Subjects: The Prime Minister’s cost of living crisis; third time unlucky for Australians: the Albanese Government’s big-taxing and big-spending budget; Telstra job losses; the Coalition’s plan for getting Australia back on track; Labor’s energy policy shambles; Labor’s Big Australia policy; the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia; home ownership – restoring the Australian dream under a Coalition Government; the International Criminal Court; the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership on the world stage; nuclear energy; QLD Labor Premier at odds with the Prime Minister on migration; the Coalition’s plan to increase workforce participation.
E&OE.
PETER DUTTON:
It’s a great pleasure to be here with my colleagues Sarah Henderson and Michael Sukkar, and there are a number of important issues obviously facing our country at the moment.
Families are really doing it tough, there’s no doubt about that. The Government’s now had three budgets to try and help families, and really many of the decisions they’ve made have just made it harder for those families and for communities. The Prime Minister promised on 97 occasions that people’s power bills would be reduced by $275 – that just hasn’t happened. We know that they promised that life would be easier and that interest rates would be lower, your mortgage would be cheaper – in the Prime Minister’s words; instead, we’ve had 12 interest rate increases under this Government. We know that food prices are up, housing is up, gas is up, electricity is up, and it is very hard for a lot of families and small businesses to cope with the economy that’s been created by Labor.
I’m very sad today to see the loss of 2,800 jobs at Telstra. These are families – it won’t just be these 2,800 people, but people and their families, and it’s a broader symptom though of what’s going on in the community at the moment.
As the Telstra CEO pointed out, it’s a tough economic environment out there at the moment and it’s deteriorating. The budget, according to every credible economic commentator, has put upward pressure on interest rates – or at least is going to keep interest rates higher for longer – and now the Prime Minister is talking about going to an early election before those interest rate rises take place and people’s power prices continue to go up.
We saw today from AEMO, the energy regulator, a very stark warning to the Government that unless you get the energy picture right, we’re going to end up with higher electricity costs and blackouts and brownouts. It seems to me that Anthony Albanese’s had the advice now for the last two reports at least, that if they don’t make investments into the energy network, if they don’t get it reliable, it’s obvious to all Australians that this Government is now sleepwalking toward an energy crisis. But the problem is that the energy crisis created by Anthony Albanese, the bill for that is going to fall to families and small businesses, and at the moment so many of them just can’t afford every line item in their budgets. It’s terrible news, as I say, in relation to Telstra losing 2,800 jobs, and all of those individual people who are impacted, but there are thousands of Australians in that situation at the moment right across the economy, particularly in small businesses and retail, and they just can’t cope with the huge costs applied to them under this Government.
In relation to migration, we know that the Prime Minister’s Big Australia policy is going to make it harder for people to get into a house, and under my leadership, I want to make sure that we can have a better Australia, not Anthony Albanese’s bigger Australia, because a bigger Australia means higher prices for everything, and it also means it’s much, much harder to get into housing.
The policy that we announced allows us to put in place arrangements which will see 40,000 homes become available in the first 12 months – and Michael will talk a little bit more about that in a second – but we need to make sure that at this time, when our country needs support, the Government’s providing that support, and at the moment, they’ve failed the test at every turn.
So, I’m going to ask Sarah to say few words and then Michael, and then I’m happy to take some questions.
SARAH HENDERSON:
Thank you Peter and good morning everyone.
Well certainly the Albanese Government is failing the test of leadership when it comes to educating students on university campuses. Every single person on a university campus deserves to be safe. There is no moral courage from this Education Minister, Jason Clare, when he refuses to combat anti-Semitism at every turn.
For University Vice Chancellors who are not enforcing their rules, their codes of conduct, who are not acting when there is trespassing, when there is violent protests, when there is intimidation and harassment, shocking anti-Semitism on university campuses, the police must be called in. The situation now at the University of Melbourne is intolerable. It is not safe to be on that campus, and it is certainly not safe to be at the University of Sydney either.
So, I call on the Prime Minister who said he would take a zero tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, to step-up and show the leadership that young Australians deserve. And as for this hapless Education Minister Jason Clare, anti-Semitism does not mean different things to different people. So I say, bring in the police and please restore law and order and safety to our university campuses.
MICHAEL SUKKAR:
Well thanks Peter, and thanks Sarah.
I think the battle lines have been drawn given the response from the Government to the Leader of the Opposition’s Budget In Reply, and the battle lines are that Labor believes in higher migration and fewer homes. We believe in sustainable migration and more homes.
Labor has not recognised that they have been the architects of a housing crisis, the likes of which none of us have seen before. We’ve got first home buyers down, we’ve got new home builds down, we’ve got approvals sadly down, which means that over the next 12 to 18 months even fewer homes are going to be built. We’ve got rents up by over 20 per cent since this Government came to power two years ago. So everybody, whether you’re a renter, whether you’re trying to get into a new home or indeed whether you have a mortgage and you’re now at least $24,000 a year worse off with higher interest repayments, everybody is struggling under this Labor Government. Yet in the budget last week, not only did we see no new money, no new thinking and no new ideas to tackle the housing crisis, we’ve seen since then, the Government criticise our approach to migration, which will ease the pressure on the housing market.
As Peter Dutton just said, we will ensure that an additional 100,000 homes over five years are made available by reducing our migration, by ensuring it’s at a sustainable level – that’s 100,000 homes for Australians. We’ve also curiously seen the Government criticise our approach to tightening foreign investment in the housing market. Again, the battle lines are drawn.
Labor will go to the election arguing for higher migration, fewer homes and more opportunities for foreign purchasers to buy Australian real estate; we’ll be arguing the opposite. Those homes should be made available for Australians. I’m a product of migration. I love migration. My family has benefited from migration, but it must be sustainable, it must be in the best interests of Australians, and it must be planned.
At the moment, the Government has brought in about a million people, building about 250,000 homes – that’s four migrants for every home built. You don’t need to be a genius to know that those maths don’t work, and that’s why we’re seeing the housing crisis we’re in.
Peter Dutton is showing the leadership, making the hard decisions to ensure that we ease the crisis that we are currently facing in housing, and it’s remarkable that the Labor Government is opposing us every step of the way thus far.
PETER DUTTON:
Happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
Has the ICC made a mistake by expressing equivalence between Hamas and Israel in issuing these warrants together? Joe Biden says the ICC actions are ‘outrageous’. What are your thoughts on that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, my view is that Australia should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Biden, and he’s shown the strength of leadership to stand up against this equivalence, which is completely and utterly repugnant. To compare the Israeli Prime Minister to a terrorist organisation leader, and to not have some clarity in relation to it, I think is appalling.
The Prime Minister squibbed it today when he was asked about this issue, and the Prime Minister had the opportunity at the ICC, where Australia was consulted in relation to this matter, they didn’t weigh in and say that they were against this measure, instead, they sat on the sideline and had nothing to say about it at all.
Now, I don’t know why the Prime Minister is not showing leadership at the moment on the economy, he’s not showing leadership in relation to anti-Semitism, and he’s tarnishing and damaging our international relationships with like-minded nations when he’s not strong enough to stand up alongside President Biden.
I very strongly support the comments of Joe Biden today in relation to the ICC. It’s an abomination, and it needs to be ceased. This action is anti-Semitic, and it is against the interests of peace in the Middle East.
QUESTION:
The ICC has said in trying to seek these arrest warrants that Israel’s intentionally causing “death, starvation, great suffering and serious injury to body or health of the civilian population” of Gaza. Do you dispute this?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I would just make a very simple point, and that is that the Australian Government had the opportunity to stand up against the action of the ICC, which is unwarranted, to draw equivalence between Israel and Hamas is a shocking indictment on the integrity of the ICC and the Prime Minister today didn’t have anything substantive to say in relation to it. Either the Prime Minister is not across the detail, or he’s trying to please a domestic audience here for political purposes. Either way, he’s selling out Australia, and that is not helping our interests internationally.
People can make their criticisms of any parties within the Middle East conflict at the moment, but Hamas still holds people in tunnels – women and children – they slaughtered 1,200 people, they are a listed terrorist organisation in our country, which is why Sarah’s points before are so well made. We need the restoration of law and order in our own country, and we need to make sure that the international rule of law is applied fairly and not on a political basis. To draw an equivalence between Israel and Hamas, I think is repugnant.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, how do you cut permanent migration to levels around 160,000 persons, without reducing the intake of the skilled foreign workers?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, what we’ve said is that the Albanese Government has now created a Big Australia policy. They didn’t tell anybody about it before the election, they’ve just sprung it on people, and it’s at the same time that they took money out of the infrastructure programme as well. So, there are no new schools, there are no new freeways, no road widenings, no new car parks at train stations, or extra capacity on public transport under the Government’s plan. They bring in 1.67 million people in a five year period, which is bigger than the population of Adelaide. Now, think of the infrastructure that has been built up over decades and decades in Adelaide to accommodate 1.6, 1.7 million people. The reality is that the Government just hasn’t planned well enough.
Now, what we’ve suggested is a much more measured way to try and make homes available for Australians. We do that through our policy in year one by reducing the *permanent programme down to 140,000. Similarly in year two, and then we gently bring it back up to 150,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four. We reduce the number in the refugee and humanitarian programme to 13,750 through years one to four, and that brings it back to the long term, close to the long term run, or average of those numbers. The Government again ramped up that programme as well. You’ve seen the growth in bridging visas.
We believe very strongly, if you look at University of Sydney, for example, now 47 per cent of their students on campus are international students. They made $1.4 billion last year, but having international students living in homes that should be rented by Australians, or purchased by Australians is not acceptable in a tight market for housing.
Like Michael, I absolutely celebrate every day our great migration story in this country, and I want to see international students come to Australia, but it needs to be done in a managed way. I want a better Australia, not Anthony Albanese’s bigger Australia. If the numbers continue to grow, then the problem of housing will continue to compound and you’ll see rents go higher. At the moment when you see people 30-40 deep lining up for a rental property, that wasn’t happening a couple of years ago.
I just say to Australians, are you better off today than you were two years ago? It’s two years since the Albanese Government was elected. There are very few Australians, maybe billionaires who are copping all sorts of support through different programmes in the mining sector – maybe they’re happier – but for average people, people who are losing their jobs now, people who are losing their small businesses, manufacturing in our country – the number of insolvencies over the last two years has gone up three fold – and these are all human stories and the Prime Minister just doesn’t have the answers.
In three budgets, Anthony Albanese’s had the opportunity to make his mark on Australia, and he’s made a bad mark. He’s made it harder for average Australians to pay their bills. Every day Australians are feeling that every time they open an email with an invoice attached.
QUESTION:
So just to be clear, how many skilled workers would you turn away under your plan?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ve been clear in terms of the permanent programme to reduce that to 140,000. The traditional mix of that programme has been about two thirds skilled, one third unskilled. But we would look at the demand settings at the time. We have said that we want a priority for people involved in the construction industry to be brought in because we’ve got building approvals at an 11 year low, as Michael pointed out before. Why the Prime Minister is bringing in a million people, when you’re only building 250,000 homes? And the problem compounds each year; I just think it’s a Prime Minister who is out of his depth, and doesn’t have the strength or the capacity to make the decisions in our country’s best interest.
QUESTION:
With your policy though, on net migration. I mean how can you guarantee that it won’t have an adverse effect on the wider economy as well as the skills shortage that we know exists? Who is going to build these homes?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, a couple of points. First is, I worked very closely with Peter Costello when he was Treasurer, I was Assistant Treasurer; we’ve cleaned up Labor messes before, and we can do it again. As Migration Minister, I worked in a way that kept our borders secure and our migration programme properly managed. These problems around housing and the rental accommodation crisis that we’ve got at the moment – are all of Labor’s making. When you look at the numbers that ramped up dramatically – and every time they make a prediction about numbers coming down in the migration programme, they always go up because Labor can’t make the decisions necessary, because they’re trying to please a domestic audience or seek political gain in it, otherwise.
The net overseas migration obviously is a product of people coming in, and leaving. We have the settings in place, we’ve outlined them, they create 40,000 or free up 40,000 homes in the first year, just over 100,000 homes over five years. Had the Prime Minister introduced this policy from day one, instead of his reckless, unplanned Big Australia policy, there would be about 325,000 more homes that are freed up for Australians to be living in today, and we wouldn’t see the tragedy of people having to live rough and in cars and tents and couch surfing and staying at home for longer, when really they want to leave home and go out and buy a home.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, Australia’s energy market operator warns the greatest reliability risks are in the short term. How will your nuclear policy address that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ve been very clear that you have to have a policy where you’ve got cheaper electricity, you’ve got consistent electricity – so that we don’t have blackouts and brownouts – because otherwise manufacturing will just go offshore where they can get a reliable energy source, and we want to make sure that we’ve got cleaner energy. They’re the three requirements for us.
Now, as we’ve said – as you transition over the next decade or so – about 90 per cent of firming capacity goes from the market. That is 90 per cent of 24/7 power goes out of the grid. That’s why you’ve got Labor Governments now who are negotiating for extension of life for coal fired power station assets.
Let’s cut through Labor’s rhetoric and trying to please the Greens and the Teals and everyone else. Labor at the moment is negotiating and paying the owners of coal fired power stations to extend the life of those so that the lights don’t go out. There is a huge need for gas into the system so that you can provide for peaking and you can bring prices down and have stability. Labor talks a big game in relation to gas, and then they go out and fund the Environmental Defenders Office, which is all about stopping the projects from going ahead. That’s why the energy regulator has warned this Government time over that if they continue to sleepwalk toward this energy crisis, power bills will keep going up, lights will go out, and we won’t get the transition to greener energy that we need.
The Prime Minister can pretend that the solar panels will work of a night time, or the wind turbines will spin 24 hours a day – it doesn’t happen. You need to be able to firm up the energy. That’s why if you look at the top 20 economies in the world, Australia is the only one at the moment that hasn’t got nuclear power or hasn’t signed up to it. It’s cheaper, it’s more reliable, it’s zero emissions, which is why 65 per cent of people aged between 18 and 34 support nuclear. It’s why there’s a huge debate in the UK at the moment where Labour is criticising the Tory Government there for not having enough nuclear in the system to firm up. Why do we think somehow that the G19 have got it terribly wrong and Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen have got it right? I mean it just doesn’t add up.
QUESTION:
So, when will you release the Coalition’s energy policy?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ll release our policy in due course. I mean there are plenty of policies I presume that the Prime Minister has got to release before the election that haven’t been released yet. So, I’m not going to take gratuitous advice from a Prime Minister who can’t stand up for our national interest and is running, I think, our country down a very dangerous path where if the lights start to go out, businesses cannot operate in that environment. They will not manufacture here and the whole ‘Made in Australia’ here will be the ‘Lights out in Australia policy’, that ends up with lost jobs, lost economic productivity, and for families – I mean people know that the hospitals need to run 24/7, your freezer at home needs to run 24/7, as does your fridge, the local IGA has cold rooms and cold storage, farmers have cold storage that needs to be run 24/7.
If the prices keep going up under Anthony Albanese, but the lights start to flicker, then our country’s in all sorts of trouble. But that’s exactly the path the Prime Minister’s taking us down. It’s an energy crisis of his own making, he’s been warned against it, and Australians should be very worried about the lack of incompetence from this Government.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, the Queensland Premier is backing your plan to cut Australia’s migration intake, despite the PM slamming it and labelling it divisive. What is your message to Anthony Albanese, and how will your plans fix the housing crisis if it doesn’t include funding for new housing?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, this is like Peter Malinauskas; the Premier in South Australia, who strongly supports nuclear, and he’s at odds with the Prime Minister. We know that other Labor leaders are at odds with the Prime Minister on a number of issues, including now Steven Miles, who is against the Prime Minister on Australia’s Big Australia policy, that was never mentioned before the last federal election. The Prime Minister never mentioned anywhere, you couldn’t point to a word he said. He said on 97 occasions he’d lower electricity prices by $275, but he never said that he was going to implement a Big Australia policy that would result in a housing crisis that this Government’s created.
So, good on Steven Miles for calling out the Prime Minister, and at least on this occasion, that Steven Miles has had greater strength of character and leadership than the Prime Minister, who’s delivering this Big Australia policy, that’s resulting in Australians not being able to get homes.
QUESTION:
How do you plan to persuade more retirees to jump back into the workforce?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, I just think for a lot of Australians, if it’s their choice to work, they want to work, we should be encouraging that. As we’ve seen in New Zealand, under Jacinda Ardern, under Chris Luxon now, the scheme allows for people to work more hours, if that’s their decision, if that’s their choice. They will do that for a number of reasons. One is, some people have just had a gutful of work by the time they retire, and they travel around Australia, they travel overseas, and they’re bored. They want to go back to work for a day or two days a week, or a couple of hours, or a few shifts a fortnight, whatever it might be. We should give them that flexibility without losing their pension and not just their pension, but their health care card as well.
So, we can increase participation. It’s a huge productivity measure for our economy at a time when we need it, but importantly also, we need to recognise that people who are on part-pensions, or on a full pension, they’ve got a fixed income when their electricity bills continue to go up under this Government. Their gas bill continues to go up under this Government. When they go to Coles or Woolies or an IGA, they’re getting less for every dollar they spend on their groceries because of this Government’s energy policy, which hits farmers and manufacturers and producers and packagers of food. All of that is passed on to pensioners and everybody who goes to a supermarket. So, for them to have some flexibility and get back into the workforce, that’s an obvious opportunity for them to have a better lifestyle, and if that’s their choice, we shouldn’t inhibit it.
Finally, I think it gives a huge win to a domestic workforce to have people with those skills – retired carpenters, veterans who retired too early and have got a degree or have done a trade since they retired from the Australian Defence Force, etc. Getting those people the opportunity to work alongside younger Australians is great for the culture in a workplace as well. It’s a transfer of skills and of culture and it helps build our economy, hopefully the homes as well that are being taken up by international students and others at the moment under Anthony Albanese’s Big Australia policy.
QUESTION:
Just to clarify, how will your plan fix the housing crisis if it doesn’t include funding for new housing?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, we’ve got – and Michael’s spoken about this at length – access your super to buy your first time or for women later in life who have had their lives financially destroyed in a marriage break up and don’t have a housing option for them or their children, to purchase that home. We need to make sure that we can free up the existing housing stock for Australians, and Australians should be first in terms of the existing housing we have here, because we can’t build homes overnight. Under this Government, building approvals are at a low and they’re not doing anything to help the situation because they continue to bring in many more people than homes are built.
So, we’ll have more to say about our housing policy in due course, but there’s 100,000 homes that would be freed up under our policy. I would say to Australians who are lining up to get a rental property at the moment, or going to an auction this coming weekend, your chances of getting into a home are much greater under Coalition Government than they are under Anthony Albanese’s Big Australia policy.
Thank you very much.
[ends]