http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.auRSS feeds for Malcolm Turnbull MP60http://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/452/Inquiry-needed-into-people-smuggling-surge.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=452http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=452&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/452/Inquiry-needed-into-people-smuggling-surge.aspxThe Federal Opposition is calling for an urgent and independent inquiry into the relationship between the Rudd Government’s softened stance on border protection and the surge in people smuggling into Australia. People smuggling is dangerous and inhumane. The Coalition believes that everything must be done to stop this trade. The Coalition is deeply concerned about the welfare of asylum seekers lured into attempting dangerous voyages by unscrupulous people smugglers. We are also deeply concerned about the safety of Australian defence and customs personnel charged with patrolling our northern waters and making the interceptions. With new boats arriving every week, reports of more unauthorised boat arrivals on their way and thousands more assembling in Indonesia, we believe the situation is critical and demands urgent action. The Coalition has repeatedly warned the Government that softening its stance on border protection in August last year would risk compromising the security of our borders and the integrity of our generous but strictly controlled refugee and humanitarian settler program. We have also warned that it could put more lives at risk by leading to an increase in people smuggling activity. We are not alone with our concerns. In December last year, the International Organisation for Migration’s chief-of-mission in Indonesia, Steve Cook, said that people smugglers had taken note of Australian Government Policy changes and are ‘testing the envelope’. It has been widely reported that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) warned the Government that its softening of border protection laws would encourage people smugglers. The Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Mr Joelianto, said that people smugglers are using the changes in policy as a marketing tool. Now, asylum seekers in Indonesia have confirmed that they plan to travel to Australia by boat because they have been encouraged by Mr Rudd’s changes to border protection policies. The facts speak for themselves. 15 boats with 541 arrivals since the Rudd Government softened Australia’s stance on border protection in August last year. Mr Rudd’s border protection policies have clearly failed. The Coalition calls on the Prime Minister to immediately launch an inquiry into Australia’s border security. The inquiry should be independent and headed up by someone with extensive experience in policy implementation, intelligence and national security. The report should be made public. In particular, the inquiry should: • Consider all intelligence reports and advice from the AFP or any government agency, which assesses the impact of the Government's changes to the border protection regime. • Assess the impact of Rudd Government’s policy changes to our border security and advise on what adjustments are needed to ensure the current surge of people smuggling does not continue. • Evaluate the impact of severe cuts to immigration, customs and border security resources to the border security regime. • Assess whether current levels of cooperation with relevant countries, in particular Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, are adequate and advise on what more could be done. Finally, I again stress that I am willing and able to meet with the Prime Minister to discuss a united approach to this situation, just as I have offered to work with him on an appropriate economic stimulus and on tackling the jobless crisis. A united and strong message to the region will be the best way to deter the evil trade of people across Australia's borders. malcolmTue, 28 Apr 2009 01:42:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:452http://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/444/Visitng-Dr-Len-Notaras-and-his-team-at-Darwin-Hospital.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=444http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=444&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/444/Visitng-Dr-Len-Notaras-and-his-team-at-Darwin-Hospital.aspxToday Lucy and I visited Royal Darwin Hospital and Dr Len Notaras introduced us to his team who once again showed incredible skill and courage in swiftly and expertly treating the victims of the boat explosion on Ashmore Reef last week.        malcolmThu, 23 Apr 2009 09:12:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:444http://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/446/Funeral-for-Hyacinth-Tungutalum.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=446http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=446&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/446/Funeral-for-Hyacinth-Tungutalum.aspxToday Lucy & I began our three-day visit in Darwin. We were honoured to attend the funeral of a great man and great leader of the Tiwi people, Mr Hyacinth Tungutalum. Born in 1946, Hyacinth was the first full-blood aboriginal to be elected to a house of Parliament. Hyacinth, a member of the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory, was elected to the NT Parliament, winning the seat of Tiwi in 1974. He was a trail-blazer of immense courage and was also an important ceremonial man on the Tiwi Islands. An influential leader of his people, Hyacinth was an inaugural member of the Tiwi Land Council, served on the Tiwi Health Board and the Tiwi Education Board. He also was an exceptional Aussie Rules Football player and was very proud of his Grandson, Ross Tungutalum, being selected and currently playing for St Kilda in the AFL. My and Lucy’s condolences go to his wife Natalie, his sons Richard and Leslie, his grandson Ross and to all of his family and the Tiwi people.  malcolmThu, 23 Apr 2009 01:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:446http://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/431/Alcopops-a-tax-grab-not-a-health-measure.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=431http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=431&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/431/Alcopops-a-tax-grab-not-a-health-measure.aspxAlong with all Australians, the Coalition is deeply concerned about the effects of binge drinking on young people. The so called ‘alcopops tax’ introduced by the Rudd Government is not a health measure designed to tackle alcohol abuse. It is a badly thought through tax grab on one alcoholic product that has proven to have no effect on binge drinking. Increasing taxes on one alcohol product in isolation is ineffective in addressing alcohol abuse and related harm. In fact, the Government has been unable to point to any evidence that the increased tax on ‘alcopops’ has had any impact on binge drinking. It could actually make binge drinking problem worse by pushing problem drinkers into more lethal alcohol products. The last thing the Australian economy needs now is new taxes - especially blatant tax grabs dressed up as health measures which do nothing to address binge drinking. Any serious attempt to counter binge drinking would involve a wide range of measures designed to change behaviour including education, law enforcement, industry involvement and rehabilitation measures. We will support any real and genuine measures to reduce alcohol abuse that have a real impact. The Coalitions calls on the Government to implement a comprehensive strategy to deal with this significant social problem.  malcolmFri, 17 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:431http://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/424/Ruddnet-is-too-good-to-be-true.aspx#Comments30http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=424http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=424&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/424/Ruddnet-is-too-good-to-be-true.aspxKEVIN Rudd promised a broadband revolution if he became prime minister. A state-of-the-art, fibre-to-the-node broadband would reach 98 per cent of the population. It would be built by the private sector with a $4.7 billion investment from theGovernment. That was the promise in 2007. Last week the tender was proclaimed a failure. None of the bidders came up with a worthwhile proposal. The Rudd Government's broadband revolution was dead. So, in order to distract attention from the total failure of his broadband policy, Rudd made an even grander promise. He said he would provide affordable, high-speed broadband at a speed of 100 megabits a second to 90per cent of Australian households via a $43 billion fibre-to-the-household network. Who could disagree? Especially when the Prime Minister told us it wouldn't cost the taxpayer anything beyond the original $4.7billion investment because the new National Broadband Network would be a commercial venture, so commercially attractive the private sector would invest (up to 49 per cent). It was going to be such a great deal that the Prime Minister urged "mums and dads" to invest in it via "Aussie Infrastructure Bonds". But it is a story too good to be true, told by a prime minister with no experience of business, happy to denounce the corporate world but not prepared to abide by the rules that apply to mere mortals. The assertions he made in his announcement and which he used to solicit investments from the public are not supported by a business plan, a financial study, advice from Infrastructure Australia or, so far as we know, anything other than his desire to get a big headline (it worked). His own Treasurer, Wayne Swan, was unable to say how many people he expected to take up the service or what they would be asked to pay. And yet those are the two key assumptions that determine whether a venture such as this will be a good investment or a complete catastrophe. A company director who encouraged the public to buy bonds in a company in similar circumstances would be spending a lot of time in the company of Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigators. So, fantasy time is over. Let's look at some facts. Everybody is in favour of widely available and affordable broadband internet access. And nobody more than me. But I am also a believer in telling the truth. So here are some truths. Big infrastructure projects such as telecommunication networks, roads, tunnels and water schemes all have very high fixed costs largely made up of the cost of servicing the huge up-front capital investment. For that reason it is vital to accurately estimate the likely level of patronage and the price the customers will pay. Consider the Cross City Tunnel in Sydney. It cost nearly $1 billion to build; today, after a bankruptcy and its shareholders losing their investment, it is worth a fraction of that. Why? Because the owners' traffic assumptions proved to be wildly optimistic. As they were for the Lane Cove Tunnel and Melbourne's Eastlink. Just as wellthese were private-sector projects and the capital loss was not borne by the taxpayer. So if you invest $43 billion to run fibre into 90 per cent of Australian homes and businesses (about ninemillion potential connections) you need (unlike Swan) to have a view about how many will take it up and what they will pay. And there are real risks and real competition. Telstra has its own extensive broadband fixed line hybrid fibre network offering higher and higher speeds including, so Telstra claims, up to 100Mbps before Christmas in Melbourne and within a year or two in other capital cities. In addition to competition at the fixed-line level, the new company, let's call it Ruddnet, will face competition from wireless. In the past six months 650,000 people signed up to wireless broadband services, four times the number that signed up to fixed-line broadband. As wireless broadband becomes faster and cheaper, its mobility and flexibility will offer real competition with fixed-line services, just as it has with telephony. But let's make some very optimistic assumptions about Ruddnet. Let's assume half of all the potential customers covered by the network take up the new service: that's 4.5 million connections. Let's assume that they will pay $100 a month to their ISP and that $70 of that finds its way to Ruddnet. If we assume half of Ruddnet's revenues go on operating expenses and depreciation is a low 5 per cent, then Ruddnet will lose $260 million each year without having paid a cent in interest or dividends. All of these assumptions can be changed of course but whichever way you slice or dice the numbers, one thing is very, very plain. Unless we (completely unrealistically) assume the vast majority of potential customers take up the Ruddnet services and that they will pay very high monthly fees in the order of $150 to $200 a month then there is no way that Ruddnet can deliver a commercial return on $43billion of investment. Now some people might say: so what? Why doesn't the Government just pay for it and then sell the services for whatever price it can get and take the loss on the chin? This is another way of saying the Government should borrow $43 billion and build a business that will, when complete, be worth a fraction of that amount if it is worth anything at all. And Rudd has undertaken to sell the business five years after it is complete, so we could see the Government spending $43 billion on an investment it subsequently sells for a pittance. Too bad for the taxpayers. We could have a debate about the merits of investing and losing billions in broadband: after all, we do not demand a commercial return from public roads or schools or hospitals. But it is not the debate Rudd has kicked off. He has asserted his broadband network will be run at arms length from government in a separate company, generating a commercial return sufficient to entice private-sector investment in the shares and to warrant "mums and dads" subscribing to bonds, the interest on which could only be paid if the company was profitable. He made that assertion without any basis in fact. He has produced no analysis or advice to backit up. The truth is that a new broadband network of this kind could only operate with a massive government subsidy, probably most of the full $43 billion. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to bathe in the glory of adulatory headlines for his "broadband vision". He must tell us, not later than the budget, what advice he has on the economics of this network, what assumptions it is based on, what returns it can deliver and if - as is inevitable - it requires tens of billions in government subsidies, what are the roads, the schools, the hospitals, the water projects and the ports that willnot be built to satisfy his broadband vision. Prime Minister, show us the numbers before you spend the money.malcolmMon, 13 Apr 2009 22:22:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:424http://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/418/Rudds-Broadband-Gamble.aspx#Comments1http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=418http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=418&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/418/Rudds-Broadband-Gamble.aspxToday's National Broadband Network announcement acknowledges the complete failure of the Rudd Government's broadband strategy.   The Rudd Labor Government has wasted 18 months and $20 million on a failed tender process that has not delivered a single new broadband service to a home and won’t for a long time yet. Mr Rudd has broken his key election commitment to build a fibre to the node broadband network for 98 per cent of the population. He promised to commence building the network by late 2008.  After a failed tender process, we now have an “implementation study” to consider how to build a network that will not be completed until at least 2018. Mr Rudd has now conceded that his election promise was undeliverable. His initial commitment of $4.7 billion has now blown out to a $43 billion exposure for the taxpayer. Labor has also decided to leave rural and regional Australia out of the fibre to the home (FTTH) network. The key questions are: how much will the network cost families to use? When will it be ready? Will there be enough demand? How will competing technology affect the viability of the network?   Wireless broadband in Australia is moving ahead at a rapid rate. Over the last six months, 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 viability of this project. What return will be needed for the $43 billion investment? All Mr Rudd has said is that it must be commercial. According to industry analysts, the venture would need to charge households and businesses at least two to three times the current average cost of broadband services. That is, households may need to pay up to $200 per month to get access to the network.   No evidence has been provided that there will be sufficient demand for this service at prices that will deliver a commercial return. This is 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 technological risk. Mr Rudd is building a second Telstra owned by the Government.  With one Telstra having been sold to the public, Labor is now proposing to build a second Telstra to compete with the first. Mr Rudd owes it to the Australian public to explain why the tender failed, what his detailed business plan is, and what risks the taxpayers will bear.  malcolmTue, 07 Apr 2009 04:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:418http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/416/Rudd-does-nothing-for-Small-Business.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=416http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=416&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/416/Rudd-does-nothing-for-Small-Business.aspxThe remarkable omission from Kevin Rudd’s jobs announcement today is any measure which will make it easier for small and medium businesses to keep their employees on the payroll.   We believe it is crucial to keep the focus on maintaining and creating jobs.   Mr Rudd has provided nothing to relieve the tax burden on small businesses.   Nothing to relieve small businesses from the crushing burden of regulation and red tape.   Mr Rudd, with all of the enthusiasm of a convert, is now passionately committed to his anti-capitalist, anti-free enterprise campaign.   As he has said, he wants government to be at the centre of the economy.   We know that the centre of the economy, the engine that creates and maintains jobs, is free enterprise.   And most importantly, small business – the most flexible and the most enterprising part of our economy.   And so it is natural that nowhere in his proposals are measures which small businesses will find helpful, or supportive to them as they battle a slowing economy.   That is why our small business action plan is focussed on supporting every small business so that they can maintain jobs and create new jobs.   I know, from my own life’s experience, that the prosperity of this country is based on the enterprise of small business.   And that is why we are proposing measures which will lower the cost of employing Australians for small business, which will provide affordable tax relief in these tougher times and improve small businesses’ cash flow.   This is largely a re-announcement of Labor Government spending initiatives and it cannot make up for the Government’s total mismanagement of employment services and its reluctance to support the private businesses which employ most Australians.  malcolmSun, 05 Apr 2009 06:29:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:416http://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/412/Address-to-the-ACCI-General-Council-Dinner.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=412http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=412&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/412/Address-to-the-ACCI-General-Council-Dinner.aspx**check against delivery**                      Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the ACCI General Council Meeting dinner tonight. It’s great to be back in Tasmania. This is my second visit this year – Lucy and I spent a wonderful ten days here in January. And it’s always a pleasure to spend time with the entrepreneurs and achievers who drive our economy. For our own part, Lucy and I have lived that spirit of enterprise. We have started businesses, created thousands of jobs, developed and exported Australian technology. We have taken risks and some of our ventures have not succeeded. But we have dusted ourselves off and got started again. And there is nothing we have done in our business life which has given more satisfaction than creating jobs – working with other enterprising Australians to create new opportunities, reach new horizons. Of course the Liberal Party has always been the party of enterprise and freedom: the party that believes government should enable Australians to do their very best, rather than tell them it knows best. That is the prime reason that I am standing before you today…the reason I left that career of creating new businesses and creating new jobs to move into politics.  I am privileged to lead the Liberal Party and put myself forward to be Prime Minister of this great country because I believe in the spirit of free enterprise. It is the private sector – small, medium and large-scale business, people putting their own money and futures on the line in search of a dream – that creates jobs and opportunity in the good times. And it is that same personal drive and spirit of enterprise that will see us recover from the difficult times. The Coalition I lead is proudly pro-small business.  Our policies, our focus, our objectives are all about helping small business. Of course the most important thing for small business is a strong and dynamic economy.  A strong economy provides more opportunities to sell goods and services.  It provides more opportunities to expand.  And it reduces the risks faced by small businesses owners.  It is no surprise that bankruptcies increase during economic downturns. The Coalition’s record on economic management is clear.  Between 1996 and 2007 Australia enjoyed remarkable economic growth, 2.2 million new jobs were created, unemployment rates fell to 30 year lows, the Budget was usually in surplus and the Commonwealth accumulated net assets rather than net debt. But times have changed.  We’re gathered this evening against a backdrop of the most troubling economic circumstances for years.  Economies all around the world are slowing, and in many cases contracting, as the OECD reminded us this week. The Australian economy is struggling too, and the Prime Minister has recently conceded that he intends to preside over a recession – the first in this country for 17 years. As a result of these circumstances, we’ve heard a lot about government stimulus packages lately.  But we must never forget that the most effective stimulus is greater economic freedom.  Not bigger government.  Not more intrusive regulation.  Not higher public debt. Mr Rudd has failed to learn the major lesson of this current financial crisis: debt is the problem, not the solution. Every dollar Canberra borrows today means higher taxes, higher interest rates and higher foreign debt in the future.  There is no escaping that. We have opposed Mr Rudd’s panicked economic policies and excessive cash splashes because we do not believe they will work. •                     They will not help secure Australians from the global recession. •                     They will not protect jobs – and they aren’t protecting jobs, as we can see from the dismal labour force statistics of the past few months. •                     They will not encourage or support the 2.4 million small businesses that employ almost 4 million Australians, and constitute the most dynamic and innovative part of our economy. •                     They will not support vital spending on research and development – Mr Rudd revealed his attitude towards business R&D when he axed the popular and effective Commercial Ready program last May.  But Mr Rudd’s borrowing frenzy certainly will leave a crippling debt to future generations. With Canberra now standing behind borrowing by both private banks and state governments, and plunging into commercial property lending with its ill-considered RuddBank, we see Commonwealth contingent liabilities have exploded.  According to The Australian Financial Review last week, contingent liabilities have soared from a few billion dollars when the Coalition left office in late 2007 to a scarcely believable $991 billion! Almost a trillion additional dollars of potential exposure for Australian taxpayers, incurred over barely 15 months, and surely putting pressure on our AAA sovereign credit rating. And that is not even counting the $200 billion of actual borrowings that Labor has decided to impose on the taxpayers of today and tomorrow. Ten out of ten Labor Prime Ministers have increased Commonwealth debt.  Chris Watson, Andrew Fisher, Billy Hughes, James Scullin, John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, and now Kevin Rudd, have increased debt.  The truth is that, like his Labor predecessors, Mr Rudd is addicted to debt.  He’s addicted to bigger government, seeing it as the answer to every question.  And he’s addicted to higher taxes to pay for it all. After all, whatever is borrowed today has to be repaid tomorrow, with interest. Same old Labor.  Same old mistakes.   ***   The solution to a financial crisis caused by too much debt is not to borrow more.  There is a different path.   •         A path that builds on the innovation, creativity and hard work of Australia’s entrepreneurs and small businesses. •         A path that recognises the tremendous strengths and skills of the Australian people. •         A path that returns proven values of self-reliance, initiative, free enterprise, prudence and debt reduction to centre stage. Over coming weeks, I intend to set out additional details of how a Coalition Government will pursue this different path.  I will continue to lay out our alternative economic approach and plan for recovery. Tonight, I want to focus on a particular installment of that plan: our strategy to support and sustain the engine room of our economy, the small business community.  Over recent weeks I and my colleagues have met with numerous small business people at 23 Jobs for Australia forums which the Coalition has held across all six states (with 17 more scheduled for the near future). These are an opportunity for us to listen closely to the community and gather ideas on how to promote employment and nurture commerce in these difficult times. Out of that consultative process my colleagues and I have formulated a Small Business Action Plan. Tonight I will briefly outline six initiatives which together form the core of our plan to ease the pressure on this most critical segment of the private sector, and enhance its future growth prospects. 1.     Tax loss carryback To bolster the cash position of firms with a solid operating history but facing operating losses in 2009 and/or 2010, limited carryback of tax losses should be introduced, capped at $100,000 of refunded tax per firm over the two years.  This would allow firms to offset their operating losses by reclaiming taxes paid over the past three years, up to this limit. The measure would only apply for businesses with at least one employee in each year a refund claim is made, and in each year that tax was previously paid.  Carryback would be governed by the same rules that currently apply when companies carry forward losses to reduce future tax liabilities. Since carryback refunds would over time be offset by lower losses carried forward, the long-run budgetary cost of this measure largely arise from changed timing of receipts. Similar treatment of current losses to reclaim past tax payments is available to firms in the UK, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands and the US, where the Obama Administration recently extended the carryback period from two to five years. 2.     Superannuation Guarantee relief To reduce on-costs for firms with 20 or fewer staff, the Coalition proposes a temporary reduction in the cash cost to small employers of the Superannuation Guarantee Contribution.  As previously flagged, we propose that the Commonwealth reimburse 3 percentage points of the employer contribution in the first year and 1.5 percentage points of the employer contribution in the second year. This will make it easier to keep employees on the payroll.  The cost to the Budget over the two years would be approximately $5 billion – leaving small employers $5 billion better off in cash flow terms. 3.     OECD-best practice regulatory burden But the most resonant call from small and large businesses alike that we have heard at our Jobs for Australia forums is for government to get out of the way.  Regulation is an enormous burden that weighs disproportionately and unfairly on smaller firms.  Regulation is imposed at Commonwealth, State and Territory and Local levels, of course.  Complying with it is immensely time consuming and expensive. Quantifying the average time it takes to comply with each requirement should be a key part of determining the overall economic costs of regulation and determining how to reduce these. The Coalition commits to applying a comprehensive quantification to the full range of Commonwealth, state and local filings required to start or expand a business, and to ensuring that this overhead burden, as measured in terms of hours and both direct and indirect financial costs, is then reduced to at least match (and preferably improve on) OECD best practice over the next three years. 4.     One-stop-shop regulatory portal The Coalition also commits to working with the states and local governments to deliver integrated online access to all forms and filings, regardless of which level of government imposes them, via a one-stop-shop business portal.  The 1996-2007 Coalition government made a solid start here by creating the www.business.gov.au portal, but much more needs to be done. Cutting red tape and bringing these functions together will require substantial co-operation and co-ordination, and depend heavily on the accelerated replacement of traditional reporting methods with internet-based alternatives.  To make this one-stop-shop for compliance and regulatory filings a reality, the Coalition will create a small business service delivery agency expressly charged with delivering integrated online access to forms, filings, government information and other assistance. 5.     Support for family businesses The new small business service delivery agency will also operate a program that will provide support and advice for family businesses on succession planning and family business professionalisation.  While this is not a large resource outlay, it represents an appropriate response to what is a vital issue for many of Australia’s small firms. 6.  Cabinet-level representation It is vital that small business has a seat at the table in Canberra that matches its importance to the national economy.  Steve Ciobo, the shadow minister for small business, is already part of the shadow cabinet.  The next Coalition government will preserve this high level of representation in Cabinet. Finally, one more small but important additional commitment: a Coalition Government will also pay its bills on time.  When we were in Government, we paid 95 per cent of our bills to small businesses who supplied goods and service to Government in less than 30 days – and we should have done better.  The Labor Government has let this slip to only 92 per cent.  This is a trend that needs to be reversed, and fast. *** None of this is easy.  But it is worthwhile, because it gets government out of the way of small business, and lets the productive sector of the economy focus on what it does best – creating jobs for Australians and bringing innovative goods and services to market. Under the last Coalition government, for the first time in our nation's history, the number of small business owners in Australia exceeded the number of union members.  In fact it is fair to say that over the past two decades there has been a revolution in the very structure of our economy, driven by the emergence of vastly more dynamic small business sector including vastly greater numbers of individual contractors and service providers, self-employed entrepreneurs and small partnerships. If elected, a Coalition government will continue work hard for small business.  We will give small business confidence, give them strength, and allow them to grow, without bureaucratic road blocks. The measures I've proposed tonight are just a first step along the very different policy development road we in the Coalition advocate – a road that depends on enduring, common sense values such as thrift, hard work and individual enterprise, rather than heavy-handed intervention. These values stand in contrast to the approach being taken by our political opponents. We are now witnessing the absurdity of a Government increasing union power and lifting the cost of employing Australians with its award modernization scheme, at the very time when unemployment is rising and the jobless need most help.  A Government borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars,  that will have to be repaid by our children,  not to build roads or ports or dams, but rather to mail everybody a cheque for $900. As one older Australian said to me the other day:  imagine if Ben Chifley and Bob Menzies had sent everyone a cheque for 50 pounds instead of building the Snowy Mountains Scheme. This approach is not good for the country or for business.  We believe our road is far preferable, and far truer to the values that have historically made Australia and Australians prosperous and successful. The great manifest difference we are seeing now between the Liberal Party and the Labor Government is that Labor believes in big government and high debt as a solution to our problems.  We believe that the spirit of private enterprise will drive us forward.  This is why the Liberal plan for recovery will focus on small business – because small business is the engine room of the economy and will play a crucial role in our recovery.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to your gathering this evening, and I look forward to continuing to work with the ACCI to develop policies which unleash the enterprise, effort and initiative that represent the only assured path out of our current economic difficulties. [ends]malcolmThu, 02 Apr 2009 06:50:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:412http://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/409/Small-Business-Action-Plan.aspx#Comments2http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=409http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=409&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/409/Small-Business-Action-Plan.aspxThe Coalition believes small business is the most critical part of our economy - the source of much of Australia's innovation, economic growth and job creation. In these difficult times small firms must be given the appropriate support to equip them to lead the economic recovery. The most important thing for small business is a growing and dynamic economy providing more opportunities. The Rudd Government's inept economic management, which has made a challenging situation worse, is having a particularly damaging impact on our smallest firms. This has been confirmed by community feedback at the 23 Jobs for Australia forums the Coalition has recently held across all six states of Australia (with another 17 forums scheduled). Today, the Coalition announces a six point small business action plan that picks up on many of the ideas and suggestions provided to us at those forums by business owners, individual contractors and Australians who work at small firms. (1) Tax loss carryback To bolster the cash position of firms with a solid operating history but facing large operating losses in 2009 and/or 2010, limited carryback of tax losses should be introduced, capped at $100,000 of refunded tax per firm over the two years. This would allow firms to offset their operating losses and retain staff by claiming back taxes paid over the past three years, up to this limit. The measure would only apply for businesses with at least one employee in each year a refund claim is made, and in each year that tax was previously paid. Carryback would be governed by the same rules that currently apply when companies carry forward losses to reduce tax liabilities in future years. Since carryback refunds would over time be offset by lower losses carried forward, the long-run budgetary cost of this measure largely arise from changed timing of receipts. Similar treatment of current losses to reclaim past tax payments is available to firms in the UK, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands and the US, where the Obama Administration recently extended the carryback period from two to five years. (2) Superannuation Guarantee relief To reduce on-costs for firms with 20 or fewer staff, the Coalition proposes a temporarily reduction in the cash cost to small employers of the Superannuation Guarantee Contribution. As previously flagged, the Commonwealth should pay for a portion of their superannuation obligations for a period of two years – 3 percentage points this year, and 1.5 percentage points next year. This will make it easier to keep employees on the payroll. (3) OECD-best practice regulatory burden Quantifying the average time it takes to comply with each requirement is a key part of determining the economic costs of regulation. The Coalition commits to applying a comprehensive quantification to the full range of Commonwealth, state and local filings required to start or expand a business, and to ensuring that this overhead burden, as measured in terms of hours and costs, is then reduced to at least match (and preferably improve on) OECD best practice over the next three years. (4) One-stop-shop regulatory portal The Coalition also commits to working with the states and local governments to deliver integrated online access to all forms and filings, regardless of which level of government imposes them, via a one-stop-shop business portal. Cutting red tape and bringing these functions together will require substantial co-operation and depend heavily on the accelerated replacement of traditional reporting methods with internet-based alternatives. To make this one-stop-shop for compliance and regulatory filings a reality, the Coalition will create a small business service delivery agency expressly charged with delivering integrated online access. (5) Support for family businesses The new small business service delivery agency will also operate a program that will provide support and advice for family businesses on succession planning and family business professionalisation. While this is not a large resource outlay, it represents an appropriate response to what is a vital issue for many of Australia’s small firms. (6) Cabinet-level representation It is vital that small business has a seat at the table in Canberra that matches its importance to the national economy. Steve Ciobo, the shadow minister for small business, is already part of the shadow cabinet. The next Coalition government will preserve this high level of representation in Cabinet. “The plan includes both proposals that offer a direct financial lifeline to struggling firms in difficult times, and moves to get government out of the way of the entrepreneurial sector of the economy,” said Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. "These measures are just the first step on the road to recovery," said Coalition small business spokesman Steve Ciobo. “The Coalition is committed to returning the smaller firms and entrepreneurs who drive our economy and create the bulk of new jobs to centre stage in the policy debate.” Mr Turnbull will launch the plan at a speech tonightmalcolmThu, 02 Apr 2009 03:35:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:409http://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-943feb885714:408