Subjects: The government’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; Labor’s bleak budget; cost of living pressures facing Australian households; the NDIS; Labor’s crab walking away from legislated tax cuts.
SABRA LANE:
The Opposition Leader is Peter Dutton. He joins me now. Good morning and welcome to AM.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Sabra. Thank you.
SABRA LANE:
With power prices tipped to rise by 50 per cent over the next 18 months, the government’s hinting at possible regulatory intervention into the energy market. Would you support that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Sabra, I think there are a lot of families who really feel deceived this morning. I think there is a lot of shock across the Australian community. They heard the Prime Minister on 97 occasions promise that their power prices would come down by $275. We now find that five months later the government is predicting that their power prices will go up by 56 per cent over the next two years, gas prices up by 40 per cent, every other cost of living pressure still will continue to mount, and this government last night threw their hands up and said that they didn’t have a plan. So, let’s wait to see what the government has to say. But on the one hand, they’re promising to fund all sorts of energy activists in this space to oppose new gas fields, for example, when one of the biggest decisions that the government could take is to bring more gas online, to try and increase that supply so that we can meet our international commitments, but also to provide that support domestically.
SABRA LANE:
The Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says the government’s going to examine every option to bring power prices down. What do you expect that might be?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I just think that’s a repeat of what they said before the election. They gave a commitment knowing all of the inputs, the factors, they blamed the Ukraine war yesterday for not being able to meet their $275 commitment. The Ukraine war had started before the election and the Labor Party made the commitment – the rock solid guarantee – the Prime Minister looked the Australian public in the eye, and he’s misled them. I think people are right to feel disappointed, let down and, frankly, worried about what the next couple of years will hold under Labor.
SABRA LANE:
Would you support an energy rebate for customers?
PETER DUTTON:
I think we need to see what the government says. They’ve put forward a plan last night and it’s clear that they haven’t got a solution for increased energy prices. But that is just one element of this budget. There are many inputs, many pressures that are going to mount on families and people on fixed incomes, including pensioners. In June, we put forward a plan to allow pensioners who wanted to work to be able to work a bit extra, a few extra hours each week or each fortnight, which would help a very tight labour market, and it would also help them increase their income, their household income to deal with their cost of living pressures. But if the government’s going out saying that in this document electricity prices are going up by 56 per cent, but they’ll have a solution for you next May or the May after, frankly, I think that’s cold comfort to a lot of families and small businesses.
SABRA LANE:
What’s your solution?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, our solution, as we demonstrated in government, was to preside over an economy – which we did for nine years – that provided downward pressure on these cost of living elements of people’s budgets and we put in place temporary measures to support families on the fuel excise….
SABRA LANE:
So, would you be bringing that back now? Would you be extending the low and middle income tax offset now to help cope with all of this?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Sabra, we’re five months into opposition. We’ll make all of our policies well known before the next election, but the government’s just come down with its first budget and it’s a shocker. When you hear some of Jim Chalmers’ colleagues refer to him as ‘Grim Jim’, this is a grim budget for Australian families and for pensioners. Australian families will be $2,000 worse off by Christmas under this Labor budget and that’s not what they were promised.
SABRA LANE:
How do you calculate that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, you can look at the impact of mortgage increases. So, the government’s assumptions over the budget papers – which we’ve examined, all of the cost increases that we’ve mentioned already in terms of electricity and gas, the assumptions that they’ve got about the cash rate and the impact on cost of living. It’s all there in the budget papers. There is a lot there in the budget papers that you didn’t hear Jim Chalmers talk about last night. He didn’t say in his speech that electricity was going up by 56 per cent, didn’t say in his speech that gas prices were going up by 40 per cent. Now, we support some of the measures. So, for example, the decrease in the PBS payment from $42.50 down to $30, we think that’s a good measure – in fact, we proposed it in government. We support the government in relation to providing additional support around PPL and childcare and some other measures but we think there’s a lot of missed opportunity here and the government has promised one thing before the election and completely reneged.
SABRA LANE:
What about the National Disability Insurance Scheme that’s soon going to hit $50 billion, $112 billion by 2032? The NDIS is a programme with bipartisan support, but how should the government deal with those costs?
PETER DUTTON:
It is, Sabra. It’s an incredibly important programme and in a finite budget where you’ve got people with profound disabilities that need support, the scheme delivers in spades to them – as it should – and we support that. But Bill Shorten designed this scheme. It had the input of the states and he’s been out there in the last 24 hours…
SABRA LANE:
Sure, but your government also set it on this trajectory as well. So, how would you deal with it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it was legislated by the Labor Party. We weren’t able to change any element of it by way of legislation because we couldn’t get the support of Labor and the Greens in the Senate when we were in government. We’ll have a look at sensible reforms that the government can put forward, but it is on a very steep trajectory. You want it to be sustainable. It’s already overtaken Medicare and if the government had a plan, presumably they would have put it forward in this budget, but they haven’t. So, how do they make some of the structural spending more sustainable? Well, they’ve got the Treasury resources, the resources of the Finance Department, all of the central agencies, and we’ll see what they put forward, and we can judge on that basis, but yes, we want to provide support to people who are most in need and we want to make sure that the NDIS is sustainable because it’s an important piece of social infrastructure but taxpayers need to be able to afford it.
SABRA LANE:
Just quickly, the tax cuts – stage three is still legislated. Given the economic times, we’re not immune, the whole world is going through it. Is it sensible to proceed?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, this is clearly a budget from Labor, which is a huge tax and spend budget as they always do. We saw in the budget papers last night additional tax revenues of over $150 billion, largely coming through bracket creep – Australians who will earn more and pay more – and, so the stage three, building on stage two and stage one, are entirely appropriate. I think there will be a very strong argument by July of ‘24 when stage three tax cuts come in to provide that stimulus and that support in the economy.
SABRA LANE:
Peter Dutton, thank you very much for joining AM this morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks, Sabra. Thank you.
[ends]