Subjects: Visit to Eden-Monaro; the Coalition’s funding commitment to upgrade the Goulburn Regional Hockey Centre; Labor’s cost of living crisis; the Coalition’s commitment to real consequences for perpetrators of anti-Semitism; Trump Administration; Australia-USA alliance.
E&OE.
JOANNE VAN DER PLAAT:
Well, good morning, everyone. I’m Jo van der Plaat, the Liberal candidate Eden-Monaro. I just want to say a very big welcome to the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, for coming to Goulburn today. We do have quite a few people here – Angus Taylor, Member for Hume, Shadow Treasurer; Dave Sharma, Senator for New South Wales; Wendy Tuckerman, State Member for Goulburn. We’ve got Nina Dillon somewhere here, the Mayor of Goulburn Mulwaree Council. So, thank you for coming out today.
We’ve had a productive morning. We’ve been to visit a few small businesses and just have a chat to them about what’s impacting them locally in the Goulburn area. They’re telling us – like we’re hearing every day – that the cost of doing business is really impacting them, and what they’ve said to us is that they cannot afford another three years under Labor. There are some businesses here doing it really tough and we know that small businesses employ over 5 million people in this country.
What I did want to talk about today was the hockey centre and I’m really pleased to have been able to meet Sharney Fleming, the President of the Association here. Goulburn is synonymous with hockey. There’s a huge membership of this club and the Association is over 100 years old. They invest a lot of time, there’s a lot of volunteers and coaches that come here every week to train anywhere from a five year old right up to seniors. They have a very good comp and they also play in the Canberra Premier League comp as well.
If you’ll take a look behind me, you’ll see two very different looking fields. One is blue and very nice and new. The other one is green and it’s very old and it’s quite unsafe. So I’ve been out fighting for some funding to upgrade that pitch so we can make sure that the safety of the players, the little ones right through to the seniors, is paramount, so they can build and continue to build this sport in Goulburn. We produce lots of great sportspeople in Goulburn.
I’m very pleased to announce that I have been able to secure some funding, almost $1.5 million, to make sure that this pitch is upgraded so we can make sure that we have increased safety for players. But the other thing is this once we have this state of the art centre up to scratch, the Association will be able to attract lots of other competitions both on a state and national level. We know that what that means is not only increased participation in hockey as a sport, but an increase to the economic growth for Goulburn. We’ll have people coming in and staying at the local hotels and eating at the local restaurants.
So, I’ve been really, really pleased to be able to secure that funding and announce that today – almost $1.5 million for the hockey centre here. I should just mention, council is the owner of the land. So we’ll be working in conjunction with council and with the Association to make sure that that project is delivered once we’re elected.
I’ll hand over to Peter. Thank you.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks, Jo. Well done.
Jo, thanks very much and thanks for being a great local candidate. Jo’s somebody who’s well connected with the local sports groups and local small businesses, as she mentioned, that Angus, Dave and I went to visit this morning.
I also want to say thank you very much to Pip and Fletch as well and to everybody here on the committee for the wonderful work that they do. Seeing young people play sport is part of the Australian culture and it’s wonderful to see young kids out there participating, they’re interacting with other people their own age, with adults, they’re training. It’s good for their health and it’s good for their social development skills as well.
As Jo points out, local clubs like this, particularly when they’re a significant part of the local fabric of this community, they need help. I’m very pleased, as Jo said today, that a Coalition government will provide almost $1.5 million worth of funding. We’ve listened very carefully, not just to the committee, but also to the mayor and the deputy mayor and the other council officers who are here today that I acknowledge and thank very much for the work that they do. We’ve listened to their arguments, and Jo has really been very forceful in putting forward that argument to us for the need of that funding. Just a couple of other things, and I’m happy to take questions.
Obviously at the moment there are many Australians who are living in fear, people who are of Jewish faith, who are worried about an attack on their home, their place of business, an attack online. The Prime Minister has had 15 months really to try and address this issue. The trouble is he’s been walking both sides of the street and I think at the moment our Prime Minister during a period of a national crisis, is completely out of his depth.
The Prime Minister had an opportunity to call a National Cabinet very early on after the October 7 attacks and after what we saw on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. He chose not to do that. Yesterday he convenes a National Cabinet meeting – after saying that one wasn’t necessary just 24 hours before that – and there was nothing substantive that was delivered out of that National Cabinet meeting. That’s exactly the purpose of the National Cabinet meeting.
We know the Tasmanian Government pushed for mandatory sentencing for terrorist offences. We know that there was discussion obviously, and Premier Minns has been at odds with the Prime Minister on this issue for some time. So there was a broader discussion, but in the end the only thing the Prime Minister could deliver was better record-keeping. I just don’t think that provides any comfort to those people living in areas of our country where they feel that they can’t do so safely.
We don’t have a situation in our culture, and we shouldn’t allow it to gather pace, where one segment of the Australian people can be treated differently to others. I believe very strongly that the Prime Minister had an opportunity to stand up to provide the leadership that our country desperately needs during the period of a national crisis and he just hasn’t done that.
In relation to the second issue, cost of living, as you know, is a huge issue everywhere you go. As we move across the country, talking to a small business owner this morning, input costs around electricity continue to go up and the Government’s renewables only policy means that power prices will keep going up. The Government has a 2035 target, but they don’t want to tell Australians about it before the election. Why? If it’s good for the country, why not provide the information about how much power bills will go up under the Albanese Government if they re-elected and they sign up to that target?
So, I just think the Prime Minister needs to provide that detail. So far he’s not done that, and Australians can expect their power prices to go up even further under a Prime Minister who promised a $275 cut to power prices and instead they’ve gone up by $1,000.
Happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
It seems that the AFP suggestion is that some of these people are doing this for money, not ideology. What’s your view on that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Mark, again, I just think the Prime Minister needs to be honest here because it seems that he’s at odds with the Australian Federal Police Commissioner. If there has been such a significant international element, what has been the involvement of the federal agencies, including ASIO, and for how long? And why has the Prime Minister never mentioned this before now? When did the Prime Minister find out that there were foreign players? Are these state actors or are they organised crime groups, or are they anti-Semitic groups? What did the Prime Minister know?
Frankly, it just shines a spotlight on the fact that the Commonwealth Government should have deployed resources much earlier to what is a rolling series of terrorist incidents in our country and to treat them as just a wilful damage attack on a car or as a graffiti event – it’s not that. It’s an attack on people because of their religious belief, because of their heritage and I think the Prime Minister should provide what information he can publicly.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, are you still backing mandatory sentences, given the evidence from the AFP Commissioner is that they might be paid actors?
PETER DUTTON:
Very strongly. We are of the view and absolutely we will implement laws which say for somebody who commits a terrorist attack that there is a mandatory sentence. I want this to be a very clear message of deterrence to those, whether they’re acting on someone else’s behalf, whether they’re somebody who has hatred and racism in their motivation, I want them to know that there is a penalty to pay in Australia and we’re not going to allow these people to go before the courts to get a slap on the wrist.
We don’t have tolerance for hatred in our country, not against the Jews, not against Catholics, not against Asians, not against Protestants, not against atheists, not against tall people, short people, nobody. The fact that the Prime Minister has allowed this issue to fester, and why? For political advantage. That’s the most shameful part here. The Prime Minister has allowed this issue to continue to fester and it has escalated to the point where we see a childcare centre and a synagogue, a place of worship, firebombed and the Prime Minister has essentially absented himself from this process. It’s completely unacceptable.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, in that list you didn’t mention against people of the Muslim faith. A few months ago, Dave Sharma said accounts of Islamophobia are fictitious, and yet Australia’s Islamophobia Register has seen more than a thousand reports since October 7. Is that helpful to social cohesion?
PETER DUTTON:
Which part of the amendment are you talking about this?
QUESTION:
To say that it’s fictitious?
PETER DUTTON:
No, in terms of the targeting toward a particular segment of society? Of course we’re not doing that. The people we have in our sights are criminals and terrorists, and somebody who commits an offence of terrorism on our soil should know that there’s a price to pay. It doesn’t matter whether it’s against a synagogue or against a mosque or against a church, these are places of worship and they’re sacrosanct.
You may disagree or agree with somebody’s religious belief, or have no religious belief at all, but in our country, you’re able to practise that belief according to your own values, you’re able to bring your children up in accordance with those values, and we respect that – providing people are acting within the law.
So, they’re not targeted toward anybody except somebody who is willing and able and has committed a terrorist offence. That’s what the Prime Minister should stand for as well. But unfortunately, at a time when our country needs national leadership during a national crisis, the Prime Minister is completely out of his depth.
QUESTION:
Just a follow up to that: Simone Abel from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, yesterday said the Opposition and the Government need to join together. Will you heed those calls for a more bipartisan approach?
PETER DUTTON:
If that means doing nothing – like the Prime Minister’s proposing – no, it’s not something that we would agree to. If it means, as the Jewish leaders asked for yesterday, that there be a bipartisan position in relation to the proposals that we’ve put forward, then yes, I do want a bipartisan position. But I don’t think the Prime Minister’s going to arrive at that position. Why? Because I think he’s hung a big part of the community out to dry, because you’ve got votes that they’re chasing from inner city seats from the Greens and in Western Sydney. That’s the Prime Minister’s motivation here. It’s why they’ve taken a position to oppose salmon farming in Tasmania, because they’re chasing Green votes. I think the modern Labor Party has forgotten about the Australian worker, forgotten about battling families and forgotten about people who are living in regional and outer suburban areas. The Liberal Party will always stand up for those people and fight on their behalf. I don’t think it’s controversial, to be honest.
QUESTION:
But do you acknowledge your role, Mr Dutton, in bringing the temperature down?
PETER DUTTON:
Andrew, this is going to escalate to a point where somebody is going to lose their life. Let’s be very clear about it. This is not somebody who was liked a nasty post online. We’re talking about a childcare centre being firebombed. It is a terrorist attack. I think we should remind ourselves of that. Somebody breaks into the sports shed here on Saturday night and steals half a dozen beers and they’re 15 years of age – that is a criminal offence and the police will treat that seriously. But it is not a terrorist attack.
We’re talking about a synagogue being firebombed. We’re talking about people – and speak to the people of Jewish faith who are worried because of their surname that they’re going to be targeted. We’ve got Jewish kids who are going to school and sitting in classrooms with armed guards at the front gate. That’s not happening in any other state school or private school system in our country. So, let’s resolve this, and let’s deal with anti-Semitism by letting every person know that we have zero tolerance for it. Part of the problem that we’ve got ourselves into as a country has been because the Prime Minister absented himself from this debate early on for political motivations and outcomes. I can’t recall an incident where an Australian Prime Minister – Labor or Liberal – has sacrificed one part of our society and their security to try and win votes in another part of the community.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, police – according to the Prime Minister – have been investigating this from the very beginning, they just haven’t been talking about it. The Government says they’ve committed money towards this issue. What specifically could the Government be doing to stop anti-Semitic attacks?
PETER DUTTON:
I wrote to the Prime Minister in November of 2023 asking for a National Cabinet to be convened because the Police Commissioners and the Police Ministers and the Premiers and Chief Ministers needed to hear from their Prime Minister about what the approach should be and what the Prime Minister believe should be the response. Now the police have to act according to law, of course, but they will listen to the direction from the Prime Minister and from the Premiers. In Victoria, if you contrast Jacinta Allan’s approach, which is disgraceful, to Chris Minns’ approach, which has been much more effective, then I think there is a contrast there and the Prime Minister’s chosen the Jacinta Allan approach instead of the Chris Minns approach.
I think it was entirely foreseeable that we would see an escalation. When you have, for months and months and months on university campuses, people chanting racist chants and attacking verbally and now their property as well, people of Jewish faith and students and academics for months and months saw nothing from their Prime Minister. The Prime Minister got worked up when his electorate office was picketed, but before that, we’ve just allowed every red line to be crossed.
So, what could we do? We could be doing a lot more. We’ve proposed changes to the law, which frankly should have been considered by the National Cabinet process, but instead, this was a tick and flick exercise by a desperate Prime Minister who’s out of his reach looking to try and change the conversation.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, when you say that the Prime Minister’s allowed this to fester for political advantage and then you nominate inner city seats and Western Sydney, there’d be voters in those seats who take great offence at that. Who are you talking about?
PETER DUTTON:
I’m talking about Green voters, Mark. I mean, talk to the Prime Minister and listen to him. He’s in a seat where he’s under attack from the Greens at a local, state and federal level. He’s obsessed with Adam Bandt. You see it in the chamber, and their existential threat is from the Greens. It’s why you see Tanya Plibersek proposing the nature positive anti mining bill for WA. They’re willing to sacrifice votes to try and hold their seats, and that’s exactly the play that the Prime Minister’s making, and we’ve called him out for it. Now it’s inconvenient for him to hear it, but that’s the fact.
I want to lead a country which is united, I want to lead a country which is safe, I want to bring downward pressure on inflation so that we can help families afford their mortgages again, I want an energy policy which brings downward prices on groceries. This Government, I mean, the reason they’re conducting themselves the way they are at the moment on this issue is because they don’t have a clue what they’re doing. It’s not just national security, their energy policy, their economic policies, have all led to the cost of living crisis that families are experiencing at the moment.
QUESTION:
If the AFP Commissioner’s suspicion is correct, and there is a foreign actor that’s trying to stir up discontent in the Australian community, you’ve worked in this space, who’s it likely to be? And secondly, do you worry that you might also be playing a role in stirring up that discontent?
PETER DUTTON:
Andrew, calling out terrorist acts is not a political act – let’s be very clear about it. The position we’ve taken is to say that we have zero tolerance for people who are committing firebomb attacks on childcare centres and synagogues. That is not a political attack, I’m sorry.
In terms of the Prime Minister’s position, he’s the person holding the highest office in our country and he has the ability to help the Jewish community through what they describe as their darkest hour. October 7 was the biggest attack on the Jewish population since the Holocaust, and in our country, we’ve seen a 700 per cent increase in the incidences of online doxxing, of attacks on people of Jewish faith, for no other reason than their heritage. Many of these people weren’t born in Israel. Many of these people don’t agree with Netanyahu. It would be like attacking people of Russian heritage in our country because of President Putin’s actions. They may not agree at all with, or be diametrically opposed to his position in relation to Ukraine or the treatment of people in Russia, but people aren’t being targeted and their cars are being attacked and graffitied. It is happening in the Jewish community and that’s what the Prime Minister needs to deal with.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, can I just clarify, do you agree that incidents of Islamophobia are fictitious?
PETER DUTTON:
No, I don’t, and I’ve been very clear. I think I posted something the other day where there was an attack. I’ve been very clear. I don’t tolerate racism or intolerance toward any part of the community. I just think every Australian should be treated equally, and that’s the approach that we’ve got.
If somebody has committed an offence, as we’ve outlined in what we’ve put forward to toughen up the laws, we don’t single out a particular type of place of religious worship. It’s all places. I just make this final point – the fire bombings that we’re seeing take place at the moment are against Jewish interests. Okay? That is what the Prime Minister needs to deal with. So, let’s be very clear about where the problem is at the moment, and it’s a very significant problem.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, just on a broader issue, earlier you nominated a whole host of policy areas that you needed to address; cost of living, energy, etc., etc.. We’ve seen Donald Trump move with incredible pace in the US in the last 24 hours. Is your prescription for change – is that an evolution or a revolution in a Trump-like fashion?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Mark, firstly, I should congratulate President Trump on his inauguration, and we look forward to working with his Cabinet.
I’ve had the great honour as a senior Minister to work with the Obama Administration, the Trump mark one Administration, and obviously the Biden Administration. I know my colleagues and many others have close relationships with those that are within the Trump 47th presidency Administration. So, we will have a very constructive relationship with them in government.
We have laid out an approach that we believe is in our country’s best interests. We don’t have the same system of government. I’m against a Republic. I’m very strongly in favour of the great system that has kept us stable since Federation. We’ll go through the proposals that we have in a methodical way and we’ll explain those.
I think the debate about the 2035 target is a very real one because at the moment Australians can’t afford to pay their grocery bills, they can’t afford to pay their insurance bills, they can’t afford to pay their school fees and the bills just keep stacking up under Anthony Albanese, and now the Prime Minister is proposing to drive up electricity prices even higher, but he just won’t tell you by how much.
QUESTION:
Would a Coalition Government remain in the Paris Accord?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, we will, and I’ve said that before.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, now having Goulburn as part of Eden-Monaro, how will that help your campaign?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ve got a great candidate in Jo Van Der Plaat. She’s got a great experience, and as she’s demonstrated here, she has a capacity to advocate and to fight for her local community and to get outcomes. You need an effective local Member, and that’s exactly what Jo will be. Obviously, Angus has been an incredibly effective Member for this area and he is doing a fantastic job in his portfolio as well.
At the next election, we need to win seats across New South Wales, including getting Jo into Parliament. We need to make sure, as we were saying yesterday in Bennelong, that we win seats there because otherwise we’re going to end up with a minority government in Canberra and an Albanese-Bandt Government will be a disaster for families, small businesses will continue to close, there will be no response to the crime crisis that’s gripping parts of our country and we will get into a situation where the problems will become entrenched as happens with a long-term Labor Government, and it’ll take a long time to undo that.
QUESTION:
The small business announcement on the weekend, how much will that cost?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ll release the costings in due course Mark, but we’ve had a costed by the PBO. So, we’ve gone through different iterations and looked at different options. We actually think it’s quite an efficient spend of taxpayers’ money. The reckless spending by the Prime Minister obviously has to stop, but we think particularly for cafes, restaurants, clubs and pubs, they’re doing it tough. There are 165,000 workers that have left that industry and we know that 27,000 businesses across the economy, small businesses, have closed. So what we’ve proposed here is for small businesses with a turnover of less than $10 million – that’s about 2.5 million businesses or 98 per cent of businesses in the country – they can spend up to $20,000 on employees or on customers to try and grow their business. It’s tax deductible for them without the complication of fringe benefits tax, and it’s also money that’s being spent to help employ and keep staff in restaurants, cafes, pubs, and clubs. So, there’s a multiplier effect there in the economy, and we think that’s a really sound approach. Thanks to Angus and the economics team, we’ve put a lot of work into that policy.
QUESTION:
Just finally, Penny Wong has now met with Marco Rubio. She’s reported it was extremely warm and constructive. The trip appears to have been a success, do you welcome that development?
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, look, I think our relationship with the United States is incredibly important, and I don’t know whether Secretary Rubio raised the comments that Penny Wong made about Donald Trump over the years, and I don’t know the conversation that’s going on between the Secretary and Kevin Rudd about his former comments or indeed, I send my best wishes to the Prime Minister, and I hope that he’s not ‘scared’ by Donald Trump’s inauguration. It seems to be going pretty well so far.
Again, the Prime Minister and others have had derogatory comments to make over a long period of time. We want to work constructively with the United States because it’s the underpinning of our security in this country in a very uncertain century, and it’s also a very important people-to-people relationship. We’ve gone through conflicts standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States over the last hundred years, and that relationship should be enhanced, not damaged, which is why it’s quite remarkable that Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese have taken a position opposed to the position of even President Biden in the United Nations in recent months.
I think there is a lot of repair work to do and it’s no wonder that Penny Wong is there, I suspect, on bended knee trying to beg forgiveness for some of the impertinent comments that they’ve made.
QUESTION:
Question from the local media?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, please. Yep.
QUESTION:
This is quite a substantial amount of money for the hockey fields. Are you worried about Eden-Monaro that it may fall to Labor? And if so, will we see more of you in this electorate?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, you’ll certainly see more of me and you’ll see more of Jo. Once Jo’s the local member, people will see her constantly, and I think that’ll be the case during the campaign as well.
We have to win a lot of seats in this election, there’s no doubt about that. But more importantly than that, we need to invest in local communities and the local hockey community here is one of the most significant hockey communities in the country. When you look at the work that the Mayor has done and Wendy, who does a fantastic job as a State Member and now alongside Jo, we can see more juniors coming into the sport. That’s fantastic for the local community, for participation, for health outcomes. It’s why Angus has been such a strong supporter of the hockey community as well.
So, yes, you’ll see more of us, but we want to get Jo into parliament. She’s a fantastic representative and I think she’ll be a great member of parliament.
Thank you very much.
[ends]