Subjects: Aston by-election; cost of living pressures; the Prime Minister’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; electricity prices; AUKUS.
E&OE.
ROSHENA CAMPBELL:
It’s great to have Peter back in Aston today. We’ve been out and about talking to small businesses and residents about the issues that matter to them. There’s a lot of anger about Labor’s cuts to road and rail funding right here in Aston and also the pressure on families and small businesses with everything going up from groceries to interest rates and now energy bills.
We got the news from the Victorian regulator that we’re going to see increases of over 30 per cent, which is going to put even more pressure on families, and they remember they were promised by Anthony Albanese that he would deliver $275 reductions on their energy bills. They’ve already gone up by hundreds of dollars and there’s more pain to come.
So, I am going to keep listening to residents across Aston and I’m going to fight for them because they do deserve a plan on the cost of living, and yet again, Anthony Albanese has come up short.
PETER DUTTON:
Roshena, thank you very much. Look, it’s great to be back in Aston. I want to say thank you very much to Roshena, to the local people that we’ve been able to meet this morning. There’s a growing concern in the Australian community about the cost of living pressures on their families, on their kids, on their grandkids, on their small businesses as well. The costs are going up in local cafes which are being passed on to consumers, and people will pay more when they go to a restaurant or when they go out.
As Roshena properly points out, the government promised the complete opposite before the last election. Anthony Albanese looked the people of Aston in the eye and said that he would reduce power prices by $275. He promised that to the Australian public on 97 occasions and strangely he’s never mentioned that figure since. I think the call now is for the Prime Minister to repeat that claim. Does he stand by his election commitment or is it just another broken promise?
Families are really hurting and if you’ve got Chris Bowen out there, and Labor out there saying, ‘well, just be grateful that your power prices are only going up by 31 per cent because it could have been 50 per cent. I just don’t think that cuts it and I think it shows that this government is increasingly out of touch with the needs of families and of small businesses.
I think in Aston there is a great opportunity for the local community here to send a very strong message to the Prime Minister that they don’t like broken promises, and particularly when it comes to the cost of living pressures that they are having to bear in their own household budgets.
Roshena Campbell is a champion for this local community. She wants to represent and to fight for the local residents on their behalf, on issues that are important to them, and she’s a great candidate for us and I’m very proud to be here with her again, today.
Happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
Paul Keating has described AUKUS as the ‘worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since Billy Hughes sought to introduce conscription’. What do you make of that?
PETER DUTTON:
I think most Australians recognise the difficult times in which we live and the fact that AUKUS is required to underpin the security of our country for decades to come. When we think the deal between the United States and the United Kingdom as a coalition, we had in mind that the nuclear subs would be a great deterrence to any attacks on our country. That’s the advice of the defence chiefs, of the intelligence agencies as well, and we went with the advice of the defence chiefs and the intelligence agencies, not Paul Keating.
The AUKUS deal was possible because of the negotiations that took place and the best chance we’ve got of preserving peace in our region, which is what we all want, is not to be in a position of weakness, but to work closely with our partners, and we do exactly that through AUKUS.
QUESTION:
Do you think Paul Keating’s comments are a threat to national security?
PETER DUTTON:
I think most Australians, frankly, will look to the advice of those experts who are contemporary, who understand the intelligence and who are acting on it. The government, as we did when we were in government, is acting on the advice of the intelligence and the military chiefs, the advice that they’ve got from their partners, and this is a necessary investment for us, and Mr Keating loves a wild phrase, but in the end, our job is to keep Australians safe. I think we give our country the best chance of peace and security, and our region the best chance of peace into the coming decades through the deal that’s been inked through AUKUS.
QUESTION:
Do you believe that there is such a fracture at all within Labor that Paul Keating talks about in terms of AUKUS essentially driving a bit of a fracture between the left and the right?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, there’s clearly division within the Labor Party, there’s no question about that. There is on nuclear, on nuclear waste – on that element of the AUKUS deal – that undercurrent has always been there. The hard left of the Labor Party, which Mr Albanese lead for years and years, they have a real hesitation, a real doubt and no doubt that’s being expressed by Paul Keating.
There are of course people, including Jim Chalmers and Richard Marles himself, who make great claim to the relationship, the mentoring relationship that they have with Paul Keating. They obviously meet with him regularly. If Paul Keating’s prepared to say this in public, what is he saying to senior Labor members in private? I think it’s incumbent upon Richard Marles and others to come out today to rebuke the unhinged comments of Mr Keating because they should be taking the advice of the military and the intelligence chiefs as opposed to Paul Keating.
QUESTION:
Are you entirely behind this AUKUS deal now? As it’s announced?
PETER DUTTON:
We are and we want to see the achievement of the nuclear submarine capability. The propulsion system on those submarines is first class and it will give us the best submarine in class, in time. We need to achieve it as quickly as possible, and we need to achieve that capability at the lowest possible cost. So, there’ll be lots of questions, I think reasonably, that Australians will have to ask Labor over the coming months in the run up to the budget, beyond that. How is it all going to be paid for? Labor always taxes and spends, and Labor always mismanages the economy and the budget, and that’s why people pay more in their bills now.
If you’re seeing an increase in your electricity bill, it’s because of policies that Labor has in place. If you’re seeing an increase in your interest rates, higher than what they otherwise need to be, it’s because Labor’s policies have been fuelling inflation, which feeds into higher interest rates. If you have a look at all sorts of bills that you pay, when you go to – it doesn’t matter whether it’s the cafe, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a local restaurant, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a local IGA – all of those input costs under Labor are going up. This is what happens when you get a Labor government. They mismanage the economy, they pull the wrong levers and families and small businesses end up paying the price, and there is a big price to pay when there is a Labor Government.
It’s very similar to what happened in the 1980s. It’s very similar to what happened with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and it’s history repeating itself, and people – when we get a change of government and Labor is elected – people get that you change the country, as Paul Keating once said, and he’s exactly right, and under Mr Albanese, you’ll pay more for every item in your grocery basket, you’ll pay more for your electricity and certainly more than you need to, and that’s a real problem.
QUESTION:
Can I just clarify your comments in terms of the NDIS and changes to that to pay for AUKUS. Do you believe that there should be changes to the NDIS to pay for this $100 billion-$200 billion spend?
PETER DUTTON:
A couple of points. I mean firstly on this, I’ve seen some reporting of quotes that I made yesterday in relation to aged care. My argument yesterday was that more money needs to be spent in aged care, and if there is a structural change that requires legislation to make our aged care system more sustainable, getting more money into the system to give people greater dignity as they age, then we would support that. Somehow that’s been misconstrued by a couple of journos. I don’t quite understand how they drew that conclusion, but there’s no quote of mine which suggests that there should be a cut in aged care. My judgement is quite the opposite.
In relation to the NDIS; the NDIS is a critically important system for the dignity of people with disabilities, and we need to make sure that it’s a sustainable system. Bill Shorten’s spoken about lots of money that’s being misspent within the NDIS. I don’t want to see that. I want to see the money spent on people who are most in need, those with the most profound disabilities and to have a system which is sustainable. My argument is that if there is waste, and the Labor Party’s arguing that there are waste elements to different programs, then it’s a responsibility of any government, of any Treasurer to make sure that taxpayers money is being spent efficiently and helping those families who are most in need, stopping rorts where they happen across every government program and by doing that they can provide support to the money that they’re spending in defence.
Final point is that the last thing that we should allow Labor to do is to cannibalise the Australian Defence Force like they did when they were last in government. Don’t forget the 2012-13 budget – so only a decade ago – Labor decided to cut defence spending in real terms by 10 and a half per cent, it reduced the spending back to 1.56 per cent of GDP, which was the lowest level since 1938.
Now, when we were in government, we restored integrity to the defence budget. Men and women in uniform recognise that and stop me constantly to say thank you for it. There were families, defence families who lost their jobs and missed out on opportunities when Labor was last in government. We need to fund AUKUS, but we don’t need to cannibalise defence to do it. The government needs to be upfront about how they’re going to pay for the AUKUS commitment. It’s essential that we get that capability and we’re strongly supporting the government in that regard, but the government needs to answer questions about how it is they’re going to pay for it, and I don’t want to see money ripped out of Army or Air Force or Navy to pay for the AUKUS deal.
Again, if there are problems in programs or money’s not being spent appropriately; if that’s the government’s claim, then make that public. But if you’re just going into defence, taking billions of dollars away from the men and women in uniform to try and fund the AUKUS program and do as the Treasurer says, that this is just going to be a cost neutral program, nobody believes that, it’s not credible and the Labor Party will have to detail that in the Budget in May.
QUESTION:
Just on Aston, Chris Bowen on Friday here in Aston said that ‘if you lose any of the margin that you’ve got in Aston it’s a major failure of your leadership’. What do you say to that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Chris Bowen said at the last election, you know, ‘if you didn’t support their policies, don’t vote for them’. If you don’t support a policy to jack your power prices up by 31 per cent, then don’t vote for Labor. I would follow Chris Bowen’s words in terms of what he said before the election. Don’t vote Labor if you don’t like their policies and their policies at the moment are really hitting families and hitting small businesses.
When you look at what Chris Bowen’s just announced, even today, forget about what he said last week, Chris Bowen today said that ‘you should consider yourself lucky that your power bill is only going up by 31 per cent here in Victoria because it could have gone up by 50 per cent. In the government’s own budget in October of last year they projected both gas and electricity prices go through the roof after two years of Labor policies.
So yes, there’s a huge price to pay when Labor is elected and Chris Bowen, I think makes that point well that if you don’t like policies, like the cut to road infrastructure here, one of the first acts of the Albanese Government was to cut funding from road projects here in Aston and now they’re telling families of Aston that your power bills are going to go up by a third and that you should be grateful for it.
I think there’s opportunity here in a by-election, for people to support a great candidate like Roshena, and at the same time send a message to Anthony Albanese that his broken promises aren’t good enough, and that his promise of $275 was heard by families in Aston before the last election and he’s never repeated it. In this by-election, will Anthony Albanese repeat the $275 claim? Will he tell people, the people of Aston, that he will honour that commitment that he made in only May of last year…
QUESTION:
That doesn’t the question though. So, if you do lose any of the margin, is that a failure of your leadership in the (inaudible).
PETER DUTTON:
Well Simon, there will be lots of issues in relation to the election. I think the growing and obvious issue is cost of living, which affects every family. I think that will be the most significant issue in the election.
As Chris Bowen has said, ‘if you don’t like Labor policy, don’t vote for them’. People were smart enough to do that in 2019 when Bill Shorten before the election was honest about the taxes he planned on imposing. This Prime Minister didn’t make any such commitment, he wasn’t honest with the Australian people before the election and that’s why you’re seeing broken promises and the Treasurer entertaining the suggestion that you could charge capital gains tax on a house, or that you could adopt a principle of capital gains being paid on the uplift in an asset value where people have even realised that. So, it means your asset value goes up, you don’t sell it and they can tax you on the paper gain. Families don’t have or businesses or investors don’t have that sort of money.
So, I think there are lots of issues at this election and we intend to win it, but it will be a very tight by-election as they always are. I think Roshena Campbell is an excellent candidate and she will be a great MP if people support her and a champion for her local community.
QUESTION:
Quick one for Roshena – have you moved into Aston yet?
ROSHENA CAMPBELL:
The commitment I made was that I would be in the electorate for voting day. We picked up the keys for the property on the weekend, so when it comes to the major parties, there will be only one candidate who is an Aston local on the 1st of April.
SIMON LOVE:
There’s another one though, isn’t there, didn’t we discover at the ballot draw there’s another one though?
ROSHENA CAMPBELL:
Just the major parties…
SIMON LOVE:
Oh, are you talking about the majors?
ROSHENA CAMPBELL:
Out of the two major parties, there will be one candidate within the seat…
SIMON LOVE:
Isn’t the Greens candidate…
ROSHENA CAMPBELL:
I don’t call them the major parties…
SIMON LOVE:
You don’t call the Greens a major?…
ROSHENA CAMPBELL:
Out of the ALP and the Liberal candidates, one will be living in the seat.
SIMON LOVE:
Okay, thanks.
PETER DUTTON:
Cheers.
[ends]