http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.auRSS feeds for Malcolm Turnbull MP60http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/617/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=617http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=617&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/617/Doorstop-Interview-Adelaide.aspxSubjects: Visit to Robern Menz factory outlet; government expenditure leading to higher interest rates and higher taxes; unauthorised boat arrivals; emissions trading; executive remuneration.   E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Christopher and I have had a great visit here with Richard, Phil and Grantley Sims, third and fourth generation confectioners here in South Australia. This is a wonderful firm, Robern Menz, and producers of course of Fruchocs, this is the home of Fruchocs, and we have seen them being sold and seen them being made. It is a great opportunity to see a great South Australian business. It is also a time to reflect on the importance of businesses like this to the Australian economy. The prosperity of Australia is based on the energy and the enterprise and the hard work of men and women such as we have here at Robern Menz. And governments that run up large levels of debt put heavy burdens on businesses like this, heavy burdens of higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. Now we saw the final Budget outcome yesterday, and it was very instructive because it confirmed what we have known for some time, which is that last year’s deficit was almost entirely the consequence of additional spending. Revenue declined very slightly. Expenditure, that is government expenditure, borrowed money of course, expanded or increased very substantially. And so that was basically the reason why we had that big deficit last year. Revenues down one point six percent, expenditure up fourteen percent. Now there is another matter I want to speak about at the outset too. It is a matter of growing and very, very real concern to all Australians. We have now had the third boat arrival of unauthorised arrivals, illegal immigrants if you like, in three days. Since August last year when the Rudd Government started to soften and change the border protection arrangements which had served us so well, we have had over 1800 unauthorised arrivals, and they are coming at an accelerating pace. Now the Government tries to pretend there is no problem. They say, oh, this is a global problem, there is nothing we can do about it. Well Australians know that we had virtually stopped unauthorised arrivals for some years, for many years in fact, because of a combination of policies that worked. The Rudd Government said those policies had no impact on the number of arrivals and they changed them. Well the arrivals are going through the roof. Now what Mr Rudd has got to do is recognise that there is a problem, recognise that his border protection policies have failed, and what he must do is have urgently an independent inquiry which can have the benefit of the expert intelligence advice so that all Australians can get an understanding of what has gone wrong, and what measures are needed to fix it. Over to you.   QUESTION: What’s your reaction to the Productivity Commission’s take on the executive pay issue? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have not had a chance to read it all, but as you know I have strongly supported shareholders having more say in setting executive pay. So based on what I have seen in the press, there are some solid principles there. It does not seem to go, it does not appear to go as far as the recommendations I have made. But when I have had a closer look at it, when I have read it, I will have something more to say about it. QUESTION: Are you confident of support from your party for ETS amendments that you are going to put forward? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we will… Yes. The answer is yes, and we will bring the amendments to the party room shortly, when we get back to Canberra, and then we will sit down with the Government and we will negotiate with the Government, and depending on the extent to which they accept those amendments, and other political developments both in Australia and in particular internationally at the time, we will then consider whether we support the legislation or not.    QUESTION: Do you expect that to be finalised in Shadow Cabinet today? Do you expect a final position to be nutted out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we have dealt with the issues in principle already. We set out those nine points of principle in July. We have been consulting very intently and intensively with business right around Australia. The businesses whose interests and whose industries are most at risk, and whose employees are most at risk, are saying to us in the Opposition, we want you to engage with the Government and take a constructive approach. They want us to seek to protect them. The only way you can protect those industries is to engage with the Government and seek to amend the legislation, and that is what we are seeking to do. So we are getting their feedback. We had a very good meeting here in Adelaide, for example, with Santos, which obviously has a great deal at stake in having a well-designed emissions trading scheme. So that is the approach we are taking. It is a constructive and it is a responsible one, and hopefully it will have the result of having a better-designed emissions trading scheme. But, you know, I just have to say, underlying all of this, the great tragedy of this debate at the moment is that Kevin Rudd is forcing the final vote on the emission trading scheme prior to the Copenhagen meeting. Now the Copenhagen meeting as you know is in December. The vote in the Senate will be at the end of November. If we waited until Parliament came back in February, sixty days delay, we would be fully informed, we would know exactly what had been or had not been decided in Copenhagen. So the sensible thing for Mr Rudd to do, the responsible thing to do, is to postpone the final vote. Of course we should be discussing the detail and the design and negotiating. I am not suggesting we should be doing nothing until February, but the final vote and the final refinements to the design of the emissions trading scheme should not be done until after Copenhagen. But so far Mr Rudd seems deaf to that argument, notwithstanding that it is so much common sense. QUESTION: Are you surprised some of your backbenchers are perhaps trying to rewrite history, questioning whether the Coalition even had an ETS policy heading into the last election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, you know, party room meetings can be long, and sometimes people can doze off or step out of the room, but I am afraid to say there is no doubt, as you know, that we had a very – it was on the front page just about every other day – we had a very public inquiry into the design of an emissions trading scheme, headed by Peter Shergold. I think that was announced at the end of 2006. It reported in 2007. The report was adopted by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and that was government policy, and then we started to legislate for it, and of course that legislation was taken to and approved by the party room. So anyone who has missed all that was obviously focusing on much more important issues, or at least things they thought were more important. QUESTION: Have you lost control of your party over the ETS? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, of course not. No. QUESTION: But how confident are you that you are going to get amendments to put to the Government given the splits in the Coalition. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I am very confident that the party room will support us taking a constructive approach. Can I say that those people who say the Coalition should not engage with the Government at all really are speaking for nobody but themselves. There is not one industry organisation – not one – not one business that will be affected by the ETS that is not saying to us, we want you to get in there and fight for our jobs, fight for our industry, and to say that we should step back and say, we are not going to have anything to do with it, we are not going to be part of the solution, we are not going to engage in a constructive way, people who say that are really saying that the Opposition should walk off the field, and that is not a responsible thing to do. QUESTION: Is that a message to backbenchers like, a pointed message to backbenchers like Cory Bernardi, who today put out an email saying nothing Australia does to reduce carbon emissions will affect the climate at all and will just stifle prosperity? I mean those views are still there. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look I will let Senator Bernardi speak for himself. But he has got particular and well-known views on climate change. As I recall it, Senator Bernardi does not think Australia should do anything about it. Now that has never been the policy of the Coalition. It was not our policy in government and it certainly is not our policy now. QUESTION: Has your authority to negotiate with the Government on an ETS been undermined by… MALCOLM TURNBULL: No… people can make statements to the press, and we can have journalists, you know, ringing up backbenchers and purporting to do surveys – who knows how accurate they are? The party room will decide. The party room will decide whether to support the leadership on taking amendments to discuss with the Government or not, and that is the critical thing. And I have to say, if we were not take a constructive approach to this we would be flying in the face of and abandoning thousands of Australians whose jobs are at risk. Farmers, people working in manufacturing industry, people working in the coal industry, people working in gas, in aluminium. We would be abandoning them all, every one of them we would be leaving behind to make some political point. Now I am committed to being a constructive Opposition, taking on the Government where we should, holding them to account, but I am not going to walk away from thousands of Australians’ jobs. I am not going to sit back and just let Kevin Rudd have his scheme go through on whatever terms he likes. That would be the consequence of us just voting it down, because he would have a double dissolution election. We all know that. Of course he would have a double dissolution election, and if he wins it he will get the bill in the form he wants to get it. Now we can, we in the Opposition can deny him the right to take a concluded, a legislated statute to Copenhagen, if we vote against it. Or, if he chooses to agree to amendments that meet our requirements, then he can get a bill that can be a law, made a law by a vote of Parliament, to take to Copenhagen. So that is what we are endeavouring to do. We are endeavouring to protect thousands of jobs. And I just ask you this: if we were to vote it down twice, let’s say we just voted it down twice without even trying to change it, let’s say there was an election held and Mr Rudd were to win, and he came back and naturally passed his bill through the joint sitting, what would we say to the workers in the aluminium industry, in the coal industry, in the gas industry? What would we say to the farmers who will be losing their jobs when they say to us, what did you do? Did you try to make it better? Did you stand up for us? Did you really try to protect regional Australia? Because if we were to do that, we would not have any answer to give them.   Now I am determined to protect the environment, I am determined to protect the environment in a way that does not damage the Australian economy and in a way that protects thousands of jobs. That is what we are seeking to do. We are taking a constructive approach to this to preserve thousands of jobs. QUESTION: How is your relationship with the National Party on this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Cordial. Our relationship with the Nationals is always cordial. We don’t always agree but we are always agreeable. QUESTION: Just on execs’ salaries, do you think they should be capped? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. I haven’t read the Productivity Commission report, so I don’t want to, you know, comment on something that I have just read reports of. But no, I don’t think salaries should be capped. I think it is very much a matter for shareholders. But the proposal I have made, which I understand the Productivity Commissioner has not agreed with, but the proposal I made some time ago was that senior executives’ salaries should be subject to a shareholder vote. QUESTION: Geoffrey Cousins has had another spray at you recently. Any comments on that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, no, I just hope it made him feel better. OK? Thanks a lot.   [ends]      malcolmWed, 30 Sep 2009 03:41:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:617http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/Doorstop-Interview-London.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=620http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=620&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/Doorstop-Interview-London.aspxSubjects: Meeting with David Cameron; emissions trading scheme; economy; stimulus spending; polls. E&OE MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I’ve just come from a very productive meeting with David Cameron and his colleagues, George Osborne and William Hague, and we’ve discussed a number of important issues including of course the big issue of debt. In this country of course the Government is running up debt at an extraordinary level. Britain went into the economic downturn with already high levels of debt, unlike Australia which of course went into the downturn with no debt at all and cash at the bank thanks to the good economic management of the Coalition in government. But nonetheless there is a common challenge of governments around the world to ensure that they do not keep racking up high levels of debt which have the inevitable consequence, as David and I discussed, of higher taxes and higher interest rates. QUESTION: Did you discuss at all with David Cameron the environment? Did you talk to him about your issues with the ETS at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, yes, we discussed that at great length and one of the great achievements that David has able to do, or effect, is to position the Conservative Party as being environmentally credible. He really has worked very hard and convincingly on the slogan – vote Blue, vote Conservative and go Green. He’s done that very well and of course I have a common commitment, a similar commitment to the environment. QUESTION: He supports emissions trading schemes, did you talk about that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we did talk about it. The emission trading scheme of course for the UK is run at the European Union level so it’s not really an issue so much for the national Government here in Britain but we talked about the implications for Copenhagen. We were both very heartened to see the positive comments made by the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, recently in New York. So there is a growing level of optimism for a good outcome at Copenhagen, although there’s a long way to go yet. QUESTION: Did you pick up anything in terms of popularity? I mean he’s doing extremely well in the polls, is seen by most as the next prime minister. You’re not doing quite as well, did he give you any tips? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we had a good discussion because of course William Hague was the Leader of the Opposition immediately after the Conservatives lost government to Labour here. So I had a good range of experience both from William and from David. No, they were full of encouragement. There’s a lot of goodwill between our two parties. We have a lot in common. There are some differences of course and there’s a great regard between our two parties and a lot of collaboration and cooperation between them. QUESTION: Timing’s everything of course, are you at the wrong end of the political cycle? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, time will tell. QUESTION: Of course that could come very soon if a double dissolution threat is carried out. Are you prepared for such an eventuality? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we’re prepared to fight an election whenever the Prime Minister chooses to call it. But as far as the emissions trading legislation is concerned, the Prime Minister has got to decide whether he wants to keep playing politics or whether he wants to get the scheme right. We need to have a scheme that is economically responsible and environmentally effective. We don’t have one that meets those criteria right now. And of course, finalising the design of the scheme before we know the outcome of the Copenhagen summit is reckless, but that’s the course of action the Prime Minister is committed to and it is all, as always, about politics. He is very concerned about politics. He’s not interested in polar bears or saving the Murray-Darling Basin or the Great Barrier Reef – it’s all politics for Mr Rudd. QUESTION: But the politics would tell you at the moment that if there is a double dissolution that you could lose a further 10 to 20 seats. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we’re certainly behind in the polls. We can all read the polls but the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. QUESTION: You discussed with Mr Cameron today the need to rein in stimulus spending to stop debt getting out of hand. The Treasury Secretary, Dr Henry, today emphatically rebutted the position you’ve been putting on that, saying that the Government’s existing program should be stuck to. Are you comfortable with the role Dr Henry’s been taking in this debate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, Dr Henry is the head of the Treasury and he was the architect of the stimulus package no doubt. But the question that we should be putting to the Government is this; if you had known in February that the Australian economy was going to be as strong and resilient as it has turned out to be, would you have spent so much money? Now the honest answer to that question must be no, because they committed all of this money in a panic because, as the Prime Minister said – he said this himself – they felt they were staring into the bottom of an abyss, they panicked, they committed far too much money, borrowed far too much money and are spending it ineffectively. As I said last night at the Policy Exchange, just because there’s a global financial crisis does not mean the rules or the laws of economics are suspended. Infrastructure spending should have a positive cost benefit. And what we’re seeing in Australia is a lot of money being spent very unwisely and ineffectively and all of it is borrowed and all of that debt is going to mean higher taxes and higher interest rates. QUESTION: Would you try to get out of contracts if you won the next election? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, if the Government’s contracted, it’s bound by them. You can’t do that. Once the Government signs on the dotted line it’s committed. QUESTION: So it’s all too late? MALCOLM TURNBULL: All too…what is all too late? QUESTION: Too late to wind back the stimulus? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think that’s right at all. I think the Government is in a position, if it chose to, to recalibrate a lot of the spending. It could spend less in some areas or it could spread the spending over a number of years. The real issue with infrastructure spending, as I said last night at the Policy Exchange, that is designed to promote economic activity as part of a fiscal stimulus is that if you’re not careful you can find that the spending, instead of being countercyclical – that is to say offsetting a general decline in the economy – becomes pro-cyclical and in a sense accelerates an economy that is already growing. And so that is why you’ve got to be very careful about the amount of money that is spent and of the timing. Now if our economy continues to grow and starts to pick up momentum – and there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest that may be so – then the Government’s spending may prove to be really ill-timed and in fact be pushing up both inflation and interest rates, and of course racking up a lot of debt at the same time. Back in February we argued for a stimulus. We were not opposed to a stimulus but we argued for a stimulus that was smaller and better targeted. And I said at the time, the Parliament is not closing down, if we need to spend more, if circumstances require us to spend more, we can come back and vote more money but let’s be careful and measured in the way we approach this. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I think if the Government was honest they would say that if they had known our economy was going to be as strong and resilient in the face of this global downturn, as it has been, they would have spent less money. QUESTION: But Dr Henry today said you’re dead wrong on that. He said that with the benefit of hindsight the timing has been spot on. Do you feel that you’re at a bit of a disadvantage here, not debating a rival political party but an independent public service leader like that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Dr Henry is committed to his program. It’s his program, I wouldn’t expect him to do anything other than defend it vigorously which is what he’s doing. He’s not an independent economics commentator. He is the Secretary of the Treasury. He is like an ambassador. His job is to go out and defend the Government’s actions because he is part of that process. He is part of the Government. QUESTION: You mentioned a happiness index in a speech a couple of nights ago. Where’s your personal happiness index with respect to your job? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh, it’s very high. I’m a happy fellow. But I think it’s an interesting concept, the happiness index, perhaps for another…a longer interview. QUESTION: [Inaudible] MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we would always like our opinion poll ratings to be higher than they are but Mr Cameron’s doing very, very well and he deserves his lead in the polls and I hope he’s able to sustain that. I’m sure he will. QUESTION: Did you give you any specific tips in terms of popularity? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we talked a lot about party reform. We didn’t talk about popularity per say at all in fact. We talked about party room, the importance of policy development. We discussed a lot policy areas; social policy in particular, environmental policy. And we just talked about the process of how the Tories here have been able to renew their party and reposition their party in Opposition and put themselves in the situation now where they are a very credible alternative government, and if the polls are to be believed, likely to become the government. QUESTION: Were you just a little bit jealous of the success Mr Cameron has had and quite how easy it’s been to him to get a clean and green environmental policy accepted by his backbench? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, we have a very good environmental policy from the Liberal Party of Australia. You’ve got to remember, just in terms of my own record as Environment Minister and Water Minister, I was responsible for the biggest water reform in our country’s history; the Federal Government taking over all the interstate rivers and groundwater systems, the Murray-Darling Basin in other words. That was a gigantic reform and that was effected by John Howard as Prime Minister and me as the Environment and Water Minister. We have a very good record on environmental management as a Coalition. And as far as an emissions trading scheme is concerned the first legislation to establish an ETS was introduced into the House of Representatives by me, as John Howard’s environment minister. So an emissions trading scheme is part of our policy. QUESTION: You shared the room today with William Hague who was the leader of the Conservatives at one stage. Are you concerned that one day you will be sitting in the room on the wrong side of the couch sharing the room with prime minister Hockey or someone like that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’ll leave all that speculation to others. It was good to see William again though, he’s an old friend. Okay, thanks very much. [ends]malcolmThu, 24 Sep 2009 01:00:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:620http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/615/Interview-with-Leigh-Sales-Lateline.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=615http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=615&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/615/Interview-with-Leigh-Sales-Lateline.aspxSubjects: Emissions trading scheme; economy; the Rudd Government’s reckless spending and bungled schools stimulus. E&OE LEIGH SALES: Mr Turnbull, good to have your company. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, good to be with you. LEIGH SALES: Let’s begin with your letter to the Rudd Government in response to its letter. What have you said to its deadline and offer to negotiate? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Penny Wong's letter really was just a stunt. Penny knows full well that we are committed to negotiate over the design of the ETS, just as we negotiated over the renewable energy target and the result of which was we got agreement and the legislation was passed.  So she knows exactly what we're planning to.  I've been very public and open about it. We're finalising our amendments now.  We've been consulting widely.  They will be approved by the Shadow Cabinet and taken to the party room when Parliament comes back in October.  And once they're approved by the party room we will sit down with the Government and negotiate.  So this letter really is just a stunt and it’s a tribute to the media spinning skills of the Government that it's taken up so much time in the news because it's just a stunt. LEIGH SALES: So basically, though, you would anticipate that you will have your amendments ready to put forward by the end of October? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh certainly, that’s absolutely right.  Leigh, this is our position on the ETS. We believe the Prime Minister is playing politics by forcing a vote on it in November.  Common sense and prudence dictate that we should not finalise the design of our emissions trading scheme until after we know the results of the Copenhagen summit, which means we would do it in the normal course of events in February rather than November. So for 60 days Mr Rudd wants to make a decision where we are less well informed than we would be in February.  That is purely politics.  There is nothing there but pure politics and gamesmanship on his part. LEIGH SALES: Well that may be so and your argument about Copenhagen may be perfectly valid but is it time for you to accept the reality that the Government is determined to put this to a vote in November and that's what you’re going to be having to deal with? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, he’s in charge of the process.  He's apparently going to persist with having this voted on in November, and on that basis we have been…we've set out the principles which underpin the amendments we’ll be seeking to the legislation – we published them in July – so the Government knows exactly where we're coming from, and we will provide detailed amendments in October just as we've planned to do. So really Penny Wong's letter was nothing more than a stunt.  I've been very open and very transparent and very reasonable about what we're doing and we will have the amendments there in October and we look forward, hopefully, to some constructive engagement with the Government. LEIGH SALES: Well you mentioned the nine concerns that you aired in July. Given that and given that the ETS legislation has been before the Parliament since May, why is it taking the Coalition so long to come up with amendments? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you really should be asking Mr Rudd the question why is he unable to finalise his own scheme? The design of the scheme itself is actually contained in the regulations rather than the legislation, which the Parliament has voted on.  Most of those regulations have not been published. There are major sectors – coal, aluminium, for example – where the Government is in intense negotiations with those industries trying to work out changes to its own scheme. So the Rudd Government ETS is not a fixed state of affairs.  It is been worked on, now it's a work in progress and it just underlines the indecent haste and the politics between Mr Rudd's…behind Mr Rudd's actions.  You see, he does not have an environmental agenda.  He's got a political agenda.  It's all about politics.  Somebody that was committed to the environment and committed to effective global action on climate change would proceed more prudently and more cautiously and finalise the design of our scheme after Copenhagen when we will know what the other countries are going to do. LEIGH SALES: Okay, we’ve made that point so let's move on. How are you going to come up with amendments that suit everybody from Wilson Tuckey at one end to Greg Hunt at the other? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Do you think they’re polar opposites, do you?  I’m sure they have a lot in common.  Look, we will put – the Shadow Cabinet will approve the amendments and we will present them to the party room and we will get the agreement of the party room. LEIGH SALES: And you’re confident of that; that everyone in the party room will sign up to what the leadership recommends? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the reality Leigh, as you know, is that in a political party individuals will have different views but then we have got to agree on one position, and so we come together and that may represent for many people a compromise or something less than their ideal position.  But, as you know, you cannot allow your conception of the perfect to be the enemy of the good.  And we will come to a common position which we will then sit down and negotiate with the Government and you know we’ve done this before. LEIGH SALES: You’re confident that your team will wear that and will go along with it because there have been quite a few public rumblings along the way thus far? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’m very confident of it and if I could just remind you and your viewers, we have done it before. We did this with the Renewable Energy Target legislation where we insisted on some changes. We set them out. We negotiated with the Government and we reached agreement. And the process worked perfectly well. I've had many discussions with government ministers in the context of the Renewable Energy Target and we will have discussions with them about the CPRS or the emissions trading scheme, and I am hopeful that we will be able to reach an agreement but time will tell. It depends how flexible the Government wants to be. LEIGH SALES: Your efforts to get your party room to sign up to the amendments are already being billed as a test of your leadership.  Do you accept that it will be a leadership failure if you can’t unite your team on this? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is no question that we will reach agreement, Leigh, and I am not going to engage in speculation about that.  And as far as tests of leadership, leaders are tested every day.  So every day is a leadership test whether you're the Leader of the Opposition or the Prime Minister. LEIGH SALES: You mentioned earlier that there are always a range of views in any political party and that was the case for the Coalition under John Howard, it's undoubtedly the case for the Labor Party under Kevin Rudd but neither Rudd nor Howard have had the same problems with their backbench that you have had. Is your problem not a range of opinion but a lack of discipline? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Leigh, I’ll allow others to run the commentary on that but obviously it’s always important for Oppositions to keep their focus on the Government.  Our job is to hold the Government to account and to put forward policies and a critique that will persuade people to make us the Government at the next election. So that's where we should always be focussed. LEIGH SALES: On that front, Ian Macfarlane told ABC radio yesterday that the Coalition's chances of winning an early double dissolution election were significantly diminished.  Do you share his assessment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think you've only got to look at the polls to see that we're well behind.  If there was an election held in the near future and the polls remained where they were, we obviously wouldn't win.  But the real point that I think Ian was making, which is the same point that I've made – and we're both pretty hard headed, practical people – is that if the Rudd ETS is knocked back by the Senate a second time and if Mr Rudd then goes to a double dissolution election and if he were to win, he would then be able to get his legislation passed without any input from us whatsoever at a joint sitting. So we have important interests to protect. We want to see an emissions trading scheme that does not sacrifice thousands of Australian jobs for no environmental gain. We want to see an emissions trading scheme that is more effective in terms of reducing emissions.  We have proposed changes which would make an emissions trading scheme in Australia greener, cheaper and smarter. This is not a well-designed scheme. Its treatment of agriculture is very unjust and ineffective. Its treatment of some of our major export industries is very dangerous. So there are a lot of changes that could be made and should be made and we will be putting them up to the Government and seeking to engage them, just as we did on the Renewable Energy Target legislation. LEIGH SALES: Let’s come at this idea of an early election from a different perspective. You could vote against the ETS in November, calling Kevin Rudd's bluff and putting the ball into his court as to whether or not he does go to an early election. We know from a recent Newspoll that four out of five Australians wouldn't support that.  We know that early elections have backfired on leaders before.  The ETS is going to be a very complicated sell for the Government in an election campaign.  Could actually going to an early election be your best course of action? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Leigh, again, that's something that the commentariat can comment on and speculate on.  It’s not for me to run a political commentary for the benefit of Mr Rudd and the Labor Party.  Basically our approach is, as we've set out, we believe a more prudent and responsible approach is to finalise the scheme after Copenhagen when we're fully informed about the intentions of the other countries, in particular China and America.  I mean that’s basically what the whole show is about you know.  If China and America can come to an agreement everything will fall into place.  If they don't, it won't. So we should wait until after Copenhagen but if Mr Rudd insists on proceeding in November, we will engage with the Government and present amendments and seek to reach agreement with them on those amendments.  And then depending on how much of our amendments they agree to, and the political situation and the developments both in Australia and internationally at the time, we will then make a decision whether to vote for bill or not. LEIGH SALES: Your approval rating and the Coalition's position in the polls are the same as it was when Brendan Nelson was ousted from the leadership 12 months ago.  How is the Opposition in a better position under your leadership than it was under Brendan Nelson’s? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ve advanced a lot in the last year.  We’ve held the Government to account over the wastefulness of its stimulus.  We’ve taken the Government on.  We've taken some tough decisions. It was a very unpopular decision to propose a less expensive, less costly and better targeted stimulus, and then when Mr Rudd refused to engage or negotiate on that, to vote against his package.  That was courageous decision but it was taken on principle and obviously it had a political price. LEIGH SALES: The G20 as we know is meeting later this week. You've been saying for while now that the Government needs to wind back its stimulus spending, as you just mentioned, so therefore you must think we're moving towards a recovery.  Give me your assessment of how you see the pace of that recovery.  Do you agree, for example, with Paul Keating who said on the 7.30 Report earlier that we're out of the woods? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I just work on the figures. I think the economy is starting to grow again. The reality is that the forecasts that everyone was working on at the beginning of the year have proved to be overly pessimistic.  And the real question that one should be putting to the Government is this; if you had known in February that the Australian economy was going to be as resilient to this global downturn has it has turned out to be would you have borrowed and spent so much money?  Now the honest answer to that would be no. But they panicked.  They looked over the edge of what Kevin Rudd describes as the abyss, and they were terrified by the implications of this global financial crisis and they rushed out and borrowed billions dollars and started spending it very quickly. Now we proposed a better targeted and less expensive stimulus package.  There's no question about, you know, this proposition that Kevin Rudd likes to put up saying the Opposition were against any stimulus is just nonsense.  For example, with schools, we said in February that to spend $14 billion on primary school assembly halls in two years, to do that effectively was not possible.  And we proposed instead $3 billion over three years in a way that would be very carefully targeted and would ensure schools got the infrastructure they needed. LEIGH SALES: We’re getting off the track though as to whether or not you think that we're out of the woods and we’re well on our way to recovery. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think the signs are very promising.  I don't like to use these metaphors, Leigh.  The fact is that we've seen our economy grow. We've only had one quarter of negative growth, so we didn't ever go into a technical recession which surprised a lot of people.  We have got very strong signs coming out of our resources sector.  I mean if you look at the billions of dollars that are going to be invested into the resources sector in Western Australia in particular, all of the, you know, the big signs for Australia are very promising indeed. But there’s no reason to be complacent and that's why governments should always be very careful to be prudent in the way they spend money and to adjust spending, if it's been spent for the purpose of stimulating economic activity, to adjust that spending in line with economic developments.  And if the economy is strengthening more than they had imagined it was going to in February then that makes a powerful case for throttling back on the Government's stimulus because there is the risk that you will end up with the spending being ineffective from a cost benefit point of view. I mean look at the situation with some of these schools where you have got millions being spent to knock down classrooms only to build new classrooms if their place. It's a pointless expenditure. LEIGH SALES: Alright, we’ve gone through that. Let me ask you one final question before you go. Your predecessor, Brendan Nelson, recently offered a less than flattering diagnosis of your personality.  Now last week in his farewell speech he urged the Coalition to vote down the ETS.  The very next day he took a job in which he would be required to push the Government’s climate change policy.  And then on the weekend he said that in the Bradfield by-election he would be campaigning against the ETS.  Do you care to offer a diagnosis of his personality? MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, I don’t. LEIGH SALES: Oh, come on. MALCOLM TURNBULL: I care not to. LEIGH SALES: You know you want to. MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, no, I have no desire to offer any sort of commentary on that.  I think people will form their own judgment. LEIGH SALES: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for joining us. Very diplomatic. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks very much, Leigh. [ends]  Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:38:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:615http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/614/Address-to-the-United-Kingdom-Policy-Exchange.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=614http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=614&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/614/Address-to-the-United-Kingdom-Policy-Exchange.aspxE&OE Thank you very much Neil. The non-partisan work your think tank is really inspiring and I have to say, just having been up stairs going through some of your output, it is remarkable what you do across the spectrum on such a wide range of topics. So I think this is really an outstanding outfit that you’re in charge of. I know the challenges you face, as indeed does Lucy my wife who is here, who is a Director of a similar organisation in Australia; the Centre for Independent Studies. And we share some talent; I see Peter Saunders has been writing for you, he used to be at the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia until recently.   Now today as Neil said both the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom and the Liberal Party of Australia are in Opposition – and neither of us plans to be there for much longer – but in terms of the political cycle the challenges we face are very different. Here in Britain the Conservatives are coming into an election, next year, against a weary and dispirited Labour Government that has ruled for 12 years. We Australian Liberals on the other hand face a government elected less than two years ago.   Eleven and a half years of very effective centre-right government came to an end in November 2007, when the Australian people elected a Labor Government led by a man who proclaimed himself to be “an economic conservative,” committed to surpluses and disciplined financial management and then along came the global financial crisis; and, very quickly, the political rhetoric changed. Barely three months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had this to say, I quote: “The time has come off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed. Ironically, it falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalising itself.” Strong words indeed.   But what we are seeing in Australia is an attempt by the left to rewrite the history of global economic development over these past 30 years. Given all we have come to know from 20th century history, it is surprising that we in contemporary Britain and Australia should need to revisit debates about the sensible limits of government power – but that is the ground on which our political opponents intend to fight. They are determined not to waste this crisis. They are already using it as a justification for higher taxes, higher borrowings, much more spending and much more intervention in the economy. Mr Rudd has said that government must now be “at the centre of the economy”. His words, not mine. Consider that – “government at the centre of the economy”. This resurgence of democratic socialism – if that is to be the preferred label – raises a number of common challenges for the centre-right in Britain and Australia. For what we are witnessing is an attempt by proponents of the “government knows best” approach to use the current difficult global economic conditions as a pretext for expanding state power. In my view, now more than ever, political leaders of the centre right must stand up for freedom. Today, more than ever, we need to safeguard the spirit of independence, self-reliance and enterprise so critical to the long-term prosperity and security of our peoples. We must stand up for a view of society which says government’s role is to enable each and every citizen to do their best, to realise their dreams, to start their businesses, to buy their homes, to choose where to send their children to school. That is the golden thread of freedom that defines what it is to live in a liberal democracy such as ours – the principle that, to the greatest extent possible, people should be able to rule their own lives. Now in all of this, the best governments will be those that understand and accept the limits of their power; not those that seek to dictate from on high how business should be run, how society should be structured, which companies stand or fall, and how individuals should run their lives. In my view, it is critical that parties of the centre-right not to be spooked or intimidated by the sense of crisis into a greater tolerance, let alone acceptance, of the notion of government intrusion into economic activity that is best left to the private sector or for heavy-handed and often counterproductive interference in the operation of markets. Throughout the 20th century, the strongest and most successful, most vibrant, most interesting societies were those infused with the principles of political, economic and religious freedom. The best-performing economies were those where citizens were given the maximum incentive, under the rule of law, to make the choices they considered best for themselves and their families. This is not a matter of ideology of faith. It is an unassailable fact of history. The Berlin Wall did not fall by accident. It fell because millions of people living in societies crippled by the failures of excessive government control yearned for the freedoms they saw in the West. The socialisation of the means of production and distribution had manifestly failed them, and they aspired to something better. The Berlin Wall fell also because leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had the courage to hold to the conviction that the most successful and stable societies would always be those where the power relationship was defined by popular consent – where government served the people, rather than people being slaves to the dictates of government. In this belief, they were relying on one of the great intellectual inheritances of Western society, indeed one of the great intellectual inheritances of British society.   Sixty years before the First Fleet arrived on the shores of Sydney Cove, a Frenchman wandered these very streets, here in London, marvelling at what he saw as the enormous liberating energy of an open, free and prosperous society. He saw a nation of small businessman engaging vibrantly in their daily commerce, unencumbered by the dead hand of bureaucracy. He saw merchants of all colours, class and creed gathered in the bustle of the London Stock Exchange, trading earnestly and honestly among themselves, all but oblivious to any notion of chauvinism or servility. And he wrote: “There the Jew the Mahometan and the Christian deal with another as if they were of the same religion and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt. On leaving these peaceable and free assemblies,” he went on, “some go to the synagogue, others in search of a drink,” and he concludes after a long list of alternatives, “all are satisfied.” Indeed Voltaire saw in England a tolerant and peaceful civil society. And he believed the cohesion, strength and vigour of that society was inextricably linked to the political, religious and economic freedoms unimagined at that time in his native France. His letters Concerning the English Nation would have a profound impact on the intellectual life of 18th Century Europe. That starburst of dynamism we know today as the Enlightenment is part of the great intellectual tradition of societies such as our own and it is vital we pay heed to that inheritance as we confront the challenges of the current difficult global economic conditions. I suspect Voltaire would have been mightily impressed with the transformative effect of the widespread adoption of the principles of economic liberalism in these past 30 years. There have been few periods in human history where we have witnessed, in the space of a single generation, such enormous economic advances across so much of the world. Many hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, as great and ancient societies such as India and even the world’s largest Communist state, the People’s Republic of China, opened their economies to global trade, accepting that free market has a great deal to offer, the principles of the free market has a great deal to offer. The freest societies have proved themselves prosperous, creative and dynamic, while societies which restrict freedom have been paralysed by social and economic failure – the most extreme contemporary example being North Korea – but history abounds with others. The fruits of greater economic freedom have been spectacular – in the 20 years to 2004 the percentage of the world’s poor living on $1 a day or less halved. That is a quantum leap by any measure, on any conceivable index of human happiness. And it is a record of achievement, a measure of progress, not to be demeaned or dismissed in the scramble to find scapegoats for last year’s collapse of confidence in global financial markets. What has happened in this past year does not as Kevin Rudd has claimed demonstrate that the ”neo-liberal experiment of the last thirty years has failed”. Now I should note at the outset the absurdity of declaring a failure of capitalism because of a crisis in one industry sector alone and of course there will be libraries built to fill the books written on the global financial crisis and its causes. But we should note that it was a crisis in the banking sector which had it origins in the United States property market, where an asset bubble was fuelled by imprudent, sub-prime lending to people whom banks would not normally have rated as creditworthy. In other words, loans were being made to people whose best, if not only, prospect of repaying the loan was out of the sale or refinancing of the house, which in turn depended on the value of the house rising materially. Far from being a product of unbridled ”free market extremism,” as Mr Rudd is fond to say, this irresponsible lending could not have occurred had it not been for the fact that the United States Government, in the shape of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was actually underwriting two thirds of the entire mortgage market. Moreover, the United States financial sector is a welter of regulation, poorly co-ordinated and often counterproductive. Much of it was directed to encouraging if not mandating banks to lend money to lower income groups to buy homes. Now if regulations allow large banks which benefit from explicit or implicit government guarantees to engage in highly risky, highly leveraged principal trading, that is hardly a failure of free market economics. Surely, that is more a failure of clumsy and ill-considered state intervention. A conservative government, a free market government determined to protect the taxpayer’s dollar, would and now should say that if banks wish to benefit from deposit guarantees or other assurances of government support in the event of disaster, then those banks should be conservatively capitalised and managed. In other words: if you want your depositors and other creditors to believe that you are “too big to fail” – meaning the government will not let you go bust – then the government should demand that you manage your affairs in such a way as to ensure the chances of the government being called upon to pick up the tab are very remote indeed. What we have seen however in the United States, and to an extent here in Britain, is a formula quite alien to economic liberalism. This is the “heads you win, tails the taxpayers lose” theorem of banking practice. I don’t recall that ever making it into the ‘Wealth of Nations.’ And I remind you that Prime Minister Rudd has said that part of the answer to this crisis is to put ”the government at the centre of the economy”. Well, the government was at the centre of the residential property market in the United States and we are all just starting to get over the consequences.   Now let’s look at another case study; in Australia, we had no such crisis. Sub-prime loans were less than one per cent of the total (versus close to 15 per cent in the United States). Our central bank, thanks to the reforms of the Howard Government, was independent. The current prudential regulatory arrangements of our financial sector was established by Treasurer Peter Costello in the Howard Liberal Government in 1997.   Banks were not prodded to lend to low income groups. There was no equivalent of Fannie or Freddie. Indeed, you could say the banking sector and the mortgage market in Australia were a model of free enterprise – the government’s role was simply to ensure the regulated financial institutions had appropriate levels of capital to ensure they could meet their obligations. We have not had a slump in property prices in Australia, comparable to that in other countries, and we have certainly not had a banking crisis. As of today, our four major banks are among only nine AA or better rated banks in the world and of course the strength of the Australian banks reflects in large measure the strength of the Australian economy and our economic position remains remarkably strong, relative to other developed countries. We have avoided a recession, at least in technical terms, with only one quarter of negative growth.  In contrast, the United Kingdom has recorded five consecutive quarters of negative growth. Australian unemployment, while it has risen to 5.8 per cent, is well below that of other developed countries where in most cases it is at or very close to double figures. And whereas Britain went into this downturn with already high levels of government debt, the Liberal Party had, in its term, paid of all the previous Labor Government’s debt and left Australia with negative net debt – in other words cash at the bank. When we were in office we established a Future Fund to provide for the previously unfunded obligations to public sector pensions. In other words we reached out across the generations and lifted heavy financial burdens off the shoulders of Australians yet unborn – what a contrast with our Labor successors who now are busy piling billions of dollars of debt onto those future generations. Labor expects net debt will rise to well over $200 billion by 2014. Two years ago as I noted we had negative net debt, cash at the bank, $45 billion. Now as I previously mentioned, we reformed the financial and prudential regulation of our banking system in 1997 and established a thoroughly independent central bank. We also reformed our labour market laws so that our workplaces became more flexible than before and as a consequence during this down turn businesses and workers have been able to shed hours rather than jobs. Our tax system was substantially reformed by our party in Government with the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (a VAT) and other associated reforms.   So, on any view, Mr Rudd inherited an efficient, modern economy with a government that had no debt, and as I noted, cash in the bank, $45 billion. Not to speak of the fact that thanks to continuing strong demand for our commodities from China, the volume of Australia’s exports in the year to June 2009 barely declined. In the case of the UK, US and Canada the decline was around 15 per cent; for Japan, around 30 per cent – a heavy dependence on manufactures. Now I fear prime minister David Cameron, if he wins the election as we expect him too, will inherit a very different set of circumstances when he takes office – which draws me towards my concluding remarks here today.   Just as it is important for us tell the truth about the origins of the crisis, so it is important to ensure that our responses to it are proportionate, and prudent. In January this year, Harvard economist Robert Barro wrote, with some prescience, and I quote: “The financial crisis and possible depression do not invalidate everything we have learned about macroeconomics since 1936. Much of our focus should be on incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and work. On the tax side, we should avoid programs that throw money at people and emphasise instead reductions in marginal income tax rates. On the spending side, the main point is that we should not be considering massive public works programs that do not pass muster from the perspective of cost-benefit analysis.” Now let us examine this sound advice from the good professor from the Australian perspective. When the financial crisis struck in its full intensity a year ago, our central bank, the Reserve Bank, moved quickly to reduce interest rates, slashing them by over four per cent in six months. The new Labor Government for its part, notwithstanding the relative strength of the economy, proceeded to undertake the third highest level of fiscal stimulus in the OECD – over the three years 2008-2010 our fiscal stimulus will be 5.8 percent of GDP, much higher than in any European country. Now our position as an Opposition was to support the concept of providing fiscal stimulus at that time but to argue it should be smaller and better targeted. We argued that, instead of mailing out $900 cheques to almost every taxpayer earlier this year, the Government should spend less by bringing forward already legislated tax cuts which would have the advantage of providing an ongoing economic incentive that a one off hand out could not – and we paid a heavy price for that politically – it’s always very difficult to argue that the Government shouldn’t be sending out cheques to everybody. Yet it was critical at this time to draw a line in the sand. As Margaret Thatcher said so famously, it is an obligation on all of us to have a prudent eye to the future, she said: “We should not and do not believe in living at the expense of the future. The essence of a good government is they are prepared to take difficult decisions to achieve long-term prosperity.” And the Future Fund I mentioned earlier is a classic example of that. Likewise, we argued that a $16 billion programme to build school halls and libraries in primary schools should be smaller and better targeted; infrastructure, we contended, should reflect what school communities really needed and wanted – and we counted with a $3 billion program to be spent over three years. Since then our concerns about what has become known, in deference to our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, as the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall initiative, has seen many classic examples of Labor mismanagement. One school, Abbottsford Primary in Sydney, some of you may be familiar with it, received $2.4 million to knock down four classrooms – perfectly serviceable classrooms – so that four equally serviceable classrooms could be built in their place. Now, modern Labor is very adroit at media management; they are masters of spin, there’s no doubt about that. And Mr Rudd is doing his very best to assert that Australia’s good fortune is entirely his own doing. But just as it is important for me, and my colleagues, to stand up for the achievements of the Liberal Party in government, so it is important for all of us to make sure that the truth is told about the cause, the response to, and the lessons of the global financial crisis. The truth is that the strength of the Australian economy today owes more to the sound economic management of the 11 and a half years of the Coalition Government than it does to Mr Rudd. Our resilience in the face of this crisis has been largely due to the economic strength with which we entered it. Now deep in their DNA, our opponents in the Labor Party believe government always knows best; they want to direct the future for us, to pick winners, to determine for themselves the best way to spend taxpayers’ money, and on whom. In contrast, we on the centre right look at millions of our fellow citizens, and marvel at their infinite ingenuity and enterprise. We look for ways to enable them to do their best. The values we defend, of freedom and of enterprise, are timeless.   As the Founder of the Liberal Party of Australia, Sir Robert Menzies, said in the year of my birth: “We believe in the individual, in his freedom, in his ambition, in his dignity. If he becomes submerged in the mass, and loses his personal significance, we have tyranny and because of this we believe in free enterprise; not enterprise free of social obligation, but free enterprise in the sense that it embraces free choice, reward for effort and skill, encouragement to grow and to be self-reliant and strong.” Now the global financial crisis has been interpreted by some as a godsend to the left. But, not withstanding my tussle with Margaret Thatcher over the Spycatcher, which Neil referred too, I have always respected her commonsense retort to those who believe government knows best. “The problem with socialists,” Mrs Thatcher said, “is that eventually they run out of other people’s money.” So as this crisis sends our opponents fleeing back to their socialist roots, clamouring for bigger and bigger government, we must stand firm for more freedom and for more choice. We do so not simply because we know that freedom walks hand in hand with prosperity but because we know it is the right thing to do. Those small business values of enterprise and self-reliance, of the men and women Menzies described as the “Forgotten People”, of what we must seek to enable and empower. They are the values of proud, resourceful and independent peoples. They are the values of strong and successful societies. If we on the centre-right are true to those values, we will not wait long to return to government – so that we can and will deliver to our great nations the prosperity, the freedom and the future they deserve.   Thank you very much   [ends]  malcolmWed, 23 Sep 2009 02:14:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:614http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/611/Temporary-Shadow-Cabinet-Arrangements.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=611http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=611&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/611/Temporary-Shadow-Cabinet-Arrangements.aspxThe Hon Andrew Rob AO will be taking leave of absence from the Shadow Cabinet for medical reasons. We all wish Andrew a speedy recovery from his illness and look forward to his early return to active duties on our frontbench. Andrew will continue to serve in the Parliament and provide guidance to the Opposition on his portfolio areas, but the front line portfolio responsibilities will be temporarily re-assigned during his leave of absence. Responsibility for assisting me on Emissions Trading Design will be taken up by the Hon Ian Macfarlane, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources. Andrew’s responsibilities for COAG will be handled in his absence by the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Tony Smith, and his responsibilities for Infrastructure will be handled by the Shadow Minister for Local Government and Housing, Mr Scott Morrison.  malcolmSat, 19 Sep 2009 01:30:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:611http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/613/Visit-to-the-United-Kingdom.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=613http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=613&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/613/Visit-to-the-United-Kingdom.aspxI will make a private visit to the United Kingdom early next week where I will meet with senior figures in the Conservative Party including Opposition Leader, the Rt Hon David Cameron. The purpose of the visit is to discuss a range of policy issues including responses to the global financial crisis and the impact of rising levels of government debt on future economic growth and jobs. I will also meet with Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon William Hague, and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr George Osborne. I also look forward to speaking at the leading London based think tank, Policy Exchange, on the evening of Tuesday 22 September. The Hon Julie Bishop will be acting Leader of the Opposition for the duration of my visit.  malcolmFri, 18 Sep 2009 01:34:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:613http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/612/Senior-Diplomatic-Appointments.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=612http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=612&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/612/Senior-Diplomatic-Appointments.aspxOn behalf of the federal Opposition, I extend my congratulations to Kim Beazley and Brendan Nelson on their appointments today to two of Australia’s most important diplomatic postings. Australia is fortunate to be able to call on the services of two of our most distinguished parliamentary leaders to serve as ambassadors. Both have served previously as Ministers for Defence and as Opposition Leaders. Both will bring great experience, insights and understanding to the responsibility of representing Australia’s interests in major world capitals. Mr Beazley’s long-standing and enthusiastic engagement on the issues at the heart of the relationship with our great friend and ally, the United States, makes him ideally suited to the role as our next Australian Ambassador to Washington DC. He is a man respected across the political divide, both here in Australia and in the United States. Likewise, after six years as a Cabinet minister and a distinguished medical career before entering politics, Dr Nelson is well qualified for the appointment as Australia’s next Ambassador to the European Communities, Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Special Representative to the World Health Organisation, and Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg. Again, I extend our warm congratulations to both Kim and Brendan. I am confident they will represent the nation with the same dedication and distinction they have brought to their many years in public life.  malcolmThu, 17 Sep 2009 01:32:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:612http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/607/Address-to-the-Bonnie-Babes-Foundation-Small-Miracles-Book-Launch.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=607http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=607&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/607/Address-to-the-Bonnie-Babes-Foundation-Small-Miracles-Book-Launch.aspxLocation: Mural Hall, Parliament House E & O E Thank you very much indeed, and it’s good to be here with so many of my parliamentary colleagues from both sides of the House – well spoken, Anna. I am particularly pleased to be joined here by my colleagues, Opposition colleagues, including Brendan Nelson, our former leader, who has been a leading supporter of the Bonnie Babes Foundation as so many of our colleagues have been. And we’re pleased to see that they have secured funding. We certainly argued very strongly for it and it’s good that there is now bipartisan support for the great work of the Bonnie Babes Foundation. Now I want to congratulate Rachel for this book. This is a very important piece of work, and I’m delighted to see that my wife Lucy has a contribution in there. Lucy has very bravely – in a way that I don’t know that I’d be able to – spoken about our experience with miscarriage, and indeed a premature birth, which in our case, in Daisy Turnbull’s case, I’m pleased to say ended very successfully, although so many premature birth experiences do not end successfully, and end tragically. And one of the points that Anna made, which I think is very powerful, and I commend her for making it, is that there is often a lack of awareness – and perhaps it’s because of modern society, perhaps we’re all so busy, perhaps we’re more individualistic than we used to be – and one wonders whether in previous generations people spoke more informally and openly and there was more shared experience. The great thing about the work of the Bonnie Babes Foundation is that in a very busy world it’s able to bring together the experience and the shared wisdom of so many women and men and professionals who have experienced these challenges, these tragedies of stillbirths, of miscarriages, and of course of premature births. And there are so many thousands of babies that are born prematurely nowadays, and most of them, thanks to the extraordinary advances in medical science and treatment are fine and grow up to be big, bouncing children and adults, just like our daughter. But it is a harrowing, gut-wrenching experience for parents at the time, and it’s important that there be more awareness and discussion about it. So this book is really important. The Bonnie Babes counsellors – and this of course is the work of the Bonnie Babes Foundation – are experienced volunteers, who have undergone comprehensive training to provide grief counselling for any member of a family or their friends who are grieving after the loss of a child, after the loss of a pregnancy. For families and individuals experiencing that loss, timely access to support and information from qualified counsellors and access to information such as is found in this book is absolutely vital and of enormous assistance in offsetting and preventing depression. Now I’m confident that Small Miracles – and what an inspired title, because every child is a small miracle, there is no doubt about that – will provide inspiration, comfort and practical advice to those people coping with the loss of a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth, and indeed it will provide comfort and support to all of us, because every person who is expecting a baby or planning to have a baby will nonetheless have anxieties about this. So the more awareness, the more information, the more comfort and love that the Bonnie Babes Foundation is able to express, the stronger we will be, and I cannot commend you, Rachel, too much on the work in this book and the work of the Foundation. Well done. [ends]malcolmWed, 16 Sep 2009 23:07:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:607http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/608/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=608http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=608&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/608/Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: The Rudd Government’s reckless spending and bungled schools stimulus; emissions trading scheme; Brendan Nelson. E & O E QUESTION: Well, Mr Turnbull, congratulations on your first year. How would you describe your first year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s been an eventful year, hasn’t it, starting off with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global financial crisis, and through that time we have presented responsible economic policies. As an Opposition we’ve held the Government to account. We have been constructive in our criticism and we will continue to do that. QUESTION: Was there a high point for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, I think right through this period it’s been a very challenging one for everybody in public life. The global financial crisis has obviously presented great challenges. We have set out an alternative approach, one that involved less debt and was better targeted. And when you look back at February where the $42 billion stimulus was presented by the Government and you look back at some of the things we were saying then, you can see really the strength of the points we were making. I mean we made the point there, for example, that we did not believe the Government could spend $14 billion on school assembly halls effectively in two years. We felt that was not a responsible way to spend money and that it would not be effectively spent. Well the evidence is now overwhelming. And we proposed instead a smaller amount, $3 billion over three years spent through our Investing in Our Schools model which of course meant that the schools would get the infrastructure they actually wanted and needed, as opposed to some of these extraordinary stories that are coming out of schools now as this program is rolled out with classrooms being knocked down only to be replaced by the same number of classrooms – so no gain at all and a cost of $2.5 million. QUESTION: Have you enjoyed yourself in the job in the past year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I enjoy every minute of my job. It’s a great privilege to be here, to be a member of parliament to begin with and to be Leader of the Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition. So, yes, I enjoy it, I certainly do. QUESTION: Does your second year begin with some awkward division in the party over ETS? It sounds like you might be out on your own on that. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t think it does at all. Look we are taking a responsible approach to the emissions trading scheme. We have said many times – and I say this as a former environment minister, as the person who introduced the first legislation to support an emissions trading scheme as a cabinet minister in the Howard Government – I say very bluntly and sincerely: if I was the Prime Minister today I would not be finalising this legislation until after Copenhagen. Now in practical terms what that means is finalising it in February instead of November, a difference of 60 days, two-and-a-half months. So why are we rushing to make a decision with less information rather than having all the information? QUESTION: Because they’re wedging you, they’re politically wedging you and it’s working… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Not at all. We’ve made that point about timing but we are going to engage constructively with the Government. We have set out the changes that we believe should be made to the scheme and we’ll be presenting those in more detail. We’re consulting widely, particularly with the industries who are most affected by it and of course for whom work thousands and thousands of Australians whose jobs are at risk by a poorly designed emissions trading scheme. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, Wilson Tuckey’s flagged a possible conscience vote. Is that an option for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There are no plans of that kind. I’ll just tell you what the process is going to be. This is what we are going to do – we will prepare our amendments, we will take them to the party room. We will then take them to the Government and negotiate with them. We will get an outcome. We will come back to the party room and we will make a decision as to how we vote on the legislation in the form that we can finally reach agreement on with the Government. So that’s the process we’re going to undertake and that’s what we will follow. That’s what we are going to do. QUESTION: Were you relieved to hear from Brendan Nelson this morning that someone with narcissistic personality disorder can become prime minister? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I’ll pass on that one. Brendan has done a great job in Parliament and it was really good to see him there at the launch of the book by the Bonnie Babes Foundation. Brendan was a great advocate for the Government to provide funding to Bonnie Babes and we’re pleased that they did and I’d encourage everyone to support their work. QUESTION: Do you think that it’s odd that he chose today to deliver his valedictory speech to Parliament? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It hadn’t occurred to me to consider the date. It’s up to him as to when he wants to retire from Parliament and he’s chosen to depart at this time. QUESTION: How confident are you you’ll be here another year? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we may have an election before another year is out. I may be prime minister within a year, you don’t know. I will lead the Opposition to the next election and we will win that election. Thanks a lot. [ends]  malcolmTue, 15 Sep 2009 23:16:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:608http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/604/Address-to-the-Poverty-Justice-Bible-Launch.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=604http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=604&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/604/Address-to-the-Poverty-Justice-Bible-Launch.aspxE & O E Reverend Tim Costello, Prime Minister, members of the Bible Society and Voices of Justice, Members and Senators. On behalf of the Opposition, can I congratulate each and every one of you for your dedication and your commitment to speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves. I hope you have found the last two days of the Voices for Justice gathering here in Canberra inspiring and that the next two days are going to be equally inspiring and stimulating. Now since coming into Parliament in 2004 I have met with many organisations – many of them represented here today – who are doing tremendous work both here in Australia and on the international stage. I have met with many youth-based organisations, more recently the Oaktree Foundation and the United Nations Youth Association, and every single one of these is made up of passionate, caring and highly-motivated individuals. But I come to you today with a slightly different approach. My challenge is directed to all Australians: that if you believe strongly in justice, then you should act to alleviate poverty and suffering, give something of yourself to others. You can donate, you can give money and we should all do that when we can, and of course there are various ways to do this, but it is also important to support the work of organisations who are on the ground, working in poor communities to give them food, water, skills for life, but also hope. And on the subject of water, and having regard to the fact that we have in the room the current Water Minister Penny Wong and the last Water Minister which is me, I thought I might take advantage of this beautiful Bible that you have given me – and I thank you for that sincerely – and just talk a little bit about the challenge of providing fresh water to the world’s poor. Access to fresh water is becoming more and more of a challenge all around the world, due not simply to the depletion of existing water resources, particularly groundwater resources, where the implications for agriculture and the ability of a number of developing countries to feed themselves are truly alarming, but also, of course, because of pollution. And it is interesting that in the Bible water is a constant metaphor. Of course, that is how we are baptised as Christians in water, literally. But as a dry country the idea of water, its unpredictability and its importance occurs throughout the Bible, so I was pleased to see that you have highlighted in Isaiah 41, verse 17, this passage: When the poor and needy are dying of thirst and cannot find water, I, the Lord God of Israel, will come to their rescue. I won’t forget them. I will make rivers flow on mountain peaks. I will send streams to fill the valleys. Dry and barren land will flow with springs and become a lake. So you can see there that Isaiah is indicating how God’s love is demonstrated by the bringing of water and there is another passage which is actually not highlighted but it is one of my favourite passages in Psalm 126, verse 4 where the psalmist says: “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams in the Negev”. The translation here is “like streams in the Southern Desert”, which means the same thing. But the point there of course is that in desert country when it rains the streams are filled instantly and there is a rush of water. Some of you may have been to the Herodian, the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada, which is a fortress built on a hilltop in the desert where the Jewish people fought a truly desperate battle at the end against the Romans; a heroic battle which is why it is so celebrated in Jewish history. But what is interesting about that, from a water point of view about that fortress, is that even though there was only about half an inch of rainfall a year, there were 70,000 cubic metres of cisterns in the middle of the fortress, carved into the rock and a most elaborate system of dams and channels and canals so that when it did rain on that one day a year not a drop was wasted – a great reminder of the importance of water management and I guess the timelessness of the commitment of the Jewish people to using water well. For as Benjamin Franklin wisely observed, we will not know the value of water until the well is dry. Now in the New Testament we are told in Corinthians of faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love, and that is so true. Both Lucy and I believe very firmly in and practice love to all we can. We believe passionately in the importance of philanthropy, loving other people, of giving and it is important that, as the Prime Minister said, to understand that governments cannot do everything and they should not because when a government collects taxes and makes payments to overseas aid or any other useful purpose, philanthropic purpose if you like, it provides enormous assistance. But when an individual, when one of us makes a contribution be it in dollars or in time, that contribution carries with it a direct message of love and personal commitment. And so it is absolutely important to support and enhance the action of individuals. Now part of your job and our job is to shine a light on the problems of poverty and the need for more assistance to the worlds poorest and most underprivileged who face considerable challenges, growing challenges from the threat of climate change in particular. Now I have recently met with Tim Costello, who is a good friend. We had a long chat with his team about, on that occasion, the need to support efforts to help rebuild the nation of Afghanistan, and can I just acknowledge the leadership he has shown and the work he is doing to support Australia’s efforts in that country. The efforts to rebuild and secure Afghanistan is one of the world’s most difficult and dangerous struggles, not just for our troops on the ground but also for the aid workers who face the same challenges, the same very dangerous challenges of booby traps and improvised explosive devices. Now it will need a great deal of determination and dedication if we are to succeed, but the good will is there internationally and many good Australians are making great sacrifices to help get that country back on its feet. But we also need the political leadership of Afghanistan, of course, to step up to their responsibilities and we support them in doing so. This challenge that you have set all of us here in this House is a massive one. But it is one, as you remind us in this Bible, that is as ancient as this book. For as long as men and women have understood God’s will, they have understood the importance of loving each other, they have understood the importance of charity, they have understood the importance of helping those who are less well off than themselves. The concept of charity, “tzedakah” in the Hebrew, is fundamental to the Jewish faith, which of course is fundamental to this book. So I thank you very much for presenting me with this Bible. I think it is a much better approach than that of Thomas Jefferson – seems to me to be of dubious literary value. This is a great piece of work and it will, I think, enable those of us who peruse this Bible, as we page through it our eyes will be drawn to the orange highlighted passages and be reminded above all of the importance of love. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmMon, 14 Sep 2009 05:11:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:604http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/603/Into-the-brave-new-world-of-making-a-difference.aspx#Comments3http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=603http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=603&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/603/Into-the-brave-new-world-of-making-a-difference.aspxNational Times It was Rupert Murdoch who shrewdly, if gloomily, predicted: "The internet will destroy more profitable businesses than it will create." And there are few businesses more vulnerable to the internet than newspapers, especially those dependent on revenues from classified advertisements. It is hard to imagine many people poring through hard copy classifieds if they have access, as most do, to the speed, functionality and comprehensiveness of online classified sites. While the demise of newspapers has been greatly exaggerated, the trend is certainly against them. As an avid consumer of news, I can say that I only buy hard copy newspapers nowadays out of habit. The vast bulk of the news and opinion I read I have received electronically – much of it before the newspaper itself actually finds itself to my front door. We all understand that the circulation revenue of most publications, and certainly all newspapers, was always woefully inadequate. The newspaper was a cheap, on occasions free, platform upon which to sell advertisements both display and classified. A similar observation could be made of free to air television, although there the oligopoly was a function of regulation. The internet has changed all that. As broadband, especially wireless broadband, becomes more and more ubiquitous the barriers to entry to compete against free to air television, newspapers and magazines are evaporating. From the consumer's viewpoint there is the prospect of almost infinite abundance of information and opinion. Our son in Hong Kong reads the Australian media online with the same ease as he, and we, are able to read the New York Times, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal - not to speak of the South China Morning Post. And the access to opinion is not limited to those big names. Increasingly opinion leaders have their own online blogs. If you want to get an expert, often contrarian, insight into the Chinese economy for example you can go to www.mpettis.com a specialist blog by a professor at Peking University and enjoy not just Michael Pettis' views but also a vigorous debate and commentary on every post. The days when only a handful of media companies controlled access to the media megaphone are fading from view. There are four main players in this game and it is interesting to consider each of their positions in the old and new worlds. The author of the content – the journalist for example – faces the challenge of news organisations with diminishing revenues. But he or she still has a valuable and important contribution to offer. People want to read Annabel Crabb or listen to Alan Jones. But what about the humble news reporter whose byline is less memorable or compelling? The advertiser has it made. The avenues for spruiking their wares gets wider and cheaper all the time. The internet offers the opportunity of very precise targeting too – so its all upside for the advertiser. The consumer too has it made – content is becoming more and more diverse and almost all of it is free. Those sites which try to charge big money run the risk that they drive down traffic which then reduces their attractiveness to advertisers who after all are only interested in eyeballs. The publisher, the big, established media company, has the most to lose. It is all downside. The reason the Sydney Morning Herald could charge a premium for its classifieds (or indeed its display advertising) was because it had a large number of dedicated readers for whom there was no, or very few, alternative mediums – now there is an enormous range of alternatives most of them offering vastly superior functionality. Many traditional hard copy publishers have sought to move into online publishing, but in doing so they have arguably only hastened their own demise. Because they assumed the hard copy publication was paying for the content, the marginal cost of repurposing it for the internet was negligible. Hence access to online newspaper websites is almost invariably free. They therefore offered advertisers the opportunity to access the readers who were interested in the content offered in hard copy for a tiny fraction of the price of an advertisement in the newspaper itself. And you can see this decline in the share price of Fairfax. When the Tourang consortium took over Fairfax in 1992 the shares listed at $1.20. Today – seventeen years later – the stock price is $1.64. So who wins out of all this? Certainly the advertisers and the consumers, that's a no brainer. The established newspaper companies will struggle to build enough additional value in their online businesses to offset the loss of value in their declining hard copy businesses. But what about the writers and journalists? Are they to face an anarchic brave new world where they have to try to sell their wares on line as Alan Kohler and Bob Gottliebsen are trying to do? And what happens to investigative journalism? Opinion is relatively cheap to acquire or produce. But who now can pay for a team of reporters to work diligently away at government or corporate misconduct? This era of profitless abundance should give us cause for concern – it raises real issues for our democracy. Will newsrooms deprived of the resources to do their own sleuthing become more and more dependent on packages of information prepared and presented to them by the growing army of government media advisers and spinmeisters? How independent can the media be if it lacks the financial resources to do its work? The National Times has been revived online and while I had a celebrated run-in with its hardcopy incarnation, I wish the online incarnation the best of luck. This is a brave new world for journalism and news as it struggles to find a sustainable and profitable business model in the online age. National Times is pitched at an audience wanting something more than day-to-day news, rather, informed comment and analysis of issues. The line-up of writers is impressive and for the first time brings together all the senior commentators from across the Fairfax Media titles. I hope this new masthead becomes too a forum for ideas, to look beyond the square and stimulate discussion on issues on which we politicians struggle sometimes to devise solutions for the optimum benefit of the nation. The extent of the role of government, our water crisis, transport, communications, the environment, taxation, health, innovation, and the arts are matters of enormous importance to all Australians, yet the combative nature of our politics and our multi-tiered government structure sometimes works against best policy outcomes. Many of these issues are linked by the need for governments to manage their budgets prudently to enable them to act in a targeted way when necessary to repair or restore failings or inadequacies in these critical areas of the economy and society. Wasteful spending, deep deficits and high levels of debt severely limit a government's capacity to intervene where and when necessary in resolving, for instance, the critical water shortage in the Murray-Darling Basin, our failing hospitals, and transport bottlenecks that limit economic growth potential. The National Times can through intelligent and thoughtful discussion provoke, inspire and remind not only the country's leaders to act in the best interests of the nation, but all Australians who want to make a difference.  malcolmSun, 13 Sep 2009 22:39:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:603http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/602/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=602http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=602&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/602/Doorstop-Interview-Sydney.aspxSubjects: individual workplace agreements; Labor’s constraint of productivity growth; Kevin Rudd’s reckless and ill-thought out National Broadband Network; school league tables; New South Wales Labor Party; anniversary of September 11; Rudd Government’s failed Productivity Places Program.   E & O E QUESTION: Will you reintroduce individual workplace agreements if you win office?  MALCOLM TURNBULL: What we are going to do – and this is in fact what I said to The Australian – is we are going to review the performance of Labor’s changes, which of course have only recently become effective. Labor claim that they will not reduce flexibility in the workplace. We believe they will, but we will review the performance of those changes and then we will, in the light of that, we will make whatever policy recommendations we think appropriate and we will take them to the election and the only thing that I have ruled out is making any changes to industrial relations in our first term other than those set out in our platform for the election. QUESTION: So you’re not ruling out bringing them back? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not ruling it in or out. This new system will be judged on its performance in the workplace. Everybody expects us to monitor it carefully. We see the Government is already making changes on the run to its award modernisation program to meet problems it is creating due to the inflexibility of its new arrangements. But we will review the performance of the new system and then we will formulate our policy response accordingly. QUESTION: You said in that same interview that Labor’s new regime had caused inflexibility in the workplace and that had put constraints on productivity growth. What evidence do you have for that at this stage? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The evidence is overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming and there is really no dispute about this, that one of the drivers of productivity growth in Australia has been labour market flexibility and the Government, the Labor Government’s answer to my point is to say that their changes have not in fact reduced flexibility so everyone is in favour of flexibility. Our point is that what the Government has done has materially reduced it but we will see. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. QUESTION: Has there been any evidence though to date because they’ve only really just taken effect, haven’t they? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is a fair point to say that the new rules have only just taken effect and that is why it is appropriate for us to… our concerns and our move from the realm of debate to the realm of fact and so we will see what the impact of Labor’s changes are on the ground. QUESTION: Politically what would that do to you though because work, the scene is a big plank in WorkChoices and that was so unpopular? Is it a particularly dangerous move? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The reality is that all of us have a vested interest in increased productivity. That is absolutely vital and, again, everybody agrees with that. The question is whether Labor’s changes are going to enhance that or constrain it. Now, we have expressed concerns, as have many others, that Labor’s changes will constrain productivity growth right across our economy. Labor says they won’t and the proof will be in the experience. QUESTION: You’re worried they are. What are you worried it is going to restrain? Some examples perhaps. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think you can see, for example, in the course of this current downturn how we have seen, as I said in my speech, a lower increase or a lesser increase in unemployment than many anticipated because businesses have been flexible and people have been cutting back on hours instead but remaining employed, and employers have been able to keep their staff on but working fewer hours. Now that is obviously less than ideal, to say the least, but it is better than having a higher increase in unemployment. So, look, the aim of a flexible workplace, flexibility in the workplace is one that almost everybody shares. The question is how do you achieve it. We have concerns about Labor’s changes and, as I said, they are now part of the law of the land so we will find out from experience. QUESTION: Are you saying the Government has done nothing on productivity [inaudible]… MALCOLM TURNBULL: On what? Sorry, I can’t hear you. QUESTION: Are you saying the Government has done pretty much nothing on productivity? I mean it has set up the Government business to build the National Broadband Network [inaudible]. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The broadband network is actually a great example of Labor’s recklessness. Kevin Rudd said that he would build a $43 billion, 100 megabits a second broadband network. He said it would be commercially viable. He said the private sector would invest in it and he encouraged mums and dads, as he said, to buy bonds in it. He did that without any business plan or without any financial analysis. So, so much for a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. The broadband plan of Mr Rudd is nothing more than a press release. All they have done is hire somebody for $2 million a year to try and work out whether what Mr Rudd promised can actually be delivered. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull, do you believe that parents in New South Wales should have access to school leagues tables? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well we certainly believe that giving meaningful information about relative performance is important but the design of the league tables, obviously, is an issue and I can understand people wanting to ensure that the information that is provided is meaningful but really, as far as I am concerned, I am in favour of parents having as much information as possible and as much choice as possible. QUESTION: Can I just ask – you seem to be sort of tying in Mr Rudd with New South Wales and their unpopularity. Is this part of your deliberate strategy to… MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, as I said, the Rudd Labor and Rees Labor are two arms of the same organism. Mr Rudd was put in his position as leader with the support of the New South Wales Right, just as Mr Rees was made leader here in New South Wales. The influence of the New South Wales Labor Party machine on the Rudd Government is self-evident. They are part of the same machine and it is the same political strategy of spin over substance and politics, politicking over policy, of course, that has seen so little done here in New South Wales. I mean, why is New South Wales in such dire straits as a state? It is because of more than a decade of Labor spin instead of real, substantial Government hard work and reform. QUESTION: Do you think you can win over votes by this tactic? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Labor Party is one machine. Kevin Rudd is not a member of a different party to Mr Rees. They are part of the same Labor machine and it is the same strategy of spin, spin above everything else that defines the modern Labor Party. QUESTION:  You’ve described Mr Rudd as a creep this week. What do you mean by that exactly?  MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Well I didn’t actually say quite that. What I said was that his attempts to rewrite history were creepy and it does remind one of George Orwell’s famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, his vision of totalitarianism where history is rewritten regularly to accord with the wishes of the totalitarian state and his speech at Paul Kelly’s book launch has earned him almost universal condemnation because it is quite extraordinary and not to say ungenerous to pretend that the 11 ½ years of the Howard Government which saw so much reform, so much progress, so much increase in prosperity had not happened at all. It was, as I said, his speech was as audacious as it was mendacious. QUESTION: September 11th anniversary. Your thoughts? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it was a most tragic occasion, as we know. It was a day when the world truly did change when we were confronted in a most extraordinary way with the reality and the impact of global terrorism and the vulnerability of the most powerful nation in the world to global terrorism. So the anniversary is an occasion for us to reflect on the need for continued vigilance in the battle against global terror. QUESTION: The Government’s Productivity Places Program has done nothing to increase skilled labour in Australia. Do you think it was an ill-conceived plan from the start and, if so, what were its major downfalls? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, this is just another example of spin over everything – an announcement, another program that does not deliver. The Rudd Government’s productivity, if that is the right term, is limited to making media statements and endeavouring to dominate the 24 hour news cycle. What Australians are increasingly demanding is that they actually deliver, they actually deliver on their promises whether it is in the workplace, in training or whether it is in investing in schools. Okay. Thank you. [ends]malcolmSat, 12 Sep 2009 01:49:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:602http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/601/Address-to-the-NSW-Division-of-the-Liberal-Party.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=601http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=601&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/601/Address-to-the-NSW-Division-of-the-Liberal-Party.aspxE & O E Well thank you very much Joe for that very warm introduction. It is wonderful to be here. You said earlier in the debate we are a grassroots political organisation, truly democratic and we are here, fellow Liberals, discussing the future of our Party and the future of our nation so I acknowledge here our President Nick Campbell, the State Executive, my parliamentary colleagues, our state leader, the next Premier of New South Wales, Barry O’Farrell and his colleagues. And I also join and endorse the high praise that has been rightly lavished on Brendan Nelson who is stepping down, retiring from the Parliament. He has served our Party magnificently in every capacity, in every capacity as a Member and a Cabinet Minister and of course as our leader. And we also note too, as Nick observed earlier, that Danna Vale has indicated she will not be recontesting her seat and she has done a magnificent job as the Member for Hughes.  Now Joe reminisced about his days at Sydney University and of course, like Joe, I was taught at this place too. And I was thinking about Sydney University but with a tinge of anxiety as I approached here because I was reflecting on Julia Gillard’s attempt to defend the scandal at the Abbotsford Public School. As you know, the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, which is rolling out across Australia, a gigantic $15 billion juggernaut which stops for nobody. This juggernaut is proposing to spend $2.5 million of your money to demolish four classrooms so that they can build four classrooms. If it was put in an episode of Hollowmen it would not be credible. The script writer would be sent back to write something else. And we put this to Julia Gillard in the Parliament and when she wasn’t dismissing this as just mere nitpicking – after all, I suppose $2.5 million isn’t a lot of money to her when she is throwing away money in the billions – but she said, at one point she said well, those four classrooms, they were built in the 1950s.  I thought to myself as I was coming up here, a lot of this university was built in the 1850s. What is going to happen to the Great Hall? Will it shortly be replaced by a Julia Gillard Memorial Demountable Assembly Hall?  The Labor Party stand for nothing but the pursuit of power. Nothing is clearer than that. That is what they stand for.  They are led by a man who in February sounded like an old style socialist, going back 30, 40 years. He said in his essay in The Monthly, you know, that long, tedious innings by the Bradman of Boredom as we call him. Well you can laugh. Joe and I and Bronwyn and the other Members of the House of Representatives here, we don’t laugh about it. We have to endure it in Question Time. If you think it is bad watching it on television, it is no better as a live performance.  But the Bradman of Boredom himself in February said that the last 30 years of government in Australia had been a failure of extreme neoliberal free market economics and in doing so he dismissed all of the reforms not just of our side, of Howard and Costello but Hawke and Keating before them. He went right back; the good old days apparently only, well the good old days ceased apparently when Whitlam went out. That was what he was casting back to. Well that was pretty breathtaking, and he said the government should be at the centre of the economy. He dismissed all of the economic progress in this country, all of the extraordinary prosperity that we have created in Australia through decades of economic reform which we as Liberals have always led and always supported which we concede that our opponents have on occasions embraced, as John Howard was doing once again so generously yesterday. What a contrast between two leaders – John Howard generous to his opponents, being truthful to history and, on the other hand, Kevin Rudd who wants to airbrush out of history anybody but his own side.  Well in February he was up there with the old style socialists and then this week he launched Paul Kelly’s book and there again I was in the front row. Joe, wisely, had hung around at the back of the room and was able to make a strategic escape when he realised what was happening. I was sitting in the front row between the author and his dear wife and so could not escape, and Kevin Rudd announced that there had been no contribution to economic reform or progress by any party other than the Labor Party.  It was an extraordinary denial of the truth, a denial of history, an attempt to rewrite history, something which they do all the time. They are completely shameless and you see it on the big stage there in terms of economic and political history, and he has been rightly castigated for it. And we see it too in the Parliament. We are constantly being accused in the House of voting against legislation which we actually voted for. There is a shamelessness about the way the Rudd Labor Party is prepared to simply look down the lens of the camera and say shamelessly and unblinkingly black is white. They do not care. It is truly Orwellian.  Now where does this come from? What is the source of this extraordinary political cynicism? It comes from this state of New South Wales. The only difference between Rudd Labor and Rees Labor is that the Rees Labor Party has been in government for far longer than the Rudd Labor Party has been in Canberra. They are the same political machine. They are connected closely, intimately. They are the same organism; devoted to power, devoted to spin. Some of you may have seen in The Australian a great one of Kudelka’s cartoons which showed Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in a classroom and they had written up on the board Building the Education Revolution, a wonderful example of their spin and Kevin Rudd says to the class, ‘does anybody have another word to describe revolution’ and a little boy has put his hand up and said ‘spin’, and Rudd replies, ‘any other suggestions?’.  So we face, Barry and I face a common opponent and it is the same opponent. It is the same Labor Party, the same Labor Party that will say and do anything to maintain power and when you look, if you want to imagine what Australia would be like after a decade of Rudd Labor, look at New South Wales. It is exactly the same people – Mark Arbib, all of that team from Sussex Street. They put Rudd where he is, they put Rees where he is and they pull the strings whether it is in Macquarie Street or in Canberra and it is that same focus of spin over substance, politics over policy.  How could it be, seriously, how could it be that we would be spending $15 billion and more on primary school assembly halls whether they are needed or not. How can that be a serious Government policy and why was it undertaken? Because every one of those schools or almost every one is a polling place. And they have decreed that there will be a large sign – we got an email from one country principal who said the sign was nearly as big as the school. There will be a huge sign proclaiming the magnificence of the Dear Leader and his deputy right up until March 2011 which just happens to be the outer date for the next federal election.  Now we stand, on the other hand, we stand for freedom. Our party, from its inception and before, the Liberals that were stating our cause and our philosophy before the formation of our modern Liberal Party, all stood for freedom. And each and every one of them expressed this ambition along these lines – we believe that the role of the government is to enable you, each and every one of you and millions of Australians like you, to do your best because we believe in the unlimited potential of every individual Australian. We believe in freedom. We believe that Australians need governments that will enable them to realise their dreams, not tell them what those dreams should be.  We are a conservative political movement but, as Edmund Burke observed, any society without the ability to change cannot conserve itself. So we believe in reform. We are committed to reform and we have a record of reform at federal and state levels right around Australia. And yet what do our opponents claim? What does Kevin Rudd claim? Claims to be a great reformer. Well, let’s think about that. Let’s just examine his record after two years.  There is probably no single factor that has contributed more to our economic prosperity than greater flexibility in the labour market over a very long period of time. When you ask the question why were we able to enjoy under the Howard Government so many years of strong economic growth with manageable inflation, ask Glenn Stevens at the Reserve Bank – he will say it is because labour markets became more flexible. Why is it, as Michael Stutchbury writing in The Australian said just the other day, why is it we have been able to meet this downturn with a much lower level of unemployment than most economists anticipated? Again it is because of flexibility – flexibility, freedom, competition. They are the keys to higher productivity.  Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are making our workplaces less flexible. Not more flexible; less flexible. They claim that our criticism is unfounded on that score. Well we shall see. Already they are having to back peddle on significant changes to industrial relations in the so-called modern awards area, modernising awards where industries, small businesses in particular, are suffering real hardship and being presented with intolerable increases in costs.  But then we move beyond the field of debate about industrial relations and consider the biggest environmental challenge our country has faced and has always faced – that of water. We are the driest continent, and we are a flat, very flat continent. This is a country that has been and no doubt always will be regularly ravaged by drought. Water management has always been a challenge to Australian leaders.  Now when we were in government, John Howard and I took up that challenge and we said a mistake was made in the 1890s. We should have put interstate water under federal control. We should have made the national government responsible for our Murray-Darling Basin system, our interstate waters, surface and ground waters and we changed that. We took on that revolutionary change. Can I just say here today, pay a tribute to the contribution Bill Heffernan made in that debate. You need a lot of guts whether you are a Prime Minister, a Senator from New South Wales or a new Water Minister to take something out of the too hard basket that has been in the too hard basket for more than a century.  But we did that. We took on that reform and we committed $10 billion replumb rural Australia. Why did we do that? We wanted to get the management of water so that it was in the national interest. We wanted to get water managed so that we met the demands of agriculture and the environment but above all we wanted to ensure that we were able to produce more food and more fibre with less water. In other words, to be genuinely efficient, to be more productive, to grow our agricultural production at the same time as we dealt with the challenge of reduced rainfall and runoff in the years ahead. That was our vision and it was a great and genuinely revolutionary vision. There was no spin there. We made it the law of the land, the Water Act 2007 and $10 billion.  Kevin Rudd endorsed it when we announced it. He said that was fine. He did not argue with that one iota. And so we did all the hard yards, we the government that he said was indolent. We did all the hard yards in getting that legislation through and battling with the states in making it the law of the land and then left him with those legislative tools and that money to ensure that we could make every drop count around Australia. And what has he done? Nothing, nothing at all. Virtually no money has been spent on replumbing rural Australia. Money has been spent on buying back water rights in a haphazard way around the country whose only consequence will be that we will end up with a smaller and smaller agricultural sector.  So let’s hear no more lectures from Kevin Rudd on his track record as a reformer because he has none. He has no economic strategy, only a political one. Every element of what he undertakes is based on spin and an attempt to rewrite history and we as Liberals must be prepared, must be ever vigilant to stand up for our record and stand up for the truth because, believe me, just because you think what he says is so audacious and is such a big lie that nobody would believe it you are wrong. He knows that if he repeats falsehoods often enough and we do not correct them, then they will start to be believed. That is what he will do.  Now let’s look at our current economic situation. Let’s look at the facts. We were presented last year with a global financial crisis, perhaps better described as a global banking crisis. We differed from the Government on its response. We did not say that there should be no stimulus – quite the contrary. We did not say there should be no bank guarantee – quite the contrary. In fact, were it not for our action the guarantee offered to the banks to enable them to borrow money in the wholesale markets would have been completely ineffective so far from opposing that, we actually made it workable.  But where we did differ with the Government was on the amount of money they were proposing to spend – the quantity – and the way in which they were spending it – the quality. And let me just focus on two elements in their $42 billion stimulus and draw out from that the difference in philosophy, the difference in values between Labor and us. Now Labor in their $42 billion package in February proposed a third of it, roughly, to go out in cash payments of $900 to just about everybody. We said that was too much. We said it was crazy to borrow so much money and just give it all away. We said a better alternative would be to bring forward the tax cuts scheduled for July 1 this year and next year, bring forward those tax cuts. That would cost the revenue less than half as much but it would provide genuine incentives. In other words, it would provide real economic incentives for people to invest, to work, to have a go, to take on that spirit of enterprise that inspires our party.  So that was where we differed from them. We wanted to put some cash back in the economy but in a way that involved borrowing less money and that was better targeted because it would genuinely incentivise employment, investment, the economic effort.  And then the other third, the second third of that package, was of course the now notorious Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program. I was challenged by Wayne Swan in the House this week when he said we had not proposed an alternative to it, which of course we had but he never lets the facts get in the way of his sledging. In front of me on the table there, just next to the dispatch box, was the Hansard from February. So I pulled it out and I saw in my Second Reading speech what I had said, what we had said as a party. We said we do not believe that the Government can effectively or efficiently spend $14 billion on school assembly halls in two years. Well, doesn’t Abbotsford Primary School demonstrate that. How prudent we were in our criticism.  But our alternative was to spend less money - $3 billion over three years – but to spend it on the basis of the Investing in Our Schools program, which our colleagues as Education Ministers – Brendan, of course, and Julie Bishop – had undertaken. And in the Investing in Our Schools program we had a completely different philosophy, a very Liberal philosophy. We reached out to school communities and we said, what do you want to do. You get together with the teachers and the parents and the community. Work out what your school really needs. Come to us and tell us what your dream is and we will see if we can provide some funding to support it. And we did - $1.2 billion. That used to seem like a lot of money before Kevin Rudd got going with the national credit card. But the important thing was that a debacle such as we have seen at Abbotsford Public could not occur under Investing in Our Schools because the school would tell you what they wanted. It was an example of that Liberal philosophy of government enabling people to do their best as opposed to Julia Gillard saying I, Julia Gillard, the great Deputy Leader, I know what is best and you’re going to get it whether you like it or not.  So that was really the difference between us. So when Kevin Rudd says the Liberals are against any stimulus at all, that is completely untrue. We put up alternatives and there are other features to our alternative package but in summary it was better targeted and involved spending less than $20 billion so less than half as much money as what they were proposing to spend.  Now as it turns out, the economy has performed better than any of the economic forecasters imagined and Kevin Rudd has naturally rushed to claim all the credit for that. Let’s look at the facts. Why has our economy performed better than other developed countries?  Well, we started off in a better position. We started off with no debt at all at the federal level and $45 billion of cash in the bank. Now who did that? We did. It was the Liberal Party in coalition with the Nationals, 11 ½ years of hard slog – put that money aside, paid off that debt, put that cash in the bank, reached forward across the generations and paid off by creating the Future Fund the obligations to public service pensions and Defence sector pensions. We are having some interesting lighting going on here.  But what we did was relieve future generations of heavy financial obligations. What Kevin Rudd has done is impose heavy financial obligations on our children and grandchildren. He has reached across the generations and thrown a lead weight on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren so that Australians are now asking themselves for the first time in many generations whether they can truthfully aspire to their children having greater obligations than they enjoyed themselves.  Now the other factor that was of vital importance to our superior economic performance has been that we had no banking crisis in Australia. There was no subprime crisis. There was no financial collapse of the kind we saw in the United States. Why was that? It was because the Coalition regulated the banking and financial sectors. After we were elected in 1996, we changed those financial and prudential regulations to become, as even Julia Gillard says, the best in the world. Who created them? We did. This collapse in the United States was a function of many things – too much government intervention in some respects, too little in others but certainly governments had a big role in the creation of the problems. But here in Australia your government ensured that we had the strength, the financial strength and the financial regulation to weather that storm.  And when Kevin Rudd claims to be an economic reformer, just think of this – what was the biggest reform to taxation in our lifetimes? It was the GST, wasn’t it. Huge reform – broaden the base, lower the rate, the whole thing. A huge, complex reform. There is nothing harder than reforming a taxation system. Peter Costello took that on, he and John Howard and the whole team took that tough debate on and introduced the GST reforms and they are now part of our financial and fiscal landscape. What did Labor do? They voted against them at every turn. Kevin Rudd described the day the GST became effective as Fundamental Injustice Day. So much for his commitment to reform.  Now the truth is that we are facing, as a party of freedom, a party in the Labor Party that is addicted to spin and to power. They will say anything, they will do anything to remain in power. Our job is to restore integrity to government, to public finances in Canberra and here in New South Wales. They are two arms – Rudd Labor, Rees Labor – two arms of the same Labor Party machine. The same doctrine of spin over substance, politics over policy. It is when we send that Band of Brothers, the Labor Party spin machine packing, when Barry and I with your support send them packing that once again the state of New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia will have the governments we deserve, governments of principle, governments of freedom, governments that recognise the value that is so important to our future – that every sinew, every political sinew in our bodies must always be directed to ensuring that whatever we do is to enable freedom and to enable each and every one of us to do our best because we have our faith in the people.  The people know best, not the government, not Kevin Rudd and that is why we, as a grassroots political party, will work relentlessly to restore Liberal leadership to New South Wales, to the Commonwealth and I know we will do so with your support.  Thank you very much.  malcolmSat, 12 Sep 2009 01:42:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:601http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/609/Address-to-the-Dinner-to-Commemorate-the-Centenary-of-the-Fusion.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=609http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=609&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/609/Address-to-the-Dinner-to-Commemorate-the-Centenary-of-the-Fusion.aspxWell thank you very much Tom. It is wonderful to be here tonight with so many dear friends, distinguished former leaders of Australia, leaders of the Liberal Party – Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Fraser, Andrew Peacock, Julie Bishop my deputy, and so many other parliamentary colleagues, so many leaders of our Party’s organisation. This is truly a great night and can I say to you Tom and Julian Leeser, the Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre, how much I appreciate and I think we should all appreciate your staging tonight’s event because what you said at the outset is very true. On our side of politics we do not do nearly enough to celebrate our history. We have an extraordinary record of achievement. We could not possibly imagine Australia in the form it is, as a federation to begin with, without the contribution of the men and women of the Liberal Party and its predecessors right back to even before the Federation itself. So we have a great legacy and it is good that the MRC is showing the leadership to ensure that it is remembered. Now we have been very privileged to hear from you, Geoffrey, tonight. You are one of our country’s, indeed one of the world’s, most distinguished historians. You gave us an astute and insightful analysis of why the fusion of the free traders and the protectionists 100 years ago proved so important in shaping the evolution of modern Australia through the 20th Century. Professor Blainey has indeed tonight honoured history with the respect it deserves by being felicitous to the facts and by shunning partisanship and political posturing. I am afraid to say I have to contrast this with the selective and self-serving view of history we heard earlier this week from that Bradman of Boredom himself, the Prime Minister, in yet another tedious innings. He has showered us with a series of essays. Each one contradicts the one that came before. Do you remember the one at the beginning of the year in which he said that the world was crippled by the product of 30 years of neoliberalism, extreme neoliberalism of which John Howard and Peter Costello were the most recent exponents in government and, of course, I and my colleagues are the current exponents in the Parliament. But of course in that history of neoliberalism, that denunciation, he naturally had to include Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. They were all damned together, all neoliberals, because they believed in the free market. And he said in that essay in The Monthly, he said the government must be at the centre of the economy. Okay, that was the story in February. And then at the launch of Paul Kelly’s book, which I know a number of you went to that launch – this is Paul’s latest book The March of Patriots, which incidentally when the Prime Minister launched, he actually said and “I now have great pleasure in launching The March of Politics”. Think about it – he is all about politics. Now everyone says being Leader of the Opposition is a tough job but there was probably nothing more excruciating than the position I had on that occasion because I was trapped in the front row and couldn’t leave. A number of my colleagues had wisely hung back towards the end of the room and were able to slip out, but I was trapped. The speech he gave there, which has been given wide publicity, claimed that in fact the only party that had engaged in economic reform and in fact the only party that had contributed to the creation of modern Australia was the Australian Labor Party, and he laid claim to the same neoliberal Hawke and Keating legacy that he had denounced in February, claimed it as his own and said that nothing at all had been down under Howard and Costello. He claimed then, as he has done all this week in the Parliament, that the economic strength and resilience that has buffered Australia from the worst effects of the current global downturn can be ascribed either to reforms delivered by his Labor predecessors, who of course went out of office in 1996, or to his own Government’s wasteful and reckless spending, which of course began when he was elected at the end of 2007. Now these claims are as audacious as they are mendacious. They are both graceless and ungenerous. Kevin Rudd treats the recent history of our nation as a political plaything, something to be manipulated in the Orwellian style of The Big Lie. And we think of that great prophetic novel of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four with the unfortunate Winston Smith of course who is employed by the Ministry of Truth, which has nothing to do with truth; it is all about lies. When he is confronted with facts of history that are disagreeable to his masters, he has to drop them down the memory hole where they are obliterated. Of course it is interesting, the history of Winston Smith – he came to a bad end after being betrayed by his girlfriend Julia but that is another story. Anyway, I would encourage you all to read the book. There it is. I leave it to you to ponder the significance of that connection. But the reality is that you can’t airbrush history aside and that is what Kevin Rudd has been endeavouring to do and it is audacious, because he has the capacity to say one thing at the beginning of the year about history and then the complete reverse this week. He has the capacity to look down the lens of the camera and unblinkingly say things which he must know, as an intelligent man, are completely and utterly untrue. It is remarkable and I don’t think we have ever had a leader of our country that is as audaciously mendacious in his treatment of history as Kevin Rudd. Because when we think about it, think about our most immediate past Prime Minister, John Howard. Undoubtedly a stalwart political partisan, a ferocious political partisan, John Howard never failed to acknowledge the contribution of the economic reforms in the governments of his predecessors, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke. Never failed to acknowledge it. Always noted that the reforms had been supported by the Opposition and always complained that the Labor Party did not support our reforms when we were in government – that was a fair comment – but he was always prepared to do that. Kevin Rudd will give our side of politics nothing. We are, for him, like somebody who was purged in the Soviet era and is then removed from all previous party photographs, becoming a non-person. It is audacious and it is extraordinary, and the risk that we run, as I said to the party room this week, is that if we do not stand up for our history, if we do not call him out and demonstrate and repeat and reiterate our contribution, the lie will start to become as the accepted version of events. It is vital that all of us, at every opportunity, tell the truth about our history because we cannot count on any generosity of spirit from our opponents. Now let us consider why Australia’s recent economic performance has been so strong. There are a number of factors and not one of these factors that I am going to mention now have been acknowledged by the Government. In fact, they have been expressly denied. The facts, my friends: we entered this crisis with the strongest financial system in the developed world, largely due to the prudential and regulatory framework put in place after 1996 by the Coalition. We did not have a sub-prime crisis in Australia. We did not have a financial crisis in Australia. We did not have banks collapse in Australia. Why was that? What was the difference? It was our regulation, our prudential management, put in place by our side of politics, by the Liberal Party and the National Party in Coalition. We went into this downturn with zero net debt at the Commonwealth level and $45 billion cash in the bank – one of the strongest balance sheets in the world. So many of the other developed countries went into this downturn hocked up to the eyeballs already, the United States being a very good example. We did not, and that was thanks to a decade of budget surpluses and the repayment of Labor debt by John Howard and Peter Costello. We had and enjoyed an open and deregulated economy with a highly efficient export sector focused on our immense natural resources and close economic relations with China and other fast-growing Asian economies. That was a result of a quarter-century of economic restructuring under the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments and with a framework and a foundation laid by Malcolm Fraser when he was Prime Minister. None of that is acknowledged, none of that is acknowledged by Kevin Rudd. We have a mature and flexible labour market, again due to a quarter century of deregulation under both sides of politics. And finally, of course, the biggest stimulus that we had to respond to this downturn was of course the monetary easing, the reduction in interest rates, delivered in 2008 and 2009 by the Reserve Bank of Australia whose credibility and independence reflects the legislative protections provided to it by the Coalition in government which of course were strenuously opposed by the Labor Party. Now all of these advantages and all of those assets, financial assets, economic assets that we went into this downturn with reflected a legacy of economic and structural reform under our government, under John Howard and, of course, under the reforms of the Hawke and Keating period, and, as Tom said, following on a foundation that was laid in advance by Malcolm’s government. Now we are not so conceited to claim all the credit. We acknowledge that there have been considerable contributions from both sides of politics. But history will nonetheless record that in the years of the Howard Government, Labor in opposition voted against virtually every one of the Howard Government’s reforms to strengthen Australia’s economic performance. They opposed the first round of workplace relations reforms, which introduced AWAs and outlawed the worst excesses in the old industrial relations system, such as ‘no ticket, no start’. They opposed strenuously waterfront reform. They opposed, as I noted, giving the Reserve Bank independence. They opposed the GST and tax reform. Remember Kevin Rudd’s famous speech where he said the day on which the GST would become law would be known forever as Fundamental Injustice Day. The single most important tax reform in our lifetimes undertaken by the Coalition in the teeth of opposition from the Labor Party and denounced by the now leader of the Labor Party as fundamental injustice, and this is the same man who claims that no economic reform has ever been undertaken other than by the Labor Party. It is truly Orwellian. He has the capacity to look down the lens of the camera and say black is white and hope that if he says it often enough people will start to believe it. Now since the end of 2007, since the change of government, we have experienced a Labor Government quite unlike its reformist predecessors in the Hawke and Keating years, except for an eerily familiar attraction to debt and deficit. They have been happy to throw a quarter of a century of economic liberalism overboard, and use this global downturn as an excuse for an agenda that harks back to the 1970s. As I noted at the outset, in his essay earlier this year the Prime Minister proclaimed or declaimed, denounced “the great neoliberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed”. “The great neoliberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed”. Can he explain how it was a ‘failure’ for Australia to finish that period with all of the challenges of the global financial crisis with the strongest banking system and public finances of all major developed economies? Can he explain how it was a failure that under the Coalition Government, John Howard’s Government, Australians enjoyed strongly rising wages, the lowest unemployment for generations and low inflation? And can this Prime Minister, whose capacity for propaganda is boundless, explain how dumping the successful policies of the past 25 years and unleashing a reckless spending spree unprecedented in peacetime is going to help secure the long-term success and prosperity of this nation? Only this week we have seen, only today and yesterday we have seen his deputy Julia Gillard struggle to explain – there is no explanation for it, of course; no wonder she is struggling – but struggle to explain how it can be in the public interest to spend $2.5 million of tax payers’ money on demolishing four perfectly serviceable classrooms at the Abbotsford Public School in Sydney so that four perfectly serviceable classrooms can be built in their place. And this is part of a $15 billion spending spree on school assembly halls. Think about it. Think about it. $15 billion spent on school assembly halls right across the country whether the halls are needed or not, whether they are wanted by the community, school community, whether they are suitable or not – it doesn’t matter. They are going to come. The Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall is coming to a primary school near you and it will be accompanied by a very large sign that by law will have to be affixed to the exterior of the school until March 2011, which is the latest day by which the next federal election can be heard. It is a breathtaking cynicism, but that is the Government we face today. Now let us recall the road that Geoffrey described in the lead up to the 1909 merger between the Protectionists, led by Alfred Deakin – there he is, that handsome bearded gentleman whose descendants are with us tonight – and the Free Traders, historically dominated by George Reid whose descendants apparently are not here with us tonight. Now I was discussing with Tom Harley whether he thought, in 1909, whether I would have been with Deakin or George Reid. Possibly my New South Wales mercantile nature would have made me closer to George Reid but Tom thinks that my soft heart would have kept me with Deakin. Who knows – I would have been a natural advocate for fusion. Now, as Geoffrey has described, the Labor Party has always sought to characterise politics in Australia as split between Labor and non-Labor. And viewed through this perspective, the 1909 fusion to form a Liberal Party was nothing more than a marriage of necessity between two parties, one avowedly anti-Socialist and committed to small “l” liberal values of free trade, and the other Protectionist and in the style of the British Liberals, the Whigs, with a policy platform involving more rather than less State intervention. Now indeed Alfred Deakin’s Protectionists, as Geoffrey reminded us, had prior to fusion sought its support from the Labor Party, ignoring the warning of George Reid that those who seek to ride the socialist tiger will inevitably be devoured by it. However, while the Protectionists and the Free Traders differed on important issues of policy, which is what they stood for, their platform, they recognised a common commitment to whom they stood for. The parties of the fusion, just as the Liberal Party of 2009, stands above all for those men and women of enterprise Robert Menzies described in his Forgotten People speech of the 22nd of May 1942. I regard that speech as arguably the most important political speech given in our history. It is both practical – it is a speech of its time; there are parts in it that are very much speaking as a political leader in the middle of the war – and there are parts of it that are absolutely timeless. It is a remarkable speech and it is good, Heather, that we have you as the daughter of Sir Robert Menzies here tonight. Menzies described the men and women that he stood for – and this of course was before the foundation of the modern Liberal Party – as the middle class and, quoting him, “salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on... They are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious. They are envied by those whose benefits are largely obtained by taxing them.” “They are envied by those whose benefits are largely obtained by taxing them.” “They are not rich enough to have individual power. They are taken for granted by each political party in turn… they are the backbone of the nation.” As true today as they were in 1942. He astutely observed that the captains of industry, the controllers of vast corporations will be able to look after themselves. And he recognised the single most important truth about the character of our opponents which is that the Labor Party is the political wing of the trade union movement. There is a labour movement. It has an industrial wing – the trade unions – and a political wing, which is subordinate to the industrial wing. Labor is a machine – it was in 1942; it is today. Its strategies and policies dictated by an organisational elite drawn almost invariably from the professional organisers and officials of the union movement. That has always been the case with Labor but what has changed is that the men and women who run the union movement and graduate from those roles to parliament no longer come with real life experience as workers. For almost all of modern Labor’s representatives, and my colleagues and I get to observe them at close quarters in the Parliament, “manual labour” is indeed a Mexican bandit. Labor has become more and more the product of an elite, a professional, political class – a nomenklatura, so to speak. You might have heard Alan Jones run through some calculations on what we might call the work experience of the Rudd Government. It is a lengthy analysis and I won’t go through it all with you tonight. But when you examine the collective career histories of 181 years of the six leading members of the Government from Mr Rudd down, there is only a total of 13 years in the private sector. And of those 13 years, 11 were spent as trade union lawyers. Now this is one of the most important differences between the modern Liberal Party and the modern Labor Party. There is almost no private sector experience on the front bench of the Rudd Government. It is a government almost exclusively of political apparatchiks, union officials and public servants. On our side, we have the widest range of life’s experience with every conceivable – some would say inconceivable – profession and occupation represented. Our party room is characterised by diversity, just as Alfred Deakin and George Reid’s were; Labor’s by homogeneity. And what is remarkable is that the diversity of our side of politics has been consistent throughout our whole history. And perhaps just as importantly, it established the tradition of a broad church capable of encompassing diverse intellectual and philosophical strands: free traders and protectionists, conservatives and liberals, urban and rural interests alike. And that tradition lives on today. Within today’s Liberal Party, as indeed within today’s Coalition, there are, as there should always be, vibrant and vigorous exchanges over the best ways forward for this nation. Unlike Labor, it has never been our practice or tradition to expel or sanction those within our party who dare to put a different view. We assemble on our side of the Parliament free-thinking individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, each bringing to the national debate their own unique perspectives and their own direct practical experience of business and society out in the real world. Unlike the trade union officials and political hacks of the Labor Party, our strength as Liberals is to reflect the diverse grass-roots organisation we represent. And that, my friends, is our tradition on our side of politics. And when you reach out through the decades, through more than a century and you ask yourself what is the essential DNA, cutting through the policies of the day because every generation will have different challenges. As Quintin Hogg, who many of you would recall as Lord Hailsham, a very distinguished minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, a Lord Chancellor no less as indeed I think his father and grandfather had been – but as Quintin Hogg observed about the British Conservatives, they have always defended the same ground. In the 19th Century defending the importance of the state against the challenges of laissez-faire liberalism which was a very, if you like, extreme version argued for in the 19th Century, and then in the 20th Century turning around to face the challenge of the socialists and the dominant state, eliminating any role for free enterprise and the individual. But as Hogg wrote back in 1947 in his great work The Case for Conservatism, he made the point that the Conservatives have always been defending the same ground against different foes. And we too, as Liberals, will always be facing different challenges. But the values we defend and the people we defend are values of freedom and of enterprise and they are timeless. Because that DNA of Labor, our opponents today, is a DNA, a political DNA which says government knows best. We see that in their schools program. When we were in government, we invested in schools but we reached out, when Julie was education minister, and we said, ‘what do you want? What do you want to do? You tell us what your dream is for your school.’ And so we then responded to that. Julia Gillard does not reach out at all. She says ‘you are getting the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall whether you like it or not, regardless of what has to be demolished or overwhelmed’ – a completely different view of the world. So when Labor says government knows best or government should be at the centre of the economy to quote Kevin Rudd, what do we say in response? We say, as Liberals have said for more than a century in Australia, we believe government’s role is to enable you to do your best because we believe in the dignity of the individual. We believe it today, as Menzies did, as Deakin did, as George Reid did. We believe in the dignity of the individual and we believe government’s role is to enable that individual, that family, that small business to do their best to realise their dreams. Now we saw with Menzies dark days. Menzies saw dark days. When he lost the election in 1946, he wondered whether he had fundamentally misread the temperament of the Australian people just as Deakin wondered, as Geoffrey described to us, when he had been defeated, whether Labor’s victory was going to be if not eternal at least very long term. But the reality is that, as Geoffrey said, the great ferris wheel of politics turns faster and slower but then will stop and change direction. And we have to recognise that as long as we hold to the values, those Liberal values , of freedom, of respect for the individual, of defending the dignity of the enterprising men and women that Menzies wrote about or spoke about in 1942, as long as we remember that it is those people, the lifters not the leaners that we are defending, then our time will come because the truth is the wealth of this country, the future of this country, the prosperity of our children and their children after them is built on enterprise and initiative, on hard work and perseverance. It is built on courage and resilience. And it is those values of the people that Menzies described as the “forgotten people”, the middle class, the people of enterprise, the people that want to have a go, that want government to help them do their best but not get in the way, those people who know that freedom is the answer to enabling them to realise their dreams, those are the people we seek to enable and seek to empower. And as we fulfill our service to them, so my friends we will return once again to government and deliver to this country the prosperity, the freedom and the future that our great nation deserves. Thank you very much. [ends]  malcolmThu, 10 Sep 2009 02:48:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:609http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/600/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Program.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=600http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=600&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/600/Interview-with-Lyndal-Curtis-AM-Program.aspxSubjects: Rudd Government’s reckless spending and bungled schools stimulus; women in the Australian Defence Force; Liberal Party. E & O E LYNDAL CURTIS: Mr Turnbull, welcome to AM. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Good morning. LYNDAL CURTIS: The G-20, the IMF, the Reserve Bank, major business groups and many economists agree that the stimulus spending shouldn’t be wound back yet, who agrees with your position that it should? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well many economists have expressed concern about the quality of the spending and the real issue – Warwick McKibbin for example right at the very outset earlier in the year who is on the Reserve Bank board – but the real issue is what value is the tax payer getting for this expenditure? It’s the quality of the spending. LYNDAL CURTIS: But isn’t your issue also that it should be beginning to be wound back because the economy is picking up? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the Government certainly has to recalibrate its stimulus spending as economic conditions change. You have to remember that right at the beginning of the year we did not say there should be no stimulus. Our point of difference with the Government was about the quantity, we said they were borrowing and spending too much money, and the quality – that the spending was not well targeted. And we are seeing in the press again today examples of poorly targeted spending on schools – these Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls going right around the country – and one example where a school is actually proposing to knock it back on the basis that they’re being told that they have to knock down four perfectly good classrooms in order to build four more, in order to gratify Julia Gillard’s ambition to have a big sign outside the school saying that the Labor Government has built some buildings there. LYNDAL CURTIS: You said though that the spending should be recalibrated, do you believe it should be cut back or would you be happy if it was… decisions on where the money was spent were changed, but not the quantum of the spending? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The two are linked, Lyndal. You see the real problem we have here, as Lindsay Tanner candidly conceded in Question Time yesterday, is that the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, lets call it for what it is, was undertaken not following an cost-benefit analysis, it was not undertaken following consultation with school communities as to what they wanted or needed – which of course was the approach we took in government – it was undertaken simply because it was money they could spend quickly and they did that because Mr Tanner said the Treasury had said the economy was on the edge of an abyss. Now it turns out that the Prime Minister’s description of our economic circumstances as the economic equivalent of a rolling national security crisis were if you like too pessimistic – I’ll be quite objective about it and not try to be rhetorical. So he had an overly pessimistic view. We can see that now with the benefit of hindsight. Now that being recognised what we need to do now is make sure that government spending does not put upward pressure on interest rates, because we know that the fact of the matter is that the more the Government spends and borrows the higher taxes will have to be to pay it back and of course more pressure will be on interest rates – and it’s going to be cold comfort for homebuyers if they end up having to pay more on their mortgages because of the Government’s reckless spending and borrowing. LYNDAL CURTIS: Your party has mounted a strong attack against the trappings that go with the stimulus spending, the signs on road sides and on letterheads, the opening ceremonies that have to include the Minister. If you get to be Prime Minister will you ban those signs and ceremonies marking government funded projects? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think the real issue here is just the scale of it and the cynicism of it. I mean consider that the outer date for the next federal election is March in 2011 and isn’t it just an interesting coincidence that on all of these schools that have the benefit, so-called, of a Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall, they have to have a great big sign advertising that fact right up until March 2011, even if the school… LYNDAL CURTIS: So you’re happy to have the signs just maybe smaller and more modest? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look the signage when we… the Investing in Our Schools programme we didn’t make signs on the exterior of schools mandatory or compulsory at all. The fact of the matter is that everybody often puts up a sign when a building work is in progress just so people know what is going on, but when the building is completed the sign is taken down. What Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd are seeking to do is to ensure that right up to polling day on all of these schools, every one of which almost without exception will be a polling both, is going to have a sign there and that is why the Australian Electoral Commission has, quite properly, characterised them as political advertisements and we have really got to ask ourselves what are we trying to achieve. Is this just another example of the Rudd Government, addicted to spin, having no economic strategy but just a political strategy? LYNDAL CURTIS: We’ve heard that the Defence Science and Personnel Minister Greg Combet is pushing for women to be able to serve in all roles across the Defence Force, including front line combat units. Do you agree with that? Do you support that? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look, I think this is very much a matter for the Defence leadership, the leadership of the Defence Forces. I just heard the president of the Defence Association there speaking earlier about issues of physicality and physical strength. These are all very relevant issues. The primary objective has to be the safety and the effectiveness of our armed forces and that’s something that I’m sure we will have an informed discussion, but it should be led by those with real knowledge, real front line experience in the field. LYNDAL CURTIS: One of your backbenchers Judith Troeth crossed the floor yesterday to ensure the bill ending immigration detention was passed. She made the point that she could do it because she’s coming to the end of her political career, that others who may have wanted to do a similar thing were worried about harming their own careers. Are the party structures on both sides too rigid to allow politicians to act on what they really believe in? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the party structures on the Labor Party side certainly are. On our side, we have a very long tradition of allowing members and senators to exercise their individual conscience and to, if in circumstances such as the one you just described with Judith Troeth, to vote against the decision of the party room and… LYNDAL CURTIS: Without it having a detrimental effect on their career if they’re early in their political career? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There are a number of leading members in our party, and Senator Robert Hill was a good example and there are many others, who had very distinguished ministerial careers not withstanding having crossed the floor on a number of occasions in the past. So it is obviously a question of extent and degree, and clearly politics is a team exercise. I mean we have to work together to be effective, but we in the Liberal Party recognise the importance of members and senators being able to express their individual conscience on issues like this in a way that the Labor Party does not. LYNDAL CURTIS: And finally, just returning to the issue we started with, you say economists agree with you, some economists agree with you that the stimulus spending should be wound back. Is there a chance though you might be wrong? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Lyndal, everybody will agree that we should only be spending money in a way that has a demonstrated positive benefit, a net benefit. So the issue is here, right here and now, we have got this massive school spending program, every day we get evidence of money being spent in a poorly targeted way. In other words, the taxpayer is not getting enough bang for his and her buck. And of course it raises big questions of priorities. I mean if you are out in the Murray-Darling Basin in an irrigation area wondering why there is no Government money being spent on lining channels, on replacing open channels and inefficient methods of irrigation with more efficient ones, you have got to ask yourself what are the priorities of the Government? I mean they have chosen to spend over $14 billion on assembly halls in primary schools with little or no consultation with those schools at all, with no opportunity for those schools to express what they want to do, and they have done that as opposed to many other initiatives that could have been undertaken and they have done it because they could spend the money quickly – so they thought – and because there was an immediate political payoff with those big signs on the schools which double as polling booths come election day. LYNDAL CURTIS: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks Lyndal. [ends]  malcolmWed, 09 Sep 2009 07:04:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:600http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/599/Press-Conference-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=599http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=599&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/599/Press-Conference-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspxSubjects: Senate inquiry into waste and mismanagement of the schools stimulus debacle; Senate Economics Committee; Kevin Rudd; interest rates; Australian economy E & O E MALCOLM TURNBULL: There is nothing more certain than that reckless Government spending is putting upward pressure on interest rates. The Labor Party used to claim that it had fiscal policy and monetary policy working in the same direction. We now see the Reserve Bank flagging higher interest rates, tightening monetary policy at the same time as the Government is ramping up its own spending program. There has been no rigorous or any cost-benefit analysis of these programs and in particular the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, the so-called Primary Schools For the 21st Century program, now $14 billion, has not been subject to the rigorous analysis the Government claims all of its spending programs should be scrutinised under. And so that is why we will seek today to refer this schools stimulus debacle to the Senate Education Committee to examine line by line the Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, to identify the waste and mismanagement, and to hold the Government to account as it spends tax payers’ dollars in a way that we can see already is putting upward pressure on interest rates. In addition to that, as you know, the Greens have moved to set up a more general inquiry into the stimulus and we will support that, and together with Senator Fielding we will be proposing amendments which will enable the Governor of the Reserve Bank to attend, and also to enable other expert witnesses to attend the hearing as well and also to enable that hearing to have adequate time to properly consider the whole question of the efficacy of the Government’s stimulus program. QUESTION: Isn’t the Auditor-General already doing this job with schools? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: With respect to the Building the Education Revolution. QUESTION: Why are you doubling up? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The Auditor-General is not expected to report until, at the earliest, the end of this year and quite possibly in February of next year. The Auditor-General is looking into the Building the Education Revolution from the point of view of what parameters should be put in place and what parameters should have been put in place before to ensure that there is an efficacy of spend. We can’t wait until February, I don’t think the Australian taxpayer can wait until February and, more importantly, the Senate has a vital role in overseeing Government spending and Government policy and this is the appropriate… QUESTION: You’re the one who referred this to the Auditor-General. If you couldn’t wait `til February, why did you refer it to him? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there is absolutely nothing to be lost by having a Senate inquiry while the Auditor-General is doing his important work in establishing the parameters for the public service that should have been in place. There is absolutely no reason why a Senate inquiry can’t go on at the same time as the Auditor-General is doing his work. QUESTION: Do you think you have the support of the crossbenchers to set this up? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We are certainly seeking that support and of course we seek the support of the Government. If the Government is so proud of its Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall program, if the Government is so persuaded that this spending is not going to put upward pressure on interest rates, then it should welcome this inquiry because it will give the Government an opportunity to demonstrate the truth, the wisdom of what they have been claiming to the Australian public about how they are spending our taxes. QUESTION: Forgive me but is the inquiry, your Senate inquiry into whether it’s going to put upward pressure on interest rates or the management of BER? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is no question that Government spending, the more the Government fuels aggregate demand as the economists would say, will put upward pressure on interest rates. There is no question about that. There may be countervailing factors, of course, but the impact of Government spending on interest rates is almost beyond argument. That is a necessary connection. The higher the level of Government spending, the higher the level of Government debt, the higher the level of interest rates and taxes in the future. That follows as night follows day. Now governments should be spending money on infrastructure but they should spend money wisely and effectively, and so the real issue is what do we have to show for this $14 billion program other than a series of Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls and signs and posters reminding voters of the Labor Party’s generosity at the time of the next election. QUESTION: But do you think that interest rates at three per cent are sustainable? Can you believe an economy as Australia should keep interest rates at three per cent for an extended period of time which is what you’re suggesting? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well interest rates are a matter for the Reserve Bank. There are a number of factors that impact on interest rates but the simple fact of the matter is this and the Dun and Bradstreet report out today underlines this – there are many Australian households, even with rates at today’s levels, who are under financial stress. The Government should not be acting in a way that is of necessity going to put upward pressure on interest rates, in particular if it not achieving real benefits and really positive outcomes for that investment and expenditure – and that’s what the Senate committee should look at. It’s the Parliament that should hold the Government to account and that’s what we will continue to do as the Opposition. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull what was your reaction to yesterday’s speech by Kevin Rudd in which he said that only the Labor Party was responsible for reforms in the last quarter century? MALCOLM TURNBULL: It was extraordinary. It was as though he had erased every part of Australian history that didn’t feature the Labor Party. It was like listening to a speech by a communist party general secretary extolling the virtues of the dictatorship of the proletariat at some rally. It was incredible. It was graceless, it was ungenerous and it showed a lack of appreciation of the sweep of Australian history that I think everybody – I think of you, one of the members of the Press Gallery aptly described it as ‘boorish and boring’, and it was both. It was very, very disappointing. QUESTION: Mr Turnbull you’ve said a little earlier that fiscal and monetary policy aren’t working together, well they are at the moment aren’t they because the Reserve Bank has yet to lift interest rates, and if it does it can go some way before we get out of the expansionary zone, so those policies are in tandem at the moment? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the point I’m making is that the Reserve Bank is flagging and the market is certainly expecting monetary policy to tighten, rates to go up and if the Government is going to continue spending, continue firing up the stimulus that it’s so proud of, then they will be pulling in opposite directions – that goes without saying. Let me just make this point though – and we should leave you now and go off to Question Time – but let me just make this point: there has never been a debate about whether there should be a stimulus or not. That wasn’t the issue. Our critique of the Rudd Government’s stimulus was as to its quantity and its quality. We said they were spending too much money and they were not spending effectively enough – in other words they were recklessly spending and borrowing too much and they were not getting enough value, enough bang for the tax payers’ buck. So we proposed a better approach, for example, to investing in our schools which would have involved a spending program, an investment program which would have reacted to what schools wanted, that would have reached out to school communities and said, as we did when we were in government, what do you want? What sort of facilities do you want? What type of investment do you need? Instead of having Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls imposed on every primary school in Australia whether it needs it or wants it or not. QUESTION: To what extent do you think the Government can take credit for Australia avoiding recession? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don’t believe it can. I mean the reality is that our strong position is because our economy was built on very solid foundations. I mean number one, we did not have a banking collapse here. We didn’t have a banking crisis in Australia. Why was that – because of the prudential and financial regulatory reforms put in place by the Coalition. Our Government went into this downturn with no net debt, with cash at the bank. Why was that – because of 11 and a half years of sound economic management paying off Labor debt under the Coalition. And as just about every economic commentator has observed another vital factor of course has been the strength of the Chinese economy, the continued demand for our resources exports and of course you could say that if there is one government stimulus that has had a very beneficial impact on the Australian economy, it’s the Chinese Government stimulus. Now on that note we must go. Thanks very much. [ends]  malcolmTue, 08 Sep 2009 07:02:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:599http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/597/Senate-inquiry-into-waste-and-mismanagement-of-the-schools-stimulus.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=597http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=597&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/597/Senate-inquiry-into-waste-and-mismanagement-of-the-schools-stimulus.aspxThe Coalition will today seek to refer the schools stimulus debacle to a Senate committee to investigate the systemic issues of waste and mismanagement and consider measures to ensure value for money for tax payers. The Primary Schools for the Twenty First Century program has been plagued by examples of waste, mismanagement and lack of value for the billions of borrowed dollars being spent. The program has already blown out by $1.7 billion and has been riddled with problems such as inflated prices, state government skimming and gross inefficiency. Schools around the country have been forced to accept Julia Gillard Memorial Halls when they need other facilities, such as classrooms. Local builders and tradespeople are being overlooked for state government-approved contractors charging inflated prices. And the Rudd Government has been forced to rob needy schools of their opportunity to build science and language facilities to cover the blow out in the primary school spend. This has always been about a political strategy not an economic strategy. The Australian Electoral Commission’s recent advice that the Building the Education Revolution display signs are political advertisements confirms this. Every Australian deserves to know that the Government is not squandering billions of dollars of their money, especially when it is borrowed and will have to be paid back with interest. There is potentially billions of dollars of savings to make in these programs if managed properly. The Coalition will today lodge a notice of motion to refer the matter to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee and seek the support of independent senators and the Australian Greens to establish this important committee inquiry without delay. This inquiry will do what the Rudd Government refuses to do – seek advice on how to address the systematic waste and mismanagement in the school stimulus debacle.  malcolmTue, 08 Sep 2009 04:37:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:597http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/595/AFP-Commissioner-Tony-Negus.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=595http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=595&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/595/AFP-Commissioner-Tony-Negus.aspxOn behalf of the Coalition, I congratulate Tony Negus APM on being sworn in today as the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police. Commissioner Negus has had a long and distinguished career in the AFP spanning nearly three decades. He has unrivalled skills in law enforcement and counter terrorism operations and has an impeccable reputation for integrity and leadership. He will now lead an organisation that has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. In 1979, the Commonwealth Police combined with the Australian Capital Territory Police to form the AFP with 2,952 staff and a budget of $73 million. The AFP has now grown into Australia’s national police force with over 6,500 staff and a budget of $1.4 billion. Over those years, the AFP has shown an acute ability to move with the times, expanding its areas of influence and responsibility across the spectrum of law enforcement and counter-terrorism activity. As Australia and the region grapple with new security and technological threats we are fortunate to have Commissioner Negus at the helm of our federal police force. I look forward to working closely with him in the future. I also pay tribute to the significant contribution of former Commissioner Mick Keelty, who led the AFP for over nine years through some of the most challenging years in its history as it responded to the growing threat of global terrorism.  malcolmMon, 07 Sep 2009 09:26:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:595http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/593/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=593http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=593&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/593/Interview-with-Laurie-Oakes-Today-on-Sunday.aspxSubjects: Michael McGurk; New South Wales Labor; Bradfield by-election; G-20 Meeting in London; the Government’s reckless and wasteful spending. E & O E LAURIE OAKES: Mr Turnbull, happy Father's Day. MALCOLM TURNBULL: And happy Father's Day to you too Laurie. LAURIE OAKES: Well these days it’s more happy grandfather’s day for me. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well happy grandfather’s day, too. LAURIE OAKES: Thank you. Now tell me why aren’t you winning the young women? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will just have to work harder at it, Laurie. I will consult with my daughter; Daisy is cooking me a Father's Day lunch today, so I’ll discuss it with her. I'm sure she’ll have a good insight into it. LAURIE OAKES: Excellent. Before we get to the stimulus issue, what's your take on the Michael McGurk murder and the alleged tape? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I know no more than what I read in the press. It's obviously a shocking crime and the police are investigating it. But it does raise some very big issues, but we will just have to see what comes out of the police investigation. LAURIE OAKES: Is there any role for the Federal Government in this; I mean could there be a federal investigation of any kind? MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t know. We do have an Australian Crime Commission, but from what we know this looks to be very much a New South Wales crime. There doesn't seem to be a federal angle to it. And in so far as there's a political angle to it, it's very much New South Wales centred. So I think it's properly a job for the New South Wales Police. LAURIE OAKES: A lot of your campaigning at the moment is New South Wales centred. You want voters in the looming Bradfield by-election to use that as a protest vote against the New South Wales Labor Government of Nathan Rees. Don’t voters differentiate though between state elections and federal elections, state issues, federal issues? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie it’s important to remember that the Labor Party is a machine; it's a very well disciplined machine. The New South Wales right put Nathan Rees in as leader of the state Labor Party here – just as they put Bob Carr in – I mean they have been running New South Wales for years and years and mismanaging it shockingly. They’re the same people that put Kevin Rudd in as leader of the federal Labor Party. His key adviser is Mark Arbib, Senator Mark Arbib, who was Secretary of the New South Wales Labor Party and is central to the whole Labor Party machine. So you have right at the centre of the Labor Party, whether it's Kevin Rudd's federal Labor Party or Nathan Rees' New South Wales Labor Party, you have an incompetent, mismanaged, corrupt Labor Party machine that has catastrophically failed New South Wales for more than a decade. LAURIE OAKES: But how can there be a protest vote when there's no Labor candidate in Bradfield, how can they protest against any Labor Government? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well any vote for the Liberal Party is a protest against the Labor Party. LAURIE OAKES: But isn't a vote for an independent or the Greens also a protest against….. MALCOLM TURNBULL: The only people that can take on the Labor Party effectively – be it at the state level here in New South Wales or federally – is the Liberal Party. It's only the Liberal Party that has the capacity to take them on. We’re the only party that has – obviously in coalition with our colleagues in the National Party – the capacity to form a government. So the independents have got something to say, but they are not in a position to take on Labor in the way the Liberal Party is. LAURIE OAKES: Well you say that the New South Wales Labor machine is at the centre the federal government. But Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard, Lindsay Tanner, the top four in the federal government, none of them are from New South Wales, in fact the New South Wales Labor Party, especially the New South Wales right are underestimated in the federal cabinet, so how can you say they're controlled by it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s the faction that put, well you wrote about it Laurie – I was relying on your commentary at the time. But Kevin Rudd was put there with the support of the New South Wales right; Arbib brought the votes in behind Rudd and of course he had, by reason of the alliance with Julia Gillard, the support from the Victorian left. LAURIE OAKES: So which one’s controlling, is the Victorian left controlling them as well? MALCOLM TURNBULL: The New South Wales right is the key element in the Labor Party today and they are the ones that have mismanaged New South Wales and they have a big say in Canberra. You’ve only got to look at the meteoric rise of Chris Bowen; I mean he is one of the stars of the New South Wales right and... LAURIE OAKES: But you look at Wayne Swan as the federal Treasurer and he was on the other side in that leadership battle; he was against the New South Wales right, I mean it's not cut and dried is it? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are all sorts of factions pushing and pulling. But right at the centre of the Labor Party – let me put it this way to you, and I put this to you as a political expert – you're the expert – the reality is that there is no group in the Labor Party, nationally, that is more powerful than the New South Wales right. There are other groups that they have to do deals with, but right at the centre, the heartbeat of the Labor Party is that machine, that New South Wales right machine down in Sussex Street in Sydney and whether it's supporting Bob Carr or Kevin Rudd or Nathan Rees or Morris Iemma, it is that gang that are at the heart of the Labor Party machine, at the heart of all the mismanagement and the spin. And if you want to see where Australia will end up in 10 years under Labor, look at what's happened in New South Wales – it’s the same formula of spin and politics, over substance and good government. LAURIE OAKES: I'm very glad that your Opposition doesn't engage in spin. But can I ask you this; what do you say to those who claim that if you’re going campaign against Nathan Rees, you can't have much on Kevin Rudd. If you’re going campaign on New South Wales issues, you can't have many policies and issues of your own? MALCOLM TURNBULL: We’ll campaign on federal, obviously federal issues are the major issues in any federal election, but the reality is the Labor Party is one machine and it's important for New South Wales voters to take advantage of the opportunity in the Bradfield by-election to send a message to Kevin Rudd and say to him – alright, you claim to be the national leader of the Labor Party, then why don't you do something about New South Wales? I mean this state is an embarrassment in terms of this government. LAURIE OAKES: In terms of a by-election…well will your federal election campaign be send a message to Macquarie Street? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Laurie it is going to be a factor everywhere in New South Wales. The failure of the Labor Party is so comprehensive here in New South Wales. It is embarrassing that we have a government….. LAURIE OAKES: Is it just New South Wales or do you think that the New South Wales Labor brand is so toxic that it will work nationally for you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think it will be most pertinent if you like, have the greatest impact here in New South Wales – but Queensland Labor has seen some shocking failures too. Look, take the schools programme, it's very good example of what…. this is Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s schools programme…. LAURIE OAKES: …the stimulus…. MALCOLM TURNBULL: …the so-called stimulus, yeah. This is classic Labor Party spin and politics. They say they wanted to put a lot of money in the economy and give jobs to tradies and support the construction industry, and yet we know that we've got schools being… having Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Halls imposed on them, whether they want them or not. We know that some of the neediest schools are missing out. We know that local tradesmen and women are not getting the jobs and they are going to large firms chosen by the Labor governments, the state Labor governments. Yet we have in rural Australia, where John Howard and I had a vision of re-plumbing rural Australia so that we could produce more food and fibre with less water, there was an opportunity and the money to get stuck in and re-plumb those irrigation districts, replace the leaky open channels with pipes, do all of that work – that could have all been done, it would have created just as many jobs. But because it would not have allowed so many ribbon-cutting opportunities for Labor Party politicians, they chose not to do it and did the school halls programme because it's all about politics. And of course the summit of that cynicism is the signs that will be out there on polling day saying, in effect, vote Labor. Your taxes have been put to work to put a sign up to encourage people to vote Labor at a polling place when the federal election comes. LAURIE OAKES: Okay. I think you’ve got that message out. Let's talk about the G20 meeting in London. Wayne Swan says that the Rudd Government's strategy of not cutting back the stimulus yet, contrary to what you want, has been vindicated by the London meeting. Is he right? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course he's not right. The situation in other economies is completely different from Australia. I mean, you know, you've got to tailor your economic response to the circumstances. In the United States unemployment is nearly twice as high as it is in Australia and you can say the same thing about a lot of European economies. I mean the fact is we have a stronger economy in Australia because we started off in a stronger position, thanks to the good economic management under the Coalition, thanks to the fact that we had no government debt when this downturn occurred, thanks to the fact we had a flexible labour market which enabled us to respond to the economic challenges in a way that didn't see a huge blow-out in unemployment. So we were in stronger position. We've also had the benefit of the Chinese stimulus and the fact that there is still strong demand for our commodities. LAURIE OAKES: So do you claim that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan are wrong when they say that to wind back the stimulus now would be premature and that it would cost jobs? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well let me put this to you Laurie – Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan have always argued that fiscal policy and monetary policy, which is the interest rate policies of the Reserve Bank, should be moving in the same direction, they should be pulling together. What we are now going to see is the Reserve Bank flagging very clearly that they are going to start putting up rates, i.e. that's to say tightening monetary policy, and yet we’ve got the Government saying they’re going to keep spending, so they’re going to be loosening fiscal policy. LAURIE OAKES: So they’re wrong….they’re dills? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well they will be working in the opposite direction to the Reserve Bank. LAURIE OAKES: They’re dills? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you say they're dills…. LAURIE OAKES: Well I’m asking you MALCOLM TURNBULL: I wouldn't go so far as to say they’re dills. I would say that they are mistaken in pursuing a stimulus that we never opposed in total – we always said that what they were proposing was too much spending, too much debt and the money was not well targeted enough. In other words, not enough bang for the buck. LAURIE OAKES: But you see the reason I asked you if Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were dills for having that view, because the Liberal Treasurer in Western Australia, Troy Buswell, said on Friday that it would be far too premature to argue for the Commonwealth to pull back on a stimulus package now. So, is he a dill? He also said we’ll get better social outcomes, we will get better economic outcomes by keeping people in employment and it’s far too early, far too premature to be arguing for a reduction in that expenditure. So you’ve got the Liberal Treasurer in Western Australia, you’ve got the federal Labor Government and the G20 all arguing in the same direction. Are you one out? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well the G20 is really a separate issue. They’re talking about other economies with different situations. They’re not casting a judgement on the Australian economy – I imagine the finance ministers of France and Germany…. LAURIE OAKES: But Troy Buswell is? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let me just move on to Troy Buswell. Troy Buswell is the Treasurer of Western Australia, and you’re absolutely right he is a Liberal Treasurer, and there has never been a state treasurer or premier for that matter that has not been in favour of the Federal Government spending money in their state. Now the real challenge in Western Australia is going to be a skills shortage in fact because of the huge resource projects that are building up there, and so Western Australia will have an incredibly strong economy going forward and the challenge is going to be finding enough skilled people to work in those gigantic LNG projects. LAURIE OAKES: Let me ask you this – when you are asleep at night, dreaming about being prime minister, what is Malcolm Turnbull prime minister do about the stimulus, where do you cut? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie that’s really an issue for the Government to deal with... LAURIE OAKES: But you're dreaming you’re in government, so let's have your answer? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well look if I was prime minister today I would not have committed to the stimulus in the form that these guys have done. LAURIE OAKES: But Kevin Rudd falls under a bus, there's an election, you become prime minister, what do you do about the stimulus? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think what you’d have to do is look at every area, just go right through it and see where you can get better value for money. Let me give you a good example with schools – a very good contrast. Back in February the Rudd Government proposed a $14.7 billion school assembly hall, Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall programme, right, and every school was going to get one whether they wanted it or not. That was essentially their package. Now we said that's a bad idea, what you should do is spend less money – we proposed $3 billion – and spend it on the basis we used to do in government called the Investing In Our Schools programme where we actually said to school communities, ‘you tell what you want, you get your plans together, you get your project together, you get the support of local tradesmen and tradeswomen, you get all of that local support and knowledge together and then we'll support you’. Now that's approach we would take. And what you would get out of that is you would get investment in schools that was well targeted, in the sense that it was what the schools really wanted, and really needed, and as a result you would spend less money and get a better outcome. So what this is all about is getting a better bang for the tax payer’s buck and it’s a question of targeting the expenditure. Overall, in terms of the other spending, it beggars belief that during this continuing drought, the Government has not spent any significant money on re-plumbing rural Australia. That was the big vision….. LAURIE OAKES: So you’re arguing for more spending there aren’t you? Look, can I ask you this, should Kevin Rudd put forward a plan for a measured withdrawal of stimulus over the next year as some commentators are suggesting, including a programme for serious cuts in federal spending? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think he certainly has to take into account that as the economy grows, as we see greater strength in the economy, and as the Reserve Bank talks about putting up interest rates, he’s got to recognise that continued growth in government spending is going to put upward pressure on interest rates. He is contributing to higher interest rates. He's doing it in two ways – firstly because he's spending a lot of money and he’s borrowing it. LAURIE OAKES: Should he put forward a plan for cuts in federal spending across the board? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well he has to have a plan for an exit strategy, and I think an exit strategy from this period of high spending and high borrowing – of course he has to do that. LAURIE OAKES: Why don’t you put forward the kind of plan you would want? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Laurie we put forward the plan that we wanted back in February in the response to the stimulus; we actually set out a stimulus, an alternative stimulus plan that was better targeted and involved spending a little bit less than half as much as Kevin Rudd was proposing. So we've actually done that. I don't know how far the Government’s spending on the schools has gone – there's a whole Auditor-General's inquiry going on into it at the moment. So really what Kevin Rudd has done is set off on a reckless spending programme which will put upward pressure on interest rates. It's now becoming apparent that it’s actually going to be working against what the Reserve Bank is trying to achieve. So at the same time as the Reserve Bank is going to be putting up interest rates, Kevin Rudd’s going to be borrowing and spending more, in other words, putting more pressure on the Reserve Bank to put up rates, and I can tell you the home buyers of Australia, and those people paying off debts and mortgages are not going to thank Kevin Rudd for higher interest rates, because his policies are now putting upward pressure on interest rates, and of course, inevitably, will require higher taxes to pay off all the debt. LAURIE OAKES: We’ll let you get back to your family and Father's Day. We thank you. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thanks a lot Laurie. [ends]  malcolmSat, 05 Sep 2009 22:46:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:593http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/589/Address-to-the-Hunter-Business-Chamber-Newcastle.aspx#Comments0http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=110&ModuleID=403&ArticleID=589http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=589&PortalID=0&TabID=110http://archive.malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/589/Address-to-the-Hunter-Business-Chamber-Newcastle.aspxE & O E Well thank you, Bob. That’s a very kind introduction. It’s wonderful to be here. This is a great occasion. And it’s good to be here with the Mayor as well and also with so many old friends, of course some of them are very youthful friends, I’ve known them for a long time like Reg Mawhinney of course who is probably the youngest person in the room. I’ve had a very long, as I suppose Bob said, I’ve had a very long association, a very long family association with the Hunter and it’s always great to be here. Let me talk about the emissions trading scheme or what Rudd calls the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme which, I mean, there’s so many engineers here and chemists and scientists of one kind or another. The idea that you would call carbon pollution is completely absurd given that we’re all made of carbon in one form or another, in fact, everything is made of carbon, everything organic is anyway. So referring to it as an emissions trading scheme… Bob has called it an emissions tax. Well, it is a tax. It’s absolutely what it is, there’s no question about that. It is a tax. The idea is to require people who want, or industries who want, to emit carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases to buy a permit. And the payment to purchase that permit from the Government, whether you buy the permit from the Government, or you buy it from somebody else that’s created as a credit, is a tax. There’s no two ways about it, it’s a tax. And the idea of the trading is to enable people to reduce their emissions most efficiently. So what it is, it’s a tax that enables trade, thereby to achieve least cost abatement. Now the fundamental problem, I guess there are two fundamental issues associated with this whole emissions trading debate. The first one is do we need to reduce our CO2 emissions at all? There are some people that say the planet is not getting warmer and if it is it’s got nothing to do with humans. If you read Ian Plimer’s book you would be, if you believed it, and you were persuaded by it you would say there is absolutely no need to do anything at all. The reality, however, is that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion differs from Professor Plimer and others who share his views and there has been a long-standing consensus in the scientific community that human actions, digging up so much fossilised carbon in the form of coal mostly and burning it or gas, pumping those emissions into the atmosphere is having an impact on the climate, making the world warmer which has obviously got to have some significantly damaging impacts on the environment in which we live. So I’m not in a position to say who is right and who is wrong. I’m not a scientist. I can only say that I regard this, as many leaders have in the past, as a risk management exercise. Rupert Murdoch summed it up very well once when he said, “You’ve got to give the planet the benefit of the doubt.” So I think that’s basically the case there. Then the next issue, okay, well let’s say we believe the world’s got to reduce its CO2 emissions, how do we actually do it? How do we do it? And how do we do it recognising that a tonne of carbon dioxide that goes up into the atmosphere from Shanghai has the same impact on the climate as a tonne from Newcastle or from Novosibirsk for that matter. In other words, it’s a global problem and it has to have a global solution, so there has to be a global agreement – that is absolutely fundamental. Now that’s been an objective of the Howard Government, it’s been an objective of the global community for a long time but it has been a long time coming. And so if we assume that we are going to start putting in place a mechanism to reduce our CO2 emissions in Australia and become more energy efficient in the absence of a complete comprehensive ideal world global agreement, which is obviously going to be a long time coming, how do we do it without devastating industries like Tomago Aluminium, that we were visiting this morning, that is producing material, producing a commodity – in the case of Tomago, aluminium – which is a global commodity but which is very, very energy intensive, and, because we generate our energy in Australia by burning coal for the most part, very emissions-intensive – energy and emissions-intensive. Tomago’s smelter here, Tomago Aluminium’s smelter here, is the twelfth largest in the world. Now that’s big but if it went out of production today, that production would be taken up somewhere else in the world. And wherever else in the world that half a million tonnes or thereabouts was produced you would have emissions, CO2 emissions, both from the production and, unless it was generated with hydro power or nuclear power, from the electricity that’s provided to it as well. So there is what Ross Garnaut described quite fairly as the whole diabolical problem, that you can impose a carbon price on what we call these emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries in Australia, you can cause them to go out of business or not expand – and the two after a while become much the same thing, mean much the same thing – and you end up exporting the emissions somewhere else, so the planet is no better off, and of course you lose the jobs and the prosperity – and that is the fundamental problem. So whether the result is to produce less aluminium in Australia, more in China or mine less coal in Australia, more in Columbia and Indonesia and South Africa – it’s the same deal. The same with steel; make less steel in Australia, make more steel in China – no difference to the environmental outcome, probably a worse outcome but of course a huge impact on jobs in Australia. So that is why we have said to the Government the first thing is you should not finalise the design of your emissions trading scheme until after the Copenhagen summit in December because then at least we will know what shape a global agreement is going to look like or whether one is likely to occur at all. We will also probably know by then whether the US Congress is going to enact an emissions trading scheme there. A bill has passed the House of Representatives, as you know, the Waxman-Markey Bill, but the Senate is yet to agree to it, or agree to anything. So it’s still up in the air as to whether Obama can get a bill through the US Congress. Now Kevin Rudd was going to bring this legislation back in November and insist on it be voted then and really for the sake of 90 days until after Copenhagen, but in truth more like 60 days, he is going to force the Parliament to vote on a bill in a framework or a context where we are less well informed than we would be if we just waited a couple more months. That is just pure politics. None of us, none of us would make a decision in November ill-informed if we could make it in February fully informed, would we? Unless there was some incredible urgency, which there isn’t in this case, we would take the time to make sure we were fully informed. So that’s our first objection. That then presents us with this challenge. Do we just vote it down or do we seek to amend it? And that’s where you get another big challenge for our side of politics because a straight-forward approach is just to say, alright, we’ll vote it down again. If we do that and the Labor Government decides to use that as a trigger for an election – a double dissolution election – it’s not so much that Rudd goes to the polls early; a trigger could be created in November and he could have double dissolution election as late as August next year. That’s not particularly early, a few months early – the real issue is that if he goes to a double dissolution election and were to win, he would come back with a majority in the joint sitting and the legislation would be passed in exactly the form he wanted it. So the risk that everyone faces is that if we were to vote it down without any amendments, and just say that’s it, no, we won’t have a bar of it, we will end up both with an election and if we lose it, or if he wins it, we’ll end up with a bill unamended. And so that is why a lot of people in industry, including industries in this room, have been saying to us; for heavens sake seek to amend the legislation, try to limit the damage it is doing to so. And so the approach that we are taking is neither to wave it through and let him do what he likes – never very appealing to me anyway or saying we won’t have a bar of it, we don’t even want to discuss it – our approach is a constructive one where we are going to engage with the Government and seek to make amendments to it, amend the scheme and then depending on the extent to which those amendments are accepted and the international developments at the time, and the political circumstances at the time, we’ll then form a view whether we vote for it or not. I think that’s the most responsible approach. It’s essentially what we did with the renewable energy target legislation. Had it not been for our efforts – strongly supported by Bob Baldwin – the aluminium industry, just one, but all the emissions intensive industries fall into the same category, but the aluminium industry would not have won the protection it got under the renewable energy target as enacted. I don’t want to make a particularly partisan speech here, but I just tell you a sad fact of life, is that there was not one Labor member from the Hunter that was standing up arguing, supporting the amendments we sought. I mean we took that case to the Government. We ran the argument and credit to them they came across, negotiated and we got an agreement – and it’s a great credit to Greg Hunt and Ian Macfarlane and Andrew Robb who handled the bulk of the one-on-one negotiations, they did a good job. But had it not been for our advocacy, and in particular Bob’s advocacy as a Coalition member, Liberal member from the Hunter, we simply wouldn’t have got that protection and those jobs and the jobs at Tomago would have been threatened by that renewable energy legislation being past in the form that the Government wanted it. And so that’s the approach we’ll take to the CPRS. I think it’s a constructive approach. In terms of the emissions intensive trade exposed industries, like aluminium and steel, coal mining for that matter, we believe they should be given 100 per cent protection. That’s what we proposed when we were in government – it’s not something we’ve just thought of. That was the approach we were going to take based on the report by Peter Shergold back in 2007 that formed the basis of our approach to this – and we believe they should have 100 per cent protection until the countries with which they compete have comparable carbon price. That may be a long time off, it may be a very long time off – it may see us all out, who knows? But there is no point, I repeat there is absolutely no point, exporting emissions and exporting jobs. The environment gains nothing and our local economy loses an enormous amount. I’ll just say one final in closing and then over to you, one final thing about the Frontier Economics Report that was mentioned at the outset. Frontier Economics is a very well respected and very expert economics consulting firm. They’re not any particular way inclined politically. They’ve done a lot of work for the News South Wales Labor Government, they designed the New South Wales GGAS scheme and of course they did the report that was kept secret until it was leaked by someone, which demonstrated pretty categorically and comprehensively the way in which this region would suffer disproportionately from the Rudd emissions trading scheme. We asked them to look at some changes that could be made to the scheme to make it more effective and they’ve demonstrated that by approaching the way in which permits are allocated to the electricity generation sector. In short, so that instead of having to buy all of their permits they only have to buy permits if they’re above a particular emissions intensity base line, and they get credits if they’re below it – by that approach you’re able to reduce the increase cost in electricity, particularly in the near and medium term, and at the same time be able to afford a significantly materially higher reduction in emissions if you choose to do that. It’s an approach that is both cheaper, greener and smarter – and that report, which was dismissed by Penny Wong without having read as a ‘mongrel idea’, which is pretty strong language I thought – but I’ve always thought a bit of hybrid vigour is much to be commended. Nonetheless she dismissed it without having read it and in fact I think as more and more people are examining the work that Danny Price and Co at Frontier have done, they’ve seen that it really a very important contribution – and it’s available on our website, the Liberal Party’s website and I commend it to you. So we’re going to take a constructive approach to this. We’re pleased the Government stopped stonewalling and was able to negotiate with us over the renewable energy target. We hope to be able to do the same over the emissions trading scheme and whether we vote for it or not in November will depend on the extent to which our amendments are accepted and of course the international developments and political circumstances at the time. So thank you for listening to me on this subject of great interest to us all, and over to you for any questions or feedback. [ends]  malcolmTue, 01 Sep 2009 03:38:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:589