Subjects: The Coalition’s plan to get Australia back on track; Labor’s Big Australia policy; home ownership – restoring the Australian dream; third time unlucky for Australians: the Albanese Government’s big-taxing and big-spending budget; the Coalition’s plan to tackle knife crime; nuclear energy; Senator Payman’s disgraceful comments a test for the Prime Minister.
E&OE
TOM ELLIOTT:
Well, last night in the Federal Parliament, we had the budget reply speech. For reasons I don’t fully understand, the Treasurer gives the budget speech, but the Leader of the Opposition gives the budget reply speech. The Federal Opposition Leader is, of course, Peter Dutton. He joins us now.
Mr Dutton, good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Tom.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Now, immigration. We’ve had 600,000 net migrants arrive in Australia over the past year, and of course, we’ve seen the impact of that – a booming housing market, congestion on the roads, you name it. How much would you like to slash immigration to if you were made Prime Minister?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Tom, our proposal is that we bring back the net overseas migration to a figure of about 160,000. If you look at the different programmes, that means that we would cut back the permanent migration programme, the refugee and humanitarian programme, and that we would bring back international student numbers as well.
Migration is a great thing for our country – and we’re blessed because of it – but we need to have migration undertaken in a managed way, and for all of the reasons you point out, and many more, the planning just hasn’t been done. That’s why when you move suburbs, you can’t get your kids into childcare, you can’t get into a GP, the roads are gridlocked already, and the Prime Minister will bring in over a five-year period they announced in the budget, about 1.67 million people in total. Now that’s bigger than the population of Adelaide, just in five years. There’s no planning for extra schools, for extra hospitals, widening of roads, etc., etc. and housing is where it’s most acute at the moment, because if you look at the last two years, about 928,000 people have come in through the migration programme, but there’s only just a little bit over a quarter of a million homes that have been built, and we’ve got building approvals in our country at the moment that are at an 11 year low.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Why do you think the Government has turned on the immigration tap so much? I’ve never got a good reason, other than they’re doing it to maybe try and assist the economy. What reason do you think Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese have issued so many visas?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s hard to know because before the election, the Prime Minister wasn’t talking about a ‘Big Australia’ policy, but this is – I mean, we’re talking about huge numbers here – more so than any Government before. Not the Rudd-Gillard Government, certainly not the Howard Government, and I don’t know whether there’s a philosophical reason behind it, because I just don’t understand how you couldn’t work out that if you’re bringing in a million people in two years and you don’t have places for them to live, what’s going to happen? And unfortunately, as we’ve seen, Australians have been forced out of rental accommodation as well as the ability to buy a house. I just think they’ve really snuffed out the great Australian dream of home ownership, and we want to make sure we can restore it.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Okay. Well, I do want to talk about the housing market in a moment. So, just so we’re clear, the current rate of over 600,000 people per annum, you would slash that down to just 150 or 160,000 per annum?
PETER DUTTON:
The comparable figure, if you have a look at the Government’s budget figures, it’s just over 500,000 this year, in terms of the net overseas migration. They claim it ramps down. Now, each of their projections have been wrong. But by year three, it gets down to about 260,000. We say against that figure, it should be about 160,000.
That really, Tom, when you think about it, if you’ve got people who need homes now, young people who want to get into their first home, people who want to rent, you need to have a solution now. Nobody can pretend you can build homes overnight, so the migration programme is the only way that you can really make serious adjustments quickly, so that you can allow people the opportunity to buy a house.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Now, what about the housing market? I think it was about a year ago in Canada, they severely curtailed the ability of foreign residents to buy houses in Canada. Like I think it even applies to Americans living in Canada. What would you change here in Australia?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ve made an announcement as well in my speech last night that in addition to these measures that we’ve just spoken about, that we would also put a two-year ban on foreign investors buying existing properties here in Australia. I think that’s an important measure as well. The numbers aren’t great in terms of those investors now, but nonetheless, it’s still going to add to the overall housing supply. I mean, Bill Shorten was sort of scoffing at that this morning saying that 5,000 houses over two years is nothing. But the reality is that if you could free 5,000 homes up for people to rent or to buy, over the next couple of years, you’d jump at it. Our argument is that through what we’re proposing, you could bring 40,000 homes, free them up over the first year, and over a five-year period, about 110,000. If the Government had implemented this plan from when they came into government, over a five-year period, they would actually free up about 325,000 homes, which I think would make a big difference to many, many Australians.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Now, what about knife crime? There was a terrible story that emerged here overnight of where a mother with a very young child with her was assaulted by someone with a knife, and he got in her car and made her drive around and get money out and buy him things. What would you do about the knife crime pandemic at the moment?
PETER DUTTON:
I just think we need to take inspiration from John Howard in response to the Port Arthur massacre, and our country’s very fortunate that we don’t have the gun culture of the US and elsewhere, but it means that knives are the weapon of choice, particularly for a lot of young gang members and young people who are either looking to defend themselves or looking to do harm on the streets in the early hours of the morning or whatever it might be.
I do think we need a national approach. We need to clamp down on who is the purchaser. Is it a young person? Why on earth do you need a hunting knife if you’re living in the city, you aren’t a hunter, and you’re known to police? There are a number of measures that we can implement at a federal level – not to solve the problem, ultimately – as John Howard was never able to solve every gun crime – but you can make a big difference.
We also need to clamp down very hard on the bail laws, because, as we know, in relation to domestic violence or some of these incidents, otherwise, some of these people had they’ve been behind bars would never committed the crime.
TOM ELLIOTT:
I can see how you might be able to restrict the sale of hunting knives, but you know, let’s be honest, you can do a lot of damage with a standard kitchen knife as well, and they’re available just about everywhere.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, you can. I mean, you can do damage with a broken piece of glass. There are many weapons that people can fashion into something that’s going to cause a lot of harm and you can’t solve every problem, but I do think, for example, as Immigration Minister, I cancelled the visas of about 6,300 people who were serious offenders, people who had committed sexual assaults, rapes, paedophiles, people who had committed serious armed robberies, domestic violence, etc. etc. So, there are a number of elements where if you’re serious, you can make a difference. You can’t stop every crime, regrettably, but I do think we need to try. As the Government’s demonstrated with releasing the 150-odd criminals from jail who were non-citizens, many of them are very serious criminals who have already committed offences.
TOM ELLIOTT:
You and I have spoken about nuclear power before. Do you think the tide of public opinion is starting to turn on that issue?
PETER DUTTON:
I do. I think it’s been a really interesting debate over the last couple of years, and I just don’t hear any coherent argument against it from the Prime Minister. They’ve signed up to the nuclear propelled submarines, so in Osborne in South Australia, or Henderson in WA, or indeed on the east coast as well, including for Victoria and New South Wales and Queensland, you’re going to have a nuclear propulsion system, a nuclear reactor on these boats, on these submarines, tying up at docks – and the technology is safe.
We also know that out of the G20 nations – the top 20 economies in the world – Australia is the only one who hasn’t adopted the zero emissions technology of the latest nuclear small modular reactors, etc. or hasn’t signed up to it. I just don’t think that Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese know something that the top 20 economies in the world don’t.
If we want to transition and get greener energy, if we want cheaper electricity – in Ontario residents there are paying about a quarter of the cost for electricity, compared to many Australians, and that’s because of nuclear power. So, you can firm up the renewables in the system, but I just don’t think the Prime Minister is going to end up rolling out 28,000km of new poles and wires. Because, as we know for a wind turbine or a solar farm, they can’t distribute that energy over the existing wires into people’s homes. They’ve got to build a whole new network, which is why I just don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s at a cost of $1.2 trillion, and people will see massive increases in their power prices. I just think there’s a much smarter way that we can do it.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Final question, I actually spoke with the Prime Minister on air on Monday, and I asked him: the phrase that is chanted at a lot of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free’. He agreed it’s an example of hate speech, and yet a West Australian Labor Senator called Fatima Payman, who is Islamic, has been publicly using that phrase. Should she be kicked out of the Federal Parliament?
PETER DUTTON:
There’s no question she should be – it’s hard to kick her out of the Parliament because she’s been elected, but she can certainly be kicked out of the Labor Party. Why the Prime Minister’s hesitating, I don’t know. To Chris Minns’ credit, who I think is a strong Labor Leader in New South Wales, he’s demoted or sacked one of his Parliamentary Secretaries, for his comments over the last 48 hours or so. The Prime Minister goes out there and says, ‘I’m supporting Jewish Australians, I’m completely against anti-Semitism’. He’s allowed the conduct, which has been quite disgraceful, against Jewish Australians and people of Jewish heritage. He has allowed a fear to spread amongst people of Jewish faith, which is just a shocking act. The anti-Semitism that we’re seeing on the university campuses shouldn’t be tolerated, and we wouldn’t tolerate it against any other segment of our society, either, and I don’t understand why the PM doesn’t sack this Senator, and the sooner the better.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Alright. Thank you so much for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, Tom.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Peter Dutton there, Federal Opposition Leader.
[ends]