http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.auRSS feeds for Malcolm Turnbull MP60http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/696/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=696http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=696&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/696/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects:  ETS E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Now it is manifestly in the national interest that the emissions trading scheme legislation currently in the Senate is passed. It is improved – it is Mr Rudd’s legislation, but it is improved as a result of amendments agreed to between the Government and the Opposition. Those were amendments which were taken to the Government with the authority of the Coalition party room and negotiated over five weeks in good faith between Ian Macfarlane and Senator Wong. They protect thousands of jobs and vital interests, in particular the interests of farmers and provide great opportunities for reducing CO2 emissions through agricultural offsets. So the package as it stands is worthy of support and it is the Coalition’s policy that it be supported. Any questions? QUESTION: Did Mr Hockey tell you this morning that he intends to challenge you tomorrow? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You can ask Mr Hockey about his intentions. I can only tell you about my intention. I will standing tomorrow. I am the leader and I will be standing tomorrow. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull yesterday you were willing to say that you had Mr Hockey’s support. Why are you not willing to say that having met with him now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well why are you not willing to ask me the question first? It is a long time since I was a reporter at Channel Nine. I tell you what Tim, I will help you out. The question is: when Mr Hockey came to see you today did he say you had his support? That’s the question. Well you ask it. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull do you have the support of Mr Hockey….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No you have got to ask me: did Mr Hockey tell me I had his support? QUESTION: Okay did Mr Hockey tell you that he is supporting you in tomorrow’s leadership ballot? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah he is definitely, he told me he would support me tomorrow in the spill. If there is a spill moved – well there will be a spill moved – he told me that he’d vote against a spill. QUESTION: And if the spill is successful will he stand against you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is a matter for him. If the leadership is vacant, anyone can run. You have got to ask him. QUESTION: What did he tell you about his intentions though in that scenario? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you should ask Mr Hockey that because he will give you reliable first hand testimony. QUESTION: Would you consider that he’d be free of any obligation to you, to be loyal to you if there is a spill that declares it vacant, would you consider that would release any obligation he had had to you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I will leave all of those metaphysial questions you can address to Mr Hockey. QUESTION: We have tried to address those questions to Mr Hockey and he is just having a coffee and getting a bit of fresh air so if you could enlighten us it would make our jobs a lot easier. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have many heavy duties as Leader of the Opposition – holding the Government to account, improving the emissions trading scheme – but making your life easier is not one of the highest priorities so I think you should speak to Mr Hockey yourself. QUESTION: Are you surprised at the level of difficulty you’re having in getting the party, the Liberal Party to embrace your position on the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well let me just say this to you: the Liberal Party has embraced my position, which is the shadow cabinet’s position, on the emissions trading scheme. Let’s just go through the chronology. I just want to get this straight with you. On the 18th of October, the Coalition party room overwhelmingly endorsed the recommendation of the shadow cabinet that a set of amendments be taken to the Government, a set of amendments which was an offer that if the Government would meet them or meet them to our satisfaction, we would pass the legislation. Last week the Government came back with its response which did not meet all our requests obviously, but met them substantially. The Government made substantial concessions and many of you reported those concessions as being a great win for the Coalition. Indeed, the Government has been criticised for giving up too much. There was a Coalition party room meeting which approved the recommendation of the shadow cabinet that an agreement in effect between us and the Government be arrived at. There was some criticism of that, as you know, from some quarters and there was a spill motion moved against my leadership the next day which was defeated. So within 36 hours of that, there has been, because the people that were unsuccessful in overturning my leadership on Wednesday were unhappy with the fact that they did not have the numbers, they are now seeking to do it again. QUESTION: What do you think about the way Mr Hockey is conducting himself now? As a senior member of your front bench he would have us think that he is not doing anything to destabilise your position, that he is standing back and that if the party wants to draft him, then he will be willing to be drafted. What’s your view? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am not going to run a commentary on Mr Hockey. I will leave that to you, Mark. QUESTION: Do you believe you have the numbers to see off the spill motion yesterday and should that… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Tomorrow. QUESTION: Tomorrow... see off the spill motion tomorrow and, should that motion be successful, do you believe you have the numbers to maintain your leadership? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes and yes. QUESTION: Does Mr Hockey support your stand on the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, absolutely. Joe is on the record regularly, frequently, in multimedia forms supporting the position of the shadow cabinet. Look there is… QUESTION: Did he reaffirm that support today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I am not going to go into the conversation I had with Mr Hockey but, as far as I am aware, he hasn’t changed his mind. Look, it is manifestly in the national interest for Australia to take action to cut its CO2 emissions. This is not a novel proposition. It was the policy of the Howard Government. An emissions trading scheme was the policy of the Howard Government – John Howard’s government not Kevin Rudd’s government. The first legislation to set up an emissions trading scheme was introduced by me as John Howard’s environment minister. We took that policy to the last election. Now a well-designed emissions-trading scheme is a very effective means of reducing emissions, CO2 emissions. We had objections to elements in the Government’s scheme. We addressed them in our amendments, and they met, I have to say, most of our concerns. I think Ian Macfarlane did an outstanding job in his negotiations. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, one of your backbenchers said that you were worse than Mark Latham in your efforts yesterday on the Nine Network in your interview. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I’ll leave that to you to run the commentaries. QUESTION: [Inaudible] some of the language that you used in that interview? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What particular bits of language did you object to? QUESTION: Intimidating bullies who are wrecking the party… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I have to say to you, the Liberal Party has to be a party of today and tomorrow. If it is going to be a relevant, credible political organisation, it has to be a progressive political movement. It has to be one that has credible policies on vital matters of public importance, and there are few issues of more importance than the challenge of climate change. Now the fact is you cannot be a policy-free zone on climate change and be credible, and you all know that, the Australian people know that, and that’s the point I have made again and again. Now we have the opportunity to settle this issue of the emissions trading scheme in a manner which achieves significant gains for jobs and for the interest that we are particularly concerned about, agriculture especially. We have the opportunity to do that by passing the legislation that is currently in the Senate. I’ll just take two more questions then we’ll go. Matt Franklin first – what was your question, Matt? QUESTION: Isn’t it possible, your critics say, that you are very narrowly defining this – that you could oppose the CPRS, this system, and that doesn’t mean that you have a do-nothing policy on climate change? Isn’t that the case? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you could certainly have another policy, but what is that other policy? So that’s the question. Look, there are many ways you can reduce CO2 emissions. The general view around the world is that an emissions trading scheme, a cap-and-trade scheme, is the most efficient way of doing it. You can of course have a carbon tax.  You can raise income taxes and give enormous bonuses to people who have low emissions forms of energy generation.  You can have a renewable energy target – we have one of those.  You can have regulations.  There’s a whole host of measures you can have, but the fact is that moving from a high CO2 emission intensive economy to a lower emission intensive economy is costly – it has a cost – and the question is what is the least costly way of doing it? And the view that we took in government, the view that the Europeans have taken, the Americans are taking, the New Zealanders for that matter are taking, I mean right around the world, is that there are benefits from trade and so having that trading element is advantageous.  So that’s the reason for it and it’s set out, you know the arguments for an ETS versus a carbon tax etc are well canvassed in Peter Shergold’s report which was published when we were in government or Ross Garnaut’s report which was published under the current government. QUESTION: Who initiated this morning’s meeting, was it you or Mr Hockey? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Joe came around to see me but Joe and I have talked – we actually had a meeting on the weekend which amazingly didn’t find its way into the press because neither participant rang up a journalist beforehand.  So Joe and I are very good friends as I think you all know.  We talk a lot.  We have very similar views on most issues and we’re very good friends.  Our families are very close so he’s a very good friend of mine, he’s a good man. There’s one more question.  You sir, the man from Brisbane, The Courier Mail. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, the fight within the Liberal Party, is this just about the ETS or is it about something broader do you think? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, I think it is primarily a policy issue.  I know it’s easy to turn this into an issue about personalities, but it is primarily I think a policy issue.  The real difficulty that we face I think as a party is that the Australian people overwhelmingly – overwhelmingly – expect their political leaders to take action on climate change. Now everyone has different views about what’s the best form of action and no doubt everyone could design their own perfect emissions trading scheme, but you’ve got to get on with it.  Now this debate has been going on for years and years and years.  And we had a proposal for a scheme when we were in government, as John Howard has said.  Kevin Rudd’s scheme is very similar to John Howard’s scheme.  We had some criticisms of it, some objections to it if you like.  We addressed them in our amendments and some very major concessions were made. And that was approved by the shadow cabinet, by the party room.  There were some objections to that as you know.  There was another party room meeting with a spill.  That spill was defeated. The reality is the bill that is currently before the Senate has the support of both the Government and the Opposition. Now obviously if the Opposition party room or the Liberal party room were to change its mind on that the Government would be able to say that we’d broken our word – they would.  And they would say that and, I’m afraid to say, they’d be right. Thanks very much. [ends]malcolmMon, 30 Nov 2009 00:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:696http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/695/Doorstop-Interview-Rose-Bay.aspx#Comments1http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=695http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=695&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/695/Doorstop-Interview-Rose-Bay.aspx  Subjects: ETS.   E&OE   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well next week is an important week in the history of the Liberal Party. We have the opportunity to honour the agreement we entered into with the Government – and we should do so. It was an agreement to pass the emissions trading scheme which has been amended at our request with very substantial concessions made by the Government which will protect tens of thousands of jobs. They were negotiated over a period of five weeks by Ian Macfarlane and Senator Wong. They will make the scheme more environmentally effective. So it will do a better job at cutting emissions and also it will protect, as I said, tens of thousands of jobs.   I recognise there are many people, particularly in my party, who do not believe that climate change is real and naturally do not see the need to do much about it. I respect their views and that of other climate change sceptics. But the fact is we should approach this issue from a risk management basis. Conservative leaders, centre-right leaders from around the world do that. I am not aware of any major political party in the world that has a do nothing approach to climate change, that has a policy of climate change denial.   Margaret Thatcher herself, back in 1990, nearly 20 years ago, said we should take action to cut greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of “risk management”, and of course, as Rupert Murdoch so famously said, “we should give the planet the benefit of the doubt.”   Because what we are talking about here is not just an issue of today, this is an issue for today, tomorrow and the years to come. It is about protecting our planet, protecting the future of our children and their children. It is a vital challenge for all Australians and everybody sharing this planet with us. We should move on. We have got a good agreement with the Government. We should honour it.   QUESTION:   Will you be leading your party to that decision though?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I certainly will be.   QUESTION:   How do you know?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I was reindorsed as the leader of the Liberal Party on Wednesday. It wasn’t very long ago. Now I recognise there are some people who are unhappy with the decision of the majority of the party room and immediately started to undermine it. But I respect the wishes of the party room. The party room overwhelmingly endorsed us taking our proposed amendments to the Government back in October. They endorsed the agreement that we had reached with the Government – the shadow cabinet recommended it – and then when those who were unhappy with that decision sought to overturn my leadership, we went back to the party room and they were beaten again. And now of course, unhappy with the decision of the majority, they want to have another go.   But at some point this undermining has got to stop. We have to be a party with a credible policy on climate change. We have to be a party that people will say is a party of integrity and integrity means that when you reach an agreement you stick to it.   QUESTION:   The LNP today in Queensland has got a motion before it to change the Coalition’s position on climate change. Is that a mistake?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I don’t know what the motion is and the LNP is a branch or a division of the Liberal Party and in a way a division of the National Party as well. It is an amalgam, but they are free to pass what resolutions they wish. But the fact is policy is decided by the parliamentary party. That is the practice. We certainly take advice from and listen carefully to the views of the party organisation but the party policy is determined by the party room.   QUESTION:   Do you believe you are loosing support from key members in the party, have you had phone calls, have you been tapped on the shoulder this morning?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Certainly not.   QUESTION:   Joe Hockey today [inaudible] and refused to say that he supported you, does he support you?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   He certainly does. Joe Hockey has again and again and again endorsed the policy that I stand for and the shadow cabinet stands for. Joe Hockey is on the record more times than you could mention supporting this agreement, supporting the decision of shadow cabinet. He spoke strongly for it in the shadow cabinet. He and I have been absolutely at one on this. I cannot imagine Joe Hockey would allow himself to be a mouth piece for the climate change sceptics. That would be a denial of everything he has stood for, for many years.   QUESTION:   It is not as big as the Labor Party’s split, but I can’t recall a bigger split in the Liberal Party. Is this the lowest ebb?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I will leave you to run the commentary. We have obviously got to unite. It is quite clear what we should do. We should honour our agreement with the Government. The emissions trading scheme should be passed with the amendments we secured. Remember this scheme we criticised, we put up amendments, the Government agreed to much of what we’d asked for, they made concessions that many thought were much greater than they’d expected. It was initially written up as a huge win the Coalition and I think it was. We should pass that scheme, the Senate should pass that scheme and then, having got that issue behind us, we should then focus on unity and working together and holding the Labor Government to account.   QUESTION:   How far away does your dream of being Australia’s next Prime Minister feel right now?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’ll leave you to speculate on that sort of introspective. Are there anymore substantive questions?   QUESTION:   What’s your message to your detractors?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I have just given that message. My message to all members of the Liberal Party and indeed all Australians is that we have a duty to our country, to our planet, to our children to take effective action on climate change. I respect the views of those who believe we don’t need to. You know I respect Senator Minchin when he says that he does not believe the planet is warming, that he does not believe in human induced climate change. I respect his view, he is entitled to that view, but it is not responsible to proceed on the basis that there is nothing to be concerned about.   This is a risk management exercise. I mean I hope none of us imagine our house is going to be hit by lightening tonight but I am sure we have all got insurance. This is, as Margaret Thatcher said nearly 20 years ago, a question of taking out insurance, of risk management.   QUESTION:   The Government is pretty frustrated with how things have gone in the past week. Do you appreciate that considering you did cut a deal?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I can readily understand the Government’s frustration because there was an agreement reached and the negotiations were conducted in good faith. The Government made very substantial concessions and they did so on the basis that if agreement could be reached the legislation would be passed. That was the agreement.   Now what does it say about the character of the Liberal Party if having entered into an agreement we were to simply say, ‘oh we have changed our mind, we are going to renege on that deal’. How could you trust us? We have to be a party of integrity and that means when you make a deal, when you reach an agreement, you stick to it.   QUESTION:   Kevin Rudd is the big winner out of this week is he not?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Again, you can run the commentary. If the legislation is passed Australia will be a big winner, the world will be a big winner. It is important that we get on and take effective action. We have been talking about this for many years. Remember the first legislation to establish an emissions trading scheme was introduced in to the House of Representatives by me as John Howard’s environment minister. It was our policy. We were committed to an emissions trading scheme and while we have criticised aspects of the design of Mr Rudd’s scheme, and of course sought to remedy them with the amendments we presented, John Howard himself said that Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme is similar to the one he had and took to the 2007 election.   QUESTION:   What will you do if you are beaten on Tuesday, will you stay in Parliament?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I will win. I will be confirmed as leader. Let’s just remember this, we had a vote in the party room on Wednesday, that is not very long ago, just a few days ago – an attempt to overturn my leadership and it was unsuccessful. I was confirmed as the Leader of the Liberal Party and I am confident that my colleagues will maintain their support for me, but it is of course up to them. The leadership of the Liberal Party, as every leader has said, from Menzies to Howard to me, everybody has said the same thing – the leadership is in the gift of the party room, to grant and withdraw as they wish.   QUESTION:   On that point how tight are the numbers, do you have any sense of what they are like?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m not going to speculate on that. I am confident that the position of leader will not be changed on Tuesday morning.   QUESTION:   It seems pretty unrealistic at this stage though?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Any other questions? Okay, thank you.     [ends]  malcolmSat, 28 Nov 2009 06:54:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:695http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/694/Press-Conference-Canberra.aspx#Comments1http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=694http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=694&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/694/Press-Conference-Canberra.aspxE&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Now I think we all recognise that most Australians expect their political leaders and their political parties to take effective action on climate change. This is about the future of our planet and the future of our children and their children. It is one of the great challenges of our time. Now I know there are many people, including many people who are supporters of my own party, who have doubts about the science and grave reservations about it. I understand that and I respect it. But as Margaret Thatcher said, right back nearly 20 years ago in 1990, this is about risk management. Or as Rupert Murdoch said, we have to give the planet the benefit of the doubt. Matt Franklin smiles, from The Australian. He is very pleased when I quote his boss. But the fact is we have to take a prudent approach to this. Saying that we are not going to do anything about climate change is irresponsible, and no credible, responsible political party can have a ‘no action on climate change’ policy. It is as simple as that. Now the Liberal party room meeting here, Coalition party room in fact, meeting here and, of course, the shadow cabinet asked Ian Macfarlane and I to negotiate a package with the Government, to take amendments approved by the party room to improve the Government’s emissions trading scheme. And we did that with the full, the overwhelming authority in fact, of the Coalition party room. And it was a set of amendments that were designed to make the scheme more environmentally effective and to save tens of thousands of jobs. We achieved enormous concessions from the Government and indeed when they were announced many of you wrote it up as an enormous win for the Coalition. Many of you were surprised that the Government made such big concessions as they did, and those concessions, those improvements will save tens of thousands of jobs and, in addition, make the scheme more environmentally effective. Then the shadow cabinet endorsed that deal, the party room endorsed that deal. Now this has now become a question not simply of the environmental responsibility of the Liberal Party but of its integrity. We agreed with the Government on this deal. We must retain our credibility of taking action on climate change. We cannot be seen as a party of climate sceptics, of do nothings on climate change. That is absolutely fatal. And we also must be seen as men and women of our word. We entered into a bargain. There was offer and there was acceptance. Now I know, and I just repeat this, this is a difficult issue for many Liberals, many Australians. But I repeat most people who doubt the science also know that it makes sense to take out insurance, to manage the risk, to give the planet the benefit of the doubt. Now at the moment, as you know, some of my colleagues have found it necessary to resign from ministerial positions so they can cross the floor on the issue. That is their right and I respect it. But I believe we must maintain this course of action. It is the responsible thing to do. It is the honourable thing to do. Australians expect their political leaders to act responsibly, to take action on climate change, to protect and safeguard the future of our planet, the future of our children. That is the challenge for us now and I am committed to it. We must be a party committed to action on climate change. Anything else is irresponsible. Any questions? QUESTION: Will you commit yourself to the leadership of the party? Will you stand and do you intend to remain the leader of the Liberal Party? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am the leader of the Liberal Party and I was confirmed as such little more than 24 hours ago in this very room. QUESTION: Are you prepared to face a new ballot if these frontbenchers who have resigned and gone to the backbench chose to try to trigger one? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the fact is that people can move a spill… it is not often that people move a spill motion within a few days of one already being resolved but if people wish to move a spill motion it is a matter for them. QUESTION: Do you think you have the numbers over Tony Abbott, Mr Turnbull? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have no doubt that the party room will make the right decision. But let me just say this – it is not a question, I know you guys love getting into the personalities and the numbers and it is terrific fun. Can I tell you something? I came here to make Australia a better place. I came here because of my commitment to political action to make Australia a better place for my children and your children to grow up in. And one of those issues is action on climate change, just as the historic reforms we achieved in the Howard Government on water policy and water management were part of that agenda. I am committed to real reform. I am committed to real environmental action. So you guys write about the numbers. I am focused on the policy. I am focused on our children’s future. QUESTION: It would be unprecedented, would it not, for a leader to face such a series of front bench resignations? Do you seriously think that you can continue to lead the Liberal Party under those circumstances? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am very serious about everything I do. Yes, Dennis. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, at issue here is the numbers not of the leadership but of that Coalition room... Many of your colleagues dispute your call as a majority and say that they did not endorse it, that it was evenly split. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Dennis, I think I said this yesterday or the day before. There was a clear, albeit a slender majority in the joint party room in favour of the shadow cabinet’s recommendation – that included the Nationals. Now the Nationals on this issue don’t regard themselves as bound by the views of the joint party room as we know. There was a very substantial majority in the Liberal party room and I think, as many of my colleagues have said, and they’re right, it was very similar to the numbers in the ballot yesterday. QUESTION: What’s the position in the Senate Mr Turnbull, will you need a new Senate Leader and Deputy Leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ve met with Nick Minchin. As you know, he has conveyed to me his offer to resign and that of his deputy Eric Abetz and the Opposition whip Senator Parry. They have undertaken to continue to fulfil their positions in the Senate until the rising of the Senate – that is to say until we finish for the year. Nick has given me a solemn undertaking not to frustrate the passage of the legislation and he will use, he has assured me, his best endeavours to see that it goes through its final, to its final committee stage by I think 3.45pm on Friday. He has said that if there is a motion to defer the legislation he would vote for it and he would vote against the bill, assuming that wasn’t carried and it then came back to the House, passed in the House, went back to the Senate he would then vote against it. So he is, well I don’t think any of us had any doubt about this position. QUESTION: Does that then leave the numbers in the Senate to carry the bill? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look the position is that there are certainly more than enough Coalition senators who have supported the shadow cabinet’s recommendation for the bill to be carried but, you know, the party made a decision, it was if you like confirmed yesterday in the ballot here over the spill, but you know there are obviously some people who don’t agree with it. But can I just say to you, if where we are heading is for an election on the issue of should Australia take action on climate change or not, and if the Coalition is on the take no action side then it will be a catastrophe for us – and that is perfectly clear. We cannot be a responsible or credible political party unless we are committed to taking responsible action on climate change. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull is sounds from there as if you are not absolutely certain yourself tonight, standing here that the ETS in its amended form will pass? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No I am confident it will pass. There has been no change to the decision of the party. We had a meeting in the party room here earlier in the week which endorsed the shadow cabinet’s recommendation and as you know there was a spill motion moved to spill the leadership and that was soundly defeated. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull what do you think it says about your leadership authority and the powers [inaudible] that so many of your backbench but also now these senior frontbenchers have not accepted your argument and your right as leader to tell the party what you think it should do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there was a vote in the party room yesterday. It was 48–35, supporting my leadership. QUESTION: But you have to admit things have changed Mr Turnbull since then? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Nothing has changed as far as the leadership is concerned. My leadership was confirmed only yesterday but it is, as John Howard used to say, always something in the gift of the party room and on that… QUESTION: So you wouldn’t call this a crisis of your leadership? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’d love to award a prize for somebody that asks a question that isn’t inviting me to comment on myself. QUESTION: Have you accepted the resignations, how many have been offered to you and when and will you conduct a reshuffle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have to have a reshuffle anyway because a number of people are not recontesting the election and so forth. What I am going to do is assess all of that after the Parliament rises and I will let you know in due course and on that note have a great night. [ends]  malcolmThu, 26 Nov 2009 10:48:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:694http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/692/Interview-with-Kieran-Gilbert-Sky-News.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=692http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=692&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/692/Interview-with-Kieran-Gilbert-Sky-News.aspxSubjects: Rudd Government’s policy failures; ETS – Securing Jobs and Reducing Costs. E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. KIERAN GILBERT: Mr Turnbull, thanks for joining us. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Kieran, good to see you. KIERAN GILBERT: Yeah, you too. You’ve won the vote. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes. KIERAN GILBERT: Are you confident that this will be enough to move forward without any sort of challenge into the future? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look we have spent a lot of time talking about ourselves and the public aren’t interested in that. They want us to get on and hold the Government to account for its many failures in policy, border protection being probably the most graphic and immediate here at the moment. But the failure to manage our economy, the incredible wasteful spending on the so-called Building the Education Revolution, the failure to do proper analysis on infrastructure spending – right across the board, Kevin Rudd has failed to deliver. Where is the great plan to save our hospitals? This guy said he was going to fix the public hospitals by 30 June or take them over. He has done none of those things. So we have got to hold him to account for all of those issues. KIERAN GILBERT: But 35 is a large number for a leader to move ahead with. Were you humbled by that result and will you change your ways to a degree? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We recognise that we have had a very, very tough process and these things can get a bit scratchy and I am sure even somebody as quiet and unassuming as myself can improve. We have all got to work on our interpersonal skills. But the reality is we have had a wide range of views and I respect all of the views of my colleagues that have been raised and some of them diametrically different from mine. But as a political party we have got to come to a decision. We have got to move forward. We have achieved enormous progress for jobs in Australia with these amendments that the Government has accepted to their scheme, which will save tens of thousands of jobs. Now that is the Coalition’s work. All of those opportunities for Australian farmers that come about from exempting direct emissions from agriculture and including agricultural offsets – all of that is the Coalition’s work. So we have done great work there in improving the scheme, but it is Mr Rudd’s scheme and we will hold him to account for the management of it. But the bottom line is, Kieran, that we have got to focus on the Government, hold them to account and present our own alternative policies. KIERAN GILBERT: There is a sense, though, that this vote wasn’t just about the ETS, that it was about you and that there is animosity towards you among some of your colleagues. How will you deal with that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We had a very heated debate that had gone over some weeks and you guys reported on it, and it was a heated debate and strong feelings were held which is very fair enough. These are big issues. But the debate has been resolved now and what we have got to do is reunite, come together and move forward and hold the Government to account. And now on that note, I had better go to Question Time. KIERAN GILBERT: Thanks for joining us. Thanks Mr Turnbull. All the best. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay. See you. [ends]malcolmWed, 25 Nov 2009 04:26:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:692http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/690/Interview-with-Melissa-Doyle-and-David-Koch-Channel-Seven-Sunrise-Program.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=690http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=690&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/690/Interview-with-Melissa-Doyle-and-David-Koch-Channel-Seven-Sunrise-Program.aspxSubjects: ETS: Securing Jobs and Reducing Costs. E&OE MELISSA DOYLE: Mr Turnbull joins us now.  Good morning to you.  Thanks for your time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning, Mel, good morning, Kochie. MELISSA DOYLE: Now, why wait until Thursday?  You’ve got a shadow cabinet meeting at eight o’clock this morning, why not bring in the whole party room and call a leadership spill then? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we had, as you just said, we had about eight hours of meetings yesterday and there were many occasions, in fact I invited those who disagreed with my leadership to move to a spill if they wanted, as indeed did others.  So the reality is there was no move to do so.  There were plenty of opportunities yesterday and it wasn't taken up. Now the fact of the matter is I am the leader. I have made the call. There is a majority of the Coalition in favour of accepting the deal the Government has offered to us, which is the result of our offer to them, our amendments to them, and they will save tens of thousands of jobs and they will make the emissions trading scheme both more responsible economically and better and more effective environmentally. Look, Mel, Kochie, I say this to you and all your viewers; we have to be a credible party on climate change. We have to be credible. You know I believe passionately that Australia should take action responsibly on climate change and if the public see us as being credible and responsible on climate change then we can win their confidence. If we don't, we won't. DAVID KOCH: Absolutely, but they see a party divided at the moment.  You just look at the front pages all around the country this morning.  The West Australian calls it a ‘Liberal revolt’.  The Australian says it’s ‘your last stand’.  Commentator Michelle Grattan writing in the Melbourne Age says it’s time for Joe Hockey to take over.  Now both Joe and Tony Abbott have both ruled out a challenge.  Kevin Andrews is still an unknown.  So you’ve got a party split. You get criticised for being too weak.  Now you are being criticised for being too strong. How can you continue to lead a party that is so divided? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you’ve got to really ask yourself, how can a party be credible in the 21st century if it doesn’t have a policy on climate change? How can we be credible if we are not going to say to the Australian people - we are committed to taking effective action on climate change? We did that when we were in government. Sure, we didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol, that was a mistake, but we had an emissions trading scheme. We started legislating for it. We had a whole range of other measures. Now the fact is that what we’ve got now is an emissions trading scheme courtesy of Kevin Rudd which John Howard himself said was very similar to the one he proposed when he was in government. We had a number of objections to it in terms of its design. We addressed that with amendments that had been proved by the party room. We had good faith negotiations which went on for five weeks. We got most of what we asked for.  I think everyone acknowledges that.  And closing that deal enables us to resolve that issue. But, you see, if we want to keep on arguing about whether climate change is happening or whether you need to do anything about it, the reality is – and you guys know this better than anyone - the Australian people want action on climate change. I am committed to the Liberal Party being credible and relevant on climate change. MELISSA DOYLE: But then you’ve also got a lot of confusion in the community between the public voters who are split.  Many believe you, many are saying they’re quite sceptical. Now we are seeing your party, the same sort of open defiance – they’re either for or completely against and calling you mad, etc, etc.  So how do you convince your party to accept the deal?  How do you convince voters that this is the way to go when we’re seeing so much open defiance, I guess, from you guys? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, we’ve got to come to a landing now.  There are some people who say we should just defer it again, not deal with it now.  The public will see through that as just a delaying tactic.  The reality is this issue has been actively debated for years, for years and years; from actually 2006 when the Shergold report reported.  So we’ve had plenty of time to debate this.  It’s about time we dealt with it. Now, as far as the public is concerned, I mean I think you guys have done some polls yourself but there is an overwhelming majority of the public want to see Australia take action on climate change.  There will always be debates about how you do it but at some point you’ve got to make a decision.  You can’t keep on deferring and deferring particularly when what you’re really doing is just avoiding making a decision. DAVID KOCH: Why do it now when we’ve got…why not delay until February which was an option because Copenhagen is next month?  We’re going to see what the world is going to do about it.  The United States hasn’t made a decision yet, China hasn’t made a decision.  Why do we have to be amongst the leaders?  We might get it wrong. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Kochie you’ve got to remember that we crossed that bridge when we were in government.  We decided that we would have an emissions trading scheme to put a price on carbon to enable renewable energy and all those other measures to come into play. You do need a price on carbon.  And we decided we’d do that in advance of and in order to promote a global agreement but we’d keep the price low and slow and then crank it up as other countries came on board. Now we’re not the first country to move.  The Europeans have been doing this for years.  The Americans are well advanced.  They’ve got a bill that’s through the House of Representatives.  The President is completely committed to it.  The Chinese are actually taking considerable action to reduce their emissions and improve their emissions efficiency.   So the idea that we’re out there miles ahead of the pack is simply not true. Now the fact is that nothing is going to emerge out of Copenhagen that is going to change anybody’s mind.  There’s not going to be an agreement there. All the countries have basically said what they’re going to do.  I think it will be, Copenhagen will be a modest step forward.  And the debate that we have had in our party room between people who believe in action on climate change and people who don’t will be exactly the same in February as it is today.  This is a good time to move on, get it resolved and then move on to other issues. MELISSA DOYLE: This whole thing though, it’s almost as though the leadership and your party has taken over a little bit of the argument about climate change at the moment and as Kochie was saying the headlines and all the papers everywhere.  Andrew Robb, his change in view clearly floored you from looking at your reaction.  I understand that one of the reasons he spoke out against you yesterday was because you showed exclusive Frontier Economics research to the Government before your own party room.  Did you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, again, that’s not right.  I mean Frontier did a report for us which we shared with the whole world.  As an effort to get additional…as an effort to persuade the Government to take this particular approach I commissioned Frontier to do some more modelling really as an effort to persuade the Government. Now we weren’t successful in that respect but the whole purpose of Frontier was to have a smoother transition of electricity prices so they didn’t jump up in one big hit, and so smooth that trajectory.  And the Government came back and dealt with it in a different way with a subsidy for small and medium businesses that would effectively smooth that transition. But I just say this apropos Andrew.  Andrew has been very ill so he stepped back, as you know, but he was very closely kept aware of all of the negotiations.  His staff in particular were intimately involved and were at most of the meetings, so he knew exactly where the negotiations were heading and really was, even if at one step removed because we didn’t want to hassle him given his condition, he was fully aware of where we were heading.  So, yes, his remarks yesterday did come as a surprise to Ian Macfarlane and I. DAVID KOCH: I must admit, I’m a bit bored with all the politics of this emissions trading scheme.  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s right, you know something Kochie, I think most Australians are.  The question is, are we going to take climate change seriously or not? DAVID KOCH: Okay, that’s question number one.  Question number two – you’re agreeing because you got big changes through that gave concessions to the big polluters to the detriment of all of us ordinary individuals.  We have research out today that says everybody sitting at home having breakfast, what this scheme means is that you will pay $1,100 more a year out of your household budget for this.  Now, have you sold the general public out in favour of the big polluters? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Kochie, again, there’s a bit of a fallacy there because the big ‘polluters’ are the same power stations that provide the electricity that’s running the television sets that we’re all watching, or if you’re a green activist, the electricity that’s coming into the computer that you type your protest letter on is coming from a big power station. What we’ve got to do – it’s not a question of looking after big polluters, it’s a question of making sure that we make the transition from a very emissions intensive economy today… DAVID KOCH: We wanted to change from coal to windmills and solar panels… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes but you’ve got to make that transition, Kochie, in a way that doesn’t destroy needlessly, or at all, tens of thousands of jobs.  So it’s also a question of protecting our emissions intensive trade exposed industries.  Now you talk about the rest of the world.  One of the concessions we won from the Government was that the protection for the emissions intensive trade exposed industries – these are the guys, you know, like aluminium, that are making a product that is sold in the global markets, it’s got a global price, it’s very energy intensive, hence it’s emissions intensive – and they can’t pass on the price increases because they’re selling a global commodity.  So what we’ve secured is a commitment from the Government that their protection, in the case of aluminium, would come down by 2020 I think about 91 per cent, still a very high level but then would not go down any further until 70 per cent of their competitors around the world have a comparable carbon price. DAVID KOCH: Okay but we’re spending more on protecting big polluters and less on cushioning low income households, pensioners, normal Australian families aren’t we? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is a lot of money and this is one of the criticisms of the Frontier model by the way, that there was not provision for household assistance.  So that is one of the issues that we had with that but as far as the Government’s scheme, there is a, I think, an adequate and fair and sustainable level of assistance for households.  It is somewhat less than had originally been proposed by the Government because the carbon price is assumed to be lower. But the fact of the matter is Kochie, again, you’ve got to remember we talk about assistance to households.  Many of those households have mums and dads who are working in emissions intensive trade exposed industries.  So if you have a scheme that puts the mums and the dads out of work it’s not much good either. DAVID KOCH: Yeah, fair point. MELISSA DOYLE: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time this morning.  We know you’ve got a big day ahead. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, great to be with you. MELISSA DOYLE: You’ve got a meeting in half an hour, we’ll let you go. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay, thanks a lot. [ends]malcolmTue, 24 Nov 2009 23:27:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:690http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/688/Press-Conference-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=688http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=688&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/688/Press-Conference-Canberra.aspxSubjects:  ETS – Saving Jobs and Reducing Costs. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Opposition has today saved tens of thousands of Australian jobs, protected vital industries and secured energy supplies by forcing significant, substantial improvements to the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme. Now the shadow cabinet and the party room have agreed to a package of changes to the CPRS that was negotiated by Macca here after five arduous weeks of negotiations in good faith, and they will provide substantial support to key Australian export industries, including coal mining, food processing and natural gas. It will protect farmers permanently by excluding direct emissions from agriculture from the scheme, by legislation – so that can only be changed by a future Parliament – while providing them with very very substantial financial and land management opportunities – biosequestration, green carbon opportunities – by including agricultural offsets from 2010. And this is good for the environment – as many of you now it’s somewhat of a passion of mine. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for farmers, and it offers us one of the best – many of the Wentworth Group would say the largest – near-term opportunity for CO2 abatement. We have ensured the security of energy supply, which was put at risk by the very poorly designed Rudd Government scheme, by doubling the assistance to the electricity generators, and of course providing a mechanism, a safety net if you like, to ensure that energy supply will be maintained. We’ve secured $1.1 billion in direct support to small and medium businesses in the mining and manufacturing areas, predominantly, to assist in their transition to the CPRS.  And there will be an additional $1 billion made available to businesses in other, less trade exposed, sectors. And of course we have included, or the Government’s agreed at our request, to include voluntary measures, to ensure that the environment benefits from households taking early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What this demonstrates is our commitment, our genuine and sincere commitment to action on climate change. We are committed to an emissions trading scheme, as we were in government, that will be environmentally effective and economically responsible, and these amendments will enable us to do both.  Any questions? QUESTION: Mr Turnbull how can you say the party room is committed to it when the final vote as I hear it was forty-seven, forty-six. That’s a finely balanced number. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the party room is committed. I’m the leader. I’ve made the call. QUESTION: Are you a dead man walking Mr Turnbull? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You’ve got to do better than that.  Yes, Matt? QUESTION: How about this then… Wilson Tuckey says he’s writing a letter tonight to trigger a spill. Is this outcome going to be achieved at the loss of your job? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look I’m not interested in Wilson Tuckey either in his correspondence or in whatever he’s been saying to you. He’s made a contribution here; we sat with him all day. He made a contribution all day, and we listened to it, we’ve heard it many times. The only jobs we’re focused on, Julie, Ian and I, are the jobs of the tens of thousands of Australians that have been protected as a result of these changes.   QUESTION: Mr Turnbull do you accept that a majority of people today spoke against supporting the ETS? That there were more people speaking against than in favour? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No look, Steve, I’m not going to go into the numbers with you, and you’ll get no doubt various tallies, but there is no question…. QUESTION: What’s your tally? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m not going to go into that. I’m the leader. I’ve made the call. There is no question that a majority of the party and indeed of the joint party room support the recommendation, the very strong recommendation of the Shadow Cabinet to accept the offer that came back to us from the Government in response to the negotiations that Ian had conducted.    QUESTION: Will your Senate leader now pursue the party room’s will as discerned by you the leader in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have no doubt that he will. QUESTION: Some of your colleagues still don’t accept that it was a majority and are still very unhappy. What do you say to those people who are still agitating and disputing what you’ve just said? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m the leader, and  if people are unhappy with the leader they can do whatever, take whatever steps that they deem appropriate. But I am the leader and I have made the call. Let me just be quite clear about this: we entered into these negotiations with the Government with the overwhelming endorsement of the party room. In those negotiations we achieved substantially our objectives – 75 per cent, 80 per cent, you guys all wrote about it, it was a very substantial concession from the Government. It was an excellent job by Mr Macfarlane here and we are very pleased with him, aren’t we Jules? He did a great job. But the fact is that having got that offer in good faith, having made that approach to them in good faith, having got that response, we’ve accepted it. QUESTION: [inaudible] that Mr Macfarlane’s predecessor Andrew Robb was going to do what he did today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not going to comment on that. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, the emissions trading scheme now becomes your policy as well, that’s what you’re saying. Do you undertake not to make any changes to it and what is your climate change policy… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Hang on, again, you are smarter than that. QUESTION: No I’m not. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay, alright. I hope you got him. Alright, you’re not as smart as I thought. Let me answer your question. The emissions trading scheme will no doubt be amended in the light of experience and developments by this government and indeed by us when we return to government but you have got to remember we went to the last election when an emissions trading scheme and, as John Howard himself said, Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme is similar to ours. Now it is similar but it is not the same. It is different, and there are a number of flaws in it, some very substantial flaws in it, that we identified publicly. The treatment of agriculture and offsets being one I have gone on at great length – I don’t think any of you have got to the end of some of my speeches on that topic. It is pretty detailed stuff. But the point is we have pointed out substantial criticisms. We took a set of amendments, with the blessing of the party room, and we achieved substantial concessions. In some areas, such as agriculture, they gave us everything we asked for. In other areas, they gave us nearly everything we asked for. We would have liked to have done better but we did pretty well as I think you all know. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, how did you get to the calculation that you have a majority in the party room? Did you count the votes of the Shadow Cabinet separately and did people dispute that that’s how it should have been tottered up? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, Lenore… QUESTION: But isn’t that what they’re arguing about? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Lenore, you obviously spend a lot of time talking to my colleagues and that is terrific. I envy you. But the fact of the matter is I am the leader, there is a majority, clearly a majority in favour of the position that the Shadow Cabinet recommended and I have made the call and we will proceed with it. QUESTION: I am asking how you counted the majority. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Shadow Cabinet are members of the party so… QUESTION: Warren Truss said he doesn’t agree. He’s in Shadow Cabinet. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Nationals have always said they are not going to vote for it. There is no surprise about that. QUESTION: So you excluded the Nationals when you decided, when you made the call as leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Dennis, this is the last thing I will say about the numbers. The Nationals have always said they will vote against it, right. They have been saying that for a long time. They were part of the joint party room meeting.  The collective, the numbers, Nationals and Liberals, altogether there is a majority in favour of the shadow cabinet’s position.  That is the fact and that is my call.  And that includes the Nationals even though I don’t think they obviously, as you know, don’t consider themselves bound by that decision and always made it clear they wouldn’t be. QUESTION: If that’s a fact that there’s a majority clearly in favour, why not simply put it to a vote. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we don’t do that Misha.  The only votes in the party room are leadership ballots and you don’t put policy matters to the vote.   I’ll take two more.  You are just so excited there.  Maybe it’s just sitting next to Malcolm Farr that gets you so excited.   QUESTION: Are you confident that there will be a vote on the ETS this week and that it will be in favour [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, yes.  The Senate will have to sit longer hours obviously to facilitate that but clearly the Government made the offer to us on the basis that it would be passed this year and that’s certainly what we expect the Senate to do. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you believe you’re capable of healing the divisions within your party any time before that Senate vote? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll just have to do the best we can. QUESTION: Miss Bishop, do you support Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership come what may? JULIE BISHOP: There was a discussion in the shadow cabinet this morning and the shadow cabinet supported the leader’s call on this.  There was a party room and the party room supported the leader’s call on it. And I support the leader. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you made the call on your authority as leader, do you think that the senators, the Liberal senators and National senators will now recognise your authority and vote for it in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Dennis they certainly should. QUESTION: Are you confident that the Coalition will stay together?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, yes, absolutely.  Any more questions? QUESTION: When are your drinks going to be held? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Don’t tell me in my absence you didn’t drink?  Honestly, as a former journalist I’m appalled. QUESTION: …you can’t guarantee that when this goes to the Senate that your senators will vote for the Government’s…this deal that you’ve come up with. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, you know as well as I do, some of the senators have said that regardless of what the party room decided they would cross the floor, but I am confident that enough senators will comply with the wishes of the shadow cabinet in the party room that the legislation will be passed. QUESTION: If you had your time over again in handling these negotiations and the internal sales campaign would you do anything differently? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, not all.  Let me be quite clear about this.  Every single one of you, and I think most Australians know, that I am serious about taking effective action on climate change.  An overwhelming majority of Australians expect their governments to do that.   Now I did not have an argument with the Government about the existence of climate change or whether they should take action.  My issue was the design of their emissions trading scheme.  And of course the first legislation to establish an emissions trading scheme had been moved in the Howard Government period while I was the environment minister.  So we’re very familiar with it, the three of us are – Macca perhaps now more than any of us, with all of this.  Ian was the energy minister in those days.  So we’re all involved in this, right.   But the question is getting the design right and there were some major flaws there.  We addressed them with some very responsible, well thought out amendments.  The Government responded.  We didn’t get everything we asked for naturally, one rarely does, but they made some very, very substantial concessions, as I think many of you have already written, which will save tens of thousands of jobs and, in particular, because of the agricultural offsets, enable us to achieve better environmental outcomes.  So it’s good for jobs, it’s good for the environment.   But it’s Labor’s scheme.  It is Labor’s scheme.  If Julie and Ian and I were in government the scheme would be somewhat differently designed but we’re working with the design they have, we’ve made some detailed amendments, they have responded in a way that we have resolved to accept those amendments.  I think that is a good outcome, a good outcome for jobs in particular.  I mean the changes on jobs that Ian secured, changes for emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries will literally save tens of thousands of jobs.  I think you all know that. QUESTION: Why then are there so many recalcitrants in your party room and is that not more a statement about your leadership? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’ll leave you to comment on that, Steve.   Just one more, Hugh. QUESTION: Assuming all this goes through, how will you feel when Kevin Rudd flies off to Copenhagen to swan around as a global climate change hero and when all the kudos that goes with that, when he’s essentially done it only thanks to the support you’ve been able to deliver, how [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I tell you Hugh, this may come as shock to you, but I hope Copenhagen is a great outcome and I hope that we get – you’re obviously going to get a global agreement there, but that’s obvious – but I hope we take some steps forward to a global agreement. And just remember the policy of the previous government, John Howard’s policy, was to have an emissions trading scheme designed to be established in advance of and in order to promote a global agreement. Ultimately we all know, you know we can all do the math right, Australia is one and a half per cent of global emissions. It doesn’t matter how much we do, if the rest of the world does nothing it’s not going to achieve anything. Having said that, if we sit back and say we’re going to do absolutely nothing until everybody else acts and everyone else does that, then nothing happens. So we took the view in government that we should provide leadership, move forward, not get too far ahead of the pack, and that was the right decision then and you know we believe that that would be the right decision with this government. Now the fact is Kevin Rudd will no doubt want a grandstand, he likes that, he will… I mean Ian and I represented Australia at these international climate conferences and it is amazing, I don’t think Kevin Rudd’s estimation of his influence is quite up to the reality. But anyway the most important thing is to get a good outcome. I mean the reality is a global agreement is vital, Copenhagen hopefully will be a positive step along the road, but it is not going to be the last word on the subject. [ends]  malcolmTue, 24 Nov 2009 11:46:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:688http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/686/Joint-Doorstop-with-Paul-Fletcher-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=686http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=686&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/686/Joint-Doorstop-with-Paul-Fletcher-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Bradfield by-election; emissions trading. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: We've just seen today what a great candidate the Bradfield Liberals have selected in Paul Fletcher. That was a  really great speech, high impact and had the room applauding and laughing and very committed. This is a great campaign and it's got two weeks to go and we're right behind Paul to ensure that he is the next member for Bradfield. QUESTION: Can you juxtapose this event for us against the backdrop of you under ETS pressure negotiations?  You get to come to a launch with the Liberal Party balloons and some of the Liberal royal family, as you say.  Is it a welcome relief? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I'm relaxed and comfortable and full of confidence and really so pleased that the Bradfield Liberal Party selected Paul. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, what do you expect the Government to offer tomorrow regarding the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I know this has disappointed you but I'm going to stick to my discipline of not providing a running commentary on the negotiations. They have been proceeding in good faith, they have been proceeding constructively but we will not know what the outcome is until we get to the end of them. And then when we do, for our part, and the Government finalises the best position it's able to offer us in response to our demands, then we will form a view on how we vote. QUESTION: For your colleagues without that sort of discipline, would you confirm reports that you might consider frontbench sackings in the wake of this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am just going to be continually...I will just continue to disappoint you in that regard I'm afraid. QUESTION: Are you disappointed with Nick Minchin and do you find his comments this week destructive to the party? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I just refer to my previous answer which I know you find disappointing but persistence is a virtue in journalists. When I was a political journalist I was just as persistent as you. But I will be tenacious in resisting the charm of your questions and the enticement to provide a commentary. I'm not going to do it. QUESTION: What have you said to those that have given until tomorrow to… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Another one, another one. Look, sorry, I'm not providing a running commentary. We're having good faith negotiations and when they are concluded we'll know where we are and we will then make a decision. Okay, I'll give you something, there you go - you ready? We are focused on the Liberal Party’s part, on the Coalition's party, we are focused on jobs, on preserving thousands of jobs. Our amendments seek to preserve tens of thousands of Australian jobs and to enable an emissions trading scheme to be much more effective, in other words to enable us to cut our emissions much more effectively and at much lower cost. So that is our goal. Now, whether we're able to achieve that will depend on the Government's reaction and we won't know finally what that is until the negotiations are concluded. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull and Mr Fletcher, you’re sounding confident about the upcoming by-election. We’ve got a few things, table cloth ballot paper, 22 candidates – Paul’s sixteenth on the ballot paper.  How concerned are you about these factors working against the Liberal Party? PAUL FLETCHER: Well we're certainly running a strong and effective campaign here in Bradfield. We've been campaigning for a long time, and the Liberal Party and as the Liberal Party’s candidate, we're offering a full-service party. We're not a single-issue party. We're addressing the concerns of the people of Bradfield on the full range of issues that concern them - local planning issues, local transport issues, health issues, economic management, the Labor Party's attack on private health insurance, the Labor Party's attack on the capacity of people in Bradfield and other areas to build up their superannuation balances. And this by-election will be won by the candidate who demonstrates that he or she is listening to the concerns of the people of Bradfield and will form part of a parliamentary party and, in due course, government which has the capacity to respond to the issues of the people of Bradfield across the full range of issues. And so therefore while we do have a large number of candidates, I'm confident that's the right approach to be taking. QUESTION: Aren't you worried that the Liberal Party's internal divisions will set you back in this by-election? PAUL FLETCHER: I am focused on delivering outcomes for the people of Bradfield. When I talk to people, when I go door-knocking, on the railway station platforms, in the shopping centres, people talk to me about issues of concern to them. They don't talk about arcane political issues. They talk about the issues of concern, as they bring up a family, as they seek to build up their superannuation balances for retirement, as they seek to have fulfilling lives. And so those are the issues that in the Liberal Party we are focused on addressing and that is what our campaign in Bradfield is about. QUESTION: What's the internal polling saying about performance in Bradfield, much of a swing for, against? PAUL FLETCHER: What we're focused on is delivering outcomes for the people of Bradfield, not getting into arcane issues of polling. And as you would know, Andrew, we would never ever comment on those issues. QUESTION: Well what's your view on the ETS? PAUL FLETCHER: I have consistently said that I'm a strong supporter of Malcolm Turnbull and the parliamentary party in engaging constructively on the ETS but, as Malcolm has said, it's a matter for the party room and the response post a process of negotiation. A process of negotiation is just that, and you have to wait and see what the outcome of the negotiation is. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you’ve talked about Mr Fletcher’s expertise in the communications area.  Is the position of Opposition communications spokesman going to be vacant soon? MALCOLM TURNBULL: All of the positions are filled at the moment by very able people. And Paul will bring a lot of talent to the Parliament and we can always do with new talent, fresh talent, and he will be a great addition. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, are your dissenters spreading rumours of a reshuffle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You guys are great. Look, it's your job, you are paid handsomely by your media companies to write all this speculation so I encourage you to write as much as you like but I'm not going to add to it. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you think that your leadership can survive these negotiations within your party? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I'm sure that my good humour and patience will survive you asking the same question in different forms, and me giving you the same answer. QUESTION: Do you think Tony Abbott has leadership ambitions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I'm sorry, running a commentary on this stuff is for you. It's not for me. My job is to focus on protecting tens of thousands of Australian jobs and ensuring that we have an emissions trading scheme which is environmentally effective. That's my commitment. That's why we're engaged in these amendments and, as Paul said and as I have said, we won't know what the outcome of their negotiations is until the negotiations are concluded. And it's getting very close to conclusion and then when they are concluded then we will respond. QUESTION: Malcolm, we all agree that debate’s healthy but surely the longer it drags on, the more damaging it is. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, again, this is all stuff for you guys to write. This is your job. You're the commentator, I'm the participant.  So I don’t write… QUESTION: ...[inaudible]… MALCOLM TURNBULL: You can write whatever reviews you like about us and speculation is up to you but I'm focused on thousands of jobs and ensuring that we have an emissions trading scheme, in so far as I can - we're not in government - but in so far as we can, ensuring that we have a scheme that is environmentally effective and economically responsible. That’s what I'm seeking to do. That's what Ian Macfarlane and I are seeking to do in our negotiations. We will not know what the outcome of those negotiations is until they are concluded. When they are we will then form a view as to how we respond. Okay, thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmSat, 21 Nov 2009 01:36:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:686http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/685/Opening-of-Liberal-House-Queanbeyan-NSW.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=685http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=685&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/685/Opening-of-Liberal-House-Queanbeyan-NSW.aspxE&OE Stephen Beer, President of the FEC, Senator Bill Heffernan, the patron senator, my parliamentary colleagues – there’s Alby and Gary Humphries and Connie Fierravanti-Wells. Any other of our parliamentary team here? Bronwyn, there you are. Good to see you. And Chris Back, Senator Chris Back. There’s a lot of support. Senator Trood, Russell Trood, that’s good. Any others of our team? Good, right, we’ve got them all. Now thank you all for being here and above all thank you very much to the people of Eden-Monaro, of Queanbeyan, for being here supporting Bill and all of us in opening this office. There was a time when Eden-Monaro was represented by a man who had a deep commitment to this community and worked tirelessly for the people of this community, and he is here today. His name is Gary Nairn. Eden-Monaro does not have a representative like that any more, but that will change. We will endorse in due course a candidate that will carry Gary’s values forward of commitment above all to the local community, because all politics is local and the best representatives, whether they are arguing cases at the national level or dealing with local constituency matters, have their feet firmly planted in the ground of their local community, understanding the needs of every community, every suburb, every family that they represent. And that is the calibre of the leadership that we will once again bring to Eden-Monaro at the next election. Now we need your support to do that. You are here in great numbers and we thank you for that. It is hot, as Stephen said, so I won’t go on any longer other than to say this: Australia desperately needs a change of government, just as Eden-Monaro needs a change of representation. We have got a Prime Minister whose policies are failing one after the other. The catastrophic failure on border protection policy is as devastating to our national security as his persistent refusal to tell the truth about it is incredible. Yesterday in the Parliament we moved a censure motion censuring him for his failure and I particularly sought to censure him for his refusal to admit the truth, which is that a special deal was offered to the people on the Oceanic Viking. He had objected to some criticism of him in The Australian newspaper a few days before on the basis that it was a right wing newspaper, so he had great pleasure to read exactly the same criticism from the ABC and The Age itself, which not many people would regard as a right wing newspaper. So the fact is the Prime Minister on this issue is believed by nobody, and that is because his policy has comprehensively failed. And of course it’s not just on border protection. What about hospitals? He was going to fix them, remember that? He was going to fix them and if he hadn’t fixed them by the 30th June, he would take them over. Well he has done neither. This guy is all spin. We know it, the Australian people are beginning to recognise this is a government of spin not of substance. It deserves better. With your support we will deliver a better government to Australia after the next election, which will include in that team a Liberal Member for Eden-Monaro. Thank you very much for your support today.     [ends]                         malcolmFri, 20 Nov 2009 05:22:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:685http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/683/Censure-Motion-House-of-Representatives-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=683http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=683&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/683/Censure-Motion-House-of-Representatives-Canberra.aspxE&OE Mr Speaker, I move that so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would enable the Leader of the Opposition to move the following motion forthwith: That this House censures the Prime Minister for losing control of Australia’s borders with badly thought through policy changes that have dramatically increased the number of unauthorised boat arrivals and handed control of our immigration policy to the people smugglers. In particular, for failing to be upfront and honest with this House and the Australian people about the nature of the special deal done for the asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking, for the Prime Minister’s inept handling of the diplomatic relationship with Indonesia, and for trying to abrogate his responsibility to take charge of this latest border protection crisis by hiding behind a wall of spin, his own staff and the bureaucracy when, as he said himself, he is the Prime Minister and the buck stops with him. Mr Speaker, only a moment ago the Prime Minister said that it was so many days since a question had been asked on jobs and so many days since a question had been asked on the economy. I don’t know whether that calculation is correct but the one thing we do know is that it is more than two years since a Prime Minister in this House answered a question straightforwardly on any topic. We have seen the most extraordinary spectacle of a prime minister standing up, looking the Australian people in the eye and unblinkingly saying black is white. Here is a situation where obviously a special deal was done in order to entice the asylum seekers off the Oceanic Viking. It was a special deal. It has no counterpart. It went to the Border Protection Committee of the Cabinet. It went there because it was such a special deal. Now the Prime Minister says, of course, that he knows nothing about that and he says his staff didn’t advise him about this deal either beforehand, before the Committee meeting, or subsequently, and one just has to note how incredible this sounds to us all given the comments by Cameron Stewart recently which I think sum up most people’s view of the Prime Minister, certainly most of his colleagues’ view which is “that he craves control, which means too often he tries to do everything. He likes to delegate and he is loath to rely on the work of others..” Well apparently on this minor matter of the Oceanic Viking, he became a laid back, relaxed kind of guy, happy to delegate everything to his staff. If you believe that, you will believe anything. But there it is. But the one thing that is beyond question is that the Prime Minister’s claim that there was no special deal has been comprehensively, universally disbelieved. I don’t believe there has ever been a statement by a Prime Minister in this House in respect of which nobody, nobody is prepared to give agreement or endorsement. We just work through some of the commentary in the media. We had Dennis Shanahan in The Australian. He said the Sri Lankans “will disembark because they have wrung a special deal from the Rudd Government”. Greg Sheridan, the same newspaper – “for some bizarre reason Rudd keeps saying the people on the Oceanic Viking have not got a special deal. This simply defies the ordinary meaning of language and common sense.” Paul Kelly – “he seems to think almost any line can be spun and will be believed, even when it is nonsense.” But I am afraid to say the disbelief extends past that centre-right newspaper which the Prime Minister is so unhappy with at the moment. Tony Wright in The Age – he says “there was no special deal for the Sri Lankans, Rudd insisted. Which is, presumably, why the last of them were content to leave the ship yesterday after refusing to budge for more than a month.” Annabel Crabb in The Sydney Morning Herald – not many people would say that was a right wing newspaper – she wrote on the 18th, “against this crowded palate of lunacy, it’s almost possible to overlook lesser offences against human intelligence such as the Prime Minister’s insistence that the Sri Lankans passengers disembarking the Oceanic Viking have not received any sort of special deal”. Or today, the same writer notes, “a denialist so shameless that he can stare bare-facedly back at the electors and his parliamentary opponents and deny again and again and again that a bunch of Sri Lankans currently being processed in record fast time in Indonesia are not in receipt of any special deal.” But Mr Speaker the Prime Minister’s spin hasn’t been able to fool anyone, even in his own town. Dennis Atkins wrote in the Courier-Mail today “the consensus view that the Rudd Government provided a special deal for the seventy-six asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking is now stronger than the much-trumpeted world scientific agreement on the causes behind climate change”. Michael Gordon yesterday in The Age – now surely, surely Prime Minister that is not a right wing newspaper – The Melbourne Age, Michael Gordon: “The truth is that the group was offered a special deal to leave the boat…” But the disbelief extends even to another. Apparently, I’m afraid, it’s the ABC. This reluctance of the Australian media to accept this spin seems to be spreading. Barry Cassidy: “just to say there’s no special deal is silly.” But Mr Speaker probably the neatest summary of all of this was in the editorial in the Financial Review today, and it said “Mr Rudd’s refusal to give a straight answer to opposition questions on the asylum issue follows a consistent and unattractive pattern of behaviour”. Now Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister’s pattern of behaviours is consistent and it is unattractive, but not simply because it involves saying black is white, for saying that no special deal was done when plainly a very, very special deal was done for a very special reason. It is unattractive because it has resulted in the collapse of border protection policy. The Prime Minister may think he can spin his way of his problems here in the House, but the real challenge is on our borders. We used to have a border protection policy that sought to achieve and did achieve two goals: the compassionate and fair reception and treatment of refugees in accordance with the UN Convention. Secondly, the security of our borders and ensuring that as far as possible people smuggling was stamped out and there were no unauthorised arrivals. Both of those goals were achieved, and the record is there from 2002-3 until the change in the border protection policies by this Government last year there was, relative to the current situation, a very, very small number of arrivals. In some years zero, in other years only a few boats. And now we have had since those changes fifty-two boats and over 2300 arrivals.   So how does the Prime Minister defend this? He defends it firstly by denying another fact of life. He defends it by saying that Australia’s border protection policies have absolutely no influence on the number of arrivals. This is as big a denial, as bizarre and absurd a denial, as his denial about the nature of the deal offered to the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking. He has been told, not simply by the Opposition but by the Federal Police, by the International Organisation on Migration, by the Indonesian Ambassador, the Sri Lankan Ambassador, by the New Zealand Immigration Minister that our border protection policies are sending a very strong signal. This is a strong pull factor. And indeed as the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UN only recently said, and it sums it up, he said and I quote: “if the pull factors are addressed, attempts to enter Australia will cease”. That’s what the Sri Lankan Ambassador said. But the Prime Minister will have none of this. They are all wrong. Now the difference between the Government and the Opposition on this issue is simply this: when we were in government we stop the boats. They stopped. We protected our borders. We complied with our international obligations and our borders were secure. And we have set out clearly the changes we would make to the policies he has instituted that will ensure once again a strong signal is sent to the people smugglers so they can no longer market the absolute certainty of permanent residency in Australia to their customers in return for the large fees they charge, ten to fifteen thousand dollars. We are prepared to undermine their business. We are prepared to undermine the people smuggling trade and protect our borders. The Prime Minister is not.     [ends]        malcolmThu, 19 Nov 2009 06:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:683http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/681/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=681http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=681&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/681/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies; President Yudhoyono. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Mr Rudd has got to come clean and tell us what other special deals he has offered the remaining 56 asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking. Yesterday and last week, he said the 22 who left the vessel had not been offered any preferential deal. He said that again and again. But the text of the written offer from the Government itself demonstrates that it is a preferential deal because it offers any of those asylum seekers who have been determined by the UN High Commission on Refugees to be refugees, it offers them resettlement within four to six weeks. Now there are thousands of refugees in Indonesia and no others are being guaranteed resettlement in Australia within four to six weeks. So it is absolutely plain it is a preferential deal and Mr Rudd’s attempt to say it isn’t is completely and utterly unconvincing and lacking in all credibility. And of course… QUESTION: Is it still your view that he misled the House? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well saying that a deal which is clearly preferential is not preferential is plainly misleading. There is no question about that. It is like saying black is white. Mr Rudd seems to have the capacity to look you in the eye and say something that is patently wrong, patently false. The fact is it is a preferential deal, and if it were not a preferential deal then every other asylum seeker in the same situation in Indonesia would have access to the same guarantee of resettlement. That is plainly not the case. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, can I just clarify – yesterday we were taking your comments to mean that Mr Rudd misled the House because he had said no and no to you, and then come back and clarified the record about his staff being on that committee. Is that what you were accusing Mr Rudd of having misled the House on? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, if you see what I said yesterday, I was quite clear about it. He has misled the House, he has misled all Australians by saying a clearly preferential special deal was not preferential. His statement that he did not know about the… well, if we go back to it, we asked him whether he knew about the special deal and whether he approved it. He said he did not know about it in advance and he did not approve it. He then came back half an hour later and said that it had in fact been approved by a Cabinet subcommittee on which sat members of his own staff. Now, as I said yesterday, I suppose it is possible that this 24-hour-a-day workaholic, said to be a control freak, was not told by his staff about the offer being made. I can’t say that without smiling because it seems so incredible – and you are all smiling too – and we read today that the minutes of the Cabinet Committee were circulated to all ministers including the Prime Minister immediately after the meeting. So look, it strains credulity but we will see. No doubt the Prime Minister will have more to say about it but… QUESTION: And you’re confident you didn’t overreach again? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The only charge of misleading that I have made against the Prime Minister relates to his claim that a preferential deal was not preferential. As I said yesterday, there is a very – what I would call – low level of possibility that such a momentous decision would have been made by members of the Prime Minister’s staff without discussing it with him, but we will let the Prime Minister explain that. Perhaps more events will come out. Can I just say this, the other thing we have to bear in mind in terms of events that have occurred in the last 24 hours, we have seen yet another boat arrive so “another boat, another policy failure” to quote Julia Gillard. We are now up to 51 boats and over 2,200 arrivals. The last minute cancellation of the President of Indonesia’s visit is an extraordinary slap in the face for Kevin Rudd and Kevin Rudd’s claims to be the great Asia-Pacific diplomat. This is an extraordinary event for an Indonesian President having made a commitment to come to Australia to speak to the Parliament to then at the last minute cancel it and all of us saw on television the body language between them at the APEC summit. Our relations with Indonesia are clearly very strained and they are strained because of Kevin Rudd’s colossal failure of policy and his failure to manage effectively our relationship with our largest and closest neighbour. QUESTION: On credibility, Government MPs have come out saying that there had been no confirmation of a visit by SBY. Does that sound credible to you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That doesn’t sound credible to me and I don’t think that will withstand a great deal of scrutiny. QUESTION: Do you have information… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you have only got to see that it was confirmed by the Indonesian Government and I think there are many people in this city that know that the meeting, the visit was confirmed and was planned and was expected. QUESTION: Does it worry you that none of these colossal policy failures, as you call them, seem to be resonating that much with the Australian people if today’s poll is to be believed? MALCOLM TURNBULL: If I paid as much attention to the polls as you do, I wouldn’t have any time to think about anything else. QUESTION: But it is worrying that voters aren’t… they are still sticking behind Labor even though this is such a damaging issue for them. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The voters will form their own judgments and they will make their decision at the time of the election. The simple fact of the matter is this – the object of Australia’s border protection policy with respect to asylum seekers is to stamp out people smuggling and prevent, as far as possible, the unauthorised arrivals of asylum seekers into our waters. Mr Rudd says that is the object of his policy. It is the object of every government’s policy. By that measure, his policy has been a colossal failure. It is about time he owned up to that failure, conceded the consequence of his unpicking the border protection policies of the previous government that had been effective and then, for him, having admitted that failure to then tell us how he is going to rectify it. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 17 Nov 2009 07:01:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:681http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/680/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=680http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=680&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/680/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies; President Yudhoyono. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Mr Rudd has got to come clean and tell us what other special deals he has offered the remaining 56 asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking. Yesterday and last week, he said the 22 who left the vessel had not been offered any preferential deal. He said that again and again. But the text of the written offer from the Government itself demonstrates that it is a preferential deal because it offers any of those asylum seekers who have been determined by the UN High Commission on Refugees to be refugees, it offers them resettlement within four to six weeks. Now there are thousands of refugees in Indonesia and no others are being guaranteed resettlement in Australia within four to six weeks. So it is absolutely plain it is a preferential deal and Mr Rudd’s attempt to say it isn’t is completely and utterly unconvincing and lacking in all credibility. And of course… QUESTION: Is it still your view that he misled the House? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well saying that a deal which is clearly preferential is not preferential is plainly misleading. There is no question about that. It is like saying black is white. Mr Rudd seems to have the capacity to look you in the eye and say something that is patently wrong, patently false. The fact is it is a preferential deal, and if it were not a preferential deal then every other asylum seeker in the same situation in Indonesia would have access to the same guarantee of resettlement. That is plainly not the case. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, can I just clarify – yesterday we were taking your comments to mean that Mr Rudd misled the House because he had said no and no to you, and then come back and clarified the record about his staff being on that committee. Is that what you were accusing Mr Rudd of having misled the House on? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, if you see what I said yesterday, I was quite clear about it. He has misled the House, he has misled all Australians by saying a clearly preferential special deal was not preferential. His statement that he did not know about the… well, if we go back to it, we asked him whether he knew about the special deal and whether he approved it. He said he did not know about it in advance and he did not approve it. He then came back half an hour later and said that it had in fact been approved by a Cabinet subcommittee on which sat members of his own staff. Now, as I said yesterday, I suppose it is possible that this 24-hour-a-day workaholic, said to be a control freak, was not told by his staff about the offer being made. I can’t say that without smiling because it seems so incredible – and you are all smiling too – and we read today that the minutes of the Cabinet Committee were circulated to all ministers including the Prime Minister immediately after the meeting. So look, it strains credulity but we will see. No doubt the Prime Minister will have more to say about it but… QUESTION: And you’re confident you didn’t overreach again? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The only charge of misleading that I have made against the Prime Minister relates to his claim that a preferential deal was not preferential. As I said yesterday, there is a very – what I would call – low level of possibility that such a momentous decision would have been made by members of the Prime Minister’s staff without discussing it with him, but we will let the Prime Minister explain that. Perhaps more events will come out. Can I just say this, the other thing we have to bear in mind in terms of events that have occurred in the last 24 hours, we have seen yet another boat arrive so “another boat, another policy failure” to quote Julia Gillard. We are now up to 51 boats and over 2,200 arrivals. The last minute cancellation of the President of Indonesia’s visit is an extraordinary slap in the face for Kevin Rudd and Kevin Rudd’s claims to be the great Asia-Pacific diplomat. This is an extraordinary event for an Indonesian President having made a commitment to come to Australia to speak to the Parliament to then at the last minute cancel it and all of us saw on television the body language between them at the APEC summit. Our relations with Indonesia are clearly very strained and they are strained because of Kevin Rudd’s colossal failure of policy and his failure to manage effectively our relationship with our largest and closest neighbour. QUESTION: On credibility, Government MPs have come out saying that there had been no confirmation of a visit by SBY. Does that sound credible to you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That doesn’t sound credible to me and I don’t think that will withstand a great deal of scrutiny. QUESTION: Do you have information… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you have only got to see that it was confirmed by the Indonesian Government and I think there are many people in this city that know that the meeting, the visit was confirmed and was planned and was expected. QUESTION: Does it worry you that none of these colossal policy failures, as you call them, seem to be resonating that much with the Australian people if today’s poll is to be believed? MALCOLM TURNBULL: If I paid as much attention to the polls as you do, I wouldn’t have any time to think about anything else. QUESTION: But it is worrying that voters aren’t… they are still sticking behind Labor even though this is such a damaging issue for them. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The voters will form their own judgments and they will make their decision at the time of the election. The simple fact of the matter is this – the object of Australia’s border protection policy with respect to asylum seekers is to stamp out people smuggling and prevent, as far as possible, the unauthorised arrivals of asylum seekers into our waters. Mr Rudd says that is the object of his policy. It is the object of every government’s policy. By that measure, his policy has been a colossal failure. It is about time he owned up to that failure, conceded the consequence of his unpicking the border protection policies of the previous government that had been effective and then, for him, having admitted that failure to then tell us how he is going to rectify it. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 17 Nov 2009 05:14:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:680http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/678/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=678http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=678&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/678/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies; emissions trading scheme. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Last Friday the Prime Minister said no preferential deal had been offered to the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking. He tabled today in the House a copy of the proposal put to them and it said, in the first point, ‘If the UNHCR has found you to be a refugee – Australian officials will assist you to be resettled within 4-6 weeks’. When we asked him whether there were any other refugees in Indonesia who had been guaranteed resettlement within four to six weeks he had no answer because no others have been. This is plainly a preferential deal. When we asked him whether he knew about this offer of a preferential fast track deal, a Rudd carpet to Australia, when we asked him whether he knew about it beforehand or had approved it, he said “no and no”. And then at the very end of Question Time, he came back to the despatch box to say that in fact it had been approved by a committee on which sat members of his own office staff. So the fact is that the Prime Minister has not been straight with the Australian people. Clearly this is a preferential deal. There are no other refugees in Australia that are being guaranteed resettlement within four to six weeks. And secondly, he knew all about this deal or at least his office did because they were part of the committee that approved it. The Prime Minister has not been straight with the Australian people about his border protection policy failure and the way he is rolling out the Rudd carpet to the people smugglers and their customers. QUESTION: Are you accusing him of misleading Parliament? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look there is no question that he has misled the House, there is no question about that. The fact is it is a preferential deal. He chose to hide behind a public servant, a letter from the Secretary of the Department of Immigration dated today which said that the offer was consistent with the arrangements being… the group I should say… I will read it precisely. The secretary said “the group” – being the people on the Oceanic Viking – “is being treated in a manner consistent with that afforded to any other asylum seeker or refugee in Indonesia”. Now that of course was written after the Prime Minister had said no preferential treatment had been given. But it is perfectly obvious that it is not consistent with the treatment offered to other refugees in Indonesia. There are no other refugees in Indonesia who are being guaranteed resettlement in Australia or anywhere else within four to six weeks. So that statement to the House and his attempt to hide behind a public servant – once again to use a public servant as a human shield – is completely and utterly unconvincing. Everyone can see straight through that. But then to say that he had no knowledge and did not approve the offer being made, only to come back and let us know that in fact it had been made and approved by a committee on which sat members of his own office staff. QUESTION: It’s possible they didn’t tell him. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Possible, yes, possible. A low level of possibility I think you would say, wouldn’t you. QUESTION: Kevin Rudd would be fairly sensitive about misleading Parliament, given what happened back in June. You think he’d… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Mr Rudd’s… there is no question that Mr Rudd’s staff approved the offer. He said as much. So the only basis on which his statement could be correct is if his staff did not tell him. I grant you that is a possibility. I think most people would regard it, on a matter as important as this, as being very unlikely. So we will see. Time will tell on that score. As far as the deal being preferential, of course it is preferential. The suggestion that it’s not is absurd. There is no other refugee group in Indonesia that is being offered a fast track to Australia. That’s perfectly plain. So to say that the people on the Oceanic Viking were not offered a preferential deal is plainly false. QUESTION: So you’re accusing Kevin Rudd of lying to the Australian people? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll leave all those accusations to you. The fact of the matter is you know and everybody else knows that there was a special deal offered to the people on the Oceanic Viking in order to persuade them to leave. That is confirmed in writing today. We have asked Kevin Rudd several times whether any other refugees in Indonesia have been offered the same fast track resettlement access and he has been unable to nominate any others. And of course there are no others. So this is plainly a preferential deal, a special deal, and he should simply be straight with the Australian people and confirm it for what it is. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, confirmation on the weekend that there’s going to be no binding targets at Copenhagen. Does that take the sting out of these next couple of weeks? Can you not now use that as a point to argue there’s no point negotiating the scheme in the next couple of weeks? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have always said there is no necessity to finalise the design of the scheme before the Copenhagen conference, but you know I have to say that I think most people have expected for a long time that Copenhagen would result in a political agreement or a political settlement and any treaty, binding international agreement would take some time to negotiate. But unlike Mr Rudd I don’t want to running a commentary on the negotiations other than to say they have been proceeding well, they will reach a conclusion ad when they do we will then decide as an Opposition how we are going to respond to it. QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we are going to proceed with the negotiations and take them through to their conclusion… QUESTION: And you’re still as committed to them as you were? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m certainly committed to having good faith negotiations Michelle, but I am not committed to voting in a particular way… QUESTION: But you’ve committed to trying to reach an outcome? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well everyone who enters into negotiations in good faith should be committed to reaching an outcome. Now whether… QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, but if you were as committed to letting me finish my answer we would be able to get o the end of the sentence. We are committed to good faith negotiations which means we are committed to the negotiations running their course. They will have an outcome. Whether that outcome is one which we support or not remains to be seen, and really anything else is just speculation. QUESTION: Do you expect the final position to be determined tomorrow or next Tuesday? MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Well we don’t expect it to be determined tomorrow but it is obviously, time is marching on and I know that Mr Macfarlane and Senator Wong are proceeding as quickly as they can, but the speed in large measure is obviously determined by the Government because they are the ones from whom we are seeking concessions.   QUESTION: So is an agreement more likely than not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to run a commentary on the negotiations. QUESTION: A couple of Liberal senators have pre-empted the party room meeting and vowed to vote against the ETS.  Doesn’t that make the party room meeting a farce? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to comment on it… QUESTION: Are you prepared for that scenario, though, of many MPs, as Dennis Jensen told us this morning, crossing the floor? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we’ll see.  I’m not going to run a commentary on other people’s comments and that’s really all I’ve got to say.  The negotiations are proceeding, they’ll have a conclusion, when we get to the conclusion we will decide how we’re going to vote. QUESTION: Just back on your comments about Kevin Rudd and the boat.  Probably most people would accept your argument that it’s clearly a preferential deal.  What do you think is in Mr Rudd’s mind as he tries to claim it’s not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t know.  It’s about as convincing as standing up and saying black is white.  But he does have a habit of, well he seems to have a habit of saying things which are patently not correct on the basis that if you say it often enough people will believe it. Now the fact of the matter is there are thousands of refugees, possibly tens of thousands of refugees in Indonesia who have been granted refugee status by the UNHCR who are in exactly the same legal position as the people who are on the Oceanic Viking.  None of them have been offered a four to six week fast track passage to Australia, whereas the people on the Oceanic Viking have.  So plainly it is a preferential deal. So why does he keep on saying that it isn’t?  It’s baffling, it’s unconvincing – it raises real questions about the Prime Minister. QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t know.  I’m the Leader of the Opposition. I’m not here to psychoanalyse the Prime Minister.  I’ll leave that to you. QUESTION: Should he revoke the deal? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, he has made an offer to these people and if they’ve accepted it I guess there’s been an offer and acceptance and there’s a question then of the integrity of the Australian Government at stake.  But we do not believe special deals should have been offered.  We do not believe special deals should be offered in the future and the reality is that this is all a consequence of a colossal failure in border protection policy. QUESTION: If you can’t offer special deals how are you going to get the remaining Sri Lankans off the boat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, really, that’s a matter you should be addressing to the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister was the one who decided to take them to Indonesia.  He says he had an agreement with the President of Indonesia that they would be able to disembark but apparently this workaholic, master of detail, this supposed control freak was so focused on the matter that he didn’t turn his mind to how he would actually persuade them to leave the vessel.  And that seems to be at the root of this problem.  The fact of the matter is it’s just one of a series of colossal policy errors in this border protection shambles that Kevin Rudd has created.  This is a colossal policy failure on any view and the sooner he owns up to it, takes responsibility for it and starts to fix it, the better. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmMon, 16 Nov 2009 07:16:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:678http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/679/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=679http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=679&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/679/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies; emissions trading scheme. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well another day, another boat, another policy failure. Since Kevin Rudd recklessly unpicked the Coalition’s border protection policies we have had 50 people smugglers’ boats and over 2,300 unauthorised arrivals. This is a colossal policy failure. Everybody recognises it as a policy failure except for the man who is responsible for it, the Prime Minister. He has got to come into the Parliament today and explain what special deals he has offered to the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking.  He said there are no special deals and yet we have seen the written offer, we have heard from Indonesian officials that the people on that vessel have been offered a fast track access to Australia, much faster than they would have been promised or entitled to if they had arrived at Christmas Island itself. Kevin Rudd has got to come clean on his policy failure. He has got to `fess up to his mistakes and he has got to tell the Australian people what he is going to do to make our borders secure. QUESTION: The offer from the Government to exclude agriculture from the emissions trading scheme, will you be recommending to the party room they should support it and, if not, what exactly more do you want? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look I am not going to run a commentary on the negotiations. They have been proceeding in good faith. As you know, we have a list of amendments. The exclusion of agricultural emissions and the recognition of agricultural offsets was a clear element in that package of amendments, but we will reach the end of the negotiations shortly and then we will have a package that we can then consider our response to. Okay. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmSun, 15 Nov 2009 23:15:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:679http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/670/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Sharman-Stone-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=670http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=670&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/670/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Sharman-Stone-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Coalition’s strong stand on border protection. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Now the Coalition takes the national government’s responsibility for border protection very seriously. Australians know that the Coalition has always been prepared to take the tough decisions on national security and border protection. We are determined to keep our borders secure, to prevent and discourage asylum seekers from risking their lives on perilous journeys and to protect the integrity of our very generous immigration program. Our border protection policy is to stop the boats. We have done this before and we will do it again. We are prepared to take the tough decisions that Kevin Rudd has failed to take. The only way to deter people smugglers is to have tougher laws. Only tougher laws send the right signals to the people smugglers and to their prospective customers. By recklessly unpicking the policies of the previous government, that had successfully stopped the people smuggling trade, Mr Rudd has given those people smugglers a powerful marketing tool where they can offer the near certainly of permanent residence in one of the richest countries in the world to those who have the cash and the contacts to buy a seat on the boat. Now having done this, the Rudd Government has created the reality and the perception that Australia is a soft target. Lives are placed at risk and the integrity of our borders and our immigration program are being compromised. I am setting out today, here with the Shadow Minister, principles that will reduce the ability of the people smugglers to market the certainty of permanent residence in Australia and these principles will therefore deter unauthorised arrivals. We will not shirk this responsibility in the way Labor has done. We will announce further details of the policy closer to the election. But here are the four core principles. Firstly, we will once again secure our borders. Our aim is to stamp out people smuggling and effectively deter unauthorised arrivals while at the same time treating refugees compassionately in accordance with our obligations under the UN Convention. Secondly, we will ensure that unauthorised arrivals seeking asylum are intercepted and processed offshore at Christmas Island, not on the Australian mainland as Mr Rudd is planning to do. Thirdly, we will introduce a non-permanent visa for asylum seekers who arrive without authorisation. Asylum seekers who arrive without authorisation will be granted this safe haven visa rather than Labor’s permanent residency. It will be reassessed after a specific period not longer than three years, and if they are found to be in need of continued protection they will then be eligible for permanent residency. If they are found not to be in need of such protection they will be returned to their country of origin. A Turnbull Government will maintain Australia’s substantial humanitarian program for refugees who come to Australia through the legitimate and conventional processes. This intake will always favour those most in need. Last year Australia took the second largest number of refugees through the UN process as documented by the UNHCR. We have a very generous refugee program. We must not, cannot outsource it to the people smugglers as Mr Rudd is doing. Now these principles are at the core of our border protection policy. They represent the tough decisions the Rudd Government is not prepared to make. Labor has weakened our border protection regime and caused a surge of unauthorised boat arrivals.  Kevin Rudd has truly rolled out the Rudd carpet to the people smugglers.  He has encouraged people smugglers.  He has given them a powerful marketing tool that has compromised the integrity of our borders and our generous immigration program.  Only the government I will lead after the next election can stop the boats and secure our borders. Now let me make some specific comments about the Oceanic Viking and the situation there. Mr Rudd must disclose today what special offers he has made to the Sri Lankans on the Oceanic Viking.  What are the special deals?  It would appear that he is trying to lure them off the boat with a special deal that will see them rush off to the airport and come down to Australia.  He appears to be offering them a better and faster passage to Australia than people arriving at Christmas Island are offered.  It is a catastrophic signal of a policy failure that has said to the people smugglers around the world, Australia is a soft target.  Truly he has rolled out the Rudd carpet to the people smugglers.  He cannot keep on sending this signal.  It is compromising the integrity of our borders and compromising the integrity of our refugee program.  He is outsourcing the refugee program that we, the people of Australia, through our government should be administering, to the people smugglers, to the criminal people smugglers.  Any questions? QUESTION: Are you advocating any return to opening other detention centres I guess in other islands in the Pacific such as Nauru?  Is this a return to the Pacific Solution? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we’re not making any proposal to that effect.  We have an offshore processing centre at Christmas Island and it should be the focus of the offshore processing.  But certainly our commitment is that unauthorised asylum seekers should be intercepted and processed at Christmas Island. QUESTION: Are you expecting any, I guess, dissent within the party, particularly from people like Petro Georgiou, particularly around the issue of having this temporary visa for asylum seekers? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we understand this is a tough decision.  Kevin Rudd has not made one tough decision on the border protection issue – not one.  He claims to be tough – he has been soft.  He has shown himself to be weak and indecisive and he has allowed himself to be stood over by people smugglers and stood over, in fact, by the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking.  That weakness has been telegraphed around the world in letters a mile high.  He has rolled out the Rudd carpet to the people smugglers.  Now that has to stop. What we have to do is reduce the ability of the people smugglers to market the certainty of permanent residency in Australia, and this is a means of doing that.  It is humane, it is just, it’s in accordance with the Convention. It its perfectly fair and Australians will recognise it as such.  It will not please everybody I grant you, but we have to have a tougher policy on the border. Kevin Rudd’s experiment of weakness, indecision, softness has failed.  It’s been a proven failure by nearly 50 boats and 2,200 unauthorised arrivals since he changed, recklessly changed, the policy of the previous government. QUESTION: You’ve been saying for a few weeks that it’s not the Opposition’s job to say what you would do in terms of the Oceanic Viking asylum seekers but now that you’ve announced your policy, what would you do in this case? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have sought, but been refused a briefing on the Oceanic Viking situation.  In our view they should be disembarked in Indonesia without any special deals.  That is clearly what Mr Rudd should be seeking to achieve.  I mean, let’s face it: he is the one who said he had the arrangement with the Indonesians to disembark them in Indonesia.  He is the one who caused the boat to go to Indonesia and he is the Prime Minister who apparently failed to give any consideration as to how he was going to persuade them to leave the boat.  But we have not been briefed on the situation.  Sharman and I do not know the details of who is on the boat, where they’re from, any of the details that are relevant to a decision as to exactly how to deal with it on the spot.  We haven’t been given that information.  Only the Government has that. They have to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. QUESTION: With the non-permanent visas, will there be a major difference in terms of people being able to see their family or bringing their family over here unlike the temporary visa situation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Our policy would be that, except in special circumstances, family reunion would not be permitted during the period of the safe haven visa, which would be likely to be a period of several years, certainly not more than three years, and they would be entitled to work. So it would have some differences from the previous arrangements. But the principle is the same. The details are important obviously. But the critical issue is the element of conditionality. What it does is it reduces the ability of the people smuggler to market the certainty of permanent residency in Australia. We’ve got to think very, very clearly about this. We are talking about people smugglers who are in a criminal business. They are seeking from those people who want to come to Australia large sums of money, large sums of money in any country but particularly in a developing country – 10, 15 thousand dollars – and they are offering them a product and that product is, as it currently stands, a near certain permanent residency outcome. What we have to do is design a policy or restate a policy that will reduce the certainty of that offered product by the people smuggler, and that therefore will serve both to undermine his business and of course deter unauthorised arrivals. The problem that we face with Mr Rudd is that he has no policy. Remember, let’s be quite clear about this, Mr Rudd unpicked the policy of the previous government that worked. The proof was there. There were little or no boats. In some years, there were no boats; in other years, a handful. So it was working. He said he could change those policies and it would make no difference to the rate of boat arrivals. And then the boats started coming. He said it was just push factors. That nonsense has been disowned by everybody – by the Indonesians, by the Sri Lankans, by the International Organisation on Migration, by the Australian Federal Police. It is blindingly obvious that the change in Australian domestic policy has acted as a powerful pull factor and what we have to do is to diminish the strength of that pull factor otherwise we will continue, under Mr Rudd’s approach, to outsource our generous immigration policy to the people smugglers. QUESTION: The previous government was often accused I guess by its critics of having an inhumane approach to asylum seekers. In returning to some of the policies of the previous government, are you afraid that you’re going to attract the same criticism? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look this is a very appropriate policy response and let me just make one very important point, as a matter of fact. When the United Nations talks about outcomes for refugees, they talk about what is called a durable solution which means essentially repatriation – going home to your own country where the conditions have improved so that you can live there without fear of persecution – or being resettled in another country such as Australia. Over the last ten years, less then one per cent, less than one per cent of all of the durable solutions, all of the satisfactory outcomes were from resettlement. The vast majority were from people being able to go back to their own homes to live there safely because the security situation has improved. So that is always going to be the overwhelming object of policy with respect to refugees. So this is an appropriate, it’s a fair response and it will serve unquestionably to deter people smuggling because it would reduce the certainty of the permanent residency outcome that the people smuggler is charging individuals a very large amount of money for. Okay. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 13 Nov 2009 03:55:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:670http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/667/Doorstop-Interview-Albury.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=667http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=667&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/667/Doorstop-Interview-Albury.aspxSubjects: Water buyback scheme; border protection; economy; ETS. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s great to be here with Sussan today.  We’re going out to Berrigan to visit some dairy farmers, irrigated dairy farmers and have a range of community meetings to discuss the challenges of irrigated farming in these very tough times.  The Labor Party has massively bungled, tragically bungled the whole water reform agenda.  When Sussan and I lost government in 2007, when the Howard Government was defeated, we left the Labor Party with the legislative tools to reform water management in the Murray-Darling Basin and with $10 billion of cash to spend on replumbing rural Australia, both on-farm and off-farm.  To date they have only spent money on buying back water entitlements.  There are no big irrigation schemes being replumbed.  There is practically nothing being spent on on-farm irrigation efficiency.  It was a great vision, a revolutionary vision that we had in government, of water reform.  We left it to the Labor Party.  We’d done all the hard work.  We passed the laws.  We’d had the money allocated and they’ve done nothing with it.  But of course it’s not the only failure of Labor Party policy.  The extraordinary, continuing collapse, catastrophic collapse of policy in terms of border protection – and Sussan of course is very well aware of this having just been to see to the detention centre on Christmas Island – this collapse in border protection policy is again in the papers with reports that Kevin Rudd, in a desperate effort to save face, has been offering special deals to the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking.  Now he needs to be fair dinkum with the Australian people and tell us what is the special deal he has offered these people?  What is the special deal that he has offered them in order to persuade them to leave the boat so that he doesn’t lose face, so that he can deliver on his promise that they will disembark in Indonesia?  It seems like he’s offering them a guarantee of settlement in Australia.  What type of signal does that send?  That is just telegraphing a signal in letters a mile high, ‘Come to Australia, Kevin will fix you up’.  It is an extraordinary act of weakness, a collapse of leadership and it sends an unequivocal signal to people smugglers and their customers to come to Australia in an unauthorised way. Now Kevin Rudd says that the only factors that are driving this surge in unauthorised arrivals are the push factors.  Now of course the push factors are always very big.  There are millions of refugees in the world, all of whom would love to come and live in Australia.  The real issue is the pull factor.  The way he recklessly unpicked the border protection policies of the Howard Government, policies that were working, that had stopped the boats – we had little or no unauthorised arrivals for years as a result of those policies.  Kevin Rudd ignored the advice of the Federal Police, ignored the advice of the Opposition, ignored the advice of the International Organisation on Migration, ignored the advice from the Indonesian Government and now we have overnight the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United Nations saying himself that it is the pull factors, the attractiveness of Australia by reason of the change in domestic policies, that is causing this surge in arrivals.  Kevin Rudd has to get fair dinkum.  He’s got to tell us exactly what he is offering these people in order to save his face. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, back on the issue of water.  Just two days ago the New South Wales Government actually gave councils along the Murray River permission to ease town water restrictions back to level two from a higher restriction.  There’s one sort of sense of feeling in the community that water’s been saved so therefore we’ve got it and we can spend it.  I mean, what’s your thought on water conservation, is that a sensible approach? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m a fanatic about water conservation and water management generally but in terms of that particular decision – Sussan, you might have a better informed local view on it. SUSSAN LEY: Well I guess we have to remember that towns have done such a great job saving water and even if our restrictions go up one level or half a level, in terms of the amount of diversions out of the system, it’s still very small.  The major diverters from the river are irrigated agriculture, as it should be, they’re growing food and I think it’s good to reward people in the town for doing it so hard as far as their gardens are concerned.  And the councils are keeping a close eye on it and can always drop it back if required. QUESTION: Sussan, what impact are the water buybacks having in your community?  Are they helping farmers get out of a terrible financial situation or are they hurting the broader agriculture industry? SUSSAN LEY: Well in some cases of course farmers are selling their water and it’s allowing them to continue to trade to be in business, and often their banks are demanding that they sell their water so they don’t really have much choice.  But every community person that Malcolm I will meet today, from a community perspective, will express concern.  It is once water leaves the district there’s no guarantee that it returns even as a temporary purchase.  So the answer to the problem would have been to implement our measures which were to allow these on-farm irrigation efficiencies and not a dollar has been spent. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I just add something to that?  Under our scheme, under our plan we had money allocated for structural adjustment and water purchases of a small amount but what it was designed to do was to support the overall reconstruction, renovation if you like, of irrigation areas.  So the idea was that we would sit down with the big irrigation users, we would work out a plan with them, or they would work out a plan actually which would involve piping and lining channels and on-farm efficiency measures, the whole package, and then if there were areas which could not economically be part of the new and improved efficient area then they would be eligible for buyback.  So that you would use it as a means to support the overall vision which was our great vision, the vision that Sussan and I had when we were in government, which was to produce more food and more fibre with less water.  That was the vision and that has just been…and it’s a magnificent vision, it’s what Australia should do.  We’re the driest continent on earth.  And what Kevin Rudd’s doing is making this area drier just by buying the water back. QUESTION: Malcolm, sorry to interrupt – I had to change batteries – let me just ask another question.  I’m trying not to monopolise it but just quickly – do you think it’s appropriate for having the asylum seekers settled within 12 weeks? MALCOLM TURNBULL: As I’ve said, Kevin Rudd has to get fair dinkum with the Australian people and he has to tell us exactly what the special deal is that he is offering the people on the Oceanic Viking in order to save face for himself so that they will get off the boat in Indonesia. Now this is sending a shocking signal – if in fact he is offering special deals, he’s sending a shocking signal because you’ve got a group of people who have been refusing to get off the boat, who have been holding up this vital Australian asset, maritime asset, and they’re going to be rewarded for that by being given a special deal.  Kevin Rudd is the Prime Minister.  We have only read what’s in the press.  He is the one that has to say exactly what special deal he’s offering them.  Sussan, you’ve just been to Christmas Island.  Do you want to say something more about this? SUSSAN LEY: Well it was apparent to me that with the immediate urgent plans to expand the detention centre, when I was there it was cooking 1,100 lunches and 1,100 dinners and it was catering obviously to a huge group of people.  Hercules transports were coming in, flying in portables, construction huts, even tents, to house the asylum seekers who are expected.  So even with the throughput that is happening, which is that in 90 days or less they are reaching the mainland in 90 per cent of cases, the Government is still expecting more arrivals and that really does sound the alarm bells about government policy.  And to see it firsthand you do clearly get that message. MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s a colossal failure in policy, there’s no question about that. QUESTION: What would the Coalition offer to get them off the Oceanic Viking?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we have asked, Sussan and I have both asked the Government for a briefing on the Oceanic Viking situation and they refuse to give us one.  So we only know what’s been reported in the press.  We don’t have anything like the information the Government has so we’re not going to provide advice to the Government about what they should do in terms of the day to day management of that situation.  It is a failure of policy.  We all know that.  But if the Government is not prepared to take us into their confidence, we’re not in a position to offer informed advice about the actual management of it.  We don’t know anything about the people beyond what we’ve read.  We don’t know where they’re situated.  Really it’s a complex security challenge and, as I say, the Government has refused to discuss it with us. QUESTION: You alluded to it earlier, the state of the Australian economy at the moment.  How would you describe it I guess given what we’re seeing with Australian and particularly regional exporters being whacked so hard at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, with the dollar?  Yeah.  Well the economy, overall, the economy has performed better than many people were expecting a year ago.  That is a consequence of the sound economic position in which we went into the downturn, and that of course was as a result of 11-and-a-half years of hard work under the Coalition which left us with no debt, cash at the bank, a strong economy, low unemployment, well regulated financial and banking sectors, so we didn’t have the equivalent of a subprime collapse as they did in the United States.  We’ve also had continuing strong demand for our raw materials, exports, particularly primary exports from Asia, in particular from China.  Now the higher dollar is obviously a challenge for exporters.  One of the things that is pressing the higher dollar of course is the prospect of higher interest rates and that is being driven in large measure, not entirely but in large measure, by the reckless spending of the Rudd Government.  Let’s not forget this – right at the moment we have the extraordinary situation where the Reserve Bank is saying the economy is getting stronger and they’re obviously concerned about inflation and it getting overheated and so they are sending out warning after warning about the need to pull back on the monetary stimulus; in other words jack up interest rates.  At the same time we’ve got Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan saying spend, spend, spend.  They are not going to take a backward step in terms of their spending. Now at the time they made the decision to borrow and spend all this money, which we cautioned them against – we said they should spend less and spend it in a better targeted way – at that time Kevin Rudd said we were facing the economic equivalent of a rolling national security crisis; he said we were in an economic cyclone.  We on the other hand, in the Coalition, were a little bit more balanced, a lot more balanced in fact.  We said we’re in an economic storm, we’ll get wet but we won’t sink.  But Rudd claimed to be looking over the edge of a bottomless abyss so he borrowed and spent a huge amount of money.  Well, it turns out he was too pessimistic.  That’s the kindest thing I can say about it.  Consequently he should be winding back on the spending but he refuses to do so.  So we now have the incredible situation where you’ve got the Reserve Bank with its foot on the brake and the Government, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan, with their foot on the accelerator.  And that’s producing a very uneven recovery…and that’s entirely due to the incompetence, economic incompetence of the Government. QUESTION: If I could just ask you about the ETS.  There are fears about Victoria’s La Trobe Valley and its future.  Given it’s a coal industry, is there a future for that [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well of course there is.  Can I just say this, we are fighting very hard at the moment in good faith negotiations with the Government for there to be adequate and appropriate compensation and a transition for the coal fired generators.  Of course the coal fired generators, the brown coal power stations are very emissions intensive.  I mean to give you just an idea, a snapshot of the scale of difference.  We were talking with one of the brown coal generators the other day who said that in Victoria they’re emitting 1.3 tonnes of CO2 for every megawatt hour, brown coal and out of the average coal fired power station 0.86.  But with the new gas fired plant in New South Wales near Wollongong, they’re emitting about 0.3.  So it’s a huge differential between the two.  So we clearly have to transition from highly emissions intensive generation to low emissions intensive generation.  That’s got to be done fairly, it’s got to be done in a way that doesn’t wreck the balance sheets of those companies and that’s part of what we’re seeking to achieve in our negotiations with the Government. QUESTION: [Inaudible] leave job losses, do you think, in that particular area? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there actually should be job increases because there should be new development and new power stations.  The work on clean coal is extremely important.  There is the real opportunity in Victoria of course to make clean coal work because you have got the depleted oil and gas reservoirs off the Victorian coast which are very suitable for storing compressed CO2 and there is of course a project underway to do that. QUESTION: Just on the ETS – hasn’t the Coalition signalled that they will vote against it in the House of Reps? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well at the moment, what we’ve done in the House of Representatives is we have moved what’s called a Second Reading Amendment which summarises the amendments that we’re negotiating with the Government.  And so the Government won’t agree to that Second Reading Agreement so we would then vote against it in the House.  But the real action obviously and the place where it will be amended if agreement is reached is obviously in the Senate. QUESTION: How could that be good faith negotiations then?  You said about the best intentions… MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we’ve made it very clear that the negotiations are proceeding in the utmost of good faith and we’ve made it very clear that we do not support the bill in its current form.  That’s been well understood.  What we have set out is a set of amendments, depending on the extent to which they are agreed to, may enable us to support the bill but we’re having those…but until such time as an agreement is reached obviously we don’t support it. QUESTION: Sorry, just one quick question.  You said there about spending, what about political donations – 86 per cent in a poll apparently support a cap on political donations – do you think it’s a good idea? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have been a long-term advocate of reform for many years, too long I’ve been an advocate of this because we haven’t had the reform yet.  I would welcome comprehensive reform to campaign finance.  It’s overdue and the model that I proposed, where again there have been discussions with the Government about this, the model I have proposed is one where there would be a cap on donations and donations would only be receivable or able to be made by human beings, by individuals who are on the electoral roll as opposed to corporations and trade unions.  So if you’re on the electoral roll you could make a donation and you have an annual cap on that and that would I think create a much more level playing field and allay a lot of concerns that people have about the current arrangements. [ends]  malcolmThu, 12 Nov 2009 03:35:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:667http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/659/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=659http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=659&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/659/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Remembrance Day; Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies.   E&OE   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, is Remembrance Day losing a bit of its significance given the Prime Minister doesn’t need to be in the country for it?    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   This is a day of enormous significance. This is the first Remembrance Day where we do not have any living survivors, veterans of the First World War. It is a very special day every year; it is a very special year to remember the sacrifice of all of those who died.   QUESTION:   What do you make of reports that The Last Post is now available for sale as a ring tone; for two dollars you can buy The Last Post to download onto your mobile phone? Do you think that is appropriate?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think it is probably the spirit in which it is heard. But I really have to say that on this solemn day, it is a day of great significance for all Australians, it is of great significance for everyone.    It is of great significance for me and my family too. It was the day my father was killed. So it is a special day of remembrance for me – both personal and remembering all of those who fought to defend us over so many conflicts, but particularly of course in the Great War.   Can I just make another observation though on another matter: we have another day and another day of policy failure by the Rudd Government. He has tried the Indonesian solution. He has tried the Philippine solution and now the New Zealand solution, and there’s no solution in sight. What Mr Rudd needs to deliver is a Rudd solution and he cannot do that until he recognises and accepts the colossal failure of policy as a consequence of his unpicking the policy framework of the previous government that worked, that kept the people smugglers at bay, that stopped the unauthorised arrivals. We have now nearly 50 boats and 2,200 unauthorised arrivals since Mr Rudd unpicked the policy that worked. He has to face up to that. This is a colossal failure in policy.   QUESTION:   There’s no other option now but to bring them to Christmas Island is there?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we have been refused a briefing by the Government. I do not have access to any more than what I read in the media. We have asked the Government for a briefing on the situation with respect the Oceanic Viking and they have refused to give us one until the whole matter is concluded – and who knows when that will be.    QUESTION:   Do you agree that Nick Minchin is a fruit loop as has been reported?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I am not going to engage in any commentary on that. Thanks very much.   [ends]  malcolmWed, 11 Nov 2009 06:33:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:659http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/660/Joint-Doorstop-with-Paul-Fletcher-Liberal-Candidate-for-Bradfield-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=660http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=660&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/660/Joint-Doorstop-with-Paul-Fletcher-Liberal-Candidate-for-Bradfield-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s broken promise to cut back on consultants; Labor’s reckless spending; Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies; climate change; Bradfield by-election.            E&OE   MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Well today we are reminded yet again of how Labor is a government of spin not of substance – one policy failure after another. Lindsay Tanner and Kevin Rudd promised they would cut back in spending on consultants. We saw today they have spent $450 million on consultants in the last year. Not a decrease, not a cut, an increase of six percent year on year. More Labor waste, more reckless spending, more pressure on interest rates, more pressure for higher taxes. That is Labor economic model – a diabolical cocktail of reckless spending and borrowing.  And of course in terms of the refugee issue, we see the people smugglers calling the shots. Kevin Rudd has outsourced our humanitarian immigration programme to the people smugglers. He recklessly unpicked the policy fabric of the previous government, said it would make no difference to the level of arrivals which had been reduced to little or nothing, and now we have had over twenty-two hundred unauthorised arrivals and nearly fifty boats since August last year when he recklessly unpicked the policies that had worked. This is a colossal policy failure of the Rudd Government, and yet again an example of where he is long on spin but cannot deliver in substance.  QUESTION:       Mr Turnbull on Four Corners last night Nick Minchin basically came across as a climate change sceptic and said the rest of the party room was a climate change sceptic. What’s your reaction to that?  MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Well I am focused on the good faith negotiations we are having with the Government. We are engaged in those good faith negotiations to consider the amendments that we put up to the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme. Our amendments will save thousands and thousands of Australian jobs and deliver a better environmental outcome. So I am focused on that and I am not going to run a commentary on those negotiations. When they are complete we will consider the outcome in the Shadow Cabinet and then in the party room.  QUESTION:       Are you worried about Nick Minchin? MALCOLM TURNBULL:  I am focused on those negotiations. QUESTION:       Mr Fletcher what’s your stance on climate change? PAUL FLETCHER:  Well I fully support the leader of the party Malcolm Turnbull and the parliamentary party, and I’m delighted that Malcolm Turnbull has come into the electorate of Bradfield again today as we campaign to win the Bradfield by-election on the 5th of December. The Liberal Party is standing and this is a choice for the people of Bradfield to choose a candidate who can be part of the process of getting Australia back on track and getting a government led by Malcolm Turnbull elected at the next election. And I’m very much looking forward to playing my part in that after, we hope, the right result on the 5th of December. QUESTION: What do you say to Liberal parliamentarians who are publicly airing their views and their scepticism of climate change? PAUL FLETCHER: Look, what I say is I’m focused on winning the by-election on the 5th of December, and I am delighted that Malcolm Turnbull has come into the electorate of Bradfield today to assist me in campaigning.  So we’ve just been talking with a range of small business owners in the mall here in Chatswood and in the Westfield here in Chatswood, having very important discussions about how they’re finding business, because in the Liberal Party we’re strongly committed to small business and supporting small business and that’s an important theme of our campaign here in Bradfield for the by-election on the 5th of December. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, is climate change man-made?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sorry? QUESTION: Is climate change man-made?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that we are going through a period of global warming caused by humans, principally by the burning of fossil fuels and releasing of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at higher rates and of course by deforestation.  They are the main contributors.  And I accept that conclusion and I think it is prudent to do so and that is why governments all around the world, without any exception as far as I’m aware, are taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  We certainly did that when we were in government and we were very successful in doing so.   I might remind you that Australian is one of very few countries that will actually meet its Kyoto target and that was due in large measure to the efforts of the previous government. QUESTION: [Inaudible] doesn’t seem to believe it is man-made?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I’m not going to run a commentary on other people’s opinions.  You have asked me for my view.  People can have whatever views they like.  The question is what action do you take.  And the reality is that leaders of governments, both of the left and the right, have regarded it as prudent to take effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  And that goes whether you’re talking about Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom or whether you’re talking about George Bush, who did take effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in America, or indeed Barack Obama; whether you’re talking about Nicolas Sarkozy in France or David Cameron, the Conservative Opposition Leader in the UK.  So there is a broad consensus around the world for taking action and we are certainly part of that. QUESTION: Mr Fletcher, you said you support Mr Turnbull’s stance on climate change, that climate change is manmade.  Do you believe that? PAUL FLETCHER:  I believe that the people of Bradfield expect the Liberal Party to take a responsible course of action in engaging, as we are doing, and they also expect a serious and well considered campaign in Bradfield across a range of issues.  And there is a significant range of issues in this by-election including concern about Labor’s overdevelopment, concern about changes to superannuation – there’s a whole range of issues.  And the people of Bradfield look to the Liberal Party to represent them across the broad range of issues, standing up for the interests of the people of Bradfield. [ends]   malcolmTue, 10 Nov 2009 06:41:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:660http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/662/Interview-with-Tim-Cox-ABC-Hobart.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=662http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=662&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/662/Interview-with-Tim-Cox-ABC-Hobart.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies; John Howard; ETS.   E&OE   TIM COX:   Mr Turnbull very good to talk to you again, good morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Great to be with you Tim.   TIM COX:   Did you get to watch Four Corners last night?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I certainly did, yes.   TIM COX:   Apart from Ian Macfarlane eating an orange… I don’t know, did you sleep well after watching that because I don’t know, it is always interesting for people like me to see what is happening behind the scenes, to get a better sense of the depth of what goes on, but also of course with your Wilson Tuckeys that we know well enough and Barnaby Joyce, but also the Cory Bernardis etc, the difficultly you are going to have in bringing together a Coalition who will be part of the debate?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Tim I’m not going to be deflected from the big issue of the moment which is Kevin Rudd’s absolutely colossal failure on border protection. The reality is that he unpicked the policies that were working at the time he came into office. He said it would have no impact on unauthorised arrivals and people smuggling. And we are now seeing an extraordinary surge in people smuggling and unauthorised asylum seekers.    We have an Australian Government vessel, the Oceanic Viking, which is heading into its fourth week now, sitting up off Indonesia when it should be doing work elsewhere. I mean, as you know, there is a big issue about the illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean, you know with these gillnets set on the bottom up to 10 kilometres long. That is something that the Oceanic Viking should be dealing with but they can’t because thanks to Kevin Rudd’s colossal policy failure it is essentially operating as a floating hostel off the coast of Indonesia.   TIM COX:   When it is resolved though, isn’t it just the Pacific Solution in another location, the Indonesian Solution, isn’t it exactly the same as the former Coalition government….   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim, Kevin Rudd doesn’t have any solution. I mean the fact of the matter is – and I am not saying something that is contentious or subjective; this is just a fact – there was a set of policies in place as of the middle of last year, following the election, which had been put into place and refined and developed and evolved under the Coalition, which had had the result of no boats, very little or no boats for many years. So it was successful. Kevin Rudd unpicked that. He was advised by the Federal Police not to do it. They said the people smugglers would use this as a marketing tool to get more customers.    The Indonesian Ambassador made a similar warning. The International Organisation for Migration made a similar warning. But he went ahead recklessly and now we have as of right now we have close to 50 boats since August of last year and over 2200 unauthorised arrivals to the point where we are going to be spending tens of millions of dollars to double the size of the detention centre facilities on Christmas Island, which were built by the Howard Government and which were described only a year ago by the Labor Party as a white elephant because they would never be needed.   TIM COX:   Now if the Sri Lankan asylum seekers do leave the ship – they say they won’t go to Indonesian soil – but is there a difference though in them going to Indonesia to if they were taken to Nauru instead, as they would once have been?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well look I think the colossal failure of judgement on Kevin Rudd’s part Tim is that he apparently – assuming, you know, just accepting what he said – he apparently reached some form of agreement with the Indonesia President that they could be disembarked in Indonesia. But he obviously did not turn his mind at all to how he was going to persuade them to leave the boat.  And so as I understand it the Indonesians are happy for them to disembark – again I am only relying on what I’ve been told in the press.    You know we have asked for a briefing on this sometime ago and the Government has said we won’t give you any briefing on the situation until it is resolved. So this is why when people ask me ‘what would I do with the people on the boat’ – the Government has put us in a position where we know no more than you do. They are refusing to share any information on this situation, no doubt because it is such a colossal policy failure.    TIM COX:   Although I note the ever helpful Senator Joyce, the aforementioned Senator Joyce had a solution of marching them back to Sri Lanka which would of course, as he said, send a strong message. Why not send a strong message then?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the reality is you cannot do that. That would be contrary to the UN Convention on Refugees. The fact is that they are seeking asylum from a situation in Sri Lanka, that is their claim – of course you know there’s a lot of question marks about at least one of them, this fellow Alex, who admits to having been living in Canada for some time, quite a considerable time and having had a fairly colourful criminal record there – so nonetheless they are entitled to have their claims processed by the UN High Commission on Refugees.    The appropriate place for them to be disembarked is Indonesia. There is no question about that. But of course Kevin Rudd’s problem is that they are on an Australian boat and he obviously hasn’t given any thought as to how to get them to leave.    TIM COX:   Well if Indonesia’s the right place then Mr Turnbull, isn’t Kevin Rudd doing the right thing and endeavouring to get them to land on Indonesian soil?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim he is certainly not succeeding in getting them to come off the boat and he is in a position now where the asylum seekers are dictating terms to Australia. And the fact is that we cannot continue with a set of policies that effectively are outsourcing our humanitarian immigration program to the people smuggling industry.  That is what Kevin Rudd has done.     Now it is a colossal, catastrophic failure of policy.  And it is his own doing because we know that we had, if you go back to 2002-03 there were no boats; in 2003-04 there were three; in 2004-05 there were none; 2005-06 there were eight; 2006-07 four; 2007-08 three.  So there were little or no people smuggling activity going right back for seven years and that was the result of good policies, successful policies.  Now Kevin Rudd threw those policies out the window and we’re now, as I said, in a situation where we have had over 2,200 arrivals since August last year.   TIM COX:   Malcolm Turnbull here on ABC local radio.     Are you happy to see John Howard, the former prime minister, returning to the political debate, the public discourse in the last week or so?  Of course he’s kept a pretty low profile over the last two years or so.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think it’s good.  I think it’s good for him to be out and about and expressing, making a contribution.  John’s experience is unparalleled.  There’s no longer serving prime minister in our history apart from Robert Menzies.  So there is no one alive in Australia today that has a longer experience in government than he has had and so he has a very valuable contribution to make and it’s important, and he provides plenty of advice when asked.  He plays a very constructive and positive role in the Liberal Party.   TIM COX:   Alright, well can we finish where I tried to get us going and that was on the Four Corners program last night.     Of course whilst it’s a very difficult humanitarian issue the asylum seeker question is one that’s very popular in the public domain Malcolm Turnbull but this other question of climate change and how the Coalition will have its seat at the table, and as I said, we saw the diversity, the difficulty with which you’re dealing last night. How will you overcome that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, very simply Tim, we have a process.  We are in good faith negotiations with the Government.  I’m not going to be deflected from those negotiations.  They will have an outcome.  At the end of that we will then decide whether we as a Shadow Cabinet agree with the outcome and then we will either recommend its acceptance or not to the party room.     Now the fact of the matter is the Australian people expect us to take a constructive approach to this and that is exactly what we’re doing.  I mean the Prime Minister’s outburst last week was not consistent with those good faith negotiations.  But I can assure you we will not be deflected by him and the negotiations are continuing and they will have a conclusion and then we will consider it.   TIM COX:   Do you envy the solidarity that appears to exist in Labor ranks on this issue?  There’s not the, well the difficulty, with respect, that you have.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Tim, look I understand your interest in it but really I can’t go any further than…   TIM COX:   It’s not my interest Mr Turnbull, it’s my listeners’ interest as you well know – as a former environment minister you well know.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m sure your listeners are interested in it but I’m not going to run a commentary on good faith negotiations which are going on at the moment.  And when they reach a conclusion we will then be able to, both the Government and the Opposition, will be able to be quite clear about our positions going forward.  But we are having good faith negotiations.      And really when I was talking to Steve Titmus this morning, our candidate in Bass, and Steve is there on the ground taking up the fight to Labor and the issues that people are talking to him about are certainty for jobs, aged care, they are talking about the concern about saving the Australian Technical College in Launceston and Burnie, they’re talking about the lack of GPs in Tasmania.  I mean those are the issues that people are talking to Steve about and those are the on the ground, at the coal face issues that politicians like myself and Steve Titmus have to address, and he’s taking that fight up to Labor very emphatically there in Bass.   TIM COX:   There would be though… people that Steve would be campaigning would be hoping to represent, primary producers in particular, that are hoping that the Coalition will talk common sense and oppose an ETS.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The position that we have put and our position is that agriculture emissions should be excluded from an emissions trading scheme but agricultural offsets, green carbon offsets, should be included.  And that is the position, by the way, that is being followed in the United States and will be followed in Europe, so it’s a very responsible approach that we’re talking.  That offers enormous benefits to farmers.   The ability to create carbon credits if you like by more sustainable methods of cultivation and grazing by environmental forestry, increasing levels of soil carbon, is a very big opportunity.  And you will have noticed that the National Farmers’ Federation have strongly supported the position that I’ve taken on behalf of farmers in these negotiations.   TIM COX:   Malcolm Turnbull, good to talk to you as always. Many thanks for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Great to talk to you Tim.  Bye.   [ends]malcolmMon, 09 Nov 2009 23:41:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:662http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/674/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=674http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=674&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/674/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspxSubjects: emissions trading scheme; Kevin Rudd’s failed border protection policies. E&OE LAURIE OAKES: Mr Turnbull, welcome. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Laurie. LAURIE OAKES: And you know you don’t need the metal jacket. Everyone knows I’m a pussycat. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, that’s right. You’re just a nice furry fellow there. LAURIE OAKES: It look as though the Coalition has had a big win with the Government announcing it’s prepared to exclude agriculture from the emissions trading system indefinitely. Do you see that as a victory? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is certainly a key part of our set of amendments that we put to the Government to exclude permanently agricultural emissions, direct emissions from agriculture, in line with what is being done in the United States and Europe, and also, equally importantly, to include agricultural offsets so that farmers and other landowners are able to generate carbon credits by more sustainable use of their land, by environmental forestry, with biochar, increasing soil carbon. And of course that offers for farmers in particular, as it already is doing in America, a very substantial additional source of income. So it is good for the environment and it is good for the farmers. LAURIE OAKES: What the Government seems to be saying, although we haven’t seen the detail yet, they seem to be saying that they will look at, they will examine this question of offsets for farmers. Will that be good enough for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie, let’s wait and see what they come up with. In the United States, for example, agricultural offsets are being specifically legislated for. In the Waxman-Markey Bill that has been through the House of Reps over there there is actually quite a long list of them. Anyway I don’t want to run a commentary on the negotiations or give forecasts of where they are going to end up. We are having constructive negotiations with the Government. Ian Macfarlane is doing a great job for our side. They are constructive talks, they will reach a conclusion and then we will make a decision. LAURIE OAKES: Well one newspaper today is saying that this concession by the Government means that we are likely to have an emissions trading system deal locked up by the end of next week. Are they going too far or is it that good? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well comment is free and facts are sacred, so I will leave the commentators to make whatever free opinions they like. And we will just deal with the facts. We will find out where the Government, how far the Government is prepared to come in addressing our amendments and then we will, as an opposition, make a decision. LAURIE OAKES: Assuming that the Government is giving you what you want on agriculture, is that the only potential deal breaker or are there other potential stumbling blocks? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Laurie, sorry, I couldn’t hear any of that last question. Could you just ask that again? There was some interference here. LAURIE OAKES: Yeah, I was saying that assuming the Government is giving you what you want on agriculture, is that the only potential deal breaker or could there be other stumbling blocks in the negotiations? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Laurie, there are a range of very important matters raised in the amendments. I have made a deliberate decision not to say what is a deal breaker, what is more important, what is less important. The negotiations have been conducted constructively and, I might say, confidentially between the Government and the Opposition and they will reach a conclusion and then we will make a decision. LAURIE OAKES: How confident are you that if Ian Macfarlane does negotiate a deal with the Government, one that you accept, how confident are you that the Coalition party room will go along with it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie, I am confident that you, despite your claim to be a pussycat at the beginning, are as persistent and tenacious as a bulldog because you are asking me the same question again and again, and I will just give you the same answer which is we will let the negotiations take their course. They are proceeding in good faith and at the end we will make a decision. We have got to look at the whole package that can be agreed on. LAURIE OAKES: But it’s not the same question, of course. If a package is agreed on, then are you confident it will get through the party room? You did stake your leadership on this after all. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie, let me just be quite clear about this. We will discover at the end of the negotiations how far the Government is prepared to go to address the amendments that we have proposed. That will be considered by Shadow Cabinet which will then take a recommendation to the party room which will, of course, make the final decision and anything else beyond that is just speculation to which, I might say, you are perfectly entitled, but as the Leader of the Opposition I am not going to engage in that speculation. LAURIE OAKES: Except that you did spark a lot of it when you put your leadership on the line. Now there has been a recent analysis… MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Laurie again, with respect, we should be talking about some other issues this morning other than this but let me just say this to you. The issue that I was concerned about and which I said was a leadership issue was the question whether we would engage in constructive negotiations with the Government and take amendments to them. The party room supported me overwhelmingly on that, overwhelmingly. And the negotiations are going ahead. I have not made any commitment, personally or on behalf of the party, as to whether we will support the outcome of those negotiations or not because we don’t know what the negotiations will be. Obviously if the Government agreed to everything, I would recommend we support it. If they agreed to nothing, I would recommend we oppose it. But we all know that the outcome is going to be somewhere in the middle, so let’s not speculate about that. Let’s see what it is and then we will decide how we vote. LAURIE OAKES: But if a large slab of Liberal senators vote against you in the Senate, wouldn’t that bring your leadership into question? I mean could you live with that humiliation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You would be amazed what politicians can live with, Laurie – look I can even live with you going on and on about this so tediously. Look, Laurie, at the moment – just leaving the ETS for a second – at the moment we are witnessing another colossal policy failure on the part of the Rudd Government. I mean, our border protection policy is a shambles. He is offering special deals to get people off the Oceanic Viking, 22 out of 78. Another boat has arrived overnight with nearly 50 people on it. That is 49 boats and over 2,200 unauthorised asylum seekers since Kevin Rudd abandoned the policies of the previous government that were working. This is a colossal failure in border protection. If you talk about humiliation, how humiliated is Kevin Rudd to be having to offer special deals, begging these people to leave an Australian Government vessel and he has only be able to get 22 out of the 78 off. He is offering them a better deal than they would have received in terms of access to Australia than if they had arrived at Christmas Island. This is an extraordinary and humiliating episode in our border protection history. It is a colossal failure. LAURIE OAKES: Look I do want to talk about that in more detail but it was Nick Minchin who on Four Corners said, ‘hey, don’t forget about ETS and the Liberal Party’s division’, so let me ask you a couple more questions on that. How confident are you that if you get a deal with the Government on the ETS that Nick Minchin will vote with you in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Nick and I speak together a lot about all of these issues. Nick is the Leader in the Senate, he is a member of the Shadow Cabinet and he understands the importance of cabinet solidarity. So if the Shadow Cabinet agrees on a course of action and that is then endorsed by the party room, then every member of the Shadow Cabinet supports it. That goes without saying. LAURIE OAKES: Even though he thinks that the idea that humans have caused global warming is a vast leftwing conspiracy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Cabinet solidarity means that we agree on a position and then we all stick to it. LAURIE OAKES: Okay. Well, asylum seekers. As you say, that is the big issue and I have been very critical of Kevin Rudd and his management of this. Another boat has been intercepted off Ashmore Reef and the Indonesians have stopped a boat with Afghanis aboard and been involved in some sort of gunfight. Do you think you are on an election, potential election winner with this issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie, I am not interested in… that aspect is something, again, for you to write about it if you want to. The real issue here is that Kevin Rudd has comprehensively failed the Australian people. Every Australian government, Labor or Liberal, has an obligation to keep our borders secure and have policies that do the utmost to stamp out people smuggling and prevent and discourage unauthorised arrivals of people smugglers. What Kevin Rudd has done is roll out the Rudd carpet and no, Laurie, I’m not speaking New Zealand. He has rolled out the Rudd carpet to these people. He has sent a big signal which says Australia is open, our borders are open. And what we are seeing is a rising surge in unauthorised arrivals because of his softening of our policies. He said he could do all that and it would have no effect. Well he has been proved comprehensively wrong. He has got to admit that his policy has failed and do something about it. LAURIE OAKES: Malcolm Fraser says you’re after the redneck vote or maybe I should say the Ruddneck vote. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I understand that not everyone will agree with the position I take and there will be critics. But leadership is about making tough decisions. Kevin Rudd hasn’t made any tough decisions. We have to be firm in our resolve to protect our borders. Let me just make this point, Laurie. Let’s just look at this coldly and objectively. The people smugglers are criminals but they are in business. They are asking their potential customers for 10, 15 thousand dollars to secure a seat on their boat and they are offering them a product and that product is the near certainty of permanent residence in Australia. Now what Kevin Rudd has done has made that product more attractive and this is why the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UN, the Indonesian Ambassador, the Federal Police, the International Organization on Migration are all saying that it is Kevin Rudd’s policies that have increased that pull factor. So that is why we have said we will – if returned to office – we will establish a safe haven visa that will mean that a person who comes in an unauthorised way as an asylum seeker, and is proved to be a refugee, will be given protection but that their status will be reviewed not later than three years and if it is found that the country from which they fled is no longer in a condition such that they could reasonably fear the risk of persecution, then they would be repatriated. What… LAURIE OAKES: The Government… MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Government says… LAURIE OAKES: The Government says temporary protection visas didn’t work last time and they won’t work this time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie, the Government said that unpicking the Coalition’s border protection policy wouldn’t have any effect on the number of boat arrivals. They got that comprehensively wrong. I think the one thing that we know is that the previous government’s policies worked. And we have got to be rational about this. The people smuggler is selling a product. That product is a certainty of permanent residency in Australia. If we make that product less certain then fewer people will part with 10 or 15 thousand dollars to get on the boat, there will be fewer boats, fewer unauthorised arrivals. And what I have proposed is entirely consistent with the UN Convention on Refugees, it is fair, it is humane, it is just, but what it does do is undermine the marketing efforts of these criminal businesses, these people smuggling businesses and unless we do that, we are not going to be able to stop this surge. LAURIE OAKES: Your announcement has caused some dissension in your party. Petro Georgiou said protection visas are a cruel response to genuine refugees. Senator Judith Troeth says your proposed safe haven visa will be even worse than the Howard Government model because it would give less security and certainty. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think either of those comments are correct. They are entitled to their view. I recognise leadership is about taking tough decisions. You cannot please everybody all of the time the way Kevin Rudd tries to do. He has tried to do that with immigration and he has failed. LAURIE OAKES: But why didn’t you take this to the party room for discussion before announcing it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Laurie, we have discussed this issue all the time in the party room and I know the mind of the party room and the measures that we announced on Friday have the support of the overwhelming majority of the party room. There is no doubt about that. LAURIE OAKES: But you can’t say boo about an emissions trading system without going to the party room because the right wing is keeping an eye on you. Is it only issues that are sensitive to the right wing that go to the party meeting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie, it is new policies and developing policies, and the fact of the matter is the emissions trading scheme is a developing situation. You have seen the Government announce some very significant changes today. You have got to remember, just on that, it is not so long ago that the Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said that our proposals on agriculture were “too good to be true”. Well now, if the press is to be believed, the Government accepts that they are not simply true but good policy. Anyway, we will see what they come up with. LAURIE OAKES: I hate to point out that you’re the one who just took us off asylum seekers back to the ETS. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there you go you see, but because you have been such an affable pussycat this morning I thought I should give you a bit of lead in there. LAURIE OAKES: Okay. Now you have said that Kevin Rudd has given a special deal to the Tamils on the Oceanic Viking. He denies that. What should he have done to get these people off the ship? Isn’t it better to coax them off the ship with offers rather than use force? MALCOLM TURNBULL: He should have told the truth. The fact is he did offer them a special deal. That is clear. The evidence is in writing. The Indonesian Government has confirmed that. So what he has said about not offering them a special deal is simply untrue. As to the method of getting them off the ship, the fact is the Government has refused to give us a briefing on it so I can’t give you an informed opinion about what would have been the best technique. But just bear this in mind, it was Kevin Rudd who said he had a deal whereby they could disembark in Indonesia but he obviously failed to give any consideration as to how to get them off the ship. What does that say about his judgment? What does it say about his competence? LAURIE OAKES: Final question, I notice a News Limited reporter today is saying that we are entering the political killing season, the time of the year when leaders normally get knocked off. Are you feeling uncomfortable, watching your back? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am feeling very comfortable and, as you said, I didn’t need the full metal jacket this morning and I don’t need a full metal jacket at any time. LAURIE OAKES: Mr Turnbull, we thank you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is great to be with you, Laurie. [ends]  malcolmMon, 09 Nov 2009 05:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:674http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/654/Interview-with-Jon-Faine-ABC-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=654http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=654&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/654/Interview-with-Jon-Faine-ABC-Melbourne.aspxSubjects: Border protection; taxation; Gary Banks; republic; gay marriage. E&OE JON FAINE: Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to 774 ABC Melbourne. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good to be with you. JON FAINE: Are you tweeting as we speak? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have put in a little tweet just to alert the twitterers that I am here with you so they can listen to us on the internet if they wish. JON FAINE: Are you obsessed with this new technology? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I’m not obsessed. I am bemused by it. JON FAINE: In what way? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think it is interesting. JON FAINE: Why is it useful? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think it is just another means of communication. As we were saying just a minute ago, the critical thing is the message not the medium. So you have got lots of ways of getting your message across – radio, newspapers, television, the Internet, Twitter, Facebook and no doubt many more that are yet to be invented. So if you are spreading the good word, which is what I seek to do, you have to make sure you do it everywhere. JON FAINE: Tailor made for narcissists, I thought. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think it is tailor made for people that want to get their message across. JON FAINE: And talkback radio is another way of doing that. 1300 222 774 if you have a question for Malcolm Turnbull. The Prime Minister spoke to us yesterday about the standoff off Indonesian waters with the Oceanic Viking. What would Malcolm Turnbull do in this situation if he was prime minister? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I would do is ensure that this phenomenon hadn’t occurred in the first place. JON FAINE: But it has. Given where we are right now, what would you do with it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Jon, you can’t just take a snapshot in time. The reality is that Kevin Rudd has presided over a colossal failure in policy. He unpicked the border protection policies of the previous government that were working, that had seen no boats come for a long time or very few, and changed those policies and we have now had a surge in people smuggling and unauthorised arrivals. He has outsourced our immigration. JON FAINE: He had a mandate to change, that was one of the key things he campaigned on in the election. MALCOLM TURNBULL: He did not have a mandate to outsource our immigration policy to the people smugglers. That is what he did. He didn’t tell the Australian people that. What he said to them was you can change the border protection policies and it won’t make any difference. And that was always wrong, the Federal Police told him it was wrong, the International Office of Migration told him it was wrong, even the Indonesian Ambassador gave a warning. He ignored all that – let alone the Opposition of course; he always ignores us – but nonetheless he made those changes and what do we have? Thousands, over two thousand unauthorised arrivals, a surge in people smuggling, our immigration program is being outsourced to the people smugglers. JON FAINE: The Sri Lankans, of course, have fled a more recent conflict so it is unfair to say that this was something that could have happened before the war came to an end. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well again, Jon, this is why – I will come to the position of the people on the boat in a minute – but I am reluctant to give specific advice about what should be done with those people on the boat because I don’t have access to the information that Kevin Rudd does. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know… JON FAINE: We know they’re Tamils. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we know that but what we have also read reports is that they have been living in Indonesia for five years. JON FAINE: Some of them, yeah. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, is that true? We don’t know. See, this is the thing. As to how they should be handled on the boat, there is no question, as a matter of international law, they were rescued at sea and they should… obviously we should always respond quickly and urgently to people who are in distress at sea. They were rescued in sea in an Indonesian search and rescue area, and quite properly they were taken to an Indonesian port. JON FAINE: Should they be escorted off our boat now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they certainly should leave the boat. The question is how to get them to leave the boat and, again, I don’t want to give Kevin Rudd advice with a megaphone on that because I know no more than what I have read in the press and what I have read in the press might not even be right. Now Kevin Rudd should know… JON FAINE: Given what you do know, given what you do know, we want to know as potential voters at an election maybe only six, seven, eight months away from now how you would handle this standoff. We’re entitled to know, we need to know. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Jon, if I was prime minister, I would be in a position to make a fully informed decision. I am not the prime minister. I don’t have all that information any more than you do… JON FAINE: So you’re sitting on the fence, which means we don’t know how you would handle this. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Jon, that is absolutely wrong. Anybody making decisions as sensitive as this shouldn’t be making them unless they have got all of the information. Now Kevin Rudd has all of that information. Clearly, the objective should be to encourage or persuade them to leave the boat… JON FAINE: Would you force… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, I am not going to buy into that. I am not going to backseat drive Kevin Rudd on this particular issue. There are security questions involved and a lot of information, classified information that he has that I don’t. He is the Prime Minister. You had him here in the studio yesterday… JON FAINE: He was on the phone but either way. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah okay, but you had him here. He is the guy with all of the knowledge on this, and he has got to make the decision. The one thing Australians do know is that if I am prime minister, if we have an election, if we win and I become prime minister, our border protection policies will be tougher and we will, over time, once again, as we have done before, eliminate the people smugglers. JON FAINE: Okay. Can I just make it absolutely clear though, we still don’t know how you would handle this in any different way to the way Kevin Rudd is handling it and we’re left not knowing then the difference between the way you would deal with it and the way he’s dealing with it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Jon, I don’t have the information that he has. With great respect, what you are saying is unreal. If Kevin Rudd is prepared to sit down and brief me with all of the information that he has, I could express an informed opinion, but any opinion I express about how he should handle… this is a tactical, people management issue which depends particularly on who those people are, what do they have, what ages are they, what backgrounds do they have. This is essentially a security assessment that has to be taken and can only be taken by a government with all of the information to hand. JON FAINE: You can just as easily say none of those things matter because it is a question of principle. They either should or shouldn’t be indulged on an Australian ship, in the words of some of the commentators. You don’t want to [inaudible] this morning and we’ll judge accordingly. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they certainly we shouldn’t have a vessel of that importance tied up there, sitting floating off Indonesia for weeks and certainly the people on the boat should leave the boat. Now actually how that is effected, how they are gotten off the boat… JON FAINE: Well the carrots have been tried and didn’t work so would you know force them off? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well again how that is done, Jon, is a delicate matter because it depends very much on an assessment of the individuals on board and the consequences of using force. JON FAINE: Alright. I’ve exercised my best endeavours to force a clearer yes or no from you and I’ve failed so I will move on. MALCOLM TURNBULL: You have tried to get me to make a completely uninformed judgment and I hope your listeners recognise… JON FAINE: We rely on it every day. What would we do without it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: …that I have resisted the temptation to make an uninformed judgment but clearly the principle is they should be disembarked in Indonesia. How that is effected is obviously a fine judgment that can only be made by the PM with all of the knowledge. It is his responsibility. JON FAINE: 18 minutes to nine. Malcolm Turnbull is my guest in the studio this morning. There is talk now, Wayne Swan yesterday unveiling what he says is going to be a ten year overhaul of the tax system off the review of the tax… globally the Australian tax system. One of the major things is whether or not the wealthy are rorting superannuation. Do you think they are? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t believe so, no. I think the superannuation concessions are designed to encourage Australians to save more and they have been successful in that extent. As a nation, we need to save more and the more Australians are encouraged to be self-reliant and save for their own retirement the better. JON FAINE: So how would you finetune the tax system? What changes would you recommend? You drafted a blueprint for Peter Costello that he didn’t seem to want when you were in opposition, in government. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as a matter of principle, the aim should be to have a tax system that is simpler, so it is less complex, it is fairer so that the people who are similarly situated pay the same amounts of tax and, of course, overall the level of tax is lower because basically I believe as a Liberal that people should be entitled to keep more of the money they earn, governments should be more careful with the way they spend money. The Rudd Government unfortunately is spending recklessly and borrowing recklessly and that is inevitably going to lead us into higher and higher taxes and interest rates. And you’ll see yesterday, Jon, that Gary Banks, who is the Chairman of the Productivity Commission which of course is an independent government think-tank effectively on economic matters, essentially echoed the same criticisms we’ve made all year of the Government’s economic policies. Gary Banks said the stimulus needs to be scaled back, it is excessive and he said that the Government was spending too much money without proper financial analysis, without proper cost-benefit analysis and, as a consequence, if governments borrow money and spend it unwisely, it means that in the future, economic growth will be lower, taxes will be higher and obviously we lose out. JON FAINE: Alright. It seems there’s little hope then of a bipartisan approach. 16 minutes to nine. We have invited callers. There’s a full board, let’s get to them and I’m sure the republic will come up at some point. Alan in Sunshine. Morning Alan. CALLER: Good morning Jon. JON FAINE: Go ahead. CALLER: Good morning Prime Minister! You keep going mate, you’ll be there. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you very much Alan. That is very encouraging. CALLER: These people, these boat people, honestly, it’s not the Australians worry at the moment. I know they’re on one of our boats but they are also in Indonesian waters. They are from Indonesia after all and they should be taken off the boat by Indonesians. That’s the simplest way. The other way, with these people that are already here, they should be taken away again back into Indonesia or wherever they come from and put through the legal system, the legal system to come here. JON FAINE: Have you got a question Alan? CALER: Well that is it. Doesn’t he want to answer that or don’t you want to answer that, Jon? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what is the question, Alan? CALLER: Well, don’t you think that these people are here illegally in the first place and don’t you think that they should have been sent back and monitored back over there, wherever they come from, whether it be Indonesia, Sri Lanka or wherever? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan, just legally, when an asylum seeker gets to Australia, we are bound by law to assess their refugee status and then of course if they are found not to be refugees within the meaning of the UN Convention on Refugees then they are sent home, that’s true. But we are not in a position legally under our law or even under the UN Convention once people arrive to simply put them on a plane without assessing their refugee status. They are entitled to have their claim heard. The problem that we have got, frankly, is that we had a set of policies – some of which were controversial but the most criticised elements actually had been changed by the time of the election in 2007 – we had a set of policies that worked, that had been developed over time, refined, amended and they worked. There had been very few boats for a long time and Kevin Rudd just unpicked that recklessly and what we have now got is a surge of people smuggling and, as I say, he is effectively outsourcing our immigration program to the people smugglers who are crooks and it is an international criminal business and these people are deciding who comes to Australia now, not us. JON FAINE: Alan, thanks for your call. Gino in Bayswater, morning Gino. CALLER: Good morning Jon. Good morning Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Morning. CALLER: Malcolm, I had a question. I’m impressed how you weren’t blasé with the comment but you do like to speak half truths. Weren’t you not in Parliament last week when it was stated categorically that this boat people influx that you are calling is a worldwide epidemic at the moment when up until about 2007 the worldwide epidemic had ceased itself and it has nothing to do with John Howard’s boat people plan or Kevin Rudd unpicking it. Wouldn’t you prefer to speak the whole truth instead of half truths? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ll give you the whole truth and what you’ve just described is just factually wrong. This, what Kevin Rudd is saying, is that there has been a sudden upsurge in refugee claims and refugee numbers around the world and this is the push factor, and therefore everything he’s done domestically is irrelevant. Let me tell you that is completely and utterly wrong. I’ll explain. The push factor – that is to say the number of refugees around the world, all of whom would love to come to Australia if they could, is enormous, has always been enormous, in fact if you look at the UN High Commission on Refugees’ own report from June this year – and it’s on their website, the UN High Commission on Refugees, look at their report, June 2009 – you will see the number of refugees over the last year has actually declined somewhat. In fact… JON FAINE: Minimally, but there is a push into Europe, there’s Africans coming across to Italy, to Spain. The world’s awash with refugees. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I totally agree with you but the question is not whether the world has got a lot of refugees, there’s about 11 million according to the UNHCR, the question is whether the push factors have increased. For example, the largest single source of refugees has been Afghanistan. There are currently 2.8 million Afghans living outside of Afghanistan who are categorised as refugees. At the peak it was about 6.5 million. So 2.8 million is still a staggering figure but it’s a lot lower than it was. So the reality is the push factors are enormous, always have been enormous, sadly probably always will be enormous. What the big change has been – the pull factor – Rudd’s reckless unpicking of a policy that worked and by doing that he outsourced our immigration policy, our program to the people smugglers. JON FAINE: Gino, thank you for your question. Bruce from Ashwood, morning Bruce. CALLER: Yes, good morning, Jon. I was just ringing to ask why the republican debate has gone so much off the agenda and why Mr Turnbull and the Prime Minister are so squeamish about it. I mean, after all Mr Turnbull’s hard work I just don’t want to see him become the forgotten man of the Australian Republican Movement. JON FAINE: Alright, thanks Bruce. Just a reminder, this is what Kevin Rudd said in answer to a similar question from me on just yesterday’s program. Kevin Rudd: I said prior to the last election that on the question of the republic it would not be a priority for any first term that we occupied in office. It would be something which we attended to later if the Government is re-elected. And that’s very much the position I still have. JON FAINE: That was Kevin Rudd yesterday. Malcolm Turnbull, are you in agreement on one thing? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Spoken with characteristic passion by the Prime Minister! Look, I am a very committed republican. I would dearly love to see an Australian citizen as our head of state and I’m no less committed to it now than I was in 1999 when the referendum was held. The question is when can we win a referendum? I want to win a referendum. I want Australia to be a republic. I want us to have an Australian citizen as head of state. I do not believe, and this is a political judgement, I might be wrong, I do not believe a referendum can be won, successfully put – and they’re very hard to win at any time – I do not believe one can successfully be put prior to the end of the Queen’s reign. I said that back in ’99 Jon, and many of your listeners would remember. I said to those people who were saying I’ll vote not on this model and we’ll get another crack in a year’s time. I said if you vote no it means no for a long time. Now sadly that… JON FAINE: Will you go to the next election undertaking that under a Malcolm Turnbull government you would implement a process for a republic upon the passing of the current Queen? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think that is… I don’t know whether we would have that as a formal policy because… JON FAINE: Well why not? That’s what you just said. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, just let me come to it Jon, but I can say to you that speaking as the Leader of the Opposition and I mean John Howard, who was my opponent in ’99 said much the same thing yesterday – I think John and I would both agree on this – that it would be virtually impossible to get the republic issue on the front burner before the end of the Queen’s reign and virtually impossible to keep it off the front burner after the end of her reign. So at the end of the Queen’s reign – and republicans and monarchists, we all wish the Queen a long life and long may she reign. At some point her reign will come to an end and whether that is when I’m prime minister or somebody else – presumably someone would be prime minister – at that point the issue will come back to the forefront and that’s when I think you will see in all probability another referendum question. JON FAINE: You could build that into the referendum. You could ask the people of Australia upon the passing of the current Queen, do you want to now commence a process that is triggered to create a republic upon the end of her reign. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s been suggested, Jon, by a few people. I don’t think that would be successful. JON FAINE: Why not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look… JON FAINE: Just a gut feeling? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I have a very high degree, I have a post doctoral qualification in not winning referendums so there are very few people who can speak with more authority than me on the difficulties of winning referendums. And I just have to say to you, to win a referendum you need to have all the planets aligned, you need to have the wind in your sails, you need to have everything going for you. And I think if you put up a referendum on the republic issue prior to the end of the Queen’s reign your chances of winning it are very, very low compared to what it may be after the end of her reign. JON FAINE: Seven minutes to nine. Andrew in Ashburton. Good morning, Andrew. CALLER: Hello Jon and hello Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Hi. CALLER: I just want to ask a question in regards to gay marriage. Australians as a whole are quite a tolerant nation and, again, both the Liberal and Labor governments don’t support any recognition of the love between a man and a man, a woman or a woman; the same recognition that is given to a man and a woman. I just don’t understand why in today’s age, when the majority of Australians are for or supportive of homosexuality or queerness, why the Government can’t recognise that love doesn’t discriminate and neither should the law. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am pleased that we have now legislated to eliminate really every form of, certainly under federal law, discrimination as between married couples, men and women, and same-sex couples… JON FAINE: That’s answering a question that Andrew didn’t ask about this. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I know Jon, I’m just coming to the point, just answering the accusation. So I’m certainly opposed to any form of discrimination based on people’s sexual orientation. However, I believe that marriage is a permanent union between a man and a woman. And so I do not disrespect unions between or relationships, partnerships – whatever you want to call it – between people of the same sex but it is not a marriage. A marriage in my view and I think the view of most Australians is a permanent union between a man and a woman. JON FAINE: So no change from your party whilst you’re leader on gay marriage? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. There will be no change and I don’t believe there will be any change on the part of the Labor Party either. I think there is a broad commitment that marriage, as I said, is a permanent union between a man and a woman. That does not disrespect other relationships at all but marriage is between men and women. JON FAINE: Andrew, thank you for your question. Layne in Mitcham. Good morning, Layne. CALLER: Good morning, how are you? JON FAINE: Good. CALLER: I would like to say to Malcolm that he is criticising – and this is with regard to the asylum seekers situation and many other situations for that matter – constant criticism that’s hiding behind not having enough knowledge to make any suggestions as constructive improvement. It’s very easy and the world’s full of people who can sit and criticise every single thing that somebody else does but offer no constructive improvement, continue waffling on about the past about how good they were. It doesn’t help the future. We’re looking at a situation now, we’re looking at a solution to be made about now. We don’t want to hear about what was before over and over and over again. It’s like a worn out record. JON FAINE: Layne, have you got a question? CALLER: Malcolm you should stop hiding behind the fact that you don’t know much and either shut up because you don’t know much or find out a little bit more and offer something constructive... JON FAINE: Layne, have you got a question for the Leader of the Opposition or not? CALLER: Yes, Malcolm when are you going to provide us with some solutions rather than just criticisms? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’ve certainly pointed to the policies that worked under the previous government and with great respect, saying that you should have no regard to the past or to history, that’s a pretty rash statement. If you had policies that as at 2007 worked, and they were changed in 2008 and now you’ve got a catastrophic policy failure, it’s not unreasonable to point back to those policies. As to the question about how the situation, managing those 78 people on the Oceanic Viking can be managed, I do not believe, with great respect to you, my personal opinion without any of the information as to what’s actually happening on the boat is going to be of much assistance to Kevin Rudd. JON FAINE: Good on you Layne. Thank you for your question. I have the unusual situation of the Opposition Leader being joined by the Opposition Leader. Ted Baillieu is the State Opposition Leader who also joins us in the studio this morning. Ted Baillieu good morning. TED BAILLIEU: Good morning, Jon. JON FAINE: You’ve just announced a reshuffle yesterday which I shall ask you about in a moment. Malcolm Turnbull, tempted to also introduce a reshuffle before we got to the polls for the federal Opposition? TED BAILLIEU: Nice try Jon. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Very good, well, as Ted will agree, leaders of political parties decide on the timing of their reshuffles and who gets reshuffled, who the reshufflees are. JON FAINE: Do you rule out a reshuffle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course I don’t rule it out. JON FAINE: So when’s it coming? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You’ll know. I will let you know. I’ll send you a tweet. JON FAINE: It’s exactly a year until the next State election, Ted Baillieu, so I’ll go through after the news with you the details of the reshuffle. TED BAILLIEU: A year and two or three weeks. JON FAINE: You can compare notes on the perils of being in Opposition and how to cope with bad newspolls, in fact, while I have you both in the studio together. TED BAILLIEU: And what would you like us to address, Jon? JON FAINE: That went down like a lead balloon, didn’t it? TED BAILLIEU: I don’t think Malcolm or I are about to start playing the commentary on polls. JON FAINE: No, no, well it was worth a try. Just finally, Malcolm Turnbull, Barnaby Joyce goading you into almost kicking him out or making him walk away from the Coalition. Are you tempted? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. I make a practise of letting everybody else run a commentary on the Coalition. And I see Barnaby a lot, meet with him a lot… JON FAINE: Do you value his contribution? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I do value Barnaby’s contribution and any discussions we have about managing the relationship between the Nationals and the Liberals, which is obviously an important part of a coalition everywhere, those discussions are ones we have privately. So I don’t propose to have discussions with Barnaby through a megaphone. JON FAINE: You can tweet to him as well. Thank you for your time this morning. Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Federal Opposition. [ends]malcolmFri, 06 Nov 2009 05:43:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:654http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/653/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=653http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=653&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/653/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspxSubjects: border protection; taxation; infrastructure spending. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Today we are seeing example after example of how Kevin Rudd’s Government is a government of spin, not of substance. He claims to have a solution for border protection. He said he had a policy that was tough but humane, when what he has done is simply outsource our immigration program to the people smugglers. A colossal failure in policy. He was warned against unpicking the policy of the previous government, which worked and worked for many years successfully to stamp out people smuggling. He unpicked that and now we have a surge of unauthorised arrivals. We have the Oceanic Viking drifting off the coast of Indonesia with the Government unable to find any conclusion for its passengers, any resolution for its passengers. And we see now today on the economic front, the Reserve Bank upgrading its forecast for our economy, taking a more bullish view, a more optimistic view of the growth in our economy and that is something all Australians will welcome. But it is a message to which the Government is completely deaf. They will not scale back their spending. They have been warned to do so by the chairman of the Productivity Commission here at this conference yesterday. The Reserve Bank is putting up interest rates and they are putting up those rates faster and they are going up further than they would were it not for the reckless spending and borrowing of the Rudd Government. He calls himself an economic conservative, but he is simply borrowing and spending and putting all of our futures at risk by his economic recklessness.   QUESTION: They are talking about unpicking another reform from the previous government around superannuation tax. It appears to have been pretty well flagged. What’s your position on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we will see what they propose but let me just say this, that Wayne Swan knows that he has to put up taxes in order to pay for the reckless spending and borrowing of this Government. Now he could, he could scale back that spending and so take the pressure off Australian tax payers but Wayne Swan – mark my words – is going to impose higher taxes on Australians in order to fund his reckless spending and borrowing. This is a high taxing Government and a Government that’s recklessness is contributing, not simply to high taxes, but higher interest rates as we are already seeing.   QUESTION: But are tax policies for superannuants too generous as they stand? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think the tax arrangements for superannuation at the moment are very fair. We have a general, well what used to be a policy that was widely supported by all sides of politics to support and encourage Australians to save for their retirement, to be more self-reliant. The Rudd Government has shown again and again its determination to chip away at that self-reliance, to penalise Australians who take responsibility for themselves. You have seen this with their attack on private health insurance and, of course, they are foreshadowing an attack now on superannuation.   QUESTION: On the Oceanic Viking [inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have not sought a briefing on it. Julie Bishop is staying in touch with the Government on it, but it is a matter really that the Government, the actual management of that… as I am often asked ‘what would you do’ with respect to the 78 people on the vessel and as I have said again and again the Prime Minister is responsible for the people on that boat. He and only he and his colleagues in the Government have access to the information, the highly classified information about the composition of that party of people, all of the information that is available about them, the attitude of the Indonesian authorities, and it’s really up to Mr Rudd to deal with that situation.  He is the one that claimed he had a solution.  He plainly did not and has not. QUESTION: [Inaudible] inhumane to leave those people on the boat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m sure the people on the boat are being treated very well and I’m sure the conditions on the boat are certainly humane.  I have no doubt about that, that they’re being treated well.  But the status quo is clearly not tenable indefinitely, but again I don’t want to try to backseat drive the Prime Minister on an issue like this where it is really subject to decisions that can only be taken by people with access to type of classified information and security information that one trusts the Government has. QUESTION: But wouldn’t you like a briefing so that you could… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, again, if I were to seek a briefing on classified information it wouldn’t be something I could share in the public domain. QUESTION: Can I come back to tax? Are you worried that Mr Swan and Mr Rudd might use the Henry tax review as a weapon to give them the weapons to increase taxes? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is going to be a high taxing government.  When the Government borrows and spends with the recklessness, the Paris Hilton type recklessness of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan, then inevitably they are going to raise taxes in order to pay for it.  They have to do that.  This is the heavy price that Australians will pay; higher taxes and higher interest rates because of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s reckless spending and borrowing.  And we are concerned that they will use the Henry review as a means of raising taxes.  But we will obviously read the review when it’s produced, published by the Government and as I said inside the Government should publish the Henry review as soon as it is handed to the Government.  They shouldn’t sit on it for three months.  It should be published so that we can all see it and have a fully informed public debate about its contents. QUESTION: Can I ask also about cost-benefit analysis?  Can you commit a Coalition government in future to publishing cost-benefit analysis for all major infrastructure [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely.  Absolutely, it should be published.  I said that in my remarks a little while ago upstairs – absolutely.  Cost-benefit analysis – the Government often says that it can’t be published because they contain commercial information.  That is an issue that can be readily dealt with. And certainly we have the truly bizarre situation of a proposal to spend $43 billion on a broadband network with no cost-benefit analysis at all and when the Finance Minister is asked why there isn’t one he treats that type of analysis as being beneath his dignity and trivialises it.  It’s recklessness on a huge scale. QUESTION: Penny Wong this morning said that the position outlaid in the modelling that came out on the day of MYEFO means that there is no way the Government can give the Coalition everything it wants on emissions.  What prospect then for a successful outcome of the negotiation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the negotiations are being conducted in good faith and confidentially and I won’t be running a commentary on them.  The negotiations are proceeding, they will have an outcome and we will then decide as the Opposition how we respond to the legislation. QUESTION: But she has said that she can’t give you what you want, so is there any point? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, I’m not going to run a commentary on the negotiations. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 06 Nov 2009 04:21:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:653http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/652/Interview-with-Daryl-Manzie-1041-Territory-FM-Darwin.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=652http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=652&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/652/Interview-with-Daryl-Manzie-1041-Territory-FM-Darwin.aspxSubjects:  Another boat – another policy failure; Northern Territory intervention. E&OE DARYL MANZIE: Malcolm Turnbull, how are you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Daryl. DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. Now, look, there are a couple of big issues running around here in the Territory at the moment and obviously the illegal, I guess, boat people, they really are an issue that is concerning us all.  We had a boat picked up last night just off the shore of the Tiwi Islands and, you know, that’s getting pretty close to home, about 30 miles off shore, 30 km off shore I think. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, I think it was 35 nautical miles from the Tiwi Islands with 16 people on board and that brings it now, Daryl, to 47 boats and 2,123 people since August 2008.  So this is a massive surge in unauthorised arrivals and people smuggling since Kevin Rudd unpicked the Coalition’s border protection policies recklessly.  He has essentially outsourced our humanitarian immigration program to the people smugglers.  DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think there is any ‘Indonesian solution’ Daryl.  I mean, let’s be honest, he’s obviously reached an impasse with the Indonesians with the 78 asylum seekers who are stranded at sea on the Oceanic Viking.  It’s his policy failure.  He doesn’t seem to be able – this is Kevin Rudd I’m talking about – doesn’t seem to be able to deliver any effective solution there.  They are stuck on the boat; that important vessel that should be at sea doing its job, protecting our borders, is just sitting there like, well, it’s just really, you know, a floating hostel off the coast of Indonesia while Kevin Rudd goes around in circles, unable to get a resolution. DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. I heard him quoted this morning, the Prime Minister, saying that, ‘no, no, they’re going to be processed in Indonesia’ and I thought, gee, he possibly doesn’t quite have his finger on the pulse there because the Indonesian local provincial authorities are saying we’re not going on to take these guys off, if they come ashore we’ll have to process them, but that’s it.  So I don’t know, I think we’ve got a problem there and the Oceanic Viking is going to be out of service for some time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Daryl, it’s a huge problem.  The tragedy of all this was that as of November 2007 we had border protection policies in place which had cut the flow of people smugglers and unauthorised arrivals down to just about nil.  The people smugglers were out of business.  We had sent a very strong message that we are a tough target and they had gone off plying their evil trade somewhere else no doubt. What Kevin Rudd did was make a series of changes which he was warned against making by the Federal Police.  They said, as indeed we have heard from representatives of the Indonesian Government as well, that these changes sent a signal.  And of course the people smugglers are in business, you know. They’re selling a service.  They’re trying to sell tickets for $10,000, $15,000 to these would-be asylum seekers and so they want to be able to say Australia’s a soft target and get on my boat and I can deliver you a very high probability of permanent residence in Australia. So Kevin Rudd gave a marketing tool to the people smugglers.  They have taken that up with gusto and as a result, as we see, we’ve had 47 boats and 2,123 people coming in an unauthorised way, in an illegal way, since August 2008. DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. Now what about the Opposition – what sort of policy are you going to put in place to deal with this Malcolm?  Have you finalised exactly what you’re going to do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think the starting point, Daryl, has got to be to look at what was working back in November 2007 when we left government.  So we’re looking very closely at that and we’re considering what changes to the previous arrangements, what refinements to it, improvements, would be appropriate.  Obviously we are at a disadvantage in terms of this matter because so much of the information on which governments rely, and on which we relied when we were in government was classified, was information from the Federal Police, from the security services, from the armed forces.  So it’s all very well for Kevin Rudd to say, ‘oh, the Opposition should tell me what to do’.  Well, we don’t have access to the intelligence and the information as to exactly what is going on in the people smuggling business that he has access to.  Now he actually got classified advice, we know, from the Australian Federal Police that these changes would be marketed by the people smugglers and would have the consequence of an increase in arrivals.  Now that was the type of classified advice that normally obviously doesn’t get into the public domain.  Kevin Rudd ignored that.  Now if you go right back to the beginning of the year when these boat arrivals started to increase and we said, okay, this is going to become a problem, Rudd said ‘no, it’s irrelevant, don’t worry, this is just a seasonal change, there’s nothing significant’.  I said at the time he should have an independent public inquiry to ascertain which part of his policy changes had had this effect and what could be done to put some security back in place.  Now he’s refused to do that and what he is basically saying now, as he’s been doing a huge amount of media over the last few days, what he’s basically saying now is there’s nothing he can do about it. So he’s essentially saying Australians just have to get used to having thousands of people arriving illegally by boat. In other words, he’s saying that he’s not going to do anything to stop outsourcing our humanitarian refugee immigration program to the people smugglers. DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. Okay. Now look let’s move on to another subject which is causing us a lot of discussion here Malcolm and that’s the federal intervention into the Indigenous situation here in… especially in the Northern Territory. We’ve had two and a half years, we still haven’t seen a house built on an Aboriginal community and the mid-year Commonwealth’s report on this also I think pointed out school enrolments I think have gone up by 36, but the attendance has gone down slightly and there’s been $40 million spent already by the Northern Territory Government and we still don’t see a house. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the headline numbers are $670 million allocated, $40 million spent, no houses built, and the demountables from Alice Springs moved to Christmas Island to prop up his failed border protection policy. So you know right across the board Kevin Rudd is being shown as being all spin and no action. All talk and no walk. DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. Do you think that there’s a drop-off in commitment or do you think the Federal Government still has a focus on proceeding with this intervention? I mean what’s the talk in Canberra regarding this particular issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think they approach with anything like the same commitment that we had when we were in government. Anyone who saw John Howard or Mal Brough at work in this area knew that they were approaching it with a real passion and a commitment. But ultimately you can have all of the commitment in the world but if you can’t actually deliver the goods it is not much good to the people you are trying to help. And so I think the real problem… what we’re facing on account of Kevin Rudd is that he is not delivering – whether it is in terms of border protection, whether it is in terms of economic management, you know we’ve seen so much reckless spending and borrowing and we are now paying the heavy price for that and higher interest rates, and before too long no doubt higher taxes. He is unquestionably a magnificent master of spin. You’ve got to hand that to him. He is brilliant at the spin. But eventually you get paid on results, and where are the results? They’re not looking good. DARYL MANZIE: And I guess there is a lot of concern being expressed too by the ‘Indonesian solution’ that a lot of human rights people and refugee advocates are saying, hey, you know, the circumstances and conditions that will prevail there aren’t the standard that Australia has operated at and there’s some concerns being expressed there as well. Malcolm Turnbull I thank you very much for talking to us this morning, we look forward to catching up again. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look forward to seeing you up there soon Daryl. Thanks mate. [ends]  malcolmThu, 05 Nov 2009 05:08:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:652http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/651/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=651http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=651&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/651/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Another boat – another policy failure; the republic; emissions trading.     E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well to quote Julia Gillard from her days as Shadow Immigration Minister, we have seen today another boat and another policy failure. Kevin Rudd’s catastrophic policy failure on border protection is becoming more and more apparent to everybody except for him. He has no solutions and is not prepared to entertain any. He has no border protection policy that is effective. He has outsourced our immigration policy, our humanitarian programme, to the people smugglers. He has to recognise that and he has to make some changes. He has got to recognise that his changes to policy, his changes to the border protection policies that worked, have created this extraordinary surge in unauthorised arrivals.   QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, ten years since the republican referendum. Does the issue come to mind very often these days? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh I often think about the republic, and I am afraid to say that it is not often one gets proved right, but back in `99 I said if we vote no it will mean no for a very long time. And you may recall there were some people who said ‘oh, you can vote no and you’ll have another vote in a year or two’. That was never going to be right. So it is a big challenge to change the Australian constitution. As I was just saying downstairs, we have had forty-six referendum questions in the whole history of our nation and only eight have been approved.  QUESTION: At the time it was said that the Prime Minister had broken the nation’s heart. Are you breaking a few hearts by sort of treading so softly on it now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I am a committed republican. Assuming the question, the model is right, I will support a constitutional referendum on the republic when it can be successful. But my view back in `99, and my view remains that the time when this issue can be successfully revisited from the republicans’ point of view is after the end of the Queen’s reign. Now others may take a different view, but I am interested in winning the next referendum, not having another glorious defeat.   QUESTION: Referendums are generally supported when they have bipartisan support. Is it something that you would talk to the Prime Minister about? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s actually not right. You need to have a lot more than bipartisan support. There have been a number of referendums including the plebiscite question in 1999 that had solid bipartisan support but have been nonetheless defeated. To get a referendum up you need to have overwhelming support and very little opposition, so it is a very very high hurdle. And there have been cases when referendums have had a national ‘yes’ vote but have failed to get four states. The simultaneous elections question in 1977, I think you’ll find, had over sixty percent voting ‘yes’ nationally but still only carried three states, so it was lost. So it is very hard. You have got to have all of the planets aligned in your favour and you need overwhelming support.     QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, with regard to Fiji, do you think there is a point at which Australia should start to consider economic sanctions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look it is a very challenging situation. I am sure the Government is going to consider all of its options. Having regard to the interests of the people of Fiji, bearing in mind the interests of the people of Fiji, the Government should proceed in a very measured way, and I know my colleague Julie Bishop will be having more to say about it.    QUESTION: With regard to the ETS, how are the negotiations going?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: The negotiations are proceeding in good faith between the Government and the Coalition. QUESTION: And in light of the fact that there’s an expected Budget deficit as a result of the ETS, are you going to amend any of your, you know, policies on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to conduct the negotiations in public.  They’re being conducted very effectively and frankly between Senator Wong and Ian Macfarlane and those negotiations will have an outcome and we can then, based on what emerges from them, we will then decide how we will respond to the legislation. QUESTION: Is that outcome likely to happen before Copenhagen? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think the Government is certainly committed to having an outcome before Copenhagen, whether it’s the outcome… QUESTION: [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well our view is that, as you know – I’m not saying anything new – our view is that the legislation should not be finalised, the design of the scheme should not be finalised until after Copenhagen.  However, if the Government seeks to force the matter to a vote before Copenhagen we obviously have to respond. Now we are negotiating constructively and in good faith and those negotiations will take their course and when they are concluded we will then decide as a Coalition how we respond to the legislation. QUESTION: With regard to the asylum seekers on board Oceanic Viking, Kevin Rudd says he has got infinite patience. Is that an effective strategy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s not having any effect so far.  I don’t think Kevin Rudd has a strategy, frankly.  I think this is part of the problem that he is facing.  He has got a very valuable, important strategic asset of Australia, the Oceanic Viking, caught there in effect as a floating hostel, not able to disembark the passengers into Indonesia, which of course is what he said he had an agreement to do. This is just another reminder of the colossal failure.  You have to remember, Kevin Rudd was left by the Coalition with a border protection policy that certainly had some critics but nonetheless it was one that worked, it was one that had been very effective for many years.  And he unpicked that, ignored the warnings from the Federal Police and others that by unpicking it he would provoke a surge in arrivals and that is exactly what has happened.  Now he has to deal with this issue and his only response seems to be to say to Australians ‘get used to it’.  QUESTION: Does Kevin Rudd then have to accept some responsibility for the drowning deaths of twelve Sri Lankans? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The tragedies at sea are caused by many things and I’m not going to respond to that other than by saying that our sympathies are with those that lost their lives at sea, their families, and of course we have nothing but unstinting admiration for the courage and the dedication of the men and women who put their lives at risk so frequently to save the lives of those whose boats and whose lives themselves are threatened in accidents at sea. Thanks you. [ends]  malcolmThu, 05 Nov 2009 03:48:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:651http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/649/Interview-with-Geoff-Hutchinson-ABC-Perth.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=649http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=649&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/649/Interview-with-Geoff-Hutchinson-ABC-Perth.aspxSubjects: Melbourne Cup; border protection; Australian economy. E & O E GEOFF HUTCHISON: And for another informed opinion on the Melbourne Cup, I am joined by the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull. Good morning to you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: There could never be a less informed opinion than mine. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Are you on the Bart Cummings bandwagon today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am certainly picking Viewed so, you know, well proven, won the race last year, won the Caulfield Cup and of course a Bart Cummings horse and in good shape. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Malcolm Turnbull, Newspoll offers an interesting assessment perhaps of the Federal Government’s border protection policies today. It shows that support for the Federal Government has slumped seven percentage points on a two party preferred basis. The Coalition has jumped to 48 per cent. Kevin Rudd remains a long way ahead of you as preferred prime minister, but do you think the issue of asylum policy is biting the Government hard? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Government’s policy on border protection has comprehensively failed. If we just drain all of the emotion and rhetoric out of this, let’s just look at the hard facts of life – every Australian government’s policy should be to secure our borders and to ensure that people smuggling does not occur and that there are no, or as few as possible, unauthorised maritime arrivals of asylum seekers. That is the objective. Every government should have that objective. Now Kevin Rudd in August last year started to unpick the fabric of the Coalition’s border protection policies which had stopped the boats for some years and had been proven effective. He unpicked those policies and since then we have had this surge of boats, 46 boats and more than 2100 arrivals, unauthorised arrivals. So his policy objective has failed comprehensively and Kevin Rudd nonetheless firstly says it is not his fault, says it is has got nothing to do with him when plainly it has. And secondly, he says he is not going to do anything about it. So he seems to be committed to having a larger and larger number of unauthorised arrivals and doing more and more to outsource our immigration policy to people smugglers. GEOFF HUTCHISON: So if you were in charge of the Oceanic Viking situation, what would you do with its human cargo? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t like talking about humans as cargo, by the way. There are 78 human beings on that boat. Kevin Rudd is… he has got himself into a very difficult situation there. He has got to find a way to persuade them to leave the boat to go on to Indonesia, go back to Indonesia. It sounds – from what we have read in the press – it sounds like a large number of them have actually been living in Indonesia for five years which demolished the whole claim that their arrival is a result of… GEOFF HUTCHISON: Okay, but what would you do? Because if we accept that the Oceanic Viking with 78 Sri Lankans on board just off the Indonesian coast waiting to find out if it can arrive or not, it is not a situation governments can control easily. What would you do if that was facing you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I would do is I would have all of the information to hand from the Customs officials on the boat, I would know exactly what was going on, I would know exactly what was going on with the Indonesians, and I would be able to make an informed decision. What I don’t want to do is provide off the cuff advice on specific, delicate security situations to the Government when I simply do not have access to all the information at hand that Kevin Rudd does. He is the Prime Minister. He is the one that has to fix it. I could make a suggestion and then Kevin Rudd could say, oh well that wouldn’t work because of these facts that were only known to the Government so it is up to him. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Would you ever consider forcing these people off the boat as Wilson Tuckey, your backbencher, has suggested? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, again, I am not going to give Kevin Rudd advice on how to deal with this specific, delicate security situation that he has got. I mean there are obviously a number of options available to him. We all understand that but he has got to make that decision in the light of the advice he has from Customs, from the Federal Police, from the Indonesian security people and presumably from the intelligence that they are gathering from the people that are actually on the boat. GEOFF HUTCHISON: But with respect, Mr Turnbull, throughout this debate you have had the easy ride, to some extent, of not having to say what you would do, not having to promise a return of temporary protection visas or a Pacific Islands solution. So under a Turnbull Government, specifically, what of the old Howard border protection policies would be reinstated and what would you abandon? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well under a Turnbull Government we would put in place measures that would, over time, stop the people smugglers. Now we have done it before and we will do it again. Our policy is our record, and we will tailor our policies. Geoff, I know you want me to answer the question that Kevin Rudd is incapable of answering even though he is Prime Minister. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Would you be incapable of answering that question as prime minister too? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, if I was Prime Minister – that is the big difference you see – if you are the Prime Minister, you have access to all the intelligence about what is going on in the people smuggling trade, who the players are, what marketing methods they are using, what impact particular changes in policies have made. Remember this, Geoff, that we inherited when we came into government, the Coalition in 1996, we inherited the whole system of mandatory detention, you know, women and children in detention centres. All of that stuff that Kevin Rudd tries to pretend was John Howard’s idea. We inherited all of that and those policies were changed and evolved in the light of experience and in response to events, and they were… the women and children were taken out of detention centres in 2005 by the Howard Government. So Keating put them in; Howard took them out. Again, you don’t hear much of that from Kevin Rudd. GEOFF HUTCHISON: With respect, Mr Turnbull, I don’t think Mr Howard’s policy was seen as particularly sensitive or humane at different times but it was very popular and I don’t know why you’re unable to tell me what a Turnbull Government would do on issues of asylum or border protection. Would you provide us with things like the Pacific Solution? Would there be temporary protection visas reinstated? If everything worked so well under Mr Howard’s stewardship, why wouldn’t you return to the same kind of policies? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will certainly review all of the policies that worked in the past and consider past policies and alternatives in the light of the security situation and the position at the time we come back into government after the next election, assuming the Australian people vote us back in. Now that is the responsible answer. The fact is that you talk about reinstating the Pacific Solution. Well if by that you mean reinstating processing at Nauru and Manus Island, that would require negotiation with and the consent of PNG and Nauru. Now when we were in government, we moved our focus of off-shore processing to Christmas Island. We built the Christmas Island facility, you have got to remember. So the Pacific Solution itself evolved into processing at Christmas Island. I guess what I am saying to you Geoff is, the question is one of commitment. You know, and the Australian people know, the Coalition is committed to stamping out people smuggling. We have used in the past a range of policies that have changed from year to year and time to time and that have proved, some would say as a result of trial and error, but nonetheless that have proved to be effective and we will do that again. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Finally Mr Turnbull, we’re likely to hear from the Reserve Bank probably at pretty much the time the gates fly open at Flemington that there will be an interest rate increase perhaps of .25 of one per cent. Whilst that will put pressure on our mortgages of course, is that indicative of an economy that is in better shape, that is up and running again? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Australian economy is certainly doing well, particularly relative to other developed countries. But the problem is, of course, that inflation is being fuelled by the Rudd Government’s reckless spending. Now they, notwithstanding that the economy is in much better shape than they anticipated when they set up their fiscal stimulus and when they committed to spend all these billions of dollars in such a poorly targeted way, notwithstanding the economy is better, they aren’t prepared to trim back or recalibrate or alter in any way their spending. In fact, according to the MYEFO document, the Mid Year Economic and Financial Outlook document published yesterday, they appear to be spending more in this current financial year than was planned in the Budget. Now they say, of course, that their spending has got no impact on interest rates but I just remind you and your listeners that on the 20th of February in 2008, last year, Wayne Swan criticised the Howard Government saying, and I am quoting him, “one of the reasons the Reserve Bank have been backed into a corner” – he is referring to interest rates – “is that you” – meaning the Howard Government – “spent and you spent and you spent and you spent”. And the question is who is doing the spending now? It is Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd, and they are the ones that are putting the upward pressure on interest rates today. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time this morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks so much Geoff. [ends]  malcolmMon, 02 Nov 2009 22:22:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:649http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/648/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=648http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=648&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/648/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: interest rates; border protection. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: The rate rise today is as expected. The reality is that while this rate rise was very much as expected, a quarter of a per cent, the truth is that the Rudd Government’s continued reckless spending, its refusal to make any change to its borrowing and spending in the light of the changed and much improved economic conditions that are causing the Reserve Bank to wind back its monetary stimulus, that failure on the part of the Rudd Government is putting upward pressure on interest rates. And I am reminded in that context of a speech Wayne Swan gave in February 2008 when he criticised the previous Coalition Government, saying one of the reasons the Reserve Bank has been backed into a corner on interest rates is that “you” – meaning the Howard Government – “spent and you spent and you spent and you spent”. That was Wayne Swan in February 2008. And now we see Wayne Swan’s rhetoric being better applied to him. It really fits him because what he is doing is spending and spending and spending. They went into this big fiscal stimulus, this big spendathon on the basis that Australia was on the edge of an economic abyss. And now we see our economic conditions are stronger. We get those figures, improved figures all the time and the Reserve Bank’s Governor Glenn Stevens has made that point today and yet the Government is not winding back or recalibrating or changing its spending at all. In fact, as we see in the MYEFO statement yesterday, there is actually a blow out in spending in this current financial year. So the truth is Australians are going to pay higher interest rates thanks to the reckless spending of the Rudd Government. QUESTION: It’s not a huge movement though. It’s not as if the Reserve Bank seems to be panicking in any way. It’s more of a… MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is an incremental movement. This is a trend of interest rate rises which will continue for some time. That is certainly what the Reserve Bank is getting us ready for. And the fact is that they are going up faster and higher than they would otherwise need to be if the Government was more responsible in terms of its spending. QUESTION: So are you saying that, to use a phrase often used by Kevin Rudd, the inflation genie is back out of the bottle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think certainly there are concerns about inflation and the Reserve Bank has made that point. When governments are borrowing and spending, particularly spending ineffectively, that does put upward pressure on interest rates. You have seen scathing criticism from the Business Council of Australia, from the Productivity Commission itself about the lack of effective spending, properly costed spending. Where are the feasibility studies? Where is the financial analysis? Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Nowhere to be seen. Only 14 per cent of all the Rudd Government’s stimulus was spent on economic infrastructure which actually grows GDP. This has been a government that has genuinely wasted the crisis. They have borrowed and spent an enormous amount of money to very little effect. QUESTION: On today’s Newspoll, why do you think there has been such a big swing away from the Government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look we are focused on holding the Government to account. The Government is failing the Australian people in so many areas. Their failure in economic policy we have just discussed – borrowing and spending like there is no tomorrow, failing to properly cost, properly analyse their infrastructure spending, spending far too little on economic infrastructure that really grows jobs and grows the economy. And then of course we see the colossal failure in border protection policy. Kevin Rudd’s policy objective should be, as he states that it is, to stop people smuggling and stop unauthorised maritime arrivals of asylum seekers. That should be the objective of every Australian government. By that test, his policy has been a colossal failure. Since he unpicked the policies of the previous government, we have seen a surge of unauthorised arrivals and, as every day goes by, Kevin Rudd is outsourcing our immigration policies, our immigration program to the people smugglers. QUESTION: How are you going to build on this good result? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Our focus is on holding the Government to account, setting out our own alternatives – holding the Government to account and presenting a constructive alternative so that when the election comes, people will know that they have a better option in voting for the Coalition. QUESTION: Would you put the closing of this gap in the Newspoll down mainly to the surge of arrivals that has been happening over the past… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will leave the commentary to you guys. You are much better able to do that than me. QUESTION: Why do you think your rating has not improved along with the party’s? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am focused on holding the Government to account and you can focus on the commentary. QUESTION: Do you think this is the end of Kevin Rudd’s honeymoon? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, I will leave you guys to do the commentary. You are better at that than me, and if there are no more questions on the economy, we will wrap it up. QUESTION: Were you happy with the Newspoll result though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, I will leave that commentary to you. That is a matter for you. Any more… QUESTION: Colin Barnett says the asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking should be sent to Christmas Island. Do you agree? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I am not going to provide advice to Kevin Rudd about how to deal with this very specific, very sensitive security situation. This is a delicate situation. There are 78 people there on that vessel. We do not have access to the intelligence or police reports about what is going on on the vessel, what is going on with the Indonesians. There would be a lot of information that you would need to have before you could make that decision. Colin may well have access to that information through the West Australian Police. I don’t know. I don’t so I am not going to try and be a backseat driver for Kevin Rudd on something as delicate as that. He has got a big problem there. He is the Prime Minister – he should fix it. QUESTION: Was it inappropriate for him to comment on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not going to make any comment on that. Colin Barnett is a head of government. He has got access to police and intelligence information that is not available to the Leader of the Opposition, and that is why in something as sensitive as this, I don’t want to make Mr Rudd’s task any harder. He has got a big challenge there. He has – leaving aside the specific case of the 78 people on the Oceanic Viking – he has got a major policy failure that he has created himself by unpicking border protection policies that worked. That was his judgment, and he said he could unpick those policies of the previous government and it would have no impact on the rate of arrivals. That is what he said. Now clearly he got that wrong and we now have a major problem with the security of our borders and the fact is increasingly, day by day, more and more of our immigration program, particularly our humanitarian program, is being outsourced to the people smugglers. QUESTION: Given you think that the conditions are inhumane in the Indonesian detention centres, doesn’t that seem to mean that you want them sent to Christmas Island? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You are asking the same question in a slightly different way and I give you ten out of ten for persistence but I have already answered that question. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmMon, 02 Nov 2009 22:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:648http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/650/AustraliaIsrael-Chamber-of-Commerce-Panel-Discussion-with-Ross-Greenwood-and-John-Symond-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=650http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=650&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/650/AustraliaIsrael-Chamber-of-Commerce-Panel-Discussion-with-Ross-Greenwood-and-John-Symond-Sydney.aspxE & O E ROSS GREENWOOD: Malcolm Turnbull, what was your interview like with Alan Jones this morning? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It was turbulent I think; a frank and forthright exchange of views. ROSS GREENWOOD: Did you expect it that way or not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan likes stormy interviews. It is good for his ratings and I guess it gets people going early in the morning – better than a cup of coffee. ROSS GREENWOOD: Is it good for your ratings as well do you think? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Who knows? ROSS GREENWOOD: The other side of it also, and we need go straight to this I guess for both of you. The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook was released by the Treasurer at 11.30am today. Now this shows among other things a reduction in the forecast for unemployment, an improvement in the underlying budget deficit – not this year but in the future years – it also means that the Government believes it will be out of the budget deficit sooner than what it had previously forecast and indeed economic growth in Australia, which was forecast this year to be down by point five per cent, is in fact expected according to the Government to up by 1.5 per cent this year. So Malcolm Turnbull I think I’ll start here with you as well and say; do you believe that the Government should be congratulated for the economy being today in the shape that it is in? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think the Government shouldn’t be seeking congratulations for the hard work of all the people in this room and for the outstanding economic legacy left to the Rudd Government by the Howard Government, and in particular by Peter Costello as Treasurer who Kevin Rudd, despite his denunciations of Peter as a neoliberal free market extremist has just now put on the board of the Future Fund, which as we all know is our biggest fund and certainly one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds – so it’s a very important appointment. Look, I think the message out of MYEFO and to be fair I’ve read the overview and obviously haven’t had time to go through it as carefully as I’d like. But I think the message is: it paints a picture which comes as no surprise to any of us of an economy that is doing better than it had been forecast to do as of the beginning of this year. In other words the abyss that Kevin Rudd said he was peering into with fear and trepidation in February has turned out to be neither as deep nor as dark. Nonetheless the Government which had committed so much spending, so much poorly targeted borrowed spending in February, on the basis that we were about to fall over the cliff into the abyss, notwithstanding that the economy is doing a lot better than they forecast, they are continuing to spend exactly as planned. And our point is really the same that we made in February. We felt in February the Government was spending too much in a poorly targeted way, and we suggested they should spend less, and spend it in a better targeted way and we’ve said, as the economy has turned out to perform better, we’ve said what you should be doing is scaling it back. Not cutting it out completely. That is absurd. Nobody has ever suggested that. But to slow it down a bit; recalibrate it in exactly the same way of course as the Reserve Bank is doing. Because the problem is what the Government is doing is putting upward pressure on interest rates by continuing the same velocity of spending as they were when they thought we were heading into the abyss, and as a result the Reserve Bank is putting up rates. And so if you’re a business person or a homebuyer or anybody that is depending on borrowed money, you’re paying an increasingly high price for Wayne Swan’s reckless spending. ROSS GREENWOOD: But could I ask another follow up to that; is quite clearly the Reserve Bank is raising interest rates because its efforts were so stimulatory to begin with when the official rates got down to three per cent, so rates naturally will rise, it is much easier surely if it is a coordinated effort between Treasury, the Treasurer and the Reserve Bank to raise those interest rates more gently, as distinct from perhaps cutting off a road, a port or a railway project mid stream. It is harder for the Government now to stop its stimulus because much of it is infrastructure and much of it is in place? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I note what you are saying but there is a lot of very poorly targeted infrastructure which they could spend over a longer period. If you take the school halls, the Julia Gillard Memorial School Halls program, that’s $16 billion, that’s a lot of money in anyone’s language. The Government has committed to spend that in about two years. They could, if they did not want to break faith with all the schools in Australia that are expecting a Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall, they could at least stretch that out over more years and actually take the time to consult with the school communities to make sure that the infrastructure that they were building was actually wanted and needed. So there are plenty of ways that they can slow down the intensity of the spending without walking away from a commitment. In terms of spending money on what we would call in this room ‘economic infrastructure’ – roads, rail, ports and so forth – the vast bulk of the infrastructure projects the Rudd Government has announced are exactly the same that we were committed to when we were in government, and in fact there have been a couple of examples in some of the projects that they’ve announced, as having been part of their program, which were not only developed, financed or funded and built but actually opened during the time of the previous Coalition government. So in terms of economic infrastructure, from my point of view it is always a good time to spend on economic infrastructure if it has got a positive benefit, the cost-benefit analysis is positive. Of course the big risk you know I think we may want to get into this in some detail, but the big risk, and this is something the Productivity Commission has criticised the Government over, is the way in which they are spending so much money or promising to spend so much money on infrastructure with no financial analysis at all. Forty three billion dollars on a national broadband network – not one line of an excel spreadsheet to analyse it. And when Lindsay Tanner was asked why there’d been no financial analysis, he said in a remark that Henry Ergas said should earn him a Nobel Prize for economics, he said the problem with financial analyses is that you get a different outcome depending on the assumptions you put into it. I mean what a genius. You know no wonder he’s the Finance Minister. This is a disgrace. There are billions of dollars of a scarce resource, your taxes and our children and grandchildren’s taxes, because most of it is borrowed, that is being spent without any proper or thorough analysis and that is only going to mean higher taxes and higher interest rates down the track. ROSS GREENWOOD: I want to take you up on the higher interest rates now because isn’t the situation John Symond that you are concerned that your customers, the first homebuyers, the investors and so forth, may ultimately pay for if you like the economic policies of the current Government? In other words if it cannot cut its budget and cut its spending quickly enough, which it says it will do, then ultimately the other result is, as we go back to the previous recession, higher than expected interest rates. Is that something that concerns you? JOHN SYMOND: Well substantially higher interest rates concerns all of us and who would have thought at this lunch last year that we were going to enter a 12 month period where the average consumer, the majority of ordinary Australians would probably have their best year in decades. And I think the greatest single stimulus was the dramatic drop in interest rates. And for that reason the Indians haven’t been restless, but that may well change going forward. Clearly most people have held their jobs in the last 12 months, historic low interest rates, lower petrol costs – really it has been fantastic for most Australians. But certainly going over the next 12 months there’s going to be some challenges, particularly with interest rates on the way up. Hopefully Glenn Stevens, he chooses his words carefully, and he did say gradual increases. So Ross I would think that on the basis that they don’t do increases as dramatic as the decreases, when the first decrease was one full percentage point, I think certainly up to one per cent, one and a bit, it’s really not going to make a big difference. But if it hits two per cent from there on there’s a lot of people who are going to really feel that. ROSS GREENWOOD: The second thing that happened and Wayne Swan even says this himself, he believes that one of the most important and indeed one of the best decisions he’s made since he was Treasurer is actually providing the guarantees to the banks funding and providing the guarantees to the banks deposits. Now at that point in time quite clearly it was vital to the solvency and to the confidence in the Australian banking system. What I ask the question of now is is the cost of that, the consolidation of the banking system now providing too little competition, particularly to this industry which needs to build more houses, which needs to build more infrastructure for Australia and as a result therefore the banks ultimately have got an ability to effectively I guess to ration out the debt to those who are the strongest? JOHN SYMOND: Well I feel that certainly the previous 12 months actions by government, as well as the Reserve Bank has really played to benefit the average consumer. But going forward, as I said the Indians will become restless, they really haven’t complained about the competition factor in the home loan space anyway because they’ve been enjoying record low interest rates. However going forward once rates substantially pick up and the competition isn’t there and particularly, probably one in four, one in five home loan applicants today are being knocked back, whereas it wasn’t a long time ago, where banks were in fact offering to pay some of the switching costs to win over business….. ROSS GREENWOOD: …you’re saying that today, what you are seeing now is that one in four housing loan applicants is being knocked back? JOHN SYMOND: Well some of their re-fi applications [inaudible] worth what it was three years ago and having borrowed too high a percentage where they could in fact be in negative equity. And it is like any business; if you have got a business where you’ve got customers lining up you can afford to cherry pick and of course that is what is happening. But the banks clearly can’t go out and borrow double the volume of credit that they used to because with the foreign banks all moving out and the non-banks and the smaller banks not being able to compete, everyone is ending up at the big banks and they can’t fund it all. So a combination of tightening credit and just not being able to satisfy a lot of people, over the next 12 months with increasing interest rates on the back of that, the Indians will become restless. ROSS GREENWOOD: Now Malcolm Turnbull I do note over the weekend that Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, as a result of the distressed banks that the British Government was forced to take over to address this problem John Symond talks about, he’s going to create three new high street banks for ordinary individuals to provide hopefully the finance that they need to keep the housing market moving along and to keep the liquidity through that. Is there something of that nature that is perhaps needed here in Australia to provide the additional competition to our banks or do you really see that the four big banks can continue to sail along and provide the credit that is needed to, if you like, give Australia the growth that it is going to require as its population grows? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look I think the Australian financial sector and the Australian banking sector in particular has held up very, very well during the crisis. That is in large measure due to the system of prudential and financial regulation put in place under the previous government by those people that Kevin Rudd calls neoliberal free market extremists – that he’s now become so admiring of – but that held up very well. There’s no doubt that the big four have, in terms of market share, done very well out of this episode, this period. As I’ve said the big four have had a good war. In large measure this has been the consequence of what we could call the retail guarantee, the deposit guarantee being initially set at an unlimited level and then after that created a great deal of dislocation, it being brought down and still kept too high at a million dollars. The deposit guarantee should be at or around the $100,000 figure and that’s what most people in the banking sector have been saying for a long time. ROSS GREENWOOD: Should it be there at all? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think there is a strong argument for having a deposit guarantee for that provides or deposit insurance, you can structure it in a number of ways, that provides confidence for mums and dads if you like and small businesses with relatively small deposits at, you know with smaller institutions. I mean the whole idea is to ensure that you don’t get at a period of say financial anxiety, a flight of deposits away from smaller institutions that are otherwise perfectly sound from you know retail depositors. So that’s why around the world there tend to be these deposit guarantees or insurance at or around that $100,000 to $200,000 level – it was $100,000 in US for a very long time, during the past year or two it has been increased to about $200,000 I believe – and that’s the type of number. I think that will be provide much less dislocation and do much less damage competitively to other lending institutions that need to access the short term money markets. Because the problem was you could be GE, GE Finance, or Ford Credit for that matter, and you had a lower credit rating than the smallest credit union or building society in Australia because they had the benefit of a Commonwealth Government guarantee. So I think that is a wind back that has to happen and I’m not Robinson Crusoe in calling for this. I think just about everyone has made that case. In terms of the other end, what they call the wholesale term funding guarantee – this is where the Commonwealth Government for a fee provides support for banks borrowing money in the wholesale markets – that was only ever seen to be a temporary measure. And a number of the major banks now are not having to have recourse to it in order to access the wholesale markets. So that should and no doubt will be wound back in due course. ROSS GREENWOOD: And John I want to go on to you because you started your business quite clearly by providing competition, serious competition to the banks by being able to obtain the funding through the wholesale markets by being able to go out there and provide cheaper finance to borrowers. Right now the ability for somebody to do what you did in those days is seriously curtailed. The question is: are those days gone forever now? Does that form of competition ever come back into this market? JOHN SYMOND: Well in terms of accessing credit by securitisation, I don’t see that coming back over the next few years at the levels that it was before where you can compete with big deposit taking institutions like the big banks. It’s going to take many years before I see it getting back anywhere near where it was. So I don’t believe you could start a business today based on securitisation. And unless you’re a big deposit-taking institution you are at a huge disadvantage. Whether you’re a regional bank, a building society, a credit union or mortgage originator, there is just no way on the mathematics you’re going to be able to compete with the big banks. Fortunately our own business, we changed our business model seven or eight years ago not relying on securitisation. So I’m fairly bearish in terms of accessing. The markets will open but I don’t believe that they will open to enable the pricing to be able to compete with the big banks. So that is going to cause problems going forward without any doubt. ROSS GREENWOOD: The reason why I ask you both this is because the people in this room here, right, they are the people who ultimately have to build and create the businesses, the properties, the homes, the infrastructure that is going to eventually, by the year 2050 we’re told, house 35 million people – here in Sydney, seven million people. The question is if you don’t have a banking industry really that is fully competitive and able to provide the significant source of funds that are required, if you don’t have if you like the infrastructure that is required to keep up with that, that ultimately something is going to break in our economy long term and even short term you could argue as well. We’ve still got the population that’s going to pour into this city and into this country. It will grow if you like but if these basic things are not sort of thought through and fixed and created now then it causes a long term problem. John, I’ll start with you. JOHN SYMOND: Unless you can… it’s going back to 20 years ago where banks, credit unions, building societies, they loaned out basically the amount of money that came into the cash register. Well when the credit markets opened that changed everything. You didn’t have to be a bank to go out and source billions of dollars. Well all that’s changed. So there is a really polarisation and unless the markets surprise the pundits and pricing comes in at a level where competition can happen – and I don’t think that’s going to happen; certainly not in the next two, three, four years – if we do want a strong, competitive landscape, well then the Federal Government has got to look at something like the Canadian model where it stands behind a secondary market. And you have a look at the Canadian market over the last 12 or 18 months and they have also performed pretty well because at least there is a funding stream that hasn’t been interrupted. It’s worked very well over there and it is something that I think our government will need to have a look at. ROSS GREENWOOD: So Malcolm Turnbull it is a serious issue because this growth in population is something that has to be planned and has to be funded out for. We can’t have our cities grow on an ad hoc basis and we can’t have our economy grow on an ad hoc basis. But of course all of these things have got to be done in the right time, at the right place as well. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think there are a couple of issues there Ross. The first point is we have a shortfall of residential construction in Australia. ROSS GREENWOOD: It’s a serious problem. MALCOLM TURNBULL: ANZ estimates there is a shortfall of 200,000 dwellings across Australia and that the number of dwellings built every year needs to increase by at least 15 per cent for a decade to address that supply shortfall. Now many people in this room – I’m thinking of Harry Triguboff in particular – who have forgotten more about this area than I am ever likely to know, but there is a general consensus that this shortage is a function of supply constraints. In other words we have not been releasing or approving or permitting enough land both in a broad acre sense and in a vertical sense, not giving enough permits to build, to enable the supply deficiency to be corrected. So that’s one big issue and we could perhaps come back to that. In terms of finance the competitors with the big banks, as John was saying, really source their finance out of the securitisation market. Now the residential mortgage-backed securities market basically shut after the sub-prime collapse in the US and it shut everywhere, including in Australia. The Australian Government – and we urged them to do this – provided some support for that market through the Treasury and that’s had some benefit. It’s something that we need to keep a very close eye on. Personally, and it might be I’m less melancholy than you John, but I think the market will revive. I think the sub-prime crisis gave securitisation a very bad name and a much worse name than it deserved and I think properly structured, securitised, asset-backed securities, properly structured and conservatively structured, can provide good opportunities for investors seeking yield. ROSS GREENWOOD: And does the Government putting, as it did just only a few weeks ago, putting $8 billion into those types of securities, does that add enough liquidity, does it actually give it a little quick start or…? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you would have to ask some of the capital markets people here as to whether the liquidity it’s added has made a material difference. ROSS GREENWOOD: John, what do you feel about that? JOHN SYMOND: Insignificant. ROSS GREENWOOD: Insignificant. JOHN SYMOND: It saved the bacon of a few small institutions, organisations, to try and empty out part of their warehouse. It hasn’t provided competitive funding out in the market place where the consumer can benefit. Because $8 billion, what’s that going to do to satisfy a week, one week’s housing demand? And as I said before with competition in the big banks, even if the big banks wanted to fund all of the business, they couldn’t fund it. So the current situation is broken and unless it just does a great turnaround over the next year or two we’re going to be in a mess. And if I can add, you did mention about the crisis in supply of dwellings and that’s something that I’m very close to. It’s contributed to our country having a far too high level of debt to consumers because not only has governments, all levels of governments, particularly state governments, have been absolutely negligent in allowing the supply problem to get where it is today, where it takes years to get release of land and not only… when it does get released, on average and you take Sydney, you’ve got to go 30 or 40 kilometres to find a block of land, the cost of connecting all the services is on average 140, $150,000 per block and that’s now levied on to the developer, pushed on to the first home buyer and it’s no wonder they go out and borrow $300,000 or $400,000 for their first home. So I think governments at all levels have done an abysmal job in terms of contributing to the lack of supply which has had a knock-on effect on the level of debt that Australians have taken on board. ROSS GREENWOOD: And I’ll pick that up and take it one step further. Malcolm Turnbull, is one of the greatest dangers potentially that Australia faces right now, if John’s scenario was correct, is a housing boom? Because as soon as you get a housing boom now on the back of low interest rates and a lack of supply of housing surely you run the risk of overcooking the economy, seeing the Reserve Bank having to push interest rates higher than what it otherwise might and you’ve almost got a replay of the 1991-92 recession. Is that a real concern that you have in your own mind as well? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I wouldn’t go as far as you have. Without endorsing what you’ve said let me just tell you what my concern is. I have a very real concern about housing affordability and it being too expensive for people to buy homes, particularly for young people to buy homes starting off. That issue of housing affordability is a fundamental one. I also have very serious concerns about booms, or some people would call bubbles, in housing prices. Now plenty of people have said that housing prices in Australia are a bubble, i.e. they’re unsustainably high, and have stayed out of the market and then wished they’d got in. So, you know, one person’s bubble is another person’s leg upwards. But here is the concern. If you have a boom or a bubble in some other asset, shares for example or a particular class of shares – technology shares as we had at one point – people buy those shares because they are seeking to invest, they’re seeking to make money, they’re buying it with an economic motive. When people buy homes by and large they’re buying them, not invariably… when they buy them for their own residence they’re buying them because they are at a particular stage in their life – you know, they’ve got married, they’ve had another kid, they’ve moved cities for a new job. All of those stages in your life cause people to buy homes and they will buy them at whatever the market price is at the time. Now fortunately we haven’t had anything like this in Australia or anything as severe as this, although there have been parts of Australia, particularly in Sydney where there have been very significant falls in house values and some people have been very badly burnt as a result. But in some of the markets in the United States – and I know many people here will have studied carefully the housing indexes in America – you’ve seen some markets where the prices were off roughly close to 50 per cent off their peak. Now imagine if you were a young couple that had in good faith gone to the bank, borrowed money and bought a house or an apartment in one of those markets in southern California or south-west of the United States – all of your equity is gone. And you might have been a very prudent buyer and you might have had ultimately 25 per cent, you might have had 20 per cent equity, you might not, but you have just been completely wiped out. So I think asset bubbles of any class are always very hard to manage. They’re very hard to manage with monetary policy, I might add, and there’s a long debate about whether central banks should be focused on them, but with housing it’s very different to other asset classes in my judgement for the reasons I’ve described. ROSS GREENWOOD: I want to take some questions around the place but just one point before we go there. We’ve spent a lot of time speaking about the residential property markets but it seems to me most of the people in this room are in business and they’re paying substantially higher interest rates than what any home owner is paying. Now, yes, we recognise that the voting class is the residential mortgage market but surely the employers of that voting class are the people who are represented in this room, in other words, the businesses. It seems to me that a lot of the focus is on trying to squeeze down the banks in terms of holding mortgage rates down and almost little significance from the political sphere at least is given towards trying to contain business rates and in particular the expenses that business pay on their banking facilities as well. What pressure can be brought to bear and what pressure should be brought to bear? Malcolm Turnbull. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the only pressure that can be brought to bear I guess ultimately is a moral or political pressure, the bully pulpit. We don’t want to get into the business of the Government telling banks who to lend money to. Arguably that was one of the contributors to the sub-prime crisis in the United States. I think banks should be encouraged to lend money to people as on commercial terms and in accordance with their own credit standards so that they are responsible for them. Having government programs that compel or strongly encourage banks to lend money to people who otherwise they wouldn’t lend to is clearly one of the contributors to the sub-prime crisis. So I think we’ve got to be careful about how far government can go there. But the key ultimately is competition. Now, there is a lot of money chasing yield and as investors become more confident about the economic recovery you will find that they will be looking further a field to chase that yield. ROSS GREENWOOD: John? JOHN SYMOND: Well business loans are the domain of banks. It is a very specialised area and my real concern over the next 12 months is really the smaller businesses. The big businesses, yes, they can cop a higher margin and still come out of it quite okay but my fear is the smaller businesses may in fact fail and that may then contribute to higher employment. And let’s face it, there’s not enough money at the moment to go around and I know the banks will tell you that they have got more than twice the demand that they had two years ago and clearly there’s not enough money to go around. And competition – you’re not going to get it from foreign banks at the moment because they are still trying to mend their balance sheets and it’s going to take some years before we get a foreign bank coming back to Australia to want to try and take market share from the big banks. So I think that is a potential Achilles heel. I think consumers are okay. I think tightening the credit from home buyers, from first home buyers especially, in experience most prone to change, going and borrowing the lot on no deposit, you know, has always been a flawed policy. I think like today you’ve got to be in your mid 40s to remember what happened back into the 80s and early 90s. So I do see a problem for particularly the small business or smaller businesses in terms of credit because it’s not just getting the credit approved that’s the tough criteria and amortisation that’s now being asked by the banks. So that’s a real problem area. ROSS GREENWOOD: It’s a real problem area. What I’m going to do is take some questions and take them from the floor. [ends] Q & A HARRY TRIGUBOFF: What worries me is that the interest rates that we have here are so much higher than anywhere else and I mean this is where the whole thing starts and if people are going to buy apartments – houses you talk all the time about; but it’s really apartments – then the Government has to help because otherwise it just won’t work. That’s my opinion. Now do you think that we could ever have interest rates like they have in England or America? Because this is what I’m hoping will happen one day. MALCOLM TURNBULL: What do you think John? ROSS GREENWOOD: I reckon you’d have to have a pretty tough housing market before you get there somehow, Harry. JOHN SYMOND: I think historically, though, the countries that have had the really, really low interest rates are countries who have been struggling with their economy. We’re fortunate that we have been outpacing any other economy in the world and to make sure that inflation doesn’t derail, our interest rates historically have always been, needed to be higher. But I’m with you, Harry. I don’t like them too much higher. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I agree and I think… ROSS GREENWOOD: You wouldn’t like to be the Prime Minister if interest rates were that low because I’m presuming it’s what came before that might actually cause some problems. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Exactly. I don’t know if Harry has still got the microphone but I’d be interested Harry if you could share with us your views on the housing supply issue because that really is at the core of a lot of these problems. HARRY TRIGUBOFF: Well the housing supply is terrible and it is getting worse. Now when they dropped the interest rates to three per cent, I thought we would have a terrific boom – amazing, because people were paying twice as much. But it didn’t happen. Now, we have problems with councils, we have problems with the government, state government and I think these investigations into the state government and people talking to people that work in the government, that’s very bad because unless the town planners of the state government speak to developers they will never fix the problems because it is all very well to draw beautiful pictures and make wonderful plans but they have to be commercially viable. Now I’m working very hard on every council, on every state government to have economists over there with whom you can talk money, not only pictures. So I think this is one thing we will have to have. The supply will not be fixed because if interest rates will go up, well how can you imagine that there will be more built? I can’t imagine. There will be even less built and the banks are very, very cautious now. The banks today are not the banks that were there a few years ago. So there you go. The other problem is we have all the time more and more people per apartment than we used to have before and I don’t know when the breaking point will be where people just straight leaving the place. On the good side though, I’ll tell you something on the good side, it is that we are very fortunate the Chinese are very big buyers, and they have been very big buyers of my apartments for the last ten years, and every year becoming bigger buyers and bigger buyers. And I get them into Queensland and into Surfers and into Brisbane, and they are very good. Now, they normally have 30 per cent deposit. That’s how they buy. And they use our banks for the balance of the money. So I think that they will be helping a lot. So I hope it will be… we might be able with their help and maybe somehow it will come good. JOHN SYMOND: Ross, if I can quickly cut in, the housing supply and housing affordability is a far greater problem than any government has ever acknowledged and we run the real risk in our country of developing a culture of the haves and the have nots and that’s a shocking situation. There’s been no government, state or federal, who’s addressed the problem. They reap billions and billions of dollars a year out of real estate and it’s not something that we just woke up one morning and think, how? We’ve got a problem here. This has been developing for more than ten years and yet nothing has been done about it. ROSS GREENWOOD: It is a fundamental long term problem. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look it is Ross. It is very much a state government issue although federal governments increasingly are getting involved in it. You may remember we put it on the agenda in about 2003 when the Menzies Research Centre published a big paper that Chris Joye had major input into on housing affordability and that was followed by a Productivity Commission report, but you are really talking about planning and land release, and you are also talking about transport. Peter Debnam, my colleague from the State Parliament, is here. Peter and I live in the eastern suburbs where this is pretty good public transport. We would love it to be better but it is pretty good. There are large parts of Sydney where there is little or no public transport and the critical thing, as we all know, the key thing with real estate is location, location, location. But location is a function of relative distance, and distance is measured in minutes, not kilometres. And so the neglect of public transport infrastructure in particular, and roads as well, has really contributed to this problem in a big way. So there is no easy fix for it but it really is a major and very, very significant national problem now – because it is present in every market – that every year you have, in effect, a form of market failure. You are supplying less dwelling units than people demand. Now, in any other business, supply will meet demand. That is what happens. That is what the markets does. JOHN SYMOND: Ross, how are people going to get into the market when in Sydney there’s over 100 suburbs with the median price breaking through $1 million, which is a joke. Melbourne’s got over 60 suburbs in that category. How is young people ever going to get into housing with the way it is at the moment? And that’s my concern of the haves and have nots because that cuts straight to the social fabric of what Australia is all about. ROSS GREENWOOD: Well I want to go to the infrastructure question now for a moment and I want to go to Graham Bradley. Now Graham is not only the chairman of Stockland but also the newly appointed Chairman of the Business Council of Australia. Now, in that particular case, the Business Council of Australia just last week put out a terrific report on infrastructure that I encourage anybody to go and sit down and read; wonderful report on the future of how infrastructure will work in Australia. And I’m sure, Graham, you would have a comment or a question of some sort. GRAHAM BRADLEY: Well thanks very much Ross. Yes, that is a good report and it highlights I think something that Malcolm was talking about earlier and that is that we haven’t been in a position over the last couple of years of economic stimulus to put as much of that money towards real economic infrastructure as we would have liked to for want of planning, particularly planning at state level. I’d like to add to this issue on land supply with this question and I applaud both speakers for highlighting, as Harry did, the problems at state and local government in releasing land and so on. But at the Business Council dinner last week, the Prime Minister proposed that in order to give some sense of urgency about proper urban land use planning, that the Commonwealth Government should tie its infrastructure investments in all forms of infrastructure to better planning at the state and local level, and to lay done some criteria for that happen. I’m just interested in whether our speakers feel that that’s a possibly useful formula for moving forward here or whether they think there is some better prescription. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay. Well it would be extremely undesirable if we were to end up with yet another layer of planning approvals at a development stage. We already have that to some extent with the EPBC Act and that, when it is dealing with big major projects, you know, a pulp mill here or the Burrup Peninsula Rock Art and big LNG projects there. People can see the national importance of it but when it is focused, as it occasionally is, down on residential subdivisions, it imposes a very substantial additional costs. So I trust we are not talking about that. I think where Kevin Rudd is coming from here is an idea that really is pretty basic which is that the Federal Government should demand more accountability in terms of overall outcomes, macro outcomes from state governments. Now in 2005, as I recall, the House Environment Committee published a report called Sustainable Cities. I was a member of the Committee after the ’04 election although much of the work was done prior to that. And one of the big ideas there was that there should be, in a way analogous to competition policy, a sustainability charter with some big broad objectives in terms of sustainability. It might be meeting supply of housing. It may relate to public transport. It may relate to climate change issues, so that the states were held to account for meeting some big benchmarks. Now I think you know there is a lot of merit in that, as long as it gets better outcomes from states in terms of meeting these big overarching objectives I think it’s good, and it is certainly something we’ve supported in the past, analogous to competition policy. If, on the other hand, we are going to end up with a Federal Department of Planning that you have to deal with in addition to the local council and the state government, that it is not a good outcome. ROSS GREENWOOD: I’d suggest that the idea was not to have the State planning, that you simply go from the federal straight down to the local council, Malcolm. Is that a reasonable suggestion? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is sort of getting back to the old, you know, can we abolish the states question. And I think, as John Howard once said, if you were designing Australia today you probably wouldn’t design it with six states, but the states are there, they have an important role in our constitution and, as someone with a special expertise in not amending the constitution, I can tell you that abolishing the states is not something that is likely to happen in the lifetimes of anyone but the very youngest among us. JOHN SYMOND: You can get rid of councils anyway. ROSS GREENWOOD: I think there’s another question out the back here – that’s exactly right – I think there’s another question out the back there. We’ll take that question out the back if we can get it. QUESTION: Hi Malcolm. Look, I know it’s hard to quantify, but what impact do you think the Government’s stimulus spending has had on these updated economic and fiscal outlooks that were released today? Do you think it’s had a significant impact? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You are asking me that question, I’d say no, not significant. The Government’s stimulus spending has been poorly directed, and we have not had good value for money from it. The reason Australia is performing so much better than other comparable developed countries and why it is performing better than was anticipated is because firstly we went into the downturn with no debt, with cash at the bank at the government level. We went in with a well-regulated banking sector, and we did not have any counterpart to the sub-prime crisis. We went in obviously with a strong economic position and high employment at the outset and, of course, we have had the benefits of a flexible exchange rate and flexible monetary policy, which both acted as very powerful shock absorbers. And of course finally – well not finally; there’s a lot of other factors – but the continued boom in China, and I think the Chinese Government’s stimulus has probably had more impact on us than our own Government’s because it has underpinned the continuing demand for resources. I mean it was interesting, Saul Eslake, you know, formerly of the ANZ, now at the Grattan Institute, I saw a PowerPoint of his just quite recently. And one of the slides was what are the factors that have caused Australia to do so well, and out of seven or eight factors, the Rudd Government’s stimulus spending was only one of them. So I think you’ve got to be careful not to fall into the fallacy of just because B happens after A, therefore A caused B, and I think the stimulus is – we have had very poor value for money for it, for the bulk of it. Any spending that is focused on economic infrastructure, if it has got a positive cost-benefit, obviously is good spending, that is good. But a lot of it has been poorly targeted. ROSS GREENWOOD: Okay. Any more questions kicking around the place? There must be a few in the room. We’ve got one up the back down here. Thank you very much. I’ll take that one. I know you’ve been sitting there for a while. QUESTION: Thanks for that. One of the other issues that’s relevant to the housing recovery is regulation, and there’s some law reforms currently in front of the Senate. The national consumer credit law reforms and the Trade Practice Act (Australian Consumer Law) amendment, which actually will impact on developers and their financers because it will actually potentially risk buyers of off-the-plan apartments being able to receive contracts in a greater range of circumstances than may currently be the case. That being so, financiers may actually take it on board as being a greater risk to lend money on residential development as they rely on pre-sales completing to pay their debt. I’m just wondering, Mr Turnbull, whether you were going to raise any objections to some of these reforms insofar as they impact on the property market given the state that we’re in at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My understanding, and you know we really need the Shadow Attorney-General here, Senator Brandis, but my understanding is that legislation is in a committee at the moment, and those issues and others are being closely considered by the senators now, so certainly we’ll have careful regard to what emerges out of the committee process. ROSS GREENWOOD: Okay. I think we had another question towards the back somewhere. Where was another question there? I had one sitting somewhere. I’ve got one right in the very far corner. Thank you very much. QUESTION: Hi. Basic economics 101 says that raising interest rates mops up the money supply caused by demand-pull inflation, and caused by too much money chasing too few goods. The last time I looked at the underlying causes of inflation in Australia was from basic utilities like sewerage, electricity, water etcetera. So my understanding is if you raise interest rates you’re going to feed into cost-push inflation which is going to create a bigger spiral. So what’s the logic in raising interest rates? JOHN SYMOND: Thanks Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Got to give John a go. JOHN SYMOND: Well we are continually told that by raising interest rates helps put a curb on inflation getting out of control. That’s the line that governments and central bankers always use. I would love to think that we could live with interest rates of five or six percent but unfortunately that’s not going to happen. ROSS GREENWOOD: But it is true though to say that government spending and a lack of government cutbacks – I’ll make the observation and follow this up – because it is right to say that utilities prices have risen dramatically, governments have allowed private utilities owners to raise, if you like, their prices as a result of the need to spend into new infrastructure and so forth. My observation, though, and I’ll make this one fairly often, is if a government was dead keen on cutting its expenditure, would not the unemployment rate of Canberra, which I understand is about three point six percent, reflect the unemployment rate in the rest of Australia, which is five point seven percent. And if therefore you were the Prime Minster right now, would you endeavour to cut your government, therefore the staffing of public servants in Canberra, so that it would reflect the unemployment in the rest of the country? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s the sort of on the share the pain basis. I think that, look, governments, and certainly in our debt reduction strategy we’ve highlighted the importance of cutting waste. You know, I do not, and we in the Liberal Party do not take the view that Labor does, that taxes are anything other than other people’s money. Governments deal with other people’s money, and they have to deal with those tax revenues as prudently and carefully as possible, and hence the importance, as Graham was making discussing a moment ago, of when you invest in infrastructure you get the best bang for the buck. I mean there’s no point spending forty-three billion dollars on a broadband network that ends up being worth ten billion dollars, because you’ve just torched thirty-three billion dollars, if that’s what it came out to be. So that’s why notwithstanding the future Nobel laureate Mr Tanner, we should do the figuring before we actually commit to the investment. I know it’s old fashioned but there it is. I think the point about the whole approach of the Federal Government though to this issue is that they do not seem to have the discipline that is warranted when you are dealing with such large sums of money. It is extraordinary that you have the situation, you know, whether you talk about the broadband network or you talk about school buildings, where you’ve got schools that are, you know, literally, like at Abbotsford Public here in Sydney where you’ve got four perfectly serviceable classrooms – and I’ve been there to see them; they are perfectly good classrooms – they are going to be knocked down and replaced with four perfectly serviceable classrooms. Also, they can have a Julia Gillard Memorial plaque on them. Now, you know, the school community is outraged by it. They just see it as a monstrous waste of money. They’d be quite happy to have some money spent to build some additional classrooms so they could have more space, but there is a sense, I get the sense that the Government does not seem to understand that they are spending other people’s money, and that is really the big difference, one of the big differences, between their side of politics and ours. JOHN SYMOND: But Malcolm why do we need upper houses, lower houses at State levels as well as a million councils and all the rest? You go around the country and work out that tens of billions of dollars is ripped up inefficiently every year when that can be overhauled. It’s not going to be popular with politicians but I reckon it will be very popular with the community at large. ROSS GREENWOOD: We’ll take that as a rhetorical question, John. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there you go. I think there’s always room for improving government, making government more efficient and making the local, state, federal government more efficient, but I was a bit disturbed when you said why do we need to have upper houses and lower houses. But we do have to have some democratic process, John. JOHN SYMOND: Not as much as we [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m sure you would do a very good job as a benign dictator, but you might actually not be benign all the time. So I’m for democracy, and the slight inefficiencies that that involves. JOHN SYMOND: Slight? ROSS GREENWOOD: On that note, please give a round of applause to Malcolm and John. [ends]    malcolmSun, 01 Nov 2009 22:27:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:650http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/663/Doorstop-Interview-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=663http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=663&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/663/Doorstop-Interview-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: Meeting with Vice Premier Li; Kevin Rudd’s chaotic border protection policy; Australian dollar.   E&OE  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well with my colleagues, Senators Brandis and Trood, we have had a very productive meeting with Mr Li visiting here, the Vice Premier, a very productive meeting, discussed a range of important issues to both Australia and China – trade, climate change and a range of other issues of great importance.  It was a very productive meeting and we can see with Mr Li a very deep commitment to a stronger and deeper and more productive relationship in the future. QUESTION: And moving on from that, the Christmas Island detention facility looking to boost…the Federal Government is looking to increase that to double the size its capacity.  What do you think about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Kevin Rudd used to denounce Christmas Island as a white elephant on the basis that there was no need for it.  Now his policy failure is so colossal that he is going to have to double its size.  It is a testimony to the fact that he has lost control of our borders.  His policy is in chaos, it is a shambles.   QUESTION: How do you think this is going to be received by the Australian people? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Australian people will see this for what it is.  This is an admission that his policy has failed.  He said he would be able to keep our borders secure.  He said he would be able to stop people smuggling and yet what we have seen since he unpicked, recklessly unpicked the policies of the previous government without regard to the consequences of doing so, we have seen a surge, a growing surge, in unauthorised arrivals, and of course that is why he is having to double the size of Christmas Island.  This is a monument to his own policy failure. QUESTION: I mean there’s no concession that international factors are increasing asylum seekers around the world and that this is a problem that many countries are facing. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Mr Rudd really should have a motto and the motto is, ‘it’s not my fault’.   He will take the blame for nothing.  The fact is that the push factors in pushing people or encouraging people to move to come to Australia as refugees seeking asylum, those push factors are enormous, they always have been enormous.  Sadly I suspect they always will be enormous, so that’s a given.   What Mr Rudd refuses to do is to accept that his changes to our own domestic policy have acted as a powerful incentive and provided a very effective marketing tool for the people smugglers to their potential customers.  And so what he has done is change those pull factors.  Now he refuses to acknowledge that this surge has got anything to do with him but when he was in Opposition, when his party was in Opposition and Julia Gillard was the shadow immigration spokeswoman, what did she say?  Whenever a boat arrived – and they didn’t arrive very often in those days because we had secure borders – she would say, “another boat, another policy failure.”  Well we’ve had 46 policy failures since Kevin Rudd softened our border protection policies. QUESTION: So what’s the solution then?  If not to accommodate the people that are coming here on Christmas Island, what should we do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well if Mr Rudd is unable to do anything to stop this surge in arrivals then he does have to increase accommodation at Christmas Island.  But this is really a testimony to the failure of his policy.  Remember, what is the policy objective of an Australian government?  Firstly, to keep our borders secure and as far as practicable, eliminate people smuggling and unauthorised arrivals, number one; number two, to treat refugees generously and compassionately in accordance with the UN Convention on Refugees.   So Mr Rudd is now in a situation where he has a shambolic, chaotic policy failure which is neither tough nor humane.  He is not achieving either goal. QUESTION: But it’s a difficult one, isn’t it?  I mean the Howard Government didn’t necessarily succeed either with their… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh well, that’s not, with great respect… QUESTION: …in terms of stopping people coming here certainly but in terms of the popularity with the Australian people of the Pacific Solution it is a tough question to deal with, is it not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: These are all tough questions and that’s why we elect governments to deal with them.   Now Mr Rudd has to face up to the fact that his policy has failed.  If his objective was to eliminate people smuggling then he has failed to meet his objective.  His policy is a failure, it’s in chaos, it is a shambles and the doubling of the size of Christmas Island is a monument to that policy failure.  QUESTION: What do you think about the Government’s handling of the situation in Indonesian waters with the asylum seekers refusing to leave the ship? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well again, it is a chaotic situation.  It seems to be a situation where Mr Rudd has completely lost control.  Really, Mr Rudd has got to acknowledge that his policy has failed and he has to address it but at the moment he is simply pretending that it’s got nothing to do with him. That’s why I say, his motto is, ‘it’s not my fault’. QUESTION: Can I just ask about ETS?  Government figures released today show the rise in the Australian dollar could undermine your amendments by reducing the revenue that would be received through the ETS. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Australian dollar as we all know goes up and down and that’s actually one of our great strengths, having a flexible currency.  A floating exchange provides a shock absorber as we saw over the last year in the wake of the global financial crisis.  In terms of our amendments they are practical amendments that will save thousands of jobs and enable a redesigned emissions trading scheme to be both more economically responsible and more environmentally effective.  And a floating exchange rate is a given, that’s just part of the economic landscape that an emissions trading scheme will operate in. Okay, thanks. [ends]  malcolmSat, 31 Oct 2009 06:44:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:663http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/668/Interview-with-Greg-Cary-4BC-Brisbane.aspx#Comments1http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=668http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=668&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/668/Interview-with-Greg-Cary-4BC-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: Asylum seekers; emissions trading; cataracts surgery rebate.    E&OE GREG CARY: We’re here with Malcolm Turnbull, and it’s good to see you. Welcome. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, great to be here in Brisbane. GREG CARY: OK, and the lines are open. If you’d like to have a chat to Mr Turnbull you can on 13 13 32. Just before we get into all kinds of other matters, um, we’ve been looking to finish our big Anglican cathedral in town for years and years and years. MALCOLM TURNBULL: A hundred years, about. GREG CARY: Well it is. More. And you were there last night… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, it was a wonderful service. And it was two-and-a-half hours, so as the Archbishop said it was a marathon service, but it took a long time to complete the cathedral too. But it was beautifully done, it was inspiring, the music was extraordinary, the choir was magnificent. I wouldn’t have ever thought I would say that I sat through a two-and-a-half hour church service and really been uplifted and inspired and enjoyed every minute of it, but it was fantastic. GREG CARY: OK, to other matters you may not enjoy quite so much. The standoff continues of course with the seventy-eight Sri Lankans on board the Oceanic Viking. They’re refusing to go on shore Indonesia. What should we be doing? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, really that is a question Mr Rudd has got to answer. We would not be in this position were it not for Mr Rudd recklessly unpicking the fabric of the Howard Government’s border protection policies that worked. Every government has got to achieve, seek to achieve, two goals. One goal is to keep our borders secure and to stop people smuggling and eliminate as far as practicable unauthorised maritime arrivals by asylum seekers. That is one objective. Mr Rudd agrees with that – every government should agree with that. The other objective is to treat refugees humanely and compassionately and in accordance with the UN Convention on Refugees. Now Mr Rudd’s policy is a complete shambles. It is in chaos. He has unpicked that policy. There has been a surge in boat arrivals. Twenty-one hundred asylum seekers have come to Australia since Mr Rudd changed the policies in August last year. And of course the only thing he has got to say, Greg, and this really should be the motto of the Rudd Government – it is not my fault. That is Mr Rudd’s new slogan – it is not my fault. He says it is not my fault that the boats started coming in bigger and bigger numbers after I changed the policy.          GREG CARY: So you are saying it is his fault? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well of course it is his fault, because that was the big change. You see, John Howard inherited a policy of mandatory detention from Labor. You know, the whole business of mandatory detention was set up by the Labor Party. It wasn’t a Howard Government initiative. John Howard inherited that and he made changes in response to different situations, and for example, there was a lot of criticism of women and children being kept in detention centres. They were taken out by the Howard Government in 2005. So there were a lot of changes made, but we got to a point where for many years, going right back… You have to go right back to 2001 before you have numbers comparable to what we are having at the moment. GREG CARY: Quite right. MALCOLM TURNBULL: So for a long time the boat arrivals were nil or negligible, and that was because John Howard’s policies were working. Now Kevin Rudd recklessly unpicked them, and said changing these policies will have no impact on boat arrivals. And then of course what have we seen? This dramatic surge. GREG CARY: OK, I understand all of that, but given all of that, if you were Prime Minister today – and I accept your point that had you been Prime Minister prior to now this may not have happened. But had this happened, you’re confronted with this situation, they’re next door to Indonesia, we want them to be sorted out in Indonesia – what do we do? Do we forcibly remove them?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Greg, again, if I was Prime Minister today I would not be standing up in the Parliament and pretending as Kevin Rudd did that he had very little involvement with this. I mean, he… GREG CARY: What should he do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The difficulty is, in answering that, is neither you nor I have access to all the information about what’s going on on the boat, what the real position with the Indonesians is, what the real position in Sri Lanka is. You know, there is so much we don’t know and Kevin Rudd is not telling us. Now remember, at the beginning of the year, when these arrivals started to get more and more, and we said hang on, we have got a big problem here. We warned you about this last year. You brushed us aside and said we were wrong – you knew best. The boats are coming. You should quickly have a thorough public inquiry into this so we can actually see what policy changes precisely have had the biggest, you know, damaging impact, and what we can put in place. Kevin Rudd dismissed all that. GREG CARY: Sure, I understand all that. MALCOLM TURNBULL: He doesn’t want to be accountable. You see, this is what I say: the slogan of the Rudd Government is it’s not my fault. GREG CARY: If he were today to make a decision that they’d use moderate force to get those folks off that boat and onto the soil in Indonesia, would you criticise him for that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Greg I’m not going to run a commentary on a hypothetical situation.  GREG CARY: But it might happen. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, it may happen there. He has got a problem. I don’t want to run a commentary on what he should do without having access to all of the facts. The bottom line is this; he has created a chaotic, shambolic situation due to a colossal policy failure. Look, he is out there saying, criticising the Howard Government for having women and children in detention, asylum seekers in detention, forgetting the fact that Labor put them in detention and we took them out. They were there for a while during the Howard years, that is true, but then the policy was changed. So we said to him in Parliament, are you proposing, are you going to insist or arrange or whatever that asylum seekers in Indonesia taken off this boat would not be, the women and children would not be kept in detention. He said no, they will not be kept in detention. I have arranged that they will be in housing outside of the detention centre. The Indonesian authorities have contradicted him and said no, no, they will be in the detention centre. GREG CARY: Critics of both of you will say that you are making, for political reasons, way too much out of all of this. How do you respond? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is a big issue. This is border protection. This is the security of our borders. It is the integrity of our immigration system. I mean, do we really say it is a small issue that Kevin Rudd has outsourced our immigration program, or the humanitarian portion of it, to people smugglers. What he is saying is, he has put out the welcome mat and he is saying to the people smugglers and racketeers and criminals that take the ten, fifteen thousand dollars a head to put these people on these boats, he is saying to them, I am outsourcing Australia’s refugee program to you. You decide, instead of us deciding who comes to Australia, he’s saying to the people smugglers, you decide who comes to Australia. GREG CARY: Michael Danby, a Labor MP, much-respected, said a little while ago there was every chance of terrorists, Tamil Tigers being on board the boats. Wilson Tuckey came out and said the same. They were both pretty much criticised for saying that. We have had a variety of Sri Lankan experts on the air this week saying it is stating the obvious that clearly there are Tamil Tigers on that boat. How do you feel about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Greg, there’s always a risk, right, that particularly coming from a region like that where there has been, you know, a war going on, and a very vicious and bloody war for a long time, there is always a risk that there will be people seeking to enter Australia who have, you know, been involved in criminal activities or terrorist activities, conflicts of one kind of another. There is always that risk, and that is why security checking should be absolutely rigorous. But the one thing we have got to be very careful to do is not to categorise asylum seekers as a class, or say, you know, asylum seekers are bad for this particular reason. We have just got to be very disciplined about this and recognise yes, there are security risks – of course there are, and Michael Danby has spoken about that and Wilson has spoken about that and others have, and that they have got to be checked very, very carefully. But, you know, we have a long tradition in Australia of being very objective and thorough in our security checking, and not seeking to stereotype any particular group. GREG CARY: OK, Malcolm Turnbull our guest, the Opposition Leader, and any calls, 13 13 32. Nick from Highgate Hill is there. Now go right ahead Nick.           CALLER: Yeah, hi Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Hi Nick. CALLER: I have some questions for you. Um, firstly, what policy changes would a Turnbull liberal Government make to ensure the number of arrivals would decrease? Would we see a return to the proven Howard Government policy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think we have got to look at all of the policy options. The Howard Government’s policies, and indeed the previous Labor government’s policies, changed and evolved over time in response to changing conditions. That is why….We know that the previous policies of the Howard Government certainly worked, in the sense that there were for many years very few, little or no arrivals. So they worked. Putting them all back in place exactly as they were, would that be effective or are there refinements and changes that would be more effective? That is something that we have got to look at. We are certainly, you know, very keen to have an informed debate about that. The first thing that Mr Rudd should do, frankly, because so much of this depends on the intelligence information and the security information that is current. What Mr Rudd should do is have a thorough public inquiry. Now we know the Immigration Department is having its own internal inquiry into this, so at least internally they recognise their policies have failed, and they are having a look at alternatives. We believe that should be done publicly so that we can all be better informed and we can frame the policies that will work. But let me say this to you: I guarantee to you that a Turnbull Government will put in place policies that will over time stop this surge in boats. Our policy is our record. We have done it before and we will do it again.           GREG CARY: OK, let’s now talk about policy on ETS, and we will get to more of your calls on 13 13 32. Story today says this – you’ve no doubt seen it – Liberal Party frontbenchers have begun to dump their support for carbon emissions trading after receiving party research showing voters are increasingly skittish about putting a price on carbon. This based on information out of Europe, Britain’s Taxpayers’ Alliance, which says their scheme hasn’t worked, that there’s a windfall profit going to the electricity generators. Income earners at the lower end and the elderly are paying more. A few questions out of that, I suppose. Let’s start with, are you getting that kind of feedback form your own frontbench. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well actually no. The report in the Australian, insofar as it refers to, you know, a report form our Federal Director Brian Loughnane, is quite inaccurate, and Brian has confirmed that himself.  Let me just say this: we recognise that we have to take effective action to combat climate change. We are committed to that. We went to the last election with an emissions trading scheme. Rudd has got an emissions trading scheme which has a number of very serious design flaws that will make it economically damaging without being environmentally effective. We have moved, proposed a set of amendments, common sense amendments that would address those deficiencies. Ian Macfarlane, as Shadow Energy Minister, is conducting good faith negotiations with the Government. At the end of those negotiations we will know what we can or cannot agree with the Government, and then we will make a decision. We may be able to support it in an amended form, or it may be that the amendments the Government is prepared to agree to do not go far enough. GREG CARY: This is all based on this notion that the science is settled. I was reading a Nobel Prize Laureate this week who has given evidence to, and has been accepted by, the IPCC. Ken Caldeira is his name. He says… MALCOLM TURNBULL: What did he win a Nobel Prize in? GREG CARY: In this are related to… The same area as Al Gore. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh right. GREG CARY: You see? MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Al Gore’s not a scientist. GREG CARY: Well isn’t that important? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well exactly, that’s right. But OK, keep going. GREG CARY: But this bloke is. He says his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight. For starters, as greenhouse gases go it’s not particularly efficient. Now he’s not saying it doesn’t play a role, but the point he goes on to make is the doubling of carbon dioxide traps less than two per cent of the outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth. The point he’s making is this: the science is far from settled. The great scientists of the world disagree on the models. Are you at any time concerned that we are going too far too quickly with this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Greg, I think the first thing is there are very few areas of science that are entirely settled, in the sense that absolutely nobody disagrees. There is no question that the overwhelming majority, if not a consensus, the overwhelming majority of scientists in this area support the proposition that, you know, human activity, burning fossil fuels etcetera, deforestation, is causing climate change, causing the globe to warm.  Now the question then is what do you do about it, notwithstanding that there are some people who say that is wrong. This is really a risk management exercise, and I come down with, you know, pretty conservative people like Margaret Thatcher twenty years ago, or even Rupert Murdoch, who said you have got to give the planet the benefit of the doubt, and that’s why every government around the world, as far as I am aware – I do not know one government that doesn’t take this view – is saying we have to take effective global action to reduce emissions. And it may be, 20, 30 years from now, that the gentleman you are quoting is proved to be right, but if he is proved to be wrong, and we have done nothing, then we are really in very hot water in every respect. GREG CARY: Malcolm, just on this notion, however – and our guest is Malcolm Turnbull, our number 13 13 32, more of your calls in just a moment. Would you sign anything before Copenhagen? It just seems to most of us that there seems little logic in that.     MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is no question that is a political agenda of the Prime Minister’s. When you say sign anything, you mean pass an emissions trading law. Well our view is that it should not be finalised before Copenhagen. That is just common sense and I can say to you with complete sincerity as a practical, pragmatic politician, if I was in Kevin Rudd’s shoes today, if I was Prime Minister I would be working very hard on the design of this ETS, I’d be having all of these negotiations and drilling into all these issues but I wouldn’t finalise it until after Copenhagen because you’ll just be that bit more informed after it. Having said that, he’s the Prime Minister, it’s his bill – if he is determined to force it to a vote before the end of the year we have to decide how we’re going to respond to it…he’s driving the agenda. You see, one of the problems with Kevin Rudd is - or one of the issues with Kevin Rudd is - he always tries to make the Opposition the issue so his asylum seekers policy has completely failed; it’s a shambles – neither tough nor humane. But what does he want to do? Focus on what the Opposition might do. Emissions trading scheme – he’s rushing the agenda and what does he want to do? Focus on what the Opposition would do, and he is… every issue he is ducking responsibility. That’s why I say, the motto of the Rudd Government – they should put it on some of those Julia Gillard School Halls – it’s not my fault. GREG CARY: Malcolm Turnbull my guest. Julia, Cairns, go right ahead. CALLER: Good morning Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning. CALLER: Good morning. I’ve been listening to what you say. Look, I just want to say help. Please stop the madness of this carbon dioxide myth, the myth that carbon dioxide is changing, is causing global warming. I’m here to tell you that I’m actually surrounded by people here in Cairns who just feel that Australia has been brainwashed into thinking this and every show I see, Q&A, all the interviews, particularly young people, they’re scared. They just think that unless this ETS happens, we’re just going down the gurgler and I’m just relying on you to stand against it and we’re just tearing our hair out up here. When I say we, I’m talking about the people that I know, the people that I’ve heard talk, talk on talkback radio, at my daughter’s work – she works with 20 people. GREG CARY: Julia, if you don’t mind I’ll leave it there. I think the point’s made. I guess the point, Mr Turnbull, is this – a lot of people are feeling disenfranchised about all of this because there is a solid body of opinion out there that has serious question marks about the whole issue, very serious question marks about an ETS, serious questions about signing it around the time of Copenhagen and they just feel like they don’t have a voice right now. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let me step through the issues one by one. The first issue, the first question is is human activity causing global warming, and that’s the so called anthropogenic global warming thesis, right. Is that correct? Well we discussed that a minute ago. There’s no question there is a gigantic body of scientific opinion saying that it is. That’s been the case for a long time. GREG CARY: The question mark, to be fair however, is to what extent. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right. There is a question mark but the issue really is one of risk management. I mean neither of us believe I hope that our houses will be hit by lightning tonight but I’m sure, Greg, that we’re both well insured.  So there’s a risk management issue. So that’s the first question and that’s the argument for giving the planet the benefit of the doubt. The way we have proposed to amend the emissions trading scheme, by the way, would involve a much greater emphasis on measures I call least regrets or no regrets. You see the biggest opportunity for Australia to offset its carbon emissions is through improvements in the way we use land, whether it terms of tillage or for cropping or grazing, environmental forestry, biochar, all of these technologies which have an enormous additional environmental benefit so if you spend, you know, billions of dollars improving the productivity and health of your landscape, taking CO2 or carbon out of the atmosphere and then you discover 30 years from now that the thesis was wrong, well you say, okay, we haven’t wasted all the money. So there is a more prudent way to approach it. The next question, can I just say this, on the ETS, should you have an emissions trading scheme. If you want to move to a low emission economy, it’s going to cost you money. And so whether you do it by way of a carbon tax, by way of regulation, by way of a renewable energy target, it is going to cost you money so the question is what is the most efficient means of doing it and the market based element in the emissions trading scheme again has become the norm, accepted around the world as being the most cost effective. GREG CARY: They’re talking about efficiencies and the economies and all of this and we touched on it last time round and I had Ziggy Switkowski on the program for an hour last week. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh good, he’s terrific, isn’t he? GREG CARY: Well he’s good and he said and The Australian editorialises about the need for a thorough cost benefit analysis of when, not if, when Australia should capitalise on its vast uranium deposits – as you know, 38 per cent of the world’s known reserves – by investing in nuclear power. 64 nuclear power plants are expected to be commissioned around the world in the next six years. Europe, which is at the forefront of pushing for action on climate change. Gordon Brown, for heaven’s sake, he’s for them, they’re expanding. So why won’t we at least have that discussion? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, you’ve got to ask Kevin Rudd that. That’s one of the… GREG CARY: Would you like to have the discussion? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely, and we’ve promoted it. The reason Ziggi has got the profile on nuclear power that he does is that we commissioned him to head a committee that wrote a really outstanding report on nuclear energy. Of course it should be part of the debate. Now let me just say to you though, being a practical man and there’s no point just theorising here, you will never get nuclear energy in Australia until there is very strong public support for it, like there is in frankly most developed countries now and when there is bipartisan political support. GREG CARY: But isn’t that a factor of political leadership, yours and the Prime Minister’s? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well exactly but what Labor says is they will not countenance any discussion on it. GREG CARY: That seems to be changing though, doesn’t it? You hear Mr Ferguson, you hear Mr Howes, you hear various others. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Ferguson, Martin Ferguson’s always been a fan of nuclear energy but he’s pretty much alone as far as we can see. You see, here’s the fascinating contrast – in the last Presidential election in France between Nicholas Sarkozy who was the conservative candidate who won obviously and Ségolène Royal who was the socialist candidate, they had a debate. There was a guy like you, a journalist moderating it and he asked a question, and the question was what percentage of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power. Neither of them had the faintest idea. They both had a stab at it and got it wrong. You know why? It’s not a controversial issue. GREG CARY: It’s 80 per cent. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Correct. Everyone in Australia knows it. GREG CARY: I could be President of France! MALCOLM TURNBULL: Vive la France. GREG CARY: Doesn’t that make the point though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll call you le président. GREG CARY: But they’re past the debate. They just take it for granted. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s exactly the point and so you see the fact of the matter is that Labor is, Labor’s position on all of this is completely hypocritical. They will not even have a debate on the issue and we recognise that you’ve got to have a fully informed debate. This is a journey that you’ve got to begin. Labor won’t even begin the journey but they want to sell uranium to the rest of the world at growing prices because everyone else is building nuclear power stations. So Kevin Rudd is like a teetotaller who owns a brewery and is going around saying to everyone, drink up, drink up. He’s not prepared to touch the stuff himself. GREG CARY: So you’re urging or at least suggesting today that there be bipartisan talks about… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there should be… what we should have is a fully informed debate and we kicked that off with a number of reports but particularly with Ziggy’s report when we were in government but I just hasten to add, because what Labor does is whenever I talk about this they say, oh Malcolm Turnbull wants to build nuclear power stations all around the country. GREG CARY: Scare tactics MALCOLM TURNBULL: Completely but let me be quite clear about this – there will never be a nuclear power station built in Australia unless the community strongly supports it and there is solid bipartisan support and the practical reason for that is that these projects take so long to design, to permit, to build that they’re going to go over the life of different governments. So it’s something… you’ve got to get to the point where France is basically… GREG CARY: It’s not an issue. MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s not an issue and this is why France is so far ahead in the whole carbon dioxide emission abatement business because they get 80 per cent of their electricity from nuclear power. GREG CARY: Richard at Albion, go right ahead with Mr Turnbull. CALLER: Malcolm, Greg, good morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Morning. CALLER: Look I’ll declare myself as a bit of a climate change sceptic but I can appreciate the need to change our outputs for polluting the atmosphere but I’m bewildered by why we have to have a tax. Why can’t we just introduce the legislation to prohibit emissions but not tax it and then go the next step and make it a tradable commodity? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you’re almost saying… the minute you talk about trading it, you’re basically back with an emissions trading scheme. It’s the same deal. GREG CARY: It’s not as if it’s just a tax, isn’t it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have a carbon tax and you say it’s $20 a tonne. Okay, everyone has to pay it; every big industry has to pay it. And then what about a farmer who says I’ve got a farm management plan which will result in offsetting ten thousand tonnes of CO2 and I want to get some credit for that, I’d like to be able to sell that. Well, you’d want him to, wouldn’t you? I’d rather the money went to the farmer to improve his land than goes to the government, frankly. So then, the minute you’ve got the farmer being able to sell those credits then the tax is starting to become like an emissions trading scheme. So the truth is, an emissions trading scheme is a tax but it is a tax that allows trading, obviously, and it should be actually called an emissions tax trading scheme. It should be ETTS but that trading of course means that the revenue does not necessarily have to go to the Government and what I would like to see, if we end up with an emissions trading scheme is as much as that revenues as possible for the permits going into investment in our landscape to make it more sustainable. If we do that, then it may be that regardless of what the scientific outcome is 30 years from now, we’ll all think it’s a good idea. GREG CARY: I want to ask you about cataracts in just a moment too. A lot of our audience will be interested in that. Just ahead of that though, related to agriculture, Martin rings in from Roma wanting to know would you rule out agriculture. Well you have… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes. GREG CARY: But this is part of your negotiations with the Government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: In a nutshell – this is Martin, is it? GREG CARY: Yes it is. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Martin, in a nutshell, what we have proposed is that direct agricultural emissions be excluded from the scheme forever. That is the position in the US and in Europe so that has got plenty of precedent. Secondly, we believe there should be the full range of agricultural offsets which are carbon abatement measures which increase the carbon in soils and obviously also in the trees and plantings and so forth so all of that, and there are a wide range of measures there, they are front and centre of what the Americans are proposing to do. Kevin Rudd to date has shown no interest in it but that should be our primary objective. Now I think we’re trying to win a bit of ground in the debate on that because I see the NFF has come out supporting what we’re doing and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, who are some of the leading environmental scientists in Australia, they have said based on some work the CSIRO did in Queensland that by changing our land management practices, by environmental changes, all of which have enormous payoffs for farmers I might say, we could, Australia could offset a trillion tonnes of CO2 a year. Now if we only did 15 per cent of that, that’s a quarter of our annual emissions. So really, the key focus, my focus is on what I call green carbon, what scientists call terrestrial carbon and it’s got [inaudible]. GREG CARY: We literally have 90 seconds but I did want to raise this on behalf of our listeners who have emailed me. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yep. GREG CARY: This is the change to the rebate for cataract surgery, the most basic form of cataract surgery which was going to see the rebate drop back by, what, 45 per cent or figures thereabouts. What’s going on? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what happened was Julia Gillard [Nicola Roxon] decided to slash the rebate in half from $623.70 to $311.85. That was going to dramatically disadvantage senior Australians who of course are the bulk of people who get cataract treatment. We disallowed the regulation and moved legislation in the Senate to reinstate the old table. Of course we can’t get that law passed without the support of the House which the Government controls. Julia Gillard [Roxon] has now been left with no regulation. She’s now reintroduced, reinstated a regulation which cuts the rebate by 45 per cent instead of 50 per cent but the bottom line is… GREG CARY: But why the cut? Is this a hit at the ophthalmologists? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well she is trying to hit the ophthalmologists… GREG CARY: But it’s hitting the wrong people. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it hits their patients and the difficult is that she has mishandled this so dramatically, she’s been unable… what she needs to do if she was a competent or a more competent Health Minister, she would be getting to an agreed position with the ophthalmologists and with representatives of their patients, representatives of senior Australians, so that you got to an agreed ground but the difficulty is she’s failed to reach agreement with anyone and the only people that will suffer are older Australians who will have to pay a lot more out of their own pocket to be able to see. GREG CARY: So the negotiations continue, it’s not all over yet, a better outcome’s possible? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well one would hope so. We are in there fighting for senior Australians and their eyesight. GREG CARY: Okay. Thank you Mr Turnbull. Always good to see you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, great to see you Greg. GREG CARY: And you’re always welcome and we covered a lot of ground there and we’ll do it again soon. [ends]  malcolmFri, 30 Oct 2009 05:39:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:668http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/645/Censure-Motion-border-protection-Parliament-House.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=645http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=645&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/645/Censure-Motion-border-protection-Parliament-House.aspxMr TURNBULL—I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition moving immediately the following censure motion: That this House censures the Prime Minister for softening Australia’s border protection policies, for denying that his changes have caused a surge in people smuggling, for refusing to take urgent action to address this policy crisis of his own making; and with each boat, another policy failure is exposed, further weakening our nation’s borders. What we have seen from the Prime Minister today is another desperate attempt to distract attention from his own colossal failure of policy. We have seen an extraordinary failure in policy. It is the government’s stated objective to bring an end to what the Prime Minister has called ‘the vile trade of people smuggling’ and prevent unauthorised maritime arrivals of people smugglers into Australian waters. That is the Prime Minister’s objective, as it was the objective of the previous government—and I have no doubt it would be the objective of any and every Australian government. The fact of the matter is this: the Howard government took hard decisions to stop the flow of people smugglers—and it worked. In 2001-02 there were 19 boats with 3,039 people. In 2002-03 no boats arrived. Over the next five years there were a total of 18 boats carrying 301 people. On average, 60 asylum seekers arrived by boat each year. Since the government’s changes in policy in August last year, we have seen 43 boats arrive, carrying nearly 2,000 people. Today we saw the Prime Minister confronted with another boat arrival. When his Deputy Prime Minister was the shadow minister for immigration, she used to issue press releases which said ‘Another boat, another policy failure’. By that measure, there have been 43 policy failures since the Rudd government changed the border protection policies of the Howard government. We saw today the Prime Minister’s desperate attempt to distract attention from this matter. The more he bellows and shrieks with his confected outrage, the more he confirms his own failure to protect our borders. He drew attention to some remarks by the member for O’Connor. Let me say this. I reject any statement which suggests that asylum seekers are, or are likely to be, terrorists—full stop. I made that perfectly clear today. I make no criticism of asylum seekers. I note that the member for O’Connor issued his own statement today in which he said that he did not state that asylum seekers were terrorists. The member for O’Connor and I do not always agree—that is well known. The fact is that the person with control over our borders at the moment is not the member for O’Connor; it is not anyone in the opposition; it is the Prime Minister of Australia, and he seeks constantly to find distractions from his own colossal failure of policy. We come back to this fundamental point: we have two objectives and we should address them in a calm and measured way, as I did earlier this week in the House—and I was complimented for doing so by the Attorney-General himself. This is no place for hysteria; this is no place for any type of hyperbole. We have a simple factual problem here—the Prime Minister’s policy has failed. The Prime Minister says that the changes to domestic policy, the so-called pull factors, have had absolutely no influence or impact on this huge surge in arrivals—over 2,000 people—since August last year. That is his contention. He pulls statistics out of the air. It is misrepresenting statistics to suggest that there has been an extraordinary increase in the push factors. The fact is that the push factors are enormous. They have always been enormous. There are millions of refugees around the world, each and every one of whom would love to come to Australia. According to the UNHCR, the number of refugees and people in refugee-like situations over the course of 2008 declined by eight per cent, but it is still an extraordinary number and an incredible toll of misery and tragedy. That is the enormous push factor that exists all the time. And so every Australian government, regardless of its political persuasion, has to try to balance two objectives. One objective is to protect our borders and ensure that there is an end to people smuggling and that we do not have unauthorised arrivals of asylum seekers coming into our waters and onto our shores. That is a clear statement of policy. The other objective is to treat asylum seekers humanely and compassionately in accordance with the UN convention on refugees. Balancing those two challenges, those two objectives, is the work of every Australian government. The challenge for the Rudd government is this: they say that nothing that they have done has affected the low of refugees. They say there is no pull factor at all. And yet we know, insofar as the enormous push factors are concerned, that the enormous pressure from refugees around the world has changed over the last 12 months. The numbers have, according to the UNHCR’s own report, declined somewhat. I concede that the push factors are enormous and that they will always be enormous. So the question then is a factual one. This is why we should approach this issue in a calm and rational way—not with the hysteria, the character assassination, the venom and the viciousness that the Prime Minister displayed today. Let us simply look at the facts. The push factors are huge today and they will always be huge. They may be somewhat larger in some years, but they are massive. That is a given. We know from reports, and also from the AFP report that the government is so reluctant to publish, that people smugglers would market recent changes to Australia’s immigration policy to entice potential illegal immigrants. That makes perfect sense. People smugglers are demanding thousands of dollars—this is a large sum even by Australian standards, let alone by the standards of desperate people, whether they come from Afghanistan, Iraq or Sri Lanka—so they have to be able to promise with credibility that they can deliver residency in Australia. So, plainly, that is a marketing tool. On 22 April, Indonesia’s Ambassador to Australia said that he thought the traffickers may use this—that is, the government’s change in policies—as a trial to organise more flows of refugees, because they get more money for it. We saw the UNHCR’s regional representative, Richard Towle, confirming that Australia’s changed immigration policies are a marketing tool for people smugglers. On 16 October, he said: … I think perceptions of policy can certainly play a role in people smuggling. They have a product that they need to market, and to show that Australia is a place where refugees can get fair and effective refugee protection is something that is understood. Finally, we have seen in the media so many reports from interviews with asylum seekers themselves. On 24 April an Iraqi refugee in Indonesia told the ABC: Kevin Rudd—he’s changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different … Maybe accepted but when John Howard, president, Australia, he said come back to Indonesia. So there is no question that these pull factors have been absolutely critical. The Prime Minister’s policy has failed and no amount of hyperbole, of hysteria, of venom and of vicious personal character attack will distract Australians from the fact that this government’s policy objective of protecting our borders has comprehensively failed.  malcolmThu, 22 Oct 2009 00:55:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:645http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/643/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-ABC-Radio.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=643http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=643&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/643/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-ABC-Radio.aspxSubjects: Coalition plan to save jobs and reduce costs. E & O E LYNDAL CURTIS: Mr Turnbull, welcome to AM. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good to be with you. LYNDAL CURTIS: You said at the start of this month you weren’t prepared to lead a party with nothing to say on the issue of emissions trading, you said you were asserting your leadership and authority, does the outcome you got yesterday satisfy your requirements? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is the outcome I sought, so it certainly does. What we are presenting are a set of responsible, practical amendments to Mr Rudd’s flawed emissions trading scheme that, if accepted, will save thousands and thousands of jobs. That is what this is all about. At the moment Mr Rudd’s scheme, for no environmental gain, will destroy thousands of jobs and undermine the strength of our economy. Now he can fix that, he can fix that if he accepts our amendments. LYNDAL CURTIS: You put out your amendments for negotiation, in any negotiation some things will be agreed and some will be given away, does your party room understand that it won’t be able to get everything you put before it yesterday? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think we’re all familiar with negotiation and you are quite right, you very rarely get everything you want and you also happily very rarely get nothing that you want. So at the end of the negotiations we will consider where we have reached. We will decide on the basis of that and the other circumstances, developments both here and internationally at the time, whether we will support the amended bill. LYNDAL CURTIS: What’s core? Is there anything you are not prepared to give away, such as an amendment on agriculture? MALCOLM TURNBULL: All of these issues are important Lyndal, but the worst thing that either Ian Macfarlane or I could do is flag our negotiating position or our bottom line if you like in advance of the discussions. So we are going to engage in good faith negotiations and that’s all I have to say about it. We have set out a set of practical amendments which will save thousands of jobs. That is what this is all about. The jobs of Australians. LYNDAL CURTIS: The Government will be introducing the legislation to the Lower House this week and says you have indicated that you won’t need more time, are you prepared to vote at the end of November? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we will ensure that the Parliament, as far as we can - of course we certainly can’t control the business of the House and we need the support of Independents to have a majority in the Senate - but from our point of view this matter should be debated thoroughly and it should take as long as it needs to take to conclude the debate. So…in the absence of an agreement with the Government, if that means that the debate continues in the normal course of a thorough consideration by the Senate into next year, then so be it. LYNDAL CURTIS: Have you looked at any ways of pushing out the timetable if you need to? It maybe asking more questions in the Senate or moving for a delay of the vote in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is absolutely no intention or interest in any type of artificial delay or filibustering. This is a very complex bill. This is the biggest single structural change to our economy in our lifetimes – introduced by the Government in one legislative package. So it is an enormous issue. It is extremely complex as everybody recognises. So it does need very, very thorough debate and if that takes us into next year then so be it. I mean Penny Wong’s deadline for having this; that this must be agreed before Copenhagen is completely artificial and when she was asked that question of why don’t you take more time, wait until after Copenhagen and spend more time getting the design right, just a moment ago on this program, her answer was completely unconvincing, it was just waffle – with great respect to the Senator. So they have got a political agenda. We understand that. They want to have it passed before the end of the year, they may be able to force a vote before the end of the year. So that’s why we have to engage in the way we can. But in the absence of an agreement I would expect the debate would roll into the new year. LYNDAL CURTIS: You said yesterday that your amendments will save jobs, ensure people don’t face massive electricity price rises. The Government too believes its scheme won’t force prices up much, isn’t the point of an emissions scheme to change peoples’ behaviour and how do you do that if you are not causing some pain? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Lyndal, the important thing is to ensure that the transition is a smooth one. The problem with the Government scheme is that it will increase prices dramatically in the first few years; wholesale electricity prices up by 40 per cent and retail prices up by 18 per cent – that’s according to their own White Paper. Now that is a very big shock to the economy. Demand for electricity cannot change overnight so it takes time for it to adjust both in terms of it being more efficient in the use of energy on the demand side, and of course moving to lower emission sources of energy on the supply side. The different model we’ve proposed, which is based on the Frontier report – what we call the intensity baseline approach – that has been demonstrated to deliver lower electricity prices. Now I might say that’s why the Government doesn’t like it. The Government would prefer to have a scheme which jacks up electricity prices quickly, which generates a lot of revenue and then enables the Government to distribute that revenue to the constituencies, sections of the community that it wishes to benefit. Now we believe that the economy will be better off overall, everyone will be better off overall, if there is a transition from where we are today to say 2030, with a more gentle gradient of increase in electricity prices. It gives industry a lot longer to adjust and you will get the same cuts in emissions, in fact you could arguably get greater cuts in emissions, but you will not get the same damage to the economy and damage to jobs. At the moment the Rudd Government scheme is anti jobs and it is in particular anti small business. LYNDAL CURTIS: Have you delivered your amendments in writing to the Government yet? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We will be delivering them in a formal letter later today. Obviously they are aware of what they are because we’ve set them out in the press release. There won’t be anything surprising in the correspondence. LYNDAL CURTIS: You’ve had the first stage of what is effectively a two-stage party room process. Any outcome of those negotiations will have to be taken back to the party room. The Nationals are unlikely to back any decision and some Liberals won’t. Are you prepared to lose a few Liberals along the way if you can get the majority of the Liberal Party with you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are plenty of occasions where the party room has agreed on a certain policy or approach and a number of individuals have chosen to exercise their right, which we allow in the Liberal Party, to vote against the vote in a different way. Obviously we would prefer everyone to vote the same way but occasionally people do cross the floor, as it were. LYNDAL CURTIS: But you’re happy if they… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I wouldn’t say I’m happy but it is a fact of life. It’s happened on many issues and there are many distinguished members of the Liberal Party room, past and present, who have crossed the floor on occasions. We have a much greater respect for individual freedom of conscience if you like on our side. LYNDAL CURTIS: The long time party servant, Graeme Morris, told Lateline on Friday that it’s time party presidents started to say to those members and senators who are publicly bucketing their party that their pre-selection or position on the Senate ticket should be looked at. Should the organisation be prepared to deal with the mavericks if they’re hurting your cause? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ll leave that to the organisation. I just simply say that it is absolutely vital for political parties to be seen to be united. Where there are differences of opinion, that they should be ideally expressed within the confines of the party room and whether inside or outside the party room they should always be expressed with great courtesy and respect for each other’s opinions and for each other. LYNDAL CURTIS: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for joining AM. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you, Lyndal. [ends]  malcolmMon, 19 Oct 2009 01:23:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:643http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/642/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Ian-Macfarlane-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=642http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=642&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/642/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Ian-Macfarlane-Canberra.aspx Subjects: Coalition plan to save jobs and reduce costs.

 
 E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Tonight we are putting the ball back into Kevin Rudd’s court. The Coalition party room has agreed to sensible amendments, practical amendments which will save thousands, thousands of Australian jobs and which will ensure that business, particularly small business, is not unnecessarily slugged with massive price hikes in electricity and of course everything else that uses electricity, including groceries.
 
So the fact of the matter is, now is the time for the Rudd Government to get real about its emissions trading scheme. They have a scheme that is almost friendless, that has been criticised by every other political party and pretty much every other interest group and every industry. 
 
Now we’ve done the hard yards, Ian in particular with Andrew Robb have done the hard yards in talking to many Australian industries and businesses right across the country, finding out what they see as the real flaws in this scheme. And so we’ve set out a number of practical measures that will protect jobs in manufacturing, in mining, that will lessen the price hikes in electricity, that will protect farmers and will unlock the opportunity to achieve substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through agricultural offsets which are a central feature of the emissions trading schemes being proposed in the United States, but for some reason or other are neglected here in Australia.
 
 IAN MACFARLANE:
  
The detail of the scheme is laid out. It covers the key areas of agriculture, food processing, electricity generation, electricity cost to consumers and also the treatment of energy intensive trade exposed industries. As Malcolm said, we will stay on the target of five per cent reduction and if the Government accepts our amendments as they currently stand it will be done within budget of the scheme.
 
 QUESTION:
 
 Mr Turnbull, every negotiation has an end but what in this is negotiable or is it a take it or leave it offer to the Government?
  
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Well Ian is going to be heading up the negotiations so we’ve set out our amendments. They have set them out in some detail and we have a great deal more detail obviously to provide to the Government and ultimately to move in the Parliament. So really the onus now is on the Government. Are they genuinely prepared to engage in good faith negotiations?
 
 QUESTION:
  
Mr Turnbull, can you explain how you can fund these amendments within the revenue of the scheme if you’re drastically increasing the compensation for generators, increasing EITE assistance etc, etc, how that works and whether you mean that it will be self-funded every year or sort of broadly over time?
  
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Do you want to address that Ian?
  
IAN MACFARLANE:
  
Yes, sure. Starting with generators – there will be no added compensation in the first five years of the scheme. We need to be aware there is a clear surplus of credits after 2015 running forward to 2025 estimated at around $50 billion in unallocated credits. 
 
Secondly that in terms of the emission intensity cap and trade scheme we’re proposing to flatten out the price rise in electricity prices, that will free up money out of the amount of money required for compensation to households. But I need to be emphatic that households will be no worse off under these amendments than they would have been in net terms under the current government amendments. There are significant areas there where these emissions can be also offset through offset schemes and ensure that we reach the target.
 
If the Government rejects any component of this then obviously we will have to look at an accrual basis where if you look over the life of the scheme, or certainly over the life of the scheme to 2025, the scheme will absolutely still be self-funding. You may run at a loss in a couple of the first five years but you will be back in surplus from there on. And with $50 billion to play with, the losses that we are talking about will be easily ameliorated.
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
  
Can I just add something to Ian’s point there. You’ve also got to take into account that the reason we’re moving, or proposing these changes, is because we want to protect thousands of Australian jobs and vital Australian industries.
 
Now if those industries are lost and those jobs are lost of course that also has a big impact on the Government’s revenues. So you have to look at the revenue situation of the Government overall. You can’t just look at the scheme itself as though it was independent of every other head of government revenue. And there are very big, what economists would call, dynamic revenue issues associated with this.
 
I mean the problem, the fundamental problem with the Government’s scheme is that it will destroy thousands of Australian jobs and you don’t have to take our word for that. You know there is widespread consensus on this. It is a poorly designed and flawed scheme.
 
I know what the Government wants to do and they have been pretty clear about it. They want to have high electricity prices and high emissions trading permit revenues so that they can then redistribute the money to the beneficiaries of their choice. Right? Now what we want to see is a scheme that does not destroy Australian jobs, does not destroy thousands of Australian jobs in vital industries and that as far as practicable keeps electricity prices low, particularly during the period of transition from what is unquestionably an emissions intensive economy to a less emissions intensive economy.
 
 QUESTION:
 
 Mr Turnbull, even though you’ve been given the all clear by this meeting today to go away and negotiate, many or some National senators for example made clear they don’t care what you negotiate, they’re still not going to vote for this at the end of the day. Have you resigned yourself to not being able to turn those people or do you think that you will be able to come up with an outcome that will swing them your way?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 All we have committed ourselves to do is what we said at the outset. Ian and I have been completely consistent about this. We have set out a series of amendments. We have sought the support of the party room to negotiating in good faith with the Government on the basis of those amendments, and when we get to an outcome, when those negotiations reach an outcome, as they undoubtedly will, we will consider them, Shadow Cabinet will consider them and the party room will consider them.
 
 QUESTION:
 
 Sure but can you answer the question?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Well what is the question?
 
 QUESTION:
 
 The question was, have you resigned yourself to not being able to provide the leadership to turn around the Nationals or others or do you think that in your negotiations…
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
  
But this presupposes that we would be disagreeing with the Nationals. You see, Matt, with great respect, you’re missing the point. The whole point here is good faith negotiations which will have an outcome which we will then consider what our response is and indeed the Government is in exactly the same position.
 
 QUESTION:
 
 Mr Turnbull, to put the question a different way, if you get all of your amendments passed by the Government are you confident that you will get at least a majority of your party room to support passage of the ETS before Copenhagen?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Look we’re not going to speculate on the outcome of the negotiations here tonight…
 
 QUESTION:
 
 [inaudible]
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Well, look, if we get all of our amendments then we would be delighted and we will certainly be recommending support for it; Ian and I would be recommending support for it and I would be confident we would secure that support but the fact that…
 
 QUESTION:
  [inaudible]
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Let’s just have a question and answer. You have asked me that question. Of course, that is the basis of good faith negotiations, but we will come back to the party room when we have got an outcome from our negotiations.
  
QUESTION:
  
How is the environment better off under your amendments? You have continually criticised the Government for not making deep enough cuts so where are you making more cuts in emissions?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL:
 
 Well I don’t think we have criticised the Government for making deep enough cuts.
 
 IAN MACFARLANE: We have said we will reach the same… QUESTION: Andrew Robb has said on many occasions that… IAN MACFARLANE: Sorry, with all respect to Andrew who has done an enormous amount of work on this and came forward to this room with the work from Frontier, this is not the plan that was presented to you two months ago. This is a different plan. It has a completely different make up across the energy sector. It has some commonality with what was discussed last time, but in terms of the target we are saying the target is five per cent. That is the Government target.
 
We are on for that target and the way we will do it is firstly, even though for instance we’ve exempted fugitive emissions from the scheme, they will be dealt with through regulation and I will guarantee you that in terms of the actual emission reductions that Kevin Rudd could produce from his scheme and the actual emission reductions that we could produce from our scheme in the coal industry, they are exactly the same because our carbon reductions are the ones that you can achieve with technology. So there is no walking away from emission reduction in that area and what we are doing is adding to the scheme a number of areas, particularly things like soil carbon, which Kevin Rudd has completely ignored. When our trade competitors like Europe and like America adopt carbon abatement through soil carbon and agriculture, we will be at a disadvantage if we don’t do that and if it is an internationally recognised process of carbon abatement then it will be included in our scheme and it will ensure we reach the target.
 
 QUESTION: So what percentage of the targets will be made up of agricultural offsets? IAN MACFARLANE: Well we have got to sit down and do the sums on that but I am saying, why don’t you go and ask Kevin Rudd what part of the abatement is going to come from the electricity industry? Why don’t you ask him what part of the abatement is going to come from the coal industry? Because he cannot perform miracles.
 
This concept that he has got that zero emission coal is going to suddenly wipe emissions out of the stationary electricity-generating industry is a complete myth. There is no likelihood. Treasury’s own modelling says the first commercial scales of multiple zero emission power stations won’t be built under the late `20s. That is Treasury’s words and the first commercial – as in without any government subsidies – won’t be built until the late `30s. So you are talking about something that is not even going to happen in the next 20 years. And so Kevin Rudd’s carbon abatement is no different to ours. We will be using the same technology under our scheme as he will be under his.
 QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you’re now on a good faith negotiation path. Will you, as part of that good faith, in the Senate support extended sittings if they’re needed to get this through? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what we will do is first conclude our negotiations with the Government. Now, as we have said right – Ian and I have said this consistently – if the question is how will we respond to the bill when it comes up for a vote in the Senate, whenever that may be, we will respond in the light of the extent to which the Government accepts our amendments and in the light of the political developments and circumstances at the time both here and internationally. There is quite a lot going on internationally. Now we talked about…
 
 QUESTION: That wasn’t the question. …if the question was. The question was specifically will you vote in the Senate for an extension of time if you feel you need it to get it through? [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: We will consider that at the time. There is no reason why other than in order to achieve an agreed outcome. I mean, clearly, one thing that we could do, notwithstanding our very strong view that it is more prudent to finalise the design of the scheme after Copenhagen rather than before it, one thing we can do is we can enable the Government to finalise the legislation before Copenhagen. But that is something, that is a matter that we have to consider very, very carefully and that is one of the chips, if you like, in the negotiating. It is one of the issues in the negotiations. If this bill were to be debated and there were to be no negotiations, if it were just simply to be debated with amendments coming up in the normal way, the normal debate of this in the Senate would run well into the new year.
 
 QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, is it the case, just to clarify, is it the case that even if the Government were to accept holis-bolis this package of amendments, you would still have to bring them back for a party room vote. And if that is the case, why should the Government negotiate with you when you can’t even promise to deliver it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Ian said it is a bizarre question and I wouldn’t say it is bizarre but we have always said that is the case so that is a… QUESTION: But you can’t even promise that you will deliver the amendments that you are putting up tonight. I mean we have got Liberal MPs saying to us, ‘oh I think we should take them out and test them but I will never vote for a carbon… IAN MACFARLANE: I have got the list of who said that and I tell you it is a small minority of this party room. I can tell you. I know exactly who said what and the thing that surprised me… QUESTION: Well they say it’s not a small minority. IAN MACFARLANE: Well I have got the numbers and they are in my little black book. QUESTION: [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Hang on, we have just got to be very practical and businesslike about this. We have a set of amendments which the party room has endorsed which we are taking to the Government. We will have discussions with the Government and no doubt we will reach some conclusion or other. We will then consider the best we can negotiate with the Government and they will no doubt consider it as well. QUESTION: [inaudible] talk about them, not to pass legislation if they were accepted. IAN MACFARLANE: That’s all we asked for. QUESTION: Because that’s all you could get? IAN MACFARLANE: No, that’s all we asked for, that’s all we were ever going to ask for at this meeting. QUESTION: How would you characterise the debate in the party room then and are the amendments that came out of the party room identical to the ones you took into it?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the debate was robust and courteous. It was a very good debate. It was a lengthy debate but it was a very good debate and it included many, many… a large percentage of the members and senators present spoke, and the amendments that were approved were exactly the ones we brought in.
 
 QUESTION: Did any members express dissatisfaction with the way the leadership came to the position?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL: Not that I recall. No. I don’t recall. I recall there being some very kind things but there wasn’t a lot of criticism, no. But anyway.
 
 QUESTION: [inaudible]
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL: George Brandis does the party room briefing.
 
 QUESTION: Did anyone reserve their right to not vote for [inaudible]?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look can I just say this to you: every Member of the party room, every Member and Senator reserves their right, as indeed does every member of the Shadow Cabinet, as to how they will respond to whatever emerges from the negotiations.
 
I mean you know at the end of the day Ian will go into negotiations with the Government, he’ll do that in good faith and he’ll see what emerges and what emerges will then be considered – and I might say, Penny Wong is in no different a position because whatever she emerges from her discussions with Ian, she then has to take back to her cabinet and her party room.
 
So neither Ian nor Penny have got some sort of plenipotentiary powers to sign-off on behalf of the Government in Penny Wong’s case or the Opposition in the case of Ian. 
 
 QUESTION: Do you think that Senator Wong is serious about negotiating? You said I think earlier today that she’s always putting up tests and… play politics from the start….
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL: No of course they play politics with it and here are some practical suggestions. I mean take the issue with coal mining as a pretty straight forward example. Coal mining is our biggest export industry. It employs thousands of Australians, generates billions of dollars of value to the Australian economy and hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions of dollars in tax, probably billions of dollars in tax in one form or another. So it is a gigantic industry – and yet the Rudd Government is proposing to impose a carbon tax on coal which has no counterpart, not just in the economies with which they compete, the developing economies like Indonesia, Columbia, South Africa, but no counterpart in the United States or Europe either.
 
So it is literally Kevin Rudd has decided to make Australia, the largest coal exporter in the world, the most heavily taxed coal mining business in the world as far as carbon goes. Now that is a remarkable, bizarre position that they take. And so what we have come back and said in a nutshell is: treat coal mining the same as it’s going to be treated in the United States and Europe. I mean when you boil it all down that’s what we are saying. Now that’s common sense.
 
Now you know Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd have got to get real. Are they going to try to penalise, make themselves some kind of environmental heroes out of slugging our biggest export industry in a way that will do absolutely nothing for global emissions, because obviously you know if you mine less coal in Australia, more coal would be mined in Indonesia and Columbia – a sort of outcome for the environment probably negative overall, but a huge negative economic impact on Australia. And there’s a host of other changes here that are similarly practical, common sense amendments. QUESTION: Mr Macfarlane how many names are in your little black book? IAN MACFARLANE: I’m not talking about that. I just wanted people to understand that people who say that there’s no way in hell the party room will vote for the amendments when they come back from Penny Wong are simply wrong.
 
They should have been in the party room. They should have heard the tone. Everyone in this party room wants us to bring the outcome of the negotiation back. There is a very small minority, and I could give you the number, and it is less than 10, who say ‘we don’t care what you bring back, we’re going to vote it down’. 
Well last time I counted there was more than 20 people in the party room.
 
QUESTION: We would be happy to come next time…. MALCOLM TURNBULL: So the bottom line is good faith negotiations, approaching it an open mind and whatever emerges from the negotiations, both the Shadow Cabinet and the party room will consider with an open mind and in good faith. And as to how we end up voting on it will depend on what the outcome of those negotiations are.
 
 QUESTION: Mr Turnbull do you support the way Sharman Stone is prosecuting the asylum seeker issue for the Coalition?
 
 MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sharman Stone is doing a great job as Shadow Immigration Minister.
 
 QUESTION: Can you explain again the accrual accounting model [inaudible] taking money from future revenue to compensate for [inaudible] today, is that right?
  
IAN MACFARLANE: Well the way the scheme stands at the moment it will fund itself year-on-year. If they, the Government, reject components out of the scheme, which means that the cost of operating the scheme in terms of dollar compensation goes up and there isn’t commensurate savings somewhere else, then we will have to accrue account and we’re just saying that over the next 10 years, let alone the next 15, the scheme will be grossly in profit, that there will be literally tens of billions of dollars.
 
But what I’m saying is that you may find that if they change let’s say the electricity model, that the scheme will run at a deficit, not a big deficit, maybe one maybe two billion – compared to what’s just been spent on the stimulus, chicken feed, not that I ever thought billions was chicken feed – but it’s going to be small amounts relative to the amount of money that will flow into the scheme which is currently unassigned as of year 2016. QUESTION: …reject components of your amendments, just to be clear, you’re saying that your amendments…. IAN MACFARLANE: …under its current format…. QUESTION: …will be self funded? IAN MACFARLANE: Under its current format. QUESTION: …that less than 10 doesn’t include the Nationals does it? There’s like 14…. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh look, Phil, yeah okay…. IAN MACFARLANE: I’m not annunciating that any further Phil. I made the comment. I stand by it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look the bottom line is, as I said, we have got some practical, common sense amendments here which are workable and will save thousands of Australian jobs. That’s the key point.
The issue now, the test for Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd is are they prepared to negotiate in good faith? If they want our support then they are going to have to give some ground, quite a lot of ground in fact.
But we will see how we get on in our negotiations. The negotiations will come to conclusion and then we will decide – we, both the Opposition and the Government – will decide how we respond. Thank you very much. 
 [ends] malcolmSun, 18 Oct 2009 11:39:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:642http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/640/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=640http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=640&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/640/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: The Rudd Government’s reckless spending and borrowing; congestion tax; ETS; border protection; asylum seekers. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Australians are starting to pay the price for Labor’s reckless spending and borrowing. We’re seeing higher interest rates and yesterday the Reserve Bank Governor, in his strongest and most forthright statement about future rate rises, saying he would not be timid about winding back the monetary stimulus that he provided quickly by reducing rates. So Glenn Stevens is saying he is going to respond to the changed economic conditions by quickly putting rates up again. And we’ve seen Ken Henry, the Treasury Secretary, out canvassing new taxes, in this case a congestion tax. We saw in the Parliament not so long ago the Government refusing to confirm or deny that they were contemplating new taxes on the family home. At the beginning of this year we said that Labor’s borrowing and spending, reckless borrowing and spending, would mean higher interest rates and higher taxes. And those economic chickens are coming home to roost for Mr Rudd because we’re starting to see both. And yet last night the Finance Minister, Mr Tanner, said that the rate of spending would not be slowed. So at the same time as the Reserve Bank Governor, recognising the economic strength in our nation, our growing economy, is winding back the monetary stimulus by increasing interest rates, the Federal Government is fuelling that growth, pushing up interest rates by continuing to spend unabated and the consequence of that is going to be higher interest rates and higher taxes. If Mr Rudd won’t listen to the Opposition who warned of this at the beginning of the year, if he won’t listen to young home buyers who are anxious about paying higher interest rates, and if he won’t listen to the Governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens, when will he start listening and stop this reckless spending? QUESTION: What’s your position on the idea of a congestion tax? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well a congestion tax is not a good idea. It can only be feasible in circumstances where there is a readily available public transport alternative. I mean it could only ever be equitable in those circumstances. And you take a city like Sydney, which probably has the best public transport of the major cities in Australia, and there are vast areas of Sydney which have little or no public transport availability. So a congestion tax in the absence of a widespread public transport network, as you have in London, would be very, very unjust and that’s why we would not agree to it. QUESTION: On a different note, do you have any comments to make on the emissions trading scheme and the call for a secret ballot in the party on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We don’t have secret ballots on policy matters in the party room, it’s not our practice. QUESTION: Are you concerned about a leadership spill on Sunday? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. QUESTION: You don’t think it’s on the agenda and you don’t think… MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, it isn’t. It isn’t and I’m not. QUESTION: On another matter again, do you support Kevin Andrews’ idea of a new temporary protection visa system for asylum seekers? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let me just say this about the asylum seekers and the situation at the moment. Unlike Mr Rudd I did see the pleas of the little girl on the boat in Indonesia and it was heart-breaking. Every Australian who saw those people would have been deeply moved by it. But the tragedy is that she and her parents were invited on to that boat by a people smuggler, by someone who believed that because Mr Rudd had softened our border protection policies they would be able to promise to those unfortunate passengers a certain passage to Australia. So the reality is that Mr Rudd unpicked the fabric of a border protection policy that had worked, that had proved its effectiveness by substantially eliminating this vile trade of people smuggling. And Mr Rudd can talk about being hardline and tough and making no apologies as often as he likes, but the apology he should make is to the Australian people because he unpicked a policy, a suite of policies that had worked and had proved their effectiveness because the boats had stopped. He said by changing those policies it would have no effect on the boats, nothing would change. He said we’d be able to eliminate those policies of the Howard Government and we’d still have no boats – and yet we now have nearly 2,000 arrivals, illegal arrivals since he changed the policy – with the expectation that there will be thousands more. This is a comprehensive failure in policy. Mr Rudd has recklessly opened up our borders in a way that is placing the integrity of our whole immigration system and our whole program, our generous program of humanitarian assistance, at risk. He must recognise that he has failed the Australian people and he must hold an urgent inquiry into the situation, getting the utmost intelligence advice, specialist advice, both from the region and domestically, to examine the impact of his policies and what measures can be put in place to rectify this problem. There is no quick fix to this. Mr Rudd has recklessly unpicked a suite of policies which worked and there is no silver bullet to resolve the situation in a moment. QUESTION: There’s not a quick fix but there’s a very immediate crisis with the Sri Lankans now refusing to take food. What do you think we should do? What action should we take? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Sri Lankans are on board a vessel in an Indonesian port so it is quite properly and factually the responsibility of the Indonesians. The hunger strike is a reckless and self-destructive act, it is putting lives at risk and I have no doubt the Indonesian authorities will be doing – just as we would be doing if the boat was in an Australian port – doing everything they can to ensure that the hunger strike comes to an end by persuading the hunger strikers to stop and by ensuring that they leave the vessel peacefully and then can be dealt with and processed in the usual way by the UN High Commission on Refugees. QUESTION: They are saying they won’t back down though until they can come to Australia so really it is partly our problem too, isn’t it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, there are not thousands, there are millions of people who would like to come to Australia and who could claim the asylum status as refugees, millions of people, and we have a very generous humanitarian program, one of the most generous in the world relative to the size of our population. But it is fundamental that we choose the refugees that we admit into Australia based on criteria, our criteria – in particular, criteria of those that are in the greatest need. We cannot have a humanitarian program which is self-selecting. We take 13,000 a year in total. We have already had 2,000 illegal arrivals since last August. If that became 4,000 or 5,000, you can readily see that the program, the quota if you like, the number, becomes more and more filled out by people smugglers. You cannot outsource your humanitarian program, your humanitarian refugee program to the people smuggling industry. That is not in Australia’s interest and it isn’t in the interest of the thousands and indeed millions of refugees who are seeking Australia’s assistance. We cannot help everyone. We help a large number, a large number particularly relative to other countries, so we are generous but we have to be able to make those judgments. We cannot allow Mr Rudd to outsource our humanitarian program to the people smugglers. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 16 Oct 2009 04:24:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:640http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/637/Doostop-Interview-with-Guy-Barnett-Abbotsford-Public-School-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=637http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=637&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/637/Doostop-Interview-with-Guy-Barnett-Abbotsford-Public-School-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Labor Waste Annual Report 2008/09; public hospitals; border protection and asylum seekers. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: We are here at Abbotsford with Senator Guy Barnett to launch the Labor Waste Annual Report. This is the product of the Labor Waste committee that Guy Barnett chairs which keeps a very close eye on the growing waste and mismanagement of the Rudd Labor Government. And this is a chronicle of waste, mismanagement and inefficiency. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on consultants; billions of dollars being wasted recklessly. And of course we are here in Abbotsford where we have one of the sadly iconic examples of Labor’s waste and mismanagement. This is the school where four perfectly serviceable classrooms are to be torn down at a cost of $2.5 million and then replaced with four perfectly serviceable classrooms. $2.5 million of taxpayers’ money to tear down four classrooms and build four classrooms – and that really is a symbol of the Labor Party’s attitude to debt, to deficit, to borrowing, to spending; borrowing and spending big, spending ineffectively and throwing a heavy burden on the shoulders of Australians now and in generations to come. And we saw today in a speech by the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, who has had to put up interest rates – these interest rates are rising in part as a consequence of Labor’s reckless spending – we saw Glenn Stevens say that economic policy has to be recalibrated as circumstances change. In other words, the message to Mr Rudd and Mr Swan is: now that you can see the economy is much stronger than you thought it was going to be when you committed to all this reckless spending, now is the time to wind it back. But oh no, Mr Swan wants to keep on spending like there’s no tomorrow. No matter how much economic data demonstrates that they should be winding back their reckless spending and borrowing, these Paris Hiltons of government finance are determined to keep spending. Guy? SENATOR GUY BARNETT: Thank you. Thank you Malcolm and today, yes, we’re releasing the annual report, it’s the first annual report of the Labor Waste Committee. It’s highlighting the Labor waste, the litany of waste, the litany of reckless spending and some of the key examples are set out in the report, and I just want to nominate a few. But today we can advise that this Rudd Labor Government is spending more on consultants than any other Australian Government in history – over $900 million since they were elected – and that’s outlined in the report. We have had the GROCERYchoice website fiasco where Mr Rudd promised to put downward pressure on grocery prices, and what did he do? He established a website and they budgeted for over $13 million over four years and of course in less than 12 months they’ve expended, of taxpayers’ money, nearly $10 million. The website was of no use to consumers or anybody else and has now been closed down. It is a shocking waste of money. The $1.7 million overspend in terms of school stimulus waste and $3.6 million, for example, on signs to promote the Labor Party, to get them elected before the next election and memorial plaques to Julia Gillard. These are but some of the examples. And as Mr Turnbull indicated, here we are at Abbotsford Primary School to highlight the $2.5 million for four classrooms to be knocked down and to be rebuilt. These are projects that are being forced on schools to undertake projects that they don’t want or in fact don’t need. So there’s a whole range of litany of examples in the report and they highlight and confirm that the Labor waste has now become systemic within the Rudd Labor Government. It is now systemic and today we have relaunched the website: www.laborwaste.com and we are seeking further examples from members of the public, consumers, small business people. To highlight the waste please go to: www.laborwaste.com. We will scrutinise that feedback and we will keep this Government accountable for what they should be doing. And at a time like this, at a time like this when it is difficult for a lot of people, we say we want to keep the Government honest and accountable and to ensure scrutiny so that taxpayers get good value for money. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you. Do you have some questions? QUESTION: Mr Turnbull just following on from the AMA’s report yesterday, do you think it’s now time that the Commonwealth took over public hospitals? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is time that Mr Rudd delivered on his promise. Mr Rudd said he would either fix public hospitals by 30th of June or take them over, and he hasn’t done either. So it is up to Mr Rudd to deliver. He is going around from one hospital to another, one picfac to another. It is all very good for his PR but it is not doing anything for the patients that are missing out on these medical services that they deserve and that the AMA is so concerned about. QUESTION: Would the Coalition look at a takeover if you were in government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We are focused on what Mr Rudd has got to do. He is in government, he is the one that has to live up to his promise. He said he would fix public hospitals or he would take them over. And he has done neither. QUESTION: Sure the AMA report suggests that states can’t run the health system the way it’s going? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the AMA report identifies the many deficiencies and failings and the deterioration over the last year, a year in which Mr Rudd of course has been in government. He can’t blame this on the previous government. That AMA report is a damning indictment of his failures, and he has to be held accountable for them. He said he would either fix it or take it over, and he has done neither. QUESTION: Kevin Andrews is suggesting an unlawful entrance visa stemming from the number of illegal boat arrivals that we have been having lately. Is that a Coalition policy or is that something that he is putting up himself? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Mr Rudd has to tell us what he is going to do. It is his problem. He is Prime Minister. He is the one that dismantled a border protection policy that worked. Illegal arrivals were negligible as a result of the Howard Government’s policies. Mr Rudd dismantled them and in doing so said it would have no effect on arrivals. He said it would have no effect. The Labor Party described the Christmas Island detention centre as a white elephant. Now it is not going to be able to cope with the flood of illegal immigrants. Mr Rudd’s policy has failed. He has no answers other than to fling his hands in the air, shrug his shoulders and say there is nothing he can do about it. What he has to do is take charge. It is all very well talking tough and describing people smugglers as vermin. Let’s all agree that they’re very bad criminals. But what is he going to do about it? And the answer is so far, nothing. QUESTION: …policies are working though, so what’s your alternative? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have proposed, given that he refuses to recognise that there even is a problem, we propose there be a thorough, independent inquiry that can get the benefit of advice from the Federal Police, from security services, to get all of that expert advice, examine which part of Mr Rudd’s blunderings have had the greatest impact on this flood of arrivals, and examine a range of alternatives that could be put in place to stop it. The fact is Mr Rudd has not even got to first base. He doesn’t even recognise or accept he has got a problem. How many thousand illegal arrivals do we need before Mr Rudd is going to have to own up and say that his border protection policies, his border protection policies have failed? QUESTION: You were saying this morning on radio that it won’t be long before asylum seekers will be processed on the mainland. Where has that come from, do you....? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is what we are hearing from the Government. They have run out of places or are running out of places at Christmas Island, and we know that they are looking actively at reopening detention centres on the mainland. That is again a total failure of policy. But this is Mr Rudd’s failure of policy and he is the Prime Minister, he has to deal with it. QUESTION: What do you think should happen to the Sri Lankans currently just in limbo up there off Indonesia? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the reality is that these people chose…. seek to travel to Australia illegally. They have been with people smugglers. They sought to enter Australia unlawfully, and they have been apprehended by the Indonesian authorities, and they if they seek the protection of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in Indonesia then they should be dealt with accordingly. But they should not be rewarded for this effort by being admitted into Australia. Okay? Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmThu, 15 Oct 2009 04:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:637http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/635/Doorstop-Interview-with-Scott-Morrison-Ropes-Crossing.aspx#Comments1http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=635http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=635&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/635/Doorstop-Interview-with-Scott-Morrison-Ropes-Crossing.aspxSubjects: Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending putting upward pressure on interest rates; housing market; Ross Garnaut; border protection; climate change; nuclear energy. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: As you have seen, Yardley and her fiancé are buying a block here and they’re going to build a house, their first new home together. And we’ve been discussing the impact of interest rates and rises in interest rates which obviously have a very big impact on young couples particularly who are buying homes at the moment with the benefit of all the incentives and are buying homes on the basis of a low interest rate environment. Now we are determined to ensure that the Government does the right thing. We can’t force the Government to do anything but we are urging them to slow back on the spending and borrowing. They are spending and borrowing at a level that is unprecedented in peacetime history in Australia and that is putting upward pressure on interest rates. And Yardley has already seen that with one rate rise that came, as she said earlier, a lot sooner than expected. The Reserve Bank says that the monetary policy has to be tightened, the monetary stimulus has to be wound back, and yet at the same time Wayne Swan wants to keep on spending, keeping on fuelling up the economy in a way that is only going to make it harder for young couples like Yardley and her fiancé to buy new homes and service their mortgage debt. Scott, did you want to add something o that? SCOTT MORRISON: Yes, only really to congratulate Yardley and her fiancé on what is a big decision. There is around about 200,000 plus who have made that decision in the last 12 months and it wasn’t welcome news that they will be paying more for that mortgage earlier than they anticipated. The other thing here is that this is an important development because we need more homes built across Australia. We need to build about 165,000 every year according to the Reserve Bank and we’re currently building less than 140,000. So that’s where the problem is in terms of prices. I mean Yardley was telling us earlier that she decided to make that decision with her fiancé to buy now because prices just keep going up. And so if we want to do something about housing affordability we must address these very important issues of supply because those who haven’t got into the market now will be paying a lot more in the future. QUESTION: Do you have any message to the banks who have all indicated that they’re going to lift rates in the near future? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well my message to the banks is that they have got to put their customers first. The big banks have done very, very well out of this financial crisis. They have had the benefit of government guarantees, both for their deposits and also for their wholesale borrowings. There is now less competition in the mortgage market than ever before because so many of the smaller lenders and the non-bank lenders are out of the market. So it is absolutely vital the banks recognise their responsibility to their customers. QUESTION: When it comes to interest rates, they were a lot higher under the Coalition and they couldn’t really have got much lower than they did recently. So wasn’t it just to be expected that rates would rise and inevitable given the economic cycle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What the Government has done, as we’ve been saying all year, is they have been borrowing and spending recklessly. Now we said at the beginning of the year that they should borrow and spend less and spend it more effectively, better targeted spending. And the Government ignored that. They assumed that we were on the edge of an abyss and so they panicked and they spent an enormous amount. Now it is plain that the strength of the Australian economy, thanks to the good economic management of the previous government, thanks to the strong demand for our exports from China, thanks to the good management of monetary policy by the Reserve Bank, thanks to all of those things our economy has been much stronger. And so that is why we’re saying, and we’re not saying it alone, other leading economists – Ross Garnaut, a Labor economic adviser, Warwick McKibbin on the Reserve Bank board – we’re all saying the same thing. Given that the economy is so much stronger than the Government anticipated it must scale back, not cut out entirely. It’s not a question of cutting out all government spending. That’s a false premise. What the Government should be doing is scaling it back, recognising, as Ross Garnaut said today, given that the economic environment has changed so should the Government’s response to it change. Because if they don’t change it Yardley and her fiancé and hundreds of thousands of other young couples are going to be paying higher and higher interest rates which will make it harder for them to realise the dreams they have for themselves and their families. QUESTION: On interest rates though, it was inevitable though that interest rates had to go up though, isn’t it? So wasn’t that just something that people should have factored in and we can’t really stop it from happening? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You see, it’s a question of the pace and the rate of interest rate increases. Interest rates will go up and down over the cycle, there’s no doubt about that, but the Government should not be working against monetary policy. What the Government is doing, at the same time as the Reserve Bank says a bit of heat needs to be taken out of the economy with higher interest rates, you’ve got the Government fuelling the economy up. So the Government is in effect fuelling higher interest rates. Now it shouldn’t be doing that. SCOTT MORRISON: I make one other point too, I mean let’s not forget that Australia has some of the highest interest rates in the world currently when you compare it to the UK. I mean it’s only countries like Iceland and Turkey and Poland that actually have higher interest rates than Australia. So I think the Government likes to let people believe that interest rates can go as high as they like and this is somehow necessary. But for Yardley and her fiancé and everyone else and 200,000 others have bought a home, they won’t be welcoming any more interest rate rises from Kevin Rudd. QUESTION: Just on the land being released, and land particularly here in Western Sydney as you’ve mentioned, what do governments need to do to make more land available affordably for young people? SCOTT MORRISON: Well firstly they need to make land available. They need to release land in terms of supply. This is the major constraint not just here in Sydney but all around the country. Secondly, it’s an issue of the charges and the various other impediments to getting the block up. I mean just here and many other sites just like this more than half the cost of putting the block out there is in these various taxes and charges and delays and costs. Now that forces prices up and as long as we have that and as long as we have an affordable housing agreement in this country with the states that is silent on issues of land supply, on issues of taxes and charges on land, then we’re going to have this problem. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I make one other comment on another topic. We have seen another boat intercepted today, the people smuggling boat with illegal immigrants, unauthorised immigrants. Now Mr Rudd has to now admit that his border protection policies are failing. He has lost control of our borders. Since he started softening our border protection policy we’ve had 41 boats and just under 2,000 arrivals. His policies have failed. The measure of the success of the policies is the extent to which people smuggling occurs or does not occur. It’s occurring now at an increasing pace. Mr Rudd has to recognise that failure in policy and what we need urgently is an independent inquiry to examine why his policy is failing, what can be done to address it. We’ve got to address this problem otherwise the pace of unauthorised arrivals will just gather more and more momentum. QUESTION: The Prime Minister’s confirmed that he spoke to his Indonesian counterpart and they then intercepted 260 Sri Lankans that were on their way to Australia. That seems to have worked. Is that the solution? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is one boat that was intercepted and we say well done to the Australian and Indonesian security services that were able to intercept that people smuggling boat. But that was one boat that was intercepted but of course another boat has arrived, and more are arriving in Australian waters than are intercepted in Indonesian waters. Certainly greater cooperation between Australia and Indonesia is absolutely vital. Mr Rudd says his change of policies has had nothing to do with the increase in arrivals. That’s his argument. And yet when the Australian media go over and interview the people smugglers or their would-be customers, they say that they know that Mr Rudd has softened our border protection policies and that’s why they are going to seek to come here. So there’s no question that what he has done has encouraged people smuggling. What we have to do now is recognise that his policies have failed and have a thorough independent inquiry to assess what can be done to protect our borders once again. QUESTION: Is making personal phone calls the solution? [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think contact between leaders is always a good thing but really that is a one-off event. The fact is, the tragic score card is, 41 boats since the policies were softened and just under 2,000 arrivals and that is too many. QUESTION: Philip Ruddock says that [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mr Rudd has made a lot of changes and they have certainly created the impression – we know that as a fact – that Australia is a much softer target. What we want to see is a thorough independent inquiry to look at the effect of the changes and what new measures may be implemented to deal with it. It’s not a simple business. It’s a very challenging problem, there’s no doubt about that, but Mr Rudd has got to recognise that his policies have failed. He’s got to recognise that openly and honestly and let’s have a thorough independent inquiry with the benefit of specialist advice, including from the police and the intelligence services, so Australians can understand what they can do to secure our borders. QUESTION: [Inaudible] Coalition’s policy though is that a return to TPVs and the Pacific Solution? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No we are focused on an independent inquiry being established. Mr Rudd has changed a lot of policies in the past and the reality is he has created an impression that Australia is a soft target. There’s no doubt about that, and what we need now is a thorough and independent inquiry with the benefit of all the expert advice to examine what measures can be undertaken to restore the security of our borders. QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: I would not rule in or out any measure; I would have an independent inquiry and get the expert advice. That is critically what we need to do because there are obviously plenty of arguments about which measures are more effective than others. But the fact is, the simple fact of life is the numbers show that since Mr Rudd changed the policies he created an impression that Australia was a very soft target. That impression has been marketed by the people smugglers and marketed with increasing success. So we need to address that. QUESTION: Kevin Rudd says [inaudible] ..that you’ve gone from touting jobs, jobs, jobs to being silent, silent, silent. Now that the jobless figures are coming down, what do you say to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mr Rudd is consistent on one thing – every day, every week, every month, every year, he is spin, spin, spin. There’s no deviation from that. Look, the biggest job destroyer is higher and higher interest rates. One of the reasons our economy responded so well and one of the reasons why unemployment has not risen as high as many feared is because of the Reserve Bank lowering interest rates. That took a lot of pressure off a lot of businesses and a lot of employers – small and large businesses. Now if interest rates go up further than they should or need to or ought to, that will be job destroying. So I’m always focused on jobs, jobs, jobs. Mr Rudd, however, is spin, spin, spin. QUESTION: The figures though are showing that the ease is coming off the job pressure, so that’s the question. What are you saying now about jobs, the tactic seems to have worked? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we are always committed to employment and high levels of employment. Unemployment was at record lows during the Coalition’s time in government and we managed to achieve what was a remarkable economic outcome with very low unemployment and very low or manageable levels of inflation. Historically when unemployment has got down to very low levels, inflation has started to take off. So being able to manage inflation within acceptable boundaries and have unemployment low was one of the great achievements of the Howard period in government. There’s no question about that. So that’s what we want to do again. We need to have high employment, low unemployment and keep interest rates low so that Yardley and her husband-to-be can buy their house and pay their mortgage. QUESTION: Scott, can we ask to have your comments on Sydney’s rental vacancy rate? SCOTT MORRISON: Well the figures today show that things have flattened but at the end of the day it’s about 1.5 per cent, 1.3 per cent. Now that is an incredibly low level of vacancies and that is why we’ve got so much pressure on rents across this city, but also across many cities around the country. And unless we get more land, unless we get more stock onto the market, unless we stop playing around at the fringes public housing cannot solve that problem. The only thing that will solve rents going up is ensuring that the private sector is building more houses in places like this here at Ropes Crossing. That is what is going to take the pressure of rents, that’s what’s going to take the pressure off house prices. And at the moment there is no plan from the Federal Government, who made much of this before the last election, but is delivering very, very little when it comes to reducing the cost of a block right here in Western Sydney. QUESTION: So the incentives that are around at the moment, low interest rates and the first home buyers boost, that’s not having an effect? SCOTT MORRISON: Well these things spur demand, but they don’t spur supply and the issues of demand are being witnessed all around us. The problem is that there are not enough houses to buy; there’s not enough houses being built for people to buy. MALCOLM TURNBULL: So the prices go up. SCOTT MORRISION: So the prices go up. And that’s what we need to do to address to keep rents lower than they are. That’s what we need to keep home prices affordable. I mean Yardley has taken a big decision and made a big commitment to get into this market. There will be many others who will have missed this opportunity and will find it very, very difficult with prices going up. And when they do finally get into the market it will be a much higher price and sadly for them they’ll be paying much higher interest rates if the Government keeps spending the way they are. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And you will have seen the Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens gave a very solemn warning to the Government about this recently when he said how unsatisfactory it would be if lower interest rates and incentives to home buyers simply resulted in higher prices and did not result in greater supply. And, as Scott has said, there are institutional, government-related barriers to increasing supply – planning, costs, all of the charges. All of this constrains supply. And the fact is we are supplying fewer dwellings onto the market than are needed every year. Demand is greater than supply so that puts upward pressure on prices. QUESTION: [Inaudible] …the Lowy Institute’s found that climate change is slipping in terms of what people consider foreign policy priorities. Does that indicate that people are less concerned about climate change? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think people are, Australians and people right around the world are concerned about climate change but there are always a range of issues that people have to focus on and obviously coming out of this global financial crisis, economic ones are first and foremost. But climate change is a big issue and that’s why we are very committed to effective action on climate change. QUESTION: Where on the list of foreign policy priorities do you put climate change? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh look, it’s high and the ultimate priority is the security of Australia, including the security of our borders. National security, you know, the safety of the citizen, of every citizen, is the primary objective and responsibility of government. But there are so many priorities and they’re all important but national security is right at the very top. QUESTION: Coming back to the Lowy Institute but just first [inaudible]…when are your amendments going to be ready? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they’ll be presented to the party room on Sunday as we have said for some time. QUESTION: Okay, so the Lowy Institute’s suggestion that there’s a split…that the split for and against nuclear is pretty much even. Should nuclear be an option and what side of the debate would you be on? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I see Mr Rudd has been playing politics with this again today. He should have enough respect for the Australian people to have an open and honest debate on nuclear energy. Now the simple fact is, the undeniable fact is that nuclear energy is proving to be a larger and larger part of the world’s energy solution in part because of concerns about climate change, because it is a zero emission source of electricity. That’s why we’re mining and selling more uranium and there are many more nuclear power plants under construction then there have been for many, many years. So it’s a growing energy source. As to whether we should have nuclear energy in Australia, that is something that deserves an informed and honest debate and Mr Rudd wants to keep on shutting it down. Now the truth is, the practical fact of life is, you will never have nuclear energy in Australia unless and until there is broad community support and indeed bipartisan political support because the projects take so long to plan and build that they would inevitably span the lives of several, perhaps even more than two governments. So you’re simply not going to have nuclear energy until you get the type of broad, bipartisan political support for it that you have in most other countries in the world, in fact in virtually every other OECD country. But we need to have an informed debate about it and Mr Rudd seems to just want to shut it down. He wants to sell uranium to the rest of the world to fuel nuclear power stations and take advantage of that but he doesn’t want to have any discussion of the issue here. When we were in government we of course started to inform that debate with the Switkowski report and other work and we believe that what we need to have is a calm, a rational debate about nuclear energy. QUESTION: [Inaudible] debate would you be on, and if you were prime minister and there was, as you said, broader support for it in Australia… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well if there was broad community support and bipartisan support for nuclear energy then subject to it being environmentally permitted satisfactorily and subject to it being cost competitive with other low emission sources like clean coal, which is another, obviously the other big opportunity for zero or low emission base load power, subject to that then one would expect nuclear energy to be developed in Australia. But we’re a long way away from that and what we need is an open and honest debate. I mean this is a Prime Minister who said he was going to engage honestly and openly with the Australian people, who had his 2020 summit, and on the subject of nuclear energy he is not even prepared to countenance an open discussion. He says, no, we’re going to have a bar of it, he’s not even prepared to discuss it and yet when he goes to the G20 meeting every other country there has got a growing nuclear energy program. QUESTION: So would you be supporting it? That’s the question. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I certainly support a debate, a debate about it and I certainly believe nuclear energy is part of the world’s zero or low emission energy future. As to having a nuclear energy sector in Australia, I support an honest and open debate and I would certainly encourage growing community awareness and endorsement of it but we are a long way away from that. I mean Mr Rudd wants to have a scare campaign and say the Liberal Party is going to build nuclear reactors everywhere – that is complete rubbish. We are years away from even getting to a serious consideration of building nuclear power stations in Australia but we’ve got to have an open and honest debate. And what that poll today shows is that the public has an interest in this issue, an interest that Mr Rudd is determined not to have discussed. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmTue, 13 Oct 2009 00:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:635http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/631/Doorstop-Interview-with-Julie-Bishop-Perth.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=631http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=631&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/631/Doorstop-Interview-with-Julie-Bishop-Perth.aspxSubjects: The Rudd Government’s economic mismanagement; Ken Henry; Ross Garnaut; WA State Conference. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Today the big issue is the economic mismanagement of Australia. We are seeing more and more signs of the consequences of Kevin Rudd’s reckless borrowing and spending. Ken Henry has conceded that taxes are going to have to be higher in the future. Bob Hawke’s economic adviser, former economic adviser, Ross Garnaut, has been as scathing in his criticism of the stimulus program of the Rudd Government and their denunciation of free market economics as we have been. So Kevin Rudd has got the economic management wrong and we are going to pay a very heavy price in terms of higher taxes and interest rates as a consequence. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you said in there that the wheels of political fortunes can turn rapidly. Is that code for ‘stick with me’? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s not code at all. It’s an expression of reality. The fact is if you stick up for the values you believe in, that the electorate will respect you for that. And I just made the point, as you heard me make, that the values and the principles that won Menzies a decisive victory in 1949 had been resoundingly rejected only three years before. QUESTION: What’s your opinion that the State Liberal Government, the only one in the country, is causing the federal Libs so much strife and trouble on the ETS for example? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m sorry the…Colin Barnett couldn’t be more supportive. QUESTION: The West Australian Libs, Wilson Tuckey. What’s your opinion of the reaction to what [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: What, you’re asking me what is my opinion of Wilson Tuckey? JULIE BISHOP: He’s a passionate advocate for his seat. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes. JULIE BISHOP: And like all our Western Australian colleagues he’s fighting to ensure that the best interests of Western Australians are looked after and that’s what our federal parliamentary team is doing as well. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you reckon the wheels have started to turn? The opinion polls and the wheels are starting to turn your way. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the reality is that, look, I’m not going to run a commentary on opinion polls other than to say obviously the only poll that matters is the one on election day. But what Australians are starting to see for the first time is the real price they are going to pay in terms of higher interest rates – and it won’t be long before its higher taxes as well – the consequence of Kevin Rudd’s reckless borrowing and spending. Now remember at the beginning of the year Julie and I said that Kevin Rudd should spend less. He should borrow and spend less and spend it in a better targeted way. Do any of us believe that if the Rudd Government had recognised or known that the Australian economy would be as strong and resilient as it’s proved to be, does anyone believe that they would have then spent so much money? They have got to recognise that this stimulus spending must be scaled back because it is working against monetary policy, it’s putting upward pressure on interest rates and it will, as even Ken Henry conceded yesterday, result in higher taxes. Now on that note I must leave you. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 09 Oct 2009 23:54:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:631http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/626/Press-Conference-with-Joe-Hockey-and-Helen-Coonan-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=626http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=626&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/626/Press-Conference-with-Joe-Hockey-and-Helen-Coonan-Melbourne.aspxSubjects: The Coalition’s plan to pay off Labor’s debt; ETS. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m here with the Shadow Treasurer and the Shadow Finance Minister to release our plan to pay off Labor’s debt. This document describes the principles and the strategies that will enable us to get Australia out of the huge debt that the Labor Party has put our nation into. The billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars that the Labor Party is throwing onto the shoulders of our children and our grandchildren, and taxpayers yet unborn will be paying higher taxes to pay off Labor’s debt. Of course it’s not simply that Labor has run up too much debt – and Joe and Helen will talk about the extent of that and the contrast with the levels of debt that have been incurred in the past – but it is that Labor is getting so little value for money. Billions of dollars are being spent unwisely with no real benefit to the community, even down to the absurdity of school buildings being knocked over only to be replaced by buildings of exactly the same size and facility – all so that Julia Gillard can put a plaque on it and claim it as another Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall. Now we have four key principles and they’re outlined here in this plan. The first is that we will reduce government waste. We will ensure that tax payers get value for money. And we will, on coming into government, establish a commission on sustainable finances that will examine the quality of government spending right across the board. And that will ensure that tax payers know they’re getting real bang for their buck. We are also going to drive the top line of the economy, GDP, because of course that drives ultimately government revenues as well; increase economic growth by ensuring that we cease burdening business with excessive regulation and red tape, and in particular we will be doing that in a way that supports small business. The most common complaint, the most frequent complaint we’ve had from small business right across Australia is the excessive burden of red tape. The third principle is that we will get the balance right between public spending and private spending. Every dollar the Government takes from tax payers deprives a tax payer – it might be a household, a business, large or small – of the ability to invest that dollar so there is a big opportunity cost. And we are going to bring the percentage of GDP represented by government spending back down to less than 25 per cent, which is where it was when we were in government. And finally we are going to ensure honesty, real honesty and accountability in public finances. Now that is a great Liberal Party tradition. We established the Charter of Budget Honesty in 1996 – an enormous breakthrough in terms of true accountability for budget outcomes. But what we also must do now is take a second step and establish a Parliamentary Budget Office which will operate like the Congressional Budget Office in the United States and provide a genuine, independent, expert economic analytical review of government spending and policies in exactly the way the Congressional Budget Office does in America. And you have to ask, would Kevin Rudd have embarked on so much reckless spending, so many reckless promises, if he had known that there would be an independent watchdog assessing and appraising and reporting on the real consequences of his various measures, be it the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program or the even more extraordinary, no cost-benefit analysis, no financial analysis required, $43 billion National Broadband Network thought bubble. A Parliamentary Budget Office would be a real disincentive for governments to engage in that kind of reckless spending. Helen. HELEN COONAN: Yes, thank you, Malcolm. Well what has been of increasing concern to us has been the level of government spending that has just continued to increase, notwithstanding the clear signs of recovery in the economy. Of course we’ve had evidence from the Governor Glenn Stevens who clearly said that this enormous stimulus spending that was rolled out when there was an emergency has peaked, and yet we have absolutely no plan from Labor as to how they are going to rein in the $20 billion or $30 billion still to be rolled out in the stimulus spending when the emergency requirement for it has clearly passed. So what we will do with this plan is to reduce waste and to ensure that the budget is actually sustainable and that we have a plan to pay down debt. We think that it is absolutely critical at this stage of the economic cycle that we are talking about rolling up $1 billion debt a week in circumstances where clearly the economy is on a recovery path. It is unsustainable to continue to roll out a fiscal policy that increases debt when interest rates are going up and when clearly the expansionary part of the economy needs to be reined in. You clearly put money in when an economy is shrinking, you take it out when it is expanding, and yet the Labor Government has no plan to roll back debt. This is what we will be doing and we will ensure that the budget is sustainable going forward. Joe, do you want to say something? JOE HOCKEY: Thanks Helen, and thank you Malcolm. This is a plan to pay off Labor’s debt. The Liberal Party and National Party have had to do that in the past. We are going to have to do it again in the future. The Labor Party’s very good at putting so much spending on the nation’s credit card, but, as with household budgets, when you spend up big on the credit card you have to pay it off at some point. This is a plan to pay off the nation’s credit card. This is a plan to pay off Labor’s debt. Kevin Rudd said at the last election that it was a reckless level of spending at 24 per cent of GDP. Today it is over 28 per cent of GDP. The reckless spending has to end Mr Rudd. This is a plan to do something about it. Thanks very much. QUESTION: [Inaudible] plan, who will be the Prime Minister if you do get into office? Will it be either you, Joe, or Malcolm? Who will be… this plan if and when you get into office? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it will certainly be me. QUESTION: Joe, can you back that up? JOE HOCKEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Joe will be the Treasurer and Helen will be the Finance Minister. QUESTION: No plans for a leadership spill? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Certainly not. QUESTION: Do you think the timing of this particular, what will be a big plank leading up to the next election, is wise given all the leadership speculation in the last 24 hours? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’ve been working on this for some time. We decided in Shadow Cabinet yesterday to release it this morning and we’re proceeding to do so. We are focused on holding the Rudd Government to account. Australians can see now the consequence of Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending. We have seen the Reserve Bank say the monetary stimulus has to be withdrawn because of the economy’s growth. And, as Helen just observed, when the economy is starting to expand that’s when stimulus should be withdrawn, but Wayne Swan wants to keep on spending. He is working against the policy of the Reserve Bank and forcing up interest rates. Australians want to see a strategy for getting this debt under control and what we’ve set out here is the way that we’ll do it. QUESTION: But is this an attempt to [inaudible] attention from those leadership issues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What you have just said I’m afraid to say is an attempt to divert attention from the real issue that Australians are focused on, which is government debt and rising interest rates. That’s what they are focused on; so many billions of dollars of their taxes, and not just their taxes but their children’s taxes because they will be paying the tax to pay off the debt. They’re concerned about that money being wasted. That’s the real issue facing Australia today. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Brendan Nelson lost the leadership because of confusion over climate policy. If the same fate were to befall you, could it happen to any subsequent opposition leader as well? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s the first paragraph of your opinion piece, but if you want to ask a question about climate policy, I’m happy to answer it. QUESTION: Wilson Tuckey wants a secret ballot on the Coalition’s ETS strategy when you meet next week. Are you going to give it to him? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we don’t have ballots in the party room on policy matters like that. No, we don’t. The party room of course is in a position to determine its own mechanism but we proceed by way of consensus, almost invariably. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, what would you say to those people who are saying, those within your own party, broadcasters, commentators, that you should step aside for the good of the party and you should do it quickly? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is no chance of that happening and the fact of the matter is we are focused on one leadership issue alone, which is the lack of leadership shown by Kevin Rudd in the reckless spending that is putting such a heavy burden on Australians today and their children and grandchildren to come. QUESTION: Were you surprised by the man to your right revealing yesterday he had been sounded out over your leadership? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, you’re keeping on focusing on this issue. If you want to ask a question to Joe, you’re free to ask him. If you want to ask a question about debt or climate policy or any other policy issue, we’re very happy to address it. QUESTION: Joe, can I ask a question to you. Are there any circumstances under which you may change your mind? You said you were sounded out yesterday and you’ve given Malcolm your loyalty but might you change your mind at some point? JOE HOCKEY: Well let me say this: Malcolm has my absolute, unqualified support. He always has had that. He continues to have that. He will have that into the future. And I just say to people, the job I want is Wayne Swan’s job. I want to knock off Wayne Swan. He is the only guy I want to knock off and I’m doing it in the national interest. That’s why, because I care about the massive burden Australians are facing into the future as a result of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan putting everything on the credit card. QUESTION: Are there any circumstances under which you may change your mind? JOE HOCKEY: Look, can I promise you, we can look into crystal balls, we can speculate, it’s a waste of time – there’s only one job I want, it’s Wayne Swan’s. I want this guy to get Kevin Rudd’s job. I want that. I really do and you know what, I want Australians to want that as well. QUESTION: Why would you tell people that you’d been approached for the leadership? JOE HOCKEY: Well in fact I didn’t actually say that. You know what, have a good look at what I actually said and go over it carefully. QUESTION: Tony Abbott was asked the same question this morning and said he wouldn’t give a definite answer. You decided to [inaudible] JOE HOCKEY: I didn’t hear Tony Abbott’s comments I’m sorry. QUESTION: He refused to answer the same question. JOE HOCKEY: But anything Tony Abbott said, I agree with. QUESTION: So do you see yourself as a future leader of the party? JOE HOCKEY: Let me just say, I want Wayne Swan’s job. It’s the job I want. QUESTION: Joe, what would you have given the Jackson Jive if you were a judge on last night’s Red Faces? JOE HOCKEY: Well I didn’t see that either, but… HELEN COONAN: Harry Connick got it right. JOE HOCKEY: What did he give it, a big zero? HELEN COONAN: Zero. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, are you saying that your party is united over your leadership, everyone’s together? Because, as you know, in politics if you’re not united that you can’t be elected. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well unity is absolutely vital and that is what we have and we get sort of outbreaks of disorder from time to time. Every political party does that from time to time, particularly when they’re in opposition, but everyone recognises before too long that we have to be united and that’s absolutely vital. QUESTION: [Inaudible] disunity is just fine by the Opposition [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think if you look at the history of oppositions, and of course it can occur in governments too, in political parties you do get situations where people will disagree and perhaps disagree more forcefully or more publicly than is ideal. But, you know, in terms of disagreement on policy in particular, that’s part and parcel of political life. And we have a debate, we come together, we reach a common position. There are very few policies on which you could say every single person in the party room has the same view but we know that as a political movement we have to come to a common view to be able to successfully prosecute and defend the interests that we stand for. QUESTION: Are you too far…well, are you too small ‘l’ to be leader of the Liberal Party? [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Certainly not. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, can I ask you, have you set any kind of deadline for how long this kind of division and destablisation can drag on for… in your own sense in terms of how long you’re prepared to put up with it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look can I just say this to you, as the Leader of the Opposition you have to put up with a lot. So I think the, you know, you need broad shoulders and a thick hide in this line of work, as all three of us do, but the critical thing for me and for all of us is to focus on the real issues whether it is debt or whether it’s climate change or any other important area of policy that affects the lives of Australians. That’s what they want us to talk about – and by the way, they would like you to do that too – they want all of us to focus on the issues that affect them. They’re not particularly interested in politicians talking about themselves. QUESTION: [Inaudible] draw a line in the sand and call a spill and just put your leadership to the test to end all these issues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No thanks. QUESTION: What do you say to people in your party then who don’t want to focus on this but want to focus on your leadership? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I encourage everybody to focus on the real issues whether they’re journalists – not that they take much advice from politicians – whether they’re politicians… JOE HOCKEY: They should. It’s good advice. MALCOLM TURNBULL: They should. It’s very good advice. Focus on the real issues. We’ve been saying, for example, that the stimulus should be wound back. Helen made that point very powerfully today. Wayne Swan said nobody agrees with you, no one agrees with the Liberals on this. Look at the front page of The Financial Review today, there’s a majority of independent economists, academic economists and market economists who agree with exactly the point that we’re making. Now just because people agree or disagree doesn’t mean the position is right obviously, everyone has an opinion, but the opinion that we are expressing, the conservative, Liberal opinion that we are expressing that stimulus spending should be conducted responsibly and delivering real value for money is one that has growing support. QUESTION: Speaking of politicians speaking about themselves, are you happy to see the back of Peter Costello? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I spoke very warmly about him last night. He has made an enormous contribution to Australian public life. His eleven and a half years as Treasurer is unparalleled in every respect both in tenure and in his achievements. So we wish him and Tanya and their children, the whole family, the Costello family, all the very best in the very exciting opportunities that await them in the future. QUESTION: [Inaudible] all the best personally, have you phoned him or anything like that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I spoke to him on the telephone and in person. He was at the dinner last night and we had a good chat. QUESTION: Isn’t that some good news because he’s not around anymore? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll leave you guys to run the commentary. We’re happy to keep going on this but do we have any substantive questions about policy? QUESTION: Just following up on one area on the ETS. You said the party room meeting on the weekend the party room has the… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, next weekend, yeah. QUESTION: Sorry, next weekend, to determine its own mechanisms. Would you oppose a secret ballot then on the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, it’s completely contrary to our tradition so I don’t think there’s any prospect of that occurring at all. Let me just explain what we’re doing, by the way, because I think it’s important particularly that everyone understands what we’re doing. The Government has proposed an emissions trading scheme not all the details of which are yet public. The regulations, many of the regulations have not been published. So it is, even from the Government’s side, a work in progress. Now we have a number of objections to that scheme. We had an emissions trading scheme proposal when we were in government. It was based on the report written by Peter Shergold’s committee and it was a very good report and a very good policy and we started legislating for it. So there’s not a contention between us and the Government about the value of putting a price on carbon and doing that via an emissions trading scheme. So we have two objections, two major objections or groups of objections to their scheme. The first is that the design itself is flawed in a number of material respects. It prejudices thousands of jobs, puts at risk thousands of jobs in Australia by failing to protect what are called emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries like steel or aluminium. And by failing to do that the consequence will be that because the countries with which they compete do not have a similar carbon price, you’ll just end up exporting both the jobs and the emissions – so there’s no gain to the global environment and of course a huge economic loss to Australia. So that is a big area. They have also failed to protect agriculture. They have failed to provide opportunities for greater offsets, what we call agricultural offsets or what I would call green carbon. So there are a lot of problems with the design and we are going to address those in detailed amendments that we have been preparing for some time in consultation with industry and many others, and they will be presented to the party room at that meeting. The other objection we have, and this is really one that Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd have great difficulty explaining, is why they insist on having the vote, or seeking to have the vote, before the Copenhagen summit. Kevin Rudd has gone to America and said President Obama won’t have an emissions trading bill passed before Copenhagen and Kevin Rudd said that’s not a problem. So if it’s not a problem for the largest economy in the world, why would it be an enormous disability for us if we were not to have it legislated? Unless Penny Wong can put her hand on her heart and say that there is nothing that will come out of the Copenhagen Summit that will have any relevance at all to the design of an emissions trading scheme in Australia, then common sense follows that the final vote should not be until after Copenhagen. It may be that the amendments or refinements or changes would only be minor. They may not be. They may be very considerable, but if Copenhagen is relevant to our ETS, then the vote should be held after Copenhagen. So that is the second objection that we have. But nonetheless we recognise that the Government – we don’t control, we are not in a position to control the Senate – so if the Government is able to force it onto a vote before the end of the year, we will have our plan B, our amendments, which represent an alternative to the Rudd emissions trading scheme. QUESTION: But what if those amendments don’t get up in the party room. What does that mean for you as leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they will get up, they will be supported in the party room so I am not going to speculate about that. I think a fair, a more important question – and I am being like the Prime Minister asking myself the questions – but a more important question is what happens if our amendments are rejected by Penny Wong, by Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong, and the answer there is that we will obviously, we assume that they will would not reject all of them, but we will consider what can be achieved and then form a view on it as to whether we can reach agreement with them and, in any event, we would then seek to move through the normal legislative process the amendments that the Government is not prepared to support that we nonetheless regard as vital. So there is a detailed, responsible, comprehensive legislative process ahead of us. This is vital legislation and we are taking it very, very seriously. We are committed to having an effective emissions trading scheme, but that doesn’t mean that we should just wave through whatever Penny Wong cares to put up. QUESTION: You just said then the amendments will get through the party room. If you’re so confident, aren’t you pre-empting the meeting? Why hold it if you are so confident they’ll be approved? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is a very silly question. QUESTION: You have already agreed the target range so what could possibly happen at Copenhagen that would affect whether we should have an emissions trading scheme and the design of it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are enormous issues in terms of the types of offsets that might be agreed to. There is quite a lot of controversy about issues relating to biosequestration and technology. There are issues relating to technology transfer. There are issues relating to the commitments that other countries will make and the nature of those commitments. It is a very, very important meeting, believe me. And the real question is if it is so important, and given that everything we do on emissions trading or on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, everything we do to be effective must be connected with and supported by global action, because obviously, as we all know, if we just eliminate all our emissions in Australia, if that was possible, then it wouldn’t make any difference to the global climate unless there was action in other countries. So we all understand there has got to be global agreement. Every report has acknowledged that from Shergold to Garnaut to the White Paper, Nick Stern, whatever you like, take your pick. They are all saying the same thing. So Copenhagen is absolutely vital and, as I say, its impact on the design of the scheme may be greater or smaller depending on what is decided but unless Penny Wong can seriously put her hand on her heart and say it is irrelevant, it will be completely irrelevant, then there is no justification, for the sake of 60 days, in trying to force a final vote before the end of the year. QUESTION: It’s dragged on for this long. How can you be so sure there will be agreement in the party room. Are you willing to concede ground on your position? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What we are taking to the party room, with the support of the Shadow Cabinet, or what Ian Macfarlane is taking strictly speaking, with all of our support as the Shadow Cabinet, is a set of amendments that we will then seek the support of the party room to in effect be our negotiating platform with the Government, and then we will see what the progress of those discussions are. The Australian people expect us to engage constructively with the Government in good faith and we are determined to do that. QUESTION: In the meantime, how do you get the dissenters in your party to shut up publicly before the vote and even after the vote? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I don’t know how do you get politicians to shut up? No ones worked it… JOE HOCKEY: Call an end to press conferences. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right, that’s right. I think politicians, they talk under water... QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Neil Mitchell’s still waiting for you. [Inaudible] 3AW at 9 o’clock. What happened? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we had a press conference here at 9 o’clock and its 9:25. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay. Thank you very much. See you. [ends]  malcolmThu, 08 Oct 2009 05:52:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:626http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/628/Doorstop-Interview-with-Jason-Wood-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=628http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=628&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/628/Doorstop-Interview-with-Jason-Wood-Melbourne.aspxSubjects: Clyde Road upgrade; Rudd Government’s wasteful spending; emissions trading. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as you have just heard, Berwick is bleeding, as Kevin Rudd is all talk and no shovel. The money has been allocated for this Clyde Road upgrade. It is desperately needed. Businesses are being lost to this area, businesses and jobs are being lost, and yet the same time Labor talks big about infrastructure and is throwing billions of dollars, billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars around on school halls, many of which are not needed, some of which involve knocking down perfectly good school buildings only to build more school buildings on top of them. While they are wasting all of that money, a vital piece of infrastructure here is being left undone, and the consequence is, as we have heard from the local businesspeople we have just been speaking with, it is a lot of jobs. They are bleeding jobs here because Kevin Rudd is all talk and no shovel. At the same time, this area, as Jason knows better than anyone as the local Member, is going to suffer hard from the increase in interest rates. We said at the beginning of the year that there should be a stimulus, but it should be judicious, it should be careful, we should borrow and spend no more than was absolutely necessary and the spending should be carefully targeted. We said that reckless spending and borrowing would push up interest rates, and now you are starting to see that happening. So just as the Reserve Bank is saying that the stimulus should be withdrawn, the monetary stimulus should be wound back and rates should start going up, at that same time we have Wayne Swan saying the Paris Hilton spending from the Rudd Government has to continue with renewed energy. So we have got fiscal policy and monetary policy working against each other. QUESTION: First of all, on the Godwin Grech situation, what’s your response to the fact that he has now parted ways with the Treasury? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look I am very sorry to read that Godwin Grech is still ill, and I hope that he has a recovery from his illness. As far as his employment relations, they are a matter between him and his employer, between him and the Treasury. QUESTION: Just a question on the leadership, apparently your colleagues are ready to get behind Joe Hockey if the emissions trading talks don’t go your way. Are you looking over your shoulder? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, not at all. I am always looking straight ahead, and I am focused on our opponents, the Rudd Government, and what we are endeavouring to do right across the country, just as we are here with Jason, here today, is hold them to account for their mismanagement of Australia’s economy. QUESTION: Are you confident that the party room will get behind you on Sunday and back your amendments to the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am sure the party room will support us taking amendments. Whether the Government agrees to them or not of course is up to the Government. But the bottom line is this: if Kevin Rudd was serious about getting his emissions trading scheme right – and I support an emissions trading scheme, I support effective action to reduce Australia’s emissions, I support action on climate change – but if Kevin Rudd was fair dinkum about it he would not finalise the vote, finalise the design, until after the Copenhagen summit. So he is the one that is trying to force it to a vote before the end of the year. Now what we are doing is reaching out, to be constructive. We have been working very closely with the industries and the various businesses whose livelihoods and whose employees are being drastically affected by this scheme. I mean there are thousands of jobs at risk here. We have been reaching out to them, seeking to put together the amendments that would protect jobs, and we will seek the support of the party room to those amendments. I am sure we will secure that support. And then we will sit down with the Government, and it is going to be up to them whether they want to put jobs ahead of politics. QUESTION: There is a lot of leadership speculation at the moment though. Is Joe Hockey being sounded out for your job? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look the only leadership I am focused on is the lack of leadership from Kevin Rudd. QUESTION: What do you hope to bed down today specifically in the meeting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What, at the Shadow Cabinet meeting? QUESTION: You know, talking about, in terms of ETS, what do you actually hope to do with the meeting this afternoon? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, this must be the most well-advertised process ever. We are going to get a presentation from Ian Macfarlane on his progress with the development of the amendments, and we will discuss those, and they will continue to be refined, and then in final form they will be presented to the party room the Sunday before the Parliament sits. QUESTION: I just wanted to follow up. How refined are they going to be by the end of today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, they’re very well advanced and we are working closely with a very wide range of businesses. Do you know, many of these industries, massive employers, have been unable to have meaningful discussions with the Government. The common comment that I have had back is that it’s like talking to a brick wall. So we’re actually sitting down and engaging with them. There are thousands of jobs at stake, billions of dollars of investment. It’s a big issue, a very complex issue so we’re working closely and we will have the amendments ready in their final form obviously when we go to the party room meeting before Parliament sits. QUESTION: Is there going to be a delay on that vote for the scheme? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What is the… QUESTION: Well is there going to be a delay on the vote depending on how [inaudible] work out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m not sure what you mean by that let me put this to you and let me try and answer what I think your question is. If you’re asking, do I think the vote will be held before the end of the year or not, or whether it will be held next year; that is really a matter for the Senate. Now my view is that we should be engaged in negotiations and discussions with the Government but we should not finalise the design of the scheme until after Copenhagen. And the question I suggest you all ask Penny Wong is this – is the outcome of the Copenhagen summit relevant or irrelevant to the design of the Australian emissions trading scheme? Now if it is relevant, as it obviously is, then it follows that the design should not be finalised and the Parliament should not make its final vote until after the Copenhagen summit. Of course there’s an enormous amount of work that can be done and has been done and should continue to be done right up to that point, but there will be very significant developments at Copenhagen and indeed in the lead up to Copenhagen. We’ve already seen a number of them at the conferences in Pittsburgh and New York. So let’s make sure that we make the decision in a fully informed way. But if the Government is able to force the matter to a vote before the end of the year then we obviously seek to have our constructive input into it and that is why we’re presenting these amendments. QUESTION: But if you don’t support the Government taking this move before Copenhagen, why put any amendments forward? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well because we have to have a view. We have to be constructive. There are thousands of jobs, tens possibly hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on getting this scheme right; businesses and industries coming to us and saying we can’t get anywhere with the Government, they don’t care about us, they don’t care about our employees, we need your help. I mean, just look at the Australian coal industry. It’s our biggest export industry. Kevin Rudd is going to put a carbon tax on the Australian coal industry that no other country is putting on their coal industry. So you can imagine how pointless it will be. All that will happen is there will be less coal mined in Australia and more coal mined somewhere else. So exactly the same amount, if not more, greenhouse gas emissions will go into the atmosphere and we will lose thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment as existing mines close and new ones are not open. Environmental benefit – nothing; economic damage to Australia – enormous. So that’s a good example of why we have to be in there fighting for jobs. QUESTION: There’s some talk that John Howard is been asked to take over as head of the NRL. What are your thoughts on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, I notice that John’s not commenting on it so I probably shouldn’t either. But I just say he is a man of enormous ability. He is full of energy. I talk to him regularly. He’s a really good, constructive supporter and friend and whatever he turned his mind to I’ve got no doubt he’d do very well. QUESTION: Jason, a question for you. Will you be supporting Malcolm’s amendments come Sunday on the ETS? JASON WOOD: I fully support Malcolm. He’s got his heart in for Australia, he’s got a heart in for the environment and that’s why he’s our leader and he’s doing a great job on this issue. QUESTION: But will you support the amendments? JASON WOOD: I support Malcolm Turnbull and obviously need to look at the amendments but I’ve got no doubt they’ll be amendments I’ll be supporting. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay? Thanks guys, thank you. [ends]  malcolmWed, 07 Oct 2009 05:59:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:628http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/623/Interview-with-Steve-Price-2UE-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=623http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=623&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/623/Interview-with-Steve-Price-2UE-Sydney.aspxSubjects: ETS.  E&OE STEVE PRICE: Good morning to you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Steve. STEVE PRICE: So it’s all or nothing, is it? Back me to support an amended carbon trading scheme or find yourselves another leader. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Steve, it is a question of whether you want to be part of the solution or not. The reality is there are thousands of jobs being put at risk here by Kevin Rudd’s flawed emissions trading scheme and in his indecent haste to pass it prior to the Copenhagen summit. Now we could simply vote it down, and that would then give him a perfectly legitimate double dissolution trigger. If he were to use that, call an election and win the election, he would then be able to pass it through without any input from the Coalition at all. And right around Australia there are thousands of people whose jobs are going to be affected by this, and their industries, and their representatives, who are saying to us – and I am talking here about coal mining, aluminium, steel, oil and gas to name just a few, farming – who are saying we want you guys to go in there and bat for us, to make a case for our jobs, to argue for amendments that will protect our jobs. And that is asking us to do our job as legislators. STEVE PRICE: But politically, why back yourself into a corner like that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Steve, I don’t know what you mean by backing yourself into a corner. I am the leader and I am stating clearly the approach that I believe we should take. STEVE PRICE: But you’re the sort of person who understands that once you make a statement with no room to shift on, then you have to see that to its final conclusion. You’ve said back me or I won’t be leading your party. You’re not leaving yourself any room there for any compromise. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Steve, the fact of the matter is there isn’t an issue of half measures here. We can follow the policy that I have articulated, that the Shadow Cabinet supported, which is to prepare amendments to the emissions trading scheme, to engage with the Government, to seek to get their agreement to them, and then, depending on how many of those amendments they accept, we will then decide whether to vote for the legislation or not. I am not saying we should vote for Rudd’s ETS on any terms at all. What I am saying is that we have got to engage… Sorry go, on. You go on. STEVE PRICE: But you’re staking your job on a piece of legislation that you agree will increase the tax burden on Australian business, it will cause job losses, and you haven’t even sent the legislation. Any of it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is not true. We have seen the legislation. It has actually been through the Parliament once and been voted down in August. The issue that we are talking about is not just Rudd’s ETS. The issue is should the Coalition, which is unhappy with Rudd’s ETS, should we seek to amend it in order to protect the thousands of jobs that we say are being put at risk for no environmental gain, or should we simply say no, we won’t have a bar of it, we have got no constructive criticism to make, we are just going to vote against it. And Rudd will say thank you very much, you Liberals, for the double dissolution trigger, and he will then use that, have an election, and if he were to get it then he will get his legislation without any input or amendment or contribution to it from us whatsoever. And there will be thousands of jobs that will then be put at risk, and those people will say to us, what did you do to help us, did you do your job as legislators, did you do your job of seeking to protect our jobs, and I am afraid to say, in that eventuality, we would have to say we didn’t do much at all. STEVE PRICE: We’ve got backbenchers this morning, interestingly they don’t have the guts to put their names to this, but they’re saying this morning you’ve placed a noose around your neck, you’re standing on a chair and waiting for it to be kicked out from under you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Steve, I don’t place any store on anonymous smartarses who make comments like that. STEVE PRICE: Well they’ve made them, and you know they’re saying this stuff. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Who are they, Steve? Who are they? STEVE PRICE: Well as I said, they don’t have the guts to put… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well exactly Steve, if they don’t have the guts to put their name to it then I’m not going to waste my time worrying about what they’ve said. STEVE PRICE: What do you think would happen in your party room if a candidate emerged with a no deal on carbon trading laws and took you on in a party room vote? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Steve, I am not even vaguely interested in speculating on that. I mean the fact of the matter is this: we need, Australians expect us to provide real leadership, and if we think Rudd’s scheme is flawed – and it is – a common sense response to us is to say okay, what are the flaws and what would you do to fix them? And what I am saying is we have identified the flaws, we have outlined the way in which we would fix them in general terms, in principles. We are going to do that in detail. I will seek the party room’s support to do that. I will get that support from the party room, and then we will sit down and we will see how we get on in terms of our discussions and negotiations with the Government. STEVE PRICE: Well on that question, on that question of leadership, as you know how this works, you’ve been around a long time. You know exactly what will happen when you go this morning, you take off and do whatever you’re going to do, we’re going to get swamped with calls from Liberal and Labor voters shortly on your threat to walk. Can I ask you this question, are you convinced that more Australians than not believe we need a carbon tax? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is absolutely no question that on all of the polling for a long time that there is an overwhelming majority of Australians want to see action on climate change, action to reduce CO2 emissions. They support an emissions trading scheme in principle. Look, Steve, it was our policy when we were in government. STEVE PRICE: I understand that. MALCOLM TURNBULL: It was John Howard’s policy. STEVE PRICE: I understand that. But you don’t think the ground is shifting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No I do not think it is shifting. I think there is concern about the detail of the scheme and concern about the design, and it may be that the problems with the design will be sufficient or so great that we will not vote for it in the final analysis. But you see it is one thing to say I am not going to vote for a scheme which will unreasonably or unnecessarily sacrifice jobs in farming and coal mining and aluminium, and having put forward reasonable amendments that would protect those jobs the Government has unreasonably rejected them. It is one thing to vote against it in those circumstances – it is another thing to simply say I am against an emissions trading scheme in general, and I haven’t had the time to go through the detail, and I don’t believe in climate change, which is what some people say. And I’ve got to tell you that is political death because the vast majority of Australians believe that climate change is real, they believe Australia should take action to mitigate it, and they want governments to act and legislators - and oppositions for that matter - to act responsibly. STEVE PRICE: So what’s your message to our huge farming audience? You know we’re right across New South Wales. What are you saying to them about carbon tax and agriculture? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I am saying to them is Kevin Rudd is going to do them in, and what I am saying to them is… STEVE PRICE: Are you going to save them? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes. That is exactly the point, because what I am doing is I have gone out there and said that emissions, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture should be excluded from the scheme, but agricultural offsets, that is to say the opportunity to offset carbon emissions by taking up increased levels of carbon by different methods of cultivation, by better methods of grazing and tillage and so forth, and by environmental plantings and via biochar, those agricultural offsets should be included. Now that, as it happens, is exactly what the Americans have done. So I am saying I am going to seek to amend this legislation to give Australian farmers the same protection and the same opportunities that Barack Obama is going to give American farmers. And the question for Kevin Rudd is why is he not prepared to give Australian farmers the same protection American farmers are getting? And my message to Australian farmers is because I am prepared to get in there and do the hard work and work through the detail and seek to amend this legislation, I am actually protecting farmers, I am actually seeking to defend their interests rather than throwing them to the mercy of Kevin Rudd, which is exactly what would happen if we were simply to knock back the scheme in its entirety without seeking to change it. STEVE PRICE: Let me just finish with this: if it came to it, would you be happy to be remembered as the Coalition leader who lost his job on a principled stand on climate change? You’d give up the chance to be Prime Minister to help deliver an emissions trading scheme, would you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will just tell you this, Steve. I will be remembered, and I certainly want to be remembered, as a man of principle, as a man who has the courage of his convictions. And whatever the consequences of that may be, I will wear them. STEVE PRICE: Appreciate your time. Thanks a lot. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks Steve. [ends]malcolmFri, 02 Oct 2009 06:41:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:623http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/622/Interview-with-Alan-Jones-2GB-Sydney.aspx#Comments2http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=622http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=622&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/622/Interview-with-Alan-Jones-2GB-Sydney.aspxSubjects: ETS. E&OE. ALAN JONES: Good morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Alan. Great to see you. ALAN JONES: Thank you. Don’t say that. You mightn’t be all that happy. Are you serious – you’ll walk away from the leadership should the backbench defy you over climate change? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan, what I have said – sorry we’ve just had the microphone moved [inaudible] here. ALAN JONES: That’s okay. MALCOLM TURNBULL: What I have said is that this is an important leadership issue and the position that I and the Shadow Cabinet are endorsing is a practical one, it is a responsible one. You have only got to look at the media today and all of the leaders of the industries that have got the most to lose from Kevin Rudd’s poorly designed emissions trading scheme are supporting the position I am taking which is to seek to amend it. Now there are thousands of jobs and dozens of mines and billions of dollars of investment at risk in the coal industry. The coal industry met with me yesterday evening and they said don’t simply vote down this ETS sight unseen. What we want you to do is to protect our jobs, protect our workers and ensure that the scheme is amended and that is what we are going to do. Now depending on the extent to which Kevin Rudd accepts our amendments, we will then consider whether to vote for it or not. But the proposition that the Liberal Party should pay no regard, Alan, to thousands of jobs that are being put at risk, pay no regard to the pleas of the affected industries and have nothing to say at all is reckless and irresponsible and I won’t have a bar of it and I believe the vast majority of my colleagues won’t have a bar of it either. ALAN JONES: You mentioned the coal industry. I read last week that the head of Anglo American Cynthia Carroll said that the proposed emissions trading scheme would cost the coal industry 14 billion in its first ten years of operation. I’m just wondering why in all of this debate you people haven’t put the heat on Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong to tell the electorate the truth about this scheme and to give us the economic model in terms of what the consequences of this legislation will be on the national economy. MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Alan… ALAN JONES: Where can every person read this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Alan that is exactly what we do. Can I just say to you part of the problem with the debate is that far too much time is spent on the essentially theological question of whether we should do anything at all about climate change and far too little time is spent on the detail. And what the people that are both literally and metaphorically at the coal face of this issue are saying to us is we want the Liberal Party to be practical, constructive and effective, and that is what I am intending to be. That is the man I am. Those are the values I stand for. ALAN JONES: Supposing climate change, though, doesn’t exist, supposing this is just the new religion like Y2K, what would you say to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well if it turns out in 20 years time that all of the science, which every nation in the world accepts, is working on the assumption is correct, is wrong then we will… ALAN JONES: Well they were wrong on Y2K. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan… ALAN JONES: They were wrong on the report of Rome, the Club of Rome Report was wrong in 1960 which said that we’re going to run out of food. MALCOLM TURNBULL: But you see, Alan, you see what you are doing here, with great respect m’lord, is you are taking the heat off Kevin Rudd because you are getting into the theological issue of whether climate change exists or not. The real question is why don’t we talk about the thousands of people whose jobs are at risk in the coal industry. Do you want me to explain why they are at risk? ALAN JONES: We’ve done that all week. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Alright, okay. ALAN JONES: I want to know why you haven’t – we’ve done that all week and I’ve spoken to people in the coal industry… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Right, right. ALAN JONES: And they are up in arms entirely and agriculture and retail and all the rest of it… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yep, sure. ALAN JONES: And the damage that it is going to do to the economy is monumental but I just wonder why someone hasn’t told the nation that a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, if that’s the legislation, that is the first lie – that there is no such thing as carbon reduction. I presume we’re trying to reduce CO2. MALCOLM TURNBULL: CO2 emissions, yeah. ALAN JONES: Well why’s it called a pollutant? CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas available on the planet. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Carbon is the source of life. ALAN JONES: But what are kids being taught at school? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No but Alan… ALAN JONES: That it’s a poison or a pollutant. I mean, what I’m saying to you is the legislations name is flawed. Now has anyone read the nine volumes? I bet you haven’t. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Which nine volumes? ALAN JONES: Read the nine volumes of this legislation. I mean who’s read this stuff? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh certainly. Look I’m very familiar with it and I can assure you so is Ian Macfarlane, so is Andrew Robb so is Greg Hunt. We are putting an enormous amount of work in it and we are working on it in order to protect thousands of jobs. Now let’s just deal quickly with the coal industry. In the United States and in Europe where they either have or are establishing emissions trading schemes, they have decided not to include what are called fugitive emissions… ALAN JONES: If I could just interrupt you there, you see. I mean you’ve got to tell the truth too. The Senate have not passed this legislation, 1438 pages of it, in America and don’t look like passing it before Copenhagen. Why does this all have to be done before we know what the world is going to do? Europe are increasingly backing off. France is certainly backing off. Now why… that’s what I think your backbench is saying. Don’t we wait and see what the world is going to do or do we just plunge into something and dance to Kevin Rudd’s music? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan I agree that we shouldn’t be finalising the legislation before Copenhagen. I’ve been saying that all year and I’ve said hand on heart that if I was Prime Minister and frankly if we had been returned at the last election we would be implementing an emissions trading scheme now – that was our policy. We had started doing it when we were in government and we would not be finalising the design until after Copenhagen. But the practical problem that we face is that Rudd is determined to have a vote on this before Copenhagen. ALAN JONES: Wants to lead the world. MALCOLM TURNBULL: If we simply vote it down without endeavouring to amend it first… ALAN JONES: Yes. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Then he will simply, he will say right, I’ve got my trigger for a double dissolution… ALAN JONES: Yes. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And if he takes that to a double dissolution election and wins, he can then carry it through in a joint sitting. ALAN JONES: Hang on, woah woah woah woah, so he takes to a double dissolution, double dissolution election and win and the Opposition Leader is such a pathetic debater and forensic arguer that he’s got no hope of getting across to the electorate the very valid points that this is a destructive piece of legislation to the national economy. Don’t you have confidence that you can win that debate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Alan, I can tell you something – there is no way that I could win or indeed I could conduct a campaign based on doing nothing on climate change. ALAN JONES: You’re not doing nothing on climate change. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan, I am afraid to say… ALAN JONES: You’re arguing that this legislation is destructive of the national economy. That’s the debate and every person out there that you’d be going to in an election campaign – your job’s at risk, your electricity prices are going up, that coal mine’s going to close, that farm will be unviable. You reckon with all your skill you couldn’t win that debate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Alan you can’t win that debate unless you’ve identified the problems and set out to seek to change them. You see this is the fundamental problem. There is a hardworking man’s approach to this and there is a lazy man’s approach to this. The lazy man’s approach to it is to say it’s going to cause a lot of damage and I’ll just vote no. The hardworking man’s approach to it – and I am a hardworking man – is to get into the detail and say this is why it is wrong, this is why it is going to cost jobs, these are the changes you can make, that you should make which will protect jobs and then, depending on whether Kevin Rudd accepts those changes or not, we can then make a decision whether to vote for it or not and if we vote against it, at least we can then go out into the electorate and say we stood up for your jobs, we stood up for your industries and we were rejected by Kevin Rudd. Whereas if we have nothing to say, nothing constructive to say, people will say you are a lazy opposition with no ideas and we are not a lazy opposition. We are a hardworking opposition and we have constructive alternative proposals that we will put in the Parliament when this bill comes back. ALAN JONES: I have a feeling that he’s getting angry. At long last, it’s taken two years. When I said the last interview, I said where was the Turnbull that abused me and roused at me and argued with me over republican debate? We have to hear it. I’m going to take a break just to get some traffic information and I’ll come back with the point that many people are making. The board was full here this morning of people – full. There wasn’t one person in support of Malcolm Turnbull and there were people prepared to say well if he’s going to go, let him go. Now that’s predicated on the argument that there is such a thing as climate change and all this dislocation must occur so that’s the first part of the debate. The second part is if we accept that there’s climate change then this is the way you would address the issue. I’ll come back to the Opposition Leader in just a moment. It’s 20 past 7. [break] See there are polls everywhere, one of which – I’m back with Malcolm Turnbull, the Opposition Leader who today has said that his leadership is on the line if the party does not support him in his determination to negotiate change to the Rudd Government’s legislation on the carbon pollution emissions trading scheme. There are polls everywhere which demonstrate – I think the last one is in July – 53 per cent said that this legislation should be not supported in any way until after Copenhagen. How do you represent that constituency? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan I think that is a common sense view. That’s not quite what the polls said. Let me tell you where the electorate is. The overwhelming… ALAN JONES: Where you think the electorate is. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Based on the polls, yeah, based on the polling both public and private. The overwhelming majority of the electorate want action to be taken on climate change and there is a very substantial majority in support of an emissions trading scheme. People generally support the common sense proposition that the design shouldn’t be finalised until after Copenhagen and that is a powerful point that the Prime Minister should take on board and it’s certainly one that we support but the reality, however, is that if – and I make this point again - and if you look at the Financial Review today there is a whole list of one industry after another supporting the approach I am taking – coal, aluminium, oil and gas. All these industries that are going to be affected and they are supporting, Alan, the approach I am taking which is a constructive one and which is arguing the case to protect jobs. ALAN JONES: But how have you prosecuted… this seems to me, and forgive me if I offend you, a failure to properly prosecute the case. I mean there are people listening to you this morning who have got in their car and that’s driven down a cement driveway. Now that requires energy and under this bill, do they really understand that the energy costs are going to escalate? They’ve actually just turned on whatever it might be, all those instruments in the kitchen or the plasma TV they turned on. That requires energy. Have you succeeded in making them understand that this legislation is going to dramatically increase the cost of electricity to them? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan I don’t know about dramatically but it depends on the level of the carbon price but it will increase the cost of energy because most of our energy is produced by burning coal. ALAN JONES: Well the retail industry say it will add four to seven per cent, this legislation, to shopping bills. See the reason these polls say oh we’re in favour, someone on the other side hasn’t persuaded them of the dreadful damage to the national economy that this lump of legislation is going to do. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan the alternative to that is to do nothing about climate change which I think is reckless. It’s also I might say electoral poison. ALAN JONES: No, no, accepting your willingness, no, I’m accepting your willingness… MALCOLM TURNBULL: You want to go out there on the climate sceptic platform, believe me you’ll get about 15 per cent of the people voting for you. Now… ALAN JONES: I don’t agree with that but nonetheless you’re the Leader of the Opposition. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am in the mainstream political business. My aim is to get more than 50 per cent voting for us and I can tell you the vast majority of Australians want to see action on climate change and Australians are more focused on climate change than just about any other developed country. ALAN JONES: But that’s because they don’t understand the issue. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, Alan, it is because they understand… ALAN JONES: They swallow this rubbish. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh well, Alan, this is the problem you see. ALAN JONES: It’s not… why don’t you move a motion to change the name of the legislation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You’re saying to me why don’t I agree with you and the reason I don’t agree with you is because I don’t agree with you. ALAN JONES: Ah, but hang on. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t agree with you on climate change. ALAN JONES: Hang on, hang on, Malcolm Turnbull is saying to me I don’t agree with you but when the backbencher doesn’t agree with you, what do you want to do to the backbencher? You tell him well take it or jump, I’ll go jump. Yes, people do disagree. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Alan, Alan… ALAN JONES: People do disagree. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay but Alan let me just get this quite clear, right. I used to be a barrister, a lawyer as you know. And as a lawyer you basically get paid to go and make the case for your client and you may not agree with it but that’s your job. You’re a mouthpiece. ALAN JONES: It’s based on evidence. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right. You’ve just got to go and make the best argument you can. I am a politician. I am the leader of a political party. I am a man of conviction. I will not and cannot make political arguments that I do not believe in and that are contrary to the values for which I stand. ALAN JONES: Fully understood. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay, good. ALAN JONES: But please give… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as long as you understand that you understand my position. ALAN JONES: Sure but give your backbencher credit for holding the same view. MALCOLM TURNBULL: They are entitled to hold that position Alan. They are entitled to hold whatever position they like. ALAN JONES: Correct. MALCOLM TURNBULL: But I do not have to, and I will not, articulate or advocate arguments that I think are wrong. Full stop. ALAN JONES: But that backbencher’s entitled to put his hand up in the party room and vote according to his conscience. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course he is. ALAN JONES: Just as you are articulating according to yours. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is exactly right, and I am not denying anybody the right to vote how they like in the party room. ALAN JONES: And if they vote against your willingness to negotiate… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we don’t actually have votes in the party room, but… ALAN JONES: But if they vote against your willingness to negotiate change, then you’re saying you’ll walk. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No Alan…I have said it would be impossible for me, absolutely impossible for me to both morally or politically or intellectually or with integrity, to make a case that was, boiled down, do nothing on climate change. Now the fact of the matter is… ALAN JONES: So you believe in this thing about climate change. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I believe climate change is happening. I accept the science that it is caused by human activities, and I believe that prudence dictates… ALAN JONES: And you reject the scientists who argue that this is just a new religion. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Alan, I don’t reject them. What I am saying is that on the balance of probabilities, I think the prudent approach, and I might say such dangerous left wing radicals and heroes as yours such as Margaret Thatcher took exactly the same view as I am taking that we should be taking a prudent approach and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. ALAN JONES: OK. Let’s just come back to negotiating the change. Why therefore wouldn’t you say that the first instrument of change would be to seek a change to the name of the legislation? I mean why shouldn’t this legislation be called what it is? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it should be called the emissions trading scheme. I always refer to it is that, but… ALAN JONES: It should be called an emissions trading tax. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh, well… ALAN JONES: Why isn’t it called a tax, so that the public know it’s a tax… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is a tax, there’s no question about that, and I think people… ALAN JONES: Eight point five billion according to this Bill in the first year it’ll raise. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sure, OK. There is no question about that, and look, it was a tax when we proposed it in 2007, and it is a tax now. ALAN JONES: But wouldn’t you take that to the next step? If the level of this tax is imposed upon the economy, wouldn’t you seek to argue, then business either absorbs it or passes it on, if it passes it on there’ll be fewer jobs, if there are fewer jobs there’s less money in the economy, if there’s less money in the economy we go south. Isn’t that an easy case to prosecute in relation to your criticism of this legislation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Alan, can I tell you there is no way you can put a price on carbon, in other words to encourage lower carbon dioxide emitting activities and discourage higher ones… ALAN JONES: How do you separate carbon from carbon dioxide? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well when we say carbon I mean carbon dioxide. That is shorthand, yeah. ALAN JONES: Well I think we should say that, I mean… MALCOLM TURNBULL: But the fact is if you are going to put a price on carbon, which is going to have a cost. Now what we should be doing, and I… ALAN JONES: Well when you say that the electorate understand this, do they understand the level of cost that this legislation will impose upon them, and if they don’t, has the Opposition sufficiently prosecuted that case? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan, I believe we have, and I think the way the scheme is designed to work, and this is exactly the way it was designed to work under our regime – I mean there are big differences in design between what we proposed and what Rudd is proposing, but one common theme is that an emissions trading scheme in Australia should start off, as they say, low and slow, with a low cost on carbon and ramp it up slowly in line with developments internationally, and as long as the price is low then obviously the impact of prices in the economy is also going to be low. If you get very high carbon prices obviously it has a very big impact. ALAN JONES: I’ll just stay with the Opposition Leader here. Shouldn’t we know what these prices are before you on behalf of us start sticking your hand up to support a piece of legislation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan there is plenty of work done on what the cost will be, but… ALAN JONES: But you yourself have said the detail will be in the regulations. Where are they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is what we are demanding form the Government. ALAN JONES: And if you don’t get them? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well if we don’t get them it will be very hard for us to propose amendments to them, and that is why frankly I think our current plan is to propose amendments to the legislation itself which of course, if they are carried and accepted will override any regulations that the Government may now or in the future choose to promulgate. ALAN JONES: But everything about this debate, basically, if you take electricity in this generation in this country now, everything about the debate has undermined the value of the assets held by electricity generators. You take the brown coal industry in Victoria, in the La Trobe Valley, you’ve got Loyang A, you’ve got Loyang B, Truenergy Yallourn station. Now Morgan Stanley has examined the impact of this legislation that we’re talking about – which is why your backbenchers say chuck it out – this legislation on that industry. And they are saying that banks are not going to turn over the loans that they currently hold. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well can I tell you, OK Alan, just a little… ALAN JONES: Seriously. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, OK, well let’s just be serious, let’s just be really serious, deadly serious here. One of the major banks, one of the major lenders to those generators came and saw me the other day and urged me to reach agreement with the Government on the scheme, to move amendments along the lines that I have already proposed, which will ensure that the generators are properly compensated, and they said we need to get this scheme settled so that we have sufficient certainty going forward to enable ourselves to keep lending to that industry. So, you know, I am sorry to inject a bit of commercial reality into this discussion, but that is the very issue you are talking about. ALAN JONES: I’ve been talking commercial reality all week. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am not sure that you are talking to people who are giving you real information. I am talking about one of the big four banks who came to see me and argued, just as the aluminium industry has, just as the coal industry has, just as the LNG and oil and gas industry have, and they are saying they want the Opposition to take a constructive role. Now if at the end of the day we cannot get amendments that are satisfactory, and we are not satisfied with our negotiations with Mr Rudd, then we have the option of course to vote it down. But the idea that we are going to do nothing, say nothing, have no ideas, take no steps to protect thousands of jobs, is an approach that I will not endorse. ALAN JONES: Right. Predicated on the fact that we are in this period of global warming. It’s predicated on that, even though that is not confirmed, there’s not a unanimous view from science, you’re just sweeping that aside. There may be some people who are just as passionate in their adherence to the view that this is Y2K revisited. We’ve been down these religious line roads before and we’ve swallowed the religious dogma. I repeat, in the sixties the Club of Rome told us – they were the most eminent people in the world – the world was going to run out of food. MALCOLM TURNBULL: OK, well let me deal with that point. Let’s say there is a risk that in twenty years from now we will be sitting here and conclude that this was a Y2K type issue and, you know, however sincerely people held their fears they turned out to be unfounded. Let’s assume that, in twenty years time. That is one of the reasons why I am seeking to amend the Rudd ETS, so that we ensure that agricultural emissions, emissions from the farm sector, are excluded as they are in America and there is ample scope for offsets in agriculture and land use so that we can create carbon credits by investing in the productivity our soils, by increasing the level of soil carbon, through biochar, through environmental plantings, through a whole range of other green carbon measures. Why do I advocate that? Not simply because it is a near and real and present means of reducing emissions, but because it means that if you are right and in twenty years time we conclude this is all nonsense, we will have spent billions of dollars improving the productivity of our landscape, and we will say, well, it turned out that was a furphy, but at least a lot of the money we spent went to a good purpose nonetheless. And so that is why we should always be looking for measures that are if not no regrets measures, at least are least regrets measures. ALAN JONES: Let me just say to you lest you misunderstand me. I have no problem with any initiative that makes the environment cleaner, and I do think – that’s separate for all of this – that any measure that gives us a cleaner environment, there’s less pollution, there’s greater economies, there’s more satisfactory ways of doing things. Sure. I’m simply saying to then tax the backside off everybody here, and at the end of the day it seems to me that the aim of the exercise, unstated by government, is to raise, it’s a lot of dough. Eight-and-a-half billion, this legislation in first year. MALCOLM TURNBULL: They are planning to recycle it all back through the community of course, so it is going to be a wash. That is what they are saying. ALAN JONES: Any guarantees of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is what they are certainly providing for. ALAN JONES: And is that going to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or are we more interested in getting the money? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Alan, as far as their treatment of the coal industry, for example, I cannot see any reason for the way they are treating coal differently to every other country in the world other than a desire to raise revenue. I mean, the fact that coal is having a tax put on it that the Americans will not put on their coal industry or the Europeans on theirs surely indicates that the Rudd Government simply has a desire to squeeze money out of the coal industry which it probably thinks can afford it. Now you see, here is my problem with them. If they just want to get more money out of the coal industry then they should be up front about it and they should argue for a tax on the coal industry and we can debate it in Parliament. The problem with the way they are treating coal here is that there is absolutely no environmental gain because all that will happen is we will employ fewer coal miners in Australia and mine less coal in Australia and they will employ more coal miners in Columbia, South Africa and Indonesia and mine more coal there, and the amount of CO2 and methane that goes into the atmosphere will be exactly the same. It will just go from somewhere else. So therein lies one of the flaws. Now that is one the reasons I am seeking to protect thousands of jobs. My mission here is to protect jobs. That is what I am about. ALAN JONES: We’ll wrap this up, but can you understand the contradictions that we’re all ordinary people. Ordinary people see out there in all of this, just yesterday we announced that there were half a million new arrivals in Australia in the last twelve months. Here’s a government on one hand saying it’s going to control carbon dioxide emissions, but we’ve got another half a million people into the country who are going to increase the level of the emissions… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely, yep. ALAN JONES: And nothing’s being done to accommodate that fact. But can I just wrap up where you stand from… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I just make one quick comment there? I think the best way to compare carbon dioxide emissions from country to country is a on a per capita basis, too, by the way, because we have got to look at these things on a per head of population basis. ALAN JONES: And ours is higher of course than other countries on a per capita basis. MALCOLM TURNBULL: We are very high, yep. ALAN JONES: Just let’s sum up therefore, because this is very important and there’s half a million people listening to you out there, where we stand. Firstly, you’re accepting, right or wrong, there is such a thing as global warming. That’s first point, is it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yep. ALAN JONES: Second point, there’s a lump of legislation here the detail of which you reject. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, in areas, a number of areas I think it is poorly designed. Correct. That is right. ALAN JONES: You will be proposing amendments when the Parliament resumes. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Correct. ALAN JONES: To what extent? Are they extensive amendments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they are extensive. We summarised them in July in nine points of principle, but probably the best sort of one line summary would be to say we believe Australian jobs and Australian industry should be offered no less protection under our legislation than American industries and jobs will be offered under any American legislation. ALAN JONES: Ok, next point. Mr Rudd and Penny Wong have been fairly intransigent about all of this for a long time. Is there any indication as I speak to you on Friday October 2 that there’s any accommodation from them of the kind of amendments that you’re talking about proposing? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well a couple of months ago I would have said there was no chance of them compromising on anything, but we did successfully reach agreement on amendments to the renewable energy target legislation, and certainly Penny Wong is going out of her way to make out, anyway, that she is receptive to amendments, but time will tell. At least we have got a try. ALAN JONES: And then if those amendments are not accepted or if they are diluted, then you will have to consider rejecting the legislation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely. I am not guaranteeing to vote for it at all. We will consider, as I have said a thousand times, the extent to which they accept our amendments, the political circumstances and developments both here and abroad. I mean this is a big international exercise – a lot is going to depend on what happens in the US Congress. ALAN JONES: Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen without legislation but Kevin will be able to lead the world with his pieces of paper, which you will have facilitated for him to some extent. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the reality is that that is the one piece of leverage we have to achieve some amendments. If we don’t take the effort… You see, the difficulty is this, Alan. We can say we disagree with the legislation. People are entitled to say alright, what do you dislike about it, and having stated what we dislike, people are entitled to say, well, you are legislators, that is your job to make laws, why don’t you seek to improve those laws you think are bad? And that is our job, and that is what we will seek to do, and depending on the outcome of those negotiations we will either vote for it or not. And if Mr Rudd wants a Bill to take to Copenhagen, he should consider our amendments favourably and carefully. ALAN JONES: Alright. Keep taking those passion pills. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, I will. [ends]malcolmFri, 02 Oct 2009 06:27:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:622http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/621/Interview-with-Greg-Cary-4BC-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=621http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=621&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/621/Interview-with-Greg-Cary-4BC-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: ETS. E&OE GREG CARY: Mr Turnbull, good morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Greg. How are you going? GREG CARY: All well? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, everything is good with me. GREG CARY: Everything’s good. That’s good. They say you’ve put your leadership up for grabs if your party won’t support you concerning your attitude to the climate change legislation. True? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Greg, what I have said is that this is a question where I am showing my leadership and my authority as Leader of the Opposition and leader of the Liberal Party and I am saying very clearly, with the support of the Shadow Cabinet and I believe with the support of the majority of my party room, that we should act constructively to protect thousands of jobs. Now let’s just talk about a few jobs in Queensland, quite a few jobs in the coalmining industry. Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme as presently designed imposes a carbon tax on the coal industry that the Americans will not impose on their coal industry and the Europeans aren’t imposing on theirs because it is going to include what is called fugitive emissions – this is emissions of greenhouse gases that occur when you are coal mining as opposed to burning the coal. Now we say that is nuts, we shouldn’t be imposing a tax on our coal miners that isn’t imposed on coal miners in other developed countries. We think that is fairly straightforward. So what are we going to do, Greg. Here is the question. What are we going to do. Are we going to just say, oh, we will just vote against the ETS and not try to amend it, or are we going to do what the coal industry and the coal unions are asking us to do and the workers are asking us to do and go in there and try to amend it to protect those jobs? And frankly that is what I am going to do. GREG CARY: Oh, look, I agree – we talked a lot about it in our last hour – I agree that is what you should be doing. Mind you, not everybody agrees with that either. And you talk about the coal miners, there’s also the farmers who not too many people are talking about at this point as well. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am delighted to talk about the farmers as well. Again, that is another example where Kevin Rudd’s scheme is completely out of step with what is being proposed in the United States. What we proposed, what I have proposed – I have proposed this for some time and I am pleased to see the Americans are taking this approach – is that emissions, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture should just be excluded. They are too hard to measure and too hard to abate. But what we should be including is agricultural offsets, green carbon offsets, improving levels of soil carbon by better methods of grazing and tillage, by environmental plantings, by biochar and other techniques that actually improve not only the absorption of carbon into our soils and our environment, and of course take it out of the atmosphere, but at the same time improve the productivity of our landscape. Now that is an enormous opportunity for farmers. GREG CARY: Certainly. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am in there, unlike a few other people, I am in there actually fighting for the farmers to get those amendments so they will get the benefit of those amendments. I am in there fighting for farmers. GREG CARY: Okay. No, this is key then, isn’t it because I just want our audience to clearly understand what it is you are standing for. You believe in some kind of legislation and you believe that you need to be involved in negotiation with the Government to water down their legislation and protect some of those you’re just talking about. To be in the game. MALCOLM TURNBULL: You have got to be in the game. You have got to be at the table. You have got to be taking a constructive role. You can’t go around wringing your hands and saying, oh, I’m worried about the impact on coal mining, or I’m worried about the impact on farming, but by the way I’m not going to do anything about it, I’m just going to vote against it, give Rudd the double dissolution trigger so he can go to an election and if he wins he can then do what he likes. That is not constructive. GREG CARY: No. If you did go to a double dissolution, and again with our listeners we were talking about this last hour, and many disagree with the proposition I put, that if you went to the electorate – even though many of us still have plenty of questions about the whole basis of the climate change, if you went to an election against all forms of legislation and against the notion of climate change, politically what do you think would happen to your party? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It would be a wipe-out. I mean the reality is that the overwhelming majority of the population believe that climate change is real. They believe humans are causing it by burning too many fossil fuels and emitting too many greenhouse gases. They want something done about it. Most Australians don’t have a good understanding of how an emissions trading scheme works but by and large they support it, and the one thing they would not support is a political party that said we don’t have any solution. It is one thing to reject Mr Rudd’s Plan A, but you can’t do that unless you have got a Plan B. Now what I have are amendments, which amount to a Plan B and I have been arguing for them over many months, and they would have the consequence of protecting thousands of jobs. Now if Mr Rudd rejects those amendments – he won’t reject all of them, I would hope, he will reject some of them perhaps – but once we know what is accepted and what is rejected then we can make an informed decision as to whether we will vote for the bill or not. But to just vote for it on the basis we don’t agree with an emissions trading scheme is completely indefensible, not least because it was part of our policy, John Howard’s policy, to have an emissions trading scheme when we were in government. GREG CARY: Yes we talked about that last hour as well. Marlene rang. Marlene’s a supporter of your side of politics and she pointed that out, she’s happy to do it. But she asked me to ask you the question, how can you lead a party which doesn’t agree with your policy? Now you are saying the vast majority do, but clearly there are plenty who don’t. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is clearly a number who don’t, and we will find out how many when we have the party room meeting but the fact is that in any political… there are people in the Labor Party I am sure that don’t agree with Kevin Rudd’s policy. They are perhaps being a little bit better disciplined and showing an example of parliamentary discipline by not talking about it in the press but what we do is we air our differences. We have a full and frank debate in the party room and then we come to a decision and that is the responsible way to go about it. There is no shame in having differences of opinion but people are entitled to demand of the opposition that it reach a position and then having reached that common position, then stick with it. GREG CARY: Okay. Let’s assume that you do come to some kind of middle ground and that the Government allows some of your amendments through which politically you would think they would do. Are you still going to stand firm against legislation prior to Copenhagen when Copenhagen really doesn’t look like coming down with anything definitive? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is the question that I have mentioned earlier, that once we know what amendments have or have not been accepted then we have to decide whether to support the legislation or not. Now I can say hand on heart sincerely that if I was Prime Minister I would not finalise this legislation prior to Copenhagen but Kevin Rudd is determined to do so. I think that is unwise, it is reckless but voting it down simply for that reason and that reason alone does run the risk that you give him, well you do, there is no question you give him a double dissolution trigger and then of course if he has an election and wins the election, he can then pass the legislation without any input from us and the conservative side of politics becomes then completely irrelevant. We have no further leverage or contribution to make. We are not in a position to argue, effectively make a case for the people we are trying to protect because at the joint sitting the Government would have the majority. GREG CARY: Yeah. A lot of my listeners are concerned – and I know you are probably hearing this around Australia – that there hasn’t been a proper debate on all of this. You say you are totally convinced about the science. The Prime Minister says the science is decided. Penny Wong says the science is decided. But there are many eminent scientists and we’ve talked to many of them on this program who aren’t decided. They’re putting up a contrary point of view and a lot of people think that hasn’t fully been debated which is why a lot of people are talking about something they don’t fully understand in the entire legislation. Are you totally convinced we’ve had a proper debate about all of this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have had a long debate and of course part of the problem is that everybody participates in the debate to differing levels so some people have read and listened to so much about climate change their ears are sort of wearing out with reports of it. Others are only just starting to switch on to it so that is always a question. Yes, there has been a long debate about it. Yes, there is some dissent about the science but you have to be honest about it and say the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, certainly every government in the world so far as I am aware is working on the assumption that we need to have a global effort, a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That was the policy of the Howard Government. It is the policy of the Rudd Government. There is no political difference on that. I mean John Howard was openly more sceptical about climate change, for example, than I am but John nonetheless said the prudent thing to do was to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so just because you have got a few question marks about the science doesn’t mean you do nothing. I mean we all have question marks about whether our house will get struck by lightning tonight but we have all got insurance. GREG CARY: Yeah. Just to finalise and I know you are busy and we appreciate your time, you will not agree with any legislation that is going to impose an unfair impost, whether it is on farmers or whether it is on families, extra taxation. In the end this is an extra tax, isn’t it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You are absolutely right, it is a tax. It is a carbon tax with the ability to trade to enable one to get lower cost abatement so if you like it is a more efficient tax. Look in terms of how we will finally vote on it, we will make that decision once we have seen the Government’s response to our amendments and also have a regard to the political developments both domestically but perhaps more importantly internationally. I mean there is a lot going on in the United States with their legislation. It has been passed through the House of Representatives. A bill has now been introduced into the US Senate. How is that going to progress? Will that get through the Senate before the end of the year? Most people think unlikely but it will be very important to monitor the progress of that because ultimately, and this is I think a key point that Mr Rudd has overlooked, is ultimately the US, the way the US structures its emissions trading scheme will become the global benchmark and my fundamental critique of his scheme is this – we should not, we should be offering or guaranteeing Australian workers and Australian industries no less protection than American industries and American workers are guaranteed by Barack Obama and at the moment we are treating a number of industries – farming and coal are just two to come to hand that are very relevant in Queensland – we are offering them less protection than they are getting in the United States, let alone in the developing countries which they compete with where of course there will be no carbon tax at all, at least not for a long time. GREG CARY: Okay. Just a final thought – Peter Dutton up for preselection, McPherson, this weekend on the Gold Coast. Will he win that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I certainly hope so. I have given him the strongest possible reference. He is an outstanding colleague. He is part of the future of the Liberal Party. He is an outstanding member of my Shadow Cabinet and is really both a current and a future leader of the Liberal Party. GREG CARY: It’s good to talk to you. Appreciate your time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks so much. GREG CARY: Thanks. [ends]malcolmFri, 02 Oct 2009 06:23:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:621http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/619/Joint-Doorstop-Interview-with-Paul-Fletcher-Liberal-Candidate-for-Bradfield-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=619http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=619&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/619/Joint-Doorstop-Interview-with-Paul-Fletcher-Liberal-Candidate-for-Bradfield-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Visit to Bradfield; Coalition’s plan to cut red tape for small business; Labor’s planning takeover; emissions trading scheme. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we have just caught up with a very old friend of mine, Don Wormald, whose hardware store is just across the road here and Don has been discussing with us a number of important issues for small business – the way in which Julia Gillard’s bungled award modernisation program is going to add significantly to his costs of staying open seven days a week and cost jobs; not only cost profits for him but also cost jobs. We also talked about the burden of unnecessary regulation and red tape on small business and one of our key focuses in the Opposition’s policy is to reduce the level of regulation and red tape on business, particularly small business, to the best level, the lowest level that is, in the OECD. That is one of our targets. And of course we discussed the big local issue which is the relentless overdevelopment here in Sydney’s North Shore and that is a key issue that Paul is going to bring to bear in the campaign and hold the Labor Party, the same Labor Party that put Kevin Rudd in as leader of the federal party is the same Labor Party that is responsible for the overdevelopment and the lack of planning here in the North Shore of Sydney. Paul. PAUL FLETCHER: Well look I am very pleased that Malcolm Turnbull has come to Bradfield literally within days of me being preselected as the Liberal candidate for the forthcoming Bradfield by-election. We have hit the ground running, talking to people across the electorate about a range of issues including today issues of concern to small businesspeople, as well as concerns about the loss of control of planning that Ku-ring-gai Council has had the powers removed from it that would normally rest with a local council and the central issue of concern is that people in this area don’t have the same capacity to make decisions about their urban environment as people would ordinarily expect. So I am delighted that Malcolm Turnbull as the Leader of the Opposition has joined me here in Bradfield so quickly. We will be running a very vigorous and effective campaign and I am pleased to say that Malcolm will be here on a number of occasions and I am very pleased to have his support at this very early stage. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great, and I am very pleased to give it. Paul will be an outstanding candidate and, with the goodwill of the people of Bradfield, an outstanding member of Parliament. Okay, so over to you guys. Any questions? QUESTION: Yeah, just with the Opposition on the ETS, Mr Turnbull. Are you worried that this could be seen as a bullying tactic and might have repercussions with the Liberal Party in the long term? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not sure, what are you talking about? QUESTION: Well the, for lack of a better word, the back me or sack me policy. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh right, okay. The fact of the matter is that we are taking a constructive approach to the emissions trading scheme. We had an emissions trading scheme policy when we were in government. Mr Rudd has designed an emissions trading scheme. It is poorly designed. It is going to cost thousands of jobs in vital Australian industries – aluminium, steel, coal, agriculture. It is a long list, a very, very long list indeed. And we believe it is reckless on Mr Rudd’s part to finalise the design of that scheme before the Copenhagen Summit in December but he is determined to do so. So in a constructive way and in our efforts to protect those thousands of jobs that are being put at risk by Mr Rudd, we are going to present detailed amendments that, if adopted, will protect those jobs. So we are out there fighting for jobs. We are seeking to ensure that the emissions trading scheme is one which is both environmentally effective – can enable Australia to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases significantly – but at the same time does not do economic damage, and needlessly and recklessly cost thousands of Australian jobs. QUESTION: You said that if those amendments don’t have the support of your party you will step down. If it does come to that… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, okay, right, go on. QUESTION: If it does come to that, who would your preferred leader be? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look the fact of the matter is I have put forward… the approach that I am taking has the full support of the Shadow Cabinet and will have, I have no doubt, the support of the party room. So I am showing leadership in taking on the challenge of protecting thousands of jobs. That is what this is about. It is not about my job. It is about the thousands of jobs that Kevin Rudd’s poorly designed ETS is putting at risk. QUESTION: Do you think that your persistence on the issue with your party puts your leadership under threat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My leadership is secure, I can assure you of that. QUESTION: No resigning? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course not. QUESTION: There have been some backbenchers, Wilson Tuckey in particular, saying some pretty colourful things. What do you have to say to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mr Tuckey is a colourful personality. In fact you could say he is a… you couldn’t call him a colourful Sydney racing identity because he does not come from Sydney but he has always had an interest in horses so he is certainly a colourful identity from Western Australia. But Wilson has always got colourful things to say and no matter how colourful they are, we are always entertained by them but we don’t always agree with them and I certainly don’t agree with him on the emissions trading scheme. QUESTION: Paul Keating once described Wilson Tuckey as, quote, a boxhead and said he was, quote, flat out counting past ten. What do you say to those [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is a colourful Sydney identity although I wouldn’t say Paul’s a colourful racing identity. Look, we have got plenty of colourful people in Australian politics and there’s a lot of colourful things said but we have got to cut through all of the vaudeville that various people contribute. My job is not to be colourful. My job is to be practical and my job is to protect the thousands of jobs that Kevin Rudd’s poorly designed emissions trading scheme are being put at risk. Only yesterday I met with the representatives of the coal industry. That is Australia’s biggest export industry. Thousands of jobs, billions of dollars of investment, dozens of mines will be lost if Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme goes ahead. Why? Because he is proposing to put a tax on coal mining in Australia which is not going to be put on it in the United States, is not going to be put on it in Europe, let alone in the developing countries with which we are competing. So Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme is completely out of line and you have to ask this question – why would Kevin Rudd want to offer less protection for Australian workers and Australian industries than Barack Obama or the European leaders are offering to their industries and their workers. And those are the mistakes, the errors that we are seeking to rectify and we are doing that because we are committed to protecting jobs. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, given that you are so secure in terms of your position as leader, why have you made such dramatic statements with regards to the fact that if your party doesn’t support you you will step down? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have not said that at all. What I have said, and I say it again, I am committed to effective action on climate change and I cannot, I cannot and would not lead a party that had a no action on climate change policy but that is not going to happen because we do have a policy on climate change. We had an effective one when we were in government. We have an effective one in opposition and our response to the emissions trading scheme, the amendments that we will be presenting will be typical of and exemplify, demonstrate our commitment to effective action on climate change. QUESTION: So [inaudible] resignation talk come from smart arses I think you put it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is a term one should never use. I think smart alec is better for family programs. Okay. Thanks very much guys. [ends]malcolmFri, 02 Oct 2009 03:26:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:619http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/618/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=618http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=618&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/618/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: Emissions trading; youth jobs forum; natural diasters in Samoa and Indonesia.         E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Andrew and I have just conducted another one of our jobs forums, this time with a young audience, young participants in it. It has been very constructive, and we have discussed the importance of having skills for lifetime employability, the challenges that face young people moving from school to employment, and it has been a very constructive meeting and gives us the type of feedback that we have been seeking in more than fifty of these forums like this right around Australia.  Now before we go to your questions I just want to make some further comments about the tragedies in our region, first the tsunami in Samoa and American Samoa, and of course the earthquake in Padang in Indonesia. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those that have been killed, particularly of course the Australians, as a consequence of the tsunami, and of course to those that have been injured both in Indonesia and, as a result of the tsunami, in Samoa. Can I also say on behalf of the Opposition that the Government has our whole-hearted support in the assistance it is rendering to those affected by these tragic natural disasters, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government in providing every possible assistance to our neighbours that have been affected by these natural catastrophes. Over to you. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, yesterday here in Adelaide you secured frontbench support for you position to negotiate amendments with the Government on the ETS. What if your backbenchers, your party room, doesn’t support you?     MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I might just say this, that the front bench, the Shadow Cabinet as you describe it, has always supported this position, in fact we set out back in July nine principles which described or summarised the changes we would seek to the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme, so we have been very up front in the constructive approach we are taking to it, although we said then, and I have been saying consistently ever since, that while we think it is important to engage in a discussion about the design of the emissions trading scheme in a constructive way, the design of the scheme should not be finalised until after we know the results of the Copenhagen summit in December.    QUESTION: Have you put your leadership on the line over the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am showing leadership. I am the leader of the Liberal Party, I am the Leader of the Opposition, and the leadership I am showing is that we will engage constructively with the Government, we will deliver to the Government detailed amendments which flesh out the nine principles that we set out in July, we will secure the support of the party room to those amendments, and we will then negotiate with the Government, and then depending on the extent to which those amendments are accepted and the other political circumstances and developments both here and abroad at the time, we will then decide whether to vote for the legislation or not.   QUESTION: What if you can’t secure the party room’s support?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will secure the party room’s support.   QUESTION: Today Mr Turnbull you said you can’t lead a party which is do-nothing on climate change. Are you worried that might actually embolden your opponents within the party, well, that this might encourage them to move against you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, anyone who thinks it is electorally wise to have a do-nothing on climate change policy is not in tune with the mood of the nation or the mood of the globe, frankly. I mean there is a growing awareness, a heightening awareness right around the world of the need to take concerted action on climate change. The speech by the Chinese President in New York recently, by Hu Jintao, was very significant, showing greater commitment by China to action to reduce its emissions-intensity. Now this is a global movement; people are becoming increasingly concerned and committed to action. Now we have always been, on the Coalition, our policy has always been to take effective action on climate change. We differ with Labor on the design of the emissions trading scheme, but when we were in government we proposed an emissions trading scheme ourselves. The principle of putting a price on carbon is one we agree with, and it is just a question of getting the design right. When I say just a question, that is a matter of detail, but it is a vitally important matter of detail because if the design is wrong, thousands of jobs will be lost for no environmental gain. If the design is right, we can strengthen our economy and make an effective contribution to a global effort to reduce emissions.           QUESTION: Doesn’t it suggest your leadership is in turmoil, though, if you’re having to read your party the riot act over this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I am not going to sort of run a commentary on myself, I will leave that to you.   QUESTION: But the rhetoric you employed this morning in terms of not wanting to lead party that was sluggish on the climate change issue is, I mean, that’s really sending a message to those sceptics that remain in your party.    MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I am sending a message to every Australian that Malcolm Turnbull is committed to effective action on climate change. I am now, and I always have been. I am committed to effective action on climate change. I was the author of the National Plan for Water Security. It was my proposal that John Howard accepted, that the Federal Government take over the interstate waters, the rivers and groundwater systems so that we could effectively manage our water resources, particularly in the face of climate change and a hotter and drier future. That was the most significant change in environmental policy in our nation’s history. Now I proposed that and it was a Coalition Government, led by John Howard, of which I was a Cabinet Minister, that took it up, not Labor. So we have a proud record on environmental action, but I am not backing away from my values or what I stand for now and in the future.       QUESTION: If you can’t carry the entire party room with you, how embarrassing would that be?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the party room will support the position that we will take, which is to seek, negotiate amendments to the scheme. This is exactly what we did with the renewable energy target legislation. We will seek amendments from the Government. People know where we are coming from, we have set that out in those nine principles in July, and then, depending on the extent to which those amendments are accepted, and the other relevant political developments at the time, we will decide whether to vote for it or not. I mean there is a lot happening at the moment. The US Senate is now considering the climate change legislation that has already been passed by the US House of Representatives. The progress of that debate in the US Senate is of vital importance to what we do here, just as Copenhagen is for that matter.       QUESTION: Apparently on radio you said you can’t be a party with no ideas. Who are you accusing of saying that you’re a party with no idea?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: What I am saying is simply this, that the Government has put up an emission trading scheme – now we had a proposal for an emissions trading scheme when we were in government, so there is not a question of are you for or against an emissions trading scheme. That was our policy in government; it is our policy in opposition. The question is getting the design right. If we simply say we don’t like the Government’s emissions trading scheme, but are not prepared to say why we don’t like it, and what changes we would demand to make it satisfactory, then we can reasonably be described as being a party of no ideas. And we are not a party of no ideas, we are a party of innovation and enterprise and reform, and I am the leader of that party, and as long as I am the leader of that party we will be pressing forward with reform, with ideas, with new proposals to make our country stronger and more prosperous in the years ahead. And part of that reform effort is getting the design of the emissions trading scheme right. OK? [ends]        malcolmThu, 01 Oct 2009 04:54:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:618http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/617/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=617http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=617&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/617/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: Visit to Robern Menz factory outlet; government expenditure leading to higher interest rates and higher taxes; unauthorised boat arrivals; emissions trading; executive remuneration.   E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Christopher and I have had a great visit here with Richard, Phil and Grantley Sims, third and fourth generation confectioners here in South Australia. This is a wonderful firm, Robern Menz, and producers of course of Fruchocs, this is the home of Fruchocs, and we have seen them being sold and seen them being made. It is a great opportunity to see a great South Australian business. It is also a time to reflect on the importance of businesses like this to the Australian economy. The prosperity of Australia is based on the energy and the enterprise and the hard work of men and women such as we have here at Robern Menz. And governments that run up large levels of debt put heavy burdens on businesses like this, heavy burdens of higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. Now we saw the final Budget outcome yesterday, and it was very instructive because it confirmed what we have known for some time, which is that last year’s deficit was almost entirely the consequence of additional spending. Revenue declined very slightly. Expenditure, that is government expenditure, borrowed money of course, expanded or increased very substantially. And so that was basically the reason why we had that big deficit last year. Revenues down one point six percent, expenditure up fourteen percent. Now there is another matter I want to speak about at the outset too. It is a matter of growing and very, very real concern to all Australians. We have now had the third boat arrival of unauthorised arrivals, illegal immigrants if you like, in three days. Since August last year when the Rudd Government started to soften and change the border protection arrangements which had served us so well, we have had over 1800 unauthorised arrivals, and they are coming at an accelerating pace. Now the Government tries to pretend there is no problem. They say, oh, this is a global problem, there is nothing we can do about it. Well Australians know that we had virtually stopped unauthorised arrivals for some years, for many years in fact, because of a combination of policies that worked. The Rudd Government said those policies had no impact on the number of arrivals and they changed them. Well the arrivals are going through the roof. Now what Mr Rudd has got to do is recognise that there is a problem, recognise that his border protection policies have failed, and what he must do is have urgently an independent inquiry which can have the benefit of the expert intelligence advice so that all Australians can get an understanding of what has gone wrong, and what measures are needed to fix it. Over to you.   QUESTION: What’s your reaction to the Productivity Commission’s take on the executive pay issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have not had a chance to read it all, but as you know I have strongly supported shareholders having more say in setting executive pay. So based on what I have seen in the press, there are some solid principles there. It does not seem to go, it does not appear to go as far as the recommendations I have made. But when I have had a closer look at it, when I have read it, I will have something more to say about it. QUESTION: Are you confident of support from your party for ETS amendments that you are going to put forward? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we will… Yes. The answer is yes, and we will bring the amendments to the party room shortly, when we get back to Canberra, and then we will sit down with the Government and we will negotiate with the Government, and depending on the extent to which they accept those amendments, and other political developments both in Australia and in particular internationally at the time, we will then consider whether we support the legislation or not.    QUESTION: Do you expect that to be finalised in Shadow Cabinet today? Do you expect a final position to be nutted out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we have dealt with the issues in principle already. We set out those nine points of principle in July. We have been consulting very intently and intensively with business right around Australia. The businesses whose interests and whose industries are most at risk, and whose employees are most at risk, are saying to us in the Opposition, we want you to engage with the Government and take a constructive approach. They want us to seek to protect them. The only way you can protect those industries is to engage with the Government and seek to amend the legislation, and that is what we are seeking to do. So we are getting their feedback. We had a very good meeting here in Adelaide, for example, with Santos, which obviously has a great deal at stake in having a well-designed emissions trading scheme. So that is the approach we are taking. It is a constructive and it is a responsible one, and hopefully it will have the result of having a better-designed emissions trading scheme. But, you know, I just have to say, underlying all of this, the great tragedy of this debate at the moment is that Kevin Rudd is forcing the final vote on the emission trading scheme prior to the Copenhagen meeting. Now the Copenhagen meeting as you know is in December. The vote in the Senate will be at the end of November. If we waited until Parliament came back in February, sixty days delay, we would be fully informed, we would know exactly what had been or had not been decided in Copenhagen. So the sensible thing for Mr Rudd to do, the responsible thing to do, is to postpone the final vote. Of course we should be discussing the detail and the design and negotiating. I am not suggesting we should be doing nothing until February, but the final vote and the final refinements to the design of the emissions trading scheme should not be done until after Copenhagen. But so far Mr Rudd seems deaf to that argument, notwithstanding that it is so much common sense. QUESTION: Are you surprised some of your backbenchers are perhaps trying to rewrite history, questioning whether the Coalition even had an ETS policy heading into the last election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, you know, party room meetings can be long, and sometimes people can doze off or step out of the room, but I am afraid to say there is no doubt, as you know, that we had a very – it was on the front page just about every other day – we had a very public inquiry into the design of an emissions trading scheme, headed by Peter Shergold. I think that was announced at the end of 2006. It reported in 2007. The report was adopted by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and that was government policy, and then we started to legislate for it, and of course that legislation was taken to and approved by the party room. So anyone who has missed all that was obviously focusing on much more important issues, or at least things they thought were more important. QUESTION: Have you lost control of your party over the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, of course not. No. QUESTION: But how confident are you that you are going to get amendments to put to the Government given the splits in the Coalition. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I am very confident that the party room will support us taking a constructive approach. Can I say that those people who say the Coalition should not engage with the Government at all really are speaking for nobody but themselves. There is not one industry organisation – not one – not one business that will be affected by the ETS that is not saying to us, we want you to get in there and fight for our jobs, fight for our industry, and to say that we should step back and say, we are not going to have anything to do with it, we are not going to be part of the solution, we are not going to engage in a constructive way, people who say that are really saying that the Opposition should walk off the field, and that is not a responsible thing to do. QUESTION: Is that a message to backbenchers like, a pointed message to backbenchers like Cory Bernardi, who today put out an email saying nothing Australia does to reduce carbon emissions will affect the climate at all and will just stifle prosperity? I mean those views are still there. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look I will let Senator Bernardi speak for himself. But he has got particular and well-known views on climate change. As I recall it, Senator Bernardi does not think Australia should do anything about it. Now that has never been the policy of the Coalition. It was not our policy in government and it certainly is not our policy now. QUESTION: Has your authority to negotiate with the Government on an ETS been undermined by… MALCOLM TURNBULL: No… people can make statements to the press, and we can have journalists, you know, ringing up backbenchers and purporting to do surveys – who knows how accurate they are? The party room will decide. The party room will decide whether to support the leadership on taking amendments to discuss with the Government or not, and that is the critical thing. And I have to say, if we were not take a constructive approach to this we would be flying in the face of and abandoning thousands of Australians whose jobs are at risk. Farmers, people working in manufacturing industry, people working in the coal industry, people working in gas, in aluminium. We would be abandoning them all, every one of them we would be leaving behind to make some political point. Now I am committed to being a constructive Opposition, taking on the Government where we should, holding them to account, but I am not going to walk away from thousands of Australians’ jobs. I am not going to sit back and just let Kevin Rudd have his scheme go through on whatever terms he likes. That would be the consequence of us just voting it down, because he would have a double dissolution election. We all know that. Of course he would have a double dissolution election, and if he wins it he will get the bill in the form he wants to get it. Now we can, we in the Opposition can deny him the right to take a concluded, a legislated statute to Copenhagen, if we vote against it. Or, if he chooses to agree to amendments that meet our requirements, then he can get a bill that can be a law, made a law by a vote of Parliament, to take to Copenhagen. So that is what we are endeavouring to do. We are endeavouring to protect thousands of jobs. And I just ask you this: if we were to vote it down twice, let’s say we just voted it down twice without even trying to change it, let’s say there was an election held and Mr Rudd were to win, and he came back and naturally passed his bill through the joint sitting, what would we say to the workers in the aluminium industry, in the coal industry, in the gas industry? What would we say to the farmers who will be losing their jobs when they say to us, what did you do? Did you try to make it better? Did you stand up for us? Did you really try to protect regional Australia? Because if we were to do that, we would not have any answer to give them.   Now I am determined to protect the environment, I am determined to protect the environment in a way that does not damage the Australian economy and in a way that protects thousands of jobs. That is what we are seeking to do. We are taking a constructive approach to this to preserve thousands of jobs. QUESTION: How is your relationship with the National Party on this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Cordial. Our relationship with the Nationals is always cordial. We don’t always agree but we are always agreeable. QUESTION: Just on execs’ salaries, do you think they should be capped? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. I haven’t read the Productivity Commission report, so I don’t want to, you know, comment on something that I have just read reports of. But no, I don’t think salaries should be capped. I think it is very much a matter for shareholders. But the proposal I have made, which I understand the Productivity Commissioner has not agreed with, but the proposal I made some time ago was that senior executives’ salaries should be subject to a shareholder vote. QUESTION: Geoffrey Cousins has had another spray at you recently. Any comments on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, no, I just hope it made him feel better. OK? Thanks a lot.   [ends]      malcolmWed, 30 Sep 2009 03:41:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:617http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/Doorstop-Interview-London.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=620http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=620&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/Doorstop-Interview-London.aspxSubjects: Meeting with David Cameron; emissions trading scheme; economy; stimulus spending; polls. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ve just come from a very productive meeting with David Cameron and his colleagues, George Osborne and William Hague, and we’ve discussed a number of important issues including of course the big issue of debt. In this country of course the Government is running up debt at an extraordinary level. Britain went into the economic downturn with already high levels of debt, unlike Australia which of course went into the downturn with no debt at all and cash at the bank thanks to the good economic management of the Coalition in government. But nonetheless there is a common challenge of governments around the world to ensure that they do not keep racking up high levels of debt which have the inevitable consequence, as David and I discussed, of higher taxes and higher interest rates. QUESTION: Did you discuss at all with David Cameron the environment? Did you talk to him about your issues with the ETS at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, yes, we discussed that at great length and one of the great achievements that David has able to do, or effect, is to position the Conservative Party as being environmentally credible. He really has worked very hard and convincingly on the slogan – vote Blue, vote Conservative and go Green. He’s done that very well and of course I have a common commitment, a similar commitment to the environment. QUESTION: He supports emissions trading schemes, did you talk about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we did talk about it. The emission trading scheme of course for the UK is run at the European Union level so it’s not really an issue so much for the national Government here in Britain but we talked about the implications for Copenhagen. We were both very heartened to see the positive comments made by the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, recently in New York. So there is a growing level of optimism for a good outcome at Copenhagen, although there’s a long way to go yet. QUESTION: Did you pick up anything in terms of popularity? I mean he’s doing extremely well in the polls, is seen by most as the next prime minister. You’re not doing quite as well, did he give you any tips? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we had a good discussion because of course William Hague was the Leader of the Opposition immediately after the Conservatives lost government to Labour here. So I had a good range of experience both from William and from David. No, they were full of encouragement. There’s a lot of goodwill between our two parties. We have a lot in common. There are some differences of course and there’s a great regard between our two parties and a lot of collaboration and cooperation between them. QUESTION: Timing’s everything of course, are you at the wrong end of the political cycle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, time will tell. QUESTION: Of course that could come very soon if a double dissolution threat is carried out. Are you prepared for such an eventuality? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’re prepared to fight an election whenever the Prime Minister chooses to call it. But as far as the emissions trading legislation is concerned, the Prime Minister has got to decide whether he wants to keep playing politics or whether he wants to get the scheme right. We need to have a scheme that is economically responsible and environmentally effective. We don’t have one that meets those criteria right now. And of course, finalising the design of the scheme before we know the outcome of the Copenhagen summit is reckless, but that’s the course of action the Prime Minister is committed to and it is all, as always, about politics. He is very concerned about politics. He’s not interested in polar bears or saving the Murray-Darling Basin or the Great Barrier Reef – it’s all politics for Mr Rudd. QUESTION: But the politics would tell you at the moment that if there is a double dissolution that you could lose a further 10 to 20 seats. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re certainly behind in the polls. We can all read the polls but the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. QUESTION: You discussed with Mr Cameron today the need to rein in stimulus spending to stop debt getting out of hand. The Treasury Secretary, Dr Henry, today emphatically rebutted the position you’ve been putting on that, saying that the Government’s existing program should be stuck to. Are you comfortable with the role Dr Henry’s been taking in this debate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, Dr Henry is the head of the Treasury and he was the architect of the stimulus package no doubt. But the question that we should be putting to the Government is this; if you had known in February that the Australian economy was going to be as strong and resilient as it has turned out to be, would you have spent so much money? Now the honest answer to that question must be no, because they committed all of this money in a panic because, as the Prime Minister said – he said this himself – they felt they were staring into the bottom of an abyss, they panicked, they committed far too much money, borrowed far too much money and are spending it ineffectively. As I said last night at the Policy Exchange, just because there’s a global financial crisis does not mean the rules or the laws of economics are suspended. Infrastructure spending should have a positive cost benefit. And what we’re seeing in Australia is a lot of money being spent very unwisely and ineffectively and all of it is borrowed and all of that debt is going to mean higher taxes and higher interest rates. QUESTION: Would you try to get out of contracts if you won the next election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, if the Government’s contracted, it’s bound by them. You can’t do that. Once the Government signs on the dotted line it’s committed. QUESTION: So it’s all too late? MALCOLM TURNBULL: All too…what is all too late? QUESTION: Too late to wind back the stimulus? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think that’s right at all. I think the Government is in a position, if it chose to, to recalibrate a lot of the spending. It could spend less in some areas or it could spread the spending over a number of years. The real issue with infrastructure spending, as I said last night at the Policy Exchange, that is designed to promote economic activity as part of a fiscal stimulus is that if you’re not careful you can find that the spending, instead of being countercyclical – that is to say offsetting a general decline in the economy – becomes pro-cyclical and in a sense accelerates an economy that is already growing. And so that is why you’ve got to be very careful about the amount of money that is spent and of the timing. Now if our economy continues to grow and starts to pick up momentum – and there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest that may be so – then the Government’s spending may prove to be really ill-timed and in fact be pushing up both inflation and interest rates, and of course racking up a lot of debt at the same time. Back in February we argued for a stimulus. We were not opposed to a stimulus but we argued for a stimulus that was smaller and better targeted. And I said at the time, the Parliament is not closing down, if we need to spend more, if circumstances require us to spend more, we can come back and vote more money but let’s be careful and measured in the way we approach this. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I think if the Government was honest they would say that if they had known our economy was going to be as strong and resilient in the face of this global downturn, as it has been, they would have spent less money. QUESTION: But Dr Henry today said you’re dead wrong on that. He said that with the benefit of hindsight the timing has been spot on. Do you feel that you’re at a bit of a disadvantage here, not debating a rival political party but an independent public service leader like that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Dr Henry is committed to his program. It’s his program, I wouldn’t expect him to do anything other than defend it vigorously which is what he’s doing. He’s not an independent economics commentator. He is the Secretary of the Treasury. He is like an ambassador. His job is to go out and defend the Government’s actions because he is part of that process. He is part of the Government. QUESTION: You mentioned a happiness index in a speech a couple of nights ago. Where’s your personal happiness index with respect to your job? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh, it’s very high. I’m a happy fellow. But I think it’s an interesting concept, the happiness index, perhaps for another…a longer interview. QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we would always like our opinion poll ratings to be higher than they are but Mr Cameron’s doing very, very well and he deserves his lead in the polls and I hope he’s able to sustain that. I’m sure he will. QUESTION: Did you give you any specific tips in terms of popularity? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we talked a lot about party reform. We didn’t talk about popularity per say at all in fact. We talked about party room, the importance of policy development. We discussed a lot policy areas; social policy in particular, environmental policy. And we just talked about the process of how the Tories here have been able to renew their party and reposition their party in Opposition and put themselves in the situation now where they are a very credible alternative government, and if the polls are to be believed, likely to become the government. QUESTION: Were you just a little bit jealous of the success Mr Cameron has had and quite how easy it’s been to him to get a clean and green environmental policy accepted by his backbench? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we have a very good environmental policy from the Liberal Party of Australia. You’ve got to remember, just in terms of my own record as Environment Minister and Water Minister, I was responsible for the biggest water reform in our country’s history; the Federal Government taking over all the interstate rivers and groundwater systems, the Murray-Darling Basin in other words. That was a gigantic reform and that was effected by John Howard as Prime Minister and me as the Environment and Water Minister. We have a very good record on environmental management as a Coalition. And as far as an emissions trading scheme is concerned the first legislation to establish an ETS was introduced into the House of Representatives by me, as John Howard’s environment minister. So an emissions trading scheme is part of our policy. QUESTION: You shared the room today with William Hague who was the leader of the Conservatives at one stage. Are you concerned that one day you will be sitting in the room on the wrong side of the couch sharing the room with prime minister Hockey or someone like that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’ll leave all that speculation to others. It was good to see William again though, he’s an old friend. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]malcolmThu, 24 Sep 2009 01:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:620http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/615/Interview-with-Leigh-Sales-Lateline.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=615http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=615&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/615/Interview-with-Leigh-Sales-Lateline.aspxSubjects: Emissions trading scheme; economy; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending and bungled schools stimulus. E&OE LEIGH SALES: Mr Turnbull, good to have your company. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, good to be with you. LEIGH SALES: Let’s begin with your letter to the Rudd Government in response to its letter. What have you said to its deadline and offer to negotiate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Penny Wong's letter really was just a stunt. Penny knows full well that we are committed to negotiate over the design of the ETS, just as we negotiated over the renewable energy target and the result of which was we got agreement and the legislation was passed.  So she knows exactly what we're planning to.  I've been very public and open about it. We're finalising our amendments now.  We've been consulting widely.  They will be approved by the Shadow Cabinet and taken to the party room when Parliament comes back in October.  And once they're approved by the party room we will sit down with the Government and negotiate.  So this letter really is just a stunt and it’s a tribute to the media spinning skills of the Government that it's taken up so much time in the news because it's just a stunt. LEIGH SALES: So basically, though, you would anticipate that you will have your amendments ready to put forward by the end of October? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh certainly, that’s absolutely right.  Leigh, this is our position on the ETS. We believe the Prime Minister is playing politics by forcing a vote on it in November.  Common sense and prudence dictate that we should not finalise the design of our emissions trading scheme until after we know the results of the Copenhagen summit, which means we would do it in the normal course of events in February rather than November. So for 60 days Mr Rudd wants to make a decision where we are less well informed than we would be in February.  That is purely politics.  There is nothing there but pure politics and gamesmanship on his part. LEIGH SALES: Well that may be so and your argument about Copenhagen may be perfectly valid but is it time for you to accept the reality that the Government is determined to put this to a vote in November and that's what you’re going to be having to deal with? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, he’s in charge of the process.  He's apparently going to persist with having this voted on in November, and on that basis we have been…we've set out the principles which underpin the amendments we’ll be seeking to the legislation – we published them in July – so the Government knows exactly where we're coming from, and we will provide detailed amendments in October just as we've planned to do. So really Penny Wong's letter was nothing more than a stunt.  I've been very open and very transparent and very reasonable about what we're doing and we will have the amendments there in October and we look forward, hopefully, to some constructive engagement with the Government. LEIGH SALES: Well you mentioned the nine concerns that you aired in July. Given that and given that the ETS legislation has been before the Parliament since May, why is it taking the Coalition so long to come up with amendments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you really should be asking Mr Rudd the question why is he unable to finalise his own scheme? The design of the scheme itself is actually contained in the regulations rather than the legislation, which the Parliament has voted on.  Most of those regulations have not been published. There are major sectors – coal, aluminium, for example – where the Government is in intense negotiations with those industries trying to work out changes to its own scheme. So the Rudd Government ETS is not a fixed state of affairs.  It is been worked on, now it's a work in progress and it just underlines the indecent haste and the politics between Mr Rudd's…behind Mr Rudd's actions.  You see, he does not have an environmental agenda.  He's got a political agenda.  It's all about politics.  Somebody that was committed to the environment and committed to effective global action on climate change would proceed more prudently and more cautiously and finalise the design of our scheme after Copenhagen when we will know what the other countries are going to do. LEIGH SALES: Okay, we’ve made that point so let's move on. How are you going to come up with amendments that suit everybody from Wilson Tuckey at one end to Greg Hunt at the other? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Do you think they’re polar opposites, do you?  I’m sure they have a lot in common.  Look, we will put – the Shadow Cabinet will approve the amendments and we will present them to the party room and we will get the agreement of the party room. LEIGH SALES: And you’re confident of that; that everyone in the party room will sign up to what the leadership recommends? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the reality Leigh, as you know, is that in a political party individuals will have different views but then we have got to agree on one position, and so we come together and that may represent for many people a compromise or something less than their ideal position.  But, as you know, you cannot allow your conception of the perfect to be the enemy of the good.  And we will come to a common position which we will then sit down and negotiate with the Government and you know we’ve done this before. LEIGH SALES: You’re confident that your team will wear that and will go along with it because there have been quite a few public rumblings along the way thus far? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m very confident of it and if I could just remind you and your viewers, we have done it before. We did this with the Renewable Energy Target legislation where we insisted on some changes. We set them out. We negotiated with the Government and we reached agreement. And the process worked perfectly well. I've had many discussions with government ministers in the context of the Renewable Energy Target and we will have discussions with them about the CPRS or the emissions trading scheme, and I am hopeful that we will be able to reach an agreement but time will tell. It depends how flexible the Government wants to be. LEIGH SALES: Your efforts to get your party room to sign up to the amendments are already being billed as a test of your leadership.  Do you accept that it will be a leadership failure if you can’t unite your team on this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is no question that we will reach agreement, Leigh, and I am not going to engage in speculation about that.  And as far as tests of leadership, leaders are tested every day.  So every day is a leadership test whether you're the Leader of the Opposition or the Prime Minister. LEIGH SALES: You mentioned earlier that there are always a range of views in any political party and that was the case for the Coalition under John Howard, it's undoubtedly the case for the Labor Party under Kevin Rudd but neither Rudd nor Howard have had the same problems with their backbench that you have had. Is your problem not a range of opinion but a lack of discipline? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Leigh, I’ll allow others to run the commentary on that but obviously it’s always important for Oppositions to keep their focus on the Government.  Our job is to hold the Government to account and to put forward policies and a critique that will persuade people to make us the Government at the next election. So that's where we should always be focussed. LEIGH SALES: On that front, Ian Macfarlane told ABC radio yesterday that the Coalition's chances of winning an early double dissolution election were significantly diminished.  Do you share his assessment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think you've only got to look at the polls to see that we're well behind.  If there was an election held in the near future and the polls remained where they were, we obviously wouldn't win.  But the real point that I think Ian was making, which is the same point that I've made – and we're both pretty hard headed, practical people – is that if the Rudd ETS is knocked back by the Senate a second time and if Mr Rudd then goes to a double dissolution election and if he were to win, he would then be able to get his legislation passed without any input from us whatsoever at a joint sitting. So we have important interests to protect. We want to see an emissions trading scheme that does not sacrifice thousands of Australian jobs for no environmental gain. We want to see an emissions trading scheme that is more effective in terms of reducing emissions.  We have proposed changes which would make an emissions trading scheme in Australia greener, cheaper and smarter. This is not a well-designed scheme. Its treatment of agriculture is very unjust and ineffective. Its treatment of some of our major export industries is very dangerous. So there are a lot of changes that could be made and should be made and we will be putting them up to the Government and seeking to engage them, just as we did on the Renewable Energy Target legislation. LEIGH SALES: Let’s come at this idea of an early election from a different perspective. You could vote against the ETS in November, calling Kevin Rudd's bluff and putting the ball into his court as to whether or not he does go to an early election. We know from a recent Newspoll that four out of five Australians wouldn't support that.  We know that early elections have backfired on leaders before.  The ETS is going to be a very complicated sell for the Government in an election campaign.  Could actually going to an early election be your best course of action? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Leigh, again, that's something that the commentariat can comment on and speculate on.  It’s not for me to run a political commentary for the benefit of Mr Rudd and the Labor Party.  Basically our approach is, as we've set out, we believe a more prudent and responsible approach is to finalise the scheme after Copenhagen when we're fully informed about the intentions of the other countries, in particular China and America.  I mean that’s basically what the whole show is about you know.  If China and America can come to an agreement everything will fall into place.  If they don't, it won't. So we should wait until after Copenhagen but if Mr Rudd insists on proceeding in November, we will engage with the Government and present amendments and seek to reach agreement with them on those amendments.  And then depending on how much of our amendments they agree to, and the political situation and the developments both in Australia and internationally at the time, we will then make a decision whether to vote for bill or not. LEIGH SALES: Your approval rating and the Coalition's position in the polls are the same as it was when Brendan Nelson was ousted from the leadership 12 months ago.  How is the Opposition in a better position under your leadership than it was under Brendan Nelson’s? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve advanced a lot in the last year.  We’ve held the Government to account over the wastefulness of its stimulus.  We’ve taken the Government on.  We've taken some tough decisions. It was a very unpopular decision to propose a less expensive, less costly and better targeted stimulus, and then when Mr Rudd refused to engage or negotiate on that, to vote against his package.  That was courageous decision but it was taken on principle and obviously it had a political price. LEIGH SALES: The G20 as we know is meeting later this week. You've been saying for while now that the Government needs to wind back its stimulus spending, as you just mentioned, so therefore you must think we're moving towards a recovery.  Give me your assessment of how you see the pace of that recovery.  Do you agree, for example, with Paul Keating who said on the 7.30 Report earlier that we're out of the woods? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I just work on the figures. I think the economy is starting to grow again. The reality is that the forecasts that everyone was working on at the beginning of the year have proved to be overly pessimistic.  And the real question that one should be putting to the Government is this; if you had known in February that the Australian economy was going to be as resilient to this global downturn has it has turned out to be would you have borrowed and spent so much money?  Now the honest answer to that would be no. But they panicked.  They looked over the edge of what Kevin Rudd describes as the abyss, and they were terrified by the implications of this global financial crisis and they rushed out and borrowed billions dollars and started spending it very quickly. Now we proposed a better targeted and less expensive stimulus package.  There's no question about, you know, this proposition that Kevin Rudd likes to put up saying the Opposition were against any stimulus is just nonsense.  For example, with schools, we said in February that to spend $14 billion on primary school assembly halls in two years, to do that effectively was not possible.  And we proposed instead $3 billion over three years in a way that would be very carefully targeted and would ensure schools got the infrastructure they needed. LEIGH SALES: We’re getting off the track though as to whether or not you think that we're out of the woods and we’re well on our way to recovery. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think the signs are very promising.  I don't like to use these metaphors, Leigh.  The fact is that we've seen our economy grow. We've only had one quarter of negative growth, so we didn't ever go into a technical recession which surprised a lot of people.  We have got very strong signs coming out of our resources sector.  I mean if you look at the billions of dollars that are going to be invested into the resources sector in Western Australia in particular, all of the, you know, the big signs for Australia are very promising indeed. But there’s no reason to be complacent and that's why governments should always be very careful to be prudent in the way they spend money and to adjust spending, if it's been spent for the purpose of stimulating economic activity, to adjust that spending in line with economic developments.  And if the economy is strengthening more than they had imagined it was going to in February then that makes a powerful case for throttling back on the Government's stimulus because there is the risk that you will end up with the spending being ineffective from a cost benefit point of view. I mean look at the situation with some of these schools where you have got millions being spent to knock down classrooms only to build new classrooms if their place. It's a pointless expenditure. LEIGH SALES: Alright, we’ve gone through that. Let me ask you one final question before you go. Your predecessor, Brendan Nelson, recently offered a less than flattering diagnosis of your personality.  Now last week in his farewell speech he urged the Coalition to vote down the ETS.  The very next day he took a job in which he would be required to push the Government’s climate change policy.  And then on the weekend he said that in the Bradfield by-election he would be campaigning against the ETS.  Do you care to offer a diagnosis of his personality? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I don’t. LEIGH SALES: Oh, come on. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I care not to. LEIGH SALES: You know you want to. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, no, I have no desire to offer any sort of commentary on that.  I think people will form their own judgment. LEIGH SALES: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for joining us. Very diplomatic. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks very much, Leigh. [ends]  Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:38:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:615http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/608/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=608http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=608&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/608/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: The Rudd Government’s reckless spending and bungled schools stimulus; emissions trading scheme; Brendan Nelson. E & O E QUESTION: Well, Mr Turnbull, congratulations on your first year. How would you describe your first year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s been an eventful year, hasn’t it, starting off with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global financial crisis, and through that time we have presented responsible economic policies. As an Opposition we’ve held the Government to account. We have been constructive in our criticism and we will continue to do that. QUESTION: Was there a high point for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, I think right through this period it’s been a very challenging one for everybody in public life. The global financial crisis has obviously presented great challenges. We have set out an alternative approach, one that involved less debt and was better targeted. And when you look back at February where the $42 billion stimulus was presented by the Government and you look back at some of the things we were saying then, you can see really the strength of the points we were making. I mean we made the point there, for example, that we did not believe the Government could spend $14 billion on school assembly halls effectively in two years. We felt that was not a responsible way to spend money and that it would not be effectively spent. Well the evidence is now overwhelming. And we proposed instead a smaller amount, $3 billion over three years spent through our Investing in Our Schools model which of course meant that the schools would get the infrastructure they actually wanted and needed, as opposed to some of these extraordinary stories that are coming out of schools now as this program is rolled out with classrooms being knocked down only to be replaced by the same number of classrooms – so no gain at all and a cost of $2.5 million. QUESTION: Have you enjoyed yourself in the job in the past year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I enjoy every minute of my job. It’s a great privilege to be here, to be a member of parliament to begin with and to be Leader of the Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition. So, yes, I enjoy it, I certainly do. QUESTION: Does your second year begin with some awkward division in the party over ETS? It sounds like you might be out on your own on that. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think it does at all. Look we are taking a responsible approach to the emissions trading scheme. We have said many times – and I say this as a former environment minister, as the person who introduced the first legislation to support an emissions trading scheme as a cabinet minister in the Howard Government – I say very bluntly and sincerely: if I was the Prime Minister today I would not be finalising this legislation until after Copenhagen. Now in practical terms what that means is finalising it in February instead of November, a difference of 60 days, two-and-a-half months. So why are we rushing to make a decision with less information rather than having all the information? QUESTION: Because they’re wedging you, they’re politically wedging you and it’s working… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Not at all. We’ve made that point about timing but we are going to engage constructively with the Government. We have set out the changes that we believe should be made to the scheme and we’ll be presenting those in more detail. We’re consulting widely, particularly with the industries who are most affected by it and of course for whom work thousands and thousands of Australians whose jobs are at risk by a poorly designed emissions trading scheme. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Wilson Tuckey’s flagged a possible conscience vote. Is that an option for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There are no plans of that kind. I’ll just tell you what the process is going to be. This is what we are going to do – we will prepare our amendments, we will take them to the party room. We will then take them to the Government and negotiate with them. We will get an outcome. We will come back to the party room and we will make a decision as to how we vote on the legislation in the form that we can finally reach agreement on with the Government. So that’s the process we’re going to undertake and that’s what we will follow. That’s what we are going to do. QUESTION: Were you relieved to hear from Brendan Nelson this morning that someone with narcissistic personality disorder can become prime minister? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll pass on that one. Brendan has done a great job in Parliament and it was really good to see him there at the launch of the book by the Bonnie Babes Foundation. Brendan was a great advocate for the Government to provide funding to Bonnie Babes and we’re pleased that they did and I’d encourage everyone to support their work. QUESTION: Do you think that it’s odd that he chose today to deliver his valedictory speech to Parliament? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It hadn’t occurred to me to consider the date. It’s up to him as to when he wants to retire from Parliament and he’s chosen to depart at this time. QUESTION: How confident are you you’ll be here another year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we may have an election before another year is out. I may be prime minister within a year, you don’t know. I will lead the Opposition to the next election and we will win that election. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmTue, 15 Sep 2009 23:16:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:608http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/602/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=602http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=602&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/602/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: individual workplace agreements; Labor’s constraint of productivity growth; Kevin Rudd’s reckless and ill-thought out National Broadband Network; school league tables; New South Wales Labor Party; anniversary of September 11; Rudd Government’s failed Productivity Places Program.   E & O E QUESTION: Will you reintroduce individual workplace agreements if you win office?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: What we are going to do – and this is in fact what I said to The Australian – is we are going to review the performance of Labor’s changes, which of course have only recently become effective. Labor claim that they will not reduce flexibility in the workplace. We believe they will, but we will review the performance of those changes and then we will, in the light of that, we will make whatever policy recommendations we think appropriate and we will take them to the election and the only thing that I have ruled out is making any changes to industrial relations in our first term other than those set out in our platform for the election. QUESTION: So you’re not ruling out bringing them back? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not ruling it in or out. This new system will be judged on its performance in the workplace. Everybody expects us to monitor it carefully. We see the Government is already making changes on the run to its award modernisation program to meet problems it is creating due to the inflexibility of its new arrangements. But we will review the performance of the new system and then we will formulate our policy response accordingly. QUESTION: You said in that same interview that Labor’s new regime had caused inflexibility in the workplace and that had put constraints on productivity growth. What evidence do you have for that at this stage? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The evidence is overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming and there is really no dispute about this, that one of the drivers of productivity growth in Australia has been labour market flexibility and the Government, the Labor Government’s answer to my point is to say that their changes have not in fact reduced flexibility so everyone is in favour of flexibility. Our point is that what the Government has done has materially reduced it but we will see. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. QUESTION: Has there been any evidence though to date because they’ve only really just taken effect, haven’t they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is a fair point to say that the new rules have only just taken effect and that is why it is appropriate for us to… our concerns and our move from the realm of debate to the realm of fact and so we will see what the impact of Labor’s changes are on the ground. QUESTION: Politically what would that do to you though because work, the scene is a big plank in WorkChoices and that was so unpopular? Is it a particularly dangerous move? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is that all of us have a vested interest in increased productivity. That is absolutely vital and, again, everybody agrees with that. The question is whether Labor’s changes are going to enhance that or constrain it. Now, we have expressed concerns, as have many others, that Labor’s changes will constrain productivity growth right across our economy. Labor says they won’t and the proof will be in the experience. QUESTION: You’re worried they are. What are you worried it is going to restrain? Some examples perhaps. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think you can see, for example, in the course of this current downturn how we have seen, as I said in my speech, a lower increase or a lesser increase in unemployment than many anticipated because businesses have been flexible and people have been cutting back on hours instead but remaining employed, and employers have been able to keep their staff on but working fewer hours. Now that is obviously less than ideal, to say the least, but it is better than having a higher increase in unemployment. So, look, the aim of a flexible workplace, flexibility in the workplace is one that almost everybody shares. The question is how do you achieve it. We have concerns about Labor’s changes and, as I said, they are now part of the law of the land so we will find out from experience. QUESTION: Are you saying the Government has done nothing on productivity [inaudible]… MALCOLM TURNBULL: On what? Sorry, I can’t hear you. QUESTION: Are you saying the Government has done pretty much nothing on productivity? I mean it has set up the Government business to build the National Broadband Network [inaudible]. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The broadband network is actually a great example of Labor’s recklessness. Kevin Rudd said that he would build a $43 billion, 100 megabits a second broadband network. He said it would be commercially viable. He said the private sector would invest in it and he encouraged mums and dads, as he said, to buy bonds in it. He did that without any business plan or without any financial analysis. So, so much for a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. The broadband plan of Mr Rudd is nothing more than a press release. All they have done is hire somebody for $2 million a year to try and work out whether what Mr Rudd promised can actually be delivered. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you believe that parents in New South Wales should have access to school leagues tables? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we certainly believe that giving meaningful information about relative performance is important but the design of the league tables, obviously, is an issue and I can understand people wanting to ensure that the information that is provided is meaningful but really, as far as I am concerned, I am in favour of parents having as much information as possible and as much choice as possible. QUESTION: Can I just ask – you seem to be sort of tying in Mr Rudd with New South Wales and their unpopularity. Is this part of your deliberate strategy to… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, as I said, the Rudd Labor and Rees Labor are two arms of the same organism. Mr Rudd was put in his position as leader with the support of the New South Wales Right, just as Mr Rees was made leader here in New South Wales. The influence of the New South Wales Labor Party machine on the Rudd Government is self-evident. They are part of the same machine and it is the same political strategy of spin over substance and politics, politicking over policy, of course, that has seen so little done here in New South Wales. I mean, why is New South Wales in such dire straits as a state? It is because of more than a decade of Labor spin instead of real, substantial Government hard work and reform. QUESTION: Do you think you can win over votes by this tactic? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Labor Party is one machine. Kevin Rudd is not a member of a different party to Mr Rees. They are part of the same Labor machine and it is the same strategy of spin, spin above everything else that defines the modern Labor Party. QUESTION:  You’ve described Mr Rudd as a creep this week. What do you mean by that exactly?  MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Well I didn’t actually say quite that. What I said was that his attempts to rewrite history were creepy and it does remind one of George Orwell’s famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, his vision of totalitarianism where history is rewritten regularly to accord with the wishes of the totalitarian state and his speech at Paul Kelly’s book launch has earned him almost universal condemnation because it is quite extraordinary and not to say ungenerous to pretend that the 11 ½ years of the Howard Government which saw so much reform, so much progress, so much increase in prosperity had not happened at all. It was, as I said, his speech was as audacious as it was mendacious. QUESTION: September 11th anniversary. Your thoughts? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it was a most tragic occasion, as we know. It was a day when the world truly did change when we were confronted in a most extraordinary way with the reality and the impact of global terrorism and the vulnerability of the most powerful nation in the world to global terrorism. So the anniversary is an occasion for us to reflect on the need for continued vigilance in the battle against global terror. QUESTION: The Government’s Productivity Places Program has done nothing to increase skilled labour in Australia. Do you think it was an ill-conceived plan from the start and, if so, what were its major downfalls? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, this is just another example of spin over everything – an announcement, another program that does not deliver. The Rudd Government’s productivity, if that is the right term, is limited to making media statements and endeavouring to dominate the 24 hour news cycle. What Australians are increasingly demanding is that they actually deliver, they actually deliver on their promises whether it is in the workplace, in training or whether it is in investing in schools. Okay. Thank you. [ends]malcolmSat, 12 Sep 2009 01:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:602http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/600/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Program.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=600http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=600&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/600/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Program.aspxSubjects: Rudd Government’s reckless spending and bungled schools stimulus; women in the Australian Defence Force; Liberal Party. E & O E LYNDAL CURTIS: Mr Turnbull, welcome to AM. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning. LYNDAL CURTIS: The G-20, the IMF, the Reserve Bank, major business groups and many economists agree that the stimulus spending shouldn’t be wound back yet, who agrees with your position that it should? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well many economists have expressed concern about the quality of the spending and the real issue – Warwick McKibbin for example right at the very outset earlier in the year who is on the Reserve Bank board – but the real issue is what value is the tax payer getting for this expenditure? It’s the quality of the spending. LYNDAL CURTIS: But isn’t your issue also that it should be beginning to be wound back because the economy is picking up? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Government certainly has to recalibrate its stimulus spending as economic conditions change. You have to remember that right at the beginning of the year we did not say there should be no stimulus. Our point of difference with the Government was about the quantity, we said they were borrowing and spending too much money, and the quality – that the spending was not well targeted. And we are seeing in the press again today examples of poorly targeted spending on schools – these Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls going right around the country – and one example where a school is actually proposing to knock it back on the basis that they’re being told that they have to knock down four perfectly good classrooms in order to build four more, in order to gratify Julia Gillard’s ambition to have a big sign outside the school saying that the Labor Government has built some buildings there. LYNDAL CURTIS: You said though that the spending should be recalibrated, do you believe it should be cut back or would you be happy if it was… decisions on where the money was spent were changed, but not the quantum of the spending? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The two are linked, Lyndal. You see the real problem we have here, as Lindsay Tanner candidly conceded in Question Time yesterday, is that the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, lets call it for what it is, was undertaken not following an cost-benefit analysis, it was not undertaken following consultation with school communities as to what they wanted or needed – which of course was the approach we took in government – it was undertaken simply because it was money they could spend quickly and they did that because Mr Tanner said the Treasury had said the economy was on the edge of an abyss. Now it turns out that the Prime Minister’s description of our economic circumstances as the economic equivalent of a rolling national security crisis were if you like too pessimistic – I’ll be quite objective about it and not try to be rhetorical. So he had an overly pessimistic view. We can see that now with the benefit of hindsight. Now that being recognised what we need to do now is make sure that government spending does not put upward pressure on interest rates, because we know that the fact of the matter is that the more the Government spends and borrows the higher taxes will have to be to pay it back and of course more pressure will be on interest rates – and it’s going to be cold comfort for homebuyers if they end up having to pay more on their mortgages because of the Government’s reckless spending and borrowing. LYNDAL CURTIS: Your party has mounted a strong attack against the trappings that go with the stimulus spending, the signs on road sides and on letterheads, the opening ceremonies that have to include the Minister. If you get to be Prime Minister will you ban those signs and ceremonies marking government funded projects? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think the real issue here is just the scale of it and the cynicism of it. I mean consider that the outer date for the next federal election is March in 2011 and isn’t it just an interesting coincidence that on all of these schools that have the benefit, so-called, of a Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall, they have to have a great big sign advertising that fact right up until March 2011, even if the school… LYNDAL CURTIS: So you’re happy to have the signs just maybe smaller and more modest? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look the signage when we… the Investing in Our Schools programme we didn’t make signs on the exterior of schools mandatory or compulsory at all. The fact of the matter is that everybody often puts up a sign when a building work is in progress just so people know what is going on, but when the building is completed the sign is taken down. What Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd are seeking to do is to ensure that right up to polling day on all of these schools, every one of which almost without exception will be a polling both, is going to have a sign there and that is why the Australian Electoral Commission has, quite properly, characterised them as political advertisements and we have really got to ask ourselves what are we trying to achieve. Is this just another example of the Rudd Government, addicted to spin, having no economic strategy but just a political strategy? LYNDAL CURTIS: We’ve heard that the Defence Science and Personnel Minister Greg Combet is pushing for women to be able to serve in all roles across the Defence Force, including front line combat units. Do you agree with that? Do you support that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think this is very much a matter for the Defence leadership, the leadership of the Defence Forces. I just heard the president of the Defence Association there speaking earlier about issues of physicality and physical strength. These are all very relevant issues. The primary objective has to be the safety and the effectiveness of our armed forces and that’s something that I’m sure we will have an informed discussion, but it should be led by those with real knowledge, real front line experience in the field. LYNDAL CURTIS: One of your backbenchers Judith Troeth crossed the floor yesterday to ensure the bill ending immigration detention was passed. She made the point that she could do it because she’s coming to the end of her political career, that others who may have wanted to do a similar thing were worried about harming their own careers. Are the party structures on both sides too rigid to allow politicians to act on what they really believe in? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the party structures on the Labor Party side certainly are. On our side, we have a very long tradition of allowing members and senators to exercise their individual conscience and to, if in circumstances such as the one you just described with Judith Troeth, to vote against the decision of the party room and… LYNDAL CURTIS: Without it having a detrimental effect on their career if they’re early in their political career? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There are a number of leading members in our party, and Senator Robert Hill was a good example and there are many others, who had very distinguished ministerial careers not withstanding having crossed the floor on a number of occasions in the past. So it is obviously a question of extent and degree, and clearly politics is a team exercise. I mean we have to work together to be effective, but we in the Liberal Party recognise the importance of members and senators being able to express their individual conscience on issues like this in a way that the Labor Party does not. LYNDAL CURTIS: And finally, just returning to the issue we started with, you say economists agree with you, some economists agree with you that the stimulus spending should be wound back. Is there a chance though you might be wrong? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Lyndal, everybody will agree that we should only be spending money in a way that has a demonstrated positive benefit, a net benefit. So the issue is here, right here and now, we have got this massive school spending program, every day we get evidence of money being spent in a poorly targeted way. In other words, the taxpayer is not getting enough bang for his and her buck. And of course it raises big questions of priorities. I mean if you are out in the Murray-Darling Basin in an irrigation area wondering why there is no Government money being spent on lining channels, on replacing open channels and inefficient methods of irrigation with more efficient ones, you have got to ask yourself what are the priorities of the Government? I mean they have chosen to spend over $14 billion on assembly halls in primary schools with little or no consultation with those schools at all, with no opportunity for those schools to express what they want to do, and they have done that as opposed to many other initiatives that could have been undertaken and they have done it because they could spend the money quickly – so they thought – and because there was an immediate political payoff with those big signs on the schools which double as polling booths come election day. LYNDAL CURTIS: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks Lyndal. [ends]  malcolmWed, 09 Sep 2009 07:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:600http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/599/Press-Conference-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=599http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=599&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/599/Press-Conference-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Senate inquiry into waste and mismanagement of the schools stimulus debacle; Senate Economics Committee; Kevin Rudd; interest rates; Australian economy E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is nothing more certain than that reckless Government spending is putting upward pressure on interest rates. The Labor Party used to claim that it had fiscal policy and monetary policy working in the same direction. We now see the Reserve Bank flagging higher interest rates, tightening monetary policy at the same time as the Government is ramping up its own spending program. There has been no rigorous or any cost-benefit analysis of these programs and in particular the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, the so-called Primary Schools For the 21st Century program, now $14 billion, has not been subject to the rigorous analysis the Government claims all of its spending programs should be scrutinised under. And so that is why we will seek today to refer this schools stimulus debacle to the Senate Education Committee to examine line by line the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, to identify the waste and mismanagement, and to hold the Government to account as it spends tax payers’ dollars in a way that we can see already is putting upward pressure on interest rates. In addition to that, as you know, the Greens have moved to set up a more general inquiry into the stimulus and we will support that, and together with Senator Fielding we will be proposing amendments which will enable the Governor of the Reserve Bank to attend, and also to enable other expert witnesses to attend the hearing as well and also to enable that hearing to have adequate time to properly consider the whole question of the efficacy of the Government’s stimulus program. QUESTION: Isn’t the Auditor-General already doing this job with schools? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: With respect to the Building the Education Revolution. QUESTION: Why are you doubling up? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The Auditor-General is not expected to report until, at the earliest, the end of this year and quite possibly in February of next year. The Auditor-General is looking into the Building the Education Revolution from the point of view of what parameters should be put in place and what parameters should have been put in place before to ensure that there is an efficacy of spend. We can’t wait until February, I don’t think the Australian taxpayer can wait until February and, more importantly, the Senate has a vital role in overseeing Government spending and Government policy and this is the appropriate… QUESTION: You’re the one who referred this to the Auditor-General. If you couldn’t wait `til February, why did you refer it to him? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there is absolutely nothing to be lost by having a Senate inquiry while the Auditor-General is doing his important work in establishing the parameters for the public service that should have been in place. There is absolutely no reason why a Senate inquiry can’t go on at the same time as the Auditor-General is doing his work. QUESTION: Do you think you have the support of the crossbenchers to set this up? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We are certainly seeking that support and of course we seek the support of the Government. If the Government is so proud of its Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, if the Government is so persuaded that this spending is not going to put upward pressure on interest rates, then it should welcome this inquiry because it will give the Government an opportunity to demonstrate the truth, the wisdom of what they have been claiming to the Australian public about how they are spending our taxes. QUESTION: Forgive me but is the inquiry, your Senate inquiry into whether it’s going to put upward pressure on interest rates or the management of BER? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is no question that Government spending, the more the Government fuels aggregate demand as the economists would say, will put upward pressure on interest rates. There is no question about that. There may be countervailing factors, of course, but the impact of Government spending on interest rates is almost beyond argument. That is a necessary connection. The higher the level of Government spending, the higher the level of Government debt, the higher the level of interest rates and taxes in the future. That follows as night follows day. Now governments should be spending money on infrastructure but they should spend money wisely and effectively, and so the real issue is what do we have to show for this $14 billion program other than a series of Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls and signs and posters reminding voters of the Labor Party’s generosity at the time of the next election. QUESTION: But do you think that interest rates at three per cent are sustainable? Can you believe an economy as Australia should keep interest rates at three per cent for an extended period of time which is what you’re suggesting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well interest rates are a matter for the Reserve Bank. There are a number of factors that impact on interest rates but the simple fact of the matter is this and the Dun and Bradstreet report out today underlines this – there are many Australian households, even with rates at today’s levels, who are under financial stress. The Government should not be acting in a way that is of necessity going to put upward pressure on interest rates, in particular if it not achieving real benefits and really positive outcomes for that investment and expenditure – and that’s what the Senate committee should look at. It’s the Parliament that should hold the Government to account and that’s what we will continue to do as the Opposition. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull what was your reaction to yesterday’s speech by Kevin Rudd in which he said that only the Labor Party was responsible for reforms in the last quarter century? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It was extraordinary. It was as though he had erased every part of Australian history that didn’t feature the Labor Party. It was like listening to a speech by a communist party general secretary extolling the virtues of the dictatorship of the proletariat at some rally. It was incredible. It was graceless, it was ungenerous and it showed a lack of appreciation of the sweep of Australian history that I think everybody – I think of you, one of the members of the Press Gallery aptly described it as ‘boorish and boring’, and it was both. It was very, very disappointing. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull you’ve said a little earlier that fiscal and monetary policy aren’t working together, well they are at the moment aren’t they because the Reserve Bank has yet to lift interest rates, and if it does it can go some way before we get out of the expansionary zone, so those policies are in tandem at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the point I’m making is that the Reserve Bank is flagging and the market is certainly expecting monetary policy to tighten, rates to go up and if the Government is going to continue spending, continue firing up the stimulus that it’s so proud of, then they will be pulling in opposite directions – that goes without saying. Let me just make this point though – and we should leave you now and go off to Question Time – but let me just make this point: there has never been a debate about whether there should be a stimulus or not. That wasn’t the issue. Our critique of the Rudd Government’s stimulus was as to its quantity and its quality. We said they were spending too much money and they were not spending effectively enough – in other words they were recklessly spending and borrowing too much and they were not getting enough value, enough bang for the tax payers’ buck. So we proposed a better approach, for example, to investing in our schools which would have involved a spending program, an investment program which would have reacted to what schools wanted, that would have reached out to school communities and said, as we did when we were in government, what do you want? What sort of facilities do you want? What type of investment do you need? Instead of having Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls imposed on every primary school in Australia whether it needs it or wants it or not. QUESTION: To what extent do you think the Government can take credit for Australia avoiding recession? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t believe it can. I mean the reality is that our strong position is because our economy was built on very solid foundations. I mean number one, we did not have a banking collapse here. We didn’t have a banking crisis in Australia. Why was that – because of the prudential and financial regulatory reforms put in place by the Coalition. Our Government went into this downturn with no net debt, with cash at the bank. Why was that – because of 11 and a half years of sound economic management paying off Labor debt under the Coalition. And as just about every economic commentator has observed another vital factor of course has been the strength of the Chinese economy, the continued demand for our resources exports and of course you could say that if there is one government stimulus that has had a very beneficial impact on the Australian economy, it’s the Chinese Government stimulus. Now on that note we must go. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 08 Sep 2009 07:02:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:599http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/593/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=593http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=593&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/593/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspxSubjects: Michael McGurk; New South Wales Labor; Bradfield by-election; G-20 Meeting in London; the Government’s reckless and wasteful spending. E & O E LAURIE OAKES: Mr Turnbull, happy Father's Day. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And happy Father's Day to you too Laurie. LAURIE OAKES: Well these days it’s more happy grandfather’s day for me. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well happy grandfather’s day, too. LAURIE OAKES: Thank you. Now tell me why aren’t you winning the young women? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will just have to work harder at it, Laurie. I will consult with my daughter; Daisy is cooking me a Father's Day lunch today, so I’ll discuss it with her. I'm sure she’ll have a good insight into it. LAURIE OAKES: Excellent. Before we get to the stimulus issue, what's your take on the Michael McGurk murder and the alleged tape? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I know no more than what I read in the press. It's obviously a shocking crime and the police are investigating it. But it does raise some very big issues, but we will just have to see what comes out of the police investigation. LAURIE OAKES: Is there any role for the Federal Government in this; I mean could there be a federal investigation of any kind? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t know. We do have an Australian Crime Commission, but from what we know this looks to be very much a New South Wales crime. There doesn't seem to be a federal angle to it. And in so far as there's a political angle to it, it's very much New South Wales centred. So I think it's properly a job for the New South Wales Police. LAURIE OAKES: A lot of your campaigning at the moment is New South Wales centred. You want voters in the looming Bradfield by-election to use that as a protest vote against the New South Wales Labor Government of Nathan Rees. Don’t voters differentiate though between state elections and federal elections, state issues, federal issues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie it’s important to remember that the Labor Party is a machine; it's a very well disciplined machine. The New South Wales right put Nathan Rees in as leader of the state Labor Party here – just as they put Bob Carr in – I mean they have been running New South Wales for years and years and mismanaging it shockingly. They’re the same people that put Kevin Rudd in as leader of the federal Labor Party. His key adviser is Mark Arbib, Senator Mark Arbib, who was Secretary of the New South Wales Labor Party and is central to the whole Labor Party machine. So you have right at the centre of the Labor Party, whether it's Kevin Rudd's federal Labor Party or Nathan Rees' New South Wales Labor Party, you have an incompetent, mismanaged, corrupt Labor Party machine that has catastrophically failed New South Wales for more than a decade. LAURIE OAKES: But how can there be a protest vote when there's no Labor candidate in Bradfield, how can they protest against any Labor Government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well any vote for the Liberal Party is a protest against the Labor Party. LAURIE OAKES: But isn't a vote for an independent or the Greens also a protest against….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The only people that can take on the Labor Party effectively – be it at the state level here in New South Wales or federally – is the Liberal Party. It's only the Liberal Party that has the capacity to take them on. We’re the only party that has – obviously in coalition with our colleagues in the National Party – the capacity to form a government. So the independents have got something to say, but they are not in a position to take on Labor in the way the Liberal Party is. LAURIE OAKES: Well you say that the New South Wales Labor machine is at the centre the federal government. But Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard, Lindsay Tanner, the top four in the federal government, none of them are from New South Wales, in fact the New South Wales Labor Party, especially the New South Wales right are underestimated in the federal cabinet, so how can you say they're controlled by it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s the faction that put, well you wrote about it Laurie – I was relying on your commentary at the time. But Kevin Rudd was put there with the support of the New South Wales right; Arbib brought the votes in behind Rudd and of course he had, by reason of the alliance with Julia Gillard, the support from the Victorian left. LAURIE OAKES: So which one’s controlling, is the Victorian left controlling them as well? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The New South Wales right is the key element in the Labor Party today and they are the ones that have mismanaged New South Wales and they have a big say in Canberra. You’ve only got to look at the meteoric rise of Chris Bowen; I mean he is one of the stars of the New South Wales right and... LAURIE OAKES: But you look at Wayne Swan as the federal Treasurer and he was on the other side in that leadership battle; he was against the New South Wales right, I mean it's not cut and dried is it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are all sorts of factions pushing and pulling. But right at the centre of the Labor Party – let me put it this way to you, and I put this to you as a political expert – you're the expert – the reality is that there is no group in the Labor Party, nationally, that is more powerful than the New South Wales right. There are other groups that they have to do deals with, but right at the centre, the heartbeat of the Labor Party is that machine, that New South Wales right machine down in Sussex Street in Sydney and whether it's supporting Bob Carr or Kevin Rudd or Nathan Rees or Morris Iemma, it is that gang that are at the heart of the Labor Party machine, at the heart of all the mismanagement and the spin. And if you want to see where Australia will end up in 10 years under Labor, look at what's happened in New South Wales – it’s the same formula of spin and politics, over substance and good government. LAURIE OAKES: I'm very glad that your Opposition doesn't engage in spin. But can I ask you this; what do you say to those who claim that if you’re going campaign against Nathan Rees, you can't have much on Kevin Rudd. If you’re going campaign on New South Wales issues, you can't have many policies and issues of your own? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ll campaign on federal, obviously federal issues are the major issues in any federal election, but the reality is the Labor Party is one machine and it's important for New South Wales voters to take advantage of the opportunity in the Bradfield by-election to send a message to Kevin Rudd and say to him – alright, you claim to be the national leader of the Labor Party, then why don't you do something about New South Wales? I mean this state is an embarrassment in terms of this government. LAURIE OAKES: In terms of a by-election…well will your federal election campaign be send a message to Macquarie Street? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Laurie it is going to be a factor everywhere in New South Wales. The failure of the Labor Party is so comprehensive here in New South Wales. It is embarrassing that we have a government….. LAURIE OAKES: Is it just New South Wales or do you think that the New South Wales Labor brand is so toxic that it will work nationally for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think it will be most pertinent if you like, have the greatest impact here in New South Wales – but Queensland Labor has seen some shocking failures too. Look, take the schools programme, it's very good example of what…. this is Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s schools programme…. LAURIE OAKES: …the stimulus…. MALCOLM TURNBULL: …the so-called stimulus, yeah. This is classic Labor Party spin and politics. They say they wanted to put a lot of money in the economy and give jobs to tradies and support the construction industry, and yet we know that we've got schools being… having Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls imposed on them, whether they want them or not. We know that some of the neediest schools are missing out. We know that local tradesmen and women are not getting the jobs and they are going to large firms chosen by the Labor governments, the state Labor governments. Yet we have in rural Australia, where John Howard and I had a vision of re-plumbing rural Australia so that we could produce more food and fibre with less water, there was an opportunity and the money to get stuck in and re-plumb those irrigation districts, replace the leaky open channels with pipes, do all of that work – that could have all been done, it would have created just as many jobs. But because it would not have allowed so many ribbon-cutting opportunities for Labor Party politicians, they chose not to do it and did the school halls programme because it's all about politics. And of course the summit of that cynicism is the signs that will be out there on polling day saying, in effect, vote Labor. Your taxes have been put to work to put a sign up to encourage people to vote Labor at a polling place when the federal election comes. LAURIE OAKES: Okay. I think you’ve got that message out. Let's talk about the G20 meeting in London. Wayne Swan says that the Rudd Government's strategy of not cutting back the stimulus yet, contrary to what you want, has been vindicated by the London meeting. Is he right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course he's not right. The situation in other economies is completely different from Australia. I mean, you know, you've got to tailor your economic response to the circumstances. In the United States unemployment is nearly twice as high as it is in Australia and you can say the same thing about a lot of European economies. I mean the fact is we have a stronger economy in Australia because we started off in a stronger position, thanks to the good economic management under the Coalition, thanks to the fact that we had no government debt when this downturn occurred, thanks to the fact we had a flexible labour market which enabled us to respond to the economic challenges in a way that didn't see a huge blow-out in unemployment. So we were in stronger position. We've also had the benefit of the Chinese stimulus and the fact that there is still strong demand for our commodities. LAURIE OAKES: So do you claim that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan are wrong when they say that to wind back the stimulus now would be premature and that it would cost jobs? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well let me put this to you Laurie – Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan have always argued that fiscal policy and monetary policy, which is the interest rate policies of the Reserve Bank, should be moving in the same direction, they should be pulling together. What we are now going to see is the Reserve Bank flagging very clearly that they are going to start putting up rates, i.e. that's to say tightening monetary policy, and yet we’ve got the Government saying they’re going to keep spending, so they’re going to be loosening fiscal policy. LAURIE OAKES: So they’re wrong….they’re dills? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they will be working in the opposite direction to the Reserve Bank. LAURIE OAKES: They’re dills? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you say they're dills…. LAURIE OAKES: Well I’m asking you MALCOLM TURNBULL: I wouldn't go so far as to say they’re dills. I would say that they are mistaken in pursuing a stimulus that we never opposed in total – we always said that what they were proposing was too much spending, too much debt and the money was not well targeted enough. In other words, not enough bang for the buck. LAURIE OAKES: But you see the reason I asked you if Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were dills for having that view, because the Liberal Treasurer in Western Australia, Troy Buswell, said on Friday that it would be far too premature to argue for the Commonwealth to pull back on a stimulus package now. So, is he a dill? He also said we’ll get better social outcomes, we will get better economic outcomes by keeping people in employment and it’s far too early, far too premature to be arguing for a reduction in that expenditure. So you’ve got the Liberal Treasurer in Western Australia, you’ve got the federal Labor Government and the G20 all arguing in the same direction. Are you one out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the G20 is really a separate issue. They’re talking about other economies with different situations. They’re not casting a judgement on the Australian economy – I imagine the finance ministers of France and Germany…. LAURIE OAKES: But Troy Buswell is? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let me just move on to Troy Buswell. Troy Buswell is the Treasurer of Western Australia, and you’re absolutely right he is a Liberal Treasurer, and there has never been a state treasurer or premier for that matter that has not been in favour of the Federal Government spending money in their state. Now the real challenge in Western Australia is going to be a skills shortage in fact because of the huge resource projects that are building up there, and so Western Australia will have an incredibly strong economy going forward and the challenge is going to be finding enough skilled people to work in those gigantic LNG projects. LAURIE OAKES: Let me ask you this – when you are asleep at night, dreaming about being prime minister, what is Malcolm Turnbull prime minister do about the stimulus, where do you cut? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie that’s really an issue for the Government to deal with... LAURIE OAKES: But you're dreaming you’re in government, so let's have your answer? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look if I was prime minister today I would not have committed to the stimulus in the form that these guys have done. LAURIE OAKES: But Kevin Rudd falls under a bus, there's an election, you become prime minister, what do you do about the stimulus? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think what you’d have to do is look at every area, just go right through it and see where you can get better value for money. Let me give you a good example with schools – a very good contrast. Back in February the Rudd Government proposed a $14.7 billion school assembly hall, Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall programme, right, and every school was going to get one whether they wanted it or not. That was essentially their package. Now we said that's a bad idea, what you should do is spend less money – we proposed $3 billion – and spend it on the basis we used to do in government called the Investing In Our Schools programme where we actually said to school communities, ‘you tell what you want, you get your plans together, you get your project together, you get the support of local tradesmen and tradeswomen, you get all of that local support and knowledge together and then we'll support you’. Now that's approach we would take. And what you would get out of that is you would get investment in schools that was well targeted, in the sense that it was what the schools really wanted, and really needed, and as a result you would spend less money and get a better outcome. So what this is all about is getting a better bang for the tax payer’s buck and it’s a question of targeting the expenditure. Overall, in terms of the other spending, it beggars belief that during this continuing drought, the Government has not spent any significant money on re-plumbing rural Australia. That was the big vision….. LAURIE OAKES: So you’re arguing for more spending there aren’t you? Look, can I ask you this, should Kevin Rudd put forward a plan for a measured withdrawal of stimulus over the next year as some commentators are suggesting, including a programme for serious cuts in federal spending? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think he certainly has to take into account that as the economy grows, as we see greater strength in the economy, and as the Reserve Bank talks about putting up interest rates, he’s got to recognise that continued growth in government spending is going to put upward pressure on interest rates. He is contributing to higher interest rates. He's doing it in two ways – firstly because he's spending a lot of money and he’s borrowing it. LAURIE OAKES: Should he put forward a plan for cuts in federal spending across the board? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well he has to have a plan for an exit strategy, and I think an exit strategy from this period of high spending and high borrowing – of course he has to do that. LAURIE OAKES: Why don’t you put forward the kind of plan you would want? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie we put forward the plan that we wanted back in February in the response to the stimulus; we actually set out a stimulus, an alternative stimulus plan that was better targeted and involved spending a little bit less than half as much as Kevin Rudd was proposing. So we've actually done that. I don't know how far the Government’s spending on the schools has gone – there's a whole Auditor-General's inquiry going on into it at the moment. So really what Kevin Rudd has done is set off on a reckless spending programme which will put upward pressure on interest rates. It's now becoming apparent that it’s actually going to be working against what the Reserve Bank is trying to achieve. So at the same time as the Reserve Bank is going to be putting up interest rates, Kevin Rudd’s going to be borrowing and spending more, in other words, putting more pressure on the Reserve Bank to put up rates, and I can tell you the home buyers of Australia, and those people paying off debts and mortgages are not going to thank Kevin Rudd for higher interest rates, because his policies are now putting upward pressure on interest rates, and of course, inevitably, will require higher taxes to pay off all the debt. LAURIE OAKES: We’ll let you get back to your family and Father's Day. We thank you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks a lot Laurie. [ends]  malcolmSat, 05 Sep 2009 22:46:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:593http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/587/Interview-with-Steve-Price-2UE-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=587http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=587&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/584/Doorstop-Interview-Cairns.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=584http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=584&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/575/Interview-with-Denis-Scanlan-947-The-Pulse.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=575http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=575&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/574/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=574http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=574&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/576/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments3http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=576http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=576&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/578/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=578http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=578&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/569/Doorstop-Interview-at-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=569http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=569&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/563/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=563http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=563&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=562http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=562&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=558http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=558&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/554/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=554http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=554&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/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/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/545/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=545http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=545&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/545/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Labor’s confusion on jobs; Yvo de Boer. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well yesterday we saw at the centrepiece of the Labor Party conference the announcement of phantom jobs from a phoney Prime Minister. Not even his own Employment Minister, Mark Arbib, could explain it satisfactorily. There were no new jobs announced yesterday and not many jobs at all. This was a great example of Labor Party spin. They’re not focused on jobs – they’re focused on spin. We in the Coalition are focused on jobs and the economy. We’re concerned about the huge mountain of debt the Government is building up – $315 billion. We’re concerned about the way in which they are not supporting small business and supporting employment. And we’re concerned about the damage their poorly designed emissions trading scheme is going to do to industry – vital export industries – and destroy jobs. It’s about time Mr Rudd got real and focused on real jobs instead of spin. QUESTION: It sounds as though this green jobs package was put together rather quickly, written on the back of a serviette or something like that and obviously Mr Arbib wasn’t across all the detail? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they’re all trying to dump on Mark Arbib about this but the fact of the matter is, as we know – and I’ve just got Mr Rudd’s press release here – Mr Rudd said 50,000 new green jobs. That’s what Mr Rudd said. So he said 50,000 new jobs and there are simply no new jobs. There are 6,000 jobs in the package and they’re not new. So it’s all very well for Mr Rudd to blame Mark Arbib but it was his statement, it was the Prime Minister’s statement – phantom jobs from a phoney Prime Minister. QUESTION: Are the jobs real even if they’re not new? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there are 6,000 jobs there that have been previously announced. These are the 6,000 jobs that were part of the compromise following the negotiation of the stimulus package in the Senate, and there is some additional training and so forth but there is not 50,000 new jobs. I mean, the Prime Minister stood up and announced 50,000 new jobs – it is simply not true. QUESTION: So do you believe Mr Arbib is just being made a scapegoat here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well of course they’re trying to make him a scapegoat, but the fact is Mr Arbib didn’t write the press release. He wasn’t up there in a Kevin Rudd suit giving the speech. I mean, Kevin Rudd is the one who announced 50,000 new jobs and it’s simply not true. And the Labor Party are now running around trying to back away from it, blame Mark Arbib here, muddy the waters there. That was a false statement. That was the centrepiece of their conference and it just demonstrates that the Labor Government is all about spin and not about substance. QUESTION: How do you react to the United Nations official this morning saying there’s no problem for Australia going to Copenhagen without an Emissions Trading Scheme in place? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I know Yvo de Boer and I noted that he had some kind words to say about the Opposition too. I met him when I was Environment Minister. Look, the reality is what Kevin Rudd needs to take to Copenhagen is a commitment to targets and we have given him bipartisan support on the targets that he has proposed to take to Copenhagen. There is no question that the emissions trading scheme should have its design finalised after Copenhagen and we’ve been saying that all year. QUESTION: And your response to forecasts that there will be 80,000 construction job losses over the next three years? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, we’re very concerned about all of these forecasts. I hope they prove to be unduly pessimistic. There is a real, a growing concern, a legitimate growing concern about job losses in the Australian economy. Of course we’ve not just seen an increase in the official unemployment numbers but a very significant increase in underemployment – that’s to say people not being able to work the hours that they want to or need to work. So these are real challenges that require real solutions, not the sort of spin we had from Mr Rudd yesterday. QUESTION: How do you view the announcement from the Deputy Prime Minister that now all contracts will require a commitment to maintaining wages and conditions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I haven’t seen the detail of her statement but obviously everybody is obliged to comply with the industrial law. So I’ll have a look at her statement but on the face of it the laws are there, industrial agreements are there, industrial laws are there and everyone has to comply with them. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 31 Jul 2009 06:44:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:545http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/543/Opening-of-Liberal-House-on-the-Central-Coast.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=543http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=543&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/543/Opening-of-Liberal-House-on-the-Central-Coast.aspxE &  O E It is a sign of our commitment to the Central Coast that we’re establishing this office and holding our Shadow Cabinet meeting here. The Central Coast deserves better than Belinda Neal and Craig Thomson – a great deal better. A lot of things have got worse under the Rudd Government but there are few things that have got worse than the representation of the Central Coast in the Federal Parliament. When we had Ken Ticehurst and Jim Lloyd, you had representatives who were part of a Coalition Government that eliminated all of Labor’s debt; that delivered over 11-and-half years 22 per cent real growth in wages, consistent economic growth and historically low levels of unemployment. And what we’ve seen in little more than 18 months – a little more than 18 months – is this massive mountain of debt building. Kevin Rudd has said in his latest essay, so-called, – a sort of ‘Bradman of Boredom’ – he goes on and on forever, you know, words and words; but he goes on, now he’s talking about the next decade being a building decade. Well my friends, the only thing he has built is a mountain of debt, heading for $315 billion and that is going to result in higher taxes and higher interest rates. Every family here on the Central Coast and right around Australia is going to be paying a heavy price for Labor’s reckless spending, a heavy price for having Belinda Neal and Craig Thomson representing them instead of the Coalition. Now we can change that. With your support and your enthusiasm we will win these seats back for the Coalition, for the Liberal Party, and we will form a government which will once again restore Australia’s public finances to a responsible state, to one which we can be proud of and which will enable us, as Liberals, to once again realise our philosophy, our vision, which is that government’s role is to enable each and every one of you to do your best. Kevin Rudd – never forget – believes government should be at the centre of the economy, he believes that government’s job is to tell us what is best and we do not accept $315 billion of debt, reckless spending, money being handed out left, right and centre with so little to show for it. Where is the great infrastructure to show for all this indebtedness – cash handouts, Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls coming to schools whether they’re needed or not? It’s been an extraordinary period of recklessness, and that debt will be paid for with higher taxes and higher interest rates. The reckless spending has to stop: the reckless borrowing has to stop, and only a Coalition government can do it. So I’m delighted to be here today. This is a key battle ground of the next election. We will win here and we will win well. And as part of our campaign, we are opening this office. [ends]  malcolmWed, 29 Jul 2009 05:28:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:543http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/542/Joint-Doorstop-with-Steve-Ciobo-in-Eastwood.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=542http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=542&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/542/Joint-Doorstop-with-Steve-Ciobo-in-Eastwood.aspxSubjects: The Coalition’s plan for recovery; cutting red tape; Kevin Rudd’s broken promise to fix public hospitals. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: This is a great opportunity to engage with small business, which is what Steven and I have been doing all year. We have been having meetings like this and forums around Australia engaging with small business about jobs. Small business is the engine room of the economy. It’s in the frontline. It is at the coal face of the recovery that Australia needs, and it needs more support. And so we have a policy for small business, for the recovery and support of small business. Mr Rudd doesn’t. He had 6,000 words in the paper on the weekend and no plan for small business – completely overlooked. Our focus is on jobs and on small business. That’s what we are focused on relentlessly. And that’s why we proposed changes to the tax system to help small business and that’s why Steven here is very focused on the issue of red tape. At the more than 50 small business meetings we’ve had – our Jobs for Australia forums – the issue of red tape and overregulation has come up again and again. So we’ve now got a search for the worst piece of red tape to highlight the problems that small business has in dealing with inefficient regulation. STEVEN CIOBO: Small business is absolutely central to the Coalition’s plans for economic recovery in this country. As part of our agenda this week you will see large numbers of Coalition members and senators across Australia that are getting out there, getting into small businesses across Australia because fundamentally the Coalition believes our policies best represent enabling small business to do what they do best, which is to employ locals and to ensure that they generate wealth, not only for themselves but for our country. And so, in that vein, what we are absolutely committed to as part of our six point small business action plan is to make sure that we reduce red tape to being the lowest in the OECD. And this week we’re looking to find the most idiotic piece of red tape that we can find. We know that there is lots that exists. We had someone mention to me recently, for example, that he thought he ran a compliance business with groceries on the side. So we know that business, especially small business, is fed up with red tape and this week we hope to find the very worst examples of it so we can get rid of it. QUESTION: Do you support [inaudible] increase in the Medicare levy to cover dental? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is not our policy. We will wait and see what the Prime Minister addresses in his speech today and we’ll obviously look at the report that he’s basing it on. But, no, that is certainly not our policy. QUESTION: What about a Commonwealth takeover of hospitals? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, the critical thing is that Mr Rudd be held to account for his promise. Let’s be quite clear about this. In 2007 Mr Rudd said to the Australian people he would fix the public hospital system by 30 June this year or he would take it over. And he has done neither. He hasn’t fixed it, things have gone backwards, and he hasn’t taken it over, and I don’t believe he’s going to take it over today but we’ll see what he says in his speech. Mr Rudd has broken one promise after another. He said he was going to bring down grocery prices. He had GroceryWatch – a complete flop. He said he was going to bring down fuel prices; FuelWatch – another flop. He said he wasn’t going to change the rules on the private health insurance rebate and he broke that promise too. One broken promise after another. At some point he’s going to have to deliver. QUESTION: What will the Opposition do though on [inaudible] do you support a Commonwealth takeover if you were in government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we support better delivery of those vital services and we’re examining all of these proposals and studies at the moment. We went to the last election with a policy that would have given greater autonomy and accountability to hospitals but we will review all of these proposals, we will see what Mr Rudd says today, and then we will take our policies on public hospitals to the next election. QUESTION: The report hasn’t actually called for a full takeover but has left open the option for Commonwealth funding for hospital admissions. What do you think about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I’ve read in the press is that there is a proposal – and we don’t know what’s in the report but what’s been speculated is that there is a proposal that the Commonwealth takeover casualty and emergency treatment. Now I think really we’ve got to wait and read the report – I’m sure it’s a very lengthy one – read the report, consider it in the light of the Prime Minister’s comments and then we’ll respond. As I understand it he’s still on his feet speaking right now. QUESTION: Should the voting age be lowered to 16? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I don’t support that. I think 18 is the right spot. That’s the right age and I don’t think there’s much support in the community for lowering the voting age and certainly we don’t favour it. [ends]  malcolmMon, 27 Jul 2009 04:17:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:542http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/532/Doorstop-Interview-in-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=532http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=532&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/532/Doorstop-Interview-in-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: Jobs for Australia Community Forum; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending; Stern Hu; uranium; ETS; coal industry; green carbon E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as you’ve just seen, Peter has organised a terrific Jobs Forum here. We’ve had over 50 now around Australia and we sit down with small business people and listen to their views, get their feedback. It’s very interesting. Every meeting is different. The focus is always on jobs – jobs, jobs, jobs. And today there was a very big focus on training and of course in the importance not just on schools and training in the sense of knowledge, specific knowledge, but on attitude; a very interesting discussion about that. So it was a very good meeting. Interesting too to see very positive feedback to our small business policy and in particular our proposal that the incentives, the cash incentives for apprentices, be brought forward to the first few, or riskier years, of the apprentice – riskier from the point of view of the employer. So there was a lot of support in the room for that and it’s a good example of how we’ve been able to develop our policy by reaching out and speaking and listening to the people who are really at the coal face, really at the cutting edge of the economy. The real challenge of course to jobs in Australia is the Rudd Government’s spending and debt. This ballooning debt and deficit poses real risks for the Australian economy. It will be a handbrake on a recovery because all of that debt has to be serviced, the interest has to be paid and the principal has to be repaid as well. QUESTION: Should Kevin Rudd reveal the details of the talks he had with the Chinese official and what do you make of those talks? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m very concerned about the signal that Kevin Rudd is sending by not calling his counterpart, the President of China. It is remarkable; by doing nothing, by treating this as just a low level consular case, which seems to be the approach he’s taking, I think he’s sending a message that he is not deeply concerned about the fact that an Australian citizen has been detained now for 10 days without access to lawyers, without access to his family or his employers. He has to be seen to stand up for Australians and stand up for Australia and I think his failure to call, just pick up the telephone – he doesn’t need a megaphone, he can just pick up the telephone – and call the President, if he did that I think he would be conveying the right signal that the Australian Prime Minister is concerned about an Australian citizen in these circumstances and is standing up for him. QUESTION: Obviously you’ve made a comment about this. Should you have sought a briefing from the Government before commenting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Government has made it clear they don’t know anything, so they can’t tell us anything. Stephen Smith has been, poor fellow, has been at his wits end. He says he hasn’t been told anything by the Chinese other than what he learns on websites, which we can all read. We’ve obviously made our own enquiries and we’ve had a briefing from Rio so I think we’re as well informed, frankly, as Mr Smith is. But he has nothing to say because he has not been able to get any meaningful feedback from the Chinese Government which, again, is an extraordinary thing for a government, for Kevin Rudd’s Government, that has claimed to have had such a special relationship, an understanding, an ability to communicate with China. I mean, what good is all of that, all of those much boasted about capacities of Mr Rudd, what good is that doing Stern Hu at the moment? Not much I’m afraid to say. QUESTION: Has Rio indicated to you that they would like the Government to be doing more? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t want to disclose what I have discussed with Rio. We have had some discussions with them so I think we are, you know, we are as well informed as anybody can be in Australia at the moment. We keep our ears open and we are reasonably well informed. But the very disappointing thing is that at an official level our Foreign Minister doesn’t know anything. The Chinese Government has said nothing to him. They won’t even say what charges are going to be laid. All he knows is what he reads on the Internet and the Prime Minister, of course, hasn’t taken the time to pick up the phone. And I just emphasise, we’re not talking about megaphone diplomacy here, we’re talking about telephone diplomacy. All the Prime Minister had to do is make a call because that would send a signal of real concern. Just ask yourself this question – what interpretation would the Chinese leadership place on the fact that the Australian Prime Minister has chosen not to raise this matter directly with them? Is that going to make them think that the Australian Government is really deeply concerned about Mr Hu’s situation? Think about it. QUESTION: What about, you know, all the focus is on Stern Hu at the moment, what about Angelina Perez who was charged over the assassination of the, attempted assassination of the East Timorese President? Her family says the Government isn’t giving enough support, what do you think? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m not familiar with the details of her case, I’m sorry. But I’m sure if you spoke to Julie Bishop she would be able to give you a detailed response on that but I’m not familiar enough with the details of her case. QUESTION: Can you confirm who is bank rolling your Wentworth Forum? Is it Frank Lowy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, all donations are disclosed in accordance with the law, as you know, and that goes with the forums that we run in the Liberal Party, the forums the Labor Party runs, so they’re all essentially…every political party raises money in much the same way and that is...all the donors and donations are disclosed and many of the most prominent donors you will find give to both major political parties. QUESTION: What about the uranium mine in South Australia, do you support that mine going ahead or not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I certainly do support uranium mining in Australia, I mean, obviously subject to the right environmental conditions and approvals. But what this approval today just shows that Mr Garrett is as big a phoney as the Prime Minister. I mean, there he is, you know, he has spent his whole life denouncing uranium mining and wanting to shut down our uranium mines, now he’s effectively opening a new one. What an incredible backflip. He really is a political chameleon. And there we’ve got Mr Rudd, on the other hand, claiming to be the great China expert – and he is very proficient in the Chinese language – not able to put those skills to use for an Australian who is in a very tight spot indeed. QUESTION: What about that particular mine, do you support that one? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well certainly, as long as it has got the right environmental approvals. I used to be the Environment Minister, I’m not, but assuming all the environmental approvals have been done in accordance with the Act and everything has been properly checked and approved, as I have no doubt it has been, then I certainly support the expansion of the mining industry. Look, can I tell you the fact of the matter is this, the world needs more, a lot more, much, much more low emission energy and one of the major sources of that is going to be nuclear energy – that’s why there are more nuclear power stations being built around the world. We are a major exporter of uranium so we benefit from that and so naturally we are going to be, as more nuclear power is used around the world, we’ll be exporting more uranium. QUESTION: What about into expansion like into Western Australia and Queensland in terms of uranium mining, is the Coalition supportive of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The answer is yes as long as all the environmental approvals are dealt with and it’s properly approved. Uranium mining is an important industry in Australia but like every new mine it has to have the right environmental approvals. QUESTION: What do you make of Anna Bligh’s letter to the Federal Government seeking a better deal for the coal industry under the proposed ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I haven’t read her letter but can I just say this to you, the way the coal industry is being treated by Kevin Rudd is extraordinary, it really is extraordinary. You know, he was at a meeting today with Al Gore. The fact of the matter is that Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme offers Australian industry and Australian jobs much, much less protection than the bill, the Emissions Trading Scheme Bill that has passed the US House of Representatives and coal is a very good example of this. In the United States the fugitive emissions from coal mining – these are the emissions mostly of methane from the process of actually mining the coal – are not included in the scheme. They’re not included in Europe either but they’re going to be included in Australia. So we, the largest coal exporting nation in the world, is going to have the toughest emissions trading scheme conditions as far as our coal industry is concerned. Why on earth would we provide less protection to workers in our coal industry than Barack Obama is going to provide to his? And Mr Rudd refuses to answer that question. QUESTION: Can I ask about Kevin Rudd’s plane? There’s a story in the Courier today. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, I read that story. QUESTION: What do you think about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it looks like another example of Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending, doesn’t it, reckless use of public resources. We have seen so much money spent so unwisely, so much debt run up with so little to show for it – it’s just another example of the reckless spending which we’re all going to have to pay for down the track. QUESTION: Would you do it differently? Would you sort of hope on commercial flights? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Me, personally, if I was prime minister? I can assure you, when I’m prime minister I will use all of those resources with great care and Mr Rudd should do so as well. But I can’t comment on the specifics of the story because I only know what I’ve read in the paper but I just say all public resources should obviously be used wisely and effectively. QUESTION: Can I just ask whether it’s just interesting that Anna Bligh’s written to the Government not really, a Labor Government, not really seeming that supportive of the ETS, you know, worried about the coal industry in Queensland? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, any Queensland Premier would be concerned about jobs in the coal industry. This is the fundamental problem with Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. I mean, it is offering less protection for Australian jobs and Australian industries than the Americans are going to offer for theirs. Why would a relatively small economy like ours impose a heavier carbon cost on industries and jobs than the largest economy, the United States, is going to do? For example, it’s not just the question of the coal industry, in the United States there are enormous opportunities for farmers to effectively invest in green carbon – in soil carbon, in biochar and other measures – that could create offsets. That’s exactly what I proposed in January in my speech about green carbon. That is not reflected in the Rudd ETS either. So whichever way you look at it Kevin Rudd is imposing a heavy cost on Australian industries and Australian jobs, much heavier than the cost that is being proposed to be imposed in the United States legislation, and he is yet to give an explanation for that. Why does Kevin Rudd care less about Australian jobs than Barack Obama cares about American jobs? That’s the question for the Prime Minister. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmWed, 15 Jul 2009 05:33:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:532http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/531/Doorstop-Interview-at-Taren-Point-with-Scott-Morrison.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=531http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=531&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/531/Doorstop-Interview-at-Taren-Point-with-Scott-Morrison.aspxSubjects: Self-Funded Retirees Forum in Cook; Mr Stern Hu; federal politics. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it’s been great to be here, as you’ve seen, with Scott, the local Member and Shadow Housing Minister, talking to the residents here, hearing their views about the economy and issues directly relating to senior Australians. We have a very keen focus on ensuring that the interests of senior Australians are protected and advanced, particularly during these challenging economic conditions. Scott’s been doing a great job in that regard and particularly of course in this local community of Cook, in his constituency. I do want to make another comment on another issue and that is the continued detention of our fellow Australian, Mr Stern Hu, in China. Now Mr Hu is an Australian citizen. He has been held without access to family, to his employer, to lawyers for nine days now. The Prime Minister has chosen not to make any direct contact with the Chinese Government about this. He should do that, he should do that. There is clearly a lot of politics in this arrest and detention of Mr Hu. I don’t want to speculate on the motives behind it or speculate on the commentary on those motives but the Chinese Government would respect us if our Prime Minister were to call and say he is concerned about Mr Hu’s detention, he wants Mr Hu to have the ability to deal with his, speak to his family, his employers, to legal advice and if there are charges to be made, then those charges should be laid openly and officially. What we’re, apparently, according to our Foreign Minister, Mr Smith, the only thing we have learned about any possible allegations or charges against Mr Hu have been through the Chinese media and that is not acceptable. So what we need is for the Prime Minister to stand up. Now, I just remind everybody of one important element in Chinese history. When Chairman Mao led his People’s Liberation Army to victory in 1949, he got to the top of Tiananmen, right in the centre of Beijing, and he said the Chinese people have stood up. Those were his opening words. And China understands that national leaders have to stand up for their nation and stand up for their citizens. So this idea that Mr Rudd would cause offence by contacting his counterpart in China is ridiculous. The Chinese people know that their leaders have to stand up for them - that’s what they said - and it’s time the Australian people are seen to stand up, in the person of their Prime Minister contacting the Chinese President directly. QUESTION: The West Australian Premier is heading across to China. He has been briefed by Mr Smith. Should you have also been briefed by Stephen Smith before making such comments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s up to Mr Smith but Mr Smith doesn’t seem to know very much about the situation. We have had some briefings from the company, from Rio, and I think we are as informed as anybody else is about the situation. I mean Mr Smith really has been despairing about his inability to get official information or official access. He said the other day that all he knew was what he was reading on Chinese media and websites. QUESTION: Mr Smith said this morning that he has had the Acting Ambassador to China in three times but they’re no closer to getting to the bottom of the situation. Mr Rudd said he wants to follow other diplomatic routes but do you think three times with the Acting Ambassador and no closer to the truth is time that another course of action was taken? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s right. You see, Mr Rudd should pick up the phone. He has made a great deal of his experience in China, his ability to speak Chinese and that’s fair enough. He’s entitled to be proud of those achievements, his Chinese language skills, which are very good. Now he can take advantage of that and of the special connection he claims to have with China and its Government. He should take advantage of that now; put that to work in aid of an Australian citizen who, as I said, has been detained now – without access to family, employer, lawyers – for nine days. No charge has been laid against him as far as we’re aware. We read all this stuff in the press. Mr Swan…Mr Smith, I should say, is essentially despairing of his ability to find out, to get to the bottom of it. It’s just not acceptable. Now the Australian Prime Minister should pick up the phone. He should stand up for Australia and for an Australian citizen in distress. QUESTION: The Treasurer says he won’t give in to calls for megaphone diplomacy. Is that what you’re asking? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’re talking about a telephone not a megaphone. QUESTION: Colin Barnett also says there should be a bipartisan because the issue is such a big deal. You obviously don’t have that bipartisan approach at this stage. What’s your response to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Mr Rudd’s approach seems to be to do nothing. That is not our approach. I promise you, if I was Prime Minister I would pick up the phone and I would talk to the President of China and let him know directly the very grave concerns that all Australians have about the detention of Mr Hu and seek to get some answers. And I think Mr Rudd would get some answers if he picked up the phone. There is clearly a lot of politics in all of this – that’s plain from reading the Chinese media – so it’s important that the leader of Australia, our leader, talk to their leader. QUESTION: The latest opinion polls show you’ve gone up somewhat in popularity but you’re still number three in popularity for the Opposition leadership. What’s your response to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My response is to focus on holding this Government to account for their economic mismanagement, talking about the issues that are of real concern to Australians, the enormous debt and deficit the Rudd Government is running up and proposing alternatives, constructive alternatives that will take Australia to a better managed economy where more Australians have the ability to realise their dreams. QUESTION: Doesn’t it worry you that somebody who is retiring from politics is still preferred over you by the people of Australia as the leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m focused on the real issues, just like the people in there are focused on the real issues. QUESTION: Do you think Joe Hockey would make a good leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, I’m delighted that you are so interested in these issues but it’s interesting that what we were talking about in there with the residents of this village are real issues – economic issues, issues relating to government, tax, superannuation – they’re the issues that Australians are focused on and they’re the issues I’m focused on. QUESTION: One of them expressed concern that she’s not going to live long enough until the Liberal gets into power, so obviously it is something that they’re aware of. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, as I said, we’ll be back in power at the next election with their support and I wish everybody in that room a long and healthy life, as I do to everybody of course, to all Australians. QUESTION: What is your response to reports in The Australian today saying that some Liberals are saying the next election just isn’t winnable? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the only thing that we know about every election is that it’s winnable. And it is our obligation to take our case, our duty even, our privilege, to take our case as the alternative government to the people at the next election and persuade them that we can do a better job managing this country and managing our economy than Mr Rudd has done. That’s the challenge that awaits every opposition. And you see there are differences between us. Right now, if I was Prime Minister I would have rung the President of China, I would have contacted the Chinese Government at the highest level and I would have demanded answers. Mr Rudd has chosen to do nothing. He has chosen to sit on his hands. He’s taking leave at the moment. Well, everyone’s entitled to a bit of leave but also they’re entitled to have a Prime Minister who will stand up, stand up for Australia and for Australians. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmTue, 14 Jul 2009 05:09:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:531http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/527/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth-with-Steve-Irons.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=527http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=527&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/527/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth-with-Steve-Irons.aspxSubjects: Jobs figures; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending; detention of Stern Hu; Coalition’s support for effective global action on climate change; Remuneration Tribunal. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Today’s jobs figures are a matter of real concern. We have seen unemployment increase in the last year by 40 per cent. This is a very real concern for all Australians and it underlines the need for the Government to be focused on jobs, jobs, jobs; the need for the Government to ensure that it stops imposing this intolerable burden of debt on the shoulders of all Australians. The Debt Truck reminds us of the heavy burden of debt that the Rudd Government is imposing on us and how it will be – that burden of debt – will be a handbrake on recovery. Because what we need, we need to see these jobs numbers improving; we need to see more Australians in work; we need to see more Australians being able to work all the hours they need to work and they want to work and at the moment that’s not the case. And this heavy burden of debt is going to be a real brake on recovery and that’s why it is vital that the Prime Minister restores some real discipline and fiscal prudence and sound economic management to the way he’s running our economy. If I can just make two other observations about two other issues. The detention of Mr Stern Hu in China is totally unacceptable. Mr Rudd must get on the phone immediately to the President, to the Chinese President, and demand that that Australian citizen, Mr Stern Hu, be released, be given access to Australian consular officials. The Chinese Government must release Mr Hu or charge him. If they think he’s done something wrong they can lay a charge – every government is entitled to do that – but detaining an Australian citizen without charge and without having access to Australian consular officials is completely unacceptable. And the Prime Minister must act immediately to ensure that our fellow Australian is treated fairly and not continued to be kept in detention without charge, without any justification in China. And finally can I just make one other comment and then we’ll move to questions. Labor has broken so many promises. We all remember in 2007 they were going to bring down petrol prices, they were going to bring down grocery prices; everything was going to be perfect in Australia when Mr Rudd became Prime Minister. And we’ve seen FuelWatch fizzle and we’ve seen GroceryWatch fizzle and now we have here, at a local level, we’ve just walked passed the only Medicare centre in Steve Irons’ electorate of Swan. Again and again the Government has promised to open another Medicare centre in Belmont – nothing has happened. It’s just, at a local level, an example of the way Labor is all spin, all promise but no delivery. STEVE IRONS: The people of Belmont have been short-changed. They were promised a Medicare centre during the 2007 election period and since then we have seen nothing happen except another four announcements announcing the Medicare centre and there is still no office. The people of Belmont have responded to me in writing, over a thousand letters back, saying they want a Medicare office. It’s important they have one. They have no access to Medicare easily in the electorate because Cannington is the only place that you can go to or to Blue Lagoon, so they need public transport to get here. So I think for the people of Belmont the Government needs to come good and come good with their election commitment by the end of this year so the people of Belmont can have a Medicare centre. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, should China…should Australia be doing business with a communist regime that treats people like this, if they don’t get their way in a business deal? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the Chinese Government should release Mr Hu, this Rio executive, Australian citizen, they should release him or charge him, but holding somebody in detention without any charge is completely and utterly unacceptable and this has to end. He has to be either released or charged and, in addition, Australian consular officials must be able to have access to him. This is an absolutely outrageous treatment of an Australian citizen. And Mr Rudd – this should be the number one priority on Mr Rudd’s agenda today. He should be on the phone to the Chinese leaders demanding that justice be done to this fellow Australian in China. QUESTION: Do you agree with Barnaby Joyce that there’s a direct link between the arrest and the Chinalco deal going bad? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m not going to speculate on that. The issue is an Australian citizen is being treated unjustly in China. He’s being detained without any charge being laid. He’s being denied access to Australian consular officials. Now, that is completely and utterly unacceptable. QUESTION: [Inaudible] the old bullying tactics of the old communist regime. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’m not going to comment…I’m not going to respond to that comment. I want Mr Hu, Mr Stern Hu, this Australian citizen, this Rio executive, I want him to be released. I want him to be released right now. I want him to have access to Australian consular officials right now. The Chinese Government has got to act. What is happening at the moment is completely unacceptable. QUESTION: Dr Emerson says that you should rein Senator Joyce in. Senator Joyce said the Chinese can’t be trusted. Are you going to have a word to him? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Dr Emerson really just underlines the hopeless lack of understanding of the real issues here on the part of the Labor Government. Here we have an Australian citizen detained without charge in China. He is being denied access to Australian consular officials. And what does Dr Emerson, this Labor Minister do? He attacks the Coalition. Dr Emerson would be better off using his skills to ensure that justice is done for Mr Hu in China instead of attacking fellow Australians. QUESTION: Is Senator Joyce right? He says the Chinese can’t be trusted, is that right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to comment on what Senator Joyce has said or any other commentary on this. My only concern – I am the Leader of the Opposition, my concern is singular, I want Stern Hu released. He has to be released. He has to have access to consular officials. If the Chinese believe he’s done something wrong then they can lay a charge but the situation at the moment is completely unacceptable. And my focus, my singular focus on the well being of an Australian citizen held without charge in China should be the same focus of Mr Rudd and the same focus, if I may say so, of Dr Emerson instead of attacking Australian politicians. QUESTION: Given the situation, is it fortunate that the Chinalco deal did fall over? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You’re talking about two different issues. As far as the Chinalco deal with Rio is concerned, I was on the record a long time ago saying that I didn’t believe it was in the national interest for it to be approved but as it happened, commercial events overtook it and no decision was ultimately taken by the Government. QUESTION: China’s Australia’s biggest trading partner. I mean, if this augurs for the future and how China does business, what does it mean for Australia? Do you have concerns Mr Turnbull? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, everybody is concerned, should be deeply concerned. Dr Emerson obviously isn’t but everyone should be deeply concerned about the wellbeing of Stern Hu, of the Australian citizen, our fellow countryman who is being held in a Chinese prison presumably, without any charge and without access to consular officials. This is completely unacceptable. It has to be stopped. He has to be given access to consular officials and he must either be released or charged. Holding somebody in China like this without charge is completely and utterly unacceptable and the Chinese should know that. QUESTION: Surely there are broader implications though for our relationship with China. So what’s your position on our relationship with China and the way that we should do business with them? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My focus today is on Mr Hu. I want to see him released. I want him to have access to consular officials and I want to…the Chinese Government has to proceed properly and the only proper way to proceed, the only fair way to proceed is either to release him or, if they feel he’s done something wrong, to lay a charge. But holding someone, just grabbing somebody and locking them up without charge is completely and utterly unacceptable. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you think that it was remiss of the Prime Minister not to seek details detailed programmatic specificity from the MEF? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as I understand it, I heard that part of his speech which you’re obviously quoting was not only incomprehensible in English but so incomprehensible the German translators were unable to translate it for Angela Merkel. Mr Rudd has a way with words. I hope he knows what he’s saying because a lot of what he says is incomprehensible to most people when he gets into that jargon. QUESTION: Was he incomprehensible to you? Do you know what he was saying? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The phrase you just ran by me then, I have no idea what it means. QUESTION: Programmatic specificity – the MEF I’m sure you’re familiar with but programmatic specificity? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think a little bit of plain English, I think clarity and plain English would be a good remedy for Mr Rudd’s linguistic problems. QUESTION: He’s in Europe at the moment. He could use ‘wassup’! Mr Turnbull, the word out of the G8 is that the world leaders have moved a step closer to a unified position on climate change. Does this mean that you might be more inclined to support the Federal Government’s position on climate change? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We support, and always have supported and we supported in Government, effective global action on climate change. In fact the first legislation for an emissions trading scheme was introduced into the House of Representatives by me as the Environment Minister so we don’t, there’s no dispute about taking action on climate change. The question is how do we do it, how we do it effectively, how do we achieve a global agreement? These meetings in Europe, it’s a format I’m familiar with. I went to the first Major Economies Meeting in Washington when we were in Government. The big challenge that awaits us is finding agreement between the major emitters. You see at the moment we do not have, we do not yet have an agreement between the United States and the other major emitters in the developed world and China, in particular, and India and other big emitters in the developing world. And that’s really the key. You boil it all down into a nutshell. Unless you can get China and America to agree on an effective model for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, you will not get effective action. That is basically what it’s all about. And the problem with Mr Rudd’s approach is that he is endeavouring to legislate for an emissions trading scheme or design an emissions trading scheme without knowing what the Americans’ legislation will look like and without knowing what the world will agree in Copenhagen. Already there are elements in the Rudd emissions trading scheme which offer less protection to Australian jobs and Australian industries than the American Draft Bill – the law that’s been passed through the House but not the Senate – than the Americans do. So I just ask you this – is it realistic, is it even remotely acceptable for an Australian Government to offer less protection for Australian jobs than an American Government is offering to American jobs. That’s what Mr Rudd’s trying to get us to accept. QUESTION: So Opposition support unlikely. MALCOLM TURNBULL: We will seek, we will seek to amend the legislation in a way that will protect Australian jobs. Whether we can do that, of course, whether the Government agrees to it, is very much up to them. But we all want to see effective global action on climate change – there’s no question about that – but it has to be global and it has to be effective and we cannot, we cannot have legislation which does incredible economic damage to Australia, sacrifices Australian jobs for no environmental benefit. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, in light of the Fair Pay Commission’s wage freeze, would you support another wage freeze for federal politicians? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Just as the minimum wage is set by the Fair Pay Commission, the remuneration of politicians is set by an independent Remuneration Tribunal and I think it is better that they deal with that. We set up these independent bodies to make these assessments and I defer to them. I don’t try to give them advice one way or the other. QUESTION: Do you have a personal view though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s what I’m saying because I think it’s important, particularly with politicians, we’ve got to…politicians do not set their own pay. There is a Remuneration Tribunal that does that which is completely independent and they should be allowed to do their work, just as the Fair Pay Commission is allowed to do its work. QUESTION: Just a quick one, Mike Dean, would he be a good federal candidate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll leave that to the commentariat to discuss. Okay. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmThu, 09 Jul 2009 05:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:527http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/526/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=526http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=526&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/526/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth.aspxSubjects: The Rudd Government’s reckless spending; Australia’s banking system; bank deposit guarantee; OzCar; Fair Pay Commission’s decision; federal-state fiscal relations E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is the big issue facing Australia, the growing burden of debt that Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending is imposing on Australians today and for many generations in the future. Now we’ve seen last night Kevin Rudd warning in Berlin of the dangers of too much debt. It’s as though he left Australia as Paris Hilton, committed to a spending spree, and arrived in Berlin as Scrooge McDuck, wanting to tighten his belt. The fact of the matter is that while Australia does have a low level of debt as a percentage of GDP relative to other countries, that’s not due to any efforts of Mr Rudd at all. He claims credit for that as though it was his own achievement and Labor’s own debt truck claims credit for that. The reason our debt is not any higher than it is – and that figure behind me is high enough, that is high enough, believe me – the reason it’s not higher than that is because of the fact that Mr Rudd inherited a federal balance sheet with no net debt and cash at the bank and he inherited that from the Coalition. And when you read through his speech in Berlin you see he gives no credit to the hard work and fiscal discipline of his predecessors. The other extraordinary thing of course is that by going to Berlin and giving a lecture about the dangers of excessive spending and the risk to inflation from excessive government debt, he was doing so in a country whose leader, Angela Merkel, has been steadfast in refusing to engage in reckless spending. The German approach to dealing with the global financial crisis has been much more disciplined and has involved much less so-called stimulus spending and a much more prudent approach to public finances. So there’s a real element of hypocrisy there as he does yet another transformation from the big spending Paris Hilton in Australia to now this very disciplined, Germanic, Scrooge McDuck in Berlin that we saw last night. QUESTION: Will your speech today be addressing Mr Rudd’s speech? Or what will you be… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, well I’ll certainly be talking about that, yes, those and other financial issues, economic issues, yes. QUESTION: What do you think of the idea of a ‘people’s bank’? Wayne Swan has come out and said it’s not going to happen but what does the Liberal Party stance on it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we don’t support that. The reality is that Australia has a very good banking system. We have some of the best banks in the world. Again, the reason our banking system has remained strong is because of the very sound regulation and prudential management that was put in place under the Coalition. Our financial system stood up to the stress of the global financial crisis. And again, you don’t hear Mr Rudd giving any credit to his predecessors for that. I think it was Julia Gillard who said at Davos not so long ago that Australia’s financial system was the best in the world. Now it was created, it was regulated and set up under the Coalition but we certainly don’t need another Labor bank. We’ve had enough experience of those and they always end in tears. QUESTION: So what can be done, I guess, to combat the, I guess the increasing monopoly of the big four over the banking sector in Australia? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I certainly welcome the idea of the proposal of having another general inquiry into the financial system, another Wallis Inquiry if you like. That is something that we should do regularly. Wallis is a long time ago now. There have been some very big changes both domestically and of course, above all, internationally. So we certainly welcome the idea of having an inquiry as been proposed by the economists. That’s a good suggestion. As far as the dominance of the banks, that has been in large measure created by the Rudd Government, by its deposit guarantee. They bungled that dreadfully. You will recall that last year Julie Bishop and I proposed that there be a deposit guarantee at $100,000 and that was designed of course to provide reassurance to retail depositors – small businesses, mums and dads with a cash deposit in a financial institution like a building society or a credit union or a smaller bank – and to reassure them. And that is consistent with what you see everywhere else in the world. The Rudd Government went for the big headline. They went for an unlimited bank deposit guarantee which was enormously distorting in the financial markets. They then scaled it back after a lot of pressure to a million dollars. It’s still too high and what it’s done is put out of business for all practical purposes every financial institution that does not have the benefit of the guarantee. So all of those mortgage funds, second tier lenders, finance companies are not able to access deposits in the way they used to and that really, the Government has created this problem by mismanaging the deposit guarantee. QUESTION: The Government I believe has set a guarantee for about three years, if I understand correctly. Is there a case to be made for ending those guarantees? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think they’ve actually set a limit on it as you say but there is a very powerful case, a really powerful case for scaling back the deposit guarantee to a cap of $100,000 or thereabouts and you’ve seen, we saw not so long ago the Reserve Bank saying that the deposit guarantee should be reduced and set at a cap and the lower the better, I think were the precise words from the Reserve Bank. We’ve had one leading banker after another saying that the deposit guarantee cap should be reduced. It should be genuinely there simply as a retail deposit guarantee. It creates too many distortions and we’re paying a very heavy price for that and this dominance from the banks that you asked me about a moment ago is a direct consequence of that. QUESTION: With yesterday’s wage rises, do you think it’s fair that the lowest paid Australians didn’t get a wage rise? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look it’s a difficult job that the Fair Pay Commission has. They’ve made that decision. They’ve had to weigh up the claims of those on the lowest pay versus their concern to ensure that employment remains supported so it’s a tough decision but I certainly support it. QUESTION: Surely they’d have to have a bit more support though given the tough economic times? They’re probably the ones that need the most boost I guess to keep things ticking along, to ensure that there’s no undue economic hardship now. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Dr Harper’s made his case for this and he’s taken into account the impact a rise would have on employment which he thinks would be negative and he’s made that decision and we certainly support it. QUESTION: Just on two other issues, many observers are saying that Wayne Swan still has many questions to answer over the OzCar affair. Are you going to continue to pursue him over that or do you think it’s become so associated with you now that it’s politically unpalatable to continue to pursue that issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We called for a full judicial inquiry into this matter. We urged the Government to do that. If the Government had nothing to hide, they would set up a full judicial inquiry into the way in which the Treasurer’s influence was used to advantage or seek to obtain advantage for a friend and benefactor of the Prime Minister. QUESTION: Okay and just finally from me on a local issue. The Premier has called on a number of occasions for reform to federal-state fiscal relations. In about three years, Western Australia will be receiving just over five per cent of its national share of GST revenue even though we have about ten per cent of the population so we’re getting about half what you would normally expect. He’s called for floors to be set on the amount of the variants in that formula. What is your position on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I just say this – every state premier is dissatisfied with their share of the GST. They all agree that they’re not getting a fair share. The problem is that they can’t all get what they want. Federal/state relations is a continuing issue which will always be under review in Australian politics and it’s something that we as a Party that is committed to the federation and committed to federalism, that we will always have under review but the arrangements are not imposed by the Federal Government. They’ve been the subject of agreement over many years and I’m sure they will always be subject to review in the future and should be. [ends]  malcolmWed, 08 Jul 2009 06:19:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:526http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/524/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=524http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=524&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/524/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme.aspxSubjects: Launch of Debt Truck; Labor’s reckless spending; Coalition’s Plan for Recovery.   E & O E   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to AM.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Lyndal.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Are you using a truck to get you out of a hole caused by a ute?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, Labor’s reckless spending and debt binge is putting a hand brake on our recovery from this economic downturn. The biggest economic challenge facing Australia now is this growing level of debt that Kevin Rudd is running up. It will be…   LYNDAL CURTIS: Does your campaign acknowledge at all that part of the debt is caused by the fall in revenue?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, certainly some of that debt is caused by a fall in revenue but at the same time we have seen a massive increase in Government spending. We’ve seen $23 billion in cash splashes which have not resulted in any jobs. We’ve seen a hopelessly mismanaged program for investing in school infrastructure. The reality is Labor is borrowing tens of billions of dollars, running into hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and having very little to show for it, and that debt is going to put an intolerable burden on the shoulders of our children and their children because they will have to pay – as we all know – higher taxes and higher interest rates to pay it off in the future.   LYNDAL CURTIS: But part of that debt you would have had had you been in government because of the fall in revenue. Does your debt truck, does your new campaign acknowledge that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: Lyndal, the fact of the matter is Labor is mismanaging our economy. They are running debt up to record levels. The level of debt that we have is vastly greater than it ought to be. It is being run up because of reckless spending and reckless spending which I might say we opposed in the Parliament. We voted against the massive spendathon earlier in the year. We proposed a more modest, measured, better targeted program. Labor rejected that and Labor has to wear the consequences of its spending and borrowing binge.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Do you agree with your Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey then that the Government should have reconsidered the tax cuts?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the Government was committed to the tax cuts and should have stuck with the tax cuts but the fact of the matter is that there was a better way to deal with this economic downturn than what they had proposed. We proposed a more measured approach to spending. We opposed the cash splashes. We supported…   LYNDAL CURTIS:   So was Joe Hockey wrong on the tax cuts?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, we supported spending on schools but at a more measured rate. You’ve got to recognise now that right around Australia we’ve got $14 billion being spent on school infrastructure, much of it in situations where the school communities are opposed to it because the buildings that are being imposed on them, the Julia Gillard memorial assembly halls, are either not necessary or duplicating existing infrastructure or they’re being built at vastly greater cost than can be obtained from local contractors.   We’re seeing a Government that is wasting money and cannot even deliver on its promises. Look at all the bold promises it made. Look at the promise it made to homeless Australians to deal with homelessness. There’s been no progress there at all. We see today Paul Moulds who’s the Director of the Salvos Oasis Youth Support Network in my own city, in Sydney, in Surry Hills and he says the reality is nothing has changed. We’re still as full as capacity as ever. We still have to turn people away. So the Government is great at spin, it’s great at borrowing but it is not spending those dollars effectively.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   But you say you would have had the tax cuts, you would have had some level of spending on infrastructure. Aren’t you just as good at spin, saying, accusing the Government of racking up the debt that you would have racked up part of yourself had you been in government?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, had we been in government the level of debt would be dramatically lower. Not only would we have borrowed and spent less money, we would have spent money more wisely, we would have managed the economy more prudently which means that revenues would have been higher, more people would have been in employment and therefore the revenue side of the Government’s account would have been higher.   You see this is a game the Government likes to play, to say that because, they say if the Coalition were in government there would still be debt therefore because there would be some debt, therefore any level of debt is acceptable. Now every Australian that’s got a mortgage knows that’s nonsense. There’s a big difference between having a small and manageable mortgage and having one that is too big and not able to be managed. And what Labor is doing is recklessly driving us deeper and deeper into debt. We have gone from an economy that 18 months ago had no debt, that had cash at the bank to one which is heading before too long to having total debt of over $300 billion and net debt of over $200 billion.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Mr Turnbull, you say the Government’s playing a game but aren’t you, don’t you have a stunt with the debt truck in order to help drive your opinion poll ratings back up because they have been well down?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, the debt truck is an important way of drawing attention to the reality of this debt. You see, this is not a question of spin. Labor is the party of spin. They are masters at it. We can’t compete with them on that. But the one thing Australians need to know is that the debt is there, it is rising and it has to be paid for. You see you can argue up hill and down dale about the merits of particular spending programs, and some of them will be better than others. Most of what Labor has spent its money on has been fruitless but the one thing that is an inescapable, incontrovertible truth is that the higher the level of debt, the higher taxes and interest rates have to be in the future. You cannot escape that and we all know that. If we go to the bank and we take out a mortgage, we have to pay it back. We have to pay the interest off it and we have to pay the principal back.   LYNDAL CURTIS: Mr Turnbull, one final question. Is the debt truck donated or does the Liberal Party own it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: The debt truck has been obtained on commercial terms, I’m sure.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you very much.   [ends]  malcolmTue, 07 Jul 2009 00:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:524http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/523/Doorstop-Interview-in-Bunbury-Western-Australia.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=523http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=523&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/523/Doorstop-Interview-in-Bunbury-Western-Australia.aspxSubjects: Impact of Labor’s proposed changes to Youth Allowance on students from rural and regional areas; ANZ jobs figures; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending; people smuggling; the need for global consensus on climate change. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as you’ve just seen Nola and I have had this meeting here and heard the very real concerns about the way in which the Government’s changes to the Youth Allowance are going to prejudice the ability of students from this area, the South-West, and from rural and regional Australia around the nation, from having equitable access to tertiary education. These changes are very damaging, and we’ve heard real life examples form parents and form students that just underline how important it is that these changes be amended, and we’ve proposed amendments to them already, which would ensure that students who’ve taken a gap year, are relying on these existing laws, will not be prejudices, and most importantly, that students form rural and regional Australia will not be further disadvantaged by these changes to Labor’s laws and rules on the Youth Allowance. I would just make one other comment about the ANZ jobs figures. We’ve seen another set of disappointing figures in terms of job ads from the ANZ. This underlines the need for the Government to be resolutely focussed on jobs, jobs, jobs. They have to ensure that every dollar they spend and borrow is effective, and so far we’re not getting the effective jobs that we need. We’re seeing the jobs market deteriorating, and yet at the same time debt is rising every day, and the one thing that we know, and every Australian knows, is that every additional dollar of debt a Government runs up with it’s reckless spending will mean higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future, and will put a very heavy brake on our recovery from this downturn. QUESTION: Would the job figures be worse without the stimulus package? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The stimulus package has not been effective. There have been a series of ineffective spending measures – you’ve had the cash splashes, which have not created any jobs, and we’ve now seen this growing scandal involving the so-called “Building the Education Revolution” where so much money is being so poorly spent, poorly directed in terms of school infrastructure. All of us, of course, are in favour of good, well-targeted investment in schools, but we have seen so much money so poorly spent, and so little to show for it other than a bigger and bigger debt burden on the shoulders of all Australians. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you think that we may see, say, some students not actually coming back into country WA and staying in the city which would therefore be another disadvantage for country towns? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve heard first-hand evidence today – you were here, and you heard it – where people were saying that these changes might result in them having to move out of the area, move to Perth, leave the South-West. There was another lady who said in a very heartfelt way that if she’d known that these changes were going to come she’d never have moved here in the first place. So these changes that Labor is introducing are not just disadvantaging students from rural and regional Australia, they’re actually undermining rural and regional Australia by making it less attractive to live there, by imposing bigger disadvantages on the disadvantages already a consequence of geography. QUESTION: Why was it important for you to come to Bunbury today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s very important. Nola Marino is my very important colleague, and very dear colleague, and she is a fantastic representative for the South-West and the seat of Forrest. So it’s important for me to be visiting all of my colleagues, and in particular on this very vital issue of Youth Allowance, this is where the damage, if you like, is being done the hardest, the worst. So it’s important to be here with Nola to meet with her constituents and hear from them, to listen. We learn most when we listen. QUESTION: Is this your first time being here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, it’s not my first trip to Bunbury. It’s my first trip for a while though. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, what will you be doing with these peoples’ concerns? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll be taking them up with the Government, with the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. We’ll also be heading to the Senate Committee process, and we’ll be taking up the cause of these students and their families in every forum that we can. QUESTION: Have you had anyone, I guess, put out the idea that maybe Bunbury needs another university? Currently we have ECU, which I know offers nursing and teaching and things like that. Would this maybe be something looked at? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, access to education is vital everywhere, but, Nola, the Member? NOLA MARINO: There’s been a lot of talk, but I think one of the things that we really are concerned about is making the most of these educational opportunities that are available here, in looking in the broader sense, we’re going to see significant increases in population throughout the South-West over the next ten to twenty years, so there’s an element of planning forward as well, as well as offering opportunity for the existing group of young people, so I think there’s a couple of different focuses here that we have, and at the moment the Youth Allowance issue for the existing group is where we’re most looking at at the moment, but certainly the issues in the longer term are where I’m also looking at, you know, the population increases and the demand going forward. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, a couple of federal questions. The Prime Minister’s in Malaysia today, seeking agreement with the Malaysian Government on the issue of people smuggling. Would that be a step forward if an agreement could be reached? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There’s no question that it would be a big step forward if we could reach agreement with all of our neighbouring countries, Malaysia and of course in particular Indonesia, to further take action to stop people smuggling. It is a vile and insidious trade. However Mr Rudd’s efforts will be judged on results and the results so far this year are very troubling. We’re getting more and more people smuggling occurring, more and more unlawful arrivals, and this is putting an enormous strain on our resources and undermining the integrity of our immigration system. QUESTION: He’s heading off also to Italy and the meeting there of the G8 Leaders on climate change and global economy. What do you expect to come out of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll see. This is a very vexed issue. The real challenge in terms of climate change is getting an effective global agreement. The largest and fastest growing emitters are now in the developing world – China in particular – and unless there is a concerted global agreement from all the major emitters both in the developed world and in particular in the developing world to cut their emissions then we will not be able to achieve an effective cut in global emissions. So there is no solution to reducing global emissions that does not require the developing world to take effective action as well. When I say the developing world I mean particularly China and India. QUESTION: What do you make of the story the two Tonys? Is there some sense of impatience in the Party for those polls to improve? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You know, it’s interesting you’ve asked me that. It wasn’t raised by any of the people we were meeting with today. I think Australians have got much more fundamental and much more real concerns than issues like that. They’re focused on jobs, they’re focused on the economy and, particularly today, they’re focused on their children’s future and the way in which Labor’s changes to the Youth Allowance are disadvantaging the young men and women of the South West. QUESTION: But is there some growing impatience among your colleagues based on that poll last week and is there a sort of a, do you think there’s a time limit on for the polls to improve before something’s done? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The only impatience I’m discerning today is an impatience of Australians with the lack of action by the Rudd Government to really address the economic challenges we face and an impatience with the rash decision that’s been taken to change the Youth Allowance in a way that will, as we heard first hand from the lips of young people and their parents, first hand evidence we heard from them today how this is going to disadvantage them. Now what Government in its right mind would want to make it harder for young people from rural and regional Australia to get to university? It beggars belief. QUESTION: I’ll just ask you about a story from our Adelaide political correspondent about the leadership issues in the South Australian Liberal Party. And do you think the way it’s developing, is there a risk that the Liberal brand will be damaged in South Australia unless this is quickly resolved? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh look, I’m not a commentator on South Australian politics I’m afraid. QUESTION: But you’d be keen to see it resolved quickly surely? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not a commentator. I used to be a state political correspondent many years ago but it was in New South Wales and I’ve given up commenting on New South Wales politics 30 odd years ago, and I’m not going to take up a new role of political commentator, thanks. QUESTION: You talk about I guess Kevin Rudd’s lack of action here in Australia. Do you think it’s fair then that he’s travelling around the world – Malaysia, Italy. Should he be in Australia focusing on these issues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, a Prime Minister has always got to get the right balance between work at home and travel aboard and there’s obviously got to be a mix. Again, the issue is what are the results, what do we have to show for it. In terms of discussions with Malaysia or any other country in terms of people smuggling, if it results in a reduction in the number of boats then that’s a good result. At the moment we’ve seen, since Labor changed the immigration laws in terms of unlawful arrivals, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in unlawful arrivals and a dramatic increase in people smuggling so the results so far demonstrate that Labor’s policies are failing. They’re not protecting our borders. We want the Government to do a better job at that and if Mr Rudd’s visit to Malaysia can help with that, then that’s a good thing. But ultimately, ultimately, he will be judged on results. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmMon, 06 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:523http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/504/Interview-with-SBS-TV-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=504http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=504&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/504/Interview-with-SBS-TV-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: FIFA World Cup Bid 2018-2022. E & O E QUESTION: First of all Mr Turnbull, powerful words we saw in there. This bid has got bipartisan support; just talk us through the relevance of that, the significance of that please? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, both sides of politics are absolutely committed to this bid. This is a great national enterprise and it’s one of those rare occasions where the Prime Minister and I are joined at the hip as dual strikers trying to score a big goal for Australia in bringing the FIFA World Cup to Australia in 2018 or 2022. QUESTION: Some people have called this a momentous, an historic day for the game in this country. Would you echo those sentiments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: This is a great day for football in Australia, a really great day. The game has got stronger and stronger. It’s the world game. We are a nation that has been built up with people from every country in the world, and from every country in the world that people have come to Australia they have come from a country that plays football, that plays the world game. So we are a nation that reflects the diversity of the world and we will host the world game, the FIFA World Cup in 2018 or 2022 – I’m sure of that. QUESTION: We’ve heard in the speech earlier all the benefits that hosting this tournament would bring to Australia, tell us why your party is behind the idea? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we are absolutely committed, as Andrew Southcott the Shadow Sports Minister said in the House, we are absolutely committed to supporting this bid. It is a bid that can only succeed if every Australian is behind it, if every political party is behind it. We’re right behind it. We expect to be in government long before 2018 I might add, but we expect to be in government before this bid is realised and we will be giving it just as much support when we’re in government, when I’m the Prime Minister, as we are now when Mr Rudd is in government. QUESTION: The hard work begins now. We heard 18 months of political lobbying and jousting now to persuade those FIFA members to get behind the bid. You’ll be doing your bit will you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will be at Frank Lowy’s disposal, if you like. I’m sure Kevin Rudd feels the same way – whatever the Prime Minister and I can do to support the bid, Frank will no doubt let us know, he’s not known for being backward in coming forward. He’ll let us know how he believes we can help, and we will help, we’ll support him and it’s very important that Australia is seen to be completely united behind this bid. QUESTION: In these tough economic times as well we heard that it could generate up to $5 billion for the economy, not to be sniffed at? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this will be an enormous generator of visits to Australia, it raises the country’s profile. I mean this is bigger than the Olympics, just think about that, it’s bigger than the Olympics – and we all know how big that was. So this is a gigantic event. It’s the biggest sporting event in the world. QUESTION: Just finally will you be off to South Africa to cheer on the Socceroos? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’d love to be able to get there. The Prime Minister seems to be suggesting there could be a temporary political truce so we could both go together. That could be interesting. We’ll have to explore that. We’ll see whether the pressures of political life in Australia enable us to get away, because it’s not just a matter of cheering on the Socceroos, it’s also going to be a very important time for lobbying. So I think, again, Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull will be at the disposal of the Australian football team, the Australian football organisation, and its Chairman Mr Lowy to support this bid. QUESTION: Okay thanks for your time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks a lot. And can I just say one thing; SBS has done an outstanding job in promoting this game. Football would not be anywhere near where it is today in terms of its profile, its participation, without the commitment of SBS. So well done to you guys too. [ends]  malcolmMon, 15 Jun 2009 00:28:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:504http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/496/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Joe-Hockey-Parliament-House.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=496http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=496&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/496/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Joe-Hockey-Parliament-House.aspxSubjects: National accounts; Joel Fitzgibbon. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re very pleased to see the March quarter figures. They’re very encouraging. It’s good to see positive growth for that quarter. It’s a great tribute to the strength of our export sector, the ingenuity, innovation, hard work of our exporters and of course the benefits of having a flexible exchange rate. I was disappointed however to see a little while ago the Prime Minister claim victory for his economic policies. It was his mission accomplished moment, missing only an aircraft carrier and a bomber jacket. The reality is that the positive figure for March is very welcome but we should not be misled by how it is made up. The figure was point four per cent, as we know, the contributions to that differed from one sector of the economy to other. The contribution from net exports was 2.2 per cent. So that very strong result from the external sector of our economy is the reason why we have a positive number for the March quarter – and that is a very welcome development. However, we have to recognise that the domestic economy remains weak and that is shown by a fall of one percentage point for domestic demand, a fall in housing investment – both domestic residential construction and non-residential construction. Across the board there have been declines in economic activity other than for household consumption where there was a small increase – and that’s welcome too. So we have to keep this in proportion. We have a long way to go in dealing with these challenges confronting us. Mr Rudd said, after he got over his initial triumphalism, he said that we are not out of the woods – and we certainly agree with him there; we are not out of the woods by any means – but the problem we face is that we have a Prime Minister who does not know the way out of the woods. His spending and borrowing binge has contributed very little to these figures, very little indeed. His cash splashes have obviously done nothing to promote exports and, given that the net exports figure was contributed to by both an increase in exports and a decline in imports, he can’t claim credit for either of those factors. So this has been a good result. It is a tribute to the strength of the private sector, a sector which Mr Rudd said earlier today is in retreat. It demonstrates the strength of our economy, an economy whose strength was built up over the period of Coalition Government, and it’s a reminder too of the importance of ensuring that our focus is always on the real consequences of these economic developments – jobs, Australian jobs. The fact of the matter is that our domestic economy is still slowing – the Reserve Bank said that only the other day, only yesterday – and that has consequences for jobs. We have to be focussed on policies that will promote jobs. Now what Mr Rudd has done is borrow and spend an enormous amount of money with no discernable effective, positive economic impact – even though he claims credit for the efforts of others – but what it has done is put a larger and larger and less sustainable burden of debt, both on our shoulders and those of our children. Because while we can debate economic outcomes through any scenario, the one thing that is beyond argument is that the higher the level of government debt, the higher interest rates will be and the higher taxes will be and the heavier a burden, the heavier a weight will be placed on Australia as we pull out of this downturn in the months and the years ahead. Joe, do you want to add something to that? JOE HOCKEY: Thanks Malcolm. I think the economy today should be pleased with the fact that exports have proven to be incredibly strong and resilient. In many ways this proves that our economic destiny is more closely linked with the Asian economy than it is with the European or the American economies, and the fact that we have avoided a technical recession is obviously very pleasing. It should be pleasing and should be a big boost to confidence. There are some challenges in the numbers and I think what we will see is over the next few days, as economists start to look carefully at the details, there will be a number of issues to address. For example gross national expenditure slumped one per cent quarter on quarter, suggesting that it was only the tumble in import volumes that prevented a negative quarter and business investment fell 6.1 per cent, which is very significant for jobs going into the future because obviously business employs people. So the wage payers are hurting and that is going to have an impact on the wage earners. And, as Malcolm quite rightly said, the fact of the matter is that if it was a day to have Mr Rudd’s celebration, why is unemployment rising? Why are more people going to be out of jobs? When the Prime Minister claimed ‘mission accomplished’ this morning he left behind those people that are significantly going to face unemployment over the next few months, if not years. So there is some way to go. It is a positive data series out today but obviously the most impressive fact is that our exports continued to grow in the last quarter. QUESTION: …seriously unwilling to give Kevin Rudd even a scrap of credit for the Australian economy being, as he has described it, the only advanced economy that’s not going backwards? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, rather than argue the point with you, there is a… we’re not in Parliament so we can still use these. Here is a table which shows the contribution to the result. There’s the result – point four per cent GDP – and the black lines are all for March and so you can net exports is the big contributor. Everything else is negative except for a modest increase in consumer spending. That, if I might say, is the only part that Mr Rudd could claim to have had any influence on overall. QUESTION: Will you give him that, will you give him that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we have never denied that the cash splashes will have some impact on consumer, on household consumption. They have to. You can’t give away $23 billion and have no impact at all. The question is: how much impact? And was it worth the huge level of debt that was incurred to fund it? But that table tells the story. There’s the total outcome, and you can see what the big contributor was, it’s this column, which is net exports. That’s the point I made. QUESTION: Aren’t you just nitpicking when you really….when your political strategy has actually been embarrassed given that household consumption has gone up by point six per cent? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, what we are doing is telling the truth. QUESTION: So telling the truth, does the Government’s spending on infrastructure, is it likely to have any impact on economic activity and jobs going forward? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Lenore of course, every dollar a government spends within Australia has some impact on economic activity. The question is: does it have net benefit? Is it worthwhile? Because every dollar the Government borrows and spends is a dollar that was not available to somebody else. There’s an opportunity cost. So the question is… Sorry? QUESTION: Is infrastructure spending worthwhile? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it depends on which piece of infrastructure spending you’re talking about. QUESTION: [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Lenore, again it depends on schools. I was talking to somebody the other day, a mother who was very concerned about a large amount of government funding that had been given to a particular school when she said that the school didn’t actually need that and that is was being….. QUESTION: … not on the P&C? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think you’re very familiar with her actually. Next question? QUESTION: Mr Turnbull the household savings ration has fallen, doesn’t that disprove your contention only a few months ago that the cash handouts would be saved and not spent? They have been spent because household consumption is up. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’ll wait and see what the….there’s a number of factors that feed into that David, as you know. The latest figures we have seen is that the bulk of the money has either been saved or used to pay down debt. The last figure I saw about the December cash splash, which is the only one for which we can have any meaningful figures on, was an indication that had been about 80 per cent saved. That’s to say only about 20 per cent had been spent. QUESTION: So that’s one of your main arguments, but I’m saying the data out today shows household savings ratio has fallen? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there are a number of other factors that feed into it, David. The cash splash is not the only source of income or cash available to households, as you know. QUESTION: Do you now believe that Australia will avoid a technical recession? And also some economists would say that even if we’re not in a recession according to that measure, we are in recession. Do you think that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, you get into a debate about definitions and language. If the economy is contracting, if growth is contracting and if people are losing their jobs then most people would say, in a common sense way, that we’re in a recession. But you’re quite right that the technical definition is two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Many cynics said that Mr Rudd’s cash splashes were a trap in more ways than one, not just a debt trap but a trap in the sense that they were a technical recession avoidance program. QUESTION: [Inaudible] keep out of that trap? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will see. You can see from the figures I showed earlier that this huge contribution from net exports, that is the big factor. I mean, if that contribution had been only a little less then we would have had a negative quarter. Now, it has benefited, that sector, net exports has benefited from a number of things but one of those is the depreciation in the Australian dollar which is now rising again. So that is going to feed in, that will work against as positive a result as that in the next quarter, in the quarters to come. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, what do you say to Wayne Swan’s claim today that the negative strategy of our Opposition to oppose economic stimulus is completely shredded by these figures? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I would say, in the words of another political commentator, he would say that, wouldn’t he? QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Mr Rudd said just a while ago that without the stimulus packages the March figure would have minus point two per cent instead of plus point four we would have been in technical recession. Was he just speaking out of his hat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I haven’t seen the calculations or the assumptions underpinning that. Look, Mr Swan and Mr Rudd can say what they like about this and they will spin like crazy, you know what they’re like. The fact is that every economist, every economic writer in this country will be making exactly the same observation that Joe and I have made here today, which is that the biggest factor, overwhelmingly the biggest factor has been the very positive contribution from net exports. That is what has offset negative contributions, negative growth, in the domestic economy overall. QUESTION: [Inaudible] pushed it over the line, though, he’s not denying the export contribution but he’s just saying his stimulus gave it a little nudge into the positive. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, you know, he’s asserted that. They’ve made a number of economic assumptions over the last few months, many of which have had to be revised. I mean, I’m not suggesting that Wayne Swan’s economic forecasts are as unreliable as Joel Fitzgibbon’s register of interests but I think you’ve got to look at it very carefully, in both cases. QUESTION: Are Treasury’s numbers dodgy because he was relying on that he [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: I just haven’t seen them, Paul. I’m not going to comment on a set of numbers of assumptions that I haven’t seen. If Mr Swan wants to share them with us we would be happy to give him a view. But, you know, the reality is the domestic economy overall went backwards, the external economy, the external sector overall went forwards by 0.4 per cent more. That’s why the result is where it is and that’s the outcome. Well, this is what UBS, Scott Haslam from UBS said and I’ll just quote him, he said, “the weak state of the economy in early 2009 is evident when abstracting from the external sector which added 2.2 percentage points to GDP in that quarter.” So what I’ve said to you is no more than an accurate analysis of the numbers. Now, the Government wants to put a spin on it. We’re not suggesting that their cash payments haven’t had a contribution, but I’m saying it’s had a modest contribution. The reason we’ve had a positive quarter is because of an increase in exports and a decline in imports giving an increase in net exports. QUESTION: Is there anything in these numbers…these national accounts which give you any cause to rethink your economic approach, economic policy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, Dennis, there is no question, absolutely no question at all… Actually, let me answer this slightly differently. You will recall yesterday in Question Time I asked the Prime Minister a question, a very straight-forward question to the effect of what will be the impact of $315 billion of borrowing – that’s what they’ve said is going to be their peak borrowing – on future interest rates. A perfectly reasonable question. He would not answer it. And he knows what the answer is. The more the Government borrows the more upward pressure it puts on interest rates. The more it borrows the higher taxes have got to be to pay it back. So the fact of the matter is, we are concerned as are, in our view, most Australians concerned, the overwhelming majority of Australians are concerned about the level of debt this Government is piling on to the shoulders of Australians. Now, they have grabbed at this figure and said, ‘aha, this justifies our activities’. But you don’t have to unpick these numbers very far to see that the contribution, the reason we’ve had a positive outcome in the quarter – which is very welcome – is because of our external sector, because of the increase in exports and the decline in imports. And the decline in imports is partly because of the exchange rate, which made imports more expensive, and also because of a collapse in demand, and particularly in terms of business investment. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull you mentioned Mr Fitzgibbon. The Prime Minister was asked about the change in the register of interests and he described it as a modest mistake and said he’s apologised and that’s that. Is that that as far as you’re concerned? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it’s like Groundhog Day, isn’t it? You know, Joel Fitzgibbon commits one more blunder and the Prime Minister says it’s just a modest blunder and we just go on and on and on. At what point do all of these blunders, at what point will the Prime Minister reach the same conclusion that everybody else has which is that the Defence Minister is an incompetent and isn’t capable or fit to hold the important office that he has. QUESTION: One of your shadow ministers asked a question on Monday about whether or not there was more to declare. Do you believe that there is more to declare? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it’s not a question of belief. It’s up to Mr Fitzgibbon. He seems to be unable to give anybody an adequate level of confidence that his register of interests is up to date. QUESTION: Can you guarantee everyone on your side has their pecuniary interests up to date? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I can guarantee that everybody on my side is fully aware of their obligations and to the best of my knowledge have complied with it. QUESTION: Can you tell us the changes to the arrangements that you’ve made for your party room meetings? You’ve asked people not to bring mobile phones in anymore. Is there anything else you have in mind; discreet bouncers perhaps, [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, well it’s often been discussed whether to have or not have mobile phones in the meetings and we’ve agreed to keep them out of the meeting. Joe and I think it’s a very good measure. I know the Press Gallery thinks it’s a very bad move. We think it’s a good move and not just for reasons of discretion, because I think it will mean the meetings won’t go so long. They’ll be shorter. Okay guys, thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmTue, 02 Jun 2009 21:07:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:496http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/493/Malcolm-speaks-with-Barrie-Cassidy-on-Insiders.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=493http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=493&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/493/Malcolm-speaks-with-Barrie-Cassidy-on-Insiders.aspxE & O E BARRIE CASSIDY: Malcolm Turnbull, good morning. Welcome. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Barrie. BARRIE CASSIDY: So you went into that party room and came out of it with a con? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Penny Wong is just running the lines as you would expect her to. Our position is a very sensible one. I think most Australians recognise that. The fact of the matter is that we are all committed to reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. The most important thing for Kevin Rudd to take to Copenhagen is a commitment to targets and we have given him bipartisan support for that. In fact when the Danish environment minister, who of course will be hosting the conference, was out in Australia recently, she met with my colleagues Andrew Robb and Greg Hunt and she said that she wasn't concerned about what scheme or structure we had to reduce our emissions. That was a matter for us. What she was concerned about was a commitment to targets. And so we've given Mr Rudd support for that. So he goes to Copenhagen with support for targets. And what we must do with the scheme, of course, is get it right. We've got to have a scheme that is environmentally effective and economically responsible. And what the Government has at the moment is a moving feast. They’re sitting down today apparently planning yet more changes. There's no certainty offered to business. And the reality is, as we all know, is even if we were to pass something this year, once the Americans have legislated and once Copenhagen is concluded we’d have to amend it anyway. So why not get it right early next year. BARRIE CASSIDY: Are you still in favour of an emissions trading scheme? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes Barrie, I am. I am in favour of putting a price on carbon. There are really only two ways, well there are only two principal ways you can do that. You can have a carbon tax or you can have an emissions trading scheme. The world is moving – there are arguments for both – the world is moving very solidly in the direction of an emissions trading scheme, most notably the Americans. So yes, I've got no doubt we will have an emissions trading scheme in Australia. That's my view. The question is, what is its design. That is going to be very heavily influenced by the decision in the United States. That will be the global benchmark. So, given that the American legislation is likely to be passed by the end of the year, why wouldn't we wait until we saw what that legislation said, saw what was agreed at Copenhagen and then we could act in a way that was fully informed. I might add Barrie, the Canadians are taking exactly the course of action that we are recommending so this is not just a, this is not an idiosyncratic Coalition view from Australia. The developed economy with the economy most similar to ours, that is to say Canada, is doing exactly what we're recommending. So it's common sense. BARRIE CASSIDY: But it does appear though as if the Nationals will never support an emissions trading scheme. Are you in those circumstances prepared to split with the Nationals and go your own way on policy and tactics? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie you've got to remember that we supported an emissions trading scheme when we were in government. It was a Howard Government initiative, an emissions trading scheme. A very different design to that proposed by Mr Rudd and Penny Wong and one which would have protected our trade-exposed emissions-intensive industries and would have protected Australian jobs, but they've set that aside and gone off on a different tack. BARRIE CASSIDY: Yes but the Nationals have hardened their position since then. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie the reality is, look, if you go back a year nobody would have said that it was likely the Americans would pass an emissions trading scheme legislation this year. Now I've got friends on both sides of the aisle in Washington, Democrats and Republicans, and they are all confident that the legislation will be passed this year, and if it's not actually finally passed this year, it will be, the terms of it will be agreed. Now that is a huge change. You add that to a new sense of momentum towards Copenhagen and I think we could easily find ourselves, very likely to find ourselves early next year in a political environment where the biggest developed economy has set up an emissions trading scheme, the world has agreed or the major economies have agreed on an approach to reduce emissions and naturally Australia and all sides of politics will want Australia to play its part, not for Australia to stand outside. BARRIE CASSIDY: So you're convinced in those circumstances then if the Americans do adopt an ETS, you can convince your National Party colleagues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie, I have no doubt that if the United States establishes an emissions trading scheme, then Australians will expect us to follow suit as part of an effective global agreement. You know, we get back to the fundamental point, and I know this will be hotly debated by your panel a little later, but the fundamental fact of life is this, is that whatever we do by ourselves is ineffective unless it is part of a global agreement. That's always been the big question mark. Now it appears that the enormous political capital that President Obama has has been sufficient to drive this legislation through the Congress. It will carry through the House, and, as I said, my intelligence is it will go through the Senate. Now that may be wrong but if what we all expect to happen happens, surely it makes common sense for us to get the scheme right. I mean we've got our biggest export industry – coal – talking about losing tens of thousands of jobs thanks to Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd's incompetently designed scheme, for no environmental gain. And they're saying to us, ‘you must sign up to this immediately’. Why would we sign up to a scheme that is going to do nothing for the environment and put tens of thousands of Australians out of work? Why would we do that? BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay, so then you block it next month, you block it again in October, presumably then the Government has a double dissolution trigger. Now you're miles behind in the polls. Why would you give them both the opportunity and the excuse for an early election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie it's only the Prime Minister who can call an election. That's up to him. So you should address all of those questions to him, not me. We will vote in the Senate according to what we believe is the right policy. We've obviously got to take into account the political circumstances. What we are putting up is a sensible approach, which is to defer the vote on the scheme, not for six years, not for a year – literally for about six months until after Copenhagen. We could come back straight after. We could come back you know in early January. But practically speaking, by early Feb, by February when the Parliament comes back, we will know exactly what the Americans have legislated, we'll know exactly what's been agreed at Copenhagen. We will be fully informed. Why wouldn't you want to make as momentous a decision as this when you are fully informed. See this rush to get the legislation passed is an exercise in vanity because Kevin Rudd wants to go to Copenhagen and be a big shot. And I might say, Penny Wong talked about a con, Barrie. Let me tell you what the big con is. The dirty little secret of the Labor Government is that the guts of this scheme, the essential details of the scheme are actually in the regulations, which are rules made by governments administratively, not legislated by Parliament, as you know. Now those regulations have not yet been published. And they are what will determine the scheme. They are what will determine what protection different industries will get. And they are not being presented to the Parliament for voting. BARRIE CASSIDY: Right, you did say then though that when you're considering whether or not you allow the, give the Government a trigger for a double dissolution, you will take political matters into consideration. Surely one of those political matters – there will be a genuine deadlock and there will be a genuine issue. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie, there may well be. The Government has changed its position on the emissions trading scheme frequently. I've got no doubt they are going to abandon the hardline, job destroying position they've taken on coal, to some extent. Whether they abandon it completely, time will tell. They've already put back the commencement date of the scheme. And you see, here again is a practical question: if the scheme is not going to start in truth until 2012, and if there is a vital input – i.e. the legislation in America and Copenhagen that will be known by the end of this year, 2010 – why would you rush to finalise the legislation in advance of that? There's just no justification for it. This is an ego trip by Kevin Rudd. BARRIE CASSIDY: Well to give the business community some certainty so that they know what they're dealing with. MALCOLM TURNBULL: But Barrie that is absolute tripe. Absolute tripe. Look, the fact of the matter is, the thing that matters to the business community is the regulations. The Parliament is not going to be voting on the regulations. The Government hasn't even drawn them up or published them. The deal for industry allocations is still up in the air. The Government has acknowledged to business leaders, just in the course of the last week, that whatever they promulgate this year will be amended after Copenhagen and the US legislation anyway. Look, let me put this to you. You're a political pundit. Do you think it would be politically viable for the Australian Government to offer its Australian workers less protection under an emissions trading scheme than an American emissions trading scheme offers American workers? The answer to that is obviously no. So the fact is, whatever the Americans legislate will be the global benchmark and will require, if the scheme is passed this year, amendment next year. So there is no certainty. That is a humbug. BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay, according to a report in The Australian you've told many of your colleagues that you will move on if you lose the next election. Do you mean by that that you will move on from the leadership or move on from politics altogether? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, the only meaning of that is that is an invention by the imaginative journalist in The Australian. I've said no such thing. BARRIE CASSIDY: You haven't contemplated... MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am committed to politics for the long term, I can assure you. BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay, no matter what happens? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I'm committed to politics for the long term, Barrie, believe me. BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay. You took a bit of a hammering this week in the Parliament for voting against various infrastructure projects, particularly those in the schools. In retrospect, how do you reconcile that vote? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie, we put up, Kevin Rudd came along with a $42 billion spending package which included some spending on schools, it included a $14 billion cash handout. We said it was too big because it was incurring far too much debt. We said that a lot of its components particularly the cash splash were going to be economically ineffective. I mean the idea that a government would go and borrow $14 billion and then give it away is just, it is not just unprecedented, until a few months ago it would've been unimaginable, but that's the level of the recklessness... BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah you were opposed to that part of it but surely they've trapped you now. They've trapped you because you've voted against all of these projects and then a lot of your members are out there welcoming them. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Barrie we haven't voted against any projects. What we voted against was the overall package. We put up an alternative... BARRIE CASSIDY: It's the same thing. MALCOLM TURNBULL: …which would have involved spending money on schools but not so much; spending $3 billion instead of $14 billion and spending it in a more targeted and effective way, for example. We put up an alternative package which would have cost less than half as much, which the Government refused to accept. So the reality is the reason we voted against the Government's package was because they were not prepared to negotiate on something different. But you know this whole farce of Kevin Rudd standing up in Parliament showing pictures of school gates and bulldozers, I mean, it really is reducing, it's demeaning Parliament. Remember it's only a few years ago he said he was going to raise parliamentary standards. I don't think any of us have ever seen a Prime Minister demean himself and demean the Parliament more than he did this week. And really what he's doing, as I said in Parliament, he's borrowing billions of dollars, putting this massive debt on the shoulders of Australians, borrowing billions to blackmail members of Parliament. So what he's doing is borrowing billions of dollars and then spraying it around the country and then saying to each member of Parliament, ‘oh so because you have concerns about that debt you don't agree with this amount of money being spent in such and such a school’. And you know he'll no doubt be calling up people to stand up and say, I got my $900 and it's outrageous that the Coalition thinks that shouldn't have been spent. He will stop at nothing. BARRIE CASSIDY: Given the nature of the financial crisis at the moment, how did you manage to grow your wealth and make it onto the BRW rich list? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look Barrie, Lucy and I have been in business, well, all of our lives. We've worked hard. We've started a lot of small businesses. We've been persistent. We've been enterprising. We've had a go. We've been successful. We've had a degree of good fortune in that. A lot of people work very hard and are not successful in financial terms; so we've been financially successful. And it gives both of us, and obviously me as a politician, a very good insight into small business, into the challenges that business faces and into the need for responsible economic management. And people know when I talk about business, when I talk about economic management, I'm talking about something I've lived my whole life. BARRIE CASSIDY: And you've said that the listing is inaccurate. Was it too high or too low? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Barrie, look I don't go around calculating my net worth. Can I tell you, the only financial figures I am acutely focused on at the moment is the massive amount of debt Kevin Rudd is piling onto Australians. This is the biggest challenge we face, getting that debt under control, because everything depends on it. How much money will we have to spend on the environment, on hospitals and schools, on roads, on anything, if we are saddled with over $300 billion of debt and rising? I mean those debt figures... BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah but your best estimate or Joe Hockey's best estimate is that your debt would be $275 billion. You're not really that far apart. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No that's not true Barrie. Barrie you are, I'm sure inadvertently, just repeating Kevin Rudd's line. That’s not what Joe said. BARRIE CASSIDY: But Joe Hockey said it would be $25 billion less. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No he didn't. Well I can tell you exactly what he said. He was asked how much lower our debt would be and he said, well for a start it would be at least $25 billion lower, and then went on to describe a number of other factors. I mean the point is that had we... BARRIE CASSIDY: Well then, let's get it accurately on the record then. How much less would it be? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie, it would be a lot less... BARRIE CASSIDY: A lot less. MALCOLM TURNBULL: …and I will explain why. BARRIE CASSIDY: No, no, if you could give us a very precise idea about how much less. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Barrie, it isn't possible to provide, for us in Opposition any more than any other Opposition has done, to provide an alternate Budget down to every last dollar and cent. We don't have the resources to do that. You've got to remember that the Government has been in office for 18 months and it has made a whole series of decisions which have weakened the Australian economy. What about talking up inflation last year? What about those interest rate rises which we didn't need last year? What about the unlimited bank deposit guarantee that shattered the non-bank financial sector... BARRIE CASSIDY: Although we are running out of time. But we'll just have to settle with a lot less, right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: A great deal less and Australians know that. And they know that only the Coalition has the discipline and the character to get this Labor debt under control. BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay. Thanks for your time this morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you, Barrie. [ends]  malcolmSun, 31 May 2009 03:51:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:493http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/490/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Warren-Truss-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=490http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=490&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/490/Joint-Press-Conference-with-Warren-Truss-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Climate change: getting in step with the world; Sol Trujillo E&OE Now the Coalition will offer bipartisan support to the Government for the carbon abatement targets Australia takes to the Copenhagen climate change conference in December. Those targets are, as you know, an unconditional five per cent reduction from 2000 levels by 2020 and a reduction of up to 25 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 subject to a global agreement being reached to achieve a substantial reduction in global emissions. Now this enables Mr Rudd to go to Copenhagen in the knowledge that the entire Parliament or at least the Government and the Opposition support the targets he is taking there. It’s a rare degree of bipartisan support and I imagine few national leaders will go to Copenhagen with that degree of support. Now as far as the emissions trading scheme legislation is concerned, we are being asked to consider that and vote on it now when Copenhagen is only six months away and when we have in the United States the Obama Administration well advanced in bringing its legislation to establish an American emissions trading scheme through the Congress. This is the Waxman-Markey Bill. Now, already it is plain that that legislation gives much greater protection to the importing and exporting competing industries upon which so many millions of American jobs depend, gives much greater protection to those businesses than Mr Rudd is proposing to give to similar Australian businesses under his scheme. Now it must be obvious, even to the most committed climate change zealot in the Government, that it would be absurd for Australia’s emissions trading scheme to give our trade-exposed businesses less protection than that which is offered in the United States. This American legislation is likely to be passed by the end of the year and certainly its final form will be well known before Copenhagen. For that reason the Canadian Government has decided to stand back in terms of progressing its own legislation and wait and see what the final shape of the American legislation is and of course what emerges from Copenhagen. We should do the same. Common sense and prudence, the importance of getting this right, of pursuing a practical outcome that is effective for the environment and does not destroy jobs, demands that the decision on the scheme and on the final design of the scheme should be postponed until after Copenhagen, by which stage we will not only know what the world has agreed to do at Copenhagen but, most importantly, we will know exactly what the United States has resolved to do with their emissions trading scheme. Now I know that Mr Rudd, in his vanity, wants to go to Copenhagen with his own legislation and he no doubt believes that the rest of the world will be so taken with his cleverness that they will all line up and copy what he has done in Australia. Now that may be a dream of his, but it is a fantasy. The reality is that the debate in America is proceeding. The scheme that they adopt and the rules they adopt will be by far the most influential benchmark around the world and it is a vital element in Australia’s interest for us to take into consideration when we finalise our own carbon emission reduction arrangements. So that is our position on the legislation. We will vote to defer it until after Copenhagen, which will also be after the US scheme, the US legislation is concluded. Now the other point that I want to make is that we are committed to early and effective action on climate change. Just as we criticise the Government for its haste in rushing the finalisation of this scheme through in a way that runs the risk of getting it drastically wrong and out of step with the rest of the world, so there are important measures to reduce emissions, be it in terms of energy efficiency or green carbon, as we’ve called it, biosequestration, soil carbon and other areas of individual action that are being overlooked. And so we propose that from the 1st of January there be a government authorised voluntary carbon market working in a similar way to the Chicago Climate Exchange so that individuals, firms, businesses, farms can undertake their own actions to reduce emissions, to create offsets, which would then be able to be banked against a future emissions trading scheme when that is enacted in the future. In other words, you add on to a voluntary carbon market the ability to carry forward those credits and bank them and credit them against your obligations in the future. This would certainly provide a real stimulus to that important area of voluntary action. Now finally, given that we are proposing that there be a period of deferment before the legislation is voted on, we are also recommending to the Government, and will seek to amend the legislation to provide for this, that there be a reference to the Productivity Commission so that there can be a thorough examination of the scheme, its impacts, likely variance to the scheme, its relationship with the United States’ arrangements and in particular the impact on jobs, both on an industry and on a regional basis. The Government has absolutely ducked the question of the impact of this scheme on jobs. This will be, the way they have set it up at the moment, this will be a job destroying scheme for very little environmental gain and the Productivity Commission is well placed to examine that with great exactitude and great skill over the next six months. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull aren’t you, in effect, by moving to defer this bill, defeating it – the real message is, start again? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well no. It’s up to the Government what they want to do. Look, if I was the Prime Minister today – and I say this to you as someone that is very committed to reducing Australia’s CO2 emissions and very committed to a global agreement – if I was the Prime Minister today I would not be finalising our scheme until after we had seen what had happened at Copenhagen and what the outcome of the United States legislative process was. Now, I’ve been saying this for quite a long time, for some time, I think ever since we went into Opposition and we started considering this issue of timing. You’ve got to remember Mr Rudd created an artificial timetable. He was the one who said in the election campaign the scheme will start in 2010 therefore, naturally, the legislation had to be completed in 2009. Now, that was a political decision by him. That’s why it was always more appropriate for the scheme to start later, not simply to delay the economic impact of it, because of the current economic downturn, but so that we could get the details of it right. You see, this is not a question of are you in favour of an emissions trading scheme, yes or no. The question is: will the scheme work, what is it going to do to jobs? Jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s the key priority. And what Mr Rudd is proposing now already is a scheme that provides Australian businesses and Australian jobs with dramatically less protection than that which is being offered by President Obama to American industries and American workers in his own country. QUESTION: What does Australian business think of your proposals and in particular the voluntary carbon market? Does that give them some sort of certainty that they have been asking for? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the whole idea of a voluntary carbon market will be very welcomed. Andrew and Greg can talk about that in a moment if you would like to go in to more detail on that. But there is a lot of support for that and of course it has a great precedent in the Chicago Climate Exchange which has been going for a long time. QUESTION: If you can’t delay this legislation, will you vote it down? And also if the Government were to emulate the trade-exposed compensation proposed by the United States, would you vote for it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Lenore, it’s up to the Government. If the Government does not take the opportunity to get the scheme right then we will not vote for it, plainly. Let me be quite clear about that. But, you see, the difficultly with Kevin Rudd trying to play catch-up with developments in the United States is that there is a 964-page bill that is going through the Congress. That is the single most important piece of climate change legislation in the world. It will be the benchmark, and common sense and prudence dictates that what we should do is defer the final consideration of our scheme until we have seen what finally emerges from the Congress and the Administration and what emerges from Copenhagen and that means we should be dealing with this … QUESTION: [Inaudible]… and then emulated the US compensation, would you vote for it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Lenore, we will look at what happens after Copenhagen but, plainly, if there is a global agreement then Australia should be part of it, and we have always been committed to that. QUESTION: Is your vote contingent on more than just the US legislation? I mean, for instance, many of our trade-exposed industries compete not with the US but with developing countries. So do you have conditions in you position about how we should compare with what developing countries do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Lenore, the point of the matter is that in the United States legislation already there is – and this is a bill, right, so it’s got a way to go, quite a way to go – in this legislation already there is substantial protection for American, what we call, trade-exposed industries, export and export competing industries. Now those protections are much more substantial, much more considerable, than offered by Kevin Rudd and they go for a lot longer. In fact, they continue indefinitely until the bulk of the world has got a similar cost on carbon. Now this is basically what we were saying when we were in government with Shergold’s plan, you may recall. So it has taken a long time for Kevin Rudd to wake up to the fact that he has gone off on a very dangerous tangent with his scheme. But for the sake of six months, let’s get this right. Let’s not sacrifice Australian jobs on the altar of Kevin Rudd’s vanity. QUESTION: Do you believe in your position strongly enough to risk a double D, because a deferral is under the Constitution a failure to pass, so it’s the same as rejecting a bill? Do you believe, is what you are saying, sorry, the strength of your conviction, are you ready to go to an election on this if the Government… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I can’t call a double dissolution. That’s up to Kevin Rudd. If he wants to, well, it’s entirely up to him. If he wants to rush through a scheme before we know what the Americans’ legislation will say, recognising that will be the benchmark – and let’s be real, America is the biggest economy in the world. It’s the biggest emitter of CO2 in the world second only, or it’s just ahead of China. So what the Americans do is the critical element – that’s the critical factor. The arrangement they reach with China at Copenhagen – that is the deal. That’s what it’s all about. Now common sense says if you are genuine about protecting the climate, if you are genuine about protecting jobs you seek to get this right and you get it right by deferring the final consideration until after you know what has happened. QUESTION: Do you think you can get the necessary support in the Senate for a deferral – and that seems to depend on Nick Xenophon? Have you had talks with him about this? Are you confident you can persuade him with this American argument? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Michelle, I talk to the senators and members all the time. I certainly talk to Senator Xenophon. You will have to talk to him. I am not going to speak for him. But certainly he is very alert to the flaws, the very serious flaws in this legislation. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, just on an aligned issue, would a Turnbull Government move for, promote the use of nuclear energy in Australia as a means to reduce emissions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, our position on nuclear energy is the same as it was when we were in government. It should be one of the energy options for Australia but it is not a viable, it’s not a practical option, Matthew, until it has strong bipartisan political support and it has obviously got to pass environmental safeguards and have the support from the community. But the reality is, the practical reality is that nuclear energy is such a long term investment that nobody is going to undertake the investment to build a nuclear power station in Australia unless and until there is bipartisan support for it. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Senator Xenophon only wants to delay up until September. That means you do not have his support to delay it until after Copenhagen. Does that mean that you will have to defeat it in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you can talk to Senator Xenophon and report on what he says. I am telling you, Warren and I are here as the Leader of the Liberal Party and Leader of the National Party, we are telling you what the Coalition will vote do and that is to defer it. QUESTION: Mr Truss, you called this scheme a rabid dog that needs to be put down. Would you vote for something like that’s going through Congress at the moment? In respect to Lenore’s question, if the Rudd Government came up with a US-type system which gives 100 per cent protection to big emitters, is that something the National Party would look at or would you not vote for anything? WARREN TRUSS: Well the National Party is strongly opposed to the Rudd Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We believe that it will be very damaging to Australian industry and the Australian economy at a time when it can ill-afford additional shocks. The evidence before the Senate Committee made it clear that industry after industry would be forced offshore as a result of the measures proposed in this legislation – mining, gas, electricity generation would be adversely affected, food processing, manufacturing – a whole range of industries. It exports jobs and, once more, it also would do nothing for the environment because essentially industries would relocate in other places. Now on the other hand, we want to take a constructive approach towards the issues. If there is an international agreement on the context of an emissions trading scheme, well then our concerns about the disadvantage to Australian industry disappear. If the whole world is moving constructively together with a common set of goals and objectives and rules across the world, then in reality our concerns about the disadvantage to Australian industry are dissipated. QUESTION: Is there an emissions trading scheme in any form that the National Party would consider supporting given your concerns that you’ve constantly expressed about the effects that it would have on agriculture and the mining sector etc? WARREN TRUSS: Well the Australian scheme is probably the harshest that is under consideration anywhere in the world. It would place Australian industry at a disadvantage in every sector. If I may just turn briefly even to the farm sector. The United States has proposals and has a system which would potentially enable farmers to benefit from being able to play a positive role in carbon sequestration activities but would not include them in measuring for emissions. Now that I think is a very constructive way and a way in which, even under our proposed voluntary carbon trading scheme, agriculture would be able to make a significant contribution towards achieving this five per cent target that we’ve set, or agreed to support, without pain being inflicted on Australian industry. So if there is an emissions trading scheme that’s adopted globally, that in fact represents an effort by the planet to address climate change issues, then it doesn’t favour one country over another, and that is our chief objection to the Australian scheme. QUESTION: How much chance do you give of getting that agreement, zero? WARREN TRUSS: Well there is a meeting in Copenhagen. That’s a critical meeting. It’s the globe’s first chance to actually put together a constructive international scheme and I think, frankly, the world deserves a right to be given that opportunity, and we’ll look at what the outcome is on the basis of the willingness of countries around the world to take on the appropriate measures. If you look again, if I may just take up briefly Malcolm Turnbull’s point about the US legislation, it caters for arrangements where the rest of the world may move at a slower pace, where some countries may move at a slower pace than others by ensuring that trade-exposed industries have their involvement in the scheme time to essentially coordinate international activity. The problem with the Rudd scheme is he’s determined to be out in places where no one else wants to be and the cost to Australian jobs and Australian industry will be catastrophic and the Nationals will never support that kind of scheme. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I just add something to what Warren’s just said. Look, I’ve represented Australia at climate change negotiations and I well understand people being sceptical about the likelihood of reaching global agreements, but I have to say to you there has been a remarkable lift in momentum. The legislation that is now before the US Congress has very broad support. Talking to our friends in Washington, they are very confident it will be passed this year and if it’s not actually finally signed into law by President Obama before Copenhagen we will know exactly what it says. Now, if you go back even a year, a lot of people would have been very sceptical that the Congress would get that far. So President Obama has enormous political capital. He’s very committed to this. I think we’re going to see legislation in the United States which will be the benchmark and which obviously would be huge input into the finalisation of any arrangements we have here, and that momentum I think will carry through to Copenhagen. So having, you know, been somewhat sceptical about the likelihood of a great result in Copenhagen in the past I think there is a degree of momentum now which may result in an effective agreement there. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull you and Mr Truss seem to be talking across purposes, you’re talking about the Obama Administration and Mr Truss is talking about an international agreement which may be well-off into the never never. The fact is there’s still a great scepticism from the Nationals about any agreement unless it’s international, as if the rest of the world has to do it before Australia is dragged into this process. Going back to Phil’s question Mr Truss, if the Rudd Government did a carbon copy of the US Administration’s proposal, would you support it? WARREN TRUSS: Well we need to see the legislation in detail. The US legislation is being used as an example of a scheme that is less industry damaging than what’s being proposed in Australia. I don’t believe we’re at cross purposes at all. We’re both talking about both the US legislation and an international agreement – and the US legislation does accommodate the fact that some countries will come on board at a later stage than others by the various industry by industry triggers that are associated with the draft. Now, as others have commented, the US legislation is only at a draft stage at this point. It’s got to go through the processes on the Hill and we all know that they can be convoluted – and so I wouldn’t want to pass a judgement on the US legislation as it stands at the present time. But I would say to you that it is one model that is worthy of consideration, as is the Canadian model, that attracts quite a lot of interest, and indeed some of the other ideas that countries are examining around the world and Copenhagen has a key role to look at, not just delivering a level of commitment from around the world, but the form in which some kind of acceptable international trading mechanism might work. QUESTION: Business and industry groups have been running this line about a needing investment certainly and I assume they’ll probably run it today in response to what you’ve announced, are those claims overblown, can they wait til next year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: They certainly can. Passing the legislation next month is not going to give industry certainty, in fact asking someone whether they are in favour of Rudd’s ETS today is a difficult question for anybody to answer because the ETS is changing every day. Greg Combet is in intense negations with the coal industry, which is most dramatically affected by this very badly designed emissions trading scheme, and I’ve got no doubt they’ll come up with some changes there too. So the Labor Government keeps on moving the furniture. You’ve got to remember that they’re moving these parts around all the time. They haven’t decided what their scheme is finally going to look like. Industry is still very anxious about it. This is the absurdity we would get into if we were to pass this scheme this year; pass this scheme this year, the Americans finalise their law, we have an agreement of some kind at Copenhagen, we would have to come back in February next year and amend our legislation in light of what the Americans have done, because I don’t think there is anybody in business or anywhere that would accept for one instant the idea that Australian jobs would have less protection under an Australian emissions trading scheme than American jobs have under an American emissions trading scheme. And yet that is exactly where we are at the moment. And, you know, I just have to say that America is the largest economy, the largest emitter, its arrangements are going to be the benchmark – and you know Kevin Rudd is very vain, he’s very concerned about taking his own design to Copenhagen. We don’t want to get into a sort of Betamax/VHS debate here, you know where Kevin Rudd says I’ve got the best scheme and the rest of the world say, ‘yeah that’s very interesting Kevin, it’s very interesting but we’re not interested in adopting it because it’s from our point of view not practical’. I mean the reality is the American model, we know, because there is a global arrangement and many of these big industries that are affected are multinationals anyway, the American model will be by far the most influential. That will be the most influential benchmark. So, as I say to you, as somebody that is genuinely committed to reducing Australia’s CO2 emissions and playing an effective role in a global agreement to cut global emissions, I say to you if I was the Prime Minister today I would not be finalising this legislation this year, I would do it early next year after we know what the American laws look like, they’ll be concluded by then, and what has been agreed at Copenhagen. But turning to Copenhagen, and again I can draw on my own experience in representing our country at meetings of this kind, the real issue at Copenhagen is going to be, what targets nations are prepared to commit to, because how you get there is a secondary issue. You know the Danish Environment Minister was out here recently and she met with my colleagues, Andrew Robb and Greg Hunt, and she made that point to them – the design of our scheme was a secondary issue, her concern was what are the targets going to be? Now we are offering Kevin Rudd bipartisan support for the targets he wishes to take to Copenhagen, an unconditional five per cent and conditionally up to 25 per cent. That is a very significant commitment. It’s a measure of our sincerity, a measure of our bipartisan commitment to an effective response to climate change. But what we will not sign up to this year is a poorly designed, job destroying scheme that is literally going to put thousands and thousands of Australian jobs, sacrifice them on the altar of the Prime Minister’s vanity. It’s more important to get the scheme right. This is a Government that hasn’t got a lot of things right lately. You know, in a different area look at this bungle with the employee share scheme. Nobody has any idea what the Government’s policy is going to be, a colossal shambles. Now there’s an opportunity to get this emissions trading scheme right and that requires a deferral into early next year. QUESTION: What do you make of Sol Trujillo’s characterisation effectively of Australians and, in particular, Kevin Rudd, as racists, do you agree with it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I don’t. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, a year ago you and Greg Hunt were very strong that Australian’s shouldn’t wait for the world before starting an emissions trading scheme. Do you still take that [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Michelle, I have always taken the view, as has Greg, that we should not finalise the design of our scheme until after Copenhagen. I’ve always said that. I’ve never said anything other than that and that is fundamental. And that was why we objected to Mr Rudd bringing forward the commencement date and bringing forward, of necessity, the legislation. QUESTION: Do you still think we should wait for the world before we start operating the scheme? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We should certainly move to reduce emissions, but it’s the design of the scheme that is critical. I mean, not every country in the world is going to sign up to the same emissions trading scheme. What we are going to see, I believe, is the largest economy in the world, the United States, with an emissions trading scheme. We have a scheme operating in Europe. We will see, I believe, schemes of one kind or another in all of the major developed countries and then commitments from developing countries such as China and India and others that move towards reducing their emissions. QUESTION: So you won’t find another excuse later when the Nationals continue to put on pressure for the deferral of killing of the scheme. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Michelle, there is nothing that I have said today, there is nothing in the recommendation we took to the Party Room today, which has been overwhelmingly endorsed by the Party Room, that is different to what we have been saying for the best part of 18 months. You know, the critical thing here is getting it right. You see, part of the problem we face here is that a number of you, with great respect, pose the question, ‘are you favour of an ETS or not?’ That is like saying, ‘are you in favour of tax?’ Well, because the real question is: what tax, what design, what level of tax, who pays it, where does the money go? The same is true of an emissions trading scheme. An emissions trading scheme is simply a market-based mechanism to impose a price on carbon. That’s all it is. But how it’s designed, the difference between one design and another, makes all the difference. And the critical issue is the treatment of what they call emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries because obviously if you put a heavy carbon price on the steel industry in Australia and the countries with which it competes doesn’t have it, you run the risk that you end up exporting both the jobs and the emissions and that’s the key problem. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, if your problem is the design of the trade-exposed compensation, why not negotiate with the Government over that right now to see if you can get 100 per cent compensation for most trade exposed industries and pass the scheme? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Lenore they have no interest in negotiating with us. I mean I’ve invited, I’ve offered to sit down with Mr Rudd to discuss it. This issue is apparently not important enough to warrant the great man taking any time to discuss it with me so, you know, they’re not interested in negotiating and you know that as well as I do. But, Lenore, the fact of the matter is we are six months away from knowing exactly what the US legislation will be and knowing what will be decided at Copenhagen, and common sense says you should wait `til then. QUESTION: [inaudible] having a scheme up and running. How far, what’s your best estimate for when Australia would have an emissions trading scheme? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think in terms of the legislation… QUESTION: [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: In terms of the legislation, the legislation could be finalised in whatever form is agreed on, and that will depend a lot on what happens at Copenhagen, in the first part of next year, and that of course gives you plenty of time. You’ve got to remember, Mr Rudd’s scheme is really only going to start, he’s only proposing to start it in 2012. In 2011, it’s just a tax. QUESTION: Are you serious in your claim that this whole thing for Kevin Rudd is about his vanity? Isn’t it just the fact that you don’t agree with him? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, Matt, I’m quite serious about this. Look, common sense, prudence, practicality, a concern for jobs and getting it right would mean that you would not finalise the design of an Australian scheme until you knew what the American legislation was and what had happened at Copenhagen because they are vital input, vital factors to bear in mind. Right. Everyone agrees with that. So why are we rushing to finalise a scheme in advance of Copenhagen? The only reason is because of Mr Rudd’s vanity. He wants to go to Copenhagen and say, ‘aha, I have this scheme passed through the Parliament’, and they will say, ‘so what’ or ‘big deal’ or something perhaps even less polite. QUESTION: Mr Truss, can you guarantee that under any emissions trading scheme that you will get Ron Boswell or Barnaby Joyce to vote for it? WARREN TRUSS: Ron Boswell and Barnaby Joyce and most other Nationals, including myself, have said that we will not support Kevin Rudd’s proposed scheme. Now, well you’ve got to tell us what’s in the scheme before you can really ask us to say whether or not we’ll vote for it or whether we’ll vote against it. We will not vote for anything that looks like, smells like, barks like Kevin Rudd’s CPRS scheme, but we are anxious to play our part in ensuring that Australia even plays a leadership role in developing an appropriate response to climate issues around the country. And some of the proposals we’ve put on the agenda today, such as the voluntary carbon market, I think demonstrate a very constructive approach which will actually deliver results without incurring unnecessary pain on Australian industries. QUESTION: [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: One at a time. Dennis. You’ve got a very nice green shirt on too. QUESTION: Just to get one thing clear, as of today all Nationals MPs and senators support not just an unconditional five per cent target but also conditional targets of up to 25 per cent. Is that the position? WARREN TRUSS: The five per cent target is one that we believe can be achieved through individual initiatives in Australia and that that can be achieved without impact adversely on the Australian industry. There are conditions attached to the Government’s 25 per cent target which includes the engagement of the rest of the world. Now those sorts of conditions fulfil the concerns that I expressed earlier about Australia moving in a direction that the rest of the world wasn’t moving. You know, it is ridiculous for instance for a tourist who travels from Canberra to holiday in Cairns would pay an emissions tax under Kevin Rudd’s trading scheme, but if they go to Bali or Vanuatu they don’t. This is the kind of international distortions that are rife right across the CPRS scheme and so that’s the kind of thing we want to see eliminated. If there is a genuine global response with common rules around the world, well then we’ll want to be a part of that. QUESTION: Without putting up a framework, I mean, you say you don’t accept the Rudd CPRS scheme at all, but you do accept the aspirational idea of a 25 per cent cut if the conditions are met, but we don’t know what those conditions are. MALCOLM TURNBULL: They’re the ones that Kevin Rudd set out actually and they’re attached to a press release of his dated the 4th of May. And I won’t read them out here but it does involve a comprehensive, a comprehensive global action capable of stabilizing etc… QUESTION: [inaudible] you do support that [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we do and that’s… QUESTION: But don’t support the whole scheme. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, let me – this is going to be the longest press conference in the history of the Parliament at this rate, but let me just get back to tors. The critical thing is what is your target to reduce your emissions, okay. Then having set that, how do you get there. An emissions trading scheme is one tool in the climate change policy toolbox, as I’ve said many times. And it can be well designed, it can be a very effective tool too, but it’s just one tool. So the question is what are your targets – that’s what they want to hear at Copenhagen – then how do we get there. Now, for all practical purposes you have to put a price on carbon, one way or another, and there are different ways of doing that. The most influential scheme in the world will undoubtedly be that in the world’s biggest economy, the United States, and how that is set up is going to be a critical influence for us. The Canadians, as I’ve said, are doing exactly what we are recommending Mr Rudd should do. They are deferring the finalisation of their legislation until they see what emerges out of Washington because naturally they deal with the United States a great deal, more than we do of course because they’re neighbours. But America is a big trading partner of ours. And of course the way in which American industries are protected in terms of the competitive issues, the carbon leakage issues, is going to be very influential every where in the developed world. So, again, Mr Rudd likes to dumb everything down. Every issue he tries to dumb it down, you know, you either agree with me or you agree with nothing. This is his sort of line. It’s not a question of ETS, yes or no. We have a particular proposal on the table from Mr Rudd which we have never supported. I have never supported his proposal. I’ve been critical of it from the time he tabled it and I’ve always been critical of the timing and of the way it treats these trade-exposed industries. We’ve got the opportunity now to get it right and we’ve got the opportunity to have a scheme agreed next year which will be in step with what other developed countries are doing and in step with a global agreement. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, climate change sceptic and nuclear energy enthusiast, Dennis Jensen, is the only one of the 11 WA MPs to be challenged for his seat. If he loses preselection this time around, as he did in 2006, will you do what John Howard did and protect him? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well preselections in the Liberal Party are dealt with by the appropriate preselection body which I imagine in Western Australia is largely composed of the local branch members. I’m not an expert on West Australian preselections and the decision is for them. Okay. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmWed, 27 May 2009 06:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:490http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/481/Doorstop-Interview-in-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=481http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=481&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/481/Doorstop-Interview-in-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: Visit to Adelaide; Coalition’s Plan for Recovery; reimbursement of MPs and Senators; Labor’s mountain of debt and deficit; Budget. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s great to be here with Christopher this morning, talking to small business people. As you know, our focus, our National Plan for Recovery is focused on small business and we’ve proposed a number of measures, a number of new policy initiatives which will really support small business, provide them with much needed cash flow in these tough times because this is, small business is the engine room of the economy. It’s the most dynamic and flexible part of the economy and that’s why it is right at the centre of our National Plan for Recovery. Now while we’ve been doing that here in South Australia for the last few days, talking to small business, Mr Rudd is still struggling to get his numbers straight. Yesterday he wasn’t able to say what the level of debt was. He couldn’t bring himself to say that the maximum level of borrowings was $300 billion. All he could say is ‘the number is 300’. 300 what? Nobody knew. He was hoping nobody would know anyway. The gentleman we were talking to earlier today, Christopher and I were talking to here, knew exactly what was happening to the country and he was begging us to get back into office as quickly as possible to stop the reckless spending. Now this morning we hear that on radio he’s managed to say 300 billion, but he still can’t get the word ‘dollars’ out of his mouth. Now when you’ve got a problem, when you’ve created a problem, the most important thing to do is to recognise it first. You’ve got to admit you’ve got a problem. Mr Rudd seems to have a difficulty actually coming to terms with the mountain of debt that he has created and that he has put onto the shoulders of Australians today and our children and grandchildren in the years ahead. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you’ve been identified as one of the 43 politicians with the, for want of a better term, Canberra residence. Do you think it’s fair that the Australian taxpayer should be funding these investments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have a very transparent system of reimbursing MPs and Senators for the cost of travelling to Canberra and it’s set by an independent tribunal. It’s the same amount paid to every MP and Senator. It’s very transparent and it’s independently established. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, is it really credible to say that the Coalition wouldn’t also have a massive debt if it was in power now given the global financial situation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we have a proven track record of paying off debt. We have a proven track record of fiscal and economic prudence in government. Now in opposition, we stood up and voted against Mr Rudd’s $42 billion stimulus. We voted against the $14 billion cash splash, so it’s quite plain that if we were in government, there would be a lot less debt and there would be a smaller deficit and when we return to government, our commitment is to restore integrity to the way in which Canberra’s finances, the nation’s finances are managed. And that’s why we’ll establish on the day we’re elected a commission, an independent commission, to look at the financial sustainability of all of the Government’s spending so that we can get our public finances back on track. Mr Rudd has been out of control. He’s been like Paris Hilton on a shopping spree – reckless spending piling up an enormous mountain of debt. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, were you aware of that loophole that effectively means that taxpayers I guess pay your mortgage in Canberra? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, the fact of the matter is every MP and Senator gets the same amount per day or per night they spend in Canberra and they are paid that allowance regardless of where they stay, whether they own a place or whether they stay in a hotel or wherever they stay, they get exactly the same allowance. So it’s very equitable, it’s very transparent and it’s set by an independent tribunal. QUESTION: Would you say it was a good business move for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the system for travel allowances in Canberra has been established for a very long time and, as I said, it is transparent and it’s set by an independent tribunal. The reality is that you have to reimburse MPs and Senators for the cost of travelling and staying in Canberra otherwise many MPs and Senators wouldn’t be able to afford to attend Parliament. It would defeat the whole purpose of electing somebody to Parliament. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull what are your thoughts on the decision to freeze politicians’ pay for at least three months? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well again, that is set by an independent tribunal. You will have seen there are some big political scandals in the United Kingdom about MPs’ allowances and expenses. Here in Australia we have a much better system. Our pay and our allowances are set by an independent remuneration tribunal and we all abide by and accept the judgments of that tribunal. And that’s how it should be. You shouldn’t have MPs setting their own pay. QUESTION: Would you be expecting to be lobbied by some of your backbenchers, trying to somehow overturn this decision? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s the whole point. It’s set by an independent tribunal. The Remuneration Tribunal makes its decisions and it’s completely transparent, it’s public and it’s thoroughly independent and that’s exactly how it should be. I think we’ve got a good system in Australia. QUESTION: In this current economic climate, do you think it’s a fair decision by the Tribunal? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s a decision by the Tribunal. If the Tribunal makes that decision, then we abide by it. It’s a fair decision. They’re entitled to make that decision. I’m not going to criticise or comment on the Remuneration Tribunal’s decisions other than to say that they’ve made their decision, they’ve made it independently, it’s transparent and that’s the way it should be. QUESTION: Do you think what Australian politicians are paid is fair for the work they do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, it is not for me to comment on that. We have a system of remuneration for MPs and Senators that is set by an independent tribunal. You don’t want to have politicians setting their own pay. It’s set by an independent tribunal and it’s done so in a transparent fashion and that’s exactly how it should be. I don’t think you could design a better system for setting the remuneration. QUESTION: Does Ken Henry have your confidence given the attacks on the Budget growth estimates that Treasury has put out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well no, the Treasury has our confidence but that doesn’t mean we agree with everything that the Treasury says. Just in terms of the growth forecast, we’ve got to bear this in mind – the Budget is not the Treasury’s Budget. It is the Government’s Budget, it’s the Treasurer’s Budget so – and Dr Henry made this point yesterday – the Treasury provides figures and estimates and forecasts to the Government and then the Government, the politicians that is, decide which ones they are going to put into the Budget. So the Treasury is expert, it’s very well respected, we have great confidence in their professional abilities but they are not independent of Government. They are part of the Government and everybody is entitled to form a view. You can take any economic issue you like, any economic forecast you like and you will find there is a range of opinion and everybody respects everybody else’s opinion but that doesn’t mean they have to agree with it. QUESTION: Do you agree with Tony Abbott’s comment that he’s not an economic god? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I didn’t hear that, I didn’t hear that comment but the reality is Dr Henry is a very distinguished economist, he’s head of the Treasury, he’s entitled to his own opinions as is everybody else. The fact is, the simple fact is that the growth forecasts that the Rudd Government is relying on to pull Australia out of deficit are way above those of really any other independent forecasting body and they are well over twice the growth figures proposed or set out for Australia by the International Monetary Fund. So there’s a big difference between the figures that Mr Swan has put into the Budget and presumably have been contributed to by Treasury and, for example, the IMF. The Government cites the IMF all the time but on this occasion their figures are very, you know, very different, much higher levels of growth and so it’s not unreasonable that there is disagreement about it. My own view – and people can take different views on this – but my own view is that if you’re setting out growth figures in the Budget, you should be cautious and conservative about the growth figures. Now for the Government to say that from 2012 there will be six years of growth at 4 ½ per cent, a period of growth I think Dr Henry said for which there is no precedent since the 1960s, that is a… that is, as I’ve said, that’s a heroic assumption. It really is a heroic assumption. And I just can’t imagine anybody else in the economic business today looking forward, recognising that the IMF and many others say the recovery from the recession will be slow and measured, agreeing with it. Now I hope it’s right. I really do. I hope we do snap out of this downturn and that Dr Henry’s very optimistic forecast or Mr Swan’s very optimistic forecasts are proved to be correct. But you’d have to say, looking at it as a fairly hard-headed, conservative businessman, they are very, very optimistic and I’m not surprised that the IMF, for example, doesn’t agree with them at all. Okay. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmWed, 20 May 2009 06:32:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:481http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/483/Doorstop-Interview-in-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=483http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=483&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/483/Doorstop-Interview-in-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: Labor’s mountain of debt and deficit; Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending; Labor’s bungling of employee share ownership schemes. E&OE………………………………………………………………………………… QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, has the new poll taken the gloss off our Prime Minister somewhat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m focused on jobs. I’m focused on the massive deficit and debt Mr Rudd is running up and as far as polls are concerned, the only one counts is the one on election day. QUESTION: Are there any implications for you in the current poll, Malcolm? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the only implication for Australia at the moment that I’m concerned about is the shocking level of unemployment that is forecast in the Budget, the shocking levels of debt and deficit. And I see today Ken Henry, the Secretary of the Treasury, has said that there have been some communication problems with the Budget. Well, there have been two very big communication problems, well at least two and they are that firstly the Treasurer couldn’t bring himself to say what the deficit was – he was so ashamed of it – and last night it took what seemed like hours for Kevin Rudd to finally `fess up to what the level of debt was. QUESTION: The International Monetary Fund is questioning this whole, the whole question of growth that’s been forecast by the Government. What do you say to their opinion? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there’s no doubt the IMF’s forecasts are much more prudent. I don’t know anybody that believes the Government’s forecast that the economy will spring back into 4½ per cent per annum growth in 2012 and then continue for six years as being even vaguely realistic. It’s well over twice the forecast from the IMF. Look, it’s just difficult to see how that can be responsible. Now, I saw that the best the Governor of the Reserve Bank, being as tactful as he could, when asked about it, could say today was that the Government’s forecasts were ‘not crazily optimistic’. Well that is very, very faint praise indeed. In fact it really is… it indicates that he’s trying to distance himself from the Government’s forecasts. QUESTION: I understand you’ve called these growth figures heroic. Would you stand by that term sir? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, heroic is another way of saying ‘not crazily optimistic’. You know, look, the fact of the matter is this – Australians expect the Budget to be realistic. They expect it to be hard-headed and objective and to give a realistic assessment of the future. The idea that within a few years we are going to go back into a long boom, six years of boom that will make the previous mining boom look half-hearted, is completely unbelievable and it just underlines the desperate measures that the Government is undertaking to try to cover up for the, and make up, I suppose, for the extraordinary levels of debt they’ve run us into. QUESTION: Given your abhorrence of the levels of debt that we’re going into, will you be reviewing all capital commitments under the recent federal Budget? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well when we are returned to Government after the next election, we’ve said that we will establish a commission to look at the financial sustainability of the Budget and of all the spending measures. There has to be a very thorough review. There’s been far too much reckless spending by the Rudd Government and we are paying a very heavy price for it, Australians are paying a very heavy price for Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending so everything will have to be reviewed. There’s no question about that. QUESTION: Including all infrastructure projects, public transport, [inaudible] that we’re already embarking on as well? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, projects that are underway, of course, will have to be continued and completed. That goes without saying. QUESTION: What do you think Glenn Stevens actually means by using that turn of phrase ‘not crazily optimistic’? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is not much of an endorsement, is it. In fact, it’s not an endorsement at all. To say that something is, an opinion is ‘not crazily optimistic’ is really no endorsement at all. I think it’s pretty clear what he’s saying. QUESTION: Just in terms of the debt level, you said there was a $188 billion debt in the Treasury papers and the Prime Minister last night said $300 billion but that was incorrect. What level do you think it is at? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I can only tell you what’s in the Budget papers. The Budget papers show that in 2012 the net debt of the Commonwealth will be $188 billion which is just under 14 per cent of GDP. Mr Rudd said last night it would be $300 billion. Now he was either revealing that there was going to be a lot more debt than the Budget papers had said or he’d got his sums wrong. It’s hard to know. So you’ve got to ask Mr Rudd whether he made a mistake or whether he was telling us something new. What I can tell you is that – and this is just a fact – that there are a number of very big expenditure items referred to in the Budget which are not calculated, not included in the calculation of debt. Now the $43 billion broadband network is one of them, so you can add that on to the $188 billion. The $28 billion of borrowings for Rudd Bank are not included either, so you can add that on to the $188 billion. So the $188 billion that Mr Rudd has on other occasions referred to as peak debt, as I said, will only be a foothill at the base of the mighty summit of debt that Mr Rudd is building up. QUESTION: Do you think more people are taking you seriously? Now a lot of letters to the newspapers around the country are saying, I voted ALP and now I wish I hadn’t because of whatever reason, whatever leanings they might have. Do you think your message is now being taken more seriously by more people? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think Australians are growing increasingly concerned about the level of debt. I mean all of us know that if you run up too much debt, you run into problems. You’ve got to pay it back with interest, and we know that if, as a nation, we run up vast levels of debt with reckless spending as Mr Rudd has done, that is going to mean higher taxes and higher interest rates for our children in the future. And Australians are very concerned about debt and deficit and the level of that concern can be seen by the fact that Mr Rudd had to be pushed and pushed and pushed last night to actually say what the level of debt was. He was determined not to say it, and on Budget night of course you had the first ever occasion of a Treasurer bringing down a Budget and not saying what the result was. It was the biggest deficit in our history. Kevin Rudd’s Treasurer, Wayne Swan, could not bring himself to say the figure. Now, if you’re not prepared to say it then you can’t be trusted to pay it back. And if you can’t count up the debt, then it’s no wonder that the Budget doesn’t add up. QUESTION: Will you block any changes to employee share ownership schemes as proposed by the Government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The share ownership scheme proposal that the Government has put up is a complete shambles, an absolute shambles. It is shutting down every employee share ownership scheme in the country. Now this is a shocking assault on the opportunity for employees to have a stake in the companies for which they work. It is inconceivable that the Government actually intended to do this and if they did intend to do this, this is an incredible attack on the aspirations of millions of Australians who want to have a stake in the businesses which they’re working for and which they’re helping to drive and deliver wealth for. So I can only assume this is a massive bungle by Chris Bowen. Of course this is the same minister that brought us FuelWatch and GroceryWatch – so he’s got a track record of bungling things. And the Government must address it. It will certainly go through a very thorough inquiry in the Senate but I’m hopeful that the Government will sort this out. It says a lot about the lack of competence that they could come up with a change like this that is so misconceived and, if I may say so, the idea that you could save money for the Budget by shutting down all the employee share ownership schemes, if you do that of course there won’t be any share ownership schemes so there’ll be no savings at all over time because nobody will be making any money out of them. So it is just a mess, and Kevin Rudd and Chris Bowen and Wayne Swan have got a lot to answer for, but they’d better tidy it up because what’s happening at the moment is that companies are acting on the basis of what they’ve seen in the Budget papers and they’re shutting these schemes down. QUESTION: Just one question in relation to local level politics. Are you at all concerned about the prospect of defamation action hanging over the head of Martin Hamilton-Smith? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I can’t comment on that. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmTue, 19 May 2009 06:36:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:483http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/473/Interview-with-Chris-Uhlmann-AM-Programme.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=473http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=473&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/473/Interview-with-Chris-Uhlmann-AM-Programme.aspxSubjects: Labor's nation-wrecking Budget. E & O E UHLMANN: Malcolm Turnbull, you must be delighted for pensioners this morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, we’re very pleased that the increase in the pension, the single age pension, that we’ve been arguing for from last year – in fact we’d introduced legislation to allow last year – has been delivered in the budget. UHLMANN: And the Government has made some structural changes so that that will be affordable over time. Also good moves? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well yes, they’ve made a number of changes, a change to the age at which the pension is available. They’ve made that decision, it comes into place from 2023, and that’s certainly consistent with an ageing population and a population that is not only living longer but also working and being active longer. UHLMANN: And you’ve been calling for the Government to be more optimistic. Well it could hardly be more optimistic in its growth forecasts, so it’s a trifecta, you’re happy on all fronts. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I heard what Mr Rudd was just saying to you there. There is enormous scepticism about these growth forecasts. The idea that we would suddenly snap out of this downturn into seven years of above trend growth at four-and-a-half percent per annum, really. Mr Rudd talks about the integrity of the Treasury – nobody is challenging the integrity of the Treasury – but you’ve only got to pick up the newspapers to see that, I think, scepticism is the order of the day. I think people are talking about Pollyanna, a Pollyanna approach to budgeting. So the reality is that what he has done is he has run up the biggest deficit in the country’s history. So horrifying is that deficit that the Treasurer last night could not bring himself to utter the words. I mean there has never been a Treasurer’s speech on budget night where the Treasurer has not said what the budget result is. It’s like the chief executive of a company standing up at the AGM and overlooking and not telling the shareholders what the results are. He was ashamed of it. UHLMANN: Well Malcolm Turnbull, the lion’s share of that collapse is down to a loss of revenue, an unprecedented loss of revenue. Not since the 1930s have we seen a loss of revenue like this, so you also would be in deficit now if you were Prime Minister, wouldn’t you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well even if you assume that’s the case, and I’ll come back to that in a moment, but even if you assume that’s the case, if I was Prime Minister, or if I was the Treasurer, and I was running a deficit, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d actually tell people what the facts were on the night. This guy is so gutless he wasn’t prepared to do it. UHLMANN: Would you be in deficit? There’s been a huge collapse in revenues, it would be unavoidable. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look I don’t think there’s any doubt that… the fact that there’s a deficit is hardly surprising. However, don’t get taken in by Labor’s line on this, because what Labor says is, if you agree or concede that there it is inevitable there be some deficit, then you give us a carte blanche to have any level of deficit; and they say, if you concede that the government should borrow one cent, then you shouldn’t object if we borrow any amount of money. The reality is we’ve got to ask ourselves how have they managed in this downturn, and the fact is peak net debt, as we know, will be $188 billion – that’s at the end of the forward estimates, it will actually grow higher than that outside of those estimates. In the last eighteen months since the election Mr Rudd has spent, has chosen to spend, discretionary spending, an extra $124 billion, so that’s two thirds of the 188 billion. UHLMANN: And Treasury says that without that spending we would be looking at double digit unemployment next year and GDP would be two-and-three-quarter percent lower, so that spending has filled the void of private sector capital as it retreats. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Chris, I do not agree with that. There is no question that much of the Labor Government’s spending has been economically ineffective. The cash splashes simply have not worked, and there is no evidence to suggest that they have. UHLMANN: The retail trade figures would suggest that there has been an effect. But there has been an effect, hasn’t there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s a tiny effect. UHLMANN: But it is not no effect. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Chris just think about this. Just recently the Government handed out fourteen thousand million dollars, okay? Fourteen thousand million dollars, and then they were excited that the retail sales figures for the relevant month, for March, has gone up by $380 million. Now 380 isn’t much of a return on 14,000, and that’s really the point – that the bulk of these cash splashes get saved, not spent. They haven’t been effective. Mr Rudd has run up a massive deficit through reckless spending. The debt, the big debt level, the burden that’s going to be carried by Australians for generations to come, is two-thirds a consequence of his spending. Yes we’ve had a global downturn, there’s no doubt about that. But the question is: how has he reacted to it? And he’s reacted poorly. UHLMANN: Isn’t there a dirty little secret in Australian politics that neither you or Kevin Rudd is prepared to tell the Australian people, which is that one day there must be a very tough budget. We were operating at levels, and we had high income, and we spent that income, and now we’re going to have lower income, and we’ll have to cut our cloth. Won’t you at some stage have to cut the cloth on the structural overspend that we had? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the only secret that Wayne Swan had last night was actually the amount of the deficit. If you were sitting at home watching this on television, and you hadn’t been following the financial pages day after day, you’d be sitting there wondering well, what’s the result, what’s the bottom line, and Swan was not prepared to utter those words. And this is typical of the way in which the Rudd Government is all about spin. Of course the $58 billion deficit was in the budget papers. The reason he didn’t want to say it was that he didn’t want a picture of himself on television saying we’re running a $58 billion deficit. Everything is about spin. UHLMANN: If you’re going to say that what the Government has done has been incorrect, what would have you done that would have been different that would have left Australia in a different position? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I can explain that very clearly. From the start, if we had been re-elected in 2007, we would not have talked up inflation and talked up interest rates. The Rudd Government for purely political purposes contributed to unnecessary interest rate rises in 2008, in the first half of 2008, which put a lot of stress on the Australian economy, right at the time when we didn’t need it, when in fact we should have had rates coming down, as they did later in the year. Secondly, we would not have had an unlimited bank deposit guarantee, which shattered the finance markets outside of the banking sector, and did enormous damage to the economy, particularly to the property industry, the motor vehicle industry. We would not have engaged in so much reckless and ineffective spending. The $42 billion stimulus that was proposed and legislated for in February, as you know, we opposed. But we didn’t say do nothing. We proposed much cheaper, much more effective measures. So the bottom line is we would have run the economy with an economic strategy rather than a political strategy of spin, we would have spent less, we would have spent more effectively, and where we intervened with credit markets, we would have done so more judiciously, more carefully, ensuring that we got the result without the damage. UHLMANN: Just quickly, you would have engaged in some stimulus spending, and there would have been a deficit. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, it’s very hard to imagine a circumstance in which the budget this year would not be in deficit, but it may have been in deficit by a very small amount or it may have been in surplus by a small amount with different policies. But the point is, Chris, the issue is not deficit or no deficit, it’s the scale of the deficit. And you see this is the problem with Mr Rudd. Everything is dumbed-down for his spin. It’s all about spin. So he wants us to agree that if there’s going to be any deficit then he is at liberty to have the biggest deficit in Australia’s history, which is exactly what he’s delivered, and of course it was the deficit that could not speak it’s name last night. UHLMANN: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you. [ends]  malcolmWed, 13 May 2009 07:45:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:473http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/468/Interview-with-Steve-Price.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=468http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=468&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/468/Interview-with-Steve-Price.aspxSubjects: Labor's nation-wrecking Budget E & O E STEVE PRICE: Malcolm Turnbull the Opposition Leader’s in our studio in Canberra. Morning to you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Steve. STEVE PRICE: This is supposed to be, by all previews, the horror budget. You must have a bit of trouble criticising it today because it’s not really a horror budget at all, is it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the deficit was so horrible that the Treasurer couldn’t even bring himself to mention it in his speech. This is the first time in history that a treasurer has given a budget night speech and has not mentioned, hasn’t had the guts to say what the result of the budget is. He couldn’t tell us, wasn’t prepared to say that it was $58 billion in deficit and he wasn’t prepared to say that the debt by 2012 would be $188 billion – the two key numbers he wasn’t prepared to utter. STEVE PRICE: Well it’s interesting you raise that deficit figure because I spoke to the Prime Minister 20 minutes ago. He says there’s absolute confusion in the Opposition ranks over what your deficit would be. Here’s what he told me. KEVIN RUDD: Here’s the rub. Today, less than 12 hours after the budget comes down, the Shadow Treasurer Mr Hockey and the Leader of the Opposition Mr Turnbull have fundamentally contradicted each other on what sort of deficit and debt they would support. Mr Hockey has said they would have a total deficit of $25 billion less than the Government. Simultaneously, on a different radio program, Mr Turnbull was asked the same question – he said it was impossible to provide a figure. Absolute chaos and confusion on something as fundamental as temporary borrowing for a temporary deficit and for net debt for the future. It’s time the Liberal Party got its act together because the future of the budget in the Parliament depends on what the Liberals do in the Senate. STEVE PRICE: You’d say they won’t utter the word. They say you don’t know what you’re talking about. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Prime Minister as usual is being… look, he’s just being dishonest. He’s misrepresenting what we’re saying. He does this all the time. He does it day in, day out. And he does it so often that we cease to be outraged by it. STEVE PRICE: So the figure Joe Hockey used is the figure you’re saying… MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is, Steve, is if we were, if we had been elected in November 2007, the deficit would be dramatically lower and the debt forecast in 2012 would be dramatically lower because there are a whole lot of things we would have done differently. It’s not just a question of spending less on the stimulus. And what Mr Rudd is referring to is the $42 stimulus package that he proposed in February; we countered with a counter proposal which was less than half what he was proposing. So he’s using that as the difference, the only difference. But the fact is, Steve, if we’d been elected we wouldn’t have done what Swan and Rudd did and we wouldn’t have talked up inflation, we wouldn’t have egged the Reserve Bank on to put up interest rates last year, which obviously damaged business, which put people out of work, which reduced government revenues. We wouldn’t have had an unlimited bank deposit guarantee which flattened every part of the finance sector outside of the banks. We wouldn’t have spent so much money, plainly. So there’s a whole lot of things, and you could form an assumption but it would be pretty speculative. STEVE PRICE: Joe’s formed an… I don’t want to get hung up on this but he’s formed an assumption. Do you agree with his assumption or you… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I haven’t heard… Look, can I tell you, you’re relying on Kevin Rudd as a report for Joe Hockey so I would… STEVE PRICE: Well I heard Joe say it this morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the reality is this: our deficit, if we were in government today, the deficit would be dramatically lower than it is, dramatically lower than it is, and not simply because we would have spent less but because we would have had different policies. STEVE PRICE: What about these growth predictions? Minus 0.5 next year and plus 0.5 the year after that and the year after that a 400 and a bit per cent turn around. How’s that going to happen? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, miracles I guess. Miracles do happen occasionally, but not that often. STEVE PRICE: Again I asked the PM that and he says well it’s the same independent Treasury officials who advised the Howard Government. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, I know, he goes on about that. Look the reality is if he wants people to accept that forecast then what he should do is table the entire Treasury advice. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean people will agree with it. And one of the things that is most contemptible about the way Mr Rudd conducts political debate in this country is that when people say, as just about everyone is, ‘hang on four and a half per cent growth for seven years sounds a bit optimistic’, he then bridles and says ‘oh you’re attacking the integrity of the Treasury’. No one is attacking the integrity of the Treasury. We’re not attacking anyone’s integrity. What we’re saying is, as reasonable people, is that a dramatic and sustained turnaround at that level seems, given the history and experience, highly unlikely. STEVE PRICE: Well The Australian has described it as on a wing and a prayer. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Correct, and so, you know, are they attacking the integrity of the Treasury? Of course not and this is where Mr Rudd really debases the political debate. The fundamental issue that Australians are concerned about today is debt and deficit. You see, he can attack Joe Hockey, he can attack me, but what he can’t get around, even though his Treasurer isn’t prepared to utter the numbers himself, is $58 billion of deficit, deficits for a very long time, and a debt in just a few years of $188 billion and rising – that’s $9,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. This is a dramatic, perilous turnaround in our public finances in 18 months. That’s what he really should be talking about. Instead of attacking the Opposition, the question he should be answering is: what are you going to do, what is your plan to get us out of debt? STEVE PRICE: They haven’t been terribly tough it wouldn’t appear to me on my reading so far with spending cuts. Would you be tougher? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will have to assess the situation we inherit. Yes, there is no question… STEVE PRICE: I mean, buried there in the Budget there apparently the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s own office has added 65 staff at the cost of $13 million. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I haven’t noticed that detail. We’re still digging through it, Steve. STEVE PRICE: Well, I’ve heard him respond to that and the Prime Minister has accepted that that’s the case. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there it is. That gives you an example of how lacking in conviction he is in terms of cutting costs. STEVE PRICE: 65 more people in the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s office. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look Steve, the reality is this: we are going into $188 billion of debt – fact. That’s what they’re forecasting. It’s probably going to be a lot higher than that. I mean none of the cost of the $43 billion broadband network is in any of these calculations, so if he proceeds with that you can add another $43 billion onto that 188. So 188 is a low estimate. But let’s say that’s what we’re heading for. Now, that is the simple fact that $124 billion, 124 thousand million dollars of additional spending was undertaken by Mr Rudd since the election. Now, that’s 124 thousand million of additional spending versus 188 thousand million of debt in a few years time. In other words, two-thirds of that debt has been contributed to by his spending. So, yes, there’s a global downturn, yes times are tough economically around the world, but Mr Rudd has made it worse and a lot worse. STEVE PRICE: Pensioners get more money. Are you now embarrassed that you didn’t do it when you were in office, give them the rise they needed? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, pensioners got a lot of increased benefits while we were in office in one-off payments and bonuses and indexation. There’s a whole range of measures. STEVE PRICE: But age pensioners, single age pensioners fell behind. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Steve, we addressed that last year and we actually brought a bill into parliament to increase the single age pension and the Government could have done that last year. Now they’ve chosen to do it in the Budget and we obviously welcome that decision. It’s one that we argued for. We championed the plight or championed the cause of single age pensioners last year. If we hadn’t done that, I very much doubt whether Mr Rudd would have taken it up. STEVE PRICE: Why did everyone on your side laugh when they announced that the retirement age should go from 65 up to 67 in 2023? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well okay, Steve… STEVE PRICE: Or did you, as I did, get the bit of paper out and work out how old I’d be in 2023 and I was horrified to work out I’m going to get caught. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Steve, I’m really thrilled that you’re so young. You won’t get caught by much I suspect. STEVE PRICE: No, six months. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there you go. Look, the fact of the matter is they said this was going to be a tough budget, right, and they said they were going to make big structural changes, and changing the age for the pension is a structural change and it’s one that’s been recognised as an issue. As Australians live longer and work longer and so forth it’s been recognised as an issue for some time. But to momentously announce you’re going to increase the age to qualify for the pension and then say it won’t hit until 2023, it isn’t really a, it isn’t a courageous or particularly tough decision. It’s a long way off. STEVE PRICE: That’s three years beyond the 2020 summit. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, well exactly, that’s right. So Mr Rudd obviously regards 2020 as being far off into the distance. I think the one thing we can be certain is that if that is the test of their toughness and their commitment to take on structural reform, just like we’ll never see a surplus from this Government, we’ll never see any tough reform from it either. STEVE PRICE: Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks Steve. [ends]  malcolmWed, 13 May 2009 06:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:468http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/458/Doorstop-Interview-Potts-Point-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=458http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=458&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/458/Doorstop-Interview-Potts-Point-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Rio Tinto/Chinalco; tax cuts; Budget. E&OE………………………………………………………………………………… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I make no apologies for standing up for Australia, for standing up for our national interest. Mr Swan has accused me of raising “reds under the beds” scares because of what I have said about Chinalco. Let’s be quiet clear about this – it is a fact that Chinalco is seeking to acquire a position of enormous influence over our second largest natural resource company, Rio, and will have enormous influence over our biggest iron ore deposit, the Hamersley iron ore deposits. This is a transaction of enormous national significance. Now Chinalco is a Chinese government company. It is for all intents and purposes a transaction between Rio and the Government of China. The senior executives of Chinalco are appointed by the central organising committee of the Communist Party of China. That is a fact. Now these raise very big issues of national interest and national sovereignty and for Mr Swan to politicise them and trivialise them shows us he is not taking his responsibilities of defending Australia’s national interests seriously. Let me just now turn to the other matter that Mr Swan raised relating to tax cuts. Labor went in to the last election promising tax cuts which were then duly passed into law and they are due to come in to effect on July 1 this year and July 1 next year. Mr Swan is now indicating or hinting that those tax cuts are going to be abandoned and that Labor will renege on its election promise and seek to repeal the legislated tax cuts we have. And this just underlines the confused nature of the Rudd Government’s economic policy, their Jekyll and Hyde approach. On the one hand they have borrowed 23 thousand million dollars, $23 billion dollars and given it away in cash splashes, running up our debt to what is approaching record levels, and then in the next breath they say we will have to tighten our belts and they are going to renege on commitments they gave to the Australian people and which the Australian people relied on in electing them into government. This is a government whose economic policy is all over the shop. They don’t know whether they are tightening their belt or throwing money around like Santa Claus on steroids. They have no coherent economic strategy and they must stick to their election commitments. What we need from Labor is a plan for recovery. That is the big difference between us and Labor. Labor lurches from spending to reneging on election tax cuts. They are all over the shop. We are consistently standing up for a plan for recovery. That is why we have laid out a clear six point plan for small business that will enable small business to continue to grow, to keep people on the payroll, to create and maintain jobs. We need leadership; we need a plan for recovery. We are offering one. Labor isn’t. QUESTION: People are aware of the financial situation and specifically Wayne Swan was not ruling out scrapping the tax cut for high incomes earners, could that be the way to go? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mr Swan and Mr Rudd took those tax cuts to the election and they were elected. They then passed them into law. They then chose to borrow $23 billion dollars and give it away in a cash splash. So what type of confused economic approach is this that has a government on the one hand handing out money in a completely unprecedented way and then on the other hand breaking its word and reneging on its commitments? You see there is no consistency there. They are either being Santa Claus or they’re being Scrooge McDuck. They don’t know what they are. They don’t know whether they are handing money out or tightening the belt. This government is deeply confused about its economic policy. What we need is clarity. We need leadership and we need a plan for recovery. That is what we are offering. QUESTION: The Government has announced they may have a shortfall in revenue of $115 billion dollars. What is you view on that and the cash hand outs that have already gone out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there was always going to be, given the economic circumstance, there was always going to be a decline in government revenues particularly in terms of company tax. So the Government knew that was coming. But even though they knew that was coming and even though they knew that the economic impact of these cash splashes is very modest, very modest indeed – because the bulk of the money is saved not spent and you have had the IMF confirming that only a week or so ago – even in the light of that knowledge they then went ahead, borrowed the money and gave it all away. QUESTION: On the Budget, what is your view on the Government’s announcement about the support for cancer treatments and the PBS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is vital that the Government continue to provide real support and effective support to sufferers of cancer. This is a very, very high health priority. We are very concerned in this confused approach that the Government is taking, this Jekyll and Hyde approach, where on the one hand they are giving money away in an unprecedented fashion, on the other hand they are going to be cutting back on essential services, reneging on election commitments. What are the Australian people to make of a government that is on the one hand throwing money out the door, borrowing billions, throwing it out the door in cash splashes and then on the other hand threatening to cut back on tax cuts that have already been promised and legislated for, on vital medical services, cutting back on benefits to self-funded retires and pensioners. This is a Government that is deeply confused. It does not have a plan for recovery. Its policies are completely inconsistent. You can’t be spending like Santa Claus on the one hand and then cutting back on vital services on the other and expect people to think you know what you are doing. The difference between Labor and the Coalition is that we have a clear plan for recovery. That is our focus and our commitment. [ends]  malcolmSun, 03 May 2009 02:33:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:458http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/453/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=453http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=453&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/453/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan E & O E Our troops in Afghanistan are fighting in the frontline in the battle against global terrorism. We should never forget that the Bali bombing terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. So our soldiers are defending freedom and they are defending Australia in Afghanistan. And our soldiers, who have put themselves in harm’s way in that very dangerous environment, have the complete support of the Coalition. And we support and welcome the decision of the Prime Minister today to commit another 450 troops to our efforts in Afghanistan. We welcome the objective of this new commitment, which is on training and mentoring and supporting the conduct of the elections in Afghanistan. Our shared objective among all the nations that are fighting together in the same common cause against terrorism in Afghanistan is to see a secure and a democratic Afghanistan which is able to maintain and conduct its own security in a peaceful and prosperous environment for the people of that country.  malcolmWed, 29 Apr 2009 05:15:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:453http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/449/Doorstop-Interview-Waverley-Park-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=449http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=449&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/449/Doorstop-Interview-Waverley-Park-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Community Infrastructure Program; infrastructure spending. E &  O  E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Could I just say that I’m delighted that the Government’s spending this money on the Pavilion here. This is a really beautiful oval. This is a cricket club with so much history behind it and so much community involvement and it’s just great that the money is being spent – so I’m delighted to be here to welcome that investment, it’s a very good investment in infrastructure. And if I could just say this; we have differed with the Government on some of their economic policies. We have never argued about investing in infrastructure. We support investing in infrastructure – in fact one of the major criticisms I’ve been making of the Government over recent weeks and months is that they have spent, borrowed and given away $23 billion in cash handouts which have not created any jobs, plainly. And certainly, have not created any economic growth and have done that instead of investing adequately in infrastructure, particularly economic infrastructure like roads and bridges and ports and railways around the country.  Whether you’re in central Queensland, talking about the missing rail link in Mackay or the airport at Gladstone or the F3 Link in Cessnock, right around the country Australians have been saying; what’s with all these cash handouts, why aren’t they investing in infrastructure that will actually create jobs and of course enable us to come out of this recession – because what we really need from the Government is a plan for recovery – so that’s what we’ve been about. So we’ve never had an argument with good investment in infrastructure – obviously every investment has got to be well targeted and well planned and well put together – but in principle we will always support investment in infrastructure. We put tens of billions of dollars at work in roads and other infrastructure, in schools and hospitals when we were in government and we support this Government doing it now. But we have criticised a lot of their wasteful and ineffective spending which of course has been done at the price of running up a bigger and bigger debt. QUESTION: But some of the stimulus money was used for investment purposes, such as this Pavilion, wasn’t it? So are you a hypocrite being here today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is that the vast bulk of the money spent in the so called $42 billion stimulus package, the vast bulk has got nothing to do with projects like this. The portion of the $42 billion package that relates to local government infrastructure is a few per cent, if that, of the whole package. So our major argument as you know has been with the size of the package and in particular with its composition. Our point has been, and you can see there’s a report in the newspaper today, a report from Fujitsu Consulting, making exactly the same point that I’ve been making for months and that the IMF made a few days ago, which is that in times like this if you make big one-off cash handouts people will save it or use it to reduce debt, they won’t spend it for the most part and therefore it has little or no economic effect – or in the words of the IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard; it does no economic good. Now that’s all the IMF did was validate and confirm the force of the arguments we’ve been making all year. QUESTION: What point do you think the Minister’s trying to make by making this announcement in the heart of your own electorate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh it’s just Anthony, he can’t help himself, he comes to a beautiful place like this, it’s a lovely community occasion, we’ve got the Mayor here, we’ve got the cricket club here, we’ve got these young kids here and it’s great that they’re here and then he goes and spoils it by being so nasty – he can’t help himself. So I’m not going to buy into that. Albo’s Albo, he’s always got something nasty to say. I’m here to say; this is good work Albo, good on you for putting the money into the Pavilion for the cricket club, we welcome it and if the Government spent more money on infrastructure and less on handouts our economy would be in much better shape. QUESTION: So he hasn’t just bought your support? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I just say this; really you know there are times in politics when we should really rise above petty partisanship and we should welcome good investments and you know governments, Liberal governments and Labor governments have made good infrastructure investments over the decades, and our country is stronger because of it, and speaking as a Liberal and speaking as the Leader of the Opposition I will welcome the Labor Government investing in good infrastructure and I’ll say well done that’s good, that’s a good use of money, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to underwrite every single economic decision they make, particularly when I happen to think they’re wrong – and certainly the evidence seems to be confirming the force of the criticisms we made about the cash splashes. But lets all unite in supporting one thing, which is cricket in the Eastern Suburbs – we all agree on that. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmSun, 26 Apr 2009 00:17:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:449http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/448/Doorstop-Interview-Darwin.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=448http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=448&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/448/Doorstop-Interview-Darwin.aspxSubjects: Anzac Day. E & O  E QUESTION: Okay Mr Turnbull, why have you decided to spend your Anzac Day in Darwin this year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Darwin’s always been at the frontline of Australia’s defence. This is a garrison city, it was under very severe attack in the Second World War of course and the medical and military personnel here, and emergency services personnel have regularly responded, as we’ve seen very recently, courageously and very professionally to disasters to our near north – this after all is the very frontline of Australia. QUESTION: And we have now got confirmation that there is a possibility that the Northern Command could be moved to Canberra; do you have any views on that at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I was out at Northern Command a couple of days ago. It’s difficult to see how Northern Command can be located anywhere but in the north, but I think we’ll wait to see what the Government proposes if it proposes anything. There’s been talk about this for a long time of course but commonsense would say that Northern Command should be in the north of Australia. QUESTION: And what does Anzac Day mean to you personally? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Anzac Day means more than one can describe. It’s a mixture of intense pride in Australia and gratitude for the service and sacrifice that so many Australians, who in the past and are today, putting their lives on the line in defence of our liberties. So it’s a mixture of so many emotions; pride, sadness, gratitude, but above all I think a spirit of Australianness and mateship. We sang there at the Dawn Service ‘We Are Australian’ and that is a very iconic song which sums up our diversity, our unity, our togetherness, our mateship as Australians. QUESTION: Why do you think with a country like Australia, which has quite a small military, that our military history is sort of considered so much of the national character here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re very proud of what our servicemen and women have done over the generations. They’ve been consistently fighting for freedom in so many different engagements around the world; today battling an implacable ruthless enemy in the hills of Afghanistan. So we’re very proud of what our servicemen and women have done and this is the one day in the year, above all others, when we remember them and honour them.  malcolmSat, 25 Apr 2009 05:47:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:448http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/450/Doorstop-Interview-Darwin.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=450http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=450&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/450/Doorstop-Interview-Darwin.aspxSubjects: Jobs for Australia forum; visit to the Top End; remarks of IMF Chief Economist; first home owners grant; Kevin Rudd’s Jekyll and Hyde policies; Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s great to be here in Darwin for the second day of our visit. It’s been a very productive one. We’ve had a very interesting, very constructive jobs forum here. This is the 20th I’ve attended around Australia. Every single one of them has different ideas and themes, but also common themes. A great concern expressed here and right around the country is that the Rudd Government does not have a plan for recovery; it doesn’t have a plan for jobs. It’s certainly borrowing big and spending big and as the IMF has confirmed overnight, its cash splashes are not an effective use of tax payers’ money. They do not create jobs and they do not create economic growth and it was very revealing to see the IMF’s chief economist last night confirming the criticism that we’ve made of the Rudd Government’s spending plans or spending programs over recent months. The critical thing for any government to have now is a plan for recovery. Our focus is on a plan for recovery. That’s why we have a six point small business plan for recovery, to support jobs, to support small business to ensure that it can keep people on the payroll and engage more people as employees. That’s what it’s got to be all about – jobs, jobs, jobs. QUESTION: Rudd has indicated that there might be a need for more taxes, possible changes to access to the first home buyers grant for people earning over $150,000 and in fact that could generate an extra $2 billion from high income earners. What are your thoughts about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there’s so many mixed messages being put out by the Rudd Government. They seem to be in a state of complete confusion about what they’re trying to do in the budget. On the one hand we’ve got the Prime Minister indicating there’s going to be a further cash handout. One would hope after the comments from the IMF being taken onboard by the Government they won’t do that because these cash splashes have been demonstrated not to be job-creating or an effective economic stimulus. They do however run up a lot of debt which we’ll have to pay off in years ahead. But the same time as he’s talking about spending more and handing out more cash in the budget, they’re also floating stories about higher taxes and clawing back benefits. We really have to ask ourselves, who is Mr Rudd? Is he Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde? Is he Father Christmas every day of the year, or is he trying to claw back benefits and raise taxes on the other hand? I don’t see any theme in this budget. What this budget should be about, it should be about jobs, it should be about a plan for recovery. But at the moment it’s sending very confused signals. QUESTION: If the pensioners are going to get a $30 a week rise such as you’ve suggested, where would that money come from if you’re not going to impose more taxes particularly on those who can afford to pay? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Government has got to marshal all of its resources. The budget is gigantic and the Government has to meet its obligations, it’s got to live within its means, it’s got to make sure that it spends money wisely and if it is just handing money out, borrowing money – let’s remember this, Kevin Rudd has borrowed $23 billion and given it away in the last four months and we have now the word of the International Monetary Fund to say that is not an effective use of money. It does the economy no good. That’s what the IMF has said. That’s exactly what we have said. So he is the one that has been misspending our resources, but what he cannot do is having wasted money from an economic point of view then use that as a reason for cutting back on benefits or raising taxes in a way that will provide a further brake on economic recovery. QUESTION: Your spokesman Joe Hockey is saying that the First Home Owners Grant is distorting the market. What’s your position on that? Do you think it should be removed altogether or wound back or reformed? What would you like to see there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I’d like to see the Government do is make up its mind about what’s happening. Again, we get confusion. We get headlines sourced from the Government suggesting that it’s going to be extended, and on the other hand we get ministers like Lindsay Tanner suggesting that it’s going to be stopped and Mr Rudd has intonated that it’s going to be stopped. What are young people meant to believe? They need to have some certainty. The Government cannot keep on sending out all of these confused messages. It has access to all of the economic data, much more than we do. It knows what the impact of the first home owners grant, the boost to it has been and they should make a decision about what they’re going to do and announce it quickly, because what they’ve done is they have created real confusion out there in the marketplace by suggesting on the one hand it’s going to be extended, on the other hand suggesting it’s not going to be extended. QUESTION: But what do you think should happen to the first home buyers grant? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the first home owners grant, the boost to it, has been effective – that is certainly our view on the evidence to date. There has been criticism of it from some quarters, including from some ministers in the Government, suggesting that it has artificially inflated the price of housing. That’s been one argument that’s made. Other people have put a contrary point of view and said without that housing prices would have declined in a manner that would have been very unsustainable, very undesirable. So there are arguments pro and con. What the Government has got to do is put the evidence out on the table. They have access to economic data that we don’t have, nobody else has. They should put it out on the table, but above all they should make a decision. What we need is certainty. You’ve got to remember in this area of economic policy, certainty is vital, confidence is vital. The Government is undermining confidence by sending out mixed signals. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, new images of the rescue of the asylum seekers off the boat explosion off Ashmore Reef last week have finally been released. What do you say about the timing? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I believe in open government. I would have preferred those pictures to have been released earlier. They clearly have been available for some time. It’s difficult to see why they couldn’t have been released earlier, but they’re out there now so that’s good. I think what those pictures do remind us of is the professionalism, the heroism, the dedication of the Australian Defence Forces who went to the aid of the people involved in, who’d been injured by the explosion on that boat. One of the things that has impressed me so much, impressed all Australians so much is the way in which the Defence Forces and of course the medical teams here in Darwin responded so quickly, so professionally, so compassionately – so much effective inter-agency co-operation. Really, Darwin is in the frontline with so many of these terrible challenges that we see to our north, be it accidents at sea or disasters in Indonesia that we’ve seen in the past with bombings in Bali and so forth. Really the resources here in Darwin and the teams here in Darwin are so professional and that’s why Lucy and I went out to the hospital yesterday to thank them for the great work they have done and I went to Northern Command also to thank the Defence Force personnel there for the work they’ve done. Really Darwin boxes way above its weight. It’s a great credit to the Top End, the professionalism of both our Defence and medical personnel in responding to these challenges.  QUESTION: Asylum seekers are saying that basically the reason why they’re being forced to come in boats is that it’s taking up to ten years for the UNHCR to fully assess them while they’re waiting in these horrible refugee camps. Do you think the Australian Government should be petitioning the UNHCR to speed up its approval processes and actually make sure that we have an international refugee system that works so we don’t have people risking themselves trying to get to our country in these rickety boats? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I thought the main message from the Iraqi gentleman that was interviewed by the ABC was that he saw the policies of Australia as being much softer and more receptive to people smuggling under the Rudd Government than they had been under the Howard Government. He said it was easier to get into Australia under Mr Rudd’s Government. Now that is consistent with what we’ve heard from the Indonesian Ambassador. It’s consistent with what we’ve heard from Steve Cook from the International Organisation for Migration. There is no doubt that the Rudd Government in changing the policies of the previous government has created the impression that Australia is a softer target and that has contributed, as was predicted by Mr Cook late last year, to people smugglers testing the envelope and putting more boats with more asylum seekers on them on the water. Now the object of Australia’s border protection policies is no boats. We do not want this people smuggling trade to continue. We want it to be stopped. Mr Rudd’s policies plainly have failed and with what we’ve seen today with the remarks from the asylum seekers interviewed in Indonesia is just further proof of the failure of that policy. QUESTION: You’ve heard some suggestions from employers here on things like getting some assistance to get people to me move interstate because it’s ridiculous that you have people being laid off down south and employers here who can’t get staff. Do you think that’s something that the federal or the state and territory governments should consider? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well when we drilled down into that in the forum, as you would have heard, the key item, the common theme was housing affordability and the concern that the cost of housing is so high in Darwin and rents are so high. Housing both in terms of purchasing housing or renting it is much more expensive in Darwin than it is say in Melbourne or other cities in the south. So that is a key focus. It was mentioned there at the meeting, as you saw, that the big factor in that was the supply of land and not enough land was being released to allow development to occur. There was also express concern about territory and local government charges. So these are issues right around Australia but obviously particularly relevant here in Darwin where you’ve got employers saying they’re short of labour but they’re unable to attract people to come north. So this issue of housing affordability is a vital one but a key element in it is the supply of land. Right around Australia, in fact right around the world, that is one of the big factors that contributes to housing not being affordable. QUESTION: Have you heard of any move to try and relocate NORCOM to Canberra and are you concerned by any suggestion of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Senator Scullion and I both commented on that in the jobs forum as you would have heard. These reports of possible moves have been around for some time and one of the Territory MLAs made the observation that they tend to surface every few years. Nigel Scullion and I both agree that Northern Command, it is hard to see how Northern Command can be located anywhere but in the north. Now I can’t really take it any further than that without knowing exactly what is being proposed, if indeed any move is being proposed at all. But I have to say the Northern Command, working with other agencies, Territory agencies, police and of course with the medical teams at the hospital, have so distinguished themselves in their professionalism in dealing with the most recent challenge, the most recent tragedy on Ashmore Reef but of course with the bombings in Bali in the past, really, again and again the teams here in the north demonstrate their professionalism and it is a formula, it’s a teamwork, it’s a set of logistics infrastructure that is working very well. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmFri, 24 Apr 2009 00:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:450http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/443/Interview-with-Leon-Compton-ABC-Darwin.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=443http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=443&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/443/Interview-with-Leon-Compton-ABC-Darwin.aspx Subjects: Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling; IMF report; Australian economy; visit to Darwin E & O E COMPTON: Malcolm Turnbull good morning to you and thank you for coming in. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, great to be with you Leon. COMPTON: So another boat of asylum seekers arrived off the coast of Western Australia yesterday, asylum seekers from the tragedy off Ashmore Reef last week are still being treated in Northern Territory hospitals, what briefings have you received on the number of asylum seekers in Indonesia at the moment, still waiting to come here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we haven’t received any confidential, any private briefings that are any different from what’s been said by the ministers, which is that there is a lot, some thousands, potentially, coming to Australia. So there is certainly, well the Government is acknowledging that its border protection policies have failed – there’s no other way you can put it. We are now very close to having had twice as many unlawful arrivals since August last year as we’d had in the previous six years. Now on any view that is a failure of policy. The Rudd Government is not protecting our borders. They are not stopping the boats. The boats are coming, putting life and limb at very grave risk – as we saw tragically on the Ashmore Reef – and of course putting at risk the lives of the Australian Defence Force personnel who go to their aid. COMPTON: And is the policy prescription coming from the conservatives that would mark a difference between the two parties that temporary protection visas need to be implemented again? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s just one aspect of it. You’ve got to remember we had a whole range of policies, a whole suite of policy if you like, which the Labor Government has walked away from and they’ve made significant changes. They abandoned the temporary protection visas – that’s true – in August last year and they’ve now got their own package of policies, but the problem we face is that they’re not working. I mean the pressure has to be on Mr Rudd – what is his answer going to be? COMPTON: Is it your answer to reinstate temporary protection visas? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Leon what we have to do, and this what I’ve offered to do to Mr Rudd, I’ve offered to sit down with him, if he’s prepared to give us the benefit of the latest intelligence, the up-to-date intelligence from the AFP. I mean we’re told that the Australian Federal Police have advised the Government that their change in policies has resulted in this dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals. We saw Steve Cook from the International Organisation for Migration in December last year, based in Indonesia, predicting this would happen….. COMPTON: What is your policy response? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Just let me go on, the interesting thing is, you’re asking me this – and I’ll answer you – but I’ll just tell you something, I have not heard one journalist ask the Government what they’re going to do. The media are very concerned about what the Opposition would do if we were in government. But there is no interest, no pressure on the Government to say what it’s going to do to stop this dramatic increase in boats – and I think a lot of people listening to this will be puzzled as to why the questions are not being put to Mr Rudd. He doesn’t get asked that. COMPTON: Is it not reasonable for people listening to accept as a policy response to sit and continue to allow people to come where they do, to continue working with Indonesia as the Government has done and as your government did before that, to continue trying to intercept people as they move into our waters, to process them in places like Christmas Island and to see what happens from there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Leon I think you need to have a suite of policies. The ideal….. COMPTON: Well what’s yours? It doesn’t seem that you do. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I was just about to say so until you interrupted me. You need to have a suite of policies and the first objective is that to ensure boats don’t leave Indonesia, plainly. So we need to improve the level of cooperation with Indonesia. What Mr Rudd should have as a top priority is reaching agreement with Indonesia to process these asylum seekers in Indonesia. That is the ideal, that is unquestionably the ideal solution. That should be highest, if you like, diplomatic priority in relation to asylum seekers. We also need to provide a very high level of, if you like, of assurance that the asylum seekers will not be able to reach the Australian mainland – in other words that they’ll be processed offshore, assuming they leave Indonesia – and that’s why interception is vital. The Rudd Government has reduced the resources available for monitoring and interception of asylum seekers and you saw the boat yesterday got very close to the Australian mainland, in which case it couldn’t have been taken to Christmas Island. So he needs to put more resources to work and stop chopping back on it. COMPTON: But correct me if I’m wrong, the Navy were arguing that they’d been following that boat for 24 hours and had it well and truly in their sights before they got here. Their argument was they had it under control. MALCOLM TURNBULL: All I’m saying to you Leon is that it was very close to the Australian mainland. COMPTON: But do you also accept that the Navy had it under control? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ve noted what’s been said. I’m saying it was very close, Barrow Island is very close to the Australian mainland. The next point is whether we should – this is the question you’ve posed earlier – whether we should reinstate the temporary protection visas? Now let’s just focus on that. What temporary protection visas means is that people who arrive by boat have a different visa entitlement than people who come by other means, right? And it was a deliberate attempt to create a disincentive for people to get into those boats at danger to themselves and to everybody else. So that was the policy. COMPTON: By denying them access to, for example, learning English when they got here, by denying them access to family reunion, amongst other things….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Leon, the reality is however that the package of measures we’ve had in years passed worked, the evidence was that they worked. COMPTON: Is it policy now, Mr Turnbull? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What I have said and I will repeat again here, if you’ll let me…. COMPTON: Is it policy now; is the reinstatement of temporary protection visas policy for the conservatives now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Leon, what I have said is that we believe that the reinstatement of temporary protection visas or a variant of them, which provides a differentiated set of visa entitlements for people who arrive by boat, should be very high on the agenda for discussion with the Government in terms of creating a new, amended set of policies that will be effective. You see temporary protection visas simply means a way of saying you have a different visa entitlement if you come by boat – it’s designed to be a disincentive. Now we had a package of policies under the previous government that worked. That package has now been changed by Mr Rudd and we have a dramatic increase in boat arrivals. What Mr Rudd is doing is he is saying ‘I am helpless’. He is saying there is nothing the Australian Government can do to prevent unauthorised boat arrivals. Now our policies when we were in government changed in the light of circumstances and in the light of intelligence and events as we learned more about the problem. They evolved. We inherited mandatory detention from the Labor Party – don’t forget that. COMPTON: Do you think Mr Turnbull that we’re about to see significantly larger numbers of people attempting to seek asylum here by boat, significantly larger numbers? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It appears to be, that’s certainly what the Government is saying and that’s certainly what is being indicated by reports in the media, yes. And it’s a matter of very grave concern. But the big difference between us and the Government, Leon, is that they are in Government, they are responsible for protecting our borders, they have access to the up-to-date information about people smuggling – which they are refusing to share with the Australian people. Now if I was the Prime Minister today I can guarantee you this; that I would be doing everything I can, undertaking whatever policies would be effective to keep our borders safe. We are committed to that. The policies will have to change, whoever is in government, from time to time to meet the circumstances. But what Mr Rudd is saying is it’s too hard. He is saying it is helpless and instead of people focussing on what the Government is going to do, you are asking us hypothetical questions about what we would do were we in government today. Now what we would do if we were in government is make sure the policies worked. What Mr Rudd’s policies are doing is they are not working. They are not keeping the boats out. COMPTON: Mr Turnbull I’d like to move on to other subjects, I’m sure there are plenty of other things the Territorians will be raising with you across the course of the next few days that you spend in the Northern Territory attending Anzac Day services, Robertson Barracks, amongst other things. You’re on 105.7 ABC Darwin. My guest this morning; Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition, at 18 past nine. You’re welcome to give us a call if you’d like to join the discussion, 1300 057 222 is the number or you can send us a text to 1999 1057. Let’s have a look at some of the figures released by the IMF today and the figures that they’re talking about in the context of the Australian economy. One point four per cent contraction in our economy, unemployment to rise significantly, I think they’re talking about 7.8 per cent, although the Northern Territory seems to be immune to some of that at the moment. What are you expecting, how bad do you think things will get? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I can’t improve or vary, challenge the IMF’s forecasts, every forecaster has got slightly different numbers but nobody is expecting the economy to get better for a while.  Clearly we are in a very significant downturn, both locally and of course globally. The issue really is not how deep is the hole that we’re in; the question is what are we doing to get out of it.  And so I’m more focused on what policies are being deployed today to get our economy on the move again.  What is the plan for recovery?  My criticism of the Government is that they have had a range of big spending, big borrowing programs which have been ineffective, which have not created any jobs.  You know, remember they borrowed $23 billion in the last four months just for cash splashes alone and haven’t created a single job.  On the other hand, I have a positive plan for measures which are much better targeted, which will create jobs and provide real incentives, particularly for small businesses, to employ Australians and keep Australians on the payroll COMPTON: The IMF seems to say we will avoid the worst of the global contraction.  Could that not be attributed to the pump-priming of the economy that the Rudd Government’s been involving itself in? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, absolutely not. And I think Mr Swan actually, as best he could – through gritted teeth no doubt – conceded this today that the reason Australia is relatively better off to other developed countries is because of the very strong position it was left in by the previous government…  COMPTON: So what would you do?  What is one thing that you could name that would significantly improve the capacity of Australians to weather the storm affecting the globe? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, firstly, what we have to do is not borrow money for extravagant and poorly targeted spending.  So you’ve got to remember that the more money you borrow today, the higher the taxes and higher interest rates are going to be in the future.  So making every dollar count, getting the best bang for the taxpayers’ buck is vital.  We would bring forward the tax cuts for July 1 this year and July 1 next year to provide real incentive.  We would provide a rebate from the Government for a portion of the superannuation guarantee contribution paid by small businesses to put cash back into small businesses.  They are at the frontline of employment. We would provide real incentives for green refits for companies to or people to refit their buildings, to have greater water efficiency and energy efficiency – double the depreciation for that – again that provides jobs.  It’s also good for the environment.  We would allow companies to carry backwards tax losses instead of only being able to carry – or losses I should say – instead of only being able to carry them forwards, be able to carry them back and get back the tax they’ve paid from past years.  This is a practice that’s available in many other countries.  It would provide real relief in terms of cash flow, particularly for small businesses, in this environment.  We would slash through red tape, make it easier for people to start businesses and keep businesses going.  We have a whole range of measures.  They are on my website – the small business plan is a six-point plan – and it’s malcolmturnbull.com.au and I would encourage everyone to have a look at it. COMPTON: Mr Turnbull, let’s have a chat about the upcoming federal election.  It isn’t too far away.  Have you started looking for candidates in the seat of Solomon? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s a matter for the CLP of course but I’m sure they’re looking out for candidates and, you know, if you’re interested in nominating you’ve just got to join the CLP.  And I’m sure there’s a preselection you could participate in, Leon. LEON COMPTON: You’re not talking to me personally of course but suggesting that people… MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is, Leon, that we are a grassroots political movement on the conservative side of politics.  The preselections are done by the local members in each division.  In the case of Solomon, obviously here in Darwin, and that is a matter for them.  But we are always looking for talent; politics is a talent business.  People think politicians aren’t talented enough I imagine but, nonetheless, we’re always looking for good people.  We had a great local member in Dave Tollner.  He was outstanding.  Of course he was unfortunately defeated in the last election and is now serving in the Territory Parliament.  But we will be looking for somebody to do that, to stand as our candidate here, but that will be the responsibility of the members of the CLP in Solomon. COMPTON: We still have asylum seekers being treated here at Royal Darwin Hospital.  Will you be meeting any of them during your time in the Northern Territory? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I would like to but I don’t think that will be possible.  I’m going to the hospital and I’m going to see Len Notaras and see some of his emergency team there and really hear what they have been doing and pass on to them our thanks for the absolutely courageous and unstinting efforts they’ve been making to helping these people.  I mean, this is an important thing, Leon – just getting back to the point about border protection policy – we have to remember that there is a massive public interest from every aspect in stopping these unauthorised boat arrivals because the more boats, you know, these are not – let’s face it – these are not ocean liners, these are often very unseaworthy boats, there’s a lot of risk and these accidents and, indeed, incidents do happen.  Now, we still don’t know exactly what happened on that boat and the sooner those facts are laid out the better. COMPTON: It seems like there’s a pretty good opportunity while you’re in the Northern Territory to have a chat to some of the people on the boat who might be being treated here. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I would very much like to but the question is whether that will be made available. COMPTON: Will you try and do it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve certainly sought to do that but my understanding is that is not going to be possible. COMPTON: It will be interesting to see what happens at that and the rest of your time in the Northern Territory. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, thanks a lot Leon. COMPTON: Thank you for coming into the studio and talking with us this morning. [ends]   malcolmThu, 23 Apr 2009 09:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:443http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/442/Interview-with-Paris-Lord-Mix-1049-Darwin.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=442http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=442&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/442/Interview-with-Paris-Lord-Mix-1049-Darwin.aspx  Subjects:  Visit to the Top End; IMF Report; Kevin Rudd’s failure to invest in economic infrastructure; Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling; republic.  E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... PARIS LORD: Joining us now very kindly from his busy tour of the Top End is the Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Good morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Paris. PARIS LORD: Thanks for coming in. We know you’ve got a packed schedule while you’re here. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, we’ve got a lot to do, a lot of people to meet, a lot of important events to attend. Hyacinth Tungutalum’s funeral today of course and the Dawn Service on Saturday on Anzac Day. PARIS LORD: One of the things overnight, the International Monetary Fund was predicting Australia’s economy is going to contract about 1.4 per cent this year. This is part of the World Economic Outlook, and forecasting that it may grow slightly again next year and the IMF also predicts rising unemployment in Australia may increase to 6.8 per cent this year and just under 8 per cent the following year. What are your thoughts on where this is all going? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, certainly the global economy is deteriorating and unemployment is rising. Growth is slowing around the world and also, of course, in Australia. We went into this downturn in a better position than most other developed countries because of the very strong economic state that the previous government, the Howard Government left Australia in, paying off all of Labor’s debt and ensuring that we had strong surpluses, low unemployment and strong economic growth. Mr Rudd inherited a very good set of economic cards. The question is how well is he playing them now. We believe that he’s borrowing too much money and spending it very unwisely. It’s all to very little effect. He’s borrowed and spent in the last four months $23 billion for cash splashes which have not created a single job. They haven’t stopped the slowing of economic growth; they haven’t stopped the rise in unemployment. We have alternative policies which will involve less debt while better targeted at creating jobs and will ensure that we weather – if our policies are adopted – we will weather this economic storm in much better shape than we will under Mr Rudd’s policies. PARIS LORD: The Prime Minister was, up until this week, was unable to use the ‘r’ word, the recession word in a sentence and now it seems to be free reign on that. He’s also said that there’s going to be a third stimulus plan in the budget coming up and The Australian’s reported today that Wayne Swan’s going to be able to fund billions of dollars of extra spending because raiding supposedly a ‘hollow log’ created last year. I take it you don’t approve of the upcoming third stimulus package, another cash splash [inaudible]? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it depends what it is. If it’s another cash handout, it will be as ineffective as the last two. Obviously if you send everybody a cheque for 900 bucks or a thousand dollars or 500 bucks or whatever it is, people will say ‘thanks very much’ and most people will spend it wisely or more likely actually use it to pay down debt, so they’ll in effect save it. And there is the problem. You see, what the Government is doing is buying itself a lot of popularity, sending out a lot of money but it isn’t creating jobs, it isn’t effective. Now if they were spending that money on building roads or bridges or ports, water schemes, all of that would create employment and it creates economic activity both now and in the future. You know, I’ve been going around Australia talking to communities in New South Wales, central Queensland very recently and people have been saying to me, well, why is Kevin Rudd borrowing all this money and handing it out in $900 licks and yet he’s not spending money on this railway, this road, this airport, this freeway extension. They’re pointing to concrete projects that are literally ready to go that are not being invested in and I think the critical obligation of any government is to make sure that the taxpayer gets value for the dollars the government spends. So it’s not a question of whether governments should spend money or not. Governments should spend money wisely and carefully, recognising that it’s other people’s money. PARIS LORD: Well from the recession to refugees and asylum seekers, the Navy intercepted a boatload of Sri Lankans, 32 men, yesterday and The Australian has reporting that there’s possibly another boat which has left Indonesia yesterday and should be soon entering Australian waters. What are your thoughts on what’s going on? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think there’s any doubt about what’s going on. The Rudd Government made a point of changing the Howard Government’s border protection policies. They made a big point about that, and as Steve Cook from the International Organization for Migration based in Jakarta said last year, the people smugglers will now test the envelope. They will now take advantage of this and see if they can have more success in getting people into Australia than they did under the previous government. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. The Indonesian Ambassador said much the same thing just the other day. So the reality is that Mr Rudd’s border protection policies are failing. The proof is in the pudding. As every boat arrives, as more unfortunate people get into these boats, which are criminal rackets, these people smugglers are criminals, many of them are tied up in drug trafficking and worse. There’s great concern at the International Conference on People Smuggling in Bali recently about the links between the people smugglers and terrorism. This is one of the items that all the nations there present particularly addressed. So we’re talking about a very evil, dangerous, criminal group of people smugglers and they are ramping up their operations and the Government’s border protection policies are not working. Mr Rudd has to address that. What is he going to do to keep our borders protected? What’s he going to do to stop this trade? So far we’ve seen nothing. PARIS LORD: But no country can stop the trade. Italy’s been trying for years; it has tens of thousands of people each year. Spain has a similar problem. There will always be poor people who are trying to transit to get into richer countries so you can’t exactly stop it. You can only manage it, can’t you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well when you’re faced with a challenge, you can always just throw up your hands and surrender, say I’m helpless. That seems to be what Mr Rudd is doing, saying there’s nothing he can do about it. Let’s just look at the facts. People smuggling has been an issue for many, many years, for decades, many decades. There have been nearly twice as many people arrive unlawfully by boat since August – nearly twice as many in those few months since August – as in the previous six years. Think about that. This has been a dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals, Paris. There’s no way you can get around that. That’s the fact. So we can debate which policy mixture is right or wrong and you can argue about this point or that point. Border protection policies have to be looked at as a whole. Our policy package as a whole worked. Mr Rudd’s policy package as a whole has failed. He’s the Prime Minister. What’s he going to do about it? Apparently he throws up his hands and says oh the Italians have got more people being smuggled into their country than we have so [inaudible] worry about it. Well that’s not good enough. Australians expect their Prime Minister and their Government to protect teir borders. PARIS LORD: On Saturday it’s Anzac Day. One of the reasons you’re here is for Dawn Services, and the Territory Government’s putting on free buses to Anzac Day Services in Darwin, Palmerston and the northern suburbs. Also free car park in the city. The car park’s run by Darwin City Council. Where will you be at the Dawn Service? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ll be at the Dawn Service there, the same as everybody else with Lucy. My wife Lucy is up here with me and we’ll both be very pleased to be there, reflecting on the sacrifice that so many Australians have made in war over many generations and remembering too the sacrifices and the perils that Australian servicemen and women are facing today. PARIS LORD: Will you have a chance to get out to the Adelaide River War Cemetery there, the Commonwealth Graves? MALCOLM TURNBULL: If we can include that on Saturday, we’ll certainly endeavour to do that. PARIS LORD: Now we know that you’re a big fan of the republic and so on. The Territory has a bit of a problem with statehood in that we’re not a state yet… MALCOLM TURNBULL: You had a bit of a problem with a referendum, as I did. PARIS LORD: You reckon you could help us become, because it’s been a long struggle for the Territory to achieve statehood, so you reckon we could bypass becoming a state and just go straight to becoming a Republic of the Northern Territory? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What, and secede? PARIS LORD: Well not so much secede as stay within the overall Commonwealth but just say, we want statehood, it’s taken far too long. Let’s just go the next logical step. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, if you want to be a republic – and I would love Australia to be a republic as everyone knows – you have to get a referendum passed and I think you face the same challenge with statehood. Ultimately, these changes are ones that have to be supported by a majority of the population. Changing Australia’s federal constitution, the Commonwealth Constitution is very hard because you have to get a national majority and a majority in four out of six states. So that’s why we’ve had very few successful amendments. But ultimately it’s not a question of, in the Territory’s case, statehood being denied by somebody else. It’s a question of if the majority of the people want to do something then in the final analysis they will get their way, as they should in a democracy. PARIS LORD: Lastly, we know that the former Leader of the Liberal Party John Howard used to each morning regularly go for his morning walks in tracksuits and listening to the radio and so on. I understood he used to listen to Radio National Breakfast a lot. Do you have any sort of similar regime? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Not as regular as John. I normally do exercise in the morning. But it depends on the circumstance, depends how early I’m starting off – often start doing radio very early in the morning. He was really admirable in the regularity of his exercise. John Howard’s management, I guess, of his regime, of his exercise regime is an example that all Australians should aspire to. He really set a great example of physical fitness, of practical physical fitness which was achievable. There are some people that are super athletes and do things that the average man and woman can’t aspire to, but I think Howard really set an example that all of us would do well to emulate more often in terms of his daily exercise. PARIS LORD: I asked the question about the tracksuit because I brought along a tape measure and if my producer Zoe Akkerman can come in and help, we’d like to take your measurements to perhaps get a Territory tracksuit made up, one with, on the chest would be a Territory flag because, as you’re aware, it doesn’t have any signs of Britain on it at all. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Alright… PARIS LORD: Perhaps on the back we could get a big crocodile… MALCOLM TURNBULL: You don’t have to measure me up. Just XL will be, XL will be fine. PARIS LORD: Okay. We’d appreciate if you do go for morning walks and so on, to be advertising the Territory and crocodiles. It’d be a big help… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay. Always happy to support you. PARIS LORD: Cheers Mr Turnbull. Thanks for dropping by. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah that’s great Paris. [ends]     malcolmThu, 23 Apr 2009 08:59:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:442http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/441/Doorstop-Interview-Darwin.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=441http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=441&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/441/Doorstop-Interview-Darwin.aspxSubjects: Visit to Darwin; Coalition’s plan for economic recovery; Kevin Rudd running up the white flag. E & O E  MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s wonderful for Lucy and I to be back in the Territory here in Darwin. It’s a wonderful visit for us. We’re meeting leaders, community leaders. We’ve obviously said farewell to a very important community leader this morning; a very moving ceremony. We’re also going to see Len Notaras at the Hospital today. He and his team have been doing heroic work in attending to the victims of the tragic boat explosion on Ashmore Reef recently. We’ll also be speaking to the Northern Command, visiting Robertson Barracks. We’ll be having a Jobs Forum tomorrow with Senator Nigel Scullion. Our key focus is jobs, jobs, jobs. The big difference between us and the Labor Party on the economic front is that we have a plan for jobs. I see Mr Swan is now saying he’s not going to rule out increasing taxes. So no sooner have they handed out $23 billion, they’re now wanting to raise taxes. A lot of people will find that doesn’t make much sense. There seems to be a lack of leadership on the economic front from the Government. Now we have a clear set of policies which are focused on small business, on driving employment, on making it easier for small business to put people on the payroll and keep them there, lowering the cost of employing people in small businesses. Those are among the issues we’ll be talking about at the small business forum tomorrow. And of course on Saturday we’ll be joining with Territorians at the Dawn Service for Anzac Day. QUESTION: The IMF has come out quite clearly in support of the Government’s fiscal stimulus, surely you’ve got to concede if the IMF is coming out that way that the Government has done right, at least to some degree with that? MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Well I wouldn’t agree with that. The reality is that governments around the world are spending money. Some are spending it more effectively than others. You’ve got to judge every dollar that governments spend by what you get out of it and Mr Rudd has borrowed $23 billion and he’s given it away in cash splashes in four months – that’s nearly 2.5 per cent of GDP – no one could have imagined that was possible a year ago. But that’s what he’s done. He said it would create 75,000 jobs. It hasn’t created one. Now that’s the big difference: Mr Rudd is spending and borrowing to no effect. We have a positive plan for recovery. We have developed that plan through meetings like the one we’re going to have tomorrow, listening to small business. We’ve built up a six-point plan for recovery focused on small business which involves giving real tax relief to small businesses, lowering the cost of their employing Australians by rebating a proportion of the Superannuation Guarantee Contribution, by allowing them to roll losses backwards to in effect reclaim tax paid in past years and offset it against losses in current years. These are all important changes which will make it easier for small business in particular – that’s the front line of the economy, that’s the engine room of the economy – make it easier for them to put people on the payroll and above all, keep them there.  QUESTION:  Can you name one country that’s been able to protect their economy from this downturn?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well every country is facing this global downturn. Some countries are being more effective in the way they respond to it. A good example is China. China is focusing its economic stimulus, its spending on infrastructure, spending on economic infrastructure. Mr Rudd has spent $23 billion in cash handouts.  It’s great for his popularity but it hasn’t created any jobs.  I go around Australia and I listen to people talking about the infrastructure; the roads, the ports, the airports, the freeways that are not getting funded by the Rudd Government.  They say, why is he giving away $23 billion dollars in cash handouts but he’s not doing the F3 link in the lower Hunter, he’s not investing in the Gladstone Airport or the missing rail link in central Queensland.  There are a range of projects right around the country – and I’m sure we’ll hear plenty about them tomorrow here in Darwin – where people are saying, where is the money being spent?  So it’s not good enough for a government to say, oh we’re spending money.  The question is – what are you spending it on and what are you getting out of it?  And if all you’re getting is popularity, that’s not doing anything for jobs.  Remember, Mr Rudd said in December the cash splash then would create 75,000 jobs.  It hasn’t created one.  In February, remember, he said that he wasn’t going to say a recession was inevitable because that would be running up the white flag.  Well now he can’t say the word ‘recession’ too often.  He wants to blame everything on international circumstances so that he isn’t held responsible.  Well, he is responsible, he is the Prime Minister.  That’s the difference between Mr Rudd and me – I have a positive plan for recovery, measures which will cost the Australian public a lot less in terms of spending, incur much less debt but will deliver jobs.  That’s the difference – we’re focused on jobs. QUESTION: You said on the radio this morning that you wanted to… you were trying to meet asylum seekers in the hospital.  If you did get that chance, what would you have said to them? MALCOLM TURNBULL:  We’re going to the hospital. It’s not intended... it’s not a media visit or a political visit.  Like all of us, we are filled with compassion for the victims of this terrible accident and admiration and thanks to the medical staff led by Len Notaras that have done such a great job in caring for them.  So Lucy and I are going to go there and thank Dr Notaras and his team for their great work.  If we are able to meet people who have been injured and provide some measure, some sign of our compassion and caring for them, we’d be happy to do so, but really we’ll be in the hands of Dr Notaras.  And I just want to say to you that this is not a visit, it is not a visit that is intended to be a political statement or a media statement. It is really a question of Lucy and I, as two human beings, saying to Dr Notaras and his team, thank you for your hard work, your heroism, sharing our compassion for the victims of this terrible accident.  Thank you.  [ends]        malcolmThu, 23 Apr 2009 08:48:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:441http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/440/Interview-with-David-Koch-Sunrise.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=440http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=440&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/440/Interview-with-David-Koch-Sunrise.aspxSubjects: Australian economy; the Coalition’s plan for economic recovery. E&OE………………………………………………………………………………...... KOCH: Good morning to you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning. KOCH: Now you’ve been a bit of a critic of Kevin Rudd for a fair while, saying oh come out and admit we’re in recession. He now has, and you’re saying he’s using it as a bit of distraction? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Kochie, I don’t think the question of whether we are technically in a recession today or not is the real issue. The real issue is what are we doing to get out of it? Where are the policies? Now Mr Rudd has had his cash splashes, two cash splashes. He said they’d create jobs. Have they created jobs? No. He said they would provide economic growth. Did they create any economic growth? No. We’re going backwards, and we’re continuing to go backwards. So he’s had two cash splashes that haven’t worked and now apparently he wants to do a third. The only thing I’ll guarantee you these cash splashes will deliver, is bigger and bigger mountains of debt, which will mean higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future – but no jobs. KOCH: Okay. Well you’ve got groups like the International Monetary Fund coming out overnight saying the recession is going to get worse around the world and Australia is in a pretty good position. So he must be doing something right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re in a good position because of the hand of economic cards Mr Rudd was dealt when he became Prime Minister. The Coalition left this country in a very, very strong economic state. You know all Labor’s debt paid off, the budget in surplus, future obligations to federal pension recipients paid off via the Future Fund. So it was a very, very solid economy that he inherited and above all he had a well regulated banking system – regulations put in place by the Howard Government – which ensured that we didn’t have a sub-prime crisis. So on every measure Australia was well positioned to take on this economic downturn around the world. That’s why we’re relatively better off than other countries like the European countries or the US. KOCH: Okay. We’ve got the federal Budget coming up very shortly. There is talk today about another economic stimulus. You say, no, we don’t need it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well no… KOCH: You’re a banker, a former banker, what would you do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Kochie what I would do is focus on jobs – jobs, jobs, jobs. You see we have an economic recovery plan… KOCH: …doing what? How do you focus on… what specific policies would you bring in for jobs? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Provide real incentives for businesses to keep people on the payroll. So we’ve proposed measures that will lower the costs for small business of employing people by rebating a portion of the superannuation guarantee contribution. We’ve proposed tax relief; bringing forward tax cuts due for July 1 this year and July 1 next year, bring them forward. We said they should have been brought forward to January. We’ve also proposed that businesses be able to roll their losses backwards and recover tax they’d paid in previous years – so instead of only being able to carry forward losses, be able to carry them backwards. Many countries already do that. This would provide real cash flow support for businesses now. We’ve proposed that investment, that government spending should be focussed on economic infrastructure – roads, bridges, ports, water, those types of things…. KOCH: Okay, they’re doing that though, they have this infrastructure program….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Are they? Where? I missed it. KOCH: …schools…. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they’re spending money on primary school assembly halls and libraries…. KOCH: ….in the short term, but longer term….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I was up in the Hunter, as you know, not so long ago, up in Cessnock, and of course I’ve been up in central Queensland too. It’s the same story; vital bits of economic infrastructure which are ready to go, not being invested in. In the lower Hunter Bob Baldwin’s been up there arguing for the F3 Link. It’s all ready to go. We put the money aside for it. All the land is bought. The planning is done. So we’re saying, Bob and the Coalition are saying, let’s build it, let’s get started – nothing is happening. It’s in Joel Fitzgibbon’s electorate. They’re handing out cash but they’re not building any roads – that’s what really provides jobs. If you want to have a stimulus, invest in business by providing them with incentives to employ, to keep people on the payroll, as we’ve proposed, and if you’re going to spend money then do so by spending on economic infrastructure. KOCH: They would say by giving us our cheques, our $900 or whatever, we’re, as the customer of a business, going to go and do more business with them. So that’s how the bosses will keep us on in terms of our jobs. You’re saying, just give it direct to the boss? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Kochie the evidence is just dead against the Government there. I mean the first cash splash which was in December, Mr Rudd said would create 75,000 jobs – it didn’t create one. We know that. The economists are telling us that 83 per cent of it was saved – so it wasn’t spent. So in other words we go and borrow $10 billion, which our kids will have to pay off, and $1.7 billion of it is spent. So that’s not much of a return. So if you want to get a real return from government spending at a time like this, everybody will tell you that you should be focussing on economic infrastructure. The Government is not doing that, it’s not spending on projects that are crying out for money. In central Queensland, the Gladstone Airport, a vital bit of infrastructure, no federal money coming their way. In Mackay, further north, you have the whole missing rail link, a vital bit of rail infrastructure to support the coal industry – no Commonwealth money, no Kevin Rudd money coming there. You see what he’s doing is he’s spending money in a way that runs up massive debt, doesn’t create jobs, but it makes him very popular. Everything about Mr Rudd is about politics and driving up his popularity. KOCH: Okay. He’s not too popular today in some of the headlines. Papers are having another go at what he eats on the V.I.P aircraft. What do you reckon about this? Is this a distraction? Is this important sort of political news? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well everywhere I go in Australia people are focussed on jobs. They want to know what the Government is doing to promote jobs. They want to know why money isn’t being better and more effectively spent. I think the Prime Minister has got his priorities wrong – on the aeroplane as well as he has on the economy. KOCH: Okay, alright, Malcolm Turnbull thanks for joining us. [ends]  malcolmWed, 22 Apr 2009 07:30:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:440http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/436/Interview-with-George-Moore-and-Paul-Kidd.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=436http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=436&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/436/Interview-with-George-Moore-and-Paul-Kidd.aspxSubjects: Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling. E & O E PRESENTER: On the line, we’ve got the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull. Good morning. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning. PRESENTER: Good morning sir. Can I say first up this morning, we see where the Federal Minister for Immigration Chris Evans has now – this story is sort of changing as each day goes by – he’s now saying that the Federal Government is warning the nation to brace for more illegal boat arrivals, describing the surge as a threat that must be stopped. And they’ve also confirmed that the Government had been warned by the Federal Police, as Julie Bishop mentioned yesterday, however it does not mean that they have ignored the advice. So… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I just watched him on the ABC. In fact, he’s still on there now. George, I didn’t gather he’d said quite that but… PRESENTER: Well that’s the quote from Glenn Milne in the Sunday papers today. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay, well he seems now to be saying… He’s not very convincing when he says that he’s not aware of any AFP advice. His position on television has been that he says he’s not aware of it. But look the fact is… PRESENTER: Well, hang on a moment. Yesterday, in this article he confirmed it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, okay, I just saw him on the TV. Let’s not argue about that. The critical thing is this – the Rudd Government changed its policy in August last year, in particular by abolishing the temporary protection visas which were designed to provide a disincentive for people arriving by boat, unauthorised boat arrivals. Now there was concern at the time that this would be perceived as Australia being more receptive or more accommodating to unauthorised boat arrivals, which everyone agrees are undesirable, and since then there has been a large number of boats arriving and around 450 unauthorised arrivals – asylum seekers arriving by boat – versus 25 in the whole of last year and really we’ve had more since August than we’ve had in the sum total of the last four or five years, much more. Now the Government says that their position is that Australia’s laws have no impact on the level of arrivals. So whether our laws are tough or soft or somewhere in-between makes absolutely no difference. PRESENTER: Yeah, they also say it’s part of a global trend. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you see there’s no doubt there are push factors, reasons for people to leave their country of origin and want to move somewhere else. There’s no doubt about that. But what the Government says is that there are no pull factors. They say it doesn’t matter whether our laws are tough, even harsh, or whether they are extremely accommodating – it makes no difference. Now, frankly, that strains credulity. It just offends common sense that our approach to border security is irrelevant. That’s what the Government contends. Now if the AFP has, as has been widely reported, and as one would expect, given advice to the Government on the impact of their changes on boat arrivals, then that advice should now be made public because you see the Government is taking a position that most people would scratch their heads and say that just doesn’t add up. PRESENTER: Okay, if I could pull a little extract out of Piers Akerman’s column in the Sunday Telegraph today, and he makes no bones of the fact that he’s a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party. What he says is… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think he is actually but anyway. PRESENTER: Well he’s not in the Labor Party, put it that way. He’s certainly not in the Labor party. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think he’s in any party. I think he’s in the Piers party. PRESENTER: He says, ‘what matters is that the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Immigration Minister Chris Evans thoughtlessly gave the green light to people smugglers when the Government abolished the system of mandatory detention, and the issuing of temporary protection visas, last year without stressing that barriers to the traffic in human cargo still existed. Perhaps they wanted their supporters to think the problem would evaporate if it was ignored. If so, they were wrong. Dead wrong’. Now what are your thoughts on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the evidence – you’ve got to just look at the evidence. As I said, back in August when the Government abolished the temporary protection visas, they said the existence of those TPVs, which made it harder for people who arrived by boat to get permanent status as refugees in Australia, had had no impact on the level of arrivals, even though the level of arrivals has been extremely low for many years. So that was their argument. Since then, there’s been a dramatic increase. Now, Labor says that’s just a coincidence. Well, you know, again that is hard to believe because you’ve got a change in policy, as soon as the change in policy has become effective there’s been a dramatic increase in arrivals. So what we’re entitled to know as Australians is the facts. If the Australian Federal Police has given advice on this – and they’re of course, they’ve got access to intelligence in Indonesia in particular – then let’s see it. The Prime Minister goes out to thunder against people smugglers very dramatically. Why doesn’t he give us some facts? PRESENTER: Yes, he’s calling them scum of the earth and telling them to rot in hell. I thought that was a nice little news grab but what is all that about? That’s a total sort of over reaction from, I saw it as an over reaction. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s just a news grab, George. All it is, all it is, is Kevin Rudd trying to distract attention from the fact that on the face of it his policy has resulted in a dramatic increase in people smuggling, people smugglers targeting Australia. PRESENTER: Alright. Now what do we do now? Yeah, where do we go now? The situation now is with the Rudd Government is saying – you can choose who you want to believe – they’re saying it makes no difference, it’s part of a worldwide, a global trend. You’re saying that it’s the softening of the previous policy that’s responsible for this. It really doesn’t matter, in one way, which one it is. What do we do now if more and more people decide to come? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Okay. This is what I propose. I think firstly the Government must set out the facts. It must produce the AFP report and any other advice it has on the impact of those changes. I mean let’s face it. The proof of the pudding is always in the eating. They changed the law in August. Since August, there’s been a dramatic increase in boat arrivals. It’s a bit rich to say that’s just a coincidence. PRESENTER: Yeah. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let’s get the facts on the table. So we must have the reports from the AFP, from the Australian Federal Police, and any other security agencies that have advised the Government of the impact on those laws, because common sense tells you that the people smugglers who are in a business and are no doubt hustling customers – I mean, people are paying ten, twelve thousand US dollars to come here so they’re obviously concerned about their prospects of getting in and the people smugglers no doubt have been using the change in law in Australia as part of their marketing. PRESENTER: Yeah. Now we saw some clips on television last night of arrests and the police activity over in Indonesia. It gives the impression that they’re giving us a hand. There is criticism from Australians saying after all the help we gave the Indonesians after the tsunami that they could be doing more to stop it at the other end. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I imagine they could always do more and I think a key element in this is cooperation with the Indonesians. But bear in mind Indonesia is a very, very big country that’s made up of thousands of islands so there’s thousands of ports and coves… PRESENTER: Jakarta I think they were coming out of, weren’t they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s probably easier to spot them in Jakarta but the only point I’m making is it’s a big coastline to police. PRESENTER: Yeah, I take your point. MALCOLM TURNBULL: So let’s get the facts on the table. Now, I’ve offered to sit down with the Prime Minister and discuss how we could together agree on changes, on a new approach that will be effective because the one thing we know, well my contention is that the current arrangements are not working. They made a change to the arrangements and unlawful immigration has gone up. PRESENTER: Yeah but as we speak, as we’re sitting here speaking now, they’re leaving. There’s more boats leaving. So something’s got to be done and something’s got to be done pretty quickly. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is absolutely right and of course the problem is that the more likely it is… I mean this is the common sense view. This is my approach; this is what the Government is denying. My common sense approach is this – the more likely it is that a person who gets on a boat in Indonesia to come to Australia will be able to get permanent refugee status in Australia, the more likely they are to leave. In other words, what is the object of getting on that boat and paying the people smuggler $12,000? It is to get permanent residence in Australia as a refugee. PRESENTER: Alright, now Malcolm we took calls from a listener this morning and I think he put his finger on something that’s really bothering a lot of people and that is that this is where the roads are paved with gold for some of these people and he was talking about people on pensions and people who don’t earn very much all, comparing what they get with what the assistance the asylum seekers get here. Rightly or wrongly, people believe that they’re getting far more assistance than people who have lived and worked here all their lives are getting, and that would be fuelling the unhappiness that people feel and the resentment that people feel about these people coming. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I can understand that but can I just say this to you: I am not attacking or criticising the asylum seekers. They are desperate people and desperate people do desperate things. But what they are seeking to do is unlawful. We have a vested interest as Australians and as a compassionate nation in doing everything we can to stop people smuggling. It simply doesn’t just offend the integrity of our borders and undermine the integrity of our own legitimate refugee program, which is one of the most generous in the world, but as we’ve seen in the last few days, every time one of these little boats sets off there is a risk of an accident or a disaster and we do not know how many of them sink without trace. PRESENTER: Yeah. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m sure a number of them do. So from whichever way you look at it, whichever angle you look at it, we must do everything we can to stop this trade. Now the Prime Minister can thunder with newsworthy slogans as much as he likes but the fact is that since he changed the law – his decision – since he changed the law, there has been a dramatic increase in boat arrivals… PRESENTER: Alright, look, thank you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: …and he has to take responsibility for that. PRESENTER: Thank you very much for your time. Good to talk to you. Thanks Malcolm. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks so much. PRESENTER: Nice to talk to you. Bye. [ends]  malcolmMon, 20 Apr 2009 04:21:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:436http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/434/Interview-with-Fran-Kelly-Radio-National.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=434http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=434&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/434/Interview-with-Fran-Kelly-Radio-National.aspxSubjects: Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling; Julie Bishop. E & O E KELLY: Malcolm Turnbull, good morning? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Fran. KELLY: Do you think Australia has a soft immigration policy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there’s no doubt it’s been perceived as being soft and that was predicted….. KELLY: Is that the same thing? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is effectively the same thing. It was predicted as that last year. You’ll recall Steve Cook, who’s the Chief of Mission of the International Organisation for Migration in Indonesia said late last year, and I’m quoting him; “people smugglers have clearly noted that there has been a change in policy and they are testing the envelope.” Now that is an expert in immigration, in Indonesia last year, commenting on the Rudd Government’s changes. They were seen as softening our border protection policies, and as Mr Cook said, the people smugglers have been testing the envelope and we’ve had more arrivals since the policies were changed in August, then we have had, nearly twice as many in fact then we’ve had in the last six years – this is a dramatic increase. KELLY: Well let’s talk perceptions and reality. Soft in what area? In your view what has the Rudd Government done wrong, what would you change, what should you change? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think we’ve got to focus on the Rudd Government’s policy Fran. I’ll come back to where I think we should aim to go ideally. KELLY: Where is it wrong? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Where it is wrong is in sending the signals. You were just talking to Michelle about the temporary protection visas and I think she fairly described them as making the achievement of permanent status in Australia less certain for people who arrive by boat – that was their deliberate purpose as disincentive. You see what should be…let’s step back and ask ourselves objectively and coolly and calmly, what should be the objective of our policy? The objective of our policy should be no unauthorised boats, boat arrivals. We don’t want them. It’s bad in terms of our….the integrity of our borders and it also poses enormous danger to life and limb on the high seas – not just of the passengers but as we’ve seen also of our Navel personnel. So in an ideal world no boats would come. That’s what we want to achieve. So we have to send a message that we are not receptive to unauthorised boat arrivals. Now the Howard Government had achieved that in a number of ways when wherever possible the Navy turned boats around and sent them back to Indonesian territorial waters. You had the Pacific Solution, now where people were processed offshore, in Manus and Nauru – that of course has been superseded by Christmas Island – so you have an offshore processing centre there. You also had….and that meant that they were processed under the UN rules not without access to the Australian legal system. So that was a discrimination against unauthorised boat arrivals – again a very deliberate disincentive. Christmas Island has been continued…is in operation. But then you had the temporary protection visa regime which the Government abandoned in August because it said it had had no effect. Events since then suggest that they were wrong. I think indicate overwhelmingly that they were wrong and that was something where the Government has unquestionably softened our policy. KELLY: So as Opposition Leader are you calling for reinstatement, reintroduction of temporary protection visas? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What I’m calling for Fran firstly is for the Government to tell us the facts. We need to know…. KELLY: ….no, no that’s a separate thing, we’ll get to that story in a moment, we’ll get to the details of this....in terms of softening, which you and your Immigration Shadow say the Government has softened its message, should it reintroduce temporary protection visas? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Certainly the reintroduction of temporary protection visas should be high on the agenda but what I’m calling for on the Government to do is firstly to release all of the information about the incident on the boat. It is unbelievable that the Government is stonewalling on this. They have all the facts. All of the Navel personnel are back. They’ve all been interviewed. A number of the asylum seekers have been interviewed. The public are entitled to know what happened. Secondly; it is clear enough that the AFP has given advice to the Government about the impact of their softening of our border protection policies on people smuggling and it appears that that advice is consistent with what most people would say is commonsense and of course what Mr Cook said, you know in the remarks I quoted earlier. Now we need to see that advice. That too should be made public because it is plain enough that the Government’s policy is not working. Now we should have all of those facts on the table and what we would like to do is sit down with the Government and discuss what policies can be changed, how we can have a different approach that will get the result we all seek, which is to have no people smuggling at all. You see the difficulty is Mr Rudd’s trying to blame this now on push factors. Those push factors have always been there. Afghanistan has been in a sorry state for many years. Iraq in many respects, in fact in almost every respect, is a much more peaceful place, relative to what it was four or five years ago…. KELLY: …I don’t think the same could be said for Afghanistan as Sri Lanka and if you’re going to quote the IOM you should also acknowledge the UNHCR says there are more people on the move right now because of push factors. But just before going down that debate we should stick with what we need to do here in this country and I want to ask you directly about the cover-up claims in a moment, but just finishing on temporary protection visas. The Immigration Department says on its website that TPV’s led to more asylum seekers resorting to people smugglers because it put an end to…… MALCOLM TURNBULL: …well that’s exactly what they did say Fran and the curious thing about that is that during the period of the TPV’s you had hardly any boats arriving….. KELLY: …not initially, initially you had boats arriving with a lot of women and children – tragically SIEVX was one of them. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Fran, between 2002 and the end of 2008, fiscal year 2008, there were around half as many people arriving as have arrived since August last year. So the fact of the matter is since the TPV’s were abolished by the Rudd Government there has been a dramatic increase. Now bear this in mind, the people smugglers are a business. They are charging people big money and they cannot succeed in their business unless they can get people into Australia. So perceptions are very important and if a government gives the perception that it is softening its policy, and this is what Mr Cook was saying from the International Office of Migration last year, if they give the perception that they’re softening their policy, the people smugglers will seize on that and say to their potential customers; look, Australia’s a softer target now, line up, let’s get a boat and off we go. KELLY: Does the Opposition share some responsibility for that? I mean in terms of perceptions it’s the Opposition shouting out to the world that the Labor Government’s policy is softer, isn’t it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh please, please, you can’t blame us for the Rudd Government’s policies. We warned that this would send the wrong signal months before they actually made the change. We warned them. We did the right thing. We said we believe this will send the wrong signal. The Government said no, we know better, it won’t make any difference. Now there has been a dramatic difference. Now let me just step forward and let’s talk about how we might be able to get a better resolution here. There’s no doubt that the ideal outcome, least from our point of view, and I think from most Australians point of view, is that no boats left Indonesia at all. So clearly we need to ensure that this becomes a criminal offence in Indonesia – which it isn’t. So that’s where there’s a need for persuasion, cooperation, engagement with the Indonesians….. KELLY: So you welcome the Prime Minister talking to the President? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course I welcome him talking to the President of Indonesia but every Australian Prime Minister has talked regularly to the President of Indonesia, it’s an ongoing discussion, we have a very close relationship. But in an ideal world, as much processing as possible would happen in Indonesia. Now that would be the ideal situation where people who came to Indonesia with the aim of going by boat to Australia instead were detained in Indonesia and were processed appropriately by the UN High Commission on Refugees in Indonesia. Now of course you’d need the Indonesian, naturally, you’d need the Indonesian Government’s agreement and commitment to that but that would be the best outcome because what we want to achieve is no boats, no boats leaving Indonesia and every aspect of policy should be directed towards that. KELLY: Let’s go to this incident and this tragic incident and this boat. You’ve said that the Rudd Government is covering up. What’s it got to cover up here? I mean, why does it matter? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Fran, I think what I’ve said is it starts to look like a cover-up. KELLY: Sure, I beg your pardon. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is when governments know the facts – and this Government does know the facts and has known the facts for some time – and declines to make them public, after a time even the most devoted admirers of the Rudd Government start to wonder why they’re not ‘fessing up and putting the facts on the table and it starts to look like a cover-up. So if the Rudd Government wants to dispel the suggestion that it’s a cover-up, all it needs to do is tell the truth. KELLY: Are you concerned about the details of why this, how this happened? I mean, does it matter how this fire started? Does it really matter in terms of the policy debate we’re now having in this country? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, at least three people have been killed, several, 30 have been seriously injured, three Australian Naval personnel have been injured. This is a very serious incident. Of course we’re entitled to know what caused it. Its vital public interest to know what caused it. KELLY: Do you accept that the Rudd Government initially said it was more appropriate to wait for the official version to come out and not leap ahead as happened in the children overboard debate? Do you accept that….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: This has got nothing to do… we’re not talking about past issues or past events. We are… KELLY: I suppose what I’m saying is it valid for them to say we’re waiting for the police…. MALCOLM TURNBULL: How many days, I think we’re now, is it five days since these events. I mean this is a long time. This is a tragic event and our sympathy, our prayers indeed, are with the victims of this tragedy who, and I might say our admiration is with the Australian service personnel and the Navy and the Police and of course the extraordinary work of the doctors and medical staff at the hospitals around Australia who are dealing with these victims of this terrible disaster. Look, this is a dreadful tragedy Fran, but we are entitled to know what happened because this is a matter of vital public interest so the Government should stop playing games and they should… they know what’s happened, they know full well what’s happened. They’ve known for some time. They should tell the truth. That’s all we’re asking them to do: tell the truth. It doesn’t always come easily to Mr Rudd’s Government but this is what he should do, he should just grit his teeth and tell the truth. KELLY: Do you accept this is a delicate debate in our nation to handle? I mean you’re calling for bi-partisan approach. Your spokesperson… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m calling for him to tell the truth. KELLY: Sure, and you’re calling for bi-partisanship on the way forward to deal with it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Mr Rudd to get a full briefing on the security information and intelligence they’ve had. You know, the Government says these changes in Australian policy have not had an impact on people smuggling. That just strains credulity. It’s unbelievable. You can’t… you get…from August when the policy was changed you get a dramatic increase in boats and the Government says that’s a coincidence. It’s simply not credible and so clearly Fran, the policy isn’t working. Now what the Government has to do is just like they’ve got to tell the truth about what happened on the boat, they’ve got to tell the truth, face the facts that their policy has failed, that they are not adequately protecting our borders, that their policies are perceived as being soft and that is encouraging people smuggling and they have to change the policies. Now I’m happy to sit down with Mr Rudd and engage with him to see if there’s something we can agree on. I think it would be good if there was collective agreement and a common will to stamp out people smuggling. KELLY: Okay. And perceptions versus reality I guess is a lot of what it’s all about. Just finally, Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop, is she your choice as Deputy, is there an effort in your Party to knock her off? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Julie Bishop is a wonderful Deputy; she’s a very dear friend of mine and has been for 20 years. She has total support from the Party Room. I know the stories you’re referring to. I’ve been reading political reports and columns and journalism for more than 30 years, Fran and I’ve never read anything so baseless and absurd as that suggestion, so Julie has my total support and the Party’s total support and she deserves it because she’s doing an outstanding job. KELLY: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you. [ends]  malcolmMon, 20 Apr 2009 01:59:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:434http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/435/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=435http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=435&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/435/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: The time has come for Mr Rudd to tell the Australian people the truth – what did happen on that boat. All of the Naval personnel are back. They’ve all been interviewed. The Government knows the facts; they’re getting hourly reports. We need to know precisely what happened. And we’ve also seen reports that the Australian Federal Police has advised the Government that their change in policy in August last year has resulted in the dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals, in illegal immigration. The Government refuses to make that report public. The Immigration Minister this morning said he hadn’t received any such report. Now that’s not believable. The Government’s position is unbelievable on many fronts. They say that the fact that unauthorised boat arrivals had dwindled to a trickle under the policies of the previous government was a coincidence. They say the fact that they have risen dramatically since the Rudd Government softened our border protection rules is also a coincidence. That doesn’t add up. It’s not believable. The Federal Police provides a report with the benefit of all of their intelligence in Indonesia and their liaison with the Indonesian authorities, and the Immigration Minister says he hasn’t seen it. That’s not believable either. It’s time for Mr Rudd to step up and give us the facts. QUESTION: How do you think the Government should handle this debacle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Government has got to send a strong message that these illegal boat arrivals are not welcome, but it has to have effective policies. We had policies in government which were effective. The Rudd Government abandoned them and, as a consequence, we have seen a dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals. QUESTION: Why do you think the Government hasn’t provided clearer details of the circumstances surrounding the explosion? MALCOLM TURNBULL: As every hour goes on without the facts being made clear, we get more and more suspicious that there is some sort of cover up going on. The Naval personnel that witnessed the events on the boat have all come back to Australia. They have all been interviewed by the Police. It is unbelievable that the Government doesn’t know precisely what has happened, so all we can say is that Julia Gillard and Chris Evans’ stonewalling is because they don’t want to tell the people the truth. We are entitled to know the facts. We need to know what happened on that boat and we need to know what the Australian Federal Police has advised the Government, because if the AFP has, as it has been reported, told the Government that their policies will result in an increase in unauthorised boat arrivals – and that is precisely what has happened – then plainly the Government’s policies are not working. The Government’s policies have failed and the Government has to change its policies. Now we’re happy to sit down with the Government and work with them to see if we can agree on a common response, because we should all be committed to keeping our borders secure and ensuring that this vile trade of people smuggling comes to an end. QUESTION: [inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Pacific Solution has been superseded by the detention facilities on Christmas Island, so that is a non-issue. The temporary protection visas were an important way of discriminating between those people who arrived on aeroplanes, for example, and those people who arrived unlawfully on boats. Now the aim of that was deliberately to act as a deterrent to people smugglers, because people smuggling is bad on some many fronts. It offends against the integrity of our own borders and it also puts the lives of both the passengers and the Australian Defence Force’s personnel who have to deal with them at very grave risk, as we have seen. So people smuggling must be stopped and we have to use every measure we can to do that. Now we had a policy in place. That was working. The evidence was that there were no boat arrivals or hardly any. We had 25 in all of last year and in past years, recent years, we’ve had none. We’ve had over 450 since August and there’s another large contingent on its way, so it’s been reported. So we have a serious problem here, a failure in Mr Rudd’s policies. Now I don’t want to make political capital out of this. I’m happy to sit down and sit with Mr Rudd with the benefit of the best advice from the AFP and our other intelligence services and see if we can agree on policies that will be more effective, because at the moment Mr Rudd is not protecting our borders. QUESTION: What are the options that the Opposition will bring to the table? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we need to see what the latest intelligence is, but certainly the temporary protection visas were a way of distinguishing between those who arrived by boat so that they had less of a prospect of achieving or a more uncertain prospect – perhaps is the best way to describe it – of achieving permanent refugee status. That was their avowed aim and they appeared to have been effective based on the evidence. Now the Government has abandoned that and as a consequence Australia is – there is no question – that our immigration laws now are more receptive and more accommodating to people who arrive by boat and we have seen, as a consequence of that, this dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals. So the fact is Mr Rudd’s policy has failed. He is not protecting our borders and we are seeing a dramatic increase in people smuggling. So it’s not good enough for Mr Rudd to say that people smugglers are the scum of the earth – we all agree on that. What we’ve got to do is ensure that we have policies that put them out of business. QUESTION: Is there any legitimacy to the claim that the increased numbers of boat people are the result of an increase in push factors and global destabilisation as Mr Rudd claims? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are always push factors but there are also pull factors. The more accommodating, the softer Australia appears to be as a target for people smuggling, the greater incentive people smugglers have to target Australia. That is just common sense. Now the Australian Federal Police has given expert advice on this. The Government is trying to cover that advice up. Let’s put it on the table, because what the Government is saying is that our policies on border protection have no influence on the level of people smuggling. Now that is so contrary to common sense, it’s impossible to believe. Australians don’t accept that. We can determine the policies, the border protection policies, that will be effective. Now what we have at the moment are policies that are not effective and that’s been proved by the number of boat arrivals. So you can either say it’s all too hard and there’s nothing we can do about it – that seems to be Mr Rudd’s position – or you can take action. Now we’re happy to work with the Government to see if we can agree on effective policies that will both protect our borders and ensure that people smuggling comes to an end, because, as I’ve said, it is not simply a question of protecting the integrity of our borders – although that is the primary duty of every Australian government – but remember, every time one of these boats sets out, lives are being put at risk and not just the lives of the passengers but also the lives of the Australian Defence Force personnel who seek to come to their aid. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmSun, 19 Apr 2009 04:18:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:435http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/432/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=432http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=432&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/432/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Ashmore Reef tragedy; Labor’s failed policies on people smuggling. E & O  E MALCOLM TURNBULL: We all agree that people smuggling is a loathsome and evil trade. What we need however are policies to send a tough and effective message to people smugglers that they’re not welcome and put that evil trade out of business. Since August last year when the Labor Government changed our policies, softened them – that was their policy, they wanted to soften the tough border protection policies of the government, of the Howard Government – since then we’ve seen a dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals. The people smugglers have been hard at work. They have been delivering far too many people to Australia, putting far too many lives at risk – not just the lives of their passengers, but also the lives of the Defence personnel who have to deal with them on the high seas and who, as we have seen, put their own lives at risk as they do so. Now we need effective policies. Policies that work. Policies that will bring an end to this evil and loathsome trade. We had policies that effectively did that. The Labor Government changed those policies and since then there has been a dramatic increase in people smuggling. The numbers sadly speak for themselves. And that is why I have called on Mr Rudd to sit down with us and discuss how we can agree on new policies – because his are not working – effective policies that will ensure that this vile trade is brought to an end. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull you know you have the support of most Australians on this, don’t you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Australians want to see their borders protected and they are – all of us – very concerned about the lives, the safety of the people that are being carried across the seas in these little boats and of course the safety of our own defence personnel who have to deal with them on the high seas. People smuggling is vile trade. But there is no substitute for tough and effective policies that bring it to an end. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull what exactly would you change about the Government’s current border protection policies? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the most significant change the Government made in August was to abandon the temporary protection visas which were designed by the previous Coalition Government to establish a real disincentive for unauthorised boat arrivals. Now the Labor Party said that those temporary protection visas had no impact on the level of boat arrivals, which had dwindled to barely a trickle, very few boat arrivals were being seen. We said that was a result of our tough policies; Labor said it was just a coincidence. They abandoned our tough policies and there has been a dramatic increase in unauthorised boat arrivals. Labor says that is a coincidence too. Indeed Senator Evans, the Immigration Minister said this morning that the state of Australia’s border protection polices had no effect on the level of unauthorised boat arrivals. Now I think the vast majority of Australians, like me, find that statement completely unbelievable. QUESTION: Have we reached a point now where we need both sides of politics to be reading from the same hymn book, so to speak? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We should have an agreed position. That would be very desirable. It would be great if both sides of politics were sending the same tough message to people smugglers, which was ‘you are not wanted, and you will not be successful in your object of trying to come to Australia’. But we need to have tough policies and effective policies. Now the Labor Government has access to police reports from the AFP, to security and intelligence reports. If those reports are saying that there is no relationship between the dramatic increase in boat arrivals and the softening of the previous Government’s tough policies on border protection, then they should produce that advice. But they should certainly be prepared to sit down with us and discuss this, because we would like to see an agreed position. I think it’d be great if Australia could speak with one voice on this matter, but at the moment we’ve got a policy, a Labor policy on border protection that is not working – the numbers speak for themselves. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you think public opinion is against the smugglers, or is it against arrivals? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My focus is on getting policies that are right, that are effective. You see at the moment we have Labor policies that are not effective. The Labor Government said that removing or abolishing the temporary protection visas, which were a deliberate disincentive to people smugglers, they said removing those temporary protection visas would have no effect, would make no difference to the level of people smuggling. Since they have been removed there has been a dramatic increase. Now they say that’s just a coincidence. That is not believable. Clearly their policies are not working. You have to judge policies by their results, and the results are not good – too many unauthorised boat arrivals, too many lives being put at risk. QUESTION: Well what do you think of the time it’s taken so far to actually find out what’s happened and what went on at Ashmore Reef? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is really a matter for the authorities. It’s a long way away. It’s important that they get the facts right, that people get back to Australia, to the mainland, and of course it’s also important that the first priority is given to those that have been injured. All of our concern should be focused on those that have been injured in this terrible tragedy, but once those medical concerns have been dealt with, and people that need hospitalisation have been taken to hospital, we also have to focus on getting the policy right. You see, people smuggling is vile trade. It isn’t just a question of challenging the integrity of our borders – although protecting the integrity of our borders is of course the primary duty of every government – but we have to remember that there are people whose lives are being put at risk in these tiny boats on these vast seas, and not just the people on the boats, but the personnel working for us, wearing our uniform in the Australian Defence Forces, who are being put at risk as they deal with these very difficult situations. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 17 Apr 2009 06:14:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:432http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/430/Doorstop-Interview-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=430http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=430&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/430/Doorstop-Interview-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: Tragic explosion on asylum seekers’ vessel; Kevin Rudd’s new attempt at alcopops tax grab. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: The explosion today on the asylum seekers’ vessel off the coast of Western Australia is a terrible tragedy. On behalf of the Opposition I send our condolences to the families of those who’ve been killed and our deepest sympathies to those that have been injured. We are particularly concerned to hear reports that Australian servicemen and women have been injured in this explosion. Our ADF personnel put their lives at risk in our service and their injuries today and the deaths on the asylum seekers’ vessel remind us of how dangerous, how very, very dangerous this pernicious business of people smuggling is. It puts lives at risk, the lives of those that venture in the boats and, as we can see, the lives of Australian servicemen and servicewomen who are involved in intercepting or protecting these vessels. That is why everything must be done, every measure must be undertaken to discourage and prevent this very pernicious business of people smuggling. It is a dangerous, unlawful and very, very, very life threatening business. Every measure must be undertaken to ensure that it does not continue. QUESTION: We have seen an increase in recent months with boat people arriving near our shores. Is the Rudd Government’s policies doing enough to discourage boat people? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look on a day with such a tragic event as this, I don’t wish to make political points but I’d simply say this that yes, there has been an increase in people smuggling. It’s a matter of very real concern. We’ve raised it repeatedly. People smuggling is a very dangerous business. We do no service to anybody by being seen to be more accommodating or more receptive to people smuggling. It is vital that Australia is seen to be and is resolute in its opposition to people smuggling. We can see it puts the lives of many people at risk, not just those in these often very unseaworthy vessels but the lives of brave Australians who are doing their duty in our service, wearing our uniform, under our flag on the open seas – their lives are put at risk too. QUESTION: Sharman Stone, your Immigration Spokesperson, has today said, she has criticised the Rudd Government’s policies saying that it is making it more encouraging for boat people to come here. I mean, do your support her comments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve made the observation in the past and I just don’t want to labour the political point today but the Rudd Government has made changes to the rules and the procedures dealing with unlawful, well asylum seekers of the kind we’re talking about today, of people smuggling and there is no doubt that the impression has been created that we are more accommodating or taking a less hard line towards people smuggling than we had in the past. There has been a significant increase in people smuggling, that is a very bad thing, and we must make sure that every policy is focused on reducing and, where at all possible, completely eliminating this pernicious trade of people smuggling. QUESTION: On the issue of alcopops, do you think the Federal Government could be planning to use this issue to call a double dissolution election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the Rudd Government will do anything it can to distract public attention from the failure of its economic policies.  It has given away $23 billion in four months in cash splashes - $23 billion.  It said that the December cash splash would create 75,000 jobs.  There’s no evidence it’s created one job.  Jobs continue to be lost.  Our economy continues to go into reverse.  So the Rudd Government’s economic policies are failing.  We have been calling for positive alternatives.  We seek to engage with the Government.  We’ve asked the Government to sit down with us and discuss positive alternatives which will provide real stimulus, to small business in particular, to create employment and keep Australians on the payroll.   The Government has declined to talk to us and it wants to create one distraction after another.  As far as the point about double dissolutions is concerned, from what we’ve been told by the Health Minister, the bill she’s proposing to introduce is a completely different bill from the one that was rejected by the Senate previously and so the double dissolution point doesn’t arise. QUESTION: It’s been voted down once already though, so why do you think they’re bringing this back at all? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Government is determined to raise, presumably, the Government is determined to raise I think $1.6 billion from this new tax.  The alcopops tax has got nothing to do with health measures.  It’s all about raising revenue.  The Government’s claim that it’s about a campaign against binge-drinking is completely hypocritical.  If the Government was serious about that it would be devoting the revenue from the tax to health campaigns to raise awareness, education, to discourage people from engaging in dangerous levels of drinking.  This is just a revenue grab – nothing more or less. QUESTION: How do you think the Coalition would go if you went to the polls? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’m very much focused on the issues of today if you don’t mind, okay.  Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmThu, 16 Apr 2009 05:14:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:430http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/429/Interview-with-Michael-Bailey-Radio-4RO-Rockhampton.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=429http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=429&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/429/Interview-with-Michael-Bailey-Radio-4RO-Rockhampton.aspxSubjects: Lost opportunity to invest in Gladstone Airport; Coalition’s six-point plan for small business; Jobs for Australia community forum; Rudd’s broadband gamble and neglect of regional and rural Australia; China’s economic growth; cash splash saved not spent. E & O E MICHAEL BAILEY: Malcolm Turnbull, how are you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning Mike, good to be with you. MICHAEL BAILEY: Good. Now you had a good meeting with George Creed, the Mayor. What came out of that one? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we had a good chat with the whole Council and the main topic of discussion was the Gladstone Airport and the real disappointment the Council has that they are not getting any financial support from the Federal Government for the upgrade, with the vital upgrade. MICHAEL BAILEY: Do you find there is a bit of political mud raking going on there because one would think that maybe, maybe, if there was a Labor person in there because you know Liz Cunningham, they keep wiping her off and she keeps getting back in with more and more people saying yes we like you Liz, we know what the other party is doing but you’re doing a good job for us. So we got her there, we’ve got George Creed who is just sitting on the fence, he has got no political whim, he just wants to do it for the people and all of sudden here is an airport which is the gateway to Gladstone – no help from the State Government, no help from the Federal Government. What is the story? Why would the local council have to chip in 100 per cent? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mike I’m really horrified that there has been no support for this airport from the Federal Government in particular because we’ve got Kevin Rudd there spending money like Santa Claus everyday of the year. He has announced $43 billion for a broadband network without any business plan so he wasn’t too troubled about the detail there and he has obviously sent out, mailed out to people $23 billion in the last four months and yet here you have a vital piece of economic infrastructure which if it is upgraded will make an enormous difference to Gladstone because it will mean that you will be able to get 737s in to the airport which will mean you’ll get competition which will mean airfares will be lower. Gladstone is one of the most expensive places to get to as I’m sure you know better than I do. And, that is simply because of the state of the airport. So this is really…it’s hard to imagine a higher priority project in Queensland and yet it seems to be, well it is being ignored. I find it impossible to understand. I was genuinely stunned to learn about the lack of interest. Really, Chris Trevor is apparently a very good lawyer. I am sure he is. He should be using his advocacy skills on his colleagues to get them to pay for it. MICHAEL BAILEY: Yeah, it’s bizarre. I mean Chris Trevor got $25 million to upgrade Kirkwood Rd so there’s a start. They just need to get some more money for the Gladstone Airport. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The airport is so important because it is these vital bits of economic infrastructure, Mike that makes such a difference. The fact that it is so expensive to get to Gladstone and you can’t get direct flights to Gladstone from Sydney for example or Melbourne for that matter, all of that makes it more expensive to get people here so if consultants are being flown up, flying in it makes it a lot more expensive to bring them here, a lot more expensive for consulting firms and business that are dealing with industries that are based here. Gladstone is such a powerhouse, such a great city, so economically strong. It deserves to have a first class airport and I can assure you we will use whatever influence we have as the Opposition, which is not very much I’m afraid to say with Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, but we will use our influence to stand up for Gladstone and that is what Senator Macdonald and I were saying to the Council last night when we met with them. MICHAEL BAILEY: Well Malcolm Turnbull you are the Leader of the Opposition. Were you gobsmacked like myself when Kevin Rudd said the people who actually looking after telecommunications aren’t up to the job of doing what he wants to do so he is forming his own company and spending $43 billion dollars on internet? I can think of so many other things that money should be going to. What was going through your mind? Were you gobmacked like myself? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I was more worried about what was going through Kevin’s mind to be quiet honest, Mike. The fact of the matter is, yes, broadband…I am a passionate internet person. Luce and I and Sean Howard and others help found, we founded OzEmail years ago. MICHAEL BAILEY: Yep, I remember that. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And of course it was an internet company so we have a long history in that industry and we believe in it passionately. But you’ve got to spend public money wisely. These things have got to stack up and the reality is, I had a piece in The Australian yesterday which set out in some detail the numbers on it. Unless you assume that virtually everyone in Australia would take up the Ruddnet service and pay a couple of hundred bucks a month for it and both of those assumptions are completely fanciful… MICHAEL BAILEY: Of course it is. I can tell you right now, I can tell you right now, in this great city of ours you are going to have half the population saying: “What! A couple of hundred bucks, you’ve got to be kidding”. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Exactly. Just to give you an example, I did the sums. If you assume 4 ½ million people took it up which is about half of the market that is addressable, half of the households [inaudible], and you assume they paid a hundred bucks a month, if you assume 70 bucks of that came back to Ruddnet which is supposed to be the wholesaler, so 30 bucks is left for the retailer, then the company would lose $260 million a year without paying a cent in interest or dividend. MICHAEL BAILEY: Oh dear. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And Kevin Rudd’s gone out there and he said on television this is going to be a commercial entity, it will be standalone, it will be a great investment, he’s encouraged people to invest. If a businessman did all that they would be down at ASIC having a very unpleasant interview. Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian, I don’t want you to think I am doing an advertisement for The Australian, but Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian today sets out all of the sections of the corporations law that appear to have been infringed or would have been infringed if Kevin Rudd had been a businessman rather than a politician. It seems as though there is one rule for the commercial world and another rule which doesn’t prevent recklessness in the political world. MICHAEL BAILEY: And do you think this project will actually go ahead because it’s all subject to, subject to, subject to, subject to, there are a lot of subjects, isn’t there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think it will. The reality is that you’ve got to work with the existing telecommunications companies to improve services. Now, there are some areas particularly in regional and rural Australia where you are unlikely with the market operating in the normal way that you will get the same sort of high speed internet access that you’re starting to see in the cities. So that is why, when we were in government we put together a project with Optus and Elders called OPEL which we put nearly a billion dollars into, which is a fraction obviously of what Rudd’s talking about. But that would have resulted in rural and regional Australia, pretty much everywhere outside of the metro, having access to high speed internet mostly delivered through wireless. And, of course, this is one of the technologies that is really powering along. I have been using my wireless card, I’ve got a Next G wireless card in my laptop and when I was in Mackay yesterday I was getting 3.5MBs speed. We are getting about that speed here in Gladstone. So, that is not 100MBs but from a practical point of view that enables me to do everything I need to do. MICHAEL BAILEY: Hey it works and you have to wait an extra five seconds maybe but it works, doesn’t it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right. All of those technologies are getting faster. Telstra and other telcos are saying that wireless, that sort of wireless will be up to 20MBs/40MBs in a few years. Now once you are in that area, wireless can be a much better solution in some areas. Part of the problem with Ruddnet, Mike, is that it’s this idea Rudd has got of the government solving everything. He has got this view that government should be at the centre of the economy and in fact what the government should be doing is enabling the private sector to do its work. We’ve got a jobs crisis in Australia at the moment. So many people are losing employment. We saw the announcements from Qantas yesterday. There’ve been a lot of jobs losses in this part of Queensland. We’ve got to be focused on empowering and supporting the private sector. That’s why our six-point plan for small business is focused on relieving the tax burden or lowering the tax burden on small business, lowering the cost of employing people, getting rid of red tape, in other words doing everything we can to make sure that the engine room of the economy, which is the private sector and small business in particular, is energised and able to keep people in work and of course start bring new people in, start creating new jobs. MICHAEL BAILEY: And of course talking about your small business policy, your six-point policy, if you lower the rates in one field where are you going to get the money to continue operating. Do you go into another area? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve got two big tax proposals in that small business policy and I will just talk about them. One is definitely a cost to the budget. What we are proposing is that for small businesses, 20 or less, 20 employees or less, rebate 3 of the 9 per cent of their compulsory superannuation guarantee contribution in year 1 and 1.5 in year 2. Now that costs you $5 billion over two years. Yes, it’s a cost to the budget, no question. It’s a temporary relief to cash flow. But the good thing about it is that every small business get it, it’s right across the board. But the second idea which that we’ve got which is, I think, a very worthwhile one is to allow businesses, all businesses with a limit of up to $100,000 in terms of the losses to carry backwards any losses they have. So if you think about it at the moment you’ve got a business and you lose money as most businesses do at some point or another you can carry forward your loss to the next year or the year after against profits. What we’re saying is you should be able to carry it backwards and offset it against the tax you paid in the past. So for example if you had a business and you made a hundred grand last year and then you lost a hundred grand this year and last year you paid $30,000 in tax that’s 30 per cent because it was a company you can carry the loss back and get your $30,000 dollars back. Now that’s actually allowed in a number of countries including the US. It would be of particular benefit to small business because it would give you that cash flow that you need and it doesn’t actually cost the Government much overall because once a tax loss is carried back it can’t then be carried forward. So it is really a timing issue from the Government’s point of view. MICHAEL BAILEY: Gee, that’s a clever idea. And it works well overseas, eh? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It does. It works in the US and the UK and a number of European countries. It is not as radical an idea as it sounds. MICHAEL BAILEY: When you were running for election, did you see that dark cloud coming over? Did you realise we were going to be in such a mess? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well certainly we talked about it. Peter Costello in particular talked about it, about a financial tsunami I think. I think that was the term he used in fact precisely, from the sub-prime crisis in the United States. I was, I became very vocal about it in January of last year when I was Shadow Treasurer because I was endeavouring to persuade the Government to stop talking up inflation and I was trying to discourage the Reserve Bank from continuing to put up interest rates because my view was that we were going to have enough financial grief if you like coming in from overseas and we didn’t need to be making things worse by having a government talking up inflation and a Reserve Bank putting up rates. I think with the benefit of hindsight that was the right call on my part. The crisis got progressively worse through last year and particularly after September when Lehman Brothers collapsed and that caused a lot of knock-on effects. MICHAEL BAILEY: And everyone got scared and wouldn’t borrow or lend money which is the name of the game. Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel? Is it as worse … we’ve just had Qantas, the possibility of 1200 jobs. Last year they got rid of 1500. Yarwun just in Gladstone there was 300 workers and grown men are crying I read in the morning bulletin. They’re just not quite sure about their jobs. And then you have all these businesses closing down. The latest one on the Gold Coast, was it Kleenmaid or something. They owed $70 million to customers. How is this being let go? We obviously know we’ve got $43 billion we can play with. Surely there’d be good things that can actually help us through for the next few months and what will they be? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think the Government’s got to do two things. It’s got to do everything it can to make it easier for business to operate and that’s why we’ve proposed the sort of measures I have talked about, that actually lower the cost of small business to employ people. As far as stimulating the economy is concerned we’ve supported, the Government didn’t agree with us, but we supported bringing forward the tax cuts that are already scheduled for July 1 this year and July 1 next year. They went for the cash handouts instead. We didn’t think they would be effective economically because in times like this most people save the money rather than spend it... MICHAEL BAILEY: Spend it, yeah. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And that’s certainly, that’s been proved to be right. So that’s why they’ve spent a lot of money but it hasn’t had any impact on employment. Unemployment’s still rising and the economy is going backwards. I think where they have got to be focused Mike is on investment in economic infrastructure. Now, we’ve talked about the Gladstone Airport. That’s a $65 million dollar project. That will need… it’s essentially an earth moving exercise. You’ve got to have, the base of the airport is about, you’ve got to fill it in. They have got to bring in a lot of fill to level it, then you’ve got about 300mm of gravel and 200mm of bluestone and then you’ve got to put your surface on. So it is essentially a big earth moving exercise and the same contractors that are losing work in the mines will be able to be redeployed there. So it is an ideal project and it’s one that the Federal Government could support. It would create jobs, both now, in the here and now, and in the future – it’s not going to be a flash in the pan. There’s another project which again inexplicably the Rudd Government isn’t getting behind which we set aside the money for down in another part of Australia’s industrial heartland, in the Lower Hunter, a link between the Newcastle Freeway and the New England Highway. Everything is approved, the land is bought, the money was set aside by us. Mr Rudd hasn’t pressed the button on it and yet they’re losing jobs there and there’s a project again that will create jobs immediately and at the same time add to economic activity in the future just like the airport would here. So I think what a lot of this boils down to is competence and commitment and I don’t think the Government has a sufficient commitment to jobs, and they’re doing a lot of things which just frankly aren’t competent. I mean if you stood up in the private sector and said you were going to spend $43 million let alone $43 billion without any business plan or any financial analysis you would get the sack. Any manager that stood up to his board of directors and said that he’d get the sack and so he should. And yet that’s what Kevin Rudd’s done with this broadband plan. There are no numbers behind it. MICHAEL BAILEY: No numbers. On the front page of the Courier Mail it makes your heart sink – decimated job crisis hit one in ten Queenslanders and of course it’s going to be even worse in the next 12 months. Is the media making it too much of a doom and gloom? Are we really in trouble or are we quite A-okay compared to other countries? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think we do tend to…we’ve to got remember that you shouldn’t be too pessimistic. Personally I’m always a glass half full person rather than a glass half empty person, so I always try to look on the positive. I think we are relatively stronger than just about any other developed country. There’s a number of reasons for that, most importantly when the previous Coalition government lost office the new Government came in and had no government debt, they didn’t inherit a huge government debt, the tax revenues were strong, the budget was in surplus, unemployment was low so our starting point was much better than say the US or the UK or any of the European countries. In terms of looking forward I think there are signs of positive years on the horizon. I was reading some economic research out of China last night which shows some encouraging signs there. Now it might be early days and the Chinese are pumping a lot of money, they pumping a lot of money into infrastructure and that is starting to make up for the decline in their export business which is obviously being driven by the economic downturn in the US and Europe. MICHAEL BAILEY: Cause they need that eight per cent growth, don’t they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah. You know, if China’s economic growth goes down to five per cent, four or five per cent, which we would think is terrific in Australia, that would feel like a very serious recession in China because they’ve got… MICHAEL BAILEY: That would be a revolution over there. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I hope it wouldn’t go that far but they are pulling, every year they’re pulling millions of people out of poverty and they can only do that with a strongly growing economy and it has to have very, very strong growth. They’re a vitally important customer for all of our exports so a strong economic performance from China and signs of it coming back is good news for Australia. MICHAEL BAILEY: Now Malcolm Turnbull how is your job security going because we hear these whispers all the time you know on the 7.30 Report and all of that sort of stuff. You’re gone, gone, gone. Mr Costello is looking over your shoulder and all the sort of stuff. How much truth is in that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mike, I’m the Leader of the Opposition. I am absolutely committed to becoming the next Prime Minister of Australia. I’m looking forward to the election which could be anytime I suppose. It’s up to Mr Rudd but most likely will be at the end of next year. We believe that there is a better way of managing our economy, a better way of protecting the jobs of Australians. We are offering that as a positive alternative and I’m absolutely convinced that when the election time comes, Australians will focus on the poor economic performance of the Rudd Government, see what we have to offer and our record, and support us. MICHAEL BAILEY: I find it very fascinating and you know you can look over the history of when Labor’s in and when the Liberal/National Party’s in. Every time Labor gets in and I said it before the federal election, mark my words, we’ll be in the red before you can even blink. It seems to be the way to go that we always go into the red with the Labor Party. I don’t mind people spending money to create jobs and we get good infrastructure because I can tell you now in Queensland, we are sorely, sorely in need of some proper infrastructure because everything’s just too old at the moment and then you guys get back in, tighten the belt, get us back to reality and then we sort of get sick and tired of you guys and then for some unknown reason Labor’s back in. I mean, it’s a weird situation, isn’t it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Mike if we’d been on the air before the last election and I’d said to you if Labor gets in they will go crazy on spending and they’ll send $23 billion out in cash payments in one hit and they’ll announce that they’re going to spend $43 billion without any financial analysis or business plan on a broadband network, you would have said oh Malcolm, you’re just scaremongering, you’re just scaremongering to get people to vote Liberal. MICHAEL BAILEY: Yeah. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And yet they’re just some of the things that have happened. I am very worried by the massive level of debt that Labor is running up because let me say this to you, I mean, I’m a businessman so I’ve got a pretty hard headed view on it. If you borrow money and use it productively to build something that is going to generate income and jobs and so forth that may be a very wise decision. But whenever you borrow money and spend it, you never quite know what the effect’s going to be because the investment may not turn out or the business may not succeed. The one certainty however when you borrow money is that you’ve got to pay it back. MICHAEL BAILEY: Oh yeah. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And so what Rudd is doing, he is borrowing money and spending it for no economic gain such as the so-called fiscal stimulus. There’s no economic gain out of these cash payments to the economy as a whole. Obviously it’s good for the people that have got the cheques but it hasn’t created one job. And yet that government debt will have to be repaid and that will mean in the future higher taxes than we would otherwise have and higher interest rates than we would otherwise have. Now, that is unarguable. Now, if on the other hand, you’re borrowing money to upgrade Gladstone Airport you could say, okay, we know…well, this is what the Council would do. The Council is borrowing the money, they know they’re going to have to pay it, they know they’ll be paying higher rates in the future to pay that off but that they say this will add to the economic strength of Gladstone, the value of real estate in Gladstone, it will improve our rate base, there will be more jobs here etc. and it’s a worthwhile investment, and that makes sense. But the difficulty is if we end up with $200 billion of debt, which we’re likely to have after this Government, how long will it take to pay it off? It took us a decade to pay off $96 billion and that was during the very strong economic boom. How long is it going to take us…what happens if we get out of this recession and we just, you know, we get back into positive growth but we’re just, you know, we’re going along at a moderate pace for some time. How many years is it going to take us to pay off $200 billion of Kevin Rudd’s debt? It could be 20 years, 30 years. MICHAEL BAILEY: Mate, there’s going to be a lot of belt-tightening, isn’t there, trying to get that money back in? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s the problem. I mean, someone said to me the other day in Mackay, they said it’s like going down to the bank and borrowing a fortune to go on a holiday, on an expensive holiday, and you get back and you say, okay, that was fun but what do I do now, now I’ve got to work overtime and work weekends to pay it off. It might have been better to have a less expensive holiday and borrow less money. MICHAEL BAILEY: Well, maybe we can order some more printing firms and rolls and start printing money like America and Europe are at the moment. They just can’t keep up with churning out the paper. It’s going to catch up with everybody. Look, I’ve got to tell you Malcolm, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. I hope you enjoyed your stay in Gladstone. MALCOLM TURNBULL: It was a very good walk here this morning. MICHAEL BAILEY: Mate, ear on the ground, very quickly, let’s wrap it up, what is concerning the people of Queensland because you’ve been up to Mackay, you’re in Gladstone, you’re doing a bit of a tour around – hopefully you’ll come to Rockhampton one day and pop in and we’ll open up the lines – what is concerning the people? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the big issue that’s being raised with me both in Gladstone and in Mackay is infrastructure, precisely the sort of thing we’re talking about. The airport obviously in Gladstone, in Mackay it was the Northern Missing Link, the rail link to Abbot Point I think’s the port that it will connect up to. And, again, the argument is why is the Government throwing so much cash around… MICHAEL BAILEY: And not on local towns. MALCOLM TURNBULL: …and not spending it on vital infrastructure, vital economic infrastructure because that will again, you know, if you build that northern link - I think it’s 69 kilometres of rail line is the extent of it MICHAEL BAILEY: That’s it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: … that would employ the same – because that’s like the airport here – the same contractors, the same skills, same trades that are losing work in the mines. So you’d essentially switch them from one job to another and you would create the basis for the economic infrastructure to take advantage of the economy as it recovers. MICHAEL BAILEY: Well, let’s hope the people in office are having a listen and a chew on this and hopefully we might get some results. Malcolm Turnbull, thanks very much for being on News Talk and the Music You Love, 990 4RO. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great to be with you, Mike. [ends]  malcolmWed, 15 Apr 2009 07:41:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:429http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/428/Interview-with-Kim-Kleidon-ABC-Tropical-North.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=428http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=428&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/428/Interview-with-Kim-Kleidon-ABC-Tropical-North.aspxSubjects: Jobs for Australia community forum; meeting with the Mackay Regional Economic Development Corporation; Coalition’s alternative economic plan; Rudd’s broadband gamble; coal industry; Coalition’s commitment to renewable energy. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... KIM KLEIDON: Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull is in Mackay today with Senator Ian Macdonald for the Community Jobs Forum. Welcome to Mackay, Mr Turnbull. MALCOLM TURNBULL: It’s great to be here. KIM KLEIDON: Now, what is it you’re actually doing? Can you just give a brief overview of what the Jobs Forum is actually about? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re meeting at the Mackay Entertainment Centre and first up we’ve got a meeting with the Mackay Regional Economic Development Corporation at 9:30 and then at 10 o’clock we have a Jobs Forum and there’ll be 40 or 50 people there – from local government, small business, employers – there to talk about jobs, to talk about what governments could or should be doing to help them, to make it easier for them to keep their employees on the payroll, to create new jobs to keep their businesses going. Now we’ve been doing these all around Australia. We must nudging close to 40 by now and they are very, very useful meetings. Really you get a good conversation going. We don’t want them to be too big. If we had 200 people it wouldn’t work. We want it to be a smallish meeting and we can get a really good discussion. And it’s been very helpful to me because it’s helped us to form our own small business policy which we announced a few weeks back with some very innovative measures which will help small business and that’s really been part of the feedback that we’ve had from the grassroots. KIM KLEIDON: So are you here to actually give suggestions for businesses or are you here to find out from businesses what they need from the government as far as support goes? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it’s a two way street. Obviously I’ll express my views and people ask my views, ask questions. But what I really want to do is listen to others and learn from others. You don’t learn a lot you know when your lips are moving. You learn most when you’re listening and listening very carefully, so that’s what we’re doing and that’s why we get a lot of very good feedback. And every meeting, there are familiar themes from every meeting but there are also special… some communities will talk more about training, you know, greater assistance to help small businesses support training their employees. Other meetings will talk more about the importance for government to reduce red tape and reduce the regulatory burden, and others talk about tax and so forth. KIM KLEIDON: You’ve been quite critical of the Rudd Government’s handling of quite a few things, including trying to block the stimulus package. What would you have done differently? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We proposed an alternative package. We thought Mr Rudd’s $42 billion package was too big. It involved picking up too much debt. We’ve got to remember that every dollar that Mr Rudd borrows today – and he’s borrowing in a way that would make Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating blush – is money that is going to have to be paid back in years to come, and that’ll mean higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future. So you’ve got to look forward a few years and not just focus on what you want to do today. So we thought the package was too big. We also felt that it did not provide an effective incentive for jobs so instead of a big cash splash, instead of sending out $13 billion as he’s done this month, we proposed bringing forward the tax cuts already scheduled for July this year and July next year, for providing real assistance to small business. Another difference between our package and what Mr Rudd proposed – apart from the size, ours was less than half the size – was that the Government would provide relief for small businesses by rebating a portion of the money they pay on their superannuation guarantee contribution. So in Year 1, they’d get back 3 of the 9 per cent. In Year 2, they’d get back 1.5, and that would put over two years $5 billion of cash flow back into the hands of small business and would reduce the cost of employment. We also proposed spending money on schools as Mr Rudd did but we proposed a smaller amount of money over a different period so that it could be better targeted. But essentially, if you wanted to say what is the difference between us and Mr Rudd, we are focused on prudent financial management. We’re not running willy nilly into debt. We believe the Government should incur as little debt as it has to and above all, every dollar should be spent so as to maximise employment. KIM KLEIDON: Well that brings us to the next point, with the financial situation, is that why you’re opposed to the broadband announcement? You’ve been critical of Kevin Rudd’s approach to the broadband network, is it because of the spending? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, let me say, I am passionately in favour of broadband. In fact, I’m a great user of broadband and many years ago Lucy and I helped start Australia’s first big internet company, OzEmail, which maybe some OzEmail customers still listening to us this morning. So I’m very supportive of broadband, but what I’m not supportive of is Mr Rudd making misleading grandiose statements for which he has no basis. Let’s just be clear what he said. He said, before the election, he said he would have a broadband network which would be fibre-to-the-node, it would be done with the private sector, he’d have a tender and so forth and that would give us broadband around Australia. His tender collapsed and he was left with nothing so what he did without any business plan, without any financial advice, without it being considered by Infrastructure Australia or anybody, he just stood up and said we’re going to have a $43 billion National Broadband Network company, it’ll be a private company, it’ll be controlled by the Government but it’ll be separate from the Government, it’ll be commercially viable, the private sector will invest and he went on television and urged mums and dads – his own words – to invest in it. Now it is very clear – and I’ve set all this out in an article in The Australian today – that this, on the basis of what he said, it is not commercially viable and realistically cannot be. So what he’s actually saying is quite reckless and if a company director or a businessman or woman went on television and talked about their business and urged people to invest in their business with so little facts to back it up, they’d be in a lot of trouble with ASIC so Mr Rudd’s really been very reckless here. This is not a question of are you for or in favour of broadband. This is a question of are you in favour of honesty in government, prudent decision-making, responsible financial decisions and Mr Rudd has failed on all of those. KIM KLEIDON: At 8:45 now, you’re listening to ABC Tropical North. My guest in the studio this morning is Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull. Just on that, have you done a business plan or have you done the sums that might lead you to believe that the plan will fail and won’t return any dividend for investors? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I have actually and I’ve set them out in The Australian. I’ve done a lot more work on this than Mr Rudd has done. Let me give you an example. At the moment most people who have access to fast broadband, 20 megabits a second, cable broadband for example, chose to pay, go for a slower speed because of price. They pay less. That’s because many people don’t need very high speed broadband so the market is very price sensitive but let’s assume out of the 9 million potential lines that could be connected to this network, let’s assume 4.5 million signed up. Let’s assume they paid a very big price of $100 a month. And let’s assume $70 of that found its way to Mr Rudd’s broadband company. If you make those assumptions – all of which are very optimistic, both in terms of the penetration, customer support and the price – on that basis, the company would lose $260 million a year before it has even paid a cent in interest on $43 billion, let alone a cent in dividends. Now I’ve set that out in The Australian today and other people can do their numbers but the reality is the people in the industry recognise that this National Broadband Network on the basis that Mr Rudd has proposed cannot be commercially viable so without – well can’t be commercially viable full stop. The only way it can happen is with a massive government subsidy, tens and tens of billions of dollars and then the question, Kim, is well, should those tens of billions of dollars be spent on schools or on roads or on water pipelines or on ports or on rail. KIM KLEIDON: But don’t we need to upgrade those service? I mean they’re all part of a lot of what you just said because businesses do rely on those services. Do we want to be left behind as a nation? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we certainly do not and we are not being left behind in my judgment. Broadband is being rolled out around Australian in metropolitan areas in particular. There is a problem about broadband in regional and rural areas and that’s why when we were in Government we entered into an agreement with Optus and Elders for the Opal Project, which would have resulted in broadband being available to 900,000 households who were outside of the big metro areas. Now that project was cancelled by Labor and if it hadn’t been cancelled, it would be well underway. It would be half built by now, if not more. So Labor essentially threw our solution for regional and rural Australia – it would have massively benefited central Queensland for example – they threw that out the window for their own plan. It failed, their tender failed and now they’ve come up with this fantasy because that is all it is. You see, Mr Rudd did not say I’m going to go and borrow another $43 billion and build this network, I don’t care whether it makes any money or not – he said it’s going to be commercially viable and he went on television and urged mums and dads to lend money to it, to buy bonds in it and yet it’s perfectly obvious that it wouldn’t be able to generate the income to pay the interest on $43 billion, let alone a return to shareholders. KIM KLEIDON: Finally, for more local matters, because you are here obviously focusing on local concerns, the resources industry as far as the coal industry has played a big part in the local economy. How do you see that industry faring given the job losses and, of course, some of the mothballing we’re seeing of the coal sector and how does it need to be supported in your opinion? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there’s a lot of doubt in the global economy at the moment about where future economic growth is going. You’re hearing a lot of conflicting reports about what’s happening in China at the moment. There seems to be good news out of China, so if Chinese economic activity picks up that will obviously be good for all of our exports, including coal and iron ore. Generally the biggest local threat to the coal industry is the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme. This is very poorly designed and it will do enormous damage, massive damage to the coal industry, particularly in Queensland, and you’ve seen Xstrata, just as one miner has talked about, the thousands of jobs that will be lost, if the Rudd ETS goes in on its current plan. And what’s really tragic of course is that your local Labor MPs like Kirsten Livermore and James Bidgood have been…and Mr Trevor in Flynn, have been gagged and haven’t been able to speak out it in Canberra. So, you know, Labor’s local representatives in the Federal Parliament are not speaking up for the coal industry. We believe that it is very unwise and unjustified to put a heavy carbon price on Australian export industries because all that you will do is move the emissions offshore. You see if you make Australia’s coal industry less competitive say with the coal industry in Columbia and Indonesia – okay, we mine 100 million tonnes less coal here, they mine 100 million tonnes more in Indonesia. We lose the jobs, we lose the income, we lose the taxes and what happens to emissions? Well, they just go up in the air from Indonesia instead of from Australia. KIM KLEIDON: Do you find that that’s a little bit contradictory to the Government’s terms to try and ratify the Kyoto Protocol? What about solar and renewable energies? How much are you wanting to develop that industry here in Australia? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’re very committed to that. As you know, I was the Environment and Water Minister in the previous government and I put a lot of your taxes and your listeners’ taxes into renewable energy. In fact, we funded what is the largest and most advanced solar power station that is being built near Mildura. And we doubled the solar rebate for households, which Labor has rolled back and put a lot money into other renewable projects – geothermal power and so forth. So there is a very strong commitment to renewables but we have to recognise that the major source of energy for the world for the foreseeable future is going to be coal. Obviously we have to work very hard and put more resources into clean coal technology. Labor has dropped the ball on that in my judgement. And I have committed that when we are in government we will build two industrial scale clean coal power stations. We have to do that. We have to prove that that technology works. We have a vital interest in that. But in the meantime there is no point putting a heavy carbon cost on Australian industries which are what they call trade exposed which compete with industries in other countries, if those other countries are not going to have the same carbon costs. Because you see, it doesn’t matter where a tonne of CO2 goes up into the atmosphere from, whether it’s from Australia or from Indonesia or from Columbia or China. So if we, if as a result of the Rudd ETS, we mine less coal in Australia but more coal is mined in Indonesia, then we have done damage to our economy, we’ve done damage to the families who have lost jobs in Australia and we’ve done nothing for the environment because the same amount of emissions are going up into the atmosphere. So the key thing has got to be a climate change policy such as the one we propose, our alternative, which is economically responsible and environmentally effective. KIM KLEIDON: Mr Turnbull, thank you very much for joining me this morning in the studio. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great to be with you. [ends]  malcolmTue, 14 Apr 2009 05:17:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:428http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/427/Doorstop-Interview-Mackay.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=427http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=427&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/427/Doorstop-Interview-Mackay.aspxSubjects: Qantas job losses; Jobs for Australia community forum; Mackay visit; coal industry; Coalition’s commitment to renewable energy; Labor’s economic mismanagement; medical services in rural and regional areas E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: The job losses announced by Qantas today remind us that the three top priorities in Australia are jobs, jobs, jobs. Senator Macdonald and I have been here today in Mackay at a jobs forum discussing jobs, the local economy, the challenges for employment in Central Queensland and what governments can do and should be doing to support employment. We had some great feedback. We were reminded of the importance of economic infrastructure and how it was important that the Government focus its spending not on one-off cash splashes but on investing in real infrastructure such as the missing rail link here, so important to the future of the coal industry in Central Queensland. It’s important that the Government stop this Jekyll and Hyde conduct, where on the one hand it’s spending money like a drunken sailor and on the other hand, as we read in the newspapers today, planning to cut back on vital funding that supports medical services in regional and rural Australia. The Government has got to get its priorities right and focus every dollar that it spends and every sinew of policy on jobs, jobs, jobs. That is our focus and that’s why we are holding these jobs forums right around Australia. QUESTION: You briefly mentioned Qantas there as you said that they’ve downgraded their profit outlook from about 500 million down to about 100, 200 million and there is a possibility more flights could be grounded. What’s your initial reaction to that – you briefly mentioned jobs but I guess the other flow on effect into the community? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, my big concern – and I make no apologies for this – is the jobs. Obviously it’s disappointing for Qantas shareholders that its cut its profits forecast but the real issue is jobs. There are hundreds of Australians who are going to be out of work as a result of this decision. That’s very troubling. That is why we must do everything we can to support employment, particularly with small businesses. As long as the small business sector is vibrant and positive and moving forward, people who lose jobs in big companies may be able to find jobs in small firms and that’s why we’ve outlined our own six-point plan to support employment in small businesses, including tax breaks, including support for small businesses to keep employees on the payroll, lowering the cost of employment. Our focus is relentlessly on jobs, jobs, jobs. QUESTION: You did mention the cuts to the bonus structure for rural and regional doctors. Now, what effect will that have in communities like Mackay? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it may have a very adverse effect in Mackay. I’ve spoken to a local doctor here – a leading medical practitioner in Mackay – and the feedback I’ve had is that it could have a very adverse effect indeed, particularly in the provision of specialist services. So this has really very severe consequences for rural and regional Australia. And, again, it begs the question, why is the Government being so extravagant with its spending on one hand – you know, sending out $23 billion in cash handouts; proposing to spend $43 billion on a broadband network without any business plan, without any financial analysis, without any economic justification to demonstrate that it would be a viable proposition – why is it doing all of that on the one hand and then cutting back on spending that supports medical services in rural and regional Australia, cutting back on the Medicare Safety Net, cutting back on benefits for senior Australians? It is a Jekyll and Hyde – on the one hand, spending like a drunken sailor, on the other hand cutting back on vital services. Mr Rudd has got to get his priorities right. QUESTION: You’ve held a number of these jobs forums around the country. There was some discussion in the one in Mackay today that our story is a little bit different. Is that correct, that the stories you’ve heard here today are different from the ones you’ve already held in other parts of the country? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, every jobs forum is different, one from the other, and then there are always common themes. Every jobs forum that I’ve been to, as we had today, you have small business saying that it wants to see less red tape, less regulation, less compliance burden, and of course our six-point plan for small business addresses that. So that’s the result of the feedback we’ve had. The emphasis today was very heavily on economic infrastructure. That was really I think the key theme. The people we met with today here in Mackay wanted the Government to focus its spending on economic infrastructure. The northern rail link, the missing link, was the prime example of something that would create jobs today and would also underpin economic growth and jobs in the future. And right around Australia I’ve had that type of feedback too. It’s not just here in Mackay. Australians want to see their money well spent and so they should. They earned it through hard work. They paid it to the Government in taxes and they are becoming increasingly anxious that it is being spent unwisely by Mr Rudd. QUESTION: Now the stimulus package and the money that was released late last week and this week – I guess people are out in the community spending that. What is your take on that? Do you think that money is going back in to… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the history with these one-off cash payments has been – not just in Australia but around the world – has been that they are mostly saved and not spent. The money that was handed out – nearly $10 billion in December – was, so the latest estimates say, over 80 per cent saved. So this is why they are not an effective economic stimulus. People use them to pay down debt or they put the money aside, that is a very wise thing to do in most cases, very wise, but it doesn’t create any jobs or any economic activity. And this is why governments have got to spend their money very wisely and very effectively. Every policy has got to be focussed on jobs. One of the big issues here that was also raised in the meeting of course was the emissions trading scheme. This is of vital significance in every part of Australia particularly where the coal industry is so important. The emissions trading scheme, as currently proposed by Mr Rudd, will devastate Australia’s coal industry because it will impose very heavy costs on our coal exporters which are not matched by the…in the countries with which they compete. So what will be the result? We will mine and export less coal in Australia, they will mine and export more coal in Indonesia. We will lose jobs, we will lose income, we will lose tax revenues. What is the environmental outcome? No difference. The emissions just go up into the sky from Indonesia as opposed to Australia, perhaps more emissions. So that is why our approach to climate change is a responsible one. We believe our climate change policies must be economically responsible and environmental effective. Mr Rudd’s approach to the coal industry is economically irresponsible and environmentally counterproductive. QUESTION: With regards to the regional retention of the program for doctors that could possibly be axed, this comes on top of the Rudd Government’s axing of the medical specialist visiting program to Mackay earlier this year. We have a lot of trouble getting doctors in Mackay, what do you think of the Rudd Government’s record so far for Mackay’s health? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the Rudd Government is actually undermining the provision of medical services here in Mackay. They seem to have a view that the program to support visiting medical specialists only supported doctors flying up from Brisbane, but it also supports specialists based in Mackay that travel to other communities in the region. So it is a very, very ill-thought out decision and it undermines the provision of medical services in Mackay. And as everybody in Mackay knows and everybody in every regional community in Australia knows, in order to have a strong and healthy community you need to have medical services of the highest calibre, and that’s why governments historically have always taken steps to support that. Mr Rudd is walking away from that. He’s walking away from regional Australia. QUESTION: Why did you choose Mackay as part of your job listening tour around Australia? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Mackay is a wonderful city. It’s a very important part of Australia. This is really part of the engine room of the Australian economy. This is right at the centre of the Central Queensland coal industry. It’s a vital part of Australia. You have with the sugar industry here also a vitally important industry and one which is playing a bigger and bigger role in the provision of renewable energy. So Mackay is brimming with energy of every kind and it’s wonderful to be here. QUESTION: The ALP is looking at a Costello election. What are your thoughts on that issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m focused on taking on Kevin Rudd at the next election and becoming prime minister after we return to government. That’s my commitment. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 14 Apr 2009 05:16:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:427http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/421/Interview-with-Fran-Kelly-ABC-Radio-National.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=421http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=421&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/421/Interview-with-Fran-Kelly-ABC-Radio-National.aspxSubjects: Broadband network announcement; interest rates; budget; China.    E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   KELLY:   Malcolm Turnbull joins us in our Sydney studio, Malcolm Turnbull welcome.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Fran.   KELLY:   You started one of the first internet providers in this country, OzEmail, you’d be all for super fast broadband wouldn’t you?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m all in favour of super fast broadband, very much so, but I’m also in favour of commercial viability, I’m in favour of political honesty and I’m in favour of governments spending tax payers money wisely. Let’s just reflect on what Wayne Swan has done in the last few minutes. He has said that the Government is going to spend $43 billion on a broadband network, which he and the Prime Minister have said will be commercially viable and which will be 50 per cent funded by the private sector.   They’ve both gone into the media and urged Australians to invest in it. They’ve said it’s a great investment for these infrastructure bonds and yet we’ve just heard him say he does not know how many households will take it up. He does not know what price they will pay and in fact he does not know whether it’s commercially viable at all. He says all of this will be determined in the implementation study. Now it’s not an implementation study.  Really what he’s done, he and the Prime Minister have done, is spend $43 billion on a project, the commercial viability of which they have absolutely no basis for knowing.   KELLY:   Is it a dream worth shooting for though? Is there anything wrong with saying this is the world’s best practice, let’s go for this, I mean I’m wondering if you’re against the concept of if you’re against the Government spending tax payers money on it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Fran I think what the Government should do is ask itself this question; how can we provide the best broadband service at the least cost technology in a way that meets customers demand and that is at an affordable price? Now when we were in government we recognised there was one part of Australia in particular where the market was not going to deliver that, and that was regional Australia, so we had a specific proposal, the OPEL Project with Elders and Optus that would have delivered that with a government subsidy – I mean a fraction of what we’re talking about here, it was less than a billion dollars – that would have provided that to regional Australia. And in the cities you have the telco’s competing with each other, providing different forms of broadband technology.  You’ve seen massive take up in wireless broadband, massive, four times as many people took up wireless broadband in the last six months than did fixed line.   KELLY:   We’re still languishing behind a lot of the world though, I mean I think we’re ranked 28 out of 30 in the tables of fast speed broadband, I mean that’s pretty bad for a developed country like Australia isn’t it? Don’t we deserve better?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Fran it’s a question of whether you’re prepared to pay for it. You’ve got to ask yourself this question; this service to be viable, to be commercially viable would require an enormous number, a very, very large percentage of households to take it up and to pay prices north of $150 a month.   KELLY:   Well Optus disagrees with that, we spoke to Optus earlier; they said that’s not true?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Optus I’m afraid to say…I don’t know what they said so I’m not going to comment on that because I didn’t hear it. But if you look at the brokers research, the economic analysis, Goldman Sachs’ work for example has been published this morning, it demonstrates quite clearly that you need to have a massive take up and you need to charge substantially higher prices. You see if you talk – let’s say they can actually build this for $43 billion and there’s a lot of people that argue quite forcefully that that is a very low number – but to get an adequate commercial return on that it would need to generate a return of over $6 billion a year. Now that is substantially more than Telstra’s entire profit. Forty three billion dollars is substantially more than the value of all of the communication assets of Telstra. So this is a gigantic undertaking and the only way it could be built is with tax payer’s dollars. The proposition that it is commercially viable has no basis because the Treasurer has said, just a few moments ago, your listeners, we have heard him admit that he has no basis for representing the project as commercially viable. If a business man or woman made statements like that with so little foundation they would be in ASIC under investigation now. This is sheer recklessness Fran.   KELLY:   Well the Government is not going to spend this money until they do this implementation study, what if the implementation study comes back and it says it is commercially viable and consumers won’t be paying too much, will you support it then?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Fran we will assess it on its merits. We are not saying we’re going to in a blanket way oppose this….   KELLY:   ….well you have, I mean Nick Minchin said you might even rewind it…..   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Might, might, Fran.  Fran, the point is we reserve the right to vote as we see fit on proposals the Government presents when they are presented. At this stage we really don’t know very much about this other than the Government’s assertion that it will cost $43 billion, we don’t know whether that’s right, their assertion that it is commercially viable, which was clearly made without any factual foundation.   You see you are, to the best of my knowledge, and if I may compliment you here, you are the only journalist that has actually asked Kevin Rudd or Wayne Swan a probing financial question. You said, ‘how many households will take it up and what will the price be?’ They are two key determinants of its financial and commercial viability.  He couldn’t answer either question.   KELLY:   The flip side of that is though should the Government not try not go for this not look at this.  It’s going to spend the dollars until it’s done (inaudible).  Should it not aim for this because it thinks it might be too expensive?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No what they should do is they should first do the work and find out what level of broadband services can be provided, what speed, at what price, what the demand is. You see here is a fundamental question; if you have got a wireless broadband or a fixed line broadband service at the moment at a speed of 10 megabites a second, for example, and say it’s costing you $50 a month, say that’s what you’re paying just as an example, and then the Government comes along and says we can give you a 100 megabites a month but it’s going to cost you $200, you may well say, I don’t actually need that faster connection, I don’t need to download movies in half a second, I’m happy with what I’ve got, and the question is; if the Government is going to provide a service like this at a huge loss, then it should say so.   But what they have said is that this will be commercially viable and they have urged, without any financial information before them, without having done their homework, they’ve urged Australians to invest in it.  And I tell you as a businessman, if I were to do that in my business life, that is, to urge people to invest in a venture with no basis of knowing whether it was viable or not, I would be hauled into ASIC, I would be in the hottest of hot water.   Now what we’ve got at the moment is a Prime Minister and a Treasurer who are demonstrably utterly reckless with the nation’s finances.  They are running up debt at a reckless rate which will impose higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future.   KELLY:   Its eight minutes to eight on breakfast, our guest this morning in the breakfast studio is the Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm Turnbull can I ask you about the decision by at least one of the banks and certainly all of them not pass the RBA rate cut on in full yesterday, the NAB not at all, do you fear that monetary policy will stop working if banks don’t pass on these rate cuts?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well if banks don’t pass them on at all, of course then it doesn’t work, that’s right. I mean the rate cuts are only effective in terms of stimulating the economy if they are passed on by banks. I’m very disappointed that the banks have not passed them on. The banks have received enormous support from the Government. They’ve got the benefit of a deposit guarantee, they’ve got the benefit of a wholesale term funding guarantee and really the least they can do is pass on these cuts in official rates. The banks are doing very, very well at the moment, particularly the big four, they’re doing very well, competitively and in every other way.   KELLY:   A couple of quick questions on a couple of issues before I let you go, it’s a…some pretty dire poll results out for you this week, are you hoping that the Budget will come along and be the circuit breaker for you, something needs to be the circuit breaker for you doesn’t it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Fran the Government is not making any tough decisions. Everything they’re doing is very popular. Even yesterday, broadband for everybody, $43 billion, don’t worry it will be commercially viable and you’re the only person, and again I compliment you on it, you’re the only person that’s actually asked the hard question, for which the Government says we have no idea. So this is la la land. They are sending out billions of dollars in cheques, every child is winning a prize at the moment, Kevin Rudd is Santa Claus all year round, so why are we surprised that he’s popular?   KELLY:   Nevertheless with your personal standing, the gap 67 to 18 per cent in terms of preferred Prime Minister, I mean does it become unsustainable at some point, what happens for you, do you just keep (inaudible) on here?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Fran I’m focussed on the Government.  I’m focussed on the way they’re running up debt.  I’m focussed on the reckless way, the reckless way they are urging Australians to invest in a project about which they have no, no reliable view on the commercial viability. So let’s just consider that. This is really the question; Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan have been out there saying this is a commercially viable project, Australians should invest in it and yet when you’ve asked them fundamental questions about the economics of it, they’ve said they don’t have a clue – is that really responsible government? Is that the way Australians want to have their economy and their government managed so recklessly?   KELLY:   Could I ask you now about relationship with China or more broadly the investment decision that’s coming up with Chinalco and Rio Tinto.  National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce has called for a ban on all foreign state owned companies being able to invest in Australian mining, do you agree with that? Is that the line we should draw?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That no state owned enterprises should invest in Australian mining?   KELLY:   We shouldn’t allow invest by state owned entities?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well there would have to be a large amount of disinvestment if that were to be the case. Look let me; because there’s already a number of Chinese state owned enterprises have invested in Australian minerals companies. Look historically these FIRB decisions, these foreign investment decisions have been taken on a case-by-case basis and in the Coalition we believe that’s the right approach. As for Chinalco, Rio that is something we’ve been considering very carefully.  We’ve discussed it in Shadow Cabinet and we’ll be expressing some views on that shortly.   KELLY:   There has been some criticism of some of the comments made by you and others on your frontbench about China and the Government’s relationship or closeness with China, I’m wondering if you’ve been approached at all by any representative from the Chinese Embassy or the Chinese community disapproving of your comments?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well not at all. I mean I speak to the Chinese Ambassador reasonably regularly, Zhang Jun Sai, I know him. Our relations with China are very important. Australia has very friendly relations with China and we respect that but we also have to respect, recognise, that we have competing interests, we have national interests of our own.   To say that Australia has concerns about Chinese Government owned companies investing in key strategic natural resources in Australia is not to be critical of China, that is a vital national interest of ours. I mean we should never forget that when Chairman Mao won victory at the end of his revolution, he stood on the top of Tiananmen in Beijing; he said the Chinese people have stood up.   Now equally the Australian people must always be prepared to stand up for their interests and I say to you Fran, that as the alternative Prime Minister of Australia, Australians know that I will always stand up for the Australian people no matter how powerful or how friendly another nation may be. We need leaders that speak for Australia, a strong voice for Australia, now that’s what I offer. I don’t believe Kevin Rudd has been a strong enough voice for Australia. That’s my criticism of him. It is no criticism of China. China’s entitled to pursue its interests as it sees fit. But we must stand up for Australia and the Chinese respect that.   KELLY:   Malcolm Turnbull, thanks very much for joining us on breakfast.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you.   [ends]  malcolmTue, 07 Apr 2009 20:52:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:421http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/420/Doorstop-Interview-West-Ryde.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=420http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=420&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/420/Doorstop-Interview-West-Ryde.aspxSubjects: Interest rates; Rudd’s broadband gamble; Craig Thomson. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: We are very disappointed that the banks have not passed on the full extent of the rate cut. The Federal Government has provided enormous support to the banks through the various guarantees and really it is up to the Federal Government to ensure that this rate cut is fully passed on to the customers of the banks, to the borrowers. It is a testimony to the ineffectiveness of the Rudd Government that after providing all this support it is so unpersuasive, so ineffectual that it cannot persuade the banks to pass on the full extent of the rate cut. Certainly when we were in Government official rate cuts were invariably passed on by the banks and they should be in this case too. Can I just turn to another issue, which is the National Broadband Network. Yesterday Mr Rudd’s tender process collapsed. His plan to have a National Broadband Network with $4.7 billion invested by the Government and the rest provided by private sector partners collapsed. None of the proposals were acceptable he said. So he’s come out and he’s said that he’s going to build a fibre-to-the-home network for $43 billion. He said it will be commercially viable and he said the private sector will invest half. He’s gone onto television, as has Mr Swan, Mr Tanner and Julia Gillard on the radio this morning, saying that this will be a wonderful investment and urging Australians to buy infrastructure bonds to finance it. And yet we know from Mr Swan’s own lips this morning that they have no idea in truth whether it will be commercially viable or not. They do not know or have a view as to how many households will take it up, what price they would be prepared to pay. Most industry analysts conclude it is not commercially viable and that for such a network to be built it would have to be overwhelmingly financed by the Government and on a non-commercial basis. So really Mr Rudd is just making it up as he goes along. He’s out there encouraging people to invest in a business enterprise that he says is viable where he has no basis for saying that. If someone in the private sector was doing that about their company, they would be in the hottest of hot water as I think we all know. So really this is an example of Mr Rudd’s inability to manage our economy, running up enormous debt resulting in higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future and out there claiming that a massive investment which he’s just thought up on the run, making it up as he goes along, will be commercially viable when he simply has not done the homework. He has no way of knowing whether this is going to be commercially viable or not and he certainly has been utterly reckless in encouraging Australians to invest in this venture when he has no basis for assuring them, no proper basis for assuring them the investment would be safe or worthwhile. QUESTION: There’s talk that the network might need legislation. Would you support that in the Senate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll see what they propose. What they have said yesterday, it is unreal. It is never going to be realised in that form. It is very clear that a National Broadband Network of this kind, costing $43 billion would not be – based on all the work that’s been done by industry analysts – would not be commercially viable. That is to say, not enough people would be prepared to pay the very, very large fees in order to make it commercially viable. So the basis on which Mr Rudd has presented this is not real. He hasn’t thought it through, he hasn’t done his homework. He’s throwing big numbers around recklessly. So let’s see what finally emerges. Mr Swan indicated today that all of the questions they should have answered before they started spruiking it are going to be studied in an implementation study. Talk about putting the cart in front of the horse. They should have done their homework first before they started talking. Now we’ll see what emerges from that and we’ll assess it on its merits. QUESTION: If it does get built, they’re saying at least eight years. That covers a couple of election cycles. If you’re back in power, would you honour the contracts that would be signed by them? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well again we’re talking about hypotheticals. The proposal Mr Rudd outlined yesterday will never happen because it is simply not commercially viable. There is no way this proposal as he’s described it would be financed as to 50 per cent by the private sector because you simply cannot get a commercial return. That is not my view, my personal view. That is the view of respected industry analysts who have done the analysis, done the work that Mr Rudd plainly hasn’t done. So when he eventually comes up with some revised proposal, then we’ll have a look at it but until then, really, this is just another case of him talking big, talking for headlines, talking recklessly, talking about spending billions of dollars of Australians’ money without any proper thought, without thinking it through. QUESTION: But if construction of some kind is underway and you win the next election, you would be left with a decision to keep going or scrap it. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll see what proposal eventually emerges and we’ll make a decision as to how we respond to any legislation that’s presented but until we see what is finally proposed we can’t express, responsibly, express a final view. QUESTION: On the banks, if the banks don’t pass on the official interest rate cut, what benefit is there to the Australian economy from the official interest rate cut? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that is a very good point.  If the Reserve Bank cuts rates and the rate cuts are not passed on then the economy doesn’t benefit.  So, plainly, for easing in monetary policy to have a stimulatory effect in the economy the cuts have to be passed on in whole or in part.  And if they’re not passed on at all then of course the benefit isn’t passed on, and I think the Reserve Bank’s made that point in the past. QUESTION: What can the Rudd Government do to persuade them to cut rates? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it does say something about the ineffectiveness of the Rudd Government.  When we were in government we were able to persuade the banks to pass on official rate cuts, and yet we weren’t providing them with guarantees on their deposits or guarantees on their wholesale funding.  We now have a Government which is providing the banks with enormous support and yet is unable to persuade them to pass on a cut in rates.  It just shows how little, how unpersuasive Mr Rudd and Mr Swan are with the banks.  They’re not very good at standing up for Australian borrowers, that’s for sure. QUESTION: What’s your advice to Mr Rudd then in being able to persuade these banks, if you were able to? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think Mr Rudd has got to become more persuasive and more forceful but he’s also got to become more credible.  You see, his economic credibility is getting worse every day.  I mean, just think about this – he has gone on television last night and said that his $43 billion project is commercially viable and that Australians should invest in it.  He’s urged Australians to invest in it.  Now, doing that without a prospectus, without having done any financial analysis, without having done the homework which Mr Swan said was going to be done later in the second part of this year, that is incredibly reckless.  And anybody in the business world is going to look at Mr Rudd and say he may have a head for headlines but he doesn’t have a head for figures. QUESTION: Do you think Craig Thomson should be disciplined for these alleged rorts of his credit cards when he was a union official? MALCOLM TURNBULL: As I understand it, they are under investigation and the investigation should take their course.  But the allegations are very concerning and we look forward to them being thoroughly investigated, in particular by the Electoral Commission. QUESTION: Should he be stood down in the meantime? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the investigation should be undertaken and undertaken quickly.  The only thing I know about the allegations is what I saw on the front page of the Herald.  I don’t know whether they’re correct or not - they are very troubling - but they should be investigated quickly and certainly Mr Thomson should provide a comprehensive response.  They are very serious allegations. QUESTION: The Westpac Index of Consumer Sentiment came out today and showed an 8.3 per cent increase to 92.7 per cent of consumer confidence.  Is the Rudd Government’s policies working? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I haven’t seen those figures so I can’t comment on them. The Rudd Government’s economic policies are making a difficult situation worse.  As every day goes by they are running up more and more debt with very little effect. Just consider this; in the last four months they have given away $23 billion of cash in handouts to households.  The vast bulk of that money either has been or will be saved.  It hasn’t created any jobs.  It hasn’t created any economic activity.  Unemployment is rising.  Economic growth is going into reverse.   They’re now talking about spending $43 billion without knowing whether the investment will be commercially viable or not.  And the Treasurer admitted this morning on Fran Kelly’s program that he didn’t know, that they were going to do the homework later.  So they – just think about this – imagine what would happen to a director of a private sector company of a business who stood up, announced a project, urged people to invest in it, said it was commercially viable and then when asked whether he’d done his homework said, oh, we’ll do all that later.  It is incredible.  Mr Rudd’s conduct here just underlines how reckless and irresponsible he is when dealing with Australians’ money, with taxpayers’ money, with the savings, the future of our nation. QUESTION: Just on the interest rates, the banks say that they get most of their money now from overseas money markets and the official Australian interest rates doesn’t have much of a role in its costs. Is that a legitimate excuse as to why they’re not passing on the full cut to the Australian rates? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I don’t think that’s quite right.  The banks are…a large part of their deposit base, if you like, is local, they borrow locally.  They also borrow offshore, so they’ve always had a mix of funds.  And there is no question that the cut in official rates does reduce their cost of funds.  Now, they’ve got to make their own case but they are getting enormous support from the Government, enormous support, unprecedented support from the Government.  And it does say something about the Rudd Government and its inability to stand up for borrowers that it has been unable to persuade the banks to pass on that rate cut.   Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 07 Apr 2009 20:50:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:420http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/419/Interview-with-David-Speers-Sky-News.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=419http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=419&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/419/Interview-with-David-Speers-Sky-News.aspxSubjects: Interest rates; Kevin Rudd’s broadband gamble E&OE………………………………………………………………………………...... DAVID SPEERS: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for joining us.  If we can start firstly with interest rates before we get to the broadband decision.  The banks are saying they can’t afford to pass on this latest interest rate cut because their funding costs are higher.  Are they right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think a lot of people would disagree with that.  The banks are doing very well at the moment.  I notice that they’ve got 92, in the housing figures out today, they’ve got 92 per cent of the mortgage market on the figures I saw today, so they’re doing very well.   These difficult times have been competitively good for the big banks.  In fact, I think we discussed that about a year ago, what these developments would entail for the big banks, so I think they should pass it all on. DAVID SPEERS: And you have been suggesting that the Government has some more leverage because of the support they have given the banks through the funding guarantee, the deposit guarantee and other measures since this financial crisis broke.  Do you think the Government should actually use that leverage, threaten to take away some of those guarantees, if the banks don’t cooperate on interest rates? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’d hope it wouldn’t have to come to that but the fact is that the banks have had unprecedented support from the Government.  I mean, they benefit from a deposit guarantee, they benefit from a wholesale term funding guarantee, and despite all of that assistance they don’t seem to pay much attention to the Prime Minister. DAVID SPEERS: So what should the Prime Minister do? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think he has to be more persuasive.  When we were in government the banks did pass on these rate cuts and there was no support in the terms of guarantees being provided to the banks. DAVID SPEERS: So is that just more persuasive language or do you actually do something that’s going to hurt the banks? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well ultimately, David, Mr Rudd has got to be able to deliver.  Now, he has claimed that he’s out there standing up for borrowers.   He’s provided enormous support to the banks.  He hasn’t been able to ensure that these rate cuts have been passed on to borrowers.  We get that we’re talking about mortgages here of course, but the people that are really complaining about not getting access to credit and not getting access to credit on competitive terms are small business.   I’ve been at a small business forum in Ryde today and there, as in many other forums that I’ve attended around the country, small business are concerned that credit is not available to them in the way that it used to be and certainly that they are not getting anything like the benefit of the official rate cut.   So there are some real issues out there.  Mr Rudd and Mr Swan have got the leverage.  They should be getting to sitting down with the banks and ensuring that the banks do their part in return, or at least an acknowledgement, of the considerable assistance they’ve been given by the Federal Government. DAVID SPEERS: Let’s move on to broadband.  Australia currently has one of the slowest Internet speeds in the developed world.  Is that good enough?  Don’t we deserve to have the fastest in the world? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, David, we can have as fast an Internet speed as we wish.  It really depends on how much we’re prepared to pay for it. Now, the real point is this, Mr Rudd is Prime Minister of Australia.  He is responsible for managing the finances of this nation.  He went out yesterday and said he was going to spend $43 billion on a national broadband network.  He said it would be commercially viable.  He said the private sector would pay for half of it.  He went on television and, without a prospectus, urged Australians to invest in it and yet we discover now that they have done no homework.  They don’t know how, they haven’t even made an assumption about how many households will take it up.  They don’t know what it will cost.  They have no basis for saying it’s commercially viable.  They’re not even… DAVID SPEERS: Isn’t it the point of the…isn’t it the point of the scoping study though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, David, let me put this to you.  In the real world, which your company lives in and I live in and Australians live in, as opposed to the la la land Mr Rudd is in, you have to do your homework first.  You don’t go out and say you’re going to spend $43 billion on a project without having done any homework.  Today we have learned that they have done no financial modelling.  This has not gone to Infrastructure Australia.  They do not know what it will cost.  In fact, the Finance Minister said it could cost a lot more - so $43 billion mightn’t even be the right number.  They don’t know what people will have to pay to make it viable.  And yet you’ve got the Prime Minister and the Treasurer out there effectively offering securities to the public for a project that they have done no homework on.  Now, is that the type of recklessness that we want to see in the person of the Prime Minister of Australia? DAVID SPEERS: Well, the Government would argue that that’s the process it’s now going to go through over the next eight or nine months, this scoping study to answer some of those questions and then it will presumably be urging people to invest in it.  It’s simply being open and honest with us now about the process that’s to come. MALCOLM TURNBULL: David, it is being completely dishonest.  Let me put it this way. You work for Rupert Murdoch.  Imagine if Rupert Murdoch started a new business… DAVID SPEERS: Partly…partly… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Partly, alright.  Imagine if Rupert Murdoch started a new media company and went out on television, went on Sky and said it’s going to involve $20 billion of expenditure and it’s going to be a great investment and everyone should line up and buy shares, and then the next day it was revealed that he didn’t really know what it was going to cost and he hadn’t done any financial modelling and he had no reliable basis for saying it was a good investment or not.  He would have some very big questions to answer down at ASIC.  Now, the fact of the matter is, this is – and the sort of defence you’ve offered for Mr Rudd I’m afraid would do him no good at all.   So the reality is Mr Rudd says he’s all against the greed and the incompetence in the business world.  He is behaving in a way that would put a businessman in the hot seat at ASIC very, very quickly. This is the most reckless statement about a financial matter I’ve ever seen from an Australian government.  This makes the Whitlam era look modest and unassuming.  This is recklessness on a gigantic scale. DAVID SPEERS: Let’s get to what you would do then as Prime Minister.  If you were Prime Minister today, would you be throwing money at Telstra to build a better broadband network? How would you approach it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think the first thing you’ve got to do, which is what we were doing in government, was to address the part of Australia where the market, the free market if you like, competitive telecom services are not going to deliver affordable broadband and that’s regional and rural Australia.  And so we had a project that was funded - this is the Opal Project between Optus and Elders - that had a government subsidy in it of under a billion dollars that would have ensured that through a mix of technologies, principally wireless and satellite, those areas would get affordable broadband.  Now that is the most important objective because they are areas that are not going to be serviced otherwise. In terms of the cities, we are already seeing a range of technologies being delivered. What we need to do is to sit down with the existing providers, including Telstra, identify the areas where broadband is not being provided adequately and identify strategies that will enable it to be delivered on a cost effective basis. You see, the thing you’ve got to remember here, David, is we’re talking about $43 billion plus for a service, the commerciality of which has not even been assessed by the Government, not withstanding their assuring people it’s commercially viable, and they’re urging Australians to invest in it. They are asking people to invest in a project which they say is a good investment and they don’t know whether it’s a good, bad or indifferent investment.  Now that is not acceptable conduct. DAVID SPEERS: Just to be clear, though, the current efforts that are underway on broadband, none of them involve fibre-to-the-home, none of them involve 100 megabits per second. Are you saying 100 megabits per second is just not necessary?  I mean, is it over the top and what do you think is necessary in Australia? MALCOLM TURNBULL: People can acquire whatever, should be able to buy whatever speed they’re prepared to pay for.  You see, the point is this, David, is 100 megabytes a second better than 10 megabytes a second?  Well obviously it is better, but how much more are you prepared to pay for it?  You see, if you have a wireless card, a wireless broadband card that gives you sufficient broadband for your purposes you may not want to pay anymore for 100 megabytes on a fixed line basis.  If you’ve currently got broadband at the moment and it’s adequate to your purposes you may not want to pay three or four or five times as much for a faster service.  You’ve got to look at – if you look at the last six months, 650,000 people subscribed to wireless broadband – four times as much as took up additional take-ups of fixed line broadband.  So there’s a lot of technology out there.  It’s moving very, very quickly. You’ve got to remember, I was involved in the foundation of Australia’s first big Internet company, OzEmail, a long time ago – 15 years ago – and so I’ve lived through this technological revolution.  I am passionately committed to the Internet. I am passionately committed to broadband and fast broadband but I am also passionately committed to ensuring that Australia’s finances are managed responsibly. And what we are seeing at the moment is a Prime Minister who has no head for figures, doesn’t seem to understand anything about the principles, the rules, the regulations that affect one’s ability to spruik securities on television, or anywhere else for that matter, and really is just spruiking this great idea as a headline grabber.  How can you seriously say you’re going to spend $43 billion on a project when you have done no work as to what it will really cost – you don’t know what it’ll cost – and you have no idea whether it is commercially viable or not, how can you responsibly urge people to invest in that? That’s the question that Kevin Rudd has to answer. DAVID SPEERS: Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, we will have to leave it there but thank you for joining us. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you. [ends]malcolmTue, 07 Apr 2009 20:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:419http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/423/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=423http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=423&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/423/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Earthquake in Italy; Rudd’s broadband gamble. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: First I want to talk about the terrible earthquake in Italy. I pass on our condolences, on behalf of the Opposition, our sympathy to all of those affected by these terrible events in Italy, and of course to the hundreds and thousands of Australians with Italian heritage and indeed with family in Italy. There are no doubt many Australians whose relatives have been affected by this shocking earthquake. The links between people and people, of culture, of history between Australia and Italy are very deep. You could not imagine modern Australia without the contribution of so many Italians that have come to Australia and become part of our community. So we’re very sad to learn of this earthquake. We pass on our condolences and I urge the Australian Government to do whatever it can to support the efforts of the Italian authorities and of course the Government will have our support, the Opposition’s support, in providing assistance to those in need in Italy. I’d now like to turn to the announcement by the Prime Minister today. We are passionately committed to high speed broadband services around Australia. I am personally passionately committed to this. Part of my business life was establishing Australia’s first large internet service provider OzEmail. I’ve grown up with the internet. I understand the enormous potential it offers for education, for communication, for trade, for every aspect of our life. It is a vital tool. Telecommunications is a vital tool. But just as we are passionately committed to high speed broadband services, we are also passionately committed to responsible economic management, and we are very concerned that the Rudd Government is yet again, in an ill-thought-out way, burdening Australians with tens of billions of dollars of debt that will mean higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. The Rudd Government, you recall, promised to commence building a National Broadband Network by late 2008. We’re now 18 months later; $20 million has been spent on a failed tender process. The announcement today is an acknowledgment by the Prime Minister of the failure of his tender. And what we have now been provided with is a commitment to undertake an implementation study to consider how to build a Government-controlled broadband network at a cost of $43 billion. Remember, this is a Government that was trying to see how $4.7 billion could secure an adequate return in the context of a broadband network. It is now committing $43 billion. Regional Australia has been left out of the fibre-to-the-home network. Labor’s original promise was that 98 per cent of Australia would be covered by the fibre-to-the-node network, by fibre network. Now it’s only 90 per cent covered and regional Australia will be dealt with, catered for with other technologies. The key question is how much will this network cost families to use, and when will it be ready? Will this technology be superseded at least in part by 2018, the end date for the completion of the network? We know now that wireless broadband is moving ahead very rapidly. In the first half of 2009, 108,000 new customers signed up to fixed broadband but 650,000 new customers signed up to wireless broadband. The Government has not provided any evidence of the economic return needed for this $43 billion investment other than to say it must be commercial. Now if it is to be commercial and if a commercial return is to be obtained for the $43 billion investment, the venture would, according to industry analysts, need to charge households and businesses at least two to three times the current average cost of broadband services in our cities. The Government has provided no evidence that there will be sufficient demand for this service at prices that will enable the network to deliver a commercial return. So they are now scrapping their failed tender process and embarking on a monumentally expensive broadband scheme that may not ever happen or could be quite unattractive to most Australians given the very high prices needed to justify the cost. This is truly a case of ‘build it and hope they will come’. No one else in the world has adopted this approach of a majority government-owned common carrier providing broadband services where the taxpayers carry the financial and the technological risk. Mr Rudd in truth is planning to build a second Telstra owned by the Government. Just consider this: the book value of Telstra’s communications assets is $25 billion – that’s all of Telstra. Mr Rudd is proposing to invest $43 billion. In other words, the Commonwealth Government, having sold one Telstra to the public, is now proposing to build a second Telstra to compete with the Telstra that it’s sold. It is an enormous investment. There is no evidence that this can deliver a commercial return. There is no evidence that there is sufficient demand to provide a commercial return, and of course without a commercial return, there is no prospect whatsoever of the private sector investing. So in reality, what we are talking about here is $43 billion of taxpayers’ money – all of which will be borrowed – being committed to a venture where the Prime Minister has been unable to provide one skerrick of financial information to justify a $43 billion investment. No wonder Australians are becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which the Government is managing the economy and the way in which it is responding to the economic challenges we face. This is a measure, a political measure by Mr Rudd to cover up for the fact that their tender process has failed, in which he is committing the Commonwealth, the taxpayers of Australia to $43 billion of investment on a scheme for which there is not one skerrick of financial justification. We don’t even know one assumption on which this is based. Not one financial assumption has been presented. This is an extraordinary way, an extraordinary way, an incredible way in fact, to commit $43 billion of taxpayers’ money. QUESTION: You’ve mentioned Telstra. Isn’t this a recognition by the Rudd Government that the arrogance that is Telstra needs to be reigned in and therefore you need some sort of government control over communications for Australia, I mean the share price of Telstra says that alone… MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t follow your question, I’m sorry. QUESTION: You were saying about Telstra and this is basically becoming a second Telstra… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it is a second Telstra. This company will have a capital investment that is substantially larger than the book value of Telstra’s own communication assets. So this is an enormous enterprise. I mean if you were, for example – to give you a figure – if this venture were to deliver a 15 per cent return on its invested capital that would be a sum substantially – that would be over $6 billion, obviously – that would be a sum substantially greater than Telstra’s reported profit last year. So this is a gigantic exercise and what we have not seen is any evidence that this will deliver a commercial return. It’s fine for Mr Rudd to say we’re going to invest $43 billion and it will deliver a commercial return. Where is the evidence for that? If, as the industry analysts say, if this would require households who are currently paying say between $40 and $50 a month for broadband to pay $150 a month for broadband, where is the evidence that households will do that? Where is the evidence that this can actually be a commercial venture? This is so poorly thought out, and then we have the whole question of competing technologies. The reality is that there is a growing move to wireless broadband because people want the flexibility and the functionality of mobile devices, be they little handhelds like Blackberries and PDAs or laptop computers with wireless cards. So there is a whole migration there, much greater than anyone had predicted. What impact does that have on the viability of a network like this? But what does it say about the Prime Minister that he is prepared to stand up and say he will invest $43 billion of taxpayers’ money in a project for which he provides not one skerrick of financial detail. Nothing. There is nothing there to tell us that we can have any confidence that this is viable. QUESTION: Is money no longer an object to the Prime Minister? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think the Prime Minister has lost track of money. Perhaps he’s spent too much time wandering around the world talking in trillions, and billions don’t seem like a lot of money to him anymore. But to announce that you’re going to spend $43 billion – where is the assumptions? How many households does he believe will take up this service? At what price will they be prepared to pay? Where are any of those details? And look, let’s just remember this, these types of blunders have been made before, have been made before. It’s not so long ago in the late 90s, there were many billions of dollars invested in sub-sea cable networks. I had some quite close experience with them. I was on the board of a company called Reach that owned a number of these assets, a joint venture between Telstra and PCCW of Hong Kong, and we saw that industry very close hand and there were many billions of dollars invested in sub-sea cables by mostly American companies which grossly overestimated the likely demand for their services and almost every single one of them ended up going bankrupt, losing an enormous amount of money. I remember the Chief Financial Officer of Telstra at the time said he thought it was the biggest failure in capitalism, in the history of capitalism to that time. It was extraordinary amount of money that was lost, and it was done because people failed to make an accurate or reliable estimation of the likely demand for those services. Now at least in those cases there were proper business plans and there were assumptions presented and there was an attempt to analyse the future. What we’ve got here is a press release from Mr Rudd – $43 billion. How many households does he believe will take up the service? There are ten and a half million lines at the moment into households. How many does he believe will take up this service?  There is a growing migration away from fixed line to wireless.  How quickly does he believe that will progress?  What does he believe people will pay?   We have no detail.  He’s plucked a big number out of the air because it’s a big headline and that is why we are getting into so much trouble financially in this country today, because we have a Prime Minister who has always got a political strategy but no economic strategy.  He’s not a businessman.  He has no head for figures.  He’s got a head for headlines and that’s all. And that’s why we’re running into tens and tens of billions of dollars of unsustainable debt. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, you’ve slumped as preferred Prime Minister in the most recent Newspoll. Is your position in danger? How are you going to revive those figures? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m focused on the Government of Australia.  I’m focused on ensuring that we hold this Government to account and that, as far as we can, we ensure that they do not continue to recklessly run up tens of billions of dollars of debt.   Now we are not the Government. We cannot govern from Opposition but it is our duty to hold this Government to account for the damage they’re doing to our economy and the recklessness.  Two questions that Mr Rudd was not asked today, I believe, and certainly should have answered even if he wasn’t asked.  How many households will take up this service, how many households does he estimate will take up this service?  What is the average price he believes they will pay for that service?  Fundamental assumptions – no detail provided. QUESTION: Do you think there’s any chance at all Mr Turnbull that some jobs could be created from this establishment of a national broadband… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there’s no doubt that if you undertake any public work you have to employ people to do it, but it’s not simply a question of creating jobs at any cost.  If we end up building for $43 or $50 billion a fibre-to-the-household network that ends up being worth $10 or $20 billion or $5 billion, that is a gigantic loss to the taxpayer. I mean we should not forget this – people have built broadband networks, inter-continental broadband networks in the past which ended up being worth a tiny fraction of their cost, a tiny fraction.  And the Prime Minister may well be on the verge of repeating that error in Australia.  Look, we have a variety of technologies that are available to us to deliver broadband services.   The one thing that I’ve learnt in my life in dealing with technology, working in the Internet, dealing with companies that are at the cutting edge of technology is that it’s very hard to predict what’s around the corner.  I mean if you take your mobile phone out of your pocket or your Blackberry out of your pocket and just ask yourself whether you would have predicted that would have been a common consumer device five years ago, let alone ten years ago and the truth is, you probably wouldn’t have predicted it being so available. So technology is moving very rapidly.   Mr Rudd is committing us, or seeking to commit us to $43 billion – and that may well be a very low estimate of the cost – on one technological solution in circumstances where he has no basis at all, no basis to know whether this is financially viable.  He says it will be commercially viable and, as I said, the industry analysts that have looked at this today suggest that households would have to pay at least two to three times the annual cost and, of course, that assumes that there’s a very, very big take up.  Now, a lot of households will say: well, 100 megabytes a second, that’s great but I don’t actually need to pay $150 or $200 a month for that. I’m happy paying $30 a month for a slower speed that is more than adequate for my purposes.  So this is a very, very risky venture and he has simply not done his homework.  Australians should be very concerned by it. QUESTION: On the NBN, I mean comparisons have been made today on the Harbour Bridge and the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Do you see some of this being Kevin Rudd looking for a Kevin Rudd legacy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think he has become intoxicated with his own magnificence and he wants to spend up big on the taxpayers’ credit card and he’s perhaps seeking to build monuments.  But the fact of the matter is that all of these ventures, all of these investments, have got to pay their way.  Mr Rudd has said this will generate a commercial return.  He wants the private sector to invest.  Nobody would invest on the basis of what we’ve been told here.   Go back to Mr Rudd, ask him those fundamental questions.  Where is your business plan?  How many households do you believe will take up this service?  What is the basis for your belief that they will?  How much do you believe they will pay?  Depending on what price they pay, what sort of return will you obtain?  These are fundamental questions.  It is an insult to the Australian public to be told that we are going to have $43 billion of our money spent on the basis of nothing more than a press release.  Not one financial assumption or calculation is presented.  Thanks very much.  Thank you. [ends]  malcolmTue, 07 Apr 2009 05:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:423http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/415/Interview-with-Tim-Cox-ABC-Hobart.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=415http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=415&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/415/Interview-with-Tim-Cox-ABC-Hobart.aspxSubjects: Small business strategy; Jobs for Australia community forum; G20 Summit; executive remuneration; incident with Kevin Rudd on RAAF plane; Joel Fitzgibbon; uranium sales; Tasmania.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   TIM COX:   Good morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning. Good to be with you.   TIM COX:   You well?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m in great form.   TIM COX:   You’re talking yourself hoarse, I can hear it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, you know, you go around, give lots of speeches. That’s the occupational hazard.   TIM COX:   You were talking at the ACCI, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry dinner last night. What was your message to them?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Small business and jobs. Focusing on jobs, jobs, jobs. What I outlined was a six-point plan that we have laid out as part of our alternative economic plan for recovery, which focuses on small businesses and which is aimed at lowering the cost, for small businesses in particular, of employing Australians. So we’ve proposed that businesses that run up losses over the next few years should be able, as they can in many other countries I might say, carry back those losses against tax that they’ve paid in previous years. So if they’ve made profits and paid tax in previous years they can chose for the next two years either to carry forward those losses as we conventionally do or carry them back and get a refund of tax paid now. So that assists businesses right now. We’ve put a cap on it of $100,000 so it’s essentially focused on small businesses.   We’ve also, and I’ve announced this previously, proposed that in order to lower the cost of employing people, the Government should in this year rebate three of the nine per cent of the Superannuation Guarantee contribution, so three percentage points, and one and a half percentage points in the following year. That’d cost $5 billion over two years. It would put cash into the hands of every small business. This would apply to businesses with twenty or fewer employees.   TIM COX:   So that would be a one-off short-term measure?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That’s a short-term measure, yeah.   TIM COX:   What if small business likes it? Small business decides that that’s a measure it in fact quite likes and enables it to employ more, to grow and so on and so forth.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   You would have to consider it, it is essentially a subsidy. It is a cash payment but it’s directed, targeted at reducing the cost of employment. See a number of the other things the Government has proposed, you know, the thirty per cent accelerated depreciation for purchasing new equipment, that’s obviously fine for businesses that wish to take advantage of it but a lot of small businesses won’t have the cash available to buy new equipment and they may not need new equipment anyway. So given that businesses are feeling the pinch in terms of cash flow at the moment, we looked at measures that would be targeted, we could form a very good estimate of the cost and that would reduce the cost of employment, improve their cash flow.   We’ve also proposed a number of other measures to reduce the regulatory and red tape burden to make it easier for businesses to get in and do their job. You know, we’ve been having these Jobs Forums around Australia – we’ve just had two in northern Tasmania this week – and it’s remarkable that the theme is very consistent: please government, get off our back, too much red tape, takes too long to fill in all these forms, too many things to comply with. Can’t you make it simpler for us to do our business?   TIM COX:   But you were part of a government for a decade that had that opportunity to be that sort of friend of small business, to make things easier for small business to operate and to grow, but clearly if they’re still saying, it didn’t.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Tim I think that there will always be the aim to reduce regulation and red tape but we just have to keep on doing more and I’m not excusing anybody for policies in the past but I’m the Leader of the Coalition now. I come from a life and a background in small business. There’s nobody in the front ranks of the Labor Party that can fit that description. Their leading players have had almost no experience in the private sector. Lucy and I have spent our whole lives starting businesses, employing people, creating jobs. I know what it involves to start a small business, to take those risks, to create jobs for Australians and so I am very focused on government, the government that I’ll lead after the election, doing everything it can to enable small business to do its best.   TIM COX:   Alright, we’ll come back to that in a moment. Of course, the big financial news this morning is what’s come out of the G20 Summit in London. Australia is by any measure – there’s an interesting piece in the The Australian today saying that the Australian seat at the table was in fact in Siberia – but can it work? Can the measures that have been agreed to at this Summit make a difference do you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the biggest thing they’ve done, overwhelmingly the most important thing they’ve done is agreed to commit about a trillion dollars to the International Monetary Fund collectively. Now that’s a good measure. That is to bulk up the IMF to enable it as a global banker to support economies that are really struggling with the global financial crisis and that is most notably in the developing world and of course Eastern Europe, which is doing it very, very tough where they have big foreign currency liabilities, their economies have dramatically slowed and they are facing real crisis. But that’s essentially what they’ve agreed to do. They’ve also agreed to undertake better regulation of financial institutions but most of it, the rest of it is essentially the re-announcement of initiatives already underway.   TIM COX:   Does that mean it is a missed opportunity perhaps?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, I just don’t think you can solve all the problems of the world at one dinner party and so they’ve agreed on what they’ve agreed on with the IMF. It was well anticipated. It’s a good measure but it isn’t… I think Kevin Rudd at one point was hoping that there would be an agreement to have a massive fiscal stimulus around the world and more cash splashes and spendathons. Well there’s been no agreement of that kind at all. He’s had no endorsement of that whatsoever.   TIM COX:   Yes. The crack down on executive salaries and tax havens – I know there was a lot of talk in Canberra about this the week before last – if that was as egregious as it would appear from what most people are saying, why wasn’t it an issue before the financial crisis? Why wasn’t it an issue this time last year, these large executive salaries and payouts, why are we so worried about it now?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think where the large executive… let me start by saying this Tim. Large executive payouts have always been an issue for me. In fact, nearly 20 years ago Lucy and I took John Fairfax, you know the newspaper company, to court to stop them awarding – we were shareholders in Fairfax at the time – stop them awarding options to the directors exercisable at a dollar when the share price was $1.50. They were just sort of writing themselves out a nice fat cheque and we went to court. I was the plaintiff, Lucy was the solicitor and her father Tom Hughes was the barrister so we did a family…   TIM COX:   Good family business there.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   …family business there. And we succeeded in protecting the rights of shareholders. So I have always been passionate about proper accountability by company executives and directors. That’s why I believe their remuneration should be approved by shareholders. So that’s a strong view I’ve always had as a matter of principle.   TIM COX:   Vote directors off the board then.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Let me just go on and answer the question. Why wasn’t it an issue before? I think the reason that it’s become a hot issue now is that people have seen directors, and chief executives in particular, getting large sums of money at the same time as the company’s going backwards so a shareholder looks at his portfolio statement and says, gosh, my investment is halved and yet the chief executive who’s presided over this is getting millions of dollars and that’s a bit rich. It’s far too rich so that’s why it’s become an issue.   TIM COX:   As I said though, vote those directors off the board if those directors are endeavouring to featherbed themselves in times where the performance is not as good or is perhaps even [inaudible]…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That’s a very powerful argument and I agree with that. I think there should be more shareholder activism. I think a lot of big institutional shareholders are too complacent.   TIM COX:   So do you think out of the G20 Summit that the changes that will come in will perhaps not prevent a similar sort of meltdown in the future but perhaps at least take some of the edges off it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the best way… if you wanted to wind the clock back and say what caused the sub prime crisis in the United States which was the trigger, it wasn’t an excess of free market capitalism. It was in fact too much government meddling. I mean, you look at the causes, what happened – the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, kept interest rates too low for too long. You had very imprudent lending in the mortgage market which was in large measure supported and in fact subsidised by the government through the big government-sponsored mortgage funds Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They owned, one way or another, about 70 per cent of the entire mortgage book.   So when Kevin Rudd says the sub prime crisis was caused by an excess of neo-liberal free market extremism, he’s talking complete rubbish. The US Government made a number of bungles one way or another which contributed to this crisis, whereas in Australia under the leadership of John Howard we restructured our financial and prudential regulation more than a decade ago and we had no sub prime crisis in Australia. Our banks remain strong and our mortgage market actually was much less interfered with and supported and pushed around by actions of government than it was in the US. So I’m not absolving the bankers or the executives at all – there have been a lot of terrible mistakes made – but don’t buy this proposition that it was an excess of free market freedom that caused this crisis. Governments’ fingerprints are all over this.   TIM COX:   In Australia, well certainly to this stage Malcolm Turnbull, the terrors that have been visited on many economies have not occurred here. Is that because we’ve got about the right level of regulation in Australia perhaps?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think what we’ve got in terms of the banking system, yes, I think we’ve got a very good system of regulation and you don’t just have to take my word as a former member of that government for that. Julia Gillard said at Davos, in the same week that Kevin Rudd was ranting and raving about the evils of capitalism, Julia Gillard said that Australia’s financial regulation was better than world class and she was quite right. But what she didn’t say, of course, was that it was put in place by the Coalition.   TIM COX:   Yes, alright. As a former banker, how do you react to those scenes of the protests in London and the suggestion or instruction – I’m not sure what you’d call it – that bank employees dress differently to go to work during this?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   These sort of violent protests are always deplorable. Nobody can have any sympathy with this type of violent protest. Everyone supports the peaceful right of assembly and protest is part of a democratic society but when you start threatening people and breaking into property and so forth, they’re just criminals and they should be punished accordingly.   TIM COX:   What about the bankers having to dress differently to go to work?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well if there’s a violent mob in the street threatening to lynch anybody that looks like an employee of a bank, I suppose you dress a bit differently.   TIM COX:   I say old chap.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Leave the furled umbrella and the bowler hat at home.   TIM COX:   Fourteen to nine. Malcolm Turnbull here on 936 ABC Hobart and ABC Northern Tasmania. Just to finish on G20 for now, could they have gone further? Were there more direct managerial levers I suppose they could have utilised to have made a difference particularly for some of those smaller economies that are through no fault of their own really suffering?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim I think this is where the IMF can help. It can provide credit lines to support these smaller economies in particular. As I say, the Eastern Europeans are the ones that everyone’s focused on but I’m sure there are many others as well. Look, I think you’ve got to recognise that there are big differences between economies. The United States is not going to be dictated to by the G20 for a start and that is where the biggest job of restructuring needs to occur and it is happening. You know when people talk about, people often hear discussions about toxic assets and toxic debt, the word toxic is probably not really appropriate. All that means is that banks have got assets, loans of one kind or another on their balance sheets that are worth a lot less in truth than they’re carrying them for. So they’ve got a loan on their books valued at $100 and in fact it is worth $30 and so what banks have to do and this has happened many times in the past, in order to clean up their balance sheet what they have to do is bite the bullet, take the write downs, sell the loan off for whatever they can get and if that means they need to raise more capital as it generally will then they’ve got to raise more capital, get their balance sheet in order and when other people perceive a bank’s balance sheet is in order, in other words that its assets and liabilities fairly state the reality, then they will be more prepared to deal with them, to lend with them, to enter into letters of credit and all of those arrangements that are important to keep the world of business humming.   TIM COX:   On another matter, Kevin Rudd has apologised for his behaviour on a RAAF flight. The story is that he managed to reduce a crew member to tears over the contents of a meal. What do you say to that? How would you describe your own demeanour when you’re flying? You’re always flying as Malcolm Turnbull, I presume he’s always flying as Kevin Rudd. So how do you countenance that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   You have asked me to comment on Kevin Rudd’s behaviour.   TIM COX:   I have.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think everyone will form their own judgment on that. It’s obviously not edifying and he was right to apologise for it. It certainly deserved an apology, merited an apology. I think what is also disappointing however was the fact that when this was initially raised with his office they denied that the incident had occurred so that wasn’t straightforward.   TIM COX:   Does that suggest they’re ashamed or embarrassed of the Prime Minister’s behaviour?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That’s one conclusion you could draw, yeah.   TIM COX:   Would you draw that conclusion?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I’d think you’d have to, you’d have to, Tim, wouldn’t you? What other conclusion could you draw? But the fact is that whether prime ministers should tell the truth and if they are asked questions they should answer them frankly. We have seen a lot of disingenuous conduct by the Rudd Government lately. I mean look at just the one sequence after another with Joel Fitzgibbon. First he says he’s never had any gifts from Mrs Liu other than small personal ones and then we discover there’s been two undisclosed fully paid trips to China and then apparently there’s another trip that occurred prior to him going in to parliament and you get the feeling with the Rudd Government that they only tell you the truth when they’ve been found out. That sort of confession or admission doesn’t have any virtue about it. If people ‘fess up after they’ve been caught red handed, that is hardly showing much integrity.   TIM COX:   It is, with respect though, not unprecedented. Politicians of all stripe will find themselves in that position every once in a while. I am not saying that you will or Julia Gillard will but it does occur. There was the famous Senator from Queensland in the previous parliament who, without ever having in fact been elected, he was appointed, had to resign after not disclosing the full extent of some share dealings. But did you have your team going through their own records following the Fitzgibbon revelations to ensure they hadn’t made similar oversights?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim I think every Member of Parliament has an obligation to make full disclosure in accordance with the rules. So one would hope that when these issues become newsworthy that everybody reflects on whether they have overlooked something. Now this again brings me back to Mr Fitzgibbon because you may recall last year there was quite a heated debate in the House of Representatives about some trips to China that had been disclosed by Mr Rudd but which had been paid for by a businessman and there were questions about what were the trips for, why did this person decide to pay for Mr Rudd to go to China, please explain the background and the circumstances, that was essentially the question. Now when all of that was going on, you would think that Mr Fitzgibbon sitting there would have turned his mind to his own travel to China and thought, gosh, I better check to see that I have disclosed everything and indeed the only time, as I said and this is a fact, this is unquestionable, the only time he ‘fessed up to those trips, undisclosed trips, was when the media became aware of them and he was found out. So what does that tell you about his candour, his integrity and what does it tell you about his capability to be Minister for Defence? I think what it tells you is that he shouldn’t have the job.   TIM COX:   How careful do you need to be though when…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   You need to be very careful with matters like this I assure you.   TIM COX:          Not just on that but these are dealings with Chinese business people and I saw it somewhere the other day the race card being played. I don’t know why we don’t have the finance card being played or the employment card but we only have the race card. But how careful do you need to be to ensure that this doesn’t look perhaps a little xenophobic, at worst perhaps even racist.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim the conduct of Wayne Swan and Stephen Smith and Lindsay Tanner in trying to suggest that the concerns we had raised were somehow or other anti Chinese or racist or xenophobic were really contemptible. I have never said and none of my colleagues have ever said anything that could be described as denigratory of China or anything which does other than endorse the fact that we have a strong friendship with China and a very important economic relationship. They are very good friends but we do have competing interests. We all understand that and like in all relationships there is a degree of common interest and a degree of competing interest and so you have to recognise that.  But the suggestion…Joel Fitzgibbon’s problems about the non-disclosure - what have been just as significant as the business person that had given him the trips, the undisclosed trips had come originally from another part of the world or indeed had been born in Australia.   So the reality is that the failure to disclose is a serious issue because the system depends on people telling the truth. The whole system depends on a view that MPs will disclose their interests voluntarily and comprehensively and will not disclose them only when they’ve been found out and this is the fact we now that we see with Mr Fitzgibbon. He’s only ‘fessed up when he was caught.   TIM COX:   You say he shouldn’t be in that job but is it possible he’s doing the job very well and that he’s come across some backsides that should be smacked in there and that they don’t like it and this is the way they respond to it by revealing these things that should have been revealed in the first place, there’s no denying that.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I don’t buy that proposition. I think if somebody is revealing things about Joel Fitzgibbon it is more likely to be outside of the Defence Department. Why would the Defence Department know about a trip he had taken to China before he was even Defence Minister? It seems unlikely. There have been suggestions that he’s got some factional enemies in the Labor Party that might be responsible for it. I don’t know or it might just be intrepid journalists doing their job and finding things out. But the fact is whatever the origins are, what do we know about Joel Fitzgibbon? That he is a man who will only tell the truth when his lack of telling the truth has been found out and that doesn’t say much for his capacity to be Minister for Defence.   TIM COX:   Only a couple of minutes left. Malcolm Turnbull here on ABC Local Radio and online. Australia will sell more uranium to China, Martin Ferguson has announced that. Not to be confused with Malcolm Turnbull. Do you support the increase in the volume of uranium that Australia is selling?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We also regretted the Rudd Government not proceeding with sales of uranium to India. Uranium is an important export of Australia and as long as it’s sold with appropriate safeguards, which is the case, then nuclear power plays a very important part in the energy systems of the world. I mean nuclear power provides about 15 per cent of the world’s electricity, it is a low emission source of power and many countries that are seeking to reduce their CO2 emissions are building up their nuclear energy as an alternative. It is a proven alternative. We were just talking about the G20. Well President Sarkozy of France has a country which generates 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power.  That is one of the reasons its emissions are so low on a per capita basis.   TIM COX:   Tasmania, to finish, obviously presents a big hurdle for you next time we go to the polls – zero seats in the House and one fewer in the Senate then last time around. What do you see as your best prospect for here over the next 18 months? We’re about 18 months away from the polls.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim, Tasmanians know that I am a great believer in Tasmania and I have a great commitment to Tasmania. Unlike Kevin Rudd, I spend a lot of time here. I am getting to know the state more and more, and moving around the state spending time talking to Tasmanian businesses and community members about jobs; Jobs Forum in Burnie, Jobs Forum in Launceston. I have a grass roots approach to politics and Tasmanians as they get to understand that in this challenging economic times we offer an alternative government that is committed to them, that is committed to employment, that is committed to enterprise, and above all, committed to ensuring that there are plenty of jobs and good jobs for Tasmanians. I think that we will find that we will win a lot of support here in Tasmania but we will work very hard to win that support, I assure you.   TIM COX:   Why do you think then, to finish, that in a broader sense that message is not cutting through, that you are not getting any traction particularly when it comes to polling obviously?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim, mate, polls go up and down. They’re very volatile…   TIM COX:   Polls are pretty static with respect.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Tim the polls that you’re talking about don’t even include Tasmania so Tasmania isn’t even part of those polls.   TIM COX:   Maybe the country’s not as savvy as we are or perhaps more, I don’t know.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look, the reality is the only poll that matters is the one on election day and you’ll get lots of volatility in polls particularly at times like this. The Prime Minister’s obviously very popular because he’s handing out lots of money. I mean this guy is running us up into hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and handing out money like someone who wants to be Father Christmas all year.   Now he is not helping our economy. He hasn’t created a job, not one job. He hasn’t stopped the economy going backwards but what he is delivering, and I was looking into the eyes of the young Tasmanian students that came along to the Jobs Forum in Launceston yesterday and I was thinking of them and the higher taxes and the higher interest rates they’re going to have to pay to fund all of the debt Kevin Rudd is running up to do his cash splashes today and that’s chilling. So the reality is Australians are smart and they will recognise that this extravagant economic mismanagement of Kevin Rudd is actually making a tough situation worse.   TIM COX:   Time will tell and I’m sure we’ll be talking frequently through that time. It’s good to see you. Thanks for coming in this morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah, great to be here Tim. Thanks.   [ends]      malcolmFri, 03 Apr 2009 03:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:415http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/411/Interview-with-Mandy-Shepherd-Coast-to-Coast-Breakfast-Launceston.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=411http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=411&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/411/Interview-with-Mandy-Shepherd-Coast-to-Coast-Breakfast-Launceston.aspx Subjects: Meeting with Cradle Coast Mayors; King Island; Kevin Rudd’s neglect of economic infrastructure; Jobs for Australia community forum.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Mr Turnbull, good morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning, great to be with you.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Thanks for coming into the studio today. I know you’ve had a couple of very busy days on the north-west coast specifically, meeting both with community leaders and local government leaders and the community in general talking about the future of employment. First of all, can I talk to you about your meeting with the north-west coast mayors, and particularly Councillor Arnold from King Island, been in the news a lot lately with the impending closure of the abattoir. Can you tell me about that conversation that you had with Councillor Arnold?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the main thing he was concerned about was branding. He’s very concerned about the way in which some food suppliers I guess are representing meat and other produce as being from or connected with King Island when in fact he says it’s not. So we had a talk about that. He’s given me a paper about some of the challenges they’re facing in enforcing the King Island brand and there’s a powerful argument, a lot of consideration at the moment about having stronger protection for regional branding.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Very important one for us in Tasmania.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No doubt.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   We’re very, very proud of our Tasmanian brand and it certainly has built up a very high reputation so we take that point indeed. Where do we go from here on that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the law should protect him. The real problem seems to be enforcement. You see if somebody has a product in a market in Melbourne or Sydney which says King Island cheese or meat and it’s not from King Island then they’re breaking the law, they’re breaking the Trade Practices Act. But I think the difficulty is getting it enforced so this is something we’ll look into and I’ve got all the Mayor’s details, and we’ll be talking about it and see whether there needs to be more legislation or whether there simply needs to be more resources put into enforcement. It may be that is the challenge because section 52 of the Trade Practices Act is pretty clear. If you say a package of meat is from King Island and it isn’t, then you’re breaking the law. There’s no question about that. It’s pretty straight forward.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   And tell me about some of the other issues that were raised with you from some of the other mayors across the north-west coast. What are the main issues that you’re taking away from those meetings?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the main issues were about infrastructure and spending on roads, bridges, all of those issues about economic infrastructure. Of course one of the things that puzzles everybody around Australia including in the north-west of Tasmania is how Kevin Rudd can spend so much money, billions, tens of billions of dollars on cash handouts and then not have enough money to spend on vital economic infrastructure. So this is what has got people scratching their heads. They’re worried about priorities. And of course you pick up the paper and you read the Medicare Safety Net is going to be cut back as a saving measure in the budget and at the same time we also have a headline today saying there’s going to be another cash splash. So it looks like a Jekyll and Hyde Government – on the one  hand he’s handing out money like a drunken sailor, on the other hand he’s cutting back on the things that really matter.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Any money that comes into Tasmania is going to be most welcome but what we don’t want to see is another job loss. Yesterday you met with key stakeholders in various industries across the coast and again can I ask you what the main messages were from the people represented that you’re taking back with you from the forum on the coast yesterday?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well look there is real concern about jobs. We went to the Paper Mill at Burnie to talk to the management there about that and had a good briefing on what they see as the road to greater economic viability and protecting the jobs there. In terms of the mayors, again, the real concern is one of investment in infrastructure. In terms of local business there’s a whole range of issues raised as there always are. We have these jobs forums all the time. We’re having one in Launceston today of course. We’re rolling them out right around the country but a big issue is support for innovation, regulation - too much red tape, talking about the obstacles in terms of compliance and paperwork that stands in the way of small business, payroll tax was brought up as something that is a cost on employment and while we haven’t proposed that payroll tax be abolished – of course it’s a state tax anyway and you’d have to fund it – what we have proposed is that small businesses have their cost of employing Australians reduced by the Federal Government rebating a portion of the Superannuation Guarantee contribution. So we’ve said for businesses with 20 employees or less in year one, three per cent of the nine percent, a third would be rebated and one sixth in year two and that would take $5 billion over two years off the cost of employing Australians for small business. So that’s not addressing payroll tax directly but indirectly it’s reducing the on costs of employment during this difficult time.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Are you happy with the response that you’re getting from Tasmanians with these Job Forums?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Very much so. All of these forums – and we have it online as well, your listeners can go to jobsforaustralia.com and put their suggestions up there and comment and critique other people’s suggestions and ideas, it’s a very interactive site – no, they’re very good. We’ve had nearly 30 around Australia now and I must have been to a dozen of those I guess right around the country from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania now. And it’s very good feedback, really is very important.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Are the messages in Tasmania different to the messages in other areas? Is there anything unique about our particularly community?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   There’s always a different message at every meeting but the themes are very similar. There is always a big concern about regulation. There was a greater concern at the meeting we had in Burnie yesterday about apprenticeships and training but of course we were holding it at the Australian Technological College there so there was naturally a high focus on that. But support for employment training is a key issue right around the country but that was probably more emphasised in Burnie than in other meetings.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Another forum happening in Launceston today and I’m sure people will be travelling in from the north-east. Are you heading to the north-east at all?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   From Launceston I’m heading down to Hobart.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Right. So people from the north-east region might be travelling in today to have an opportunity to speak to you there. It’s good for you to come in and spend a couple of minutes on Coast to Coast Breakfast this morning. We appreciate you coming in.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It was great to be here.   MANDY SHEPHERD:   Good to see you. Thank you Malcolm Turnbull.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks so much.   [ends]   malcolmThu, 02 Apr 2009 05:01:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:411http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/410/Doorstop-Interview-in-Launceston-Tasmania.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=410http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=410&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/410/Doorstop-Interview-in-Launceston-Tasmania.aspx Subjects: Jobs for Australia community forum; Kevin Rudd’s economic mismanagement; Coalition’s small business strategy; economic inexperience of senior Labor ministers; ACL Bearing Company; Joel Fitzgibbon’s competency.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   As you’ve seen, we’ve been talking about jobs and all sorts of issues from freight equalisation to the challenges of growing up and leaving home. It’s been a very broad discussion in there but it’s a great way that Guy Barnett and I and his Senate colleagues and Sue Napier are engaging with people, with the community, with small businesses and really getting a keen understanding of the challenges and the opportunities, in particular the opportunities for government to take effective measures to promote employment.   Now, last night we saw Wayne Swan concede that unemployment was going to go above seven per cent. It’s only a little while ago that he and the Prime Minister trumpeted a $42 billion spending package in which they said this would keep unemployment at no more than seven per cent. Now already they have admitted that their second package has failed just as their first package failed. They said their first spending package in December would create 75,000 jobs. There is no evidence that it created one job. All we’ve seen is unemployment rising. We’ve seen economic growth slowing. It was apparent from the retail sales figures yesterday that the cash splash did not work, that some of it was spent but the vast majority of it was saved. And yet we read today in the press that Mr Rudd is contemplating a third stimulus. So he’s going to go back to the bank, borrow more money on the nation’s credit card, put our children in deeper and deeper hock and spray more money around. The fact is that you cannot borrow your way out of an economic problem caused by too much debt. That’s the point that Mr Rudd doesn’t seem to get. When is he going to realise that Australians need to have policies that will create jobs, that will promote economic activity?   Now our policy, our alternative is a better plan. We have proposed measures which will see Australia taking on much less debt, spending money much more shrewdly in a much more targeted way that will provide the right incentives for job creation now and in the future and I’ll be laying out more details of that plan tonight of our small business strategy. Because above all we recognise that the engine room of this economy is small business and what we must do is everyday work out how we can make the task of small business easier, how we can enable Australians to do their best because that is the fundamental difference between us and Mr Rudd. He believes government has all the answers and should be at the centre of the economy and yet we know that at the centre of the economy is the enterprise and the ingenuity of thousands of Australians and the small businesses they represent. And that’s why we’ve been speaking with them here today.   QUESTION:   So the Opposition wouldn’t support a third package?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well if it’s another third spendathon certainly we wouldn’t. But we’ll see what he proposes. Who knows, he may come up with something that makes sense but based on the last two it is a very, very poor use of Australian taxpayers’ money. The runs are on the board. It’s beyond argument now. They said the first pay out in December would create 75,000 jobs. It hasn’t created one. They said it would promote economic growth. We’re going backwards and the Government concedes we’re in a recession. They said it would promote employment and unemployment continues to rise and now their estimates that are only really a few weeks old are now too optimistic. So these guys, their policies have failed. They are making a tough situation worse.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, while it can be argued that [inaudible], for example, won’t create jobs in themselves, the submissions for the schools infrastructure program in Tasmania have closed recently - that money hasn’t yet rolled out to go into schools - is it possible that that’ll create construction jobs and bigger spaces for more teachers?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well there’s no question that if you spend money on construction it creates jobs. That goes without saying. You need men and women to build anything, be it a house or a school hall or a library or a factory. The question is whether that infrastructure money is well spent and there are priorities. And the challenge is going to be when, as we saw yesterday in Burnie, local communities discover that there isn’t enough federal money to pay for a road or a bridge or for economic infrastructure that’s of vital importance. It’s really a question of priorities. I mean all of us, from the household level up to government, we’re always making decisions about priorities. Where are we going to spend our money? Are we going to spend our money on the kids’ education, or are we going to take a holiday? Are we going to buy another house, are we not going to buy a new car and spend the money on something else. Everybody is making decisions about priorities. Sometimes you make better decisions and sometimes you make worse decisions.   Mr Rudd has spent a lot of money already for little or no economic benefit and that is the core of the problem. He is not a competent economic manager and the runs are on the board or the lack of runs I should say are on the board because unemployment is going up, debt is going up, economic activity is going backwards. That is the result of his policies. He has not been able to deliver an economic benefit for this vast investment of public money.   QUESTION:   Is it because Mr Rudd is not a very good economic manager or is it because he’s ignoring his Treasurer? Has Wayne Swan got the ability and wherewithal to manage this?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well when you look at the top people in the Labor Government, they have spent, in the whole of their careers, there is virtually no time in the private sector at all. All of them are either professional politicians or political operatives or have worked for government so there is nobody in the senior ranks of the Rudd Government that has any feeling for business, for small business in particular. On our side politics, so many of us, myself included, have spent a lifetime in business creating jobs. That’s what I’ve done my whole life: taking risks, making investments, hiring people, starting businesses. Sometimes they don’t work out, other times they do but always having a go. And it’s that spirit of enterprise which creates the economic prosperity we all want to enjoy. Labor understands none of that.   QUESTION:   You say you want to save jobs but not spend any government money to do it…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well spend money wisely. The government has to spend money but it’s got to spend it very wisely.   QUESTION:   I want to ask you about spending wisely. One of the critical issues in Launceston is the ACL Bearing Company which has 277 jobs and faces a refinancing issue on June the 30th. Last year they lost $8.7 million. The year before they lost $11.5 million. Would you support propping up this company to save 277 jobs?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well any government support for a company in that situation has got to be very carefully targeted and it’s got to recognise that it has to be temporary because clearly an unprofitable company cannot be propped up indefinitely so there is a role for governments to provide assistance to get businesses, particularly ones with very considerable regional importance, to get them over a difficult patch but there has to be a pathway to economic viability and that is always going to be the critical assessment. Now at this stage the State Government, as I understand it, has been prepared to make a commitment but there’s been a stony silence from Canberra. QUESTION:   The bonus has thrown up some interesting ideas. I had a friend email this morning and said make sure you spend the second one quickly so we get a third one. Are you getting a feel from the community about how they’re spending it and…       MALCOLM TURNBULL:   If that’s right, that is very sad. And the fact of the matter is, look, some people have spent their payments wisely, some people have obviously spent it unwisely. Most people have saved it. I saw an analysis yesterday from one of the banks that said that 83 per cent of the December cash splash had been saved so only 17 per cent has been spent. Now all that has done is meant that household indebtedness has come down a bit and government indebtedness, ie the whole nation’s indebtedness has gone up. So it has produced no net beneficial impact on the economy, created no jobs, created no economic growth. And you know you see this right across the board, the question of competence. That is at the core of the whole question. Is Kevin Rudd a competent economic manager? Well if you ask a business, a shareholder in a company, is the chief executive competent? They say, let’s have a look at the accounts. Are we making a quid? What’s the share price?   Now the reality is Kevin Rudd has come out with one package and a second package and unemployment has continued to go up and is now going up higher than his own forecasts and economic growth is going backwards. So he is not performing. We see the colossal bungle with the Job Network. What a shambles that is. Hundreds of people being thrown out of work, instability in the whole employment services area precisely at the time where you need continuity and commitment.  Again, one bungle after another.   QUESTION:   Sorry, I didn’t quite understand whether you said you’d support putting money into ACL or not.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, it depends whether it is going to take it on a pathway to viability.  If all government investment does is buy another month or two for a company to keep operating that is already doomed to failure, then government obviously shouldn’t support it.  There is a powerful argument, very carefully, for governments to provide financial assistance to get companies through difficult periods of transition or adjustment.  But again it depends very much on the facts and the particular circumstances.    I know there’s a lot of commitment to get behind ACL Bearings here in Tasmania and I support that and sympathise with that but the extent of the support and the financial support depends on the facts in question.  It depends on the specifics.  Okay, just one more.   QUESTION:   Just on reports out today about the Defence Minister having made a third trip courtesy of Helen Liu, is it possible that there’s a fourth one that he’s forgotten about?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, is it possible that Joel Fitzgibbon will ever tell the whole story?  I would say no.  It seems that he only tells you the truth, or part of the truth, when he’s been found out.  He only confesses when he’s caught.  Joel Fitzgibbon has misled Parliament. He’s been a bungler in terms of the management of his own department and no sooner has he claimed to have made a clean breast of all the facts, then more facts emerge and he has to apologise and make another clean breast.   Look, the reality is, this Department of Defence is too important, too critical for the security of our nation to have an incompetent bungler, a man who’s misled Parliament, misled the people, running it.  Joel Fitzgibbon should go.  Thanks a lot, thank you.   [ends]   malcolmThu, 02 Apr 2009 04:56:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:410http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/417/Doorstop-Interview-South-Burnie-Tasmania.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=417http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=417&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/417/Doorstop-Interview-South-Burnie-Tasmania.aspxSubjects: Shadow Cabinet visit to Tasmania; Jobs for Australia community forum; Tarkine loop road; Kevin Rudd’s confusion on the economy; paid parental leave; Kevin Rudd at the G20; clean coal. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: The whole Shadow Cabinet is here showing our commitment to the north-west of Tasmania and above all our commitment to jobs. The three top priorities for Australia today right around the country are jobs, jobs, jobs. For all around Australia we are sitting down, as we are here today, talking to small business, medium business, local government, students as well, and hearing about their experiences in the economy today, what they believe governments can do and should do to promote employment. Everything we are doing in terms of our policy development, in terms of our criticism of the Government is focused on jobs. We are very concerned, as are many Australians, at the tens of billions of dollars that Kevin Rudd has spent on cash splashes - $23 billion now just on sending out cheques to people around the country for which he has nothing to show. Only yesterday, Richard and I and the other Tasmanian Senators met with the Cradle Coast Mayors and they talked about roads that needed upgrading, bridges that needed building, infrastructure that needed investment and yet they haven’t seen the money for that from Mr Rudd but we’ve seen $23 billion spent in these cash splashes. Have they created any economic activity? No. Have they created one of the 75,000 jobs Mr Rudd promised? Not at all. This Government has got its priorities wrong. It’s on the wrong plan. We have a better plan, one that is focused on ensuring debt levels remain low and manageable, that investment is focused on infrastructure where it can create jobs and that above all that we can provide the incentives, the enthusiasm, the optimism and the environment that encourages Australians to do their best, that enables small business to get in there, work hard, invest, employ Australians and continue to create the prosperity that has given us the strong economy, the powerful nation that we enjoy today. QUESTION: With so many jobs on the line here in Tasmania’s north-west, do you think $23 million that our Government’s planning to spend on a Tarkine loop road could be better spent? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is a bad idea. This is the State Government’s Tarkine loop road. We are opposed to it as are the state Liberals. We support the Cradle Coast Authority’s initiative which of course was developed with funding that Richard and the other Tasmanian Liberals procured or obtained from the Federal Government. It’s a much better solution and one of course that has been developed in consultation with the local community. QUESTION: How would you better spend that $23 million with so many jobs under threat? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well $23 million is a lot of money, just as indeed $23 billion is a lot of money. That’s what Kevin Rudd has spent on cash splashes. You see every dollar that is misspent today is a dollar that you cannot then spend on something that is worthwhile. This is the fundamental problem Mr Rudd doesn’t seem to understand. He is borrowing money, sending it out in these cash splashes, ensuring higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future and then cutting back on worthwhile projects. As every day goes by we hear about more cuts to be had in the budget and Australians are entitled to ask whether they’re not being governed by Jekyll & Hyde. On the one hand the Prime Minister is spending like a drunken sailor, sending cheques out to everybody, no doubt in an effort to procure political support and on the other hand he’s saying the budget’s going to be tough and we’re going to have to cut back on spending. He’s got his priorities wrong. We have a better plan, a better plan that involves much less debt and that involves spending that is better targeted and that will create jobs. QUESTION: You’ve probably seen the stunts in the papers today by the group GetUp. Should we expect to see paid parental leave in this year’s budget? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll see. The Government certainly made that commitment. We’re all waiting to see what the Productivity Commission’s final report is. QUESTION: What’s your stance on the Rudd Government committing to using carbon neutral Australian-made paper which is actually made here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we certainly support the use of carbon neutral paper and Richard Colbeck here on my right has advocated it be taken up in the Parliament as an example and we certainly support that. QUESTION: Will Kevin Rudd’s trip to the G20 be a failure if there’s no significant break throughs? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well he seems to be backing away from the high hopes that he had a few days ago and I think Gordon Brown probably summed it up when he was asked what his objective was and he said his objective was that the media gave it a favourable report, which makes one pretty cynical about what they’re trying to achieve. The reality is that the big challenge is to get the banking system right. That is being addressed in the United States and in Europe in particular. In Australia we have a very strong banking system and the reason for that is because of the financial and prudential regulations put in place by the Howard Government. We did not have a sub prime crisis in Australia. Our banks have remained strong and it’s because of the hard work that was done by the Coalition in Government, hard work which Mr Rudd never gives any credit for of course. QUESTION: In the Sydney Morning Herald this morning Professor Peter Newman from Infrastructure Australia questioned the Government on clean coal technology. Do you believe that it’s still a valid choice to be putting such high hopes in clean coal? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, clean coal really is the hope of the side in terms of - right around the world everybody, whether it’s the International Energy Agency, the UN, the OECD, the European Union, everybody is focused on clean coal. Because if you want to generate large scale, base load power without CO2 emissions you’ve basically got two choices – you’ve either got nuclear power, which Mr Rudd and the Labor Party are vehemently opposed to and which clearly needs bipartisan political support to be viable, or you have to find a way of capturing the CO2 from burning fossil fuels and storing that under the ground. Those really are the two alternatives. Obviously if you’ve got hydro power you’re very fortunate. Some places have got geo-thermal power they can use but, by and large, those are the two options – either clean coal or clean gas on the one hand or nuclear on the other. So every single assessment, regardless of who’s published it, has a huge role for clean coal. QUESTION: Where do you stand on nuclear? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we believe it should be one of the options that is considered and that was our position when we were in government. But the fact of the matter is – there are two facts of the matter – one is that nuclear power will not be undertaken, there will be no investment into nuclear energy in Australia until such time as it has broad, bipartisan political support, and that clearly isn’t there at the moment and it’s perhaps not likely to be there for a long time. And secondly – and this is perhaps the most important point - if clean coal can be demonstrated to be economically viable and we have a vital vested interest in demonstrating it to be viable - the fact is Mr Rudd has dropped the ball on clean coal – our commitment is that there should be, we should establish at least two industrial scale clean coal power stations. We must demonstrate that that technology is viable. We are the world’s largest exporter of coal after all. Most of our energy comes from coal. So we have a vital vested interest in clean coal. But if clean coal is economically viable in Australia, and if it’s going to be economically viable anywhere it’s most likely to be viable here, then there would be no justification for nuclear energy here even if it was politically acceptable. QUESTION: Just back to Burnie, what are you hoping to take away from the forums today? What do you plan to do after the forums? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, what we do at all of these forums is we listen very carefully. We encourage a good, open discussion with lots of ideas. We’ve had some very good input from the small business forums around the country. There are a lot of familiar themes, common themes, if you like, but then every single forum that I’ve been to has had some particular, unique suggestions that are raised. So this is really a process of reaching out and listening and engaging and, of course, we do it physically, in the flesh, as we are today but also on the internet through our Jobs for Australia.com website where we now have hundreds of submissions and ideas, and people using the site can comment on them and rank and rate the submissions. So it’s a very effective, interactive site. Okay, thanks. [ends]  malcolmWed, 01 Apr 2009 07:03:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:417http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/408/Joint-Doorstop-Interview-with-Joe-Hockey-Devonport-Tasmania.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=408http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=408&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/408/Joint-Doorstop-Interview-with-Joe-Hockey-Devonport-Tasmania.aspxSubjects: Shadow Cabinet visit to north-west Tasmania; Jobs for Australia community forum; OECD Report; unemployment; Rudd’s debt; Coalition’s alternative economic plan.   E & O E   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The Shadow Cabinet is meeting here today in Devonport showing our commitment to Tasmania and the north west of Tasmania, our commitment to jobs. This morning in Burnie we met with 50 or 60 locals, small business owners, local government representatives, talking about jobs, what they believe governments could do and should do to promote employment, to make it easier for them to create jobs, to keep people on the payroll. Our focus is relentlessly on the three top priorities for Australia – jobs, jobs, jobs. And we heard today and last night about the need for investment in infrastructure in Tasmania and many Tasmanians are concerned – as indeed are many Australians concerned, right around the country – of the way in which Kevin Rudd has spent $23 billion on cash splashes and at the same time every day we pick up the paper and read about more cuts anticipated in the budget. Only today we hear about proposed cuts to the Medicare Safety Net, so cutting back on vital services in order to fund his enormous cash splash extravagance. And that’s part of the problem that we face with this government of Kevin Rudd. It’s got its priorities wrong. Jekyll & Hyde – on the one minute, he’s spending like a drunken sailer giving everybody a cheque. On the other hand, he’s cutting back on essential services whether it’s with the police, security, defence or essential social services like the Medicare Safety Net.   Now we’ve seen today too the drop in the retail sales figures and what that demonstrates is that the cash splash of December was, as one economic commentator observed today, almost entirely saved. Only about 17 per cent of it is estimated was spent so the taxpayer got very little bang for that enormous expenditure and very little economic benefit. No jobs created, no enduring economic activity promoted or inspired by it. So it was a poor choice of a way to use $10 billion, it was a poor allocation of funds and just underlines that Mr Rudd’s policies are making a difficult situation worse.   Now Joe’s going to have some remarks about the OECD Report overnight.   JOE HOCKEY:   The OECD released a Report overnight that illustrates that Australia is second only to the United States in the amount of money the Government has spent to try and stimulate the economy. What Kevin Rudd did was decide to spend, spend, spend to try and address a problem that he was unable to fix. Kevin Rudd’s solution to a drought was to create a flash flood and it did not work. In fact out of all of this we find that the Australian taxpayers have, as Malcolm just said, a massive bill to foot for Kevin Rudd’s flash flood but it did not work. It is also ironic today that the Draft Communiqué of the G20 focuses on free markets and market-based solutions which is completely at odds with Kevin Rudd’s recent rhetoric about the Government being front and centre of every solution to the world’s financial crisis. Time and time again, Mr Rudd says that the only solution to a problem is to spend taxpayers’ money and ultimately that means that the next generation of Australians will have a greater bill to pay for.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Okay, thanks guys.   QUESTION:   Joe or Mr Turnbull, whoever you think, do you expect people will lose more jobs?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well everybody including the Government is forecasting increases in unemployment so the critical obligation on government is to ensure that every dollar it spends, every policy it develops and sets in place is one that is going to encourage employment. That’s why the focus must be on jobs. That’s our focus. See Mr Rudd had a very expensive stimulus package - $42 billion – which has not created one job. We had an alternative, a better plan, less expensive incurring much less debt, much less cost but carefully targeted on promoting jobs.   QUESTION:   Does the Government have a handle on how bad it’s going to get, do you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Joe, what do you think?   JOE HOCKEY:   Well I don’t think it does. If the Government had a proper handle on the way things are heading, they would not have spent so much money so early. When you add all the money the Government has spent – which is identified in the OECD report – together with the fact that interest rates have dropped by around four per cent as a result of the Reserve Bank’s actions, it’s fair to say that Kevin Rudd created a flash flood for the Australian economy but we are still in drought.  And that means that more Australians are going to lose their jobs than should have been the case.   QUESTION:   Do you expect to see another stimulus payment?   JOE HOCKEY:   Well, there’s no end in sight to the spending, is there?  I mean, there’s no end in sight to the Government’s spending patterns.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think the thing that we’ve got to remember is that every time the Government spends money there is always going to be debate about how effective that spending is going to be - how many jobs will it create and so forth, how much economic benefit will it promote - but the one thing that is absolutely certain is that as the Government borrows more and more it means that in the future we are going to have to pay higher interest rates, because the Government is in there competing with everybody else, competing for money, and we’re going to have to pay higher taxes in order to pay that debt off.    And so what Mr Rudd is doing is undertaking measures which have not promoted economic activity, they have not created jobs, they have given a blip in retail sales for a couple of months but the vast bulk of the money was saved and not spent, hasn’t created any jobs and yet the debt is there.  So the debt…if you borrow $200 billion and spend it wisely, that’s one thing; if you borrow $200 billion and spend it foolishly, you still have the same amount of debt to pay off and you’ve got nothing to show for it.   The reality here is, in Tasmania – we’ve been talking about roads, we’ve been talking about bridges, all of which require investment, all of which require expenditure and the Government, no doubt, will be saying: “we haven’t got the money”.  Why haven’t they got the money?  Because they spent it all. They just blasted it all away in $23 billion of cash splashes.   QUESTION:   So just to reiterate, what should the Government be doing?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It has to invest and make sure that every dollar gets the maximum effect.  It has to invest in the productivity and the efficiency of the economy.  So our plan, our better plan, involved bringing forward the tax cuts already scheduled for July 1 this year and July 1 next year in order to promote greater investment, greater incentives in business.    We propose relieving small businesses of a portion of the superannuation guarantee contribution over two years to lower the cost of employment.  We’ve promoted and proposed a doubling of the rate of depreciation for companies and firms that invest in water and energy efficiency, in green refits if you like, and again that creates jobs, it creates greater efficiency, it creates employment.    Right across the board every measure we’ve promoted has been one that will deliver jobs but that get maximum benefit for the taxpayers’ dollar.  We just cannot forget this fact – every dollar that is borrowed, every additional dollar that is borrowed, means higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future and if we’re not getting any effect for those dollars that are being borrowed and spent, then that’s a very raw deal for the Australian taxpayer.   QUESTION:   Just to clarify, Mr Turnbull, is it the Opposition’s position that the Government should be buying paper that’s produced here in north-west Tasmania?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Senator Colbeck has proposed to the Parliament that we should use the carbon neutral paper which is being produced here.  Other people could produce it too no doubt.  We think that’s a good idea and I’ve supported Richard in the submission that he’s made to the Speaker and to the President of the Senate.  Okay, thanks.   [ends]     malcolmWed, 01 Apr 2009 04:54:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:408http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/407/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=407http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=407&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/407/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: KPMG report into SAS pay scandal; Joel Fitzgibbon scandal and need for decisive action from Kevin Rudd. E & O E   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well today Joel Fitzgibbon receives the KPMG report into the SAS pay scandal that he has so sadly and incompetently mismanaged for so long. That report must be published immediately. The Australian people, the Australian Defence Forces need to know the facts. Mr Fitzgibbon has been completely unable to give Parliament any explanation for the bungle despite having promised many times to fix it up.  It’s just one example of his incompetence and why he should no longer be Australia’s Defence Minister.   Now we have over in London the Prime Minister who seems to be more concerned about where he sits on a television set than in taking responsibility for his incompetent and distracted Defence Minister. He hasn’t had time to pick up the phone to speak to Mr Fitzgibbon and he certainly hasn’t taken responsibility for this incompetent's actions and he hasn’t taken the responsible step that a Prime Minister should, which is to replace Mr Fitzgibbon with a Defence Minister who is competent and who can command the respect of the Defence Forces and the Australian people.    QUESTION:   Don’t you think sacking Mr Fitzgibbon at this stage would just basically give into all those within the Defence Department who are resisting his efforts?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Mr Fitzgibbon’s conduct has been that of an incompetent, careless, misleading Minister. He hasn’t been able to explain the SAS pay bungle, his bungle, despite several assurances that he had the problem fixed and finally had to throw up his hands in despair and call in KPMG to try to get to the bottom of it. He has failed to be straight and honest in reporting the trips that he received, the free trips he’d received in the manner that all parliamentarians are obliged to do. And let’s face it, the only reason he fessed up was because he’d been found out.   QUESTION:   Do you find it unusual that when you compare the incident with Belinda Neal and Iguanas incident, Mr Rudd was on the phone to her straight away but this Fitzgibbon example, it seems as though he’s trying to distance himself from it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Mr Rudd is clearly trying to pretend it’s got nothing to do with him; he’s more concerned with where he sits on a television set than in taking responsibility for his Defence Minister. Belinda Neal is a Member of Parliament, she’s a backbencher. Joel Fitzgibbon has one of the most responsible positions in the Australian Government – indeed apart from the Office of Prime Minister it is difficult to think of one more responsible. The Prime Minister seems to believe it’s got nothing to do with him and if he just pretends it’s not happening the problem will go away. Well it won’t. While he’s worrying about where he sits on a television set an incompetent and distracted Defence Minister is left swinging in the breeze.   QUESTION:   What do you think this SAS Report will reveal?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we’ll see. We’ve tried to get an answer from Mr Fitzgibbon on several occasions. We’ve had different answers contradicting each other. We have to see the report and that’s why it should be published today.   QUESTION:   And if the Report comes down in favour of the Government will you accept it or will you challenge it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, we’ll read the report, let’s see what the report says, the first thing to do is to publish the report. Thanks a lot.   [ends]   malcolmTue, 31 Mar 2009 03:52:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:407http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/405/Doorstop-Interview-North-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=405http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=405&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/405/Doorstop-Interview-North-Sydney.aspx Subjects: Joel Fitzgibbon scandal and need for decisive action from Kevin Rudd; Nielsen Poll; bikie gangs.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s a matter of very real concern to all Australians that the Prime Minister has still not picked up the phone and spoken directly to his Defence Minister. Apart from the Office of Prime Minister there’s no position more important at this time then Defence Minister. We have in Joel Fitzgibbon a man who has misled the Australian public, misled the Parliament, who’s proven himself to be an incompetent in the management of his own portfolio – and yet the Prime Minister has not bothered to speak to him directly – why is that? What is the Prime Minister concerned about? Why is he afraid to take the responsibilities of leadership and talk to this most important Minister who is clearly so inadequate in his job.   Let’s not forget, when you consider that President Obama is stepping up the American presence in Afghanistan, and we recognise that big decisions will have to be made by Australia in respect of our commitment to that country, we have in the role of Defence Minister a proven incompetent, a man who has demonstrated again and again that he doesn’t know what is going on in his own department, is incapable of acting in a transparent, honest and accountable way. Joel Fitzgibbon has to go and the Prime Minister has to take responsibility. The Prime Minister made him Defence Minister, he should now sack him.   QUESTION:   What…there’s question about the Opposition mounting in a yellow peril campaign, what do you say to that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That is a contemptible suggestion. Issues relating to our dealings, our relationship, our friendly relationship I might add, with China are of important national interest. We have big questions to debate all the time about foreign investment. There are big issues around at the moment and our dealings with China, as indeed with other major powers, are matters of intense public interest – and the Finance Minister’s attempt to silence that debate by his remarks are contemptible.   QUESTION:   Aside from the…the not declaring of the travel, putting that issue aside, is there anything wrong with Mr Fitzgibbon or any MP for that matter having a relationship with this Chinese business woman?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The issue is one of transparency and disclosure. The fact is we have rules which require sponsored travel, that’s to say free trips, to be disclosed so that people know what politicians are doing, whether they’re receiving gifts from other people, so that there’s full transparency. Now Mr Fitzgibbon has misled the public and misled the Parliament about this.   Last year there was a very intense debate in Parliament about sponsored travel to China. Mr Fitzgibbon did not choose then to fess up and disclose these trips, paid for by Ms Liu. Then only a few days ago he was asked whether he’d received gifts from Ms Liu and he said only small ones – and he only admitted to having received these trips when he realised he had been found out. In other words he didn’t tell the truth because he suddenly had a flash of recollection, he told the truth because he discovered or realised that his failure to disclose had been discovered by others – in other words he was found out.   So this wasn’t somebody who’d overlooked a trip or two trips and had forgotten to put in his declaration, he only declared it when he knew he was caught.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull your approval rating has slumped as Opposition Leader, any idea why that’s happened?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   My focus is on this country’s jobs, this country’s economy, this country’s security. Let’s not forget that right at the moment we see our security, both internally and externally, at threat from the cuts by the Rudd Government.   We know the Rudd Government has been cutting the level of police in the AFP – in other words they are letting the Australian Federal Police run down in order to save money. We know, and the Commissioner has admitted to this, that there is a 35 per cent gap in the level of policing at our airports – again to save money – and now we read in the press that the Government’s proposing to make big cuts to our Defence budget – and yet at the same time as they’re doing that, compromising our security and our safety, both from enemies outside Australia and enemies from within, they are spending $23 billion in cash splashes, borrowing tens of billions of dollars to mail out cheques to most Australians – and Australians will ask themselves; hasn’t this Government got its priorities wrong? It’s putting cash splashes first and safety and security second.   QUESTION:   So you’re not concerned by the approval ratings and particularly Mr Rudd going up to 74 per cent?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   My focus is on holding this Government to account, on doing everything we can to ensure that jobs are protected and Australia’s safety and security is sound. And as part of that effort we need to have a Defence Minister who is competent and who can tell the truth.     QUESTION:   Your disapproval rating though is now higher than your approval rating, if your focus is on that surely other elements in the Liberal Party will be focusing on the poll?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   My focus is on the Government, on holding this Government to account. We have three big priorities here today in Australia; jobs, jobs, jobs. What is the Government doing about them? It’s borrowing tens of billions of dollars, ensuring higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future, it’s not pursuing correct priorities, its spending money on cash splashes instead of investing in protecting Australians, both at home and from enemies abroad.   QUESTION:   It’s pretty hard to combat someone who is handing out $900 cheques in the popularity stakes?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Handing out $900 to millions of Australians maybe very popular but it is very bad policy. The reality is we are already seeing cuts proposed for Defence, we’re seeing the consequences of a lack of proper policing at our airports. I mean let’s get this clear. We have got 35 per cent less security personnel at our airports then we should have – that is conceded by the Government –why is that? To save money; and yet at the same time the Government is spending in a way that would make a drunken sailor blush.   QUESTION:   Would you be happy for tax payers to foot the bill for the Opposition Foreign Affairs portfolio, travel bill?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think there is a great deal to be said for a proper budget to be allocated for MP’s travel so that there doesn’t need to be so much reliance on sponsored travel. But this practice of having sponsored travel has been around for a long time, as long as it is fully disclosed and people understand precisely who has contributed to the travel, then everyone can make their own judgements.   The real problem we have at the moment is Mr Fitzgibbon and his failure to disclose. And I’d simply remind you of this; we know, every Australian knows the only reason Joel Fitzgibbon fessed up was because he knew he’d been caught out. What else hasn’t he told us? What else don’t we know about? What other secret meetings have been held? We need a Government that is transparent, that is accountable, that can always be trusted to tell the truth.   QUESTION:   Are you happy with the way the state government and the New South Wales Police are handling this recent (inaudible) of bikie violence?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well they’re acting too late. We need national laws and we need national leadership. The Prime Minister has taken up our suggestion that there be a national meeting of Attorney’s General – that should be expanded as we proposed, to include Justice Ministers and Police Ministers.   We need tough national laws to deal with these bikie gangs. We need a national approach. This sort of gang activity does not stop at the state border. But we need real action, real leadership from Mr Rudd – we’re yet to see that – and we need to have proper resourcing into policing.   Mr Rudd, while he’s been Prime Minister, we have seen less security at our airports, we have seen fewer officers in the Australian Federal Police, he’s allowed their manning levels to run down. We’ve seen a taskforce on bikie crime by the Australian Crime Commission stopped and we’ve seen the resources bleed away from the Australian Crime Commission – and at the same time he has been borrowing and spending tens of billions of dollars on cash splashes.   He has got the priorities wrong. Australians want their money to be spent well, they want to see real bang for their buck and at the moment we’re seeing massive increases in debt, meaning higher interest rates and higher taxes, cash splashes but where we really need the Government to invest, in terms of our internal and our external security.  We’re seeing cut backs in order to save money – presumably to fund Mr Rudd’s next cash splash.   Thank you.   [ends]        malcolmMon, 30 Mar 2009 06:18:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:405http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/404/Doorstop-Interiview-in-Olinda.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=404http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=404&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/404/Doorstop-Interiview-in-Olinda.aspx Subjects: Jobs for Australia Forum; Joel Fitzgibbon scandal and need for decisive action from Kevin Rudd; Chinese role in the IMF.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   As you know, I’m here today with Jason Wood, the Member for La Trobe, having a Jobs Forum. This is one of a series of meetings we’re having all around the country, speaking to and, most importantly, listening to small business to find out how they’re travelling in these difficult economic times and what they believe governments can do to enable them to keep Australians on the pay roll and encourage them to employ more Australians because our three top priorities are jobs, jobs, jobs. And so we’re getting down to the grassroots, to the very front line of the economy right around Australia and this is another meeting of that kind here today.   Now we also have today a real test of leadership for Kevin Rudd. He has to take responsibility, and lead and dismiss his Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. Apart from the Prime Minister’s job itself, it is difficult to think of an office in Australia that is more important and more responsible than that of Minister for Defence. We have in Joel Fitzgibbon somebody who is proven to be incompetent. He’s bungled the pay of our SAS, said he’d fix the problems with their pay, said it was fixed, then said it wasn’t fixed, then said it was fixed again and then finally threw up his hands in despair and called in the auditors. He didn’t even know what was going on in his own Department. He now appears to have completely lost the confidence of his Department and we’ve seen just yesterday that he has failed to disclose to the Parliament – as he is obliged to do – free trips given to him by a businesswoman with links to Chinese companies and the Chinese Government.   Now these are all matters that should be transparently and openly disclosed. That’s why we have this method of accountability through public disclosures of members’ interests, shareholdings, gifts and so forth. Joel Fitzgibbon has failed to do that and so the question is, how much else has he not told us? If he’s been Minister for Defence ever since November 2007 without us knowing the extent of his relationships, the extent of his dependency, the debts that he owes in terms of thanks for these free trips, what else is going on? What else hasn’t he disclosed? So he’s failed to be transparent and candid, he’s demonstrated he’s incompetent and he has to go.   And the real test now is on Mr Rudd. This is all about Mr Rudd.  Is he going to be a responsible Prime Minister and put a competent person in as Defence Minister? Or is he going to allow Joel Fitzgibbon to stumble along, bungling, stumbling, failing to disclose his true affairs, losing the confidence of his own Department and the Defence Forces. It’s unsustainable, it’s untenable – Fitzgibbon has to go.   QUESTION:   What’s worse, the fact that he didn’t disclose it or the fact that even yesterday he was still denying there was anything more than just trinkets?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   These are all outrageous. The fact that he didn’t disclose them is bad enough but the fact that yesterday morning he said that he had only received a few trivial personal gifts from Ms Liu and then within a few hours we discover there have been two trips to China. They are very substantial gifts. What were the trips about? Who did he meet with? What was the agenda? None of these things have been explained. I mean the reality is we have a very close relationship with China. We are friends with China. They’re important economic partners but we are in a competitive position. China has a vested interest in acquiring our natural resources at low prices. We’re the vendor, they’re the purchaser. So we have a competing interest and our relations with China, particularly the relations of our senior ministers with China, should always be openly and transparently disclosed. And Mr Fitzgibbon has not done that so the question is what else has been going on. What else haven’t we been told? How can we rely on Mr Fitzgibbon to be candid?   QUESTION:   The Defence White Paper gets released soon. Is it realistic to ask for Mr Fitzgibbon to be sacked? Shouldn’t he be overseeing this White Paper’s release?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think the better question is: is it realistic to expect a Minister in whom the Defence Forces, the Defence Department and the public have lost confidence as being able to preside over something as important as the White Paper. Mr Fitzgibbon is fatally wounded. He has to go.   QUESTION:   Would a new Minister be able to oversee the White Paper, is it realistic?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Mr Fitzgibbon has lost the confidence of the Defence Forces, he can’t even pay the SAS properly. He’s lost the confidence of his Department. It appears he’s been investigated, or his relationships have been investigated, by his own Department. And if there were concerns about his relationships, there seems to have been some merit in those concerns because he’s failed to openly and honestly and lawfully disclose the nature of his involvement with Ms Liu.   QUESTION:   Is that appropriate though having a department investigate a minister? Is that ever appropriate do you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the only appropriate way, in my understanding, that a department, in this case a security agency within the Defence Department, could investigate associates of the Minister is with the authority of the Prime Minister. Now if it’s happened in an unauthorised way it’s a matter of very grave concern.   But you see the vital national interest of Australia, this is not, again, this is not just about Joel Fitzgibbon. This is about Australia, our national interest. Our vital national interest is having a Defence Minister who is competent. Mr Fitzgibbon is clearly incompetent. It is in having a Defence Minister that has the confidence of the Defence Forces and his own Department. He clearly does not have that confidence. We have a vital national interest in having a Defence Minister who has the confidence of the Australian people. How can any Australian have confidence in this man when he doesn’t even tell the truth? When he doesn’t even disclose the nature of his relationships with Chinese business interests when our relations with China, while very friendly, are nonetheless competitive and are always highly sensitive.   QUESTION:   The Prime Minister’s comments this morning were that he was disappointed in Mr Fitzgibbon and that he would expect better of him in the future. You obviously don’t think that’s nearly strong enough?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think the question is how disappointed does Mr Rudd have to be before he dismisses Mr Fitzgibbon. Being disappointed is not good enough. What Mr Rudd has to do is take responsibility, be a leader and put in that job a man or a woman in whom the Defence Forces, the Defence Department and the Australian people can have real confidence in. At the moment, we have an incompetent Defence Minister who doesn’t know what’s going on in his own Department, who’s lost the confidence of the public, and lost the confidence of the Department and the Defence Forces.   QUESTION:   Joe Hockey said that this was an example of Australia having too closer ties with China, he said that this morning. Do you agree with that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s a good example of the importance of ministers’ relations with China being fully disclosed. As I said, we have close ties with China. We have friendly relations with China but they are competitive. They are very competitive. And there are areas where China’s interests are not the same as ours. We have to recognise that. So that is why the relations and the involvement and the entanglement of Australian ministers, particularly a Defence Minister, with China is a matter of the most vital public interest and it has to be disclosed. It wasn’t disclosed and the question now arises, what else don’t we know about Mr Fitzgibbon’s relations here?   QUESTION:   Mr Rudd wants China to play a bigger role in the IMF. Do you support that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Mr Rudd has been going around the world now acting as a spokesman for China in terms of its participation in the IMF. There are certainly powerful arguments and they’ve been made in the past as well. It’s not a new proposition that Mr Rudd is putting, that China should have a say in the IMF that is commensurate to its economic status today as opposed to what arrangements might have been decades ago. But when you listen to Mr Rudd, and I’d encourage you to look at the transcript of the interview he did on Jim Lehrer’s programme in the United States, he seems to be more like a travelling advocate for China as opposed to Australia. He was given the opportunity in that interview to speak up strongly on behalf of Australia’s economy and Australia’s successful system of financial regulation and compare it favourably with the failures elsewhere in the world. He didn’t do that. He seemed to spend most of his time talking about China. Now he’s not a roving ambassador for the People’s Republic of China. He’s the Prime Minister of Australia and he has to put our national interest first.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, have you accepted free trips while you were an MP?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No I haven’t.   Thanks.   [ends]   malcolmFri, 27 Mar 2009 05:42:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:404http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/403/Interview-with-Ray-Hadley-Radio-2GB-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=403http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=403&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/403/Interview-with-Ray-Hadley-Radio-2GB-Sydney.aspx Subjects: Joel Fitzgibbon should resign or Kevin Rudd should sack him; Labor Debt; Kevin Rudd’s meeting with Chinese official; Australia-China relationship.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   RAY HADLEY:   Mr Turnbull good morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Ray.   RAY HADLEY:   What should they be doing with Joel Fitzgibbon and I should point out that he is having a media conference in the next 25 minutes in Newcastle.    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well he should resign and if he doesn’t resign Kevin Rudd should sack him. This is really now a test of Kevin Rudd’s leadership. We have got a man who is holding one of the most important positions in Australia – it’s hard to think of a more important one other than that of Prime Minister – and he is plainly incompetent. He hasn’t fully disclosed his dealings with Helen Liu. The failure to disclose these free trips is a matter of real concern. We have a system for transparency and accountability with ministers, and he should have complied with it.   RAY HADLEY:   It seems a bit obscure that we can right it by him now saying ‘oh I am going to change things on the register to say I did go there for free’ and he is also living in a unit when he’s in Canberra that is owned by her or companies associated with her?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   All of these raise very big questions. The fact of the matter is that he is in an extremely responsible, very responsible and sensitive position and if he is not disclosing information like this that he is obliged to disclose, you have got to ask yourself: what else hasn’t he disclosed? How can we be sure that he is being candid with everything else? Are these just the only two oversights? And then of course you’ve got the whole question, Ray, of competence. This is a guy who couldn’t manage to pay the SAS properly. He had our soldiers on the frontline and leaving some of their families on the breadline and he gave one bungling explanation after another to parliament and then finally threw up his hands and said he didn’t know what was going on and called in an outside firm of auditors to find out. So this is a question of leadership for Mr Rudd. He has got, plainly, an incompetent Defence Minister who has not been transparent and open and honest about his dealings with Helen Liu. He must go.    RAY HADLEY:   Alright. Now in relation to being open and transparent, and we might hear a little more from the Defence Minister in the next 30 minutes as I said, when your government under John Howard and Peter Costello came to power I think it was around $100 billion we had to jump over in terms of debt and they retired that debt. If you are to become Prime Minister in the future you will be confronting a debt bill of $200 billion and it is likely that $40 billion will be owed to the Chinese government. That is one aspect of it and then we had the revelations days ago that Mr Rudd secretly met with China’s 5th most powerful figure at the Lodge with no media involved in that meeting and we still don’t know what it was all about.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I can tell you what it was all about because, unlike Mr Rudd, I met with Li Changchun and we certainly were quite open about it and media came in and took pictures and I answered questions about it at a doorstop interview afterwards. And I can tell you Mr Li Changchun was there to urge Mr Rudd, just as he tried to urge me, to give our approval to Chinalco, the Chinese government-owned resources company, to buy the interest in Rio and that was the major object of the mission.   RAY HADLEY:   Was your meeting after the meeting at the Lodge?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it was. I of course, like you, I didn’t know about the meeting at the Lodge. My meeting with Mr Li was on Monday and I think the meeting with the Prime Minster was over the weekend.   RAY HADLEY:   But why has he escaped censure on this one from mainstream media. I mean it’s being mentioned, it’s mentioned again today in the Daily Telegraph, but the people who are currently touring with him in the US don’t seem to be concerned. If this was John Howard it would be front page headlines across every newspaper in the country for the week and half, two weeks after it happened. We seem to just think, oh no its ok for him to have a meeting where the media are not invited and his explanation is coolly accepted by those who weren’t invited to find out what the meeting was about .   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well exactly. Certainly when we realised he had this secret meeting I was very critical of it. There are very, very sensitive issues associated with China and the Chinese government that we have to deal with. We have got to remember that we have a very close economic relationship with China but we do have competing interests. China wants to buy as much of our natural resources as they can at the lowest possible price, and China’s ambitions are not always in Australia’s best national interest. So it is a friendly relationship but it is a competitive relationship, and that is why it is very important for dealings, whether it is the Prime Minister and this senior minister from China or whether it is Joel Fitzgibbon and Mrs Liu and her relationships with the Chinese government, all of these things have to be fully disclosed and above board and be transparent, and when they are not they raise legitimate concerns about what is really going on.    RAY HADLEY:   I know you don’t bet, but if I was framing a market on what Joel Fitzgibbon is going to say in Newcastle in the next 25 to 30 minutes will he resign or just explain away what happened and why he didn’t do it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well look I imagine he will want to hang in there. I think really the question is for Mr Rudd now. It is up to Kevin Rudd to take the responsible course of action and dismiss him. Lets just get clear, Joel Fitzgibbon earlier this year demonstrated his total incompetence when he couldn’t pay the SAS properly. The matter was raised with him last year. He said he would fix it; he couldn’t fix it. He then came back into parliament in February and said it had been fixed. Then he came back and said it hadn’t been fixed, and then finally in despair he called in the auditors. Now he clearly doesn’t know what is going on in his department. He has lost the confidence of his department, and now we discover that he is failing to disclose in a transparent way dealings with… I mean these are not small gifts. If someone pays for two trips for you to fly to China there are thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars involved. What were the trips about? There is a lack of disclosure here. There has been a bit of a pattern of this with the Labor Party, I have to say. Mr Rudd had a number of free trips paid for for him going to China by some other Chinese business people. They seem to be in recipience of a lot of largesse in that area, but as long as it is disclosed I guess people can form their own judgement. Mr Fitzgibbon’s failure to disclose it, just like Mr Rudd’s failure to disclose his meeting with Mr Li are matters of very grave concern.   RAY HADLEY:   Thanks for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks Ray.   [ends]       malcolmFri, 27 Mar 2009 05:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:403http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/397/Doorstop-Interview-in-Alice-Springs.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=397http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=397&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/397/Doorstop-Interview-in-Alice-Springs.aspx Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Subjects:  Pine Gap; Joel Fitzgibbon; Commonwealth guarantee on state borrowing; US-Australia relationship   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: Julie Bishop, David Johnston and I have been visiting the joint communications facility here at Pine Gap.  This is a great example of the very long-standing and close working relationship between Australia and the United States, and we were very pleased to have an extensive briefing there from the commanders of the facility. I also want to say something about Joel Fitzgibbon.  We’ve seen today another unhappy episode in the career of this incompetent minister.  He should have been sacked long ago.  This is the Defence Minister who was not able to manage to pay our frontline troops properly.  He left our troops on the frontline and their families on the breadline.  And now we see another extraordinary episode underlining what appears to be a complete breakdown in the relationship of confidence between him and his department.  Mr Rudd seems to be trying to brush this under the carpet.  There needs to be a thorough and independent inquiry into these matters.  There is an office able to do that appropriate to the task, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.  He should be asked immediately to investigate this matter and to provide a full report on it.  These are very serious allegations and they need to be addressed urgently.  And, above all, we need to have a Defence Minister in whom the Australian Defence Force has confidence, in whom the Australian public has confidence and who can work effectively with his department.  Joel Fitzgibbon can do none of those things. The other matter I’ll just comment on is the report about emissions trading – this is the economic report by Frontier Economics.  And what this has demonstrated is what we’ve been saying for some time, that the poorly designed Rudd Government emissions trading scheme will do very little for the environment but do enormous damage to jobs, particularly in regional Australia.  It will result in us exporting thousands of jobs and exporting the emissions as well.  So we will pay a heavy price in terms of our own economy, in terms of our own prosperity, in terms of our own jobs with no gain to the environment.  And it just underlines the incompetence of the Rudd Government as it seeks to manage the Australian economy. QUESTION: On Fitzgibbon – what about the department’s conduct?  It looks like they’re trying to undermine their own minister? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s a matter of grave concern and that’s why there needs to be a thorough and independent investigation, and the Inspector-General is obviously the ideal person to do that.  He has the power and the capacity to undertake that. QUESTION: Why should the minister have to stand down?  Ministers and their departments often have a rocky relationship, why should he stand aside? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Joel Fitzgibbon should have stood down some time ago.  He has misled parliament.  He’s admitted to having provided parliament with mistaken information already relating to the SAS pay scandal.  Let’s not forget this – Joel Fitzgibbon is the Defence Minister that managed to put our soldiers on the frontline while leaving their families on the breadline.  He could not manage to properly pay, appropriately pay, our SAS.  Now, I don’t know how incompetent a defence minister can be before he deserves to go but Joel Fitzgibbon has crossed that line a long time ago, and he should have been sacked a long time ago.  But what we now appear to have is a Defence Minister in whom the department, his own department, has no confidence. QUESTION: Is that a precedent [inaudible] with your own ministers if you were in government? MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Any minister that was as incompetent as Joel Fitzgibbon, regardless of the political colour of the government, should go. QUESTION: Treasury announced yesterday a Commonwealth guarantee on states and territory borrowings.  Do you support that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’re looking at that very closely.  Here are the big concerns that we have.  Firstly, we have to understand what impact this will have on the credit rating of the Commonwealth.  This involves the Commonwealth Government taking on substantial, additional liabilities, contingent liabilities for the states.  Secondly, we have to be satisfied that this is not going to be a blank cheque for incompetent state governments to borrow up big on the strength of the Commonwealth’s credit card and spend money on poor projects, on paying over the odds for fat bureaucracies of overpaid public servants. I mean, you just look at it in the terms of New South Wales where Nathan Rees is the Premier.  We don’t want this to be a means for Nathan Rees to be able to back his truck up to the Commonwealth Government’s ATM and take out as much as he likes.  We will look at it very carefully and then respond to the legislation when it is presented.   So let’s not forget – this would not be necessary had it not been for the inept way the Rudd Government managed its own bank deposit guarantee scheme.  It created a lot of distortion in financial markets and now it is seeking to catch that up.    But again, the state governments have been spending billions, running up billions of dollars of debt without the taxpayers getting any effective return, and that’s particularly true on the east coast and New South Wales and Queensland in particular.  Now it’s vital that this Commonwealth guarantee not be like an unlimited account at the Commonwealth Government’s ATM for Mr Rees and his comrades in the Labor Party.   QUESTION:   Kevin Rudd is getting a lot of support in Washington for his G20 reforms but in the EU it seems the situation is different. What’s your [inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, this is very interesting.  Overnight you saw the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, was very critical of the spend, spend, spend approach of Gordon Brown and said it had to stop. The reality is that these stimulus packages around the world that are simply consisted of handing out billions of dollars in one-off cash handouts, they have been proved in all the countries where they have operated – the United States, the UK and Australia – they have proved to be ineffective.  And what we really need now is to see measures, such as those we have proposed which invest in the productivity and the efficiency and the enterprise of the nation, because the way we recover from an economic downturn is by having a more efficient, productive economy.  And you don’t do that just by borrowing tens of billions of dollars, which mean higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future, and throwing it out in cash handouts.   QUESTION:   What about Rudd’s relationship with Obama? He seems to be getting on quite well over there, was it worth the trip?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well every Australian prime minister will be received courteously and warmly by an American president.  Our two countries have a very close relationship.  It’s been built up over many, many years by prime ministers from both sides of politics.  John Howard lifted the relationship between Australia and the United States to new heights and now it’s up to Mr Rudd to continue that.  But this relationship is not the product of just one president and one prime minister.   QUESTION:   Speaking of Pine Gap, there’s quite a few concerns within the Alice Springs community that there isn’t more transparency and people don’t know what’s actually going on at the base so close to Alice Springs. Do you think there does need to be more transparency there?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, there always has to be a balance between transparency and security. Clearly the operations there are highly classified and it’s in everybody’s interest that they remain so.  So an appropriate balance has to be struck and we feel that that balance has been struck.   QUESTION:   Can I ask you a question about something many people are passionate about here [inaudible] the federal intervention.  I’d be interested to know what you think is…what element is working the best and the worst of the federal intervention at the moment?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, the intervention was a great success.  It made great steps towards resolving very difficult problems that will take a long time to address.  But I don’t want to pick out one aspect versus another.  I think the intervention has been widely recognised as having done enormous good but also recognising that the challenges ahead are considerable.   QUESTION:   There is concern in Darwin today that a protest is underway in an Aboriginal community nearby about the Territory Government planning to develop some land that is currently occupied by an Aboriginal community.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look, I’m not familiar with this particular incident.  I’d love to be able to comment on it particularly but I just don’t know any more than what you’ve just told me.   We’ll have one more.  I don’t want to have you [inaudible].  Okay, what is your one question?   QUESTION:   The latest opinion polls show Costello would have a better chance of leadership than you in terms of winning the next election.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I make a practice of never commenting on opinion polls.  There are thousands of journalists that are very well paid to do just that – you’re one of them.   Thanks a lot.   [ends]  malcolmThu, 26 Mar 2009 05:07:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:397http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/393/Interview-with-Richie-Williams-Radio-2GF-Grafton.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=393http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=393&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/393/Interview-with-Richie-Williams-Radio-2GF-Grafton.aspxSubjects: Visit to Coffs Harbour; Jobs for Australia Forum; Afghanistan; economy.   E & O E   WILLIAMSON:   Mr Turnbull good morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good to be with you.   WILLIAMSON:   How are you this morning?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m in good shape. How about you?   WILLIAMSON:   I’m in good shape too; I’m in good shape too. You’re in Cowper, the Cowper Electorate today?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah I’m here with Luke Hartsuyker, just here in Coffs. We’ve got a jobs forum on in about an hour and 20 minutes and we’re going to be meeting with small and medium businesses, business owners and other people in the community talking about what enables them to create jobs, what governments can do to make it easier for them to keep people on the payroll, keep the economy moving.   WILLIAMSON:   Has small business ever been under the pump like this before?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Oh look it has of course in the past, yeah sure, if you go back to the….Paul Keating’s last Labor recession we had, I think there’s plenty of us that are old enough to remember that, that was pretty bad too. The question I guess is; is the Government acting in a way that is going to improve our position as opposed to making it worse? And I’m afraid to say we believe that the Government’s made a number of economic errors since it’s been in Government and the situation is worse then it otherwise would be.   WILLIAMSON:   So today’s forum, you’re meeting with business leaders, both small and medium size businesses in Coffs and I know there’s a few Clarence businesses being represented there as well, what are you hoping to get out of the forum today?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well listening, it’s very important to hear what business has to say. I’ve been to a lot of these jobs forums around the country. We’ve got a Jobs for Australia website – jobsforaustralia.com – so we’re getting feedback both via the internet and via these direct meetings. It’s interesting you know increasingly we’re seeing that business is not saying; give us a handout, they’re saying they want government to get out of the way, to reduce red tape, reduce regulation, make it easier to tender, you know reduce nuisance taxes, taxes that put costs on business but don’t really raise a lot of revenue and generally they’re looking for greater freedom to do what they do best.   WILLIAMSON:   That’s run their small business. Yesterday the unions made a claim for a $21 a week pay rise for low paid workers and the exact businesses we’re talking about today of course will probably be affected, in this climate is that warranted do you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think that’s what the Fair Pay Commission will be looking at very closely. They’ve got to weigh up the balance between giving people a pay rise on the one hand and its impact on jobs on the other – so that’s really their task to do that.   But in many respects, I think for a lot of local businesses here, a greater threat is the modernised awards changes, which have been proposed by the Industrial Relations Commission, which the Labor Government is obviously right behind and that is going to see the cost of labour and the conditions of labour becoming a lot more expensive – particularly for people in the restaurant business and hospitality business. And you see the restaurants around Australia are becoming very concerned that they will be able to remain competitive and profitable, particularly in these difficult times with wages being increased with these new awards.   WILLIAMSON:   For sure. Afghanistan is again in the news this morning and of course the Prime Minister yesterday jetted off to meet with the President of the United States and I guess that the Afghanistan troop numbers will be on the agenda in his meetings, is now the time that we should be sending more troops to Afghanistan do you think?     MALCOLM TURNBULL:   What we believe is that we need to give our troops all of the support they deserve. These are brave men and women, they’re fighting the most dangerous enemy in the most treacherous terrain imaginable and they need the entire nation behind them.   Now Mr Rudd when he goes to….now that he’s in Washington, he has to find out from President Obama exactly what the Americans are seeking to achieve there, he needs to have a clear strategy, he needs to explain it to the Australian people, he needs an unambiguous commitment from the NATO nations to upgrade their contributions, both in terms of troop numbers and in the…and the rules of engagement under which their forces operate. So we need to know what is going to happen.   If the Dutch, for example, proceed with their plan to pull 1600 troops out of the Oruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan, where they’ve been working in joint operations with the Australian Defence Forces. So all of this Mr Rudd needs to lay all this out very clearly. He needs to level with the Australian people and say this is what our allies are doing, this is the strategy, this is what we’re trying to achieve and this is how we will provide the resources to do that.   He needs to be extremely clear about this and give us the details of his strategy for Afghanistan. We’re not going to play politics with this, the way he did with Iraq, but we need to have all of those facts laid out.   WILLIAMSON:   The $42 billion stimulus package appears to be a popular one with the Prime Minister increasing in the latest polls out, is that going to do the job, will the $42 billion keep us out of recession do you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I don’t think so, no, and I don’t think the Prime Minister thinks so anymore either. I mean he said the cash splash in December and the big cash splash that’s being mailed out now were going to create jobs – well there’s no jobs that have been created – he doesn’t even claim any jobs have been created now. He said it would deliver positive economic growth –well it hasn’t done that either. The reality is that he’s spending a lot of money in a way that is extremely popular; he’ll never become unpopular mailing billions of dollars out to people…..        WILLIAMSON:   ….mailing $900 cheques out…..   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   …no, no, that is a good way to make people like you. But the reality is, the money has been sent out and I just ask this question; how many kilometres of the Pacific Highway have been upgraded with that money? Not one. What’s actually been produced with it? Well people have got some money, they’ve maybe paid down some debt, maybe they’ve bought something they need, and that’s good but the reality is what we need at the moment is serious investment in our economic infrastructure, in the infrastructure that will enable Australia, the Australian economy to continue to grow.   We need to invest in the efficiency and the productivity of Australia. You see the thing that makes Australia the prosperous nation it is today, it’s not governments; it’s the enterprise and ingenuity and the hard work of individual Australians and their businesses, the people that Luke Hartsuyker and I are going to meet at 10 o’clock today.   Now what they need is governments that enable them to do their best and every dollar that Mr Rudd sprays out in his cash splashes is a dollar that he’s borrowed and the more the Government borrows, and the Government’s borrowing in a way now that would have made Mr Keating blush, every dollar they borrow means higher taxes and higher interest rates in the years ahead.   And so all of those businesses that Luke and I are meeting today, that have not been given any help directly from the Government, that have not seen their roads upgraded with these billions of dollars, they are going to be paying higher taxes and higher interest rates in future years in order to pay off the loan that Mr Rudd took out to pay for his cash splash.   WILLIAMSON:   Is anything going to stop Australia slipping into recession do you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well a recession as you know is two consecutive quarters of negative growth – so we went backwards in December – I don’t know anyone that doesn’t believe we’ll go backwards in the March quarter. Now hopefully we won’t, in which case we’ll officially not be in recession – but most people believe we will and if we do then we are most officially in recession.   WILLIAMSON:   Alright. Well look I hope the discussions today are fruitful ones and we certainly hope that the impression that is given to the Opposition is that we’re certainly open to ideas and let’s hope that the business community think that our economy here on the North Coast is going okay.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Great; I’m really looking forward to the meeting.   WILLIAMSON:   Thank you very much Mr Turnbull, have a nice day.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks a lot.   [ends]     malcolmTue, 24 Mar 2009 05:51:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:393http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/392/Doorstop-Interview-with-Luke-Hartsuyker-Coffs-Harbour.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=392http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=392&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/392/Doorstop-Interview-with-Luke-Hartsuyker-Coffs-Harbour.aspxSubjects: Jobs for Australia Forum; Labor’s neglect of economic infrastructure; Afghanistan; Kevin Rudd’s meeting with Chinese officials; Newspoll; failure of first stimulus package to create jobs. E & O E   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Luke and I are here to meet with local business leaders, small and medium business owners, to talk about jobs. The three top priorities in Australia today are jobs, jobs, jobs. Right around Australia the Coalition is meeting with businesses and business proprietors and their employees and asking what they believe governments should and could be doing to make it easier for them to employ Australians, to keep people on the payroll, to make it easier for them to keep doing the work that makes for Australia’s prosperity.   Now, we’ve seen today Mr Swan has said that the budget is going to have to cut back on a number of Labor’s spending promises. Labor can’t afford to invest in the infrastructure that they promised they would invest in. And that is the consequence, the direct consequence, of their failed economic policies. Labor is spending this year $23 billion in cash splashes. Just handing money out to people, it’s very popular, extremely popular, no one’s sent a cheque back yet. But it doesn’t build a road, doesn’t build a hospital, doesn’t build a pipeline for water or a dam, doesn’t build any of the economic infrastructure we need. We have to ask ourselves whether that money has been spent for political purposes and we now end up with the result that the Government doesn’t have the money to do the work that’s really needed to enable the Australian economy to grow.   Mr Rudd’s in Washington seeing President Obama and they’ll be talking about Afghanistan. Mr Rudd has got to level with the Australian people. He’s got to set out very clearly what he wants our troops to achieve in Afghanistan, what the strategy is, where he’s taking us and then he’s got to commit to provide all of the support that our troops deserve. They are brave men and women fighting the most dangerous enemy in the most treacherous terrain in the world but we need to know exactly what the strategy is. We do not want to play politics with Afghanistan and we won’t, unlike Mr Rudd who of course made Iraq a big political issue before the last election. We support our troops in Afghanistan. But just as they deserve our support, financially and in terms of equipment, they also need to know exactly what their task is, what the strategy is, what our allies are doing, whether they’re playing their part. Mr Rudd has got to lay out a coherent strategy for our participation in Afghanistan. He’s got to set that out and then Australians will understand the sacrifice that they’re being asked to make.   QUESTION:   Just on Afghanistan, if the Government does commit further troops, is that something the Coalition would support?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we support the battle against terrorism around the world and we support our troops in Afghanistan. But it’s up to Mr Rudd to lay out a very clear and coherent strategy for what we’re doing in Afghanistan. We want to know what our allies are doing. What is going to happen when the Dutch leave Uruzgan Province? Who’s going to take their place? What is the strategy for victory in Afghanistan? Mr Rudd has got to lay all that out. He’s got to level with the Australian people. We support our troops. We always have and we always will. But our troops need to understand, need to be told by the Government, as do the Australian people, exactly what the mission is.   QUESTION:   Does that include an exit strategy as well?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well every battle, every war I should say, every war has to have a strategy, a strategy for victory. The exit strategy is victory. What is the strategy for victory?   QUESTION:   Was it wrong for Kevin Rudd not to publicise his meeting with China’s Li Changchun?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It was completely baffling. I met with Mr Li Changchun yesterday in Sydney. It was perfectly open. We met in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices in Sydney; cameras came in and took pictures of us. We had a very good discussion. Why Mr Rudd chose to meet this senior Chinese official in secret is completely baffling. I cannot understand why you would do that. And it obviously gives rise to a lot of concern as to what was being discussed.   QUESTION:   Your popularity’s seen a slide in recent Newspoll figures. Are you concerned?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m only concerned about jobs and the strength of the Australian economy. The opinion polls come and go. Mr Rudd’s been spending a lot of money, sending a lot of cheques out and he’s very popular. But that popularity will wane when Australians realise that all of that money is being paid for by debt and every dollar of debt that he piles up, every billion dollars of debt he piles up means higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future.   QUESTION:   The Prime Minister though says his stimulus package is all about jobs, jobs, jobs. Why is yours better? Why’s your plan better?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, the Prime Minister is yet to demonstrate that he’s created any jobs. You may remember he mailed out the best part of $10 billion in December and said it would create 75,000 jobs. He hasn’t been able to provide any evidence that it’s created one job and of course unemployment has continued to rise and the economy has gone into reverse. So the score is on the board and it’s not a pretty one. Mr Rudd’s stimulus has not been effective as an economic stimulus. Now, the people that received the money, most of them I’m sure used it wisely and many of them would have appreciated it enormously but in terms of keeping the economy moving, it isn’t money that has been well spent. As I say, the one thing you know is the more the Government borrows, Mr Rudd is setting us on a course to borrow $200 billion plus. That will put Paul Keating to shame as a borrower. This is going to be Labor’s debt train on steroids, gearing up with all of this debt and that means higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. You can’t escape that.   Thanks a lot.   [ends]      malcolmTue, 24 Mar 2009 05:32:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:392http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/394/Doorstop-Interview-at-Sydney-Airport.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=394http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=394&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/394/Doorstop-Interview-at-Sydney-Airport.aspxSubjects: Airport security and national strategy to deal with outlaw motorcycle gangs; economy; meeting with Mr Li Changchun.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I’m very glad Mr Rudd has agreed to support my call for a national meeting of Attorneys-General to quickly resolve a national approach to deal with outlawed motorcycle gangs.  It should also include, as I said yesterday, Justice Ministers and Police Ministers.  We need an urgent national approach.  The South Australian legislation is a good example of what should be done nationally.   And Mr Rudd should also provide leadership by stopping his budgetary cuts which are reducing the effectiveness of the Australian Federal Police.  At the same time as he’s been splashing billions of dollars away in cash handouts, he’s been cutting back on staffing levels for the Federal Police.  And the staffing levels, the security levels of Australian airports, are 35 per cent below those agreed to by COAG.  So this is no time to be spending like a drunken sailor on one hand and then cutting back on vital services on the other.   QUESTION:   So you’re saying that you’re happy with the meeting of Attorneys-General.  What do you hope that they are able to do?  Do we need to adopt the South Australian model?  There’s been criticism of that.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I would recommend the South Australian model be adopted but we need to adopt one…[audio interruption]…the South Australian model is a good one but we need to adopt one national approach to outlaw motorcycle gangs.  We have one national approach to terrorism; we should have one national approach to this type of criminal gang because crime doesn’t stop at the state border.  There needs to be a national approach.  There needs to be a meeting quickly to agree on one national approach and then get on with it.    Australians deserve to be protected and feel safe, especially when they’re at places like airports.  It is incredible, absolutely incredible, to think that at a busy airport like this, Australians could witness gangs assaulting each other and bashing a man to death.   QUESTION:   Isn’t that a broader question though and one that Bob Debus said today that there would be an inquiry into the airport security, isn’t that what we need, a separate inquiry into airport security?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we know that the level of airport security, that’s to say the level of policing at airports, is 35 per cent below that which was agreed to by COAG. Now what Mr Rudd is doing, and you see this in Mr Swan’s statements today, what Mr Rudd and Mr Swan are doing is throwing tens of billions of dollars of borrowed money out in cash handouts on the one hand – and they’re very popular handouts lets face it – but at the same time they’re then cutting back on vital services.   So we’ve seen the AFP cut back, the Australian Federal Police cut back, airport security cut back. So at the same time as they’re spending tens of billions of dollars, they’re not spending money on the vital services that Australians need to protect their security. The single most important obligation of the Government is to protect Australians so that they are safe, safe from crime and the Government is not spending enough on that.   QUESTION:   Very popular handouts aren’t they? He’s a very popular man at the moment Mr Rudd?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Certainly there is no doubt that spending tens of billions of dollars is very popular in the short term until people start to count the cost and recognise that all of that money is borrowed money and borrowing at this level means much higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future.   QUESTION:   Kevin Rudd has had a great reception in the US in relation to his economic policies; do you think that he might be on the right track?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No I don’t believe he is on the right track. Look everyone will be very polite to Mr Rudd when he’s travelling, just as we’re polite to visiting dignitaries from other countries when they come to Australia, but the reality is that Mr Rudd’s spendathon has not resulted in the creation of new jobs and it has not resulted in economic growth. Our economy is going backwards and unemployment is going up. So you can have all of the warm words in the world but ultimately you’re judged by results, you’re judged by the score and the score, the economic score in Mr Rudd’s economic policy is going backwards.   QUESTION:   The US Treasury Secretary has actually given Mr Rudd a score of A-plus, I take it you give him a different grade?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think what Australians are interested in is the score in terms of jobs, we’re not interested in opinions, we’re interested in jobs; how many jobs are being created? Mr Rudd said his handout in December would create 75,000 jobs, he hasn’t been able to provide any evidence it’s created one. He said it would provide an economic boost to the Australian economy. We went backwards in the December quarter and now he’s already conceded we’re going backwards in the March quarter. So Mr Rudd is conceding his economic policy as a failure.   QUESTION:   You criticise Mr Rudd for not inviting the Australian media to his meeting with Mr Li from China, you also had a meeting with Mr Li and the Australian media wasn’t there…..   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well that’s not right. There were plenty of media there. They were certainly alert to it and I was asked about it at a doorstop subsequently and discussed it openly. There was no secret at all about my meeting with Mr Li. Thanks.   [ends] malcolmMon, 23 Mar 2009 22:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:394http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/386/Malcolm-Turnbull-speaks-with-David-Speers-Sky-News-Agenda.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=386http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=386&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/386/Malcolm-Turnbull-speaks-with-David-Speers-Sky-News-Agenda.aspx Subjects: soldier killed in Afghanistan; economy; Fair Work Bill 2008; Queensland election.   E&OE………………………………………………………………………………......   SPEERS:   Mr Turnbull, thank you for your time. If we can start on Afghanistan. Australia losing its tenth soldier there. Do you think we should be considering sending more troops to Afghanistan?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well David before we move on to that can I just say how sad we are to learn of another Australian soldier being killed in Afghanistan. He died as the Chief of the Defence Force just said, serving others, putting his life on the line to protect the lives of others. And he deserves our thanks, our respect. He has set a great example of service and sacrifice wearing our uniform, serving under our flag in the cause of freedom.   SPEERS:   But on that question now of whether indeed we do need greater protection in terms of potentially more infantry support for our troops who are doing that mentoring role in Afghanistan, is that something that you would support?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we have to see what type of request is given to us. There has been no request for us to put more troops into Afghanistan. We also have to take into account the contribution of other countries and also hear from, get the advice from the military chiefs as to our capabilities and how that can best be deployed. So this is not a straightforward question, it’s a complex one and one that we will be looking at with great care if and when a request is made.   SPEERS:   Mr Turnbull if we can move to the latest grim forecast from the International Monetary Fund. It has put out its fourth update in the space of just six months and this is even gloomier than those in the past. It’s now saying the global economy will contract by one per cent, as much as one per cent, and advanced economies by around three per cent. No specific forecast for Australia, but what do you think, given your expertise, this means for Australia? Do you think we are now either in recession or headed for one?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well David certainly there aren’t many people who believe that the March quarter will show positive growth. So if it shows negative growth then we are technically in a recession because we’ll have two quarters of negative growth. There’s no doubt the economy is slowing; there’s no doubt jobs are at risk. We’re losing jobs and that is why so many of the Labor Government’s policies are so baffling to many Australians. I mean why are they pursuing policies that are actually putting jobs at risk? Their emissions trading scheme has lost all support, whether it’s from the environmental lobby on the one hand or from business and unions on the other. We see thousands of jobs at risk every day, particularly in Queensland. Thousands of jobs in the Queensland coal industry, our largest export industry being put at risk by an emissions trading scheme which does little or nothing for the environment and devastates jobs in Australia.   SPEERS:   And yet those reforms haven’t gone through. The one thing that it has done is its stimulus packages and the IMF has said that a two per cent of GDP stimulus is appropriate for advanced economies and that they will need to continue stimulus throughout 2010 according to this latest report. You opposed that stimulus package. Does that leave you with any egg on your face?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The only people with egg on their face – and I have to say it’s not much comfort for me to say they’ve got egg on their face because what I’m worried about are jobs. Jobs being lost in Australia, huge debts being run up by this Government, hundreds of billions of dollars of debts that will mean our children – and we will too – but our children also will have to pay higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future. Never forget David that money that Mr Rudd claims is being spent on stimulus has been ineffective. See you can’t just say ‘I’m spending money’ and call it a stimulus and that makes it effective. You’ve got to make sure you get a bang for the buck. And as one of Australia’s leading market economists said from ABN AMRO, this spending from the Rudd Government has not delivered any bang for the buck, nothing more than a dull thud. And one might add a dull and very expensive thud that we’ll be paying for for many, many years to come.   SPEERS:   But you not only opposed the nature of the spending but the size of the spending, the extent of the spending.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That’s right…   SPEERS:   Are you saying the IMF is wrong to say that a two per cent of GDP stimulus is appropriate?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   David, Mr Rudd has already spent more than that. We in Australia, with one of the strongest economies in the developed world, are spending more on so-called stimuluses than countries whose economies are much weaker. You see this spendathon approach of Mr Rudd is not endorsed by every country in the world I can assure you. And what he has done in the last stimulus package, so-called, he has spent a third of it by just throwing cash away, giving cash away, $900 to most Australians. And he has done that even though he knows that the cash splash in December was ineffective, even though he knows that only 20 per cent of it was spent, that it didn’t do anything to stop rising unemployment, that it didn’t do anything to stop a slowing economy. So he has gone and borrowed another $14 billion to do it all over again, to make the same mistake twice.   Now you can cut him some slack and say, ‘well, okay, he thought it would work in December and it didn’t work. But at least he tried’. But now he’s gone and made the same mistake in March and yet we see now they have spent so much money, so much money David they do not have the cash to fund vital economic infrastructure. Their Building Australia Fund is very short of funds, it’s only got a fraction of what they were promising to put into infrastructure. An older Australian said to me some time ago, imagine where we would be if Bob Menzies and Ben Chifley had given everybody a cheque for fifty quid instead of building the Snowy Mountains Scheme? And, you know, that’s exactly what Kevin Rudd is doing. He is sending our cheques to everybody on poor economic policy that will not provide an effective stimulus and he has nothing left to fund vital economic infrastructure which would be a good stimulus.   We support investment in economic infrastructure. We do. We support bringing forward tax cuts. We support and have supported lowering the on-costs of employment for small businesses. Our alternative programme cost less, involved less borrowing, but would have supported more jobs. So it’s not a question of in favour of stimulus or not. We are in favour of a stimulus but an effective one that is affordable, that’s responsible and that will deliver results.   SPEERS:   Malcolm Turnbull if we can turn to industrial relations. The Senate, the Coalition in the Senate very early this morning voted to amend the Government’s legislation which means…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the whole Senate voted to kill WorkChoices at 2.30 this morning, and the only person that’s planning to revive WorkChoices is Kevin Rudd.   SPEERS:   Well Kevin Rudd would argue that it’s you that are reviving WorkChoices or keeping it alive because you will not support the Government’s legislation. You have amended it in a way that is unacceptable to the Government. So do you accept any responsibility for keeping WorkChoices alive?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Absolutely not, we voted to end it. We voted for the Bill with the amendments. Let’s be quite clear about this – the matter in dispute is tiny. Australians will be absolutely baffled at the arrogance, the vanity, the pride, the stubbornness of this Government that they’re not prepared to concede one inch.   Let’s be quite clear, under Work Choices businesses with 100 employees or less were not subject to the unfair dismissal laws. Under the Labor Party’s proposal businesses – small businesses, so they described – would be subject to the unfair dismissal laws but would have a streamlined code of compliance because it was recognised, so they said, that small businesses didn’t have the resources to go through all the paper work of complying with those laws. So it’s not a question of employees in small businesses not having any protection, they have all the protection of the unfair dismissal laws. Their employers have a streamlined way of complying with it.   But then there’s the question of what is a small business. Now Labor has said that the definition should be 15 employees. But when you say 15 employees, most people think of 15 full-time employees. But there’s a trick, because Labor says it’s any employee no matter how many hours they work. So you can have a restaurant with two full time employees and a dozen people who work for a few hours a week and they would fall outside the definition of a small business. Now that’s ridiculous and that’s why Nick Xenophon, Steve Fielding and the Coalition have said, ‘look, we’re not arguing with you about the thrust of your policy. We accept the thrust of your policy but you’ve got to get the definition of small business right’. So we have said, we’ve agreed with the independents, that the definition should be 20 full-time equivalents. Now that is a fair definition. It’s workable, it’s in accordance with what the Australian Bureau of Statistics say and it’s a very workable, practical definition. And that is the only point of difference.   So you see Kevin Rudd – he is the one who is going to breathe life back into WorkChoices in the House of Representatives today over this small but important point of definition. And he’s doing that because he is as usual, David, more concerned about politics than he is about economics. He is only interested in politics and that has been his undoing from the time he begun. He hasn’t had an economic policy; it’s just been politics, spin and misrepresentation.   SPEERS:   It is only a small point of difference, as you acknowledge. Given that, are you prepared to wear what will be an intense Labor and union campaign once again calling you the party of WorkChoices? Labor does argue and the Prime Minister says he has a mandate for these changes. Do you accept that at all?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well let’s be quite clear. In their policy document which I have in front of me here, they talk about, they refer to small businesses with fewer than 15 employees. Now anyone reading that would think that meant full time employees. If they’d fleshed that out and said this means that a business could have just a couple of full time employees and a dozen people who work only a few hours a week, everyone would have recoiled. I mean the reality is we are arguing here about a definition to make their proposal, their model, more workable. And that is exactly what I said in November. I said in November that we would move amendments to improve the operational efficiency of the bill and that is what we’re doing. We’re doing this with the support of the Independents and so this is a good amendment and it’s one the Government should accept.   And you talk about the unions, David. Let me tell you, the unions will be completely stunned that Kevin Rudd is going to hold up his own Fair Work Bill into which the unions have such a great interest in over this one point of definition. He has got 99.98 per cent of what he wants, but because he hasn’t got 100 per cent he’s going to throw all the cards up in the air and say, ‘I won’t have anything’. So the only person that is keeping WorkChoices alive today is Kevin Rudd, ably assisted by Julia Gillard. They’re like the two doctors in Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory. They’re the ones putting the electric current back into WorkChoices. They’re keeping it alive. The Coalition, at 2:30 this morning, voted to kill WorkChoices. Kevin Rudd is breathing life in it today.   SPEERS:   Okay Malcolm Turnbull, just finally and quickly because we are running out of time, I wanted your thoughts on Queensland. The polls on election eve show that Lawrence Springborg is just a whisker in front. If he does win, is that validation of the merged Coalition party, the Liberal National Party? Is that in your view a template for something that could succeed elsewhere?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, David, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the merger of the Liberals and Nationals in Queensland to form a united conservative force, the LNP, has been an enormous benefit to Queensland, to politics in Queensland and it’s given the people of Queensland new hope that they can replace this incompetent, stumbling, bumbling state Labor government. I mean let’s not forget Anna Bligh ran that state into $74 billion of debt and lost the AAA rating in the middle of a mining boom, so how could you trust her, how could you possibly trust her to manage the state when times get tough?   SPEERS:   Alright, Malcolm Turnbull we will have to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks David.   [ends]   malcolmFri, 20 Mar 2009 04:33:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:386http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/388/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=388http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=388&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/388/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Fair Work Bill.     E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The three criteria on which this law will be judged are jobs, jobs, jobs. Every month there will be a report card for jobs figures, and it’s from that report card that we and all Australians will know the real impact of this law on jobs, because that’s what it’s all about. We have taken a strong and principled stand for jobs, and as a result of that a bad law has been made less bad, so that it destroys fewer jobs. But the test will be jobs. How many jobs will it destroy, and we will know every month. It won’t be a matter of theory, it won’t be a matter of speculation, it won’t be a matter of ideology – it will be a matter of fact, and we and all Australians will judge this law on that measure.   QUESTION:   Will that be in 2010 when the laws start or will it be for another eighteen months beyond 2010 when Nick Xenophon’s little concession expires?    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The impact of the laws will obviously start in anticipation now, but of course from the time they’re in force we will see their total impact.    QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, have you been made redundant in this debate?    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   If it were not for our strong and principled stand, the Government would not have moved any of the major amendments, or accepted any of the major amendments that they have agreed to. There are 231 amendments to this Bill, and a number of them have resulted in the Government abandoning positions it took in a manner of complete retreat. They retreated from their position on the right of entry by union officials to inspect non-members of unions records. They abandoned that, and so they should have abandoned that. If it hadn’t been for our strong advocacy, they would have stuck to their guns, just as they would have done with the outrageous claims they had in respect of greenfield projects. There is a whole range of changes to this legislation that have made it less bad, but none of them, not one of them, would have been possible without the strong and principled stand the Coalition took for jobs.     QUESTION:   So will you vote against the entire Bill now that it has this fifteen provision back in?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the only vote that is left now is for the Senate, whether to insist on the remaining amendments that the House did not accept, that the Government did not accept in the House, and we will insist on our amendments, but the Bill, the Fair Work Bill which put Workchoices to death, was supported by us at 2.30 am this morning, as you all know.   QUESTION:   Has the crossbench in effect saved you form having to take a firm stand on this one way or another?     MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Our stand was unequivocal and very straightforward. We put forward a proposal that the test for a small business for the purpose of the unfair dismissal laws should be twenty-five full-time equivalents. As you know, that amendment was not carried. We were able to support the crossbenches on a twenty full-time equivalent test, and now the crossbenches have reached an agreement on a transitional fifteen full-time equivalent test with the Government. Now that is not as good a test from the point of view of jobs or small business as that which we proposed or which the Senate agreed to early this morning, but it is certainly better than the position that the Labor Party had in their legislation.   QUESTION:   You must at least a little bit relieved that WorkChoices is now finally and unequivocally dead?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well WorkChoices was dead at 2.30 this morning.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull can I ask you about jobs, you say every sort of sinew of the Government’s focus must be now jobs, jobs, jobs. If that’s the case why don’t you come out now and support Chinalco’s bid for Rio given they’re going to sack 2,000 people. They’re making similar claims to Xstrata on the ETS.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I don’t think those claims are by any means beyond question. That debate has got a long time to go.   QUESTION:   Are they as genuine as Xstrata’s claims on the ETS?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look the ETS is a pretty straightforward issue in terms of its impact on trade-exposed emissions intensive industries. If you look at the coal mining industry and coal miners in Queensland in particular, these companies compete with other coal mines in other countries almost all of which are developing countries, largely Indonesia, South Africa, Colombia for example. They’re the major ones. They are not going to have a carbon price any time soon, perhaps ever at all. Now the reality is that the more costs you impose on Australian coal miners and coal exporters the less competitive they are with countries that do not have a carbon cost. So it is perfectly obvious to everybody involved in the coal industry that if we put a cost, a carbon cost on our coal exporters we will make them less competitive with other countries.   Now the tragedy of that is the loss of jobs in Australia but also the environmental pointlessness of it, because all that happens is we will export less coal from Australia and more coal will be exported from Indonesia or South Africa or Colombia. And that’s why I’ve been saying for years now that the problem with a carbon tax or a carbon emissions trading scheme, any carbon price that is put on emissions intensive trade-exposed industries where their competitor countries do not have a similar cost is that you will end up exporting the jobs and you’ll export the emissions. In other words, economically irresponsible and environmentally futile.   QUESTION:   …expecting all Australians to believe that every job loss that we see from now on is because of these IR laws rather than the global financial crisis?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We will be measuring the impact of these laws against job losses. That will be the test. You see we’ve had a debate…   QUESTION:   How do you differentiate – how do you separate the impact of the IR laws from what else is going on?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well there are many ways that the impact of these laws will be assessed. Clearly there will be the job figures, there will be interviews with small businesses, small and medium businesses, and they will respond to surveys and no doubt interviews from intrepid reporters who are concerned to find out what’s going on in the workplace, who break out from Parliament House and go out into the community and talk to businesses and restaurateurs and cafes and small manufacturers. And you’ll find out, they’ll tell you, they’ll say why they have not been able to hire people or why they’ve had to lay people off.   So we’ll find out all of those things in due course, but we’ve now moved into the world of fact. Julia Gillard has a very heavy burden on her shoulders. She now has the responsibility for demonstrating that the laws which she said would not destroy jobs do not in fact destroy jobs. And if they do destroy jobs, if they do destroy jobs then she and her government will be held accountable for it.   Thanks very much.   [ends] malcolmThu, 19 Mar 2009 21:18:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:388http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/384/Interview-with-Alan-Jones-Radio-2GB-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=384http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=384&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/384/Interview-with-Alan-Jones-Radio-2GB-Sydney.aspx  Subjects: Ruddbank; ETS; Fair Work Bill; alcopops tax; employment; people smuggling.   E & O E   JONES:   Malcolm Turnbull, good morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Alan.   JONES:   Can I put this to you? Look a few years ago before you went into parliament you were on the phone to this programme proclaiming fairly loudly and unapologetically the virtues of a republic. I was in the process of arguing for the monarchy in that referendum. And I put you straight on air and we had what you might call a less than polite ding-dong brawl, and I think I subsequently wrote a reference for you because even though we disagreed on that issue I admired your passion and your commitment to a cause. And I’ve said that’s what we need in public figures. We need people who believe and argue persuasively their beliefs. Where is that Malcolm Turnbull, the man of passion and forceful belief?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well he’s right here Alan with you this morning.   JONES:   But we don’t hear that Malcolm Turnbull standing up. I mean surely the current political environment ought to be a picnic for you. You’re a highly successful businessman, a Rhodes Scholar, outstandingly educated, you come from a poor background. But you speak and act as if you’re embarrassed by all that.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan I don’t think that’s right but I mean you’re obviously free to your own opinion. But the reality is we’ve taken on the Rudd Government on a number of issues very forcefully, very passionately. We’ve taken on unpopular positions. We opposed the $42 billion cash splash. We’ve voted against this crazy idea to set up a new Labor Party bank – this Ruddbank – a son of Tricontinental and State Bank of South Australia, ready to waste billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on commercial property investments. You know we’ve seen what the Labor Party does when it gets into banking, it loses billions.   JONES:   But see I suppose people want to…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We’re standing up to them on their changes to the industrial relations laws.   JONES:   Yeah I’ll come to all that in a moment but I suppose people are saying look, we don’t want to know really what, in a sense, he’s opposed to, we want to know what he is for. I mean your only employment in life has been in the private sector. The Prime Minister’s only employment has been as a public servant. His solutions are public sector solutions, your solutions, people would think – which would be the virtue – would be about small business and business being productive to get us out of this mess. They want to know what you stand for.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan everyone knows what I stand for. I believe government’s role is to enable Australians to do their best, not to tell them what is best. I believe the prosperity of this country lies in the individual initiative, the enterprise, the ingenuity of thousands of Australians, and that what we should be doing is fostering free enterprise and private initiative. I’ve talked about my father’s life, my own life, which has all been built around enterprise, having a go, not always succeeding, if you get knocked down dust yourself off, get up and have another go. That is our commitment.   And Mr Rudd is on the record now saying that he wants to put government, big government at the centre of the economy. So we oppose him when he says the answer to economic challenges is more government, bigger government, more regulation, higher taxes, higher debt. Let’s face it Alan, what we have got from Kevin Rudd now is a terrible trifecta of traditional Labor Party mismanagement: higher unemployment, higher debt and more strikes. Doesn’t that sound familiar?   JONES:   But I suppose what I’m saying to you is what I said to you last time we spoke. If Kevin Rudd wants to throw money at everybody, which money belongs to the taxpayer, shouldn’t the taxpayer be able to go to Malcolm Turnbull’s website and say well look, what would Malcolm Turnbull have done. And he can turn up here and he can read on industrial relations, on emissions trading, on alcopops tax or whatever, this is what Turnbull is about. I mean there are millions of small businesses out there employing 4.5 million people – they want to know with clarity what Malcolm Turnbull would do for them, not what Kevin Rudd isn’t offering them.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well that’s right Alan and that’s why I’ve got a very good website and I’ve got an email newsletter list of nearly 40,000 people and they all know that I gave a speech on Saturday at the Federal Council of the Liberal Party, which was widely reported, about our opposition to Labor’s flawed emissions trading scheme. And they know that our commitment is that Australia should reduce its CO2 emissions but it’s got to do it in a way that does not destroy thousands of jobs and export both the jobs and the emissions for enormous economic loss to Australia and no environmental gain.   We’ve talked about – and I’ve set out in another paper I gave in January which is also on my website and was widely reported – as to how we can reduce our emissions substantially and at the same time improve our environment by promoting soil carbon, biochar, carbon forestry, by encouraging businesses with accelerated depreciation and other measures, all of which we’ve announced to invest in energy efficiency.   JONES:   But did you make a tactical mistake though when you said that the Government had a mandate to get rid of WorkChoices and therefore you wouldn’t be opposing the legislation. Now there is a difference is there not…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan I – can I just cut you off there – let’s get the history straight here. The person who said WorkChoices was dead was Brendan Nelson after the election. Right, that was his decision as leader, he had the support of the shadow cabinet obviously of which I was a member. So we took that position straight after the election and I have maintained that and the party has maintained that that WorkChoices is dead. However when the legislation appeared late last year, in November, I said that while we recognised that WorkChoices was dead, we would seek to move amendments to their legislation in order to improve the efficiency of the legislation and we have done that. And in particular to hold them to account for any changes that go beyond their election policy, and most, or many at any rate, of the most objectionable parts of this legislation, such as their proposal on right of entry, giving unions the right to access the records, employment records of people who aren’t members of the union without their consent, those changes were not part of their election policy at all. Now we’re having some success with our amendments in the senate but we’re still battling away and we are fighting very, very hard I can assure you.   JONES:   But I mean WorkChoices, abolishing WorkChoices is quite different from institutionalising the power of the union movement. WorkChoices must have had something going for it. I mean we’ve held employment at 10.8 million or more, month after month after month in the wake of this so-called economic cyclone. Does someone defend that or do you just say oh well pretend it doesn’t happen?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan there’s no question that the reforms to the labour market, to workplace laws to create greater flexibility have made a huge contribution to Australia’s high levels of employment and everybody acknowledges that. Glenn Stevens and his predecessor at the Reserve Bank were always talking about this as one of the reasons for Australia’s high employment. Now the WorkChoices policy however was a key part of Labor’s election platform, it was certainly one of the contributors to our defeat, and we as politicians recognising that we live in a democracy have to acknowledge that. But equally it is our responsibility, recognising that political reality, nonetheless to seek to amend the legislation to make it more effective and of course to reject Labor’s attempts to impose changes to the industrial relations laws for which they have not even the claim of an electoral mandate. And that’s what we’re doing and we’re battling away in the Senate at the moment.   JONES:   Now I’ve asked you before about abolishing payroll tax and the principle of taxing someone when they give someone a job is a nonsense when everyone seems to be saying jobs, jobs, jobs. And I’m sick of hearing about that rather than hearing from people who are going to do something that actually generates jobs. I’ve heard you say that but I mean why wouldn’t we abolish payroll tax and compensate the states? It would be a better way of using the money than giving $900 to people who don’t live in this country, who are dead or who are in jail.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan that’s a very fair point. Now what I proposed – and I think we’ve discussed this on your programme before – as an alternative approach to Labor’s cash splash, one of the alternative measures is to give small businesses a rebate of a portion of the superannuation guarantee contribution. For example if you gave businesses with 20 employees or less, if you rebated a third of their superannuation guarantee contributions in year one and a sixth – half of that amount – in year two, it would cost taxpayers $5 billion over two years and it would all go to improve the cash flow of small businesses.   JONES:   But you’d still be taxing them every time they gave someone a job?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Let me go on Alan. The reason why we proposed that rather than reimbursing the states to reduce payroll tax was that many small businesses, most of them in fact, do not pay payroll tax because they’re below the threshold. In New South Wales I think you’ll find the threshold is a wage bill of $630,000 a year. So if you’ve only got a few employees you may not come within that envelope.   JONES:   But do people understand that’s what Malcolm Turnbull is saying?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan they do. It depends how many people listen to me when I’m talking to you on the radio and on television. We’ve made this point again and again.   JONES:   See you’re accused in the parliament, they were throwing stuff at you yesterday about being an agent for binge drinking because you opposed the alcopops tax. Now where have the Opposition made firmly the point that under the alcopops tax, beer would be cheaper than alcopops and these are people purporting to be opposed to binge drinking.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan we make it relentlessly and of course you’ve just been making it on the radio. I think Australians understand this alcopops tax is just a tax hike. The hypocrisy has been staggering. This has got nothing to do with health. All of us, everybody knows, whether you’re looking at the official statistics or whether you just go down to your local pub or your bottle shop, and you go down there and ask the guy at the counter and he’ll tell you that, yes they’re selling less of some of these alcopops but they’re selling a lot more straight spirits. And I remember being…   JONES:   That’s quite right.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I remember being on radio a couple of days after the tax was announced and there were people calling in from all over Sydney with bottle shop specials with vodka and whiskey…   JONES:   That’s quite right.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   …being sold with a few bottles of soft drink thrown in. So the reality is all it has done is made a shift between one form of alcohol and the other. It’s a tax hike. But let me put this to you, if the Labor Party was fair dinkum about doing something about binge drinking they would accept our offer to validate the collection of the tax that’s already been paid – this is about $290 million – so it doesn’t have to be given back to the distillers and the liquor companies, and use that money for health programmes and advertising and other measures to promote responsible drinking.    JONES:   What about the poor retailer, the poor small businessman, the retailer and the customer who has paid the damn tax? It’s been passed on to him and it’s illegal.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well ultimately it has been paid by the consumer of course.   JONES:   Of course.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s charged to…   JONES:   Are they going to get it back?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   This is the difficulty Alan, this is the practical difficulty. The money can only – in practical terms – can only go to the distillers.   JONES:   Go to the distiller.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That’s right. And so our proposal is responsible but Labor has rejected that.   JONES:   Did the former Queensland Labor treasurer and fellow Rhodes Scholar I might add – no dunce – this David Hamill, the chairman of Envirogen, write to the Opposition saying that the emissions trading scheme would put current investment of $455 million and 100 jobs at risk? And his company wouldn’t be in the position to make planned new investments if the emissions trading scheme proceeded as planned?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well he most certainly did and I raised that in parliament.   JONES:   And will you be then campaigning in Queensland this year in the days leading up to the election in a state which is energy rich which is going to be decimated if this comes into place?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Alan we have raised these issues about jobs in Queensland relentlessly. Both the Envirogen example and an even bigger example of Xstrata have been front page news in the Queensland papers, and the Courier Mail in particular, and we’ve raised these in parliament. Xstrata which is one of our largest coal companies has said that if the emissions trading scheme is introduced in the form that it has been designed by Mr Rudd, and it is a very badly designed scheme, it will cost them 1,000 jobs now, three or four mines will close now, projects will not go ahead worth up to $7 billion, and 4,000 new jobs won’t be created. And most of them are in Queensland. You see Queensland…   JONES:   And have you made that point though, in the election campaign in Queensland?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Alan, absolutely it has been made up there and I said we raised it in parliament on Monday and it covered the front page of the Courier Mail…   JONES:   Alright, we’re running out of time but in January we had our first intake of refugees since the Rudd Government eased these rules on asylum seekers. 28 boat people we were told would resettle in South Australia. Now another boat carrying 52 suspected asylum seekers has been intercepted off the north east of Darwin, the ninth vessel to be detected by Australian authorities since last December. All this is a result of tough rules on asylum seekers being eased. If we’re about jobs, jobs, jobs, who do you imagine is going to give these people jobs?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Alan I think they will struggle to get jobs and this is part of the problem that the Labor Government has changed the rules and they have sent a signal to the people smuggling industry that Australia is less forthright or less stalwart in its resistance to unlawful immigration. Now that has been the message that has been received, this is not my opinion but this is the opinion of organisations operating particularly in Indonesia, expert organisations, the Organisation for Migration – I think we discussed this earlier in the year – and the fact of the matter is that that perception has been created. It’s very unfortunate that it has been created and we’re starting to see an increase in unlawful arrivals.   JONES:   Okay we’ve got to go to the news, we’ll talk again soon.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks so much Alan.   JONES:   Malcolm Turnbull, Opposition Leader.     [ends]        malcolmThu, 19 Mar 2009 03:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:384http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/387/Interview-with-Steve-Price.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=387http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=387&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/387/Interview-with-Steve-Price.aspx  Subjects: Alcopops tax; Fair Work Bill; cash for crims; Labor’s failure to build F3 link; Medicare Safety Net. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   STEVE PRICE:   Mr Turnbull’s in our Canberra studio. Thanks for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Steve.   STEVE PRICE:   Will you wake up on Saturday morning and wonder, given that you’ve voted against the alcopops tax, that some young girl has ended up in emergency?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Steve, Nicola Roxon was outrageous in those remarks. We are passionately committed to preventing and reducing binge drinking, particularly among young people. And it’s the Government, it’s Nicola Roxon and her colleagues in the Government that are going to hand back $290 million of tax revenue that they’ve collected without any legislative authority over the last year; they’re going to hand it back to the distillers. And it’s we in the Opposition that have twice tried to persuade them and offered them our support to direct that money towards health education, programs to promote responsible drinking, programs to prevent binge drinking. There’s a huge pool of money there that the distillers don’t want back. They’ve said we’re happy for it to be used for alcohol awareness and programs to prevent binge drinking. But if the Government…   STEVE PRICE:   Julia Gillard says it’s legally impossible for them to keep the money, the Deputy Prime Minister.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well that is legal nonsense, with great respect to the Deputy Prime Minister.   STEVE PRICE:   So she’s wrong?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   She’s absolutely wrong. Completely wrong.   STEVE PRICE:   So they can legally keep that money?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well they can. They’ve got to pass legislation to do it and that’s what we have offered to support. So the only reason this money will be going back to the distillers is because the Government refuses to accept our invitation to cooperate with us to direct it to health awareness, alcohol awareness, programs to reduce binge drinking. We all know, Steve, that with the right awareness programs, the right advertising programs, you can promote more responsible behaviour. Look at the effect all of the campaigns against smoking have had on smoking over the years. Australians smoke a lot less now than they did 20 or 30 years ago. We could do the same thing with binge drinking.   STEVE PRICE:   Well, on that, we banned smoking advertising. Senator Fielding wanted advertising for alcohol un-hooked from sport. Was that unrealistic of him? If it could work as you point out with cigarette advertising, why couldn’t it work with alcohol?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I think what’s worked most effectively as far as cigarettes is concerned is promoting the health message and promoting awareness so that people understand the dangers of smoking. That’s what’s been most effective. In terms of alcohol, moderate use of alcohol is something that is acceptable and is consistent with leading, responsible use of alcohol is consistent with a healthy lifestyle. We know that. But it is excessive drinking, binge drinking in particular, that is very dangerous. And generally, people grow out of it. Obviously it’s something that often happens to people when they’re young and that is something that we should be spending a lot of money on preventing and we do that by changing people’s attitudes.   STEVE PRICE:   So you’re absolutely convinced the alcopops tax was a tax grab and not the first step in a move to change the culture of drinking?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Steve, you and I both know it was a tax grab. I remember talking to you in the studio…   STEVE PRICE:   You were sitting here with me.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I was sitting here with you and we had publicans and liquor shop owners calling up and saying we’re selling a few less alcopops but we’re selling a lot more straight spirits. And all that has happened is there’s been a substitution from one type of alcohol to another. And that was always going to be the case. It was obvious, as I think we said at the time, never underestimate the ingenuity of the Australian drinker. Just because alcopops become a little bit more expensive or a lot more expensive, then people will drink more beer, they’ll drink more wine. They’ll go to straight spirits and mix it with soft drinks themselves. There is no evidence. The Government has had a year to produce evidence…   STEVE PRICE:   So we’ve wasted a lot of time on this alcopops tax then, haven’t we?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Steve it was always hypocritical. I mean the fact of the matter is the Government, what they did, they went for a tax grab for $1.6 billion and they dressed it up sanctimoniously, hypocritically as a health measure. It was never a health measure. It was exposed as being just nothing more than a tax grab right from the outset and I’d say to any of your listeners that have doubts about this or think that the Government may have a point, go to the local pub, go to the bottle shop and ask them whether they are selling more straight spirits and other drinks as opposed to alcopops.   STEVE PRICE:   Walk down George Street on Saturday night.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Correct, that’s right. You see, what you’ve got to do is attack the behaviour. You attack the behaviour. Obviously better policing is very important too, but really it’s a question of understanding what the health impacts are. People now are aware – and the success of the anti-smoking campaigns is very relevant – people are now aware of the dangers to your health from smoking cigarettes so there’s a lot less smoking than there used to be. And equally binge drinking is very dangerous to your health and, again, we need more awareness of that.   So there’s an opportunity there for the Government to take that $290 million. We’ll support it. The distillers aren’t complaining. It is perfectly feasible, legally. And Julia Gillard is just wrong when she says it isn’t. So the only reason that money is going back to the distillers is because the Government is so stubborn, so pig-headed. Just remember, Steve, they imposed this tax last year without any legislative authority, without any legislative authority. And they knew we were not supporting it. So they have collected the tax for a year without any legislative authority. Now when they finally have their legislation knocked back by the Senate, they’re so pig-headed, so obstinate, that they’re not prepared to do the sensible thing and apply that $290 million to campaigns that will genuinely educate Australians, young Australians in particular, as to the dangers from binge drinking and reduce that social problem.   STEVE PRICE:   Fair Work Bill is next one up in the legislative chain, which is getting blocked in the Senate. Have you made your mind up yet on saying whether you’ll oppose it? I know you’re saying you’re waiting until you see exactly what’s in it but you will have some idea.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Steve, it’s been called a moving feast and that’s absolutely right. There are a lot of amendments being moved. The Government has made some movement in a number of areas towards the position we’ve been arguing for. In other areas, no movement has been made, but it is still a moving feast.   STEVE PRICE:   Well you call them pig-headed. Let’s get to the pig-headed point. They won’t change the definition of small business from being 15 or less. Should they?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well of course they should Steve. The reality is this – that what they went to the election with was a proposal that the unfair dismissal laws should apply to all businesses, so they do apply to all businesses, but with small businesses there would be a small business code of conduct which was designed to make it more straight-forward, simpler, less bureaucratic if you like for small businesses to be able to terminate employees.   STEVE PRICE:   This is the mandate you said they had.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, they went to the election and they certainly had the support of the electorate on that point, but the real issue is…   STEVE PRICE:   But how has that changed since you endorsed that mandate?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   But Steve the question is – there’s no argument about having a different arrangement for small business – but when the Senate Committee looked at the definition of small business carefully and when industry responded to it, and when you realise that a headcount of 15 didn’t mean 15 full time equivalents, it could be 3, 4, 5 people working full time and 10 people working part time with a full time equivalent of 6 or 7 or 8 or even less. I mean the problem with the definition is that a lot of businesses that are on any view small businesses will not be regarded as small businesses. Now there are many definitions of small business in the ABS and elsewhere. There is nowhere that a small business is defined as 15. The general definition, the widest use of a definition is 20 actually.   STEVE PRICE:   I know this is complicated and you can’t, neither of us can, simplify it, and it’s a massive piece of legislation but is there a deal-breaker in there for the Opposition or is there a range of deal-breakers?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we will look at the legislation as a whole. We are very concerned. We are in there fighting for the rights of small business…   STEVE PRICE:   So if it gets voted down, they’re going to point at you right through the next election campaign, well they want WorkChoices back, that’s why they voted against our Fair Work Bill. Do you suspect they may be quite happy to see this bill fall over?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Steve, if Julia Gillard is so stubborn that she’s not prepared to give any ground then she may not get her bill through the Senate and may not get it passed at all.   STEVE PRICE:   Do you think she’s unhappy about that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well you’ve got to ask her that question but just say this, but my focus is…   STEVE PRICE:   Tactically you must have talked with your colleagues about whether you want to go to the next election still being seen as someone who supports WorkChoices.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Steve, the only thing I’m talking to my colleagues about are jobs, jobs, jobs. This legislation will damage jobs, will undermine the ability of Australians to employ other Australians. The definition of a small business as it stands in the bill at the moment is not appropriate, and it’s been widely criticised, and we’re seeking to improve it so that it is more realistic. The bill also includes provisions, a number of which are in the process of being amended – so this is why it is difficult to take a final judgement on those provisions – but includes a number of provisions which are completely outside the Government’s election program. In fact, Julia Gillard you will remember said in 2007 that the right of entry laws would not be changed. Unions’ right to enter premises would not be changed and yet they’ve produced a bill that said unions could walk onto anybody’s premises and inspect the records of an employee, all of his records, regardless of whether he was a member of the union or had given his consent.   STEVE PRICE:   Under your laws, if there was a non-unionised work force there was no right of entry.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well because people should not, a union should not…   STEVE PRICE:   Well, that’s what it was.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   But Steve, why should a union be able to look at somebody’s records…   STEVE PRICE:   I’m not arguing they should be   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   … if a person’s not a member of the union?   STEVE PRICE:   I’m pointing out the difference.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well exactly. And Julia Gillard said she was going to respect that and maintain it. So when we talk about election mandates and election commitments, Julia Gillard was the one who broke her election commitment on that and on a number of other points, but in particular on the right of entry laws. She broke that commitment by seeking to change those laws in a way that would allow unions to trample through workplaces and rifle and ruffle through the work records, the employment records. They could just pull out, pull out Steve Price’s records – ‘oh, that looks a bit interesting. I’ll have a look at that’ – and with no protection as to your privacy.   STEVE PRICE:   Are you worried that there could be a mood among the Australian people that says you lost the last election, you’re now frustrating the Government that got elected to get on with the job and govern?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Steve, the Australian people expect us to do our job.   STEVE PRICE:   But don’t they expect the Government to do their job and aren’t some people likely to say, well, let them do it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Steve the Australian people did not elect a Parliament entirely composed of members of the Australian Labor Party. They elected Liberals and Nationals and independents and they’ve elected us to hold the Government to account, and where we can improve the Government’s legislation so that it destroys fewer jobs, so that a bad law is less bad, we have a duty to do that. And that is what we seek to do. So when Kevin Rudd came up with his $42 billion stimulus package, so-called, we proposed a more responsible alternative. Now he didn’t take that up, but we did our best. We proposed a more responsible alternative and we did not support his irresponsible proposal. And so it goes. That’s our job.   The people didn’t elect me to Parliament in order to be just an echo chamber or a rubber stamp for Kevin Rudd. If they’d wanted that, they should have elected the Labor candidate for Wentworth.   STEVE PRICE:   Are you stretching it to suggest dogs and cats and horses are going to get the $900 bonus? I mean isn’t every payout from Canberra that is whacked into the computer run by the Tax Office liable to have those small anomalies?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well they’re pretty big…   STEVE PRICE:   Didn’t it happen when the Howard Government was running things?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well hang on, this is very different, this is not a tax break in the normal sense. What this is – let’s face it – this is just a cash splash.   STEVE PRICE:   But are we going to find one horse in Australia that gets a cheque?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I’ve seen reports of dead people. I’ve seen reports of dogs. There’s obviously lots of people who live overseas who’ll be stimulating someone else’s economy, if they stimulate it at all. And then of course we’ve got Kev’s crims for cash, or Kev’s cash for crims I should say. In fact there probably are crims out there who are delighted with the cash and are calling for more of it. But the fact of the matter is he is borrowing, he is borrowing billions of dollars from our children to pay for these cash splashes and you can see – and some of which is going to people in jail and to dead people and people overseas, and apparently a few dogs and cats – but the real issue, Steve, is that what he’s done, he has blasted away so much money already, borrowed money, that now we read that there isn’t enough money to fund vital economic infrastructure.   STEVE PRICE:   Yeah I want to ask you about that, the Bank of Scotland today is saying infrastructure projects are in danger of falling off a cliff, The Australian reports today, with these 20 projects with a $45 billion price tag because credit is drying up.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well there is no doubt it’s a very tough market and that is why the Government should be, and could be if it chose to, investing in economic infrastructure but it isn’t doing it. Now look I was in Cessnock just the other day in the lower Hunter, where 83 people have lost their jobs at the Bonds factory. This is part of the Pacific Brands lay-off. So that’s bad news for that community; jobs lost. There is a project that we had approved, we had put all the money aside for, all the planning has been done, all the land has been acquired to link the New England Highway at Branxton through to the Sydney to Newcastle expressway. This is the F3 Link   STEVE PRICE:   Know the road well, yep.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   A very vital bit of infrastructure. Why isn’t it started? It’s shovel ready; it could be going right now. So Kevin Rudd – and the people were saying to me ‘what is Kevin Rudd doing, why is he borrowing money to spray it around in cash splashes but he’s not prepared to just press the button and start building a piece of infrastructure that would deliver thousands of jobs to the lower Hunter?’ Thousands of jobs. Instead of losing jobs they’d be gaining jobs. And the reason they’re not is because Kevin Rudd has got his priorities all wrong. He’s focused on throwing cash around instead of investing in the future of Australia.   STEVE PRICE:   Final question from me, there’s a story in Brisbane this morning suggesting that the Medicare safety net could indeed be means tested. Have you heard that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we have and we’ve seen those reports. That would force families back onto failed state public hospital systems and you can see the horror with which that has been greeted – I’ve got the Courier Mail story here – by leading doctors. There’s a Queensland obstetrician here, David Molloy, who has talked about how this will cut back on gynaecological and obstetrics services. This is, again, an extraordinary example of the bungled priorities of the Rudd Government. They’re spending money like drunken sailors on programs and cash splashes which are having no beneficial economic effect to the economy and, at the same time, they’re cutting back on vital services.   STEVE PRICE:   And I notice the Health Minister has refused to confirm or deny that they’ll means test the Medicare Safety Net. Will you ask about that in Question Time today?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it’s certainly one of the issues we’ll be looking at it. We haven’t decided what questions we’ll be asking. We’ve only got ten. But you can be rest assured that the Medicare Safety Net is a vital issue for Australians and the Government’s plans to cut that back and attack that just demonstrate how out of control their priorities are. What are they doing? Why are they wasting money on the one hand but not investing in economic infrastructure on the other, and not protecting vital services, vital services for all Australians.   STEVE PRICE:   Thanks for giving us so much time, appreciate it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Great to be with you Steve.   [ends]    malcolmWed, 18 Mar 2009 21:57:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:387http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/382/Interview-with-Nicole-Bond-ABC-Western-Queensland.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=382http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=382&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/382/Interview-with-Nicole-Bond-ABC-Western-Queensland.aspx Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Subjects: Kevin Rudd’s job destroying and environmentally ineffective ETS.    E & O E NICOLE BOND: …Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme was. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme is damaging for jobs, it is economically irresponsible. In other words, it will cost thousands of Australian jobs and at the same time it’s not environmentally effective. It’s not going to result in a substantial reduction in our CO2 emissions because it leaves out of the scheme a [inaudible] of opportunities for reducing our emissions. NICOLE BOND: Now the emissions trading scheme hasn’t been introduced yet, nor has anything like it. How can we be so sure that it will damage jobs? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it actually has been Nicole. The legislation has been published, there is a white paper that describes it. So yes there are a number of details of the scheme that are yet to be revealed and that will be dealt with in regulations, but the architecture of the scheme is now well known and that’s why you’ve got companies, big Queensland employers like Xstrata, saying that the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme will cost 1,000 existing jobs and 4,000 future jobs. NICOLE BOND: Is this not just a scare tactic on this part? I mean the ETS is going to cost them money, we’re in a climate where the economy and jobs are under threat at the moment. Isn’t this an easy threat for them to make though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: [Inaudible] very important point Nicole. Let me explain it. If you have a company like Xstrata, a coal mining company, it is competing [inaudible] with coal exports, with exports from other countries, almost all of which are developing countries like Indonesia or Columbia or South Africa. So if we put an additional cost on our coal miners in Australia and they become less competitive, then all that will happen is less coal will be dug out in Australia and more coal will be dug out in Indonesia. So there will be fewer jobs in Australia, more jobs in Indonesia. The environment won’t be any better off because the same amount of coal will be burnt, the same amount of emissions will go up into the sky and it will have the same effect. That is the problem with the way they have structured the scheme. It’s very different to the approach we took in government. They are structuring the scheme in a way that will sacrifice Australian jobs for no environmental gain. NICOLE BOND: What areas are you most concerned, or what regions of Queensland are you most concerned about? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s really the mining and the minerals processing centres. You’ve seen the mayors of Gladstone and Mount Isa have already come out warning against the impact of the ETS. ACIL Tasman, which is an economics research firm, is reported here in the Courier Mail today releasing a new report which is warning that the emissions trading scheme will force the closure of four out of 10 mining and processing projects in Queensland. And it found, according to this report, that another four projects would have their profits cut so badly that they would not be able to invest in similar projects and only two would be viable. And that’s a straight quote out of the Courier Mail today. So there are thousands of jobs in Queensland that are going to be at risk and the Queensland Resources Council naturally, and the mining council nationally is making these points. NICOLE BOND: Obviously you don’t support the ETS in its current form or perhaps in any form. What would you… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t support it in its current form or on its current timetable. I mean let me just say this to you Nicole and to your listeners: we are absolutely committed to Australia making a substantial reduction in its CO2 emissions. So there is not a debate about that. We think that the Rudd scheme will be ineffective environmentally and irresponsible economically. An emissions trading scheme is something that has to be got right. Mr Rudd is rushing into it in order to have it up and running next year. So he’s going to finalise the design before he knows what the new US administration is going to do, before he knows what the nations of the world will agree to or not agree to at the Copenhagen summit in December. So it is rushed, it is poorly designed, and it is going to cost thousands of jobs. And the tragedy of it Nicole is that it’s going to sacrifice those jobs for no environmental gain. NICOLE BOND: What would your party do if it was in government then, on this issue of reducing emissions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ve laid out a whole series of areas that the Rudd Government’s plan overlooks. Number one is energy efficiency in buildings. We could reduce our emissions by 50 million tonnes a year by 2020 if we had appropriate regulations and incentives to encourage energy efficiency in buildings. The Rudd Government is also ignoring our biggest natural and comparative advantage which is 770 million hectares of real estate. We have the opportunity to sequester, to store in our own soil millions of tonnes through increasing soil carbon, through biochar, and of course through what we’d call environmental planting – carbon forestry in appropriate areas. We don’t believe carbon forestry should [inaudible] agricultural land for example but there’s plenty of opportunities in other areas. Now all of those added together would result in literally – potentially if you want to go that far – hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 abatement. I set all that out in a paper I delivered in January which is on my website. NICOLE BOND: That’s Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Federal Opposition there talking about the emissions trading scheme and how he feels it will impact on jobs. [ends]malcolmWed, 18 Mar 2009 03:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:382http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/381/Interview-with-Ray-Hadley-2GB-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=381http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=381&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/381/Interview-with-Ray-Hadley-2GB-Sydney.aspx Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Subjects: Kevin Rudd’s cash for crims; defence contracts going overseas; Labor’s debt train; emissions trading scheme; Labor’s neglect of F3 link.  E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   RAY HADLEY:    Joining me on the line from the Canberra studio is Malcolm Turnbull.   G’day Malcolm.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   G’day Ray.   RAY HADLEY:    I have made the point, which you probably haven’t heard this morning, it’s been cobbled together. I mean it is a lot of money, $42 billion dollars. But we keep finding gaps in it and this is just another one.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well they are making up it as they go along and they are even trying to make a new rule for the Monopoly game. Instead of going directly to jail, do not collect $200, Kevin Rudd says go directly to jail, collect $900.   RAY HADLEY:    To be fair to them, because it is such a massive exercise, is there any way you can regulate this and to make sure prisoners don’t get it or is that physically impossible?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well of course it’s possible to get it right. I mean this is the problem – Kevin Rudd is making it up as he goes along. Every action is an overreaction. What he has got to do is think these things through carefully and make sensible decisions that are going to benefit the Australian economy. He is running us up into enormous debt, over $200 billion dollars of debt and delivering, in terms of the present conditions, very little in the way of any effective economic stimulus. We saw that the cash splash from December didn’t stop us going backwards in December. He said it would create 75,000 jobs. He can’t give any evidence that it created one job, let alone 75,000. And now we have got another cash splash in March that has gone to dead people. There’s reports that it’s gone to cats and dogs, and now it has gone to people in jail. I think the Daily Telegraph said it was not so much as a stimulus as a crimulus.   RAY HADLEY:    The one I don’t understand, that lady that was on the front page of the Herald a week or two back climbing a mountain in New Zealand because she happened to be here a fair while ago. She is on a part pension which is supplemented by her British pension and therefore she qualifies for it as well. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   But Ray they have not thought any of this through. They are in panic mode. They have been panicking ever since September when the big investment bank in the US Lehman Brothers fell over and they have been in panic mode ever since and they are making one decision after another that is actually making a difficult situation worse. You look at their emissions trading scheme for example. They have managed to create an emissions trading scheme that has got business offside and the green lobby offside. Everybody hates it. We’ve got a situation where the mining industry is doing it tough anyway and the emissions trading scheme is going to cost thousands of jobs around the country. Xstrata alone, just one company, one coal mining company, has said it will cost 1,000 jobs right now and 4,000 jobs in the future because they are going to have to cancel some big projects.    RAY HADLEY:    Here’s a simple one for them. I have a got a net note here from Stephen Keir, the MD of Akubra hats which is based in Kempsey on the mid north coast of New South Wales. He is guaranteeing me that if he gets the defence contract for slouch hats featured on the front page of the Tele today, they will be Australian made. There’ll be no shells coming from the Czech Republic. They’ll be Australian made ,which seems to be a no-brainer for the Federal Government to issue that contract, wouldn’t  it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Absolutely. Again, it’s fairly straightforward. We’ve had another issue that we’ve raised in the Parliament this morning about a new armoured vehicle which should be made in Australia. The Thales company, which makes the Bushmasters in Bendigo, has been making these armoured vehicles in Australia for the Australian Army very successfully and the Government is looking for a new vehicle and it is actually inviting an American company to make a prototype. So, what it’s doing – you know, it’s extraordinary – they say they are committed to jobs and yet every example that you see either involves them spending money recklessly and running up debt recklessly, which will result in higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future, or they’re undertaking policies such as a very poorly, recklessly designed ETS – emissions trading scheme – which will actually cost us jobs in the here and now.   RAY HADLEY:   You know how you want to be Prime Minister after the next federal election and your predecessor when he came to power, a combination of Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello took a decade to retire $96 billion in debt left to them by the former Labor Government. How much debt do you think you’ll need to retire by the time you finish your first term or second term if you get that far?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Ray, the Government I think will run up a couple of hundred billion dollars of debt at least between now and the next election, and it could be more.   RAY HADLEY:   It took us a decade. Will it take us a decade and a half to retire that debt, if in fact we get [inaudible]?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Ray, it could take us a generation. They are running up so much debt. When you talk about a fiscal stimulus today, spending money today, it can have little effect – which is what they’ve done with their cash splashes – or it could have a very positive effect – for example, if you invested it in economic infrastructure.   I mean, the classic example of how out of touch and uncoordinated they are is in Cessnock. I was up there the other day – and this is Joel Fitzgibbon’s electorate by the way, so he’s a Cabinet Minister so you’d think he’d be able to manage this – but I was up there the other day and they’ve lost 83 jobs in the Bonds factory there, which is part of the Pacific Brands layoff. Yet there is a project there, a freeway project to link the Sydney-Newcastle Expressway to the New England highway. This is called the F3 link. All the land has been bought. All the planning is done. We put the money aside to pay for it when we were in Government. It’s ready to go. All Kevin Rudd has got to do is say get started and the work will commence. And that will create thousands of jobs. And what the locals were saying to me: what is this Government doing? They’re throwing billions away in cash splashes. We’re bleeding jobs in this area in the Lower Hunter. Here’s a project that is absolutely vital and it’s ready to go and will create thousands of jobs. All Kevin Rudd has got to do is say, get started. It is literally shovel-ready. And there’s example of example after example of this around the country. They seem to have lost control of their economic management.   RAY HADLEY:   Okay just going back to whence we started and the 900 bucks to prisoners. Are they showing any willingness to either look at this or do something about it? Or is it just, no, bad luck it’s going.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I think the cheques have been sent. Any cheques that haven’t been sent shouldn’t be sent. If they can claw the money back, it’d be good if they could. But you can imagine how difficult that would be. So I think realistically this is just another bungle. Ray, the truth is this: our kids are going to be paying higher taxes and higher interest rates to pay off the debt that Kevin Rudd incurred to send criminals $900. Now, you’ve only got to state those bare bald facts to see how out of control the Government’s economic management is.   RAY HADLEY:   Thanks for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks Ray.   [ends]  malcolmWed, 18 Mar 2009 02:53:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:381http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/374/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme-ABC-Radio.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=374http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=374&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/374/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme-ABC-Radio.aspxSubjects: Cuts to skilled immigration; Labor’s ETS; alcopops tax.  E & O E   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to AM.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   The Government’s cut to skilled immigration. Do the cuts go far enough?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, we’ve been calling for the Government to cut its immigration intake for months now in light of the worsening economic situation so this is certainly a welcome move. It’s good that they’ve finally recognised the gravity of the threats to jobs in Australia and acted to reduce the immigration intake.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Should they be prepared to cut further if they have to?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   They certainly should be prepared to reduce the immigration intake in light of the economic situation. We’ve been disappointed that they’ve failed to do so for many months now. And they finally responded to our calls to do so.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   You said on the weekend that the Labor emissions trading scheme is unacceptable in its present form, that it’s poorly designed. Are you prepared to vote against it even if it’s amended?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, depends, again Lyndal, depends what the amendments are. Now, the reality is we have always said we will vote against a poorly designed emissions trading scheme. There is no such thing as being for or against emissions trading because the range of alternatives and designs is almost infinite. Different countries today who are introducing emissions trading schemes have very different schemes. It’s very important for us in Australia, as I’ve always said for years now, that we should design our scheme, finalise whatever scheme we have in Australia in the light of what the United States does because there they will be the leader naturally as the largest economy, and what is agreed at Copenhagen. Mr Rudd’s plan to finalise the design of an emissions trading scheme this year before we know either of those things is reckless. It always has been reckless. And the plan he’s come up with of course is hopeless in the sense that it does enormous damage to jobs, sends jobs overseas with the emissions, so it does no good for the environment, and it doesn’t reduce Australia’s emissions in any effective way. So that’s why everybody is against it. It is literally completely friendless apart from Senator Wong and Mr Rudd.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   If it is so poorly designed as you say, is it possible then not to be able to… is it impossible for amendments to be designed that will make the scheme better?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well you could always have a completely new scheme. I would not support finalising the design this year. Even the best designed scheme, in theory, needs to have the input of the knowledge of what happens at Copenhagen and what the Americans will do. I mean imagine, just think, imagine if we create – this will test the memories of some of our older listeners – but imagine if we create in Australia a scheme that is to emissions trading schemes a one off in the world, an equivalent of a P76, you know, a completely unique scheme that doesn’t fit in with anything else. Now that would be absurd. There is no reason for a scheme to start in 2010. That is entirely a political agenda of Mr Rudd’s. It’s putting jobs at risk and we should have an emissions trading scheme that is finalised with its design with all of the relevant information. And of course you don’t, again, the emissions trading scheme is not the objective, the objective is to reduce emissions. The emissions trading scheme is just one tool in the climate policy toolbox. Well designed, it’s a useful tool but it’s not a necessary tool at all. You can reduce emissions by other measures.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   You’ve proposed a scheme that you say would lower emissions further than the Government and no doubt be easier on business. Are you seeking to outflank the Government on the left and the right?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, what we’re proposing are measures that are economically responsible and environmentally effective. I’ve demonstrated how we can cut emissions by more than the Government has proposed in a way that will invest in the health of agriculture in Australia, in the health of our environment, take advantage of our comparative strength or our comparative advantage which is our 770 million hectares of real estate. You see the problem with – well there are many problems with the Government’s ETS as you know – but it ignores all of the opportunities for green carbon, it ignores energy efficiency, it doesn’t give credit for the CO2 emission reductions that households and businesses make off their own bat and that’s why everybody hates it. Mr Rudd has created a legislative orphan that nobody wants.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   But do you risk ending up with a scheme that has tougher targets and is tougher for business because you’re forcing the Government into negotiating with the Greens?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, the Government’s got to take responsibility for its own actions. We will stand up for what is right. We will stand up for jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs are our priority. We will stand up for jobs, and we’ll stand up for an effective response to climate change that enables Australia to reduce its emissions at the lowest cost and with the greatest additional benefits. All of the measures I laid out in the speech I gave in January about this were measures that will significantly reduce our emissions but have additional other benefits, whether it is to agricultural productivity, the strength of the environment or the health of the environment overall or to energy efficiency. So there are a range of ways we can attack this creatively and practically. Mr Rudd is ignoring this. He’s on an ideological crusade which is to have an emissions trading scheme. He doesn’t seem to care what’s in it as long as he can tick that box. That’s not good enough.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   The alcopops legislation, the report, will come out in the Senate today. If the Government puts significant amounts of money into alcohol abuse prevention, are you more inclined to support the increased tax on alcopops?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, we propose to validate the collection of the tax over the last 12 months. We will oppose the collection of the tax in the future. It’s not a health measure. It is a revenue-raising measure. However we don’t…   LYNDAL CURTIS:   [Inaudible] the increased tax was okay for the last six months?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, what we’ll do is pass amendments that mean the tax that has been raised, without legislative authority obviously, does not have to be paid back. So the tax that’s received should be kept by the Government but, in our view and this is what we’re negotiating with the Independent Senators about, that money should then be earmarked for practical measures to reduce binge drinking, improve awareness of the dangers of binge drinking, particularly among young people. There’s quite a lot of money there, we don’t know how much but it’s in the order of $250 million and that can be used for really effective practical measures to address the problem. You see the problem with the alcopops tax, as you know, is that it’s raising a lot of money for the Government but it isn’t reducing binge drinking at all. So it is just a revenue raising measure under the guise of being a health measure.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you Lyndal.   [ends]    malcolmSun, 15 Mar 2009 23:18:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:374http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/371/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=371http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=371&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/371/Doorstop-Interview-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Labor’s trifecta; jobs figures; impact of Labor’s IR policy on jobs; Rudd Bank; Liberal Party; consequences of Labor’s IR policy on small businesses.   E & O E   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Today we see Labor’s terrible trifecta – higher unemployment, higher debt and more days lost to industrial disputes.   In the last month unemployment has risen by 47,000 Australians, 47,000 more unemployed. So much for Labor’s policies creating jobs or protecting jobs. We are losing jobs and at a rapid rate, a very concerning rate for those of us that are concerned about jobs. And for those of us who are concerned about the recovery from this period, which we fear will be a Rudd recession, we see $26 billion dollars of additional debt that is going to be borrowed by Rudd Bank and all guaranteed by the Commonwealth. That is $26 billion dollars on top of the $200 billion dollars the Government has already passed through the Parliament. And in 2007, less than 50,000 days were lost to industrial disputes and we see last year nearly 200,000 days lost to industrial disputes. So it’s old Labor, same old mistakes.   A terrible trifecta – higher unemployment, higher debt and more days lost to industrial disputes.    QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, is it time for you to reconsider your position on the IR policy and vote to strip the safety net away again and make labour cheaper to keep more people on?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Our position on the IR legislation is well known. We set all that out yesterday.   QUESTION:   Just on the Government’s stimulus, what’s you reaction to the fact that foreigners, some foreigners are receiving it as well as deceased estates?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the fact that foreigners are receiving these payments shows how poorly thought through this so called stimulus payment has been. See, it’s not intended to be an increase in the pension. It is supposed to be a payment to people in Australia who Mr Rudd believed would spend, spend, spend. Now as we know, almost all of them saved the money but his objective was to get people to spend money in Australia so sending cheques to people who don’t live in Australia just shows how little they thought through the action they were undertaking and how careless they were with the billions of dollars that they’re borrowing and putting on our national credit card.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, you’ve been using the term for the last couple of days, you just did. Rudd recession, nice alliteration but are you seriously expecting us to believe that a recession in Australia is because of Kevin Rudd? Isn’t it the global financial crisis?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Kevin Rudd is making our economic situation much worse. Yes there is a global financial crisis, we recognise that, but he is making one economic mistake after another. From the time he came into office, he had a political strategy but no economic strategy. He talked up inflation and talked up interest rates last year for purely political purposes. He went, without getting direct advice from the Reserve Bank, he went for an unlimited deposit guarantee, devastated the savings of hundreds of thousands of Australians, prejudiced the motor industry because it shut down the source of finance for the finance companies. He has then undertaken one cash splash which was ineffective. The money wasn’t spent, it was saved. And notwithstanding the evidence that his first cash splash was a flop, he has gone off and he is doing it again even as we speak.   QUESTION:    Why do you blame Labor for more industrial unrest given people are still now bargaining under the old Work Choices architecture and will be until such time as the Parliament passes new laws?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it is perfectly clear that Labor has sent a message to its supporters and comrades in the trade union movement that there is a more supportive Government in Canberra and that has resulted in higher levels of industrial disputation. I mean Mr Rudd says the buck stops with him. His current strategy is to say that he is to blame for nothing. He wants to be the blameless one. Well, I am sorry. He is the Prime Minister. He has to take responsibility.   QUESTION:   If things are as bad as all of that, should MPs cut down on their own perks and consider flying economy class rather than business class?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think that is up to MPs but there is a set of rules that are laid down by the Remuneration Tribunal and certainly, for our part, we scrupulously comply with them.   QUESTION:   Would you commit to doing that, flying economy class?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We will comply with the rules that are set down by the tribunal.   QUESTION:   But shouldn’t the rules be changed since across the private sector everyone is cutting back. Why shouldn’t the rules be changed to save people money? The public.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, that is a matter for the Remuneration Tribunal. We have a mechanism for independently assessing these conditions and if Mr Rudd wants to propose a change to the Remuneration Tribunal, he is free to do so.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, you said we knew your IR policy, the Coalition’s IR policy, but we don’t know the very fundamental thing of whether the Coalition will vote for or against this Bill.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Michelle, we don’t know yet what will be in the bill. The fact of the matter is, there is a bill at the moment which we have sought to amend. The Government is also seeking to amend it. Independent Senators are seeking to amend it. All of these amendments, or many of these amendments, are addressing the same defects that we’ve identified and so we will resolve on the appropriate course of action when we see the final bill.   QUESTION:   But you said late last year you would let this bill through.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, I did not say that, Michelle. You have repeatedly said that, and you were wrong. You’ve been repeatedly wrong, with great respect. What I said last year was that we would move amendments to improve the operational efficiency of the bill without seeking to frustrate the objects of the Government’s election policy and that is what we are doing.   QUESTION:   Julia Gillard says you haven’t responded to a letter that she sent to the Shadow Minister about…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, that’s not right. The Shadow Minister has contacted her office and is seeking a meeting and we’d be delighted to meet with her. She had made it rather clear that we were not welcome but now that the ice is breaking, that would be terrific. We very much look forward to sitting down with her and discussing the amendments we’re proposing.   QUESTION:   Do you agree with Peter Costello’s comments this morning on radio that the Coalition should not support the IR laws…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m sorry; you’re all speaking at once. Can one person start?   QUESTION:   Do you agree with Peter Costello’s comments on radio this morning that the Coalition should not support the IR laws in their current form before the Senate?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’ve stated what our position is.   QUESTION:   What is that? Can you clarify that? We’re not sure.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, I’ve stated what our position is. We had a press conference here only a little while ago, explaining what our position is and I’ve repeated it again today.   QUESTION:   You wouldn’t – just to clarify, I’m a bit dumb – you wouldn’t support the bill…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   There are nodding heads all around here.   QUESTION:   We’re all a bit slow. How about one more time?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look, if the bill, it’s a completely hypothetical question because the bill is in its current form, is not going to be presented because the Government itself is moving amendments. The bill is going to be changed. The bill is not satisfactory. How much clearer can I be? But it is a moving feast and when the feast stops moving, when we know what the amendments are and the final shape of the bill is, then we will cast our vote. You can deduce what you like from that, but I’m not going to lock us in to a pre-existing position when I’m engaged in discussions and negotiations with Independent Senators and now, so it would appear, with the opportunity to negotiate with the Government. which I welcome.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, do you think there’ll be an increase in the minimum wage given the current pressure on the labour market?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, that’s a matter for the relevant authority so I won’t buy into that.   QUESTION:   Has Peter Costello told you that he’s seeking preselection to recontest the seat of Higgins?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I am focused on jobs. The critical issue today is the rate of unemployment, the high level of debt and the concerns that Australians have about whether their jobs are secure, whether the prospects for their family are secure, and how our nation is going to be able to pay off the hundreds of billions of dollars of debt that Mr Rudd is racking up. If I could just go on, the Rudd Bank proposal, which I’m sure you’ve seen, which has just been introduced into the House, is one of the most extraordinary measures ever introduced by an Australian Government. It demonstrates…   QUESTION:   [inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, you should do a bit more digging. This proposal which was stated by Mr Rudd, you will recall, as being designed to enable the Government to replace foreign banks who pulled out of commercial property syndicates, is not limited to refinancing syndicates where foreign banks pull out. In fact, it can refinance any commercial property syndicate and, I might add, it’s not limited to commercial property. It can extend to any other form of commercial finance that the banks and the Government agree. So what Mr Rudd has done is gone way beyond what he originally announced and is essentially establishing a new bank which can engage in any kind of business that he wishes, and all of the risk is being taken by the Commonwealth. There is $30 billion at risk here, of which only $2 billion is coming from the big four banks. And there is a massive conflict of interest between the Government and the banks in that partnership. It is completely misconceived and it will encourage banks, not just foreign banks, but second tier banks below the level of the big four, to exit. It is entirely counterproductive and could only have been put together by a Government that has no experience or understanding of finance. It is a shocking proposal and one that will do great harm to the Australian economy. It will just be another item on the list of economic blunders by this inept Government.   QUESTION:   Mr Turnbull, understanding as we do your great interest in jobs and we’ve got that, can you tell us would you like to see Peter Costello recontest at the next election?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That’s a matter for every Member of Parliament as to whether they..   QUESTION:   No, I asked whether you’d like to see it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I am focused on the jobs of Australians right around the country. I’m not interested…   QUESTION:   And the job of the Member for Higgins?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I am focused on the jobs of Australians, the Australians, the millions of Australians who are worried about losing their jobs. That is the real focus today, that’s what everybody is concerned about. It’s the economy.   QUESTION:   On those figures, Mr Turnbull, do you believe the seven per cent unemployment target is still reasonable?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Phil, that’s a very good question. That is a very good question. The estimate for 2008-09 in the most recent economic financial outlook – the UEFO so-called – was 5.5 per cent for this financial year and we’re already at 5.2. And seven per cent for the following year. So the Government will no doubt be looking very carefully at those forecasts.   But I just simply make this statement again, just remember this: what we have is a terrible trifecta from Labor. We have higher unemployment, four times as many days lost during their first year in government from industrial disputes, and debt growing by the day - another $26 billion. Now whether you regard the objects for which the money was borrowed and spent as being good objects – I recognise there’s a debate about that – the one incontrovertible economic fact of life is that the higher the level of government debt, the higher taxes will have to be in the future to pay it off and the higher interest rates will be in the future because the government is in the market as a huge borrower competing with everybody else. So the higher that debt cranks up, the harder it is going to be for us to recover from this current economic downturn.   QUESTION:   Do you think that forecast is too low?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well everybody would – this is a big jump in one month – so everyone will be looking at those forecasts and questioning whether it is too low. But I hope – I am an optimist – I hope that it will prove that unemployment will rise as little as possible, I hope this is the last time we see a rise in unemployment. But this is not a good number, it’s very concerning and it underlines the fact that the Government’s policies have done nothing to create jobs. Remember, the Prime Minister said his December cash splash would create, not protect, not support, create 75,000 jobs. He’s been asked again and again to show that it created one job and he hasn’t been able to demonstrate it created one. And we’ve already seen in one month, in one month, 47,000 increase in the unemployment figures.   QUESTION:   Just back on IR, you were complaining yesterday that you didn’t seem to be feeling as much love from Julia Gillard and the Government as some of the independent senators have.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I don’t think that is quiet what I said…   QUESTION:   No I’m paraphrasing.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That would be…you are, you’re paraphrasing with poetic license.   QUESTION:   You seemed somewhat miffed anyway. What efforts has the Coalition made to have a dialogue with Ms Gillard or the Government about your proposed changes to the IR Bill?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Miss…Julia Gillard has made it clear she wasn’t going to talk to us as of yesterday.  I hear today that she is open to discussions and so we have been in touch with her and hopefully we’ll have a meeting shortly.  But we certainly look forward to speaking to her about it because the…you know, there are a number of, look, there are essentially – the areas where we are proposing to amend the legislation really fall into two parts.  There are the outrageous elements in the legislation – they’re outrageous because they go well beyond the Government’s election policy, indeed, contradict the Government’s election policy.  I mean, lets not forget, this party, Julia Gillard said in the lead-up to the last election, that the existing right of entry laws would be preserved and they are being dramatically expanded, not preserved at all, so that a union official could go onto any of your workplaces, even though you’re not a member of the union and haven’t given consent, and go through all your employment records.  It’s an outrageous breach of privacy and it breaches the faith of the Government in terms of its election promise.   The other area where we are seeking an amendment relates to the definition of a small business.  Now, remember I said last year that we would seek amendments to improve the operational efficiency of the bill.  The definition of a small business that the Government’s got, as far as unfair dismissal is concerned, is for 15 people and it’s on a headcount basis.  So it doesn’t matter whether they’re working a few hours a week or whether they’re full-time.  Given that a lot of small businesses have often quite a large number of part-time employees who don’t work a full week, in full-time equivalent terms, this can mean that businesses, which are not just small businesses but very, very small businesses, will not come within the Government’s definition of a small business.  So it’s breaching faith.  You see, if you say you’re going to have a special arrangement for small business, you’ve got to have a definition that is meaningful and adequately protects at least a large number of small businesses.  So what we…   QUESTION:   [Inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, we’ve been discussing this with the Independents and we’ll discuss it with the Government.  And what we are going to propose, what we are proposing, we’re seeking an amendment to say that the definition should be 25 employees on a full-time equivalent basis.  Now, that is still below many definitions of a small business and it certainly wouldn’t be regarded as a medium size business let alone a large business.  But it is a question of getting the number right and we look forward to discussing that with the Government and with the Independents who share our concerns. So if I just may repeat what I said in closing, what I said the other day, Julia Gillard can attack us as much as she likes but the fact of the matter is that the concerns we have expressed are exactly the same as the Independent Senators have expressed, or largely the same, and indeed very similar to the concerns that the Labor Government’s most favoured business representative, Heather Ridout, has expressed.  And so really, the fact that the Labor Government is abusing the Liberal Party for proposing these amendments but not abusing anybody else who proposes the same amendments shows yet again they’re not interested in jobs, they’re only interested in the politics.   QUESTION:   [Inaudible] you said she had a mandate on, or the Government had a mandate on unfair dismissal.  Why have you changed your mind?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, the fact of the matter is, they had a policy to provide special arrangements for small business.  On close examination of it and particularly as a result of the work of the Senate committee, it became obvious that the definition of small business that they had was unreal because it would exclude many businesses, thousands of businesses, that on any view, any commonsense view, were small.  And if I could just add this to the point about Julia Gillard’s real agenda.  If she was as concerned about jobs as she said she is, where is the modelling of the effect of the industrial relations laws on jobs?  Nowhere to be seen.  Where is the modelling of the effect of the ETS on jobs?  Nowhere to be seen.  For a Government that claims, for a Government that claims to be concerned about jobs, they’re not prepared to produce any evidence that their two big policy agendas this year will actually support rather than undermine unemployment. Thanks very much.   [ends]    malcolmThu, 12 Mar 2009 05:07:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:371http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/370/Interview-with-Tim-Cox-ABC-Hobart.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=370http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=370&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/370/Interview-with-Tim-Cox-ABC-Hobart.aspxSubjects: The impact of Labor’s policies on unemployment; Labor’s debt. E & O E   TIM COX:   Kind enough to give us a call Malcolm Turnbull, good to talk with you again.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning, Tim. Great to be with you.   TIM COX:   Now this is the week that you’d have been hoping for a bit of clear air on ETS with the Canberra phone book of legislation there. And of course…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   You know what they say Tim about that, that some people have an ambitious target by 2020, which is to read 15% of it.   TIM COX:   Well the ten senators that are going to be sitting on it for the next couple of months I am sure will be sleeping very well at night. The other issue of course is workplace reform. The leadership of the Coalition has surfaced as an issue, just what you need at the moment of course. Did you in fact have to scruff Peter Costello in the party room the other day?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim, the only focus I have at the moment is on jobs, and that’s jobs for Australians and the impact that the Government’s so called Fair Work Bill is going to have on jobs.   TIM COX:   What about a job for Peter Costello? You got any focus on that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, Tim. I am focused on jobs for all Australians.   TIM COX:   But did you have to scruff him the other day or not?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Tim I am not going to get into discussions about personalities. There is a Press Gallery full of people who can do that. I am focused on the big issues. The people that are listening to us today want to know what we believe the Government is going to do for their jobs and the tragedy is that the Government is failing to protect Australians’ jobs. The Fair Work Bill, the industrial relations bill that is in the Senate at the moment is simply going to give massive additional powers to trade unions. Do you know that if this bill is passed in its current form, a trade union official could come in to your workplace, into your radio station and inspect your employment records which could have health details, personal details about leave, family leave, all sorts of personal information, without your consent and you not being a member of that union. So if you’re not a member of the union and you haven’t given consent the union official can come in and rummage through your private information.   TIM COX:   Work Choices, though, cost John Howard the Prime Ministership. It cost you a car with a flag on the bonnet etc etc. How hard line do you want to be in opposing these changes that were so overwhelmingly supported by the Australian voters at the last election?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I am really glad you raised that Tim, because the change I just mentioned about right of entry was, not only was it not part of Labor’s election policy, but Julia Gillard said expressly that the right of entry rules would not be changed. They would be left as they were. So these issues about right of entry – and there are some other amendments that we are seeking as well – represent not simply matters that weren’t raised by Labor before the election but matters where Labor said they were not going to make any changes and now as part of their strategy to reward the trade union movement for their generosity and support in the election campaign, they are raising.   TIM COX:   Steve Fielding, whose support for this of course is absolutely crucial, the aforementioned Julia Gillard says the last thing he wants to see is the rights of businesses or the rights of workers being tramped, or I think he used the word “trampled” on. That, through the classification you’re using Malcolm Turnbull, would certainly be the case with this change.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, there’s no doubt it would. The reality is that, as I said, Labor expressly promised before the election that they would not change the existing right of entry rules. What they’re now saying is that a union official can go onto a workplace and go through the employment records of any employee, whether they are a member of the union or not, whether they have given consent or not. And that is an extraordinary breach of privacy, and is open, and will be the subject of incredible levels of abuse by trade unions as they can go through individuals’ records and it will be used as part of a process, as we know, of intimidation in the workplace. The overwhelming majority of Australians I know – whatever views they may have had about the Work Choices legislation of our government, when we were in office – the overwhelming majority of Australians would be appalled to think that somebody could go into the workplace, a union official, and look at their employment records without their consent.   TIM COX:   Alright, we’ll see if Julia Gillard will give us a couple of minutes on that this morning. The back drop, of course, to all of this is the latest jobless numbers coming out today. Whilst, and I think we canvassed this last time we spoke, you’re keen not to talk down the economy but are you expecting there to be a significant sort of rise to the jobless rate today?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think most people would be surprised if there wasn’t an increase in unemployment. The numbers will be out soon. Let’s hope that the unemployment numbers do not get worse and if they do get worse, they get worse by a small amount. We’re all very committed to maintaining a strong economy. The difficulty that we face is that the Government’s economic policies – we’ve talked about their industrial relations changes – the Government’s economic policies are not supporting jobs and not supporting a strong economy. Now they may be well intentioned. I’m not arguing about that. But they have had very adverse impacts, whether it was their talking up inflation last year, the unlimited bank deposit guarantee which has had such a devastating effect on so many Australian savings and on the finance companies that support the motor industry, and now the extraordinary level of borrowing that they’re running up. Just remember every dollar that is borrowed means higher taxes and higher interest rates in years ahead and those borrowings are being incurred to fund cash splashes which have already been demonstrated to be ineffective as an economic stimulus. And of course some of the cash splashes are actually being sent to people who aren’t even living in Australia so it is not a question of them spending five or ten per cent of it. It doesn’t matter how much of it they spend, they’re spending it in another economy altogether.   TIM COX:   We need to leave it there but thank you for your time this morning.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks so much Tim.   [ends]       malcolmThu, 12 Mar 2009 04:43:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:370http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/366/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=366http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=366&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/366/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Fair Work Bill E & O E The focus of the Government, the focus of every Australian today should be on jobs. And we are looking at the Fair Work Bill through that prism. This is all about jobs. What we are being presented with by Labor is legislation that goes well beyond their election policy. It includes provisions which are not simply anti-jobs but which are calculated, designed to increase union power at the expense of jobs. In other words, they are putting union power and the strength of the trade union movement, the interests of the trade union movement ahead of employment.   Now Labor says that their legislation will not cost jobs. Where is the economic modelling? Where is the evidence? If they are to be believed – and let’s face it, they said their cash-splash in December would create 75, 000 jobs and they’ve not been able to produce any evidence of one job – if they’re to be believed on this, where is the economic modelling? That should be provided to the Parliament, to the nation and to the Senate before it votes on this legislation.   Now we will be moving amendments to specific areas of the legislation. I will just run through them with you quickly.   As you know, Julia Gillard undertook expressly on many occasions that the existing right of entry rules would not be changed and yet that is exactly what the legislation is doing. They are proposing to give unions access to non-union members. So a union official can go on to a work site, can go and get your employment file, that may have many personal details – health records, other records – get hold of those even though you’re not a member of the union. That is wrong.  It’s contrary to Labor’s election promise, and we will move amendments to ensure that people’s records are not able to be accessed by unions if they are not a member of that union, unless of course they give consent.   The same, we’ll move a similar amendment in respect to unions’ right of entry to come on to workplaces for discussion with people, with members – or members of that workforce – who are not members of the union.   What the Government is proposing is a situation where a union can go into a workplace, as of right, where it has no members at all and enter into discussion with those members.  We say that’s wrong.  If the members wish, if the employees, I should say, wish to have the union come on to the workplace and they democratically vote to enable it to come on, then it can come on. But otherwise it should not be able to.   The Deputy Prime Minister also undertook on many occasions that there would be no compulsory arbitration, because of course we have a comprehensive safety net of awards which is there to ensure that there are fair terms and condition of employment in the event no other agreement is reached. This legislation breaks that promise and it would enable employers to be forced to agree to arrangements different from awards, to be compulsorily obliged to agree to those arrangements. That too is wrong and we will propose amendments to prevent that from happening.   There is also an elaborate change to the rules for greenfield projects, for new projects, which would allow any union to get involved with massive demarcation disputes and effectively veto new investment, new projects and of course cost jobs. Again, we will move amendments to deal with that also – and they are set out in the statement.   There is also the question of transmission of business and this where a portion of an employer’s business is transferred to another entity; it might be outsourced or whatever.  The changes the Government has proposed will actually cost thousands of jobs.  It is very much anti-jobs.   Now there are a number of these areas. The existing law on transmission of business is vastly preferable, although we note the Government has recognised they’ve got big problems with what they have proposed and their proposing amendments.  So we will look at those amendments but our position is that the existing law does a much better job at protecting employment.    Now, finally, dealing with unfair dismissal.  The unfair dismissal laws are a significant discouragement for employers to take on new employees because, of course, they increase the risk to the employer if the employee does not work out.    There is widespread concern that the definition of a small business of a headcount of 15 people – who could be 15 casuals maybe only working a few hours a week – is too low because it will leave out of the definition of small business many small businesses, indeed, many very small businesses.  And that definition is one that we seek to change.    Now we are going to work closely with the independent senators who have expressed similar concerns to see if we can reach a common ground that will better protect small business and better protect jobs.   QUESTION:   What did you say to Mr Costello in the party room?  Did you invite him to make his contribution from the frontbench?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m not going to go into what was said in the party room but we had a very good discussion and I should say the recommendations of the Shadow Cabinet were endorsed by the party room.   QUESTION:   At the end of the day, will you support the bill?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it depends what’s in the bill, Paul.  I mean, that is the issue.  We will see what the bill finally ends up as.  It is clear that it’s a moving feast.  You will have seen the correspondence Julia Gillard sent out to independent senators last night.  She’s proposing major amendments in vital areas – some of the ones we’ve mentioned here – but it’s unclear as to what those amendments will be and there’ll no doubt be many other amendments too.   QUESTION:   [Inaudible] insist on your amendments?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, we will insist on the amendments we are proposing, yes, but we may be able to agree on alternatives to those amendments with the independent senators or perhaps with the Government.  The Government’s not reaching out to discuss these matters with us, as you’d expect, but we seek to achieve the best outcome for jobs.  And so what we will be doing is putting up our amendments and then seeking to negotiate the best outcome.   QUESTION:   Do you not accept that there is a mandate on unfair dismissal laws as they’re put forth?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, as I said back in November, we reserve the right to move in the Senate amendments which will improve the operational efficiency of the bill without seeking to frustrate the Government’s election policy.  Now, the difficulty with the test of a small business at 15 is that it creates enormous anomalies, because you would have a business, for example, with 14 full-time employees, each working 40 hours a week, being described as a small business – and so being under the threshold – then a business with 15 or 16 people who may only work a day a week or a few hours a week being regarded as not within that threshold.  So there are considerable anomalies there and they’re widely recognised and it’s something that has to be addressed.  And the independent senators, particularly Senator Xenophon, and us have been discussing this and hopefully we will be able to come up with a solution that will improve the effectiveness of that threshold so that it is less damaging to small business and less damaging to jobs.   QUESTION:   [Inaudible] 20 employees…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Sorry?   QUESTION:   Before WorkChoices the Liberal Party policy was unfair dismissal with the threshold being 20 employees.  Is that what you’re looking at reinstating?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, 20 is certainly a lot better than 15 but, again, I don’t want to pre-empt the discussions we’re going to have with the independents.   QUESTION:   Have you sought to have direct negotiations with the Government rather than via the independents and the minor parties?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, as you know, our door is always open to direct discussions with the Government on this and so many issues but, you know, the shadow of Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard never darkens the entrance so they’re not. But we’d be delighted to sit down and discuss this with Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd but I am not holding my breath.   QUESTION:   [Inaudible] by the shadow of Peter Costello?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No.  I’m focused on jobs.   QUESTION:   Do you still broadly support the principle that the Government does have a mandate for this and isn’t it true that there are some notable exceptions to supporting that principle within your own side?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, the position that I’ve described is the position of the Shadow Cabinet, which has been endorsed by the party room. So that is the Coalition’s position.    Okay, thanks very much.   [ends]      malcolmTue, 10 Mar 2009 06:39:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:366http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/362/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=362http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=362&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/362/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspxSubjects: Liberal Party; economy; cash splash saved not spent.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………   LAURIE OAKES:   Mr Turnbull welcome to the programme.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good Morning Laurie.   LAURIE OAKES:   Look, as you know, I always try to be tactful but I am going to have to talk about the elephant in the room, the elephant that’s always in the room wherever you go, its name is Peter.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, Laurie I'm not sure which Peter you're talking about. Let me just say this to you in all candour and very seriously. As Australians are losing their jobs, as they are becoming more anxious about their future, as they are worried about what the economy holds for them, there is nothing of less interest to Australians than gossip about personalities and political games. So I'm not interested in that. I am focussed on jobs, jobs, jobs.   LAURIE OAKES:   You say you're not interested, but after Peter Costello's big week in the media, The Australian ran a story very prominently saying that most Liberal MPs now believe the Treasurer is positioning himself to take the leadership from Malcolm Turnbull. Are you spooked?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I'm concerned about jobs.   LAURIE OAKES:   Not just yours?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I am concerned about jobs. Let me tell you a story about the real world. I went up to Cessnock recently where 83 workers had lost their jobs in the Bonds factory. These are the lay-offs that Pacific Brands had announced. And I was up there talking to the local council about what could be done, what measures would be important. And do you knowat the same time as Kevin Rudd is spraying out tens of billions of dollars in cash splashes, they have not got on with a vital piece of infrastructure linking the expressway from Sydney to Newcastle to the New England highway? A billion dollars, all the money was set aside by the Howard Government, it would create thousands of jobs in the lower Hunter. And what people were saying there to me is, ‘we have got jobs being lost in factories here, we have got a Government wasting tens of billions of dollars in cash hand-outs, and they're not prepared to invest in vital infrastructure that will create jobs, thousands of jobs in our community’. And that is going on around Australia. We have got a Government that has lost its way.   LAURIE OAKES:   People are focussed on that and I think they are surprised the Liberal Party doesn't seem to be; you seem to be focussed on the elephant. Let’s get rid of the elephant quickly then. Did you or did you not offer Peter Costello the shadow treasurer’s job when Julie Bishop was about to fall on her sword? Peter Costello’s people say that you lied about that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I don't tell lies and I just want to be quite clear about this. I do not tell lies. I do not tell lies about any of my colleagues and anyone that suggests I have is not being truthful. But let me again repeat: the real issue is jobs and the economy, Laurie. The political gossip and personalties are of enormous and an absorbing interest to the media, there is no doubt about that. They can write about it. I want to use the precious time you and I have together – where you will exhibit your tact and I will exhibit my modesty – and let's focus on the real issues that confront Australia.   LAURIE OAKES:   Well a final elephant question then.   MALCOLM TURNULL:   Are you only using the word elephant because like Wayne Swan you can't pronounce rhinoceros?   LAURIE OAKES:   Certainly elephant is a lot easier. If the Coalition wins the next election, assuming you are still leader and Peter Costello is still in the Parliament, will you offer him a job in your Cabinet, and which one?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Laurie, again, I don't want to go there. You know, we've been around this bush so many times, let's focus on jobs. There are thousands of Australians, hopefully millions of Australians out there watching us who want to know why isn't Kevin Rudd taking the strong measures, the decisive measures that will promote employment, protect their jobs, make the economy stronger? They are the arguments that I'm putting out. I mean the fact of the matter is, we have a government that has lost its way. It's in a panic. Every action has been an overreaction to this economic crisis. Australians jobs are at risk, the Government is making a tough economic situation worse and my job is to put up the policies, and the critique, the constructive criticism that will help make it better.   LAURIE OAKES:   It is your job to critique the government and Prime Minister, as you say. But why have you involved the Prime Minister's wife? Why have you apparently attacked Therese Rein?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I have never attacked her. In fact I have congratulated her.   LAURIE OAKES:   Well you have certainly involved her in your article in The Australian yesterday and used her to get at the Prime Minister.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Laurie, in the article in The Australian on Saturday, and I would encourage all of your viewers to read it, its available on the web – a good advertisement there for The Australian. The fact is I congratulate Therese Rein and Kevin Rudd for the immense success of their family business which is in the job placement industry and I congratulate her for that, for her enterprise, her energy, the gutsy risk-taking that she has exhibited and they have created, they are a very wealthy couple, and good luck to them, good luck to them I say. I'm from the Liberal Party, we're the party of enterprise and having a go and getting on with living your dream, realising your dream and they have done that. But my criticism is of Kevin Rudd because he wrote a long piece recently in which he accused the Liberal Party of free market extremism and one of the things he gave as an example of that was deregulation and privatisation. Now you and I both know that Hawke and Keating did as much if not more deregulation and privatisation as Howard and Costello. But the real point is that the considerable wealth of the Rudd family is built on the business that Therese runs, which was built on the Howard government, and indeed to some extent the Keating government before it, outsourcing the functions of the Commonwealth Employment Service to the private sector. So, there you have a man who is standing up in Parliament denouncing privatisation and the free market and yet his very considerable wealth – he is the wealthiest Prime Minister in our history – is based upon a family business that that has made its fortune on outsourced government services. So in other words he has profited immensely, immensely from the very policies that he now stands up and criticises.   LAURIE OAKES:   But his argument has been that capitalism shouldn’t run wild and needs to be regulated and certainly in the jobs area it's very tightly regulated. But can I ask you this, aren't you taking a political risk highlighting the wealth of Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein when you and your wife are worth a reported $160 million, and you there sit in Parliament and you vote against $900 bonus payments for ordinary low income Australian families?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   But Laurie what I am voting for in parliament is financial responsibility. Remember, every single one of those billions of dollars that Kevin Rudd is borrowing, $200 billion is going to have to be paid back. It will be paid back by our kids with higher taxes and higher interest rates. And Kevin Rudd said these cash splashes would produce a boost to the economy and we saw in the December quarter we went backwards. The bulk of the money was saved. So while everyone that received it was grateful to receive it and the vast majority used it wisely by saving it, the reality is it did not deliver the economic boost that it ought to have done. But I would just say this about the personal business: Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party have attacked me consistently, personally, viciously for a lifetime, for a lifetime in the business world where Lucy and I have created thousands of jobs. Now I congratulate the Rudds on their success, I make no criticism of them, but I do criticise Kevin Rudd when he stands up and bites the hand that fed him. Because it was the policies of deregulation and privatisation and outsourcing of government services under the Howard government, and to some extent under Paul Keating, that enabled him and his wife to build a very considerable fortune and make him the richest man ever to sit in the Prime Minister's chair. I make no criticism of him of that. My point is his hypocrisy, not his wealth.   LAURIE OAKES:   Well, let's look at the big issue, the economy. One of the criticisms...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That is the elephant in the room, if I may say so, and it's taken us a long time to get to it.   LAURIE OAKES:   On this element, one of the criticisms of you is that you're inconsistent.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Really?   LAURIE OAKES:   The Government says this and I haven't hard you respond. In recent weeks you have accused Kevin Rudd of talking down the economy, undermining confidence by using gloomy language.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Very gloomy, apocalyptic language in fact.   LAURIE OAKES:   Yet on September 16 last year, you said and I quote: "we are presently facing probably the gravest economic crisis globally in any of our lifetimes". That's pretty apocalyptic.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think there is no doubt what I said in September is right. It is the gravest economic crisis we have faced in our lifetimes.   LAURIE OAKES:   So if you can say it why cant Kevin Rudd?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The point is, just think of what he said. On the 15th February, this is what he said, ‘we are facing an economic cyclone that's devastating country after country, devastating industries, devastating families, destroying jobs’.   LAURIE OAKES:   Is any of that untrue?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Laurie, it's the language. The reality is this: yes, we are facing a grave economic crisis and it is bigger than anything in our lifetimes, unless either of us are older than our youthful appearance would suggest. But the fact is that what he is doing is failing to point out that Australia is relatively stronger than any other developed country and you know why he never talks of our strengths? Because they are the consequences of eleven and half years of solid, efficient, effective, prudent economic management by the Coalition. It was the Coalition, the Howard government, that paid off all the Labor debt, that set us up, that dealt him the strongest set of economic cards, the strongest hand of economic cards any Prime Minister has ever had.   LAURIE OAKES:   But you, Malcolm Turnbull, who doesn't believe in talking down the economy, told Neil Mitchell in March last year, a year ago, you told Neil Mitchell it was possible Australia would go into recession. And when I asked you on a Sunday morning a year ago tomorrow whether a recession was likely, you said we could find ourselves having a very hard landing economically. Talking down the economy.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   But it is not talking down the economy. Laurie again, I thought we were going to talk about the economy and we're talking about words. Of course it's possible, any economy could go into a recession. I mean that’s like saying is it possible there will be a lightning strike on the transmitter here at Channel 9, of course it's possible.   LAURIE OAKES:   But for political reasons you were talking up the possibility of a recession a year ago and yet having predicted a recession then, you changed tack and you say in December ‘my view is that Australia will not go into a recession, I think that we'll have positive economic growth in the year ahead’. The inconsistencies are pretty mind boggling.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Laurie what is mind boggling is the fact that you are – I don’t know why we're wasting everybody's time talking about this but here we go. Someone says to me, is it possible we could go into a recession? Am I expected to say it is impossible that we could ever go in to recession? Of course it's possible. Is it possible there will be a lightning strike on this television station? Yes, of course it's possible. Do I think it's likely? Well no, I don't. A year ago I said I didn't think it was likely we would go in to recession, but it's possible. That's what I said a year ago. And that was true and if I has said anything else I would have been misleading people. I challenge you to find anything I have said about the Australian economy which is other than accurate and factual and objective. You have a long list there.   LAURIE OAKES:   Australia will not go into a recession. Australia will have a positive economic growth for the year ahead. You said that a couple of weeks ago. And now the Coalition says we're in recession.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No. I am not saying we are in recession. In fact we are not in recession…   LAURIE OAKES:   Joe Hockey says it feels like a recession. Inconsistency.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Laurie you’re playing words games…   LAURIE OAKES:   They are you words.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well you let me finish a sentence okay, deal?   LAURIES OAKES:   Yep.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Of course it feels like recession if you have lost your job, if you can't afford to pay the bills. Joe is absolutely right. Are we in a recession overall? Well we won't know that until we see the March quarter’s numbers and everybody knows that. We've had one quarter negative growth. If we have two in a row that is a recession. Joe is absolutely right. If you have lost your job, this is the thing that people forget – it boils down the personal situation of each family. If people are out of work, if they can't pay the bills, even if the economy overall is growing strongly, they feel as though they're in a recession. Times are tough for them.   LAURIE OAKES:   Malcolm Turnbull is not inconsistent, but on October 15...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Which year Laurie?   LAURIE OAKES:   October 15 last year. You said about the pre-Christmas stimulus package: ‘much of it if not all of it will be spent’. Yet last Wednesday you said, ‘we said the cash splash in December would be saved rather than being spent’. Not inconsistent?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   What I said was in October, because it was being handed out before December, I was expecting it would be spent, but what happened frankly between that and 8 December when I gave a long and very detailed speech about the economy to the Millennium Forum in Sydney, the evidence came in from the United States where a similar cash splash had occurred in the middle of last year and only about 20% of it was spent and that was a real wake-up call to everybody that these one-off cash hand-outs, even if they're handed out in the lead-up to Christmas, and that was I guess the most likely time to for it to be spent, that was a wake-up call, that was new information that this cash splash would not be effective. So, if you look and again if your viewers look at my website they can see the speech on the 8th of December, and I laid out the evidence from the United States and I said this is proof of a potential problem here. Now as it turns out 20% of the money that was splashed out in the States was spent and only about 20% was spent here. So the real issue Laurie is not that Mr Rudd made the cash splash in December. That is one issue. The big issue, the big problem is that cash splash in December having failed to be effective, why is he doing it again in March? In other words, he's made a mistake, let's say he made that mistake with the best of intentions and thinking it would be effective, give him credit for that, but it failed as an economic stimulus. But he's now backing up and doing it again. Now, people normally don't make the same mistake twice.   LAURIE OAKES:   Well we have to leave that elephant alone now. We're out of time, but thank you very much.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you very much.   [ends]      malcolmMon, 09 Mar 2009 02:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:362http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/360/Doorstop-Interview-Dernancourt-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=360http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=360&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/360/Doorstop-Interview-Dernancourt-Adelaide.aspx Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Subjects: Jobs for Australia Forum; stimulus package; South Australia’s High Court water challenge; motor vehicle industry. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’re here today with Chris Pyne and Andrew Southcott for another Jobs Forum. Right around Australia, we are reaching out to small business and medium business, asking Australians what they believe governments can do to enable them to employ more Australians and keep those employees they have on the payroll. We’re getting great feedback right around the country and what we’re learning is that the Rudd Government’s cash handouts have failed. The Rudd Government’s economic policy, made in a panic, is not producing jobs, it’s not protecting jobs, and it certainly isn’t creating jobs. Mr Rudd said last year that his $10 billion cash splash would create 75,000 jobs and promote economic growth. Well, we’ve seen what’s happened to economic growth. It’s gone backwards. And he hasn’t been able to demonstrate that it’s created one job, let alone 75,000. Mr Rudd’s policies have been the result of panic and politics. Right from the time he became Prime Minister, he’s had a political strategy but no economic strategy. Last year he talked up inflation and he talked up interest rates. And that had a negative impact on our economy in the latter part of last year. And now what he’s doing is borrowing tens of billions of dollars, up to $200 billion in fact, from our children which will mean higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. And he’s using that money to scatter around like confetti, sending out cheques to left, right and centre. And what has it done? Nothing. It has had no economic impact, no positive economic impact, and we saw that in the December figures. What we need are policies that are focused on promoting employment, and that’s what we stand for. Bringing forward tax cuts. Lifting the burden of tax from the shoulders of small business. Making it less expensive to employ Australians. That’s why we proposed a rebate of a portion of the Superannuation Guarantee Contribution, so that the cost of employing Australians borne by small business would be lightened. The government would help them keep their employees on the payroll. And we promote green refits. We’ve promoted doubling of the depreciation for investment in energy efficiency and water efficiency, creating jobs and of course doing a great deal for the environment as well. Can we just make one other observation on another topic. We’ve seen today that Mr Rann has decided to take Victoria to the High Court over water. What we’re seeing is a breakdown in the agreement, the pact, between the four Murray Darling states. Now in 2007, in government, we took the revolutionary step of doing what South Australians had called for in the 1890s, which is to put the interstate waters of Australia under federal jurisdiction. That was a bold move, it was a radical move. We carried through with it in the face of opposition from some Labor states and we legislated. It was the law of the land, the Water Act 2007. Since then, Mr Rudd has abandoned that vision. He’s handed the control of it all back to the states so it’s back to consensus management. He’s not taking a leadership role and, above all, he is not investing the billions of dollars we set aside, and that are in the budget, in irrigation infrastructure. And so around the Basin, from Queensland to Victoria, New South Wales, farmers are saying in the upstream states, what’s in it for us? Where is the money that was promised? Where is the investment in our on-farm irrigation infrastructure, and in the channels and pipes that bring the water to our farms? The investment has not been made. The money was there. Mr Rudd seems to have lost interest. And so naturally you see the arrangement starting to fall apart. Mr Rudd has dropped the ball. He’s abandoned South Australia. He’s abandoned the great vision of water reform. QUESTION: Do you support the court challenge? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not sure exactly what the challenge is. I don’t know that any of us are. I understand he’s challenging the Victorian arrangements about water transfers but until we see some more about it, it’s hard to comment on it. But what you can obviously see is that Mr Rann has thrown up his hands and said this whole thing isn’t working. So he’s really abandoning his Labor colleague Mr Rudd. It just shows you. Mr Rann was a very solid collaborator of mine in 2007. We worked very closely in putting together the support from South Australia for the National Plan for Water Security, even though we were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. But there is now an enormous gulf between him and Mr Rudd. Mr Rudd has failed South Australia. QUESTION: Does the Federal Government need to use its constitutional powers for a full takeover now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the Federal Government has those powers and we enacted them in the 2007 Commonwealth Water Act. That was the legislation I introduced into the Parliament in 2007 and is now the law of the land. So Mr Rudd has backed away from that and, in doing so, he’s abandoned South Australia. QUESTION: Is the problem really that Victoria could never be forced to give up its cap even by a national agreement? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the reality is that the Commonwealth Government, the Commonwealth Parliament I should say, has the constitutional ability to regulate water planning across the Basin and that’s provided for in the Commonwealth Water Act. Now clearly there has to be, there’ve got to be transitional periods. You can’t change water planning arrangements in one stroke on one day. And so there’s got to be a transition but really what Mr Rann is doing here, I think, is sending not so much a legal challenge. He’s sending a political message to Mr Rudd which basically is stop dithering, get to work, do something. Make the investments. Show us that you’ve really got the vision that John Howard had in 2007. I mean we had a vision for water reform in 2007. Mr Rudd said ‘me too’. He said he supported it. But once he became Prime Minister, he has dropped the ball. QUESTION: Onto another matter, what’s your reaction to Peter Costello last night offering to become Kevin Rudd’s adviser? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Kevin Rudd wants to talk about everything except his economic incompetence. I’m focused on Kevin Rudd’s failure as an economic manager. That’s why we’re meeting here to talk about jobs. So you can talk to Mr Rudd about those things. We’re focused on jobs. We’re focused on economic growth. We’re focused on the lives and the livelihoods of Australian families. QUESTION: Is Peter Costello overstepping the mark by giving policy advice? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, we’re focused on jobs. We’re focused on the economy. Other people can talk about politics and personalities. We’re focused on results. The people in that hall behind you want to know what governments can do to protect their businesses, to enable them to keep their employees on the payroll. QUESTION: Do you get the sense that Peter Costello might want to move to the frontbench, that his ambition is still there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I get the sense that the people behind us want us to talk about real issues, about jobs, about what governments can do to deliver real economic growth. Thanks a lot. QUESTION: On the job front… MALCOLM TURNBULL: On the job front. Okay, just one on the job front. QUESTION: Holden’s put the idea forward that cutting shifts might be in order to save workers’ jobs. What are your views on that, that cutting shift policy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I couldn’t comment on that. Really, we need a strong automobile industry in Australia. I would just say this. We saw in February a very significant drop in automobile sales in Australia. In fact, there was a year on year 28 per cent drop in sales of Australian-made vehicles and about 22 per cent for all vehicles. Now that is partly due, of course, to the economic situation. But in very large measure it is a direct consequence of the drying up of finance for the finance companies that finance the motor trade, that finance the motor dealers’ floor plans and, of course, finance people in buying cars. Those finance companies – GE, Ford Credit, GMAC and others – have not been able to raise short term money because of the Government’s unlimited bank deposit guarantee that they entered into late last year because the finance companies don’t have the benefit of the guarantee. Now the Government recognised that they’d had this adverse impact on the motor industry and said they were going to set up a special purpose vehicle to provide finance to the automobile sector. As far as I’m aware, no finance has been provided. And I’m hearing from motor dealers around the country that their job, their work, is getting harder and harder and that is a very good example, that decline in motor vehicle sales, which of course has an impact on jobs right through the supply chain, is a consequence of again a political decision, a poor economic decision driven by politics rather than by clear-headed thinking. The problem with Mr Rudd is that, so far, in terms of this economic situation, every action of his has been an overreaction. He’s overreacting all the time, acting politically instead of with a clear-head, thinking things through carefully and making well-judged, well-balanced economic decisions. Thank you. [ends]   malcolmFri, 06 Mar 2009 05:21:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:360http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/357/Doorstop-Interview-Mannum-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=357http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=357&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/357/Doorstop-Interview-Mannum-Adelaide.aspx  Subjects: Jobs for Australia Forum; stimulus package; South Australia’s High Court water challenge; motor vehicle industry. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’re here today with Chris Pyne and Andrew Southcott for another Jobs Forum. Right around Australia, we are reaching out to small business and medium business, asking Australians what they believe governments can do to enable them to employ more Australians and keep those employees they have on the payroll. We’re getting great feedback right around the country and what we’re learning is that the Rudd Government’s cash handouts have failed. The Rudd Government’s economic policy, made in a panic, is not producing jobs, it’s not protecting jobs, and it certainly isn’t creating jobs. Mr Rudd said last year that his $10 billion cash splash would create 75,000 jobs and promote economic growth. Well, we’ve seen what’s happened to economic growth. It’s gone backwards. And he hasn’t been able to demonstrate that it’s created one job, let alone 75,000. Mr Rudd’s policies have been the result of panic and politics. Right from the time he became Prime Minister, he’s had a political strategy but no economic strategy. Last year he talked up inflation and he talked up interest rates. And that had a negative impact on our economy in the latter part of last year. And now what he’s doing is borrowing tens of billions of dollars, up to $200 billion in fact, from our children which will mean higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. And he’s using that money to scatter around like confetti, sending out cheques to left, right and centre. And what has it done? Nothing. It has had no economic impact, no positive economic impact, and we saw that in the December figures. What we need are policies that are focused on promoting employment, and that’s what we stand for. Bringing forward tax cuts. Lifting the burden of tax from the shoulders of small business. Making it less expensive to employ Australians. That’s why we proposed a rebate of a portion of the Superannuation Guarantee Contribution, so that the cost of employing Australians borne by small business would be lightened. The government would help them keep their employees on the payroll. And we promote green refits. We’ve promoted doubling of the depreciation for investment in energy efficiency and water efficiency, creating jobs and of course doing a great deal for the environment as well. Can we just make one other observation on another topic. We’ve seen today that Mr Rann has decided to take Victoria to the High Court over water. What we’re seeing is a breakdown in the agreement, the pact, between the four Murray Darling states. Now in 2007, in government, we took the revolutionary step of doing what South Australians had called for in the 1890s, which is to put the interstate waters of Australia under federal jurisdiction. That was a bold move, it was a radical move. We carried through with it in the face of opposition from some Labor states and we legislated. It was the law of the land, the Water Act 2007. Since then, Mr Rudd has abandoned that vision. He’s handed the control of it all back to the states so it’s back to consensus management. He’s not taking a leadership role and, above all, he is not investing the billions of dollars we set aside, and that are in the budget, in irrigation infrastructure. And so around the Basin, from Queensland to Victoria, New South Wales, farmers are saying in the upstream states, what’s in it for us? Where is the money that was promised? Where is the investment in our on-farm irrigation infrastructure, and in the channels and pipes that bring the water to our farms? The investment has not been made. The money was there. Mr Rudd seems to have lost interest. And so naturally you see the arrangement starting to fall apart. Mr Rudd has dropped the ball. He’s abandoned South Australia. He’s abandoned the great vision of water reform. QUESTION: Do you support the court challenge? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not sure exactly what the challenge is. I don’t know that any of us are. I understand he’s challenging the Victorian arrangements about water transfers but until we see some more about it, it’s hard to comment on it. But what you can obviously see is that Mr Rann has thrown up his hands and said this whole thing isn’t working. So he’s really abandoning his Labor colleague Mr Rudd. It just shows you. Mr Rann was a very solid collaborator of mine in 2007. We worked very closely in putting together the support from South Australia for the National Plan for Water Security, even though we were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. But there is now an enormous gulf between him and Mr Rudd. Mr Rudd has failed South Australia. QUESTION: Does the Federal Government need to use its constitutional powers for a full takeover now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the Federal Government has those powers and we enacted them in the 2007 Commonwealth Water Act. That was the legislation I introduced into the Parliament in 2007 and is now the law of the land. So Mr Rudd has backed away from that and, in doing so, he’s abandoned South Australia. QUESTION: Is the problem really that Victoria could never be forced to give up its cap even by a national agreement? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the reality is that the Commonwealth Government, the Commonwealth Parliament I should say, has the constitutional ability to regulate water planning across the Basin and that’s provided for in the Commonwealth Water Act. Now clearly there has to be, there’ve got to be transitional periods. You can’t change water planning arrangements in one stroke on one day. And so there’s got to be a transition but really what Mr Rann is doing here, I think, is sending not so much a legal challenge. He’s sending a political message to Mr Rudd which basically is stop dithering, get to work, do something. Make the investments. Show us that you’ve really got the vision that John Howard had in 2007. I mean we had a vision for water reform in 2007. Mr Rudd said ‘me too’. He said he supported it. But once he became Prime Minister, he has dropped the ball. QUESTION: Onto another matter, what’s your reaction to Peter Costello last night offering to become Kevin Rudd’s adviser? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Kevin Rudd wants to talk about everything except his economic incompetence. I’m focused on Kevin Rudd’s failure as an economic manager. That’s why we’re meeting here to talk about jobs. So you can talk to Mr Rudd about those things. We’re focused on jobs. We’re focused on economic growth. We’re focused on the lives and the livelihoods of Australian families. QUESTION: Is Peter Costello overstepping the mark by giving policy advice? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, we’re focused on jobs. We’re focused on the economy. Other people can talk about politics and personalities. We’re focused on results. The people in that hall behind you want to know what governments can do to protect their businesses, to enable them to keep their employees on the payroll. QUESTION: Do you get the sense that Peter Costello might want to move to the frontbench, that his ambition is still there? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I get the sense that the people behind us want us to talk about real issues, about jobs, about what governments can do to deliver real economic growth. Thanks a lot. QUESTION: On the job front… MALCOLM TURNBULL: On the job front. Okay, just one on the job front. QUESTION: Holden’s put the idea forward that cutting shifts might be in order to save workers’ jobs. What are your views on that, that cutting shift policy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I couldn’t comment on that. Really, we need a strong automobile industry in Australia. I would just say this. We saw in February a very significant drop in automobile sales in Australia. In fact, there was a year on year 28 per cent drop in sales of Australian-made vehicles and about 22 per cent for all vehicles. Now that is partly due, of course, to the economic situation. But in very large measure it is a direct consequence of the drying up of finance for the finance companies that finance the motor trade, that finance the motor dealers’ floor plans and, of course, finance people in buying cars. Those finance companies – GE, Ford Credit, GMAC and others – have not been able to raise short term money because of the Government’s unlimited bank deposit guarantee that they entered into late last year because the finance companies don’t have the benefit of the guarantee. Now the Government recognised that they’d had this adverse impact on the motor industry and said they were going to set up a special purpose vehicle to provide finance to the automobile sector. As far as I’m aware, no finance has been provided. And I’m hearing from motor dealers around the country that their job, their work, is getting harder and harder and that is a very good example, that decline in motor vehicle sales, which of course has an impact on jobs right through the supply chain, is a consequence of again a political decision, a poor economic decision driven by politics rather than by clear-headed thinking. The problem with Mr Rudd is that, so far, in terms of this economic situation, every action of his has been an overreaction. He’s overreacting all the time, acting politically instead of with a clear-head, thinking things through carefully and making well-judged, well-balanced economic decisions. Thank you. [ends]    malcolmThu, 05 Mar 2009 05:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:357http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/356/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=356http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=356&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/356/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme.aspx  Subjects: ETS; economic stimulus; infrastructure.   E & O E   CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to AM.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Lyndal.   CURTIS:   The former Treasurer Peter Costello has been out this morning with his prescription for the economy, reconsidering emissions trading and industrial relations and spending on building things and business, is there anything you’d disagree with there?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well all of those matters are being looked at at the moment. The emissions trading scheme is something we’ve been very critical of. There is no question that it is neither economically responsible nor environmentally effective in its current formulation – that’s for sure.   CURTIS:   Are you happy to have Peter Costello as part of your economic team?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Peter Costello is a backbencher, one with a distinguished record in economic management and his contributions are always welcome. But the real issue today is Mr Rudd. Mr Rudd has a failed economic policy. Every reaction he’s had to this crisis has been an overreaction. We’ve seen one panic after another. We’ve seen a cash splash in December that was not effective as an economic stimulus and now incredibly, even though it was already apparent that the December cash splash was not effective, he is nonetheless going out to do another cash splash in March – so he’s compounding his error – and every dollar of that Lyndal is borrowed from our children. So the one thing we know is we are borrowing tens of billions of dollars from the future for ineffective economic policies today.   CURTIS:   But consumer demand did hold up in the quarter. Retial sales rose in December and at the same time households saved and put themselves in a better financial shape, why isn’t that a success?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the whole purpose of the cash splash was to get people to spend. Household spending went up by $1.2 billion in the quarter, household saving rose by $9.5 billion.   CURTIS:   So they managed to do a bigger…..   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   ….as Tim Colebatch said in The Age today; ‘the debate is over, Labor’s cash splash failed, it was a failure.’   CURTIS:   But there was only three weeks of that quarter where the stimulus package was in force……   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Lyndal you’re making a lot of excuses for the Labor Party – and that’s fair enough – the fact of the matter is this was a cash splash designed to get people to spend, it was saved – that was the criticism we made of it. We made the point last year. I gave a speech on the 8th of December and I made the point…..looking at what had happened in the United States, that in these times, these one-off cash payments almost invariably tend to be saved.   Now that doesn’t mean that it isn’t wise for people to save their money, of course it is in tough times, and some people will have had great benefit from the payments, but Mr Rudd aimed these payments not at social equity or fairness, it was designed to kick start the economy and it simply did not work.   Now the problem is that’s not the only economic decision he’s made that has made a tough situation worse. You see of course we’re in challenging economic times but we need a government that is able to make disciplined, carefully thought through decisions, not making panic decisions which are political overreactions to events they really do not understand.   CURTIS:   Should the cheques about to go out from the Government be stopped?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Lyndal I think that’s a theoretical proposition, it’s way too late to do that. Ideally it shouldn’t have happened. Obviously we voted against it. We have a plan for dealing with this challenge which is more effective than Labor’s. We went to the Prime Minister and said; sit down with us, we’re happy to negotiate a plan with you. Here is our alternative, which was spending half the amount of the money, therefore borrowing half as much money and spending money in a way that would genuinely deliver jobs that would benefit every business across the economy, lower the cost of employment for small business, provide real incentive for green industries and green jobs.   So we had an effective plan that was much more economically responsible. Labor wasn’t interested in that and they rammed through this plan which involves compounding and repeating the mistake of December.   CURTIS:   But the bulk of the stimulus package will go to building things, to schools, to houses, some money for roads and some money for small business, will that help the productive capacity of the economy?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well to a very limited extent Lyndal. The reality is a third of the package is a one-off cash splash, which is happening in the next few weeks, another third is $14 billion to be spent over two and a half years on….mostly on assembly halls and libraries and primary schools.   Now as Michael Costa, the former Labor Treasurer of New South Wales wrote only a few weeks back in The Australian; there is no chance of state governments being able to effectively manage that. And you see the bizarre thing about this Government is that at the same time as their shovelling tens of billions of dollars out in cash splashes, which are demonstrably not working, they are not getting started with infrastructure which is shovel ready.   Now I was in Cessnock the other day, on Friday, where of course there have been workers laid off by Pacific Brands and the Bonds factory – and that’s having an impact on that community – there is a road there, a freeway extension, the F3 Link, to link the Newcastle Freeway to the New England Highway which is fully approved, the land’s been acquired, the planning is done, the Howard Government put the money in place to enable that to be done, it could start tomorrow, it could start almost immediately, why isn’t it getting underway? And what the people up there in Cessnock were saying to me; is why is Kevin Rudd throwing money around like confetti instead of investing in infrastructure that will actually create jobs and improve the productivity, the efficiency, the prosperity of our country in the years ahead.      CURTIS:   Do you believe Australia is in a recession now?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I mean it’s a technical term and you’ve got to wait to see what the March quarter says. But certainly the economy is slowing and these are very challenging times. People are losing their jobs, the economy is slowing and the Government is making the recovery harder.   You see this is the thing….it’s as though there is no tomorrow for Kevin Rudd. He’s throwing money out the door today. He doesn’t care whether it’s effective and he says, oh look cut me some slack, I’m just trying, I’m just spending money, you know just please make excuses for me – which is what he’s encouraging everyone to do. But what he’s forgetting is that every billion dollars he spends today is going to have to be paid back tomorrow – and that means higher taxes, higher interest rates tomorrow.   So he’s spending money ineffectively, failing to stimulate the economy today but creating a situation when that money has to be paid back, it will definitely slow the economy, cost jobs, higher interest rates, higher taxes in years ahead.   CURTIS:   You say Kevin Rudd’s rhetoric has been scaring people yet the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister has said overnight the world faces an economic hurricane that imperils the planet, isn’t Kevin Rudd merely saying similar things to Gordon Brown?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it sounds like Gordon Brown is catching Kevin Rudd’s problem. Look the fact of the matter is using this type of extravagant language is very counterproductive. What people need are facts. I always try to talk about the economy in factual terms and not being extravagant. Kevin Rudd at the same time as he’s encouraging people to spend is – and you heard him as I did on the 15th of February in the House of Representatives where he talked about an economic cyclone leaving wreckage in its wake, devastating economies, devastating jobs, crushing the dreams and livelihoods of families across the world – now anyone that listens to that is hardly going to take their $900 and spend it, they’re going to use it to pay-off debt or put into the bank.   So the fact of the matter is his political style is designed…..well what’s he trying to do? You’ve always got to look at the political question. Kevin Rudd’s political agenda is this; he wants everybody to blame today’s problems entirely on overseas events. He does not want to take any responsibility for the situation in Australia and what he is trying to avoid is the recognition, that I think that has now dawning on all of us, which is that he has by making foolish political, poor economic decisions made the situation worse, he has made a difficult situation worse.   There’s no question we’re in an economic storm. There’s no question we’ll get wet. We will not sink in my judgement because of the strength of the Australian economy he inherited. But what he is doing is steering the boat so poorly that we are getting more wet then we ought to be. And he is mismanaging our economy making things worse.   Look at the damage he’s done to the motor industry, that is a direct consequence, that incredible crash in sales in February year on year, is a direct consequence of a failed Rudd Government policy.   CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull thank you very much for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks so much Lyndal.   [ends]   malcolmThu, 05 Mar 2009 04:44:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:356http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/355/Interview-with-Keith-Conlon-and-Tony-Pilkington-Radio-5AA-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=355http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=355&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/355/Interview-with-Keith-Conlon-and-Tony-Pilkington-Radio-5AA-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: The economy; cash splash saved not spent; visit to Murray River. E & O E QUESTION: Joining us now is the Federal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Turnbull, good morning, welcome to Adelaide. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, great to be with you. QUESTION: And of course we’re here on a day when the headlines around Australia talk about the numbers and, as we’ve been saying, most people don’t need to be told what the technicals are. They know that we’re either in it or going into recession. You’re arguing about the packages of the Government. What would be different under a Turnbull package? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we would spend less money, and we’d spend it more effectively. Our big criticism of Mr Rudd is that he has been panicked; he’s been in a state of panic ever since this global financial crisis became apparent. QUESTION: But even the IMF, a very conservative organisation, has said spend, spend, spend. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I wouldn’t quite agree with that but let’s look at the facts. The results are now in. The reality is he spent, he threw $10 billion out in December and it produced very little impact. The vast bulk of it was saved. That’s apparent from the numbers. You saw a big increase in household income, very small increase in household expenditure, big increase in savings. The bulk of the money was saved, so it wasn’t an effective economic stimulus. QUESTION: So retailers would disagree. They’re pretty happy with their figures. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, though there was an increase in retail sales, there could be a number of factors for that. But see that again is not really the point. You can always justify paying money to people. Part of the payment in December went to pensioners. Now we’ve been arguing that pensioners should get an increase in the single age pension so you could argue, and certainly we welcome the payments to pensioners. But the question is was it an effective use of taxpayers’ money because the thing we cannot forget – this is what Mr Rudd always forgets – is that every dollar he spends today to try and get an economic lift, is going to be an economic drag in the future when we’ve got to pay higher taxes and higher interest rates to pay it back. So there’s no free lunch. So when you’re using taxpayers’ money today, you’ve got to use it in a way that’s most effective. QUESTION: Can you guarantee that by spending less, and you say spending better. I mean spending less would suggest… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Spending less and spending better. QUESTION: …it would suggest that maybe we would be worse off, because it’s not such an injection. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s not right. I disagree with you. What we proposed, our plan was one which would have created jobs. What we said was rather than just throwing out a lot of money which people will save as has turned out to be the case, so I think we’ve been proved right there. Rather than doing that, we should bring forward the tax cuts which benefits every business right across the country. QUESTION: You’re still in favour of tax cuts? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, absolutely, because… QUESTION: Right across the board, or only for business? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, what we proposed was that the tax cuts which were already in the system scheduled for July 1 this year and July 1 next year just be brought forward by six months in one case and eighteen months in another. Now… QUESTION: Isn’t there international evidence that suggests that when we get tax cuts, we save, which is not necessarily a bad thing. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The evidence is actually different. What the evidence is that if you give people, particularly in difficult times like this, a one off cash payment they will tend to save it, and about 80 per cent plus of this money was saved. That incidentally was exactly the same experience in the United States, in the middle of last year. And when the numbers from the United States came out towards the end of last year, that was the point I made in the speech in Sydney in December. I said, well, it will be interesting to see whether Mr Rudd’s fiscal stimulus works because it’s a bit of an economic experiment because if ever people are going to spend a one off cash payment it’s when you give it to them two weeks before Christmas. Now, as it turned out, 80 per cent of it was saved here, 80 per cent of it was saved in the States. However when you increase someone’s permanent income, by reducing their taxes or increasing their salary for example, they are much more likely to spend it and invest it because they have a feeling of security and permanence and that’s part economics, part psychology. QUESTION: You can understand though, is it dangerous politically for you to be arguing against the idea of this stimulus package when people say, well effectively, Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition don’t want to pay us the money. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s why I said at the time the position we took on the $42 billion spendathon of Mr Rudd’s was going to be electorally unpopular and it’s proved to be. There’s no question. Mr Rudd’s never made an unpopular decision in his career as Prime Minister. Now, I believe we’re elected to Parliament to do the right thing. It’s not always going to be popular, and you will get a kick in the guts in the polls from time to time. But you’ve got to stand up for what’s right. Now that $42 billion spending package is not a good package. It’s all borrowed money. It will all have to be paid back and what we proposed as an alternative is a smaller package, less than $20 billion in fact, which was focused on tax cuts, reducing the cost of employment for small business, promoting and encouraging investment in green refits and buildings so to improve our energy efficiency, our environment and of course create jobs, and also to spend money on schools but to spend a smaller amount in a much more targeted way that would get better results. You see, the real question is, it’s not just a question of spending. You’d think everyone that’s listening today can think of a business. You can get a business manager who’ll say I’ll go out and spend a fortune on marketing. What happens if it doesn’t work… QUESTION: Malcolm Turnbull, can we get to Terry McCrann’s question. The fact is in a couple of weeks there’s going to be another dollop of money heading for most families. Yeah, $900. At least that, and if you’ve got the back to school kids, you could have 3000 bucks. He says, don’t spend. He says don’t worry about what the Government says. He says save, save, save, that will be good for you. What’s your advice to South Australians? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, my advice is take account of your own situation. I mean, everyone’s situation is different. I think the vast majority of people will save it, and they’ll save it because they think tougher times are coming up ahead and they will use it to pay off some debt or if they haven’t got any debt, they’ll put it aside for a rainy day. And I can see what Terry’s advice is, but I reckon most people will have made that decision already. QUESTION: Quarter past eight. We’ll just delay the headlines slightly because we know you’ve got to head off up the Murray today. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right. QUESTION: Where are you headed? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’m heading up to Mannum, meeting Pat Secker and Jamie Briggs up there. And we’re going to be looking at the river. As you know, the Murray River is one of my great passions. When I was the Water Minister, John Howard and I were able to put together the National Plan for Water Security that for the first time put the control of interstate water under the Federal Government, where actually South Australians wanted it to be in the 1890s but they got rolled by the other states. So we corrected that error in 2007. QUESTION: We’ve got a current worry because one of your Coalition partners, Mr Springboard, up in Queensland has just in the last 24 hours said maybe Queensland will pull out of this new historical national deal. What are you going to tell him? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think the real message there is to Mr Rudd. What happened was, we presented a great vision and $10 billion of funding in 2007, and we legislated to take that federal control over the interstate water. But the whole basis of the plan was to be able to use water more efficiently, to grow more food with less water and to invest in irrigation infrastructure both getting water to the farm and on the farm. So win-win, win for farmers, win for the environment, win for food security. What the Labor Party has done – it’s really tragic that this is being done by a South Australian Minister, Penny Wong – that they’re focusing all their efforts on just buying back water. In other words, putting farmers out of reducing our agricultural capacity. Now that is a lazy solution and that is what is angering a lot of people around the country, but particularly a lot of farmers who can see, hang on, we’re going to end up with no irrigated agriculture at all. So we’ve got to be able to do both. You’ve actually set an example here in South Australia. Years ago, South Australian irrigation areas were largely piped and plumbed. They’re, relative to other areas, very efficient in the way they use water. You do that right across the basis, you’ll have more water in the river, you’ll have a stronger economy and a more productive agricultural sector. That’s our approach. Labor’s is just buy the water back, shut the farms down. QUESTION: Eighteen past eight. Malcolm Turnbull our guest. Before you leave, Mr Turnbull, there’s a telephone call for you. You wouldn’t mind putting the earphones on. We can’t guarantee the quality of the call, or who it’s from. Good morning. CALLER: Hi Malcolm. It’s Amanda Blair. QUESTION: Our afternoon presenter. CALLER: You’re coming in to my program this afternoon. MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right Amanda. CALLER: I bet you think this voice is just a parody of my voice, don’t you. Boy are you in for a shock. Malcolm, my producer Monique Bowley and me both think you’re really attractive and hot. We do. We think you’re really sexy. And you’ve got to say, Malcolm, my love, that that takes women from being shallow and being attracted to wealth and power to a whole new f***ed up level, don’t you reckon? QUESTION: Get out of here. CALLER: Malcolm? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, yes, I’m here, Amanda. I’m listening very intently. CALLER: You don’t talk much either, and that’s quite attractive too. When you come in… MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s right, you like the strong, silent type with the emphasis on the silent. CALLER: Oh, you want to have a bit of what for now, do you? Listen, wear black leather when you come in. Bye Malcolm! Love you. QUESTION: You will join Amanda this afternoon. CALLER: I think, yeah. QUESTION: Good luck! I think Chris Kenny’s kind of lined him up as a bit of a gag, I think. To sort of toughen him up a bit.  [ends]malcolmWed, 04 Mar 2009 23:19:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:355http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/335/Interview-with-Tim-Webster-Radio-2UE.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=335http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=335&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/335/Interview-with-Tim-Webster-Radio-2UE.aspx Subjects: Securing our economic future.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   WEBSTER:   Malcolm Turnbull is on the line now. Hi thanks for your time again.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah hi Tim. Great to be with you.   WEBSTER:   Are you playing politics with this or are you genuinely concerned about this package?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We’re very concerned. We’re standing up for what is right. Tim I know that the position we’re taking by voting against this package is going to be unpopular. I know we will get bad polling…   WEBSTER:   You will.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   …but it is right. Because we’re standing up not for ourselves but for our children and their children, because the debt Mr Rudd is running up will have to be paid off by them.   WEBSTER:   Alright now the ideological side of it I’ve been mentioning for the last couple of days, we’re going back to this silly old thing of social democrat versus neoliberals. Putting that aside…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’ve never heard of a neoliberal by the way, until Mr Rudd said I was one.   WEBSTER:   In the essay, I thought it was a fascinating, fascinating essay, wasn’t it? So putting that aside, and I’d really like to, economically why is it not a benefit to inject all of this money into the economy, particularly things like infrastructure and building?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well Tim firstly the size of the package in our view is too big at this time. We’ve got to remember that every dollar we spend today is going to have to be paid for. Right now the budget is in deficit so every extra billion dollars that is spent is going to go onto the national debt which future tax payers, those kids I talked about, are going to have to pay off in the future. So therefore you shouldn’t spend any more money than is absolutely necessary.   We think $42 billion is more than we should or need to be spending at the moment. We have suggested that we should spend between $15 billion and $20 billion; we think that’s about the right approach. That’s a judgement call. There isn’t, you know, a mathematical formula that tells you the precise answer. But of course it leaves some more ammunition, some more shots in the locker to use later if needed. So that’s the first point.   Secondly we do welcome investment in infrastructure. It has got to be effective and you’ve got to make sure the infrastructure you invest in is infrastructure that is going to give you the best outcome. Now in this programme, this $14 billion is directed mostly to assembly halls and libraries in primary schools. Now we are very committed to spending money on schools and as you know…   WEBSTER:   We should, yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   …we spent a lot on schools when we were in government. But $14 billion is a lot to try and spend on primary schools, not all of it on primary schools but most of it, over the next few years. We think a more realistic approach would be to reinstate and expand the Coalition’s Investing in Our Schools programme which was very effective and very popular. And put a smaller financial target on that. We’ve suggested around $3 billion, and that over three years, that would be a significant amount and of course you can increase it if you choose to do so.   WEBSTER:   Okay now the $10.4 billion stimulus package over Christmas, now the figures are out saying that retail sales are up, a record $19.2 billion. That would seem to suggest that Mr Rudd’s package over Christmas worked.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it seems to suggest that people spent more money over Christmas but there are a couple a things you’ve got to bear in mind. Firstly was that just a one-off sugar hit? Number two, a lot of people had more money in their pocket by Christmas time because those people who hadn’t lost their jobs or whose businesses hadn’t declined were paying less for petrol and they were paying lower interest rates. So there was more money in the system anyway. Now most economists estimate – and we won’t know until all the final numbers are in – estimate that most, two-thirds in fact of that money was in fact saved. And therein lies the problem. If you give people one off payments, windfall payments at a time of economic uncertainty they are more likely to save it…   WEBSTER:   Yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   …or use it to pay down debt. And that’s why we think that a better approach is to bring forward the tax cuts from 2010.   WEBSTER:   I have to say that’s been troubling me. That’s been troubling me because you know you had those awful figures that quite a few hundred million dollars of it ended up in the pokies.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well no doubt. I’m sure most people used the money wisely but obviously a percentage did not.   WEBSTER:   Now if that’s the case, is having a second, if you like, mini budget in early February too early?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well this is a sort of a budget you have when you’re not having a budget I suppose. The Prime Minister would do well to have a more comprehensive approach but this is a very substantial economic commitment, financial commitment. It’s difficult to see what he could do in the budget that would match this in terms of its scale. But the real issue though Tim is that we are not opposed to a stimulus. And we don’t think, unlike the Prime Minister, we don’t think we have all the answers. We have views about the size of the package and its composition and we want to sit down with the Government and discuss it and go through it and see if we can agree on measures that will have the most effective outcome.   Now the Prime Minister introduced this proposal yesterday and gave us a few hours notice of it, and said we had 48 hours to pass it through the House and the Senate or else. $42 billion in 48 hours, now just think about it.   WEBSTER:   Yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It is a staggering amount of money.   WEBSTER:   It sure is.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   To think that the Parliament of Australia should just wave it through with that scant consideration is an insult to the Parliament and an insult to the Australians who paid the taxes and who will have to pay that money off in due course.   WEBSTER:   Okay, so that’s it, voting against it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We are indeed but we are very open to, in fact we are seeking to consult with the Government, and what we would like to do is to reach an agreement on a package that would be a more effective one. We are not saying, as far as our proposal is concerned, take it or leave it, but we wanted to put down some indication of our views both as to the scale and the composition so that people had an understanding of where we were coming from on this important issue.   WEBSTER:   Okay, thanks for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks Tim.   [ends]       malcolmWed, 04 Mar 2009 05:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:335http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/353/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments1http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=353http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=353&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/353/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: National Accounts. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Today’s figures are a wake up call for Mr Rudd and Mr Swan. Their economic mismanagement, ever since they came into government, is making a difficult economic situation much worse. Their panicked decisions and old Labor style of spend, spend, spend is damaging the Australian economy, undermining our prospects and costing Australians’ jobs. Right from the time they came into government, they have had a political strategy but no economic strategy. We’ve had a poor December quarter. We’ve seen the numbers there today. That December quarter was affected by the interest rate rises earlier last year. Those interest rate rises were a direct consequence of the actions by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer talking up inflation. For purely political reasons they talked up inflation, they talked up interest rates. We were urging the Reserve Bank and the Government to focus on the challenges from the international problems from the sub-prime crisis. They ignored that. They wanted to make a political point. They talked up rates, and up they went. And that has affected our economy. We have seen today, just today, numbers – very grave numbers – of vehicle sales. Vehicle sales in February are down 22 per cent year on year, and for Australian made vehicles they’re down 28 per cent. That is directly connected to another Rudd Government economic blunder – an unlimited bank deposit guarantee that ensured that the finance companies that financed the motor trade couldn’t raise money themselves, and of course that’s had an impact on people’s ability not simply to finance cars if they’re selling them but on their customers’ ability to buy them. And so we’ve seen that dramatic fall off in vehicle sales, again directly connected to decisions, poor economic decisions, made by the Rudd Government. Now you’ll remember that last year we said the cash splash in December would be saved rather than being spent. In other words, it wouldn’t be an effective fiscal stimulus. It wouldn’t be an effective economic stimulus because people would save it in these difficult times, they’d save it or they’d use it to pay down debt. It is now beyond any doubt that over 80 per cent of that money was saved and not spent. We’ve seen a very big increase in household income but a very modest increase in household expenditure and household consumption, and that is because the $10 billion was, as most economists predicted, was largely saved. In other words, it produced very little bang for the buck, but the one thing we know, even though it produced a very small economic stimulus, it will produce a very big economic drag in years to come when it has to be paid back because every cent of that $10 billion will have to be paid back, as will every cent of the $42 billion the Government is undertaking right at the moment. And that will mean higher interest rates for Australians in the future and, of course, higher taxes. Finally, let me say something about confidence. A key element in all of this is to ensure that Australians are confident about their future. Now, Mr Rudd won government and inherited the strongest hand of economic cards of any incoming Prime Minister anywhere in the world. A government which had no debt. It had paid off the Labor Party’s debt. The Coalition had done that. John Howard had done that. Paid off the debt and had a lot of cash at the bank. Taken the burden of pension obligations into the future off the shoulders of our children and our grandchildren with the Future Fund. Solid budget surpluses; it was a terrific hand of economic cards. And that is why, that is the reason why our growth, while negative in the December quarter, is still better than most other countries with which we can be compared, because of the very good starting position that Mr Rudd inherited. But he has been misplaying those strong economic cards again and again.  And on the one hand, as he borrows billions of dollars from our children and seeks to spend them to promote economic activity today, he was also talking down the economy and sometimes in terms that would terrify the most cool-headed person.  Just remember this, just think of this, on the 15th of February this is what Mr Rudd said in the Parliament at the same time that he was getting approval for his economic stimulus, the $42 billion, he said: "the global economic recession is the equivalent of an economic cyclone spreading from continent to continent, leaving wreckage in its wake, devastating economies, devastating jobs and crushing the dreams and the livelihoods of families across the world".  Can you imagine any other political leader in the world using language like that?  That is language that is designed to scare people, to terrify them.  No wonder people aren’t spending when they hear their Prime Minister talking about their future like that. So, yes, we’ve had a negative quarter and we are very disappointed that it is negative.  We want to see strong economic growth every quarter.  What troubles us in the Opposition is that this Government inherited a great and strong economic situation here, delivered by eleven and a half years of good Coalition government, and they have been squandering it in a panic with measures that have had little impact, little or no impact on our economy today, but will generate a very heavy economic drag in terms of higher interest rates and higher taxes in the years ahead. QUESTION: Can we avoid recession now? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we hope, well, what you’re really asking us, asking Joe and I, is whether we will have a negative quarter in March.  Now we don’t know the answer to that.  We hope that we’ll have positive quarters always, and we were hoping we’d have a positive quarter in December, but we will see.  So I’ll leave that to the economists to forecast.  But obviously a recession, the technical definition, is two negative quarters one after the other.  So we’ve had one. If we have another, yes, we will technically be in a recession. QUESTION: What do you make of Wayne Swan’s comments that the figures would have been a lot worse had the Government not gone ahead with its stimulus package? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, this is what he says, this is the only thing he has to say.  I mean Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd said the $10 billion cash splash in December would create 75,000 jobs. We’ve asked them in Parliament – show us it created one job.  They cannot demonstrate it created one job.  They gave us to believe that these massive expenditures, borrowing money from our children to spend like that in a big cash splash, they said this would keep us out of recession, this would ensure that our economy was growing strongly, and we’ve had now a negative quarter.  Now if ever there was a time people were going to spend a $10 billion cash hand out it was a hand out that was delivered two weeks before Christmas.  And you can see from these figures, exactly as we predicted last year, the vast bulk of it has been saved. Now that’s not a bad thing. Of course it’s sensible for people to save and restock their net assets, I guess, in times when houses have come down in value and particular financial investments, shares and so forth have really taken a hiding. It’s sensible for families to do that, but it doesn’t produce the economic lift that Mr Rudd has promised. So basically what he’s done is taken $10 billion, borrowed it from our children, borrowed it from the future, he’s handed it out, it’s had little or no impact and when the results of their incompetence are made clear with this negative growth figure, the only thing they can say is, yes it’s bad but it would have been worse if we hadn’t spent that $10 billion. Well he will say that regardless of what the figures are. QUESTION: We did have positive retail results yesterday and also I mean we are still in positive territory overall, annually adjusted figures. It really could have been a lot worse, couldn’t it. We could have seen negative for the year but we are still are above the line compared to other countries in the region. MALCOLM TURNBULL: If the Rudd Government had had a balanced economic strategy from the time it came into office, our economy would be stronger today. You can’t just look at these figures as being the result of one decision. You’ve got to remember this is a Government that talked up interest rates at a time that interest rates should have been coming down. This is a Government that has talked in the most apocalyptic terms about our economic future. I read you that passage. It is difficult to think of anything more frightening that a Prime Minister could say about the economy. That has been the tenor of his language. What he is seeking to do is always to shift the blame onto somebody else. He wants Australians to believe that the only reason things are tough is because of external factors and it’s got nothing to do with him. The fact is he inherited a very strong economy. I’ve said again and again we are in an economic storm. We will get wet, but we won’t sink. But even though you’re in a storm, even though you’re in a storm and it may not be the skipper’s fault that you’re in the storm, the skipper nonetheless has to steer the boat effectively and wisely and prudently, and that is what Mr Rudd has not done.   Look at those motor vehicle figures. Just think about that. Think about that dramatic fall in motor vehicle sales directly as a consequence of that foolish, poorly considered unlimited deposit guarantee. A deposit guarantee, bear in mind, that was entered into without the Prime Minister talking directly to the Reserve Bank, and within days the Reserve Bank was begging them to change it, saying, put a cap on it and the lower the better. They have made one mistake after another and we are now paying a heavy price for it. QUESTION: Do you think criticising the stimulus packages is lowering confidence further? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, not at all. The Australian economy has very considerable inherent strengths, and as I’ve said in large measure because of the very strong fiscal position that was inherited from the previous government. And we also don’t have the same problems in our banking industry as other countries have done. Why is that? Because of the financial and prudential regulation that was put in place under the previous government. Julia Gillard, the same time as Mr Rudd was saying the Australian economy had been mismanaged by liberal extremists, Julia Gillard was in Davos saying that our financial and prudential regulation was better than world class. Now they can’t have it both ways. They inherited a very strong economy with outstanding – better than world class in Julia Gillard’s words – financial and prudential regulation. That is one of the reasons why our economy is relatively strong. But we still need good management, and what we are seeing is one political decision after another. These are decisions that are aimed at political headlines, not good economic management. And Australians, who will have to pay back these billions of dollars in years to come, are going to be saying, what did we actually get for it in terms of economic activity? And the answer is, practically nothing. QUESTION: What would you tell the Government to do from here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: What the Government has to do is undertake measures that will drive jobs, that will promote economic activity. So what did we do? Mr Swan says that we didn’t have an alternative to the $42 billion stimulus. That is completely untrue, as everyone knows. We proposed a smaller package, so therefore incurring less than half the debt, focused on increasing the productivity of our economy. So bringing forward tax cuts to give incentives right across the board, lowering the cost of employment so that small businesses would have some of the burden of employing Australians and keeping Australians on the payroll lifted off their shoulders. Genuine incentives to invest, to work, to undertake the enterprise, the enterprise that drives our economy. The old Labor approach of just throwing money at everything and hoping that some of it works has failed. It has failed in the past and it is failing today. QUESTION: Can you say that we are really doing that bad considering that some of our major trading partners have recorded GDP figures that are much worse than ours? MALCOLM TURNBULL: And I acknowledge that. That is right. The reason we are doing better than other countries, relatively, is because of the very strong economic position we had going in to this downturn. And Malcolm Edey from the Reserve Bank has given a speech to the AIG this morning where he makes that very point. In fact, I think I’ve almost paraphrased what he said. So we started off, our starting point – whereas other countries are starting off with a lot of government debt, with budget deficits, with slowing economies – our economy was growing right through last year until the last part of the year. And the fact is we went into this downturn, this global downturn, in a relatively strong position. And that’s why we’re still relatively better off than others. But nonetheless the question is… now Mr Rudd can’t claim credit for that, he can’t take credit for the hard work that the Coalition did in government. What he has to be judged on is simply this test: has he made things better or worse? And it is clear beyond any doubt that his poor economic decisions have made a difficult situation worse. Thank you. [ends]malcolmWed, 04 Mar 2009 05:16:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:353http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/343/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=343http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=343&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/343/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: SAS pay scandal; climate change; RBA, national and international economy.   E & O E   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Kevin Rudd should immediately ask the Australian National Audit Office to investigate the SAS pay scandal. He has a Minister who has admitted that he is completely clueless as to what is going on. He doesn’t know how many soldiers are affected. He doesn’t know how much money has been docked from their pay. He doesn’t know how much is owed. He’s admitted he knows nothing and he said he’s going to get an outside auditor to come in and look at it. Well, we have in the Australian National Audit Office the team that is ideally qualified, the appropriate team, to investigate this and they should get to work immediately. The Prime Minister can set them to work straight away to look into this extraordinary case of carelessness and incompetence that has seen our soldiers on the frontline and their families on the breadline.   I also want to talk about carbon and carbon emissions. In the course of last week, the Rudd Government has mocked and wilfully misrepresented the Opposition’s proposal to harness the enormous potential of our 770 million hectares of real estate, the vast continent of Australia, as a means of reducing CO2 emissions by promoting soil carbon, biochar and environmental forestry. They’ve mocked that. They’ve misrepresented it. They’ve said it’s unproven. They’ve poured every bucket of scorn they could find upon it and now we see today the Agriculture Minister announcing he’s investing some millions of dollars into research into soil carbon. Well, that’s not good enough. If they’re serious about taking a practical and effective approach to climate change, then these green carbon opportunities have to be part of their emissions trading scheme. They cannot be ignored any longer. They represent the greatest opportunity to cut our CO2 emissions, improve the productivity of our agriculture, improve our food security and improve our environment in so many other ways.   Now, turning to the interest rate or the decision by the RBA. The Reserve Bank today has emphasised the relative strength of the Australian economy, its strength relative to other economies. It’s good that they’ve done that. It’s a pity that Mr Rudd doesn’t do it more often. I hope when he meets President Obama he will pick up a little bit of President Obama’s optimism because all Mr Rudd has done is talk down our economy. The last time he spoke in the House about the Australian economy he talked about a global economic cyclone that is wreaking devastation on nations, industries and jobs around the world.   He’s got to speak accurately, responsibly and positively about our economy because while we face challenges we need a government that makes them better, not one that makes them worse. And the fact of the matter is that from the time it came into office, the Rudd Government has not had an economic strategy – it’s had a political strategy.   It has made difficult times worse for Australians by poor economic policy. We should remember today, in the context of interest rates, as we reflect on interest rates, the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Rudd Government is in the process of borrowing to fund spending decisions which will not represent good value for money, which will not create the jobs Mr Rudd has promised, and for which he has no evidence, will nonetheless put a heavy burden on future generations and guarantee that in years ahead Australians will be paying higher taxes and higher interest rates because of Mr Rudd’s ballooning debt burden.   QUESTION:   Couldn’t Mr Rudd argue that this is a sign that the stimulus package is working?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   There is no evidence that the stimulus package, the cash splash from December, has had any positive effect beyond a slight increase in retail sales. In fact there’s a report from Westpac today, an independent report, which estimates that 75 to 80 per cent of the $10 billion that was handed out in December has been saved. In other words, that confirms exactly what we’ve been saying, which is that these one off payments at times like this are for the most part going to be saved or used to reduce debt and that means they’re not going to be going back into the economy to promote economic activity and jobs.   That is why these one off payments, however much they may be justified on other grounds, are not an effective economic stimulus. That’s why we’ve advocated measures to make the cost of employing Australians less, to reduce the cost of employment, to bring forward tax cuts, to create greater incentives for investment, for employment, for economic activity.   We proposed a fiscal stimulus package half the size of Mr Rudd’s, half the debt but with much greater impact, and, as time goes on, we will all see how unwise and reckless Mr Rudd’s economic policies have been.   QUESTION:   But while most countries are going backwards, we seem to be at least holding our ground. Surely it’s had some impact, these stimulus measures?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, you see from the Westpac numbers that the December cash splash has had very little impact because almost all of it has been saved. I mean the whole purpose of the cash splash in December was to spend. Remember Mr Rudd said, spend, spend, spend, and encouraged everyone to go shopping.   Now if ever there was a one off payment that was going to be spent, it’s one handed out two weeks before Christmas. But now we have Westpac saying, and I have no reason to doubt their figures, that 75 to 80 per cent was saved. And that, by the way, is a very similar percentage to what was seen in the United States when they had a similar cash splash in the middle of last year. There the evidence is that only 20 per cent was spent. So it’s a very similar experience.   QUESTION:   Has the economy stabilised?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, we will see. These are very challenging times around the world and we’re seeing, only last night, big falls in international share markets. The reality is we are in challenging times. I like to say yes, we’re in an economic storm, we’ll get wet but we won’t sink. I am very optimistic. I am very positive about the Australian economy. We are, relative to other countries, much stronger and that is because not just the enterprise, the hard work, the ingenuity of the Australian people, but because Mr Rudd inherited a government which had no debt. He inherited a government which had been managed for 11 and a half years by the Coalition, which had paid off all of Labor’s debt, had put money in the bank, had taken the burden of future obligations off our children and grandchildren’s shoulders. So he inherited the best set of economic cards that any incoming prime minister could ever hope for. And he has been playing them very badly, because we’re already going into the biggest debt we have ever seen.   Okay, thanks guys.   [ends]   malcolmTue, 03 Mar 2009 06:13:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:343http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/334/Interview-with-Jamie-Dunn-Radio-4BC-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=334http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=334&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/334/Interview-with-Jamie-Dunn-Radio-4BC-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: General; Queensland election.   E & O E   DUNN:   Malcolm, how are you?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah, great to be here.   DUNN:   Mate thanks for coming in. This is a segment I do where I kind of don’t talk politics which is tough for you I guess?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s a relief.   DUNN:   Is it a relief?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah.   DUNN:   Now I was going to say to you – before we went on air we were talking about surf clubs and sharks and God knows what – but you were a member of Bondi…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   North Bondi Surf Club, yeah that’s right, when I was – well I’m still a member but when I was a young bloke I was a lifesaver there.   DUNN:   Yeah well I was in Tugun here as a cadet when I was 14. My goodness how long ago is that. And Noosa Heads I was the president of Noosa Heads, mate don’t take me on.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well you’d know all about politics if you were president of a surf club.   DUNN:   Wouldn’t you? That’s so true. You know they say with surf clubs it makes men out of boys and boys out of men. You kind of like slide in the middle there. Did you ever have a rescue when you were…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well only one…   DUNN:   Have you saved anyone?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I only ever saved one person’s life personally, and that was – it was quite a funny story actually. It was an absolutely flat day, the surf was as flat as a tack. I was sitting down at the north end of Bondi with my little hat on…   DUNN:   Yeah, yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lifesaver’s hat on. Yellow and red hat on and sitting there next to a reel; we had reels in those days.   DUNN:   Oh yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   And a lady, a very nice middle aged lady came up and she said in a very English accent, she said ‘excuse me, are you a lifesaver?’ And I said ‘well yes I am, actually.’ I was very polite back.   DUNN:   Yes.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   And she said ‘my husband can’t swim and he appears to be in some difficulty.’   DUNN:   That is so English.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   And she gestured out towards Ben Buckler, out to the rocks there and I could see there was a couple of guys on boards, on surf planes I should say, and there was obviously something happening there so I jumped into the belt, swam out and we pulled the old boy in. He had obviously had a heart attack or a stroke or something, anyway we got him in and got him going again and all the time while we were feverishly working away to get him breathing again she sat by his side and said ‘there, there dear, you’ll be alright.’ And so I thought well, no wonder the Brits survived the Blitz.   DUNN:   Malcolm I was a lifesaver at Noosa and once again a pommy tourist had gone out in quite a big sort of surf and I went out with a torpedo buoy which is supposed to hook around – I get out the back and his face was paler than it normally would have been because he was you know, the same colour as your shirt being an Englishman. I clipped him up and all of a sudden behind him I see this massive wave coming and it was sucking all the water out from around us and I said to him ‘we have to go further out.’ And the look on his face, I said ‘we have to go further out and go under that wave that’s coming.’ And the look on his face was like I was a complete idiot and I swam towards the wave and of course he was behind me attached to the torpedo buoy, and I got under the wave but then that rope went ‘dooing’, and then it went [water noise] and his little face…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Do that again, that was great.   DUNN:   I finally got him to the beach, all he did was unclip himself and walk away. I’ve never seen him ever again.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   He should have been very grateful.   DUNN:   So mate where did you start, I mean I’m supposed to research this and rehearse this but I like this just to be au natural.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Sure, sure.   DUNN:   Are you a toff?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, what do you reckon?   DUNN:   Well I don’t know, I want to just like talk about…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I’ll tell you where I grew up, I grew up in Sydney in the eastern suburbs. My parents, my father was a salesman, later became a hotel broker, and my mother was a writer.   DUNN:   That would have been tough – a writer.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well no she, look they didn’t have much money and they had even less when my mother cleared out when I was about nine. And my father was a battler in the sense that he was – well he just didn’t have a lot of money. He kicked a few goals later in life but when I was a kid he was, you know he was always trying. The great thing about my father was, and in fact it’s one of the things that has always inspired me, is that firstly he stuck with me when mum left. Never said a bad word about her although he obviously thought a few bad thoughts about her I’m sure.   DUNN:   Yeah he would have.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   But he was very controlled and he was determined that whatever happened I would always love her. So he was always very positive about her. And he was incredibly resilient, you know he tried a lot of things and they didn’t always work out…   DUNN:   And like you say later in life he still had the motivation to make things work later…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well yeah, he made, he got some interests in pubs eventually and – he died when he was killed in an aeroplane accident when he was 56 which was very sad because he was a very, it would be sad for anyone but Bruce was a very athletic guy, a very fit guy, ran marathons and everything else…   DUNN:   Isn’t it amazing with your father though, I’ve lost mine too because I’m 59, you’re 54.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   54, yeah.   DUNN:   You just – I miss him still you know. There might be a, I don’t know, some smell, some clothing, something that just reminds you of them.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I was – because my father and I lived together, just as two blokes, and really from say when I was, really from before I was nine until when he got remarried  when I was about 16.   DUNN:   How did you handle that? Were you pleased for him?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No that was okay, well I was pleased for him. It didn’t work out, he wasn’t a particularly good, marrying time type of person.   DUNN:   It was him. All this time we’re thinking it was your mother, it was him.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I don’t know, I don’t know. The fact is that he was, you know we were just living in little flats in Sydney’s east and so we were very close and we did all the surf club stuff together…   DUNN:   Yeah, yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   You know lots of those sorts of things.   DUNN:   Because it makes men out of boys, that’s why he did it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah well he was a very humorous guy, but he had so many good values. You know he’d always say ‘never take a backwards step’, ‘keep punching’ you know all that sort of…   DUNN:   My dad said that to me…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Really, very, very – he was a great one to believe in the power of positive thinking and you know just generally a wonderful human being. A very, very Aussie bloke. He embodied for me the best characteristics of the Australian bloke.   DUNN:   So his inspiration, like my dad, I would always consult with my dad, his inspiration kept you going and you drew a lot from it.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It did and when he died, when he was killed, I missed him – I think of him every day.   DUNN:   I can’t imagine what that would be like.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think of him every day, we were so close because we were like brothers. And I kept all his clothes…   DUNN:   We are very similar.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’ll tell you, he was a smaller man than me but one of the most beautiful things is that my son, our son Alexander who was born three months before Bruce was killed, my father was killed, is more my father’s size, as it turns out. He wears his grandfather’s boots, I kept all of Bruce’s clothes and he was, you know he loved riding and so he had some nice riding boots, and he had these western boots…   DUNN:   Yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   That, actually I had bought them for him when I’d been travelling in the States. I bought some cowboy boots for him, you know really…   DUNN:   How does it feel to have your son wearing your father’s boots?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s amazing you know, when Alex was in – he works and lives in Hong Kong now – but when he was studying in Boston in the United States I used to think what an amazing thing is that there is Bruce’s grandson stamping around in the snow in Boston in his grandfather’s boots.   DUNN:   With the spirit of your father on board.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, I’m very sentimental about him and when he died he was living on a property he’d bought up in the Upper Hunter at Scone, which we still have, and I just buried him there in the front garden.   DUNN:   As you would.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I thought he loved it so much and I didn’t want him to leave it.   DUNN:   Well, I still have mum and dad. I had them in the car for a long time which unnerved a lot of people I worked with. But I had such a good relationship with them, like you and your dad, although I don’t know how I would have coped with one day there, one day gone sort of thing. My dad passed away over a period of time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, that’s how my mother, my mother had a long illness and that was very sad but…   DUNN:   But you get to say everything you want to say to them.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, you do. Well, you should do. I imagine not everyone does but I always think, Bruce was in a light plane flying from Scone. He was meant to be going from Scone to Casino, on the New South Wales coast and it crashed in the Barrington Tops. Well it actually crashed right in the middle of the town of Gloucester. Luckily it didn’t kill anybody else other than the people in the plane. It haunts me all the time, just thinking of that couple of minutes when they knew they were, when the wing came off and they started to spin and they knew they’d had it. There was nothing they could do.   DUNN:   So, you think he’d be proud, obviously he’d be proud of you now, Leader of the Opposition and you could, mind you, Kevin’s very, very, very, very popular.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   He is, he’s very popular. No doubt about that.   DUNN:   But there’s no reason you should be punished for being successful.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think if Bruce was here, he would say well done. He always used to tell me I was too heavy. He used to say, ‘lighten up, for God’s sake, lighten up.’   DUNN:   You mean personality wise?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   He just thought I took life too seriously. I was too, I didn’t see enough of the funny side of things and I think as I got older…   DUNN:   I think you do. I think you’ve got a turn of phrase. I like your sense of humour.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Anyway, he certainly taught me that. He was a very, very good raconteur. They’re great things fathers, and you know, as a man, when your father dies, I think a lot of men I’ve talked to have this feeling, and whatever age it is, you might be old yourself and your father might be in his nineties when he dies, you sort of have that feeling that you’ve somehow or other rather moved to the front of the queue.   DUNN:   Yes, yes, well, you’re preaching to the converted here. I’m right at the very front of the queue! Your father is in you, isn’t he? You live your life by his rules and stuff.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Mmm.   DUNN:   I suppose I should ask a political question to end it all. I’ve really enjoyed working with you. What are you doing in town? Why are you here?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I’m going out to…   DUNN:   You’re helping Lawrence.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I’m delighted to help Lawrence. I mean heaven knows Queensland needs a change of government. You know the scariest thing about the Labor Government here is that Queenslanders are contemplating who they will elect to run the state during a period of economic difficulty and they’ve got the Labor Government there that ran the state heavily into debt when times were good. Now if you run up a gigantic debt when times are good, how capable are you going to be when times are tough? And that’s just something to contemplate.   DUNN:   Well, my last question is your middle name.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Yep.   DUNN:   It’s Bligh.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Bligh it is, yes. I can reveal now, I can reveal now…   DUNN:   Are you related?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Drum roll, no, I’m not related…   DUNN:   Hang on, I’ll get a drum roll, I’ll get a drum roll then you can reveal. Hang on, we have to wait. Where’s my drum roll? I need a drum roll. There you go, what can you reveal now, Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I can only reveal that I’m not related to Anna. She is, I believe, a direct descendant of Governor Bligh, you know, Captain Bligh, the Bounty, whereas I’m just named after him. That wasn’t because I was a particularly cruel child or took to throwing my little friends off the side of the boat. No, but the old Turnbulls, I’m descended from a guy called John Turnbull who settled out in Australia in 1802 on the Hawkesbury River, and Bligh was a great supporter of the small farmers, small free farmers, free settlers, against the Rum Corp, which were like a sort of crooked police force.   DUNN:   We had those in Queensland.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The old Hawkesbury River families were great admirers of Bligh and a lot of them, no, a number of them, named their children after the Governor and my line of the family has just kept the name going so I’m Malcolm Bligh, my dad was Bruce Bligh and so forth.   DUNN:   Well, my last name Dunn means dark and swarthy. So look out! Thank you very much for coming in, Malcolm.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Okay, good to be here. Thanks mate.   DUNN:   You’re a good bloke!   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you.     [ends]      malcolmMon, 02 Mar 2009 04:23:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:334http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/332/Doorstop-Interview-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=332http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=332&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/332/Doorstop-Interview-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: the economy; Joel Fitzgibbon; executive pay; Rio/Chinalco; Jobs for Australia.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m here with my colleague Andrew Laming, the Member for Bowman, and Mark Robinson, the LNP candidate for Cleveland in the state election. In this state election, Queenslanders are being asked who do they trust to manage their state, to manage its finances and to manage this great economy of Queensland in what we know are going to be challenging times ahead. And they have a Labor Government that has run this state into massive debt in good times, in the middle of a mining boom. Ran up enormous debt and lost the state’s AAA rating. The real question then for Queenslanders is, how can you trust the Labor Party to manage this state, the jobs of Queenslanders, the future of Queenslanders, in tough times when they have so badly mismanaged it and run up so much debt in good times.   The other thing I want to make some remarks about is Joel Fitzgibbon. In October last year, Joel Fitzgibbon said he would fix the problems with the SAS pay. These are Australia’s elite fighting men. They are in the front line of the battle against terrorism. They’re the men we send into the most dangerous part of the world to fight the most ruthless enemy, the Taliban, and their pay has been in a state of disarray for months. Joel Fitzgibbon said in October he’d fix it up.  He said in Parliament in the last few weeks that it was all fixed and now today he has thrown up his hands in despair, acknowledged that he has no idea what the real facts are, and called in independent auditors to investigate. The sad fact of life is this; Joel Fitzgibbon is completely out of his depth. He does not know whether the soldiers have been properly paid or not. He does not know how much they have been underpaid by. He does not know how much has been claimed back. He does not know how many soldiers are involved. He doesn’t know anything at all and Mr Rudd should put him out of his misery and appoint somebody competent as Minister for Defence.   QUESTION:   In that case, are you calling for Mr Rudd to sack Joel Fitzgibbon?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Absolutely. Mr Rudd should dismiss Joel Fitzgibbon. If Joel Fitzgibbon is not prepared to do the right thing and resign, then Mr Rudd should sack him. We have a Defence Minister who has said again and again, over months, that there is not a problem or that the problem will be fixed or that the problem has been fixed and yet the only thing we know about Joel Fitzgibbon is that he doesn’t know what’s going on and he has now admitted to that today by saying he is so despairing of his ability to find out the real facts, to find out what’s going on, he’s calling in the auditors. Now, there has been a complete collapse in confidence between the Minister and the Defence Department. He has to fall on his sword, and if he doesn’t, Mr Rudd should give him a push.   QUESTION:   So it’s no doubt that the relationship between the Minister and the Department is at an all time low. What does that mean for our troops serving over in Afghanistan?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   There is nothing more important than morale. When we send our troops into the frontline, they have to know that they have a Government and a Minister for Defence who is rock solid behind them. They have to know that that Minister will move mountains to sort out any problems they have. Now every soldier in the Australian Army knows that if John Howard was still Prime Minister and this problem had arisen, it would have been fixed on the spot. Immediately. It would have been fixed. It doesn’t involve a large number of men. It isn’t a huge amount of money. It is simply a question of incompetence, indifference, laziness, that has seen this situation where we have a Minister who genuinely does not have a clue. He is clueless, and he’s admitted he’s clueless today by calling in independent auditors to try to find out the real facts of the matter.   QUESTION:   But the accounting problems in the Defence Department were an open and acknowledged problem even during the previous Howard Government. If the Howard Government couldn’t fix the problem in all the time they were in Government, how can you expect Joel Fitzgibbon to have fixed it in the short time he’s been the Minister?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   There hasn’t been a precedent for this. This is a bizarre situation where we have our finest soldiers on the front line and a Minister leaving their families on the bread line. That hasn’t happened before. It shouldn’t have happened now, and Mr Fitzgibbon should resign.   QUESTION:   Moving to executive pay, what’s your stance? The Greens have come out saying one thing and Lindsay Tanner said shareholders should decide. What’s your stance on what they should get paid?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I thought Lindsay Tanner had said the opposite, actually. He said shareholders shouldn’t decide. I’ll tell you what our position is. I have stated last year and I’ve stated again this year, and I might say this has been my view for many, many years, that the senior executive salaries – certainly, the salary and the remuneration of the chief executive – should be decided by the shareholders. That’s to say, it should get the approval of the shareholders. Now, there’s plenty of precedent for that. There are many decisions that are taken in companies, particularly public companies, that have to go to shareholders for approval. That simple change, just a little bit of democracy in the corporate world, would ensure that you would not get some of these over the top salaries and, frankly, if shareholders want to pay their chief executives a lot of money, it’s their company, they can do it. But what outrages a lot of shareholders, a lot of mums and dads with shares in companies, in their super funds, who have seen the value of their investments plummet, what enrages them is to see executives being paid big money when the shareholders have been losing. It’s a sort of heads they win, tails they win situation and that’s not fair.   QUESTION:   Do you think that Chinalco should be able to invest in Rio?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   This is a big issue, Chinese investment in Australian mining companies. We are continuing to get information on it from the company and we are looking forward to the Government’s consideration of it through the Foreign Investment Review Board process. There are a lot of issues there, and we are carefully considering it and monitoring it, and we’ll be expressing our views on it in a considered way in due course.   QUESTION:   So at this stage you don’t have a position?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   This is a complex situation. Rio has some very big financing challenges. It needs to raise money to reduce debt. There are a lot of questions as to whether this is the best way for it to do so. There are some shareholders that have been arguing they could raise that money through a rights issue. Rio has said that’s not open to them. It’s a complex structure that is being proposed. There are questions about how much control the Chinese investors will have and we’re seeking more information on that, as I’m sure the Government is, and we’ll be forming a considered opinion in due course having regard to all of the issues, including the thousands of jobs that depend on Rio in Australia.   QUESTION:   Well, then, what are some of the reasons that a Chinese company shouldn’t be able to invest in an Australian mining company? What would it mean for our resources sector?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I think those issues have been well aired in the press. There are questions about control. That’s why we have a Foreign Takeovers and Acquisitions Act. That’s the whole purpose of the regulation is to ensure that the national interest is protected. It’s a question of getting the balance right. None of these issues are ever straight forward. They’re always complex, and it’s important to look at them very carefully and have regard to the competing issues, not least of which, of course, are the jobs of Australians and also, of course, the question of control of Australia’s resources so it is always a balancing issue. The Government is dealing with it right now, as they should be, and we’re certainly monitoring it very closely. But we’ll be forming our views in the light of all the information.   What we’re doing today, this is a jobs forum. What we’re doing around Australia is reaching out, both in public meetings like this and through our website Jobs for Australia, to seek ideas, suggestions, policy suggestions, from the public, particularly from small business, as to the policies we can propose and that governments can undertake to protect jobs. The three top priorities of every government in Australia today are jobs, jobs, jobs. That is our focus and that’s what we’re holding the Government to account for. Now so far they’ve spent a lot of money, a lot of borrowed money, and haven’t created any jobs. When Mr Rudd was asked to demonstrate that his $10 billion cash splash in December had created the 75,000 jobs that he said it would, he couldn’t demonstrate that it created one job. There’s a lot of wisdom out there in the community and we’re reaching out all over Australia in forums like this and on our website for ideas, suggestions that will enable us to present the policy proposals that will enable Australian business to keep their employees on the payroll.   QUESTION:   Is this the first forum of its kind in Queensland, or have you held some already?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We’ve held forums around Australia. This is not the first, but this is probably the largest one that’s been held in Queensland to date. Andrew Laming, as you know, is the Member for Bowman and heads up our Opposition Economics Committee. Andrew’s very focused on the needs of small business, very alert to the opportunities for action and policies that will create, make it easier for businesses to keep people on the payroll. That’s why when Mr Rudd was proposing his $42 billion stimulus, we proposed a different, a smaller amount of money therefore less debt but a more effectively targeted stimulus. And one of the elements in that was a proposal that would rebate a proportion of the Superannuation Guarantee contribution for small business, thereby directly reducing over a period of several years the cost of employment. So that was one constructive suggestion that we put forward, and we’ll be putting forward others, particularly as we draw on the ideas from the community and in particular the small business community which is really the engine room of the Australian economy.   [ends]   malcolmMon, 02 Mar 2009 02:47:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:332http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/331/Interview-with-Luke-Grant-Radio2HD-Newcastle.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=331http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=331&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/331/Interview-with-Luke-Grant-Radio2HD-Newcastle.aspxSubjects: Pacific Brands; employment; Labor’s debt train; Joel Fitzgibbon’s SAS pay scandal.   E & O E GRANT:   He’s on the line, morning Malcolm.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Luke.   GRANT:   Thanks very much for your time today. What do you intend to do when you’re in the region today?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we’re always meeting people, listening to the local community, getting good feedback, it’s particularly important to understand the implications of these job losses for Cessnock and the lower Hunter. And that’s why we’re meeting with the community leaders, with the Mayor, Alison Davey, and the Deputy Mayor Dale Troy and the Council. And also getting out and meeting with small business people and members of the community.   GRANT:   Yeah, given the report in the Telegraph today in relation to what the directors have allegedly voted themselves, that increase, you can understand there’s a fair bit of anger in the community about this today.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Not only can I understand it, I share it. I have been advocating changes to the way executive remuneration is set for a very long time. In fact many years ago, more than 15 years ago I took one of the big listed companies in Sydney, Fairfax which publishes the Sydney Morning Herald and of course the Newcastle Herald, I took them to court when they were giving themselves options exercisable at a dollar when the share price was $1.50. They were giving themselves cash.   [line drops out]   GRANT:   He’s back on the line now.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Sorry about that I don’t know what happened. So I was just saying that in the past I took the directors of Fairfax to court to stop them overpaying themselves and I believe there’s a very straightforward reform that we could make now and Mr Rudd should make now if he’s fair dinkum about this issue, which is to say that senior executives’ pay must be approved by the shareholders. Now at the moment the senior executive remuneration package, if you like, goes to the shareholders and they can express an opinion but it isn’t binding. But it should actually be voted on by the shareholders and that will see a great deal more moderation and circumspection in some of these salary increases.   GRANT:   You would certainly hope so because right now all of us think well, we’ve given that company something like $17 million and a year later after receiving that money in two licks they practically double their directors’ bonuses and they sack nearly 2,000 people. It just doesn’t seem to be right. But what about this issue, where we’ve got – now it’s out there for everyone to understand they’re going to let those workers go. But if those workers leave today because there’s a job down the road that suits them today they’ll lose their entitlements. There’s got to be some protection for those people don’t you think?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Absolutely and this is one of the issues I look forward to discussing with the company and I don’t [inaudible] major political issue out of the very, very [inaudible] circumstances of these workers. Our concern is that the Government has good economic policies that promote jobs and lower wherever possible the cost of employment. Now we believe the Government’s economic policies since they have come in have actually made a difficult economic situation a lot worse. We have a different view, we recognise people, you know there’s a legitimate range of debate about that but that’s our view that they talked up inflation last year, contributed to higher interest rates last year. They have blasted away a lot of money in spending which is all borrowed money, all of which will have to be paid back but which has been done in a way that does not, and is not obviously contributing to employment. So they’re spending a lot of money ineffectively.   But as far as the particular workers involved here are concerned, they must be treated fairly and generously, and whatever we can do to assist them and protect their interests with the company, we will do.   GRANT:   The average bloke in the street or average lady in the street hearing people like you talk and the Treasurer talk, and we hear the world financial turmoil which gets the blame now for everything that exists in a negative way on planet earth. We hear things like the Industry Minister say ‘no job is safe’ and a lot of people nod and say ‘yeah, that’s right given what we hear.’ Was he wrong to say that yesterday or right to say that yesterday?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it was an absolutely reckless and destructive thing to say Luke. You know the key element here is confidence. Kevin Rudd is like the coach of a football team that is struggling a bit at half time. And instead of going into the dressing room and saying ‘guys, you can walk through brick walls, you can walk over broken glass, you can tear the hearts out of your opponents, you can win, you can do anything, you’re supermen.’ Instead of talking, instead of doing that he’s like a coach who goes in there and says ‘we’re doomed, we’ve lost, give up.’ All he does is talk down the economy.   You know the other day in parliament I sat there, I was stunned to hear him talk about the global financial crisis, this is what he said, I’m paraphrasing but this is essentially what he said; he said ‘it is an economic cyclone that is going from country to country, devastating nations, crushing industries, destroying jobs.’ Anyone who listened to that and believed it would just want to go and hide. What you need is confidence. The fact is jobs are being lost, but the fact is most Australians have still got their jobs and a year from now will still have their jobs, the vast majority.   What we need is confidence and a belief in ourselves, a recognition that we have a strong economy. Kevin Rudd inherited a very strong economy, a Commonwealth Government that had paid off all the previous Labor Party debt. He was dealt by John Howard the very best economic cards he could have ever asked for. And what he has been doing now is talking down the economy from the day he got into office. He undermines confidence and he is making a difficult – it is a difficult situation – he is making it a lot worse. That is my criticism of him.   GRANT:   But doesn’t Joe Hockey also talk it down when he talks to the fact that they’ve now gone into so much debt, or the Government has gone into so much debt it will take forever to pay off? I mean isn’t that more gloomy talk there, the stuff that Joe Hockey [inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I think you’ve got to build up confidence but the reality is Luke, I’m afraid to say Joe is telling the truth there. It’s not pleasant but it is true, if the Government runs up $200 billion of debt which they’re doing, everybody knows it will have to be paid off. Whether you run up $200 billion of debt as a government, or $200,000 as an individual you know you’re going to have to pay it off at some point.   GRANT:   Yeah.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   And the fact is it will be our kids and our grandkids that will be paying it off.   GRANT:   I’ve only got a minute to go, apparently Joel Fitzgibbon, the local member here and Minister for Defence has said that your party has misrepresented a blank payslip in its dealings with the SAS pay dispute this week, and that you owe them an apology. Do you?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Joel Fitzgibbon has said again and again in parliament that he didn’t know what was going on. He’s corrected himself frequently about his blunders but Joel has totally mishandled this. The fact of the matter is, and there’s a story on the front page of The Australian quoting the partner of the soldier concerned, there was a soldier, there is a payslip – it was from January – where there are so many deductions clawing that money that had been previously paid that the payslip ended up with a zero on it.   Now the reality is that what Joel Fitzgibbon is now doing is he is seeking out, trying to find out the people who have complained about this so they can be victimised. And this is a very shabby exercise. Now Joel is a nice bloke and a good guy to have beer with and all of that stuff, but he has completely mishandled this situation and the SAS and every member of the Defence Forces know that if John Howard had been prime minister, if Brendan Nelson had been defence minister or Robert Hill had been defence minister, this problem would have been fixed up in an afternoon. There’s not a lot of men involved, it’s a relatively small number of men, in the context of the defence budget a relatively small amount of money, they could have fixed it up in an afternoon and Joel has allowed it to go on for months and months. Frankly he’s just not competent enough to fix it up.   GRANT:   I’ve got to leave it there. Thanks for your time, have a good day up here today.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks.   [ends]      malcolmFri, 27 Feb 2009 05:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:331http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/346/Doorstop-Interview-Cessnock.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=346http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=346&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/346/Doorstop-Interview-Cessnock.aspxSubjects: Pacific Brands; F3 link; executive remuneration; Rudd meeting with President Obama; self-funded retirees; Labor’s panic on ETS.   E & O E …………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We’re here today with the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor discussing the job situation here in Cessnock, particularly in the light of the 83 job losses at Bonds. Every one of those is a tragedy. It’s important to ensure that we have a strong economy everywhere so that where jobs are lost there will be other job opportunities opening up.   Now right here in the lower Hunter there is a great, shovel ready infrastructure project which should be under construction now. If the Coalition had been re-elected it would be being built right now, and that is the F3 link. Now the previous government committed $887 million towards that, the vast bulk of the cost – almost all of the cost. The land acquisitions have been completed, the planning is completed. It is ready to go. It will provide an adrenalin shot to the lower Hunter, it will provide a lot of jobs over the six years of construction, naturally, but even more jobs in terms of increased economic activity.   Now if the Rudd Government, and if Joel Fitzgibbon in particular, are serious about jobs in this part of Australia the F3 link should be started straight away. It was a commitment of our government, Labor said they supported it but since they have been elected they have had plenty of committees but they haven’t started work, and work should start now.   QUESTION:   There’s news today that the board of Pacific Brands gave themselves a pay rise last year. What was your reaction to that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I was as horrified as every other Australian to read that in the Telegraph today. Look the reality is executives have been overpaying themselves for a long time. Now I have actually taken executives to court for overpaying themselves, many years ago I took the whole board of John Fairfax to court for trying to issue themselves as options exercisable as a dollar when the share price was $1.50. So I have a track record of activism in taking on this type of overpayment.   Now we have proposed a very simple, concrete reform which would deal with this and that is to make senior executive salaries only able to be increased or varied with the approval of the shareholders. Now at the moment the senior executives’ remuneration package goes to the shareholders and they can give an advisory opinion on it but it’s not binding. Now we say change the law so that the shareholders vote. If the chief executive can persuade his shareholders that he’s entitled to a big salary well, sobeit, it’s their company, they can do that. But I don’t think any of us have any doubt that if the shareholders had to vote on these salary increases then you would see much more modest increases and directors would be a lot more circumspect in proposing increases.   QUESTION:   How likely [inaudible] shareholders approve any salary increase? There’s no reason for them to [inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well ultimately every employer has to pay what the market requires to get the people they want, whether it’s people on big salaries or modest wages. But the problem at the moment is that you’ve got this situation, and look I have to say this is a debate that’s been going around for a long time, I have always taken a particular view on it and I have shown my commitment to making directors accountable by my own action, by taking them to court years ago in that case involving John Fairfax. But really it’s a very simple reform and Mr Rudd likes to talk about executive salaries but he doesn’t do anything about it. All you need to do is change the law so the senior executives, the chief executive and say the next two or three people, their salaries must be approved by the shareholders. Yes or no, if the shareholders approve it well, it’s their company, they can pay their staff, high and low, what they wish.   QUESTION:   What about a cap, that’s been floated, the idea of putting a cap on salaries?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think you will get a better result by giving the shareholders the say. I don’t believe the Government should tell companies what to pay their employees. I don’t think that’s right. Let the shareholders decide and you will find that it will have a very beneficial impact.   QUESTION:   In what instance would shareholders approve a pay increase? What’s in it for them? It would never happen.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No that’s not necessarily the case. It would depend on productivity, whether the shareholders think they’re getting value for money. Ultimately the shareholders will make decisions that they believe will increase the value of the company’s shares.   QUESTION:   Pacific Brands was getting assistance from the Government, what does that say about management or the Government’s role in determining their salaries?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look it’s not for the Government to determine salaries. But you do raise another question, if the Government is providing support for companies it is entitled – because historically it hasn’t done this, governments haven’t done this – but governments that provide support for companies aren’t entitled to put conditions on that support. Now you’ve seen in the United States President Obama has said that where the federal government is providing capital for banks it will insist that those banks limit the amount of money they’re paying their executives.   Now that is not, to my way of thinking, I don’t object to that because that is, like any person who is asked to invest in a company, is entitled to put conditions on their investment. So the government or an institution, a pension fund or whatever is entitled to say ‘if you want so many millions of dollars from us to invest in your company we’re happy to give it to you but there are a few conditions.’ And you can either take it or leave it, so I think what President Obama has done is quite reasonable in that context. But as a general principle shareholders should be deciding what executives are paid and if they do make that decision I think you will see, you will not see as many of these huge pay packets as we have seen.   QUESTION:   Kevin Rudd has secured a meeting with Obama in March, what’s your response to that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well I welcome that. I hope that he listens very carefully to President Obama because President Obama is doing things very differently to Mr Rudd. Firstly he is not talking down the US economy. President Obama’s message is always one of optimism and hope. He demonstrates the power of positive thinking in a very, very persuasive way. We have had extraordinary examples of the Rudd Government talking down our economy, it’s only yesterday we had the Industry Minister say nobody’s job was safe, nobody’s. That no one in Australia’s job was safe. You can imagine what that does to business confidence, to small business confidence. So he’s got a lot to learn from President Obama and I hope he takes plenty of notes.   QUESTION:   Woolworths is creating 7,000 jobs, is that a sign the stimulus package is working?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the stimulus package has not been effective. The simple fact of the matter is that these one off cash payments are not an effective economic stimulus, that’s been demonstrated in Australia. We’ve asked Mr Rudd, who said that the first cash splash in December would create 75,000 jobs, to demonstrate where one job was created. He could not demonstrate one, let alone 75,000. Now the reality is the second cash splash will be just as ineffective. So the same experience has been had in the United States too. If you want to use government monies to promote jobs and promote economic activity, invest in infrastructure, particularly if it is like the F3 link and it’s infrastructure that you can start on immediately. A lot of these big infrastructure projects are very worthwhile but they’ll take years to get started. This is one that’s ready to go so why isn’t it underway? How can Mr Rudd and Julia Gillard and Joel Fitzgibbon stand up there and show lots of sympathy and empathy with jobs being lost in Cessnock, and yet they’re sitting on their hands and doing nothing about the one bit of infrastructure that everybody knows has been budgeted for by the previous Government, the money’s there and we know it will create thousands of jobs.   QUESTION:   If retail is so bad and the economic stimulus package isn’t working, how can 7,000 jobs be created by Woolworths?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, we’ll see. You should address that question to Woolworths I think.   QUESTION:   How would you describe the behaviour of these company directors for taking this pay increase in this financial climate and when they’ve just sacked so many jobs?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s a poor decision by Pacific Brands, you’ve got to say that. They know they’re going to take a hit in terms of their public image by laying off 1,850 Australians. That’s going to hurt them, and to do that at the same time as they’re jacking up their own pay is obviously going to make it even worse so it’s not a smart move on their part. But I get back to the fundamental question, which is, who’s in charge? I believe shareholders should be in charge of setting senior executive salaries. Now, the fact is that the biggest shareholders are, in many companies, are often super funds that are partly controlled by trade union representatives. So the labour movement has not been sufficiently active in terms of shareholder activism, in terms of representing the interests of the people whose savings are invested in their funds and I think a little bit of shareholder activism will make a world of difference.   QUESTION:   Do you think Sue Morphett’s pay rise from $680,000 to more than $1.8 million [inaudible]?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’ve made my point. I think it’s a matter for the shareholders. That is the one reform. Mr Rudd could do that. That could be through the Parliament in a day or two. It’s very, very straight forward reform. Give the control over the salaries to shareholders, very simple reform and it would have the desired effect.   QUESTION:   What about immediately, isn’t there anything more that the Government should be doing to help the workers?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think the critical thing they’ve got to do is to make sure they keep the economy strong. You see, at any stage of the economy, even if you’re in a boom, companies will close down, people will lose jobs, people lose jobs, get new jobs all the time, we understand that. But the most important thing is that when people do lose their job and that is a tragedy, there are other jobs available. That’s what we’ve always got to seek to achieve.   Now my concern is that the Government’s policies have made our economy worse than it otherwise would be. In other words, they’re making a difficult situation worse. That is because they talked down the economy last year, they talked up interest rates, that had a negative impact. They’re blasting tens of billions of dollars away on poorly conceived policies that will load enormous debt onto our shoulders and particularly the shoulders of our children in years ahead and they’re not creating jobs, lower the cost of employment.   So, what did we propose? Bring forward the tax cuts, that benefits everybody, benefits business right across the board. Rebate a portion of the superannuation guarantee contribution for small businesses, directly lowers the cost of employing people. That’s the type of innovative policy that we’ve proposed which will promote employment and create jobs. What Labor’s done is spend a lot of money for political solutions, not economic solutions.   QUESTION:   [Inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’ll just say this about the question of self-funded retirees. Self-funded retirees have been doing it very, very hard, very, very hard indeed. They haven’t benefited from Mr Rudd’s cash splashes, they’ve seen their interests in their savings and their super funds if they’re in the share market, they’ve taken an incredible dip, a huge hit. In some cases down 30 per cent, 40 per cent, 50 per cent, depending on what shares they’ve held. And of course if they’ve had money in the bank and they’ve been living off interest, interest rates have come too. So I haven’t seen the detail of what’s proposed, I don’t think any of us have because we haven’t seen the report but I just say this, self-funded retirees have been doing it very hard, and it would be a very rash government, a very harsh government, that would consider making life even harder for them today.   QUESTION:   [Inaudible]   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well that is exactly what we’ve been proposing. What we have said, and we said this in 2007 when we proposed an emissions trading scheme, we said it shouldn’t start until 2011 or 2012, and that was before the global financial crisis and obviously a lot of things have changed since then. But the reason why you should not finalise any emissions trading scheme, any emissions trading scheme before 2011, 2012, not simply because of the economic situation, but because of the fact that you’ve got to know, to do the job properly, what the United States is going to do. You’ve got a new Administration, you were always going to have a new Administration and that was present in our thinking in 2007. And of course you’ve got know what the rest of the world is going to do in Copenhagen. There is a real risk that Mr Rudd will set up an emissions trading scheme that costs a lot of jobs, especially in this part of Australia, does very little to reduce emissions, so it’s economically damaging, environmentally ineffective, and it may be completely out of sync with what the rest of the world is doing. So for the sake of a year or two rushing into it, he’s putting our economy at very grave risk for no environmental gain.   Thank you.   [ends]   malcolmFri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:346http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/314/Doorstop-Interview.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=314http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=314&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/314/Doorstop-Interview.aspxSubjects: Joel Fitzgibbon’s SAS pay scandal.   E & O E   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Joel Fitzgibbon is blaming everybody but himself for this appalling SAS pay scandal. The SAS are Australia’s elite fighting force. They are in the frontline in the most dangerous part of the world, fighting for freedom, under our flag, wearing our uniform, fighting against the Taliban.   And Joel Fitzgibbon’s incompetence has undermined the morale of the SAS, it has undermined the morale of the entire ADF. He has, by his incompetence, allowed a situation to continue where soldiers, troopers in the SAS, are having their pay docked – some are getting no pay. So while they are taking the fight up to the Taliban they are having to worry whether they can meet their mortgage payments; their families are back at home with no income. It is an extraordinary example of ministerial incompetence.   And we have to ask whether this incompetence is so great that Mr Rudd can any longer have confidence in this minister who blames everybody but himself. He is the minister. He could have fixed this up long ago. He said he would. He hasn’t. The problem continues and it’s entirely his fault.   QUESTION:   Is it a sackable offence?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well that’s a matter for the Prime Minister. I have to say it is a remarkable display of incompetence. The idea, the idea that men could be fighting in Afghanistan, taking on the most dangerous enemy in the world and have nothing in their pay packets, have their wives anxious about whether they’re going to lose their houses – it’s an incredible situation. The fact that he has allowed it to continue for so long, the fact that he has allowed it to continue for months and months, let alone any amount of time. This is something that should have fixed instantly.   QUESTION:   When he says he can’t answer any of your questions about it because he doesn’t have access to the information, shouldn’t he just get someone to go around to the SAS and ask them who has been…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well of course he should. He blames it on the computers. I mean we’re not talking about 20,000 people here. We’re talking about a relatively small number of men upon whose shoulders very heavy responsibilities are being placed by our nation. A small number of men. A competent bookkeeper could sort this out in a matter of hours. But Mr Fitzgibbon blames it on the computers, blames it on his own department, blames it on everybody but himself. He could go in and fix it up himself if he had the energy and the will to do it.   QUESTION:   The Auditor General over a number of years going back four, five, six years has been pointing to these problems with IT systems at Defence, both payroll systems and the inventory management systems. Doesn’t the Coalition bear responsibility for that given that these systems, these problems in the systems go back four, five, six years?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well let’s get back to the fundamental responsibility. Mr Fitzgibbon is the minister. He is the Minister for Defence. Under his time as Minister for Defence members of the SAS who are taking on the most dangerous roles, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan on behalf of our nation have been having their pay docked to a point where they are unable to pay the mortgages on their homes.   Now that is an incredible scandal. It’s incredible because it is almost impossible to believe that a minister could be so incompetent.   QUESTION:   In principle, if a soldier is overpaid should he not be required to repay the money?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I think there are very real issues about whether these men have been overpaid at all. I mean this is not one of those cases where somebody accidentally has a million dollars credited to their bank account. These are men who were being paid in a way that the Army thought was appropriate at the time, they thought was appropriate at the time, they had no reason to believe they were being overpaid. And I have very real doubts whether the Army properly, legally – certainly morally – should be docking their pay at all.   QUESTION:   But that sort of thing happens all the time, you’re a person who has been in business, surely you would know that?I mean it happens in my company too.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we’re talking about the SAS here. We are talking about the elite fighting force of our defence forces in Afghanistan taking on the most difficult, dangerous enemy in the world and we have a Defence Minister who is leaving them with nothing in their pay packet. And when asked to give an account of that he blames the computers, he blames the Defence Department, everybody but himself. The Minister has to take responsibility.   Thanks very much.   [ends]     malcolmWed, 25 Feb 2009 05:22:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:314http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/301/Interview-with-Lyndall-Curtis.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=301http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=301&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/301/Interview-with-Lyndall-Curtis.aspxSource: AM Programme Subjects: emissions trading; the Coalition’s Green Carbon Initiative.   E & O E   CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to AM.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   It’s good to be with you.   CURTIS:   You said when the Government called its inquiry that it was having second thoughts about an emissions trading scheme, are you?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We certainly are having second thoughts about the Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme and we’d be Robinson Crusoe if we weren’t. Everybody is concerned about it. Industry believes it is too complex and is going to seriously disadvantage Australian industries and export jobs overseas and those people who want……   CURTIS:   ….but do you still believe an emissions trading scheme is the way to go?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Let me just finish what I was saying. Those people who want to reduce Australia’s emissions, including us, including me, in particular, feel this is going to be an ineffectual scheme because the cut in emissions is going to be very low. Now in answer to your question – do I believe an emissions trading scheme can be a useful part, one useful tool in the climate policy toolbox? The answer is yes – if it is well designed – but it has to be well designed and it has to be able to work effectively with other schemes internationally and that’s one of the reasons why we don’t believe the Government should finalise its ETS design until we know what the Americans are going to do, until we know what is happening at the Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.   CURTIS:   So you’re not attracted by calls to switch from an emissions trading scheme to a carbon tax?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look, I’m certainly going to pay very close attention to them. There are merits for an ETS and we were persuaded by those when we were in government and also there’s merit on the side of a carbon tax – greater certainty because you know exactly what the price is.   There are arguments both ways. But the real problem is it’s not just ETS verses tax, it is: is this ETS going to be effective to reduce emissions? You see what Mr Rudd has done, and this is a characteristic of the Prime Minister, he has completely lost sight of the real objective. The objective is to reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions. It is not to have an ETS. The object is to reduce emissions. And so he’s come up with an incredibly cumbersome, economically damaging – so we are told by industry – ineffectual – so we are told by people concerned about climate – emissions trading scheme, which seems to disappoint everybody. There is almost unanimous criticism of it.   CURTIS:   So Australia shouldn’t make any moves until either the US makes a move or there’s an agreement at Copenhagen?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well certainly we would be able to make a much more informed decision after the US has worked out what its policy will be and after the decision in Copenhagen. Our policy, and we stand by this position, our policy has been for some years now that we should not finalise the design of any scheme, any emissions trading scheme, until we know what the US is going to do and in particular what the rest of the world is going to do at Copenhagen.   Now it was Mr Rudd who for purely electoral reasons, political reasons, said ‘I’m not going to have a scheme starting in 2011 or 2012 because I’m greener than those Liberals, I’m going to start mine in 2010’. And so for purely a political flourish in an election year he painted himself into a corner where he’s building an emissions trading scheme in the dark as to the intentions of the most important players whose efforts are going to be absolutely critical to anything in Australia being effective.   CURTIS:   Your Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey says the Government’s target is very low, do you believe there should be a higher target?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well certainly we should cut our emissions by more than what Mr Rudd has proposed and I’ve set out how we can do that. I gave a speech in January which showed how we could, at relatively low cost and with great additional benefits to our environment, cut an additional 150 million tonnes a year by 2020 and do that very, very realistically, without rocket science technology.   CURTIS:   But some of those technologies, things like carbon capture and storage aren’t proved yet?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No well that’s not what I was talking about. Carbon capture and storage, you’re quite right – there won’t be a lot of that happening much before 2020. I was talking about biocarbon, promoting soil carbon – that’s the biggest carbon sink – forestry, environmental forestry, but in particular the technology that is completely overlooked and is extremely effective is bio-char – the business of turning crop waste and forestry waste or whatever, you know, straw, wheat straw into in effect charcoal, returning that to the soil, so you get in effect biosequestration of carbon and at the same time you materially improve the productivity of the soil.   You see what we’ve got to try to do always is to increase our agricultural productivity. One of the biggest failures of the Labor Government, and you see this in the way they approach water and the way they approach climate, is that they are undermining the agricultural productivity of Australia. The world needs more food; it will need more Australian food. We have to put a bigger and better effort into improving our food security.   CURTIS:   There are some in your party who are concerned about an emissions trading scheme and concerned about a tougher version……   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   When you say some, I think there’s everybody, I mean I don’t know anyone that is happy with Mr Rudd’s emissions trading scheme other than him and Penny Wong.   CURTIS:   But you would no doubt acknowledge there are differences of opinion in your own party about an emissions trading scheme, the worth of it. Given you had an outbreak of fighting last week over party positions, how do you avoid a fight over a policy like this?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We will have a discussion about the emissions trading scheme. Let’s be quite clear; we don’t even know what Mr Rudd’s scheme is yet. He’s had a green paper, he’s had a white paper; they’re already announcing changes from what was proposed in the white paper. Until you actually see the legislation you won’t be sure where they finally land.   So of course there will be a debate about it and there will be discussion about it and there’ll be a public debate about it by the way – and that’s why having an inquiry is so important because that way you can ventilate different views from the public, you can get the major players, many of whom have got the access to top economic analysis, to come in and let those debates be had in public. Let the public have a say.   CURTIS:   Are you open to the Greens suggestion for a wider terms of reference including looking at the science?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well we’ll see. I don’t know what they’re proposing. But obviously we need the minor parties’ support to have the inquiry. So they have a bit of leverage, so plainly.   CURTIS:   You’d be looking to putting what was a bad week behind you this week, how do you do that especially when you have people like former leader John Hewson buying in again and saying that Peter Costello should go?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look the Australian people are sick of all these political games. They’re focussed on jobs, they’re focussed on the economy, they’re focussed on issues like climate change. You know, how do we reduce our emissions in a way that is environmentally effective and economically responsible? Those are the issues I’m talking about. I’m not here to comment on political games and personalities.   CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you.   [ends]    malcolmMon, 23 Feb 2009 05:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:301http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/320/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=320http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=320&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/320/Doorstop-Interview-Melbourne.aspxSubjects: Employment; bank deposit guarantee; ETS; Liberal Party; IR; Kevin Rudd’s socialism essay.   E&OE   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m here with Helen and Andrew to listen to small business about the big topic, the big economic topic of our times, which is jobs. We are reaching out to the Australian business community, the small business community, the enterprises that employ most Australians, and asking them what they believe government should do for them, how government can make it easier for them to employ Australians, to keep people on the payroll. We’ve taken that feedback and turned it into policies already, and we’ll keep doing that. We do it through our website, Jobs for Australia, and we’re doing it through these meetings. And around the country we’ll be holding meetings like this.   You saw last week in the debate about the $42 billion package, we proposed alternative policies that would have lowered the cost of employing Australians for small business. We proposed that government could rebate, should rebate, a portion of the superannuation guarantee contribution for small business, thereby directly reducing the cost of employing Australians. Now that is the type of idea, and the type of policy, that we are getting back from the community, back from the business community. So we’re here to listen, and we’re here to learn.   QUESTION:   Recently the GM job cuts, which will no doubt flow on to Holden, what does this suggest about the effectiveness of the Government’s $6 billion automotive industry package last year?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   This is a commentary, a consequence, in part, of the Government’s mismanagement of our economy. You’ll recall that last year the Government decided to offer an unlimited guarantee on bank deposits. Now this became extremely damaging very quickly, and you’ll remember the Reserve Bank Governor begged the Government, begged the Treasury Secretary in an email that was subsequently published, to impose a cap, and the lower the better. One of the consequences of the unlimited bank deposit guarantee was that the flow of money to the finance companies that finance the motor industry dried up. And right around the country motor dealers, car dealers, are struggling to find the finance to fund their floor plans, and of course the finance to enable people to buy the cars that they’re offering for sale. So it did enormous damage to the motor industry. The Government, recognising this damage, said it would set up with the banks a new finance company to fill in the gap. As far as we’re aware, no money has flowed from that at all. Nothing has happened. So the car industry is facing challenging times, no doubt about it, but the times it is facing are tougher, tougher than they ought to be because of the economic mistakes of the Rudd Government.   QUESTION:   In recent times it seems like Andrew Robb is possibly pointing at a shift from a carbon pollution reduction scheme more to a carbon tax. Can you clarify the Opposition’s policy in this area?    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Our policy is the same as it was when we were in government. In government we proposed an emissions trading scheme, in fact we started to legislate for it. It was very different to the emissions trading scheme proposed by the Rudd Government, because it would not have cost Australian jobs. The Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme is very complex, it is not going to be effective, as far as we can see – of course we haven’t seen the final form of it yet – and it is certainly going to do a lot of damage to our trade-exposed, our big exporting industries. Now, having said that, it is a moving target, because they haven’t produced the final legislation yet, and in fact they’re referring the whole question of whether there should be an emissions trading scheme to the House Economics Committee, so quite where the Government is going to land up it’s hard to say.   QUESTION:   But where are you standing at the moment?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   As I said, our policy is as it was at the time of the last election. There is a lot of debate around the world about the merits of emissions trading, on the other hand, and of a carbon tax. The economic arguments, I can restate them if you like; an emissions trading scheme works by putting a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted. And then people have to buy permits to emit CO2. The price of those permits is determined by the level of demand, so it’s a traded permit and so the price can go up and down and fluctuate. So you’ve got certainty about the amount of emissions but uncertainty about the price of the permit. A carbon tax on the other hand sets a fixed price, it’s a tax of so many dollars a tonne, that you have certainty on the price but of course you don’t have certainty on the amount of CO2 that will be emitted. Both approaches have their proponents, there’s a debate going on in many countries including the United States about it, both arguments have their merits.  The view that we’ve taken when we were in government and remains our policy today is that on balance an emissions trading scheme is more effective. But it has got to be a well designed emissions trading scheme and what the Government has put up as far as we can tell is not a well designed scheme.   QUESTION:   On another topic, do you think Peter Costello should clarify his future as Brendan Nelson has done?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Peter Costello has made his position very clear. He has said that he has no interest in returning to the front bench, he has no interest in a front bench position or a leadership role. So he has made that abundantly clear and that is the end of the issue.   QUESTION:   He was still your first choice for shadow treasurer and now you’re wanting Alan Stockdale to be replaced with Shane Stone. Is this a case of the Liberal party living in the past?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Can I just correct you there, Alan Stockdale has my full support. I know Alan Stockdale very well, I work very closely with him, he is doing a fine job as President of the Liberal Party. Not only is there no move against Alan Stockdale but as far as I’m aware there is nobody who has expressed any interest in replacing him. So this story about Alan Stockdale has no basis in fact, Alan Stockdale has the full support of the Liberal Party as President and he is doing a very good job.   QUESTION:   There are suggestions that you’re ignoring Victorians in any sort of leadership role or within the Liberal Party, and have become quite Sydney-centric. Do you agree with that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well…   HELEN KROGER:   That’s a good question when we’re in Victoria, we’re standing in Victoria.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Senator Kroger is here standing on my left. Here I am in Victoria.  I think that gives you an indication of how committed I am to the Party in this state. Look Victoria - people often describe Victoria as the jewel in the crown of the Liberal Party. As the leader of the federal Party I should say it is one of the brightest jewels, without discriminating against other states. But Victorians play a critically important role in the Liberal Party and it is just simply ridiculous to suggest that there is anything less than enormous respect, reliance upon the strength of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party. It is a vital part of our federal Party, it is a vital part of Australia, Australia’s economy, Australia’s energy and enterprise. You know, Victoria is at the centre of our party’s work, always has been and always will be. But we are a national organisation, and so we have strong divisions right around the country. But there is no division stronger or more respected than that of Victoria.   QUESTION:   Just on the Fair Work Bill, considering the worsening economic situation, are you going to seek significant amendments to what the Government’s put forward?    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look, the Senate committee, as you know, is concluding its considerations. We’ll be looking very closely at the report from the Senate committee, and we’ll be considering amendments very, very carefully. But the Senate committee hasn’t finished its work yet.     QUESTION:   How secure is Julie Bishop as Deputy Leader?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Julie Bishop has the total support of the party as Deputy Leader. She’s an outstanding Deputy Leader.   QUESTION:   How damaging has all the recent events been to the Liberal party?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m not going to run a political commentary. I’m happy to answer questions of fact, but I’ll leave the commentary to you.   QUESTION:   I’m wondering, Mr Turnbull, whether you’re considering penning an essay in response to Kevin Rudd’s.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well it’s interesting. Over the Christmas holidays Mr Rudd and I both spent some time doing some writing. I wrote a long speech – it wasn’t 7,700 words – but I wrote a long speech about climate change, about climate policy, about biocarbon, about how Australia could more effectively reduce its CO2 emissions at a lower cost and with greater benefits to the environment. That was the piece of work I did. And it’s quite a long and detailed piece of work with a lot of research behind it. At the same time Mr Rudd, instead of reading fiction, which of course is what a lot of people do over the holidays, was writing fiction. And his essay is just a long, ideological rant. It’s the product of his own imagination – that is, other than the bits that he copied from other articles. So it really has nothing useful or interesting to contribute to political debate.   And let me just underline one point. I responded to this, I might say, in a speech I gave in Sydney yesterday. Mr Rudd says that the Liberal Party was part of a long tradition of free market extremism, that it was opposed to regulation and allowed financial markets and the free market to rip, doing great damage around the world, and he pointed to the Howard Government as being part of that. And yet at the same time as he published this article, his own Deputy Prime Minister was in Davos at world economic conference saying that Australia’s financial and prudential regulation was better than world class, and that our banks were secure, and stable, and well-capitalised and the best in the world in these difficult times. All true, everything she said was true on that occasion. But who put that regulation in place? Of course it was the Liberal Government. So Mr Rudd’s created this political fantasy; I hope he enjoyed writing it; I don’t think anybody has been informed at all by reading it.   Thanks a lot.   [ends]     malcolmThu, 19 Feb 2009 01:05:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:320http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/328/Interview-with-Leon-Byner-Radio-5AA-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=328http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=328&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/328/Interview-with-Leon-Byner-Radio-5AA-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: Labor’s debt train; securing our economic future; RBA Assistant Governor Malcolm Edey’s speech; Murray-Darling Basin.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   BYNER:   Let’s talk to a bloke who was one of those who said, ‘nup, we’re not going to buy this stimulus package.’ He’s the Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm thank for joining us today.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   G’day Leon.   BYNER:   Are you still adamant that the Government’s stimulation package is wrong?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No Leon my position is, and the Opposition’s position is, that the Government’s stimulus package is too big, it incurs too much debt, it throws too much debt onto the shoulders of our children. And it is composed of elements that are not going to deliver enough value for money.   BYNER:   Okay.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   In other words too much.  Can I just summarise; too much debt, too few jobs.   BYNER:   Alright.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Too much debt, too few jobs.   BYNER:   What are some of the things they’re doing with some of this money that you think are really inadequate or wrong?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The standout is that one-third of the package is going in a cash splash in March. Now you’ll remember we had a $10 billion cash splash in December which the Government said would create 75,000 jobs. There is no evidence offered by the Government or anyone else that it created any jobs.   They’re now going to hand out close to $14 billion in March. And again the simple point is that while that money will no doubt be gratefully received by everyone that gets it, and most Australians will get some of it, and most Australians I imagine will use it to pay down debt or put away as a saving, it is not going to create jobs. These one off payments, and the experience both from December in Australia or from the middle of last year in the United States when the Bush Administration did a similar thing, the experience is in times like this they are not an effective economic stimulus.   BYNER:   Okay, would you have had tax cuts instead would you?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   What we suggested – the answer is yes - they would have cost a lot less. The Government is spending close to $14 billion on a cash splash.  What we suggested was that the tax cuts that are already scheduled to come into effect on the 1st of July this year and the 1st of July in 2010 be brought forward to January. So they are permanent tax cuts and that is the…some of your listeners may have seen the American economist John Taylor on Lateline the other night who was explaining how permanent increases in income from permanent tax cuts have a much greater stimulatory effect, and there is plenty of evidence for that.   BYNER:   Alright.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   So while these are permanent tax cuts they are not a permanent drain on the budget because they’re already budgeted in from July 1 this year and July 1 next year.   BYNER:   Malcolm there is a fundamental problem with this whole theology and I’ll tell you what it is, and I’m sure as a former…a very successful banker you will understand this. Most economists when you talk to Robert Carling at the Centre for Independent Studies, or you go to someone like Quentin Grafton at ANU, the first thing they will tell you is that the borrowings of a federal government which are significant will ultimately mean that taxes will have to go up to pay for them.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   This is exactly the point I’ve been making, that the more the Government borrows today the higher the taxes our kids will have to pay.   BYNER:   So to borrow anything significant, okay, as far as I can read what you were saying is that you wouldn’t have spent $42 billion, you probably would have spent half that, right?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We said a package between $15 billion and $20 billion, better designed, so to spend less and to spend it more effectively. And we can go through the other elements of it if you have time.   BYNER:   Yeah alright, so surely no matter what you’re going to borrow if it’s significant amounts of money, $21 billion or $42 billion, someone has got to pay for this at some point?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No question. It all has to be paid for.   BYNER:   So what’s the point of giving a tax cut when down the track you’ve got to give it back and probably put taxes back up again to pay for what you’ve borrowed?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Leon the point is that you’re obviously trying to balance the need to have as little…incur as little debt as possible today and also provide an economic stimulus. The virtue of cutting taxes, as long as it’s done responsibly, is that it increases incentives to work, increases incentives to invest. And you can take a couple of paragraphs out of Wayne Swan’s speech in February last year when he legislated for these tax cuts and I could quote that today. I mean everyone understands the reason for lowering marginal rates is to increase incentives to work. And so it’s an economic positive but you’ve got to balance that off against the cost to the revenue.   BYNER:   What sort of debt are we going to be faced with? I mean what will the interest bill be a year, because the Government have said…see a lot of the publicity at the moment is going on the $42 billion or $43 billion. But remember that the federal Government has got a mind to borrow somewhat more than that. What’s the interest bill on this going to be? And when does it have to be paid?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the Government is going to run up $200 billion worth of debt in fairly short order. So pick whatever interest rate you assume, it’s pretty easy to work out. If you think the Government…this money will be borrowed for a long time but if it’s borrowed for example at, you know, four per cent interest, you can work it out pretty easily – it’s a huge amount of money.   BYNER:   Well a couple of billion a year.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well four per cent on 100 is $4 billion and four per cent on 200 is $8 billion.   BYNER:   Yeah, so the question is; can the nation afford it or is the Government banking on the fact that some of the money that they’ve invested or all is going to have a multiple affect where somehow it will stimulate the economy? For example, do you like the package spending the money on the schools?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   We certainly support spending money on schools and we invested a huge amount of money in schools when we were in government. But what the Rudd Government has said it wants to do is spend $14 billion over two and a half years largely on assembly halls and libraries in primary schools.   Now I’m all in favour of investing money in primary schools or indeed secondary schools – and there’s an element of their package that goes to secondary schools too – but I am very sceptical about the ability of state governments to deliver that level of investment efficiently in that timeframe and if you doubt me on the basis that I’m a Liberal/federal politician, Michael Costa, who was until recently the Labor Treasurer of New South Wales, has made exactly that point in an article in The Australian not so long ago.   So what we said, again, because we are more prudent and more careful about spending other peoples money and raising taxes; what we’ve said is that instead the….what we would support is a $3 billion school investment program, $3 billion over three years.   Now of course if there is greater demand than that, and you can spend more efficiently, governments can look at it.   Let me just wind back to another fundamental point Leon, we all recognise that our economy is a lot stronger than just about any other developed country – I can’t think of another developed country which has an economy as strong as ours. Unemployment has been going up, but it is still 4.8 per cent, so it is not up towards…heading up towards eight per cent as it is in the United States and other countries.   Because of the 11 and a half years of good government under the Coalition debt was paid off, so Labor is taking us heavily into debt, but they didn’t start off with a big debt like most other countries did.   So all in all we are in a relatively stronger position and yet we are spending more as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product, a percentage of our GDP, as a stimulus than any comparable country – and in case people doubt me on this, Malcolm Edey who is the Assistant Governor in charge of economic policy for the Reserve Bank has given a speech today, it’s on the Reserve Bank’s website: www.rba.gov.au and there he sets out in a table there the discretionary fiscal easing in selected countries as a per cent of GDP in 2009 – he has US over two, UK over one, Germany one and a half, Japan one and a quarter, China, South Korea and Taiwan over two, Australia two and a half. So there we are; we are at either higher or as high as any other country.   Now all of those countries have got economic circumstances much more difficult than ours and so our criticism is they are spending too much money at this time. They should be spending less money more effectively and of course you’ve always got the option to spend more at a later date if that is required.   BYNER:   Do you believe that this stimulus package, which is 2.5 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product, is going to wrestle us away from recession?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I don’t believe that it is going to be effective for the money that is spent. There is no doubt that a percentage for example of the cash splash will be spent but it will be a very small percentage.   The history and experience with these sorts of cash payments is that you know somewhere in the order of a quarter of it tends to get spent. Now you saw - the figures aren’t yet in for the cash splash in December - but if you look at the retail figures, the Government was cock-a-hoop that after spending $10 billion retail sales had gone up by $700 million in December.   Now that is not much of a return and of course much of that money, perhaps most of it was spent on imported goods anyway. So the real question has got to be; is this going to be effective? How many jobs will it create?   BYNER:   Malcolm are you enamoured of Nick Xenophon’s initiative to bring forward some…about a billion dollars to the Murray-Darling Basin?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   I’m pleased that he’s stirred up some action from the Government. As you know the whole Murray-Darling plan was our initiative. I was the Water Minister at the time. The whole idea of the Federal Government taking over water management in the Murray-Darling Basin, committing $10 billion was an initiative of our government – it wasn’t even an idea proposed by Labor.   BYNER:   So you think Nick did the right thing?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Look, Nick did the right thing in pursuing his agenda, yes. It’s not something that we could have done because we had a more fundamental objection to the package. But I have been criticising Labor ever since they came in for the way they have dropped the ball on water and water management in the Murray-Darling Basin.   You know there is no shortage of money to invest Leon. John Howard put in $10 billion, it’s all in the budget, it’s all budgeted for, it’s all there. What Labor has done is fail to follow up with investments in irrigation infrastructure that will enable us to produce more food with less water.   BYNER:   Malcolm one obvious question; are you going to try as hard as you can to get Peter Costello back onto the frontbench?    MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Leon, I think the issue is closed. Peter’s position is unequivocal and he’s made it very clear he’s not interested in a frontbench or leadership role.   BYNER:   Alright. Malcolm, thank you for joining us.   [ends]     malcolmWed, 18 Feb 2009 01:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:328http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/347/Interview-with-Michael-Smith-Radio-4BC-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=347http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=347&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/347/Interview-with-Michael-Smith-Radio-4BC-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: Liberal Party; economic management, Labor’s debt.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   SMITH:   Malcolm, G’day.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   G’day Michael, how are you?   SMITH:   Well thanks. Can you just clear up a little bit of doubt about this, did you offer the Shadow Treasury role to Peter Costello?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Michael, I’m not going to go into private conservations.   SMITH:   You’re not going to answer me?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, no, I am going to answer you, but let me just put this to you. Both I as Opposition Leader and indeed Brendan before me, have offered Peter on several occasions or invited him to come onto the frontbench and both of us as Leaders of the Opposition would have welcomed him onto the frontbench. He has declined and said that he has no interest in a role on the frontbench or indeed a leadership role. That’s the position he’s taken and I respect that and he is serving the people of Higgins as a backbencher.   SMITH:   Well is his presence destabilising you in the fact that people like me are going to ask you that question endlessly?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   He’s doing a good job Michael as the Member for Higgins. It is his prerogative to decide how he wants to serve in the Parliament. I have certainly invited him to come onto the frontbench and indeed so did Brendan and he has declined. His position has been quite consistent, which is that he does not have an interest in a frontbench or leadership role.   SMITH:   So is there any agreement between you and he that he won’t challenge for the leadership?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Michael what I’ve said to you is his position. So that is….you know…if he says he has no interest in a frontbench or leadership role then that answers the question doesn’t it?   SMITH:   Wayne Swan has today pointed to the Reserve Bank’s endorsement of his stimulus package and says that’s confirmation the size of the package was right. You opposed the package, were you wrong?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No we were right. The package was very large. It was large relative to similar measures in other countries, in other countries whose economies are much weaker than ours and it was also very poorly constituted.   There simply will not be enough jobs coming out of this package. This is all borrowed money Michael; we’ve just got to focus on that. This is $42 billion of borrowed money which our children will have to pay back. They are going to have to pay higher taxes and or probably get fewer government services or less government services in the future in order to pay this debt back.    SMITH:   What’s left to sell off to pay it back? Is there anything…there’s no Telstra, no Commonwealth Bank?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   There’s not a lot left, no that’s right, that’s right and that is an extremely good point because in order to pay-off Labor’s debt, obviously we ran solid surpluses, but we were also able to sell Telstra.   Now if you just get back to the…so we make the point this is all borrowed money and it will have to be paid back by our kids, of that there is no question – even Wayne Swan would have to admit that.   The next question is; is the money being wisely spent?  Well, let’s have a look at it.  One-third of it is going in cash payments, cash handouts, in March.  Now, we did a similar exercise, or the Government did a similar exercise in December, that so-called cash-splash of $10 billion.  There is nobody who believes that created any jobs.  The Government said it would create 75,000.  They have not presented any evidence it created one.  And so the big question – and this is really the key question – is, just focusing on that, if you spent $10 billion of borrowed money in December on the basis it would create 75,000 jobs and you cannot prove it created one, why are you backing up and doing the same again, plus some, that’s for about $14 billion in March?   SMITH:   Anna Bligh in this State says she’s creating 119,000 jobs attendant to the spending of $17 billion in infrastructure this year.  Do you think those numbers add up?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well she’s got to stack them up, Michael.  You know, it doesn’t sound very convincing to me.  But the onus when politicians stand up and say this will create jobs, so many jobs, the onus is on them to prove it.  Now, the fact is, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd said we are going to give away $10 billion in December and it’s going to create 75,000 jobs.  Where are they?   SMITH:   Did they say create or changed that to support, Malcolm…   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   No, they said create…   SMITH:   …originally?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   They said create.  They haven’t changed that as far as December was concerned.  Now, with the $42 billion package they changed their language slightly and they said it would support 90,000 jobs – whatever that meant.   SMITH:   Yeah.  Do you think Malcolm that the politics at present would suggest that, you know, voter support is with the Government?  The polls seem to suggest that.  Have you got the politics wrong?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well, I believe we’ve got the policy right.   SMITH:   The politics, though?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Michael, if the polls show the Government is ahead, well, they speak for themselves.  The simple fact of the matter is this, we were not elected, none of us, were elected to parliament just to do things that are popular in the short-term.  We’ve got to think of the long-term.  We’ve got to have a vision for the type of country we want to leave our children.  I do not want to leave this country burdened with huge debts that are going to cripple us financially and cripple our children and their children financially for decades to come.  And that is why you will find the Liberal Party standing up to the Government and saying, “stop, don’t spend any more than you absolutely need to, don’t spend money that is not going to be effective in creating jobs, use the taxpayers’ money and, in particular, our children’s credit card prudently, sparing and efficiently”.    SMITH:   Malcolm Turnbull in the interests of time we’re going to have to leave it.  Thank you very much for speaking with me.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thanks so much Michael.   [ends]   malcolmTue, 17 Feb 2009 00:02:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:347http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/339/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=339http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=339&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/339/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Subjects: Securing our economic future.   E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   The Opposition has vote