http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.auRSS feeds for Malcolm Turnbull MP60http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/545/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=545http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=545&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/545/Doorstop-Interview-in-Sydney.aspxSubjects: Labor’s confusion on jobs; Yvo de Boer. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well yesterday we saw at the centrepiece of the Labor Party conference the announcement of phantom jobs from a phoney Prime Minister. Not even his own Employment Minister, Mark Arbib, could explain it satisfactorily. There were no new jobs announced yesterday and not many jobs at all. This was a great example of Labor Party spin. They’re not focused on jobs – they’re focused on spin. We in the Coalition are focused on jobs and the economy. We’re concerned about the huge mountain of debt the Government is building up – $315 billion. We’re concerned about the way in which they are not supporting small business and supporting employment. And we’re concerned about the damage their poorly designed emissions trading scheme is going to do to industry – vital export industries – and destroy jobs. It’s about time Mr Rudd got real and focused on real jobs instead of spin. QUESTION: It sounds as though this green jobs package was put together rather quickly, written on the back of a serviette or something like that and obviously Mr Arbib wasn’t across all the detail? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they’re all trying to dump on Mark Arbib about this but the fact of the matter is, as we know – and I’ve just got Mr Rudd’s press release here – Mr Rudd said 50,000 new green jobs. That’s what Mr Rudd said. So he said 50,000 new jobs and there are simply no new jobs. There are 6,000 jobs in the package and they’re not new. So it’s all very well for Mr Rudd to blame Mark Arbib but it was his statement, it was the Prime Minister’s statement – phantom jobs from a phoney Prime Minister. QUESTION: Are the jobs real even if they’re not new? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, there are 6,000 jobs there that have been previously announced. These are the 6,000 jobs that were part of the compromise following the negotiation of the stimulus package in the Senate, and there is some additional training and so forth but there is not 50,000 new jobs. I mean, the Prime Minister stood up and announced 50,000 new jobs – it is simply not true. QUESTION: So do you believe Mr Arbib is just being made a scapegoat here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well of course they’re trying to make him a scapegoat, but the fact is Mr Arbib didn’t write the press release. He wasn’t up there in a Kevin Rudd suit giving the speech. I mean, Kevin Rudd is the one who announced 50,000 new jobs and it’s simply not true. And the Labor Party are now running around trying to back away from it, blame Mark Arbib here, muddy the waters there. That was a false statement. That was the centrepiece of their conference and it just demonstrates that the Labor Government is all about spin and not about substance. QUESTION: How do you react to the United Nations official this morning saying there’s no problem for Australia going to Copenhagen without an Emissions Trading Scheme in place? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I know Yvo de Boer and I noted that he had some kind words to say about the Opposition too. I met him when I was Environment Minister. Look, the reality is what Kevin Rudd needs to take to Copenhagen is a commitment to targets and we have given him bipartisan support on the targets that he has proposed to take to Copenhagen. There is no question that the emissions trading scheme should have its design finalised after Copenhagen and we’ve been saying that all year. QUESTION: And your response to forecasts that there will be 80,000 construction job losses over the next three years? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, we’re very concerned about all of these forecasts. I hope they prove to be unduly pessimistic. There is a real, a growing concern, a legitimate growing concern about job losses in the Australian economy. Of course we’ve not just seen an increase in the official unemployment numbers but a very significant increase in underemployment – that’s to say people not being able to work the hours that they want to or need to work. So these are real challenges that require real solutions, not the sort of spin we had from Mr Rudd yesterday. QUESTION: How do you view the announcement from the Deputy Prime Minister that now all contracts will require a commitment to maintaining wages and conditions? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I haven’t seen the detail of her statement but obviously everybody is obliged to comply with the industrial law. So I’ll have a look at her statement but on the face of it the laws are there, industrial agreements are there, industrial laws are there and everyone has to comply with them. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmFri, 31 Jul 2009 06:44:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:545http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/543/Opening-of-Liberal-House-on-the-Central-Coast.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=543http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=543&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/543/Opening-of-Liberal-House-on-the-Central-Coast.aspxE &  O E It is a sign of our commitment to the Central Coast that we’re establishing this office and holding our Shadow Cabinet meeting here. The Central Coast deserves better than Belinda Neal and Craig Thomson – a great deal better. A lot of things have got worse under the Rudd Government but there are few things that have got worse than the representation of the Central Coast in the Federal Parliament. When we had Ken Ticehurst and Jim Lloyd, you had representatives who were part of a Coalition Government that eliminated all of Labor’s debt; that delivered over 11-and-half years 22 per cent real growth in wages, consistent economic growth and historically low levels of unemployment. And what we’ve seen in little more than 18 months – a little more than 18 months – is this massive mountain of debt building. Kevin Rudd has said in his latest essay, so-called, – a sort of ‘Bradman of Boredom’ – he goes on and on forever, you know, words and words; but he goes on, now he’s talking about the next decade being a building decade. Well my friends, the only thing he has built is a mountain of debt, heading for $315 billion and that is going to result in higher taxes and higher interest rates. Every family here on the Central Coast and right around Australia is going to be paying a heavy price for Labor’s reckless spending, a heavy price for having Belinda Neal and Craig Thomson representing them instead of the Coalition. Now we can change that. With your support and your enthusiasm we will win these seats back for the Coalition, for the Liberal Party, and we will form a government which will once again restore Australia’s public finances to a responsible state, to one which we can be proud of and which will enable us, as Liberals, to once again realise our philosophy, our vision, which is that government’s role is to enable each and every one of you to do your best. Kevin Rudd – never forget – believes government should be at the centre of the economy, he believes that government’s job is to tell us what is best and we do not accept $315 billion of debt, reckless spending, money being handed out left, right and centre with so little to show for it. Where is the great infrastructure to show for all this indebtedness – cash handouts, Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls coming to schools whether they’re needed or not? It’s been an extraordinary period of recklessness, and that debt will be paid for with higher taxes and higher interest rates. The reckless spending has to stop: the reckless borrowing has to stop, and only a Coalition government can do it. So I’m delighted to be here today. This is a key battle ground of the next election. We will win here and we will win well. And as part of our campaign, we are opening this office. [ends]  malcolmWed, 29 Jul 2009 05:28:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:543http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/572/Address-to-the-Australian-Institute-of-Company-Directors.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=572http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=572&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/572/Address-to-the-Australian-Institute-of-Company-Directors.aspxE & O E Well thank you very much Kevin, it’s great to be here. Now over the weekend we’ve had another long essay from the Prime Minister – but I’m not going to do a Fidel Castro imitation and deliver a speech as long as his essay was – but I note that in his latest manifesto he says that the decade ahead is the building decade – well so far the only thing he’s built is debt, an enormous mountain of debt and one that is getting bigger every day. When we talk about the recovery in Australia, and we talk about the recovery that we’re all committed to, we have to recognise that the biggest brake on that recovery is debt; this huge and growing mountain of Commonwealth debt that the Prime Minister has presided. Taking a country that had no net debt at all in 2007 to one where we’re heading towards gross debt of $315 billion – that’s where it is said to peak – a net debt of over $200 billion – and that in itself my friends, I’m afraid to say, is an understatement. The National Broadband Network, $43 billion, no business plan, no financial analysis, none of those tedious details that any of you spend your lives with. Imagine if you’d gone on television with a business proposal and said this is going to be commercially viable and mums and dads of Australia you must invest. Imagine if you’d said that? Imagine? Well the lawyers in the room would be able to offer you some help I imagine. You’d be spending a lot of time in court. But that’s what the Prime Minister did. Think about that. A National Broadband Network plan that has no financial basis for being proclaimed, in the way it has by the Prime Minister, and I might say not one cent of that $43 billion is contained in the debt forecasts. Now the tragedy that we face with this mountain of debt is that we have so little to show for it. We have seen $23 billion borrowed and given away. We have over $14 billion being borrowed and being spent on Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls – coming to a primary school near you. Around the country there are these tragic stories of schools that actually don’t want the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall. That have got a perfectly nice playground that is going to be occupied by this new creation which is there so that a Labor politician can cut a ribbon around it. We’ve seen a complete contrast between the approach we took in government and the approach Labor takes in government over schools. Because when you boil it all down, when you cut through the debate about one policy or another, the big difference between the Labor approach to government and ours is that Labor believes government knows best and we believe government’s job is to enable you to do your best. We are a party committed to freedom. That’s our commitment. And so when we were in government, and we were investing money in schools, we had a program called Investing in Our Schools, which reached out to school communities and said; what do you want? Some of you may have been on P&C’s that put in applications that got money for…might have been a shade cloth, or it might have been a computer room, it might have been some repairs, a huge variety. And we looked at those and we said okay, the school community, if this school wants to do this let’s see if we can help – and we did to the tune of $1.2 billion. That was our approach. Enabling those school communities to do their best, to do their thing, to realise their dreams – that was the Liberal approach – and what we have instead now is this so-called Building the Education Revolution where so much money is being spent so scandalously and inefficiently, that it’s now being investigated by the Auditor-General. In fact some school principles, those that haven’t been muzzled by the governments, have been calling it ‘the evil revolution,’ that’s probably taking it a bridge too far, it’s not so much evil as dramatically incompetent and spending billions and billions of dollars, borrowed money, for very little return. Because that my friends is the real challenge we face as we look at our recovery; how are we going to pay off that debt? How are we going to pay it off? And you and I know that it will be paid for with higher taxes and higher interest rates. There is no alternative. You cannot escape that. Taxes will be higher because of the debt, because it will have to be paid down and that will mean that there will be greater restraints on business, each and every one of your firms will be paying more in tax than they otherwise might have been. And each and every one of your firms will be asking where is the value, where is the infrastructure that all of this borrowing could have created? And the truth is that there is precious little in the form of economic infrastructure to show for all of this indebtedness. There are no great railways, no great roads. Warren Truss, the Leader of the Nationals told me the other day, we were contemplating what you could do with $23 billion – which is the amount of the cash splashes – Warren observed that you could complete the duplication of the Pacific Highway from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne to Adelaide for $23 billion – that’s how much was given away. Now Mr Rudd of course has recently in his Berlin lecture, and in the winter sermon, which we saw on the weekend, has now started to talk about belt-tightening and economic conservatism. But what he…again, he even being an economic conservative than a democratic socialist, now he’s veering back to economic conservatism, he changes his season like a fashionable lady changes her wardrobe, everything is in time with the season – in fact he loves that phrase doesn’t he, in due season; see the Chasers had a bit of a go at him about that – but I’d say this about the Prime Minister’s big essay; is that what is most remarkable about it is not simply the technique he has of saying that anybody that doesn’t agree with every aspect of his particular policies has absolutely no policy – this is this sort of, you know, there’s no way but my way approach he has, which is obviously designed to stifle debates – not so much that, or the ridiculous misrepresentation of history he has in describing the origins of the global financial crisis. If you read Kevin Rudd’s writings you’d believe that the global financial crisis was orchestrated by John Howard and Peter Costello. You really would. Neo-liberal free market extremists. Yeah here they were in Australia. Here we have the most secure, most stable banking system in the developed world, regulated by…working under regulation set up by the Coalition, no credit ever given to the Coalition for that. We have in our mortgage market sub-prime loans less than one per cent of the total loans. In the United States closer to 15 per cent – big difference between our market and America’s. Our market was differently regulated. We actually had a free market; well have a free market in mortgages. We don’t have a Fannie Mae or a Freddie Mac equivalent with the government in effect underwriting an enormous share of the mortgage market. I mean far from free markets running amuck, in the United States as you all know, the mortgage market was heavily interfered with by governments – both in terms of encouragement, indeed mandating to lend money to people that ordinarily wouldn’t have money lent to them – and of course in underwriting so many of the mortgages. So there where government was at the centre of the mortgage market you had the sub-prime problem. Here in Australia where government was essentially absent, other than in the normal prudential and regulatory areas, which it should be its province, there was no such counterpart. And that is something that the Prime Minister fails to give credit – either to the previous government or to the business community. Because the reality is we have weathered, we are weathering this global financial crisis better than other countries and we are doing so in large measure because of the prudent economic management of the previous government, a government that paid off all of Labor’s debt, that left Australia with no net debt and cash at the bank and indeed because of the prudent financial regulation which ensured that our financial services sector, our banking sector in particular, didn’t face the same stresses that it did in other markets where regulation was less prudent and less well designed. Now the biggest political story of course in the last few weeks has been the Government’s flawed emissions trading scheme. Now can I just say that again we face a Prime Minister who is determined to treat the important challenge of climate change as purely a political issue and not as an economic issue. The design of an emissions trading scheme, getting the design right is absolutely vital, absolutely vital. A well designed scheme can be an efficient way of reducing emissions. We recognised that when we were in government and legislated…started to legislate accordingly. A poorly designed scheme can do enormous economic damage for little or no environmental benefit, and so the devil is truly in the detail. Now, because any action Australia takes will be futile in the absence of global action, of a global effort, it makes sense for the design of our scheme to be finalised after the Americans have legislated for their’s – because that will undoubtedly by the global benchmark – and after the Copenhagen summit in December. And that is the argument that we have put. Many other countries are taking a similar approach. The Canadians, for example, have postponed work on their scheme until they see what emerges from the US Congress and from Copenhagen. Now that is the position that we’ve taken and it is a sound one, it’s a commonsense one, but the Prime Minister is determined to fight on and legislate this year. And so it is important that we also, while making the argument about timing, also make a constructive contribution to the debate about design which so many of your companies have such a very powerful vested interest in, whether you’re in energy, coal mining, whether you’re in steel or aluminium; so many industries, agriculture, have got a vital, vested interest in this. And so we have laid out a number of principles that must be taken into account, a number of concerns; issues that need to be addressed clearly and expressly. They have been dismissed by the Government, naturally, because they’re not interested in debate. Their only message to the Opposition is to get out of the way. But the first and most fundamental one – and this I note is something that people in the trade union movement and the Labor movement are also echoing – the first and most fundamental one is that we should ensure that Australian industries and Australian workers have no less protection from our emissions trading scheme than American industries and American workers have from theirs. Surely it is fundamental, absolutely fundamental that we should not impose a heavier cost on our industries in terms of a carbon trading scheme than is imposed on American industries – America being the largest economy and of course what will be the global benchmark. And there are already very substantial differences. The American legislation of course is not complete. It’s passed through the House of Representatives in the form of the Waxman-Markey Bill. But you see there much more comprehensive protection given to emissions intensive trade exposed industries, such as steel and aluminium and coal and so forth, as I just described, much more comprehensive protection than is offered under the Australian…under the legislation proposed in Australia. Similarly; and this is where the Rudd Government’s scheme is so tragically deficient from an environmental point of you. You can talk to any environmental advocate – Tim Flannery is probably the most eloquent on this subject – and they will tell you that the greatest opportunity for near-term abatement of CO2 is through our landscape, through biological sequestration of carbon, through increasing the levels of soil carbon, through improved agricultural and grazing practises, through environmental forestry, through biochar, through so many other techniques – all of which are recognised in the US legislation but almost all of which are completely ignored in Australia. So here are we with our single greatest comparative advantage being our 700 million hectares of real estate and the opportunity to invest into that landscape and reduce CO2 emissions and yet that is being ignored in the legislation. So we will continue to argue for those changes. We believe the scheme would be best legislated for finally, or finalised after Copenhagen, but we will participate constructively in the debate about the design of the scheme in the course of this year. But whether the scheme is finalised this year or, as we would argue, next year, the fundamental challenge that we’re going to face in terms of our recovery is going to be that mountain of debt. All of us have had issues with companies which have had too much debt and it has a sort of a lingering, menacing nature to it. It sits there on the balance sheet demanding to be serviced and to have interest paid and principal repaid. Our nations are no different. That debt, that mountain of debt, so much built up with so little to show for it, is the biggest single handbrake on our economy. And the sooner the Prime Minister stops adding to that mountain of debt, the better our prospects for recovery will be. Thank you very much. [ends] _______________________________________  malcolmTue, 28 Jul 2009 06:27:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:572http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/542/Joint-Doorstop-with-Steve-Ciobo-in-Eastwood.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=542http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=542&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/542/Joint-Doorstop-with-Steve-Ciobo-in-Eastwood.aspxSubjects: The Coalition’s plan for recovery; cutting red tape; Kevin Rudd’s broken promise to fix public hospitals. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: This is a great opportunity to engage with small business, which is what Steven and I have been doing all year. We have been having meetings like this and forums around Australia engaging with small business about jobs. Small business is the engine room of the economy. It’s in the frontline. It is at the coal face of the recovery that Australia needs, and it needs more support. And so we have a policy for small business, for the recovery and support of small business. Mr Rudd doesn’t. He had 6,000 words in the paper on the weekend and no plan for small business – completely overlooked. Our focus is on jobs and on small business. That’s what we are focused on relentlessly. And that’s why we proposed changes to the tax system to help small business and that’s why Steven here is very focused on the issue of red tape. At the more than 50 small business meetings we’ve had – our Jobs for Australia forums – the issue of red tape and overregulation has come up again and again. So we’ve now got a search for the worst piece of red tape to highlight the problems that small business has in dealing with inefficient regulation. STEVEN CIOBO: Small business is absolutely central to the Coalition’s plans for economic recovery in this country. As part of our agenda this week you will see large numbers of Coalition members and senators across Australia that are getting out there, getting into small businesses across Australia because fundamentally the Coalition believes our policies best represent enabling small business to do what they do best, which is to employ locals and to ensure that they generate wealth, not only for themselves but for our country. And so, in that vein, what we are absolutely committed to as part of our six point small business action plan is to make sure that we reduce red tape to being the lowest in the OECD. And this week we’re looking to find the most idiotic piece of red tape that we can find. We know that there is lots that exists. We had someone mention to me recently, for example, that he thought he ran a compliance business with groceries on the side. So we know that business, especially small business, is fed up with red tape and this week we hope to find the very worst examples of it so we can get rid of it. QUESTION: Do you support [inaudible] increase in the Medicare levy to cover dental? MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is not our policy. We will wait and see what the Prime Minister addresses in his speech today and we’ll obviously look at the report that he’s basing it on. But, no, that is certainly not our policy. QUESTION: What about a Commonwealth takeover of hospitals? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, the critical thing is that Mr Rudd be held to account for his promise. Let’s be quite clear about this. In 2007 Mr Rudd said to the Australian people he would fix the public hospital system by 30 June this year or he would take it over. And he has done neither. He hasn’t fixed it, things have gone backwards, and he hasn’t taken it over, and I don’t believe he’s going to take it over today but we’ll see what he says in his speech. Mr Rudd has broken one promise after another. He said he was going to bring down grocery prices. He had GroceryWatch – a complete flop. He said he was going to bring down fuel prices; FuelWatch – another flop. He said he wasn’t going to change the rules on the private health insurance rebate and he broke that promise too. One broken promise after another. At some point he’s going to have to deliver. QUESTION: What will the Opposition do though on [inaudible] do you support a Commonwealth takeover if you were in government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we support better delivery of those vital services and we’re examining all of these proposals and studies at the moment. We went to the last election with a policy that would have given greater autonomy and accountability to hospitals but we will review all of these proposals, we will see what Mr Rudd says today, and then we will take our policies on public hospitals to the next election. QUESTION: The report hasn’t actually called for a full takeover but has left open the option for Commonwealth funding for hospital admissions. What do you think about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I’ve read in the press is that there is a proposal – and we don’t know what’s in the report but what’s been speculated is that there is a proposal that the Commonwealth takeover casualty and emergency treatment. Now I think really we’ve got to wait and read the report – I’m sure it’s a very lengthy one – read the report, consider it in the light of the Prime Minister’s comments and then we’ll respond. As I understand it he’s still on his feet speaking right now. QUESTION: Should the voting age be lowered to 16? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I don’t support that. I think 18 is the right spot. That’s the right age and I don’t think there’s much support in the community for lowering the voting age and certainly we don’t favour it. [ends]  malcolmMon, 27 Jul 2009 04:17:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:542http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/541/Statement-regarding-an-Emissions-Trading-Scheme.aspx#Comments3http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=541http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=541&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/541/Statement-regarding-an-Emissions-Trading-Scheme.aspxThe Shadow Cabinet has convened today and endorsed this statement concerning the design principles for an Australian emissions trading scheme (ETS). The Coalition supports, and supported when in Government, an environmentally effective and economically responsible ETS being put in place in Australia as part of a co-ordinated global response to climate change. In our view, the design of the Australian ETS should be completed following the passage of the United States ETS legislation (the Waxman Markey Bill) through the US Congress and the conclusion of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December. Every party and interested group except the Government agrees that Labor’s ETS legislation is flawed and must be improved if we are to save jobs, protect small business and industry in Australia and prevent production and carbon leakage which frustrates any net global CO2 abatement. Notwithstanding the good sense of waiting until after Copenhagen, if the Prime Minister is determined to force an earlier vote on this legislation for political purposes, the question arises therefore whether and on what terms the Coalition would be prepared to consider supporting the legislation prior to the Copenhagen Summit. So in that practical context, I have set out below the principal issues which must be addressed in Labor’s scheme. Amending the ETS to address these issues will take some time and if the Government ignores these legitimate concerns and insists on a vote on its ETS in its current form on August 13, the Coalition will vote against the Bill. If the Government amends its ETS to put in place these crucial improvements, I will seek, and am confident of obtaining, the support of the Coalition party room for the amended scheme. The ball is now in Mr Rudd’s court. If he genuinely wants to legislate for an ETS which protects both the environment and Australian jobs, then he should be prepared to engage with the Coalition and address the issues set out below. Specific Issues 1. An Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) should offer no less protection for jobs, small business and industry than an American ETS which is being developed and is presently in the form of the Waxman Markey Bill which has been approved by the House of Representatives but is yet to pass the US Senate. The final form of any legislation may be materially different from Waxman Markey and will not be known until later in the year. 2. To that end there must be an effective mechanism, such as a regular review by the Productivity Commission or a similar expert independent body, to ensure that the Australian ETS does not materially disadvantage Australian industries and workers relative to American industries and workers. The legislation must bind the Government to correct any disadvantage identified by the review process. 3. In order to ensure that an Australian ETS does not simply result in futile carbon and production leakage – exporting the emissions and the jobs – Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed industries (EITEs) should at least be on a level playing field with the United States and other advanced economies and should therefore receive full compensation for higher energy costs until the bulk of their competitors (measured as in Waxman Markey by global market share) face a similar carbon cost. 4. Fugitive methane emissions from coal mining should be treated in the same way as they are in the United States and Europe. 5. As in the Waxman Markey legislation agricultural emissions should be excluded from the scheme and agricultural offsets (eg. biosequestration or green carbon) should be included. Australia’s greatest near term potential of reducing its CO2 emissions are to be found in the better management of our own landscape. 6. The scheme design must ensure that general increases in electricity prices are no greater than comparable countries to minimise the impact on all trade exposed industries, to reduce the need to compensate for households and to avoid a needlessly high increase in taxation. 7. In order to ensure continuity of electricity supply, electricity generators should be fairly and adequately compensated for loss of asset value to ensure capacity to invest in new abatement technology and to fund maintenance of existing facilities for energy security purposes. 8. Effective incentives and/or credits must be established to capture the substantial abatement opportunities offered by energy efficiency, especially in buildings. 9. There must be adequate incentives for voluntary action which can be added to Australia’s 2020 target.  malcolmFri, 24 Jul 2009 06:25:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:541http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/538/Death-of-Australian-Soldier-in-Afghanistan.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=538http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=538&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/538/Death-of-Australian-Soldier-in-Afghanistan.aspxThe federal Opposition is deeply saddened by today’s news of the death of a young Australian soldier in Afghanistan. The thoughts and prayers of all Australians will be with his family. Our thoughts and wishes are also with a second soldier recovering from serious wounds suffered in the same bombing, along with three Afghan civilians, including a small boy, injured by the blast. This tragedy reminds us all of the enormous dangers our forces face in Afghanistan every day, not least from the ever-present threat of improvised explosive devices. Coming on top of the vicious attacks in Jakarta, it is another horrific reminder that the global fight against violent extremism is far from over; these indiscriminate bombings illustrate why it is vitally important to defeat the scourge of terrorism, in Afghanistan as elsewhere. Earlier this month, I visited Australian troops on the frontline in Afghanistan. I was hugely impressed by the bravery and dedication of our forces. They are doing a magnificent job in our name, under our flag, in very tough conditions. This brave soldier is the eleventh member of the Australian Defence Force to be killed in Afghanistan since 2002. As Australians, we are immensely proud of the men and women of the ADF; of their service, and their sacrifice. They are fighting in defence of liberty and democracy, the values on which our nation was founded. Today, we mourn the loss of a courageous Australian, and we extend our heartfelt sympathies to his family at this extremely difficult time.  malcolmSun, 19 Jul 2009 22:53:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:538http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/539/Address-to-the-Tasmanian-Division-of-the-Liberal-Party.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=539http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=539&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/539/Address-to-the-Tasmanian-Division-of-the-Liberal-Party.aspxThank you. Isn’t Lucy beautiful? It’s very kind of you to invite me here today, David McQuestin and the Tasmanian Liberal Party. It’s wonderful to see you all together, to be here with my Deputy Leader Julie Bishop and the Deputy Leader of the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz and all our federal colleagues that are here today, the great Tasmanian Senate team and of course we’re joined by the Shadow Employment Minister, Michael Keenan, who is over from Western Australia. Also Will Hodgman, our next Premier here in Tasmania and your state team. It’s good to see you as well. Now we gather together today with a sombre note. Yesterday we saw again cowardly and vicious acts of terrorism in Jakarta. The death toll is still uncertain, but grave fears are held for three of our fellow Australians. These attacks are reminders of why we must be relentlessly vigilant, relentlessly vigilant in our fight against terrorism whether it is here in Australia, in our near north or in the rocky hills of Afghanistan where, together with Julie Bishop and our Shadow Defence Minister Senator David Johnston, I recently visited our troops. Those young Australians are doing vital work in the frontline of the battle against terrorism, against an enemy as fanatical as he is ruthless and we should be so proud of those young men and women there in Afghanistan. Now our hearts go out to those who have been injured and to those families who have lost loved ones. But in our prayers for the victims we carry too a steely resolve to continue our work, our tireless work with our allies and our friends, including the newly elected Government of Indonesia, both to eradicate terrorism and demonstrate that freedom and democracy will triumph over fanaticism and tyranny. We in the Opposition will support the Australian Government wholeheartedly in providing whatever assistance is required to help Indonesia respond to these attacks including tracking down and punishing the perpetrators of these dreadful crimes. Now that said, that sombre note observed, I have to say again it is a wonderful, great pleasure to be back here again in Tasmania, my third visit this year. As you know, Lucy and I enjoyed a summer break at Cradle Mountain in January and the Shadow Cabinet met in Devonport in April where many of us also spent time in Burnie with a Jobs Forum, and also gathered together in Launceston as well. So if I can let you in on a secret – and I know it will stay within these walls – but of all of the privileges of being leader of the federal Opposition, one of the most pleasant is to spend time here in this beautiful state. Tasmanians are famously shrewd and prophetic, quietly spoken and given to understatement. It was of course a famous Tasmanian, John Batman, who arrived on the banks of the Yarra in the 1830s, and declared it would be a good place for a village. And whom of today’s Tasmanians would disagree with him on that? Now, Tasmanians are also rugged outdoors people – resilient and resourceful – or do you just have a sense of humour? I ask this because on another Tasmanian visit Lucy and I were here in Hobart and we consulted a popular local book of walks and we found one which had a trail up to the top of Mount Wellington which was described, as we recalled, as we clung perilously to what appeared to be almost a sheer rockface, as an easy stroll suitable for families with small children. You are very rugged, you Tasmanians. You have a great state – everything is here, natural beauty, lots of energy in every respect, a great spirit of entrepreneurship as we can see in so many innovative businesses, some of whose leaders I’ve met in the last 24 hours. But there is one thing missing: good government. Tasmania urgently, desperately needs an end to this cycle of Labor debt, deficit and spin. Tasmania needs Premier Will Hodgman. We need to take Labor out of government here. They need to see in Premier Will Hodgman a Tasmania led as it should be led, and that is what we will show the Labor Party – the alternative, a Tasmania that can realise its vision, show true leadership, true innovation and realise its great natural blessings and the energy and the enterprise of its people with real leadership. Now we need to show Labor something too in Canberra. We need to show them once again what a Liberal government can do, a government I will lead at the next election supported by great Tasmanians – Senators Abetz, Colbeck, Parry, Barnett and Bushby. And supported too by Liberal Members of the House of Representatives from Tasmania that will be elected at that election. The challenge for all of us, my friends, is to marshal a Liberal resurgence that will bring the defeat of Labor at the next federal election. For we literally cannot afford to have the Rudd Labor Party in power for one minute longer than is necessary. Let us remember this – we are a party with very different values to Labor and we need to stand proud for those values and look the Labor Party in the eye and show them up for what they are and stand up for what we are. Because we are a party of freedom. We are a party that believes in you. We are a party that believes the prosperity of this nation is built on the energy and the enterprise, the passion, the courage, the commitment, the preparedness to invest and take risks, the preparedness to hire people, to have a go. That is what we believe in. We believe that government’s job is to enable you to realise all of that, to enable you to do your best. Labor believes government knows best. It believes in government. It believes, as the Prime Minister said himself in his essay in The Monthly, it believes government should be at the centre of the economy. It believes in bigger and bigger government, and it’s no wonder our debt is heading for $315 billion. Remember this, we have a Prime Minister whose maiden speech in 1998 began with these words: “Politics is about power”. That’s what he said, Kevin Rudd, in 1998. “Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. It is about the power of the state as applied to individuals…” Just think about that. Sounds like something you might read in a Cuban publication, and that is the big difference between us and Labor. What we are witnessing in Australia is a historic failure of leadership by the Rudd Government. They have turned the strongest balance sheet in a generation into a towering summit of deficit and debt. A debt whose staggering scale is set out for all of us to see on the debt truck outside this hotel. Now you Tasmanians do not need to be told of the risks when governments are lazy and complacent about budget discipline. Tasmania today is paying the price for the excessive spending and poor management of Labor governments. Along with Queensland, it is one of only two Australian states deemed undeserving of AAA ratings by Standard and Poor’s. Revenues are down. Spending and borrowing are up. And we see the same pattern across the Labor states. And now the same is happening federally, only many times worse. This is part of Labor’s DNA – borrow and spend. Ten out of ten Labor prime ministers have left Australia in debt. That’s a fact of history. And Kevin Rudd will smash all their records. Compared to Kevin Rudd, Gough Whitlam was almost in the mould of an economic conservative. We might have to revise the history books. Compared to Kevin Rudd, his predecessors were committed to the free market. Paul Keating was just a try-hard in terms of debt compared to Kevin Rudd. He left us with $96 billion in debt. That took us ten years to pay back. That took us ten years to pay back. That was what we showed Labor. They ran that debt up recklessly under Keating and we showed Labor it could be paid back in ten years. And now, they are taking us to over $200 billion in net debt and, according to their own estimates, as you see on the truck outside, $315 billion in gross debt. That’s just a few years away. Now that means, it must mean higher taxes and higher interest rates. It means that debt will act as a brake on economic recovery. All of us in business know, if you’ve got a balance sheet out of whack, if you’re laden with debt, your flexibility is gone, your options are reduced. What can you do? Crushed with debt, the options for Australia are limited and for all of Labor’s big talk and for all of the tens of billions of dollars of debt accumulating month after month, what does Australia actually have to show for it? $23 billion in cash splashes; $23 billion handed out. Gone to the bank, he borrowed it, or from the bond markets, borrowed it, gave it away – nothing to duplicate the Midland Highway. $14.7 billion to be spent on primary school assembly halls – many of them not wanted or surplus to requirements. You see, it is not just the debt this reckless spending is running up that is the problem. It is the opportunity cost – the real infrastructure, the real jobs that could have been created with the money that has been wasted. How has the Rudd Government changed Australia, other than reducing our capacity to pay our bills? Is anyone pretending for a moment that our schools or our health system are really any better? Say you’re a school principal, or a P&C, and you don’t think what’s on offer in the building stimulus package so-called is best suited to your school’s needs. And, as we know, there are hundreds of schools that are in that situation. What is the Rudd Government’s response? ‘Tough! Take the Julia Gillard Memorial Hall or nothing.’ That’s what they’re saying. If I tell you there are schools around Australia, most of which are not prepared to speak up because they’re worried about being victimised or punished, where buildings are being imposed on them for no reason other than that a Labor Member of Parliament wants to be there to cut the ribbon when it’s opened. There is a school in the electorate of Cook, the southern part of Sydney, in the Sutherland Shire, which has a beautiful outdoor area with a shadecloth over it and a great thing that they’ve built up, the P&C has established over the years – it’s wonderful for outdoor classes and outdoor assemblies. It’ll be gone. They’ve already got an assembly hall of course but it’s going to be gone because there will be another Julia Gillard Hall coming to take its place. They don’t want it but they have no say in it. And this schools program is a very good example of the difference between us and Labor and why, as I said, we need to demonstrate with a Turnbull government federally and a Hodgman government here in Tasmania, we need to demonstrate and show Labor that we are different and the values we have are values of freedom. Think about this. When we were in government, when Julie Bishop my deputy was the education minister, we had a program called Investing in Our Schools and it was a Liberal program because what we did, or what Julie did, was reach out to those school communities and say: what is your dream, what do you want to do? What is the bit of maintenance or the new building or the changes to the playground, what is it you want to do that you think would really make a difference to your school? And the community would get together and the mums and dads who were tradesmen and tradeswomen would pitch in and they might raise some money, might have a fundraiser and they’d come back to Julie and say to her, ‘okay, this is our dream. Can you help?’ And we helped to the tune of $1.2 billion. And so that is why when Kevin Rudd proposed his $14.7 billion Julia Gillard Memorial Hall establishment fund, we said, ‘no, we’ll spend less money’. We would suggest $3 billion over three years spent, on the basis of our Investing in Our Schools program. And that was rejected by Labor. And what we have seen instead is instead of a school infrastructure program that respects what school communities want, that enables them to do their best consistent with our philosophy, we see on the other hand, the centralised, socialistic approach of Kevin Rudd – you will get what you are given, what we decide you are going to get. Government knows best. And you see these bureaucratic dictates fail completely to acknowledge the importance of local communities having that input into how taxpayers’ money is put to the best and most efficient use to service their health, education and infrastructure. The Rudd Government has promised capital works funds for the Launceston General Hospital. But, again, it’s simply bricks and mortar, not critical health care provision. What about cancer services? What about the emergency department? And what about the “pea-and-thimble” trick where state Labor governments, including Mr Bartlett’s here in Tasmania, make cuts to their spending almost identical to the funding increases announced by the Commonwealth? When it comes to the vital infrastructure that will bolster economic growth and enhance productivity, for example, by upgrading our transport arteries, what do we get from Labor? In the case of the May Federal Budget, the answer for Tasmania was zero. Tasmania received nothing of substance from the $22 billion national infrastructure package, despite the manifest inadequacy of the Midland Highway, a substandard rail system and the obvious need for an urgent upgrade at the Bell Bay port. And what of Labor’s pledge of a high-speed broadband network? Senator Conroy promised that would be rolling out this month. So far, all it has rolled out is an ad in the papers asking for a tender for cables. And has there been any proper tender process? What Tasmanian towns will receive fibre to the home? What is the cost and who will pay? There is nobody, no one that believes that this $43 billion project, so-called, is commercially viable. It simply cannot be. And so who is going to pay the cost for that and when Labor builds – if they do – a $43 billion broadband network which is worth a quarter of that in reality, what are the roads, the railways, the schools, the hospitals, the ports – what are the other worthy pieces of infrastructure that are going to miss out? You see, it’s not just the debt that Labor is building up that is going to crush us. It’s not just the higher taxes and higher interest rates. It’s the fact that every billion dollars they spend on a purpose that is not of the highest value, is a billion dollars that cannot be spent on something that is of high value. You see, as Rudd’s debt piles up unrelentingly on the shoulders of the taxpayers of the future, our children and grandchildren, we have to ask ourselves this very tough question: will we be the first generation not to deliver on the great Australian dream which has not been a dream – it’s been a reality; it’s been a realised dream – which is that every generation will have greater opportunities than the one that preceded it. In other words, we’ve always thought – for more than 60 years – that our kids will have a better opportunity, the chance of a better life than we had. This is fundamental, of course, to our philosophy, as political conservatives. As Edmund Burke once put it, society is a partnership between “the living, the dead, and the yet unborn”. We recognise the organic nature of society and our obligations to future generations. And when we were in government, we did the exact reverse of what Labor has done. We actually paid off debt and then having paid off all Labor’s debt, then put money aside in a Future Fund so that there were sufficient resources there to fund the hitherto unfunded pensions of Commonwealth public servants and Defence Force personnel. That was the Future Fund. We actually reached across the decades and took burdens off, a burden, heavy burden off the shoulder of future generations. What Kevin Rudd is doing is recklessly spending today and throwing heavier and heavier burdens on those future generations. Now the ultimate indicator, of course, of economic performance is jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. That is the fundamental, fundamental benchmark for any and every government. Now while other countries are heading towards double digit unemployment – the most recent labour force figures for both the US and Europe show each with a jobless rate of just under ten per cent. In Australia our unemployment rate is relative to those countries, lower, standing at 5.8 per cent in June. Far too high, but we’re doing better than other countries. Now the increase that has occurred over the past year has been relatively slow, and at current levels Australian unemployment is well below the peak rates of more than 10 per cent we experienced during the recessions of the early 80s and early 90s. One of the great achievements of the Coalition Government over its term of 11 ½ years was economic growth of 3.6 per cent per annum, bringing unemployment down from over eight per cent to about four per cent, growing real wages by 21 per cent. And of course that was a reflection of the hard work and the enterprise of millions of Australians. But it was also a reflection of the sound financial and economic management of the Howard Government, it’s willingness to make hard policy decisions. It was truly in economic terms a Golden Age, an era of AAA performance and it was a government that left an extraordinary financial legacy to Kevin Rudd. Imagine this Prime Minister who is taking us, after 20 months in government, to the biggest debt in our nation’s history, at the time he entered into office inherited a government that had no debt, no net debt at all and cash at the bank. And he’s changed that in 20 months and it was those strengths of financial management and that strong balance sheet that John Howard and his team delivered over 11 ½ years that has put us in the position where we are not suffering so far as much as many other countries are in this economic crisis. Now it didn’t have to be this way. Kevin Rudd could have played his economic cards, those phenomenally good economic cards he inherited much better. He didn’t have to embark on this dangerous course of high deficits, high debt and higher unemployment. There was a better way forward involving less debt, less risk, more discipline, more responsibility. The Coalition’s Plan for Recovery, our plan, is based on four key principles: 1. The protection and creation of jobs for all Australians. 2. Governments should not incur one dollar more in debt than absolutely necessary. 3. Spending should be targeted at jobs and economic infrastructure. 4. And private enterprise and small businesses must be supported because they are the drivers of economic growth. Now we’ve met with small business people around the nation at more than 50 Jobs for Australia Forums, including here in Tasmania, in Burnie and in Launceston. Those enterprising Australians we have met are at the coalface, in the engine room of our economy. It’s the most flexible and dynamic part of our economy. We’ve learned a lot from those meetings and as a result we have proposed a number of practical measures to support jobs and businesses, especially small businesses. We proposed a tax loss carryback for business. If businesses make operating losses this year or next, they should be able to carry them ‘back’ against earlier profits and recover up to $100,000 of tax paid over the past three years. This bolsters cash flows in difficult times. And because losses carried back cannot also be carried forward, the cost to the Budget should be neutral over the cycle. We need fairer rules to deal with troubled businesses. Australia’s insolvency laws do not encourage the rehabilitation of businesses that hit hard times. They too often result in fire sales by secured creditors and jobs and value too is lost when viable assets are wound up. We support a change to our laws along the lines of the American Chapter XI process which is focused on reconstruction and rehabilitation that will save thousands of jobs. The most consistent complaint we have heard from small business is excessive regulation and compliance. The Coalition would reduce this burden to the lowest in the OECD, and join state and local governments to deliver a one-stop online portal for all filings. Related to that is the complexity and the lack of conformity in tendering. Many small businesses, and again I’ve heard this from small business leaders just in the last 24 hours here in Tasmania, find paperwork for government tendering overly complex and inconsistent between departments and governments. Part of our reform will be to standardize and streamline procurement contracts and similar processes. We’ve also heard a lot about training. There is real concern amongst small business people today that we will lose apprentices and trainees in these tough times. So we, listening to their suggestions, we’ve proposed that a greater proportion of the existing incentives for trade apprenticeships to be directed to the first two years which are the more risky ones, obviously, from the employers point of view. Now these are all pragmatic, practical, job-focused measures that would greatly assist the economy in this difficult period, but have only a modest Budget impact. The tax loss carryback as I mentioned means of course that the tax loss cannot be carried forward. If it’s carried back and recovered it’s offset against tax paid so it has over the cycle very little budgetary impact. We know that history tells us it has been historically our job to repair the damage done by Labor. It is only a Coalition government that can manage our finances properly and restore the nation to prosperity. And as I said at the outset, in this we will rely, as ever, on the energy, the ingenuity, the perseverance of millions of Australians like yourselves, who we will use government as a tool not to tell them what to do but to enable them to do their best. That’s what we have to show the Australian people and we have to show the Labor Party, arrogant in its office in so many places, we have to show them that we are different, that we offer a real alternative. Because we know that Labor’s current policies are going to impose higher interest rates and higher taxes. That debt will be a brake on recovery. Labor’s topdown style of government is contracting freedom when we should be expanding it. You see, as this financial crisis sends Labor fleeing back to its socialist roots, sending Mr Rudd fleeing back to his socialist roots, abandoning all pretence of being an economic conservative and as he clamors for bigger and bigger government, we in the Liberal Party stand firm for more freedom and more choice. Always at the heart of our philosophy will be those core values of enterprise, energy, opportunity and optimism. It is our commitment to freedom. It is a commitment to the values that have made the Liberal Party the standard bearer for prosperity and freedom for all of its existence. Those, my friends, are the values, the values of freedom, that have made Australia great and with your support and with your energy, with the election of Will as the Premier of Tasmania and me as the Prime Minister of Australia and with our team forming a Liberal government of Australia, it will be those values that will make a great nation greater still. Thank you very much for your support. [ends]  malcolmFri, 17 Jul 2009 22:57:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:539http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/537/Jakarta-Bombings.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=537http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=537&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/537/Jakarta-Bombings.aspxToday’s despicable attacks in the heart of Jakarta represent a vicious assault on all who cherish the values of free societies. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families of the victims of these terrible acts. Indonesia is a new and flourishing democracy, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and one of Australia’s most important neighbours. The recent re-election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signified an explicit repudiation by the people of Indonesia of those who stand for religious intolerance and violent extremism. Tragically, today’s bombings indicate there are those who remain unwilling to accept the desire of the Indonesian people for a free, open and tolerant society. It is paramount to the mutual interests of Australia and Indonesia that they work effectively together. Nowhere has the co-operation been closer than in efforts to wage the struggle against terrorism in our region. Australia and Indonesia have jointly hosted key regional meetings on counter-terrorism, including through the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Co-operation. Today’s attacks on two hotels in Jakarta are a reminder that much work is still to be done, and that the global struggle against terrorism is far from over. Indonesia, Australia and their friends and allies across the Asia-Pacific must remain vigilant, and united in their resolve to defeat those who would inflict these and other atrocities on innocent people. In Government, the Coalition established close and extensive links with democratic Indonesia to ensure the two countries worked hand-in-hand to apprehend and bring to justice those responsible for terrorist acts. The federal Opposition will support the Australian Government wholeheartedly in providing whatever assistance may be necessary to help Indonesia deal with these latest attacks, including any intelligence co-operation and police support as requested to hunt down and punish the perpetrators. 17 July 2009  malcolmFri, 17 Jul 2009 05:57:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:537http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/535/State-Funeral-for-Ted-Kenna-VC.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=535http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=535&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/535/State-Funeral-for-Ted-Kenna-VC.aspxIt will be an honour and privilege to represent the federal Opposition at today’s state funeral in Melbourne for Ted Kenna VC – a great bloke, and a great Australian. Today’s service at St Patrick’s Cathedral represents an opportunity for all Australians to honour the memory of one of the bravest of that generation of Australians who fought so resolutely to defend our freedoms in the darkest hours of World War II. Edward Kenna was the last surviving Australian Victoria Cross recipient from that war. His courage in risking his own life to protect the lives of his mates should never be forgotten. The state funeral commemorates not only an extraordinary act of valour, but also Ted Kenna’s extraordinary humility. Through to his death at the age of 90, he insisted he had done no more than his duty, much as any Australian soldier faced with the same choices and circumstances might have done. In this, he embodied the Anzac spirit. Edward (Ted) Kenna was born in Victoria on 6 July 1919. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in August 1940 and served in the 23/21st Battalion. In June 1943 his unit was disbanded and he was assigned to the 2/4th Battalion and embarked for New Guinea in October 1944. He was awarded the VC for action in Wewak, on 15 May 1945, where coming under heavy fire he overwhelmed a Japanese machine gun crew. There is no greater act of heroism than to risk your own life to save the lives of your mates : to do so not only when under direct fire from an enemy, but to run directly into that enemy fire, knowing you could face your own death at any moment. The Victoria Cross is awarded only for the most conspicuous bravery, a daring act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. Today’s service offers a final opportunity to salute Ted Kenna’s courage, and to express a nation’s gratitude for his commitment to his fellow soldiers, his fellow Australians. We offer our condolences to his family and friends, especially in his birthplace and hometown of Hamilton, Victoria. Today’s state funeral is an occasion for the nation not only to celebrate the life of a genuine Australian hero – as true-blue as they come – but also to pay our respects to all remaining World War II veterans, and to reflect on the enormous contribution they have all made to safeguarding our freedoms, our democracy, and our way of life.  malcolmThu, 16 Jul 2009 00:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:535http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/532/Doorstop-Interview-in-Brisbane.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=532http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=532&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/532/Doorstop-Interview-in-Brisbane.aspxSubjects: Jobs for Australia Community Forum; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending; Stern Hu; uranium; ETS; coal industry; green carbon E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as you’ve just seen, Peter has organised a terrific Jobs Forum here. We’ve had over 50 now around Australia and we sit down with small business people and listen to their views, get their feedback. It’s very interesting. Every meeting is different. The focus is always on jobs – jobs, jobs, jobs. And today there was a very big focus on training and of course in the importance not just on schools and training in the sense of knowledge, specific knowledge, but on attitude; a very interesting discussion about that. So it was a very good meeting. Interesting too to see very positive feedback to our small business policy and in particular our proposal that the incentives, the cash incentives for apprentices, be brought forward to the first few, or riskier years, of the apprentice – riskier from the point of view of the employer. So there was a lot of support in the room for that and it’s a good example of how we’ve been able to develop our policy by reaching out and speaking and listening to the people who are really at the coal face, really at the cutting edge of the economy. The real challenge of course to jobs in Australia is the Rudd Government’s spending and debt. This ballooning debt and deficit poses real risks for the Australian economy. It will be a handbrake on a recovery because all of that debt has to be serviced, the interest has to be paid and the principal has to be repaid as well. QUESTION: Should Kevin Rudd reveal the details of the talks he had with the Chinese official and what do you make of those talks? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m very concerned about the signal that Kevin Rudd is sending by not calling his counterpart, the President of China. It is remarkable; by doing nothing, by treating this as just a low level consular case, which seems to be the approach he’s taking, I think he’s sending a message that he is not deeply concerned about the fact that an Australian citizen has been detained now for 10 days without access to lawyers, without access to his family or his employers. He has to be seen to stand up for Australians and stand up for Australia and I think his failure to call, just pick up the telephone – he doesn’t need a megaphone, he can just pick up the telephone – and call the President, if he did that I think he would be conveying the right signal that the Australian Prime Minister is concerned about an Australian citizen in these circumstances and is standing up for him. QUESTION: Obviously you’ve made a comment about this. Should you have sought a briefing from the Government before commenting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Government has made it clear they don’t know anything, so they can’t tell us anything. Stephen Smith has been, poor fellow, has been at his wits end. He says he hasn’t been told anything by the Chinese other than what he learns on websites, which we can all read. We’ve obviously made our own enquiries and we’ve had a briefing from Rio so I think we’re as well informed, frankly, as Mr Smith is. But he has nothing to say because he has not been able to get any meaningful feedback from the Chinese Government which, again, is an extraordinary thing for a government, for Kevin Rudd’s Government, that has claimed to have had such a special relationship, an understanding, an ability to communicate with China. I mean, what good is all of that, all of those much boasted about capacities of Mr Rudd, what good is that doing Stern Hu at the moment? Not much I’m afraid to say. QUESTION: Has Rio indicated to you that they would like the Government to be doing more? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t want to disclose what I have discussed with Rio. We have had some discussions with them so I think we are, you know, we are as well informed as anybody can be in Australia at the moment. We keep our ears open and we are reasonably well informed. But the very disappointing thing is that at an official level our Foreign Minister doesn’t know anything. The Chinese Government has said nothing to him. They won’t even say what charges are going to be laid. All he knows is what he reads on the Internet and the Prime Minister, of course, hasn’t taken the time to pick up the phone. And I just emphasise, we’re not talking about megaphone diplomacy here, we’re talking about telephone diplomacy. All the Prime Minister had to do is make a call because that would send a signal of real concern. Just ask yourself this question – what interpretation would the Chinese leadership place on the fact that the Australian Prime Minister has chosen not to raise this matter directly with them? Is that going to make them think that the Australian Government is really deeply concerned about Mr Hu’s situation? Think about it. QUESTION: What about, you know, all the focus is on Stern Hu at the moment, what about Angelina Perez who was charged over the assassination of the, attempted assassination of the East Timorese President? Her family says the Government isn’t giving enough support, what do you think? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’m not familiar with the details of her case, I’m sorry. But I’m sure if you spoke to Julie Bishop she would be able to give you a detailed response on that but I’m not familiar enough with the details of her case. QUESTION: Can you confirm who is bank rolling your Wentworth Forum? Is it Frank Lowy? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, all donations are disclosed in accordance with the law, as you know, and that goes with the forums that we run in the Liberal Party, the forums the Labor Party runs, so they’re all essentially…every political party raises money in much the same way and that is...all the donors and donations are disclosed and many of the most prominent donors you will find give to both major political parties. QUESTION: What about the uranium mine in South Australia, do you support that mine going ahead or not? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I certainly do support uranium mining in Australia, I mean, obviously subject to the right environmental conditions and approvals. But what this approval today just shows that Mr Garrett is as big a phoney as the Prime Minister. I mean, there he is, you know, he has spent his whole life denouncing uranium mining and wanting to shut down our uranium mines, now he’s effectively opening a new one. What an incredible backflip. He really is a political chameleon. And there we’ve got Mr Rudd, on the other hand, claiming to be the great China expert – and he is very proficient in the Chinese language – not able to put those skills to use for an Australian who is in a very tight spot indeed. QUESTION: What about that particular mine, do you support that one? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well certainly, as long as it has got the right environmental approvals. I used to be the Environment Minister, I’m not, but assuming all the environmental approvals have been done in accordance with the Act and everything has been properly checked and approved, as I have no doubt it has been, then I certainly support the expansion of the mining industry. Look, can I tell you the fact of the matter is this, the world needs more, a lot more, much, much more low emission energy and one of the major sources of that is going to be nuclear energy – that’s why there are more nuclear power stations being built around the world. We are a major exporter of uranium so we benefit from that and so naturally we are going to be, as more nuclear power is used around the world, we’ll be exporting more uranium. QUESTION: What about into expansion like into Western Australia and Queensland in terms of uranium mining, is the Coalition supportive of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The answer is yes as long as all the environmental approvals are dealt with and it’s properly approved. Uranium mining is an important industry in Australia but like every new mine it has to have the right environmental approvals. QUESTION: What do you make of Anna Bligh’s letter to the Federal Government seeking a better deal for the coal industry under the proposed ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I haven’t read her letter but can I just say this to you, the way the coal industry is being treated by Kevin Rudd is extraordinary, it really is extraordinary. You know, he was at a meeting today with Al Gore. The fact of the matter is that Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme offers Australian industry and Australian jobs much, much less protection than the bill, the Emissions Trading Scheme Bill that has passed the US House of Representatives and coal is a very good example of this. In the United States the fugitive emissions from coal mining – these are the emissions mostly of methane from the process of actually mining the coal – are not included in the scheme. They’re not included in Europe either but they’re going to be included in Australia. So we, the largest coal exporting nation in the world, is going to have the toughest emissions trading scheme conditions as far as our coal industry is concerned. Why on earth would we provide less protection to workers in our coal industry than Barack Obama is going to provide to his? And Mr Rudd refuses to answer that question. QUESTION: Can I ask about Kevin Rudd’s plane? There’s a story in the Courier today. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, I read that story. QUESTION: What do you think about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it looks like another example of Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending, doesn’t it, reckless use of public resources. We have seen so much money spent so unwisely, so much debt run up with so little to show for it – it’s just another example of the reckless spending which we’re all going to have to pay for down the track. QUESTION: Would you do it differently? Would you sort of hope on commercial flights? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Me, personally, if I was prime minister? I can assure you, when I’m prime minister I will use all of those resources with great care and Mr Rudd should do so as well. But I can’t comment on the specifics of the story because I only know what I’ve read in the paper but I just say all public resources should obviously be used wisely and effectively. QUESTION: Can I just ask whether it’s just interesting that Anna Bligh’s written to the Government not really, a Labor Government, not really seeming that supportive of the ETS, you know, worried about the coal industry in Queensland? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, any Queensland Premier would be concerned about jobs in the coal industry. This is the fundamental problem with Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. I mean, it is offering less protection for Australian jobs and Australian industries than the Americans are going to offer for theirs. Why would a relatively small economy like ours impose a heavier carbon cost on industries and jobs than the largest economy, the United States, is going to do? For example, it’s not just the question of the coal industry, in the United States there are enormous opportunities for farmers to effectively invest in green carbon – in soil carbon, in biochar and other measures – that could create offsets. That’s exactly what I proposed in January in my speech about green carbon. That is not reflected in the Rudd ETS either. So whichever way you look at it Kevin Rudd is imposing a heavy cost on Australian industries and Australian jobs, much heavier than the cost that is being proposed to be imposed in the United States legislation, and he is yet to give an explanation for that. Why does Kevin Rudd care less about Australian jobs than Barack Obama cares about American jobs? That’s the question for the Prime Minister. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmWed, 15 Jul 2009 05:33:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:532http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/531/Doorstop-Interview-at-Taren-Point-with-Scott-Morrison.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=531http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=531&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/531/Doorstop-Interview-at-Taren-Point-with-Scott-Morrison.aspxSubjects: Self-Funded Retirees Forum in Cook; Mr Stern Hu; federal politics. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it’s been great to be here, as you’ve seen, with Scott, the local Member and Shadow Housing Minister, talking to the residents here, hearing their views about the economy and issues directly relating to senior Australians. We have a very keen focus on ensuring that the interests of senior Australians are protected and advanced, particularly during these challenging economic conditions. Scott’s been doing a great job in that regard and particularly of course in this local community of Cook, in his constituency. I do want to make another comment on another issue and that is the continued detention of our fellow Australian, Mr Stern Hu, in China. Now Mr Hu is an Australian citizen. He has been held without access to family, to his employer, to lawyers for nine days now. The Prime Minister has chosen not to make any direct contact with the Chinese Government about this. He should do that, he should do that. There is clearly a lot of politics in this arrest and detention of Mr Hu. I don’t want to speculate on the motives behind it or speculate on the commentary on those motives but the Chinese Government would respect us if our Prime Minister were to call and say he is concerned about Mr Hu’s detention, he wants Mr Hu to have the ability to deal with his, speak to his family, his employers, to legal advice and if there are charges to be made, then those charges should be laid openly and officially. What we’re, apparently, according to our Foreign Minister, Mr Smith, the only thing we have learned about any possible allegations or charges against Mr Hu have been through the Chinese media and that is not acceptable. So what we need is for the Prime Minister to stand up. Now, I just remind everybody of one important element in Chinese history. When Chairman Mao led his People’s Liberation Army to victory in 1949, he got to the top of Tiananmen, right in the centre of Beijing, and he said the Chinese people have stood up. Those were his opening words. And China understands that national leaders have to stand up for their nation and stand up for their citizens. So this idea that Mr Rudd would cause offence by contacting his counterpart in China is ridiculous. The Chinese people know that their leaders have to stand up for them - that’s what they said - and it’s time the Australian people are seen to stand up, in the person of their Prime Minister contacting the Chinese President directly. QUESTION: The West Australian Premier is heading across to China. He has been briefed by Mr Smith. Should you have also been briefed by Stephen Smith before making such comments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s up to Mr Smith but Mr Smith doesn’t seem to know very much about the situation. We have had some briefings from the company, from Rio, and I think we are as informed as anybody else is about the situation. I mean Mr Smith really has been despairing about his inability to get official information or official access. He said the other day that all he knew was what he was reading on Chinese media and websites. QUESTION: Mr Smith said this morning that he has had the Acting Ambassador to China in three times but they’re no closer to getting to the bottom of the situation. Mr Rudd said he wants to follow other diplomatic routes but do you think three times with the Acting Ambassador and no closer to the truth is time that another course of action was taken? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s right. You see, Mr Rudd should pick up the phone. He has made a great deal of his experience in China, his ability to speak Chinese and that’s fair enough. He’s entitled to be proud of those achievements, his Chinese language skills, which are very good. Now he can take advantage of that and of the special connection he claims to have with China and its Government. He should take advantage of that now; put that to work in aid of an Australian citizen who, as I said, has been detained now – without access to family, employer, lawyers – for nine days. No charge has been laid against him as far as we’re aware. We read all this stuff in the press. Mr Swan…Mr Smith, I should say, is essentially despairing of his ability to find out, to get to the bottom of it. It’s just not acceptable. Now the Australian Prime Minister should pick up the phone. He should stand up for Australia and for an Australian citizen in distress. QUESTION: The Treasurer says he won’t give in to calls for megaphone diplomacy. Is that what you’re asking? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’re talking about a telephone not a megaphone. QUESTION: Colin Barnett also says there should be a bipartisan because the issue is such a big deal. You obviously don’t have that bipartisan approach at this stage. What’s your response to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Mr Rudd’s approach seems to be to do nothing. That is not our approach. I promise you, if I was Prime Minister I would pick up the phone and I would talk to the President of China and let him know directly the very grave concerns that all Australians have about the detention of Mr Hu and seek to get some answers. And I think Mr Rudd would get some answers if he picked up the phone. There is clearly a lot of politics in all of this – that’s plain from reading the Chinese media – so it’s important that the leader of Australia, our leader, talk to their leader. QUESTION: The latest opinion polls show you’ve gone up somewhat in popularity but you’re still number three in popularity for the Opposition leadership. What’s your response to that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My response is to focus on holding this Government to account for their economic mismanagement, talking about the issues that are of real concern to Australians, the enormous debt and deficit the Rudd Government is running up and proposing alternatives, constructive alternatives that will take Australia to a better managed economy where more Australians have the ability to realise their dreams. QUESTION: Doesn’t it worry you that somebody who is retiring from politics is still preferred over you by the people of Australia as the leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m focused on the real issues, just like the people in there are focused on the real issues. QUESTION: Do you think Joe Hockey would make a good leader? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Again, I’m delighted that you are so interested in these issues but it’s interesting that what we were talking about in there with the residents of this village are real issues – economic issues, issues relating to government, tax, superannuation – they’re the issues that Australians are focused on and they’re the issues I’m focused on. QUESTION: One of them expressed concern that she’s not going to live long enough until the Liberal gets into power, so obviously it is something that they’re aware of. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, as I said, we’ll be back in power at the next election with their support and I wish everybody in that room a long and healthy life, as I do to everybody of course, to all Australians. QUESTION: What is your response to reports in The Australian today saying that some Liberals are saying the next election just isn’t winnable? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the only thing that we know about every election is that it’s winnable. And it is our obligation to take our case, our duty even, our privilege, to take our case as the alternative government to the people at the next election and persuade them that we can do a better job managing this country and managing our economy than Mr Rudd has done. That’s the challenge that awaits every opposition. And you see there are differences between us. Right now, if I was Prime Minister I would have rung the President of China, I would have contacted the Chinese Government at the highest level and I would have demanded answers. Mr Rudd has chosen to do nothing. He has chosen to sit on his hands. He’s taking leave at the moment. Well, everyone’s entitled to a bit of leave but also they’re entitled to have a Prime Minister who will stand up, stand up for Australia and for Australians. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmTue, 14 Jul 2009 05:09:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:531http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/527/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth-with-Steve-Irons.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=527http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=527&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/527/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth-with-Steve-Irons.aspxSubjects: Jobs figures; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending; detention of Stern Hu; Coalition’s support for effective global action on climate change; Remuneration Tribunal. E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Today’s jobs figures are a matter of real concern. We have seen unemployment increase in the last year by 40 per cent. This is a very real concern for all Australians and it underlines the need for the Government to be focused on jobs, jobs, jobs; the need for the Government to ensure that it stops imposing this intolerable burden of debt on the shoulders of all Australians. The Debt Truck reminds us of the heavy burden of debt that the Rudd Government is imposing on us and how it will be – that burden of debt – will be a handbrake on recovery. Because what we need, we need to see these jobs numbers improving; we need to see more Australians in work; we need to see more Australians being able to work all the hours they need to work and they want to work and at the moment that’s not the case. And this heavy burden of debt is going to be a real brake on recovery and that’s why it is vital that the Prime Minister restores some real discipline and fiscal prudence and sound economic management to the way he’s running our economy. If I can just make two other observations about two other issues. The detention of Mr Stern Hu in China is totally unacceptable. Mr Rudd must get on the phone immediately to the President, to the Chinese President, and demand that that Australian citizen, Mr Stern Hu, be released, be given access to Australian consular officials. The Chinese Government must release Mr Hu or charge him. If they think he’s done something wrong they can lay a charge – every government is entitled to do that – but detaining an Australian citizen without charge and without having access to Australian consular officials is completely unacceptable. And the Prime Minister must act immediately to ensure that our fellow Australian is treated fairly and not continued to be kept in detention without charge, without any justification in China. And finally can I just make one other comment and then we’ll move to questions. Labor has broken so many promises. We all remember in 2007 they were going to bring down petrol prices, they were going to bring down grocery prices; everything was going to be perfect in Australia when Mr Rudd became Prime Minister. And we’ve seen FuelWatch fizzle and we’ve seen GroceryWatch fizzle and now we have here, at a local level, we’ve just walked passed the only Medicare centre in Steve Irons’ electorate of Swan. Again and again the Government has promised to open another Medicare centre in Belmont – nothing has happened. It’s just, at a local level, an example of the way Labor is all spin, all promise but no delivery. STEVE IRONS: The people of Belmont have been short-changed. They were promised a Medicare centre during the 2007 election period and since then we have seen nothing happen except another four announcements announcing the Medicare centre and there is still no office. The people of Belmont have responded to me in writing, over a thousand letters back, saying they want a Medicare office. It’s important they have one. They have no access to Medicare easily in the electorate because Cannington is the only place that you can go to or to Blue Lagoon, so they need public transport to get here. So I think for the people of Belmont the Government needs to come good and come good with their election commitment by the end of this year so the people of Belmont can have a Medicare centre. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, should China…should Australia be doing business with a communist regime that treats people like this, if they don’t get their way in a business deal? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, the Chinese Government should release Mr Hu, this Rio executive, Australian citizen, they should release him or charge him, but holding somebody in detention without any charge is completely and utterly unacceptable and this has to end. He has to be either released or charged and, in addition, Australian consular officials must be able to have access to him. This is an absolutely outrageous treatment of an Australian citizen. And Mr Rudd – this should be the number one priority on Mr Rudd’s agenda today. He should be on the phone to the Chinese leaders demanding that justice be done to this fellow Australian in China. QUESTION: Do you agree with Barnaby Joyce that there’s a direct link between the arrest and the Chinalco deal going bad? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m not going to speculate on that. The issue is an Australian citizen is being treated unjustly in China. He’s being detained without any charge being laid. He’s being denied access to Australian consular officials. Now, that is completely and utterly unacceptable. QUESTION: [Inaudible] the old bullying tactics of the old communist regime. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’m not going to comment…I’m not going to respond to that comment. I want Mr Hu, Mr Stern Hu, this Australian citizen, this Rio executive, I want him to be released. I want him to be released right now. I want him to have access to Australian consular officials right now. The Chinese Government has got to act. What is happening at the moment is completely unacceptable. QUESTION: Dr Emerson says that you should rein Senator Joyce in. Senator Joyce said the Chinese can’t be trusted. Are you going to have a word to him? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Dr Emerson really just underlines the hopeless lack of understanding of the real issues here on the part of the Labor Government. Here we have an Australian citizen detained without charge in China. He is being denied access to Australian consular officials. And what does Dr Emerson, this Labor Minister do? He attacks the Coalition. Dr Emerson would be better off using his skills to ensure that justice is done for Mr Hu in China instead of attacking fellow Australians. QUESTION: Is Senator Joyce right? He says the Chinese can’t be trusted, is that right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m not going to comment on what Senator Joyce has said or any other commentary on this. My only concern – I am the Leader of the Opposition, my concern is singular, I want Stern Hu released. He has to be released. He has to have access to consular officials. If the Chinese believe he’s done something wrong then they can lay a charge but the situation at the moment is completely unacceptable. And my focus, my singular focus on the well being of an Australian citizen held without charge in China should be the same focus of Mr Rudd and the same focus, if I may say so, of Dr Emerson instead of attacking Australian politicians. QUESTION: Given the situation, is it fortunate that the Chinalco deal did fall over? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You’re talking about two different issues. As far as the Chinalco deal with Rio is concerned, I was on the record a long time ago saying that I didn’t believe it was in the national interest for it to be approved but as it happened, commercial events overtook it and no decision was ultimately taken by the Government. QUESTION: China’s Australia’s biggest trading partner. I mean, if this augurs for the future and how China does business, what does it mean for Australia? Do you have concerns Mr Turnbull? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, everybody is concerned, should be deeply concerned. Dr Emerson obviously isn’t but everyone should be deeply concerned about the wellbeing of Stern Hu, of the Australian citizen, our fellow countryman who is being held in a Chinese prison presumably, without any charge and without access to consular officials. This is completely unacceptable. It has to be stopped. He has to be given access to consular officials and he must either be released or charged. Holding somebody in China like this without charge is completely and utterly unacceptable and the Chinese should know that. QUESTION: Surely there are broader implications though for our relationship with China. So what’s your position on our relationship with China and the way that we should do business with them? MALCOLM TURNBULL: My focus today is on Mr Hu. I want to see him released. I want him to have access to consular officials and I want to…the Chinese Government has to proceed properly and the only proper way to proceed, the only fair way to proceed is either to release him or, if they feel he’s done something wrong, to lay a charge. But holding someone, just grabbing somebody and locking them up without charge is completely and utterly unacceptable. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you think that it was remiss of the Prime Minister not to seek details detailed programmatic specificity from the MEF? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as I understand it, I heard that part of his speech which you’re obviously quoting was not only incomprehensible in English but so incomprehensible the German translators were unable to translate it for Angela Merkel. Mr Rudd has a way with words. I hope he knows what he’s saying because a lot of what he says is incomprehensible to most people when he gets into that jargon. QUESTION: Was he incomprehensible to you? Do you know what he was saying? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The phrase you just ran by me then, I have no idea what it means. QUESTION: Programmatic specificity – the MEF I’m sure you’re familiar with but programmatic specificity? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think a little bit of plain English, I think clarity and plain English would be a good remedy for Mr Rudd’s linguistic problems. QUESTION: He’s in Europe at the moment. He could use ‘wassup’! Mr Turnbull, the word out of the G8 is that the world leaders have moved a step closer to a unified position on climate change. Does this mean that you might be more inclined to support the Federal Government’s position on climate change? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We support, and always have supported and we supported in Government, effective global action on climate change. In fact the first legislation for an emissions trading scheme was introduced into the House of Representatives by me as the Environment Minister so we don’t, there’s no dispute about taking action on climate change. The question is how do we do it, how we do it effectively, how do we achieve a global agreement? These meetings in Europe, it’s a format I’m familiar with. I went to the first Major Economies Meeting in Washington when we were in Government. The big challenge that awaits us is finding agreement between the major emitters. You see at the moment we do not have, we do not yet have an agreement between the United States and the other major emitters in the developed world and China, in particular, and India and other big emitters in the developing world. And that’s really the key. You boil it all down into a nutshell. Unless you can get China and America to agree on an effective model for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, you will not get effective action. That is basically what it’s all about. And the problem with Mr Rudd’s approach is that he is endeavouring to legislate for an emissions trading scheme or design an emissions trading scheme without knowing what the Americans’ legislation will look like and without knowing what the world will agree in Copenhagen. Already there are elements in the Rudd emissions trading scheme which offer less protection to Australian jobs and Australian industries than the American Draft Bill – the law that’s been passed through the House but not the Senate – than the Americans do. So I just ask you this – is it realistic, is it even remotely acceptable for an Australian Government to offer less protection for Australian jobs than an American Government is offering to American jobs. That’s what Mr Rudd’s trying to get us to accept. QUESTION: So Opposition support unlikely. MALCOLM TURNBULL: We will seek, we will seek to amend the legislation in a way that will protect Australian jobs. Whether we can do that, of course, whether the Government agrees to it, is very much up to them. But we all want to see effective global action on climate change – there’s no question about that – but it has to be global and it has to be effective and we cannot, we cannot have legislation which does incredible economic damage to Australia, sacrifices Australian jobs for no environmental benefit. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, in light of the Fair Pay Commission’s wage freeze, would you support another wage freeze for federal politicians? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Just as the minimum wage is set by the Fair Pay Commission, the remuneration of politicians is set by an independent Remuneration Tribunal and I think it is better that they deal with that. We set up these independent bodies to make these assessments and I defer to them. I don’t try to give them advice one way or the other. QUESTION: Do you have a personal view though? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s what I’m saying because I think it’s important, particularly with politicians, we’ve got to…politicians do not set their own pay. There is a Remuneration Tribunal that does that which is completely independent and they should be allowed to do their work, just as the Fair Pay Commission is allowed to do its work. QUESTION: Just a quick one, Mike Dean, would he be a good federal candidate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll leave that to the commentariat to discuss. Okay. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmThu, 09 Jul 2009 05:20:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:527http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/528/Ted-Kenna-VC.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=528http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=528&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/528/Ted-Kenna-VC.aspxThe passing overnight of Ted Kenna VC at the age of 90 marks the end of an era in Australia’s military history. His bravery in the face of great personal danger must never be forgotten. Ted Kenna was the last surviving Australian Victoria Cross recipient from World War II. His death will be mourned, and his memory honoured, by all Australians. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for action in Wewak, New Guinea on 15 May 1945, where coming under heavy fire he defeated a Japanese machine gun crew. There is no greater act of courage than to risk your own life to save the lives of your mates. To run directly into enemy fire, knowing you could face your own death at any moment, requires extraordinary valour. Edward (Ted) Kenna was born in Victoria on 6 July 1919. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in August 1940 and served in the 23/21st Battalion. In June 1943 his unit was disbanded and he was assigned to the 2/4th Battalion and embarked for New Guinea in October 1944. Ted Kenna’s actions in the New Guinea campaign epitomised the Anzac spirit. He was among the bravest of the brave in that great generation of Australians who fought to defend our freedoms in Europe, in Asia and on our doorstep. The Victoria Cross is only awarded for the most conspicuous bravery, a daring act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. We salute Ted Kenna’s courage and commitment to his fellow soldiers. And we would like to express our heartfelt condolences to his family at this time. Yet as much as we mourn the passing of a great Australian, today is also a time to reflect on the contributions of the surviving WWII veterans who gave their all in the protection of our country. The Coalition remains committed to ensuring that they receive the care and support to which they are entitled, in recognition of the debt owed to them by all Australians. 9 July 2009  malcolmWed, 08 Jul 2009 22:01:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:528http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/526/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=526http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=526&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/526/Doorstop-Interview-in-Perth.aspxSubjects: The Rudd Government’s reckless spending; Australia’s banking system; bank deposit guarantee; OzCar; Fair Pay Commission’s decision; federal-state fiscal relations E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well this is the big issue facing Australia, the growing burden of debt that Kevin Rudd’s reckless spending is imposing on Australians today and for many generations in the future. Now we’ve seen last night Kevin Rudd warning in Berlin of the dangers of too much debt. It’s as though he left Australia as Paris Hilton, committed to a spending spree, and arrived in Berlin as Scrooge McDuck, wanting to tighten his belt. The fact of the matter is that while Australia does have a low level of debt as a percentage of GDP relative to other countries, that’s not due to any efforts of Mr Rudd at all. He claims credit for that as though it was his own achievement and Labor’s own debt truck claims credit for that. The reason our debt is not any higher than it is – and that figure behind me is high enough, that is high enough, believe me – the reason it’s not higher than that is because of the fact that Mr Rudd inherited a federal balance sheet with no net debt and cash at the bank and he inherited that from the Coalition. And when you read through his speech in Berlin you see he gives no credit to the hard work and fiscal discipline of his predecessors. The other extraordinary thing of course is that by going to Berlin and giving a lecture about the dangers of excessive spending and the risk to inflation from excessive government debt, he was doing so in a country whose leader, Angela Merkel, has been steadfast in refusing to engage in reckless spending. The German approach to dealing with the global financial crisis has been much more disciplined and has involved much less so-called stimulus spending and a much more prudent approach to public finances. So there’s a real element of hypocrisy there as he does yet another transformation from the big spending Paris Hilton in Australia to now this very disciplined, Germanic, Scrooge McDuck in Berlin that we saw last night. QUESTION: Will your speech today be addressing Mr Rudd’s speech? Or what will you be… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, well I’ll certainly be talking about that, yes, those and other financial issues, economic issues, yes. QUESTION: What do you think of the idea of a ‘people’s bank’? Wayne Swan has come out and said it’s not going to happen but what does the Liberal Party stance on it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we don’t support that. The reality is that Australia has a very good banking system. We have some of the best banks in the world. Again, the reason our banking system has remained strong is because of the very sound regulation and prudential management that was put in place under the Coalition. Our financial system stood up to the stress of the global financial crisis. And again, you don’t hear Mr Rudd giving any credit to his predecessors for that. I think it was Julia Gillard who said at Davos not so long ago that Australia’s financial system was the best in the world. Now it was created, it was regulated and set up under the Coalition but we certainly don’t need another Labor bank. We’ve had enough experience of those and they always end in tears. QUESTION: So what can be done, I guess, to combat the, I guess the increasing monopoly of the big four over the banking sector in Australia? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I certainly welcome the idea of the proposal of having another general inquiry into the financial system, another Wallis Inquiry if you like. That is something that we should do regularly. Wallis is a long time ago now. There have been some very big changes both domestically and of course, above all, internationally. So we certainly welcome the idea of having an inquiry as been proposed by the economists. That’s a good suggestion. As far as the dominance of the banks, that has been in large measure created by the Rudd Government, by its deposit guarantee. They bungled that dreadfully. You will recall that last year Julie Bishop and I proposed that there be a deposit guarantee at $100,000 and that was designed of course to provide reassurance to retail depositors – small businesses, mums and dads with a cash deposit in a financial institution like a building society or a credit union or a smaller bank – and to reassure them. And that is consistent with what you see everywhere else in the world. The Rudd Government went for the big headline. They went for an unlimited bank deposit guarantee which was enormously distorting in the financial markets. They then scaled it back after a lot of pressure to a million dollars. It’s still too high and what it’s done is put out of business for all practical purposes every financial institution that does not have the benefit of the guarantee. So all of those mortgage funds, second tier lenders, finance companies are not able to access deposits in the way they used to and that really, the Government has created this problem by mismanaging the deposit guarantee. QUESTION: The Government I believe has set a guarantee for about three years, if I understand correctly. Is there a case to be made for ending those guarantees? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t think they’ve actually set a limit on it as you say but there is a very powerful case, a really powerful case for scaling back the deposit guarantee to a cap of $100,000 or thereabouts and you’ve seen, we saw not so long ago the Reserve Bank saying that the deposit guarantee should be reduced and set at a cap and the lower the better, I think were the precise words from the Reserve Bank. We’ve had one leading banker after another saying that the deposit guarantee cap should be reduced. It should be genuinely there simply as a retail deposit guarantee. It creates too many distortions and we’re paying a very heavy price for that and this dominance from the banks that you asked me about a moment ago is a direct consequence of that. QUESTION: With yesterday’s wage rises, do you think it’s fair that the lowest paid Australians didn’t get a wage rise? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look it’s a difficult job that the Fair Pay Commission has. They’ve made that decision. They’ve had to weigh up the claims of those on the lowest pay versus their concern to ensure that employment remains supported so it’s a tough decision but I certainly support it. QUESTION: Surely they’d have to have a bit more support though given the tough economic times? They’re probably the ones that need the most boost I guess to keep things ticking along, to ensure that there’s no undue economic hardship now. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Dr Harper’s made his case for this and he’s taken into account the impact a rise would have on employment which he thinks would be negative and he’s made that decision and we certainly support it. QUESTION: Just on two other issues, many observers are saying that Wayne Swan still has many questions to answer over the OzCar affair. Are you going to continue to pursue him over that or do you think it’s become so associated with you now that it’s politically unpalatable to continue to pursue that issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We called for a full judicial inquiry into this matter. We urged the Government to do that. If the Government had nothing to hide, they would set up a full judicial inquiry into the way in which the Treasurer’s influence was used to advantage or seek to obtain advantage for a friend and benefactor of the Prime Minister. QUESTION: Okay and just finally from me on a local issue. The Premier has called on a number of occasions for reform to federal-state fiscal relations. In about three years, Western Australia will be receiving just over five per cent of its national share of GST revenue even though we have about ten per cent of the population so we’re getting about half what you would normally expect. He’s called for floors to be set on the amount of the variants in that formula. What is your position on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Can I just say this – every state premier is dissatisfied with their share of the GST. They all agree that they’re not getting a fair share. The problem is that they can’t all get what they want. Federal/state relations is a continuing issue which will always be under review in Australian politics and it’s something that we as a Party that is committed to the federation and committed to federalism, that we will always have under review but the arrangements are not imposed by the Federal Government. They’ve been the subject of agreement over many years and I’m sure they will always be subject to review in the future and should be. [ends]  malcolmWed, 08 Jul 2009 06:19:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:526http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/525/Launch-of-the-Debt-Truck.aspx#Comments2http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=525http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=525&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/525/Launch-of-the-Debt-Truck.aspxLabor’s reckless spending and debt binge are putting a handbrake on Australia’s economic recovery. Mr Rudd is fond of doing media stunts while wearing hard hats and unveiling his $3.7 million worth of plaques around the country, but this debt truck will be a constant reminder that Mr Rudd has committed generations of Australians to crippling debts. In less than 18 months the Rudd Labor Government has taken gross debt to over $100 billion. By 2013-14, the Rudd Labor Government will have burdened Australians with an unprecedented gross debt of $315 billion. That’s over $13,000 of debt for every man, every woman and every child in Australia as a direct consequence of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s reckless spending. Mr Rudd has confirmed in Parliament that the Government’s budget projections are based on bond rates of six per cent per annum. There are concerns that interest rates could go higher. The interest payments alone on Labor’s debt could reach nearly $19 billion per year – that’s a cost of around $800 each year for every Australian. The consequence of the Rudd Labor Government’s reckless spending and growing debt will be higher taxes and interest rates and more Australians out of work for longer. Only the Coalition has a plan for economic recovery. We must think clearly and make the right decisions now, or the consequences will be paid for many times over by our children. Australia doesn’t need political fixes or excuses, it needs lasting solutions firmly focussed on Australia’s and our children’s future. Central to the Coalition’s plan for economic recovery is to provide small businesses with the incentives and opportunities to grow their business and employ more staff. Only the Coalition values Australians’ ability to adapt and respond to change. Our economic recovery plan also includes investments in sustainable technology, waste reduction and better targeted public spending to help workers, families and small business get through these uncertain times. Over the coming months the debt truck will visit communities around Australia.malcolmTue, 07 Jul 2009 01:33:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:525http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/524/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=524http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=524&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/524/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Programme.aspxSubjects: Launch of Debt Truck; Labor’s reckless spending; Coalition’s Plan for Recovery.   E & O E   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to AM.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Good morning Lyndal.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Are you using a truck to get you out of a hole caused by a ute?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, Labor’s reckless spending and debt binge is putting a hand brake on our recovery from this economic downturn. The biggest economic challenge facing Australia now is this growing level of debt that Kevin Rudd is running up. It will be…   LYNDAL CURTIS: Does your campaign acknowledge at all that part of the debt is caused by the fall in revenue?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, certainly some of that debt is caused by a fall in revenue but at the same time we have seen a massive increase in Government spending. We’ve seen $23 billion in cash splashes which have not resulted in any jobs. We’ve seen a hopelessly mismanaged program for investing in school infrastructure. The reality is Labor is borrowing tens of billions of dollars, running into hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and having very little to show for it, and that debt is going to put an intolerable burden on the shoulders of our children and their children because they will have to pay – as we all know – higher taxes and higher interest rates to pay it off in the future.   LYNDAL CURTIS: But part of that debt you would have had had you been in government because of the fall in revenue. Does your debt truck, does your new campaign acknowledge that?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: Lyndal, the fact of the matter is Labor is mismanaging our economy. They are running debt up to record levels. The level of debt that we have is vastly greater than it ought to be. It is being run up because of reckless spending and reckless spending which I might say we opposed in the Parliament. We voted against the massive spendathon earlier in the year. We proposed a more modest, measured, better targeted program. Labor rejected that and Labor has to wear the consequences of its spending and borrowing binge.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Do you agree with your Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey then that the Government should have reconsidered the tax cuts?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Well the Government was committed to the tax cuts and should have stuck with the tax cuts but the fact of the matter is that there was a better way to deal with this economic downturn than what they had proposed. We proposed a more measured approach to spending. We opposed the cash splashes. We supported…   LYNDAL CURTIS:   So was Joe Hockey wrong on the tax cuts?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, we supported spending on schools but at a more measured rate. You’ve got to recognise now that right around Australia we’ve got $14 billion being spent on school infrastructure, much of it in situations where the school communities are opposed to it because the buildings that are being imposed on them, the Julia Gillard memorial assembly halls, are either not necessary or duplicating existing infrastructure or they’re being built at vastly greater cost than can be obtained from local contractors.   We’re seeing a Government that is wasting money and cannot even deliver on its promises. Look at all the bold promises it made. Look at the promise it made to homeless Australians to deal with homelessness. There’s been no progress there at all. We see today Paul Moulds who’s the Director of the Salvos Oasis Youth Support Network in my own city, in Sydney, in Surry Hills and he says the reality is nothing has changed. We’re still as full as capacity as ever. We still have to turn people away. So the Government is great at spin, it’s great at borrowing but it is not spending those dollars effectively.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   But you say you would have had the tax cuts, you would have had some level of spending on infrastructure. Aren’t you just as good at spin, saying, accusing the Government of racking up the debt that you would have racked up part of yourself had you been in government?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, had we been in government the level of debt would be dramatically lower. Not only would we have borrowed and spent less money, we would have spent money more wisely, we would have managed the economy more prudently which means that revenues would have been higher, more people would have been in employment and therefore the revenue side of the Government’s account would have been higher.   You see this is a game the Government likes to play, to say that because, they say if the Coalition were in government there would still be debt therefore because there would be some debt, therefore any level of debt is acceptable. Now every Australian that’s got a mortgage knows that’s nonsense. There’s a big difference between having a small and manageable mortgage and having one that is too big and not able to be managed. And what Labor is doing is recklessly driving us deeper and deeper into debt. We have gone from an economy that 18 months ago had no debt, that had cash at the bank to one which is heading before too long to having total debt of over $300 billion and net debt of over $200 billion.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Mr Turnbull, you say the Government’s playing a game but aren’t you, don’t you have a stunt with the debt truck in order to help drive your opinion poll ratings back up because they have been well down?   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Lyndal, the debt truck is an important way of drawing attention to the reality of this debt. You see, this is not a question of spin. Labor is the party of spin. They are masters at it. We can’t compete with them on that. But the one thing Australians need to know is that the debt is there, it is rising and it has to be paid for. You see you can argue up hill and down dale about the merits of particular spending programs, and some of them will be better than others. Most of what Labor has spent its money on has been fruitless but the one thing that is an inescapable, incontrovertible truth is that the higher the level of debt, the higher taxes and interest rates have to be in the future. You cannot escape that and we all know that. If we go to the bank and we take out a mortgage, we have to pay it back. We have to pay the interest off it and we have to pay the principal back.   LYNDAL CURTIS: Mr Turnbull, one final question. Is the debt truck donated or does the Liberal Party own it?   MALCOLM TURNBULL: The debt truck has been obtained on commercial terms, I’m sure.   LYNDAL CURTIS:   Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time.   MALCOLM TURNBULL:   Thank you very much.   [ends]  malcolmTue, 07 Jul 2009 00:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:524http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/523/Doorstop-Interview-in-Bunbury-Western-Australia.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=523http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=523&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/523/Doorstop-Interview-in-Bunbury-Western-Australia.aspxSubjects: Impact of Labor’s proposed changes to Youth Allowance on students from rural and regional areas; ANZ jobs figures; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending; people smuggling; the need for global consensus on climate change. E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………... MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well as you’ve just seen Nola and I have had this meeting here and heard the very real concerns about the way in which the Government’s changes to the Youth Allowance are going to prejudice the ability of students from this area, the South-West, and from rural and regional Australia around the nation, from having equitable access to tertiary education. These changes are very damaging, and we’ve heard real life examples form parents and form students that just underline how important it is that these changes be amended, and we’ve proposed amendments to them already, which would ensure that students who’ve taken a gap year, are relying on these existing laws, will not be prejudices, and most importantly, that students form rural and regional Australia will not be further disadvantaged by these changes to Labor’s laws and rules on the Youth Allowance. I would just make one other comment about the ANZ jobs figures. We’ve seen another set of disappointing figures in terms of job ads from the ANZ. This underlines the need for the Government to be resolutely focussed on jobs, jobs, jobs. They have to ensure that every dollar they spend and borrow is effective, and so far we’re not getting the effective jobs that we need. We’re seeing the jobs market deteriorating, and yet at the same time debt is rising every day, and the one thing that we know, and every Australian knows, is that every additional dollar of debt a Government runs up with it’s reckless spending will mean higher taxes and higher interest rates in the future, and will put a very heavy brake on our recovery from this downturn. QUESTION: Would the job figures be worse without the stimulus package? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The stimulus package has not been effective. There have been a series of ineffective spending measures – you’ve had the cash splashes, which have not created any jobs, and we’ve now seen this growing scandal involving the so-called “Building the Education Revolution” where so much money is being so poorly spent, poorly directed in terms of school infrastructure. All of us, of course, are in favour of good, well-targeted investment in schools, but we have seen so much money so poorly spent, and so little to show for it other than a bigger and bigger debt burden on the shoulders of all Australians. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you think that we may see, say, some students not actually coming back into country WA and staying in the city which would therefore be another disadvantage for country towns? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve heard first-hand evidence today – you were here, and you heard it – where people were saying that these changes might result in them having to move out of the area, move to Perth, leave the South-West. There was another lady who said in a very heartfelt way that if she’d known that these changes were going to come she’d never have moved here in the first place. So these changes that Labor is introducing are not just disadvantaging students from rural and regional Australia, they’re actually undermining rural and regional Australia by making it less attractive to live there, by imposing bigger disadvantages on the disadvantages already a consequence of geography. QUESTION: Why was it important for you to come to Bunbury today? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s very important. Nola Marino is my very important colleague, and very dear colleague, and she is a fantastic representative for the South-West and the seat of Forrest. So it’s important for me to be visiting all of my colleagues, and in particular on this very vital issue of Youth Allowance, this is where the damage, if you like, is being done the hardest, the worst. So it’s important to be here with Nola to meet with her constituents and hear from them, to listen. We learn most when we listen. QUESTION: Is this your first time being here? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, it’s not my first trip to Bunbury. It’s my first trip for a while though. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, what will you be doing with these peoples’ concerns? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll be taking them up with the Government, with the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. We’ll also be heading to the Senate Committee process, and we’ll be taking up the cause of these students and their families in every forum that we can. QUESTION: Have you had anyone, I guess, put out the idea that maybe Bunbury needs another university? Currently we have ECU, which I know offers nursing and teaching and things like that. Would this maybe be something looked at? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, access to education is vital everywhere, but, Nola, the Member? NOLA MARINO: There’s been a lot of talk, but I think one of the things that we really are concerned about is making the most of these educational opportunities that are available here, in looking in the broader sense, we’re going to see significant increases in population throughout the South-West over the next ten to twenty years, so there’s an element of planning forward as well, as well as offering opportunity for the existing group of young people, so I think there’s a couple of different focuses here that we have, and at the moment the Youth Allowance issue for the existing group is where we’re most looking at at the moment, but certainly the issues in the longer term are where I’m also looking at, you know, the population increases and the demand going forward. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, a couple of federal questions. The Prime Minister’s in Malaysia today, seeking agreement with the Malaysian Government on the issue of people smuggling. Would that be a step forward if an agreement could be reached? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There’s no question that it would be a big step forward if we could reach agreement with all of our neighbouring countries, Malaysia and of course in particular Indonesia, to further take action to stop people smuggling. It is a vile and insidious trade. However Mr Rudd’s efforts will be judged on results and the results so far this year are very troubling. We’re getting more and more people smuggling occurring, more and more unlawful arrivals, and this is putting an enormous strain on our resources and undermining the integrity of our immigration system. QUESTION: He’s heading off also to Italy and the meeting there of the G8 Leaders on climate change and global economy. What do you expect to come out of that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’ll see. This is a very vexed issue. The real challenge in terms of climate change is getting an effective global agreement. The largest and fastest growing emitters are now in the developing world – China in particular – and unless there is a concerted global agreement from all the major emitters both in the developed world and in particular in the developing world to cut their emissions then we will not be able to achieve an effective cut in global emissions. So there is no solution to reducing global emissions that does not require the developing world to take effective action as well. When I say the developing world I mean particularly China and India. QUESTION: What do you make of the story the two Tonys? Is there some sense of impatience in the Party for those polls to improve? MALCOLM TURNBULL: You know, it’s interesting you’ve asked me that. It wasn’t raised by any of the people we were meeting with today. I think Australians have got much more fundamental and much more real concerns than issues like that. They’re focused on jobs, they’re focused on the economy and, particularly today, they’re focused on their children’s future and the way in which Labor’s changes to the Youth Allowance are disadvantaging the young men and women of the South West. QUESTION: But is there some growing impatience among your colleagues based on that poll last week and is there a sort of a, do you think there’s a time limit on for the polls to improve before something’s done? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The only impatience I’m discerning today is an impatience of Australians with the lack of action by the Rudd Government to really address the economic challenges we face and an impatience with the rash decision that’s been taken to change the Youth Allowance in a way that will, as we heard first hand from the lips of young people and their parents, first hand evidence we heard from them today how this is going to disadvantage them. Now what Government in its right mind would want to make it harder for young people from rural and regional Australia to get to university? It beggars belief. QUESTION: I’ll just ask you about a story from our Adelaide political correspondent about the leadership issues in the South Australian Liberal Party. And do you think the way it’s developing, is there a risk that the Liberal brand will be damaged in South Australia unless this is quickly resolved? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh look, I’m not a commentator on South Australian politics I’m afraid. QUESTION: But you’d be keen to see it resolved quickly surely? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not a commentator. I used to be a state political correspondent many years ago but it was in New South Wales and I’ve given up commenting on New South Wales politics 30 odd years ago, and I’m not going to take up a new role of political commentator, thanks. QUESTION: You talk about I guess Kevin Rudd’s lack of action here in Australia. Do you think it’s fair then that he’s travelling around the world – Malaysia, Italy. Should he be in Australia focusing on these issues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, a Prime Minister has always got to get the right balance between work at home and travel aboard and there’s obviously got to be a mix. Again, the issue is what are the results, what do we have to show for it. In terms of discussions with Malaysia or any other country in terms of people smuggling, if it results in a reduction in the number of boats then that’s a good result. At the moment we’ve seen, since Labor changed the immigration laws in terms of unlawful arrivals, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in unlawful arrivals and a dramatic increase in people smuggling so the results so far demonstrate that Labor’s policies are failing. They’re not protecting our borders. We want the Government to do a better job at that and if Mr Rudd’s visit to Malaysia can help with that, then that’s a good thing. But ultimately, ultimately, he will be judged on results. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. [ends]  malcolmMon, 06 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:523http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/521/Visiting-the-Troops-in-Afghanistan.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=521http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=521&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/521/Visiting-the-Troops-in-Afghanistan.aspxOpposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has praised the bravery and dedication of Australian troops on the frontline in Afghanistan and told them that they have the wholehearted support of all Australians in their important work. During a visit to the Australian headquarters in Kandahar and the forward operating base of Tarin Kowt, Mr Turnbull met with key elements of the Australian Defence Force involved in the difficult and dangerous work of securing and stabilising Afghanistan. "They are doing a magnificent job in our name, under our flag in very tough conditions" Mr Turnbull said. "The restoration of political stability in Afghanistan depends on the work of men and women in the ADF and other allied forces as they suppress insurgent activity, train the growing Afghan National Army and Police and give a breathing space for the new Afghan Government to progressively take complete responsibility for securing its own country from terrorist insurgents." "All of us, no matter, what side of politics, salute their service and their sacrifice." Accompanied by Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop and Shadow Defence Minister, Senator David Johnston, as well as Major General Mark Kelly Commander of Task Force 633, Mr Turnbull stayed overnight on Monday in Kandahar with Task Force 633 and then visited Tarin Kowt on Tuesday sharing a meal with special forces and commandos engaged in hunting down the leaders of the Taliban insurgents. Mr Turnbull also met with the members of the Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force whose work it is to support and train the Afghan security forces as they take a greater and greater role in securing their own communities. The MRTF is also leading efforts to rebuild key infrastructure including hospitals, bridges and schools. "Afghanistan has a stark beauty of its own, but it is in these picturesque ranges of the Hindu Kush and in the green Baluchi and Mirabad valleys where the dangers of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other insurgent attacks are at their worst." Mr Turnbull met with and praised the work of our forces involved in bomb detection and disposal, air traffic control, unmanned aerial surveillance, helicopter rescue and life, logistics and the provision of critical medical care. The Opposition Leader was impressed with the way the Australian forces are engaging with the local community and inspected a trades school where locals are learning basic building trades under Australian supervision and spoke with Afghan elders at a meeting of community leaders - a shura - in Tarin Kowt. "The young men and women of the ADF bring enormous skill and dedication to the many complex and difficult challenges facing Afghanistan. It has been inspiring to get a first hand appreciation of the fantastic work they do." "With elections in Afghanistan due next month, the next few weeks are likely to be very demanding as insurgents intensify their efforts to deny the people of Afghanistan the rights and freedoms we, in Australia, take as a given." "I promised our troops that we in the Coalition would do everything we can to make sure they have all the support they need to continue doing the vital work, in the cause of freedom, that we have asked them to do."  malcolmWed, 01 Jul 2009 04:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:521http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/519/Address-to-the-National-General-Assembly-of-Local-Governments.aspx#Comments2http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=519http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=519&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/519/Address-to-the-National-General-Assembly-of-Local-Governments.aspxE & O  E Thank you very much Geoff. Look it’s great to be here with the board of the Australian Local Government Association and also all the mayors and shire presidents and delegates. Now, Lyndon Johnson, President Johnson once said that “When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.” Having experienced the life of a lord mayor second hand through my wife Lucy and having been a minister and now Leader of the Opposition, I think I have to agree with Lyndon Johnson – being a mayor is a very tough job. So it’s a great honour to be among so many distinguished mayors and councillors and presidents. Thank you for inviting me to speak at your annual assembly. No matter what level of government we operate in, our motivation and our objective as elected officials remains the same: to serve the Australian public as best we can. I was very pleased to address your constitutional summit in Melbourne late last year. At that time, I made the point that as local government leaders you are as close if not closer than any of us in public life to the people we represent and the issues of most concern to them. And there is no doubt that when it comes to service delivery, the community is best served by a level of government that can be the most responsive to its needs. Local government’s contribution to the national economy is substantial. I understand that the 565 local government authorities employ over 160,000 people with an annual expenditure of around 2 per cent of GDP or $23 billion and that you have a very sizeable pool of assets worth around $212 billion. In that context, the importance of local government and its rightful place in our society and the economy is assured and indisputable. Your role in serving our local communities should be commended and you will always find support from the Coalition. PARTNERSHIPS To fully realise our potential as a strong and prosperous nation however, there needs to be a strong partnership between the different levels of government. Good government is about partnerships – partnerships between the three levels of government; partnerships between government and the community; and partnerships between the government, business and industry. I want to say at the outset that the Coalition is firmly committed to building a new stronger partnership between federal and local governments across Australia. While recognition and clear lines of communication are important objectives, the overriding focus should be on outcomes – outcomes that build prosperity across the nation; outcomes that make the community work better; and fundamentally, outcomes that benefit our constituents, Australians, everyday Australians that need our support and our help. I also recognise that state and territory governments need to come to the table. There must be stronger complementary investment from these governments and the cost-shifting onto your budgets at the local government level must be stopped and wound back wherever possible. One of our most crucial responsibilities as elected officials is to ensure that taxpayer resources are allocated and utilised to the best effect for our constituencies. This means ensuring that the benefits of any proposal clearly outweigh the cost. It means that our priorities must be spot on. Basically, it means we need to get the biggest bang for our buck. Now I expect that our new partnership would be based on these principles and promote greater accountability and transparency. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT Now before I move onto the themes of this Assembly this year, I would quickly like to touch on the issue of a Constitutional amendment to recognise local government. The Liberal and National Parties will continue to work closely with you as we devise a pathway to recognition that may be of most value to Australians and of the most interest and appeal to them. Speaking from personal experience, I can assure you that Constitutional reform is not easy. People say that being Leader of the Opposition is the hardest job in the country. I suggest they should try taking on major constitutional reform to a referendum. Now that doesn’t mean we should shy away from the debate – quite the opposite. But as we continue our policy development together, can I make this point when it comes to amending the Constitution: the simpler, the better. I can’t emphasise enough that we should focus on the practical outcome of any proposed amendment, rather than any symbolic gesture. In this case, the practical outcome would be to enhance the ways in which the Commonwealth Government can work more closely with local government across Australia. That is the outcome and that is the test. Would any proposal going forward to the Australian people be sure to create a better, easier, more functional working relationship between our tiers of government? Once we have established that answer, then we will be in a much better position to address the important issue of constitutional amendment and the purpose it would have in improving the daily lives of our fellow Australians. So again I look forward to an ongoing dialogue with you on this issue. I know my colleagues Warren Truss and Scott Morrison will welcome that and be part of it. Scott has made it very clear to the Australian Local Government Association that our doors are always open to you and we recognise the need to work closely together on a vast range of matters including proposed constitutional reform. FINANCING Local governments around the country are facing increasing financial pressure as their role expands and diversifies. The lack of direct revenue raising opportunities also contributes to the challenges you face in this situation. I know that some councils have also suffered quite heavily in recent times from the performance of foreign investments, along with exchange rate movements. And I am also well aware that economic contraction and rising unemployment impacts directly on councils’ revenue base. When in Government we set about the task of strengthening the direct Commonwealth contribution to your budgets. The result was an increase in Financial Assistance Grants from $1.16 billion in 1996 to $1.77 billion in 2007. We remain conscious of the importance of these grants to councils, enabling you to get on with your core responsibilities to ratepayers. Any new funding must be predictable and timely. Last November, the Prime Minister trumpeted additional funding for new projects when he addressed local government representatives in Parliament House. We all remember his words, given with great emphasis for the benefit of the media. Funding, he said, was available immediately: ‘by immediate, I mean immediate. It means now. It’s ready to go now’, he said. It took persistent questioning by the Coalition in the Senate Estimates process for the truth to emerge publicly. Mr Rudd’s ‘now’ does not actually mean what everyone else thinks it means. The first of these payments to councils was in fact at the end of February 2009. It signals poor administration. It betrays government actions where the rhetoric is not matched by the reality and it turns expectation into a degree of disappointment. COST SHIFTING AND DUPLICATION Let me turn now to cost-shifting. This remains a particular concern to the Coalition. During the previous term of Coalition Government, a Parliamentary Committee chaired by David Hawker drew attention to a massive cost to the community arising from duplication and lack of co-ordination between governments – a cost estimated to exceed $20 billion a year. Now that’s a lot of money that we can never afford to waste, least so at this time when we’re facing a staggering debt bill running up to more than $300 billion in gross terms. In government, we set in train some early dialogue between the three levels of government to find solutions to this waste. Despite some progress being made, there’s still much more to be done. The Coalition recognises a continuing need for Commonwealth, states and local government to focus intensely on the cost-shifting by states onto councils, and move to protect councils’ income streams. In particular, I see a need for a much firmer assurance that federal funding to councils is completely allocated to the tasks for which it is earmarked, without blindside grabs from other stakeholders trying to effectively re-allocate to themselves funding which isn’t theirs. Efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate cost-shifting by the states onto local government will be a major focus for the Coalition’s new partnership with you. You have a right to expect that funding to you from the Commonwealth will be fully available for the purposes for which it is intended. INFRASTRUCTURE I’d now like to move onto infrastructure. As I mentioned before, the Coalition strongly believes that the benefits of any policy proposal should clearly exceed its costs. And that’s what will make our nation stronger. Since the 1980s, all Australian Governments of both persuasions and at all levels have shown a commitment to the idea of cost-benefit analysis and rigorous policy analysis. But unfortunately, with the Rudd Government, there is a growing chasm between the rhetoric of what certain programs we are told will achieve and what is actually delivered. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe Mr Rudd when so much of the public discourse is engulfed in spin. We remember Mr Rudd in 2007 as the ‘economic conservative’ and indeed in that year, in the election year, he expressly promised an ‘evidence-based’ and rigorous analysis of Commonwealth policies. Well, we all now know Mr. Rudd’s commitment to rigorous and responsible analysis of new policies has turned out to be just as unfounded as his claims to be an economic conservative. There have been many failures of this Government to make important policy decisions with the benefit of serious analysis. But today, I’ll just focus on infrastructure. In the 2008 Budget, the Government observed, and I quote, that: “..efficient public infrastructure investment requires …decision making based on thorough and rigorous cost-benefit analysis….a commitment to transparency at all stages.” Since then, the Government has made a succession of decisions about infrastructure investments, worth an amount fast approaching $100 billion over the next decade, without any analysis to speak of, let alone the “thorough and rigorous cost-benefit analysis” which is clearly required for good decision making. When you strip away the sloganeering about ‘nation-building’ it quickly becomes apparent that only a small share of what Labor is selling as ‘infrastructure’ in fact equates to the traditional way the term is used – to denote spending on assets that directly add to the productive capacity of the economy. There is no doubt that spending $15 billion on primary school assembly halls and libraries, $4 billion on roof insulation and solar panels, and $6 billion on ‘social housing’ will create some jobs. It could hardly do otherwise. But how much will it add to the nation’s longer-term economic potential? We simply don’t know because any cost-benefit analysis undertaken by Infrastructure Australia will remain confidential, even for projects where there is no private money involved. Now the Coalition did not object to the $300 million in payments to local government announced on the 18th of November last year. We were of course concerned that you were told one thing – namely that funding was immediate – but the outcome was quite different with the first of any of the payments made more than three months thereafter. As you’re also no doubt aware, the Coalition opposed the second stimulus package as simply too big and too wasteful with its cash splashes to people overseas, deceased people and apparently even to people’s pets. Now, we’ve said that we would have contemplated a smaller and much better targeted package to deliver genuine economic stimulus and value for the amount of money being spent. That is, getting the biggest bang for our buck, for your buck. The importance of local government, as the tier of government so close to the requirements, to the daily requirements of Australians, is not to be overlooked in generating stimulus measures. The decisions of councillors in their local council chambers are ones that really count to taxpayers and ratepayers. And that is why the Coalition recognised when it boosted direct payments to councils by way of Financial Assistance Grants throughout our 12 years in government. And that’s why your infrastructure works – however funded – are an important part of our ongoing economic development. It’s the view of the Coalition that we need to be on a constant watch for ways to deliver even better value for each and every precious dollar that goes into works across your regions. There’s a case for all three levels of government to engage together in a comprehensive reform program – reform that means you get your funding when you’re told it will be coming, improved, more efficient planning and approval processes, less business regulation and red tape, and enhancing transparency in decision-making processes. Every dollar counts. You know that and we understand that. It is critically important that infrastructure spending delivers value for money. It’s a concern that my Parliamentary team and I have expressed on the floor of Parliament in recent weeks but sadly it’s an objective missing from a Labor Government here in Canberra intent on building debt and splashing the cash now with little or no regard for the nation’s long term economic interests. Now you can be certain that the next Coalition Government will work in partnership with you, and also engage our state and territory governments, in a bid to realise the efficiencies that are there for the taking, to deliver infrastructure in a far more efficient, less wasteful manner than the approach we see today from this Government. Just think what could have been spent on local government infrastructure if the Rudd Government did not so recklessly throw around $23 billion in cash splashes for questionable benefit overall to the economy. What improvements to roads in your region could have been realised if the education infrastructure debacle was managed better. It is now emerging that the significant problems with the ‘building the education revolution’ are a result of a lack of cost benefit analysis before the program began. Where is the cost-benefit analysis and policy rigour that was so emphatically promised to us in last year’s Budget by the Federal Government? Now this is a prime example of how public money can be wasted – by plunging into huge public spending programs for political purposes with little consideration of how it will benefit the long term economic interests of Australia. THE EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME Now finally, since one of the themes of your Assembly this year is climate change, I want to briefly touch on the proposed emissions trading scheme where once again there has been an appalling lack of transparency and disclosure over its impact on our economy. Whatever is legislated at the federal level, local government will to continue to play an essential role in mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The emissions trading scheme, so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, is a far reaching regulatory system that will require detailed legislation. But despite the enormous implications to our economy of their proposed ETS, the Government still has not undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of its proposal and reasonable alternatives. The Green Paper, the White Paper and the Regulation Impact Statement that accompanies the bills introduced last month do not contain any analysis that would allow a reader to conclude that the Government has considered a range of feasible policies and then selected the one which provides the greatest net benefit for the community. Indeed, no reader could be confident that there actually is a net benefit from the Government’s policy. Incredibly, despite the fact that the proposed ETS is arguably the most important single policy-driven change to our economy ever, there has apparently been no official modelling of its transitional impact on regions, industries or firms whatsoever. Nor has there been any public analysis of the costs and benefits of this particular ETS as an abatement measure compared to other ETS designs or non-ETS policies. THE CONSEQUENCES Now what do all these poor policy decisions mean for the average Australian and for local governments? What it means is that we will all have to pay the price for Mr Rudd’s reckless spending. Resources will be shifted from higher value public and private uses to lower value public uses. This is at the heart of our concern about rising Government debt levels. As debt rises inexorably to pay for this Government’s poor spending decisions, Australia’s future economic development is harmed. Since November 2007, this Government has taken decisions to increase spending by $124 billion – two thirds of the $188 billion of debt, net debt, we’ll accumulate by 2012/2013 according to the Budget. CONCLUSION Now is an exciting time, however, for local governments. You’re experiencing an unprecedented expansion of your role and responsibilities and your contribution will be crucial as we travel down the road to recovery from this economic downturn. I and my team acknowledge the contribution you make and understand that you need recognition and financial certainty. I reiterate my commitment to build a new stronger partnership between the federal and local governments across Australia when we are returned to government. Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate not only the chance to be with you today, but in particular an ongoing and very constructive relationship with our side of politics. We welcome your ongoing feedback and ideas as we seek to work with you to build a productive and sound financial future for local government in our nation. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmWed, 01 Jul 2009 00:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:519