Subjects: Visit to the Riverland and Murrayland; infrastructure upgrades; Indigenous Voice to Parliament; Australia Day.
E&OE.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
Peter Dutton is the Federal Leader of the Opposition. He’s joined us during his visit to South Australian River Murray communities.
Peter, welcome back. You promised on our programme, when we talked to you late last year, you’d visit flood-affected communities when the emergency had passed. You’re making good on that pledge in January.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, thanks, Rikki. It’s nice to be back on the programme and we had a really good visit yesterday through the Riverland with Tony Pasin and we’ve got another day today just meeting with tourist operators, people that have been impacted by the event, just listening to some of the lessons they’ve learned, the experience on the ground. I didn’t want to come here during the course, the height of it. There’s nothing worse than just standing up on a flood levy for, you know, a 15 minute photo opportunity and then jumping back in the plane. So, we started in Renmark yesterday and then we’ll work our way all the way all the way back to Adelaide today. It’s been a really important engagement and I’ve been very grateful for the time that people have given to us.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
I don’t know if you’ve been along the South Australian River Murray before, what impression has it left on you – the people and the landscapes that you’ve seen there?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s a pretty amazing event. I mean, people talk about ‘74 and ‘56 and ‘31, but this is certainly a major event. The levee system is quite remarkable. It’s a great credit to the local councils on the ground and the work that’s been done by landholders and others within the community, because obviously that makes it a very different event. I think the other thing that’s really striking is that, you know, most of us from the east coast are used to floods like we’ve seen in Lismore or in my hometown of Brisbane or Queensland after pretty regular flooding there over the years. It’s sort of a catastrophic event, it’s acute, there are rescues, cars washed downstream, all the rest of it. But the preparedness that takes place, and the modelling, the expectation and the dealing with it is one aspect, the sort of standard in contrast to a flood as we would otherwise know it. Secondly, and most importantly, is that it’s an incredible event when you see those flood plains filled and those communities and those ecosystems that’ll come back to life after the waters have receded and the tourism opportunity for people to go and see that now and over the next few months. So, it’s really an encouragement for people to go and have a look now, which is what the local tourist operators are encouraging, but also to book your holiday over the next couple of months. Don’t pull back from that and don’t cancel, for goodness sake. It’s a once in a lifetime event, potentially, and it’s a pretty amazing thing to see from the air and on the ground.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
Yeah, it’s a good point, and the South Australian Murray sits at the end of one of the biggest river catchments in the world in the form of the Murray-Darling Basin. In floods like this one, we see all this water coming through, yet it’s one of the only places in the nation where we’ve got ferries crossing flood plains. Your Shadow Cabinet colleague and the local MP there, Tony Pasin, he’s talked about blue sky projects like the Sturt Highway Bridge over Spring Cart Gully. Is it time we lifted South Australia’s river crossings into the 20th or even 21st century?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, there’s no question about that. We went to about five or six different locations yesterday where there’s a requirement for a road upgrade, for lifting of a particular causeway, for, you know, a bridge upgrade or a bridge replacement. There’s a compelling argument that Tony puts in relation to the Sturt Highway as well. So, there’s a lot to invest in. As I said, kudos to the local councils for the way in which they’ve responded and coordinated on the ground, but it’s clear that some of the roads need to be upgraded and that’s really the whole idea of mitigation and building back a road so that it’s not impacted on the next flood occasion. It might happen every 40 or 50 years, but we should be designing and planning now once the waters recede for those roads and for those connection points where communities are separated at the moment, people can’t get to work or get to an aged care facility or get to a hospital to provide services to a loved one, then that’s something that we need to address and be very cognisant of as the rebuild takes place.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
Yeah. Community representatives, councils and others have expressed frustration that sometimes we’re just putting bitumen over potholes and broken up roads and they just break again. With our regional roads in disrepair, your Coalition colleague, National Party leader David Littleproud, when we’ve talked energy, he refers to the energy grid as being gold plated or even platinum plated. Why are we platinum plating the energy network, but only paper plating our road network?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, and we see what happens when that’s the case. It gets washed away or there’s bridges where the approach roads are cut, and the consequence, the inconvenience as much as anything. Asking people to drive an extra 45 minutes to work makes – particularly with the cost of electricity or cost of fuel – it makes it, you know, near impossible, and some people, as we heard yesterday, have resigned from their work because the numbers just don’t add up when you’re doing three or four hours casual work a day and you’ve got to drive an extra 45 minutes each way. So, I think it’s a compelling argument that the roads should be built to a higher standard. Certainly, when the Coalition was in government, we put more money into these sorts of projects and the money is there waiting for the federal government to draw down on, to spend as we come out of this event.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
Now, we’ve got limited time, so we’ll move on to the topic of the Indigenous Voice. Speaking of the Nationals, earlier, they made an early call saying they’re not going to vote for it. What is the Liberal Party position on this Indigenous Voice and why is your position different to the Nationals?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Rikki, we’ve taken a position that we want the details so that we can make an informed decision, and so far the Prime Minister is refusing to give that detail over, which becomes more and more peculiar by the day. There are basic questions, and I think this is the stance of millions of Australians, frankly, that, you know, we all want a better outcome for Indigenous Australians, but we want a situation where we understand what we’re being asked to vote for. At the moment, the Prime Minister can’t answer basic questions and I think people are quite confronted by that because we now see the Prime Minister’s office changing transcripts from interviews that the Prime Minister has had where basically he’s just botched it. The last thing you want is a situation where the efforts go backwards in relation to Indigenous Australians, and if the Prime Minister sets up a process by way of referendum, it fails, then we will see that reconciliation effort going backwards and the Prime Minister will have to explain why he’s botched it. From day one he’s discounted the reasonable questions of people that should be answered. So, we’ll go through our Party Room process when Parliament returns. We’ll have that respectful discussion with our colleagues. There’ll be a range of views and the Liberal Party always operates in that democratic fashion. It’s not a position imposed from me on high. I want to listen to all of the colleagues and I’ve spoken to a lot of them over Christmas and we’ll arrive at that position and make that announcement in due course.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
It’s often said in politics; ‘the devil is in the detail’. It does seem the referendum on our republic at the turn of the millennium fell over when the detail finally emerged. Is that where we’re heading with a Voice to Parliament?
PETER DUTTON:
I think it’s very obvious that there are different ways in which the Voice could operate. So, in Alice Springs at the moment we’ve got a national tragedy that is not just unfolding, but that’s been taking place for a period of time. I went up there a few months ago and called on the Prime Minister to intervene straight away, to send up resources, and we’ve seen in the last 48 hours the mayor of Alice Springs pleading with the Federal Attorney-General, who has control of the Australian Federal Police and the resources within that portfolio to send help to Alice Springs because law and order has broken down.
Now when I was there, the voice was very clear from Indigenous elders and from women, mothers, grandmothers in that community that they wanted additional support. The problem to me seems to be not that there isn’t a Voice and that the Voice isn’t worthy of being listened to, The fact is it’s not being acted upon. The Prime Minister has ruled out sending any resources to Alice Springs. I think the travesty of kids being sexually abused, of not going home of a night-time because they get scared to do so, so they’re out committing crimes during the hours of darkness and then they’re sleeping during the day so, they’re not going to school. They’re the issues that I want addressed as quickly as possible, and the Prime Minister can’t even tell us that the Voice would address those issues in a tangible way, because it seems at the moment this government’s unwilling to act, even when the voice from Indigenous Australians is very clear.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
Your local MP there, you’ve been journeying the Riverland and River Communities with Tony Pasin, put out a flyer just this week about the Australian flag, expressing concern that the Greens don’t even want to do press conferences in front of the flag as we enter a new millennium with a new sovereign. What does it mean for our sovereignty when we’ve got voices in Parliament that want to undermine Australian nationhood?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s an absurdity. I mean, we have a proud Indigenous history, we’ve got a proud British history, and we’ve got a great migrant story to tell and our country is a blend of all three – no one above the other – and we have to be very proud of our place on the world stage and what we’ve been able to achieve in our country. We live in the greatest country in the world. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our history. We should learn from it, and we should be very proud of the fact that we’re the envy of many countries of the world.
We have a strong and stable democracy, which is why people are really questioning whether there’s a need to change the Constitution. Because if you change the Constitution and the High Court interprets it in a particular way, then you can see our system of government, the decision-making process change very quickly and Australians understandably are reluctant to do that. We should be celebrating our flag, we should be celebrating Australia Day and all that’s great about our country and the people who want to rewrite history or ignore certain parts of history, that’s not the majority view in our country and good Australians should stand up and say so.
RIKKI LAMBERT:
Well, Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, thanks for your visit to the river communities of South Australia today and thanks for joining us on Flow FM.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure, Rikki. Thank you very much, mate. Take care.
[ends]