#185 Peter Dutton: The Election Week Interview - The Coalition’s Policies & Australia’s Future with Labor - Straight Talk with Mark Bouris

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, my Boris and this is straight Talk. Peter Dutton.
Welcome back to straight Talk. Mate.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Great to be with you. Mark.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Thank you been a bit hectic.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's been a bit on there's no sleep at the moment,
but we're just going twenty four to seven until Poles
closed on Saturday night.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Did you ever have any concept of how I use
it hectic? How sort of crazy this is like running
for you know, the leader of the party as opposed
to just your normal seat.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Do you have any sense for it?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Look, I've been around. I've served four Prime ministers, so
I've seen different campaigns, and I've been in the leadership
group and watched it pretty you know, sort of ringside
for a long time. But until you're in the ring
and you're just going round after around it, it can
be exhausting. But it's also exhilarating, mate. I mean, we've
met some just amazing people. We're up in towns full
the other day on Anzac Day meeting with young diggers

(00:50):
up there in the RSL and you know what, selfie's
and all that sort of stuff, But you're standing there thinking,
you know what this young blow twenty one, twenty two
years of age has such a love for our country
that he's prepared to trade his life to keep my kids,
my grandkids safe in our country. And all of that
provides you, I think, just with fuel and the tank
to think, you know what, this is worth fighting for

(01:11):
and we're in a great country and I need to
step up and make sure we protect our country and
get it back on track.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
You got the fight still in you?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
One hundred percent? Yeah, yeah, I never never give in,
and I've always had that as my maximum over life,
to make sure that you just double down and you
stand up for what you believe in, and there's no
sitting on the fence. You need to tell people and
be clear about what your values are, what you stand for,
and if you try and please everyone in this job,
you end up, I think, standing for nothing. And there

(01:42):
are good and bad people on both sides of politics,
but the worst ones of those that get to the
end of their career and nobody can tell you what
they stood for or what they believed in. What's the
point of public service if you can't stand up for
the values that you really strongly believe in, and what
are w'here to?

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Anything is surprised.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Just the negative campaigns and the lies that have come
from Labor in this campaign. As I said, I've been
in Parliament almost twenty five years and the you know,
I mean, politicians can be accused of telling FIBs or
lies or whatever, but I've never seen a leader look
down the barrel of the camera like this one and

(02:24):
he just lies, just flat out tells people black is white,
and even when he's pulled up on it, he dances around.
And I mean, I've seen different Labor and Liberal leaders
get caught out, and most of them respect the truth
and adhere to that, but this is a different scenario.

(02:47):
So I've been really surprised by the depth of the lies.
And I think though, I've got an incredible faith in
the Australian people, and I think over the last four
or five days, people are starting to say, actually, you
know what, that doesn't add up what he's saying, and
I know that not to be true what I just
heard him say. And we've seen it because we've had

(03:07):
four debates now and people have done their research, and
I think as we get closer to the election, momentum
is starting to swing back towards the Liberal Party and
I think that will by six PM on Saturday Night.
See is in a very strong position in which I
think we can win.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
This is funny.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
I've been through a lot of elections too, and not
in the same capacity as you, but as a voter,
and I don't think I've ever heard anybody be called
a lie I don't think people have challenged a proposition
that you know, opposing people have put up. But I
don't really ever.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Remember hearing anyone call anyone a liar.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
And actually, one of the things that has come out
of this whole campaign from both sides is that I've
actually heard you say that the Prime Minister is weak,
yet he's somehow surged ahead of you guys in the
polls so called post talk about that at a moment,
but it looks as though at least the media of
putting him as a winner.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
I can't reconcile that stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Well, I mean a couple of points. One is, you
don't lead the left of the Labor Party for twenty
years if you don't have some mungrel in you, so
there's no question about that. But weak in the sense
that he hasn't been able to stand up, for example,
to Kevin Rudd, who wanted demanded to go to the
United States as our ambassador and has been a failure.
Really weak in the sense that he wasn't prepared to

(04:29):
explain the detail of the Voice to the Australian people,
even though it was promised, but he never had any
intention of doing that. Weak in the sense that they've
made decisions to spend a lot of money when they
should have been taking the foot off the accelerator so
that interest rates didn't stay as high as they have.
They've gone up on twelve occasions, they've only come back
once and that's only by point two five of one percent.

(04:52):
And weak in the sense that he hasn't been able
to stand up and make the decision to invest into
keeping us safe as a community, and people feel less
safe in their communities. And I think we're less safe
as a country because the government's taken money out of
defense as well in a very uncertain period. So I
think there's that element to it if you step back though,

(05:14):
as as best I can, and i'm as assay sort
of in the arena. But what they've done is they
have just plastered a negative campaign against us over the
course of the last few weeks. Why would they do that?
Their campaign can't be look vote for labor at this
election because you're paying three hundred bucks a month less

(05:35):
for your groceries, you're paying two hundred dollars less a
month for your electricity bill, or two hundred and seventy
five dollars less, or you're paying one hundred and fifty
dollars less a month for your insurance premiums. Gas has
gone up by thirty four percent, electricity is up by
thirty two percent, groceries up by thirty percent, and people
know in their own budgets that they're struggling to keep

(05:56):
their heads above water. So they had to go negative
because they can't talk the achievements of the last three
years and how people are better off. Thirty thousand small
businesses have gone broke. So that's why I think we've
seen the level of negativity, the depth of that negativity,
and the labor lies. It probably just talks about Medicare.
Block building rates are down by eleven percent under his watch.

(06:18):
People are paying forty three dollars out of pocket to
go and see a GP. In some cases they're canceling
or not making appointments to go to see a doctor
because they haven't got the forty three bucks to fork
out out of their budget for a doctor's visit, and
you know, I mean that's if you listen to their campaign,
they've been the greatest friend of medicare ever. It's just

(06:39):
not the reality.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
But then, how does he is it a reflection on
the voting population or how is it that he's able
then to swap over the national poles which is different
to seat by seat pole, but the national poles that
the media keep trotting out. How's he been able to
swap it over from the coalition being ahead, let's say

(07:02):
beginning of January late last year, to accordingly according to
the current.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Position being looking as though that you're behind. Is he
just a good politicians?

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I think he's a tricky politician. I think he's demonstrated that.
And the negative campaign has had an impact. I do
think though over the last four or five days, and
you can see this in the internal track polling, it
is starting to shift and people are starting to see
through the negative campaign. The campaign is starting to and
momentum starting to come back. We've seen it on the

(07:34):
pre pole as well. Talking to marginal seat members and
candidates in our key seats. There's a really positive sentiment
on pre polling since it's opened now, that'll be some
Liberal Party voters coming out early, particularly older Australians, older
Astralans who are really worried about unrealized capital gains tax,

(07:54):
They're worried about where the economy is going. They're worried
that kids and grandkids can't get housing. So there'll be
that element to the voter sentiment at the moment. But
there are still you know, a lot of people who
are undersided, a lot of people who don't take much
interest in politics at all, will start to switch on
over the next few days. And I think there are
a lot of people who have listened to the Labor

(08:15):
Party pitch and may have been taken first up by it,
but now realize, hang on it, that doesn't make sense.
Medicare is not going to see a doctor, is not
cheaper than it was a few years ago. And am
I better off today than I was three years ago? Well,
for a lot of families know, And it's not just
a referendum. This election is not just a referendum on

(08:36):
the campaign of the last few weeks and who's held
more babies and you know, who's visited more seats or
done more flights or anything like that. This is a
referendum on the last three years, and I don't think
people forget that. And it's also about, well, are you
better off in three years time having re elected a
labor Green's government, or are you better off with labor

(08:58):
being out of power and the Liberals managing the economy
effectively again and keeping us safe and realizing the dream
of home ownership again.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
So I received a text last night, interesting enough and
unsolicited and more random than anything from Jeff Wilson.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
And you're going to.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Say, Clive Palmer for a second.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
I've got a few of those says. I haven't had
a few of those trumble to Patriot once now. But
I received this text from Jeff Wilson. Jeff Wilson runs
a fund and he's a very successful guy here in Sydney.
And he sent me a copy of a paper about
unrealized gains capital gains in super funds and the proposed
tax on those gains.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
And I thought, wow, that's knowing I was.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Seeing you today, that is a really important point I
need to put to you.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
And I said to Jeff, I would put it to you.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
He's a good friend of mineus that have put to you,
and he's actually prepared a white paper on it, or
his organization prepared white paper on it, which I might
actually send over to you. But where everyone's forgotten about this,
you know, I think the amount is three million dollars
if you have in your super fun because you've worked
hard and you've been out to contribute over a million years,
you know, enough money to get over three million dollars

(10:10):
worth of assets, but you haven't sold them.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
They just value did that.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Under the proposal by the Labor Party, which is what
Jeff was bringing to my attention last night again, was
that you'd be paying tax on that. And I don't
know how you paid tax on an unrealized game. I
don't we get the money from him to pay tax
on something as unrealized because you don't have the cash
because you haven't realized the game. Can what's the position
of the Liberal Party of the coalition on this stuff?

Speaker 2 (10:37):
So, Mike, we opposed it straight away when the government
proposed it, and they've tried now, I think, to sort
of push the boundaries on this. They've done research on
abolition of negative gearing and cutting out the discount on
capital gains, tax on the sale of an asset held
for longer than twelve months as well. So I think
there is a broader issue here of credibility. So the

(10:59):
prime went to the last election saying no changes to
super tax, and of course this change then came in,
and I equate it to you know, if you're a
way journal, if you're a tradee or you working for
a boss, it's like charging you tax, like you're having
to pay the tax office the tax before you get

(11:20):
paid your wage for that week. And if you're in
a superfund and you've got a farm in that super fund,
which many rural families do, or if you're a family
maybe second third generation family with a block of shops
or a couple of units, or if you've got shares

(11:42):
that have just done really well, you've picked a couple
of cracking shares that have taken off. For that twelve
month period, you might have seen an increase in value
in the block of flats or in the price of
your shares, you haven't realized the gain. So if the
price has gone from a all are up to five dollars,

(12:02):
you're taxed on that capital gain, and the next twelve months,
the shares might come back. There might be a crash.
The valuation that you've had to pay for again for
the building that you've got in your superfund might show
that prices have come off, or perhaps you've got vacancies
and the yield's gone down in relation to the shops

(12:24):
that you've got to. It could be anything, right. You
could have a development application that's approved. You've sunk a
lot of money into getting the development application and it
increases the price of the block of land that you're
holding or whatever it is. You're going to pay tax
under Labour's model, and it raises a few billion dollars,
so they know that it's really going to hurt. And
if you're in a superfund and you haven't got much

(12:46):
cash in the super fund, if you are a farmer,
for example, and you've got limits as to how much
money you can put on depending on how old you
are as to how much money you can put into
that fund, you might be forced into a position where
you've got to sell the asset to pay the tax bill.
And it just it's I just think it's unjust and
it's unfair and it's also nonsense. Well, it's absolutely it is,

(13:09):
but it captures like people might say, now, oh, you
know three million bucks and you're super fund if only,
but this will capture with inflation people over the coming years.
It's not not index, so the three million doesn't go
up each year, so this will capture more and more
tax payers each year. And as I say, if you're
if you've inherited some money and you've put it into
your super or you've just listened to the financial advisors

(13:31):
who have said, okay, pile as much money as you
can into super because it's a safe asset class. You're
you're now going to come within scope over the course
of the next few years. Like we've fought really hard
against this, Labor and the Green strongly support it. And
again I think it gives a window into Labour's thinking.
It's it's that we can take money away from you

(13:53):
because we think you've done too well. And that's sort
of the socialism that's at operation. That's at the heart
of the operation of Labor and Green's parties. That it's
well three distribution. And Jeff Wilson, who I know well
also I'm in one of the smartest financial minds in
the country. He's horrified by all of this, and most

(14:14):
financial advisors are poor keating, poor keeting would be he
wouldn't he wouldn't recognize it in terms of what the
Labor Party's proposing here. And it provides a disincentive as well,
because a lot of financial advisors will be saying to
younger people, look, actually I wouldn't be putting that much
money into supernow because it's just risky. We don't know

(14:35):
whether the three million is going to be brought down.
If Labor needs to create more tax and more revenue,
maybe they'll drop the three million down to two million
dollars and you'll be captured by that. So the whole
idea of that Super is that it's a safe place
to invest and it's going to provide for your retirement.
But if you take away that certainty, younger people are
just going to say, well, actually, no, I'm not going

(14:56):
to tip money into Super. And you know, we sold
you know, a car or a boat instead of spending
that money, we're going to dump it into Super. Those
people stopped doing that, and I think that's you know,
I think that that is a really bad outcome. Not
enough people are talking about it, and as I say
it also then says, well, if Anthony Albanezi told you

(15:17):
before the last election that there were no not going
to be any tax changes around super he's saying the
same thing now around the family home. But we know
that they've done the work on what negative gearing abolition
looks like and what the abolition of the CGT fifty
percent discount looks like as well, So that you know,
I think gives a window into the thinking of the

(15:38):
Labor Party and that they'll always want a tax more
because I always want to spend more. But that's what
puts interest rates up as well.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
I hope you don't mind if I just I don't
want to labor this this point, but it's quite important
to someone like me. I think about the kids, the
twenty year old kids, let's call them, even the fifteen
year old kids, but maybe they're not voting. But let's
say your grandkids or my grandkids in my case, or
we could be thinking about young people who are just

(16:06):
turning twenty getting the first job they're going to work
for forty five years, and they're going to be putting
the money into this great thing that look, you know,
let's give it a keyping a great thing that the
Keyting came up with in the nineties, a great thing,
and it's about building up enough wealth so you can
retire comfortably, because every Australian works their butt off and
they deserve to retire comfortably. And the whole regime about

(16:31):
this is having concessionary concessional tax rates on your superfund
and the money the super fund made. That's the whole premise.
A kid who's twenty in forty five years time will
probably will have to have more than three million dollars
worth assays it's be.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Able to live comfortably, no doubt about that.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
And so that person right now want to get their
act together and think about what they're going to do,
because if this goes through, this is a next extential
threat to what was originally designed by Jim Chalmers's greatest
person in his life, Paul Keating. And I just can't
believe that they're actually even talking about it or considering it.

(17:15):
Is this a real risk of getting a pass by
it through Parliament?

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Well, yes, and again it wasn't. Nothing was mentioned about
it before the election. It's one of the key broken
promises And to your point too, which I think is
really well made, that the reason that we've got a
concessional taxation arrangement that is people paying low attacks in
SUPER when the money's compounding and you're earning and building

(17:39):
that nest eck up is because it's your money ultimately,
Whilst the boss takes it out before you see it
and sends it off to your super fund, it's your
money and you can't access it. So the price that
we as a government are saying to you for putting
that money aside not being able to use it to
buy a boat or go on a holiday or whatever

(18:00):
it might be, is that we're going to tax you
at a lower rate because we want you to be
self sufficient in retirement because we've got an aging population,
more people on pensions, and your point is spot on,
where you've worked your guts out your whole life. We
want you to be able to enjoy your retirement and
SUPER is part of the way in which you're going
to be able to do that. But the government just

(18:21):
up ends all of that logic and thinking that keeping
first had in mind, and it's just a tax grab.
And it's even worse than that because you're saying to somebody, Okay,
we're going to have to pay a valuer during the
course of every financial year to work out whether the
asset's gone up or down during the course of that year.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Then the cost of valuers for real estate, they charge
a percentage of the valuation, well on.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Thousands and thousands of dollars. So the values will be
happy because they're going to be paid to do these
desktop audits or whatever. I don't know the level of detail.
The government hasn't released how much money you'd have to
spend in an average super fun to comply with the
new change. And there are as I say, like that

(19:04):
you get fluctuations in different assets that you've got in
your superannuation, whether it's shares or whether it's real property
or whatever it might be. So I think there's a
real problem here, and I think it shows the difference
between the two parties. The Liberal Party will always be
better economic managers because most of us come from a
business background. Most of us know how to manage money.

(19:27):
We've started businesses, we've worked really closely in my case
with with Peter Costello and with John Howard. And part
of the reason that the economy suffering at the moment
is because there are now four budgets where the government
has made decisions that have just made life much harder,
and people feel that in their own household budgets.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
When we talk about that tax on.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Assets of a super inneration fund, I feel as I'm
playing a game of Monopoly and i just landed on
the chance square and I've left it up my chance
card and it says pay tax. It's like a prosperity taxes.
It's like I've been prosperous for the twelve months as
a result of the advice that my advisor has given
me as to what I should be buying.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Investing has done well as a result of that prosperity.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
You got to pay tax. It doesn't mean I made
the money. I didn't earn the dough. It's not too
different what Dan Andrews put into Victoria for farmers who
have had their land rezoned, where the land's gone from
being a farm worth one price to being resigned for
housing become much more valuable, and Dan Andrews went and
taxed them before they sold on. These poor bloody farmers
have been forced to sell their property to pay the tax.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
That's right. They haven't got the cash, the lazy cash
sitting around to pay the uplift tax like that. It's
and I just I mean, this is a really interesting
coint as well, because if Labour's logic is that that
can apply within superinnuation, well why not outside of super Yeah,
so if you're scar yeah, it's really scary, but it
would generate them a lot of money. People would pay

(20:57):
a lot of tax. And again I sort of bring
it back to the basic point that if you're a
trading and you're getting you know, however much a week,
a thousand bucks a week, you're being asked to pay
the taxman the turn of dollars a week before you
get the thousand, you know, or before you get the
eight hundred. And it's wrong in principle, and it discourages

(21:18):
investment and it undermines the certainty about investing in this country.
And that is that's exactly what we've seen in Victoria
where businesses have just pulled money out. They've gone to
Adelaide or they've gone to Sydney or Brisbane and they're
employing workers there. And the Labor Party's devastated the Victorian
economy and you know a lot of Victorians are very

(21:38):
angry about it.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Rightly, so it's very interesting.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
I have a lot, I got quite a lot of
branches down in Brisbane, Victoria, and I used to go
down there and they'd always say to me, you know,
Dan Andrews is Dan Andrews that, And then I say,
but how come we keeps getting in? But now, what's
interesting that the mood has completely swung against Dan Andrews
and his successes in Victoria in terms of labor Party,
like completely swa yes, yeah, I think that's right. And

(22:03):
because people eventually worked out that Andrews was just running
the joint into the ground and he was a big spender,
like a massive spender. And now he's turned the place
into it a tax haven for government. And what I
mean by that is not tax over for consumers, but
government there, like the property market in Victoria's suffered because
if you own an investment, you pay land tax on

(22:26):
the first fifty after the first fifty thousand dollars of valuation,
whereas New South Wales as something like one point one
five or something like that, one point one five million,
and people are house prices going down. A real estate
investment down there is at an all time low as
a result of that.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Let's put my houses.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
That means a collecting less stamp duty and they're getting
into a bigger hole, and the hole is getting deeper
and deep and deeper.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Do you see that?

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Is that a mentality? Is that a Labor Party mentality?
It eventually gets them.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
It is it's a jealousy thing. And it's if you
have a look back through the history of this country
where there's only so much tax that people who work
hard can pay, and you get to a tipping point
where they say, you know what, I'm just withdrawing my
effort and I'm not going to build that house or
I'm not going to build that block of units. And

(23:15):
it's almost what's happened in the construction sector with the
involvement of the CFM. I mean, the CFMA has donated
about twelve million dollars to the Labor Party since Anthony
Alberanezi became leader, and so they've let the CFM you
just run right. In the building sector, productivity is down
to about two and a half days a week, which
means it takes twice as long and twice the cost
to build an apartment block. And in Victoria, all of

(23:38):
that capital is being withdrawn and moved to other states,
to New South Wales for example, as you point out,
and at a time when we should be seeing an
encouragement to invest into say housing, when we need more
houses coming online, people are just saying, well, the taxes
are too great, and I'm not being I'm just not

(23:59):
going to be this sort of soft target any longer.
And my point before about if it's logical for Jim
Chalmers and Anthony Open easy to tax you in that
way in superinnuation, why not in your other investments, and
why not on your house. If your house is worth
more than you know, a million dollars and my house

(24:20):
is only worth five hundred thousand dollars, then you know,
the logic is that you should pay tax so that
I can be subsidized in another way. I mean, that
is just socialism. It's and it's withdrawing the encouragement, the
incentive for entrepreneurialism and for people to invest and grow
their businesses. And and that ultimately means that less tax

(24:41):
is paid, more public servants, you know, become employed. And
a lot of that's happened over the last few years,
particularly in Victoria.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
So someone else raised another interesting point with me. Well
known economy, so I won't drag him into the conversation,
but he raises his point with me. If you look
at the the credit rating of New South Wales compet
to Victoria Victoria, Victorians have to pay a higher regist
rate on money that Victoria and government borrows relative to

(25:11):
what we have to do here in New South Wales
because the credit rating New South Wales is higher than
the credit rating Victoria. And I see today that stand
and Pause are concerned about the long series from now on,
the long series of deficits we're going to have, which
means have I either got to raise the money in
the markets, go and borrow money as a country, and

(25:33):
we keep hearing this number of a trillion or a
trillion plus in debt and either that or we've got
a tax more or both in order to fund the deficit.
Stand Pause are a pretty tough organization. They don't muck
around and once you get a downgrade from them, it's

(25:53):
very hard to get regrader back up. In Australia as
a country, not stay by state, but as a country
has enjoy a triple A rating for a long long time,
which is a rare thing. Like lot many countries in
the world have this, which means we pay the lowest
as a country when we borrow, we pay the lowest
possible interest rate, which is great, which I means, you
know more, we feel more encouraged that we can borrow

(26:14):
more money. But if we keep borrow money, STANDPOD is
going to get nervous because investors will sue them. That's
what happened during the GFC if they don't properly rate
a country. In other words, they think you're spending too much.
So I'd like to ask you this. I know you're
not the treasurer, but doesn't matter. You're the leader of

(26:35):
the party.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
And I know you understand economics.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
What is the danger of running deficits year in year
out for a ten year period, having to tap the
markets all the time, when already we have an example
of what's happening in Victoria.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Victoria, we have that example.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
But when already the stand and poor rating Agency, the
Global Rating Agency, is already starting to think of this.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
What's the danger of that?

Speaker 3 (27:01):
And what will what will you, as your elader of
your party do to try and manage this?

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well mark that the risk compounds each year, as you
point out, because you've got a thirty billion dollar deficit
one year, and add that on top of the debt
that you've already got. So it goes, you know, from
a trillion dollars up and this government projects it will
go to one point two trillions. So they have deficits
in every year that they forecast, and it's like having

(27:31):
your credit card maxed out each month and pretending that
if you get sick or you lose your job, or
you need to replace the fridge it's broken down unexpectedly,
that you're going to be able to do that. At
some stage, you can't do it. And your point is
exactly right in terms of standard and poor now in

(27:53):
terms of what they've said, so they're basically firing shot
across the bout to say, look, we think, you know,
we think labor government's spending a lot of money. They
talked about off budget funds, So these are all green
energy funds that they're continuing to fund in the tens
of billions.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Of dollars which do not appear in the budget.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
That's right, So they're off budget and they're still though
taken into account in terms of our credit worthiness. So
the point is that Australia becomes much riskier and the
price you pay for those borrowings, as you point out,
goes higher, and it becomes this vicious cycle, and as
your credit rating deteriorates, you're paying more and more for

(28:34):
the bank. No different than if a person with a
bad credit rating goes to borrow money from the bank,
as opposed to someone who's got an impeccable credit rating.
You'll pay different interest rates because the risk is higher
if you've got a bad track record. And this also
happened with the Reserve Bank governor, who's independent from the government,
who has been warning the government over the last few years. Look,

(28:54):
if you keep spending money like you are, and this
is the biggest spending government in the last forty years,
you're going to end up with higher interest rates. Well
guess what they've gone up twelve occasions since the government's
been elected. Come back by quarter, as we said before,
and I think people thought, oh, well, you know, if
it's come back by point two five, there'll be another
twenty five points next month and another fifty points of

(29:16):
the month after. That hasn't happened because now guarantee, well,
well there's not And as we know, with what we're
seeing internationally at the moment, the uncertainty in Europe and
in the Middle East and the tariff debate, the talk
of a global recession is real and if that happens,
we don't have any money in the bank to pay
for what we need to pay for to get through

(29:36):
that rainy day. One of the things that we had
going for is going into COVID, was that we'd got
the budget back into balance after years and years of
labor deficits after Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and it
took us a number of years, and it's exactly history
repeating itself, given that it happened for John Howard as
well when he came into government after the Keeping years.
They had ninety six billion dollars of debt in those days,

(29:58):
a lot of money in ninety ninety six, and it
took them year after year to go through the budget
find where the waste was cut, the waste out, trimmed
down on spending where you can still provide the essential services,
but got the budget back into balance and then put
it into surplus. And then they created the Future Fund

(30:18):
and that Future Fund still sits there today. Labour's never
created a future fund because they never run surplus budgets.
They got two surpluses at the start of this term
only because of the fact that we put the budget
into a good position when they came into government. But
then for every year after that, as we pointed out before,
there's just read ink in every projection, so it's putting
us in a weaker position. And I think that's what

(30:40):
the credit agencies are saying now, and we need to
heed that advice and make sure that we spend money wisely.
The other point, of course, is that if you're somebody
at the moment who's just taken a second job, maybe
a shift at the bottle or at the survey on
a Saturday night, because you just can't pay the bills,
you ought to know that when you're paying that tax

(31:01):
from your second job and from your first job, maybe
your third job as well, that your taxes are being
spent wisely. And if you've trimmed back every dollar of
discretionary spend in your own household budget or as a
small business, you know every cost has gone up, your
sales have gone down, and your profit margins are really tight.
You want to know when you're paying tax that the

(31:22):
federal government is spending that tax wisely, and at the moment,
I don't think people believe that that's the case under
this government. So we have to spend money wisely because
ultimately the government has no money, only the moneys they
collect in taxes from hard working Australians.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
I mean, for those people who wanted somebody to address that,
or someone who has addressed that in the past, or
you need to go as on YouTube and have a
look at Kerry Packer addressing your Senate and saying you
guys don't really know how to spend the money that
you're trying to raise for everybody, and actually that's existed forever. Yeah,
And I think that's a really important point. We should
not be seduced during these campaign means into thinking, oh, wow,

(32:02):
there's something more and it for me. There's a bit
more money for me, there's a bit more money for me,
when in actual fact, you be people got to be
very very careful because ultimately it's got to come from somewhere.
And we did talk about standard paus, we did talk
about the borrowing of money.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
You did mention something very interesting.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
To me, and I'm reminded of another conversation with it,
because I'm talking to conoms all time. Another economists conversation
the other day and he was talking about the Howard period.
And of course John Howard still around today, extraordinarily one
of the one of the icons of the Liberal Party,
but a great manager of this country, him and Costello.

(32:40):
But you know he was at the helm and in
nineteen ninety six and just prior to that period, during
the Keating Hawk period, interest rates got up to extraordinary heights,
as did inflation. But post ninety six, right through to
twenty right up until the COVID period, the inflation number

(33:02):
in Australia sat between two percent and three percent for
twenty odd years as a result of what John Howard.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Did after that period of Kiding Hawk.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
That's Howard and Costello a great team and they were
in government for a long long time and they didn't
go right through to twenty twenty, of course, but that
momentum carry through for that period, right through a GFC.
I mean, we had a blip in the GFC, but
we got under control. I worry that we're heading through

(33:41):
We're heading through another tumultuous high inflation period. We might
get one or two reductions, but it could come back very,
very quickly. I'm worried about that process happening again. Does
that something that goes through your head and your parties
and your senior advisors then your party. Do you feel

(34:02):
a responsibility to sort of bring back that low inflation
period to Australia like we had for twenty odd years
because Australia is one of the few countries of the
world was able to do that.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Very few countries could do it.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
The answer is yes, and it's instinctive because this is
the reason that we've got prices just going through the
roof right across the economy. We're at blue Scope the
other day. The biggest manufacturers of steel in Australia, color bond, roofing,
steel frames for housing. They're paying three times the cost
for electricity now and three times the cost of gas,

(34:42):
and obviously they're huge energy users. They've got furnaces and
pumping out steel and products that we used to build
homes and buildings, and it's three times the cost of
their same factory in the United States. Now it's unsustainable.
You go to brickworks, same story, three times what they're
paying in the US. So those two core elements to construction, brick,

(35:03):
send and steel. We're paying the highest cost really in
the world. It's not sustainable, and so inflations everywhere across
the economy, and it's been driven by a number of things.
Core inflation is twice that of our g seven countries. Now.
Just spend a moment on that. When you think, why

(35:23):
haven't interest rates gone further down when they've gone down
in the United States and down in the UK and
down in Canada, in Europe absolutely and New Zealand, why
have they dropped there and they started to drop six
months before here. Why have we had the biggest drop
in living standards in our country's history over the last

(35:43):
three years and why are we living with the lowest
living standards compared to comparable nations at the moment. Well,
there's a bit to unpacked there, but one of the
reasons I think is because the government has been running
an inflationary budget. They've been fueling inflation, which is why
that core inflation rate is still held very high, and
that's why interest rates aren't coming down, and this is

(36:05):
what the Reserve Bank governors warned about. But also the
energy policy, which has just been a train wreck it's
actually just been a wrecking ball through the economy. Haven't
heard from Chris Bahin for a long No, he's witness protection.
I'm serious.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
I wasn't trying to be funny, but I don't think
I've seen Chris Bones pop up anywhere.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
No, for three months.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
No, they've had him out of the public eye because
when people see him, they just know straight away he's
the bloke along with Anthony Alberanezi that's driven my power
prices up by over thirty percent. Now again, we were
talking with We're down an hour today with Andrew Constance,

(36:45):
and we went to small business owned by two brothers,
started it from scratch and it's a pretty big footprint.
They've got fruit and vege, but they also do grocery
lines and they've got meat and and dairy, et cetera.
They were saying there that they're just about to negotiate

(37:06):
their contracts, et cetera, and their power prices are up
by about forty percent. Now, if your power bill goes
up by six or eight thousand dollars a month, and
your wage bill's gone up, your rent's gone up, the
cost of every other input you know, you're running delivery
trucks around, et cetera. All of that is either consumed

(37:28):
by the business absorbed by the business, which is more
and more unlikely because the profit margins just aren't there.
What's happening is the cost increases have been passed on
and it's not just there on the shop floor. If
you go back through the supply chain, the farmer is
paying a lot more for fertilizer now because there's a
lot of gas used in the generation of fertilizer, and

(37:51):
the jars that they're buying to put the fruit in
ultimately that end up on the shelf. The glass manufacturer
under the Renewable's Only policy of Chris Bonne and Anthony,
they're paying more for the manufacture of those glasses. So
every point in the supply chain, the farmer, the cold storage,
the processing plant, the energy that's used to provide the

(38:13):
processing or manufacturing of food or clothing or motor vehicles,
whatever it is, all of that has increased under this
government and that's applied across the economy. So a few
of the things that we've said, Okay, what do you
do about that? Well, I think the way in which
we can fix the problem up as John Howard did
with the keating problem. Is the twenty five p cent
a leter cut in fuel tax. That means straight away

(38:35):
across the economy. So the delivery truck drivers, the fishing,
charter business, the pensioner, the Uni student, the trade's running
three or four trucks around the mums and dads. You
come down by about fourteen dollars a tank. And if
you're a two car family, that's saving you money straight away.

(38:55):
So removing a week every week and it removes some
of the cost pressure out of that family budget or
that small business budget. Then we say, okay, we'll give
you twelve hundred dollars back of tax that you've paid.
Twelve hundred dollars tax rebate for people on incomes up
to one hundred and forty four thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
It is means tested, it's means tested, and it.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Means for a two income average household are twenty four
hundred dollars back. So that's the immediate relief to help people. Now,
what do we do then to fix up the broader
problem that Chris Barlin and Anthony Albanezi you created. We
have a huge export market for our gas, for our
natural gas fantastic because it creates revenues and royalties and

(39:35):
taxes being paid. But we can divert some of that
which is being exported now or beyond the reserves of it,
and increase the amount of gas that we're producing, flood
the market, flood the domestic market with that gas, and
bring the price down, and we cap the price, and
we say to those companies that you're going to be
required to sell that into the austrain market. Now, the

(39:57):
independent analysis that's been done by Frontier Economics, probably the
best economists in the country on energy policy, they say
that that will bring gas down by twenty three percent
the wholesale price. So that means Blue Scope paying less
for their gas. It means that the local Chinese shop
paying less for their gas. It means the gas used
in the production of electricity comes down and cost as well,

(40:18):
So the cost of electricity can come down for households,
but for businesses as well. And if we fix up
that energy disaster that they've created and ultimately bring in
our base load power, which we believe should be nuclear
zero mission's nuclear, that on the analysis brings our electricity
costs down by forty four percent and that's how we

(40:40):
can be competitive as a country again, and how we
can reduce the cost of groceries and reduce the cost
of all of those household budget items at the moment
that are just crushing families.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
So that's a good point you're doing.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
It's all very well to say we will reduce the
cost of living, but you've got to actually have some policies,
and you've just announced a number of policies there that
they all make sense to me, particularly the fuel exise.
I mean, I just can't believe that twenty five cents elita.
I mean, if for some reason the price of oil
dropped by twenty five cents and petrol at the bowser

(41:16):
become twenty five cents less, if for some reason that happened.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
People would be sort of cheering and going up.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
It should be going crazy, and they say it's only
going to be there for two weeks. Everybody, you're trying
to work out how to store the the petrol up. Correct,
But this thing is an ongoing thing, or are you're
saying it?

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Do it for twelve months and then we assess it,
which is exactly what we did during COVID with job Keeper.
We said Okay, we need to address the economic circumstances
that we now face. But we didn't legislate job keeper forever,
and we're not still paying that because that problem has passed.
And so our argument is, what's our vision for our country. Well,
it's to help people right now, get them through the

(41:55):
next twelve months, the next twenty four months. With the
gas solution. We believe that that can have a big
impact by the end of this calendar year. So that
can start to relieve some of the pressure of the
costs in businesses by the end of this calendar year.
And if we need to extend the fuel excise, well
we can assess that at the time. And if petrol's

(42:16):
at two dollars under US, it comes down to a
dollar seventy five. If petrol the oil price drops and
the petrol price comes down to a dollar dollar fifty,
it's a dollar twenty five under US. And the fixed
cost of the excise, which is at fifty point four cents,
Now that applies whether PETREL's you know, fifty cents a
leter or it's five dollars a leter. But the problem is,

(42:38):
because it's been indexed, it's growing off a bigger base
each year, so it actually grows at a much faster
rate as the years go by. This is the argument
relation to beer excise as well, I might say, And
it grows off a bigger base because it's growing off
fifty cents not thirty cents each year, and so it
becomes a bigger tax each and every year year. And

(43:01):
it's the one way in which you can help across
the economy, as I say, and it's targeted. It helps
the UNI student, it helps the pensioner, it helps the
self under retiree, it helps the small business owner. And
that's you know, that's the thinking that we've applied to it.
But you need to fix the problem up. And part
of our solution, part of our thinking, as it was

(43:23):
for the how governments, what changes can you make to
modernize and to actually provide some relief to the cost
pressures Because what a strains don't want, but what they're
going to get if we end up with an urban
easy ban labor Green's government, They're going to spend more money.
Interest rates are going to go up higher. And the
thirty four percent increase in gas now that's just going

(43:46):
to continue to go up over the next three years
because the system is going to become more and more costly.
Is you need to roll out the twenty eight thousand
klimeters of new poles and wires, which is their energy policy.
That's going to be tens of billions of dollars which
you'll end up you're starting to pay that now in
your power bills. You look at the breakdown of your
power bill. Now you look at the chargers and look

(44:09):
at the network charges. You're already paying. That is a
big part of your electricity bill now.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
So just explain to us, because none of us know
how it works in parliament. If it's an Albanizi band
or Labor and Greens sort of let's call it the
coalition government going forward? In practical terms, how does it work?

(44:34):
So let's say the Greens have got something they're really
desperate to push through. What do they walk up to
Albanisi or Chris Baron and say, listen, where he's supporting you?

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Can you get this through and we'll do a deal.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
What's the padder look like down there and the mothership
down there in camber? What would happen sort of thing?

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Well, the Greens have already been transparent in terms of
what their shopping list looks like, at least the first
couple of items. One is they want an into fossil fuels,
so that means no gas, no coal. A company like
Rio Tinto last year paid about ten billion dollars worth
of company tax and royalty. So without that money, we're

(45:13):
not paying for schools and hospitals. But that's that's the
first issue.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
And biggest taxpayer on mining companies.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
And and there's there's insatiable demand for our product, for
our commodity, you know, whether it's iron ore or whether
it's coal, or whether it's you know, critical minerals, et cetera. Otherwise,
there's there's insatiable demand for that around the world. But
they want to close that down. That's their first want,
and they've been very open. I mean, Adam Bant, you know,

(45:42):
I don't give him credit for much because I don't
believe in the Green's philosophy, but he's been very clear
that their first you know, then their next request is
an abolition of negative gearing, and oh sure, and and
that that they've been upfront about that. Now that will
be on the table with the labour part. Jim Chalmers
has already done the research himself to ask Treasury to

(46:04):
model it and how much money would they get back
if they abolish negative gearing. So we know that they're
open to it.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
It hasn't worked that bitterly. What happens is bank go
up to knock on the door of the Prime Minister.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yes, yeah, they'll sit down in negotiations and if there's
not a clear decision on Saturday night then and that's
remember back to what happened with Julia Gillard when when
Anthony Albanzi was a senior minister and negotiating with the
Greens to find a compact between Julia Gillard and the Greens.

(46:36):
That's exactly what happened then. And this is why the
Prime Minister, even in his own seat, is putting the
Greens number two, and the Greens have put him number
two as well. I'll always preference the Labor Party ahead
of us.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Is this what you mean by when you vote Labor
you're endorsing Greens and effectively voting for the Greens.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Correct. In other words, you are voting for the Greens policies.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Yes, And if you're voting one for the Green, two
for the Labor candidate, three for the liberal candidate, Well,
that will only ever go to the labor candidate. And
that's the that's that's how they that's how they win,
because you can't just mark the ballot with with number one.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
So, Peter, one of the things that I've been surprised
about and somewhat disappointed, to be honest with you, is
that there has been a bit of a personality game
going on in this campaign. And yeah, you're a hardened
ex copper and businessman, so you know, I don't know

(47:34):
what you did, what you did wrong in your life
to have to do both become be a policeman first
and put up with all that, and then have to
become a business a small business, I have to put.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Up all that.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
But you know, you get fairly hardened after all that.
But irrespective, I sort of know what it's like because
you worry about your family. You do have wife and
kids and stuff like that. Who aren't part of all that,
of course, and it's never asked to.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Be either, by the way, And.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
How do you feel right now about the personal attacks
on you? Because I actually thought, remember the old miss
Potato and anice sort of stuff. I mean, I have whatever,
big deal, but it's got much more personal from every level, Nelly,
how do you feel about that?

Speaker 2 (48:18):
It does? And back to the earlier point about the
negative campaign, the personal attacks, because they haven't got a
good track record to talk about and that so their
campaign can't be how well you've done under labor over
the last three years. So in a two horse race,
their objective is to try and kill off the other horse,
and that's why they run the personal attacks against me.

(48:43):
If I'm being honest, it puts fuel in my tank
because it just makes me more determined to succeed. And
I mean in business and in life. As a police officer,
you know, I've been in some pretty tough situations, and
I've delivered death messages to parents of kids who have
overdose or have been killed in a car accident, and

(49:04):
all of that really pales. Makes what I'm going through
and the pressure that I'm under you seem pretty manageable.
And I've been in responded to domestic situations where women
are within an inch of their life and kids are screaming,
And you think back to those circumstances a detective taking

(49:24):
statements from rape victims, and people have been exposed to terrible,
terrible crimes, and part of the motivation for why I
got into politics was to protect people like that and
to make sure that we had less victims and not more.
And yes, maybe that sort of makes you harden because

(49:45):
of those experiences, but it makes me more determined to
succeed for our country because we do live in the
best country in the world, and we beat ourselves up
over it, and we're told at school now, our kids
are told, you know, be ashamed of our history and
our play in the world's not legitimate. And all of
these people who are teaching our kids that within the

(50:06):
education system, which is a small proportion of teachers, but
still the ones that we've sent out marching out on
the university campus is attacking Jewish kids, etc. And then
they're turning around and lecturing our kids, you know, in
a business course or something. It's a bit of a
screwed up world at the moment. But for me, not

(50:28):
that it's water for ducks back, because you know, you
do take the attacks and you're only human and all
of that, but it does mean to me, you know,
you know what it's worth fighting for because you want
to stand up and fight for what you believe in
and what is right. I don't need to tell lies
to achieve success at this election, and happy to run
on my track record. And yes, there is a huge

(50:50):
price that your family pays, and I'm really conscious of
that because my kids, my wife, you know, they haven't
put their name on the ballot paper, but they've got
the same surname as me, and they suffer, you know,
the attacks online. Harry, he's a second year chippy, came
with me on the campaign a couple of weeks ago
and you know, just gets bombarded with crap online. But

(51:11):
again he's stoic and resilient enough. And we're a tight
family unit where we've supported each other through everything. So
so they want you to succeed and and you know,
I'm really proud of what they've been able to put
up with as well. But it shouldn't it shouldn't be
the case, but it is, and that's the reality of it.

(51:32):
And I'm just I'm fortunate that they're you know, they're
strong characters. See them through it as well, and they're
proud of what I do. And they know the person
that I am, and they know the crap that they
read online is nothing like the person I am, and
and I think that makes them more passionate about making
sure that they help me to succeed because they know

(51:55):
that the lies that are being told just don't equate
with the dad that they know or the husband. I know.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
It's funny.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
I've got to know you a little bit, fortunate enough
to have a dinner with you and my good friend
David Coleman some time ago, and then I've had you
in podcasts, and one of the great things about podcasts
I get to know people without having to spend twenty
years with them. But I get it on pretty quickly,
and you come across as that quiet but sort of

(52:22):
quite stoic, defender style person. You might not be the
huge personality in smiling and you're not Hollywood, but.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
That's an understatement. But not the flashy, not the flashy guy,
but but you are.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
There's a sense, it seems to me that there's in you.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
And maybe it could have been the reason you became
a policeman perhaps, or you were you worked as a
police person because you seem like you have a protective
element around you, like you want to not protect us
in a silly way, but you want to make sure
that our rights are well observed. All of our rights

(53:05):
well observed and manage, whether economic rights, whether they're personal rights.
When you're a policeman out person rights. But now as
a leader of a party, it's economic rights, personal rights, society,
social rights, every other right.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
There's a stack of them.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
It seems to me that you have that as an
underlying theme in your DNA and your personality, but not
in a flashy way. It's just get the job done.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
I think that's right. It's sort of a right and
wrong thing, and justice or not. I have a again,
you know, sort of influenced by what you've seen in life.
I worked in the sex offender squad as a detective
for a period, and when you see young girls who
have their lives destroyed, or you see them later in life,
and maybe they didn't make a complaint about being sexually

(53:52):
assaulted when they were twelve years of age, but you're
now talking to them in they're thirty years of age,
and I remember it clearly. In many of those is
where they hadn't been able to form proper relationships, they
changed their patterns of life of you going to the
car a different way, or not going out of a
night time. And I saw the impact on people in

(54:15):
that way, and I a strong believer all of my
life that, particularly for kids growing up, that you should
be able to enjoy the sanctity of your childhood. You
should be able to enjoy that freely and not to
be encumbered with that, you know, that weight of having

(54:37):
been poorly treated, and whether it's sexual assault or whether
it's physical assault, or you know, just brought up in
a very difficult circumstance. And so yeah, so that's sort
of the moral compass for me, and similarly in life,
it's probably part of the good part of the reason
I joined the Liberal Party. My old man was a
bricklayer builder and worked his guts out his whole life.

(54:58):
And in those keeping years you'd spoke about before with
the high interest rates. I mean, we'd sit around the
kitchen table of a nighttime and I'll probably tell you
the story before, but you know, I'd write out the checks,
Mum and dad had sign them, and you write paid
on the invoices and staple them to the statement and
file them, et cetera. So the discussions around that kitchen
table some months where you know, we don't have money,

(55:20):
we don't have money to pay those bills or we
don't have work over the coming weeks to you know,
to bring money in. And Dad worked hard and so
did mum, and they did well later in life when
we were older, but only because of their hard work.
And so for me, now you know, a guiding principle

(55:40):
I suppose influenced by that time, was it kills me
to see a small business person who's working seven days
a week, going home doing book work of a nighttime
and just being smashed. And thirty thousand small businesses have
closed over the last three years. More small businesses have
closed in our country under Anthony Albanisi in the last
twelve months that any twelve month period in our country's history.

(56:02):
And I just think it's completely unfair. So I want
to do anything I can to help turn around the
economy and to manage the economy well so that there
can be a better environment where people can work hard
and be rewarded for it. And it's a similar approach
that we've taken in relation to the twenty five per
cent a letter cut on fuel as we discussed, and

(56:24):
the twelve hundred dollars back and then providing the change
around the energy system. That's all in my mind designed
to do the right thing and to provide a productive environment.
And I've been heavily influenced by John Howard and my
political life, and I think he adopted that same principled
approach and that's what would guide me as Prime minister.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
Some of the things you talked about then gave me
one word I can think of that sort of describes
a lot of those things that you have a view against. Unfairness, yes,
or the system should be as fair as posses, and
that means in a broader sense for everybody, the broader community,
but also in depth it should be really actually fair
like it shouldn't be you shouldn't be able to rud

(57:10):
it in other words, you know, And that's sort of
not a principle that's always been associated with liberal although
as you said, Howard was very much that type of person.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
It's more more a little bit more towards labor.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Actually, you know, that's how they that's they're doing it originally,
you know, because I grew up in the West suburb
the Sydney where everyone voted for labor. But over time
I think labor's lost its way. I don't think labor
as the same Labor Party as it was when I
was a kid, where they were looking after the working class.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Or and working lives.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
I don't mean someone who's just earning a living just
enough to get by. I'm to have people who work
to earn the money I have to actually go to
work and works. Working class is someone who goes to work.
I consider myself still working class. I might have assets,
but I go to work every day and I still work.
And working class has lost a lot of respect and

(58:01):
fairness and everybody, whether you're someone with a three million
dollars of assets in your superannuation fund which you worked
your whole life as part of the working class to accumulate,
it is unfair that you have to pay tax on
that at a higher rate than it was originally envisaged
when they first seduced you into putting money.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Into subites which you can't take out.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
You can't take out, so it's unfair.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
So sort of that theme of unfairness is that something
and as you're the boss of the party, is that
something you look for in terms of all your party members?
You want to have that sense of fairness for all
Australian citizens, whether it's being safe walking home from school
to your home, young girl, young boy, Whether it's being

(58:49):
concerned about someone sort of you know, lobbying a missile
over the country and in relation to our borders. Whether
it's amount of money we pay for our own gas
which is crazy. Whether it's the interest rate you're paying
your mortgage after you were encouraged to go and borrow
as much mon as I possibly could during COVID. And
you know when issues are extraordinarily though now it's extraordinarily high.

(59:13):
Is that that on fairness something that perhaps you guys
stand for it? It looks like it's nearly a new
position for the Liberal Party under your leadership, and it.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Goes back to the howadays.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
No, I agree with that, and I made the point
when I came into the leadership of the party that
I didn't see us as the party of big business
any longer. Coals and wallies and others can take care
of themselves. Our task, I think as a Liberal party
is to take care of the small business person. And
you know, the mum who's working part time at home

(59:43):
in a micro business, in a back bedroom or in
a garage, and that business, you know, the aspiration is
to take that business to be listed one day, Or
how do we help the cafe owner who wants to
buy a second cafe, Or how how do we help
the person who's worked really hard, sacrificed border rental property,

(01:00:07):
has three kids once to end up with three rental
properties so that they can leave one to each of
their kids, or to their grandkids, whatever it might be.
It is that fairness. As immigration minister. You know, I
get a bad rap sometimes about being too hard as
immigration minister. But the approach that I took there was
that I canceled about six thousand visas of people who
were here as non citizens who had committed rape and

(01:00:29):
pedophilia and had been involved in biker gangs and distributing drugs,
and I allowed in twelve thousand Yezdi women, for example,
who are being slaughtered by Isis and iol. They've become
amazing Australians. And for me, that was how the migration
system should work. You should say to people who were
taking the piss frankly, that you're not here to commit

(01:00:53):
crimes against Australian citizens. And if you do that, out
you go. But we bring in good people and in
my mind that is about fairness. And I think to
the point you made before that the Labor Party at
the moment under this Prime Minister, given that he's so
far left, is to how do you please inner city
green voters in Sydney and Melbourne, And they've forgotten about
people in the suburbs. And that's why at this election

(01:01:14):
I think there's a big move going on in the
out of metro areas, in regional areas where people feel forgotten.
And it also bleeds into the housing debate as well
because one of the things that and again it is
a fairness thing, I feel a guilt that our generation
had to work hard and save but got into housing.
Housing was much cheaper, interest rates were much higher, as

(01:01:35):
you pointed out, you know, depending on when you were born.
But I want young Australians to get into housing and
I want them to be able to climb that property
ladder and renovator house, or build an extension and sell
that house for a profit down the line, or use
the house as an asset to start a small business

(01:01:58):
and get a loan from the bank. And we're locking
people out of housing at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
A big part of that is that's unfair.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Well, it's completely unfair and it's actually I think it
generates over time a lot of resentment between homeowners and
Novision absolutely and the government. The Prime Minister's happy for
people to rent for life, right, because that's what happens
in parts of Europe and in parts of the United States.
And unless you are left a home by a family

(01:02:25):
in parts of Europe, you've really got a buggerall chance
of home ownership. And I don't want that for our country.
I want people to have a choice, and I want
them to have stability, because if they buy a house,
it gives them a stable environment, and they don't you
know that, I'm not a prospect of being kicked out.
If they're they're tenants. They'll start a family then, and

(01:02:46):
they'll start a small business if that's their choice, or
they'll use the increased value in the house to then
buy some shares and secure their margin loan, or to
purchase another property or whatever it might be. It gives
them choices, and if they've paid the house off by
the time they've retired or their mortgage has been paid down,

(01:03:07):
it gives them the sort of retirement that we spoke
about before, where they've got dignity after having worked all
of their lives. It gives them options to travel and
maybe help their kids or grand kids out if they're
in need. And the governments bought in a million people
over the last two years, which is a seventy percent
increase on any two year period in our country's history.

(01:03:27):
So we've just flooded the market with buyers for homes,
and of course all of those people want a house
for their kids and their grandkids, and they're locking Ozzie
kids out of housing at the moment, and that's why
we're saying that we want to cut migration for two
years until we can get on top of the housing problem.
We've also said that for interest on the first six

(01:03:47):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars dollars of your mortgage Japan,
your own correct correct that that becomes a tax deduction
for first time buyers for the first five years, and
that'll help average way journals around about one thousand dollars
a month. So it helps with your application to the
bank because you can service your loan, and it also
helps you service the liane when you take the mortgage

(01:04:08):
out after you've settle a property, and it takes just
a bit of pressure out it also increases supply because
it's only for new homes, and that will drive the
market to build more homes to meet that demand. And
we put five billion dollars in on the supply side
to create five hundred thousand new homes so that we
can bring more houses into the market, so that we're

(01:04:30):
not just increasing demand for houses as labor has done
over the last couple of years. So, if I think
about it, the principle behind that is about equity and
fairness and allowing people the opportunity and the option if
they choose not to buy a house. Fantastic, but I
don't want people to be locked out of housing as
they are at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
It's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
The liberal party of the coalition becoming the party of fairness.
I mean, who would have thought that labor would abandon
that position and that liberal would move into that position.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Who would have thought?

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
And I know, there's nothing no one's really talked about this,
but you know, because it's been a bit of a
personal attack on you most of the narrative, unfortunately, and
no one's really had an opportunity to sort of dig
into Peter Dart as to what drives him and actually
that's I think that's the one word that comes out
of talking to you. You're not flashy, you're not bitter

(01:05:32):
flash you know, you're not Hollywood, you're not you know, Polish,
and that you haven't been through two or three election cycles,
you haven't been the prime minister. You know you're sort
of new to the show in that regard. But at
the end of the day, that whole concept of fairness
is a pretty critical one for every cohort of voter.

(01:05:53):
If you're twenty to thirty, you want a fair guy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
If you're thirty to forty, you want a fair go
forty if you and it goes on. There is not
one category that doesn't want a fair shot at it.
And it doesn't matter what it is they want to achieve,
whether they want to have a small business, they don't
want have a small business, they want to travel, where
they want to pay less tax, where they want to
earn more money, they want to work three jobs. Fairness
cuts across every category in every single cohort. And I

(01:06:20):
think I think that's I'm glad we talked about it.
I'm glad I had an opportunity talk to a second
time because I didn't really get that the first time,
but the second time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
The more you talk, the more I'm getting that out
of you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
I think it's important. I think we should just cover
this off, Petter, if you don't mind. The narrative right
now is Labor are going to win. There's no point
even turning up put your vote in. There's going to
be a you know, a Green's Labor sort of coalition,
let's call it that after the election on Saturday. But
that's the and the polls, the national polls in Inmo

(01:06:53):
indicating that. But what are you seeing when you go
to the the various electorates. You see something different, A.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Very different picture on the ground really is. And I
think you'll see this turning up in the papers over
the next few days because Labors started to retreat back
to defending some of their seats that are at risk,
and there are a number of particularly in Victoria, in
New South Wales, in WA and even in Queensland now
as well. So you watch where the Prime Minister visits

(01:07:21):
seats over the next few days. They're defending seats. The
feedback from our marginal seat campaigners and people who have
been around the block a few times through a few
elections is that the mood at pre polling has been
much more positive than it was at the twenty twenty
two election. Remember what happened in twenty nineteen. The book
is paid out on Bill Shorten to be the Prime

(01:07:42):
Minister before election day on a Friday, and he ended
up even though the national polls were showing that he
would win, he ended up losing and the Coalition won
that election, and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
It was a big part of the loss.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Well, of course you talk about native gearing, Cabrigaine, Saxon,
Frankin credits going exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
And this again like this is a long term This
is a long held view of the Labor Party in
relation to negative gearing and capital gains tax discount, et cetera.
They see it as the rich getting a benefit off renters.
It's the same reason they've got contempt for small business
people or for employers. They've got a militant union thinking
that you employ people and you're there to exploit them,

(01:08:24):
not that you're there employing people and you're giving them
a wage which is helping them put their kids through
school and payoff payoff their mortgage, and you're taking care
of your employees, which is the case for most employers,
that's the thinking. So in some of those seats now
and I think you'll see this play out over the
next few days. There is a change in sentiment and

(01:08:46):
there is a momentum that's coming back to the Liberal
Party over the course of the last four or five days,
and it comes up in the seat by seat poling,
which the national polling doesn't pick up because you've got
a really popular local member who's sitting and has really
worked hard. In the next seat, you've got somebody who
has just been lazy, hasn't worked hard, and you've got
a candidate, a Liberal candidate who's door knocked ten thousand

(01:09:09):
homes and they've got a real following. And so when
you look at its seat by seat, there is a
pathway to victory for us by Saturday night. And I
honestly believe that that's where it's tracking, that's where it's trending.
And there's also there's also the question people have to ask,
and you know this has been asked at elections and
been a famous campaign theme over a long period of

(01:09:31):
time here and other parts of the world. Are you
better off today than you're worth three years ago? I
don't know any Australian that I've met over the course
of this campaign who says thumbs up. Absolutely. In fact,
the opposite people to say, look, it's really tough and
we've gone backwards. Everything's gone up, and everything will go
up even further if there's another three years of labor

(01:09:53):
and particularly if they're in in coherites with the Greens
as well. And I don't want that for our country.
I want a better way forward. We are better economic managers.
We have the ability to manage money and to spend
it wisely to bring pressure down on inflation, so we
can bring interest rates. If we can bring interest rates
down by a couple of percent, that will create a

(01:10:15):
lot of headroom for families pretty quickly. But if labor
spends money like they've spent over the last couple of years,
particularly with the Greens urging them on, then that will
see inflation stay higher for longer. And even if interest
rates stay high without going up compared to what they
could come down under a liberal government, then that's going

(01:10:35):
to really put a lot of families to the wall.
I was talking to a yesterday up in Robertson, where
the Lucy Wicks is running for us. He's going to
mate of his who didn't want to speak to us.
But one of these stories conveyed, he reckons he's twenty
five points zero point two five one percent away from
losing his house. If they go up by another twenty
five points, he's done and he just won't be able

(01:10:56):
to meet the repayments. And I have to hand you know,
they'll sell the house. And that I think is a
more common story than what the bookies and others are
picking up at the moment. And I think a lot
of those people say, you know what, I may not
like every part of the Liberals policy, or I may
not like Peter Dutton for this reason or that reason,

(01:11:16):
but I know that he'll be a strong leader, and
I know that he's got the business experience and the
experience in the defense portfolio and the health portfolio and
the immigration portfolio and home affairs to make the decisions
that need to be made for our country, to fix
the economy and get inflation down and help address the
cost of living standards, and also to keep us safe.

(01:11:37):
We live in a very uncertain time and we have
to invest in defense and also into protecting our borders.
So I've been really big on this. Over the course
of the campaign, we've announced a seven hundred and fifty
million dollar plan to set up task forces to crush
the biker gangs and other gangs who are involved in
the tobacco wars and the illicit tobacco, the gangs who

(01:11:59):
are buying the car off kids who steal them out
of your house, and the kids who are buying drugs
off the bikes to and to fuel that, to pay
for that, to pay for that drug habit, they're breaking
into your house. So I'm going to reduce crime across
communities as well as keeping us safe in the regions,
and we've got the ability to be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
It's interesting you you mentioned hardworking liberal members in some
of the various electors you've been visiting, and I medally
thought of three. I thought of first off, I thought
I was Gott Young, Scott Young in the city of
ben Long. I mean, my god like the guy, and

(01:12:40):
I did have him on the show, but he did
work for many years ago. But that's your realment.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
I got him.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
I wanted to highlight how the type person is, even
though he's been sort of harangued as a Chinese whatever
he's more ousy than anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
That great blow.

Speaker 3 (01:12:57):
But the guy when he was working for me, he
was ridiculously had he probably would have been the longest hour,
spent the most hours working my organization of any other
person of his equivalents in our organization. And he's doing
that right now in his electric Roeknox who was on
here today and rose incredibly talented and unbelievably bloody hard worker.

(01:13:21):
And you mentioned Andrew Constance, who's always been a favorite
of mine. Andrew's incredibly hard working guy like and supremely
decent and good, like really good, high good values like.
I mean for those sort of people to be in
government for me anyway. And I don't know the other
people who are going against. I'm not having a crack

(01:13:42):
at the people are going against. I'm just talking about
those individuals. Yeah, three Liberals got it. But there's three
people I know and I can say genuinely say I've
known him for a long time. They are brilliant and
hard working. I mean, Australia is about hard work, and
you work hard and get paid well and you pay
some tax, but you shouldn't get penalized for your hard work.

(01:14:05):
And that's part of our DNA and that's fair, that's fairness,
and that's those three people are exactly I mean David
com is another good example. But they're exactly the types
of people we want, we want. I would I see
government and they're in your team.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
I'm so proud to have them in my team. And
there are many more. But you look at somebody like
Scott Mum started with nothing, great migrant story again, just
worked hard, has built himself up. Would be like he's
just door knocked on literally thousands of doors, and the
people he speaks to just say, wow, what an impressive

(01:14:42):
young guy. And he has a real shot in Bentelong.
It's a tough seat, but I think you can win.
Roe Knox is, I mean, she's smart, talented, a great
intellects just like exactly the sort of person you'd want
in a seat like Wentworth and in the Parliament. And
Andrew Constance. You look at what he did over you know, bushfires,

(01:15:06):
and and he is like he bleeds for his community
and he's he's really passionate about helping people, particularly you know,
people who are in their darkest hour. And he's proven that,
like he's just he's got those runs on the board
and he's a great candidate in Gilmourn. And similarly David Coleman,
who's now our shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman, he would represent

(01:15:28):
our country on the world stage like very few people could.
He's he's got a great talent, and he's worked hard
in his local community. He's respected by all the multicultural groups,
and and he's built up his margin over a period
of time, which reflects the fact that people locally respect him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
So you've covered off your policies and you know you've
magically weaved it into our discussion, which is you know,
that's your job, and you've done a good job of
dub You know, every opportunity you had to weave into
into the discussion. You know, those those ideas. One of
the things I expected you would. So one of the
things I thought i'd do is ask you to comment

(01:16:06):
on some of the labor's policies. But you know, I
don't want to look like, you know, a flag waving liberal.
So I went into artificial intelligence, went into AI and
I don't mind telling him, went into co pilot. Copilot's
my favorite AI place to go, And I asked co pilot,
what are the five main policies of the lay party

(01:16:28):
at that Anthony Alberanezi has expoused over the past three
months and I'm going to put the five to you
because he's not here to put him to the audience,
so I'm going to put.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Him to you and if you like, you can make
a comment on him.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
And this is our last part of the discussion of
the first one is housing and it goes the ten
billion dollar Housing Australia Future Fund names too. It's a
future fund aims to build one hundred thousand homes for
first time buyers out of the next decade. The initiative
is part of a broader housing strategy including Help to
Buy a scheme and the National Housing Cord which targets
one point two million new homes in Australia by twenty

(01:17:03):
twenty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
Would you care a comment, Well, just if you look at.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
The actions as opposed to the words their signature housing policy.
Whilst it's got some houses under construction at the moment,
not one has been completed in three years, so not
one house has been brought to market. They've fueled demand,
as we said before, they've just put a million buyers
into the market, million renters and they've made it harder
for Australians. Their focus is on community housing as opposed

(01:17:29):
to providing support to first home buyers. They talk about
the five percent deposit policy. It was actually introduced by
the Liberal government and we want to continue that policy.
So there's common ground between the two parties now on
that issue. In relation to the fund that you spoke about,
this is in part what Standard and PAU has talked about,

(01:17:50):
these off budget funds, and that's in part what's contributing
to the risk of our credit rating at the moment.
And the government's talking about putting one hundred thousand dollars
into building a home. You can't do a renovation, you know,

(01:18:12):
for ten thousand dollars, and you don't get much of
a renovation anymore for one hundred thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
Dollars with the price the bathroom, kitchen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Well, that's right, And so I don't know what sort
of homes are going to build for one hundred thousand dollars,
but it obviously and they haven't outlined the detail, but
it's obviously some sort of subsidy that they subsidize the
construction of a home. So I don't think frankly, I
just don't think it'll ever happen, but it sounds flashy
when you've got a ten billion dollar you know, future
housing fund. I just think, look at the reality of

(01:18:42):
the last three years and housing. The housing crisis is
just really I think it's been devastating for a lot
of young strains. Young younger strains are putting off having kids,
and older Australians parents and grandparents, even though they've worked
hard provisioned for their own retirement, are staying in the
workforce longer now because go to help the kids with
monthly repayments or with the deposit. So that's the you know,

(01:19:05):
that'll be my critique of their policy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
The second thing that day AI can't come up with
this cost living, it says Labour's modest is obviously about
as unbiased as you can get because it's unless the
AI is hallucinating, which can do from time time. But
it says the cost living Labor's modest tax cuts. Tax
cuts start in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, that's
next year, and they are designed to provide gradual relief,

(01:19:29):
doubling and value by twenty seven twenty eight. What would
you have to say about Labour's cost of living measures.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
Well, it's the contrast here is that Labour's saying seventy
cents a day by way of a tax cut, is
starting in fifteen months time. So let's say you know,
four dollars ninety let's say five dollars a week, two
hundred and sixty dollars a year. That's what they're promising
you by way of tax cut. Our alternative is to say,
starting from day one, we want to lower a petrol
by twenty five cents a lead, so you're saving fourteen

(01:19:56):
dollars a tank, twenty eight dollars a week for two
car family fourteen fifteen hundred dollars a year, and that
then is followed up by the twelve hundred dollars tax
rebate if there are two of you and the family
twenty four hundred dollars for the year. So you end
up with a net benefit over that period of depending

(01:20:16):
on the family circumstances. But let's say thirty nine hundred dollars,
it takes you a lot of weeks at five dollars
a week under mister Albaneze's plan to match what we've
got on the table, and as I say, we then
fix the system up so that we can bring the
prices down. Mister Albaneze's promising one hundred and fifty dollars
energy rebate but not fixing the root problem. So he

(01:20:39):
promised before the last election energy costs it come down
by two hundred and seventy five dollars and they've gone
up by thirteen hundred dollars. So we want to fix
you know, it's a bullet on a a band aid
on a bullet woe. We want to fix the underlying
problem as well as provide immediate relief and the seventy
cents a day, five bucks a week in fifteen months time.

(01:21:00):
I just think if you're out there talking to families
at the moment of deciding not to ensure their car
because I just can't afford to pay the premium, I
think that'd so you know what, I'll probably take the
help now.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
And the third point that Ai gave me was on
energy and it says the Labor Party wants to continue
to invest in renewable energy projects and this aligance with
Labour's climate goals focusing on reduction of emissions and transitioning
to cleaner energy sources.

Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
Have you got to comment on well, we're all in
favor of.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
Zero missions by twenty fifty or reducing our missions and
being responsible. And we're an exporter and were export to
Europe and other countries, and there'll be a requirement ongoing
for us to have sensible policies in place. But this,
as I said before, like it has been a wrecking
ball going through the economy. And have a look at
what's happening in parts of Europe, or what happened when

(01:21:53):
Ukraine was attacked by Russia. Germany and France and other
countries were all of a sudden worried about energy security.
There are reports out of Spain at the moment. I
don't know the cause of those blackouts there, but no
economy can function without reliable power. And the Prime Minister
and Crispylon want to pretend that solar and offshore wind

(01:22:16):
and green hydrogen that'll keep the lights on. It just won't.
And this is why people have got solar panels at
the moment starting to find that they're being penalized because
the sunshines during the day and they can pump energy
into the network and they were paid a reasonable tariff
not too long ago. But now the battery technology hasn't

(01:22:38):
got to a point where it can store energy to
keep the fridges running or the air conditioning unit running overnight.
And we have to have a base load power and
we have to firm up the renewable power. We need
twenty four to seven power. The hospitals need it, cold
rooms need it, mining needs it to pay its access
every part of our society. Energy is the economy, and

(01:23:00):
so yes, I mean they're signed up to a renewables
only policy, but it's killing the economy. And that's what's
if you ask, if you ask me what's the biggest
single factor as to why grocery prices have gone up
by thirty percent, I think it's the energy policy. And
as I say, it's not just your power bill at
home that's going up. It's the farmer, and it's the
cold storage provider, and it's a transport operator, and it's

(01:23:22):
everybody who's paying more and more for electricity and gas.
And that's why we want to address gas and electricity
costs and bring them down.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
The fourth one that says is education.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
So AI says, Education says an expansion of free TAFE
programs is set to benefit over six hundred thousand Australians
addressing skill shortages and boosting workforce participation.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
That'll comment on that well.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
As we've discussed before, nothing the government does is free.
So for somebody to be paid to go to do
a course, another taxpayer is paying that. So somebody who's
just finished their degree or just finish their apprenticeship, they're
the ones who are paying for it through their taxes. Now,
I'm a really strong supporter of young Australians deciding what

(01:24:07):
is best for them. If that's UNI, that's great, But
you're not a failure if you don't go to UNI,
which is sort of the labor ethos. You should be
encouraged to do a trade if that's what's important. What
we've said is we're going to set up and invest
further into austral and trade colleges instead of the TAFE model.
It allows kids in year ten and eleven and twelve
to start to start their apprenticeship and get some of

(01:24:31):
that underway. By the time they leave school they can
get paid for part of it. They're developing skills and
in addition to that, we're putting twelve thousand dollars into
a wage subsidy for trainees and for apprentices so that
employers see them as more attractive and will employ more apprentices,
particularly in the construction sector as well.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
And the final one is health. Labor has committed this
is going to be is going to wrankle yours Medicare.
But Labor has committed eight point five billion dollars to
meet aiming to have ninety percent of GP visits that's
visits to the doctor bulk build by the end of
the decade. I presume he means twenty thirty. This includes
funding for urgent care, clinics and women's health initiatives.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
What do you say about.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
Well, some of some of the government's claims at the
moment in relation to health, as it pointed out before,
it is completely overblown. So when I was Health Minister,
the bulk building rate was eighty four percent. It went
up and the Prime Minister makes this point that it
went up over the course of COVID because more people
were doing telehealth consults, et cetera, getting vaccinations. It went
up to eighty eight percent. Today it's at seventy seven percent,

(01:25:39):
so down eleven points and Australians are finding it hard
to get into a doctor. So you know, as a dad.
As somebody who uses a health system, obviously myself, I
want to make sure that we can have a really
strong primary care network because that stops people from going
to hospitals and presenting an emergency departments. It means that
there's early detection of cancers and it means you can

(01:26:01):
be treated much earlier. And blokes in particular, I might say,
should go to the doctor more regularly. Women are much
better at going to the doctor more regularly. And we
need to invest in training of gps because we've got
an aging workforce. More gps are getting older and retiring,
and also it's less attractive as a specialty compared to
obstetrics or gynecology or to other specialties where people can

(01:26:24):
make more money, so we've got to properly pay the doctors.
So we support additional investment into medicare and we've been
very clear about that. We've doubled the number of psychology
sessions which labor cut in half, because particularly for young
kids with complex psychological needs, we need to get them
with more support, not less. And we've made a big

(01:26:45):
investment into GP training and we've worked with the Australian
Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of General Practice
to come up with that plan. So a very strong
supporter of general practice and there's probably some similarities between
labors at at the moment and US. I just think
we can manage the economy more effectively, which means that
we can ultimately invest more into into health and that

(01:27:09):
can help keep people healthier and detect particularly those those
cancer types earlier, which means the survival rates are much higher.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
But just so anyone listening or watching can get it clear,
you're not going to smash.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
Medicare, no where where's that coming from.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
But it's their scare campaign and they ran it. Remember
they ran it before Tony Abbott got elected, and they
ran it before Scott Morrison got elected. They ran it
before John Howard got elected, and before Malcolm Turmer was elected.
There was this medi scare campaign that we were going
to privatize Medicare. I remember older Australians coming up to
us on the booth crying saying I voted for you

(01:27:47):
for all of these years, why are you going to
sell Medicare? And it proved to be a complete and
utter fabrication, like they were misleading and lying to elderly
Australians scaring them and that that is out of their
campaign again. Now, I just think Australians realize it's a
con job and that the Prime Minister is saying all

(01:28:07):
of this because he can't get re elected on his
track record and throw the mard. Run the scare campaigns,
tell the lies. That's how you get elected, and that's
what this election is about. And I intend to make
sure that that's not the case. And I want to
stand up for our country. I want to make sure
that we're safe and secure. I want to make sure
we can get our country back on track as well

(01:28:29):
as the economy and help people live their lives again.
I want to We've had seven we've had seven consecutive
quarters so twenty one months of negative household growth. That is,
households have been and recived for almost two years under
this government. And as I said earlier, the biggest drop
in living standards that the strains have experienced and people

(01:28:50):
know it, and they're the stories we've heard, the tears
that we've seen when we've spoken to family, so working
their guts out and just going backwards at the moment,
and people aren't better off today. Than they were three
years ago, and people can't afford three more years of
a bad government will end up like Victoria. But at
a national level, when you get a second term, the
first term looks bad, but the second term is when

(01:29:12):
they really consolidate the bad decisions and lock in the
debt that might be paid off for a generation. And
let's change the government now and get to get things sorted.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
And just as you get, helped me out because you know,
you're a political scientist, and I don't mean in terms
of academy, but you are a political scientist and that
there's the game you work in. Just an observation and
maybe you can help me out though it seems to
me what most people aren't.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
Thinking about is for this election is that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
Labor is about big government because they take the view
and rightly wrongly. I know where my position is, but
you know everyone will have a different position. But big
government movements like labor the view that government make the
best decisions for everybody. So you're how you live your life,

(01:30:08):
I'll sort it out. I'll build the rules around how
you live like COVID is a good example, which is
what happened to Victoria. We as a government are better
making decisions about how you live your life. Therefore, as
a result of that, we will build governor bigger and
bigger and bigger if you vote us in. But you're
going to have more rules, more regulation. For a small business,
you're gonna have to buy, buy more, many more rules.

(01:30:32):
As to hey, you're going to ministry your business. You
know you've got to collect the tax. You've got to
do this, You've got to do that. Whereas the liberal
program has been obviously government, you've got to have rules,
but smaller government.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
And the vote for.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
Labor in my opinion, and if you are someone who's
going to vote for labor, in my opinion, you are
voting for big government. And by voting for big government,
the job of someone in working government is to make
more rules. That's what governments do. They govern, They make rules,
and they make more rules and more rules and more rules.
And when it comes to working out whether I'm on
better off today, get better what it was, say three

(01:31:10):
years ago, I just know there's a lot, a whole
lot more rules around.

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
Than it was three years ago. But just take economic society. Yes, and.

Speaker 3 (01:31:21):
Is a liberal party still stand for let's call it
smaller government relative to what Labour does.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
The short answer is yes, and I think you're right
in your analysis. It's just a philosophical and ideological difference
between the two parties.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
And everybody can make their own decision about course, so
they should know of course.

Speaker 2 (01:31:38):
Yeah, so look at our The Liberal Party approach is
to knowing that we're spending taxpayers money to pay the
wages of public servants in Canberra, is to make sure
that the money is spent efficiently. So let's get the
best bang for our buck, and let's make sure that
we're employing people who are making it easier for you
to navigate government services or get the services that you

(01:32:00):
are relying on from government. One of the reasons I
think that we've established a lot of inefficiency and why
we're passing a lot of cost onto the end user,
say in the construction sector, I think is a good
good example. The Labor government will always try and police
a unions. So the CFMUU has donated twelve million dollars
since Anthony Albanezi became Labor leader. They've let the CFMU

(01:32:26):
largely go untouched. The CFMU workplace now is at about
two point four days a week, so and as we
said earlier we discussed this, you end up paying twice
the amount to construct a building. And it's why the
cost of a two bedroom unit has gone up so
dramatically and why it's cost a lot of people additional

(01:32:48):
holding costs. So the developer buys the block of land.
The government used to approve that development application in say
three months, It now takes three years or six years,
and so the costs of that interest ultimately get paid
by the young couple who's buying the two bedroom unit.

(01:33:09):
And the reason why that's blown out is because government
has expanded and when you bring new public servants on,
they look for new things to do. That's their job exactly,
and they they don't find efficiency, They find reasons to
prolong the discussion and we need to consider more factors,
and we need more reports, and you need to pay

(01:33:29):
the consultants more and more, and that's what's driven up
the cost and the labor. Governments employed an extra forty
one thousand public servants in Canberra and to put that
into perspective on a per capita basis, and it's a
really interesting graph. I think it was in the Economists
just recently, but Australia has the highest number of public
servants per capita compared to any other country, including European countries,

(01:33:50):
in the world, and that means that it's grown at
about three times the rate under this government compared to
when Julia Gillard and Kevin rud were and government last.
So that is a pretty phenomenal growth number. Now, if
you're talking a wage bill there of over seven billion
dollars a year, you think what you can do for that.

(01:34:11):
You can drop petrol by twenty five cents. A letter
costs you six billion dollars a year. You can provide
permanently permanently, You could provide more support to defense, You
could give more funding to roads, you could provide more
support in age care. There are a lot of things
you can do for that money. And if you can
deliver a more efficient service and you can make it
easier and less costly to deal with government, you end

(01:34:34):
up reducing the overall costs that have to be complied
or paid for to comply with the government regulations. And
that's a big difference between the two parties. The Commonwealth
Public Service Union, of course applaud the Albanezi government for
employing more public servant in camera because they get to
clip the ticket and they get to collect the union

(01:34:55):
fees and then the CPSU pay the union fees to
the Labor Party to help them campaign. That's their business model.
I just I want an efficient public servants service, and
I want a smaller government, and I want people to
be able to make decisions that are right for them
and right for their families and right for their businesses.
And I'm not interested in having to tell you whether

(01:35:18):
you turn a left or right coming out of your bedroom,
or whether you allowed to serve up that cereal in
the morning, or whether you're allowed to, you know, do
this or that in your life. I want you to
make those decisions. And that's the big difference between the
two parties. The Labor Party believes in a control you,
command and control model, and that's.

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):
They believe they're better off at making decisions than we
are as individuals.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Yes, and again because it's a trust thing. They don't
trust business owners because they think they're there to exploit workers.
As we said before, they want to give a model
where people can rent for life, because that means that
you know you've got you're not empowered a landlord who's

(01:36:02):
got that subservient relationship. They want the super funds to
own the houses that people live in and give them
a rent for life model. And they're just the fundamental
differences between the two parties.

Speaker 3 (01:36:16):
And then that sort of takes us around sort of
that territory of socialism, because that's sort of the philosophy
of socialism. Yes, and all these things, apart from being efficient,
costs end up costing us more money. So may the
whole business cycle inefficient. Just so I'm clear, though, any
public servants listening to this doesn't mean that if Dunton

(01:36:36):
gets in he's going to go and fire everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
No. Look, I mean look at what we did again
when we were in government. We found efficiencies and we
did reduce the overall number of public servants as we're
proposing at this election as well. But we're at a sensible,
sustainable model and trying to get that balance right. As
I say, where people are working harder and paying more tax,
they want to know that it's being spent efficiently. And

(01:37:00):
if they think we're just employing public servants in Canberra
to please the Union as the Labor Party is done,
well that's not an efficient use of your money. If
you're making an application to be a pension or if
you're working in the Department of Defense, you want to
know that they're the most streamlined process is going. And
we should be encouraging the state governments and the councils

(01:37:21):
to do that as well, and encourage them to be
efficient in the taxes that they're applying and the public
servants that they're employing in the way in which they
spend their taxes as well. And sometimes the commwealth government
can incentivize state governments to try and cut waste and
try and condensed timelines for approvals, etc. Not abandoned environmental considerations, etc.

(01:37:43):
But it takes sixteen years in our country now for
a mind to be approved. What's happening there? All those
companies like Rio are just taking money. They're putting it
into Africa, They're putting it into Asia and North America.
We lose the jobs, we lose the taxes. We would
end up being more environmentally responsible in that mining operation

(01:38:05):
than what would happen in Africa, and so we don't
improve the overall missions across the world, and we do
ourselves out of huge revenues, and we could be building
more schools or we could be providing more GPS. That's
they're the fundamental differences I think between the two parties.

Speaker 3 (01:38:26):
So, Peter, the elections on in four days from now,
it's the last run home. You've got to take one
hundred meters Togo. It looks like there's a you know,
you've got to catch up. You got to really put
this stride out. What are you going to say to
Australians now? Why vote for the Coalition.

Speaker 2 (01:38:45):
We're going to work hard right up until election night
because I believe we can win the election, and I
believe we can win it because not just of the
track record of the last three years and how hard
that's been for a lot of families, but probably more
importantly because of what we've got on off and that
is a positive plan. It's about providing immediate assistance and
it's the twenty five cent a letter cut, it's the

(01:39:06):
twelve hundred dollars back. It's fixing up the energy system
straight away, and it's fixing the economy so that the
economy can be working for people, not that people are
slaves to the economy. I want to create an environment
where we can support families and help small businesses grow again,
where we can bring inflation down so that we can

(01:39:28):
bring interest rates down, and we can be a safe
society as well. I want people to be safe in
their own homes. I want them to be safe in
their communities, and I want us to be safe as
a country in a very uncertain century. And we have
the experience to be able to do that, and we
have the capacity. When you look at the front bench
and Angus Taylor and Jane Hume and others who are

(01:39:50):
very accomplished people in their own business lives, etc. They
bring a lot of experience to the table as well.
And we have the ability to clean up this mess
of the last three years and help bring down the
cost of petrol, of power, of electricity and gas, and
we can help rebuild the economy. And that's exactly what

(01:40:12):
liberal governments have done after bad labor governments before.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
Better done.

Speaker 3 (01:40:16):
Thanksgiving our audience a better sense of who Peter Donte
really is.

Speaker 2 (01:40:20):
My pleasure. Mark, Thank you very much.

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#185 Peter Dutton: The Election Week Interview - The Coalition’s Policies & Australia’s Future with Labor

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#185 Peter Dutton: The Election Week Interview - The Coalition’s Policies & Australia’s Future with Labor