http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.auRSS feeds for Malcolm Turnbull MP60http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/588/Election-of-a-new-Government-in-Japan.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=588http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=588&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/588/Election-of-a-new-Government-in-Japan.aspxWe in the federal Opposition congratulate the Democratic Party of Japan on its election victory and look forward to working with the new government of Prime Minister-elect, Yukio Hatoyama, to strengthen further the valued and vibrant partnership between our two nations. Japan and Australia are fellow democracies, standing up resolutely for the values of freedom. The historic election victory by the DPJ will mark a new chapter in a relationship underpinned by decades of goodwill and common purpose. As a leading parliamentarian of long standing, Mr Hatoyama has demonstrated a deep personal commitment to the bilateral relationship, including hosting a delegation of young Australian leaders in March. The Japan-Australia partnership has proved resilient and reliable in part due to strong cross-party support in both countries. In keeping with that tradition, I would like to pay tribute to outgoing Prime Minister Taro Aso for his distinguished service. He has been a great friend of Australia. The importance of Australia’s relationship with Japan should never be underestimated. Japan has been Australia’s largest export market for 40 years, and Australia is the leading supplier of energy resources, beef and dairy products to the Japanese market. Moreover, more than 64,000 Japanese residents call Australia their home away from home, and almost half a million visitors from Japan make their way to Australia each year. These people-to-people links are vital to a relationship characterised by great warmth and mutual respect. We also share profound strategic interests. As leading allies of the United States, Japan and Australia work closely together on the goal of preserving peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Our two countries are strong voices in the great global debates. On the twin challenges of climate and energy security, Australia and Japan have worked productively, including through the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, to identify and develop technological solutions that will make a meaningful difference. For more than 30 years, Japan has been a world leader in low-emission energy use, both in the policies it adopts domestically and in the technology it exports. This global leadership role was underlined by the appointment of Mr Nobuo Tanaka to head the International Energy Agency. Our two countries have a strong mutual interest in continuing efforts to find cleaner ways forward, without compromising the fundamental economic strengths so integral to the prolific advances in living standards across our region over the past quarter of a century. In the past decade, Australia’s relations with Japan have also deepened at the strategic level, including co-operation between our forces in Iraq. We in the Liberal and National parties remain proud of our role in instituting the formal Joint Declaration on Security Co-operation in 2007. Across the full spectrum of policy challenges, the relationship between Japan and Australia has become a much-treasured asset. It must never be taken for granted. We in the federal Opposition hope to work with the new Government in Tokyo to ensure the enduring bonds of trust and friendship established across more than 50 years serve as a platform for this relationship to go from strength to strength into the 21st century.malcolmMon, 31 Aug 2009 04:55:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:588http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/587/Interview-with-Steve-Price-2UE-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=587http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=587&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/587/Interview-with-Steve-Price-2UE-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Rudd Government’s bungled schools spending; retirement of Brendan Nelson; emissions trading; Ted Kennedy; Liberal candidates for Bradfield. E & O  E STEVE PRICE: Good to talk to you again. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, good to talk to you Steve. STEVE PRICE: Does this indicate to you that we’re not being cautious enough with tax payers’ money in this schools program? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it absolutely vindicates the criticisms we made at the time, Steve. We said that the stimulus package was too big and involved too much debt and was not being properly targeted and what we’re seeing are Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls being proposed to be built all around the country, whether they’re needed or not, without consultation with school communities. It is very much a top down, government knows best approach and there are huge amounts of money involved here, and all of it is borrowed so every cent of it is going to have to be paid back. And when you’re dealing with tax payers’ money, particularly when you’re borrowing money that has to be paid back by tax payers in the future, you’ve got to make sure that every dollar is well spent, and it’s very, very clear that what we’re seeing here is reckless spending of course funded by reckless borrowing. STEVE PRICE: We ought to point out that the criticism of this, the way that these packages have been handled is coming from the Commonwealth Coordinator-General. This is just not coming from the Opposition. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, that’s absolutely right. There’s been a whole string of revelations about cost blowouts and skimming by state government, local tradesmen not getting a crack at the projects and, you know, halls being proposed for schools where they’ve already got a hall. The whole scheme has been the subject of controversy from the outset. It’s under investigation by the Auditor-General and this report from one of the Government’s own senior officials, the Coordinator-General, just demonstrates that the concerns we had at the time were very well founded. STEVE PRICE: You’re going to now face a by-election in Bradfield. Would you have rather that Brendan stayed until the next election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I think that it’s really a matter for Brendan. I mean he’s made his decision, Steve. I think probably Brendan would have rather stayed `til the election, which is what his original intention was, but he’s obviously had a change of heart about that and he feels it’s better that there be another Member for Bradfield, someone who has got a long term in Parliament ahead of them, of course, because he’s retiring. So look it’s his decision. He’s done a great job as a Member of Parliament and as the Member for Bradfield and he will leave very big shoes to fill. STEVE PRICE: You don’t take it as a slight to you that he’s done this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh certainly not. No, he’s made his own decision and by-elections occur all the time. You’ve got to remember that we’ve had a whole series of them – Alex Downer retired then Mark Vaile retired. It’s not uncommon for people to do this mid-term and I think you’ve got to weigh it up. On the one hand, when you get elected you in effect enter into a three year contract with your constituents to serve the term. On the other hand, if you feel you’re not able to give it your best because you’re no longer as committed, if you like, to the cause as you were then there’s a powerful argument for letting someone else have a go, which was what Brendan was saying. STEVE PRICE: He made it clear to me in an interview this week that he thinks you’ve got it wrong on emissions trading, that everybody ought to wait until after Copenhagen. You’re not going to change your mind on that? You are going to negotiate with the Government and try and get this up before then? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think the difference between Brendan and I is actually quite as stark as people, some people have described. I mean I have always taken the view consistently – long before I was leader – that the parliament should not finalise the design of the emissions trading scheme until after the Copenhagen conference, which is in December, and that remains my view… STEVE PRICE: But they said they won’t do that, forcing you to negotiate with them. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s right, but what they are saying is ‘we will bring it on for a vote in November’. So the question then arises, what should our reaction be. Should we just say ‘we have nothing to say, we have no ideas, we have nothing to contribute, we’re not going to offer anything except a negative vote in November’. Anyone who, if there are people that are advocating that course of action, I profoundly disagree with them. My view is that the Opposition has an obligation to the Australian community to be constructive, to engage, to seek to amend the legislation, to seek to rectify as far as we can the many deficiencies in it to ensure that it is economically responsible and environmentally effective – to do all of those things and depending on how successful we are in our amendments and the political circumstances of the time, we can then make a decision whether we vote for the bill or not in November. We may vote for it with a warning tag attached to it saying to the Government it is unwise to pass this law before Copenhagen but we would rather have it passed with these amendments than have it rejected with no amendments at all and run the risk of course that the Government then goes to a double dissolution election, wins the election and is then able to carry the bill. See this is one of the important things to bear in mind, Steve – we’ve got to be absolutely crystal clear about this. The Senate cannot perpetually block legislation. The Senate can vote against the bill twice. If the Government then choses to go to a double dissolution election and if the Government wins the election, then it will inevitably have a majority in a joint sitting of the two houses and the bill will be passed. So what all the people in the business world and a lot of people who are concerned – farmers and so forth – who are concerned about the impact of Rudd’s badly designed scheme on them will be, what they are saying to us is, ‘for God’s sake, be responsible, engage, seek to amend this law because if you don’t, if you all do is just vote it down a second time and Rudd goes to an election and if, heaven forbid, he were to win that election, then he will get exactly what he wants without you guys having any input at all’. STEVE PRICE: So the Nationals are being irresponsible, are they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look individuals in the National Party have expressed different views. Let me just give you an example of the approach I take to these things because I don’t want to speak for others… STEVE PRICE: But if you’re saying that it’s irresponsible to not negotiate to get the changes that would be important to the bill, you’re saying those who won’t negotiate are irresponsible and that includes the majority of the Nationals. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think that’s right, Steve, and this is the point I was making. We had a very similar issue with the Renewable Energy Target legislation just a couple of weeks back and there were lots of comments in the press saying that the Coalition was divided and there were all these differences of opinion. Greg Hunt, Ian Macfarlane, Andrew Robb led the charge, negotiated a whole series of amendments with the Government. We brought them back to the party room and the party room endorsed them. The joint party room, including the Nationals, endorsed them unanimously. In fact, they gave Greg and Andrew a round of applause. So a constructive approach, as long as it is focused and disciplined and seeks to protect the interests that we are concerned about which is jobs – jobs, jobs, jobs – plus doing an effective job on protecting the environment, if we can protect both our economy and our environment with effective amendments, then it is responsible for us to move them. You know, you’re better off being part of the solution than simply standing back and saying, I’m not going to have a bar of it, I’ve got no opinion to offer. We’re not paid to go to Parliament to offer no opinion, to offer no constructive contribution. STEVE PRICE: You got some sympathy for New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not sure in what regard I should have sympathy for him… STEVE PRICE: Well he’s a leader who keeps being attacked by his own. I thought you might see some parallels there. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think there are many parallels between me and Nathan Rees. I wish he was doing a better job running New South Wales. As a fellow New South Welshman, Steve, you and I and your listeners, we know what years and years of Labor neglect and mismanagement have done to our state. It is a tragedy and you know the Labor Party has been in office for so long. They can’t blame it on anybody else. It’s all their own work. They have failed comprehensively. STEVE PRICE: Did you ever meet Ted Kennedy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No I didn’t. I’ve never met Ted Kennedy. He was a remarkable man obviously. You could not write a novel about a family that would be as remarkable and extraordinary and uplifting yet as tragic as the history of the Kennedys. They were a remarkable family. STEVE PRICE: Given your interest in history, you must have been listened back to that speech he made at his brother’s funeral often and thought, boy, powerful words, beautifully delivered. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, they are great orators. It is a great tradition. And we miss some of that nowadays. I think that the older generation of politicians who cut their teeth speaking in public halls to live audiences had a different approach to oratory than perhaps the modern generation of politicians where the ten second sound bite on the evening news is what’s allegedly most important. STEVE PRICE: Unlike lawyers who honed it in the courtroom, hey. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Lawyers have got to adjust their act, you know – there’s a big difference between addressing a jury or the High Court. Some lawyers are very powerful advocates in any scenario. I mean Lucy’s dad, Tom Hughes, is one of our great barristers – 85 now and still practicing. Tom is one of those rare people who can be just as effective with a jury on a very earthy matter, criminal matter as he is arguing obscure constitutional points in the High Court. So, some people aren’t as [inaudible]. STEVE PRICE: I’ll let you go. I presume you’re not going to endorse anybody for Bradfield but are you pleased that John Alexander, the Australian tennis champion has put his hand up? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ve heard that. I’m pleased that there is a big field. Can I just say that the best thing, obviously we want to ensure we have an outstanding candidate at the end of the day, but it is a great thing for the Liberal Party, it is a great thing for our system of democracy that we get a wide field, people with a wide range of skills and backgrounds and ages and life stories. And that’s good because one of the great strengths of the Liberal Party is that we’re very diverse, we are a broad church, as John Howard always said, and we don’t have the same cookie cutter, trade union official, political staffer type of training ground that the Labor Party has. That may mean that we have more differences of opinion than the ALP does from time to time but it also means I think that we are a more effective grassroots political organisation. STEVE PRICE: Appreciate your time. Thanks a lot. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great to be with you Steve. STEVE PRICE: Good on you. [ends]  malcolmFri, 28 Aug 2009 04:51:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:587http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/586/Good-Samaritans.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=586http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=586&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/586/Good-Samaritans.aspxWe welcome the suggestion by the family of Luke Mitchell to recognise our nation’s Good Samaritans. Luke’s tragic death and that of Melbourne lawyer Brendan Keilar demonstrate the high price that some people pay for the selfless care they show to their fellow human beings. Edmund Burke famously noted all that is needed for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. These two men were not prepared to stand aside and do nothing. The Opposition would support the creation of a Good Samaritan Day where we could recognise the contributions of people such as Luke Mitchell and Brendan Keilar. While the circumstance of their terrible deaths should never be repeated, they should act as an inspiration to all of us to look out for others, strangers or not. Australians have a proud tradition of helping out their mates and neighbours, and we often extend that attitude to strangers. In many ways, it would be ideal for every day to be a Good Samaritan Day, but the idea of being reminded of this common sense of humanity once a year is admirable. Australia is fortunate enough to have around 5.4 million volunteers across the nation who provide resources to some 700,000 not for profit organisations. These volunteers make up the social fabric of our community on an ongoing basis. Good Samaritans assist their fellow citizens for no other reason that it is the right thing to do. As a community, we should celebrate the fact that we are willing to reach out to others and assist them, even if they are extending only the most basic of courtesies such as assisting someone with a disability to cross the street. On behalf of the Opposition we thank all our Good Samaritans and urge us all to learn from their actions.malcolmFri, 28 Aug 2009 04:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:586http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/584/Doorstop-Interview-Cairns.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=584http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=584&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/584/Doorstop-Interview-Cairns.aspx Subjects: Visit to HMAS Cairns; Bradfield by-election; Gorgon LNG project; Senator Ted Kennedy. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am very pleased today to be here at HMAS Cairns and to go out to sea with the Commander and ship’s company of the HMAS Wollongong to see the hard work they are doing securing Australia’s borders. We’re a vast continent with an enormous coastline under challenge all the time and it’s the men and women of our navy that secure our borders. They face constant challenges, increasing levels of unauthorised arrivals, illegal immigrants and people smugglers – the people smuggling is increasing significantly. We have had over 1,200 arrivals since August last year and this is a very significant challenge so we’re looking forward to spending some time seeing how these defence personnel are handling it right in the frontline. QUESTION: Do you believe then that the Government aren’t doing enough in terms of [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is no doubt that the Rudd Government has created the impression that Australia is a softer target. There is no doubt about that. That’s absolutely no reflection obviously on the Navy, they are doing an outstanding job. But they are having more work to do because there is a growing level of unauthorised arrivals and that puts heavier responsibilities on the men on the vessel behind us and all of their colleagues in the Defence Forces. QUESTION: Why did you come to Cairns, any particular reason? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Cairns is a very important base. HMAS Cairns is a very important base. I have visited defence bases right around Australia. We’re also having a series of other meetings today, a roundtable with the tourism industry here in Cairns and also a discussion with the Cape York partnership. So I have a number of meetings, getting to know some of the issues here in Cairns. I’ve been here many times and it’s obviously a very important area, a very important region of Australia. QUESTION: What will you be discussing with the Cape York guys? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Really all of the issues of Indigenous welfare that we’re all familiar with. My colleagues and I are very focused on that – as you know Tony Abbott has just spent a week up working in the community at Aurukun. We are very focused on getting better outcomes for Indigenous communities. QUESTION: You’re not just trying to get out of Canberra? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it’s certainly warmer here than it is in Canberra but Parliament is not sitting at the moment, and certainly the weather is much, much better in Cairns than it is in Canberra. QUESTION: There’s plenty of heat down there for you though isn’t there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there’s always plenty of activity in the Parliament. QUESTION: The Australian High Court has ruled the top military court as unconstitutional. That was a Howard Government initiative. What do you make of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, this often happens with the High Court. That’s what the High Court does, it interprets the Constitution. That obviously means another solution will have to be reached. We will cooperate with the Government in ensuring that the necessary legislation that will of course be informed by the High Court’s decision is quickly passed through the Parliament. QUESTION: There was a column in The Australian today by Arthur Sinodinos suggesting Peter Costello run as Victorian Premier. What are your thoughts on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, that’s a matter for Peter Costello. QUESTION: Who are you endorsing to replace Brendan Nelson? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am hoping that we will have a wide field, a large number of candidates, very talented candidates I’m sure, and it’s up to the preselectors of Bradfield to make their decision. We are a grassroots political movement in the Liberal Party and endorsements of candidates and preselection of candidates are taken by the membership. So, you know, we always like to see a big field – the wider the range of candidates, the larger the number, the more diverse their backgrounds, the better it is for the party. QUESTION: So you won’t play any role in this election process? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I have one representative out of a very large preselection panel but this is very much a local decision. QUESTION: What are your thoughts on the failure of the Federal Government’s cash incentives to lure back nurses to hospitals? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is just another one of Kevin Rudd’s broken promises. So many things he promised when he ran for office! He promised he was going to fix the hospital system by June 30 this year or take it over and he hasn’t done that. He had his initiative to bring nurses back – that hasn’t succeeded. Computers on every desk – that hasn’t come to pass. He was going to keep a cap on fuel prices with FuelWatch – that was a flop; GroceryWatch – another flop. Kevin Rudd is long on promises, very short on delivery. QUESTION: Are you going to visit Cairns Base Hospital then? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we don’t have that on the schedule today. QUESTION: So what else are you doing while you’re up [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: As I just said to you, we have a meeting with the tourism industry, which is your biggest… QUESTION: Anywhere other than Cairns though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I’m meeting here in Cairns with a tourism roundtable and then we have a meeting with the Cape York partnership and then I’m travelling tomorrow to the Davos Conference at Hayman Island. QUESTION: Peter Garrett’s criticised you as being too weak with the patrial approvals of the Gorgon project… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sorry, I beg your pardon, Peter Garrett has criticised who? QUESTION: …as being too weak with your partial approval of the Gorgon project in Western Australia when you were Environment Minister. How do you respond to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I haven’t seen what Peter Garrett has said. I’m impressed that Peter Garrett has acknowledged that the previous government had anything to do with it. We put enormous work into all these big natural resource projects, these LNG projects in Western Australia and I was involved in a series of approvals that were very relevant to them. These are vital projects, vital for Australia’s future, vital for the global battle against climate change. LNG is a very clean fuel and when it’s exported to a place like China and burned instead of coal it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by an enormous amount. So certainly we’re very proud of our record there in supporting those projects and the Rudd Government should acknowledge that the work they have done has built on the hard work of their predecessors. QUESTION: Any reflections on the death of Ted Kennedy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: This is the end of an era. Ted Kennedy of course is the last surviving brother of the Kennedy family, an extraordinary family that has contributed so much to the history of the world, the history and the politics of the United States. He has died at a very old age, it’s very sad that Ted Kennedy has died at 77. He was still making an enormous contribution to the Senate right up to the very end. But it’s a very important family, a very tragic family in many respects, and Ted’s death reminds us all of the extraordinary contributions the Kennedys have made not just to the United States but to the world. QUESTION: Hopefully we’ll still see you around at 77. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I certainly hope so, yes. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmThu, 27 Aug 2009 06:36:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:584http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/583/Visit-to-HMAS-Cairns.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=583http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=583&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/583/Visit-to-HMAS-Cairns.aspxToday, I was honoured to visit some of Australia’s Navy personnel who operate at the front line to protect our nation’s borders. At HMAS Cairns LCDR Ted Cummins gave me a comprehensive briefing on the role the base plays in defending our nation. Aboard the Armidale class patrol boat, HMAS Wollongong, its Commanding Officer, LCDR Tony Allen, introduced me to his ship's company and gave us a demonstration of the boarding techniques deployed when unauthorised vessels are encountered in Australian waters. Given the size of our coastline and the waters that need to be patrolled, it is an enormous task to keep our borders secure and I commend the Navy, and our other border protection forces, for the magnificent contribution that they make to this effort. The Navy’s Armidale Class Patrol Boats play an essential role in the interception of unauthorized arrivals and their vessels. I was very impressed by the professionalism and dedication of the ship's company of HMAS Wollongong and the other Navy personnel we met at HMAS Cairns and I thank them all for their hospitality. These young men and women often put their lives at risk defending our borders, as we saw in the tragic events surrounding the explosion on the SIEV 36 in April. Today’s visit was a reminder to me that the Australian public still awaits further information about what happened in the incident. The public has a right to know what lessons should be learned from that tragedy. Since the Rudd Government softened Australia’s polices on border protection in August last year, there has been a large surge in people smuggling activity. The Rudd Government has sent the wrong message to people smugglers and I fear the surge in unauthorized arrivals will continue. It is time for Mr Rudd to launch a full independent inquiry into the relationship between his new policies on border protection and the increase in people smuggling activity.  malcolmThu, 27 Aug 2009 06:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:583http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/581/Taking-students-with-disabilities-out-of-the-too-hard-basket.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=581http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=581&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/581/Taking-students-with-disabilities-out-of-the-too-hard-basket.aspxToday, the Opposition held a major stakeholder forum in Melbourne to discuss the significant challenges faced by students with disabilities and their families. This issue has been languishing in the too hard basket for too long and the Coalition wants to work with parents, educators and the providers to find a solution to ensure every child has the opportunity to reach their potential. The Opposition heard that governments at all levels have failed to provide adequately for the hundreds of thousands of young people living with a disability across Australia. Parents of students with disabilities shared their very personal stories of a system that has failed them and their children. We also heard from principals, teachers and representatives of the education and disability sectors about the need for national leadership and reform in this area. Overwhelmingly, participants agreed that the education system is failing to meet the diverse needs of students with disabilities. Every sector at the forum indicated their strong support for action. Parents talked about some of the considerable challenges that they face every day. We heard difficult stories of how these families have been discriminated against and denied real choice when it comes to the education of their children. Some of the key deficiencies that were identified included but are not limited to: • Equity and portability of funding – the difference between funding in a government school and non-government school is unfair and unsustainable. Fundamentally, the funding should follow the child. • More training for teachers and teacher’s aides must be undertaken so that these educators can better support these children. • Parents are exhausted and need more support across the board with less red tape. • There are substantial problems with different definitions of disabilities and too many children are falling through the gaps. The views expressed today will provide critical input to our policy development in this important area. The Coalition will continue to consult stakeholder groups across Australia with a clear focus on parent driven solutions. We encourage anyone who would like to share their experiences or offer policy solutions to go to www.educationforaustralia.com. The investment we fail to make today in these young Australians will cost the nation more in the long run.  malcolmTue, 25 Aug 2009 06:44:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:581http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/580/Major-Stakeholder-Forum-Equal-Access-to-Education.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=580http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=580&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/580/Major-Stakeholder-Forum-Equal-Access-to-Education.aspxE & O E Thank you very much Mitch and Christopher for those opening remarks and thank you very much too to all the team and our staff that have helped organise this forum today. Now today is not about partisan politics. This issue is above politics. It’s too important. Giving every child the best possible education no matter what their ability should be the number one priority for every parent and every politician. Unfortunately, even the best intentioned governments at both a state and federal level have failed to provide adequately for the 250,000 young people living with a disability across Australia. Essentially, the education of those students has been too often relegated to the too hard basket. Parents who have attempted to navigate through the complexities of support options would know only too well how you have to fight tooth and nail for every bit of support you’ve gained for your child. When it comes to one of the most fundamental of rights, the right to an education, we’ve made steps in the right direction, most recently in 2005 with the national Standards for Education. But there is so much more to be done before children with disabilities have the same choices as their counterparts who are not living with disabilities. So I’m here today as the Leader of the Opposition with my parliamentary colleagues to take the education of our children with disabilities out of the too hard basket and to work with you, the parents, the educators, the providers to find the solutions to ensure each and every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential. Now I would hasten to guess that most people here believe the system is broken or at least very much inadequate. However, we do not believe it is broken beyond repair. I think you would agree that we are long overdue for reform in this area and we think it’s time that students with disabilities and their families get a fair go. Now the Coalition has always stood for choice when it comes to education. This choice should and must extend to parents of children with a disability. It’s about you as parents having the ability to choose an education for your child that gives them the best start in life. Many parents have told me, including parents in my own electorate in Sydney, about their frustration with losing government funding when they change schools, if they were able to get it in the first place of course. While others have told me about the significant costs and the sacrifices they’ve had to make as a family to ensure their child receives the support and education they need. Some parents have to drive hours and hours every day to get to the only school that can meet the needs of their child. Now it’s time for change. It is time for change. We want to help shift the debate from ‘if we can’ to ‘how we can’ because we are committed to supporting our children, their families and the teachers who teach them. Today the Coalition, represented here today with all my colleagues, want to hear from you about what you think is wrong with the system and, more importantly, what you think should be done to improve it. We’ve got a great panel here of thought-provoking speakers who’ll start the discussion and then, after the morning tea, it’s over to you. Now thank you for being here today but above all thank you for the love and care you provide to your children, our children, and for taking the time to come and share your personal stories and importantly your ideas on how we can give these young Australians the support and the education that they deserve. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 25 Aug 2009 05:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:580http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/579/The-Hon-Dr-Brendan-Nelson.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=579http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=579&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/579/The-Hon-Dr-Brendan-Nelson.aspxI would like to pay tribute to the distinguished career of former Education Minister, Defence Minister and Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson, as he announces his retirement from Federal Parliament. Dr Nelson’s retirement will precipitate a by-election later this year in the seat of Bradfield. This by-election will be an important opportunity for voters to express their views on the Rudd Labor Government’s economic management, which has seen unprecedented levels of reckless spending and record debt which will lead to higher taxes and higher interest rates. Labor must take the opportunity at this by-election to explain why they have amassed so much debt and how they will ask Australians to repay that debt. State Labor has taken the Bradfield area for granted, and the by-election will give residents a chance to air their views on vital local issues such as the impact of planning and development changes. The by-election will also be fought over Labor’s attacks on aspiration and self-reliance, and in particular Kevin Rudd’s broken promise not to alter the private health insurance rebate. On behalf of the Coalition I would like thank Brendan for his years of service to the Liberal Party, the electors of Bradfield, and the people of Australia. During the Howard Government, Brendan served with distinction in two very senior ministerial portfolios. As Minister for Defence from January 2006, Brendan oversaw record government investment in the Australian Defence Force, including three per cent annual real increases in Defence spending out to 2015/16. Brendan was also responsible for major defence acquisitions such as the Air Warfare Destroyers, amphibious ships, C-17s and Abrams tanks. These investments in defence will be essential to the protection of Australia’s people, interests and values well into the future. As Defence Minister, Brendan also oversaw deployments of Australian troops to restore stability to the Solomon Islands and East Timor, and he implemented far-reaching reforms to boost recruitment and retention in the ADF. As Australia’s Education Minister from November 2001 to January 2006, Brendan’s achievements included delivering much needed reform of Australia’s higher education sector, putting in place an agenda for higher standards and greater consistency in Australian schools, and lifting the status and profile of vocational education, training and apprenticeships. As Leader of the Opposition, Brendan began the process of rebuilding our party in challenging times and we owe him a debt of gratitude for his service. I wish Brendan, Gillian and their family a very happy and successful future together.  malcolmTue, 25 Aug 2009 05:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:579http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/575/Interview-with-Denis-Scanlan-947-The-Pulse.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=575http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=575&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/575/Interview-with-Denis-Scanlan-947-The-Pulse.aspxSubjects: Visit to Geelong; Labor Party’s focus on gossip and smear; emissions trading; Renewable Energy Target; Labor’s reckless spending; Rudd Government’s lack of investment in water infrastructure; Liberal candidate for Corangamite, Sarah Henderson.   E & O E DENIS SCANLAN: Mr Turnbull, good morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Denis. DENIS SCANLAN: So firstly, can I call you Malcolm? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely. DENIS SCANLAN: Thank you Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: [inaudible] DENIS SCANLAN: Now first up, you’ll be happy to know, no jokes about the ALP. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Righto, fair enough. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, I was just talking to Tony Wright, who you’d know from The Age’s Canberra bureau, about this and he and I were discussing this and generally he and I agree that I don’t think a lot of people care that you, I won’t even ask you did you approach the ALP or did they approach you but he says – and a pretty experienced political journalist as you would know – that most people don’t really care. I mean a lot of us ten years ago might have been something else politically. So are you getting feedback about this whole ALP thing that the electorate doesn’t really care? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think the electorate are impressed with the Labor Party constantly focusing on political spin and smear as opposed to the real issues, which are getting the emissions trading scheme right so it doesn’t devastate Geelong, also ensuring that the Government doesn’t continue running up an unbelievable mountain of debt; to ensure that we maintain levels of high employment. These are all the issues people want to talk about and this latest outburst is obviously just a very concerted, well put together package of smear that the Labor Party has flung at me and the bizarre thing about it, Denis, is that I’ve never been a member of the Labor Party. Now there’d be no shame if I had been. There would be plenty of people on the Liberal side of politics who have been members of the ALP in the past and possibly people in the ALP side of politics who were in the Liberal Party. DENIS SCANLAN: Well Malcolm your predecessor immediately comes to mind. Dr Nelson, of course, was a proud member of the ALP and I don’t think anyone really cared much about that. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s right because you see political parties seek to recruit supporters from the other side and they seek to recruit supporters from the undecided. DENIS SCANLAN: So have you got any idea why the ALP brought this up at this particular time? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think they’re just trying to, it’s just part of their political ‘play the man, not the ball’ exercise. They don’t want to concentrate on the real issues. They’ve got an emissions trading scheme which is literally friendless. It’s supported by nobody. We were able last week to negotiate changes to the Renewable Energy Target legislation of the Government, which had the effect of protecting thousands of jobs around Australia including many in Geelong, in the electorate of Corangamite, particularly in the aluminium sector. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, in regards to the emissions trading scheme, just talking to Tony Wright and other people have mentioned this, a lot of people are of the opinion that we should hold off on the emissions trading scheme until Copenhagen which is in December to see what the other nations are doing. What do you think about that, that we should hold off, do nothing about an emissions trading scheme until after Copenhagen? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Denis I certainly don’t think we should do nothing. I think we should keep working on a scheme but I have said and it’s our policy and I’ve said that if I was Prime Minister today I would not finalise the design of our scheme until after the Copenhagen Summit. That is absolute common sense. But clearly we should continue doing research and working on the design but you shouldn’t finalise it until you know two things, two things at least – one, what the shape of the Americans’ emissions trading scheme is going to be. Now at the moment, we have a law that has passed through one half of the US Congress, the House of Representatives, but is yet to pass through the Senate. So we’ve got an idea of where the Americans are heading and their scheme is already much more protective of American jobs and in particular of American trade-exposed emissions-intensive industries such as there are so many of in Geelong. They are much more protective of them than Mr Rudd’s scheme is and I think we need, ideally, you want to see, firstly, what the American scheme will look like because that will inevitably be the global benchmark and, secondly, you want to see what happens at Copenhagen. Now really Mr Rudd is for the sake of a few months, it’s not as though we’re saying to him pit this off for three years – we’re saying let’s finalise it in February rather than November. That’s literally all we’re talking about. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, on the whole subject of emission trading schemes and the environment, is it an embarrassment to you that you have in your own party, the Liberals, some people who doubt climate change, climate change doubters and the Nationals, just about every National doesn’t want to know about it. Is that an Achilles heel for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Denis, let me just say this – this is not a theological issue. Some people try to treat it like that. It is perfectly reasonable for people to have doubts about science, question science. I mean, heaven’s sake, there are so many examples of received wisdom, scientific wisdom being proved to be wrong. So you’ve always got to be questioning and be prepared to challenge orthodoxy. So denigrating people because they are sceptical about the theory, the proposition that the earth is warming because of human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, denigrating them is ridiculous. However, the question is, the real political question is what do we do about it. Now, as you go right back to Margaret Thatcher who was really one of the leading politicians in terms of picking up this problem many years ago, nearly 20 years ago. Margaret Thatcher made the point that you had to act prudently or indeed, as Rupert Murdoch famously once said, you’ve got to give the planet the benefit of the doubt. And what that means is that even though some people entertain doubts, grave doubts about the theory of climate change, there is so much scientific evidence for it and so much scientific opinion in favour of the theory that in my view it would be irresponsible not to take action. And of course, I’m not aware of any government in the world that isn’t seeking to take some form of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. DENIS SCANLAN: But it does give the Government a lot of ammunition though, Malcolm, doesn’t it? The fact that you do have doubters in your own party. I mean I watch Question Time virtually, well, every time Question Time is on and they have… MALCOLM TURNBULL: [inaudible] DENIS SCANLAN: Sorry? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You’re a masochist if you do that. DENIS SCANLAN: I know, I know, but at times it’s good comedy acts. MALCOLM TURNBULL: You get 20 questions and no answers. DENIS SCANLAN: You get a lot of laughs, Malcolm. You do. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s good. DENIS SCANLAN: They do have fun with it, don’t they. Let’s put it this way, wouldn’t you prefer that every member of your Party – let’s exclude the Nats for the moment – every member of your Party, you’d prefer no climate change doubters there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, Denis, the issue of whether people are doubters or have got varying degrees of acceptance or scepticism about any particular scientific proposition is really beside the point. The issue is are you in favour of doing anything about it. Now, you could be very sceptical about the scientific theory but nonetheless say, as a matter of prudence, as a risk management exercise, I believe we should be part of concerted global action to reduce CO2 emissions. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, on the subject of the Nationals and there was a conference in Queensland where some Nationals up there at the grassroots level talked about breaking away from the Liberal Party. They seem to be, well, are they a problem and where do you see the Coalition’s agreement with the Nationals going? Are you concerned? I mean they’re making some noises that you would rather not hear, Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Denis, the Nationals are very committed to the Coalition and they’ve reaffirmed that at their conference over the weekend. That’s the first thing. The second thing is there will from time to time be issues on which we differ, where we take a different approach. It’s very, very rare; very rare indeed. It may be, it may be – it’s not necessarily the case – it may be that we will vote in the Senate differently on the emissions trading scheme. But it’s far too early to say. The approach that we are taking is this – just as we did with the Renewable Energy Target – we are going to seek to amend the emissions trading scheme so as to protect jobs, in particular jobs in energy intensive regions such as Geelong. Geelong is a very, very good example of an area that will be, if Labor’s ETS were to go into operation now, would suffer very heavy disproportionate job losses. So we’re going to focus on improving the scheme. We will argue with Mr Rudd that he should not finalise the legislation until early next year, after Copenhagen and after we see what the Americans do. If he refuses to do that and forces it to a vote in November we will then have to make a decision whether we vote for it or not and that will depend on the circumstances at the time but in particular on whether and to what extent the amendments that we’ve proposed have been accepted. Now if we can get satisfactory amendments it may be that we will vote for it, notwithstanding that it is being introduced some months earlier than we believe is ideal. We have to make a pragmatic decision there. But what the Australian people want to see the Opposition doing is seeking to improve Labor’s emissions trading scheme, seeking to rectify the errors in it, the job destroying mistakes and flaws in the scheme. And that’s exactly what we did with the Renewable Energy Target legislation. We are going to play a constructive role and seek to protect the industries and the jobs that are so important, particularly in regional Australia. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, I think we all agree that climate change of course is very, very important and all issues associated with it, but just talking to Tony Wright an hour or so ago and he said something which I think most people I’ve spoken to agree with – the big issue at the next election will be the economy. And Malcolm as most people see it the economy is going alright. We have a great banking system – the four tier bank system seems to be working. When you look at other countries which have been a disaster like America, England, we’ve got a great banking system, which I know the present Government didn’t put there of course but… MALCOLM TURNBULL: The great banking system and the great banking regulation is entirely the creation of the previous Coalition Government. DENIS SCANLAN: I did say that Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I know, I’ll just repeat – it was such a wise observation that you made, Denis, I repeated it. DENIS SCANLAN: Okay, now on the subject of the stimulus. If we look at places like JB Hi-Fi, a big electrical retailer that came out with a great profit result and it said a lot of their result was due to the stimulus. Wesfarmers and Coles of course have come out with their results saying that they did think the stimulus helped their result, although they did say they would say to Mr Rudd, no more. So you’ve got business, public companies like JB Hi-Fi, Malcolm, like Wesfarmers, saying the stimulus was good and it worked. How can you say it’s wrong? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, our view was back in February that the stimulus was too much, there was too much money being spent and it wasn’t being spent well enough. So we certainly supported a stimulus but we were really arguing about, or we were arguing about the size of the stimulus and the targeting of it. So that’s really the issue. So it’s not a question of whether the stimulus, you know, whether there should or should not have been a stimulus – we certainly supported a stimulus – but we would have just composed it or designed it differently. We certainly wouldn’t have had so much money being handed out in cash handouts; we opposed those. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, could I ask you – just butting in here – do you believe that these stimuluses that the economy or the stimulus that the Government put into the economy will come back to bite us or come back to bite the Government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, of course it comes back to bite you in the sense that it’s all borrowed money and this is really the issue, Denis. I mean, it’s no different to the decisions all of us make in our own lives. You can borrow money and you can use it very wisely and build up your business or improve your farm or improve your house – you can add value by using borrowed money wisely. Or you can borrow money and you can use it ineffectively. You know, you can borrow $100,000 and spend it on something and end up with only $25,000 worth of investment, so you’ve lost $75,000. It’s a question of how you use it. Now our point simply is that the stimulus has not been well targeted. Of course if you sent everybody a cheque for $900 it’s going to have some impact on retail sales but a large part of that stimulus money was saved, so it didn’t go back into the economy. It simply reduced debt, household debt. And, again, you’ve got to ask yourself, I mean, here were are in Victoria which has been so short of water – and we think of the dire straits the irrigation districts in Victoria face – instead of spending so much money on Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls and schools, why not divert that money to repairing the very leaky and inefficient irrigation systems of Australia? I mean we allocated a lot of money towards that when we were in government. That was part of our vision, our National Plan for Water Security, and the Rudd Government has done practically nothing with it. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, would you agree that the… MALCOLM TURNBULL: [Inaudible]…responsibility. DENIS SCANLAN: …the big issue at the next election will be the economy and if the economy… MALCOLM TURNBULL: There’s no doubt the economy and the management of the economy is always the big issue and it will be a very big issue at the next election – you are absolutely right. DENIS SCANLAN: So if the economy stays in pretty good shape or improves – and there’s every chance of that happening – do you believe that if people look at the economy and they say, well, the Government seems to be going alright, that you’ll suffer a pretty devastating defeat Malcolm? To be on the pessimistic side. MALCOLM TURNBULL: You would hardly expect me to agree with that! Look, let me just say this to you… DENIS SCANLAN: Well, let’s put it this way, it’s going to make it very hard for you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, Denis, let me put this to you; the Rudd Government is running up debt at an unprecedented level. Australians are smart enough to know that the higher the level of government debt, the higher the level of taxes and interest rates have to be. That follows as night follows day. Now a government can say, you know, we borrowed money and we spent it on some very important infrastructure and that’s increased economic activity and so our tax revenues have gone up, so it’s all paying for itself. But if you’ve borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars and you have got very little to show for it, then all you’ve left people with is the heavy burden of that debt and so the economy has not been strengthened and you are going to have to pay higher taxes and higher interest rates. And it doesn’t matter, you know, the Government can talk about, you know, can identify any sort of idealistic objectives it wants to in terms of tax reform but if it has imposed on the community, on the taxpayer, a heavy burden of debt then it follows that taxes are going to have to be higher to pay it off. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, just one more question. I know you’ve got to get away to the function there at Grovedale. Now the seat of Corangamite – and I must say you’ve got an excellent candidate there in Sarah Henderson, she’s like you and she’s like me. MALCOLM TURNBULL: A great candidate. DENIS SCANLAN: She’s also like you and me – she’s a journalist, so she’s an excellent candidate. Now, at the last election Corangamite went Labor for the first time in history, do you believe that Sarah Henderson and the Liberals can win Corangamite back? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely. Sarah Henderson is an outstanding candidate. She will give Corangamite the representation that it deserves. She will stand up for Corangamite. Darren Cheeseman, the current Labor member, what has he done to seek to protect the industries of Geelong in the face of the Rudd Government’s emissions trading proposals? He wasn’t there seeking amendments to the Renewable Energy Target – it was the Liberals. He’s not there proposing to change the emission trading scheme to protect the jobs at Alcoa or Shell or Ford. And what about the student Youth Allowance? He hasn’t put his hand up to defend the interests of regional students there. Sarah Henderson, on the other hand, will be a strong voice for Corangamite and she is the type of representative, the type of parliamentarian that every electorate would seek to have. And Corangamite I think will have a very great member of the House of Representatives in Sarah. DENIS SCANLAN: Malcolm, have a good day in Geelong. You’re there at Grovedale and then you’re down on the coast to Torquay this afternoon. I appreciate your time this morning Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great to be with you. DENIS SCANLAN: Thanks Malcolm. [ends]  malcolmMon, 24 Aug 2009 22:42:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:575http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/574/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=574http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=574&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/574/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspxSubjects: Jobs for Australia forum; Julia Gillard has got to back down on Youth Allowance changes; Sarah Henderson; investing in infrastructure; Labor Party’s focus on gossip and smear; emissions trading; Renewable Energy Target; nuclear power. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sarah and I and Senator Ronaldson just had a very constructive Jobs for Australia forum – the 58th that we have held around Australia and the 31st that I have attended, but the first I have attended with you, so it’s very good.. SARAH HENDERSON: And my pleasure. It’s wonderful to have you here. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, it’s been good. Now a big issue today is the way the Government is unconscionably disadvantaging young Australians, particularly in rural and regional areas, with its changes to the student Youth Allowance. Not only has it changed the rules which young people relied on with the advice of school counsellors and Centrelink, and the Government itself, changed the rules so that they now are not going to be able to qualify for the Youth Allowance in the way they were told they would, but it also has in particular disadvantaged young people in rural and regional Australia, making it harder for them to get a higher education. Labor has got to change. It has got to back down on these changes. Julia Gillard has had the message again and again that she has got it wrong. And we are committed to changing this so that, firstly, the students who are currently doing a gap year will not be disadvantaged and, secondly, there will be a scholarship set up, a scholarship scheme set up for students in rural and regional Australia to ensure that they are given the additional support that they need. But Julia Gillard has got the opportunity to back away from these unconscionable changes she is inflicting on young Australians and get it right – and we hope she does. QUESTION: Ms Gillard said this morning, Mr Turnbull, that she will speak to students. Would you concede that Labor are still prepared to tinker at the edges of the changes? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well she has met with a lot of students. I mean, some of you may have seen the Q&A program a few weeks back, and she got some very direct feedback there from several hundred young Australians, told her exactly what they thought of her changes. She has had meetings with students. She knows what the situation is. It is causing enormous unfairness and injustice. You cannot, you simply cannot change the rules which people have in good faith relied on, planned their life on, planned their higher education on and then just change it, just pull the rug out from under them and expect them to be happy about it. It’s an outrage and she’s just got to fix it. QUESTION: If the Government doesn’t change Youth Allowance, will the Coalition block it in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’ll seek to amend it, it’s going before a Senate Committee at this stage and we have certainly flagged some amendments but, really – and the amendments, I might say, have been structured in such a way that there is no net cost to the budget, so that we’ve found savings in the measure. Christopher Pyne, the Shadow Education Minister has set all that out and of course it’s going to be the subject of a Senate Committee – but, you know, really what we need is action now. The Government needs to take action right now to fix this problem. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, your visit to Geelong today – and this is [inaudible] from the north suburb of Melbourne that [inaudible] down here in Geelong. Sarah Henderson, pre-selected candidate for the seat of Corangamite – new visions, new approaches by you and your party when you get into government; Sarah an outstanding candidate; Geelong really looking forward to some improved support from the Federal Government. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you could not have a better advocate for Geelong and for Corangamite than Sarah Henderson. QUESTION: Are you confident that Sarah will get the seat from Darren Cheeseman? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m confident that Sarah will win this seat. She is an outstanding candidate and I’m confident we’ll win the election. Corangamite needs a powerful, persuasive advocate. It needs a representative that will ensure that this community gets the services and the investment that it deserves, and you couldn’t have a better advocate than Sarah Henderson. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, are you worried your own showing in the polls could hinder Sarah’s attempt to get back the marginal seat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re focused on election day. The polls go up and down. The real choice for the people of Corangamite, the most immediate choice, is between Darren Cheeseman, who has failed to stand up for Corangamite, and Sarah, who we all know will stand up for Corangamite. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you’ve heard a lot of issues around Geelong today including the infrastructure to grow Geelong. Is that something that… I know you’ve spoken to the Mayor about this and the CEO. Is that something you’ll also take back to Canberra? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh, very much so. We’re very focused on infrastructure right around Australia. The importance of investing wisely. One of our biggest concerns, probably our biggest concern with the Rudd Government, is not simply that they’ve incurred so much debt, but they’ve incurred it with so little so show for it. You know, where are the big infrastructure projects that you’d think $300 billion of debt would warrant? Far too much of this money has not been spent wisely. It’s been spent very unwisely, and what we need to ensure is that every dollar of taxpayers’ money is spent wisely to maximise the economic return for the community in which it’s invested and for the nation as a whole. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you spoke strongly today about the world of agriculture, and certainly Geelong is surrounded, through the Western District, with a great farming community. Did you feel that the farming community can be appeased, particularly in the area of the economic, the climate change proposals? MALCOLM TURNBULL: If an emissions trading scheme were designed in a way to support agriculture, it could be quite beneficial. Our proposal is, as, which is exactly what the Americans are doing – so it’s a pretty good precedent – our proposal is that the emissions from agriculture should be excluded, but that offsets should be included. Now that would provide an enormous incentive – and additional cash flow, I might say – to the farming sector, and land management sector generally, to invest in our landscape, to make our soils and our countryside more productive. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, another senior Labor Party member has said today that it was you who approached him regarding a job at the ALP. What’s your response to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think it’s comical. Look, the reality is this, that if I had wanted to join the ALP I would have joined the ALP. It is not very hard to join a political party. The only political party I have been a member of is the Liberal Party. I first joined the Liberal Party in 1973. I ran for preselection in the 1980s as a Liberal Party candidate. I was scrupulously non-partisan during the time I was chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, naturally, because we were seeking bipartisan support. And after the republican referendum was over, and the ARM’s affairs were settled, and the debts were paid off and so forth, I rejoined the Liberal Party. And I just have to say that I’m fascinated by this outpouring of Labor Party supposed reminiscences, but it’s a bit hard to see why they are spending so much time on all of this smear and gossip instead of focusing on the real issues that concern Australians, which relate to the economy, to jobs, to debt, to the design of the emissions trading scheme. QUESTION: On the emissions trading scheme, what guarantee are you able to offer business going to the next election on the ETS when you’ve got senior Nationals such as Barnaby Joyce talking about dismantling the scheme completely? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, Barnaby Joyce is speaking for himself, he’s expressing a personal opinion. At the moment we do not have an emissions trading scheme. The Government hasn’t finalised its emissions trading scheme. Now we are very firmly of the view, the very practical view that the design of the emissions trading scheme should not be finalised until after the Copenhagen conference. And in practical terms, let’s just be quite clear about what that means. That means that we would finalise the legislation in February next year as opposed to November this year, which is what Mr Rudd wants. So for the sake of 90 days he is going to have us voting on a scheme, if he has his way, without knowing what the American legislation looks like and without knowing what the world’s nations have decided at Copenhagen. Now we will seek to persuade him to do the right thing and legislate next year, and we will obviously seek to engage, as we did on the Renewable Energy Target, with amendments of the kind we discussed in the room today that will protect agriculture and protect jobs. But as to what the emissions trading scheme, assuming one is passed, before the next election looks like, at this stage it’s too early to say. Mr Rudd hasn’t even finalised his proposal. QUESTION: Surely though it makes it a difficult sell for you given the open disunity I suppose within the Coalition over having an ETS at all, let alone the shape of it, but whether you take one to the next election at all? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, people have different views. It may be that the Nationals have a different view on the ETS in the final analysis. It’s not the first time the Nationals and the Liberals have disagreed. You have to remember, we not only took a proposal for an emissions trading scheme to the last election, we actually started legislating for one under the Howard Government. QUESTION: Wayne Swan and Chris Bowen have announced that ASIC will play a supervising role over the Australian financial markets. Is this appropriate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I haven’t seen the detail of their announcement so I’ll come back to you when I have. QUESTION: And back on ETS, do you think all Liberals will vote together? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes I would expect so. We don’t have the sort of ruthless discipline that the Labor Party has where people have to always vote precisely as the caucus resolves. So Liberals do have the right to exercise individual conscience, if you like, and sometimes people do vote differently to the resolution of the party room. Again, that’s rare, just as it’s rare for the Nationals and the Liberal to disagree. But there is overwhelming support in the party room for the approach we’re taking on climate change as was evidenced by the unanimous support for the compromise we reached with the Government on the Renewable Energy Target last week. So if you want to see a trial of the approach we’re taking, there it was in the party room last week – unanimous support. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you agree with Barnaby Joyce’s comment that there should be a referendum on nuclear power or with Nick Minchin in that he is saying that the debate on nuclear power is futile? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, rather than pick between the two, why don’t I tell you what I think. I believe that nuclear power is an important part of the world’s electricity generation technology. Nuclear power generates about 14 to 15 per cent of the world’s electricity now, and of course with the pressure from concerns about climate change, that percentage is likely to grow. There are many new nuclear power plants being built around the world. That’s why we are selling a lot more uranium. Okay. Now, that’s a fact. Second question, second issue is, should we be building a nuclear power station in Australia to generate electricity here? You will never have nuclear power in Australia until you have widespread community support and bipartisan political support, and we are a very, very long way off having that. It’s a debate that will continue. It’s certainly a worthwhile debate to have but in terms of raising it as an immediate issue, I think Nick is, I wouldn’t say it’s futile, but I would say it’s a long way off, but it’s something that is worth examining and debating, not least because we are the world’s largest exporter of uranium. We have a vested interest in the growth of nuclear power around the world. QUESTION: … possibly taking over revenue collection from states and local government. Does this make sense? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, again, I haven’t seen that. Thanks for letting me know, but I haven’t seen that proposal. Okay. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmSun, 23 Aug 2009 22:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:574http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/576/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments3http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=576http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=576&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/576/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Labor Party’s focus on gossip and smear; the Coalition; emissions trading; nuclear power. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it says a lot about the Labor Party’s spin machine, that a time when Australians are coping with rising unemployment, with government debt heading to over $300 billion, with all of the challenges of getting an emissions trading scheme designed that won’t send thousands and thousands of jobs offshore, when we are dealing with those real issues what do we see this morning but the Labor Party again spinning away with gossip and smear. So we are going to remain focused on the real issues that confront Australia, issues of economic management, ensuring that the environment is protected without destroying our economy, with ensuring that Australia is well governed and well managed. Labor is failing in government – it is failing in government and is trying to make up for that with lots of spin. QUESTION: So are you saying the meeting didn’t happen? We have confirmed that it did with at least one person. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, can I just say this to you, I know many people in the Labor Party as indeed everybody does. I was in business with Neville Wran for 10 years. So I have got plenty of friends in the Labor Party and over the years plenty of them, many of them, have sought to encourage me to join their side of politics. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating – actions speak louder than words. I have never joined the Labor Party. I don’t disrespect the Labor Party; I disagree with the Labor Party. I think they are doing a bad job at running Australia. And since you have just had Barry O’Farrell here, as you well know, they are doing an especially bad job running New South Wales. But the suggestion that I was asking the Labor Party officials for permission to join the Labor Party is ridiculous. Anyone can join the Labor Party. If I had wanted to join the Labor Party I would have done so. QUESTION: Or were you trying to join it to get a seat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the only – and this is has been on the record for many years – the only concrete discussion I have ever had to my recollection with anybody in the Labor Party about becoming a member of parliament was many years ago when Paul Keating was Prime Minister. He raised with me the idea of joining the ALP and replacing, I think it was Senator Richardson, when he created a casual vacancy by retiring from the Senate. Now I thanked Mr Keating for that offer, or that suggestion, which was very flattering. I said it was very kind of him to think of me in that respect but I said I wouldn’t be comfortable in the Labor Party and it wouldn’t be comfortable with me. And, again, the proof of the pudding is in the results. I did not join the ALP, I have never joined the ALP and the only political party, parliamentary political party I’ve been a member of is the Liberal Party. QUESTION: So you didn’t say to Bob Hawke that you were bloody pissed off with John Howard? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Listen, I told the nation he had broken the nation’s heart, so obviously I wasn’t feeling very positive… on the night of the election, you know, of course John had been my opponent. And, look, can I just say a little bit about John Howard here too. You know, John Howard and I fought tooth and nail over the republic issue for several years. And I was very unhappy when we lost, as were a lot of people who had been republicans. And after I had stepped down as chairman of the Republican Movement, after we had paid off all the debts after the campaign and sorted the affairs of the ARM out, I rejoined the Liberal Party – the party I had been a member of previously, before I had been involved as chairman of the ARM. And I went to see John – and, again, this is on the public record – and I said, ‘well, look, I’ve been encouraged to do this, how do you feel about it?’ And he said, ‘I think that’s great’, and he had no hard feelings and we then went on to work together in parliament and of course in government. And I mean together we delivered the biggest reform to the management of Australian water, Australia’s waters, in our history in the National Plan for Water Security. So, you know, John Howard proved that he was a big man in the way he dealt with that and welcomed me back into the Liberal Party. QUESTION: Even if there’s nothing in it, even if it’s just smear, are you not concerned there will be some affect on the joint party room in terms of your position? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I actually find it rather comical to be quite honest with you. I mean, Kevin Rudd stands up in parliament, foaming at the mouth, accusing me of being a neo-liberal, free market extremist determined to unleash all of the dangers, that he describes, of unbridled capitalism on the Australian public and on the other hand they are saying that I really ought to be in the Labor Party. So they have got to make up their mind. They are the ones that are sixes and sevens. QUESTION: What do you make of Barnaby Joyce’s comments this morning that you’re not his leader? Are you, as Leader of the Opposition, leader of the Coalition? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, of course I’m leader of the Coalition. I’m the Leader of the Opposition. But I assume Barnaby is just making the point that in the federal parliament the Nationals are a separate party and they elect their own leader and because we are in coalition with them the Leader of the Liberal Party – which is the larger member of the Coalition – is the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Coalition. But Barnaby is there in our leadership group meetings every morning, so he’s part of the team. QUESTION: So unhelpful is that, though? Doesn’t it just tell the electorate there’s disunity? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I saw Warren Truss’s interview this morning on Insiders and I thought Warren really dealt with it in a very similar way that I had earlier in the week and that is this – that we work together as a Coalition, as a team. I mean, as Barnaby himself has said, we vote together 99.999 per cent of the time and we always seek to come to an agreement. Now occasionally, particularly when we’re in Opposition, there will be issues upon which we will vote differently if we can’t reach a common position. The best recent example was wheat, obviously. There may be others. But we always endeavour to reach a common view but if we determine that we can’t do that and it’s one of those rare occasions where we will take a different course of action, then we do so. QUESTION: One of those issues is the emissions trading scheme. He said today that he would like to see it dismantled if there was a Coalition Government… Mr Joyce. In government, if you were the leader of a Coalition government, would you dismantle the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, let me just say, let me just remind you that when we were in government, which was a Liberal-National Party Government, the deputy prime minister of which government was the leader of the National Party, we started the legislation for an emissions trading scheme. We not only went to the last election in 2007 with a proposal for an emissions trading scheme, very differently designed to the one Mr Rudd apparently has on offer I might add, but we went to the election with a proposal for an emissions trading scheme and the legislative framework for that was started by a law that I introduced into the House of Representatives as John Howard’s Environment Minister, as part of that Liberal-National Party Government. So Senator Joyce is free to express his opinions on an emissions trading scheme but the fact is we were committed to an emissions trading scheme when we were in government – and that’s just a historic fact. QUESTION: So is the answer to that no, that you… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, you are asking a lot of hypothetical questions, but if we assume that an emissions trading scheme is legislated by the Labor Government then we will consider it. We may well, as the conservatives did in New Zealand, as John Key’s party, the National Party in New Zealand did, we may well go to the election with proposals to amend it or change it. But at this stage we don’t even know the final details of Mr Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. You know, pick a big issue: agriculture – very much up in the air; coal – very much up in the air and under negotiation. I mean, don’t let’s kid ourselves. The Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme is far from settled. Now we are prepared to sit down and negotiate with them in good faith with the intention of coming to an agreed position. We were able to do that over the Renewable Energy Target last week and if the Government is prepared to deal constructively and openly with us then we may well reach an agreement, but we’ll see. QUESTION: If you don’t like it then, why negotiate? Why not just say this is a dumb idea, we don’t like it let’s… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think an emissions trading scheme… QUESTION: No, the Government’s scheme? MALCOLM TURNBULL: But you see the point is, look, everybody knows that if you want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions you have to put a price on carbon, okay. Now there are a number of ways you can do that. The general view that certainly we came to in government and the general view around the world is the most efficient way to do that is through what is called an emissions trading scheme rather than just a flat carbon tax. And the reason for that is because it enables you to get the efficiencies from trade. That is both trade inside Australia and inside and outside Australia. So that’s why people are opting for emission trading schemes around the world but of course getting the design right – you saw a few weeks back we produced, or we didn’t produce we published a report that had been prepared for us by Frontier Economics which demonstrated that with some design changes dealing with the electricity generation sector, with the power stations, you could achieve a greater reduction in emissions at a much lower cost. Now that’s just being greener, cheaper and smarter. So obviously we are focused on getting the best outcome from the scheme. QUESTION: On the oil spill, can we ask you about the Government’s response to this? Greg Hunt has been saying the Government sat on its hands; has not moved quickly enough. The West Australian Premier last night was saying everything was at hand… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will leave the commentary on that to Greg. QUESTION: On another environmental issue; [inaudible] today about embracing nuclear power and… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sorry, who did? QUESTION: Mr Joyce. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Senator Joyce, right. QUESTION: He said about embracing nuclear power and having councils hold referendums on the issue and so forth – your position? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well our position is the same as it always was, always has been, which is that nuclear power is obviously a near zero emission option for base load power and that is why Australia is selling a lot more uranium and why a lot more nuclear power stations are being built around the world. However, until such time as there is bipartisan political support for nuclear power and broad community support in Australia, it isn’t going to happen. These projects, nuclear power stations, require many, many years – a decade or more – of planning and construction so they are simply not going to happen unless there is strong community support for it. In some countries there is. For example, in France, as we all know, about 80 per cent of the electricity is generated by nuclear power and has been for a long time but in Australia that is not the case. But I encourage everybody to study it and debate the merits and the pros and cons of nuclear power. It is certainly going to play a larger role in the world’s electricity generation. Right now around the world nuclear power generates about 14 or 15 per cent of the world’s electricity and that share will grow. QUESTION: To gauge or to clarify where people do stand on it, are referendums such a bad idea? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I think we are a long, long way away from that. I don’t think that would be a productive course of action. If a local council wants to do that, it’s up to them but we are a long way from getting that degree of community support before it would be a realistic possibility in Australia. QUESTION: Can we just clarify your talks with the ALP? Can you categorically deny ever approaching the Labor Party about a seat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have never approached the Labor Party about running for a seat in parliament. I have had many discussions with ALP figures over the years and I have been courted, if you like, and encouraged to join the ALP, which is hardly surprising. Look, the reality is political parties are like football clubs, you know, they seek to recruit people they think might be good players. And during the years, particularly when I was chairing the republican movement and I wasn’t a member of any political party, other than the Australian Republican Movement of course, I had plenty of encouragement from people in the ALP. I have got a lot of good friends in the Australian Labor Party. And if I had wanted to join the ALP I can assure you I would have done so. I have never been known for being timid and if I had wanted to be a member of the Australian Labor Party, I would have been one. It’s as easy to join the ALP as it is to join the Liberal Party. And I would encourage all of you who are thinking about a career in politics to join the Liberal Party. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmSat, 22 Aug 2009 22:46:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:576http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/577/Address-to-the-South-Australian-Liberal-Party.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=577http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=577&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/577/Address-to-the-South-Australian-Liberal-Party.aspxE & O E Sean Edwards, it’s wonderful to be here with South Australia’s Liberal Party. The South Australian contribution to the Federal Parliament has been an outstanding one. Not only has it delivered great cabinet ministers such as the former cabinet ministers we have here today in Alexander Downer and Robert Hill, and of course our Senate leader, Nick Minchin, but it also of course delivered in a literal sense our Deputy Leader, Julie Bishop, who of course now represents Australia from the seat of Curtin in Western Australia. Julie, like Isobel Redmond, is a daughter of the Adelaide Hills and what a great contribution both of them are making to Liberal politics here in Australia! Also of course among our South Australian team we have Christopher Pyne who is doing an outstanding job as the Manager of Opposition Business in the House where we have to put up with Question Time after Question Time but no answer time from Kevin Rudd. Now, I have spent some time over the last few days with our new state leader, Isobel Redmond. Can I just say to you all, hearing her speak yesterday I heard and saw genuineness and a candour that stands in marked contrast to the disingenuous spin on the Rann Labor Government. We have in Isobel a real alternative, a real Liberal alternative to the spin of Mike Rann. And I believe in seven months South Australians will look at Isobel and say there is a premier, a future premier, that will stand up honestly, candidly, and give South Australians the truth, no spin, just the blunt facts and the real leadership this great State deserves but has been denied for too long by a failing, spinning Labor State Government. Now, everyone from New South Wales, like myself, is always reminded when we come here that South Australia was founded by free settlers. And you always wonder whether people are looking to your ankles just to see if there is still slight indentation left from the leg irons. But there is another aspect of your state’s history that is particularly relevant to the Liberal Party of Australia. South Australia was founded on the spirit of enterprise. When Wakefield came up with his visionary plan and the South Australian company was formed, the whole basis of the successful social and economic experiment that founded South Australia, the vision that founded South Australia, was that settlers who bought land and were given an opportunity would build a future, would build an economy, would build a community and how proud they would be to see what South Australia has become. The spirit of enterprise realised. It was the foundation of South Australia and it is absolutely at the core of what makes us Liberals. Because it is that spirit of enterprise, that Liberal spirit of enterprise that has made Australia great and it is that spirit of enterprise that it is our duty, my friends, to revive and restore to government right around Australia. And just of course to complete the picture for the rest of the country, the convicts in other colonies quickly learned too that working hard, valuing freedom and trying to earn an honest dollar was the way to get head as well. Now jumping ahead the best part of two centuries, I believe South Australians are better placed than anybody in the country to understand the full consequences of two of the greatest failures of the Rudd Government. And they relate to water and to debt. And I want to talk to you again about water. Some of you may have heard – well, I know you were with us yesterday when I spoke about water. There is nothing more important for the future of this nation than the management of our water resources. Water is the source of life. We cannot have a nation without our water resources being well managed. And do you know more than a hundred years ago your ancestors, the South Australian statesmen who were among the founders of our Constitution had the vision to see that. They recognised as they sat down with their counterparts in the other colonies that the only way the water resources of Australia, the great resources of the Murray River and its tributaries could be managed effectively was by the new Federal Government, the new Federal Parliament that was in the process of negotiation and creation as they sat down and drafted the Constitution. They had that vision but it was denied by the parochial interests of the upstream states. And I remember reading the constitutional debates – and they are all there, you can read them yourselves – and one of the New South Wales leaders, I believe it was Sir George Reid, who said, meeting the South Australians objections, he said, “you should be pleased to be looked after handsomely by us just as you always have in the past.” And how well that summed up the neglect and disregard the upstream states have had for South Australia for so long. It was blindingly obvious in the 1890s just as it was in 2007 and just as it has been for over a century that the only way the interstate waters of this country can be properly managed in the national interest is by the national government. Because otherwise every state takes the view that any drop of water that crosses the border is a failure in water planning. That has always been the case with water. Every irrigator you will ever meet, everyone drawing water from a river will view the diversions of everybody upstream with enormous bitterness and resentment and the claims of everybody downstream with utter indifference. That’s human nature. That’s why Mark Twain famously said whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over. Now the fighting can only end with real national leadership. So in 2007 it was a Liberal government led by John Howard that took up that challenge. We took this problem of water mismanagement out of the too hard basket. This was a problem, do you know, when I had gone around Australia in my year as John’s parliamentary secretary responsible for water, in effect a junior minister for water resources, and I went around Australia, nobody disagreed with the proposition that interstate water should be under national control but everyone said it was too hard, too difficult. ‘Oh, if we were writing the Constitution again today we would write it differently but, there it is, you can’t do anything about it.’ We took that out of the too hard basket. We created the Commonwealth Water Act 2007, it became the law of the land, and it vested the control of the interstate waters of the Murray-Darling Basin in the hands of the Federal Government through an independent expert body, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority which we established. Now, we sought the cooperation of the states and, indeed, three of the four Basin states, South Australia of course, New South Wales and Queensland were prepared to sign up. The Victorians were vehemently opposed. The Victorian Labor government was vehemently opposed. And it is one of the great ironies of history that the very influential and powerful public servant, Terry Moran, who was then head of the Premier’s Department in Victoria and really led the argument very publicly against the National Plan for Water Security, is now of course the head of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Department in Canberra. I just note that. Now the Victorians’ opposition prevented there being a reference by the four states of their powers. But we had more than enough legislative power under our own jurisdiction to achieve what we needed to achieve the degree of national control that we needed and so we legislated using our own jurisdictional powers. When we announced this plan Kevin Rudd said it had bipartisan support and he warmly endorsed it. We had bipartisan support. We had the legislative tools. We then allocated $10 billion to go to work to transform the way water is used in rural Australia. Because what we wanted to achieve was a win for the environment and a win for agriculture. We wanted to increase the amount of food and fibre we could produce for a hungry world but do so with dramatically less water. And the only way to do that is through investment in better technology, through lining or piping open channels, through using more efficient methods of irrigation than flood irrigation, drippers and subsoil irrigation – all of those techniques were able to save hundreds of billions of litres of water and increase our food security. So that was the great vision. Kevin Rudd endorsed it in 2007 and then abandoned it in 2008. And Mike Rann went along with it. You know, Mike Rann is putting up a sort of feeble protest now but he signed up to a new arrangement with the states driven by the interests of the Labor Government in Victoria which has essentially backed away from where we were in 2007. The vision that we had in 2007 that we backed up with the legislative tools and the capital and the cash has been abandoned by Kevin Rudd. And Mike Rann has been his collaborator in that abandonment of responsibility – and South Australia, my friends, is paying the highest price. But don’t imagine that you are the only ones that are going to pay a heavy price. We have seen virtually no investment by the Labor Government in irrigation infrastructure upgrades around Australia. At the same time as $14.7 billion is being spent on Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls, coming to a school near you whether it’s wanted or not, at the same time as $23 billion was borrowed and given away, virtually nothing is being spent on upgrading and making more efficient the way water is used in Australia. And the consequence will be, the consequence of this neglect will be, that there will be no more water in the system and we will have a dramatically reduced capacity to reduce food and fibre. In other words, when we come through this drought we will have farmers using the same wasteful techniques, and irrigation corporations and cooperatives using the same wasteful techniques of distributing water as they did beforehand – a vital opportunity utterly wasted and thrown away by Kevin Rudd. Now when we, with your help, return to government at the next election I pledge to you that we will take up again those tools for water reform we established in 2007 and the financial resources we allocated in 2007 and we will go back to work. We will complete the vision that we had in 2007. The vision of making every drop count, of re-plumbing rural Australia and of ensuring that the River Murray has the environmental flows it needs and it deserves and that South Australia is no longer neglected and treated with contempt by the upstream states. We need a Murray-Darling Basin that is managed in the national interest. We created the means to do that and when we return to government I promise you we will put that vision, those tools, that money, to work. Now you in South Australia know all too well the consequences of Labor governments running up recklessly massive levels of debt. This party, our party in South Australia, had to clean up the mess left by a reckless Labor government, the Bannon Government. And of course when we were arguing the case against Mr Rudd establishing a Labor bank, the so-called ‘Ruddbank’, there weren’t too many South Australians that doubted the wisdom of denying another Labor government the right to establish another bank. We have seen here and of course elsewhere, particularly in Victoria, the consequence of Labor banking. You see, you can argue the toss about debt and governments borrowing money uphill and down dale. There are some occasions when governments can borrow money and use the money very wisely but the one thing we know without any contest, incontrovertibly, is that every dollar of debt has to be repaid, and the higher and higher the mountain of debt that is built, the higher your taxes will be – they have to be higher because how can the Government pay off the debt without it – and interest rates will be higher too because when you’re going out to borrow money you have got the Government out there competing with you, seeking to fund its own borrowings as well. So government debt comes with a price and that is beyond argument. The only question is: was that money borrowed for a productive purpose? Was it borrowed to spend on infrastructure that would raise level of economic activity across the board and therefore result in higher revenues for everybody, including governments? Kevin Rudd has borrowed billions and billions of dollars and given it away – borrowed $23 billion and gave it away. He’s spending nothing on improving the irrigation efficiency of Australia, nothing on ensuring that we can use less water to make more food and fibre and restore more water to the environment. He is not investing in that vital economic infrastructure but he is spending $14 billion on school assembly halls regardless of whether they are needed or not. And we are heading to the highest debt in our nation’s history – a peak debt of over $300 billion and net debt of over $200 billion. And that transformation has occurred in about 18 months. In November 2007, when we left government, the Federal Government, Commonwealth Government, had no debt, no net debt and $45 billion of cash in the bank and here we are more in the red than we have ever been in our history. Now Kevin Rudd is unashamed about this because he has a very different political philosophy to us, and he makes no bones about it. He said that he believes government should be at the centre of the economy. That is what he has said. He says that the global financial crisis has been caused by 20 years of what he calls extreme neo-liberalism and free market extremism. He overlooks the fact that the trend of economic reforms, the direction of economic reforms is one that was contributed to by leaders of his own party. So he is putting John Howard and Peter Costello and Paul Keating and Bob Hawke all in the same bucket – they are all free market extremists. He is going right back to the Labor Party that we remember from many decades ago, which is essentially a socialist party. Anyone who says government should be at the centre of the economy is a socialist. And never forget what Margaret Thatcher said about socialism: the problem with socialism is at some point you run out of other people’s money – and that’s what he is doing. So when we come to the next election, be it a national election or a state election, there is a clear line of difference between us and Labor. And I sum it up like this, my friends, Labor believes that government knows best, they believe they have the answers. We believe government’s role is to enable you, you and millions like you, to do your best. We believe government’s job is to enable freedom, to enable enterprise, to enable people, as Wakefield did, to get on with their lives, create their own visions of prosperity for themselves and their family, create their own vision of happiness. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as the Americans say in their Declaration of Independence – it’s worth remembering that. That is our commitment to freedom. In 1954, the year of my birth, the founder of our party, Robert Menzies, said, and I quote: “[w]e believe in the individual, in his freedom, in his ambition, in his dignity. If he becomes submerged in the mass and loses his personal significance we have tyranny. And because of this we believe in free enterprise; not enterprise free of social obligation but free enterprise in the sense that it embraces free choice, reward for effort and skill, encouragement to grow and be self-reliant and strong.” That is our credo. We are the party of freedom. We are the party of enterprise. And that is why in our approach to the economic challenges that we face we are looking to support the most enterprising part of our economy – small business – completely neglected by the Labor Government, totally neglected. We have reached out and had over 50 Jobs for Australia forums around the country. Most of them much smaller gatherings than this – 30, 40, 50 people sometimes – sitting down and having a serious talk, a discussion about what small business needs. We have had them all over Australia. And we have learnt from that that what small business people want is greater freedom. They are concerned about too much regulation and red tape. They want the Government to get off their back. They want them to have the opportunity to grow. We have looked to see how we can support them without putting undue strain on an already strained and bleeding Federal Budget, owing to the reckless spending and borrowing of the Labor Party. And so we have come up with some innovative ideas. One of them which we proposed in the Budget-in-Reply was to allow tax losses to be carried backwards. Think about that. You have a business that loses $50,000 this year, you can carry that forward and offset it against next year’s profit. And if you make $50,000 profit next year, then you won’t have to pay any tax. Why shouldn’t you be able to carry that backwards? And if you paid $15,000 tax on $50,000 of profit the previous year, recover that tax back from the Tax Office. Imagine what that would do to small businesses going through tough times right at the moment. It doesn’t make any long-term impact on the Federal Budget of course because the tax loss once carried back cannot then be carried forward, so it is essentially a timing issue. That is an example of innovative thinking that will assist small business. Now, right across the board Labor is endeavouring to restrict freedom. Look at the changes to the private health insurance rebate – trying to undermine self-reliance. They talked about their school building program. It stands in marked contrast to the program we had in government, that Julie Bishop initiated, the Investing in Our Schools program which actually went out to school communities and said - what do you want? Tell us what your dream is, what your vision is. Persuade us that you have got a project that has the support of your community that we can support. In other words, enabling those schools to do their best and pursue their own dreams. That was the approach we had to funding schools. And now, as I’m sure you all know from your own communities, schools are having buildings and infrastructure imposed on them with little or in most cases no consultation whatsoever. Now, history tells us it’s always been the job of the Liberal and National Party Coalition to repair the damage done by Labor. Here it was Dean Brown and John Olsen who rescued the State after a Labor disaster. It’s only a Coalition government in Canberra that can manage our public finances properly and restore the nation to prosperity. We will offer the leadership that is prepared to take the tough decisions. We will rely as ever on the energy, the ingenuity and the sheer gut-busting perseverance of millions of our fellow Australians who are determined to make their lives a success and prepared to work hard to achieve it. That is the fundamental difference between us and Labor. As Liberals we must never forget that the most effective economic stimulus is more freedom – not bigger and more intrusive government. And so as the financial crisis sends our opponents fleeing back to their socialist roots, clamouring for bigger government, we stand firm for more freedom and for more choice. We stand for enterprise. We stand for innovation. We stand for confidence and optimism and the preparedness to back the individual efforts and hard work of millions of Australians. That is the difference between our side of politics and Labor. They, my friends, as I have said at the outset, they believe government knows best, we believe governments job is to enable each and every one of us to do our best. Our nation’s prosperity was founded on the vision of enterprise. That is what has made Australia great. Politicians can take credit for one decision or another but the prosperity of this nation depends on the enterprise and the hard work, the preparedness to have a go and if you are knocked down, get up and have another go. That spirit of enterprise is what makes us great. It’s the spirit of enterprise that has filled me my whole life. Lucy and I have spent our whole lives working to create opportunities, to create businesses, to create jobs. Some of those enterprises have been successful, some of them haven’t, but we have never stopped seeking to create something, to build something, to realise a vision, realise a dream. And that is what millions of Australians do every day. It is all of those dreams that we should be enabling. It is all of those visions of great businesses, great opportunities, better times for our children that we should be enabling. Canberra does not have all the answers and, my friends, it does not have a lot of the answers. What Canberra can do and what Canberra will do when we return to government is to enable Australians to realise their dreams, to empower their freedom, to unleash once again the spirit of enterprise that Wakefield set forth here in South Australia so many years ago and which we will once again revive and inspire when we, with your support, return to government and end Mr Rudd’s socialist experiment. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 21 Aug 2009 22:48:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:577http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/578/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=578http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=578&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/578/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: The Government’s failure to invest in water infrastructure; campaign finance reform; the Coalition; Rebiya Kadeer. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, you have just heard me talk about water, the big issue facing South Australians, and the colossal neglect by the Rudd Labor Government of water management in Australia. In 2007 we did what people had said was too hard for more than a century. We put the management of the water of the Murray-Darling Basin under federal control and we allocated $10 billion to re-plumb rural Australia so we could produce more food and fibre with less water and have a lot more water for the environment – billions of litres of water savings. All would benefit South Australia because you are at the end of the River Murray; you are at the end of the system. So the more environmental water there is in the system, the greater the benefits for South Australia. That vision has been abandoned by Kevin Rudd. We left him with the legislative tools and we left him with the money. And he hasn’t done anything with it. And I pledge that when we return to government we will pick up those tools and get back to work and complete the vision of water management in the national interest that we set out in 2007 and which Kevin Rudd has so tragically and recklessly abandoned. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Isobel Redmond has pledged that if she gets into government she will ban this kind of function whereby business people can pay to have access to cabinet ministers or shadow ministers, so would effectively outlaw this kind of event today, this kind of fundraiser. What do you make of it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have been a passionate supporter of campaign finance reform for many years, long before I was in Federal Parliament in fact. I believe that we need to reform our campaign finance laws. It has to be done nationally to be effective, plainly, and it will clearly need the support of the Labor Government. If they are fair dinkum then they should get behind reforms which will… and Isobel and I have a lot of common ground. I haven’t been through all of her proposal but I will tell you what my views are and they are the same views I’ve had for seven years or so and it’s this: that I believe that political parties should only be able to raise donations from individuals who are on the electoral roll, human beings who are registered to vote – so no union donations, no corporate donations – and there should be an annual cap. That’s my view. I’ve held that for many years, long before I went into Parliament, and I think as time goes on… QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that is a debateable point, whether it is a couple of thousand dollars or $5,000 or $1,500 – that’s something people can debate about but the critical thing… QUESTION: So this kind of function you think would be okay? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, this function was $135 a head, so I don’t think you would have a cap that would cut that out. QUESTION: But the wider forum, Mr Turnbull [inaudible] isn’t there a hint of hypocrisy that you’re happy to take their money today but perhaps not in six months? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely not. Look we on the Conservative side of politics are at an enormous disadvantage, in terms of fundraising, to Labor. Unless you want Australia to become a one party state, the Liberal Party and the National Party have got to keep on raising money to stay competitive with Labor. Now Labor has an enormous financial advantage in terms of fundraising because they get 100 per cent of the enormous cash flow from the trade union movement – they give nothing to the Liberals or the Nationals – and they also get at least half, often more, of the corporate dollar as well, and that’s particularly because they’re in government in so many places around Australia – everywhere except Western Australia. So the reality is that from our point of view, while we would like to see the rules change and while we have supported change to the rules – as I say, I’ve been consistent about this for many years and argued for it in many forums – we need to keep raising money to stay competitive. The worst thing that can happen to Australia is that we end up with a Labor Party that is completely unassailable because of their huge financial dominance in terms of election funding. QUESTION: What do you make of the Rann Government’s resistance to establishing a register of lobbyists in South Australia and also its resistance to an ICAC? Do you think there are any motivations behind that position? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look a register of lobbyists is a good idea and we’ve got that now at the federal level, and I see Senator Minchin supported that today, and it’s certainly something that has a lot of merit for it. As to an ICAC, I’m not going to buy into the debate here in South Australia. Corruption is an enormous issue and there are arguments, you’ll find people in the police and the law enforcement area who will argue very strongly for a specialised anti-corruption body, and other people who will say that you should simply put more resources behind the existing police agencies. I can certainly say that in many countries and in many jurisdictions ICACs have proved to be very effective, but it’s obviously got to be well resourced, it’s got to be genuinely independent and set up with the powers that enables it to do its job. QUESTION: Do you think the Rann Government has something to hide though in its resistance to a register’s lobby, a lobby of registers, a register of lobbyists and an ICAC? Are they trying to hide something? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You really should address those questions to Isobel Redmond. I just simply say that if you want to get to the very core of this issue of confidence in the integrity of the campaign finance system then the type of reform that I’ve been advocating for many years and that Isobel has been talking about where you limit donations to contributions from individuals on the electoral roll with an annual cap and it’s very transparent. Get rid of the big money from the unions and big companies. That would make an enormous difference. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, the Nationals’ AGM this weekend, one of the motions is that they will… they’re looking to pass a motion to ensure the Nationals vote against an ETS. Does that signify that the Coalition will be split on this issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, as I said yesterday, the Liberals and the Nationals are in Coalition and have been for many decades, and will remain so I’m sure for many decades to come. From time to time, particularly when we’re in Opposition, we do take a different approach on particular issues, as we did on wheat for example. It’s very rare – as Barnaby Joyce said not so long ago, we vote together 99.99 per cent of the time. Now, we will work together as a Coalition. We will seek to reach a common agreement, common position, on the ETS, but if we can’t do that it may be that the Nationals will vote differently to the Liberals. It’s no different to the situation on wheat. QUESTION: The Nationals also have…are lining up candidates for a couple of three-cornered contests in WA – one in Wilson Tuckey’s seat. Do you see that as a provocative move or is it… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to run a commentary on that. Again, three-cornered contests are not unknown. QUESTION: Would it be unhelpful if one of them ran against Wilson Tuckey? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to bite on that one, thanks. QUESTION: Leader, another network question for you: Philip Ruddock has suggested it was a bad idea to issue a visa to the Uighur leader that recently visited Australia. Do you concur with that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I am not going to express an opinion on whether or not a visa should have been given to Rebiya Kadeer and I’ll tell you why. I don’t want to as the Leader – it’s fine for Philip; Philip is very experienced and knows a lot about national security and he can express that view – but as the Leader of the Opposition I don’t want to make this issue a partisan issue. The reality is the Government and the Government alone has access to all of the national security information and advice to make an informed opinion. So, you know, Stephen Smith and Kevin Rudd – they have all of the information and advice in front of them. So they have got to make that decision and I’m not going to argue the toss with them about Rebiya Kadeer being granted a visa at that particular time. QUESTION: Are you happy to see her here nevertheless? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I will just repeat what I said. The real issue is not the question of that grant of a visa. The real issue is that we have seen a dramatic deterioration in the relationship between Australia and China. And that is a matter of real concern. It’s not just one particular incident. The relationship has been mishandled by the Rudd Government and it’s a problem. And Julie spoke about it, as you would have heard, in the lunch. And Kevin Rudd held himself out as a great China expert and the truth of the matter is that our relations with China are progressing much worse, or not progressing as well as they were when John Howard was Prime Minister. Okay, thank you. [ends]  malcolmThu, 20 Aug 2009 22:50:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:578http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/570/Renewable-Energy-Agreement-another-victory-for-common-sense.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=570http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=570&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/570/Renewable-Energy-Agreement-another-victory-for-common-sense.aspxToday’s compromise between the Government and the Coalition on a 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target (RET) for Australia by 2020 is a victory for common sense and the environment. The Government should now adopt the same common sense in negotiating for its proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS). Over the next decade the expanded RET will dramatically increase the share of Australia’s energy needs generated from solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources, and assist the Australian economy in making the transition to a low carbon future. The Coalition welcomes the Government’s flexibility in relation to our key concerns, which included: A full decoupling of the RET from the proposed ETS. Appropriate protection for key energy-intensive trade-exposed industries such as aluminium. Protection of existing investment and jobs in the coal mine waste methane power generation industry. Scope for industries which may be affected by the RET, such as food processing, to refer their treatment to the Productivity Commission. A tightening of regulations relating to RET eligibility for heat pumps. Today’s outcome provides certainty to the renewable energy industry and gives the green light to further investment in this sector. The RET outcome demonstrates the economically and environmentally beneficial outcomes which can result from good faith negotiations between the Government and Coalition. The Government must now adopt a similar approach to negotiation of its ETS legislation.  malcolmWed, 19 Aug 2009 04:48:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:570http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/569/Doorstop-Interview-at-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=569http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=569&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/569/Doorstop-Interview-at-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Mr Rudd’s scare campaign on tariffs; Government tax increases; relationship with China; wasteful spending. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Mr Rudd has got to explain to Australians his latest fear campaign. Last night he said that if Australia did not legislate for an emissions trading scheme before the Copenhagen Conference in December we would be subject to punitive tariffs from other countries, punitive costs being imposed on our exports because we don’t have an emissions trading scheme legislated. Now the fact is that most of the countries going to the Copenhagen Conference will not have an emissions trading scheme in place. Some of them have got no plans to put one in place at all. The United States may have one legislated by then, but more likely will not. Japan has no plans to legislate for an emissions trading scheme and certainly won’t have one in place by December. And, of course, the Head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer has said that there is no need to have an ETS legislated before December at all. What he wants countries to do is to come to Copenhagen with a target, with a target that they are prepared to commit to. And, of course, Mr Rudd has got targets and we have given him bi-partisan support on this. So this is really just another fear campaign from Mr Rudd, a scare campaign, and what he should do is explain it. The real reason he’s doing it, I imagine, is because he’s trying to distract Australians from their real genuine anxiety about the taxes he’s going to raise in order to pay for the huge debt he’s imposed on us. He refused to rule out yesterday a new tax on the family home and Australians are very anxious, knowing that higher levels of debt, higher and higher levels of debt mean higher taxes and higher interest rates. QUESTION: So what do you reckon he’s doing? He’s scaring businesses to try and threaten you blokes into supporting an ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is clearly a scare campaign, but he really now has to get out there and explain it. I mean, let’s be quite clear – the United States has passed an emissions trading scheme bill through the House of Representatives, very narrowly. It has yet to go to the US Senate, it may not get through the Senate at all and most people are sceptical whether it will be passed before December, and it may not be passed at all. So who is going to be imposing sanctions on the Americans if they don’t pass it? And what about Japan? They are not going to have an emissions trading scheme in place before Copenhagen. Who is going to be imposing tariffs on them? And what about China? They won’t have one either. Who is going to be imposing tariffs on their exports? You see, this is just a scary concept that he’s plucked out of the air, as you said, in order to frighten to Australians. But now he’s put it out there, he should now explain it and say exactly what tariffs are going to be imposed on exactly what Australian exports, which countries are going to be imposing them, and what other nations that don’t have an emissions trading scheme in place by December are going to suffer the same penalties. QUESTION: You say he’s running a scare campaign with the tariffs. Aren’t you doing the same by raising the prospect of new taxes being imposed on everything when a review is underway? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’re just asking questions. That’s our job... QUESTION: ..isn’t Rudd just asking questions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, he’s not asking questions. We asked the question ‘is there going to be a new tax on the family home’. There was a report in the press over the weekend. Mr Rudd has failed to rule that out. Australians know that with higher and higher levels of government debt, there has to be higher levels of tax to pay it off, plainly. That’s common sense. So where are those taxes going to be imposed? Mr Rudd could have put that to rest and said, ‘no, there won’t be any new taxes on the family home’, but he hasn’t ruled that out and so that is a legitimate concern. He’s not asking questions about what other countries may do. He is saying that if Australia does not legislate its ETS before December, there will be punitive tariffs imposed on our exports. Now he’s got to say which exports, who will impose those tariffs, what are the other countries that are going to do that and how are they going to deal with other countries that won’t have an ETS before December, such as Japan and very likely the United States as well. QUESTION: Do you think it’s an indication Kevin Rudd himself might in fact try to impose punitive tariffs on countries that don’t have an ETS once we get one? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well good heavens. Kevin Rudd may well think he’s the master of the universe but I hope he doesn’t go that far. The reality is that in order to get effective action on climate change you need a global agreement and, you know, he has been making an absolutely ham-fisted effort with our diplomatic relations lately. And if he starts threatening carbon taxes on imports from other countries that will only put his diplomatic efforts back a few more notches. I mean our relations with China are – well not at an all time low because there was a time when we had no diplomatic relations with China – but they are at the lowest ebb they have been for many, many years and Mr Rudd has mishandled our relations with China and of course he boasted of his connections with China and how he would be able to persuade China to reach agreement on a global climate change agreement. This is actually the fundamental deal that has to be done at Copenhagen, as between China and the United States. If those two countries can get a deal done then everything else should fall into place. If they can’t then it won’t. And he obviously has no leverage left with China at all. The relations are, as I say, at the lowest ebb they’ve been for many years. QUESTION: Kevin Rudd has also been boasting about his economic credentials and reckons that the cash handouts have saved us from recession, do you agree with that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t agree with that. Look I think Australia is doing better in this global downturn than most other countries and that is a tribute to a number of factors. First and foremost it’s because of our strong starting point. We went into this recession with a very strong economy, with no government debt – because of the hard work of the Coalition Government over 11 and a half years – so we went into it in a very strong position, and that is the reason, the principle reason why we’re doing better than others; why our debt, while high historically now, is still low relative to other developed countries. But the stimulus that has really been working for Australia is of course the stimulus in China. The huge investment by the Chinese Government that they’re spending there, that is holding up the prices of our big exports to China. QUESTION: You’ve got to admit that the cash handouts have helped a bit though haven’t they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think they’ve been value for money. The reality is a great deal of them were saved. The fact is we have had an enormous level of debt imposed on Australians and they will pay for that with higher taxes and higher interest rates. That is a certainty. And what do we have to show for it. I mean I ask you that – what do we have to show for it: cash handouts and hundreds if not thousands of Julia Gillard memorial assembly halls scattered across the schools around the country whether they’re needed or not. You know where is the really valuable investment in economic infrastructure – when you look at it closely you see that the Rudd Government is committed to spending really no more than the Coalition was committed to spending. They have borrowed an enormous amount of money and we have very little to show for it except higher taxes and higher interest rates. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmTue, 18 Aug 2009 05:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:569http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/566/Address-to-the-Australian-Industry-Group-Annual-National-Forum.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=566http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=566&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/566/Address-to-the-Australian-Industry-Group-Annual-National-Forum.aspxE & O E Thank you Kerry and Heather and Don. It is great to be here. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to your Annual National Forum. This is a most important event for one of Australia’s most important business organisations. When we think about the Government policies which will have the greatest impact on whether Australia emerges from the current global economic downturn in better or worse shape, a number of issues spring to mind. First, the strength of Australia’s financial system, which has weathered the storm better than almost any of its peers. Of course, this is largely a legacy of the robust supervisory framework left by the Coalition Government, indeed, set up by the Coalition Government. The only material way in which the Rudd Government has altered this has been through what has turned out to be an inept meddling with bank deposit guarantees. Secondly, the strength of Australia’s public finances. Now while the Rudd Government makes much of the fact that Australia is projected to exit the downturn with lower levels of public debt than many other economies, let’s remember – and I don’t think I need to remind this audience of this fact overly – let’s remember that this largely reflects Australia’s superior starting point from 2007, rather than any modesty or sense of proportion displayed by the current Government in its fiscal strategy. And then there is the strength of Australia’s ongoing commitment to further micro-economic reforms, which increase the efficiency of our economy and pave the way for productivity gains. The Government talks a good game about productivity but it has delivered precious little. In fact by re-regulating the labour market and pursuing its ill-considered award modernisation program, the Government is making our economy more rigid and less oriented towards job creation. Now these are all very important issues and all issues where we expect business groups to take the lead in pointing out that policies framed with short term political expedience in mind are not necessarily the optimal approach if longer term economic prosperity is the objective. Indeed, evidence-based data-driven policy choices are far preferable as business groups have so often argued in Australia’s past debates over economic policies, whether it’s tariff reform, financial deregulation or indeed tax reform. But of course at this time there is another economic issue that is currently topical and arguably of equal importance to how our economy emerges from the global downturn and evolves over the next few years. And that issue is, of course, the design of Australia’s emissions trading scheme. We have to recognise that Australia is an energy intensive, export oriented economy. We have a comparative advantage in many of these industries based on cheap energy. It is also emissions intensive energy. So the debate over how our nation approaches the task of responding to climate change is especially pertinent to our economic fortunes over the next few years. I’ll come to the Frontier Economics report in a moment at some greater length but there is a table at the back of that report which is particularly instructive, and it shows the extent to which different economies, the ratio or the relationship between the emissions consumed in goods, and services for that matter, and the emissions produced. And obviously those countries that are big exporters of raw materials with emissions intensive industries and manufactures, emissions intensive manufactures tend to produce more than they consume. The only developed countries that are in that category are Australia and Canada, and Canada only by a small margin. So Australia has a profile in terms of its emissions intensity and its trade exposure that is comparable to developing countries as opposed to the developed economies in North America and of course in Europe, not to speak of Japan. This is very important. We are particularly vulnerable to putting a price on carbon even if it is done in the best designed and the most globally coordinated fashion. So a global price on carbon will nonetheless, if you imagine a perfect world, you know, a global price right around the world, it would nonetheless have a heavier impact on Australia than other countries because of the nature of our economy. And of course given we are not going to reach that carbon pricing nirvana any time soon, the design of our ETS is of critical importance. Now we contend, and I believe your organisation contends, that the Rudd Government’s ETS is flawed. We have put forward nine principles which we say the Government should adopt or recognise in order to fix up its ETS. Key among them is that an Australian emissions trading scheme should offer no less protections for jobs and industries than that proposed, and indeed that which is in the future implemented, in the United States. Let me make a point about the question of timing too. The emissions trading scheme having been defeated in the Senate last week, the Government is now proposing to bring it back for a vote in November and this is obviously political timing because if it is voted down in November, then the Government will have a trigger for a double dissolution election which would enable them to go to the polls ahead of next year’s budget. We believe, and I think most people who reflect on this issue, we believe that the best time, the appropriate time to finalise the design of this ETS – this is not to say that all discussion and debate should be suspended, far from it – but the time to finalise the design and indeed to vote on it should be after the Copenhagen Summit in December where we will know what the rest of the world has agreed to do or not to, and, in particular, after we know what the United States have legislated. We have at the moment a bill that has passed through the House of Representatives which you’ll read a lot about called the Waxman-Markey Bill. We expect the final outcome will be similar to that but of course the Senate, the US Senate, is developing its own bill and, assuming they can agree, they will have to come together in a conference and try to reconcile the two bills and come out with something that’s agreed. Now that arrangement, that US emissions trading scheme, will undoubtedly be the global benchmark and it will be of enormous influence and it’s simply not going to be credible or sustainable for Australia to have an emissions trading scheme that is materially at odds with the set up in the United States or indeed, in particular I should say, which provides less protection for jobs and industries in Australia than the US legislation does for jobs and industries there. And I mean a very good example, which you will have seen some debate about – and David Crombie from the NFF has quite a good little op-ed in I think the Fin Review today about this – under the Waxman-Markey Bill agriculture is excluded, agricultural emissions are excluded but there is ample scope for agricultural offsets. This is the ability, recognising the ability for agriculture and indeed land managers generally to offset CO2 emissions by enhancing soil carbon levels, reducing emissions from their farming operations, forestry, biochar, a whole range of measures – there’s quite a long list in the bill. Now that is an enormous advantage to American farmers. Many would say they are pretty well advantaged compared to ours already. That opportunity is being denied to Australian farmers under the Australian legislation. So whichever way you slice or dice this, cutting through the political rhetoric, the fact is that if Waxman-Markey became law tomorrow and Mr Rudd’s ETS became law tomorrow, the American farm sector would have a substantial additional source of revenue which our law would deny our own farmers with whom they are competing. And you have to ask yourself, why would we do that. So that’s just one example of many of the defects in the legislation. Now as you know, a week ago we in the Coalition and Senator Xenophon released the modelling and analysis we commissioned from Frontier Economics. This work showed an ETS could be greener, cheaper and smarter, with the appropriate modifications and, in particular, by taking a different strategy towards the electricity generation sector rather than the remainder of the economy. So just treating the generators somewhat differently by only requiring them to buy permits for emissions above an intensity target and giving them credits for emissions if their emissions are below that intensity target. Frontier’s work demonstrates that this will result in materially lower, dramatically lower electricity costs. In other words, it creates a much smoother transition to a low carbon economy. Now, given that Frontier has past experience in designing and implementing a real-world ETS – this is the New South Wales GGAS scheme – in contrast, dare I note, to the Federal Department of Climate Change or the Federal Treasury – I mean Frontier has actually done it – you would expect their work to be treated with some respect and consideration. You would expect it would at least be read and studied and there would be a period of analysis and reflection before a view is expressed. But the immediate reaction of the Government was of course to denounce it, to say it was old hat, it was a mongrel scheme was the word Penny Wong gave to it – really extraordinary! All this without having read it. Now, the fact is that right at the moment we have an emissions trading scheme that is still a work in progress. It was confirmed in the House only last week, in the same week that we were being called upon to urgently vote for the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme, that it was still under construction. Negotiations are still underway with the coal industry – Australia’s largest exporter. It is by no means settled how that industry is going to be treated under the scheme and of course because it is all done via the regulations, this doesn’t impact on the actual statute, the bill. As you know, Morgan Stanley has been asked to examine the devastating balance sheet impacts the proposed scheme will have on coal-fired power generators with a view to changing the compensation arrangements, so that too is up in the air. Most of the detailed regulations on how the various industrial activities are defined and compensated under the ETS remain unreleased. Rules for fewer than a dozen of what could be up to a hundred sets of sector-specific activity definition regulations have been finalised. So when the Rudd Government says the Parliament must vote for its scheme, it really is asking the Parliament to vote for a framework, many of the most important details of which are as yet undecided. And indeed industry leaders – perhaps some of you in this room – have been told by the Government that if the US legislation comes up with a materially different arrangement to what we’ve got in Australia, the Government has said we can always change the regulations next year. So really what the Government is asking the Parliament to give it is in fact a blank cheque. A scheme that is ill-defined, a scheme that is a work in progress and what has been lacking to date has been an informed discussion about policy and design. We have wasted far too much time, far too much time on debates about what I would call the theology of climate change – are you or have you ever been a climate change sceptic? If you do not sign up entirely to Mr Rudd’s scheme, then you are a dinosaur, and you’ve seen the dinosaur ads on the television. Now this is all, you know, good theatre perhaps and light relief but what it has done is obscured a discussion about the design of the scheme. The Frontier work, for example, showed that by treating electricity generation in the manner I described, retail power bills would only rise by about five per cent rather than the immediate 25 per cent price hike Labor’s scheme would trigger. It obviously would then, as a result, reduce the need for compensation, reduce the need for churn. Rather than losing 26,000 regional jobs under the Rudd CPRS as modelled, Frontier’s proposed changes would lead to net gains of 42,000 in employment in regional Australia. And overall the cost to the economy is dramatically reduced. Now we look forward to having a meaningful, substantive engagement with the Government and with all interested parties but particularly with the Government over the design of the ETS. In our view, in summary, the best course of action is not to have a final vote on this scheme until early next year. We should obviously be debating this and exchanging economic modelling and getting the rocket scientists together so they can test their economic assumptions. We should do all that, absolutely, but we should not finalise the design until after Copenhagen. If the Prime Minister continues to insist on this November deadline – which is all about politics, got nothing to with policy – then we will seek to amend the legislation. We’ve indicated what we believe it should do, what we believe the amendments should look like in those nine principles, and we’re obviously going to be very informed by the work that Frontier has done and those who disagree with the Frontier work, really the onus is on them to generate their own modelling which demonstrates where it’s wrong. As I say, there is nobody better qualified – this doesn’t mean they’ve got a monopoly of wisdom; no one does – but there is nobody better qualified in this area than Frontier Economics. So I hope Mr Rudd approaches this issue with common sense and with a desire to engage genuinely with the Opposition to get the best outcome. And I will just in closing urge you and all other business groups like yourselves to engage actively in the policy debate, but engage actively and publicly. There is a tendency for business organisations to be cowered by this Government and to just engage privately and behind closed doors in the hope that their eloquence will persuade the Government to change its mind. We need to have a fully informed public debate and it has to get down now into issues of design. We have crossed the bridge and we agree – we crossed that bridge years ago – and we agree that Australia must take action to reduce CO2 emissions as part of an effective global effort. But the question of how we do it and the design of the scheme that does it is now the critical stage of the debate, and I’m afraid to say that debate has not been had anywhere to the extent that it should have been had given how imminent the re-presentation of the legislation is. So thank you very much. It’s been a great pleasure to be here. [ends]  malcolmMon, 17 Aug 2009 07:22:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:566http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/565/Gillard-again-dismisses-rural-and-regional-students.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=565http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=565&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/565/Gillard-again-dismisses-rural-and-regional-students.aspxDeputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard today again arrogantly dismissed in Question Time the very real concerns of rural and regional students from across the country who have been gutted by the Government’s decision to strip away their entitlement to claim Youth Allowance next year. The Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull and the Shadow Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne today met with a delegation of rural and regional students to hear first hand about the effect of the Rudd Government’s changes to the Youth Allowance eligibility criteria. “These students told us that under the new rules, it would be nearly impossible for them to afford to go to university,” said Mr Turnbull. “We know that the Government’s changes to Youth Allowance will hurt thousands of students from farming and small business backgrounds in rural and regional areas – these students will not be eligible for Youth Allowance even if their families can’t afford to send them to the city to attend university. “They do not have the luxury enjoyed by many city students who can stay at home when they study. “The Rudd Government’s changes will also punish all students who are currently on their gap year – having taken the decision to defer their studies in order to meet the workforce participation criteria that were in place and on which they relied when they were at school last year. “To meet the new criteria, they will have to work thirty hours per week for eighteen months. More often than not, there simply aren’t enough full time jobs in these local communities for these potential students. “The Coalition has been arguing since the Budget that Julia Gillard’s changes will suffocate many students’ dreams of a higher education,” said Mr Pyne. “Today in Question Time the Education Minister continued to arrogantly assert that she knows best, and everyone else must be wrong. It is time for Ms Gillard to swallow her pride, admit that she is wrong. “We have a three point plan to reverse this inequity: 1. When the legislation comes before the Parliament, the Coalition will move amendments to delay the start date for the abolition of the gap year provision from 1 January 2010 to 1 January 2011 to help those young Australians currently on a gap year. 2. In government, we will look after regional and rural students with a targeted scholarship program that will help thousands of needy students from the country who do not qualify for Youth Allowance assistance. 3. In government, we will fix the ridiculous situation under the Rudd Government’s proposal where these young people will be looking for full time work (30 hours per week) for 18 months so they can qualify as independents. “Students in rural and regional areas deserve better from this part-time Education Minister.” 17 August 2009  malcolmMon, 17 Aug 2009 06:51:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:565http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/563/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=563http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=563&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/563/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: A victory for common sense on the Renewable Energy Target; emissions trading. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well today we’ve seen a victory for common sense. We’re very pleased that the Government is backing down from its approach of holding all of renewable energy hostage – solar, wind, geothermal – hostage to the passage of the emissions trading scheme. We’ve been saying for a long time that Mr Rudd and Senator Wong should sit down with us and negotiate constructively a new renewable energy target, and of course the emissions trading scheme. Now, we see today that Senator Wong has backed off from the hard line she’s had to date, and she’s prepared to sit down and negotiate with us, and we will certainly negotiate with her in good faith in the course of this week, with a view to getting the renewable energy target legislation passed. What she should now do, now that she’s in such an accommodating frame of mind, is sit down and negotiate with us about the emissions trading scheme. We’ve been trying to do that all year. Australians expect their politicians to work together constructively and positively with a view to getting the measures Australia needs and the world needs to battle climate change. QUESTION: The Opposition, as I understand it, was keen to secure more support for the aluminium energy industry. Have you got what you wanted? Will you now support this legislation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s difficult to see precisely what Penny Wong is proposing from her press release – there’s not a lot of detail in it. But she seems to be moving in the right direction. She’s certainly proposing to decouple it from the emissions trading legislation, so that’s a positive move. But we’ll sit down and go through the details with her this week. QUESTION: Will you insist on your amendments, or…? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look we approach these things in a constructive frame of mind. We’ve set out some amendments in detail. They range through a whole range of measures, including protecting trade exposed emissions intensive industry, also making sure that there is room in the renewable energy target for the emerging renewable energies, like geothermal, like baseload solar, like tidal, like wave energy – these are important technologies that should have some room to move, some room to grow, I guess, in the scheme. But there’s a range of measures, amendments we’ve proposed, and we look forward to discussing them, as I say, positively and constructively with the Government. We want this legislation passed, but we want to make sure it’s right before we vote for it. QUESTION: Do you think you’re stuck between a bit of a rock and a hard place with the threat of an early election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, Mr Rudd wants to go to an early election. He wants to go there before interest rates go up too far, before he has to bring down a May Budget. He’s got a political agenda. What he doesn’t have is an environmental agenda. I mean let’s be honest, let’s cut through all of Mr Rudd’s spin and political claptrap. If he was fair dinkum about Australia having a well-designed emissions trading scheme, we would finalise the design of the scheme in February when Parliament comes back, after we know what the Americans have legislated, and after we know what the world has agreed to, or not, at Copenhagen. He’s insisting on it being voted on in November. For the sake of three months, why is he doing that? It’s all politics. Any of us, in our own lives, whether it’s a big decision or a little decision, always try to make those decisions when we’ve got all the information we can get our hands on. We will be more informed in February than we are in November, but Mr Rudd wants to finalise the emissions trading scheme now in November. And why does he want to do that? Politics. With Mr Rudd it’s all about politics. Politics first, second, and third, and environment and the economy come a very long last, I’m afraid. QUESTION: Does the decoupling put… Does the decoupling of all this, does that put additional pressure on the Coalition when it comes to ETS? Do you feel that [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well really Mr Rudd’s strategy of saying the renewable energy target legislation couldn’t be passed unless the emissions trading scheme was passed was a pressure point he was trying to put on us, so he was essentially holding solar, holding wind, holding geothermal, holding tidal, hostage, and saying they will not be allowed to grow unless you vote for my ETS. Now that bluff has failed, so we called his bluff there. So he’s backed down. And look, I don’t want to make a big deal out of him backing down – it’s a victory for common sense, it’s a sensible thing to do. But what we now have to do is negotiate these things in good faith. I mean he needs our votes to get them through the Senate, and we’re prepared to support legislation if it’s in the right shape. QUESTION: But the focus will then turn to you and your ETS position, and there doesn’t seem to be a cohesive Coalition position on it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, no, we have set out very clear principles. Last month the Shadow Cabinet formulated nine clear principles on which we would negotiate. They’re very, very clear. And we’ve provided a lot of information to support the debate – the Frontier Economics report is a very valuable piece of work which I think many people are now only just starting to absorb. It’s a, you know, complex piece of economic research, as you’d expect. So we’re looking at this very carefully and constructively. You know, I just want to make this very clear. Our aim is to get the best renewable energy legislation and the best emissions trading legislation through the Parliament that we can, but to do that we’ve got to work together, and the question for Mr Rudd is does he want to work together, does he want to listen to the views of others, and engage positively and constructively with us, and if he does then he’ll find a willing partner in us in terms of having those negotiations. QUESTION: Is your support for the renewable energy bill, target bill, contingent on getting extra support for the aluminium energy industry? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well certainly those emissions intensive trade exposed industries need support, and I see in Senator Wong’s press release she refers to that, but it’s not clear which industries are going to be protected and how far the protection will go. But again, that’s a matter for discussion. The critical thing is that until today the Government’s position was that they weren’t talking to the Opposition, in fact the only advice they had for us was the very friendly advice, “get out of the way”. We were just sort of like a log that had fallen over the road as far as they were concerned; they just wanted to push us out of the way. Well now they’re prepared to talk to us, so that’s good. We’ve made some progress this day. QUESTION: Can I ask about Kerryn Phelps running in the seat of Wentworth, possibly as a Labor candidate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, that’s up to the Labor Party. They can endorse whoever they wish. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmSun, 16 Aug 2009 01:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:563http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/564/Retirement-of-Margaret-May.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=564http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=564&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/564/Retirement-of-Margaret-May.aspxMargaret May has announced that she will not contest the seat of McPherson at the next election. One of the most dedicated members in the Parliament, Margaret has worked tirelessly and assiduously for her local community over the last eleven years. Margaret has served with distinction as Shadow Minister for Ageing since the last election – no member of parliament knows more about the issues affecting senior Australians than Margaret, and no member works harder on their behalf. Just last week I attended the McPherson Seniors’ Expo and Forum with Margaret – an outstanding event which Margaret organises each year, bringing together and providing support to more than 500 senior Australians in her community. Margaret has also served on many parliamentary committees including the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, the House of Representatives Standing Committees on Health and Ageing, and Employment, Workplace Relations and Workforce Participation, and as Chair of the Procedures Committee. Margaret’s decision will mean that she will have more time to spend with her husband David as she supports him through a difficult period. Lucy and I wish Margaret and David, their three children, Dayne, Dimity and Kristin and four grandchildren Jaiden, Emily, Angus and Abby every happiness into the future. I thank Margaret for her years of service to the people of the Gold Coast. 14 August 2009  malcolmFri, 14 Aug 2009 01:44:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:564http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/562/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-ABC-The-World-Today.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=562http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=562&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/562/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-ABC-The-World-Today.aspxSubjects: Emissions trading; the Government’s failure to negotiate; Henry tax review.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   LYNDAL CURTIS: Mr Turnbull welcome to The World Today. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great to be with you. LYNDAL CURTIS: Are you the Government’s best shot at getting this legislation passed in November? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Penny Wong talked about a lot of things she was going to do before the end of the year and one of the things she really must do is start negotiating. It really is remarkable that she has gone right through this year and refused to negotiate or have any discussions with the Coalition about the bill. And we put forward proposals, we put forward some very constructive suggestions, we put forward a report only a few days ago which showed some alternatives that would make for a scheme that was greener, cheaper and smarter. A greener, cheaper and smarter scheme – and she just dismissed it out of hand and said it was a mongrel idea. LYNDAL CURTIS: She says she’s prepared to negotiate in good faith. You’ve said as much yourself. How soon can you develop amendments and sit down and talk to her? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have actually set out a number of principles that she, well she has a perfectly good basis for negotiation now. The issues that we’ve raised throughout the year – right at the beginning of the year I raised this important issue about agricultural offsets or green carbon. This is one of the big deficiencies in the bill. In the United States agricultural emissions are not included but agricultural offsets – investments which increase soil carbon, biochar, environmental forestry – are very much included and encouraged, and a lot of other measures. Now Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd have decided to deny Australian farmers those opportunities, deny our environment and the world’s environment those massive opportunities for abatement. I’ve been trying to talk to them all year about that and they won’t discuss it. So if she has a change of heart and wants to sit down and negotiate with us that would be terrific. LYNDAL CURTIS: You have said you will develop amendments. How soon can you do that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we will work through them over the next few weeks and months. But it depends, Lyndal, on what Penny Wong is actually talking about in terms of amendments. I mean normally the way differences like this are negotiated is the party that the Government is seeking to get support from sets out the issues of principle that it has concerns about, as we have done in our nine principles that we set out or restated just recently, and we sit down and work on amendments together. Now if Penny Wong is saying she will not have any discussion with us until such time as we present formal legislative amendments then that will take some time. But this is really pedantic bloody mindedness, stubbornness on her part. You know, we’ve said for example we want to have green carbon included. We want Australian farmers not to be disadvantaged by an unfair emissions trading scheme in Australia that disadvantages them versus American farmers. Now you know once you agree on that principle, then you can get the draftsmen and women off to do their work. LYNDAL CURTIS: Your Senate leader Nick Minchin has called today for the legislation to be put in the deep freeze until Copenhagen. He says it would be reckless and irresponsible to pass it before then. If you get proposals up for negotiation, can you get his agreement on those? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh certainly. Everything that we’re doing and all of our proposals and principles have had the support of the whole Shadow Cabinet, which of course Nick is a very distinguished member. But Nick is quite right in saying the scheme ideally should not be concluded until after Copenhagen. I mean that really is the best time to reconsider this legislation because by then – and we’re only talking about the difference of a few months, Lyndal – if this scheme were to come back for final consideration for example in February, when the Parliament comes back in February, we would know then what the American legislation looked like, because we would have heard from the US Senate – so far we only know what the US House of Representatives bill looks like – and we would know what Copenhagen had agreed or not agreed. So we would be able to make a much more informed decision. Now, Yvo de Boer, the Head of the UN Framework on Climate Change secretariat, who’s the head UN person on climate change, has said you do not need to go to Copenhagen with concluded legislation on an emissions trading scheme. And it’s quite likely the Americans won’t have concluded their legislation. What you need is a commitment to targets. Mr Rudd has some targets and we have supported him on them. LYNDAL CURTIS: If we can get back to what Senator Minchin said, he said it would be reckless and irresponsible to pass the bill before Copenhagen, yet you’re prepared to entertain the idea of doing… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look we have to deal in the real world. I mean the reality is that if the Government comes back with their legislation in November, we’ve got to have an answer to it. Now Senator Minchin and I absolutely agree that it would be better for the legislation to be dealt with early next year but both of us have to confront the reality, the real world situation of Kevin Rudd bringing the bill back in November. And he’s doing that for political purposes because he wants to get a double dissolution trigger so he can have an early election before next year’s budget. I mean, let’s face it, that’s what he’s on about. Why would anyone – just think about this – given that the scheme is not going to start in full force until 2012 with proper trading – so you are going to have a sort of soft start in 2011 – why would you make a decision in November, as opposed to February, when the difference of three months would enable you to be fully informed in making that decision? None of us for the sake of three months in our own lives would choose to make a less rather than a more informed decision. And that’s the recklessness that Nick Minchin’s talking about and well this is a point we’ve been making all year. Let’s make an informed decision. LYNDAL CURTIS: On another issue, a report prepared for the Henry tax review has apparently recommended that vehicles be taxed on how far they drive. While it would hit hardest people such as long-haul truck drivers, is it one way to send a signal about the impact of driving on the environment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look this is just a newspaper report so I don’t want to take it too far other than to say, if it is as reported it would work in enormous unfairness. I mean there are many people in Australia, particularly those in rural and regional Australia, who have to drive very long distances on very unsatisfactory roads, in many cases on dirt roads. Why should they be penalised because of where they live? The real answer, if you want to reduce congestion in the cities, I can tell you this and I’m a passionate supporter of public transport, you’ve got to invest more money in public transport that provides an alternative. But slugging people who have to drive hundreds of kilometres every day as part of their work in the bush, there’s no justice in that. LYNDAL CURTIS: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmThu, 13 Aug 2009 07:32:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:562http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/561/Another-Rudd-Minister-confirms-the-CPRS-is-a-work-in-progress.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=561http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=561&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/561/Another-Rudd-Minister-confirms-the-CPRS-is-a-work-in-progress.aspxThe answer provided in Parliament today by Resources Minister Ferguson clearly demonstrates the Government’s ETS legislation is still not finished – proving today's Senate vote was a political stunt, and had nothing to do with the national interest. Mr Ferguson said: "I can simply say that in terms of the coal industry there has been engagement and there will continue to be engagement with respect to the final framework of both the CPRS and the renewable energy legislation." (House of Representatives, 13 August 2009). If changes affecting vital export industries such as coal are still pending, why try and ram a flawed scheme through the Senate? If less than a dozen industry activity definitions out of roughly 100 such regulations have been completed, why pretend any delay in legislating an ETS is unthinkable? If the Government still plans to change the ETS treatment of generators, as the recent commissioning of the Morgan Stanley study indicates, why today's grandstanding in Question Time? The answer is that today's vote on a flawed ETS was not about either the environment or the needs of the economy. It was about the political interests of the Prime Minister and the Labor Party. This is far from the right way to handle such a vital national policy with such sweeping economic and jobs implications. Mr Rudd should come clean on the truth, and sit down and negotiate.  malcolmThu, 13 Aug 2009 07:10:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:561http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/560/Ted-Kenna-VC-Condolence-Motion.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=560http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=560&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/560/Ted-Kenna-VC-Condolence-Motion.aspxParliament House E & O E The passing of Ted Kenna at the age of 90 marks the end of an era in Australia’s military history. As a nation, we mourn the death, and we honour the memory, of the last of our Victoria Cross winners from World War II. Ted Kenna’s actions in the New Guinea campaign epitomised the Anzac spirit. He was among that great generation of Australians who fought to defend our freedoms in Europe, the Middle East, in Asia and on our own doorstep, here in the Pacific. And Ted Kenna was one of the bravest of the brave. He was born in Victoria on the 6th July 1919. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in August 1940 and served in the 23/21st Battalion. In June 1943 his unit was disbanded and he was assigned to the 2/4th Battalion and embarked for New Guinea in October 1944. His courage in the face of great personal danger at Wewak, on the 15th May 1945, must never be forgotten. There is no greater act of courage than to risk your own life to save the lives of your mates. The Victoria Cross is awarded only for conspicuous bravery and I quote: “a daring act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy”. Even by that lofty measure, Ted Kenna’s actions on that famous day represented valour of epic proportions. Let me refer briefly to the citation from the War Office and I quote: “On his own initiative and without orders Private Kenna stood up immediately in full view of the enemy less than fifty yards away and engaged the bunker, firing his Bren gun from his hip. The enemy machine gun immediately returned Private Kenna's fire with such accuracy that bullets actually passed between his arms and body. Undeterred, he remained completely exposed and continued to fire at the enemy until his magazine was exhausted. Still making a target of himself, Private Kenna discarded his Bren gun and called for a rifle. Despite the intense machine gun fire, he seized the rifle and, with amazing coolness, killed the gunner with his first round. A second automatic opened fire on Private Kenna from a different position and another of the enemy immediately tried to move into position behind the first machine gun, but Private Kenna remained standing and killed him with his next round”. Mr Speaker mates of Ted Kenna swear that as he stood there, in full view of the enemy, they watched bullets go straight through his shirt. Risking death in every one of those terrifying moments, this young man, known to his closest mates as Ned, stood up – literally, stood up – for his country. On behalf of the Opposition, and together with the Prime Minister, I had the honour to attend the state funeral for Ted Kenna at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne. It was an occasion of great solemnity, but it was also a warm and loving celebration of the life of a great bloke; a great Australian. It was an opportunity to salute one last time Ted Kenna’s courage and commitment to his fellow soldiers. And to salute the character and qualities demonstrated throughout his life by this humble man from western Victoria. At his state funeral, we heard from his sons, daughters and grandchildren of the valuable lessons bequeathed to them. Despite being one of the most decorated war heroes in our history, Ted Kenna was never seduced by fame. After the war, he returned to his hometown of Hamilton. He was intensely competitive in all things, including as a local footy legend, even into his 40s, and he demonstrated in his own life the value of staying true to oneself. As one of his boys, Robert, told us, Ted Kenna VC was no shrinking violet; that VCs are not by their very nature, shrinking violets. And yet he remained utterly unpretentious, and authentic in the way of so many of the sons and daughters of rural and regional Australia He was not given to airs and graces, or for making a fuss of himself. He was a proud man, yet never boastful. With his wife, Marj – the nurse who had tended his war wounds back at the repatriation hospital in Melbourne – he also maintained throughout his life the centrality of a loving family. For all of these reasons, the heroism of Ted Kenna VC to friends and family and to his mates from the military, extended far beyond that amazing act of courage at Wewak. We express our condolences to Marj, and to the Kenna family and the nation shares in their sorrow. And as much as this House mourns the passing of this great Australian, the death of Ted Kenna is also a time to reflect on the contributions of the surviving WWII veterans who gave their all or put all at risk in the protection of our country. This is particularly so as we look forward to this Saturday’s commemoration of Victory in the Pacific Day, and remember all those who sacrificed so much to defend and protect this country in its darkest and most desperate days. The Coalition remains committed to ensuring our World War II veterans receive the care and support to which they are entitled – in recognition of the debt owed to them by all of us, Australians. [ends]    malcolmTue, 11 Aug 2009 06:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:560http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/559/Jakarta-Bombings-Condolence-Motion.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=559http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=559&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/559/Jakarta-Bombings-Condolence-Motion.aspxParliament House E & O E Mr Speaker, the gruesome events in Jakarta on the morning of July 17 were a wake-up call for any of us who had dared to hope or imagine that the threat of global terrorism was on the wane. These despicable attacks on two major hotels in the heart of Indonesia’s capital claimed the lives of nine innocent people, including the lives of three of our own countrymen. These atrocities were the work of suicide bombers, almost certainly operating at the direction and behest of extremist ideologues linked to the Jemaah Islamiah movement. Today, we join with the Prime Minister in extending our heartfelt sympathies to the families of all the victims. In particular, we express our sorrow to the loved ones of businessmen, Nathan Verity and Garth McEvoy, and the Austrade official, Craig Senger. By what twisted ideology Mr Speaker could these talented, generous, well-motivated men, much loved by their family and friends and workmates, become the targets for these vicious attacks? They were Australians working in Indonesia to bolster business and people-to-people links between our two countries. They were three among the many tens of thousands of Australians who have taken it upon themselves to travel our region, and build the bridges of commerce and culture so crucial to continuing stability and prosperity here in East Asia. The appalling agenda of the extremists is, of course, to sabotage that sense of comity and co-operation in our region, in our world. Their aim is to drive a wedge between peoples of different cultures and different faiths. They must not be allowed to believe they can succeed. And in this, I am reminded of the very touching, and very brave, words of Mr McEvoy’s brother, Trent, and I quote: "Garth wouldn't have wanted people to stop working in Indonesia, or for Australians to think the worst of Indonesians because of a senseless act by a small minority. He would have wanted everyone to continue working with the wonderful people in Indonesia." Mr Speaker, these bombings were a vicious assault on all of us who cherish the values of free societies. These events should harden our resolve to defeat the scourge of terrorism, not only in our own region but across the world. The most vital priority is to do all we can to help the people of Indonesia deal with this menace in their midst. Indonesia is a new and flourishing democracy, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and one of Australia’s most important friends and neighbours. Indonesia is also a vital example to the world of the great possibilities for fusion of the Muslim faith with the principles of an open, pluralistic and democratic society. The recent re-election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signified an explicit repudiation by a vastly overwhelming majority of the people of Indonesia of those who stand for religious intolerance and violent extremism. Tragically, however, these bombings indicated there remain those unwilling to accept the desire of the Indonesian people for a free, open and tolerant society. It is paramount to the mutual interests of Australia and Indonesia that we work effectively together. Nowhere has the co-operation been closer than in efforts to wage the struggle against terrorism in our region. Since the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 88 Australians were among more than 200 people to die, the Republic of Indonesia has been as resolute as any nation in the world in the fight to defeat the global network of extremists responsible for these callous and cold-blooded acts of mass murder. Australia and Indonesia have jointly hosted key regional meetings on counter-terrorism, including through the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Co-operation. The attacks on Jakarta’s J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels are a reminder that the global struggle against terrorism is far from over; that much difficult work remains to be done. Indonesia, Australia and their friends and allies across the Asia-Pacific must remain vigilant, and united in our determination to defeat those who would inflict these and other atrocities on innocent people. In Government, the Coalition established close and extensive links with democratic Indonesia to ensure the two countries worked hand-in-hand to apprehend and bring to justice those responsible for terrorist acts. The federal Opposition will support the Australian Government wholeheartedly in providing whatever assistance necessary to help Indonesia identify, hunt down and deal with those responsible for these latest attacks. It is also important we work closely with Indonesia in supporting and upholding inter-faith dialogue, to ensure that reasonable and compassionate people of all faiths unite in the struggle to rid the world of this poisonous strain of extremism These terrorist attacks have become a curse of the early 21st Century, with the cruel and brutal destruction of life and property in so many cities across the world. We have seen an intolerable loss of innocent life, including more than 100 Australians killed by terrorist action while either travelling or working overseas. We also know that our homeland is not beyond the reach of these extremists and it illustrates Mr Speaker why it is imperative we do all we can as Australians to help defeat the scourge of terrorism in Indonesia, as in Afghanistan; indeed wherever these psychopathic murderers seek to disrupt and destroy the values of free societies and to deny so callously the rights of innocent people. [ends]    malcolmTue, 11 Aug 2009 06:02:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:559http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/558/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Senator-Nick-Xenophon-and-Andrew-Robb.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=558http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=558&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/558/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Senator-Nick-Xenophon-and-Andrew-Robb.aspxSubjects: Frontier Economics Report: The economic impact of the CPRS and modifications to the CPRS; proposal for a greener, cheaper, smarter ETS. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Now this report represents the modelling the Government has refused to do. This is the hard work, the close analysis the Rudd Government has failed to do in its rush, its reckless rush to implement a poorly designed emissions trading scheme – one that will cost jobs and will not achieve the levels of greenhouse gas abatement that are possible with a better designed scheme. What Frontier Economics have done is analyse alternatives, as Senator Xenophon and the Coalition asked them to do. This was our joint decision. We believe more work needed to be done and we chose Frontier Economics because they are leaders in this field. They developed, modelled, designed the New South Wales greenhouse gas abatement scheme. They are the leading firm in this area in Australia and their expertise is respected right across industry and across governments. What they have proposed here is a hybrid scheme that would allow at much lower cost a doubling of the unconditional reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So instead of an unconditional five per cent reduction, a ten per cent reduction. So it’s greener. It will also be cheaper. It would be 40 per cent cheaper than the Government’s scheme – a $49 billion saving to our economy over the next 20 years. And, above all, it will be smarter. It will ensure that there are more jobs, more Australians in work, earning higher wages, and this impact will be particularly felt in regional Australia. Regional Australia is going to be hammered by the Rudd ETS and you’ll see here in the work that Danny and his team have done that this change that they’ve proposed, this hybrid scheme with a different approach to the generator sector, will ensure that there is a significant, a significant improvement in employment opportunities in regional Australia versus what would be the case if Mr Rudd’s scheme is allowed to go into action. So these are very important measures. This shows that close analysis, hard work, rigorous examination of alternatives can produce better results. It underlines the recklessness of Kevin Rudd rushing to introduce and pass his emissions trading scheme, not simply because he’s doing it before the Americans have concluded their work or before the Copenhagen summit has met and confirmed its deliberations, but because he has not even done the hard modelling work himself. What we are seeing with Kevin Rudd’s ETS is thousands of Australian jobs being put on the line, billions of dollars of Australia’s wealth being lost because of poor design. It’s not good enough. The time has come for Mr Rudd to sit down with the independent senators, with the Coalition, to sit down with us here assembled and discuss a better scheme, a better design. We’re prepared to do that. He’s rejected our approaches out of hand. Now he will have to say why this report is wrong. He’ll have to deliver reasoned argument to refute what is presented here. Of course reasoned argument is not something the Government is very interested in at the moment. I see Mr Combet has rejected this report without having read it. That must be wonderful to be able to come to a conclusion about reports without having to read them, so confident is he in the direction they’re taking Australia. So that’s our commitment for a well-designed scheme that is greener, cheaper and smarter. That should be the aim of all sides of politics and this contribution from Frontier Economics is an extremely valuable element in the debate we have to have. Andrew. ANDREW ROBB: Well thanks Malcolm. As Malcolm said, this design that’s been recommended to us is greener and cheaper and smarter. I’d just like to make a couple of comments before handing over to Nick Xenophon about the smarter element of this design that’s been put in front of us by Frontier Economics. The current Government scheme will lead to the export of jobs and emissions because of the massive tax primarily on electricity. That’s it. That’s the essence of it – a massive tax on electricity. The big design breakthrough that I think is embodied in what Frontier has put forward is that there will be, rather than an abrupt massive 40 per cent increase in wholesale electricity prices, which introduces a great shock to the system and introduces huge indirect costs to hundreds of thousands of small businesses – not just the energy intensive, but across the board, and to households – because there is no abrupt 40 per cent increase, rather there is a gradual, starting at five per cent increase in wholesale prices and gradually moving up over 20 years to 25 per cent. So you get a demand response from that, but you’re not introducing a shock in terms of costs. Now the big thing is – and it’s the untold story – with the Government’s scheme they will face massive indirect costs from day one. You take the average dairy farm; the Government’s own research body ABARE has confirmed that you’ll see an $8000 to $10,000 increase in costs on the average dairy farm purely and simply from the indirect increase in electricity prices. Now that’s true not just of dairy farms and beef producers and other parts of agriculture, it’s true for the tens of thousands of small manufacturing businesses. It’s true for all of the small retail. You take fish and chips shops. All of these, they cannot change their equipment overnight. It takes years to do that. If they’re hit with a massive tax, it goes to the bottom line and it slows growth. Now what this scheme does is not have that drag on the economy of hundreds of thousands of businesses with higher costs restricting their growth. And the important thing about being smarter is that when companies are not hit with that increased tax, small and large, they’ve got the capital on their balance sheets to invest in low emission technology. And Australia can be, in many respects, if we want to show leadership on this whole issue, we can be the laboratory in my view for innovative, low emissions technology. But you have to protect the balance sheets of companies. You have to make sure they’ve got the money. Sure, the price of carbon will be there; they’ll be an incentive to reduce their overall emissions and that’ll be as strong as the Government’s scheme, but you haven’t stripped their balance sheets so that they cannot afford to make investments in low emitting technology. We can lead the world. We can provide that technology to China and India and Indonesia and all the others. That’s the contribution we can make as leaders because we’ve been in this energy business for 100 years. We’re good at it, we know it and if we can provide the right incentives for business, we can make a very smart contribution to lowering world emissions. Nick. SENATOR NICK XENOPHON: Thank you. Thank you Andrew and Malcolm. Let’s go back to the beginning. When the Government undertook its green paper, its white paper, there was never a thorough examination of any alternative schemes, of an alternative approach to achieve a better environmental outcome and a better economic outcome, and that’s why Frontier Economics has been commissioned to undertake this report and my agenda is very clear. I believe that we ought to go for deeper cuts, and I can’t see how we can do that economically responsibly under the Government’s scheme. This report gives an approach, a springboard for deeper cuts, deeper, more effective environmental cuts in a way that’s economically responsible. And I guess the message is this – that this report makes it clear that if this scheme can be twice as green at forty per cent less cost, then why wouldn’t the Government want to sit down and talk to us about this? In relation to Danny Price, he’s here with his team, Amar Breckenridge and Matt Harris, who have prepared this report. They’ve been working around the clock for the last six years, six weeks to prepare this – seems like six years! But can I say that Danny Price was commissioned by the Carr Government in New South Wales ten years ago to implement the world’s first mandatory emissions trading scheme, albeit a baseline and credit scheme which was relatively narrow in its scope, but it has still been very effective in reducing emissions in that state by many millions of tonnes. So he has an expertise that is unparalleled. He’s actually not only designed it but implemented it for the New South Wales Government. His consultancy has worked for NGOs, for industry and for governments, Labor and Liberal, around the country for a number of years. And I think he has an unparalleled expertise to give some independent advice in relation to this, and if I could ask Danny to outline how this would work. [ends]  malcolmMon, 10 Aug 2009 07:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:558http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/556/A-Greener-Cheaper-Smarter-ETS.aspx#Comments7http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=556http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=556&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/556/A-Greener-Cheaper-Smarter-ETS.aspxIndependent economic research commissioned by the Coalition and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon demonstrates that the Rudd Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will unnecessarily drive up electricity prices, destroy jobs and expand the size of government in Australia. The research, by respected consultants Frontier Economics, is the modelling the Rudd Government refused to ask its own Treasury to undertake. The results make it clear the Rudd Government should immediately withdraw its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) legislation and begin negotiations with the Opposition, minor party Senators and other stakeholders to design a more effective scheme. To persist with the CPRS would be the height of irresponsibility given Frontier’s work shows the scheme can actually be made twice as green at a much lower cost to consumers and the broader economy, and a net improvement of 68,000 in regional jobs. With appropriate amendments the ETS can deliver an unconditional 10 per cent reduction in Australia’s 2000 greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared to the Rudd Government’s 5 per cent unconditional target. It shows that by treating the electricity generation sector in a less punitive manner, household power bills need only rise by about 5 per cent in the near term rather than the immediate 25 per cent price hike the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) will trigger. Five years into the scheme, average annual household power bills would only be $44 higher, rather than the $280 price hike under the CPRS. The damaging impact of the CPRS on regional Australia and the nation’s key export industries is also greatly reduced by the changes modeled by Frontier. Rather than the loss of 26,000 regional jobs revealed by modelling of the CPRS, Frontier’s proposed changes would lead to net gains of 42,000 in employment in regional Australia. Overall, the cost to the Australian economy over the next 20 years in net present value terms is reduced by $49 billion, or about a third. KEY MODIFICATIONS TO CPRS The key changes to the currently proposed ETS recommended by Frontier are: – Doubling the unconditional emissions abatement target offered to the international community by Australia from a 5 per cent reduction from 2000 levels by 2020 to a 10 per cent reduction. – Allocating permits to electricity generators using a baseline approach, rather than forcing generators to purchase permits for all emissions. This enables a less abrupt increase in retail electricity prices, without diminishing incentives for generators to shift to greener power sources. – Providing 100 per cent shielding without a decay factor to emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries, including the coal industry. – Auctioning about 30 per cent of the permits required by Australian industry, in line with the ratio auctioned under the proposed Waxman-Markey scheme in the US, rather than the 70 per cent proposed by the CPRS. – Excluding agricultural emissions from the scheme, but allowing the agricultural sector to contribute to abatement and earn new revenue streams by allowing the inclusion of offsets such as carbon sequestration in forests or biochar. KEY ECONOMIC OUTCOMES The key economic consequences of these changes to the proposed ETS are: – A reduction in the net present value of the economic costs of the scheme over the next 20 years from $121 billion to $72 billion – a $49 billion improvement. Under the approach proposed by Frontier, output, real wages, employment and investment would all be higher. – Wholesale electricity prices rise by about 5 per cent in the near-term, and then slowly increase over the next two decades until they are about 25 per cent higher than their anticipated level in the absence of any ETS. This compares to an immediate rise of 40-50 per cent in wholesale prices under the CPRS (which translates into a 25 per cent rise in retail electricity prices). – The impact of the ETS on jobs and output in regions with emissions-intensive economies such as the Hunter Valley, Illawarra, Gippsland and central Queensland is reduced. Rather than tens of thousands of jobs disappearing in these regions, new jobs will be created. “This is the modelling work that the Rudd Government refused to undertake,” said Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition. “It shows that with relatively modest changes, the proposed ETS can be made far less harmful to jobs, investment, regions and the Australian economy.” “This is a strategy for an ETS that is twice as green and compared to the Government’s scheme saves an average household over $200 a year on their power bills,” said Senator Nick Xenophon. “Rather than shutting down important parts of our economy, we can deliver the right mix of incentives and signals to encourage clean growth.” “We have long argued that a flawed ETS is worse than no ETS at all,” said Andrew Robb, Coalition spokesman on Emissions Trading Design. “Frontier’s modelling and analysis provides us with new thinking about how to design a more environmentally and economically effective response to climate change.” FRONTIER’S APPROACH Frontier’s analysis utilizes the MMRF-GREEN model at Monash University's Centre of Policy Studies – the same model used in the Garnaut Review and the Federal Treasury's modelling of the CPRS. MMRF-GREEN is a multi-sector, multi-region dynamic model of the Australian economy. “It is important to note this is the very same model which was used by Treasury,” said Danny Price, Managing Director of Frontier Economics. “These results aren’t some pie-in-the-sky magic pudding. They reflect the application of careful design and real world economics to the policy challenge of implementing an ETS in an energy-intensive economy such as Australia.” TREATMENT OF ELECTRICITY GENERATORS The use of a baseline approach to the electricity generation sector greatly reduces the ‘churn’ involved in the ETS - less money is raised from industry and then redistributed to households to compensate them for higher electricity prices. Rather than an abrupt and large jump in power bills, the changes proposed by Frontier would mean a small and gradual increase – giving households and businesses more time to scale back their electricity use by purchasing more efficient appliances, insulating buildings, and making other adjustments. A much smaller and more gradual increase in power bills also greatly decreases the need for compensation payments to households. This, in turn, means the many billions of dollars of annual fiscal ‘churn’ created by an ETS can be greatly reduced. “Lower electricity prices will also greatly reduce the indirect costs of the Government’s ETS that would be faced by hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized businesses,” said Mr. Robb. “For example, under the CPRS, a typical dairy farm faced extra costs of $8000-$10000 per year. Under Frontier’s proposals, this would be reduced by 90 per cent.” Separately, the Coalition has also committed itself to a doubling of the compensation proposed for the electricity generators, from $4 billion to $8-10 billion, in order to provide greater fairness and investment certainty for firms in this industry. Securing the balance sheets of existing electricity generators is critical to energy security, and also a key enabler for these firms to invest in cleaner generation technologies. SUMMARY “Overall, these possible alterations to the ETS have the effect of delivering a more transparent, market-driven scheme rather than Labor’s big government CPRS,” said Mr. Turnbull. “We look forward to the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Rudd and Senator Wong to discuss these innovative ideas, and work co-operatively to deliver a response to climate change that best serves the interests of all Australians.” To read the slides click here To read the full report click here        malcolmMon, 10 Aug 2009 01:01:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:556http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/557/Address-to-the-Abruzzo-Earthquake-Appeal-Dinner-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=557http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=557&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/557/Address-to-the-Abruzzo-Earthquake-Appeal-Dinner-Melbourne.aspxWell thank you very much, thank you very much. What a great night! We cannot imagine Victoria, we cannot Australia without the Italian community. John Brumby on the Labor side and Russell Broadbent and myself on the Coalition side may disagree on issues of policy, but we agree that you could not have the wonderful, diverse, creative, vibrant nation we have today in Australia without the contribution all of you have made and so many thousands of other Australians like you. So thank you very much. Now I’m told by Michael D’Ascenzo that he was born in Rome and it’s wonderful that Michael is here. Lots of people have come up to him and told him that they’ve paid their tax. They’ve assured him of that all night. Everyone has told him they’ve paid their tax. And my Italian friends tell me the Romans are very good at collecting taxes, so Michael comes with a great lineage there. But really tonight is a great tribute, the success of tonight is a great tribute to the enthusiasm of your community and Nicoletta, you and your committee have done an amazing job. Well done. I was so pleased, Pat La Manna, to see you up there as the banana king. I started my working life as a labourer for a banana merchant in Sydney. Maybe I should have stayed in the business, who knows. Now, that awful night of the 6th of April stunned the whole world as we saw the images of falling buildings in L’Aquila, the hospital emergency departments working under extreme duress, the collapsed walls of the Casa dello Studente at the University. The young, especially, were among the victims of this disaster in one of Europe’s, Italy’s most venerable and distinguished medieval cities. This was the worst earthquake in Italy for nearly 30 years. Hundreds died, more than a thousand people were injured and, as we’ve heard tonight, tens of thousands of families were rendered homeless. The events that night evoke the same spirit of solidarity and feeling of humanity, shared humanity that arises whenever we see our fellow human beings fall prey to nature’s inexplicable fury. And how remarkable and how tragic it was that the Black Saturday bushfires here united our nation and united our world. All of us became Victorians, committed to supporting the victims of these terrible bushfires in Victoria and then, so shortly afterwards, the shocking earthquake in Abruzzo. So we became – just as we are all Victorians supporting the victims of the bushfire – we became all Abruzzese, supporting the victims of the earthquake. L’Aquila has had seven major earthquakes in 700 years and it is little wonder that the city is called ‘a city that refuses to disappear’. It is resilient. It is strong. And it is strong because of the love and the support that people like you and all of us will give that community now and in the future. From the medieval times we’ve had a fascination with the soaring beauty of the Apennines and its lush valleys, but we’ve known also too how fickle and dangerous nature can be. The scientists of our century, the 21st Century tell us L’Aquila’s vulnerability and susceptibility to earthquakes is due to having been built on the unstable bed of an ancient lake. In the times however of Dante, the greatest of the epic poets of the Middle Ages, earthquakes were explained more in religious terms as the work of God, an act of God. Dante, of course, was a frequent traveller to Abruzzo, and, indeed, to L’Aquila. It’s said that he was among the pilgrims who poured into that city in 1294 to watch the coronation of Pope Celestine V, who came out of his monk’s cell to become a Pope. He went from being a beggar to becoming a Prince and then, remarkably, abdicated from that position and returned to his hermit’s cave. And it’s not hard to imagine why this breathtaking scenery, with the bustling medieval towns on its hilltops, shepherds tending their flocks in the valleys below, would later figure in Dante’s Commedia, in particular in the Purgatorio. And I’d just like to remind us all of that remarkable poem – the Purgatorio is one of the books in the Divine Comedy – and I do this because Dante captures the sense of existential fear, then as now, in the quaking of the mountains. He writes as he’s ascending the mountain of Purgatory and as the earthquake strikes. He says: We had already left him there behind us and strove to pick our way as nimbly as the narrow path allowed, when I felt the mountain tremble as though it might collapse, and a chill, like the chill of death, subdued me. Then there rose up a great cry all around us so that my master drew up closer to me, saying: 'Have no fear while I'm your guide.' 'Gloria in excelsis Deo' all were saying …. ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’. Of course that was the hymn the angels sang to announce the birth of Christ. And as Dante goes on – and if you’ll forgive my poor Italian; his wonderful Italian, my poor pronunciation – he goes on to say: No' istavamo immobili e sospesi come i pastor che prima udir quel canto, fin che 'l tremar cessò ed el compiési. Thank you. The translation is: We stood still there in suspense, Terrified by the earthquake of course. like the shepherds who first heard that song, until the trembling ceased and the song was done. Now tragically, the quaking of the mountain has returned to L’Aquila, costing too many lives. We grieve for the dead, and we pray for their families. The earthquake has wrought significant damage to much of the legacy of Dante’s times, including the Basicila Santa Maria and, indeed, the tomb of Pope Celestine V. We know the people of L’Aquila will rebuild their city, as they have done many times over many centuries, and we will support them. We are not strangers to natural disasters in Australia – far from it. You in Victoria know better than anybody the caprice of nature, the cruelty of nature, as you’ve seen with the bushfires. And at these times of distress, it is so important that, just as the people of Italy reach across to help the people of Australia, so the people of Australia reach to help the people of Italy. It is our job to help the Abruzzese rebuild. In the words of San Bernardino da Siena, one of L’Aquila’s four patron saints, “Eamus ad Aquilam” – let’s go to L’Aquila. Let’s do all we can to help rebuild the lives of her people. Let’s do all we can to restore that city, that beautiful region’s charm and beauty. Can I congratulate you all on the magnificent efforts you’ve made to raise this extraordinary sum in your campaign. Can I congratulate the Premier on his contribution from the Victorian people and I can say it’s a wonderful privilege to be here among you tonight. Viva la bellissima Italia! Thank you. [ends]  malcolmSat, 08 Aug 2009 02:52:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:557http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/549/Engaging-with-Senior-Australians.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=549http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=549&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/549/Engaging-with-Senior-Australians.aspxThe Federal Coalition has launched its ‘Engaging with Senior Australians’ initiative to hear from Senior Australians on what’s important. “This is a very important and exciting initiative that will provide senior Australians with a real opportunity to have their voices heard on the issues that matter to them,” Malcolm Turnbull said today. “Tapping into the wisdom, knowledge and experience of senior Australians is the key to ensuring seniors policy best reflects the needs of this important age group. “Senior Australians have made our great nation what it is today and continue to have a range of ideas on how to best move forward. “There are over 20 000 Australians over 65 in the electorate of Wentworth and I want to hear from each one of them. “Soon I will be hosting a Seniors Forum and will be encouraging all senior Australians in Wentworth to attend. “We particularly encourage input from senior Australians on how to best deliver world-class aged care services, aged pensions, social inclusion, health services and retirement incomes. “The Coalition has also launched a webpage inviting senior Australians to submit their ideas on how we can continue to best move forward,” said Malcolm Turnbull. The webpage can be found at www.liberal.org.au/seniors “The Coalition recognises the important contribution senior Australians have made, and continue to make, and we want to hear from all senior Australians,”.  malcolmTue, 04 Aug 2009 02:23:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:549http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/555/Statement-concerning-Mr-Godwin-Grech-and-Ozcar.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=555http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=555&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/555/Statement-concerning-Mr-Godwin-Grech-and-Ozcar.aspxReports today make it clear an email which Mr Grech spoke of in his testimony to the Senate was faked and forged by Mr Grech himself. It is very regrettable that in doing so Mr Grech misled the Opposition, the Parliament and the Australian people. At all times the Opposition acted in good faith. We have remained silent on many of these issues because of the ongoing AFP investigation into the faked email. But Mr Grech’s public admissions and his accusations against the Opposition require a response. We are sympathetic about Mr Grech’s current situation and share concerns about his welfare, but we must now respond to the allegations made by Mr Grech in The Australian today. The Prime Minister and others have attacked us over this issue, to the extent that they have even suggested the Opposition was involved in forging the email. Those allegations are now shown to be totally false, as we have stated all along. The Government is claiming that the Auditor-General’s report released today completely clears them of any wrongdoing. However the report does raise matters of legitimate concern. The report finds it was “inadvisable” and “not prudent” for Treasury officials to raise Mr Grant’s case with Ford Credit in the way that they did and mention at that meeting that Mr Grant was a friend of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. This goes to the heart of our concerns and the detail of the report makes it clear that Mr Swan needs to take responsibility for the failings identified by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). Our response to Mr Grech’s allegations are set out below: 1. Mr Godwin Grech has in a statement to The Australian newspaper, admitted that he personally forged an email purporting to be from Andrew Charlton in the Prime Minister’s Office to himself. Mr Grech is an experienced and Senior Executive Service Band 1 Treasury Official and was responsible for managing the OzCar financing scheme. 2. Given the AFP investigation into Mr Grech’s conduct is still continuing the Opposition has been reluctant to make public statements about the matter. 3. Moreover, Mr Grech’s admissions that he forged an email and showed it to the Opposition relieve the Opposition of the obligation to maintain the confidentiality of communications between him and the Opposition . 4. The Australian says “Mr Grech said he co-operated with the Opposition to save the jobs of 2,000 people by seeking their support to pass the OzCar finance bill in the Senate. “My concern was that the issue of Grant could be used to frustrate the passage of the bill.” 5. That statement by Mr Grech has no basis in fact. The Shadow Cabinet had already resolved to support the OzCar legislation without amendment on 25 May. On 27 May, speaking in the House, the Shadow Minister, the Hon. Chris Pearce, had stated the Opposition supported the bill and on 28 May it was passed without the need for a division. In short, there was never any suggestion that the OzCar bill would be opposed by the Coalition. 6. The first the Opposition knew of Mr Grant and alleged representations to OzCar on his behalf by the Prime Minister and Treasurer’s offices was when Mr Grech contacted the office of Deputy Senate Leader Eric Abetz prior to the 4 June Estimates Committee hearings at which Mr Grech was scheduled to appear. Mr Grech proposed a detailed list of questions be put to him relating to OzCar including questions concerning Mr Grant and representations made on his behalf (attached and marked “A”). 7. In other words, were it not for Mr Grech’s actions the name of Mr Grant would never have been raised by the Opposition. 8. Following the Estimates Committee hearing on 5 June, Mr Grech emailed Mr Turnbull proposing that the OzCar legislation be referred to a Senate Committee Inquiry as “one way of getting me before a Committee to give evidence”. Mr Grech proposed a meeting be held with Mr Turnbull and Senator Abetz to discuss the matter and “to show you the various emails I have” (email attached and marked “B”). 9. The meeting was held on 12 June. Present were Mr Grech, Mr Turnbull, Senator Abetz and Senator Abetz’s Chief of Staff. Mr Grech spoke freely and naturally, and neither Senator Abetz nor Mr Turnbull had any reason to doubt the truth of what this senior and well respected public servant had to say. 10. Mr Grech began by stating that on 19 February 2009 he had received an email from Andrew Charlton in the Prime Minister’s Office seeking assistance from OzCar for John Grant Motors. He showed Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull a copy of the email. It appeared to have been received by Mr Grech at his Treasury account at 2.01 pm on 19 February and there was no reason to suspect that it was not genuine. Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull took an abbreviated note of its contents but did not take a copy of it. 11. At the meeting Mr Grech told Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull about his conversations with Mr Swan’s office, Mr Grant, and Ford Credit, the substance of which is all now on the public record. 12. At that meeting Mr Grech provided Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull with a further list of possible questions to the Prime Minister and Treasurer concerning OzCar (attached and marked “C”). 13. Neither Mr Turnbull nor Senator Abetz had any reason to doubt the truth of what Mr Grech had told them. 14. No accusation was made against the Prime Minister by Senator Abetz or Mr Turnbull until after Mr Grech had given his sworn testimony in the Senate, and in doing so Mr Turnbull stated that he was relying on that sworn testimony. 15. The Australian quotes Mr Grech as saying that it was agreed between himself and Mr Turnbull that he should speak to a journalist off the record about the matter. The facts are that Mr Grech phoned Mr Turnbull and proposed that he (Mr Grech) should speak to the journalist in question. At Mr Grech’s request Mr Turnbull gave him the journalist’s telephone number. Specifically Mr Turnbull did not encourage Mr Grech to disclose the contents of the 19 February email to the journalist and subsequently was most surprised to learn that he had done so. 16. Later, the journalist told Senator Abetz that Mr Grech had read to him the text of the 19th February email, and relayed to Senator Abetz the contents of that email. 17. In summary: a. Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull had never heard of the alleged connection between Mr Grant and OzCar before Mr Grech made contact. b. The Opposition relied in good faith on statements made to them by Mr Grech, a senior and well regarded public servant. c. Mr Grech volunteered the information about OzCar, and sought the meeting with Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull – not the other way around (see above point 8). d. The suggestion that Mr Grech was pressured to make statements concerning Mr Grant is false. On the contrary, Mr Grech voluntarily provided the Opposition with two lists of questions to be asked (see above point 6 and 12). e. The suggestion that the Opposition was considering blocking the OzCar legislation is false – the legislation had the full support of the Opposition and this was publicly known long before Mr Grech drew Mr Grant to the attention of the Opposition. f. Mr Grech urged the Opposition to convene a Senate Committee hearing so that he could provide information about OzCar and John Grant to the public (see above point 8). g. In making public criticism of the Prime Minister and Treasurer, Mr Turnbull expressly relied solely on the sworn evidence given by Mr Grech before the Senate. To read the attaching document click here malcolmMon, 03 Aug 2009 20:45:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:555http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/554/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=554http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=554&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/554/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Counter-terrorism arrests; OzCar E & O E Now, I want to deal firstly with the arrests this morning and I want to praise the work of the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission, the Victorian Police, the New South Wales Police and ASIO over a long period of time that has led to the arrests and execution of search warrants today in what we understand is the second largest counter-terrorism operation ever conducted.   I was briefed about this operation last night by the security agencies. It is a testament to the calibre of our law enforcement and national security agencies that this operation was executed so professionally today. However, the existence of such a significant security threat in our own backyard is a very great concern. The fact that the alleged target was our own military personnel who defend our nation, under our flag, wearing our uniform, is also very disturbing indeed. It’s a sober reminder that the global struggle against terrorism is far from won and that terrorism remains a threat to the lives of Australians not only overseas, but, sadly, also here at home.   Now I appeal for calm and tolerance amongst the whole Australian community. It’s important, however, to remain vigilant to this ongoing threat to our nation’s security. And as this is an ongoing investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to make any further comment other than to repeat my praise for the work of our security agencies. Now are there any questions on the terrorism issue? Okay, thank you.   I will now turn to the matter of OzCar. Now reports today make it clear that an email, of which Mr Grech spoke of in his testimony to the Senate, was faked and forged by Mr Grech himself. It is very regrettable that in doing so Mr Grech misled the Opposition, the Parliament and of course, as a consequence, the Australian people. At all times the Opposition has acted in good faith. We have remained silent on many of these issues because of the ongoing AFP investigation into the faked email. But Mr Grech’s public admissions and his accusations against the Opposition require a response. We are sympathetic about Mr Grech’s current situation and we share the concerns of many for his welfare but we must, however, respond to the allegations that have made by him in The Australian today. Now the Prime Minister and others have attacked us relentlessly over this issue, to the extent that they have even suggested the Opposition was involved in forging the email. Those allegations are now shown – as we always said they were – to be totally false. The Government is claiming that the Auditor-General’s report released today completely clears them of any wrongdoing. However the report does raise matters of legitimate concern. The report finds it was “inadvisable” and “not prudent” for Treasury officials to raise Mr Grant’s case with Ford Credit in the way that they did and mention at that meeting, when Ford Credit was seeking substantial funding from the Commonwealth Government, that Mr Grant was a friend of the Prime Minister. Now that arrangement, those conversations, that conflict went to the heart of our concerns and the heart of our criticism of the Government. And the detail of the report makes it clear that Mr Swan needs to take responsibility for the failings identified by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). Now we’ve set out some detailed responses here so I’ll just deal with the key points. You all have a copy of it. The Australian quotes Mr Grech as saying that he cooperated with the Opposition to save the jobs of 2,000 people by seeking their support – that’s to say the Opposition’s support – to pass the OzCar finance bill in the Senate. That statement has no basis in fact. The Shadow Cabinet had already resolved to support the OzCar legislation without amendment on the 25th of May. On the 27th of May, speaking in the House, the Shadow Minister, the Hon. Chris Pearce, had stated the Opposition supported the bill and on the following day it was passed without the need for a division. In short, there was never any suggestion that the OzCar legislation would be opposed by the Opposition. The first the Opposition knew of Mr Grant and the alleged representations to OzCar on his behalf by the Prime Minister and Treasurer’s office was when Mr Grech contacted the office of the Deputy Senate Leader, Senator Eric Abetz, prior to the 4th of June Estimates Committee hearings. Mr Grech proposed a detailed list of questions should be put to him at that hearing and a copy of those questions is attached. In short, were it not for Mr Grech’s actions, the name of Mr Grant would never have been raised by the Opposition. Following the Estimates Committee on the 5th of June – that’s to say the day after the Estimates Committee Hearing on the 5th of June – Mr Grech emailed me proposing that the OzCar legislation be referred to a Senate Committee inquiry as – and I quote – “one way of getting me before a Committee to give evidence”. Mr Grech proposed a meeting be held with me and Senator Abetz to discuss the matter and – and I’m quoting Mr Grech – he said, “to show you the various emails I have”. And that email from Mr Grech to me, dated the 5th of June, is also attached.   The meeting was held on the 12th of June. Present were Mr Grech, myself, Senator Abetz and Senator Abetz’s Chief of Staff. Mr Grech spoke freely and naturally, and neither Senator Abetz nor myself had any reason to doubt the truth of what this senior and well respected public servant had to say. He began his account of events by stating that on the 19th of February he had received an email from Andrew Charlton in the Prime Minister’s Office seeking assistance from OzCar for John Grant Motors. He showed Senator Abetz and myself a copy of the email. It appeared to have been received by Mr Grech at his Treasury account at 2.01 pm on the 19th of February and there was no reason to suspect that it was anything other than genuine. Mr Abetz and I took an abbreviated note of its contents but we did not take a copy of it. Now, at the meeting Mr Grech told us about his conversations with Mr Swan’s office, Mr Grant and Ford Credit, the substance of which is all now on the public record. At that meeting Mr Grech provided us with a further list of possible questions to the Prime Minister and Treasurer concerning OzCar – and that’s attached; attached to this statement – and one of those questions was directed at the Prime Minister, to the Prime Minister, asking him to stand by his statement of the 4th of June that he had not made any representations on behalf of Grant, and Mr Grech notes in italics here, “if he stand by the original answer – he will have misled the Parliament again”. Now we had no reason to doubt the truth of anything that he said to us. I note that no accusation against the Prime Minister was made either by Senator Abetz or myself until after Mr Grech had given his sworn testimony in the Senate, which of course was consistent with what he had said to us on the 12th of June. I also should note that The Australian quotes Mr Grech as saying that it was agreed between himself and myself that he should speak to a journalist off the record about this matter. The facts are that Mr Grech phoned me and proposed that he, Mr Grech, should speak to the journalist in question. At his request I gave him the journalist’s telephone number. Specifically I did not encourage Mr Grech to disclose the contents of the 19th of February email to the journalist and I was subsequently very surprised to learn that he had done so. So, in summary, we had never heard the alleged connection between Mr Grant and OzCar before Mr Grech made contact with us. We relied in good faith on statements made to us by Mr Grech, a senior and well regarded public servant. Mr Grech volunteered the information about OzCar and sought a meeting with Senator Abetz and myself – not the other way around. The suggestion that Mr Grech was pressured to make statements concerning Mr Grant is false. On the contrary, Mr Grech voluntarily provided the Opposition with two lists of questions to be asked.   The suggestion that the Opposition was considering blocking the OzCar legislation is also false – the legislation had the full support of the Opposition and this was publicly known long before Mr Grech drew Mr Grant to the attention of the Opposition. Mr Grech urged the Opposition to convene a Senate Committee hearing so that he could provide information about OzCar and John Grant to the public, and that was in the email of the 5th of June. And I just note again that in making the public criticism of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, I expressly relied solely on the sworn evidence given by Mr Grech before the Senate. Now, do you have any questions? QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, can you clear up, on this question of the meeting on the 12th of June, Mr Grech says that he made it very clear that any email, that this particular email that he’d showed you, was a draft, was a note of his recollection, rather than the original item. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s not true. QUESTION: So according to him, I mean he told you that it was… MALCOLM TURNBULL: He showed it to us and he said, this is the email. QUESTION: So there were no caveats on its use? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, no. He said he did not want it to be published and we did not publish it. So, and I can understand why he was sensitive to that given it was an email between two people, but there was no suggestion made by Mr Grech that it was anything other than the genuine article. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, was it a case of you accepted this email because Mr Grech had provided you with information before? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t want to go into other discussions we’ve had with Mr Grech. Suffice it to say this – Mr Grech is a very senior public servant. He’s very well regarded by everybody that’s dealt with him. We had no reason to doubt his word. Quite frankly, whether he’d shown us a copy of an email or not, if he said he’d received an email from somebody I would have accepted that at face value. He was a person whose word I had every reason to trust and did trust. QUESTION: But why were you so willing to trust him when he was virtually willing to commit career suicide? I mean that’s essentially what he was offering to do. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are many, as the journalists here know, there are many whistleblowers and they play a very important part. Mr Grech indicated he was concerned about the political influence that was being brought to bear, concerned about the cronyism. Cronyism has a long tradition in the Labor Party, as we’ve seen recently in other contexts. He was concerned about that and so were we, and we were doing our duty as the Opposition in following this up. QUESTION: Is it not more the case that you trusted him because previous information he’d given to you had actually been good? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think I’ve already answered that question. Hang on… Sorry. Peter Hartcher was about to ask a question. QUESTION: How do you reconcile the fact that, as you have in your statement today, on that June 12 meeting you read the email, yet I think later you said that you hadn’t read the email until you saw it published in the Telegraph? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, that’s not right. Well, what you’ve put to me is not correct. I said I’ve never had a copy of the email. We did not take a copy of the email. QUESTION: So how was it that Senator Abetz was able to quote it verbatim at the Estimates Committee before it had been published in the Telegraph? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, sorry, as it said in the statement here, later, the journalist told Senator Abetz that Mr Grech had read to him the text of the 19 February email, and relayed to Senator Abetz... and the journalist relayed to Senator Abetz the contents of that email. And I think Senator Abetz said that in the Senate Committee hearing. QUESTION: Did you pay for Mr Grech or the Coalition pay for Mr Grech to come to Sydney for that fateful meeting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Certainly not. Certainly not. QUESTION: So he paid his own [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I assume so. I don’t know. I assume he did; I imagine he did. QUESTION: In the history of your career so far, how big of a mistake is this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh look, let’s deal with the facts, okay. Are there any other questions about the events in question? QUESTION: The facts are you’ve been hugely embarrassed by an amazingly bad gaff. How bad is it in your career? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is this – we have been misled. Let’s be quite clear about this. It’s very disappointing that this occurred. The events that have occurred are almost beyond belief. The idea that a senior public servant would forge a communication like this and then show it to the Opposition is extraordinary. It is almost beyond belief. Now it is certainly within belief that public servants provide information to the Opposition, and I think we can all remember when the Labor Party was in opposition they would boast of the leaks they had from the public service, including advance dumps of Cabinet papers and Budget leaks. So whistleblowers and leaks are part of the Canberra culture, and many would say they’re a very important part and without whistleblowers being prepared to reveal what they perceive as wrongdoings on the part of governments, then a lot of wrongdoing would go unrevealed. But these actions by Mr Grech are both hard to believe and of course very, very regrettable and there’s no question we and everyone was very gravely misled. Now I note that Mr Grech insists that he did, he still believes he received an email on that date and of course, but that does not excuse creating a fake. QUESTION: Regardless of how valued you thought Mr Grech was, you had an obligation to check the source of this information… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well he was the source. QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: You see this is not a case – I mean let’s be quite clear about this – this is not a case where a politician or a journalist is given a bundle of emails or documents and said, look these are genuine and accepts them at face value. This was a situation where a person that we knew very well, that had a very senior position, asserted that he had received a communication from the Prime Minister’s office on a particular day and then showed us a document which appeared to be the communication in question. And really it’s difficult to know how else one could have checked it. He vouched for it himself. He vouched for the accuracy of his own statement and of course for the genuineness of the email that he showed to us. QUESTION: Will you now apologise to the Prime Minister? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have withdrawn the criticism of the Prime Minister some time ago, long before Mr Grech made this admission today. I withdrew the criticism of him because plainly the suggestion that there had been a fake email involved, and it was pretty clear, the inference was fairly clear at the outset that Mr Grech had been responsible for it, although that hadn’t been established, that put a question mark over his evidence, and we had relied on his evidence in making the criticism of the Prime Minister. QUESTION: You’ve maintained your case pretty solidly against the Treasurer though, haven’t you? In fact you pursued it very vigorously over the week even after Mr Grech’s activities began to be involved. Now this report that’s come out today seems to absolve the Treasurer, explain why he was receiving home faxes and, in fact, if it appears that this whole program has been diddled in favour of one party or another, it seems to have been diddled in favour of a Liberal Party supporter and donor. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re not in favour of any practices of that kind regardless of who the beneficiary would be. I just note… QUESTION: Sure but is the Treasurer… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I just note this – the ANAO say in finding 1.9, some of the Treasury testimony given by Mr Grech during these proceedings was inconsistent with statements made by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister in the House of Representatives. And that of course, it was those statements upon which we relied. Now the ANAO, I have not had the opportunity to read this ANAO report in the course of today as closely as I would like, but the ANAO report does say it was “inadvisable” and “not prudent” for Treasury to be raising Mr Grant’s desire to seek refinance with Ford Credit in the same meeting where Ford Credit was seeking funding from the Commonwealth. And that actually was the guts, the essence of our criticism. Now Mr Swan and his office, according to the emails that were tendered in the Senate, were aware that that was happening so. Mr Swan can claim as much vindication as he likes, and as far as apologies are concerned, as I’ve said on an earlier occasion, I’m more than happy to offer an apology to the Prime Minister if he’ll apologise for having accused me, without any basis in fact, of having forged this email. QUESTION: So it’s a matter of who apologises first? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m all in favour of mutual apologies but you’ve got to remember Kevin Rudd when he was Opposition Leader – and let’s not forget this – accused John Howard, Alexander Downer and a substantial percentage of our frontbench of having financed terrorism through the AWB saga and when all those allegations were proved to be false, I don’t recall there being any apologies. He also called on them and many others to resign.  malcolmMon, 03 Aug 2009 20:42:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:554http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/547/Address-at-the-2009-McPherson-Seniors-Expo.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=547http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=547&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/547/Address-at-the-2009-McPherson-Seniors-Expo.aspxE & O E Well thank you very much, Margaret, it’s wonderful to be here and also with Councillor Jan Grew from the Gold Coast City Council. I’m really proud to be here with you today and particularly with Margaret. Margaret is – well, I cannot tell you of a harder working Member of Parliament than Margaret May. She sets an example of a commitment to her local community, a passion for her local community. She is part of your community, of your family and she works tirelessly for you in parliament. I would also say there is nobody in the Federal Parliament that works harder for senior Australians than Margaret does. And it’s very fitting that she is the Shadow Minister for Ageing and she is, in that capacity as well as in her capacity as your local member, an absolutely invaluable member of our team. And it’s a great testimony to her commitment both as the local MP and as the Shadow Minister that so many of you have come here today for this forum. Now, you – senior Australians and many others like you around the country – have helped build this country and created its prosperity. That contribution, that vital contribution, needs to be recognised and celebrated. And I think we should also acknowledge that senior Australians continue to contribute enormously to our communities, whether they are working or working part-time or whether they are in their retirement, so often providing vital volunteer services through community organisations such as Lyons who are out there today and I also commend…sorry, Rotary, I should say, out there today. And I should also commend you spend that $7 in the bowel cancer kit; I think that’s a very good initiative. But there’s also really no barrier to – age should not be a barrier to people being able to achieve their goals and to fulfil their dreams. And, I must say, in our family we have a very good example of that. Sadly, both my parents died far too young but Lucy’s father, Tom Hughes, the Honourable TF Hughes QC no less, former Federal Attorney-General, is still practising law and practising his farming activities at the age of 85 and a great example he is too. So we have a very good understanding in our family of the enormous vitality that senior Australians have. Now, there is no doubt that your contribution, the contribution of senior Australians, will become more and more important as we come to grapple with what is probably the biggest social challenge facing our nation, the ageing of our population. Now I want to just explain that because when we say we’re ageing, well of course we’re all ageing. The youngest, the newborn baby is ageing just as an 85-year-old is ageing – all of us get older every day – but by 2010 the baby boomer generation, my generation, will start to turn 65. I won’t be 65 in 2010 I’m pleased to say but I’ll be 56. But that is just the start of it. By 2047, 25 per cent of Australia’s population will be over 65 and that proportion is now 13.3 per cent. So the percentage of the over 65s as a percentage of our population is going to double, and the percentage of the over 85s will increase by more four times. So the mix, the demographic mix, of our population is going to change dramatically. And I might say, while that is dramatic in Australia it is much more dramatic in other countries. It’s a consequence, simply stated, of the fact that people today have fewer children than our parents, let alone our grandparents’ generation did. Our birth rate here in Australia is around 1.8 plus. So it’s not quite at the replacement rate of 2.1 but it’s still a lot lower than it was in the 50s and the 60s when people, you know, most families had three or more children. In some countries this ageing phenomenon is really profound. In Italy, for example, the birth rate is 1.2. And indeed if in 100 years – just to give you an example of how better off we are than many other countries in this respect – if in 100 years Italy’s population is the same as it is today, less than 25 per cent of those people will be the descendants of today’s Italians, and that is because of the declining birth rate. You could say the same thing about Spain and Greece and Japan and many other countries. But nonetheless the phenomenon here in Australia, while not as severe as in other countries, is going to put enormous and some people would say, difficult to sustain, pressures on our essential services and that’s why we need to plan very carefully for health and for aged care. And we also need to plan now to ensure we can meet this huge demand. Now just going back into history, when we were in government, when the Coalition was in government under Mr Howard’s prime ministership, we did a number of very important things to plan for that future. Firstly, we paid off all of the Labor Party’s debt. So we inherited $96 billion of debt and we paid it all off. And then we looked and said what can we do to take the burden off future generations, take burdens off future generations because those future generations – our kids and our grandkids – are going to have to pay taxes to look after people of Margaret and my age when we’re in our 80s; they’re going to have enough to deal with there, so what further burdens can we take off their shoulders? And so one thing we did was put a huge amount of money – it’s now well over $60 billion – into a fund called the Future Fund which was designed, and is designed, to provide for the unfunded, in the sense that they had not been funded by contributions in the past, unfunded superannuation and pension obligations of public servants and public sector employees including defence personnel. So that Future Fund reached across the generations and relieved those kids and grandkids and children yet unborn of that obligation knowing that they had some pretty big obligations coming up in the lift anyway. By contrast what we’re very worried about in the Coalition is that Mr Rudd is not planning for the future in the way we did. He’s putting off the tough choices for another day, most likely the day when the Liberal-Nationals return to government. He’s mortgaging our future and the future of the next generation by making it very hard, much harder for future governments to support an ageing population. Now, 20 months ago we were left with…we left the Labor Party with a federal government that had no debt and cash at the bank and we’re now looking down the barrel at $315 billion worth of debt just a few years from now. How long do you think that will take us to pay it off? It took us 10 years to pay off $96 billion. And how long will it take us to pay it off when we will have every year higher costs for health services, for pharmaceutical benefits, for age pension and so forth? And of course, what do we have to show for it? You know, if Margaret and I had come around doorknocking at the last election, knocked on your door as we both did – not together, but if we did separately, but if we’d been campaigning together and we’d come and knocked on your door and said, please you’ve got to vote for us because if you don’t vote for us and the Labor Party get in, they will borrow $23 billion and give it away. You would, I hope, have looked at Margaret and I kindly and said, you’ve been out in the sun too long, the stress is getting to you, it’s not that bad. You might have said, to make us feel better, don’t worry and we’ll vote for you. Hopefully you would have invited us in for a cool drink. But that is exactly what the Labor Party has done. They’ve borrowed $23 billion and given it away. Now we know it’s all going to have to be paid back with interest and that means – Margaret said that there are two certainties, death and taxes, and ain’t that the truth; there is another certainty too, that the higher the level of government debt, the higher the level of taxes and interest rates in the future. I mean, just think about it. It’s obvious, isn’t it? If you run up a huge debt, you’ve got to pay it off. The more the Government borrows, the more pressure it puts on interest rates across the board, so the more higher interest rates you’ll have to pay on your mortgage or on your business loans and of course the higher taxes we’ll have to pay in order to pay it off. And all of that at a time when we should be preparing, as we were in government, to have greater financial flexibility and greater financial strength to deal with the challenges of an ageing population. Now, we want to plan for the future and are doing so. In particular, we are determined to support senior Australians in their retirement and we want their help, your help. So today we’re announcing an exciting and important new Coalition initiative called ‘Engaging with Senior Australians.’ We want to hear from you about your concerns, your ideas and your priorities for the future. We want to tap into your wisdom. And this initiative is designed to ensure that senior Australians are given the opportunity to participate in the political process directly through this forum – and of course you participate through many other forums as well, not intended to be exclusive – but to have a direct say on the policies that we will put together to shape the future of our nation. It’s about translating your ideas into the policies and initiatives that will help to improve the lives of all of our fellow Australians, our senior Australians and it’s an opportunity for you to tell politicians what you really think. Everything that affects senior Australians is up for discussion but we think particular focus needs to be given to – and I’ll run through some items here –the need for quality care both in the home and in aged care environments so that our elderly can be cared for with respect and dignity; retirement incomes – a huge issue – so all Australians can plan for their future needs with certainty through a mix of income support, superannuation and self provision; opportunities for seniors to remain active in our communities through employment, through volunteering and through maintaining relationships with their family and friends, especially in their role as grandparents which is becoming increasingly important, I believe, in the modern world. And of course the challenge of meeting the demands we’ll all be putting on our health system in both primary and acute care. Now your views will help us shape those policies and they’ll be the policies we’ll take to the next election. We’re going to hold forums in all of the electorates around Australia to hear directly from senior Australians about issues that matter to them. We’re going to establish a new website, in fact, we have established it – it’s launched today – to provide you with all the information you need about this initiative and it will also keep you up to date with the latest news about the forums around the country and it’s one of the platforms where you can share your ideas for us. It’s easy to remember. It’s www.liberal.org/seniors. So you can find that very easily on the Internet. We want to hear from you and we want you to get involved. This approach of forums both in the flesh, in person, and on the Internet is one that we used very successfully with our Jobs for Australia forums around the country. We’ve had well over 50 of them now and they’ve been a fantastic source of new ideas, discussion, debate, policies, very often…sometimes the meetings have been nearly as big as this, most they’re smaller and we end up having a very good discussion. I think this is a great initiative to engage in senior Australians. So when a forum’s held you should go to it. Of course there’s one here today. Jump online, send us an email, write to us or call us and we’ll take on board what you have to say. Now, we believe you deserve the flexibility and the choice that you need when it comes to your retirement. You deserve a big say, the say, about what care options best suit your needs and we will always ensure, as the Coalition, that senior Australians are, as they always have been, a priority for us. So don’t be shy, have your say, get involved, speak up. It’s very important to make yourself heard. We are listening intently. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be here with you today. I’ll be around for morning tea to talk to as many of you as we can and I just want to say again, thank you to Margaret May, this incomparable local member and Shadow Minister for Ageing, for putting on such a wonderful event. Thank you very much. It’s been wonderful to be with you. [ends]  malcolmMon, 03 Aug 2009 04:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:547http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/546/Rudds-debt-to-burden-future-generations.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=105&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=546http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=546&PortalID=0&TabID=105http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmsBlogs/tabid/105/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/546/Rudds-debt-to-burden-future-generations.aspxKevin Rudd’s latest manifesto acclaims the years ahead as “the building decade”. So far, all this Prime Minister has built is a mountain of debt. We are heading for $315 billion of total debt – the largest increase in borrowings by far of any government in peacetime. This debt represents about $13,000 for every Australian man, woman and child -- and never has so much public debt been accumulated with so little to show for it. There has been $23 billion in cash handouts – borrowed, then given away. There has been $14.7 billion to be spent on Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls – coming to a primary school near you whether it is needed or not; and whether the school community wants it or not. And despite all the nation-building rhetoric, there is no more investment proposed by Kevin Rudd in road and rail than was already committed to by the Coalition. Labor’s wasteful spending is not only a poor use of Commonwealth funds today. It also has the effect of denying governments now and into the future the opportunity to direct more taxpayer resources to areas of greatest need without imposing either significant cuts elsewhere or higher taxes. This is a key point about Labor’s short-sightedness. As the nation ages demographically, and costs of health and pensions rise, the damage to public finances from Labor’s debt addiction will be profound and ongoing, for decades. When working Australians are asked to repay the mountain of debt incurred by this Government –a massive task facing taxpayers for years to come – they will be entitled to ask: what purpose did it serve, how did our communities benefit, how did all this debt make our economy stronger and more prosperous? Will they be satisfied by the 6000 words of tedious spin offered up to readers of The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald last weekend? Kevin Rudd likes to style himself as a philosopher-king issuing edicts from on high about how the world should be better governed. The fact is this Prime Minister is as poll-driven as any politician in living memory. He is forever adapting his message to suit the mood of the day. He changes with the seasons. In 2007 he was an economic conservative – no daylight between him and John Howard on economic matters. By late 2008, he had become a democratic socialist again, chastising Howard as a neo-liberal extremist, and proposing that the only answer to the global financial crisis was to put government at the centre of the economy. And now, as we have seen in his essay last weekend, he is moving back towards the centre, warning about the dangers of excessive levels of government debt and the need to return budgets to surplus. Not so much a Prime Minister as a political fashionista. If there is one consistency in his economic meanderings, it is a breathtaking, Orwellian, disregard for the truth. Let us consider some of the falsehoods in his latest essay. Once again he accuses the Coalition in Australia of being a leading force in an imagined neo-liberal experiment that brought on a global financial crisis. So determined to cast himself as the Great Helmsman, he is unable to credit the Howard Government for leaving Australia better prepared than most other advanced economies to weather the storm. Nor could he pay tribute to his own Labor predecessors for their role in creating a more open, flexible and resilient modern market economy. Instead, in Mr Rudd’s fantasy world, the last 25 years have been a bleak period of free market extremism, where not just John Howard but Labor leaders Bob Hawke and Paul Keating are cast as willing cohorts in a vast global conspiracy to impose on an unsuspecting world an ideology of unrestrained greed. How then could it be that the prudential and financial regulation put in place by the Coalition Government has resulted in Australia having, in Julia Gillard’s own words, the best regulated financial system in the world? How could it be that, unlike the USA, Australia suffered from no sub-prime mortgage crisis? Indeed sub-prime mortgages were less than 1 per cent of all mortgages outstanding versus close to 15 per cent in the United States. And as RBA Governor Glenn Stevens noted only this week, mortgage defaults in Australia remain at historically low levels. How could it be that Australia’s banks remain among the most secure and best capitalised in the world? The answer, which Mr Rudd cannot bring himself to utter, is that the Coalition left him with a national balance sheet free of debt and with cash at the bank -not to speak of the longest period of sustained economic growth in our history. While Mr Rudd has piled billions of dollars of debt onto the shoulders of present and future generations, the Coalition paid off all Government debt and then reached across the generations and by establishing the Future Fund made provision for the payment of previously unfunded public sector pensions. And the regulation of the financial system established by the Coalition has proved its worth, standing the test of the global financial crisis. When we look at the United States and the origins of the global financial crisis, we see a mortgage market in which Governments encouraged, and in some cases directed, the making of sub-prime loans – lending money to people whose prospects of repayment were poor. Two huge government-guaranteed mortgage funds, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, underwrote around 70 per cent of all residential mortgages. Mr Rudd said in his summer essay for The Monthly that he wanted Government to be at the centre of the economy; that government was the antidote to all global ills. Well, the truth is that if Government had not been at the centre of the US mortgage market, if the US Government had limited itself to prudential regulation as the Howard Government had done, then we may not have had a sub-prime crisis at all and, as a consequence, we may not have had a global financial crisis. Another example of playing fast-and-loose with the facts is his boast that Australia’s public debt is low, as a percentage of GDP, relative to other developed countries. This is no thanks to Mr Rudd. Plainly, it is a consequence of his inheriting a Government with no net debt at all and plenty of cash at the bank. The OECD recently summarised the size and composition of fiscal stimulus packages around the world for the years 2008 to 2010. Australia’s stimulus was the third largest, at 5.4 per cent of GDP, behind only South Korea and the United States. Germany’s stimulus was a much more modest 3.2 per cent of GDP, and half of that stimulus was provided through reduced taxes. So one can only imagine the bemusement of his German hosts when the Prime Minister recently visited Berlin and gave a speech about the dangers of excessive Government debt and the need to restore budgets to surplus. Another falsehood in Mr Rudd’s economic narrative is his claim that Australia is experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, Australia faced far worse economic conditions in the early 1990s when, under Labor, unemployment was over 10 per cent for more than two years. Of course Kevin Rudd’s constant rhetoric of crisis had a point. It enabled him to justify extraordinary levels of borrowing and spending. And it is there in that borrowing and spending that we see the biggest barrier to a speedy recovery from this economic downturn. All of that debt will have to be repaid. Whichever way he tries to spin his message, the simple, brutal fact of life is that the higher the level of Government debt, the greater will be the burden of taxes and interest rates we all have to carry. For while you might think a lot can be said in 6000 words, the one unspoken truth in Mr Rudd’s latest offering is that Australians are going to be paying a high price for Labor’s extravagant and poorly-targeted borrowing and spending. Heavy debt will force governments to consider spending cuts or tax hikes. Only this week, we have seen Health Minister Nicola Roxon flag the likelihood of raising taxes if Labor is to spend more on public health. The Rudd Government’s debt-fuelled spending also risks reviving an inflationary spiral. Likewise, in the housing market, Mr Rudd may well have cause to fear the impact on home affordability if interest rates pressures begin to mount. He complains in his essay that house prices have “soared far above the true long term worth.” What will he have to say to the thousands of young couples encouraged by his government’s increase to the first home owners’ grant to get into the market at a time when interest rates were at an historic low? Will they thank him as the cost of their mortgage begins to spiral upwards, putting stress on family budgets? And the children of those young homebuyers? As they reach working age, they, too, will be burdened by having to pay higher-than-necessary taxes to meet the punitive interest costs of repaying the massive Rudd Debt. This is going to raise some fundamental questions about whether Australia can continue to live up to what all of us have come to expect of our nation. For at least 60 years, it has been a proud boast that every generation of Australians has left its children better off than their parents. As Rudd Labor’s debt piles up unrelentingly on the shoulders of taxpayers of the future, we have to ask ourselves the tough questions: will we be the first generation not to deliver on that dream? Will we through reckless and irresponsible decisions today deny the next generation of working Australians their fair share of opportunities in life? For all his sermons and essays, Mr Rudd will not be able to talk his way out of having to grapple with the consequences of his own poor policy choices. Soon enough, he will have to confront the reality of a budget in crisis. He knows there will have to be spending cuts. He knows the additional cost to the Budget of spiralling government interest repayments will mean putting under the microscope essential government services. And what he won’t admit himself is that his policies will lead to higher taxes. His Health Minister’s concession this week to the inevitability of rising taxes under Labor is the first signal from within government that they are beginning to comprehend the nature of the mess they have made of the Budget, and the policy dilemmas arising from that failure. They will do everything they can to tap-dance through to the next election, but the day of reckoning for Labor cannot be forestalled forever. This is a Government very adept at political spin. But what is clear is that they have no credible strategy or plan to get Australia through the difficult conditions ahead. If the Prime Minister has a detailed strategy to reduce Labor’s debt, why wouldn’t this be the centrepiece of debate at this weekend’s ALP national conference? The truth is, Mr Rudd has no plan. Meanwhile, the costs of Labor’s Big Spend become more apparent by the day. Australians are not gullible. When they see Labor dispersing a record $124 billion in new spending, they will soon begin to ask whether the community is getting value for money. There is now far greater scrutiny, for example, over the costs of the so-called Building Education Revolution. The Commonwealth Auditor General has this $14.7 billion program under investigation, after mounting evidence it has been grossly mismanaged, that local school communities are being provided with facilities they don’t want or need, and that far too much money is being wasted. It’s bad enough that Labor has destroyed the nation’s balance sheet, once the strongest in the advanced world, in little more than 18 months. But even worse is the growing likelihood that the nation will have little or nothing to show for it, other than $315 billion of Commonwealth Government bonds to repay. It didn’t have to be this way. Australia went into the global economic downturn in a far stronger position than most of the advanced economies in the world -- debt free, with a budget $20 billion in surplus, and unemployment and interest rates at historic lows. One of the great achievements of the Coalition government over 11 years was to record economic growth averaging at 3.6 per cent per annum. Over our time in office, unemployment fell from over 8 per cent to about 4 per cent Real wages grew by 21 per cent. This success story was in part a reflection of sound financial and economic management by government, and by the willingness to make hard decisions. But, more broadly, it reflected the hard work and enterprise of millions of Australians. Just as Mr Rudd cannot bring himself to acknowledge the efforts of predecessors in government, he seems unable to acknowledge the efforts of the Australian people. He tells us that he will build a “sustainable growth strategy” because “in the past, Australia relied almost exclusively on the rollercoaster of the boom and bust of the mining sector on the stock market”. Does Mr Rudd really believe Australians have been lazing around, doing nothing over all these years other than waiting to be spoon fed by our mining wealth? Does he not understand what truly makes this nation’s economy tick? Is he unaware of the extraordinary growth of Australia’s services sector, especially education and tourism as major export earners? Or the development of the Australian wine industry? Does he not know of the success overseas of Australian architectural and legal firms, of our farm sector, and of the strong international reputation of our doctors, nurses, teachers and engineers? And does he think that mining itself is just some fun park ride on the stock market, rather than an Australian success story characterised by high levels of investment, hard work, innovation and professionalism? Australia’s progress of the last decade or more was built on the energy, ingenuity and intelligence of millions of Australians, aided and encouraged by good government policies. It is because Australia’s progress was built on such solid foundations that there is optimism of a return to high growth in the next few years. The Howard years marked an era of AAA performance by the Australian economy The intrinsic strengths of that economic performance have allowed Australia to stand comparatively proud and tall during the global downturn. The Rudd Government would have done better to acknowledge those fundamental strengths, and to work in a measured and disciplined way to ensure nothing was done to undermine our capacity to emerge from this downturn as strong as ever. A smarter way forward for this nation involves less debt, less risk, more discipline, and more responsibility. In his essay, Mr Rudd offers no plan to promote small business enterprise. This is one of his blind spots. His 6000 words of prose reveals no genuine understanding of what actually drives growth and jobs in our economy. In contrast, the Coalition has been meeting small business people at Jobs for Australia forums around the nation. Drawing on what we have learned, we have proposed a number of measures --- tax loss carrybacks, fairer insolvency rules, better incentives for hiring apprentices, and a major assault on bureaucratically-imposed regulation and compliance costs. These are all practical, pragmatic measures to support jobs and businesses in challenging times, but have only a modest Budget impact. They aim to foster growth where it matters most – in the many hundreds of thousands of small to medium businesses enterprises that count for much of the nation’s economic horsepower. Instead, in his essay, Mr Rudd speaks airily about increasing productivity – yet without offering one practical measure to do so. Flexible labour markets have added immensely to productivity – yet Mr Rudd has made labour markets less flexible. Competition in financial services has also added to productivity – yet Mr Rudd’s ill considered unlimited bank deposit guarantee wiped out many non-bank lenders and contributed to a dramatic increase in borrowing costs for small business. In his essay, Mr Rudd boasts about his plans for the future. But he has not explained how he will finance the $43 billion he intends to dedicate to the National Broadband network, and no business plan on how to make it viable. On water security, our biggest environmental challenge, he is abandoning the vision of investing $10 billion in increasing water efficiency in rural Australia by diverting these funds to buy back more and more water entitlements without regard for the impact of those buybacks on food security or the communities that depend on them. As ever, Mr Rudd is more interested in the next day’s headlines. He is not interested in bedding down the hard policy choices. He spends most of his time merely playing for political advantage ---while staking hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money, and the nation’s future economic security, on his belief that government always knows best. This is proving a foolish and reckless gamble. Mr Rudd is relying on the savings of foreigners to bankroll what is essentially a strategy to protect Labor politically, not an economic strategy to safeguard the nation. This is why, for the Coalition, the economy and the rapidly deteriorating state of our public finances remains the main game – the only game – in Federal politics. For who among us takes seriously the Rudd Government’s claim that it can provide the leadership and discipline to bring our public finances back under control? As a ready reckoner of the scale of the challenges now facing the Commonwealth budget after 18 months of Labor in power, it is worth noting that for every word Mr Rudd published last Saturday in The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald, his government is planning to accumulate more than $50 million in Commonwealth debt. We know the Prime Minister is never short of a word. But it is this Prime Minister’s actions for which Australians will pay the heaviest price. Large deficits for the best part of a decade, and debt for as far as the eye can see, do not represent strong foundations for the nation’s future. So when Kevin Rudd speaks of the next 10 years as the “building decade”, we in the Opposition will continue to ask: what capacity has this Government provided for Australians to build a stronger, more secure, and more prosperous future? What do Australians have to show for this massive accumulation of Labor debt? If a Prime Minister cannot answer those questions effectively in 6000 words, we can only assume he doesn’t have the answers.malcolmSat, 01 Aug 2009 02:10:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:546