Subjects: Visit to Stanwell and the Rockhampton region; Beef2024; Labor’s energy policy trainwreck; nuclear energy; tragic loss of Australian lives in Mexico; Willetton stabbing attack; the Treasurer’s budget blunders and lack of an economic plan; Labor’s immigration detention shambles; Clare O’Neil and the Prime Minister at odds on the independence of their Community Safety Board; Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles – the hapless and hopeless Ministers who have failed to keep the community safe.
E&OE
COLIN BOYCE:
We’re here at Stanwell today with my colleagues from Federal Parliament – the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton; Leader of the National Party, David Littleproud. My colleagues from the Senate – Senator McDonald, Senator Canavan, and Michelle Landry, the Member for Capricornia.
We’re out here at Stanwell, just west of Rockhampton, hearing from affected landholders on one of the biggest issues that is facing rural and regional Australia – and that is the enormous impact of the renewable sector and how it’s going to affect their livelihoods, their families, and their way of life. David?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD:
Well thanks, Col. It’s great to be up here with Peter. Peter and I here for Beef24, and it’s great to have the Leader of Opposition, the alternative Prime Minister, showing the respect to not only go to Beef24, but to come out and to listen and to learn and understand the plight of our farmers. While the Prime Minister is coming, I do call on him – if he wants to turn up to Beef – he needs to come up and he needs to say to beef producers that he’ll settle the Livex case that is outstanding, has been outstanding for some time. He’s got an Agriculture Minister that was a litigation lawyer from the Gold Coast – you would have thought that he’d be all over this in being able to settle that. He should also make the announcement always here that he’s going to abolish the fresh food tax on Australian farmers. So, not come and flit around Beef, but to actually give something meaningful to the producers that are here.
But it has been great to have Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, who is a member of Parliament for a city-based seat, but what Peter’s understood is the burden that regional Australians are being asked to bear on this reckless race to an all renewables approach: that they are being asked for their livelihoods and their lifestyles to be torn up all for an ideology that doesn’t meet the practical reality. A practical reality of spreading our risk and in fact, going down a concentration risk of putting all our energy eggs in one basket. Why would we do that in a country where we have sovereignty of all of our resources? Why wouldn’t we spread our risk? Why wouldn’t we utilise all the resources we have and not only give us affordable, reliable energy, but one that can reduce emissions? And that’ll be the vast difference that Peter Dutton and I will be providing to the Australian people compared to this ideology, of not only to the people that live out here, but to the entire country about a reliable energy source.
I just say to metropolitan Australians: please, cast your minds adrift further than just the city limits and understand what your fellow Australians have been asked to bear. They are going to have thousands of hectares of their lifestyle ripped up, your food security being torn up, your food prices going up – all because of an ideology. Appreciate what you are asking reasonable Australians to bear in this reckless race, and open your minds up to what Peter Dutton and myself and the Coalition will put forward. Because there is an alternative, there is a common sense solution to this, and that’s what we’ll bring in the coming weeks to the Australian people.
Can I thank Peter for the courage of his conviction to come out here and to listen to the human toll, the human toll that sat around a table and told about their aspirations being torn up by a Government. That’s what political leadership is. It’s not sitting away from all this and listening and learning. It’s actually coming out and facing up to it full on. To you, Peter, to have the courage to come here and listen and understand the burden of what people here have been asked, I think it’s a testament to your leadership and the leadership you’ve shown since becoming leader of the Liberal Party. I commit myself and the Nationals to working tirelessly with you to make sure that common sense is taken to Canberra.
Pete?
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks, mate. Thank you.
Well, David, thank you very much. Firstly, thank you very much to Col and Michelle for having us here today. It’s great to be here in the Rocky for Beef 2024. It’s a spectacular event. I know that Susie McDonald, Matt Canavan, they are well and truly immersed, obviously, in regional Australia, like my other colleagues here, but this is a particularly important event for our country.
We get Australians who are from regional communities, and from the cities as well, descending on to Rockhampton, to exchange ideas, to look for business opportunities and to tell Australians about the wealth that is generated in the agricultural sector, and right across regional Australia. So, it’s a wonderful opportunity to be here to catch up with many people during the course of the few days that we’ll be on the ground.
Today, of course, at Stanwell, it’s been an amazing opportunity to listen to hard-working Australians who live on properties just like this. In some cases, they’re second or third generation. In other cases, they’re a young couple that we spoke to, who just bought 300 acres and starting off their dream. Their dream, though, has been shattered because the picturesque background that you see behind us is now going to be littered with wind turbines, at least 275 metres out of the ground. So, to put it into perspective, the tops of those mountains will be cleared. There won’t be any environmental impact done in relation to it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s koala habitat, it doesn’t matter that trees are being knocked over in the thousands, it doesn’t matter that sediment then runs into the streams and the waterways that feed farms like this, it doesn’t matter that the neighbours don’t agree or that their amenity will be lost, and all for a wind turbine that’s going to take somewhere between 600 and 1,000 cubic metres of concrete in each one of the footings to support those structures. It’s going to last about 20 years. You’re going to have very significant disruption to local roadways. There will be tracks literally carved up through these environmentally sensitive areas. There hasn’t been adequate consultation with Indigenous leaders. All of this is being done, why? Because in inner city Sydney and Melbourne, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese are trying to protect their seats from Green attacks. That’s what it’s about, okay? It doesn’t make any sense here for these communities to have their lives and their livelihoods destroyed. It doesn’t have any relevance to people who don’t understand what the impact is here in these local communities. If you live in a capital city like I do, it’s very easy to say, ‘well, it’s not in my backyard, it’s thousands of kilometres or a couple hundred kilometres from where I live’. That’s not good enough anymore. We need to treat Australians fairly and equally. There is a moral argument to the ‘renewables only’ policy being pushed by the Prime Minister.
I’m in support of renewable energy, but as part of a mix, and I want to make sure that we can bring prices down for Australians. These wind turbines are going to drive up the cost of electricity, they’re going to make it less reliable, which means we’ll lose manufacturing, and it means that we will have less green power, ultimately, because we can have a sensible energy mix as we’re proposing, and we can bring those prices down, have reliable and greener energy through what the Coalition’s proposing.
At the moment, the Prime Minister has absolutely zero regard for people who are living in regional areas, and I think we’re here today to call that out.
There are a couple of other issues, very important issues, obviously, that are out and about at the moment. I want to make some comments in relation to the tragedy of the two lost Australians in Mexico. Obviously DFAT will be working very closely with the family, and with the authorities there. It’s devastating for a family to receive this dreadful news. We have millions of our Australians travelling overseas every year and across a lifetime of many young Australians, and what should be the adventure of life, turns into an absolute tragedy.
As we’ve seen in WA as well – a very tragic story there. We need to be very careful of what our kids are seeing online, and what indoctrination is taking place in bedrooms, and it’s easy – I know, with teenage kids – just to not have the fight with your kids. But you need to know what it is that they’re looking at online. We know from the Director-General of ASIO, that young, impressionable minds, particularly of young men, can be influenced within a matter of days or weeks if they’re seeing these videos and the information that’s being sent through, to convert them into somebody who wants to go and commit a terrorist act. It’s shocking for our country that we’re seeing a resurgence of this threat in our community. The police in WA will have a process to work through in terms of how they define this act, but, the fact is that, as we know and as we’ve experienced over the course of our history, there are people for different reasons, ideological reasons, who will want to cause harm to other Australians.
I think now is a time to praise the work of the police, the West Australian Police in this circumstance, but the Federal Police, ASIO, ASIS, our other intelligence agencies. When we came to government, Labor had stripped money from all of those agencies. We restored that funding back into the agencies and we’re seeing a much greater propensity and ability to fight against this scourge. We need to make sure that that continues.
Labor, obviously, is on the eve of a budget – their third budget. Their first two budgets have only driven inflation up and made interest rates higher for longer for families. There is one thing that we know about Labor: they tax and spend. The obligation of the Treasurer now is to undo the damage that they’ve done over the course of the last two budgets. This Prime Minister was completely distracted and obsessed by the Voice for the first 18 months of his Government’s term – $400 million wasted, the country divided, and when they should have been making decisions to fight inflation, they we’re out there working up plans on how to spend more money and how to fuel inflation. That is having a devastating impact on families and businesses across the country at the moment.
This budget has to be an opportunity for Labor to undo some of the terrible mistakes that they’ve made over the last two budgets, which is why families – when they go to the supermarket, when they go to the bowser, when they go to buy their insurance – they know that the cost of everything is going up under Labor, and that Australians can’t afford three more years of Mr Albanese as Prime Minister.
I’m happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
So, just on today, you’ve obviously got some time to talk to the locals. What are their major concerns with this project?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I was at Beef this morning, and obviously had the opportunity to speak to the locals here in Stanwell this morning. They’re happy to contribute to a decarbonisation of our community, of our energy system. They’re happy to be responsible in the way in which they can contribute to that debate. The farming practices that have changed over the course of a generation have been quite dramatic.
The farmers in Australia are the greatest friends that the Australian environment’s ever had. They want to see the environment survive and thrive because it’s absolutely integral to their own success and the success of generations to come, but they don’t want their lives destroyed.
When you think about 60 wind turbines, 270 metres on top of those mountains already, that destroys the vista. It’s amazing that there’s no environmental impact, really, that’s considered. It’s not impact assessable under the Planning Act, it’s code assessable, which means that neighbours don’t have to be consulted.
If you want to go and build a block of units, or you want to build a shopping centre somewhere or open a mine, you need to go through a planning process. You need to engage with the community, you need to explain how it is that your project is going to impact on the environment, and on that local community. None of that takes place here. Instead, the photos that we saw before, you’ll see the tops of these mountains cut off. They need to be levelled down to a flat point where you can get the concrete bed, as I say, of up to 1,000 cubic metres of concrete for each of the turbines. You need quite an area on top of these mountains, and at the moment that they peak, and that needs to be cut off, with no regard to the species that live there, no regard to the environment otherwise – the flora and fauna. That’s why I think we need to be honest with the Australian people about the cost of the Prime Minister’s folly of a ‘renewables only’ policy.
Don’t forget that 28,000 kilometres of new poles and wires are required then to distribute the energy off these wind turbines into the energy networks. So, we’re going to have poles and wires going through communities. I just think we need to have a more honest debate about the impact on communities, and that’s what people spoke about today.
QUESTION:
And what are you calling for? What does the Government need to do?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, the Government needs to listen to communities here, and they need to stop treating Australians differently. If you live in a capital city, if you live in a suburb, if you live in a town, or live in regional or remote Australia, every Australian is of equal worth and equal value, and we should listen to the locals here about the concerns that they have, instead of just being discarded.
One company in particular here has essentially refused to meaningfully engage with the community. For the host community, the host land owner, there’s a significant financial windfall, but the fact is that the rest of the community pays a huge price. That’s what the Prime Minister’s proposing. I think the Prime Minister, when he’s up here in Rockhampton later this week, that we extend an invitation to him to come out and have a look at what his policy means and the impact it will have, the negative impact it will have, on local communities.
QUESTION:
Which company are you referring to there?
PETER DUTTON:
I think you can talk to the locals. I think they’d be more than happy to tell you more about the company.
QUESTION:
And will you be naming the six new nuclear sites soon?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll name our sites in due course. Obviously, what we want is a credible pathway to net-zero by 2050. It’s incredibly clear now that the Labor Party doesn’t have a credible pathway to net-zero by 2050, with the policy that they’ve got of ‘renewables only.’ It’s obvious under the Labor Party policy that they won’t take into consideration the needs of regional and remote communities. Under our policy, we will. When you look at the fact that out of the biggest economies in the world – the G20, 20 biggest economies in the world, Australia is the only country in the world at the moment of the G20 that does not have or has not signed up to using nuclear as part of a zero emissions technology that’s reliable, that can reduce energy costs and can underpin industrial and manufacturing activity in our country. I want to make this very clear: under Anthony Albanese, manufacturing has no future in our country if you can’t provide renewable energy that is supported by a baseload energy, and is delivered at a cheap cost, and is reliable. Let’s be very clear about that. The Prime Minister can talk about ‘Australian-made’ all he wants, but he can’t deliver on it, because at the moment, as we know, over the last two years under his Government, manufacturing insolvencies have gone up threefold.
QUESTION:
Will the Stanwell coal fired power station being one of the nuclear power stations?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll make an announcement in relation to our policy in due course. As we’ve said, we’re limited to a number of sites where there is an end of life coal fired power station. The good reason for that is – well, many good reasons – but the primary one, in my mind, is that you’ve got an existing distribution network. That is, the poles and wires already go from a coal fired generator site out into the community. So that when people turn their lights on, they’ve got power and it’s reliable, but as the energy regulator’s warned, there will be disruption under Labor’s policy, there will be higher prices on the Labor’s ‘renewables only’ policy.
Our desire is to deliver cheaper electricity, reliable electricity, and greener electricity, and I believe that we can achieve that, and we’ll make our announcements in due course.
QUESTION:
I’ve got a couple of other questions from Canberra.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, sure.
QUESTION:
Is the Government paying for uni students on prac a good idea in key areas with high dropout rates?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I just think what we’re seeing from the Government at the moment is every decision they make is inflationary. If you ask why inflation is higher here than it is in other parts of the world, it’s because of decisions the Government’s made in the last two budgets. When the Reserve Bank Governor says that this is a ‘homegrown’ problem, what she’s saying is that the policies of the Australian Government have led to inflation staying higher for longer. As every mortgage holder across the country knows, you’re paying more and more with 12 interest rate rises under Labor, because inflation is high and that’s what keeps interest rates high. Every decision they make that fuels inflation, makes it harder for everyday Australians to pay their mortgage.
QUESTION:
And you touched on it earlier, but are you concerned by the teen incident in WA? Should it be declared terror?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, whether it should be declared a terrorist incident is for the Commissioner in WA, and that’ll be something that the Australian Federal Police and ASIO feed into. But look, what we know is that the work of ISIL and the work of fanatics, has found a new breeding ground online. It used to be that you had to hop on a plane and go to the Middle East somewhere to be recruited into a terrorist network. That no longer is the case. People, kids at home who are sitting in a darkened room, who are disconnected from family or from a workplace or from school, can listen to this ideology being drummed into them over the internet, and to a point, after a week or two, they’re prepared to strap a suicide vest onto themselves or pick up a knife and go and harm Australians in a mass casualty attack.
Our job, my first job as Prime Minister after the election will be to make sure that we keep our country safe and secure. You have to make tough decisions to make sure that that is the case, and you have to deal with the law and order crime issue that is prevalent across our community at the moment. As we’ve seen with Labor Governments at a state and federal level, as we’ve seen with Minister Giles and Minister O’Neil and the Prime Minister, they make decisions which make Australians less safe. They make decisions to release 151 hardened criminals into the community, and then they act surprised when those criminals – including seven murderers, 37 rapists, 72 violent offenders – when those people go out and commit more crimes. The Prime Minister says, ‘well, I don’t know anything about it. Don’t ask me. It was a responsibility of some board’. Well, under a Coalition Government, that won’t happen.
Under a Government I lead, as I demonstrated when I was Minister for Home Affairs, we make the decisions to kick these people out when they’ve caused harm against Australian citizens. I won’t tolerate these people being in our local community, and I ramped up the number of deportations as Home Affairs Minister, to a record level, because I didn’t want them repeating more crimes against Australians.
The Prime Minister has presided over a process now where he’s delegated his responsibility to keep Australians safe, to some unelected body, and that he blames them when they make the wrong decision. Well, Prime Minister, the buck stops with you. If Minister Giles is not up to the task, sack him. If Minister O’Neil is not up to the task, sack her. But you need to do whatever you can to keep Australians safe. At the moment, as we’re seeing at a state level, at a federal level, Labor does not have the ability, the capacity, the strength of leadership to make decisions to keep our country safe.
QUESTION:
Can I just loop back on one?
PETER DUTTON:
Sure.
QUESTION:
So, Stanwell could make the list of six nuclear sites?
PETER DUTTON:
No, we’re not ruling sites in and out across the country. What we’ve said is that where we have coal fired power stations that are coming to end of life, we’ll consider all of those facts. We haven’t ruled a site in or out anywhere around the country, except for Tasmania, where there’s a different case there, but we’ve looked at and assessed dozens of sites, and some communities will want the latest technology, zero emissions nuclear power. As we’ve seen in polling, even in the Hunter, for example, looking at the Newcastle Herald this morning, communities, as we’re seeing in the United States, want the technology because they know it supports industry, we know that it supports jobs, we know that it can keep a sector going. We know that with a small modular reactor for two and a half hectares or five acres, you can have a 470 megawatt, zero emissions technology that can feed into the system. The equivalent of solar panels is 10,000 acres of flat farming land. So, in terms of impact on local communities, I want to make sure that we’re not destroying the local environment to save the planet. And unfortunately, at the moment, the Prime Minister is making decisions which are destroying local communities, particularly in farming communities like here in Stanwell, and that is not the way of the Coalition.
David and I have worked in hand-in-glove to make sure that we are a credible alternative at the next election, and that will include an energy policy which will help keep electricity prices much cheaper than what Labor can deliver you. We’re not going to have 28,000 kilometres of poles and wires littered across the landscape, through national parks, through pristine farming land. That’s the Labor and Greens policy – and it’s not one that we’re going to support.
Thank you very much.
[ends]