Subjects: The New South Wales Liberal Party; Labor’s cost of living crisis; Dr Chalmers at war with the Reserve Bank Governor to distract from Labor’s poor economic management; Labor’s energy policy shambles disadvantaging regional communities; Labor’s failure to condemn Dr Basyouny’s messages of hate; the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia; the Prime Minister’s weak leadership.
E&OE.
RAY HADLEY:
Every Thursday I speak with the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. He’s on the line right now.
Peter Dutton, good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
Well look, I’d imagine you’d like to concentrate this morning on the Federal Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, but we’ve got to address another matter, and that’s Mr Loughnane’s report to the Federal Liberal Party about the performance of the State Executive. And finally – finally after I called for it two and a half weeks ago, Don Harwin has gone, along with the rest of the State Executive.
But can you explain to our listeners – I’ve already explained it, I think, in detail yesterday – how we somehow managed to announce Rob Stokes was one of the three man panel to oversee the State Executive, and then he said, ‘no, I don’t want to do it’?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, a couple points. Firstly, we can win the next federal election, but we can only do that if we perform well across the country, and including in New South Wales. So I want to make sure that the organisation is running at full speed. That clearly hasn’t been the case. There have been problems internally, and they need to be addressed. We need to get new members into the organisation. There are many people who are being excluded from joining the Liberal Party at the moment, for all sorts of reasons. That is completely unacceptable. I want to make sure that we have our best opportunity at a state level as well, because I want Mark Speakman to be the next Premier of New South Wales.
So we had a discussion at the Federal Executive, as you know, and we took a decision that we would work with New South Wales to get the organisation back on track, and that includes appointing a three person panel.
To your question about Rob Stokes; his name was put forward by the New South Wales Division, and obviously Mr Stokes has indicated that he’s not available. We’ll find a replacement and we’ll have that sorted today I hope. But we’ve got Alan Stockdale and he will chair the three person committee, and he’s been a former Federal President, and he’s an honest broker in all this. I don’t want factional leaders. I want people who have the absolute interests of our members and our interests in winning elections at heart.
RAY HADLEY:
But you would agree that the two remaining members would lean to the right as opposed to the centre of the left?
PETER DUTTON:
I just think, to be honest, they’re people – and the reason that we’ve selected people is not based on their affiliations, or anything else other than what is in the best interest of the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party, so that it is fighting fit for the byelections coming up, for the federal election and for the state election after that.
RAY HADLEY:
You talk about Mark Speakman being the next Premier of New South Wales – I hope you’re not holding your breath, or you’re having a joke with me. Did you hear his explanation yesterday about how he wouldn’t have sacked Harwin anyway, despite what we now know? Brian Loughnane obviously verbally reported to you.
PETER DUTTON:
I didn’t see that, but I’ve worked closely with Mark, I know him well, and I find him, frankly, to be a thoroughly decent person. I think he’s got the interest of New South Wales first and foremost in his mind, Ray. So, I think that’s a good starting point.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, I’d say this to you, I’ve said to other people before; my Uncle Jack’s a really nice bloke, but I wouldn’t make him the Premier of New South Wales. So being a nice bloke doesn’t qualify you to be the Premier, and I’m afraid in this particular case he’s not the right nice bloke – but we digress.
In relation to Brian Loughnane, there seems to be some sort of surprise that it was a verbal presentation. Given the rather hurried nature of what Mr Loughnane had to present, well, what else would it have been? He didn’t have the time to write a 28 page report. He goes to you blokes and women and says, ‘well, listen, it’s a basket case. Get rid of Harwin, get rid of the State Executive and I’ll tell you the reasons a bit down the track’.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, he gave a verbal presentation, but without getting into the weeds a bit, the advice that he gave was pretty obvious. We’d watch pretty closely over a long period of time different concerning elements. Brian’s, again, an objective, independent person, and he looked at all the facts, he spoke to the key stakeholders and he drew a conclusion that any reasonable person would have.
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah, and that brings me back to Mark Speakman. Now, I know [inaudible] have a blue with a state leader, right? But at the end of the day, you’ve got Brian Loughnane, a highly respected member of your Party, independently giving you a view that Don Harwin’s about as useful as a sunroof in a submarine. And yet we got Speakman talking yesterday and because you haven’t heard it, I’ll play it for you now:
[excerpt]
MARK SPEAKMAN:
I don’t have the power to sack anyone on State Executive. Federal Executive, however, has the power to intervene if they think there are appropriate circumstances… Can I finish the answer? Ok, no I don’t. No, I don’t. Federal Executive has that power to intervene if they think there is a risk to campaign readiness – and that’s obviously what Federal Executive has decided.
And what is more important than the internal makeup of a Liberal Party administration committee, be it State Executive, or a smaller committee, is making sure we have – we are giving the people of New South Wales and Australia our very best chance of defeating these terrible Labor Governments. That’s what matters. And people out in Blacktown, or Penrith, or Ballina, or Nowra, they’re more concerned with cost of living, cuts to health and education, infrastructure. They don’t really care who is on an administrative committee of the Liberal Party.
But no, I don’t regret not calling for Mr Harwin’s resignation. And can I, can I, can I finish the answer? Can I finish the answer? It’s nothing to do with factional mates. I have formed a good faith opinion that the stuff up down at Macquarie Street was at the feet of the State Director. And while I disagree with Mr Harwin from time-to-time and disagree with some of the selections that were made by State Executive, I just don’t see that he has any sort of culpability for what has happened.
[end excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
Would that statement put him at loggerheads with what you heard from Brian Loughnane?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again Ray, I’m just not going to go into what was said by Brian Loughnane in the report that he gave. I think as Mark pointed out there…
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah, but he – Peter, Peter, he got rid of him. Be fair dinkum. He got rid of him, and then you’ve got the Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales saying, ‘I wouldn’t have sacked him’. I mean he lives on another planet this bloke. Mark Speakman’s on another planet.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, we took a decision at Federal Executive. It was the right decision and we will work day and night to sort the organisation out because I believe there is strong support for us, and building support for us in New South Wales. We’re not going to squander that opportunity. I’m not going to let down the people of New South Wales. We are going to win the next election.
This Government is a disaster and Anthony Albanese – you can see at every turn, every policy decision, the wheels are just coming off. We owe it to the Australian people to be a credible alternative. We are, and when you look at the federal team, we’ve been absolutely united over the course of the last two and a half years, which has allowed us to put pressure on the Government, but also to come up with good policies – our stance on the Voice, the position we’ve taken on nuclear power – all in our country’s best interests. I think that’s what people are worried about, as opposed to the sausage making at the other end.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Well, let’s get back to that. Now we’ve had the Bichon Frisé attack dog, Jim Chalmers into you last week with a bow in his hair. Now, he seems to be at loggerheads with most financial writers today. Financial Review points out, ‘record Federal Government spending is making it harder for the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates and pouring resources into unproductive parts of the economy’ and Jim Chalmers is the captain, coach and sole selector of that.
So on Sunday, he chooses to rip into the RBA because of high interest rates – his perceived high interest rates – which we now know are a direct result of his spending like a spendthrift with a sense of humour.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think that’s spot on. If you have a look at Jim Chalmers’ history, he’s influenced by two people; one is Paul Keating – he did his doctorate on Paul Keating – and he was the Chief of Staff to Wayne Swan. This sort of attack dog of the Reserve Bank Governor really smacks of how Keating or Swan would have acted. He’s got as much political nous and as much economic skill as Wayne Swan – which is not much – but I think it was all designed to be a distraction for these figures that we saw come out. He was trying to pre-position to say, ‘look, there’s bad news coming and we’re going to hang it around the neck of the RBA’, which is, I think, outrageous because the RBA can only respond to economic settings in the economy.
If you have a look at – I think what gives it away and what shows how bad the economy’s being managed at the moment: the core inflation here in Australia is higher than any comparable economy – so the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, the euro area, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand. Interest rates have come down in New Zealand, they’ve come down in the United Kingdom, they’ve come down in Canada, they’re on the way down in the United States, and yet we’ve got our Prime Minister and our Treasurer out there skiting about pumping extra billions of dollars into the economy, which is keeping inflation up and it’s destroying….I mean these people are slowly wrecking the Australian economy. We’ve got six quarters now of a per capita people going backwards. People are going backwards in their lives and these are the things that are important. There is a much better way and the Liberal Party will always manage the economy better than Labor and it’s on full display at the moment.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, now I just – I want to get to a couple of other issues, but quickly, Barnaby Joyce is blowing up about what’s happening in, around Tamworth with these transmission lines. Now, I’ve been on about this since I came back from Paris. The Land and Environment Court in New South Wales knocked on the head 18km of transmission lines for a silver mine at Mudgee, separate to the gold mine at Blayney. They knocked it on the head and said, ‘no, you can’t do that’.
The next day, Tanya Plibersek announced 800km of transmission lines from a solar facility in the Northern Territory, to Darwin, which allegedly then will go out to Singapore – not that we need the power – Singapore needs it more than us.
But the point I make is this; if you mention renewables in any application to any facility, they say, ‘what about the wide mouth frog? What about that snake? What about that tree? What about that plant? No, bugger it, it’s renewable. Plough on through it!’. If you say it’s for a mine, they’ll find some animal that no one knows about, a skink somewhere that could be impacted, or might be impacted or might not be impacted, so they knock it on the head. There’s two sets of rules Peter Dutton in Australia at the moment. You say renewables, you get the green light, you say mining, you get the red light – and that’s just the way life is unfortunately.
PETER DUTTON:
That’s a perfect summary of it Ray, and you’ve got to ask yourself the reason why. I mean why would that be the case? Because people in regional areas are also being treated as second class citizens, because they’re the ones that are having these wires running across their front paddocks and through the streets and across national parks. It’s spoiling their lifestyle and they’re paying a big price. Tanya Plibersek has nothing to say to them.
So why are they doing this? Well, it’s because they want to win seats in the inner cities of Sydney and Melbourne, and they’re worried – the Prime Minister is petrified of the Greens, so he compromises our national security by not running proper checks on people coming into our country so that he can be popular with a segment of the population. Tanya Plibersek’s out there throwing sand in the gears of all these projects which are creating jobs and they’re creating opportunities.
The renewables only approach that they’ve got, I mean, the Prime Minister’s out there saying, ‘oh, the wind is free and the sun’s free’. Well, if that were the case, why are people’s power bills going through the roof? And why has he never been able to deliver the $275 cut?
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, one final thing: a story today by Matthew Knott in The Herald; ‘A high profile doctor running against Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in his Western Sydney’ – or southwestern Sydney seat – ‘has outraged Jewish community leaders by sharing social media posts celebrating Hamas’ October 7 attacks and portraying them as a dream come true’. ‘The Cairo-born GP Ziad Basyouny made headlines’ last month when he announced his candidacy for Watson. Now that includes Lakemba, Punchbowl, Greenacre, southwestern Sydney – very high percentage of Muslim voters in the area.
‘October 12, five days after the attack that killed the estimated 1,200 people in Israel and more than 200 taken hostage and many of them now being murdered, Basyouny shared a Facebook post containing an illustration of a rock throwing protester and a machine gun wielding paraglider’, according to screenshots provided by The Herald. ‘The original post by another Facebook user, which Basyouny shared to his 132,000 followers, said ‘dreams, my friend, come true for those who seek to work and see them come true!’. Hamas militants used paragliders to breach the Gaza-Israel border October 7′ in the attack, of course.
Now, the other thing about all of this is he then supported what happened on October 8 in Sydney with, of course, the marches. Now, at that particular stage, Israel had not responded. They had not responded in any way, shape or form. They were still licking their wounds after what happened on October 7. ‘When asked about the post Basyouny told Sky News, ‘It’s exactly what’s written. It was. It is obvious that this post was related to Palestinians celebrating being out of the cage.’ He went on to say ‘that all life lost is tragic’.’ All life, everything life is tragic. ‘I condemn attacking civilians, any shape or form’, blah blah blah blah blah.
So this bloke could be getting travelex, of course, Tony Burke out of his position and he stands on that particular shameful attack. It’s incredible.
PETER DUTTON:
I think it is absolutely incredible. I mean this is a test of leadership for the Prime Minister, Ray. The Labor Party will be happy to line up and take preferences from this doctor. Mike Burgess has advised that if somebody is liking a post like that, which celebrates the slaughter of 1,200 people, including pregnant women, that they are not fit to be an Australian citizen. That’s the reality of what we’re dealing with here. This is a message of hate.
Now, if the Prime Minister is serious, and I think he should come out today on this, as should Tony Burke. They should refuse to accept preferences, or give preferences to this independent candidate. This is a very significant matter. The anti-semitism that we’re seeing in our country at the moment, we’ve got armed guards at Jewish schools and synagogues, etc.. And as Mr Burgess has pointed out, there’s been an increase in the security threat in our country.
The Prime Minister needs to stand up today, and he needs to make it very clear that Labor will not accept nor preference this individual. I think really, this is now gone beyond the pale and it is a big test for the Labor Party because they’re playing footsies with these sort of candidates, and I think they should be condemned for these sort of posts and for that sort of thinking; and people of that character don’t deserve to be in the Australian Parliament.
RAY HADLEY:
We’ll talk next week. Thanks for your time as always.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you Ray. See you mate.
[ends]