Subjects: 10 year anniversary of MH17 tragedy; CFMEU caught out on crime and corruption; the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership; CFMEU and Labor ripping off Australians and pushing up building costs; Trump assassination attempt; Australia-America relations; Labor’s cost of living crisis; Labor’s energy policy shambles; nuclear power.
E&OE
PETER DUTTON:
Well everyone, firstly; I wanted to acknowledge today’s the 10th anniversary of the downing of MH17. As we know, 38 Australians lost their lives out of that tragic incident, 298 people in total lost their lives – a barbaric act. Our thoughts today are with the families on this important anniversary.
It should make us realise that we live in a very uncertain world still and there’s a lot of reason to stick with our friends and our allies, people of like-minded values, to stare down dictators like Vladimir Putin and others. We know that this is a difficult time right around the world.
But most importantly, I wanted to say today, for those families who are commemorating the 10th year that they lost their loved ones; it’s a very difficult day for them, I’m sure, and our thoughts are with all of those people.
Obviously, as we’re watching at the moment, the CFMEU has been involved with organised crime for a long period of time. I know that Tony Burke, the Industrial Relations Minister, has been out today saying that he’s responded because he’s just found out now that there’s been some link between the CFMEU and bikies and organised crime figures. The fact is that this goes back years and years. The fact is, as we know, the bikies have been involved we know, for example, back to 2014. How could this come as a surprise to Tony Burke today when we’ve known for the last decade that Mick Gatto and bikies and others have been involved with the CFMEU? This has all been public knowledge, and the Minister’s saying that he’s never received a briefing in relation to it. It just lacks credibility.
Now, I think what we’re seeing at the moment from the CFMEU, their thuggish behaviour, the criminal conduct – we’re only just scratching the surface at the moment. My view is that this will turn out to be the biggest defrauding of the Australian taxpayer in our country’s history. We’re talking here about tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of money that’s been added onto contracts or subverted otherwise. I don’t believe that the Prime Minister’s response by announcing that an administrator will be appointed, and somehow that’s going to be adequate to deal with the issues that are before us.
The weakest possible response from Anthony Albanese would be to appoint an administrator to the CFMEU – that’s like going into one of the bikie organisations and the police saying, ‘well, let’s just change out the leadership here and put in an administrator’, and somehow the activities of the bikies will correct itself. It’s a complete nonsense. It’s an abrogation of the Prime Minister’s responsibility. The only thing that’s changed here is that the Prime Minister’s mates have been caught on tape. That’s what’s happened here. The Prime Minister has known of the activities of the CFMEU for years and years. He’s chosen to do nothing about it. The only thing that’s changed now is that the Prime Minister’s been caught out because of the excellent investigative journalism from the Nine journalists, and from others who have been involved in these matters.
I just don’t believe that the Prime Minister can say to the Australian public that an adequate response is to appoint an administrator to what we know is a corrupt organisation. CBUS and others need to extinguish their relationship with the CFMEU. They are a discredited organisation and the Prime Minister needs to deregister the CFMEU. That’s the first step that he needs to take. If the Prime Minister had any backbone whatsoever, he would deregister the CFMEU. He would make sure that the legislation to reintroduce the Australian Building Construction Commission, takes place on the 1st of August when we go back.
The Coalition will be moving that Bill and we believe very strongly that this Commission needs to be put back in place because we know that, for example, only just in the last 12 months or so – indeed since February of last year – there are currently six matters that remain before the courts. We know that there have been 35 cases that have been finalised, nine that have been discontinued. That’s what’s happened since the ABCC has been abolished. We know that in February of last year, Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney-General, protected the CFMEU from paying $150,000 in court costs. We know that millions of dollars are still being donated by the CFMEU to the Labor Party. I just don’t believe this is tenable.
I don’t believe that the Australian public will accept from a weak Prime Minister that the best he can do is to offer an administrator to run the CFMEU. It needs to be dealt with in a very serious way because as we know from recent reports, if you’ve got a school that has a $25 million build cost, add 30 per cent on because of the CFMEU behaviours. If you’ve got a road that’s being constructed that’s worth $1 billion, a bridge contract – that goes up by 30 per cent because of the CFMEU. Hundreds of millions of dollars here are being misappropriated or misspent, and it’s taxpayer’s money. The best our Prime Minister says, is that, ‘well, we can just appoint an administrator’. It’s not good enough.
This organisation, the CFMEU, is corrupt and it needs to be deregistered. We know that when Bob Hawke deregistered the BLF, he dealt with it in a very serious way. In fact, if you look at his comments on the public record in 1985, Bob Hawke said, and I quote, ‘the BLF’s complete disdain for the law, their frequent resort to practices of thuggery and physical coercion, have no place in our society. The BLF has forfeited any claim it might otherwise have had, either on the community at large or on the trade union movement. The Government believes – (that is the Hawke Government believes) – that over many years, the BLF has demonstrated nothing but contempt for the system and values of Australian society…’. This is a carbon copy of what happened with the BLF.
Bob Hawke had the guts to stand up against the corrupt BLF and we know that Anthony Albanese has not got any ability to show the leadership that Bob Hawke did. I think this is an issue that’s going to go on. It’s going to bedevil this Government for as long as the Prime Minister continues to be weak. We know that there’s a flow on into the domestic housing sector as well.
The fact is that Australians know that building costs have gone through the roof. Why? Well, in good part because of the practices of the CFMEU. If you’re paying a contractor $250,000 to go and work on a job site in the CBD, that has a flow on effect, because that contractor is not working in the domestic sector, because the domestic builder can’t afford to pay that $250,000. But they do have to pay more and more and more.
We know that productivity now on big building sites is down to about two and a half, three days a week if it’s a CFMEU site. So consumers, Australians are being ripped off, taxpayers are being ripped off to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. What does the Prime Minister say? He says, ‘oh, I’m going to appoint an administrator to the CFMEU’. The thing needs to be deregistered, and the Prime Minister needs to stand up and act in the national interests, not in his own personal interests and in interests of the union movement more generally.
I’m very happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
What should happen with all the money that Labor has already got from the CFMEU? Should they be returning it like South Australia’s Premier’s said?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, I mean as normally happens here, Premier Minns and Premier Malinauskas show the leadership that Prime Minister can’t demonstrate. The fact is that the Labor Party’s taken over $10 million worth of donations from the CFMEU during the Prime Minister’s time as Labor Leader. That money has been received by the ALP from a corrupt organisation.
So firstly, they should stop receiving any donations and the money that they have received should be quarantined. I don’t believe that the Prime Minister has any credibility when he’s taking millions of dollars from the CFMEU into the coffers of the Labor Party. It’s completely and utterly outrageous.
QUESTION:
You talk about wanting the Prime Minister to deregister the CFMEU. What else would you like to see from the Prime Minister and the Workplace Relations Minister?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we need to see leadership instead of weakness from the Prime Minister. Saying that an administrator should be appointed to a corrupt organisation like the CFMEU is a joke. If the Australian Federal Police or the agencies require more money to conduct these investigations, then the Prime Minister should provide that money because this corruption is widespread. It’s well known, it’s well documented.
When the Prime Minister decided to abolish the Australian Building Construction Commission, which was the watchdog designed to look over the building industry – largely the CFMEU – the Prime Minister abolished it knowing exactly what he knows today. There’s no new information available to the Prime Minister that wasn’t available to him when he decided to abolish the ABCC.
Why did he abolish the building watchdog? Well, because the CFMEU want him to abolish it, and because the CFMEU had donated $10 million to the Labor Party. That’s what happened here. The Prime Minister is only acting now, not because he’s got new information, but because his mates have been caught on tape. The corrupt practices that we’re seeing today have been well known, they’ve been publicly reported on, and if the Prime Minister says that he knew nothing about it, he’s not telling the truth.
QUESTION:
In terms of political donations, does this show the need for them to be transparent in real time, made publicly available?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, what it shows is that the relationship between the Prime Minister and the crooks at the CFMEU is unhealthy. It’s ripping off taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year, because we know that there’s a 30 per cent CFMEU premium on these job sites. So when you go and build a hospital, when you go and build a school, when you go and build roads or bridges, you’re getting ripped off by 30 per cent. So Australians at the moment who are screaming out for more health services, or for more road upgrades in regional areas, you can’t have that because the CFMEU is ripping that money off and the Prime Minister doesn’t have anything to say about it.
QUESTION:
You’ve just returned from the US. What are your reflections of being in that country at a time that there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, there was an enormous amount of raw emotion, as you would expect. Obviously the tragedy of one man losing his life and two who were injured. There’s rightly an investigation now the Secret Service is conducting and the Department of Homeland Security. That’s appropriate as well, because obviously there’s been a massive breach.
But the United States is an incredibly important ally to Australia. We live in an uncertain period – that’s known to everyone – and we know that we need to stand with countries like the United States. It’s why I think the Prime Minister should have been in Washington at the same time that I was there last week, because bringing together the NATO leaders and supporters of NATO was supposed to send a very strong message to Putin, to President Xi, to the North Korean dictator, to Iran, to other like-minded countries – and our Prime Minister wasn’t there.
It was noted, I might say, and this has been reported on, as you know, but a number of people raised this with me in meetings. They couldn’t understand why on earth Anthony Albanese wasn’t there. The Prime Minister, to this day, still doesn’t have a cogent response as to why he wasn’t.
QUESTION:
You mentioned needing to show a strong force against Putin in Russia. Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, he’s previously opposed military action in Ukraine. Does that worry you? What do you make of his appointment there?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I congratulate JD Vance on his appointment as the running mate to President Trump. Obviously, as has been the case over decades, regardless of whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican administration, regardless of whether at this end, it’s a Labor or Liberal administration, we’ve worked very closely with our counterparts in the United States, and we’ll continue to do that.
We believe very strongly that support should be provided to Ukraine because innocent men, women and children are being slaughtered there by President Putin. The world shouldn’t take its eyes away from what’s happening in the Ukraine just because time has elapsed and the media cycle moves on. Putin still commits murder on a daily basis, and we shouldn’t forget that. We should do everything we can to stop it.
QUESTION:
Today marks 10 years since the downing of the MH17. Do you think the families of those on board will ever get some portion of justice?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, it’s hard to see how that justice can be provided to those families – they can never get their loved ones back. Any father, any parent, any son, or daughter could just never get over the loss of a loved one in that circumstance. It doesn’t matter the circumstances of the loss of life, it’s always a tragedy and those families, I don’t think could ever get over the loss of their loved ones and our thoughts are with them today.
QUESTION:
I’ve only got one more – the IMF has downgraded Australia’s growth forecast for this year. Do you have a response to that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, obviously the Government’s now had three budgets to deal with the economic circumstances that they facing. Anthony Albanese has created a cost of living crisis for families. He promised to reduce power prices by $275. Instead, your power prices, the bill’s now have gone up by about $1,000. The Prime Minister promised to reduce mortgage rates and we now know that interest rates have gone up on 12 occasions under this Government – and they may go higher. We just don’t know what is going to happen next under this Government because they always pull the wrong economic levers. Whenever Labor’s in power, people always pay more for their mortgages.
We know that businesses are really struggling at the moment, cafes and restaurants. Hospitality is really doing it tough under this Government, and with their renewables only policy, we know that the Government has only one trajectory for prices on power, and that is up and up and up. We’re going to see blackouts, as the energy regulator warns if the Government continues down this path. And that’s why we need to have a sensible mix of energy. We need to have renewables, we need to have gas, and we need to firm up the renewables energy when it’s not working. Let’s be very clear about it. It’s just a sensible discussion that we need to have.
If you look at what other countries are doing, most other comparable countries in the world have either embraced, or are about to embrace zero emissions nuclear technology because it’s cheaper, it’s reliable, and it can underpin economic success as we grow jobs and industry in this country. That’s incredibly important. I see Chris Bowen out there today talking about energy. Chris Bowen has not a clue what he’s talking about, and he’s at odds with most world experts in relation to energy. I think Chris Bowen is sounding more and more desperate each day because he knows that his renewables only policy is just going to drive up the power prices, and it’s going to make our energy system even less reliable than it is now. That’s why we have to have a sensible debate, which we’ve initiated.
Everyone knows that having renewables in the system is great. We support that. But of a night time, the solar panels don’t work and you can have 98 per cent renewable energy, you still need to be able to firm up when the wind’s not blowing, or the sun’s not shining. At the moment, the Government’s losing 90 per cent of their baseload energy by 2034. That is a recipe for disaster. You can’t start the new system until you’ve got a situation where it’s mature enough to implement. And if you turn off the old system before the new ones ready, well, prices go up and the lights are going out, and that’s exactly what we’re starting to experience now.
QUESTION:
The Energy Minister says voters have to choose between renewables or nuclear reactors. How are you planning to do both? What portion of Australia’s energy mix will be renewable under your plan?
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, our plan is a mix of technologies – it’s renewables, it’s gas and it’s nuclear. It’s nuclear because, as we know, the International Energy Agency, the OECD, the United States Department of Energy and M.I.T. all say that the least cost option for low carbon electricity, includes nuclear. Okay? So you can listen to Chris Bowen and his desperate chants at the moment, or you can listen to the experts.
The experts know that in Ontario, for example, they’re paying $0.14 a kilowatt hour. At the moment in Australia, in South Australia, for example, they’re paying $0.56 per kilowatt hour. So let’s have a mature discussion about it. It’s not a choice between renewables and nuclear. Our policy has renewables, it has gas and it has the underpinning of a baseload power.
As coal exits the system, the Government’s saying that green hydrogen is going to be the solution. It’s not even a developed technology yet. It’s not scalable, it’s very expensive, it uses an enormous amount of water, and our argument is – as it is for most other OECD countries – our argument is that there should be nuclear as the baseload so that we can firm up those renewables.
In a renewables only, Chris Bowen world, we’re going to see disruption to power. Okay? In that circumstance, business can’t operate. Manufacturers can’t operate if the power is being switched off, or if we’ve got scheduled blackouts like we see in California. If Chris Bowen’s after a California model which is renewables only, that is a disaster for our economy, it’s a disaster for families, and as we know at the moment, there are a lot of pensioners this winter who are either eating or heating, but they can’t do both. That’s the circumstance that Anthony Albanese’s created.
QUESTION:
What portion is going to be renewables under your plan?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll have more to say in relation to that detail. But we’ve been very clear – I mean we demonstrated it when we were in Government – the investment that we’ve got in renewables today happened because of Liberal Governments over the course of the last nine years. We put money into different prospective technologies. We put money into hydro. We’ve put money into solar – a strong believer in solar – but we need to make sure that we can provide a firming up of that power, because when they refer to intermittent power, when they’re talking about wind and solar, it’s intermittent because it’s not 24/7. So unless people are prepared to have their fridges, or freezers off in the hours of darkness, or we don’t want hospitals to run of a night time – it’s complete nonsense what they’re saying and it’s no other country in the world that has gone down this renewables only path.
If we don’t take action, we are going to see a massive economic disruption, as well as social disruption in our country. That’s not something that I’m going to tolerate. We’ve been clear and upfront in relation to the nuclear policy because it’s exactly what comparable countries are doing. As I say, the agencies who know this space best are very clear and adamant. I’ll just read one other quote to you, which I think is of interest as well. It’s from the former CEO of ANSTO, Adi Paterson, who said, ‘it’s unequivocally true that when you take nuclear and you add it into a grid that is high wind and high solar, it reduces the cost of electricity’. So again, you can listen to Chris Bowen, or listen to every expert who says the opposite of what Chris Bowen is saying. Mr Bowen needs to stick to the facts because the scare campaigns, I think, are running out of puff.
QUESTION:
Do you have a ball figure, though, of what will be renewable of your plan?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ll talk about it in due course.
QUESTION:
Queensland’s Opposition Leader, the Premier – no one’s emphatically backed this plan here either. Is that a concern?
PETER DUTTON:
But that was the case for nuclear submarines as well. And let’s look at the case for nuclear submarines: the reactor’s intact, it’s the latest generation technology, and the Prime Minister’s made the decision to buy the nuclear submarines, knowing that they will be in Osborne in South Australia at the port there, they’ll be in Henderson in WA, a matter of kilometres from houses. The Government’s signed up to disposing of the waste here in Australia. We have the biggest deposits in the world of uranium.
Let’s just have a mature conversation instead of this silly conversation. When you look at the fact that 18 to 34 year olds in our country – two thirds of them support nuclear because they’re well read on it. They understand what’s happening in Europe and Asia and North America. They understand that we can’t achieve our net zero targets without nuclear being involved in the mix. That’s why I think coal is likely to stay longer in the mix under Labor, than it is under us.
QUESTION:
The AEMO says nuclear power stations won’t be ready in time for the exit of coal. How will you flip that gap in the meantime?
PETER DUTTON:
But again, just instead of listening to the Government mouthpieces, look at the international experts. The international experts and those that are here, including Dick Smith and Adi Paterson and others, Ziggy, you look at what all of them have had to say – and that is that nuclear is required in the system because without it, we’re going to have blackouts and the intermittent power – that is the power that’s not 24/7 like wind and solar – it’s going to drive up the price of electricity.
Our plan means that you can reduce electricity prices, you can have reliability in the system. Anthony Albanese’s renewables only policy’s already contributing to inflation, because it’s not just your power bill that’s gone through the roof, it’s the farmer’s power bill, and it’s the truck driver, and it’s the depot where there’s cold storage. Their power prices have doubled as well. That’s why under Anthony Albanese, you’re paying more and more when you go to the checkout at the supermarket.
Alright, thank you very much.
[ends]