Topics: Ratings agencies warnings, Joint Strike Fighter, Donald Trump, refugee resettlement deal with the US, Malcolm Turnbull and the republic movement.
E&OE …
KIEREN GILBERT:
With me now, the Special Minister of State Scott Ryan and Labor frontbencher Matt Thistlethwaite. Gentlemen, good morning to you both.
Matt, I want to start with you and this is the latest warning from ratings agencies in relation to the budget update. Labor, do you accept, has got a bit of accountability here as we head into the new year, in terms of agreeing to more? The Government’s still got $20 billion held up in the Senate.
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
Well it’s another sombre warning Kieren. What we’ve seen under this Government is debt blow out by $100 billion, the budget deficit has tripled. I accept that there needs to be savings made to the budget. Labor also says that there needs to be additional revenue raised and we’ve put forward a coherent plan to do that and we’ve offered compromises to the Government, particularly on superannuation tax concessions, but also importantly on tackling negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts. This is something that’s now widely recognised across the whole of Australia by various state governments, including the NSW Liberal Government. Mike Baird himself has said there needs to be reform of capital gains tax and negative gearing and this pig-headed Government just refuses to look at it. When you’ve got is a Government that have stuck their head in the sand, is it any wonder that we’re getting warnings from ratings agencies about debt?
GILBERT:
Senator Ryan, in relation to the latest comments, this came from Moody’s, we know that S&P has already got Australia on a negative watch when it comes to our credit rating. What’s your reaction to these comments from Moody’s overnight?
SENATOR SCOTT RYAN:
Well it reinforces the need, as you mentioned in your question there, to make savings in the budget. Every idea that Matt threw up there, as well as punishing investors, punishing the 70 per cent of people who have a negatively geared investment property who only own one property, as well as opposing the company tax cuts that will help in growing the economy, and growing the economy is the single-most important element of ensuring that the budget deficit is addressed and comes back in to balance, apart from our savings measures, Labor constantly blocks the measures in the Senate that are necessary to fix the deficit disaster they left Australia with. Matt can repeat all he wants the deficit has apparently, he says, got worse. The problem is Labor blocks every step we take, other than a few it agrees with, in order to address the budget deficit. What I read in the paper just reinforces the need for the Parliament to allow the Government to get on with the plan it took to the Australian people.
GILBERT:
As assistant minister in the shadow treasury area, I want to ask you again, in terms of Chris Bowen, Jim Chalmers, yourself, your thinking on this? Moody’s is pretty clear that they, in their comments to The Australian overnight, a spokesperson said ‘we look at the various measures being proposed, at the likelihood of them being implemented’. So, they are obviously liking what they see in terms of the measures, but the opposition to them is what is so creating the doubt here, that is, Labor’s position and that of the crossbench.
THISTLETHWAITE:
Labor’s demonstrated that we can be constructive on budget savings. The $6 billion worth of savings in the Omnibus Bill clearly demonstrated that, Kieren. It was because of Labor that we actually ended up with greater savings than what the Government was originally proposing. But what we won’t be involved in is measures that increase poverty in Australia and reduce the participation of average Australians in our economy. That’s what cutting the pension, cutting access to Medicare and cutting investment in education do. It means that the lower levels of echelons of our society are much worse off. Now when you’re talking about the housing market and exploding prices and first-home buyers going along and having to compete with people who might be investing in their 10th investment property and they get a subsidy from the Government that costs our budget billions of dollars each year to do that, that doesn’t make economic sense at all. We are not going to stand for measures that increase poverty, but we will tackle areas that are fair.
GILBERT:
Minister, as Mr Thistlethwaite quoted earlier, this is the view of the Baird Government as well, through its minister recently arguing that negative gearing does need another look.
SENATOR RYAN:
Matt throws around the word ‘subsidy’. It’s not a subsidy, it’s the same treatment to every other investment that you or I can undertake. Why should people be able to borrow money to invest in the share market and claim an interest deduction there, but not be able to do it in the residential property market? Paul Keating tried this and walked away from this because of its impact on the residential property market, particularly with respect to rentals.
Matt and Labor, constantly, quite frankly, lie. They talk about cuts, yet in most of those areas Matt mentioned, we are talking about slowing the rate of growth. When you have a budget deficit, slowing the rate of growth, making promises sustainable, making the health and education system sustainable – as my colleague Simon Birmingham outlined earlier – is the most responsible thing to do.
GILBERT:
All right, I want to move on to a focus on the Joint Strike Fighter. It’s a bit of a change of pace, but important to Australia.
We’ve got 20 on order, I think the final order is somewhere around 70 Joint Strike Fighters, a cost of $15 billion. The Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne in London overnight, Scott Ryan, he has said that we’re confident that the Joint Strike Fighter is the right jet for Australia, whether it is efficiently managed is a matter for the United States. This follows a tweet overnight by the president-elect in which he said that billions of dollars can be and will be saved on military purchases, pointing specifically to Lockheed Martin and the Joint Strike Fighter. What’s your reaction to president-elect Trump’s comments and should we have as much confidence as Mr Pyne suggests we should?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well look I don’t want to provide particular comment on what the president-elect said, the way the US procures and manages its defence program is entirely a matter for the US and I don’t think many Australian politicians would be in a position to make comment. What Minister Christopher Pyne said overnight was entirely the right thing to say. We remain committed to the project, it is very important to our long-term defence planning, but it is not something that I think most politicians can provide direct comment on. Defence procurement is complex and it requires the integration of whole ranges of systems and programs.
GILBERT:
Matt Thistlethwaite, Senator Ryan and Christopher Pyne, as you would imagine, cautious in their response to this, but from someone who is not a defence expert looking at this, it raises a bit of nervousness, doesn’t it, in the sense that this is our only plan? Both major parties support this, but we don’t have a plan B. If the Joint Strike Fighter is a multi-billion dollar flop, where do we go?
THISTLETHWAITE:
Look Kieren, it’s concerning that the US president-elect appears to be conducting some of his foreign policy and strategic engagement via Twitter. But nonetheless, what’s important with the Joint Strike Fighter project is that the Government manages it properly and that we get value for money, and ultimately, that the project meets Australia’s national security needs into the future. These projects takes decades, decades to complete, they are long-term investments and we need to ensure that governments of all persuasions manage these projects properly and Labor will do our best to hold this Government to account on the management of this project through committees of the Parliament, through the Senate Estimates process and through the Auditor-General overlooking of these projects.
GILBERT:
And you’re worried, just on something you alluded to there, the fact that it is not just comments like this in relation to Lockheed-Martin, last week to Boeing, but also in relation to foreign policy that Mr Trump is making his position known via the 140 characters afforded by Twitter.
THISTLETHWAITE:
Yeah, it’s certainly unusual for a president-elect with such an important position to be conducting foreign policy engagement and strategic commentary over Twitter. I’m confident that once he gets into the position that this will probably stop.
GILBERT:
Senator Ryan, your reflections on that and the fact that Beijing, through its Foreign Ministry, has expressed concern that the US might be wavering in its view on One China, the One China Policy, which has been part of the US thinking for four decades?
SENATOR RYAN:
United States foreign policy is a matter for the United States. I’m not going to provide a comment, or a running commentary, on how US elected officials decide to communicate with their people.
GILBERT:
One person who is trying to influence the Trump thinking is the head of the immigration department Mike Pezzullo, he is in the United States meeting with Trump officials apparently, arguing the case, Senator Ryan, for this refugee deal with the United States done, struck by Mr Turnbull with Barack Obama.
SENATOR RYAN:
Look, I’ve seen the report. I’m not going to provide any particular comment on that report. The Australian Government made an announcement several weeks ago about an arrangement struck with the US Administration and that’s being worked on.
SENATOR RYAN:
Matt Thistlethwaite, you’d welcome the fact that Mr Pezzullo is in the US doing this? This is obviously in our national interest?
THISTLETHWAITE:
Well, the question needs to be asked, why isn’t Peter Dutton over there? He is the responsible minister. We could guess that he is not there because there is a fear of failure with this whole proposal. There is very little details that’s been released by the Government. We don’t know how many people we’re talking about here. It appears to me Kieren that this whole announcement has been rushed. It’s been rushed in the wake of the election of president Trump and the Government hasn’t got their i-s dotted and their t-s crossed. They’re rushing it and now they’ve sent someone over there to try and salvage this proposal. It all goes back to the fact that the Government should have agreed to the Malaysia people-swap arrangement that was put in place by the previous government. We wouldn’t have had the additional drownings at sea, it would have been a project that would have been working and even Tony Abbott recognised that he made a mistake in denying Liberal Party agreement to that policy.
SENATOR RYAN:
Matt, I can tell you one thing about that arrangement. Every single one of the people we are trying to deal with came under Labor’s failed border protection policies and that Malaysia solution was no solution at all, it was a political slogan.
THISTLETHWAITE:
Well mate, it is the same. It’s a people swap arrangement that you’re trying to negotiate with the US now.
SENATOR RYAN:
No it’s not.
THISTLETHWAITE:
It’s the same thing that would have occurred with Malaysia. It would have been brought on earlier and you wouldn’t have had the additional deaths at sea that came about because your Government did a deal with the Greens to stop this policy getting up in the Australian Parliament.
SENATOR RYAN:
Completely untrue. The High Court found your policy was illegal and it was another failed attempt by the Labor Party. The more you want to talk about this issue Matt, please go ahead because your record speaks for itself.
GILBERT:
I want to just finish, if I can, with the republican 25th anniversary dinner, it’s this Saturday night, the Prime Minister is going to be speaking. Senator Ryan, is this a distraction from where his focus should be to conclude 2016?
SENATOR RYAN:
There is probably no one more identified with the ARM than Malcolm Turnbull. He was the leader and prime supporter of the campaign in 1999. He has been quite frank about his reflections on it. I am a republican but I was a no-voting republican at the time. I want the Prime Minister to be able to talk about the issues that have motivated him in politics, not just now, but also in the past. He has made his position quite clear on the republic, that he doesn’t think anything will or should happen during the reign of the current monarch and I think that’s where most of the Australian public are.
GILBERT:
Matt Thistlethwaite, hard to be critical of the Prime Minister on this front isn’t it? Given his long association with this particular movement, anyone that doesn’t know he was heavily involved in the republican movement in years gone by, would have probably been under a rock or not watching very closely?
THISTLETHWAITE:
Looks it’s a test for Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership on Saturday night, is he going to go along and stand up for what we all know he believes in, and that’s an Australian head of state? Is he going to show some leadership and map out a plan for his Government to join with Labor and get a bipartisan commitment to a program to deliver an Australian republic, or is he going to wimp out and go along and tell them that the time’s not right, or that they’re doing something wrong, as he has done on climate change and marriage equality?
GILBERT:
Minister, finally, your thoughts just to wrap up?
SENATOR RYAN:
Matt can find any excuse to be outraged, even in the Christmas season. I mean, everything’s a test. That’s a farcical comment there Matt. He has made his comments well known, he has put more into the republican cause than just about anyone else in Australia, so just take a chill pill for Christmas.
GILBERT:
It is our last chat before the Christmas season. Matt Thistlethwaite, Scott Ryan thanks so much for your contributions throughout the year and merry Christmas to you and your families.
(ENDS)