Subjects: The Prime Minister’s censure motion stunt; Labor’s extreme industrial relations legislation; cost of living pressures; the government’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; nuclear power; the Government’s leaked modelling on the economic impact of the closure of coal fired power stations; Liberal Party.
PAUL MURRAY:
Mr Dutton, nice to talk to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure, Paul. Thank you, mate.
PAUL MURRAY:
Let’s not waste too much time. Australia made its decision. They have asked for a change, they’re getting that change. But today was trying to spike the football. It was trying to break the spirit of you and your members before they went home, wasn’t it?
PETER DUTTON:
That’s exactly what it was about. It was about trying to eke out some political advantage. At a time when you’ve got families who are really struggling under the cost of living pressures, and they want to try and pull these political stunts, but, in the end, we want to honour Scott’s career and the contribution that he made to our country.
He made a mistake in relation to the extra ministries. He’s pointed that out but there was no illegality to it and the overreach today from the Prime Minister and from Tony Burke, frankly, I think they were embarrassed by the end of the day and we stood strong, we support our own, and we stand up for what we believe in.
PAUL MURRAY:
But also, for the normal people that are watching us right now, Parliament did nothing today to improve normal people’s lives. Yes, the Integrity Commission is something that people want and it’s good for the way the system works. But if you’re not there to improve people’s lives, then what is the point? But instead, it’s all politics. It’s all games. Nothing happened today to improve anyone’s life, and that is the test of what a government is truly about, and on that test, they failed today.
PETER DUTTON:
Paul, I think you’re right. They don’t have a plan. I mean, they went to the election promising to reduce power prices by $275. The Prime Minister promised that on 97 occasions. He’s never mentioned that figure once since. We ask him every day about the $275 promise, he talks about everything but that – and if they had a plan, like they led people to believe before the election, a plan to reduce power prices, they should have implemented it in the budget. But they haven’t done that, they haven’t done it this week.
PAUL MURRAY:
Normal people get screwed over in the application of this politics. Perfect example is the briefing note that we saw today about what’s going to happen to the Hunter Valley when eventually the coal fired power stations get blown away, and sure, lots of people in Sydney get richer with green investments, but that part of Australia is about to get much poorer. Again, nothing said about that today.
PETER DUTTON:
I think the government should be releasing that report because clearly, it’s going be a huge blow to the local community and you’ve got the new Labor member up in the Hunter who’s completely abandoned his roots, who he believes in. He’s a former mine worker, has completely abandoned his mates, and has completely walked away from his community. I think there’ll be a lot of anger on the ground up there and if they’ve got a report – which had been leaked – that says that Australians are going to hurt and the government has an ability to do something about that, instead of making it worse, then it’s a debate we should be having in the Parliament. But of course, they don’t, they don’t mention it, they obfuscate, they play political games and in a Parliament where they’ve got the numbers, they’ve got the support of the Teals – the Simon Holmes à Court candidates – it’s tough, but we’ve just got to keep pushing away on what we believe in, our values, fight on behalf of those families and those battlers who just don’t have a voice in this government.
PAUL MURRAY:
Now we know that the country changes every three years and certainly the country today is much different than it was five years ago, let alone ten years ago. But I got a little philosophical a bit earlier in the week when I started to show the people that are watching us now, what the different generations value, and yes, there are things that are different about millennials than baby boomers, but there’s one value that everyone from a Gen Zer, to a millennial, a Gen X, a baby boomer and the people connected to World War II all have in common and that’s the word ‘freedom’. So, I’ve heard an awful lot in the past couple of days about the existential threats and end to the Liberal Party. But last time I checked, you’ve got a better record and you’ve got a potential in the next two and a half years to build policies around one word – ‘freedom’. Is that going to be the funnel that you try to work out what you take to the electorate in the next two and a half years?
PETER DUTTON:
Absolutely, it will be, Paul. It’s an incredibly powerful argument that you put. It is exactly about that freedom. It’s about choice. It’s about making a decision that’s best for you and for your family and for your kids and grandkids, and that’s the freedom and one of the core values that we stand up for – having that choice, keeping more of the money that you work hard for.
PAUL MURRAY:
By this time next year, what do you hope to put on the table? You’re not going to have every answer, every idea, but by this time next year what should people expect of Peter Dutton as the Opposition Leader?
PETER DUTTON:
We’re going to hold the government to account where they get it wrong. Every good opposition should do that. It puts pressure on the government to make better decisions than they otherwise would have. They’ve been elected, we respect the electoral process, so that’s the first point.
Second point is that – and we’ve already started this work – we’re going to put coherent policies together, policies which are contemporary that, again, reflect the values of the Liberal Party, of the Coalition, and we’re going to have this debate about nuclear power because it’s impossible to understand how we don’t have blackouts and huge power price increases in our country like they’ve seen in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and California. So, we’re going to have an honest debate in relation to energy. I think that’s incredibly important.
Third point is that we’re going to support the government where we believe that they’ve got it right, or where it’s in our national interest to do so.
I want to bring a maturity to the role. I want to make sure that we’re a credible alternative and the policy development work that we’ve got underway at the moment will build on what we did in government and there’s a lot of good that we did when we were in government, but there are some elements that we don’t want to take forward. Allowing people, for example, to access their own money in superannuation, so that young people and people who have separated later in life, particularly women, who just don’t have the money to reestablish themselves can buy their home, use that money, importantly, put that money back into superannuation when they sell their house so they can compound before they get to retirement. Those sort of sensible economic policies that will help Australians, not hinder them, and in 12 months’ time we’re going to have inflation that the government’s projecting will go to 8 per cent, interest rates will continue to go up over the course of the next 12 months and the government’s got this industrial relations system where you’re going to have small businesses who have never seen a union boss come through the door before are going to be coming through in an aggressive way.
I think the people of Australia are going to be looking very seriously about what the alternative is within the next 12 months and we’ll build on that all the way up to the next election – have the discipline that we’ve got within our team now. We haven’t got the breakouts that we saw when we went into opposition in 2007. We’re a strong united team and we’re a credible alternative government already and we’ll continue to build on that over the next 12 months and over the next two and a half years in the run up to the next election.
PAUL MURRAY:
Well, all the best to Peter Dutton and his family for the summer break. We’ll look forward to talking to him many more times next year.
[ends]