Subjects: Visit to Stuart and Townsville; the Coalition’s support for small business; Labor’s cost of living crisis; Labor’s visa and immigration policy shambles; Labor’s border security chaos; defence spending; aged care; the Bush Summit; Reef HQ.
E&OE.
ANDREW WILLCOX:
It’s fantastic to be here in Gough Plastics, joined by Ian and Simon Gough, in this brand new facility. We’ve got Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition up here. It’s really fantastic to have the Federal Leader of the Opposition come to rural and regional Australia, because he actually gets it. So he’s been into Mackay in my southern part of the electorate, the central part, and now the northern part in the manufacturing. I’m joined by Phil Thompson, the Member for the Herbert, my parliamentary colleague next door. Phil fought for Australia and he fights for Townsville to get a better deal each and every day, and of course, the great Senator Susan McDonald who’s all over the place, the Shadow Minister for Resources, all over Queensland and trying to do the best she can for rural and regional Australia, and particularly North Queensland.
Well folks, really, really good facility here. We’ve had the tour. This is in the northern part of my electorate of Dawson. The Gough team, they research, they design, they manufacture and then export for all over the world, and the Coalition backs people like the Gough team because they’re doers. But we back business, we back the workers. Whether you’re a big business, a small business, or whether you’re a person that’s just started your first job and you’re only doing a few hours a week. We believe in reward for effort. If you’re prepared to work, we’ll back you each and every day of the week. If you have a go, the Coalition will always give you a go.
So, I’ll hand over to the Member for Herbert, Phil Thompson.
PHIL THOMPSON:
Thanks, mate. Thank you.
Well, it’s great to be in the mighty electorate of Dawson that backs onto the fantastic electorate of Herbert.
It’s always good to be joined by Andrew Willcox, who’s an avid fighter for the regions, and the only Senator in North Queensland, Susan McDonald, who’s out championing the regions all the time, and my friend, the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, who is a frequent flyer to this part of the world, a frequent flyer to Townsville, and whilst he’s been here a lot in his role as the Leader of the Opposition, he was here quite regularly and is a fan favourite at Lavarack Barracks when he was the Minister for Defence. The soldiers that are based out there now still talk about the time when Peter Dutton came out, sat down, and asked them, ‘how can we help? What do you need?’. And a lot of the projects that are flowing through now, from changing of the helicopters, to projects rolling right around the country for the ADF, is because of Peter Dutton.
Simon and Ian at Gough Plastics, where we are today, they took a risk. They took a risk and they backed themselves in a very challenging time with this build and moving locations. This was supported through the former Coalition Government. We helped out, through the NAIF, and now, Gough Plastics’ dream is coming to fruition.
We’ve walked around, we’ve seen what they do here, and we’ve met some employees like Rob, who’s been a big part of Gough Plastics, and we’ve seen concrete being poured and everything that’s happening. This is great for the region because this means jobs, this means that people are being employed and we see cranes in the sky. That’s when you know things are going well, but that’s on the back of the Coalition Government.
Projects have stalled under this new Albanese weak Labor Government, and because of that, we know that people are doing it tough here in the regions, but around the country as well. The Coalition is a big supporter of getting out of the way and allowing businesses to do what they do best, which is provide jobs and drive this economy.
So, our commitment to local, to regional businesses around the country, is we want to be in your corner because we know that you drive this nation and like Gough Plastics, who were doing a fantastic job yesterday and will do a fantastic job in the future. They’ll be better supported under a Coalition Government.
SENATOR SUSAN MCDONALD:
Good morning.
It is absolutely terrific to be here at Gough Plastics, because this is North Queensland at its finest. This is a business that employs people, this is a business that develops technology. We’ve got catches from the Burdekin, they’re pouring tanks for agricultural use. But this is a business that is really showcasing what is the best about North Queensland.
So, I’m very proud that in Government, the Coalition Government provided grant funding under the Northern Australia Development Grant to make this new development a reality. This is what I’m proud of, and it’s what me and my colleagues, both Andrew and Phil, we get, we take to Canberra, we fight for. That’s why I’m so proud to have Peter Dutton here – because he gets it. He gets small business, he gets why these sort of jobs are important, and why this kind of development is important.
I just want to touch on what the Albanese Government is failing to do at the moment. Here in Townsville, we are at the intersection of agriculture and critical minerals and more traditional mining. Under Labor, under the Albanese Government, they are slowing development, they are stopping projects. It doesn’t matter whether it’s mining or gas, they will see no future development in this country, and that jeopardises businesses like Gough Plastics, businesses that need more affordable electricity and need more gas. Under the Albanese Government, we will get more expensive electricity, we will see less gas, we’ll see more expensive motor vehicles, which is bad for us here in North Queensland.
So, I am terrifically proud to have Peter Dutton here. He gets us, he fights for us, and I’m proud to be part of his team. Over to you, Peter.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Susie. Thank you.
Well, ladies and gentleman, it’s great to be here today.
Firstly, thank you very much to our hosts, to Simon and Ian at Gough here, and to all of the team. This is an amazing story, and for a small business to put their homes on the line, to invest into their local community, to create jobs, it’s a big undertaking, and there are huge risks because the cost escalation that they’re sitting in their input costs, the compliance costs with three levels of government. It’s tough and it’s very tough and getting tougher under this Government in the business sector, particularly for small and medium sized businesses. So, I really tip my hat to the Goughs here and what they’ve been able to create. It’s a multi-generational business, and it is thriving because they understand their local community, they understand their market, they have an incredibly dedicated workforce, and that’s why, as Susie and Phil and Andrew pointed out before, we’ve invested into this operation, it’s not viable without that support, and when you look at the work that’s being undertaken here by contractors, local contractors, concreters, electricians, others who are involved in building these sheds, it’s their families who benefit, and the money that they’re spending here in the local community is what becomes an economic multiplier. But Labor doesn’t get that because none of them have worked in business or owned businesses before.
When you look at the Prime Minister’s agenda, it’s really about trying to please Green voters in inner city seats, and as a result, people in regional areas, like the one we’re in here at the moment, are disenfranchised under a Labor Government.
I want to say thank you very much to Andrew Willcox. He’s a fighter for his region. He’s a small business person himself, and he understands what it means to take a risk and to employ staff, the vagaries of markets and prices and input costs and the rest of it, Andrew’s lived and breathed that, and he’s doing a great job as the Member for Dawson. As is Phil Thompson, who, as Andrew rightly pointed out before, has served our country in uniform. He is highly respected when you go around the country and speak to people who are currently serving, and he, as the Assistant Shadow Minister for Defence, really has made a huge mark and continues to engage very effectively with our Australian Defence Force personnel.
The fact that we’re meeting in this garrison city of Townsville, means that we should recognise the sacrifice that those men and women have made, and that they still make this very day to keep us safe.
Thank you also to Susie McDonald, who is a great champion, not just of North Queensland but of regional Australia. She does a fantastic job in her portfolio and she makes a very important point: when you look at what is happening at the moment under the Albanese Government, they are closing projects down. When you’ve got a situation where there is an approval in place, people have invested money, they’ve employed staff, and this Government now is saying to those businesses that they need to close, and we lose those jobs, and we lose that investment into the local economy. What happens is that those businesses just pop up in Malaysia or in Wyoming. We lose the Australian jobs, we lose the productivity. This is why this Labor Government, people are comparing to the Whitlam Government, because they’re slowly strangling the Australian economy and families know it. They are doing it tough at the moment, and it has got tough under Mr Albanese over the last two years.
As we’ve seen in the last two weeks, Mr Albanese is a man whose word you now can’t trust. If you sacrifice our national security to try and win votes at a domestic level, you have sold our country out. Now, that’s bad for any Australian to do, but it’s an unforgivable error by a Prime Minister. I think the Australian public now is starting to see a very different side to Mr Albanese, not just Mr Albanese, but Tony Burke and Chris Bowen and others – who, with their renewables only policy are driving up the cost of electricity and gas in a business like this, and all of that cost ultimately has to be passed on to consumers.
So, this business is manufacturing many things, but including water tanks, when you go to purchase a water tank, it’s more expensive under the Albanese Government because the price of the plastics and the price of the gas and the price of electricity have all gone up under this Government. That’s why inflation is a problem, it’s why it’s sticky, and it’s why interest rates will stay higher for longer under Mr Albanese.
I’m happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
Yep. Just some from Canberra. The AFP has arrested three foreign nationals for allegedly conspiring to collect and conceal a group of unlawful maritime arrivals who arrived in Western Australia in April. Does this show Border Force is doing its job?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think what it shows is that the Government has walked away from Operation Sovereign Borders. They pretend that they support OSB, but they don’t because they’ve reduced the amount of money that they’re spending on maritime surveillance and aerial surveillance as well, and that’s why we’ve had these incursions. People have been able to make it to the mainland without being detected, because there has been a reduction in the amount of surveillance, and the people smugglers understand that.
The people smugglers always take advantage of a weak Prime Minister. We saw it with Kevin Rudd, we saw it with Julia Gillard, we’re now seeing it with Anthony Albanese. When we were in Government, as the Home Affairs Minister, we had a tough policy with Operation Sovereign Borders – but it worked. It stopped people from drowning at sea and it made sure that we could get the women and children out of detention that Labor put in there. Labor has increased the number of people in detention, and at the same time they’ve sent the green light to people smugglers.
So, I welcome the news that the AFP, and no doubt other agencies, have done fantastic work. But they’re chasing their tail because they’ve got a Government that provides a weak policy response and people smugglers will continue to send boats, because people are just another commodity and an opportunity to make money to those people. You’ll see more of this activity, I suspect, under the Labor Party.
QUESTION:
Australia is today announcing it’s assuming command of a Middle East taskforce to protect the Red Sea from October. Is the fact Australia won’t deploy a warship due to the Coalition leaving the Navy with too few ships without adequate protection?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I think what we’ve seen at the moment, obviously, because the Government’s given a green light to the people smugglers, a lot of the Navy assets are being deployed to the north and northwest of our country. That’s what’s happening here. So, when you look at the crew hours – there are only so many crew hours – and it’s being taken up trying to clean up the mess that Mr Albanese has created by opening our borders up again. That’s why we’re seeing boat arrivals. If you do that, then it starves you from the opportunity to join with coalition partners.
I think Australia looks weak on the world stage at the moment because the Prime Minister keeps telling us that we live in the most precarious period since the Second World War and then takes money out of Defence. There was never, ever a ship commissioned by the Labor Party when they were in government. They reduced spending on defence to the lowest level since the 1930s. We’ve restored the funding into Defence when we were in Government, we commissioned, obviously, the AUKUS submarines and we cleaned up, as best we could, in the time we had in government, a mess that Labor had created.
So, I think when you look at the contribution that we’re making to the Red Sea effort at the moment, it should be more. If we had a competent Government in place it would be more, because it’s important to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies and to stare down Iran-sponsored terrorism in the form of Hezbollah, or Hamas, or the Houthis, and that’s the reality that we need to face as a world and we should be standing together with our partners who share similar values.
QUESTION:
Switching topics, why are negotiations on the aged care reforms taking so long?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, what we want in our aged care system, as we age as a society – and like most Western societies at the moment, we’re ageing – we need to make sure that we can meet the demands of the aged care system. So, it needs to be sustainable. We know with the early onset of dementia, with longer, more intense care periods for people who are diagnosed earlier with dementia, we need to make sure that the system is working right. When we were in government, we tried to make the system sustainable, and the Government, I’d acknowledge, is trying to do the same thing now.
So, we’ve entered into good faith discussions with the Government. We haven’t yet settled a position with the Government and negotiations still continue, and we have discussions with some of the sector and some of the people who are stakeholders otherwise, before we make a final decision about what it is the Government is proposing.
It is a difficult area of policy because we want to make sure that we’ve got a sustainable system. I think the most important thing is that we want people to live with dignity and with respect and to receive the care that they need as they grow older, whether that’s in place – as in in their home or with family members, or if they’re moving into higher care arrangements.
QUESTION:
And then just on that, are you worried about a backlash on families losing part of their inheritance to pay for aged care through bond levies?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I know there’s sort of a lot of breathless reporting of it at the moment, but let’s see what the Government’s proposing and then we’ll have discussions from there. But, in the end, what we want is a sustainable aged care system that provides dignity and respect to people as they age, and we need to make sure, particularly as we age as a society, that we recognise that not just now, but over the coming two and three decades, there is a very significant demand on the aged care system.
At the moment, under the Government, people aren’t investing in new beds so there’s a logjam there of people who require the beds in aged care facilities, but the companies won’t make the investments because there’s not a viable return. So, we have to make sure that we’ve got a viable aged care economy in the sector and that we’ve got adequate support for people who, after having worked all of their life, they can live with the dignity and respect that we demand in a society like ours.
QUESTION:
Yep, and a final one for us – how excited are you to be at the Bush Summit today?
PETER DUTTON:
Well look, I’m incredibly excited, actually. I lived in Townsville in the early 1990s. I’ve watched it grow as a city, as a region, over a long period of time.
I think when you look at the representation of Phil Thompson and Andrew Willcox, and what they’ve given back to their community, but the plan and the vision that they have for this community, it’s phenomenal. The big difference between the Coalition and the Labor Party is that we have a vision for North Queensland and for northern Australia.
The opportunity here to get water right, to make sure that we can invest into agriculture, to increase the amount of productive farming land that we’ve got, the defence industry piece as we invest with the United States and the United Kingdom in AUKUS – the jobs that that creates, that is a bright future for this region. Then you look at mining, not just critical minerals, but what we’re doing in mining otherwise, Australia has a huge opportunity. But when you’ve got a Federal Government at the moment that is just throwing a wet blanket over the economy, increasing inflationary pressures, the projects don’t get off the ground because they don’t stack up under this Government.
I was speaking with a big Australian company this morning, well known to many Australians, they’re talking about their partners and their investors, at the moment, about investing more in Australia, but there’s a hesitancy to because they’re worried about sovereign risk under the Albanese Government. They’re worried about the industrial relations system, they’re worried about if they invest into a mine in this country, is Labor just going to stop the approval process? But there are no jobs going in regional areas if we don’t provide support to those sectors.
That’s why I’m excited to be here. I think it’s a fantastic part of our country, and the opportunity here in the north, when you look at Gough Plastics, they’re a prime example of how, with a small investment from the Commonwealth Government, we can leverage incredible outcomes. Thousands and thousands of jobs can be created, and we can not just contribute to North Queensland and northern Australia, but to the economy more generally. That’s how we can provide a bright future and to get our country back on track, because at the moment, the Albanese Government is making all sorts of bad decisions, which is just making it harder and harder for Australians to pay their bills and for small businesses to stay open.
Alright? Thank you very much. Thank you.
QUESTION:
Thank you. Thanks.
Can I ask Phil one question? Just about Reef HQ. Obviously the Labor Government have now announced that they will support that. What do you think about this?
PHIL THOMPSON:
Well, I think it’s important to know how we got here. We committed through the City Deal, $200 million for the Haughton Pipeline Stage 2, which was because Townsville has a water security issue. The State Government rejected that money on a lie about GST. So then, I put together a community group that would come together and then come up with the ideas, meet with the community, about what projects that would benefit our region. Reef HQ was in there, the concert hall was in there, the Royal Flying Doctor Service was in there, and we funded $80 million to Reef HQ. The new Government came in and said, ‘we don’t want to do refurbishment, we want to do a knock down and rebuild’, but that cost more money, and not a dollar was allocated then. We’ve only just seen an announcement now where a redirection of funding has gone.
So, the $100 million was earmarked for the concert hall, a business case was done – still hasn’t been released, which I think is pretty poor form – and the Labor Federal Government made a decision to give the council the option of a Reef HQ or a concert hall. Now, the part I’ve seen of the business case, it said that the reason that they don’t want to go ahead with the concert hall is because the State Government refuses to own it and operate it. So, in QPAC in Brisbane, the State Government owns and operates it and it works well, but they’re refusing to do that here.
So, Steven Miles has completely treated the people of Townsville with utter disrespect because of that. The business case should be released to the public to see what’s in it, and the council’s now decided to allocate the rest of that funding to Reef HQ, which we support.
It was only a couple of months ago I tabled in Parliament, signatures in support of getting funding for Reef HQ, so this is a good thing. The council also said that they’ll only do that if they get a $60 million footbridge across from the Metropole Hotel to Flinders Street.
So, essentially, we’ve gone from getting $100 million state-of-the-art, world renowned concert hall to a $60 million footbridge.
So, Townsville has missed out because of that, but we are supportive of Reef HQ and we look forward to working closely with GBRMPA and making sure anything they need we can support.
QUESTION:
Do you think the timing of this announcement is political?
PHIL THOMPSON:
This timing is all political! Can you see it? Like this has been ongoing for two years, and we haven’t seen the Prime Minister do anything, and he’s coming out for the Bush Summit, tells the council they have to make a decision because he wants to make an announcement.
This is all political. It’s pathetic. But that’s what we say from the Prime Minister. Last night at the dinner he was high-fiving himself telling everyone how great he is because of it. Well, this funding isn’t new funding. This is $100 million of City Deal money that we got during the former Coalition Government. To get it redirected isn’t a new spend. It’s a great project, but I don’t think he should be patting himself on the back saying how great he is, because he’s really treated the people of Townsville like mugs for two years. He’s let the people down, and he flew in last night, thought he was going to walk into getting a round of applause, and that’s not what he got.
[ends]