Subjects: Penny Wong’s call for Palestinian statehood; the barbaric attacks on Israel and the ramifications around Australia; Labor’s Big Australia policy; Labor’s NDIS mess.
E&OE
LUKE GRANT:
As you know, every Thursday when the Opposition Leader’s available, he speaks to Ray at this time on this show. And I’m delighted to say Peter Dutton is on the line.
‘Morning, Opposition Leader. I hope you’re well.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Luke. Very well, thanks mate. I hope you’re well too.
LUKE GRANT:
Yes mate, I am very much indeed.
Let’s get down to business. I know you’ve got a busy day. But you’ve labelled Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s call for Palestinian statehood as ‘Australia’s most rash diplomatic move in decades’, saying the move is ‘reckless’. I agree with you and I think that she’s made a horrible misstep here, but I don’t imagine the Government will backtrack anytime soon, do you?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’re seeing the Prime Minister double down today. Look, I think frankly, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong need to move past their university politics days. They’ve got a real blight against Israel. I think the Jewish community here is reeling from the speech made by Penny Wong. I think there was an enormous amount of concern within communities, within Jewish communities, but right across the Australian community, with the level of anti-Semitism that we’re seeing.
Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation, like Al-Qaeda. They slaughtered Israelis in their homes. They dragged them out into the street. They still hold hostages. And we’ve got Penny Wong out there criticising Israel for not fixing the situation. Israel, don’t forget, is a country –the only democracy in the Middle East, they provide us with a lot of support, there is intelligence that they’ve provided to Australia over the years, which have stopped terrorist attacks from taking place against our interests, including against men and women in the Australian Defence Force; and why we would want to treat Israel the way that Penny Wong is at the moment, I’ve got to say, is beyond me.
I think a lot of Australians, particularly a lot of people of Jewish heritage, are really shaking their head at the way in which Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese are conducting themselves at the moment. The reality, Luke, is that a lot of it has to do with the internal politics within the Labor Party. We’ve seen reports today that Labor powerbrokers are worried about the vote in Western Sydney, and they’re worried about independent candidates from the Islamic community running against the Labor candidates and Members of Parliament now. I think it’s a shameful act that the Labor Party is hanging Israel and the Jewish community out to dry at the moment, at a time when they need support.
LUKE GRANT:
You know, I’ve read those reports and I’m no fan of leftist politics, but that is just so ordinary to think that it’s a domestic political manoeuvre. And how can you possibly, Peter, how can you have all those people – more than 1,200 people killed, 200 plus kidnapped, plus the thousands of people who have been injured in Israel from this horrific October 7th attack, how can an outcome of doing that be, ‘by the way he’s statehood’? I mean, doesn’t that send just completely the wrong message?
PETER DUTTON:
Completely the wrong message, and as I say, this is a listed terrorist organisation. Our intelligence agencies have given advice to governments of both persuasions that this is an organisation which is evil. They’re involved in barbaric activity and we saw that in the biggest attack on the Jewish population since the Holocaust, where six million people were gassed and tortured in those concentration camps. We’ve got survivors in our country of that period of history, people with relatives who perished at the hands of Hitler and were gassed in an unimaginable circumstance. I think every young kid in school today should learn more about that period of history…
LUKE GRANT:
Yes.
PETER DUTTON:
…Because I fear that we’re repeating the mistakes of past. There are Holocaust survivors in our country who came here, who’ve lived in peace and harmony, made wonderful contributions to our country, are amazing Australians, and for the first time in their life, they’re saying that they feel uncertain and unsafe in our country. And we’ve got the Prime Minister running off talking about giving statehood to a Hamas led territory in Palestine. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think the Prime Minister is a tricky politician. We saw that with the Voice. He’s now out trying to walk both sides of the street and I don’t think people will cop it. It’s affecting our – I think it’s detrimental to our relationship with Israel. I think there is a big price to pay, because our global standing, our international standing is tarnished by Penny Wong’s actions.
LUKE GRANT:
Answer me this, if you can. I’m told that you attended one of Australia’s, if not Australia’s largest synagogue as the Jewish community in Sydney mourned six months on from October 7 and the Prime Minister didn’t attend. Now, let’s not play politics with the event, and you wouldn’t, but there’s something telling in that. Is that right that you were there?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I went out to Dover Heights, Luke, right at the start. There were about 10,000 people of Jewish faith there on that night and many other Australians who were of no faith at all, or Christian faith and they were there to support the Jewish community because of the shock that they were feeling. The Jewish community is, as I say, really quite repulsed by the reaction, the doxing, the targeting, businesses that have been boycotted. I’ve had a lot of engagement with the Jewish community. I’ve met with rabbis, and I’ve met with community leaders, including last night at the Opera House in Sydney.
Symbolically, we wanted to say that we’re taking the Opera House back because we don’t want that image to last, where we had people chanting ‘F*** the Jews’ and ‘F*** Israel’ and, ‘Let’s find the Jews’, whatever they were saying, it was repulsive. I think Australians have in their hearts a desire to treat every Australian equally; and to see people targeted because of their skin colour, because of their religion is not something we should abide. We should push back on it. If we don’t speak up against the anti-Semitism and that hatred, it’ll continue to fester. I think the Prime Minister at the moment is playing a cute political game, but there’s a human cost and I think the Jewish community is acutely feeling that right now.
LUKE GRANT:
Yeah. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil spoke on the Channel Seven program, Sunrise, yesterday saying that last year the Government introduced a range of reforms to try to control the population numbers through immigration, claiming that it would halve by July 1. Just have a quick listen to this, Peter:
[excerpt]
JANE HUME:
How big is your Big Australia, Clare? Because quite frankly, if you’re overshooting your own target and you cannot tell us how much, even just a couple of months out, I think that makes a mockery of what you’ve just said.
CLARE O’NEIL:
Well, that’s, that’s not what I’m saying. That, that’s not what I’m saying at all, Jane. And just, I don’t think we need the hyperbole in this conversation. What we’ve seen here is that with the year after the borders opened, there was a boost in migration, as we saw in countries all over the world. Our Government has acted to bring migration back under control. What that has meant is that our net overseas migration rate will halve over a short period of time…
JANE HUME:
So we’re going to hit your target?
CLARE O’NEIL:
We are in a transition year back to normal.
[end excerpt]
LUKE GRANT:
That’s refreshing for everyone who pays rent. Wouldn’t you agree, Peter Dutton, that the Government’s got this under control and about to halve it?
PETER DUTTON:
Oh Luke, look, I mean this is another disaster of the Government’s making. We have to have a managed migration system. When we’re in government and we win the next election, we’ll return back to a sensible migration program – because in the Howard years, in the Coalition years otherwise, the migration program was set at about two third skilled, one third unskilled, we had a balanced program. The Government’s ramped up dramatically the numbers.
Now, Clare O’Neil don’t forget, is the Minister, along with Andrew Giles, responsible for releasing 150 hardened criminals into the community. They’re out committing crimes, and police are spending tens of millions of dollars monitoring people and dealing with them at the moment, and not dealing with other crimes or preventing other crimes. And so Minister O’Neil is out there saying that they’re going to halve the migration numbers.
This is really interesting because the Government said that they would wind back the numbers and they’ve had it in their budget papers. We knew that in December, only a few months ago, the Government predicted that the target would be about 375,000 people. We know that the actual figures in the first quarter of the financial year 23-24, that migration to our country increased by 145,000 to 548,800.
Now, the Government talks out of both sides of its mouth here. If you’re lining up and you can’t get a rental property, or you can’t buy a property, or your kids or grandkids can’t get into the housing market, Luke, it’s for this reason. The last two years, the numbers of people have topped out at about a million who have come through the migration program. Our country’s only building, at best, about 170,000 new dwellings each year. That’s why you’ve got the huge problem with housing at the moment. I think Australians are starting to get really angry about this, and I think they’re right to do so.
So yes, the Government’s got to wind it back and let’s see what they do, because they’ve promised this three or four times before and they just haven’t delivered. In fact, they’ve increased the numbers when they’re telling people they are going to cut it back.
LUKE GRANT:
Yeah. I know you’ve got to go, but I have to ask you about this, Peter, because we’ve talked about it here in Ray’s absence all week. The number of criminals who seem to be getting surveillance, courtesy of the NDIS, is just appalling and I don’t know if the Government see an early way out of this, but this is something that has to be stopped immediately, doesn’t it? Someone who’s a rapist, or a paedophile, or even worse, that gets released and requires some support and then has the NDIS swing into action. That’s not the original intent, is it?
PETER DUTTON:
It’s not, and I mean the NDIS is a great program for people with profound disabilities – that’s the objective of it. Not to provide support to criminals and to paedophiles and others who have harmed their fellow Australians. When Bill Shorten designed the NDIS, it was designed with that intent in mind – to provide support to people in need – but as it turns out, as we’ve seen with the pink batt program and as we’ve seen with other programs in the migration space that Labor designs, the intent is never matched by the reality.
The reality is that they’ve got here a program which is now outstripping the money that we spend on the entire Medicare system in our country, the fraud is rife, and the Labor Party don’t want to seem to do anything about it. They’ve got a fight with the States about who’s paying for it. And in the end, if you’re paying for these criminals, you’re not paying for those who are most in need. The NDIS needs to be a program to provide support to those most in need, that’s what we support, not what they’ve ended up with. I think the Government’s got another big mess of its own making and unfortunately Australians, again, are going to be the ones who suffer as a result.
LUKE GRANT:
Yeah I agree.
We’ll let you go. I know you’ve got a busy day Peter. Good to talk again. Take care of yourself, will you?
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Luke. You too mate. I’ll speak soon. Bye bye.
[ends]