Subjects: IGADF report; Labor’s Direction 63 fail; the Prime Minister’s cost of living crisis; Labor’s Big Australia policy; UN vote.
E&OE.
LUKE GRANT:
Now, every Thursday, when he can, Ray speaks with the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. He joins me on the line this morning. There’s plenty going on.
Good morning, Peter. I hope you’re well.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Luke. I’m very well, thank you, mate.
LUKE GRANT:
Appreciate your time very much indeed.
Let’s start here. A secret report, a review into Australia’s military justice watchdog kept secret for the last half year or so, accidentally published online yesterday. I said at the time, I don’t know how you accidentally publish anything online? Maybe it’s because I’m a child of the ’70s – I don’t know – but it seems to me like something that’s pretty involved and can’t be done by accident. But nonetheless, this 141 page report into the Office of the Inspector General of Australia’s Defence Force, investigates deaths and complaints of misconduct and the like was briefly uploaded and then Senator Jacqui Lambie reposted it. She’s called for the Defence Minister, Richard Marles, to step down. Do you agree with that and how does a report like this get accidentally leaked?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Luke, it’s very hard to know because these things don’t happen without the Minister’s direction or some understanding of his office as to what Defence is planning and the timelines and all of that will have been agreed to, or indeed, dictated, to the Department by Richard Marles’ office.
So, the trouble here is just a lack of transparency. I mean, why can’t the Government or Minister Marles just come out and say, ‘look, you know, we stuffed this up’ or ‘there’s a reason for it, here’s what we’re thinking’. But there’s none of that. They just try and – you know, as they say, the crime’s always the cover up, it’s not the original act that brings somebody undone.
So, I think it comes off the back also, unfortunately for Richard Marles, of the release of the decision around the stripping of medals, which was done essentially in the same time frame as the announcement of the suicide report by Nick Kaldas and the other Commissioners for our veterans. The insensitivity, and the rage, frankly, that that generated in the veterans community was very visceral.
I think Richard Marles, frankly, whilst I think he’s a good bloke, I think as people are seeing at the moment, he’s just one of many Albanese Ministers who are completely out of their depth.
LUKE GRANT:
Well, they’re out of their depth – it’s exactly what they are – they’re out of their depth. It’s extraordinary to think that you have so much time in opposition to get things right – and they certainly remind us that the Party of which you’re now leader was in Government for near enough to ten years – and they remind us how much that you might or might not have got wrong, but they had a long time to walk into office if that’s what they were going to do, and present a series of policy ideas, that would just work. You know, I find it extraordinary, Peter.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Luke, it’s what happened with the Whitlam Government in the ’70s and it’s what happened with the Rudd and Gillard Governments when they came in post-2007. Part of the problem, of course, is that the Prime Minister has never had a job outside of his time at university as a student, then he went straight into the union movement, then into a Member of Parliament’s office. None of these people have run a small business, none of them have employed or managed people, none of them have been involved in senior positions within the workplace.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that when Anthony Albanese becomes Prime Minister, with the only experience he’s had is in government is as the Infrastructure Minister and his mentor was Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. I guess, to be fair to him, we shouldn’t be surprised about the level of incompetence that we’re seeing. I just think there is a much better path for our country to be on. We live in a precarious period. Economically, as we know, things are very tight for a lot of families and a lot of families are losing hope. The Government at the moment just seems to stumble from one disaster to the next.
LUKE GRANT:
This quiet axing of Direction 63 – I spoke about this earlier in the week. I reckon, goodness me, this is an effort by government, is it not, to make it a little easier – and I think you might have made this point – for any Middle Eastern recently-arrived immigrants to stay here and not so worry about behaving. I mean, it’s just extraordinary. Someone who is charged or investigated – we’ve got to set a high bar, don’t we? It used to be the case under the former Government – I think Scott Morrison brought this in many years ago – that if you didn’t do the right thing, ‘ta-ta’. But in this instance, what do you make of the Direction 63 being axed?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Luke, I think a lot of Australians, when they look at the decision the Government made, that the Prime Minister made, to bring people in from a war zone that was controlled by a terrorist organisation – a listed terrorist organisation in our own country – I think people thought, ‘well, I mean, that’s very strange, but there must be some explanation for it’, but as it turns out, the Prime Minister has risked our national security and made our country less safe. Why? Because he’s chasing votes in Tony Burke’s seat and Chris Bowen’s seat. That’s what this is about. The Direction 63 was designed exactly as you point out, to say to criminals who have committed offences against Australian citizens, that if you’re here as a non-citizen and you commit a crime, then you can expect to be deported.
There was no press release in relation to this scrapping of Direction 63. There was no press conference. They didn’t even put a note up on the Home Affairs website. So, if it was such a good decision then why not trumpet it and why not put it up in lights? They’ve been so secretive about it and obviously it’s been designed to make it easier for people to come here. Andrew Giles was the Minister at the time and he’s the same Minister that made the decision to release the 152 hardened criminals from immigration detention when he didn’t have to do so.
So, I think, the Government has a couple of key objectives. I mean, one is they’ve got to keep Australians safe – they’re failing to do that. Secondly, they’ve got to make sure that Australians can afford to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. At the moment, a lot of Australians are struggling to do that and as we’re seeing in the fights that they’re having with the Reserve Bank, they’re at war with the Business Council of Australia and the CFMEU is reasserting itself now. I just think the Government has lost its way and Mr Albanese at the moment is doing a lot of damage to families and small businesses. As we find with Labor, and as in particular we found with the Whitlam Government, they’re slowly choking the Australian economy. What they’ve done in two years has been quite remarkable and I just don’t think our country can afford three more years of a bad Government.
LUKE GRANT:
Yeah, well that’s right. If we’ve got an election – obviously we do sometime next year – you wonder what might happen in the lead up to that. I just, if I might, play you two things that caught my attention this week. The first is when Andrew Clennell attended a prime ministerial media event, I think two days ago, have a listen to this:
[excerpt]
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, Bill Kelty has reportedly said there’s not enough imagination in your Government, you’ve got polls showing your Government at risk of losing – certainly all of them indicate you’ll lose your majority. It does feel a bit like the political strategy is hope and wait for a rate cut? And you can’t get this housing agenda through the Senate, so do you fear a hung parliament where it would be even harder to get anything through?
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
Well, I don’t accept the premise because every indication is certainly not that. I’m very confident that when Australians focus on what the next term is about, a Government that’s making a difference to the economy, a Government that wants an economy to work for people – not the other way around, a Government that’s seen a million jobs created on our watch at the same time as there’s those global pressures are there, that’s halved inflation, that has fee free TAFE, cheaper childcare, that’s reforming the NDIS, aged care, that’s making a difference on the shift to net zero, and that’s restored our international relationships and restored respect, that we will receive support at the next election. That’s what my focus is on.
I note that during these difficult economic times, when we’ve seen economies like the UK and Japan and New Zealand go into recession, what we’ve done is managed to keep the economy in the black to deliver not one, but two budget surpluses at the same time as we’re providing support for that social agenda and that cost of living support.
QUESTION:
Do you expect a rate cut before the election?
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
I don’t comment on the responsibilities of the Reserve Bank…
[end excerpt]
LUKE GRANT:
Alright, well there was a rate cut on the USA of half a percentage point today. And the other thing quickly, Peter, is what we heard on the ABC with the Prime Minister and Patricia Karvelas today:
[excerpt]
QUESTION:
So just to get some absolute clarity, Prime Minister, as we go in – it’s some time away, but into an election period, are you saying negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions are absolutely off the table for you?
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
Well, they’re tax policies…
QUESTION:
Yep, but are those tax policies…
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
…What we’re talking about here is housing policies.
QUESTION:
Are those tax policies completely off the table for you?
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
Well, Patricia, I don’t answer those sort of questions in the way that…
QUESTION:
You mean good ones?
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
You know, refer…
QUESTION:
That’s a good question! Are you going to say no to those or not?
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
…they’re not clever, they’re things that journalists – the next question is, ‘when will the election be?’, you know.
QUESTION:
No, no, that’s not my next question.
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
Yeah, well, they’re not terribly clever questions. You ask all of that. We’re interested in the tax policy that we are implementing, not the ones that we’re not.
[end excerpt]
LUKE GRANT:
He’s rattled, I reckon. What do you think, Peter?
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, I think that’s right, Luke. You want a Prime Minister who’s strong and competent, not weak and incompetent. Unfortunately, I just think people voted for somebody in Anthony Albanese a couple of years ago, who they thought was very different than the person they’ve ended up with.
This Government is Whitlam-esque. It’s getting to a point where it’s quite dangerous. We’re getting mining companies who are taking their capital offshore, manufacturing businesses have closed threefold compared to a couple of years ago, just over the last two years, and these companies are going offshore. The Government’s industrial relations policy is a disaster and they can talk about people getting more money, but the fact is that companies are moving jobs to New Zealand, to the United States, to India, to Asia, and we’re missing out on those jobs. That’s why the economy is slowing under Labor.
Our core inflation here in Australia is higher than every comparable economy. Higher than the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland. That’s why the Reserve Bank is having trouble with interest rates at the moment. If the right economic settings were in place, interest rates would have come down by now, as they have in the UK and New Zealand and Canada and now in the US overnight as you point out, but the Reserve Bank Governor won’t do that whilst the Government continues to pump money into the economy.
We’ve got migration figures out which I suspect are going to indicate that we’ve had the biggest migration intake in our country’s history, at a time when we’re not building houses, so they’ve created a housing crisis and the Government just lurches from one problem to the next.
I just think at some point the Prime Minister’s got to be honest with the Australian people and just say, ‘look, I’m just not up to it and I just don’t have what it takes’. If he’s honest like that, then I think people frankly would respect him, and we’d probably end up with Tanya Plibersek as the Labor Leader or maybe Tony Burke, I’m not sure. So we might be out of the pan, into the fire, but really, I despair for people who are doing it really tough at the moment, and this wasn’t necessary. The Government’s made economic decisions which were wrong. They spent the first 16 months obsessing about the Voice and spent half a billion dollars on it, and now we’ve got a Government that just can’t manage the circumstances in front of them.
LUKE GRANT:
Yeah. Before you go, I have to ask you about this: Australia has abstained from casting its votes on this UN motion which was drafted by the Palestinian Authority. Now, from what I’ve read of Penny Wong comments, that were trying to get the statement watered down a little bit by way of having amendments. She wasn’t successful, or we weren’t, in having that included, so rather than vote no, we abstained. I note that particularly the Council of Australian Jewry were somewhat underwhelmed to be polite about the Government’s position here. What do you make of it? Is abstaining the only way to deal with this?
PETER DUTTON:
No, they should have voted with the United States. That much is very clear, and that’s exactly what the Hawke Government would have done, it’s what a Howard Government would have done, it’s what an Abbott Government would have done, and I think Penny Wong here is – and along with the Prime Minister, frankly – damaging our relationship very significantly with Israel, with the United States and with like-minded partners. This is a dangerous period and for Jewish Australians living here – many in fear at the moment –we’ve got armed guards at schools, etc. Again, Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation – like ISIL. Like other listed terrorist organisations, they seek to do harm and evil acts, that’s what we’re dealing with here. For Labor to be making these decisions, which is about trying to hold votes here in Western Sydney etc.,
I just again, coming back to our earlier point, Luke. You have to make decisions which sometimes are tough decisions, but they have to be in our national interest, in our country’s best interests, and at the moment the Government’s trying to find political opportunity because they’re desperately worried about losing votes to the Greens and they want to stop that haemorrhaging of the Labor Party core vote, and they’re making some weird decisions, but some bad and dangerous decisions, and this is the latest one.
LUKE GRANT:
Stay well. Good to talk to you again, Peter. Thanks so much.
PETER DUTTON:
You too Luke, take care mate. Thank you.
[ends]