Subjects: Visit to Lyons; Labor’s cost of living, energy and homegrown inflation crisis; getting Australia Back on Track; ceasefire agreement; the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia; report of Bendigo Bank going woke on forestry industry financing; the Coalition’s plan to tackle knife crime and youth crime; AUKUS; Australia Day; Greens-Labor alliance a disaster for Tasmania; renewable energy.
E&OE.
SUSIE BOWER:
It’s wonderful to have Peter here. I always love Peter coming back into Lyons. We were in New Norfolk earlier this morning at Tynwald Park announcing some security cameras there for the community. Community safety, as we know, is one of our key issues – making sure that our communities are safe.
Now we’re here at Brighton, where I’ve been able to show Peter through the biggest IGA here in Tasmania – and the newest. We had an opportunity to talk to Drew, who is the manager here, around some of the cost of living pressures that small businesses are actually facing. I think this is a point that Peter and I, in particular, probably understand a little bit more than most. Peter has obviously run his own small business and I actually helped my parents run their small business for six years. So, it’s an issue very close to our hearts, understanding some of these problems that small businesses are actually facing. As we know, small business is not for the faint hearted and the Tasmanian economy – it’s an economic driver here in Tasmania for small business, and particularly in the seat of Lyons.
With that, I’ll hand over to the Honourable Peter Dutton.
PETER DUTTON:
Susie, thank you very much.
It’s great to be here with Susie and also with Wendy Askew as well.
I want to say thank you to Drew and all the staff that we met this morning. People who are working hard and working in a very important industry. They’re seeing customers every day who are changing their consumption patterns and the food that they’re buying. People are really feeling the cost of living pressures here in Tasmania and across the country. People have a real appreciation in their own budgets of the increase in energy costs, the increase in insurance costs, their mortgages have gone up, and every cost in their household budget has gone up over the last two and a half years under Anthony Albanese.
Of course, the same is true of the local IGA or the local farmer. Here in the IGA business, the price of energy has gone up 30 per cent over the course of the last three years. We know that for businesses here they’re paying more and more for, not just energy, but their insurance, which in some cases is even hard to source, let alone to find affordable insurance products. It’s not just the IGA, and it’s not just your budget, it’s also the farmer. So when you’re pulling the berries off the shelf in the supermarket, it’s also the cold storage that the farmer is paying and the distribution, the packaging, all of that inflationary pressure is why you are paying more for your groceries when you turn up to an IGA or to a supermarket to buy your groceries. That is as a direct result of the policies of the Albanese Government.
So, we want to get our country back on track. We want to support small businesses, we want to make sure that we can grow a strong economy, we want to support families and fight the cost of living pressures. We want to make sure that we can help Australians, not hurt them. That’s exactly what a Coalition government does. So, I’m very happy to be here today.
Just another point that I’d make today in relation to the agreement that’s been struck between Israel and Hamas. We should never forget the carnage that took place on October 7 when Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation, went in, slaughtered, raped, pillaged the kibbutzes, the music festival where young people were struck down in their prime. Some of these people will be released shortly. They’ve been in captivity and in the hands of these barbarians for about 14 months. It is horrific and we should never forget that. The fact that they’re still held hostage and haven’t been released by now is an absolute disgrace. So, we welcome the peace agreement that’s been arrived at, we hope that it can be sustained, and Australia should now seek to re-establish its important relationship with Israel, which has been damaged so significantly by the Albanese Government over the course of the last year or so.
I also want to make the point that as a result of Hamas’ actions, Jewish Australians are feeling unsafe in our country. The anti-Semitism, which is up by 700 per cent, is something that is completely and utterly unacceptable in our country and for which we should have zero tolerance. The fact that the Prime Minister wasn’t able to stand up and to stare down those people who have been involved in these dreadful protests is a very poor reflection on his weak leadership. So, there is a bit way for our country and we’ll deliver that after the next election.
I’m happy to take any questions.
QUESTION:
Talking about the cost of living pressures that farmers and the whole food chain is facing, what’s your government going to do to fix it if it gets elected later this year?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, as the Reserve Bank Governor has pointed out, inflation is what keeps interest rates higher for longer. The energy policy of the Government is what keeps the energy prices higher for longer, and therefore those energy costs and prices, the businesses just can’t absorb that. The local IGA can’t absorb a 30 per cent increase in their energy costs. When you go into an IGA or you go into a butcher shop, have a look at the amount of cold storage that they’ve got and the tens of thousands of dollars that must be spent each month or each quarter on the electricity bill. All of that is being passed on.
So, we need an energy policy which has downward pressure on prices. The Prime Minister promised a decrease of $275 in power prices. People’s prices have gone up by $1,000. So we need a good energy policy which we put forward. And you need to make sure that the reckless spending stops. At the moment, the Federal Government is spending money like a drunken sailor, and that’s what’s keeping upward pressure on inflation. So we will cut the government wasteful spending and we will put downward pressure on inflation, which will reduce not just interest rates, but the inflationary pressures as they are in our economy at the moment.
QUESTION:
Just on the ceasefire agreement, what do you think it’ll do in terms of improving social cohesion in Australia? Will it have an impact there?
PETER DUTTON:
I certainly hope it does have an impact on social cohesion in our country because I think it’s the most shocking thing I’ve seen in our country in my lifetime; the treatment of people of a particular religious faith or a particular heritage or background. It’s unimaginable that we could treat people of Indian heritage or Chinese heritage or Catholics or Protestants or atheists, Buddhists, in the way that Jewish Australians are being treated at the moment.
I think the Jewish community is completely and utterly bewildered at the lack of leadership that’s been provided by the Prime Minister and that has given rise to the anti-Semitism that we’ve seen in our country. I want to see it come to an end, and quickly, because the firebombing of synagogues, the targeting of Jewish women, of people who are involved in society, philanthropic work, it’s completely and utterly unacceptable and it’s not part, should not be part of an Australian culture.
QUESTION:
Should we push for a formal recognition of the state of Palestine?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, again, the Government, with its actions over the course of last year, has given hope to a terrorist organisation. We should not be giving hope to a listed terrorist organisation that somehow they can achieve a political win out of what was a barbaric terrorist attack. So everybody wants peace in the Middle East, of course we do, and we want to make sure that the remainder of the hostages are released if they’re still alive. Let’s wait to see what happens in relation to those commitments and whether they’re honoured before we start to talk about next steps.
QUESTION:
It emerged this week that Bendigo Bank knocked back financing for a company in Tasmania involved in native forest logging. Do you think companies like that ought to be making those kind of decisions?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, firstly, I’d applaud Eric Abetz for calling this bad behaviour out by the banks. There are a lot of Australians who would say that big banking executives on multi-million dollar pay packets, frankly, have less values and standing than people do in the forestry industry. So why are they backed? Let’s get serious, the banks are there to provide finance to creditworthy customers. If a business is legal and it has the ability to service the loan and it’s creditworthy, then the banks should not be discriminating on any other basis. I think this whole woke agenda and the approach of chief executives trying to please industry super funds and proxy voters and the rest of it has to come to an end. If there is a customer of Bendigo Bank who is an employee within the forestry industry, are they going to stop banking that customer? Do they want to stop taking the fees that are paid by that customer working in the forestry or the salmon industry?
The banks have a moral and social responsibility to consumers and they have a social licence which they need to honour. That social licence includes not discriminating against people who are involved in an absolutely essential and critical industry. If Labor had their way, the salmon industry, forestry would close down tomorrow and the Tasmanian economy would be bankrupt and tens of thousands of people would be out of work. If the banks want to subscribe to that sort of theory, they should be called out for it – and we will call them out for it.
QUESTION:
Coles, this week, has announced they’re stopping the sales of kitchen knives after that awful attack in Queensland. Do you support this? Do you think more needs to be done? What’s your response?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, you can understand why Coles have taken that decision because it was a horrific incident at Ipswich. For a 63 year old woman to go to work at a supermarket, and to be the subject of this attack, I mean, not only is it obviously a brutal incident that takes place right there and then, somebody like that will live with the psychological scars of that attack for the rest of their life.
We have done a lot of work with the Beasley Foundation and I’d encourage the Premiers across the country to look at the work of the Beasley family. We have committed ourselves as a Coalition in government to rolling out uniform knife laws. John Howard had the leadership and the strength of character to stand up when it counted for our country when it came to the response to Port Arthur and the response to the proliferation of guns within our society.
The modern weapon of choice, particularly for young gang members, is a bladed weapon; a knife, a machete, a meat cleaver, etc., and we have to get serious about this because the police need every tool to make sure that this stops, because innocent people, including women who are turning up to work at supermarkets, are the subject of these horrible, horrible incidents.
I was in Victoria this week speaking to an IGA worker there – a woman who’d been confronted with a machete. These incidents continue to become more and more prevalent and we need to do everything we can to take the knives out of the hands of these young gang members who have no business whatsoever in carrying knives into a shopping centre or into a playground or into a school. That’s why I think these uniform knife laws are something that the Government should have enforced by now.
QUESTION:
Do you think AUKUS will thrive under a Trump Administration?
PETER DUTTON:
I do think AUKUS will thrive under the Trump Administration. I’m very confident of that. I’ve worked now with four Administrations; the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration, obviously the Biden Administration, and this administration will, I think, do a lot of good for the relationship. I think there is an enormous opportunity for us to expand the work that we’ve done. AUKUS is essential for the safety of our country in a very uncertain century, and there is bipartisan support, there’s mutual understanding across the aisle, both here in Australia and in the United States, that this is to our mutual benefit. We will make sure that when we get into government, that that relationship will build and that AUKUS will be realised for our country.
QUESTION:
Members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community have said that your comments around citizenship ceremonies are stroking division, and aren’t about preserving tradition. Are you willing to listen to the concerns of Tasmanian Aboriginals or members of the community? And what will you do to support that community if you were to obtain government?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’m very happy to listen to Australians, as I do each week as I travel around the country, including Indigenous Australians, and I listened to the Australian public in relation to the Voice as well, when the public voted 60/40 against the Voice and sent a very clear message that they want practical support and want to see the best for Indigenous Australians, as we all do.
Part of our plan of getting Australia Back on Track is to provide the practical support to Indigenous Australians, and Jacinta Price has pointed this out as well. But Australia Day is a celebration of the greatest country in the world, and we should be proud to celebrate it. We can acknowledge the mistakes of the past and we can unite as one people.
There’s no comparable Western democracy that separates its country under separate flags. We have great respect for the Indigenous flag and great respect for the Torres Strait Islander flag, but we have one national flag and we should celebrate Australia Day. We should celebrate the fact that we have the incredible multicultural story in this country, which we don’t talk enough about. People who came here – particularly since the Second World War – who came here with nothing and worked here in Tasmania, worked across the country, to build a life for themselves. Their children and grandchildren are now doctors and people who are involved in every part of society, and that’s a celebration of Australia Day because millions of Australians became citizens on the 26th of January.
So, we can conduct Australia Day in a respectful way, we can do what every other country in the world does and celebrate the successes, the values. We are not going to unite and we’re not going to have reconciliation if we continue to treat people in different ways. We are all equal Australians, whether we’re Indigenous – and we’re incredibly proud of our Indigenous heritage – whether we came here as a citizen sworn in yesterday or whether we’ve been here for four or five generations, whatever it might be, every Australian is equal. Equal under the law, and we should celebrate in accordance with that.
I’m incredibly proud of this country, and I want every Australian to be taught at school the history of our country, the mistakes that have been made, the wonderful attributes of people who have come here, who have fought in uniform for our country. That’s what Australia Day is about. It’s a celebration of that.
I would encourage every Australian to celebrate Australia Day and make sure that we provide every support to Indigenous Australians in education, in outcomes around health, and other aspects of life that we all take for granted in capital cities. That’s the approach that I will take as Prime Minister.
QUESTION:
Some members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community did vote ‘No’ in the Voice Referendum. What are you going to do to support them, moving forward?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I just addressed that.
QUESTION:
The Prime Minister announced a reshuffle this morning, when are you going to announce yours?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll have a look shortly at when we’ll make the announcement, but obviously, as I’ve said before, I’ve got many people to choose from on the backbench and on the frontbench, people of great talent, and we’ll make that announcement in due course.
I mean, it’s interesting to note in the Prime Minister’s reshuffle, that it’s essentially a shuffling of chairs on the deck of the Titanic. This is a Government that is losing its way and has lost its way over the course of the last two and a half years.
The Prime Minister can announce a new reshuffle, but this is an old Government. It feels like this is a fourth or fifth term of the Government, it’s actually the first term, and Australians have gone backwards every day under this Albanese Government, and there is no light ahead.
If we have a Bandt-Albanese Government after the election, you can forget about salmon farming in Tasmania, you can forget about the forestry industry here in Tasmania. I want to lead a Government which will stand up for Tasmanians, for jobs here in Tasmania, for investment in Tasmania, and for a bright future. We are the only Party going into the election who has given a clear and unambiguous commitment to the salmon industry, and the Prime Minister, if he’s in minority government with Adam Bandt and the Greens, I promise you will drop Tasmania and the salmon industry like a hot potato.
QUESTION:
So just on salmon farming, yesterday Mr Albanese said that the Macquarie Harbour issue highlights the need to reform environmental laws. Do you agree that the EPBC Act should be changed so that agricultural industries or aquaculture industries in this case don’t need to shut down during reviews by Federal Environment Ministers?
PETER DUTTON:
Oh week, look, if only the Prime Minister was able to do something about this? I mean, he’s the Prime Minister of the country and he’s been the Prime Minister for three years! If there was a problem, why hasn’t he fixed it? The Parliament goes back in February – only a couple of weeks time, we will support a bill, and in fact, we demand of the Prime Minister that a bill should be presented to the Parliament to protect the salmon industry here in Tasmania. But the Prime Minister won’t do that because he’s too weak, because he’s chasing Green votes in inner city Sydney and Melbourne, and that’s why he’s sacrificing the jobs here in Tasmania.
The Prime Minister had a choice to make here. He could have prioritised the jobs and the sector here in Tasmania. He chose people who he wants to steal from the Greens in Adam Bandt’s seat, and you see the stories in the Financial Review and elsewhere today about the Prime Minister’s priority for this election: that is for Greens voters. That’s his priority and he’s forgotten about people in the suburbs, which is why families, working class families are abandoning Labor and coming to the Coalition because they know that the modern Labor Party is a Party of inner city trendies. It’s not the Party of the worker. The Liberal Party is the Party of the modern worker. We will make sure that our policies help Australians get their own budgets back on track and help them support their families and their small businesses.
QUESTION:
The Liberal Government here supports some wind farms; both the Robbins Island wind farm – a billion dollar wind farm in the State’s northwest – and also offshore wind farms in Bass Strait. Would a Federal Coalition Government support those wind farms?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ve been clear that we support renewables, and that’s part of our plan. We support renewables, but they need to be underpinned by reliable power. The view that the batteries last for more than four hours or five hours – that’s not the science. You can’t run a hospital on part time power, you can’t run the cold rooms here at the local IGA off sun and wind. You need an underpinning of that power.
Now, our judgement is – like the 19 of the top 20 economies around the world – that nuclear should underpin that renewable power, which is what we’ve done. We’ve identified those seven sites of the coal fired power stations as they come to an end of life, to provide that 24/7 baseload power. So we’re very strongly supportive of the Tasmanian Government’s initiatives in relation to the renewables projects and we’ve been clear about that, but nobody can pretend, as Mr Albanese and Mr Bowen are doing at the moment, that the lights can stay on in Victoria, for example on part time power. When people get the next power bill, understand that it’s gone through the roof again and you’re paying 30 per cent more than you were three years ago under the Albanese Government for your electricity bill. Why? Because of their renewables only policy. That’s why there is a much better way and that’s why we’ll get our country Back on Track after the next election.
Thank you very much.
[ends]