Subjects: young Australians and the Liberal Party; cost of living pressures; emissions reduction; nuclear energy; housing affordability; Indigenous Voice to Parliament; mental health support; family, domestic and sexual violence; Australia’s migration programs; what it takes to be Prime Minister; Peter Dutton as leader of the Liberal Party.
E&OE.
TOM CROWLEY:
Peter Dutton, thank you for speaking to The Daily Aus.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Tom.
TOM CROWLEY:
The Coalition has got some trouble attracting young voters. What do you think matters to young people and why do they feel like they’re not getting that from you?
PETER DUTTON:
I think a few things. I think we’ve allowed the Liberal Party to be defined by our opponents as opposed to making it very clear as to who we are. I mean we stand for aspiration, we stand for rewarding effort and for young people, there’s a particular focus on – at different stage in life maybe then right now – on home ownership and how you’re going to balance a budget once kids come along, how you can save money for retirement. I mean they’re all things that we believe in supporting people on that journey and helping them through those different stages of life.
So, I think it’s important for us to recognise what we did on the environment when we were in government, the incentivising of renewables. We’ve got probably the biggest take up on a per capita basis of solar anywhere in the world; and that aspiration I think is a really important piece to talk about, because parents want the best for their children, you want the best for your children, and it’s how we can give people the best start in life.
When I left school, unemployment was very high. There were for lease signs all over closed down shops and it was hard to get work, and we’ve been in a different environment for some time, but hopefully we can demonstrate to people what the true value of the Liberal Party is being able to manage the economy well, so that you can do well in your own life and also, final point is, if the government’s doing well and the economy is being run well, then you can afford to put money into all sorts of projects, social projects, environmental projects that otherwise couldn’t be funded.
TOM CROWLEY:
You mentioned the climate there briefly. It’s obviously an issue that is front of mind for a lot of young people. I suppose, since the election the Coalition’s opposed Labor’s climate target and is opposing another Labor climate policy now. But looking forward, what’s your climate policy?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’re in favour of the targets, we were against the legislation of it – and there are a few reasons for that – but our commitment is to make sure that we can reduce emissions in a credible way. I’d love to say that the battery that we have at the moment, the technology is more advanced than it is, but it’s not. So we have to be careful about turning the old system off before the new system starts and all of us – I mean you don’t have to be young to want to see a reduction in emissions or a responsible climate change policy – I want to have a credible pathway to get there, and I think part of the problem that the Labor Party has at the moment is that they talk a big game, but I’m just not sure that they’re going to achieve what it is they’re projecting.
So, how do we get there credibly? We’ve started a conversation in relation to nuclear power for example. Many other countries; Justin Trudeau in Canada is a huge advocate of the small modular reactor, President Macron in France, Greta Thunberg now is talking about the value of nuclear. The new small modular reactors – it’s not big plants – but the beauty is that they have zero emissions and they can firm up renewables coming into the system.
So, that conversation is something I think as a country we have to have. We already deal with nuclear waste from nuclear medicine. We have one of the most stable environments in the world. We export uranium now. Bob Hawke was strongly in favour of a nuclear industry, John Howard strongly in favour of a nuclear industry and I think we have to be mature enough to have that conversation because that is one way that we can credibly and quickly reduce our emissions and contribute to a global effort.
TOM CROWLEY:
A lot of the experts though on nuclear point to the fact that that will take a long time to come online and is unlikely in the Australian context to account for all of our needs. Do you accept that a lot of the volatility that we have in the energy market at the moment is, that some experts say, because of underfunding in renewables over a period of time?
PETER DUTTON:
I think the difficulty at the moment, and why people are seeing a big increase in their power bills is that you’ve still got to pay for the firming up. So again, if the technology meant that the solar panels went of a nighttime and provided energy, fantastic, but that’s not the technology. The technology with solar is that you can run it during the day, obviously, you can store some power – I mean we’re just looking at the battery system at home at the moment and it’s still an expensive technology – there’s some capacity to store, but not enough, and wind can firm up, hydro can firm up, there’s a lot of talk about hydrogen, but it’s a highly volatile energy source. I just think in a sense you want to be agnostic about it because if the achievement is to reduce emissions and to have stability within the energy market as well, then you have to weigh up all of this.
Now, just in terms of the timeline, if you can look at what Justin Trudeau – and he’s not a right-wing Prime Minister – I mean he’s a liberal left-wing Prime Minister and strongly embraces nuclear in the small modular reactor. I don’t support the establishment of big nuclear facilities here at all, I’m opposed to it, but for the small modular reactors, we can have them essentially replacing brownfield sites now, so you can turn coal off and put the small modular reactors in and it’s essentially a plug and play. You can use the existing distribution networks.
At the moment, the government’s talking about 28,000 kilometres of new poles and wires going through national parks, through farming land, through communities that don’t want the poles and wires on their landscape and you can understand that. So, if you can use the existing distribution network, you can use a technology that’s proven and you can have the small modular reactors in place by 2030. That’s a pretty significant outcome. As I say, I think it’s one that we should be open minded to and at least have a conversation on.
We can’t pretend that we don’t need to firm up, which is why, as Chris Bowen said, we need more gas in the system and at the moment companies are being incentivised by the federal government to extend and to sweat out some of the coal assets because they’re worried that you can’t firm up sufficiently to keep the renewables backed up in the system.
It’s a complex debate, but I think it’s one that’s really worth having.
TOM CROWLEY:
I want to move on to the cost of living, which is something else where you’ve been quite critical of the government’s management and for prices going up. But if you were the prime minister, what would you be doing to stop prices from going up?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think if you look at the industrial relations system, everybody wants a system where people are paid fairly and get proper remuneration for their work, but if you’ve got a system which is inflationary and it’s not just in the area of industrial relations, but some of the policy decisions that they’re making otherwise and that they made in the October budget, they’re fueling inflation.
The Reserve Bank Governor gets all the blame, but he has to deal with the economic settings that are a result of the government’s policies. At the time when he’s trying to increase interest rates to get above inflation, the government is driving inflation further.
It’s no mistake that during the Coalition’s time in government, in nine years, out of 100 meetings of the Reserve Bank, they increased interest rates on one occasion. Labor’s been in power, they’ve had eight meetings, they’ve increased interest rates eight times. But you go back to the Keating years as well and compare that to the Howard times. Again, much higher interest rates in Labor’s time…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but this is, I mean the interest rates at the moment are a global issue and the interest rates began to rise under the Coalition. It’s not a problem at the moment that’s unique to Australia. So, I guess, I mean, you’ve talked about wages there, but in terms of positive steps that the government could be taking, you’ve been very critical about prices going up under Labor. What specifically would you do?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, again, the government can’t fuel cost of living pressures…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but again, I’m not so much asking about the government. I’m asking about what positive steps that you would take?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I suppose the point I’m making is that you don’t want to be fueling inflation if you’re in government. So the decisions that you’re making, if you’re in government, need to have that in mind. I think the Reserve Bank Governor has made this point about the spending that Labor is undertaking at the moment in a number of programs.
So, if they’re increasing spending and they’re putting more money into the economy, that is driving up inflation. You’re right to point out that there are global factors, but there were always global factors. There was the avian bird flu, there was the collapse of Ansett. If you go back over the last 20 or 30 years, there have been different economic circumstances – both domestic and international – that Liberal and Labor governments have had to deal with; but interest rates have always been higher under Labor governments over the last 30 or 40 years, not just because of the international factors, which always exist – the war in the Middle East, the situation in Asia where there was a financial collapse, there have been all sorts of international factors.
Don’t forget the Prime Minister promised on 97 occasions, including 27 occasions after Ukraine had been invaded by Russia, he promised that he would deliver a $275 cut to your power bill. He’s never mentioned that figure since the election, and he knew of all those international factors and knowing that Russia was already into Ukraine, and knowing that that would be a pressure on cost of living and inflation here in Australia, oil prices and gas prices, he still made that commitment knowing that he couldn’t deliver it.
TOM CROWLEY:
But again, I mean you mentioned industrial relations there and talking there about wages. You know, the story over the last decade in Australia has been that wages have not kept up with prices, which is part of the reason why this current cost of living crunch is so difficult for people. Is the implication of what you’re saying on wages there that you believe that wages need to stay low now because of inflation?
PETER DUTTON:
No, but I mean to go back to the point that you were making before, I mean you made the point around interest rates started to go up because of international factors and I suppose the adjunct to that, the point you were making otherwise, is that inflation had been low before that, remained low and therefore the independent Fair Work Commission who sets wages in this country – it was created by Julia Gillard when she was in government and we used that model when we were in government, no changes made to it – they made the recommendations about wages growth and wages growth is not high when inflation is low, and that’s…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but it was below inflation.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, the point that you make is that inflation is higher now than it was two or three years ago. Fair point. But as a result, wages don’t go up as quickly when inflation is low and the government relies on the Fair Work – the independent arbiter, if you like – and this government’s taken the advice of Fair Work as well. So, there’s a continuation of that, they haven’t changed the arrangement with the Fair Work independence and they take the advice…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but the government expressed a view that a five per cent minimum wage increase was appropriate and the Coalition did not express that view.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, they expressed it in a high inflationary environment, which as you point out, has really taken off under Labor and inflation is higher, but interest rates are higher as a result. As the Reserve Bank Governor has pointed out, and as the Treasurer said, you don’t want to get yourself into a situation where wages go up by five per cent, inflation goes up, interest rates go up as a result because you’re getting more in your pay packet, you end up paying more to the bank at the end of each month, or each fortnight when you’re paying your mortgage or you rent because rents go up as a result of increased interest rates as well.
TOM CROWLEY:
Well, on that issue of rent, there are a lot of renters who are struggling under stress at the moment. Is there more that government can be doing to specifically help them?
PETER DUTTON:
We went to the last election with a pretty strong policy which the Labor Party rejected, but allowing people, young people for their first home purchase to access their superannuation. Now, that takes the pressure off the rental market if you’re pulling people into home ownership. There’s obviously a lot of rental assistance that’s provided both by the federal and state government, but social housing is a responsibility of state government and there’s support that they provide. The federal government – Liberal or Labor – doesn’t give offsets if you like, or pay for rental accommodation for young people or for old people. Social housing…
TOM CROWLEY:
…the federal government is funding social housing.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we provide a contribution to the state government, but as you know, I mean there are three levels of government in our country. There are lots of things that the federal government do that the states don’t pay for and state governments have their own responsibilities. So, it’s right that the federal government contribute, and during our time, the investment in social housing went up very significantly; but how do you help people get off sort of the rental cycle and help them and incentivise them to get into their own home, which is again, the aspiration of many young people.
Also for older women, there’s a huge issue where women who separate later in life just can’t re-establish their lives and so the idea of allowing people to access their own money, that they’ve worked hard for and put into their own super account, allowing them to access that to buy a first home or to buy a home later in life in those circumstances, I think that provides dignity, it provides a financial windfall for them. And what we said was that when you sell the house, and you have a capital growth, or you have a profit in the house, then that proportion that you drew out of your superannuation should go back in because you want it to compound by the time you retire and enjoy the benefit of that in retirement.
TOM CROWLEY:
Now later this year there’s going to be a Referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Have you made a decision yet? Do you support a Voice to Parliament?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I certainly support a voice of Indigenous people and we went to the last election with that policy, concentrating…
TOM CROWLEY:
…in the Constitution?
PETER DUTTON:
No, In legislation. I support a Voice in legislation. There’s no question about that. The question is whether or not the government’s proposed words in the Constitution deliver the practical outcome that we want for Indigenous Australians.
When I’ve moved around the country, we’ve been in Leonora, in Laverton in WA – two Indigenous communities – we were up in the East Arnhem Land last week, there are a lot of Indigenous leaders who are very nervous about what the government’s proposing, wanting the detail. Frank Brennan, you would have seen came out – and he’s a strong advocate for the ‘Yes’ case – he’s very concerned about the words that the Prime Minister’s put forward and the Prime Minister himself has said that he’s open to changes.
So, we haven’t yet seen the final form of what it is the government is going to propose. What we’ve said is, I think, reflective of what millions of Australians are thinking, that is that we want the detail so that we know – even if we’re instinctively in support of the Voice – how it’s going to work and how it’s going to improve the outcomes in Indigenous communities…
TOM CROWLEY:
…that detail, as you say, is something that will be legislated, that you’ll have the opportunity to debate in Parliament and that you could change in government in the future if you wanted to. The proposed wording for the Constitution does not make any specifications about the Voice. So, why is that an issue that matters as far as enshrining it in the Constitution, which is something that the Uluru Statement called for?
PETER DUTTON:
Tom, it’s a huge issue because it’s open to the interpretation of the courts and the High Court can interpret a form of words in a way that you and I can’t…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but a number of High Court justices and former High Court justices, have made assurances that there’s no particular issue with that wording. What specifically is the concern?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, there are High Court justices who have made the opposite case as well. This is why people like Frank Brennan, who’s an adjunct professor I think in law, and many others, and this is why the Prime Minister himself said that, you know, the crafting of the words is incredibly important and a different set of words can deliver a very different outcome than what you thought would be the desired outcome.
I just think we’ve got to take a step back and look at the question for example of when the Prime Minister says ‘the Voice will only be concerned with issues relating to Indigenous Australians’. Now, I mean do you think that that includes health and education? Of course. Does it include law and order and policies around those areas in communities? Of course it does. But it’s actually a racist statement to say that an Indigenous person is impacted differently than a non-Indigenous person in relation to any area of public policy. Defence affects Indigenous people in exactly the same way as it does non-Indigenous people and that’s been ruled out by the Prime Minister, but he can’t rule it out. So, I think there are just questions that are reasonably asked.
But do I want to hear from Indigenous Australians about how we can improve the situation? Absolutely. In East Arnhem Land, where I was the other day in Nhulunbuy and Gove, they have a 90 per cent attendance rate of kids at school, they’ve got employment programs, they have a huge housing initiative and many of the problems that we see in other Indigenous communities don’t exist in some of those communities. They’ve got a Dilak which is basically the four clans coming together and almost a governance, or a small government, or a cabinet I suppose that’s set up there. Now, in their situation, they want their voice to be heard and they want their voice to dictate the local policies…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but I mean, why hasn’t it been? I mean, you know, you talk about tangible outcomes in communities. I mean you’ve been around governments for a long time. You’ve been in governments that have failed to make any progress on Closing the Gap targets, or significant progress. Why is government failing to hear these voices, and is that not exactly the kind of problem that a Voice is trying to solve?
PETER DUTTON:
I think if you listen to some of the elders at the moment, and again, I’ve sat down and spoken with women in Indigenous communities, elders in those communities who want the detail of the Voice, because some of them think that it can work well, others believe that it will be another bureaucracy.
TOM CROWLEY:
But what’s been going, I mean, like you know, bureaucracy of any government for…
PETER DUTTON:
…well look, I think there has been a huge failing for the last couple of hundred years, let’s be very frank about it. The situation for Indigenous Australians didn’t improve during Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s time in terms of the Closing the Gap indicators. It didn’t improve sufficiently during the Coalition’s period through the Howard Government, through the Morrison Government. It hasn’t improved now…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but why not?
PETER DUTTON:
…well, because, a few reasons. You’ve had lots of bodies set up with strong Indigenous voices about what policies should be rolled out and even with that, it hasn’t improved. It’s a ridiculous statement to say that in the Rudd Government or the Gillard Government or the Abbott Government, that Indigenous people didn’t have a say or a voice in policy formulation, of course they did.
There’s a lot of anger within Indigenous communities about the amount of money that’s poured in by Canberra and the states, and in many cases local government as well, and by the time it gets down to those communities, it’s on some accounts 30 per cent or less. So, there are layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy, both in Indigenous corporations and non-Indigenous corporations where a lot of that money is soaked up before the services are provided on the ground.
Now, will the Voice improve that or add another layer of bureaucracy? Well, that’s a reasonable question to ask and that’s why I hope the Prime Minister can provide that detail. That’s the sort of detail we’ve asked for and it’s also the detail that the Indigenous leaders are asking for in communities where their programs are working at the moment, and they don’t want to be disrupted by a voice coming out of Canberra or…
TOM CROWLEY:
…I mean, consistent polls show that a strong majority of Indigenous people support a Voice.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, no question, no question; but there are Indigenous people who don’t, and their voice is as important as any others within the community. It’s not an insignificant voice. I just think too, where we’ve got a practical demonstration of lives being improved, of life expectancy improving, of infant mortality rates improving, of employment numbers improving, and education and attendance rates at school improving in Indigenous communities; why wouldn’t we learn from that example and why would we seek to disrupt it when they’re doing a really good job at the moment.
TOM CROWLEY:
Okay. I want to pivot to mental health, which is a system that for years there have been warnings about cost and access barriers getting worse. How did the system get into such a state and what’s the way forward?
PETER DUTTON:
There’s certainly been an increase in demand as a result of COVID. I know anecdotally, I mean you speak to friends here in Victoria, which is probably the hardest hit state by lockdowns, of their daughters, sisters self-harming and mental health issues that were never present before COVID. Now, there are all sorts of pressures online, body image, all sorts of bullying. I think the prevalence of violence in, you know, a lot of content, even on TikTok or on YouTube that people are consuming now, I think all of that has had a compounding impact on people’s mental health.
I mean, we’re in a pretty strong economy, or we have been up until now, where unemployment’s been low. So, a generation ago, high unemployment, homelessness were very significant factors in mental health. Where people can get a job, where there is more housing, you know, all of these factors always play a role, but I think in terms of what’s fed in over the last couple of years, to your point, I think that has been a significant factor. And again, when we were in government, we put significant billions of dollars more into mental health. The government’s cut some of that back in the most recent budget…
TOM CROWLEY:
…well, I mean, that was something that was due to be cut back under…
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it was it was due to be renewed, and that’s what happens with policies…
TOM CROWLEY:
No, it was an expiry date. It was a COVID measure that was due to expire.
PETER DUTTON:
But it was due to be renewed. I mean, there are many government programs that don’t go into perpetuity…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but, it’s clearly a much broader issue in terms of access to the system, that the system’s not providing people enough access across the board to the services.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, there’s no question about that. I mean, if you look at what we did in Headspace, we expanded headspace dramatically. You speak to Pat McGorry, who’s a world leading expert clinician who was involved in the establishment of that program. I mean he talks about the acute care needs, the complete inadequacy at Emergency Departments, as the sort of the interface for young people when they’re coming in who may have self-harmed or had, you know, difficulties otherwise in relation to relationship breakdowns, etc. So, I don’t think there’s a lack of effort or desire from anyone, frankly, on either side of politics. I think it’s above that issue. It’s a question of how, again, you can get the significant investment into the hands of the providers and the doctors and nurses and stop spending the money on the bureaucracy and get people the care that they need.
TOM CROWLEY:
A couple more topics I want to get through. One is family violence, and that’s another one where governments, despite the best intentions, including your governments, have failed to really deliver tangible progress on that. What’s going to break that cycle?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I think there’s, you know, we could spend all day talking about what I think is an incredibly important issue. I was a policeman a long time ago. I went to many domestic violence situations and I can tell you, when you arrive at a home and you hear screams of help and, you know, force your way into a home and find a woman on the ground covered in blood, or a child injured or sexually assaulted, they’re horrific scenes and they stay with you forever. I’ve always had, as frankly, my number one passion, the desire to see a reduction in that violence. Domestic violence is a complete life destroyer. Sexual violence against children means that it’s more difficult for predominantly young girls, but boys as well, to start relationships, to you know, in many cases just have recurring, you talk about mental health issues, you know, recurring thoughts of that abuse and that violence.
As Home Affairs Minister, I put $80 million into the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. So, that stops kids from being abused in the first place. It takes kids out of harmful situations, and again, I think it comes back to the normalisation of violence through many, you know, computer games. I think it comes down to how people are educating, particularly their boys when they’re young and the circumstances, the conversations that they’re hearing within their own home and within the workplace as they get older. I think all of that is, you know, we still haven’t got the mix right.
So all of those messages are out there, they are consistent, they’re being pushed, but it’ll take time and sadly, you want to change it overnight, but I just don’t know that that’s possible.
TOM CROWLEY:
Bipartisan policy for years has seen refugees and asylum seekers detained indefinitely and often in reports of really appalling conditions within those detention centres, including during your time as a responsible Minister. I’ll ask you the same question that I asked the Prime Minister. Why does Australia treat people this way?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we have one of the most generous migrant intakes in the world on a per capita basis. We settle more people in our country than any other country…
TOM CROWLEY:
…but the international community consistently expresses concern about the way that people are treated inside Australia’s detention centres.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, the UNHCR High Commissioner at the time said to me when I met with him that we had the best –probably equal best with Canada – resettlement program.
TOM CROWLEY:
But I’m talking about the conditions within detention centres where thousands of people are being detained indefinitely.
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, that wasn’t during my time, to your point. I mean the Prime Minister, I don’t know whether he said that they made a mistake in allowing women and children drowning at sea, and then set up tents for them on Christmas Island.
When we were in government, I was the Minister responsible for getting every child out of detention, getting women out of detention and I didn’t have a single person drown at sea on my watch, and I’m proud of that. At the same time, we increased the number of Yazidi women, for example, who were being raped and slaughtered by ISIL in the Middle East, we resettled those women in their thousands in our country, and now they’ve started a life that they could never have imagined. We did the same with Syrians. We did the same with Iraqis and many others.
The policy that we have is that, and now adopted by the government, is that you want people to come in an orderly way, because if you allow the boats to restart, there are millions of people that want to come to our country tomorrow and if they thought that that was the way they could get here, there’s no amount of resource you could put in to stop that or to prevent the tragedy of people drowning at sea.
I’ve spoken to sailors and to members of the Australian Border Force who pulled half eaten bodies out of the water, including of children. Now, I didn’t have that on my watch, I didn’t allow it to restart, and I will do everything to support Anthony Albanese to make sure that it doesn’t restart because that is a human tragedy.
So in terms of the appalling situations – the tents and the conditions that you speak of – that was during Julia Gillard’s period in government and Kevin Rudd, it was not during the period of the Coalition. I’m very proud that we got the kids out of detention and stopped people going into detention in the first place.
TOM CROWLEY:
Okay. The final topic that I want to come to is another thing that I asked the Prime Minister about, which is, you know, what do you see as the traits that are most important in a leader and how do you want people to view your leadership?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think you need stability, first and foremost. You need people to see that you are a steady hand, particularly in a time of crisis or a time of need when the nation needs its Prime Minister to stand up. I think people want that reassurance in their leader. They want to see experience that people have had a breadth of experience that they can bring to the table, because as Prime Minister, I’ve seen this in the leadership group, I’ve seen it in the National Security Committee, in the Expenditure Review Committee, in Cabinet, etc. over many years; you’re dealing with a broad range of issues every day.
I always think the Prime Minister has 20 balls in the air in a day. You’ve got to land 18 instinctively and sweat the two and not have 40 the next day. I’ve seen some Prime Ministers where they just can’t deal with the pressure of that office. So being able to deal with that, I think is important.
I think also a consistency around the commitments that you give and delivering on those. There’s no sense saying to the public that you will do one thing before the election and then breaking that trust after the election. You need to maintain the trust that people have put in you and you need to accept where you’ve got it wrong, and put your hand up on occasion to say that I’ve made a mistake, I should have done this instead of that, and I think people are accepting of that. I think you need to show the human side, that you are a leader, that you’re a father, that you’ve had a diverse experience in life, and people need that to be able to relate to you as well.
TOM CROWLEY:
Do you have negative perception to overcome there? I mean, expert opinion polls quite consistently paint a picture that a lot of people over many years that you’ve been in public life have accumulated quite a negative image of you. Why is that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, you know, my mum says to me ‘you should smile more when you’re in front of a camera’. Fair point, but if you’re the Home Affairs Minister and you’re talking about the levels of sexual abuse against kids, if you’re talking as Defence Minister about an evacuation from a particular village or particular town or airport; they’re not issues that you can just sort of, you know, crack a joke over…
TOM CROWLEY:
I understand that, but does it go beyond that? I mean, you recently apologised for boycotting the Apology to the Stolen Generations and acknowledged that that was something that you would do differently. Are there more things of that nature and actions that you’ve take in public life that feed that perception?
PETER DUTTON:
Again, I think I’ve had tough jobs and I think I’ve had to deal with those tough jobs, and I’ve done that in the best interests of our country. That does require you to have a look…normally by the time that some of these cases get to the Minister, they haven’t been dealt with at 10 levels below you. You’re dealing with two dreadful proposals in front of you and you’re taking the least dreadful decision, right? And if there was an easy decision, it was made before it got to you. And that’s often the case with leadership; you have to make decisions that aren’t publicly palatable, but are in our country’s best interests or in thousands of cases, frankly, where I was able to provide support as Immigration Minister to kids who were sick, to elderly women who had had a heart attack here, had their visas cancelled, people who have run out of money. I mean, you make all of those decisions in the background that would paint you in a different light, but the public never see those cases, right, but that’s no doubt formed a view about who I am.
I think as leader now and you see this in the polling you referred to, the people’s view of me, I think has changed and softened just over the last 12 months, and I think that will continue because people can see in a more holistic way who you are, your background, the reason, given your life experiences, particularly around my time as a police officer, you know people I think can put into perspective who they see you as. I think even in relation to the Voice, I think our position in relation to the Voice has been perfectly reasonable, reflective of the views of literally millions of Australians, and I think people can reconsider you when you’re in this role, as no doubt that they’ve done with Anthony Albanese. When he was Infrastructure Minister, people had a very different view of him than they do now, and that’s I suppose the opportunity in this job is to show the whole product – who you are and what you’ve done in your life and the way that’s influenced you – and I hope that people can reconsider on that basis.
TOM CROWLEY:
Peter Dutton, thank you for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Tom.
[ends]