Subjects: Visit to Adelaide; Nicolle Flint’s strong track record of delivering for Boothby; Labor’s cost of living crisis; Dr Chalmers at war with the Reserve Bank Governor to distract from Labor’s poor economic management; the New South Wales Liberal Party; migration; Labor’s Big Australia policy; Labor’s visa and immigration policy shambles; the Census; the CFMEU; South Australian Liberal Party.
E&OE.
NICOLLE FLINT:
Well, good morning. I’m Nicolle Flint former Member for Boothby, now the Liberal candidate for Boothby, and it is wonderful to have Opposition Leader Peter Dutton here with me today and my colleague Senator Kerrynne Liddle, right in the heart of Boothby at one of our incredible local family businesses.
We’re very grateful to Dario Tonon and his sons, Carmen and Adrian for hosting us today. We’ve met some incredible apprentices; a first year apprentice Ellie, a third apprentice Isaac, and had a good chat to all of the team at Eblen Collision Repairs. But unfortunately, like every business in the community, like every household’s door I knock on, everyone here is feeling cost of living pressures.
So, for Eblen Collision Repairs, their power prices are through the roof and for their customers, they’re really struggling with record high insurance costs – not just premiums, but also the increase in excesses – and this is all adding in to the Albanese Labor Government’s cost of living crisis that they have delivered to the Australian people, and I tell you what, that’s what gets me out of bed every single morning to stand on all of the train stops and the tram stops and doing all of my doorknocking and visiting incredible family owned businesses like this, because I am determined to win back the seat of Boothby, and I am determined to help get our federal economy back on track so my community does not suffer anymore.
So, I’ll hand over to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Peter, thank you so much for being here today.
PETER DUTTON:
Nicolle, thank you very much.
Look, great to be back in Boothby, and great to be back with such an energetic candidate. Nicolle is well known to the constituents in Boothby. She works hard, she is determined to fight every day for her local constituency, and she is an incredible advocate for the whole of South Australia when she’s in Canberra as well. So, great to be here with Nicole.
It’s equally good to be here with the wonderful Senator Kerrynne Liddle as well, who’s doing amazing work in her portfolio, but across the state. Obviously travels a lot listening to people on the ground in communities, and Kerrynne, thank you very much for being here today.
I want to say thank you Dario to you and to all of the staff here, to the apprentices that we met, to hear more about your business, the struggles, the opportunities, what it is you’re facing in the economy at the moment. As Nicolle rightly points out, many Australians, it’s not just in your own household budget where you’re struggling, it’s a lot of small businesses who are facing increased costs on electricity, on gas, input costs continue to go up, and it’s obvious to all Australians now that the Albanese Government just can’t manage the economy.
There’s no sense the Treasurer being at war with the Reserve Bank Governor, there’s no sense the Prime Minister being at odds with the Director-General of ASIO, we know that this is a dysfunctional Government, and the wheels really are falling off the Albanese Government. We know that for a business, a small business, IGAs, the Drakes chain of stores, their electricity prices have gone up dramatically here in South Australia, but right across the country. The Government’s had three budgets now where they’ve had an opportunity to make decisions that would bring downward pressure on inflation. We know that in Canada, in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom, interest rates have already come down there and interest rates should have already come down in Australia, but as we know from the Reserve Bank Governor, the Federal and State Labor Governments keep pumping more money into the economy, which is what’s keeping inflation higher. So people pay more for their mortgages. There have been 13 increases – 12 under this Government, and Australian families are really struggling.
So, it’s good to be back here in South Australia to talk about issues which are important locally. We’ll continue to work very hard to make sure that every day up until the election counts, because I think there is a much better way for our country.
The Liberal Party will always manage the economy more effectively than Labor can, and we can do that because we’re not going to have a renewables only policy, which is driving up the cost of electricity and gas. We’re going to have a good balance of energy mix, including nuclear, and that way, we can provide long term relief to people in their power prices, and we’ll have more to say about short term support as well because families have had a tough two years under this Government, and it’s obvious to every Australian, that people just can’t afford three more years of Labor.
I’m happy to take some questions.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, are you embarrassed that Rob Stokes has refused to be part of the federal takeover of New South Wales Liberals?
PETER DUTTON:
No.
QUESTION:
You’re not embarrassed?
PETER DUTTON:
No, no. The process was very simple there, there was a discussion with New South Wales, New South Wales put forward Mr Stokes and…
QUESTION:
[inaudible] told you that this is [inaudible].
PETER DUTTON:
I’m just explaining to you that New South Wales put forward Mr Stokes’ name, he wasn’t available as it turns out, and that’s fine.
QUESTION:
Did you approach Mr Stokes before putting his name down?
PETER DUTTON:
No, New South Wales nominated Mr Stokes. That was their nomination, and they’d had the conversation, as I understand it, with Mr Stokes.
QUESTION:
Mark Speakman’s also been saying that he wasn’t aware that you were going to appoint Mr Stokes to the committee. Did you jump the gun on that decision?
PETER DUTTON:
No, no. Mr Stokes was put forward by the New South Wales Division.
QUESTION:
Why is it necessary for a federal takeover?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, in Victoria, the Federal Labor Party has taken over the state division there and now for five years. So, these questions are reasonably asked of Mr Albanese.
My task is to make sure that we can listen to the needs of the people of South Australia here today, but in the case of New South Wales, listen to millions of people in New South Wales who want a change of Federal Government.
Our Party needs to be functional, and the way that it was operating was completely unacceptable to me, and we took a decision at the federal executive to put in place a council of wise elders, who will get the New South Wales division of Liberal Party back on track, because we can win the next federal election. We can only do that if we win Boothby, we want to win Makin in South Australia, and other seats across the country, including in New South Wales.
We’ve worked collaboratively with the New South Wales division, there was full disclosure about the steps forward, and we’ll continue to make sure that we can listen to the people of New South Wales because they do want a better future for their state and for their country, and a Coalition Government replacing a bad Albanese Government will be one of the best ways to do that.
QUESTION:
What specifically in the Loughnane Report led you to believe that intervention was [inaudible]?
PETER DUTTON:
I don’t have any further comment to make on internal matters.
QUESTION:
Rob Stokes did say no, who replaces him?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ll make that announcement in due course.
QUESTION:
There’s also been two Victorians elected to the committee, why are we taking Victorians to the New South Wales committee [inaudible]?
PETER DUTTON:
As I say, I’ve made some comments in relation to the internal matters. That’s all I’d say.
QUESTION:
It’s expected that GDP figures today will show migration’s helped the economy in dire times. Do you acknowledge your migration plan may be harmful, therefore, to the economy?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I just think, a couple of points: the Government can’t be blaming the Reserve Bank Governor, you can’t be at war with the Reserve Bank Governor, because the Reserve Bank Governor can only respond to decisions of the Government of the day.
The Reserve Bank Governor is independent, and she deserves to be respected, and the abuse that she’s received from Jim Chalmers just shows what a shambles this Government is. The Cabinet is leaking against the Prime Minister, people now in senior positions: Tony Burke, Tanya Plibersek, Bill Shorten, Jim Chalmers, are pitching themselves against the Prime Minister. So the dysfunction that we saw in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years is now being evidenced within the Albanese Government.
So it is clear the wheels are falling off the Albanese Government. When you get these sort of Cabinet leaks, when you get the dysfunction that we’ve seen, the abuse of the Reserve Bank Governor, the Prime Minister trying to blame ASIO for the missteps of Minister Giles at the time and now Minister Burke. It’s a debacle. But the Australian public just want to know that there’s something out there for them, and that there’s some hope on the horizon, and economic figures that we’re seeing out of this Government at the moment, that makes people feel quite anxious about the future – and I get that, I understand, because we move around the country every day listening to families and small businesses.
People are doing it tough, and the Australian Labor Party, Mr Albanese, has made all sorts of decisions in the last three years which have forced up inflation, and that’s why interest rates are higher, and that’s why families continue to suffer under a really bad Government.
QUESTION:
And the answer to migration is [inaudible]?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think economists have pointed this out, without some of the migration growth, you’d be in recession now, but without migration growth, we’d have more Australians in homes now.
The fact is that the Prime Minister brought in a million people in a two year period, and only built 265,000 homes. So we see families living in the backs of cars, we see families living in tents, we see the homeless numbers going up, we see it almost impossible now for young people to buy a home unless they’ve got the assistance of mum or dad. That’s not what our country’s about. Our country is about providing support to those who are in need, and it’s about making sure that young Australians, young South Australians, can achieve the dream of homeownership. But under this Government, they just make it harder and harder for Australians every day.
QUESTION:
Just on the GDP figures from today before we move on – potentially the worst four quarters since the 1990s. Do you think we could be heading towards a recession?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, I really worry because there’s a human face to all of these figures. When somebody loses a small business, generally they lose their house because the house is security with the bank for the business, people lose their jobs, in some cases, people can lose their super. It’s a tragedy. It really is. But that’s the human cost of bad decisions of a Government.
When you have a Coalition Government in power, we know how to manage the economy. We’re not going to put in place inflationary measures like the renewables only policy. The economy can’t function on intermittent power. We need 24/7 power, or our hospitals don’t work. There’s been a three-fold increase in manufacturing business closures in this country over the last two years. Why has that happened on the Prime Minister’s watch? Because he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing economically. When the Reserve Bank Governor gives some advice as to how we could get inflation down, she gets abused by Treasurer Jim Chalmers. That’s why families are really hurting at the moment.
QUESTION:
Does Chalmers need to be taking more responsibility then?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Jim Chalmers is the Treasurer – unless he hasn’t noticed. He’s delivered three budgets and he had the opportunity to make decisions that would bring downward pressure on inflation. Australians have to ask themselves, why have interest rates gone down in the UK, Canada, and in New Zealand, but not in Australia? They should have come down by now, they would have come down under a Coalition Government. Interest rates will always be cheaper under a Coalition Government, we know that, including back to the 90s. I lived through that period of the 90s. People lost their homes.
At the moment we’ve got demand for houses and people have got, in many cases, a big capital growth in their houses over the last 10 years, but people are selling their homes at the moment. People are selling rental properties. People are really struggling and I just don’t think that Jim Chalmers gets it.
QUESTION:
Mike Burgess said people had chosen to distort his words about security checks for Palestinians, he didn’t name any politicians. He was talking about the Coalition, wasn’t he?
PETER DUTTON:
No, no. The first point is that I think the Prime Minister owes an apology to Mike Burgess. I really do. I think Mike Burgess and ASIO have been used here by the Prime Minister when he misled Parliament. The Prime Minister said that when 1,300 people came in from Gaza, which is a territory occupied by and controlled by a listed terrorist organisation, Hamas, that those people had been checked by ASIO. The fact is that they hadn’t been checked by ASIO, and the Prime Minister tried to hide behind Mike Burgess, and he’s been found out.
I appointed Mike Burgess when I was Home Affairs Minister to run ASIO because he’s a first class patriot who, I think, has done an exceptional job in running ASIO. But we can’t have a situation where people are brought here on tourism visas without checks being done.
When we brought people in from Syria, we bought 12,000 people in, but we staged them in Jordan and northern Iraq, in third countries before they got to Australia because as we know, of the 1,300 people from Gaza here now, about 750 or more have already claimed protection. Generally speaking, that will mean that they will go onto permanent residency and onto citizenship without us having a proper understanding of the backgrounds and where they’ve come from.
Now, maybe every one of the 1,300 is a fantastic human being. I hope that’s the case, but the problem is the Government doesn’t know. You can’t bring people in without face-to-face checks. You can’t bring them in with a 24 hour turnaround, without any checks being done on people coming out this sort of climate. I think that’s…
QUESTION:
They’ve had no checks at all on these [inaudible]?
PETER DUTTON:
No, no, no – 24 hour…
QUESTION:
You just said there were no checks?
PETER DUTTON:
There’s none. No, everybody who comes in on a tourist visa is checked against the MAL list, but that’s standard for somebody coming from London or from Auckland. That you could bring people in from Hamas controlled territory after the atrocities that we saw on October 7, is a complete abrogation of the Prime Minister’s first responsibility. His first responsibility is to keep Australians safe and he has failed Australians in this step.
QUESTION:
So was the Prime Minister right to overrule Cabinet to try and remove questions around gender identity from the Census?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, I mean, it’s just another mess of the Prime Minister’s making. The Prime Minister is promising things to people in closed meetings and then he makes a policy decision which goes against what he’s promised. So firstly, you can’t take the Prime Minister at his word, and secondly, I think he’s demonstrated to Australians, as he did during the course of the Voice, that he can be very tricky.
The Makarrata Commission is now promised, yet he says that he didn’t promise it, and now he’s not going to do it, but he might do a form of it. I mean it just doesn’t add up. Australians aren’t stupid, they can see through a Prime Minister who’s being tricky. I think that’s why the Prime Minister’s finding himself in all sorts of strife at the moment, and it’s why people like Tony Burke and others are positioning themselves against the Prime Minister.
QUESTION:
John Setka’s been out at a large rally of construction union members at a Victorian Government construction site. Is it a bit of a slap on the face or a finger to the Albanese and Allan Governments?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, I just think John Setka has been part of the CFMEU, which is a criminal organisation – it involves bikies, it has driven up the cost of building. I was talking to a builder the other day, for an apartment block now, it used to take 15 months to build, under a CFMEU contract, it takes three years. The productivity is down to about 2.9 days per week, and people are paying literally hundreds of thousands of dollars more for every unit, or for every aged care bed that they buy, and that’s as a result of the CFMEU.
But here’s the important point; Tony Burke said that he knew nothing about it. I mean how could that be? The federal court cases, which have imposed fines and penalties on the CFMEU, have been reported on in the national newspapers. So the Prime Minister and Tony Burke and the whole of the Labor Party have been happy to take the millions of dollars from the CFMEU over a long period of time, and to close their eyes and block their ears as to the criminal activity that’s taken place.
We moved amendments to the CFMEU Bill to strengthen it up. We want the rule of law restored to building sites so that we can have productivity, so that we can get building underway again. It’s not just in industrial, importantly, it’s not just industrial building, it’s spreads into residential building as well. So every family who is paying more for a renovation, or paying more for a tradie is doing so because of the CFMEU – and they’re joined at the hip with Anthony Albanese.
QUESTION:
Speaking about chaotic state parties, we have a new Leader here in South Australia.
PETER DUTTON:
You have a great Leader.
QUESTION:
Why is Vincent Tarzia not here with you today?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’m catching up with Vince a little later this morning. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve communicated with him, obviously, since he’s become Leader. I wish him well. I had a good relationship with David before, and we work very closely with our stakeholders.
QUESTION:
Are you concerned about the infighting between Mr Speirs and Mr Tarzia, and the comments that have been going backwards and forwards over the past 24 hours?
PETER DUTTON:
That’s a matter for the state division.
My position is that the Liberal Party is at its best when we’re united and when we’re able to provide a clear alternative to the Labor Party. That’s exactly what we’re doing at a federal level, which is why we’re – at worst at the moment – 50-50 in the polls, it’s why the Prime Minister’s numbers continue to deteriorate so quickly, and it’s why there’s now leadership chatter within the Labor Party, and the leaking that we’re seeing against the Prime Minister at the moment out of Cabinet is evidence of that.
QUESTION:
I think you might have joked the SA Libs might have been the ‘crazy uncle’ of the Party, are you concerned that they actually might damage your electoral chances?
PETER DUTTON:
No. I think when you look at candidates like Nicolle Flint, we’ve got great prospects in a number of seats. I think the work that Nicolle’s done when she was a Member, the work that she’s done now as a candidate, I think it would really enthuse people within Boothby that they’ve got a champion again, somebody who will stand up for them and fight for them and argue for what’s important to them and their families.
QUESTION:
So is there a reason Vincent isn’t here today? Do you have confidence in him as Leader?
PETER DUTTON:
I have absolute confidence, and I’m meeting with him later today.
QUESTION:
Sorry, just back to New South Wales quickly. Did you read Brian Loughnane’s report and what did you make of it? Did you agree with what it said?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes. Yes, I read it. I don’t have any comment in relation to it.
Okay. Thank you.
[ends]