Subjects: Labor’s bleak budget; cost of living pressures facing Australian households; the government’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; the NDIS.
E&OE
LISA MILLAR:
I want to bring in the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton this morning. Good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
`Morning, Lisa.
LISA MILLAR:
You couldn’t hear that interview then, but we were just listening to someone in the electorate of Rankin, someone who’s doing it tough, who is concerned. The Prime Minister says that inflation will be more of a problem. You can’t give handouts here. This is not the time to do it, this is the time for restraint.
PETER DUTTON:
But Lisa, the difficulty is that the government said – only a matter of six months ago – on 97 occasions that families would see a $275 reduction in their power prices. They’re now being told it’s a 56 per cent increase. So, for people on fixed incomes, pensioners, self-funded retirees – they are really, really copping it in this budget and it is a grim budget. I worry for those families who are already struggling with an increased mortgage payment, who are struggling with increased prices at the bowser, at the checkout at their grocery store, and now they’re being told by a government the complete opposite of what they were told before the election. So, you can understand the anger that’s there.
LISA MILLAR:
Well, I put that to the Prime Minister just a moment ago and he said that there were regulations baked in, your previous government did not let on what was going on so they’re putting that aside. At the end of the day, they’ve pretty much stumped up with all their election promises in this budget. So, you’ve got to give them credit for that, can’t you?
PETER DUTTON:
I don’t think there was any election promise about a 56 per cent increase in electricity prices and, tellingly, the Treasurer never mentioned it in his speech last night. There was no mention about a 40 per cent increase in gas prices in the Treasurer’s speech last night. I think a lot of Australians thought they heard the Prime Minister say before the election that he had a plan to deal with the cost of living pressures. Everybody knew about the Ukraine war. The $275 promise was made knowing all of the settings – the Ukraine war had already started. I mean in Question Time yesterday, they were carrying on about, well, they can’t honour the $275 commitment, even though they promised it 97 times because of the Ukraine war, but it started before they made the promise. So, I think there is a lot of doubt and a rising level of anger within the Australian public because they know that Labor just doesn’t have the ability to manage the budget and they’ve demonstrated that in their document last night.
LISA MILLAR:
Do you not take responsibility, though – the previous government – for what Jim Chalmers called a decade, a wasted decade of stuffing around on energy policy for where many Australians are right now?
PETER DUTTON:
But does anybody really believe that? I mean, it’s like the claim…
LISA MILLAR:
Are you saying that you don’t take any responsibility for energy policy inaction over the last decade?
PETER DUTTON:
Lisa, what the government’s embarking on now is a transition which is too rapid into renewables. Now, we all support a reduction in emissions and a credible pathway to do that. We all support an introduction of renewables into the system, but the government’s talking about rolling out 28,000 kilometres of poles and wires – it’s not going to happen. In Germany they stopped it, and so the price that we’re seeing in the 56 per cent and whatever happens beyond that over the years, beyond the next two years, the market is factoring in that cost being passed on. I want to say that the battery lasts for longer than 75 minutes, but it doesn’t, and I want to say that the government has a plan which is sustainable, but it’s not.
LISA MILLAR:
So, no responsibility taken for a decade of inaction on energy?
PETER DUTTON:
But Lisa, when you say inaction though, I mean we invested billions of dollars into renewable energy. The investment that we’ve seen now in solar – the highest uptake in the world was as a result of money that nine years of Coalition government put in. When you look at what we’ve got as the fundamentals, the underpinning of the Australian economy because of nine years of Coalition management, we will avoid going into recession like the United States and the United Kingdom will. The fundamentals that they’ve inherited are very strong, a 50 year low of unemployment. Now they’ve got 150,000 Australians they say, will lose their jobs that they’re predicting in this budget. They’re employing an extra 20,000 public servants in Canberra. They are talking about funding environmental activists to take legal action against gas companies at a time when we need more gas coming on, both to honour our international contracts and also to meet the domestic demand. The government’s speaking out of both sides of its mouth, that it’s demonstrated that it doesn’t have a plan for families and small businesses who are really struggling with these price increases.
LISA MILLAR:
Well, you talk about economic management. Let’s turn to the NDIS because that’s been blowing out for years and was the former government not responsible for being disciplined with it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Lisa, again, I mean, that’s the Labor Party’s argument, but if you strip back the facts, we supported the NDIS, it’s a very important programme. It helps people, particularly with profound disabilities. A lot of parents who are really worried about as they age, what will happen to their kids when the parents pass on. I mean, I share all of that and I really feel, I’ve got family members in the situation, as many Australians do. So, we absolutely strongly support the NDIS, but the architect of the NDIS was Bill Shorten. Now, in government…
LISA MILLAR:
Yes, but you’ve been looking after it for the last 10 years.
PETER DUTTON:
But Lisa, again, there was no legislation, no change to the NDIS that we could get through the Senate. We needed the support of the Labor Party and The Greens. See, the great triumph of the economic outcomes that Paul Keating and Bob Hawke were able to achieve were only possible because the Liberal opposition supported them through the Senate. Now you’ve got Bill Shorten who is saying that the expenditure trajectory of the NDIS is unsustainable. It may well be. I mean, let him make that argument and we will support sensible measures. But Bill Shorten over the last five months has been running around telling people that they can have more, not less, under the NDIS. That’s the promise that they made going into the election, it’s what they’ve lived over the last six months. We’ll support sensible measures because I want it to be sustainable funding into that programme. It’s necessary, it’s right, it’s a very important piece of our social architecture, but it does need to be sustainable. It’s more expensive now than Medicare and if the government had a plan, they should have put it in the budget last night.
LISA MILLAR:
Peter Dutton, got to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks, Lisa. Thank you.
[ends]