Subjects: Visit to WA; the Coalition’s plan to get more GPs into our suburbs and regional areas; Labor’s continuing immigration detention shambles; Anthony Albanese’s tax credits for billionaires; Labor’s disregard for WA and Australia’s mining sector; the Coalition’s commitment to WA’s live sheep export industry; Labor’s energy policy shambles; nuclear energy; the International Criminal Court and the Prime Minister’s weak leadership; Snowy 2.0; Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre (QEIIMC) funding.
E&OE
TOM WHITE:
‘Morning, everyone. My name is Tom White. I’m the endorsed Liberal Candidate for the seat of Curtin.
It’s a great pleasure to have Peter Dutton back in town, here in Perth and in Curtin. We’ve just had a great meeting with a bunch of GPs and GP trainees, hearing from them about the challenges they’re facing providing frontline care in our community.
As you know, we’re staring down the barrel of a GP shortage in Australia and that’s being felt by people that I speak with in Curtin. So, a very important conversation this morning about what we can do to alleviate some of those pressures and provide practical solutions to GPs and prospective GPs to help re-enliven the sector and ensure that people are getting the care they need in the community.
Peter, I might throw to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Tom, thank you very much. Thanks all for being here today.
Firstly, can I say thank you very much to the RACGP, Doctor Raman, for the round table that we’ve had this morning, which was incredibly productive. Great to hear from some of the young trainees, some of the practice managers, people who are at different stages during the course of their training.
As we know, we need to get more GPs – particularly out into outer metropolitan areas, into regional areas. We announced in the budget reply speech that we would in government, invest $400 million into general practice, to try and provide additional financial support around leave, around maternity leave, and around the disparity between some hospital training and people being placed out in general practice.
We’re going to continue that conversation because we want to do a lot more in relation to health. We know that in the Government’s own figures at the moment, the bulk billing rate is down by 11 per cent under this Government since they’ve been in power, and we want to make sure that we can support general practice and build up all of that offering.
Obviously, out of the budget, we see that every credible economic analyst has suggested that the budget is inflationary, it’s going to keep interest rates for higher for longer, which means that a family is paying $35,000 more for their mortgage, and it means there’s less certainty in the environment, in the business environment that people make investments.
We know over the last two years that there’s been a three-fold increase in manufacturing insolvencies in our country, and that’s because of the economic settings now under three budgets, make it harder for families and small businesses, in particular, and that’s the reality always under a Labor Government.
The other issue that I should comment on this morning is in relation to the allegation, which is a very serious one, about Minister Giles not overturning the decision of the AAT delegate in relation to a circumstance where the allegation is that this individual, this non-citizen has now gone on to commit murder.
When you look at the facts and you look at the judgement, and the wording in the judgement, this is a continuation of the disastrous law and order programme of this Albanese Government. The Prime Minister thought he was being big hearted in saying that he would water down our character test.
We – during my time as Minister for Immigration – cancelled the visas of about 6,300 people. These were bikies, they were people who committed domestic violence offences, sexual offences against women and children, and serious offences otherwise. As you can read in the judgement, this person would have stayed in the position of having their visa cancelled if the old rules had have applied, not the new ones that Mr Albanese introduced.
Minister Giles needs to front the media today to explain the reasons, and why this person was allowed out into the community because it’s very obvious to me that it should have been taken over by the Minister and the visa should have been cancelled. That person should have been held in immigration detention until they could be deported. I think Minister Giles going to ground, yet again, is not going to answer the questions. We’ve already seen from Minister Giles and from Minister O’Neil, a complete and utter disaster on the way in which they’re managing the migration programme; releasing 150 odd hardened criminals in the community, as we know here in WA, but across the country, has meant that more Australians have fallen victim to some of these individuals already.
I’m happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
Are you concerned that your position on the critical minerals subsidies, the $7 billion, is going to hurt you in Western Australia in trying to win back five different seats?
PETER DUTTON:
No, I think you’ll see our full policy before the election. What I need to make sure of is that we’re going to see WA continue to grow as an economic powerhouse for our country.
We will not have a Nature Positive Bill, which is Orwellian named, because it will mean an end to mining. The Prime Minister has pulled that bill and said that he’ll reintroduce it if re-elected. But as we know, the likelihood of the next election by some of the polling at the moment, is that at best, the Labor Party will be in coalition with the Greens. That will mean an end to many mining projects. So, you can give money on the one hand and then take it back with the other.
The way in which the approvals process is undertaken at the moment, the funding that the Government’s put into the advocates who stand up in court with taxpayers’ money to run interference on projects, even when they’ve been approved through the environmental standards that we apply in a country, which are very high. There are so many attacks on the mining sector. When Chris Bowen and Tanya Plibersek speak on the East Coast, they’re dead against gas, they’re dead against iron ore, they’re dead against mining in this country.
So, we’ll have a lot more to say in relation to our assistance for the mining sector, but it’s clear to me that when we’ve got necessary investment to make in Defence, when we’ve got more money to put into health, when we’ve got more money to put into NDIS, when we need to service the debt off the back of COVID, in addition to every other expense pressure that we’ll have in the budget, we need to grow our economy, and the best way that we can do that is by providing support to the resources sector and making sure that we spend taxpayers’ money appropriately and adequately, because the Liberal Party will always be the party of lower taxes, and the Labor Party is always the Party of higher taxes, higher spending, and because of that spending, we’ve seen interest rates go up now on 12 occasions under this Prime Minister.
QUESTION:
That policy does have the backing of the resources industry here, and Chris Ellison yesterday, Mineral Resources Chief commented that your position is based on political backlash, rather than facts. Can I get your response to that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Chris Ellison is somebody for whom I have a great deal of respect. One of the smartest business people in our country, and he’s not a billionaire by mistake. He’s a very astute business person. I think he is somebody who is invested into projects, he’s made a decision not to invest in other projects, and obviously he’s got a great skill set.
My job with taxpayers’ money is to make sure that if there is a project proposal that billionaires, or people in industry super funds, or investors otherwise, don’t want to invest into those projects, is it appropriate for the Australian taxpayer to invest into that project? So, we’re working with the industry, with key players, we continue to have a conversation with Chris and others about ways in which we can help this sector grow.
WA is the economic powerhouse of our country, and we want to make sure that the entrepreneurial spirit of WA is kept alive, but when you speak to the main players here in WA, and we do it on a regular basis, the biggest threat to the mining sector is the Nature Positive Bill, which will see mining approvals grind to a halt – it would be a train wreck for WA, and ultimately for our country.
If like the Voice, the Prime Minister just says, ‘vote for me and I’ll tell you about the detail later’, the detail, if it’s not known to the public, why would anybody in WA vote for a Labor Government? If the detail is so important and it’s so beneficial to the mining sector here in WA, why not release the bill? And why have these secret discussions where people have had to sign non-disclosure agreements and not release the detail? Why is it so good that Roger Cook demanded the Prime Minister should pull the bill? And now the PM is telling people in Marrickville and in seats in inner city Melbourne and Sydney, that this Nature Positive Bill will be fantastic for the environment, terrible for mining. Well, I just think the PM should be honest, and he should have the strength of leadership instead of being so weak and keeping it from the people of WA.
QUESTION:
Libby Mettam and Rick Wilson both support the production tax credits, though. Will you meet with them while you’re in WA to discuss their position?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes. I’m seeing Rick a little bit later, and I’ll see Libby later in the day as well. We’re having a roundtable with Rick and with Melissa Price, talking about a very important issue, which is obviously playing out in WA as well, and that is the Government’s decision to ban live sheep exports, which is a decision, frankly, that has angered, rightly, a lot of people within regional communities, but right across the country because we don’t know whether it’s live cattle next, we don’t know whether it’s road transport of sheep or whatever it might be. And why is the decision made? Because it’s going to have a huge detrimental effect here in WA on the economy and on those farmers in those local communities. Why is the Prime Minister doing this? Because he wants to win Green votes in inner city Sydney and Melbourne.
The Prime Minister abandons WA, abandons outer suburbs, abandons regional areas, because his number one priority is to try and hold those seats against the Greens in inner city Sydney and Melbourne. That’s the reality of his approach, but unfortunately, there are many farmers who will go broke, and that is not something we will stand for.
We have been very clear that we will push back against the Government decision, and when we win the election, we will reinstate the live sheep export industry, because it’s of huge benefit to WA, it’s also very important to note that with our trading partners, particularly in the Middle East, that sort of sovereign risk creates problems in other commodities as well. So, people are less likely to trade with us, and that’s a reality of what the Government’s done.
QUESTION:
CSIRO’s report on nuclear power says nuclear power will cost billions and take two decades to get off the ground. Why are you pursuing this?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, if you look at the top 20 economies in the world, Australia is the only economy that hasn’t adopted nuclear power, or hasn’t signed up to it. So, just ask yourself the question; do you think those 19 countries have got wrong and Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese have got is right? I don’t think so.
I want to see zero emissions technology. The latest generation of nuclear, as we know with the submarine deal, Henderson will play a huge part where there will be a constant presence of a nuclear reactor on those submarines, and there are no safety issues, there are no issues around disposal because the Government under the AUKUS deal has signed up to dispose of the waste. But we can shore-up the renewable energy that’s in the market.
You won’t have, frankly, any industry left in this country if they’re relying on solar and wind because it’s intermittent. At the moment in WA and across the country, we’re telling big energy users, smelters, and in heavy industry otherwise, that they need to ramp down their production in an afternoon shift when people get home from work because they’re plugging in their cars, they’re turning on the washing machine, they’re cooking dinners. That’s not happening in other comparable markets. We want those industries where they’ve got an insatiable order for their products, for their commodities, to be ramping up their production, for the reasons that I spoke about earlier on.
We’ve got to build our economy, not pull it down, and the Government has 90 per cent of the firming power coming out of the market by 2034, which is why you’ve got Chris Minns, and the Premier in Victoria and elsewhere – Labor Governments now negotiating with coal fired power generators to extend the life of those assets – and it’s why you’ve got a reality of gas as well.
So, if you look at Ontario, and you look at other markets where they’re paying a fraction of the electricity price that we are here in our country, it’s because they’ve got nuclear in their system. It is a safe technology, it’s going to provide cheaper electricity, it’s going to provide greener electricity, and it’s going to make sure that we don’t get the blackouts and brownouts that the energy regulator is telling us about that’ll happen under Anthony Albanese’s renewables only policy.
QUESTION:
If you get elected, you say seven nuclear reactors will be built in Australia, where will be their locations?
PETER DUTTON:
What we’ve said is that under Labor’s programme, and it’s an important point, right? They are going to roll out 28,000km of poles and wires, their whole plan costs between $1.2 and $1.5 trillion – trillion dollars. All of that money is going to be passed on to consumers and to small businesses and to users of energy otherwise. So, you’re going to see a skyrocket in your electricity prices if the Albanese Government is re-elected. There is going to be disruption to supply, which means manufacturers will just move offshore where they can get cheaper electricity in a nuclear fuelled market. They will have no interest in being here if there is interruption, constant interruption, to their energy supply. You can’t run a business like that. You can’t turn the smelter off for an hour when the wind turbines aren’t turning, or it’s a week of rain and the solar panels aren’t working, and the battery technology is just nowhere near where it would need to be to firm up.
So, I think if you take all of those factors into consideration, it’s why the 19 biggest countries in the world have taken a decision to embrace a cheaper nuclear energy that’s zero emissions, you can firm up renewables, and that’s our plan. The beauty of our plan is that if you put the SMRs onto an existing brownfield site where a coal fired power station’s coming to end of life, you’ve got the existing wires and poles there to be able to distribute that energy. We don’t need the 28,000km of poles and wires that Labor’s proposing. There’s no $1.2 to $1.5 trillion cost under our plan, and of course, none of that is reflected in the CSIRO report. So, I think when you look at the policy settings now, it’s all stacked against anything, but wind and solar. We’ll have, again, more to say in relation to some of those matters.
QUESTION:
You said you would be upfront with voters as to where the location of these nuclear reactors would be. Why aren’t you telling us?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll provide that information in due course. I think there’s 12 months, the Prime Minister says, before the next election, and our detail of that and many other policies will be announced in due course. I’m sure that’s the case for the Government. I’m pretty sure we haven’t got the detail of all of their plans yet either.
QUESTION:
We are reporting tonight that Collie is one of those locations. Are you telling us that’s wrong?
PETER DUTTON:
I’m saying that we’ll announce all of our sites in due course.
QUESTION:
Will you rule out Collie?
PETER DUTTON:
I haven’t ruled it out or in – any sites. I’ve said that we’re looking at coal fired power stations that are coming to an end of life. If you look at the community attitudes in some of those communities, people are strongly in favour because they know that it’s a continuation of their jobs. They know that there is a continuation of heavy industry, that has been the underpinning of those, in many cases, regional towns. That’s why we can have a sensible debate about it.
I mean, the Prime Minister’s not making any argument against nuclear power on the basis of safety. Let’s be very clear about that. He has signed up to a nuclear propulsion system in the submarines which means that men and women wearing the Australian Navy uniform, are in that submarine alongside the reactor for months at a time. In Henderson and in Osborne in South Australia, the reactors will be tied up and worked on, on a constant basis for decades to come. We know in Australia already, we’ve got a presence at Lucas Heights, which we’ve had since the 1950s, because of nuclear medicine, the safe disposal, all the rest of it takes place there. So, let’s have a mature conversation as other economies have done.
My vision for our country is to make sure that we can have cheaper electricity, that we can have cleaner electricity and consistent electricity, and to get our country back on track to make sure we can grow the jobs and that we can see WA boom again – that is going to be a big underpinning of how we do that.
QUESTION:
You mentioned before that we are facing heightened blackout threats this summer. Do you think energy companies should be paying more tax?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, again, I think the companies react to the policy settings. You’ve got a Government who has been bagging gas – the Prime Minister on the East Coast says that he won’t invest a dollar into gas, when he gets over to WA, he says that gas is the greatest thing going.
If you’ve got that uncertainty in a marketplace, well, people won’t invest. That’s why now, you’ve got Labor Premiers negotiating with coal fired power stations to be in the market longer because they know that the lights are going out.
If you get a disruption to power in this country – I mean, think about the cost to the economy, to hospitals that need to run 24/7. You’ve got a huge influx of diesel generators at the moment to underpin data centres who are huge users of energy. All of that uncertainty is being created through the renewables only policy.
Our policy provides stability, it provides 24/7 baseload power, and that means you can underpin the renewables that are in the system. The beauty about the nuclear latest generation product is that it’s zero emissions. In Poland, they’re creating tens of thousands of jobs. They are taking a decision there, which means that by investing into nuclear, it’s the equivalence of taking about 13 million cars off the road, or powering about 9 million homes emissions free, and that way we’re not relying on battery technology, which just hasn’t advanced as quickly as we hoped it would.
QUESTION:
Do you think that that CSIRO report is credible? And given it’s suggesting that a nuclear reactor would take 15 plus years to build, which would mean completion in 2040, how will a Coalition Government meet its Paris Climate Agreement?
PETER DUTTON:
Well just, an important point you make, because there is no credible pathway for the Albanese Government to achieve their net zero by 2050 target. Let’s be very clear about that. People talk about how long it will take for nuclear, how long will it take for green hydrogen to come into the system? Huge questions about the amount of water to be used, the energy consumption offset with thousands of acres of solar panels.
One of the things that Bill Gates, I think, is really spot on in relation to his comments in this area, is that he argues that you should be trying to yield the most amount of energy out of every square metre of impact on the environment. For a small modular reactor that produces 470MW of power, it takes up the site of two hectares – five acres. The equivalent amount of solar panels takes up 4,000 hectares, or 10,000 acres. So again, let’s look at all of what’s before us.
In relation to the report, it’s based on the current government settings, which are against the use of nuclear. It doesn’t take into account all the costs of the $1.2 to $1.5 trillion plan of the Albanese Government.
If renewables are so cheap, why aren’t people’s power prices going down? Under this Government, your power price continues to go up because of the cost of firming up, and the Prime Minister says, ‘oh, it’s okay, the wind is free and the sun’s free’. Well, if it was free, you wouldn’t be paying anything in your bill. Yet we know that despite promising on 97 occasions power prices would come down by $275, everybody’s had an increase in their power prices under the Albanese Government, and it’s going to continue to go up.
QUESTION:
If the ICC proceeds with arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister, should Australia withdraw from the ICC?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, the first thing that the Prime Minister has to do is to reverse his position, which I think was just off the cuff yesterday. I don’t know how the Prime Minister can say that he’s not interested in commenting on matters before the courts and then in the next breath, talk about the matter before the courts in the UK in relation to Julian Assange.
The Prime Minister needs to stand up for our ally – the only democratic country in the region, and somebody who was attacked by a terrorist organisation on the 7th of October, where 1,200 people were slaughtered. The biggest attack on the Jewish people since 6 million people were gassed and tortured during the Second World War.
So, if the Prime Minister doesn’t have moral clarity here and he can’t explain his position, then I think he needs to go with the revised position, which should, but wasn’t, unfortunately, his first instinct.
The Prime Minister should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Joe Biden and the leaders of other countries around the world, who have made the right call here. Our Prime Minister got it wrong yesterday, and the opportunity for him is to stop digging and to start thinking properly about how we should be standing up to protect our international reputation, but more importantly, to stand with an ally and a country that was subject to barbaric attacks by a listed terrorist organisation in this country and many others. Don’t forget that people, including women and children, are still being held in tunnel networks as hostages. That is a reality that the Prime Minister needs to acknowledge.
QUESTION:
Does standing shoulder-to-shoulder though, mean cutting ties though, with the ICC?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, in the first instance, it needs to make sure that there is moral clarity in our country, and that is to reverse the decision and to put pressure on the ICC to make sure that they reverse this terrible decision. That’s the first instance. Then I think, the next steps, in relation to what you would take beyond that, I’m very open to. I don’t rule it out, but I think the pressure at the moment needs to be for likeminded countries that share our values, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, for there to be no difference, and to put pressure on the ICC, to make sure that this anti-Semitic stance that they’ve taken does not advance.
QUESTION:
Why are you so opposed the ‘Future Made in Australia’ policy, especially as when you were in government, you gave away billions in incentives?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think if you look at the decision to invest in solar panel manufacturing in our country – I’d love to believe that we can compete with China. We’ve got a much higher wage cost, we’ve got three levels of government and huge regulatory compliance costs, we don’t have the same environmental standards as they do in China, and as most analysts have pointed out, this is money that likely is going to be wasted by the Albanese Government. As much as you’d like it to be different, I just don’t think that’s the commercial reality. They’ve decided to put half a billion dollars into a firm that was made – a decision that was made on the recommendation of Labor lobbyists in the quantum computing issue. Quantum computing is incredibly important to our future, worthy of investment in the right circumstances, but not the way the Government’s gone about it. I don’t think their position, in relation to many of these issues, is sustainable or withstands much critique at all.
QUESTION:
On Direction 99, sorry, what sort of changes would you make specifically to those sort of directions?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’d revert it back to what was before, so it worked well, and it kept our country safe, and we deported bikies and we deported rapists and people who had committed sexual offences against young boys and girls. It kicked out people who had committed the most heinous crimes in domestic settings.
Now, the Prime Minister has changed that, which has meant that this individual has stayed in our country, and this individual allegedly has now gone on to commit a murder. This is on top of the 150 odd people that they released from jail, who were some of the most hardened criminals, and they’re non-citizens committing offences against Australian citizens.
The Prime Minister needs to reverse the decision immediately, he needs to apologise for the decision that he took in the first place, and Minister Giles needs to be out fronting the media today to explain why on earth, when he saw the AAT decision, he didn’t intervene with his ministerial powers, which are extensive in the portfolio he holds.
QUESTION:
The Snowy 2.0 project is encountering more problems with the tunnel boring machine stuck again. This project was launched under the Coalition. Was it an error in hindsight and what can be done to get it back on track?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think it’s a demonstration of how fraught it is to invest in some of these projects. We want Snowy Hydro 2.0 to proceed, but there obviously have been significant delays and cost overruns with it – supported on a bipartisan position – but when you get a situation, as the Prime Minister’s presiding over, nobody else will invest into a solar panel plant to compete with China, he comes in with taxpayers’ money. People have worked hard for their money, and under a Liberal Government, we will reduce taxes because a Labor Government always taxes and spends. They’re spending an extra $315 billion, which is why the Reserve Bank is worried about interest rates, it’s why interest rates have gone up on 12 occasions under this Prime Minister, and it’s why a lot of families are struggling with their mortgage repayments at the moment.
Their energy policy is a disaster, it means every farmer’s electricity bill has gone up, every manufacturer, their electricity prices have gone through the roof. All of that is passed on by the time you buy the end product at Coles or Woolies, and it’s why people know when they turn up to the checkout now, it costing much more for a basket of goods than it did two years ago.
For most Australians, just ask themselves this question: are you better off today, two years and one day after Anthony Albanese was elected, than before he was elected? I just don’t think there are any Australians who are in a position where the Government’s decisions have made it easier, not harder for them. That’s why most critics have been, you know, have just slammed the budget because it was a third missed opportunity, and it’s actually going to make it harder for families and small businesses to operate in a very difficult economic environment.
QUESTION:
Before the last election, Scott Morrison announced $375 million towards a cancer centre, QEII – tell me if you’re familiar with that. Are you committed to that funding?
PETER DUTTON:
We are committed to the cancer project. We promised it in government. The Government that was elected, the Albanese Government was initially against it, but I think they’ve been shamed into making that investment. We believe it’s a very important part of the health investment here in WA. A big part of the reason I’m here today is to talk more about the $400 million that we want to invest into general practice to provide support for those doctors. It’s hard to get into a GP. It’s hard to get the services that you need within general practice.
So, the prevention end is incredibly important and that primary care setting is important, but so too is research and the tertiary response to people who have cancers and different types, particularly brain cancer and others that we need to invest in to make sure that the research and development is done.
When I was Health Minister, we created the Medical Research Future Fund, which has a corpus now of over $20 billion and it’s funded literally billions of dollars of new projects, research projects and I’m incredibly proud of it.
QUESTION:
Is the State Government dragging it’s feet on that project?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’re happy to work with the State Government because I think it’s an incredibly important precinct and investment for us to make in WA and I hope the State Government can support it.
Thank you very much.
[ends]