Subjects: Third time unlucky for Australians: the Albanese Government’s big-taxing and big-spending budget; Labor’s homegrown inflation crisis; Labor’s cost of living and energy crisis; NDIS; Labor’s Big Australia policy.
E&OE.
SABRA LANE:
Peter Dutton, thanks for joining AM.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure Sabra. Thank you.
SABRA LANE:
Every household, rich and poor, will get $300 in energy bill relief next financial year through a rebate. In your electorate, they’ll get more – a thousand dollars more. Do you support this Federal Government measure?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Sabra, a few things. Firstly, full marks to the Prime Minister for being honest about this budget. He said it’d be big taxing, big spending – and it is – but the trouble for families, not just in my electorate, but around the country, is that it keeps upward pressure on inflation and therefore higher interest rates.
I think the best thing that the Government could have done in this budget was to be responsible, to take the pressure off their homegrown inflation and to try to reduce interest rates. What they’re sneakily trying to do is get an interest rate reduction before the election, but then rates will jump back up after. So, I think there’s a smoke and mirrors game going on here and giving $300 to people who were promised much more than that by way of reduction of their power prices, it’s just not going to cut it for the average family.
SABRA LANE:
So, are you going to support it or not?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll support measures which provide relief. Obviously this comes in this budget before the election in any case. But we do know that families under this budget – a typical Australian household with a mortgage, is more than $35,000 worse off, and that is a huge price to pay.
SABRA LANE:
Okay. Can we just – we’ve got a bit to get through – just on that measure alone. Is the Coalition inclined to pass it?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ll support that measure, yes.
SABRA LANE:
There’s an extension of Commonwealth rent relief, freezing of PBS co-payments, debt relief for students – are they measures that you support?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, we’ll support those measures because I think a lot of Australians are hurting a lot more than what we might realise at the moment. The Government has created a mess. They inherited a budget situation, which meant that they’re able to deliver two surpluses, and then of course Labor reverts back to type, and we see massive deficits over, not just the balance of the estimates, but then into the medium term and the long term. That is going to mean higher interest rates, higher debt for our country, and therefore a more difficult circumstance for families and small businesses for many years to come.
SABRA LANE:
If the Reserve Bank doesn’t cut rates this year, if it just keeps them on hold, is that a measure of success for Jim Chalmers or not?
PETER DUTTON:
I don’t think it is. I think the Government’s had the opportunity to put downward pressure on inflation. As the Reserve Bank Governor has pointed out, this is homegrown inflation. That is the last two budgets, now added to by this budget, see an increase in inflation at exactly the wrong time. Every credible economic journalist overnight has panned this budget as a disaster.
So, I think if you look at, on the one hand, we’ve got the Reserve Bank Governor, we’ve got credible economic commentators who are all very critical of this budget, or worried about inflation; and on the other hand we’ve got Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers telling you that ‘everything’s okay and nothing to see’. Well, I just don’t think they have credibility, and when the Prime Minister says that his word’s, his bond, we know that he doesn’t live up to that.
SABRA LANE:
The Government is banking on savings to the National Disability Insurance Scheme of $14.1 billion over the next four years in moderating growth in plans and slowing the growth in people actually joining the scheme and stopping providers from skimming money off the top. Is that achievable? And are you prepared to work in a bipartisan way to achieve all of that?
PETER DUTTON:
The short answer is yes, and I said in my Budget In Reply speech last year Sabra, that we would work with the Government to make the NDIS sustainable because it’s an important programme for those who are profoundly disabled and need support. It’s particularly important for families where you have ageing parents and they’re worried about their disabled child and what the future might be. But we also need to recognise that there are billions of dollars of rorts and rip offs under Bill Shorten’s scheme at the moment by providers and others who are overcharging, and the Government’s acknowledged that, and there have been lots of cases aired in the media. So, if we don’t make the programme sustainable and direct the money to those participants who are in need of that support, then it will become unsustainable.
We’ve worked constructively with the Government. I’ve sat down with Bill Shorten to hear the Government’s argument, and we’ll support good policy, and we’ll support measures which make the NDIS sustainable, and we’ve approached it on that basis.
SABRA LANE:
It’s your turn tomorrow night to deliver your alternative budget. With respect, most people don’t seem to remember budget in replies because they’re usually pretty thin with policy ideas. Are you going to buck that trend and give people a sense of these big policy ideas and the price tags that come with them tomorrow?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Sabra, I think we’ve done a bit of that in the last couple of Budget In Reply speeches, and this one is important again, as you say. I was amazed that the Prime Minister didn’t acknowledge the fact that migration dramatically increases under this budget and that is going to put more pressure on people wanting to rent homes, it’s going to put more pressure on young Australians who want to get into the housing market…
SABRA LANE:
Migration numbers, sorry, the migration forecasts are going backwards. Net migration is halved.
PETER DUTTON:
It’s just not the reality, Sabra. I mean the Government said this in MYEFO, Clare O’Neil’s out there regularly saying that it’ll be cut in half and it doesn’t, it continues to go up. That’s the difficulty that we’ve got, and when you bring in 1.67 million people over five years and we’ve got house building at an 11 year low, the reality is that people know that for rental properties now, people are 30 or 40 people deep lined up to make an application for the one property. You go to an auction, for love, nor money you can’t buy a property. The property prices continue to go up, and we just can’t pretend that the building is taking place that the Government says will take place.
So, we’ll have a sensible look at how we can address Labor’s housing crisis that they’ve created and support families, and there are measures that we can speak about, otherwise. But I think at the moment people are very concerned that this is a high taxing, high spending budget. It’s going to make it harder for interest rates to come down and therefore harder for families to get on top of their family budgets. I think that’s a real concern for all Australians.
SABRA LANE:
Peter Dutton, thanks for joining AM.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure Sabra, thank you.
[ends]