Subjects: Visit to Kooyong; Liberal Party candidate for Kooyong – Amelia Hamer; Andrew Giles’s continuing immigration detention shambles; Labor’s cost of living crisis; Peter Costello; nuclear power; Labor’s energy policy shambles; the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
E&OE.
JAMES PATERSON:
Good morning everyone. It’s wonderful to be here in Melbourne and in Kooyong, with the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, and our local Liberal Candidate, Amelia Hamer.
Kooyong is a seat that we are fighting hard to win, and I believe we can win, particularly with such an outstanding candidate like Amelia. Amelia was chosen by local Liberals to represent us in the community and she’s doing an incredible job, and you’ll hear from her in a moment.
I just want to make some observations, though, first about Andrew Giles’ shocking press conference this morning where he implicitly, but didn’t honestly admit the failures of this Government when it comes to Direction 99. It was a nine minute press conference where he couldn’t answer any questions about the details and refused to accept responsibility. Really, it’s him and the Prime Minister who put our community at danger by issuing Direction 99.
Now we’ve got Direction 110, and I hope it will be better for the Australian community than Direction 99 was, but on the details available so far, I’ve got no confidence that will be the case. Because it continues to have ties to the Australian community as a primary consideration and that will leave the AAT to make decisions like they have been before.
What the Government should have done is gone back to the old Direction under the previous Government that had ties to the Australian community as a secondary consideration, that put community safety first. But this is a Government which has failed repeatedly to put community safety first – whether it’s the NZYQ cohort following the High Court decision, or Direction 99 – this is a Government that puts the Australian community at danger because they don’t have the strength to make the tough decisions in the national interest.
I’m really pleased to be standing with someone who does have a strong record of making those tough decisions in the national interest, Peter Dutton.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks mate, very much. Amelia?
AMELIA HAMER:
It’s fantastic to be here today out in the Kooyong community. We’re here at Bakers Delight, at their headquarters in Camberwell. We’ve just done a store visit at the local Camberwell store.
Bakers Delight was founded here in Kooyong, down in the Glenferrie Road shop on Hawthorn, where I’m a local visitor there. Down there getting my cape seed loaf every week – if you haven’t tried it, I recommend you do.
We’ve also been supporting their Pink Bun initiative, which is a fantastic initiative supporting Breast Cancer Network Australia. I decided to wear my pink suit this morning – I couldn’t quite talk Peter into doing the same – but it’s just terrific to be out here listening to the local community and supporting local business.
PETER DUTTON:
Well done. Amelia, thank you very much, and thank you to James as well.
Firstly, I want to say thank you very much to the amazing staff here at Bakers Delight. They’re an incredible family owned business and a great success story, and we should celebrate more the small business successes in Victoria, but across the country as well, because these are people who have made a business from nothing. They’ve sacrificed, they’ve gone without, they’ve put their own home on the line with the bank to get the capital to start the first store and the second and so it goes on. But they’re employing young people who are at university, they’re employing people who want flexibility in their lives, who might have part-time retirement in mind, they might have a second or third job. It’s that flexibility and the ability to provide employment opportunities to help people get through university, to help them pay off their mortgage, to help them with their kids and their expenses of life otherwise.
One of the great things about the Liberal Party is our support of small business, not just the community here in Kooyong, but across Victoria. I want Victoria to be a manufacturing powerhouse again. I want to make sure that we have a situation of secure and cheaper and greener energy into the system as we transition. If we do that then businesses can afford to keep their doors open.
At the moment, as we know, we’ve seen a threefold increase in the number of insolvencies for manufacturing businesses over the last two years, and we’ve seen a situation where people continue to pay higher and higher prices for their electricity and gas. We’ve now got the independent regulator telling us that there’s the prospect of disruption to energy supply. Now just think about that for a second. We’re talking about hospitals being without power because they reliant on Mr Albanese’s renewables only policy. We’re talking about cold rooms, cold storage, businesses otherwise that require 24/7 power, and a modern economy can’t operate on that basis.
So, I believe that we have to have an honest discussion about energy. We can’t allow the lights to go out here in Victoria or elsewhere, because otherwise businesses can’t succeed. If they can’t succeed, and they don’t employ people, and they don’t pay taxes, they don’t contribute to the expansion of the economy – and that is a disaster for our country.
I also want to just commend James Paterson for the work that he’s done on Direction 99 in the space of the Shadow Home Affairs portfolio. It is incredibly important that we can have a Government that keeps our country safe and secure. I want people to be able to live in their homes safely, I want to make sure that kids can go to the movies, or go to their mates place, or go down to a local park and to do it safely. I want to make sure that women are safe in their own homes and in the community more generally, and to do that, you need to make tough decisions, and this weak Prime Minister, unfortunately, has made decisions along with Andrew Giles, that has made us, as a society, less safe.
I give an absolute commitment to the Australian people that as Prime Minister I would prioritise the security and the safety of the Australian people above anyone else. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister, through Direction 99, has put Australians second as, quite unbelievably, when you think about some of the individual cases that come to mind. There are people who have fallen victim to these criminals who have stayed in our country, who should have been deported, and I think the Prime Minister, whilst he refuses to get up and apologise now, really should get up and apologise. But this new Direction 110 doesn’t give much change in circumstance at all, and it will still give rise to the sort of outcomes that we’ve seen in allowing these people to stay in our community.
Now, one of the most important things that I wanted to say today was that in Amelia we have an incredible, well accomplished individual, but an incredibly enthusiastic person about her community here in Kooyong.
We want somebody that’s not going to side against her community, or against the interests of Victoria, which is what we’ve seen with the current Member for Kooyong. The current Member for Kooyong votes constantly with the Greens and with the Labor Party. I don’t believe that reflects the values or the aspirations of people here in Kooyong.
Amelia is accomplished in her own right. I think she’s demonstrated that she will stand up to anyone if it means fighting for her community and representing this community in the Federal Parliament.
So, I’m really pleased that Amelia is part of our campaign. She will be a wonderful local Member, but we’ve got a lot of hard work to do between now and then. If we can win Kooyong, we can get rid of a bad Government, and we can stop a Labor-Greens minority Government from, frankly, destroying the economy, if that’s the outcome after the next election.
I’m happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
You said that she stood ‘up to anyone’ fighting for Kooyong. Does that include Josh Frydenberg in his kite flying over the weekend about considering knocking her out of the preselection?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’d just say a couple of things. I mean, one is that Josh has been a friend of mine for a long period of time. Josh had a chance to run for preselection, he chose not to do that. He’s prioritised his career and his family – and that’s to his credit.
Amelia has accomplished a lot in her life as well. She was preselected by the local members, and I think people know that she has a tenacity and a drive and an enthusiasm for her local community, which will see a great representative again in the seat of Kooyong in the Federal Parliament. We haven’t had that since Josh lost his seat at the last election.
So, I think people are seeing more and more of Amelia, and they know that she will be a great local candidate here in Kooyong, and an even better Member after the next election.
QUESTION:
What should happen with Chisholm? Given that Katie Allen may not have a seat to run in, she’s been preselected in Higgins. Will you push at admin committee for Chisholm to be reopened so that she could run in that seat?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Simon, it’s a decision for the Party here in Victoria. Generally in circumstances where a seat has been abolished and a good part of that seat has gone into the adjoining seat, in this case, Chisholm, then the admin committee would look at whether they reopen that preselection or not. That’s quite distinct…
QUESTION:
What’s your view though?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’ll express my view to the Party, but ultimately it’s a decision for the members of the Victorian Division.
QUESTION:
How do you feel more broadly about the redistribution in Victoria? It’s going to make some seats in Melbourne’s east – which you traditionally held – a little bit tougher. What sort of, I guess, representation would you like to make ahead of the final boundaries being made at the end of the year?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, it’s like trying to pick the election date. I’ve watched this movie, many times over, over the years and people who, leading into these redistributions tell you where the lines are going to be on maps, nobody gets it right. There are some anomalous outcomes here and others that just doesn’t make sense, to be honest.
In the end, that’s the independent umpire’s decision, you abide by that, and we just make sure that we’ve got great candidates, which we do have. Some of the candidates; Mary Aldred and Amelia, many others that we’ve preselected, I think we’re saying in a very strong and positive way to the Victorian community that we’ve listened to them, and we are selecting candidates who I think will be the face of the Party into the future, and will contribute significantly to our prospects at the next election.
We must win the next election for the sake of the Victorian economy, for the sake of the Victorian people, but for our country as well, because we’ve got a weak Government at the moment. We’ve got a weak Prime Minister who has now held three budgets, and what Australians know is that they’re no better off today than they were two years ago. In fact, in many cases, sadly, many families are really struggling in their millions at the moment under this Government, and not just families, but small businesses as well.
As you walk down main streets now, not just as we were this morning, but around the country, the ‘For Lease’ signs are going up. Now, I remember that from the 1990s. We’re in a per capita recession and have been for five quarters, and Australians are feeling it. I was speaking to a small business owner, cafe owner, in my electorate this morning, who’s talking about closing down his business.
Now, he’s an iconic local business, has employed people for a long period of time, but he just can’t keep up with the rising electricity and gas costs under Labor, he can’t keep up with the industrial relations challenges just to try and please the unions, and this is a Prime Minister who, if he had some backbone, would have made decisions to keep our country secure, but also to help families and businesses survive in a very tough environment.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, I just wanted to ask you about Peter Costello. He was involved in an incident at Canberra Airport. I think you’re aware of it. You said on TV this morning that you were. What do you make of what happened there? And he’s quite an experienced person in the media, shouldn’t he have been a little bit more careful in dealing with the media?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, a couple points. Firstly, I don’t know Liam well, but he’s obviously an excellent journalist and first and foremost, I hope that he’s okay.
Secondly, Peter is a friend of mine for now over 20 years, so I guess I’m not the person to be asking for comment in relation to it, but I’ve never known Peter to be aggressive or anything of that nature. I haven’t seen the other angles of the footage, etc.. I know that some people have and they’re out there, so I’ll leave it to those to comment on, but as I say, I know Peter very well and aggression is not a part of his nature.
QUESTION:
Have you ever knocked over a journo accidentally or otherwise?
PETER DUTTON:
No, but sometimes you see the enthusiasm of journalists and they’re multi-skilled, generally, journalists – some of them with good skills, some with bad skills, depending on which organisation you’re coming from, generally – but we can go into that at another time.
QUESTION:
Do tell.
PETER DUTTON:
Sometimes when they’re walking backwards some have the ability to stay upright, others don’t. But on this circumstance, I think that’s, as I say, it’s hard to make a judgement when you haven’t seen all of the footage, and I think hopefully this matter can be resolved amicably between the parties.
QUESTION:
Don’t forget the camera, too.
What about – just back to Victoria – John Pesutto won’t back your push for nuclear power until you’ve revealed the detail and or where possible reactor will be in Victoria. Where will it be? If it ain’t Anglesea, where’s it going to be?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, a couple points. I mean firstly, I desperately want John Pesutto and the Liberals to form government after the next state election, just for the sake of this state. When you look at the amount of debt that’s being accrued – close to $200 billion now – and if you’re spending $1 million an hour on the interest bill, which is what’s happened under Labor, it means that you’re not doing the road upgrades, you’re not investing into the schools, you’re not getting more police, and if you don’t do those things, then we have a loss of amenity in the community – particularly for kids going to school, we have less police and therefore, a less safe society, and we don’t have public transport being upgraded, we don’t have the investment that needs to be made in a great state like Victoria.
So, I think the disastrous period of the Andrews-Allan Government needs to come to an end more quickly than should, because if not, Victorians are going to see closures of businesses at a greater number, we’re going to see people moving from Victoria and setting up their manufacturing plant elsewhere, and we don’t want that for Victoria. We want it to be an economic powerhouse. I think it’d be great to see John elected at the next election. I have a different view than John in relation to the energy transition.
We need to, as we decarbonise, have a credible pathway to reducing those emissions. We can’t have a situation where the Prime Minister says ‘we’re not going to have gas, we’re not going to have coal, and we’re not going to have nuclear’, but somehow the lights are going to stay on and prices will come down. It’s just fantasy. As Victorians are pointing out, as we move around, their electricity bills are going through the roof here, and that’s the case.
Coal is coming to an end, we all accept that. Gas is going to play a big part in the transition, but what is the baseload? The baseload is reduced by 90 per cent over the next 10 years. The Prime Minister talks about green hydrogen – it’s in developmental stages, and it takes something like nine litres per kilogram of green hydrogen produced – so it’s incredibly expensive, and the Government’s plan is to spend about $1.3 trillion, trillion dollars, including with 28,000km of new poles and wires across Victoria and across the country, otherwise, to transmit the energy that’s created under their scheme…
QUESTION:
But where would you put a nuclear reactor?
PETER DUTTON:
Our proposal is to look at end of life coal fired power stations which have an existing distribution network – so the poles and wires are already there. So why would you rebuild the poles and wires? And we’ll make an announcement in relation to the sites…
QUESTION:
So, Latrobe Valley?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ll make an announcement in due course…
QUESTION:
When?
PETER DUTTON:
…but I don’t believe that the Government can keep the lights on in our country if there is not a credible baseload 24/7 power. If you don’t have that, you don’t have industry, and families will continue to pay their share of that $1.3 trillion. If you think your power bill’s gone up already, it will go up exponentially under Labor.
QUESTION:
You’re in Camberwell right now, which is John Pesutto’s electorate. Are you catching up with him while you’re here?
PETER DUTTON:
I spoke to John on the phone just the other day. I won’t – unless he’s at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce lunch, that I’m going to, which I think he is, then hopefully I can see him there.
So, I have a very good relationship with John. I saw some of that media speculation, but I get on with all the state leaders and, hopefully – and I will do everything within my power – John Pesutto is the next Premier of Victoria. If that’s the case, we can get this state and our country back on track.
QUESTION:
Just on 99 and 110, the new Direction keeps someone’s ties to Australia as a primary consideration. Should that line have been deleted entirely?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Simon, again, what has the Government done here? They have listened to the pleadings of Jacinda Ardern to put New Zealand citizens ahead of Australian citizens.
Now, I don’t think it’s a controversial thing to say that the Prime Minister of Australia should prioritise the interests of Australians. The Prime Minister has implemented Direction 99, Andrew Giles is just the patsy for it.
Anthony Albanese made the commitment to Jacinda Ardern that Direction 99 would be implemented, and because of Direction 99, there are more people who have become victims of crime and serious crimes, including sexual assault, robbery, etc. in our community, and there was no need for those people to be in Australia.
We have a wonderful country, in good part because of our migration programme. We’re a blessed, fortunate, greatest country in the world. We welcome people, and we have done for a long period of time into a country. We shouldn’t be afraid to say that we want the best people to come here, and if you commit a crime as a non-citizen against an Australian citizen, if you we’re born in another country, you should expect to be deported.
We wouldn’t issue the visa in the first place if we knew that you were a person who had committed sexual assault or robbery or drug trafficking, you wouldn’t get the visa in the first place. Why that’s so complicated for the Prime Minister to understand and to put into practice is beyond me.
I think a lot of Australians at the moment want a leader with strength, and the Prime Minister doesn’t have it, and his weakness here has been on full display, and unfortunately, tragically, Australians have paid the price.
QUESTION:
There’s still a few more weeks before the new directive comes into – I think there’s 10 cases that will be under the former directive, the current one. Are you concerned about that?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, I am. I think it’s crazy. It should have immediate effect, it should be retrospective, if at all possible. I can’t believe that it’s taken this long to make such a minor adjustment, which in the end, is still going to allow criminals to stay here.
The Prime Minister is putting New Zealand citizens and citizens from other countries – it just doesn’t apply to New Zealand, but every other country – is putting those citizens who have committed crimes ahead of the interests of those victims here in Australia, who, as we know, with many of these people, including the 153 hardened criminals that the Minister released when he didn’t have to. Those people have gone on to commit crimes against Australians, and we shouldn’t tolerate it.
QUESTION:
Is there any sort of type of Australia that should prevent a non…
PETER DUTTON:
Can you speak up, sorry mate.
QUESTION:
Are there any sort of crimes, or any sort of ties to Australia, that should prevent non-citizens with serious criminal convictions being deported?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’d just give you the example of an Australian who was born here and goes to Germany for study or work, meets and marries someone there, they’ve been there from a very young age. If they commit a crime, Germany will deport that person back to Australia, and rightly so. That person is our responsibility. We may not want him back because he’s obviously an unsavoury character, but that is our responsibility and that is the way that the law has operated.
Now, we have a special relationship with New Zealand, but that is not to say that we should be putting other citizens ahead of our own citizens. As I say, it doesn’t have application just to New Zealand, it has application to people coming from all parts of the world. If somebody comes here as a non-citizen, that is that they weren’t born in our country and they commit a crime, particularly a crime of violence against women and children, then they should expect to be deported.
As Immigration Minister, I cancelled the visas of over 6,300 people, and I had a specific focus on people who had committed sexual offences against women and children, and I don’t apologise for that whatsoever. I know the Prime Minister is critical of me for having cancelled those 6,300 visas.
I was on the Central Coast in New South Wales the other day. I was at a factory visit. A lady in a high vis vest at the end of it came up to me and said, ‘you saved the life of my daughter’. And I said ‘oh, how? Please tell me’. I deported a person who was a domestic violence perpetrator who had been obviously assaulting, and demeaning this woman’s daughter, and she was fearful that her daughter would die at the hands of this domestic violence perpetrator. That’s the practical impact of the decisions that you can make. You can make good decisions that help people, that keep our country safe, and that was the objective that I had as Minister, or you can take the Anthony Albanese approach, that is to tell everybody what they want to hear, to be weak and not to make the tough decisions that keep Australians safe, and that’s the approach I took.
QUESTION:
Just regarding the NACC Robodebt decision, to what extent is the Coalition exonerated, given your previous Government’s role in its creation?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think there are lessons to learn, and there’s obviously been a lot written in relation to that. So, we want to make sure that we’ve got appropriate use of taxpayers’ money and where that money is wasted, or where somebody has falsely claimed, then there’s a debt to the Commonwealth, and people ultimately have worked hard for that money as taxpayers to pay that welfare benefit. But there are lessons from Robodebt. We can certainly learn from that experience.
It’s not dissimilar to what we’re seeing in the NDIS at the moment in terms of making sure that taxpayers’ money is being spent appropriately. As Bill Shorten, in another train wreck interview on the Today Show this morning said, basically, he doesn’t know how to control the system. You’ve got billions of dollars being spent on drugs and prostitutes and other wastes of money.
We’re talking about taxpayers’ money. People at the moment are working hard, they can’t afford to pay their mortgages because interest rates have gone up on 12 occasions, can’t afford to buy groceries when they go to the supermarket or fill a car up, and the Government is wasting billions of their taxpayers’ dollars. It’s completely unacceptable.
As the architect of the NDIS and as the Minister now in charge for two years, Bill Shorten needs to get this expenditure under control because ultimately taxpayers are the ones who foot the bill, and I think a lot of people are angry at the Albanese Government now, because of the waste that we’re seeing, and also recipients are and good providers are angry because they’re all being besmirched. Ultimately, the NDIS that we all support is one that provides support to people who are profoundly disabled, and we need to make sure we’ve got a sustainable system.
QUESTION:
But back to the NACC question, do you…
PETER DUTTON:
I’ve dealt with that.
QUESTION:
Senator, I’ve just got a quick one for you. Home Affairs won’t say whether anyone’s been sacked or demoted for giving the Minister the advice on the use of drones when he spoke to Kieran Gilbert. Should Home Affairs come forward with that information? And should someone lose their job over it?
JAMES PATERSON:
Well, Andrew Giles should release the advice that he says he relied on when he claimed that there were drones monitoring released detainees in the community, because immediately when he said it, no one believed it, everyone was skeptical of it, with good reason, because the Department of Home Affairs and Border Force grounded the drones they did have a year earlier, so I’m not sure what drones he even imagined were being used, given that they didn’t have any.
It’s up to him to explain and not just throw the Department under the bus. When anything goes wrong on his watch, and the Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil, it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s the AAT’s fault, it’s the Home Affairs Department’s fault. They never take responsibility. But it’s them who issued Direction 99, it’s them who released the dangerous 153 criminals into the community and weren’t ready to monitor, or protect the community, and it’s them who invented the imaginary drone programme, monitoring detainees, that don’t exist. Well, he’s got to take responsibility for his own public hallucinations.
QUESTION:
Thanks very much.
PETER DUTTON:
Very good. Thank you.
[ends]