Speaker 1: Hi, my Boris and this is straight Talk. Peter Dutton.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to straight Talk. Mate.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you. Mark.
Speaker 1: Thank you been a bit hectic.
Speaker 2: It's been a bit on there's no sleep at the moment,
Speaker 2: but we're just going twenty four to seven until Poles
Speaker 2: closed on Saturday night.
Speaker 3: Did you ever have any concept of how I use
Speaker 3: it hectic? How sort of crazy this is like running
Speaker 3: for you know, the leader of the party as opposed
Speaker 3: to just your normal seat.
Speaker 1: Do you have any sense for it?
Speaker 2: Look, I've been around. I've served four Prime ministers, so
Speaker 2: I've seen different campaigns, and I've been in the leadership
Speaker 2: group and watched it pretty you know, sort of ringside
Speaker 2: for a long time. But until you're in the ring
Speaker 2: and you're just going round after around it, it can
Speaker 2: be exhausting. But it's also exhilarating, mate. I mean, we've
Speaker 2: met some just amazing people. We're up in towns full
Speaker 2: the other day on Anzac Day meeting with young diggers
Speaker 2: up there in the RSL and you know what, selfie's
Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff, But you're standing there thinking,
Speaker 2: you know what this young blow twenty one, twenty two
Speaker 2: years of age has such a love for our country
Speaker 2: that he's prepared to trade his life to keep my kids,
Speaker 2: my grandkids safe in our country. And all of that
Speaker 2: provides you, I think, just with fuel and the tank
Speaker 2: to think, you know what, this is worth fighting for
Speaker 2: and we're in a great country and I need to
Speaker 2: step up and make sure we protect our country and
Speaker 2: get it back on track.
Speaker 1: You got the fight still in you?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent? Yeah, yeah, I never never give in,
Speaker 2: and I've always had that as my maximum over life,
Speaker 2: to make sure that you just double down and you
Speaker 2: stand up for what you believe in, and there's no
Speaker 2: sitting on the fence. You need to tell people and
Speaker 2: be clear about what your values are, what you stand for,
Speaker 2: and if you try and please everyone in this job,
Speaker 2: you end up, I think, standing for nothing. And there
Speaker 2: are good and bad people on both sides of politics,
Speaker 2: but the worst ones of those that get to the
Speaker 2: end of their career and nobody can tell you what
Speaker 2: they stood for or what they believed in. What's the
Speaker 2: point of public service if you can't stand up for
Speaker 2: the values that you really strongly believe in, and what
Speaker 2: are w'here to?
Speaker 1: Anything is surprised.
Speaker 2: Just the negative campaigns and the lies that have come
Speaker 2: from Labor in this campaign. As I said, I've been
Speaker 2: in Parliament almost twenty five years and the you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, politicians can be accused of telling FIBs or
Speaker 2: lies or whatever, but I've never seen a leader look
Speaker 2: down the barrel of the camera like this one and
Speaker 2: he just lies, just flat out tells people black is white,
Speaker 2: and even when he's pulled up on it, he dances around.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I've seen different Labor and Liberal leaders
Speaker 2: get caught out, and most of them respect the truth
Speaker 2: and adhere to that, but this is a different scenario.
Speaker 2: So I've been really surprised by the depth of the lies.
Speaker 2: And I think though, I've got an incredible faith in
Speaker 2: the Australian people, and I think over the last four
Speaker 2: or five days, people are starting to say, actually, you
Speaker 2: know what, that doesn't add up what he's saying, and
Speaker 2: I know that not to be true what I just
Speaker 2: heard him say. And we've seen it because we've had
Speaker 2: four debates now and people have done their research, and
Speaker 2: I think as we get closer to the election, momentum
Speaker 2: is starting to swing back towards the Liberal Party and
Speaker 2: I think that will by six PM on Saturday Night.
Speaker 2: See is in a very strong position in which I
Speaker 2: think we can win.
Speaker 1: This is funny.
Speaker 3: I've been through a lot of elections too, and not
Speaker 3: in the same capacity as you, but as a voter,
Speaker 3: and I don't think I've ever heard anybody be called
Speaker 3: a lie I don't think people have challenged a proposition
Speaker 3: that you know, opposing people have put up. But I
Speaker 3: don't really ever.
Speaker 1: Remember hearing anyone call anyone a liar.
Speaker 3: And actually, one of the things that has come out
Speaker 3: of this whole campaign from both sides is that I've
Speaker 3: actually heard you say that the Prime Minister is weak,
Speaker 3: yet he's somehow surged ahead of you guys in the
Speaker 3: polls so called post talk about that at a moment,
Speaker 3: but it looks as though at least the media of
Speaker 3: putting him as a winner.
Speaker 1: I can't reconcile that stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean a couple of points. One is, you
Speaker 2: don't lead the left of the Labor Party for twenty
Speaker 2: years if you don't have some mungrel in you, so
Speaker 2: there's no question about that. But weak in the sense
Speaker 2: that he hasn't been able to stand up, for example,
Speaker 2: to Kevin Rudd, who wanted demanded to go to the
Speaker 2: United States as our ambassador and has been a failure.
Speaker 2: Really weak in the sense that he wasn't prepared to
Speaker 2: explain the detail of the Voice to the Australian people,
Speaker 2: even though it was promised, but he never had any
Speaker 2: intention of doing that. Weak in the sense that they've
Speaker 2: made decisions to spend a lot of money when they
Speaker 2: should have been taking the foot off the accelerator so
Speaker 2: that interest rates didn't stay as high as they have.
Speaker 2: They've gone up on twelve occasions, they've only come back
Speaker 2: once and that's only by point two five of one percent.
Speaker 2: And weak in the sense that he hasn't been able
Speaker 2: to stand up and make the decision to invest into
Speaker 2: keeping us safe as a community, and people feel less
Speaker 2: safe in their communities. And I think we're less safe
Speaker 2: as a country because the government's taken money out of
Speaker 2: defense as well in a very uncertain period. So I
Speaker 2: think there's that element to it if you step back though,
Speaker 2: as as best I can, and i'm as assay sort
Speaker 2: of in the arena. But what they've done is they
Speaker 2: have just plastered a negative campaign against us over the
Speaker 2: course of the last few weeks. Why would they do that?
Speaker 2: Their campaign can't be look vote for labor at this
Speaker 2: election because you're paying three hundred bucks a month less
Speaker 2: for your groceries, you're paying two hundred dollars less a
Speaker 2: month for your electricity bill, or two hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: five dollars less, or you're paying one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: dollars less a month for your insurance premiums. Gas has
Speaker 2: gone up by thirty four percent, electricity is up by
Speaker 2: thirty two percent, groceries up by thirty percent, and people
Speaker 2: know in their own budgets that they're struggling to keep
Speaker 2: their heads above water. So they had to go negative
Speaker 2: because they can't talk the achievements of the last three
Speaker 2: years and how people are better off. Thirty thousand small
Speaker 2: businesses have gone broke. So that's why I think we've
Speaker 2: seen the level of negativity, the depth of that negativity,
Speaker 2: and the labor lies. It probably just talks about Medicare.
Speaker 2: Block building rates are down by eleven percent under his watch.
Speaker 2: People are paying forty three dollars out of pocket to
Speaker 2: go and see a GP. In some cases they're canceling
Speaker 2: or not making appointments to go to see a doctor
Speaker 2: because they haven't got the forty three bucks to fork
Speaker 2: out out of their budget for a doctor's visit, and
Speaker 2: you know, I mean that's if you listen to their campaign,
Speaker 2: they've been the greatest friend of medicare ever. It's just
Speaker 2: not the reality.
Speaker 3: But then, how does he is it a reflection on
Speaker 3: the voting population or how is it that he's able
Speaker 3: then to swap over the national poles which is different
Speaker 3: to seat by seat pole, but the national poles that
Speaker 3: the media keep trotting out. How's he been able to
Speaker 3: swap it over from the coalition being ahead, let's say
Speaker 3: beginning of January late last year, to accordingly according to
Speaker 3: the current.
Speaker 1: Position being looking as though that you're behind. Is he
Speaker 1: just a good politicians?
Speaker 2: I think he's a tricky politician. I think he's demonstrated that.
Speaker 2: And the negative campaign has had an impact. I do
Speaker 2: think though over the last four or five days, and
Speaker 2: you can see this in the internal track polling, it
Speaker 2: is starting to shift and people are starting to see
Speaker 2: through the negative campaign. The campaign is starting to and
Speaker 2: momentum starting to come back. We've seen it on the
Speaker 2: pre pole as well. Talking to marginal seat members and
Speaker 2: candidates in our key seats. There's a really positive sentiment
Speaker 2: on pre polling since it's opened now, that'll be some
Speaker 2: Liberal Party voters coming out early, particularly older Australians, older
Speaker 2: Astralans who are really worried about unrealized capital gains tax,
Speaker 2: They're worried about where the economy is going. They're worried
Speaker 2: that kids and grandkids can't get housing. So there'll be
Speaker 2: that element to the voter sentiment at the moment. But
Speaker 2: there are still you know, a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are undersided, a lot of people who don't take much
Speaker 2: interest in politics at all, will start to switch on
Speaker 2: over the next few days. And I think there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people who have listened to the Labor
Speaker 2: Party pitch and may have been taken first up by it,
Speaker 2: but now realize, hang on it, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: Medicare is not going to see a doctor, is not
Speaker 2: cheaper than it was a few years ago. And am
Speaker 2: I better off today than I was three years ago? Well,
Speaker 2: for a lot of families know, And it's not just
Speaker 2: a referendum. This election is not just a referendum on
Speaker 2: the campaign of the last few weeks and who's held
Speaker 2: more babies and you know, who's visited more seats or
Speaker 2: done more flights or anything like that. This is a
Speaker 2: referendum on the last three years, and I don't think
Speaker 2: people forget that. And it's also about, well, are you
Speaker 2: better off in three years time having re elected a
Speaker 2: labor Green's government, or are you better off with labor
Speaker 2: being out of power and the Liberals managing the economy
Speaker 2: effectively again and keeping us safe and realizing the dream
Speaker 2: of home ownership again.
Speaker 3: So I received a text last night, interesting enough and
Speaker 3: unsolicited and more random than anything from Jeff Wilson.
Speaker 1: And you're going to.
Speaker 2: Say, Clive Palmer for a second.
Speaker 3: I've got a few of those says. I haven't had
Speaker 3: a few of those trumble to Patriot once now. But
Speaker 3: I received this text from Jeff Wilson. Jeff Wilson runs
Speaker 3: a fund and he's a very successful guy here in Sydney.
Speaker 3: And he sent me a copy of a paper about
Speaker 3: unrealized gains capital gains in super funds and the proposed
Speaker 3: tax on those gains.
Speaker 1: And I thought, wow, that's knowing I was.
Speaker 3: Seeing you today, that is a really important point I
Speaker 3: need to put to you.
Speaker 1: And I said to Jeff, I would put it to you.
Speaker 3: He's a good friend of mineus that have put to you,
Speaker 3: and he's actually prepared a white paper on it, or
Speaker 3: his organization prepared white paper on it, which I might
Speaker 3: actually send over to you. But where everyone's forgotten about this,
Speaker 3: you know, I think the amount is three million dollars
Speaker 3: if you have in your super fun because you've worked
Speaker 3: hard and you've been out to contribute over a million years,
Speaker 3: you know, enough money to get over three million dollars
Speaker 3: worth of assets, but you haven't sold them.
Speaker 1: They just value did that.
Speaker 3: Under the proposal by the Labor Party, which is what
Speaker 3: Jeff was bringing to my attention last night again, was
Speaker 3: that you'd be paying tax on that. And I don't
Speaker 3: know how you paid tax on an unrealized game. I
Speaker 3: don't we get the money from him to pay tax
Speaker 3: on something as unrealized because you don't have the cash
Speaker 3: because you haven't realized the game. Can what's the position
Speaker 3: of the Liberal Party of the coalition on this stuff?
Speaker 2: So, Mike, we opposed it straight away when the government
Speaker 2: proposed it, and they've tried now, I think, to sort
Speaker 2: of push the boundaries on this. They've done research on
Speaker 2: abolition of negative gearing and cutting out the discount on
Speaker 2: capital gains, tax on the sale of an asset held
Speaker 2: for longer than twelve months as well. So I think
Speaker 2: there is a broader issue here of credibility. So the
Speaker 2: prime went to the last election saying no changes to
Speaker 2: super tax, and of course this change then came in,
Speaker 2: and I equate it to you know, if you're a
Speaker 2: way journal, if you're a tradee or you working for
Speaker 2: a boss, it's like charging you tax, like you're having
Speaker 2: to pay the tax office the tax before you get
Speaker 2: paid your wage for that week. And if you're in
Speaker 2: a superfund and you've got a farm in that super fund,
Speaker 2: which many rural families do, or if you're a family
Speaker 2: maybe second third generation family with a block of shops
Speaker 2: or a couple of units, or if you've got shares
Speaker 2: that have just done really well, you've picked a couple
Speaker 2: of cracking shares that have taken off. For that twelve
Speaker 2: month period, you might have seen an increase in value
Speaker 2: in the block of flats or in the price of
Speaker 2: your shares, you haven't realized the gain. So if the
Speaker 2: price has gone from a all are up to five dollars,
Speaker 2: you're taxed on that capital gain, and the next twelve months,
Speaker 2: the shares might come back. There might be a crash.
Speaker 2: The valuation that you've had to pay for again for
Speaker 2: the building that you've got in your superfund might show
Speaker 2: that prices have come off, or perhaps you've got vacancies
Speaker 2: and the yield's gone down in relation to the shops
Speaker 2: that you've got to. It could be anything, right. You
Speaker 2: could have a development application that's approved. You've sunk a
Speaker 2: lot of money into getting the development application and it
Speaker 2: increases the price of the block of land that you're
Speaker 2: holding or whatever it is. You're going to pay tax
Speaker 2: under Labour's model, and it raises a few billion dollars,
Speaker 2: so they know that it's really going to hurt. And
Speaker 2: if you're in a superfund and you haven't got much
Speaker 2: cash in the super fund, if you are a farmer,
Speaker 2: for example, and you've got limits as to how much
Speaker 2: money you can put on depending on how old you
Speaker 2: are as to how much money you can put into
Speaker 2: that fund, you might be forced into a position where
Speaker 2: you've got to sell the asset to pay the tax bill.
Speaker 2: And it just it's I just think it's unjust and
Speaker 2: it's unfair and it's also nonsense. Well, it's absolutely it is,
Speaker 2: but it captures like people might say, now, oh, you
Speaker 2: know three million bucks and you're super fund if only,
Speaker 2: but this will capture with inflation people over the coming years.
Speaker 2: It's not not index, so the three million doesn't go
Speaker 2: up each year, so this will capture more and more
Speaker 2: tax payers each year. And as I say, if you're
Speaker 2: if you've inherited some money and you've put it into
Speaker 2: your super or you've just listened to the financial advisors
Speaker 2: who have said, okay, pile as much money as you
Speaker 2: can into super because it's a safe asset class. You're
Speaker 2: you're now going to come within scope over the course
Speaker 2: of the next few years. Like we've fought really hard
Speaker 2: against this, Labor and the Green strongly support it. And
Speaker 2: again I think it gives a window into Labour's thinking.
Speaker 2: It's it's that we can take money away from you
Speaker 2: because we think you've done too well. And that's sort
Speaker 2: of the socialism that's at operation. That's at the heart
Speaker 2: of the operation of Labor and Green's parties. That it's
Speaker 2: well three distribution. And Jeff Wilson, who I know well
Speaker 2: also I'm in one of the smartest financial minds in
Speaker 2: the country. He's horrified by all of this, and most
Speaker 2: financial advisors are poor keating, poor keeting would be he
Speaker 2: wouldn't he wouldn't recognize it in terms of what the
Speaker 2: Labor Party's proposing here. And it provides a disincentive as well,
Speaker 2: because a lot of financial advisors will be saying to
Speaker 2: younger people, look, actually I wouldn't be putting that much
Speaker 2: money into supernow because it's just risky. We don't know
Speaker 2: whether the three million is going to be brought down.
Speaker 2: If Labor needs to create more tax and more revenue,
Speaker 2: maybe they'll drop the three million down to two million
Speaker 2: dollars and you'll be captured by that. So the whole
Speaker 2: idea of that Super is that it's a safe place
Speaker 2: to invest and it's going to provide for your retirement.
Speaker 2: But if you take away that certainty, younger people are
Speaker 2: just going to say, well, actually, no, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to tip money into Super. And you know, we sold
Speaker 2: you know, a car or a boat instead of spending
Speaker 2: that money, we're going to dump it into Super. Those
Speaker 2: people stopped doing that, and I think that's you know,
Speaker 2: I think that that is a really bad outcome. Not
Speaker 2: enough people are talking about it, and as I say
Speaker 2: it also then says, well, if Anthony Albanezi told you
Speaker 2: before the last election that there were no not going
Speaker 2: to be any tax changes around super he's saying the
Speaker 2: same thing now around the family home. But we know
Speaker 2: that they've done the work on what negative gearing abolition
Speaker 2: looks like and what the abolition of the CGT fifty
Speaker 2: percent discount looks like as well, So that you know,
Speaker 2: I think gives a window into the thinking of the
Speaker 2: Labor Party and that they'll always want a tax more
Speaker 2: because I always want to spend more. But that's what
Speaker 2: puts interest rates up as well.
Speaker 3: I hope you don't mind if I just I don't
Speaker 3: want to labor this this point, but it's quite important
Speaker 3: to someone like me. I think about the kids, the
Speaker 3: twenty year old kids, let's call them, even the fifteen
Speaker 3: year old kids, but maybe they're not voting. But let's
Speaker 3: say your grandkids or my grandkids in my case, or
Speaker 3: we could be thinking about young people who are just
Speaker 3: turning twenty getting the first job they're going to work
Speaker 3: for forty five years, and they're going to be putting
Speaker 3: the money into this great thing that look, you know,
Speaker 3: let's give it a keyping a great thing that the
Speaker 3: Keyting came up with in the nineties, a great thing,
Speaker 3: and it's about building up enough wealth so you can
Speaker 3: retire comfortably, because every Australian works their butt off and
Speaker 3: they deserve to retire comfortably. And the whole regime about
Speaker 3: this is having concessionary concessional tax rates on your superfund
Speaker 3: and the money the super fund made. That's the whole premise.
Speaker 3: A kid who's twenty in forty five years time will
Speaker 3: probably will have to have more than three million dollars
Speaker 3: worth assays it's be.
Speaker 1: Able to live comfortably, no doubt about that.
Speaker 3: And so that person right now want to get their
Speaker 3: act together and think about what they're going to do,
Speaker 3: because if this goes through, this is a next extential
Speaker 3: threat to what was originally designed by Jim Chalmers's greatest
Speaker 3: person in his life, Paul Keating. And I just can't
Speaker 3: believe that they're actually even talking about it or considering it.
Speaker 3: Is this a real risk of getting a pass by
Speaker 3: it through Parliament?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and again it wasn't. Nothing was mentioned about
Speaker 2: it before the election. It's one of the key broken
Speaker 2: promises And to your point too, which I think is
Speaker 2: really well made, that the reason that we've got a
Speaker 2: concessional taxation arrangement that is people paying low attacks in
Speaker 2: SUPER when the money's compounding and you're earning and building
Speaker 2: that nest eck up is because it's your money ultimately,
Speaker 2: Whilst the boss takes it out before you see it
Speaker 2: and sends it off to your super fund, it's your
Speaker 2: money and you can't access it. So the price that
Speaker 2: we as a government are saying to you for putting
Speaker 2: that money aside not being able to use it to
Speaker 2: buy a boat or go on a holiday or whatever
Speaker 2: it might be, is that we're going to tax you
Speaker 2: at a lower rate because we want you to be
Speaker 2: self sufficient in retirement because we've got an aging population,
Speaker 2: more people on pensions, and your point is spot on,
Speaker 2: where you've worked your guts out your whole life. We
Speaker 2: want you to be able to enjoy your retirement and
Speaker 2: SUPER is part of the way in which you're going
Speaker 2: to be able to do that. But the government just
Speaker 2: up ends all of that logic and thinking that keeping
Speaker 2: first had in mind, and it's just a tax grab.
Speaker 2: And it's even worse than that because you're saying to somebody, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to have to pay a valuer during the
Speaker 2: course of every financial year to work out whether the
Speaker 2: asset's gone up or down during the course of that year.
Speaker 3: Then the cost of valuers for real estate, they charge
Speaker 3: a percentage of the valuation, well on.
Speaker 2: Thousands and thousands of dollars. So the values will be
Speaker 2: happy because they're going to be paid to do these
Speaker 2: desktop audits or whatever. I don't know the level of detail.
Speaker 2: The government hasn't released how much money you'd have to
Speaker 2: spend in an average super fun to comply with the
Speaker 2: new change. And there are as I say, like that
Speaker 2: you get fluctuations in different assets that you've got in
Speaker 2: your superannuation, whether it's shares or whether it's real property
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be. So I think there's a
Speaker 2: real problem here, and I think it shows the difference
Speaker 2: between the two parties. The Liberal Party will always be
Speaker 2: better economic managers because most of us come from a
Speaker 2: business background. Most of us know how to manage money.
Speaker 2: We've started businesses, we've worked really closely in my case
Speaker 2: with with Peter Costello and with John Howard. And part
Speaker 2: of the reason that the economy suffering at the moment
Speaker 2: is because there are now four budgets where the government
Speaker 2: has made decisions that have just made life much harder,
Speaker 2: and people feel that in their own household budgets.
Speaker 1: When we talk about that tax on.
Speaker 3: Assets of a super inneration fund, I feel as I'm
Speaker 3: playing a game of Monopoly and i just landed on
Speaker 3: the chance square and I've left it up my chance
Speaker 3: card and it says pay tax. It's like a prosperity taxes.
Speaker 3: It's like I've been prosperous for the twelve months as
Speaker 3: a result of the advice that my advisor has given
Speaker 3: me as to what I should be buying.
Speaker 1: Investing has done well as a result of that prosperity.
Speaker 3: You got to pay tax. It doesn't mean I made
Speaker 3: the money. I didn't earn the dough. It's not too
Speaker 3: different what Dan Andrews put into Victoria for farmers who
Speaker 3: have had their land rezoned, where the land's gone from
Speaker 3: being a farm worth one price to being resigned for
Speaker 3: housing become much more valuable, and Dan Andrews went and
Speaker 3: taxed them before they sold on. These poor bloody farmers
Speaker 3: have been forced to sell their property to pay the tax.
Speaker 2: That's right. They haven't got the cash, the lazy cash
Speaker 2: sitting around to pay the uplift tax like that. It's
Speaker 2: and I just I mean, this is a really interesting
Speaker 2: coint as well, because if Labour's logic is that that
Speaker 2: can apply within superinnuation, well why not outside of super Yeah,
Speaker 2: so if you're scar yeah, it's really scary, but it
Speaker 2: would generate them a lot of money. People would pay
Speaker 2: a lot of tax. And again I sort of bring
Speaker 2: it back to the basic point that if you're a
Speaker 2: trading and you're getting you know, however much a week,
Speaker 2: a thousand bucks a week, you're being asked to pay
Speaker 2: the taxman the turn of dollars a week before you
Speaker 2: get the thousand, you know, or before you get the
Speaker 2: eight hundred. And it's wrong in principle, and it discourages
Speaker 2: investment and it undermines the certainty about investing in this country.
Speaker 2: And that is that's exactly what we've seen in Victoria
Speaker 2: where businesses have just pulled money out. They've gone to
Speaker 2: Adelaide or they've gone to Sydney or Brisbane and they're
Speaker 2: employing workers there. And the Labor Party's devastated the Victorian
Speaker 2: economy and you know a lot of Victorians are very
Speaker 2: angry about it.
Speaker 1: Rightly, so it's very interesting.
Speaker 3: I have a lot, I got quite a lot of
Speaker 3: branches down in Brisbane, Victoria, and I used to go
Speaker 3: down there and they'd always say to me, you know,
Speaker 3: Dan Andrews is Dan Andrews that, And then I say,
Speaker 3: but how come we keeps getting in? But now, what's
Speaker 3: interesting that the mood has completely swung against Dan Andrews
Speaker 3: and his successes in Victoria in terms of labor Party,
Speaker 3: like completely swa yes, yeah, I think that's right. And
Speaker 3: because people eventually worked out that Andrews was just running
Speaker 3: the joint into the ground and he was a big spender,
Speaker 3: like a massive spender. And now he's turned the place
Speaker 3: into it a tax haven for government. And what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is not tax over for consumers, but
Speaker 3: government there, like the property market in Victoria's suffered because
Speaker 3: if you own an investment, you pay land tax on
Speaker 3: the first fifty after the first fifty thousand dollars of valuation,
Speaker 3: whereas New South Wales as something like one point one
Speaker 3: five or something like that, one point one five million,
Speaker 3: and people are house prices going down. A real estate
Speaker 3: investment down there is at an all time low as
Speaker 3: a result of that.
Speaker 1: Let's put my houses.
Speaker 3: That means a collecting less stamp duty and they're getting
Speaker 3: into a bigger hole, and the hole is getting deeper
Speaker 3: and deep and deeper.
Speaker 1: Do you see that?
Speaker 3: Is that a mentality? Is that a Labor Party mentality?
Speaker 3: It eventually gets them.
Speaker 2: It is it's a jealousy thing. And it's if you
Speaker 2: have a look back through the history of this country
Speaker 2: where there's only so much tax that people who work
Speaker 2: hard can pay, and you get to a tipping point
Speaker 2: where they say, you know what, I'm just withdrawing my
Speaker 2: effort and I'm not going to build that house or
Speaker 2: I'm not going to build that block of units. And
Speaker 2: it's almost what's happened in the construction sector with the
Speaker 2: involvement of the CFM. I mean, the CFMA has donated
Speaker 2: about twelve million dollars to the Labor Party since Anthony
Speaker 2: Alberanezi became leader, and so they've let the CFM you
Speaker 2: just run right. In the building sector, productivity is down
Speaker 2: to about two and a half days a week, which
Speaker 2: means it takes twice as long and twice the cost
Speaker 2: to build an apartment block. And in Victoria, all of
Speaker 2: that capital is being withdrawn and moved to other states,
Speaker 2: to New South Wales for example, as you point out,
Speaker 2: and at a time when we should be seeing an
Speaker 2: encouragement to invest into say housing, when we need more
Speaker 2: houses coming online, people are just saying, well, the taxes
Speaker 2: are too great, and I'm not being I'm just not
Speaker 2: going to be this sort of soft target any longer.
Speaker 2: And my point before about if it's logical for Jim
Speaker 2: Chalmers and Anthony Open easy to tax you in that
Speaker 2: way in superinnuation, why not in your other investments, and
Speaker 2: why not on your house. If your house is worth
Speaker 2: more than you know, a million dollars and my house
Speaker 2: is only worth five hundred thousand dollars, then you know,
Speaker 2: the logic is that you should pay tax so that
Speaker 2: I can be subsidized in another way. I mean, that
Speaker 2: is just socialism. It's and it's withdrawing the encouragement, the
Speaker 2: incentive for entrepreneurialism and for people to invest and grow
Speaker 2: their businesses. And and that ultimately means that less tax
Speaker 2: is paid, more public servants, you know, become employed. And
Speaker 2: a lot of that's happened over the last few years,
Speaker 2: particularly in Victoria.
Speaker 3: So someone else raised another interesting point with me. Well
Speaker 3: known economy, so I won't drag him into the conversation,
Speaker 3: but he raises his point with me. If you look
Speaker 3: at the the credit rating of New South Wales compet
Speaker 3: to Victoria Victoria, Victorians have to pay a higher regist
Speaker 3: rate on money that Victoria and government borrows relative to
Speaker 3: what we have to do here in New South Wales
Speaker 3: because the credit rating New South Wales is higher than
Speaker 3: the credit rating Victoria. And I see today that stand
Speaker 3: and Pause are concerned about the long series from now on,
Speaker 3: the long series of deficits we're going to have, which
Speaker 3: means have I either got to raise the money in
Speaker 3: the markets, go and borrow money as a country, and
Speaker 3: we keep hearing this number of a trillion or a
Speaker 3: trillion plus in debt and either that or we've got
Speaker 3: a tax more or both in order to fund the deficit.
Speaker 3: Stand Pause are a pretty tough organization. They don't muck
Speaker 3: around and once you get a downgrade from them, it's
Speaker 3: very hard to get regrader back up. In Australia as
Speaker 3: a country, not stay by state, but as a country
Speaker 3: has enjoy a triple A rating for a long long time,
Speaker 3: which is a rare thing. Like lot many countries in
Speaker 3: the world have this, which means we pay the lowest
Speaker 3: as a country when we borrow, we pay the lowest
Speaker 3: possible interest rate, which is great, which I means, you
Speaker 3: know more, we feel more encouraged that we can borrow
Speaker 3: more money. But if we keep borrow money, STANDPOD is
Speaker 3: going to get nervous because investors will sue them. That's
Speaker 3: what happened during the GFC if they don't properly rate
Speaker 3: a country. In other words, they think you're spending too much.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to ask you this. I know you're
Speaker 3: not the treasurer, but doesn't matter. You're the leader of
Speaker 3: the party.
Speaker 1: And I know you understand economics.
Speaker 3: What is the danger of running deficits year in year
Speaker 3: out for a ten year period, having to tap the
Speaker 3: markets all the time, when already we have an example
Speaker 3: of what's happening in Victoria.
Speaker 1: Victoria, we have that example.
Speaker 3: But when already the stand and poor rating Agency, the
Speaker 3: Global Rating Agency, is already starting to think of this.
Speaker 1: What's the danger of that?
Speaker 3: And what will what will you, as your elader of
Speaker 3: your party do to try and manage this?
Speaker 2: Well mark that the risk compounds each year, as you
Speaker 2: point out, because you've got a thirty billion dollar deficit
Speaker 2: one year, and add that on top of the debt
Speaker 2: that you've already got. So it goes, you know, from
Speaker 2: a trillion dollars up and this government projects it will
Speaker 2: go to one point two trillions. So they have deficits
Speaker 2: in every year that they forecast, and it's like having
Speaker 2: your credit card maxed out each month and pretending that
Speaker 2: if you get sick or you lose your job, or
Speaker 2: you need to replace the fridge it's broken down unexpectedly,
Speaker 2: that you're going to be able to do that. At
Speaker 2: some stage, you can't do it. And your point is
Speaker 2: exactly right in terms of standard and poor now in
Speaker 2: terms of what they've said, so they're basically firing shot
Speaker 2: across the bout to say, look, we think, you know,
Speaker 2: we think labor government's spending a lot of money. They
Speaker 2: talked about off budget funds, So these are all green
Speaker 2: energy funds that they're continuing to fund in the tens
Speaker 2: of billions.
Speaker 1: Of dollars which do not appear in the budget.
Speaker 2: That's right, So they're off budget and they're still though
Speaker 2: taken into account in terms of our credit worthiness. So
Speaker 2: the point is that Australia becomes much riskier and the
Speaker 2: price you pay for those borrowings, as you point out,
Speaker 2: goes higher, and it becomes this vicious cycle, and as
Speaker 2: your credit rating deteriorates, you're paying more and more for
Speaker 2: the bank. No different than if a person with a
Speaker 2: bad credit rating goes to borrow money from the bank,
Speaker 2: as opposed to someone who's got an impeccable credit rating.
Speaker 2: You'll pay different interest rates because the risk is higher
Speaker 2: if you've got a bad track record. And this also
Speaker 2: happened with the Reserve Bank governor, who's independent from the government,
Speaker 2: who has been warning the government over the last few years. Look,
Speaker 2: if you keep spending money like you are, and this
Speaker 2: is the biggest spending government in the last forty years,
Speaker 2: you're going to end up with higher interest rates. Well
Speaker 2: guess what they've gone up twelve occasions since the government's
Speaker 2: been elected. Come back by quarter, as we said before,
Speaker 2: and I think people thought, oh, well, you know, if
Speaker 2: it's come back by point two five, there'll be another
Speaker 2: twenty five points next month and another fifty points of
Speaker 2: the month after. That hasn't happened because now guarantee, well,
Speaker 2: well there's not And as we know, with what we're
Speaker 2: seeing internationally at the moment, the uncertainty in Europe and
Speaker 2: in the Middle East and the tariff debate, the talk
Speaker 2: of a global recession is real and if that happens,
Speaker 2: we don't have any money in the bank to pay
Speaker 2: for what we need to pay for to get through
Speaker 2: that rainy day. One of the things that we had
Speaker 2: going for is going into COVID, was that we'd got
Speaker 2: the budget back into balance after years and years of
Speaker 2: labor deficits after Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and it
Speaker 2: took us a number of years, and it's exactly history
Speaker 2: repeating itself, given that it happened for John Howard as
Speaker 2: well when he came into government after the Keeping years.
Speaker 2: They had ninety six billion dollars of debt in those days,
Speaker 2: a lot of money in ninety ninety six, and it
Speaker 2: took them year after year to go through the budget
Speaker 2: find where the waste was cut, the waste out, trimmed
Speaker 2: down on spending where you can still provide the essential services,
Speaker 2: but got the budget back into balance and then put
Speaker 2: it into surplus. And then they created the Future Fund
Speaker 2: and that Future Fund still sits there today. Labour's never
Speaker 2: created a future fund because they never run surplus budgets.
Speaker 2: They got two surpluses at the start of this term
Speaker 2: only because of the fact that we put the budget
Speaker 2: into a good position when they came into government. But
Speaker 2: then for every year after that, as we pointed out before,
Speaker 2: there's just read ink in every projection, so it's putting
Speaker 2: us in a weaker position. And I think that's what
Speaker 2: the credit agencies are saying now, and we need to
Speaker 2: heed that advice and make sure that we spend money wisely.
Speaker 2: The other point, of course, is that if you're somebody
Speaker 2: at the moment who's just taken a second job, maybe
Speaker 2: a shift at the bottle or at the survey on
Speaker 2: a Saturday night, because you just can't pay the bills,
Speaker 2: you ought to know that when you're paying that tax
Speaker 2: from your second job and from your first job, maybe
Speaker 2: your third job as well, that your taxes are being
Speaker 2: spent wisely. And if you've trimmed back every dollar of
Speaker 2: discretionary spend in your own household budget or as a
Speaker 2: small business, you know every cost has gone up, your
Speaker 2: sales have gone down, and your profit margins are really tight.
Speaker 2: You want to know when you're paying tax that the
Speaker 2: federal government is spending that tax wisely, and at the moment,
Speaker 2: I don't think people believe that that's the case under
Speaker 2: this government. So we have to spend money wisely because
Speaker 2: ultimately the government has no money, only the moneys they
Speaker 2: collect in taxes from hard working Australians.
Speaker 3: I mean, for those people who wanted somebody to address that,
Speaker 3: or someone who has addressed that in the past, or
Speaker 3: you need to go as on YouTube and have a
Speaker 3: look at Kerry Packer addressing your Senate and saying you
Speaker 3: guys don't really know how to spend the money that
Speaker 3: you're trying to raise for everybody, and actually that's existed forever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think that's a really important point. We should
Speaker 3: not be seduced during these campaign means into thinking, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: there's something more and it for me. There's a bit
Speaker 3: more money for me, there's a bit more money for me,
Speaker 3: when in actual fact, you be people got to be
Speaker 3: very very careful because ultimately it's got to come from somewhere.
Speaker 3: And we did talk about standard paus, we did talk
Speaker 3: about the borrowing of money.
Speaker 1: You did mention something very interesting.
Speaker 3: To me, and I'm reminded of another conversation with it,
Speaker 3: because I'm talking to conoms all time. Another economists conversation
Speaker 3: the other day and he was talking about the Howard period.
Speaker 3: And of course John Howard still around today, extraordinarily one
Speaker 3: of the one of the icons of the Liberal Party,
Speaker 3: but a great manager of this country, him and Costello.
Speaker 3: But you know he was at the helm and in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six and just prior to that period, during
Speaker 3: the Keating Hawk period, interest rates got up to extraordinary heights,
Speaker 3: as did inflation. But post ninety six, right through to
Speaker 3: twenty right up until the COVID period, the inflation number
Speaker 3: in Australia sat between two percent and three percent for
Speaker 3: twenty odd years as a result of what John Howard.
Speaker 1: Did after that period of Kiding Hawk.
Speaker 3: That's Howard and Costello a great team and they were
Speaker 3: in government for a long long time and they didn't
Speaker 3: go right through to twenty twenty, of course, but that
Speaker 3: momentum carry through for that period, right through a GFC.
Speaker 3: I mean, we had a blip in the GFC, but
Speaker 3: we got under control. I worry that we're heading through
Speaker 3: We're heading through another tumultuous high inflation period. We might
Speaker 3: get one or two reductions, but it could come back very,
Speaker 3: very quickly. I'm worried about that process happening again. Does
Speaker 3: that something that goes through your head and your parties
Speaker 3: and your senior advisors then your party. Do you feel
Speaker 3: a responsibility to sort of bring back that low inflation
Speaker 3: period to Australia like we had for twenty odd years
Speaker 3: because Australia is one of the few countries of the
Speaker 3: world was able to do that.
Speaker 1: Very few countries could do it.
Speaker 2: The answer is yes, and it's instinctive because this is
Speaker 2: the reason that we've got prices just going through the
Speaker 2: roof right across the economy. We're at blue Scope the
Speaker 2: other day. The biggest manufacturers of steel in Australia, color bond, roofing,
Speaker 2: steel frames for housing. They're paying three times the cost
Speaker 2: for electricity now and three times the cost of gas,
Speaker 2: and obviously they're huge energy users. They've got furnaces and
Speaker 2: pumping out steel and products that we used to build
Speaker 2: homes and buildings, and it's three times the cost of
Speaker 2: their same factory in the United States. Now it's unsustainable.
Speaker 2: You go to brickworks, same story, three times what they're
Speaker 2: paying in the US. So those two core elements to construction, brick,
Speaker 2: send and steel. We're paying the highest cost really in
Speaker 2: the world. It's not sustainable, and so inflations everywhere across
Speaker 2: the economy, and it's been driven by a number of things.
Speaker 2: Core inflation is twice that of our g seven countries. Now.
Speaker 2: Just spend a moment on that. When you think, why
Speaker 2: haven't interest rates gone further down when they've gone down
Speaker 2: in the United States and down in the UK and
Speaker 2: down in Canada, in Europe absolutely and New Zealand, why
Speaker 2: have they dropped there and they started to drop six
Speaker 2: months before here. Why have we had the biggest drop
Speaker 2: in living standards in our country's history over the last
Speaker 2: three years and why are we living with the lowest
Speaker 2: living standards compared to comparable nations at the moment. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a bit to unpacked there, but one of the
Speaker 2: reasons I think is because the government has been running
Speaker 2: an inflationary budget. They've been fueling inflation, which is why
Speaker 2: that core inflation rate is still held very high, and
Speaker 2: that's why interest rates aren't coming down, and this is
Speaker 2: what the Reserve Bank governors warned about. But also the
Speaker 2: energy policy, which has just been a train wreck it's
Speaker 2: actually just been a wrecking ball through the economy. Haven't
Speaker 2: heard from Chris Bahin for a long No, he's witness protection.
Speaker 2: I'm serious.
Speaker 3: I wasn't trying to be funny, but I don't think
Speaker 3: I've seen Chris Bones pop up anywhere.
Speaker 1: No, for three months.
Speaker 2: No, they've had him out of the public eye because
Speaker 2: when people see him, they just know straight away he's
Speaker 2: the bloke along with Anthony Alberanezi that's driven my power
Speaker 2: prices up by over thirty percent. Now again, we were
Speaker 2: talking with We're down an hour today with Andrew Constance,
Speaker 2: and we went to small business owned by two brothers,
Speaker 2: started it from scratch and it's a pretty big footprint.
Speaker 2: They've got fruit and vege, but they also do grocery
Speaker 2: lines and they've got meat and and dairy, et cetera.
Speaker 2: They were saying there that they're just about to negotiate
Speaker 2: their contracts, et cetera, and their power prices are up
Speaker 2: by about forty percent. Now, if your power bill goes
Speaker 2: up by six or eight thousand dollars a month, and
Speaker 2: your wage bill's gone up, your rent's gone up, the
Speaker 2: cost of every other input you know, you're running delivery
Speaker 2: trucks around, et cetera. All of that is either consumed
Speaker 2: by the business absorbed by the business, which is more
Speaker 2: and more unlikely because the profit margins just aren't there.
Speaker 2: What's happening is the cost increases have been passed on
Speaker 2: and it's not just there on the shop floor. If
Speaker 2: you go back through the supply chain, the farmer is
Speaker 2: paying a lot more for fertilizer now because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of gas used in the generation of fertilizer, and
Speaker 2: the jars that they're buying to put the fruit in
Speaker 2: ultimately that end up on the shelf. The glass manufacturer
Speaker 2: under the Renewable's Only policy of Chris Bonne and Anthony,
Speaker 2: they're paying more for the manufacture of those glasses. So
Speaker 2: every point in the supply chain, the farmer, the cold storage,
Speaker 2: the processing plant, the energy that's used to provide the
Speaker 2: processing or manufacturing of food or clothing or motor vehicles,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, all of that has increased under this
Speaker 2: government and that's applied across the economy. So a few
Speaker 2: of the things that we've said, Okay, what do you
Speaker 2: do about that? Well, I think the way in which
Speaker 2: we can fix the problem up as John Howard did
Speaker 2: with the keating problem. Is the twenty five p cent
Speaker 2: a leter cut in fuel tax. That means straight away
Speaker 2: across the economy. So the delivery truck drivers, the fishing,
Speaker 2: charter business, the pensioner, the Uni student, the trade's running
Speaker 2: three or four trucks around the mums and dads. You
Speaker 2: come down by about fourteen dollars a tank. And if
Speaker 2: you're a two car family, that's saving you money straight away.
Speaker 2: So removing a week every week and it removes some
Speaker 2: of the cost pressure out of that family budget or
Speaker 2: that small business budget. Then we say, okay, we'll give
Speaker 2: you twelve hundred dollars back of tax that you've paid.
Speaker 2: Twelve hundred dollars tax rebate for people on incomes up
Speaker 2: to one hundred and forty four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: It is means tested, it's means tested, and it.
Speaker 2: Means for a two income average household are twenty four
Speaker 2: hundred dollars back. So that's the immediate relief to help people. Now,
Speaker 2: what do we do then to fix up the broader
Speaker 2: problem that Chris Barlin and Anthony Albanezi you created. We
Speaker 2: have a huge export market for our gas, for our
Speaker 2: natural gas fantastic because it creates revenues and royalties and
Speaker 2: taxes being paid. But we can divert some of that
Speaker 2: which is being exported now or beyond the reserves of it,
Speaker 2: and increase the amount of gas that we're producing, flood
Speaker 2: the market, flood the domestic market with that gas, and
Speaker 2: bring the price down, and we cap the price, and
Speaker 2: we say to those companies that you're going to be
Speaker 2: required to sell that into the austrain market. Now, the
Speaker 2: independent analysis that's been done by Frontier Economics, probably the
Speaker 2: best economists in the country on energy policy, they say
Speaker 2: that that will bring gas down by twenty three percent
Speaker 2: the wholesale price. So that means Blue Scope paying less
Speaker 2: for their gas. It means that the local Chinese shop
Speaker 2: paying less for their gas. It means the gas used
Speaker 2: in the production of electricity comes down and cost as well,
Speaker 2: So the cost of electricity can come down for households,
Speaker 2: but for businesses as well. And if we fix up
Speaker 2: that energy disaster that they've created and ultimately bring in
Speaker 2: our base load power, which we believe should be nuclear
Speaker 2: zero mission's nuclear, that on the analysis brings our electricity
Speaker 2: costs down by forty four percent and that's how we
Speaker 2: can be competitive as a country again, and how we
Speaker 2: can reduce the cost of groceries and reduce the cost
Speaker 2: of all of those household budget items at the moment
Speaker 2: that are just crushing families.
Speaker 1: So that's a good point you're doing.
Speaker 3: It's all very well to say we will reduce the
Speaker 3: cost of living, but you've got to actually have some policies,
Speaker 3: and you've just announced a number of policies there that
Speaker 3: they all make sense to me, particularly the fuel exise.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just can't believe that twenty five cents elita.
Speaker 3: I mean, if for some reason the price of oil
Speaker 3: dropped by twenty five cents and petrol at the bowser
Speaker 3: become twenty five cents less, if for some reason that happened.
Speaker 1: People would be sort of cheering and going up.
Speaker 3: It should be going crazy, and they say it's only
Speaker 3: going to be there for two weeks. Everybody, you're trying
Speaker 3: to work out how to store the the petrol up. Correct,
Speaker 3: But this thing is an ongoing thing, or are you're
Speaker 3: saying it?
Speaker 2: Do it for twelve months and then we assess it,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what we did during COVID with job Keeper.
Speaker 2: We said Okay, we need to address the economic circumstances
Speaker 2: that we now face. But we didn't legislate job keeper forever,
Speaker 2: and we're not still paying that because that problem has passed.
Speaker 2: And so our argument is, what's our vision for our country. Well,
Speaker 2: it's to help people right now, get them through the
Speaker 2: next twelve months, the next twenty four months. With the
Speaker 2: gas solution. We believe that that can have a big
Speaker 2: impact by the end of this calendar year. So that
Speaker 2: can start to relieve some of the pressure of the
Speaker 2: costs in businesses by the end of this calendar year.
Speaker 2: And if we need to extend the fuel excise, well
Speaker 2: we can assess that at the time. And if petrol's
Speaker 2: at two dollars under US, it comes down to a
Speaker 2: dollar seventy five. If petrol the oil price drops and
Speaker 2: the petrol price comes down to a dollar dollar fifty,
Speaker 2: it's a dollar twenty five under US. And the fixed
Speaker 2: cost of the excise, which is at fifty point four cents,
Speaker 2: Now that applies whether PETREL's you know, fifty cents a
Speaker 2: leter or it's five dollars a leter. But the problem is,
Speaker 2: because it's been indexed, it's growing off a bigger base
Speaker 2: each year, so it actually grows at a much faster
Speaker 2: rate as the years go by. This is the argument
Speaker 2: relation to beer excise as well, I might say, And
Speaker 2: it grows off a bigger base because it's growing off
Speaker 2: fifty cents not thirty cents each year, and so it
Speaker 2: becomes a bigger tax each and every year year. And
Speaker 2: it's the one way in which you can help across
Speaker 2: the economy, as I say, and it's targeted. It helps
Speaker 2: the UNI student, it helps the pensioner, it helps the
Speaker 2: self under retiree, it helps the small business owner. And
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's the thinking that we've applied to it.
Speaker 2: But you need to fix the problem up. And part
Speaker 2: of our solution, part of our thinking, as it was
Speaker 2: for the how governments, what changes can you make to
Speaker 2: modernize and to actually provide some relief to the cost
Speaker 2: pressures Because what a strains don't want, but what they're
Speaker 2: going to get if we end up with an urban
Speaker 2: easy ban labor Green's government, They're going to spend more money.
Speaker 2: Interest rates are going to go up higher. And the
Speaker 2: thirty four percent increase in gas now that's just going
Speaker 2: to continue to go up over the next three years
Speaker 2: because the system is going to become more and more costly.
Speaker 2: Is you need to roll out the twenty eight thousand
Speaker 2: klimeters of new poles and wires, which is their energy policy.
Speaker 2: That's going to be tens of billions of dollars which
Speaker 2: you'll end up you're starting to pay that now in
Speaker 2: your power bills. You look at the breakdown of your
Speaker 2: power bill. Now you look at the chargers and look
Speaker 2: at the network charges. You're already paying. That is a
Speaker 2: big part of your electricity bill now.
Speaker 3: So just explain to us, because none of us know
Speaker 3: how it works in parliament. If it's an Albanizi band
Speaker 3: or Labor and Greens sort of let's call it the
Speaker 3: coalition government going forward? In practical terms, how does it work?
Speaker 3: So let's say the Greens have got something they're really
Speaker 3: desperate to push through. What do they walk up to
Speaker 3: Albanisi or Chris Baron and say, listen, where he's supporting you?
Speaker 1: Can you get this through and we'll do a deal.
Speaker 3: What's the padder look like down there and the mothership
Speaker 3: down there in camber? What would happen sort of thing?
Speaker 2: Well, the Greens have already been transparent in terms of
Speaker 2: what their shopping list looks like, at least the first
Speaker 2: couple of items. One is they want an into fossil fuels,
Speaker 2: so that means no gas, no coal. A company like
Speaker 2: Rio Tinto last year paid about ten billion dollars worth
Speaker 2: of company tax and royalty. So without that money, we're
Speaker 2: not paying for schools and hospitals. But that's that's the
Speaker 2: first issue.
Speaker 1: And biggest taxpayer on mining companies.
Speaker 2: And and there's there's insatiable demand for our product, for
Speaker 2: our commodity, you know, whether it's iron ore or whether
Speaker 2: it's coal, or whether it's you know, critical minerals, et cetera. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: there's there's insatiable demand for that around the world. But
Speaker 2: they want to close that down. That's their first want,
Speaker 2: and they've been very open. I mean, Adam Bant, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't give him credit for much because I don't
Speaker 2: believe in the Green's philosophy, but he's been very clear
Speaker 2: that their first you know, then their next request is
Speaker 2: an abolition of negative gearing, and oh sure, and and
Speaker 2: that that they've been upfront about that. Now that will
Speaker 2: be on the table with the labour part. Jim Chalmers
Speaker 2: has already done the research himself to ask Treasury to
Speaker 2: model it and how much money would they get back
Speaker 2: if they abolish negative gearing. So we know that they're
Speaker 2: open to it.
Speaker 1: It hasn't worked that bitterly. What happens is bank go
Speaker 1: up to knock on the door of the Prime Minister.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, they'll sit down in negotiations and if there's
Speaker 2: not a clear decision on Saturday night then and that's
Speaker 2: remember back to what happened with Julia Gillard when when
Speaker 2: Anthony Albanzi was a senior minister and negotiating with the
Speaker 2: Greens to find a compact between Julia Gillard and the Greens.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened then. And this is why the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister, even in his own seat, is putting the
Speaker 2: Greens number two, and the Greens have put him number
Speaker 2: two as well. I'll always preference the Labor Party ahead
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 3: Is this what you mean by when you vote Labor
Speaker 3: you're endorsing Greens and effectively voting for the Greens.
Speaker 1: Correct. In other words, you are voting for the Greens policies.
Speaker 2: Yes, And if you're voting one for the Green, two
Speaker 2: for the Labor candidate, three for the liberal candidate, Well,
Speaker 2: that will only ever go to the labor candidate. And
Speaker 2: that's the that's that's how they that's how they win,
Speaker 2: because you can't just mark the ballot with with number one.
Speaker 3: So, Peter, one of the things that I've been surprised
Speaker 3: about and somewhat disappointed, to be honest with you, is
Speaker 3: that there has been a bit of a personality game
Speaker 3: going on in this campaign. And yeah, you're a hardened
Speaker 3: ex copper and businessman, so you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: what you did, what you did wrong in your life
Speaker 3: to have to do both become be a policeman first
Speaker 3: and put up with all that, and then have to
Speaker 3: become a business a small business, I have to put.
Speaker 1: Up all that.
Speaker 3: But you know, you get fairly hardened after all that.
Speaker 3: But irrespective, I sort of know what it's like because
Speaker 3: you worry about your family. You do have wife and
Speaker 3: kids and stuff like that. Who aren't part of all that,
Speaker 3: of course, and it's never asked to.
Speaker 1: Be either, by the way, And.
Speaker 3: How do you feel right now about the personal attacks
Speaker 3: on you? Because I actually thought, remember the old miss
Speaker 3: Potato and anice sort of stuff. I mean, I have whatever,
Speaker 3: big deal, but it's got much more personal from every level, Nelly,
Speaker 3: how do you feel about that?
Speaker 2: It does? And back to the earlier point about the
Speaker 2: negative campaign, the personal attacks, because they haven't got a
Speaker 2: good track record to talk about and that so their
Speaker 2: campaign can't be how well you've done under labor over
Speaker 2: the last three years. So in a two horse race,
Speaker 2: their objective is to try and kill off the other horse,
Speaker 2: and that's why they run the personal attacks against me.
Speaker 2: If I'm being honest, it puts fuel in my tank
Speaker 2: because it just makes me more determined to succeed. And
Speaker 2: I mean in business and in life. As a police officer,
Speaker 2: you know, I've been in some pretty tough situations, and
Speaker 2: I've delivered death messages to parents of kids who have
Speaker 2: overdose or have been killed in a car accident, and
Speaker 2: all of that really pales. Makes what I'm going through
Speaker 2: and the pressure that I'm under you seem pretty manageable.
Speaker 2: And I've been in responded to domestic situations where women
Speaker 2: are within an inch of their life and kids are screaming,
Speaker 2: And you think back to those circumstances a detective taking
Speaker 2: statements from rape victims, and people have been exposed to terrible,
Speaker 2: terrible crimes, and part of the motivation for why I
Speaker 2: got into politics was to protect people like that and
Speaker 2: to make sure that we had less victims and not more.
Speaker 2: And yes, maybe that sort of makes you harden because
Speaker 2: of those experiences, but it makes me more determined to
Speaker 2: succeed for our country because we do live in the
Speaker 2: best country in the world, and we beat ourselves up
Speaker 2: over it, and we're told at school now, our kids
Speaker 2: are told, you know, be ashamed of our history and
Speaker 2: our play in the world's not legitimate. And all of
Speaker 2: these people who are teaching our kids that within the
Speaker 2: education system, which is a small proportion of teachers, but
Speaker 2: still the ones that we've sent out marching out on
Speaker 2: the university campus is attacking Jewish kids, etc. And then
Speaker 2: they're turning around and lecturing our kids, you know, in
Speaker 2: a business course or something. It's a bit of a
Speaker 2: screwed up world at the moment. But for me, not
Speaker 2: that it's water for ducks back, because you know, you
Speaker 2: do take the attacks and you're only human and all
Speaker 2: of that, but it does mean to me, you know,
Speaker 2: you know what it's worth fighting for because you want
Speaker 2: to stand up and fight for what you believe in
Speaker 2: and what is right. I don't need to tell lies
Speaker 2: to achieve success at this election, and happy to run
Speaker 2: on my track record. And yes, there is a huge
Speaker 2: price that your family pays, and I'm really conscious of
Speaker 2: that because my kids, my wife, you know, they haven't
Speaker 2: put their name on the ballot paper, but they've got
Speaker 2: the same surname as me, and they suffer, you know,
Speaker 2: the attacks online. Harry, he's a second year chippy, came
Speaker 2: with me on the campaign a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 2: and you know, just gets bombarded with crap online. But
Speaker 2: again he's stoic and resilient enough. And we're a tight
Speaker 2: family unit where we've supported each other through everything. So
Speaker 2: so they want you to succeed and and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm really proud of what they've been able to put
Speaker 2: up with as well. But it shouldn't it shouldn't be
Speaker 2: the case, but it is, and that's the reality of it.
Speaker 2: And I'm just I'm fortunate that they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: strong characters. See them through it as well, and they're
Speaker 2: proud of what I do. And they know the person
Speaker 2: that I am, and they know the crap that they
Speaker 2: read online is nothing like the person I am, and
Speaker 2: and I think that makes them more passionate about making
Speaker 2: sure that they help me to succeed because they know
Speaker 2: that the lies that are being told just don't equate
Speaker 2: with the dad that they know or the husband. I know.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 3: I've got to know you a little bit, fortunate enough
Speaker 3: to have a dinner with you and my good friend
Speaker 3: David Coleman some time ago, and then I've had you
Speaker 3: in podcasts, and one of the great things about podcasts
Speaker 3: I get to know people without having to spend twenty
Speaker 3: years with them. But I get it on pretty quickly,
Speaker 3: and you come across as that quiet but sort of
Speaker 3: quite stoic, defender style person. You might not be the
Speaker 3: huge personality in smiling and you're not Hollywood, but.
Speaker 2: That's an understatement. But not the flashy, not the flashy guy,
Speaker 2: but but you are.
Speaker 1: There's a sense, it seems to me that there's in you.
Speaker 3: And maybe it could have been the reason you became
Speaker 3: a policeman perhaps, or you were you worked as a
Speaker 3: police person because you seem like you have a protective
Speaker 3: element around you, like you want to not protect us
Speaker 3: in a silly way, but you want to make sure
Speaker 3: that our rights are well observed. All of our rights
Speaker 3: well observed and manage, whether economic rights, whether they're personal rights.
Speaker 3: When you're a policeman out person rights. But now as
Speaker 3: a leader of a party, it's economic rights, personal rights, society,
Speaker 3: social rights, every other right.
Speaker 1: There's a stack of them.
Speaker 3: It seems to me that you have that as an
Speaker 3: underlying theme in your DNA and your personality, but not
Speaker 3: in a flashy way. It's just get the job done.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. It's sort of a right and
Speaker 2: wrong thing, and justice or not. I have a again,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of influenced by what you've seen in life.
Speaker 2: I worked in the sex offender squad as a detective
Speaker 2: for a period, and when you see young girls who
Speaker 2: have their lives destroyed, or you see them later in life,
Speaker 2: and maybe they didn't make a complaint about being sexually
Speaker 2: assaulted when they were twelve years of age, but you're
Speaker 2: now talking to them in they're thirty years of age,
Speaker 2: and I remember it clearly. In many of those is
Speaker 2: where they hadn't been able to form proper relationships, they
Speaker 2: changed their patterns of life of you going to the
Speaker 2: car a different way, or not going out of a
Speaker 2: night time. And I saw the impact on people in
Speaker 2: that way, and I a strong believer all of my
Speaker 2: life that, particularly for kids growing up, that you should
Speaker 2: be able to enjoy the sanctity of your childhood. You
Speaker 2: should be able to enjoy that freely and not to
Speaker 2: be encumbered with that, you know, that weight of having
Speaker 2: been poorly treated, and whether it's sexual assault or whether
Speaker 2: it's physical assault, or you know, just brought up in
Speaker 2: a very difficult circumstance. And so yeah, so that's sort
Speaker 2: of the moral compass for me, and similarly in life,
Speaker 2: it's probably part of the good part of the reason
Speaker 2: I joined the Liberal Party. My old man was a
Speaker 2: bricklayer builder and worked his guts out his whole life.
Speaker 2: And in those keeping years you'd spoke about before with
Speaker 2: the high interest rates. I mean, we'd sit around the
Speaker 2: kitchen table of a nighttime and I'll probably tell you
Speaker 2: the story before, but you know, I'd write out the checks,
Speaker 2: Mum and dad had sign them, and you write paid
Speaker 2: on the invoices and staple them to the statement and
Speaker 2: file them, et cetera. So the discussions around that kitchen
Speaker 2: table some months where you know, we don't have money,
Speaker 2: we don't have money to pay those bills or we
Speaker 2: don't have work over the coming weeks to you know,
Speaker 2: to bring money in. And Dad worked hard and so
Speaker 2: did mum, and they did well later in life when
Speaker 2: we were older, but only because of their hard work.
Speaker 2: And so for me, now you know, a guiding principle
Speaker 2: I suppose influenced by that time, was it kills me
Speaker 2: to see a small business person who's working seven days
Speaker 2: a week, going home doing book work of a nighttime
Speaker 2: and just being smashed. And thirty thousand small businesses have
Speaker 2: closed over the last three years. More small businesses have
Speaker 2: closed in our country under Anthony Albanisi in the last
Speaker 2: twelve months that any twelve month period in our country's history.
Speaker 2: And I just think it's completely unfair. So I want
Speaker 2: to do anything I can to help turn around the
Speaker 2: economy and to manage the economy well so that there
Speaker 2: can be a better environment where people can work hard
Speaker 2: and be rewarded for it. And it's a similar approach
Speaker 2: that we've taken in relation to the twenty five per
Speaker 2: cent a letter cut on fuel as we discussed, and
Speaker 2: the twelve hundred dollars back and then providing the change
Speaker 2: around the energy system. That's all in my mind designed
Speaker 2: to do the right thing and to provide a productive environment.
Speaker 2: And I've been heavily influenced by John Howard and my
Speaker 2: political life, and I think he adopted that same principled
Speaker 2: approach and that's what would guide me as Prime minister.
Speaker 3: Some of the things you talked about then gave me
Speaker 3: one word I can think of that sort of describes
Speaker 3: a lot of those things that you have a view against. Unfairness, yes,
Speaker 3: or the system should be as fair as posses, and
Speaker 3: that means in a broader sense for everybody, the broader community,
Speaker 3: but also in depth it should be really actually fair
Speaker 3: like it shouldn't be you shouldn't be able to rud
Speaker 3: it in other words, you know, And that's sort of
Speaker 3: not a principle that's always been associated with liberal although
Speaker 3: as you said, Howard was very much that type of person.
Speaker 1: It's more more a little bit more towards labor.
Speaker 3: Actually, you know, that's how they that's they're doing it originally,
Speaker 3: you know, because I grew up in the West suburb
Speaker 3: the Sydney where everyone voted for labor. But over time
Speaker 3: I think labor's lost its way. I don't think labor
Speaker 3: as the same Labor Party as it was when I
Speaker 3: was a kid, where they were looking after the working class.
Speaker 1: Or and working lives.
Speaker 3: I don't mean someone who's just earning a living just
Speaker 3: enough to get by. I'm to have people who work
Speaker 3: to earn the money I have to actually go to
Speaker 3: work and works. Working class is someone who goes to work.
Speaker 3: I consider myself still working class. I might have assets,
Speaker 3: but I go to work every day and I still work.
Speaker 3: And working class has lost a lot of respect and
Speaker 3: fairness and everybody, whether you're someone with a three million
Speaker 3: dollars of assets in your superannuation fund which you worked
Speaker 3: your whole life as part of the working class to accumulate,
Speaker 3: it is unfair that you have to pay tax on
Speaker 3: that at a higher rate than it was originally envisaged
Speaker 3: when they first seduced you into putting money.
Speaker 2: Into subites which you can't take out.
Speaker 1: You can't take out, so it's unfair.
Speaker 3: So sort of that theme of unfairness is that something
Speaker 3: and as you're the boss of the party, is that
Speaker 3: something you look for in terms of all your party members?
Speaker 3: You want to have that sense of fairness for all
Speaker 3: Australian citizens, whether it's being safe walking home from school
Speaker 3: to your home, young girl, young boy, Whether it's being
Speaker 3: concerned about someone sort of you know, lobbying a missile
Speaker 3: over the country and in relation to our borders. Whether
Speaker 3: it's amount of money we pay for our own gas
Speaker 3: which is crazy. Whether it's the interest rate you're paying
Speaker 3: your mortgage after you were encouraged to go and borrow
Speaker 3: as much mon as I possibly could during COVID. And
Speaker 3: you know when issues are extraordinarily though now it's extraordinarily high.
Speaker 3: Is that that on fairness something that perhaps you guys
Speaker 3: stand for it? It looks like it's nearly a new
Speaker 3: position for the Liberal Party under your leadership, and it.
Speaker 1: Goes back to the howadays.
Speaker 2: No, I agree with that, and I made the point
Speaker 2: when I came into the leadership of the party that
Speaker 2: I didn't see us as the party of big business
Speaker 2: any longer. Coals and wallies and others can take care
Speaker 2: of themselves. Our task, I think as a Liberal party
Speaker 2: is to take care of the small business person. And
Speaker 2: you know, the mum who's working part time at home
Speaker 2: in a micro business, in a back bedroom or in
Speaker 2: a garage, and that business, you know, the aspiration is
Speaker 2: to take that business to be listed one day, Or
Speaker 2: how do we help the cafe owner who wants to
Speaker 2: buy a second cafe, Or how how do we help
Speaker 2: the person who's worked really hard, sacrificed border rental property,
Speaker 2: has three kids once to end up with three rental
Speaker 2: properties so that they can leave one to each of
Speaker 2: their kids, or to their grandkids, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: It is that fairness. As immigration minister. You know, I
Speaker 2: get a bad rap sometimes about being too hard as
Speaker 2: immigration minister. But the approach that I took there was
Speaker 2: that I canceled about six thousand visas of people who
Speaker 2: were here as non citizens who had committed rape and
Speaker 2: pedophilia and had been involved in biker gangs and distributing drugs,
Speaker 2: and I allowed in twelve thousand Yezdi women, for example,
Speaker 2: who are being slaughtered by Isis and iol. They've become
Speaker 2: amazing Australians. And for me, that was how the migration
Speaker 2: system should work. You should say to people who were
Speaker 2: taking the piss frankly, that you're not here to commit
Speaker 2: crimes against Australian citizens. And if you do that, out
Speaker 2: you go. But we bring in good people and in
Speaker 2: my mind that is about fairness. And I think to
Speaker 2: the point you made before that the Labor Party at
Speaker 2: the moment under this Prime Minister, given that he's so
Speaker 2: far left, is to how do you please inner city
Speaker 2: green voters in Sydney and Melbourne, And they've forgotten about
Speaker 2: people in the suburbs. And that's why at this election
Speaker 2: I think there's a big move going on in the
Speaker 2: out of metro areas, in regional areas where people feel forgotten.
Speaker 2: And it also bleeds into the housing debate as well
Speaker 2: because one of the things that and again it is
Speaker 2: a fairness thing, I feel a guilt that our generation
Speaker 2: had to work hard and save but got into housing.
Speaker 2: Housing was much cheaper, interest rates were much higher, as
Speaker 2: you pointed out, you know, depending on when you were born.
Speaker 2: But I want young Australians to get into housing and
Speaker 2: I want them to be able to climb that property
Speaker 2: ladder and renovator house, or build an extension and sell
Speaker 2: that house for a profit down the line, or use
Speaker 2: the house as an asset to start a small business
Speaker 2: and get a loan from the bank. And we're locking
Speaker 2: people out of housing at the moment.
Speaker 1: A big part of that is that's unfair.
Speaker 2: Well, it's completely unfair and it's actually I think it
Speaker 2: generates over time a lot of resentment between homeowners and
Speaker 2: Novision absolutely and the government. The Prime Minister's happy for
Speaker 2: people to rent for life, right, because that's what happens
Speaker 2: in parts of Europe and in parts of the United States.
Speaker 2: And unless you are left a home by a family
Speaker 2: in parts of Europe, you've really got a buggerall chance
Speaker 2: of home ownership. And I don't want that for our country.
Speaker 2: I want people to have a choice, and I want
Speaker 2: them to have stability, because if they buy a house,
Speaker 2: it gives them a stable environment, and they don't you
Speaker 2: know that, I'm not a prospect of being kicked out.
Speaker 2: If they're they're tenants. They'll start a family then, and
Speaker 2: they'll start a small business if that's their choice, or
Speaker 2: they'll use the increased value in the house to then
Speaker 2: buy some shares and secure their margin loan, or to
Speaker 2: purchase another property or whatever it might be. It gives
Speaker 2: them choices, and if they've paid the house off by
Speaker 2: the time they've retired or their mortgage has been paid down,
Speaker 2: it gives them the sort of retirement that we spoke
Speaker 2: about before, where they've got dignity after having worked all
Speaker 2: of their lives. It gives them options to travel and
Speaker 2: maybe help their kids or grand kids out if they're
Speaker 2: in need. And the governments bought in a million people
Speaker 2: over the last two years, which is a seventy percent
Speaker 2: increase on any two year period in our country's history.
Speaker 2: So we've just flooded the market with buyers for homes,
Speaker 2: and of course all of those people want a house
Speaker 2: for their kids and their grandkids, and they're locking Ozzie
Speaker 2: kids out of housing at the moment, and that's why
Speaker 2: we're saying that we want to cut migration for two
Speaker 2: years until we can get on top of the housing problem.
Speaker 2: We've also said that for interest on the first six
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars dollars of your mortgage Japan,
Speaker 2: your own correct correct that that becomes a tax deduction
Speaker 2: for first time buyers for the first five years, and
Speaker 2: that'll help average way journals around about one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a month. So it helps with your application to the
Speaker 2: bank because you can service your loan, and it also
Speaker 2: helps you service the liane when you take the mortgage
Speaker 2: out after you've settle a property, and it takes just
Speaker 2: a bit of pressure out it also increases supply because
Speaker 2: it's only for new homes, and that will drive the
Speaker 2: market to build more homes to meet that demand. And
Speaker 2: we put five billion dollars in on the supply side
Speaker 2: to create five hundred thousand new homes so that we
Speaker 2: can bring more houses into the market, so that we're
Speaker 2: not just increasing demand for houses as labor has done
Speaker 2: over the last couple of years. So, if I think
Speaker 2: about it, the principle behind that is about equity and
Speaker 2: fairness and allowing people the opportunity and the option if
Speaker 2: they choose not to buy a house. Fantastic, but I
Speaker 2: don't want people to be locked out of housing as
Speaker 2: they are at the moment.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 3: The liberal party of the coalition becoming the party of fairness.
Speaker 3: I mean, who would have thought that labor would abandon
Speaker 3: that position and that liberal would move into that position.
Speaker 1: Who would have thought?
Speaker 3: And I know, there's nothing no one's really talked about this,
Speaker 3: but you know, because it's been a bit of a
Speaker 3: personal attack on you most of the narrative, unfortunately, and
Speaker 3: no one's really had an opportunity to sort of dig
Speaker 3: into Peter Dart as to what drives him and actually
Speaker 3: that's I think that's the one word that comes out
Speaker 3: of talking to you. You're not flashy, you're not bitter
Speaker 3: flash you know, you're not Hollywood, you're not you know, Polish,
Speaker 3: and that you haven't been through two or three election cycles,
Speaker 3: you haven't been the prime minister. You know you're sort
Speaker 3: of new to the show in that regard. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, that whole concept of fairness
Speaker 3: is a pretty critical one for every cohort of voter.
Speaker 3: If you're twenty to thirty, you want a fair guy.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: If you're thirty to forty, you want a fair go
Speaker 3: forty if you and it goes on. There is not
Speaker 3: one category that doesn't want a fair shot at it.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't matter what it is they want to achieve,
Speaker 3: whether they want to have a small business, they don't
Speaker 3: want have a small business, they want to travel, where
Speaker 3: they want to pay less tax, where they want to
Speaker 3: earn more money, they want to work three jobs. Fairness
Speaker 3: cuts across every category in every single cohort. And I
Speaker 3: think I think that's I'm glad we talked about it.
Speaker 3: I'm glad I had an opportunity talk to a second
Speaker 3: time because I didn't really get that the first time,
Speaker 3: but the second time.
Speaker 1: The more you talk, the more I'm getting that out
Speaker 1: of you.
Speaker 3: I think it's important. I think we should just cover
Speaker 3: this off, Petter, if you don't mind. The narrative right
Speaker 3: now is Labor are going to win. There's no point
Speaker 3: even turning up put your vote in. There's going to
Speaker 3: be a you know, a Green's Labor sort of coalition,
Speaker 3: let's call it that after the election on Saturday. But
Speaker 3: that's the and the polls, the national polls in Inmo
Speaker 3: indicating that. But what are you seeing when you go
Speaker 3: to the the various electorates. You see something different, A.
Speaker 2: Very different picture on the ground really is. And I
Speaker 2: think you'll see this turning up in the papers over
Speaker 2: the next few days because Labors started to retreat back
Speaker 2: to defending some of their seats that are at risk,
Speaker 2: and there are a number of particularly in Victoria, in
Speaker 2: New South Wales, in WA and even in Queensland now
Speaker 2: as well. So you watch where the Prime Minister visits
Speaker 2: seats over the next few days. They're defending seats. The
Speaker 2: feedback from our marginal seat campaigners and people who have
Speaker 2: been around the block a few times through a few
Speaker 2: elections is that the mood at pre polling has been
Speaker 2: much more positive than it was at the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two election. Remember what happened in twenty nineteen. The book
Speaker 2: is paid out on Bill Shorten to be the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister before election day on a Friday, and he ended
Speaker 2: up even though the national polls were showing that he
Speaker 2: would win, he ended up losing and the Coalition won
Speaker 2: that election, and.
Speaker 1: It was a big part of the loss.
Speaker 3: Well, of course you talk about native gearing, Cabrigaine, Saxon,
Speaker 3: Frankin credits going exactly.
Speaker 2: And this again like this is a long term This
Speaker 2: is a long held view of the Labor Party in
Speaker 2: relation to negative gearing and capital gains tax discount, et cetera.
Speaker 2: They see it as the rich getting a benefit off renters.
Speaker 2: It's the same reason they've got contempt for small business
Speaker 2: people or for employers. They've got a militant union thinking
Speaker 2: that you employ people and you're there to exploit them,
Speaker 2: not that you're there employing people and you're giving them
Speaker 2: a wage which is helping them put their kids through
Speaker 2: school and payoff payoff their mortgage, and you're taking care
Speaker 2: of your employees, which is the case for most employers,
Speaker 2: that's the thinking. So in some of those seats now
Speaker 2: and I think you'll see this play out over the
Speaker 2: next few days. There is a change in sentiment and
Speaker 2: there is a momentum that's coming back to the Liberal
Speaker 2: Party over the course of the last four or five days,
Speaker 2: and it comes up in the seat by seat poling,
Speaker 2: which the national polling doesn't pick up because you've got
Speaker 2: a really popular local member who's sitting and has really
Speaker 2: worked hard. In the next seat, you've got somebody who
Speaker 2: has just been lazy, hasn't worked hard, and you've got
Speaker 2: a candidate, a Liberal candidate who's door knocked ten thousand
Speaker 2: homes and they've got a real following. And so when
Speaker 2: you look at its seat by seat, there is a
Speaker 2: pathway to victory for us by Saturday night. And I
Speaker 2: honestly believe that that's where it's tracking, that's where it's trending.
Speaker 2: And there's also there's also the question people have to ask,
Speaker 2: and you know this has been asked at elections and
Speaker 2: been a famous campaign theme over a long period of
Speaker 2: time here and other parts of the world. Are you
Speaker 2: better off today than you're worth three years ago? I
Speaker 2: don't know any Australian that I've met over the course
Speaker 2: of this campaign who says thumbs up. Absolutely. In fact,
Speaker 2: the opposite people to say, look, it's really tough and
Speaker 2: we've gone backwards. Everything's gone up, and everything will go
Speaker 2: up even further if there's another three years of labor
Speaker 2: and particularly if they're in in coherites with the Greens
Speaker 2: as well. And I don't want that for our country.
Speaker 2: I want a better way forward. We are better economic managers.
Speaker 2: We have the ability to manage money and to spend
Speaker 2: it wisely to bring pressure down on inflation, so we
Speaker 2: can bring interest rates. If we can bring interest rates
Speaker 2: down by a couple of percent, that will create a
Speaker 2: lot of headroom for families pretty quickly. But if labor
Speaker 2: spends money like they've spent over the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: particularly with the Greens urging them on, then that will
Speaker 2: see inflation stay higher for longer. And even if interest
Speaker 2: rates stay high without going up compared to what they
Speaker 2: could come down under a liberal government, then that's going
Speaker 2: to really put a lot of families to the wall.
Speaker 2: I was talking to a yesterday up in Robertson, where
Speaker 2: the Lucy Wicks is running for us. He's going to
Speaker 2: mate of his who didn't want to speak to us.
Speaker 2: But one of these stories conveyed, he reckons he's twenty
Speaker 2: five points zero point two five one percent away from
Speaker 2: losing his house. If they go up by another twenty
Speaker 2: five points, he's done and he just won't be able
Speaker 2: to meet the repayments. And I have to hand you know,
Speaker 2: they'll sell the house. And that I think is a
Speaker 2: more common story than what the bookies and others are
Speaker 2: picking up at the moment. And I think a lot
Speaker 2: of those people say, you know what, I may not
Speaker 2: like every part of the Liberals policy, or I may
Speaker 2: not like Peter Dutton for this reason or that reason,
Speaker 2: but I know that he'll be a strong leader, and
Speaker 2: I know that he's got the business experience and the
Speaker 2: experience in the defense portfolio and the health portfolio and
Speaker 2: the immigration portfolio and home affairs to make the decisions
Speaker 2: that need to be made for our country, to fix
Speaker 2: the economy and get inflation down and help address the
Speaker 2: cost of living standards, and also to keep us safe.
Speaker 2: We live in a very uncertain time and we have
Speaker 2: to invest in defense and also into protecting our borders.
Speaker 2: So I've been really big on this. Over the course
Speaker 2: of the campaign, we've announced a seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: million dollar plan to set up task forces to crush
Speaker 2: the biker gangs and other gangs who are involved in
Speaker 2: the tobacco wars and the illicit tobacco, the gangs who
Speaker 2: are buying the car off kids who steal them out
Speaker 2: of your house, and the kids who are buying drugs
Speaker 2: off the bikes to and to fuel that, to pay
Speaker 2: for that, to pay for that drug habit, they're breaking
Speaker 2: into your house. So I'm going to reduce crime across
Speaker 2: communities as well as keeping us safe in the regions,
Speaker 2: and we've got the ability to be able to do that.
Speaker 3: It's interesting you you mentioned hardworking liberal members in some
Speaker 3: of the various electors you've been visiting, and I medally
Speaker 3: thought of three. I thought of first off, I thought
Speaker 3: I was Gott Young, Scott Young in the city of
Speaker 3: ben Long. I mean, my god like the guy, and
Speaker 3: I did have him on the show, but he did
Speaker 3: work for many years ago. But that's your realment.
Speaker 1: I got him.
Speaker 3: I wanted to highlight how the type person is, even
Speaker 3: though he's been sort of harangued as a Chinese whatever
Speaker 3: he's more ousy than anybody.
Speaker 2: That great blow.
Speaker 3: But the guy when he was working for me, he
Speaker 3: was ridiculously had he probably would have been the longest hour,
Speaker 3: spent the most hours working my organization of any other
Speaker 3: person of his equivalents in our organization. And he's doing
Speaker 3: that right now in his electric Roeknox who was on
Speaker 3: here today and rose incredibly talented and unbelievably bloody hard worker.
Speaker 3: And you mentioned Andrew Constance, who's always been a favorite
Speaker 3: of mine. Andrew's incredibly hard working guy like and supremely
Speaker 3: decent and good, like really good, high good values like.
Speaker 3: I mean for those sort of people to be in
Speaker 3: government for me anyway. And I don't know the other
Speaker 3: people who are going against. I'm not having a crack
Speaker 3: at the people are going against. I'm just talking about
Speaker 3: those individuals. Yeah, three Liberals got it. But there's three
Speaker 3: people I know and I can say genuinely say I've
Speaker 3: known him for a long time. They are brilliant and
Speaker 3: hard working. I mean, Australia is about hard work, and
Speaker 3: you work hard and get paid well and you pay
Speaker 3: some tax, but you shouldn't get penalized for your hard work.
Speaker 3: And that's part of our DNA and that's fair, that's fairness,
Speaker 3: and that's those three people are exactly I mean David
Speaker 3: com is another good example. But they're exactly the types
Speaker 3: of people we want, we want. I would I see
Speaker 3: government and they're in your team.
Speaker 2: I'm so proud to have them in my team. And
Speaker 2: there are many more. But you look at somebody like
Speaker 2: Scott Mum started with nothing, great migrant story again, just
Speaker 2: worked hard, has built himself up. Would be like he's
Speaker 2: just door knocked on literally thousands of doors, and the
Speaker 2: people he speaks to just say, wow, what an impressive
Speaker 2: young guy. And he has a real shot in Bentelong.
Speaker 2: It's a tough seat, but I think you can win.
Speaker 2: Roe Knox is, I mean, she's smart, talented, a great
Speaker 2: intellects just like exactly the sort of person you'd want
Speaker 2: in a seat like Wentworth and in the Parliament. And
Speaker 2: Andrew Constance. You look at what he did over you know, bushfires,
Speaker 2: and and he is like he bleeds for his community
Speaker 2: and he's he's really passionate about helping people, particularly you know,
Speaker 2: people who are in their darkest hour. And he's proven that,
Speaker 2: like he's just he's got those runs on the board
Speaker 2: and he's a great candidate in Gilmourn. And similarly David Coleman,
Speaker 2: who's now our shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman, he would represent
Speaker 2: our country on the world stage like very few people could.
Speaker 2: He's he's got a great talent, and he's worked hard
Speaker 2: in his local community. He's respected by all the multicultural groups,
Speaker 2: and and he's built up his margin over a period
Speaker 2: of time, which reflects the fact that people locally respect him.
Speaker 3: So you've covered off your policies and you know you've
Speaker 3: magically weaved it into our discussion, which is you know,
Speaker 3: that's your job, and you've done a good job of
Speaker 3: dub You know, every opportunity you had to weave into
Speaker 3: into the discussion. You know, those those ideas. One of
Speaker 3: the things I expected you would. So one of the
Speaker 3: things I thought i'd do is ask you to comment
Speaker 3: on some of the labor's policies. But you know, I
Speaker 3: don't want to look like, you know, a flag waving liberal.
Speaker 3: So I went into artificial intelligence, went into AI and
Speaker 3: I don't mind telling him, went into co pilot. Copilot's
Speaker 3: my favorite AI place to go, And I asked co pilot,
Speaker 3: what are the five main policies of the lay party
Speaker 3: at that Anthony Alberanezi has expoused over the past three
Speaker 3: months and I'm going to put the five to you
Speaker 3: because he's not here to put him to the audience,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to put.
Speaker 1: Him to you and if you like, you can make
Speaker 1: a comment on him.
Speaker 3: And this is our last part of the discussion of
Speaker 3: the first one is housing and it goes the ten
Speaker 3: billion dollar Housing Australia Future Fund names too. It's a
Speaker 3: future fund aims to build one hundred thousand homes for
Speaker 3: first time buyers out of the next decade. The initiative
Speaker 3: is part of a broader housing strategy including Help to
Speaker 3: Buy a scheme and the National Housing Cord which targets
Speaker 3: one point two million new homes in Australia by twenty
Speaker 3: twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Would you care a comment, Well, just if you look at.
Speaker 2: The actions as opposed to the words their signature housing policy.
Speaker 2: Whilst it's got some houses under construction at the moment,
Speaker 2: not one has been completed in three years, so not
Speaker 2: one house has been brought to market. They've fueled demand,
Speaker 2: as we said before, they've just put a million buyers
Speaker 2: into the market, million renters and they've made it harder
Speaker 2: for Australians. Their focus is on community housing as opposed
Speaker 2: to providing support to first home buyers. They talk about
Speaker 2: the five percent deposit policy. It was actually introduced by
Speaker 2: the Liberal government and we want to continue that policy.
Speaker 2: So there's common ground between the two parties now on
Speaker 2: that issue. In relation to the fund that you spoke about,
Speaker 2: this is in part what Standard and PAU has talked about,
Speaker 2: these off budget funds, and that's in part what's contributing
Speaker 2: to the risk of our credit rating at the moment.
Speaker 2: And the government's talking about putting one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: into building a home. You can't do a renovation, you know,
Speaker 2: for ten thousand dollars, and you don't get much of
Speaker 2: a renovation anymore for one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Dollars with the price the bathroom, kitchen.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, And so I don't know what sort
Speaker 2: of homes are going to build for one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: but it obviously and they haven't outlined the detail, but
Speaker 2: it's obviously some sort of subsidy that they subsidize the
Speaker 2: construction of a home. So I don't think frankly, I
Speaker 2: just don't think it'll ever happen, but it sounds flashy
Speaker 2: when you've got a ten billion dollar you know, future
Speaker 2: housing fund. I just think, look at the reality of
Speaker 2: the last three years and housing. The housing crisis is
Speaker 2: just really I think it's been devastating for a lot
Speaker 2: of young strains. Young younger strains are putting off having kids,
Speaker 2: and older Australians parents and grandparents, even though they've worked
Speaker 2: hard provisioned for their own retirement, are staying in the
Speaker 2: workforce longer now because go to help the kids with
Speaker 2: monthly repayments or with the deposit. So that's the you know,
Speaker 2: that'll be my critique of their policy.
Speaker 3: The second thing that day AI can't come up with
Speaker 3: this cost living, it says Labour's modest is obviously about
Speaker 3: as unbiased as you can get because it's unless the
Speaker 3: AI is hallucinating, which can do from time time. But
Speaker 3: it says the cost living Labor's modest tax cuts. Tax
Speaker 3: cuts start in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, that's
Speaker 3: next year, and they are designed to provide gradual relief,
Speaker 3: doubling and value by twenty seven twenty eight. What would
Speaker 3: you have to say about Labour's cost of living measures.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the contrast here is that Labour's saying seventy
Speaker 2: cents a day by way of a tax cut, is
Speaker 2: starting in fifteen months time. So let's say you know,
Speaker 2: four dollars ninety let's say five dollars a week, two
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty dollars a year. That's what they're promising
Speaker 2: you by way of tax cut. Our alternative is to say,
Speaker 2: starting from day one, we want to lower a petrol
Speaker 2: by twenty five cents a lead, so you're saving fourteen
Speaker 2: dollars a tank, twenty eight dollars a week for two
Speaker 2: car family fourteen fifteen hundred dollars a year, and that
Speaker 2: then is followed up by the twelve hundred dollars tax
Speaker 2: rebate if there are two of you and the family
Speaker 2: twenty four hundred dollars for the year. So you end
Speaker 2: up with a net benefit over that period of depending
Speaker 2: on the family circumstances. But let's say thirty nine hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: it takes you a lot of weeks at five dollars
Speaker 2: a week under mister Albaneze's plan to match what we've
Speaker 2: got on the table, and as I say, we then
Speaker 2: fix the system up so that we can bring the
Speaker 2: prices down. Mister Albaneze's promising one hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 2: energy rebate but not fixing the root problem. So he
Speaker 2: promised before the last election energy costs it come down
Speaker 2: by two hundred and seventy five dollars and they've gone
Speaker 2: up by thirteen hundred dollars. So we want to fix
Speaker 2: you know, it's a bullet on a a band aid
Speaker 2: on a bullet woe. We want to fix the underlying
Speaker 2: problem as well as provide immediate relief and the seventy
Speaker 2: cents a day, five bucks a week in fifteen months time.
Speaker 2: I just think if you're out there talking to families
Speaker 2: at the moment of deciding not to ensure their car
Speaker 2: because I just can't afford to pay the premium, I
Speaker 2: think that'd so you know what, I'll probably take the
Speaker 2: help now.
Speaker 3: And the third point that Ai gave me was on
Speaker 3: energy and it says the Labor Party wants to continue
Speaker 3: to invest in renewable energy projects and this aligance with
Speaker 3: Labour's climate goals focusing on reduction of emissions and transitioning
Speaker 3: to cleaner energy sources.
Speaker 1: Have you got to comment on well, we're all in
Speaker 1: favor of.
Speaker 2: Zero missions by twenty fifty or reducing our missions and
Speaker 2: being responsible. And we're an exporter and were export to
Speaker 2: Europe and other countries, and there'll be a requirement ongoing
Speaker 2: for us to have sensible policies in place. But this,
Speaker 2: as I said before, like it has been a wrecking
Speaker 2: ball going through the economy. And have a look at
Speaker 2: what's happening in parts of Europe, or what happened when
Speaker 2: Ukraine was attacked by Russia. Germany and France and other
Speaker 2: countries were all of a sudden worried about energy security.
Speaker 2: There are reports out of Spain at the moment. I
Speaker 2: don't know the cause of those blackouts there, but no
Speaker 2: economy can function without reliable power. And the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: and Crispylon want to pretend that solar and offshore wind
Speaker 2: and green hydrogen that'll keep the lights on. It just won't.
Speaker 2: And this is why people have got solar panels at
Speaker 2: the moment starting to find that they're being penalized because
Speaker 2: the sunshines during the day and they can pump energy
Speaker 2: into the network and they were paid a reasonable tariff
Speaker 2: not too long ago. But now the battery technology hasn't
Speaker 2: got to a point where it can store energy to
Speaker 2: keep the fridges running or the air conditioning unit running overnight.
Speaker 2: And we have to have a base load power and
Speaker 2: we have to firm up the renewable power. We need
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven power. The hospitals need it, cold
Speaker 2: rooms need it, mining needs it to pay its access
Speaker 2: every part of our society. Energy is the economy, and
Speaker 2: so yes, I mean they're signed up to a renewables
Speaker 2: only policy, but it's killing the economy. And that's what's
Speaker 2: if you ask, if you ask me what's the biggest
Speaker 2: single factor as to why grocery prices have gone up
Speaker 2: by thirty percent, I think it's the energy policy. And
Speaker 2: as I say, it's not just your power bill at
Speaker 2: home that's going up. It's the farmer, and it's the
Speaker 2: cold storage provider, and it's a transport operator, and it's
Speaker 2: everybody who's paying more and more for electricity and gas.
Speaker 2: And that's why we want to address gas and electricity
Speaker 2: costs and bring them down.
Speaker 1: The fourth one that says is education.
Speaker 3: So AI says, Education says an expansion of free TAFE
Speaker 3: programs is set to benefit over six hundred thousand Australians
Speaker 3: addressing skill shortages and boosting workforce participation.
Speaker 1: That'll comment on that well.
Speaker 2: As we've discussed before, nothing the government does is free.
Speaker 2: So for somebody to be paid to go to do
Speaker 2: a course, another taxpayer is paying that. So somebody who's
Speaker 2: just finished their degree or just finish their apprenticeship, they're
Speaker 2: the ones who are paying for it through their taxes. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm a really strong supporter of young Australians deciding what
Speaker 2: is best for them. If that's UNI, that's great, But
Speaker 2: you're not a failure if you don't go to UNI,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the labor ethos. You should be
Speaker 2: encouraged to do a trade if that's what's important. What
Speaker 2: we've said is we're going to set up and invest
Speaker 2: further into austral and trade colleges instead of the TAFE model.
Speaker 2: It allows kids in year ten and eleven and twelve
Speaker 2: to start to start their apprenticeship and get some of
Speaker 2: that underway. By the time they leave school they can
Speaker 2: get paid for part of it. They're developing skills and
Speaker 2: in addition to that, we're putting twelve thousand dollars into
Speaker 2: a wage subsidy for trainees and for apprentices so that
Speaker 2: employers see them as more attractive and will employ more apprentices,
Speaker 2: particularly in the construction sector as well.
Speaker 3: And the final one is health. Labor has committed this
Speaker 3: is going to be is going to wrankle yours Medicare.
Speaker 3: But Labor has committed eight point five billion dollars to
Speaker 3: meet aiming to have ninety percent of GP visits that's
Speaker 3: visits to the doctor bulk build by the end of
Speaker 3: the decade. I presume he means twenty thirty. This includes
Speaker 3: funding for urgent care, clinics and women's health initiatives.
Speaker 1: What do you say about.
Speaker 2: Well, some of some of the government's claims at the
Speaker 2: moment in relation to health, as it pointed out before,
Speaker 2: it is completely overblown. So when I was Health Minister,
Speaker 2: the bulk building rate was eighty four percent. It went
Speaker 2: up and the Prime Minister makes this point that it
Speaker 2: went up over the course of COVID because more people
Speaker 2: were doing telehealth consults, et cetera, getting vaccinations. It went
Speaker 2: up to eighty eight percent. Today it's at seventy seven percent,
Speaker 2: so down eleven points and Australians are finding it hard
Speaker 2: to get into a doctor. So you know, as a dad.
Speaker 2: As somebody who uses a health system, obviously myself, I
Speaker 2: want to make sure that we can have a really
Speaker 2: strong primary care network because that stops people from going
Speaker 2: to hospitals and presenting an emergency departments. It means that
Speaker 2: there's early detection of cancers and it means you can
Speaker 2: be treated much earlier. And blokes in particular, I might say,
Speaker 2: should go to the doctor more regularly. Women are much
Speaker 2: better at going to the doctor more regularly. And we
Speaker 2: need to invest in training of gps because we've got
Speaker 2: an aging workforce. More gps are getting older and retiring,
Speaker 2: and also it's less attractive as a specialty compared to
Speaker 2: obstetrics or gynecology or to other specialties where people can
Speaker 2: make more money, so we've got to properly pay the doctors.
Speaker 2: So we support additional investment into medicare and we've been
Speaker 2: very clear about that. We've doubled the number of psychology
Speaker 2: sessions which labor cut in half, because particularly for young
Speaker 2: kids with complex psychological needs, we need to get them
Speaker 2: with more support, not less. And we've made a big
Speaker 2: investment into GP training and we've worked with the Australian
Speaker 2: Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of General Practice
Speaker 2: to come up with that plan. So a very strong
Speaker 2: supporter of general practice and there's probably some similarities between
Speaker 2: labors at at the moment and US. I just think
Speaker 2: we can manage the economy more effectively, which means that
Speaker 2: we can ultimately invest more into into health and that
Speaker 2: can help keep people healthier and detect particularly those those
Speaker 2: cancer types earlier, which means the survival rates are much higher.
Speaker 3: But just so anyone listening or watching can get it clear,
Speaker 3: you're not going to smash.
Speaker 1: Medicare, no where where's that coming from.
Speaker 2: But it's their scare campaign and they ran it. Remember
Speaker 2: they ran it before Tony Abbott got elected, and they
Speaker 2: ran it before Scott Morrison got elected. They ran it
Speaker 2: before John Howard got elected, and before Malcolm Turmer was elected.
Speaker 2: There was this medi scare campaign that we were going
Speaker 2: to privatize Medicare. I remember older Australians coming up to
Speaker 2: us on the booth crying saying I voted for you
Speaker 2: for all of these years, why are you going to
Speaker 2: sell Medicare? And it proved to be a complete and
Speaker 2: utter fabrication, like they were misleading and lying to elderly
Speaker 2: Australians scaring them and that that is out of their
Speaker 2: campaign again. Now, I just think Australians realize it's a
Speaker 2: con job and that the Prime Minister is saying all
Speaker 2: of this because he can't get re elected on his
Speaker 2: track record and throw the mard. Run the scare campaigns,
Speaker 2: tell the lies. That's how you get elected, and that's
Speaker 2: what this election is about. And I intend to make
Speaker 2: sure that that's not the case. And I want to
Speaker 2: stand up for our country. I want to make sure
Speaker 2: that we're safe and secure. I want to make sure
Speaker 2: we can get our country back on track as well
Speaker 2: as the economy and help people live their lives again.
Speaker 2: I want to We've had seven we've had seven consecutive
Speaker 2: quarters so twenty one months of negative household growth. That is,
Speaker 2: households have been and recived for almost two years under
Speaker 2: this government. And as I said earlier, the biggest drop
Speaker 2: in living standards that the strains have experienced and people
Speaker 2: know it, and they're the stories we've heard, the tears
Speaker 2: that we've seen when we've spoken to family, so working
Speaker 2: their guts out and just going backwards at the moment,
Speaker 2: and people aren't better off today. Than they were three
Speaker 2: years ago, and people can't afford three more years of
Speaker 2: a bad government will end up like Victoria. But at
Speaker 2: a national level, when you get a second term, the
Speaker 2: first term looks bad, but the second term is when
Speaker 2: they really consolidate the bad decisions and lock in the
Speaker 2: debt that might be paid off for a generation. And
Speaker 2: let's change the government now and get to get things sorted.
Speaker 3: And just as you get, helped me out because you know,
Speaker 3: you're a political scientist, and I don't mean in terms
Speaker 3: of academy, but you are a political scientist and that
Speaker 3: there's the game you work in. Just an observation and
Speaker 3: maybe you can help me out though it seems to
Speaker 3: me what most people aren't.
Speaker 1: Thinking about is for this election is that.
Speaker 3: Labor is about big government because they take the view
Speaker 3: and rightly wrongly. I know where my position is, but
Speaker 3: you know everyone will have a different position. But big
Speaker 3: government movements like labor the view that government make the
Speaker 3: best decisions for everybody. So you're how you live your life,
Speaker 3: I'll sort it out. I'll build the rules around how
Speaker 3: you live like COVID is a good example, which is
Speaker 3: what happened to Victoria. We as a government are better
Speaker 3: making decisions about how you live your life. Therefore, as
Speaker 3: a result of that, we will build governor bigger and
Speaker 3: bigger and bigger if you vote us in. But you're
Speaker 3: going to have more rules, more regulation. For a small business,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to buy, buy more, many more rules.
Speaker 3: As to hey, you're going to ministry your business. You
Speaker 3: know you've got to collect the tax. You've got to
Speaker 3: do this, You've got to do that. Whereas the liberal
Speaker 3: program has been obviously government, you've got to have rules,
Speaker 3: but smaller government.
Speaker 1: And the vote for.
Speaker 3: Labor in my opinion, and if you are someone who's
Speaker 3: going to vote for labor, in my opinion, you are
Speaker 3: voting for big government. And by voting for big government,
Speaker 3: the job of someone in working government is to make
Speaker 3: more rules. That's what governments do. They govern, They make rules,
Speaker 3: and they make more rules and more rules and more rules.
Speaker 3: And when it comes to working out whether I'm on
Speaker 3: better off today, get better what it was, say three
Speaker 3: years ago, I just know there's a lot, a whole
Speaker 3: lot more rules around.
Speaker 1: Than it was three years ago. But just take economic society. Yes, and.
Speaker 3: Is a liberal party still stand for let's call it
Speaker 3: smaller government relative to what Labour does.
Speaker 2: The short answer is yes, and I think you're right
Speaker 2: in your analysis. It's just a philosophical and ideological difference
Speaker 2: between the two parties.
Speaker 1: And everybody can make their own decision about course, so
Speaker 1: they should know of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so look at our The Liberal Party approach is
Speaker 2: to knowing that we're spending taxpayers money to pay the
Speaker 2: wages of public servants in Canberra, is to make sure
Speaker 2: that the money is spent efficiently. So let's get the
Speaker 2: best bang for our buck, and let's make sure that
Speaker 2: we're employing people who are making it easier for you
Speaker 2: to navigate government services or get the services that you
Speaker 2: are relying on from government. One of the reasons I
Speaker 2: think that we've established a lot of inefficiency and why
Speaker 2: we're passing a lot of cost onto the end user,
Speaker 2: say in the construction sector, I think is a good
Speaker 2: good example. The Labor government will always try and police
Speaker 2: a unions. So the CFMUU has donated twelve million dollars
Speaker 2: since Anthony Albanezi became Labor leader. They've let the CFMU
Speaker 2: largely go untouched. The CFMU workplace now is at about
Speaker 2: two point four days a week, so and as we
Speaker 2: said earlier we discussed this, you end up paying twice
Speaker 2: the amount to construct a building. And it's why the
Speaker 2: cost of a two bedroom unit has gone up so
Speaker 2: dramatically and why it's cost a lot of people additional
Speaker 2: holding costs. So the developer buys the block of land.
Speaker 2: The government used to approve that development application in say
Speaker 2: three months, It now takes three years or six years,
Speaker 2: and so the costs of that interest ultimately get paid
Speaker 2: by the young couple who's buying the two bedroom unit.
Speaker 2: And the reason why that's blown out is because government
Speaker 2: has expanded and when you bring new public servants on,
Speaker 2: they look for new things to do. That's their job exactly,
Speaker 2: and they they don't find efficiency, They find reasons to
Speaker 2: prolong the discussion and we need to consider more factors,
Speaker 2: and we need more reports, and you need to pay
Speaker 2: the consultants more and more, and that's what's driven up
Speaker 2: the cost and the labor. Governments employed an extra forty
Speaker 2: one thousand public servants in Canberra and to put that
Speaker 2: into perspective on a per capita basis, and it's a
Speaker 2: really interesting graph. I think it was in the Economists
Speaker 2: just recently, but Australia has the highest number of public
Speaker 2: servants per capita compared to any other country, including European countries,
Speaker 2: in the world, and that means that it's grown at
Speaker 2: about three times the rate under this government compared to
Speaker 2: when Julia Gillard and Kevin rud were and government last.
Speaker 2: So that is a pretty phenomenal growth number. Now, if
Speaker 2: you're talking a wage bill there of over seven billion
Speaker 2: dollars a year, you think what you can do for that.
Speaker 2: You can drop petrol by twenty five cents. A letter
Speaker 2: costs you six billion dollars a year. You can provide
Speaker 2: permanently permanently, You could provide more support to defense, You
Speaker 2: could give more funding to roads, you could provide more
Speaker 2: support in age care. There are a lot of things
Speaker 2: you can do for that money. And if you can
Speaker 2: deliver a more efficient service and you can make it
Speaker 2: easier and less costly to deal with government, you end
Speaker 2: up reducing the overall costs that have to be complied
Speaker 2: or paid for to comply with the government regulations. And
Speaker 2: that's a big difference between the two parties. The Commonwealth
Speaker 2: Public Service Union, of course applaud the Albanezi government for
Speaker 2: employing more public servant in camera because they get to
Speaker 2: clip the ticket and they get to collect the union
Speaker 2: fees and then the CPSU pay the union fees to
Speaker 2: the Labor Party to help them campaign. That's their business model.
Speaker 2: I just I want an efficient public servants service, and
Speaker 2: I want a smaller government, and I want people to
Speaker 2: be able to make decisions that are right for them
Speaker 2: and right for their families and right for their businesses.
Speaker 2: And I'm not interested in having to tell you whether
Speaker 2: you turn a left or right coming out of your bedroom,
Speaker 2: or whether you allowed to serve up that cereal in
Speaker 2: the morning, or whether you're allowed to, you know, do
Speaker 2: this or that in your life. I want you to
Speaker 2: make those decisions. And that's the big difference between the
Speaker 2: two parties. The Labor Party believes in a control you,
Speaker 2: command and control model, and that's.
Speaker 3: They believe they're better off at making decisions than we
Speaker 3: are as individuals.
Speaker 2: Yes, and again because it's a trust thing. They don't
Speaker 2: trust business owners because they think they're there to exploit workers.
Speaker 2: As we said before, they want to give a model
Speaker 2: where people can rent for life, because that means that
Speaker 2: you know you've got you're not empowered a landlord who's
Speaker 2: got that subservient relationship. They want the super funds to
Speaker 2: own the houses that people live in and give them
Speaker 2: a rent for life model. And they're just the fundamental
Speaker 2: differences between the two parties.
Speaker 3: And then that sort of takes us around sort of
Speaker 3: that territory of socialism, because that's sort of the philosophy
Speaker 3: of socialism. Yes, and all these things, apart from being efficient,
Speaker 3: costs end up costing us more money. So may the
Speaker 3: whole business cycle inefficient. Just so I'm clear, though, any
Speaker 3: public servants listening to this doesn't mean that if Dunton
Speaker 3: gets in he's going to go and fire everybody.
Speaker 2: No. Look, I mean look at what we did again
Speaker 2: when we were in government. We found efficiencies and we
Speaker 2: did reduce the overall number of public servants as we're
Speaker 2: proposing at this election as well. But we're at a sensible,
Speaker 2: sustainable model and trying to get that balance right. As
Speaker 2: I say, where people are working harder and paying more tax,
Speaker 2: they want to know that it's being spent efficiently. And
Speaker 2: if they think we're just employing public servants in Canberra
Speaker 2: to please the Union as the Labor Party is done,
Speaker 2: well that's not an efficient use of your money. If
Speaker 2: you're making an application to be a pension or if
Speaker 2: you're working in the Department of Defense, you want to
Speaker 2: know that they're the most streamlined process is going. And
Speaker 2: we should be encouraging the state governments and the councils
Speaker 2: to do that as well, and encourage them to be
Speaker 2: efficient in the taxes that they're applying and the public
Speaker 2: servants that they're employing in the way in which they
Speaker 2: spend their taxes as well. And sometimes the commwealth government
Speaker 2: can incentivize state governments to try and cut waste and
Speaker 2: try and condensed timelines for approvals, etc. Not abandoned environmental considerations, etc.
Speaker 2: But it takes sixteen years in our country now for
Speaker 2: a mind to be approved. What's happening there? All those
Speaker 2: companies like Rio are just taking money. They're putting it
Speaker 2: into Africa, They're putting it into Asia and North America.
Speaker 2: We lose the jobs, we lose the taxes. We would
Speaker 2: end up being more environmentally responsible in that mining operation
Speaker 2: than what would happen in Africa, and so we don't
Speaker 2: improve the overall missions across the world, and we do
Speaker 2: ourselves out of huge revenues, and we could be building
Speaker 2: more schools or we could be providing more GPS. That's
Speaker 2: they're the fundamental differences I think between the two parties.
Speaker 3: So, Peter, the elections on in four days from now,
Speaker 3: it's the last run home. You've got to take one
Speaker 3: hundred meters Togo. It looks like there's a you know,
Speaker 3: you've got to catch up. You got to really put
Speaker 3: this stride out. What are you going to say to
Speaker 3: Australians now? Why vote for the Coalition.
Speaker 2: We're going to work hard right up until election night
Speaker 2: because I believe we can win the election, and I
Speaker 2: believe we can win it because not just of the
Speaker 2: track record of the last three years and how hard
Speaker 2: that's been for a lot of families, but probably more
Speaker 2: importantly because of what we've got on off and that
Speaker 2: is a positive plan. It's about providing immediate assistance and
Speaker 2: it's the twenty five cent a letter cut, it's the
Speaker 2: twelve hundred dollars back. It's fixing up the energy system
Speaker 2: straight away, and it's fixing the economy so that the
Speaker 2: economy can be working for people, not that people are
Speaker 2: slaves to the economy. I want to create an environment
Speaker 2: where we can support families and help small businesses grow again,
Speaker 2: where we can bring inflation down so that we can
Speaker 2: bring interest rates down, and we can be a safe
Speaker 2: society as well. I want people to be safe in
Speaker 2: their own homes. I want them to be safe in
Speaker 2: their communities, and I want us to be safe as
Speaker 2: a country in a very uncertain century. And we have
Speaker 2: the experience to be able to do that, and we
Speaker 2: have the capacity. When you look at the front bench
Speaker 2: and Angus Taylor and Jane Hume and others who are
Speaker 2: very accomplished people in their own business lives, etc. They
Speaker 2: bring a lot of experience to the table as well.
Speaker 2: And we have the ability to clean up this mess
Speaker 2: of the last three years and help bring down the
Speaker 2: cost of petrol, of power, of electricity and gas, and
Speaker 2: we can help rebuild the economy. And that's exactly what
Speaker 2: liberal governments have done after bad labor governments before.
Speaker 1: Better done.
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving our audience a better sense of who Peter Donte
Speaker 3: really is.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Mark, Thank you very much.