Subjects: Floods in North Brisbane; the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership and credibility; Labor’s cost of living crisis; the Coalition’s commitment to defund Labor’s Environmental Defenders Office; UNRWA funding scandal; PNG.
E&OE.
RAY HADLEY:
We speak to Peter Dutton, the Federal Opposition Leader every Thursday. He’s online.
Peter, good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
In a bit of strife – you and people north of Brisbane, in fact, right across parts of Queensland with this flooding. What’s happening, particularly in your area?
PETER DUTTON:
There’s certainly been a lot of damage and a lot of families and local homes in my electorate –particularly around Bray Park and Moreton, Petrie, a number of other spots where people have been inundated, in many cases for the first time. So, we’ve been out visiting some of those families and businesses, and some of them are insured, some of them couldn’t afford their insurance, some are worried about maintenance with floodplains and drains etc. that may have backed the water up.
So, there are a lot of people who are really, really doing it tough at the moment, Ray. It’s true up in Townsville and in other parts of the country, as well, where there’s been a weather event, and it’s not over yet, I suspect. There’s still talk about more systems coming through. So, the cleanup’s underway and people are throwing out their possessions and photos from when their kids were young and everything. It’s heartbreaking for many of them.
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah. Laidley copped it on Tuesday…
PETER DUTTON:
Yes.
RAY HADLEY:
…I was on air talking about over 300 mm of rain for our listeners in the Darling Downs and down towards Ipswich area. They really copped a hammering.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, it came right through there, through Laidley and through Gatton and those places. Samford in my electorate copped about 350 or 360 mm in three hours which is a hell of a lot of rain, and as I say, there were houses that were flooded – and businesses, flooded for the first time ever.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, now you’ll be happy to know the Prime Minister has spoken on an FM radio station this morning – and I think he might have spoken about Toto and the colour of the tie he was wearing – but I don’t know if you’re aware of this, because I know you’re busy doing other things, but you’re to blame, or not specifically you personally, but you’re Party’s to blame for everything, including the state of politics.
Asked by WSFM Jonesy & Amanda if Australia is heading down the same path as US with people being divided, he said yes he’s concerned about the conduct of the Opposition, ‘I’m concerned about conflict-based politics, where the Opposition just oppose everything. I used to say, ‘I’m the Labor Leader, not the Opposition Leader’. So for example, throughout the pandemic, even where we thought the Government’s measures weren’t perfect, we said we won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’. So, any of the ‘yes’ vote, what’s happened with the stage three tax cuts, anything that’s gone wrong, it’s not the fault of the Federal Government and Anthony Albanese, it’s the fault of Peter Dutton and the Opposition. So, take the responsibility please.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s sad but predictable. He and Jim Chalmers run around with these gimmicks and lines that their pollsters would have given them, but the fact is that Australians know when the Prime Minister’s lied to them. He did in relation to the Voice, promising that the detail would be made available before people voted, it never happened. He never told people it was going to cost $450 million, it did. I didn’t force his arm to get him to promise 97 times that electricity prices would come down by $275, he’s never mentioned that figure since the election. Again, I’m happy to take responsibility for that. In relation to the tax cuts, people have budgeted for those tax cuts, and I think the debate now is about what comes next.
Jim Chalmers, when you look at his words, he’s got this cute form of words around negative gearing and dividends and the family home where the Prime Minister refused to give a straight answer in Question Time on whether they have plans to tax the family home. All of that now, I think people can reasonably say they’re worried that changes are coming. It’s wealth redistribution, it’s an attack on aspiration, it’s pitching one Australian against the other, and I don’t think it has any place here.
As for Australia Day, if the Prime Minister had the guts to stand up for our National Day and call out the woke CEOs and other government departments that are completely out of control, well, we would have got the leadership our country needs and deserves at this point in time, but when you’ve got a Prime Minister that walks both sides of the road and tells everybody what they want to hear, you end up allowing these academics and Thomas Mayo and these other people, CEOs on millions of dollars a year, the elites otherwise, telling us what to do. The vast majority of Australians want to celebrate who we are, and they want a Prime Minister that stands up for them.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, Jim Chalmers, and people get suspicious – you see, the problem I had, and I spoke to you about this…
PETER DUTTON:
Hey, hey, Ray, Ray, it’s Dr Chalmers.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, I’m not going to get a COVID injection from him, I can give you a tip.
PETER DUTTON:
I’d say those people who know him best would tell the same story.
RAY HADLEY:
He likes to be called Dr, does he?
PETER DUTTON:
I think he does. He was also Wayne Swan’s Chief of Staff. Don’t forget about his credentials.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Well he was the World’s Greatest Treasurer.
Look, I’ll rephrase: Dr Casanova Chalmers. Now, he’s promising – because they’re all Casanovas now – Tony Burke, Chris Bowen. It’s the Casanova Albanese Government, because everything they’ve touched since coming to power, you know what they’ve done to it, don’t you?
PETER DUTTON:
Yep.
RAY HADLEY:
Exactly what Casanova Bowen’s been doing to power and immigration and a whole range of other portfolios, but back to him and franking credits and negative gearing. It’s a credibility question. Now, even if he was true, even what he said that it’s true, and he believed it be true, people don’t trust you anymore, Doc. They don’t trust you. It’s like saying ‘this isn’t going to hurt, just bend over’. ‘This is not going to hurt, okay? We’re going to do a prostate examination here, I promise it won’t hurt’. People don’t believe you anymore, Dr. They don’t believe you because you’ve lied to us previously, and you may lie to us again. That’s the problem for Anthony Albanese and his Government and the Treasurer.
PETER DUTTON:
I think that’s right. When they’re asked about negative gearing at the moment, they say, well, as I say, a cute form of words, which if you if you have a look at it, it’s not a straight answer and it gives them wiggle room. I don’t know what they’ve got planned in the budget, but if they come out and say that we’re going to cap negative gearing or abolish negative gearing or change capital gains arrangements, all they’ll do is kill confidence in the economy and the rental stock that they want available, investors will just leave, and they’ll go into shares or other investments. If it’s retrospective, then people will have to unwind arrangements and sell properties because they won’t be able to afford the rental property or rental properties that they’ve got. The fact is that a lot of Australians will work hard to pay off their own mortgage, will pay it down, and then buy a rental property because they rely on that rent in their retirement.
If you’ve worked in a union your whole life or at the Labor Party local Senator’s office – I mean, the Prime Minister’s been in that lap of luxury since he left university – I guess you don’t understand the reality of what normal people do in terms of their budgeting and way in which they live their lives. I think, at the moment, Jim Chalmers is on this crusade to be Robin Hood, and in the end, all they do is kill aspiration, investment, and Australia has a volatile economy at the moment. The fundamentals are strong, but this Government’s had two budgets where they’ve weakened it considerably, and I hope interest rates come down soon. But they’ve spent a lot of money which has kept them higher for longer, and when they get in they always damage and wreck the economy, and that’s exactly the path we’re on at the moment.
RAY HADLEY:
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken about the Environmental Defenders Office and the fact that learned judges of the Federal Court have identified them as simply bringing cases that have no hope of winning, and also having people, their so-called ‘experts’, particularly in Western Australia, coaching witnesses about what they should say when they have no basis in truth and they’ve been sent packing, but we keep lining up with them – the Environmental Defenders Office – and whether it’s gas lines or whether it’s mining in WA. Wherever it may, we keep funding them.
Now, they’re an organisation, I’m told, who rely upon charity and benefactors, but they also rely upon Government funding. It’s almost unexplained how a Government can fund an organisation that’s taking them on. I mean, they’re actually taking the Government on and the Government’s paying their part of the bill?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Ray, when you sit back and analyse the modern Labor Party – they’re in a fight not even so much with the Liberal Party anymore – their concern in Grayndler, which is the Prime Minister’s seat, or in Sydney for Tanya Plibersek’s seat, they’re in a fight with the Greens and all of these decisions that they make are based on trying to keep green votes in the city. So, they don’t give a toss whether people in regional areas are having to look up at these 260 metre wind turbines and fertile paddocks that were once grazing paddocks and are now taken up with tens of thousands of solar panels. They don’t care less about those people, because what it does is allow them to tell the inner city voters who are voting for the Greens or teals or the Labor Party, that the Labor Party’s more green than the Greens.
This is the problem that they’ve got, because we end up having decisions made, including funding of the Environmental Defenders Office as a proxy, because Anthony Albanese goes back to his local electorate and he says, don’t worry, we funded the Environmental Defenders Office, they’re going to take the mining companies on, they’re going to take the salmon industry on and, you know, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, they’re a proxy for us being able to do what I can’t say that the Government will do.
It’s a tricky approach but that’s what they’re doing. I mean the Voice was to please a boisterous minority. The majority of Australians, two thirds, indicated very clearly that they weren’t going to tolerate this rubbish. The same in relation to Australia Day, but I think the Prime Minister has got a problem here. We announced yesterday that we would defund the Environmental Defenders Office, that in a Coalition Government, they would no longer receive $1 of taxpayers’ money, and I think the Prime Minister should follow suit.
RAY HADLEY:
Now, I spoke to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, co-CEO, Alex Ryvchin, this week. He told me quite clearly he’d been warning the Government about the United Nations body in Gaza and their links to Hamas for years.
Now, Penny Wong has now joined a throng of other Western leaders to say, ‘no, we won’t make good the $6 million promise’ – even though $20 million went before it. And according to Alex Ryvchin, he said he warned the Prime Minister directly and Penny Wong directly that the money they were sending there was going in some way to fund Hamas. This is inarguable now. This body has stood down I think nine of 12 people who were directly involved in the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, but they were deaf to this, particularly Penny Wong.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, I believe that Penny Wong’s position is untenable if it’s demonstrated that she had advice that this money could be used for the purpose that wasn’t intended by the Government. If she had advice, which at least, from what’s publicly reported and as you’ve just said, she has received that advice, then the money’s being flowed on regardless, and ended up in the hands of terrorists. That is an outrage, because firstly, it’s taxpayers’ money, it’s against our national interest, and if she had definite advice – if that’s what turned out to be the case – that she should not have ignored and the payment, the transfer of taxpayers’ money, should have been stopped.
If she’s knowingly sent that money to a terrorist organisation, then I think that is an outrage, and I think Penny Wong and the Prime Minister have more questions than answers in relation to this particular issue.
RAY HADLEY:
Now finally, it looked like a bit of posturing by the PNG Minister responsible, in relation to ties to China. Now we’ve got the Prime Minister, James Marape, coming to Canberra next week to give an address. Do you think there were just one across our bow, as a nation to say, ‘well, you better start looking after us a bit better or we will go to China?’.
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, there’s a lot of competition, obviously, in the region. The Chinese are desperate to set up a naval base somewhere in the region. They’re looking for a willing partner, they’re making payments for sports centres and administration buildings, providing payments that we’ll never know about otherwise. It’s a competition. Some of the leaders – leaving PNG aside because Prime Minister Marape’s a very good friend of Australia and does a great job – but there will be some leaders in the world who will try and play China off against the West, and vice versa, and they’ll try and ramp up the amount of money that they’re receiving. There will be others who take the decision that the Chinese are paying more and they’ll go with them. That’s just the reality of what the Government has to deal with, it’s what we were dealing with when we were in Government.
I said in Perth earlier this week that we will provide support to the Government because it’s in our national interest to do so, to make sure that we remain the preferred partner of choice, particularly in relation to police training and defence training and exercises. The Prime Minister says – and I agree with him 100 per cent – that we live in the most precarious period since the Second World War, which is why he’s got to get serious about getting defence properly funded and acquisitions underway, because it is a dangerous period and we are a friendly country. We want peace and stability in our region, but we won’t achieve that through being weak, and insipid. I think that’s the problem with the Prime Minister’s approach to most things – that most world leaders now see him as a pushover and weak, and most people here in Australia have drawn the same conclusion.
RAY HADLEY:
We’ll talk next week. As always, thanks for your time. Good luck with that flood clean-up.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, Ray. I appreciate it, mate.
[ends]