Subjects: Labor’s hit to Australian businesses and manufacturers; cost of living pressures; increased electricity and gas prices confirmed in Labor’s budget; gas supply; Syrian repatriation.
E&OE
RAY HADLEY:
The Federal Opposition Leader joins us, he’s in Western Sydney today. Peter Dutton, good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, Chris Bowen has a history. I call him Casanova because everything he touches he does that to and now he’s doing it to energy. He’s off to Egypt at the moment with a conga line of people to talk about things – probably not human rights given they’re in Egypt – but the message has to be there. You and I have said time and time again, it’s not about denying climate change. It’s about the fact that getting there too quickly before we have the technologies in place to replace what we have already.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think that argument is spot-on, Ray, and I can understand why the Prime Minister would put Chris Bowen in charge. He was the architect, as you point out, of FuelWatch and GroceryWatch and some of the worst decisions made by the Rudd and Gillard governments, he was front and centre of it.
He was a shocking immigration minister and he had complete failure on his watch and now we’re putting him in charge of the emissions reduction strategy. I really worry, quite genuinely, for our country that the Prime Minister is sleepwalking with all of this ideology in mind and has completely lost touch with where households are and where businesses are. What do they achieve in the end if they close these businesses down? You’re talking about companies who employ tens of thousands of Australians. So, the businesses close here, they go into a more certain economic environment in another country, they continue their manufacturing there, they employ those workers from whatever country they’ve gone in to and the emissions still go into the atmosphere. So, there’s no environmental gain and all that happens is that we lose the jobs here in Australia. The companies couldn’t be any clearer: they’re happy to reduce their emissions and they’re working on all those strategies. But it’s just too radical a path that the Prime Minister is taking us down and they’re just making the switch too quickly when the technology is not yet there to store the energy from solar and from wind and the other renewable sources. If you can’t turn the lights on over nighttime or the IGA store can’t run their fridges if the government gets us into a position where they’re rationing power, then that will be devastating for the economy and the price rises that the Prime Minister pointed out to gas electricity in the budget – 56 per cent for electricity and 44 per cent for gas – that will just be the start of the hurt that Australians are feeling.
RAY HADLEY:
I note today, writing in the Australian Financial Review, the AGL Energy Chairman Patricia McKenzie said the faster closure of coal power plants as demanded by the company’s biggest shareholder Mike Cannon-Brookes, is not possible because the replacement capacity cannot be built in time to keep the lights on and prevent prices shooting higher. Now, it’s ok for Mr Cannon-Brookes with his, you know, half a dozen homes across all parts of the country, with a fairly big footprint. It’s okay for Chris Bowen to jump on a jet and go to Egypt with another big footprint, but the rest of us are going to live in the dark if they keep going down this path, as is evidenced by the words of Patricia McKenzie.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, that’s right, Ray. You’ve just got to stick to the facts here and strip the emotion back. If the wind and the sun energy is free as the Prime Minister likes to say, then why are people facing huge increases in their electricity prices and in their gas prices and when they get their bills, they continue to go up? The fact is that wind and solar don’t keep our energy sources running for 24 hours in the day. You need to make sure that you can store. The battery at the moment in Victoria lasts for 30 minutes. In South Australia at last for about 75 minutes. But that’s not going to see you through the hours of darkness or if you’ve got a couple of days of rainy periods or whatever it might be. I just think, step back and look at it rationally. I think it’s quite a dangerous path that the Prime Minister is taking us down, because it’s not only this issue, Ray, it’s also the reality of the industrial relations reforms that they’re bringing in which brings us back – as Paul Keating’s pointed out – to a period prior to his time as Prime Minister, so it takes us back to the ‘70s or ‘80s. So, you’ve got high inflation, you’ve got high energy costs, you’ve got a more rigid industrial relations system. All these costs of doing business ultimately get passed on to consumers at a time when people can’t afford it. If that’s the path that the Prime Minister’s taking us down, then I really do worry about cost of living and the pressures that will continue to mount on families and pensioners and self-funded retirees and all Australians for that matter.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, to another matter – four of the ISIS brides and 13 children have come back, well, not to Australia they’ve come specifically to Sydney. We had an interview which you may not have heard with Ben Fordham this morning and our Police Commissioner in New South Wales, Karen Webb. Karen Webb basically said that she didn’t know where they are, her officers were not part of the equation, that the AFP carries the job of monitoring these people. We now know thanks to a report by Chris O’Keefe on Channel Nine, they’re at Maccas, they’re in the community, there are no prohibitions. We also found out through our own research, that this thing of someone saying, ‘well, I’m going to put myself under house arrest, if the courts don’t do it.’ Well, there’s no capacity for anyone to do that. It must be via the Supreme Court of New South Wales for people who monitor. They can’t just say ‘oh I surrender to being monitored.’ It’s impossible to do. The most important fact – this is all political, Peter Dutton – they’re not going anywhere near Victoria until after the state election on November 26, because that may jeopardise the chances of a Labor man becoming a premier again, in Daniel Andrews.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I mean, it all speaks for itself, Ray. The fact that they won’t send people to Victoria until after the state election shows that this is all about politics, and I just don’t think you can play politics with our national security. These are very significant issues and it’s a terrible situation that these families have put their own children into, like somebody hopping in a car and drug-driving or drink-driving or making a terrible decision which impacts negatively on your children. But tragically, that’s the decision that the mother and father in these circumstances have made. If I was a grandfather or my daughter was over there, of course, you’d want them back here in Australia, but the job of the Prime Minister is to keep our country safe and to reduce risks, not to increase them.
If you were going to have undertakings provided by people, if they were going to subject themselves to an ankle bracelet or some sort of curfew or a regime, wouldn’t you have done that before they came into our country? I mean, wouldn’t that agreement have been entered into as a condition of entry into Australia? Once people arrive here, the government’s lost all leverage to get that outcome, so they’ve surrendered at every point. If you’re even a young kid, who has been influenced by hearing people just talk constantly about their hatred of the West, of Australia, of the United States, of our allies, of Christians – they’re going to live with that forever, and it’s going to be an influence on people. Now, I hope that people can lead a good life and all of that which we would hope in any circumstance, but the Prime Minister hops up and he says, ‘well, I can’t tell you anything about this because of national security reasons and I’m not going to tell you what the security arrangements are, if any, are in place,’ which it seems that they aren’t. What assurances have they got that there is not going to be a problem?
I think Australians are rightly asking the spot-on questions that need to be asked. Why, if there’s no problem and the government’s happy with the decision they’ve made, why are they waiting until after the election in Victoria to take people to Victoria? It’s completely unacceptable that local police in a community wouldn’t know that these people are now living within their suburbs. The Prime Minister, at every press conference hops up and says ‘I can’t tell you anything about this because of national security reasons.’ Well, the security advice I received when I was Minister for Home Affairs was pretty clear and it was don’t bring these people here. It’s a tough decision and it’s one that the Prime Minister has to make. Instead, he’s made a decision, which I think does compromise our national security and does put people potentially in harm’s way and he needs to explain that to the Australian public.
RAY HADLEY:
There’s another aspect I raised this week and I found, sort of, people nodding in agreement as far as my listeners are concerned. I don’t know whether it applies to younger children that are back here already or those to follow, but some of them have been born in detention. Now, given that the husbands of these women are either incarcerated or dead, they’ve had relationships inside detention resulting in the birth of children and people are saying and I’ve raised the spectre of this – family reunion. What happens next? Do we then invite one of these non-citizens, who’s the father of one of these children via family reunion to join them in Australia, to reunite the family, so to speak, out of detention?
PETER DUTTON:
These are the questions that the Prime Minister should be answering and they’re not unreasonable questions. There’s a particular status that’s attached to being an Australian citizen or parenting an Australian child. There are all sorts of circumstances that you could conceive of, but the Prime Minister has made a decision to bring people here to our country. It has created a security risk and he needs to answer these questions. I presume that all of these scenarios were contemplated – they certainly were when we were in government. We worked through all of these issues around DNA, of testing of people to test their claims as to whether they were actually Australian citizens and there are kids who are orphaned, who are adopted by some parents. There are so many different scenarios, but the government has to have sought advice on all of that and taken the legal advice and looked at the risks of what it gives rise to in terms of visa applications etc. But none of that has been declared and none of it’s been made public. I just don’t understand how the PM thinks that he can keep getting away with standing up at press conferences saying, you know, the Australian public don’t deserve answers to these questions that they’re reasonably asking. He’s just stonewalling and hoping that people move on and that the issue is forgotten about.
RAY HADLEY:
Ok, we’ll talk next week. As always, thanks for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray. See you, mate.
[ends]