Subjects: Visit to Western Australia; federal election; Newspoll; Labor’s cost of living crisis; anti-Semitism; the Coalition’s commitment of $2 million to the Holocaust Institute of WA; Kwinana Freeway.
E&OE.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
We’re joined here at Perth Today by the Opposition Leader. Peter Dutton is here to make a very important announcement and he joins us here on Perth Today.
G’day, Peter.
PETER DUTTON:
Rusty, good morning, mate. How are you?
RUSSELL COLLETT:
Good, mate. Lovely to have you in WA. We’re certainly getting a bit of attention at the moment with both you and the Prime Minister here on our shores.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah. Look, I think as we said before, the election obviously is not far off and on election night, I think all eyes will be glued to the West. I think WA will have really be a deciding factor in the election outcome. So, there are a number of seats that are important to both sides of Parliament.
Obviously, the West is our economic powerhouse as well. So we need to get the policies right so WA can do what’s best economically because we don’t pay for schools and hospitals on the east coast without the mining sector and the ag sector and the economic might of WA.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
Do you think it’s a – look, a lot of the times when we watch the telecast of a federal election, the result is known before we even finish voting here in WA and it gets quite frustrating from a West Australian perspective that we’re all one nation. Would you agree to any thought where we could actually time it so that the West Australians are voting at the same time as those in middle Australia and of course, on those on the eastern seaboard?
PETER DUTTON:
I just think the reality of daylight savings and the time zone difference makes it difficult. Look, in the end, I think we’re one of the best democracies in the world. We’ve got a stable system of government. There can be a change of government and there’s a shake of hands and handover of keys and the new government comes in. But, frankly, on Australia Day, I think it’s one of the things that we should really celebrate – or over the Australia Day weekend – because in your intro there before, I think you touched on a really important point. I think sometimes we take for granted what we have and it’s many of our newly-arrived migrants who are most passionate about Australia and our democracy and what we have, our freedom of speech, because they’ve come from a country, they’ve known a situation, a life without that, and we do take it for granted.
So, I think you start mucking around with it at your own peril, but I understand the frustration.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
I’m sure this year, Peter, you know, I do think that the election will still be in play the way it’s looking at the moment. You’d be happy with the latest polling?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, we’re happy with where we are. I think we’ve been a disciplined Opposition which has allowed us to look like an alternative government. We’ve come up with some fresh ideas, some new ideas, and we’ve also put the pressure on what I think has been a bad Government for our country. So, it’s not just the usual task of being in opposition and critiquing the government. We’ve also taken a very positive approach.
We’ve got a great team and a very experienced team. I’ve had the privilege of working under four Prime Ministers and have been Defence Minister, and Home Affairs Minister, and Assistant Treasurer to Peter Costello, and Health Minister. So, I think, collectively, our team has the experience to really clean up Labor’s mess and get the economy pumping again and get our country back on track.
We need to get inflation down because the prices that people are paying, not just for mortgages, but for groceries, for insurance, for every household budget expense item. It’s just gone through the roof over the last couple of years. If there’s a minority government with the Greens, it’ll be a disaster for the federal economy, but certainly for WA as well.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
We’re chatting to Peter Dutton, the Opposition Leader who’s in Perth and has made a very important announcement today. This is so important for – well, we’ve seen what’s happened over the last 18 months to two years with the war in Gaza, but people seem to have – there’s a sentiment out there that we’ve – we’re starting to get a real strong anti-Semitic voice here in Australia. It’s never been here before. We’ve never lived through this sort of time.
You’ve made a very important announcement in regard to this, and I think probably one of the most important announcements in regard to people if you’re forgetting about history, you’re destined to relive it. The announcement you’re making today?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Rusty, it builds on a couple of announcements we’ve made. So, we want to put more money into the Holocaust museums. We want to make sure that school children can really get an appreciation of what it meant during that period of history for 6 million people to be gassed. The fact that, as the Jewish population here has pointed out, they’re living in fear again, and they feel that there’s a repeat of history. I think it’s absolutely essential.
So, we’ve been working very closely with some of the Jewish groups and organisations, including here in WA, and we want to put more money into, as I say, the hub here, the Holocaust Institute, the Education Centre, and we really want to extend the knowledge of history to younger generations so that the mistakes of the past can’t be repeated.
The attack on Israel on October 7 was the biggest attack on the Jewish population since the Holocaust, and that’s why it’s most relevant now. And as you point out, we’ve got synagogues and we’ve got childcare centres and schools with armed guards. Those childcare centres and synagogues being bombed and graffiti – all targeted at one part of society. I mean, it’s just unconscionable that in our country we would allow one group of people to be ostracised and for the racist chants to be to be shouted and screamed and spewed at them. It just has no place in our country whatsoever.
I think this announcement, the commitment of our funding to the Holocaust Institute, it allows them to finish off some works they’ve already started. It’s part of $19 million that we’ve committed to Holocaust museums across the country.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
These minority voices that are starting these arguments here in Australia – it’s very, very un-Australian.
PETER DUTTON:
It is, and it doesn’t share any of the values that we’ve just celebrated over the weekend. We have an opportunity to provide a welcoming home to people from four corners of the earth, which we’ve done since there was settlement in our country. We have some amazing stories. I mean, our migrant story we don’t talk enough about. There’s a lot of concentration on our Indigenous heritage and that’s great. But we need to talk about the movement of people here, I think particularly since the Second World War, people who came with absolutely nothing out of Europe or out of Asia, other parts of the world, from Italy, from Greece, from China, from India. There are so many wonderful stories and people who have worked hard, set up shops or restaurants or laid concrete or been involved in the agricultural or mining sector. We should be talking more about those success stories.
The Jewish success story is a big part of that. They’ve contributed significantly to our defence forces, they’ve significantly contributed to philanthropic causes, obviously to the business community, and we shouldn’t tolerate racism against them or any other part of society. I mean, you couldn’t imagine that the university campuses would allow these people to gather and start chanting against Indigenous Australians or Chinese Australians or Catholic Australians or atheist Australians or whoever it might be. We have Holocaust survivors in our country saying that they’ve lived here peacefully since the end of the Second World War, and they now feel unsafe in our country, we know that we’ve got a significant problem.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
Yeah, certainly not good enough. And I do know the great, great, great majority of Australians will agree with you there wholeheartedly…
PETER DUTTON:
You’re spot-on, mate. I think that’s exactly right – 99.9 per cent of people in our country would have exactly the same view and that’s why we should stand up for that view.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
And we’re a great country of mutual respect. That’s the key to being Australian. As you say, we did celebrate it just recently over the weekend.
One last thing before I do let you go. I’m not trying to put you on the spot here, but the Prime Minister has announced some more funding for our Kwinana Freeway. There’s an area there where there’s two lanes. I know you would have been up and down it during the campaigning already. Are you looking at a similar sort of commitment to that? There seems to be a bottleneck of traffic there.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, it’s a real problem. Andrew Hastie and others have raised it with me and we support that funding. So, if there’s an election of a Coalition Government, we’ll provide that $350 million to match the WA Government’s contribution.
It is a real problem and it’s not the only road where there’s congestion. The Albanese Government’s pulled a lot of money out of infrastructure. So, there’s a lot of repair work to do and I think this is a sensible investment and we certainly would deliver it in government.
RUSSELL COLLETT:
All the best going forward. Lovely to have you here in the West. We can’t wait for your next visit.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, mate. Great to be back. I’ll speak soon.
[ends]