Subjects: Labor’s bungled Industrial Relations legislation; union donations to the Labor Party; electoral donations; The Teals; renewable energy; increased electricity and gas prices confirmed in Labor’s budget; Chris Bowen’s energy crisis.
RAY HADLEY:
This IR debate is continuing and there are various votes and divisions. Now, obviously they need all the numbers they can gather in the lower house and Mr Dutton was about to come to the phone and talk to us when the bells went again. So, he had to go back into the chamber, and that will continue through the course, I would believe, of the morning. Now if he gets a chance to talk to us, he will. But if he can’t, well, he can’t. That’s just the way things are. Now, I think I’ve got the Opposition Leader on the line right now. Peter Dutton, good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
I know what’s going to happen here. So, feel free to, you know, hang up if you have to rush off with those bells ringing in the background, and obviously, it’s all about IR reforms and reading the comments this morning, as no doubt you had by Dennis Shanahan and others – it’s a pack of poo tickets. They don’t know what they’re doing.
PETER DUTTON:
They’ve moved 150 amendments, Ray, to this Bill that they only put together a week ago. So, there’s a lot that they’re making up on the run. One of the really strange inclusions that they’ve put into the Bill now gives the unions a right of veto over an agreement that employers can arrive at with their employees. This really, frankly, takes us back to a Whitlam era as Paul Keating pointed out. This is bad legislation and takes it back before the Hawke-Keating years. I just think it comes at a time when inflation is going to continue to be a problem for our country – interest rates are high, in the government’s budget they said that with their policies over the next two years, electricity goes up by 56 per cent, gas by 44 per cent, and if you start making it harder to employ people then I think we’re going to see a spike in unemployment in this country as well and business failures will also go up. So, there are very many concerning elements to this Bill. They abolished the Australian Building Construction Commission so that gives the CFMEU a free run now. As we pointed out yesterday, the union movement since 2007 has donated over $100 million to the Labor Party and they’re getting repaid in spades in this Bill. I mean, we’re all in favor of reasonable union behavior, but the coverage of unions now is about just under 10 per cent across the broader public, higher in the public service. So, we’re happy for sensible reforms, but this really swings the pendulum back so far in favour of the union movement. I think it’s going to be very detrimental to business and to the economy.
RAY HADLEY:
I just want to make sure I got that clear: you’re telling me that if the employer and employee reach agreement through some sort of enterprise bargain agreement, that the union then has the right to veto the decision by the employee to accept the employer’s offer. Is that what you said?
PETER DUTTON:
That’s exactly right, Ray, and it goes beyond that. So, if you think about a local shopping centre, where you’ve got maybe a Coles or Woolies, you got a hairdresser, you’ve got the liquor store, you know, maybe a dozen shops within that shopping centre. The Bill provides that the smaller businesses can be compelled to come into a situation if they’ve got more than 15 employees. So, you know, when you think about casuals, at a bakery or at a newsagency, I mean most of them would be picked up because they would have part-time employees and they would reach the headcount of 15 pretty quickly. They can be compelled into a situation where effectively they have to adopt the arrangement that the bigger companies have got – that they brokered with the union. So, there will be many small businesses over the next 12 or 18 months who have been operating for decades, who have never had a problem with their employees – they pay them well, they treat them well, they’ve never seen the union rep and the employees have never had an interest in joining the union – they are going to see unions coming through the door in increasing numbers. So, I think this is just starting to play out, but the government’s ramming this through the parliament today. They’ve only restricted people to five-minute speeches, which again, is quite unprecedented and they’re only allowing the amendments to be dealt with in one lot. So, it all gets a bit technical, but the point is that they’re trying to truncate the debate and drive it through as quickly as they can.
RAY HADLEY:
Well then, they’ve got the problem with Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock in the Upper House, in the Senate, but just on this, you just nominated the amount of money over a period of time the union’s given to the Labor Party. Are you concerned about what the Teals are getting and what they’ve got already and how they may be beholden to some people in relation to the deep pockets backing them?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I was really staggered I’ve got to say, Ray, about those numbers. I mean, it’s always difficult in these seats because you’ve got to raise money and you need to send flyers out and make phone calls and the rest of it. People don’t like it, but that’s part of the democratic process. But when you look at the individuals who have contributed significant amounts, I suppose the question is to them: I mean, when they’ve made donations in an unprecedented way, what is their expectation in return and what will the Teals be fighting for? I think it also demonstrates that many of the Teals aren’t actually Teal – they’re Green. I mean, if you look at somebody like Monique Ryan – completely opposed to the use of gas. Many of the Teal independents are opposed to stage three tax cuts. They never mentioned that to their constituents before the election. These are Greens’ positions. So, I think you really need to pay attention to what it is they’re doing, who the paymasters are, and who the big business people are – the rich individuals behind them who are paying millions of dollars into donations in these seats. The major parties can’t spend, you know, $2 million dollars in an individual seat, to be honest, and yet all of these Teals are in a position where they’re flush with cash, in some cases, they weren’t able to spend all that they raised.
RAY HADLEY:
Let’s go back to the election in 2019, when Zali Steggall was successful and then we find out at the start of this year that she copped money from the Kinghorn Family Trust. The Kinghorns are entitled to give money to whom they like, but John Kinghorn – the founder of Rams, of course – is someone involved in the coal industry. The family trust is a multi-millionaire coal investor. She took their money, and then blamed someone in her office for not telling her the money was coming from a coal millionaire. I mean, and we only find that out two-and-a-half years after she’s elected on a platform that she hates coal. Well, she doesn’t hate it enough not to take the money.
PETER DUTTON:
And not to give it back. If you’re really offended by it, wouldn’t you give the money back? She hasn’t done that. So, I think that hypocrisy is writ large, and, as I say, they want to make themselves out to be, you know, normal Liberal voters that are just disaffected with the Liberal Party and decided to run as independents. They’re not that, Ray. They’re Greens. I mean, there are a couple of exceptions. Dai Le, who I think has done a really good job – not just because she defeated your former Premier in New South Wales, Kristina Keneally, which I think was a great service to the nation and she should be honoured in the Australia Day Awards for that alone – but I think Dai Le is a good person. But most of the Teals, they are, frankly, entitled. Some of the speeches, the wealth, and the hypocrisy is just dripping – and I think Australians will be looking at them at the next election saying ‘actually, you’re not who we thought you were and some of the double-talk, we’re just not going to cop.’
RAY HADLEY:
I thought for one horrible moment when you got to ‘your former Premier’ you were about to say ‘your favourite Labor politician’ or something sarcastic like that – she’s now gone. I know you’re flat-out but one final thing. I spoke to Daniel Walton yesterday, from the AWU, and I think he’s a young bloke with a few brains….
PETER DUTTON:
A very decent bloke.
RAY HADLEY:
…and he said quite clearly – even though he wouldn’t bag Chris Bowen – but he said quite clearly, and he said what you’ve said, what I’ve said, and have been saying for quite some time, it’s not about denying climate change, it’s about the fact we don’t have renewables available to us now to replace gas and coal. We don’t have it, and he said that quite clearly to me yesterday, he said ‘Ray, we don’t have it’. It’s no good saying we’re going to go to renewables in 2030. I don’t know if you saw the story today in New South Wales at Mosman, they’ve got extension cords charging cars. Christ! I’m fair dinkum! There’s a picture in The Daily Telegraph that came from our website on 2GB in Sydney of an extension lead across a tree, out of a garage, charging a car at Mosman on the side of the road. People have made the point to me today, they’re saying in Mosman ‘oh, we’ve got all these wonderful electric cars, we need more charging stations, the council has got to put them on’. What about all the people that don’t have electric cars? Is their petrol subsidised by Mosman Council? No it’s not, of course it’s not subsidised! Anyway, back to Daniel. So you’ve got the AWU National Secretary saying the same thing as the Liberal Opposition Leader and the shock jock – we don’t have what’s available in renewables to replace what we have in, of course, coal and gas.
PETER DUTTON:
But Ray, that is an undeniable fact. What you’ve said there and what Daniel Walton has said, is that’s just the science of where it is. I mean, they might want to believe that the battery in Victoria lasts for more than 30 minutes, but it doesn’t. The battery in South Australia lasts for 75 minutes. I mean, it doesn’t even get you from six o’clock to the time you put the kids in bed. You’re in the dark after that and you can’t store the renewable energy at the moment. The technology might be here next year or the year after – and let’s hope it is, but it’s not at the moment – and this is this has been the problem in Europe. I mean, the problems that we’ve got here at the moment, frankly, have been compounded by a government that is just ideologically driven to turning coal and gas off before they’ve got the ability to store the renewable energy. In that scenario, the prices continue to go up because there’s this uncertainty in the market and the lights will go out. It’s what’s happening in Germany now. They’re rationing power and businesses in that environment, which is what the AWU is pointing out, businesses in that environment will say: we can’t run a manufacturing plant on that basis, and we employ 400 Australians at the moment, but we’re going to close the plant and we’ll go to Malaysia or we’ll go to Singapore or somewhere else and we’ll manufacture there – it’ll be a lower wage cost, but the energy costs will be cheaper and we know that the lights will stay on.
I just can’t understand how the Prime Minister can stand up and say in the budget as he did that wind and solar is free. When people get their electricity bills, they know that’s not true and yet he continues to repeat it. Chris Bowen, as we know, one of the great success stories of the Gillard period with GroceryWatch and FuelWatch and allowing boats on his own watch. The fact is that he, in the budget, has funded these environmental legal officers who are taking action against coal companies and against gas companies to stop the gas companies from bringing new supply into the system. If you don’t bring new supply in at the moment, we’re going to be in all sorts of trouble in the next 12 or 18 months and this government is taking us down a road that our country shouldn’t go down. You can have renewables – everyone’s in favour of that and if the storage comes along, that’s great – but at the moment, you can’t turn off the old system until a new technology is discovered or the science changes or you have the ability for the solar panels to work off moonlight, like they do off sunlight at the moment. There’s an honest debate going on in other parts of the world, which is why Mr Walton from the AWU is in favor of a discussion around nuclear as well because in France and Canada, in Germany and elsewhere, they know that you can firm up renewable energy in the system with nuclear because it’s zero emissions and the latest technology in the small modular reactors is quite remarkable. It’s low cost, it’ll reduce the cost of power in our country and again, the government doesn’t want to even have the discussion about it. I mean, you can hear the frustration in their voices, but we’re headed down a dangerous path in our country with a government that’s sort of looking more like the Whitlam government than the Hawke government.
RAY HADLEY:
Just one thing I need to remind all my listeners, the reason I spoke to Daniel Walton, there’s a company in South Western Sydney employing 600 people – Snack Foods Australia. They make Cheezels among many other snack foods. Their gas bill has gone from $3 million annually to $9 million. The boss said, look, I don’t know what we’re going to do. They’ve gone up by 40 cents a pack, the snack. But then he said the people are suggesting ‘oh, we’ll go to solar.’ They would need 200 acres of land somewhere in Smithfield, which is in Chris Bowen’s electorate, or Blacktown where the other factory is. Two hundred acres of solar and then it would only heat the oil during daylight! I mean…
PETER DUTTON:
That’s for one factory. For one factory, Ray…
RAY HADLEY:
For one factory, one factory to make some Cheezels. Strike me pink! Anyway, I know you’re flat-chat. Thanks for making time for us and we’ll no doubt be hearing more about the IR legislation through the course of the day. Thank you.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks, Ray. Take care, mate.
[ends]