Radio interview - 6PR Perth Radio Mornings with Gary Adshead

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
6PR Perth
Mornings with Gary Adshead
Thursday, 30 November 2023

Subjects: NZYQ High Court case, Cost of living, Monthly CPI, Defence FDV Strategy

HOST, GARY ADSHEAD: Yes, they both join me right now from down the line in Canberra. Good morning to you both.

MINISTER FOR VETERANS' AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL, MATT KEOGH: Great to be with you, Gary.

SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE, ANDREW HASTIE: Good to be with you, Gary. And hi to my kids who are listening in.

GARY ADSHEAD: Hi, kids. Now, let's just play you first up to get the ball rolling on this whole High Court decision around those long-term detainees. Let's play you, Clare O'Neil. This is from yesterday and it's led to some allegations of base politics. Let's have a listen to Clare O'Neil, the Home Affairs Minister in relation to Peter Dutton.

[Excerpt Begins]

MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS, CLARE O'NEIL: We heard on Monday, we saw on Monday the Opposition, led by the Leader of the Opposition, come into the Parliament and vote to protect paedophiles over children. That's what they did. Voted to protect paedophiles over children.

[Excerpt Ends]

GARY ADSHEAD: Do you believe that, Matt Keogh?

MINISTER KEOGH: Well, it was totally bizarre. We had the Opposition coming out and saying, "We need to pass these laws as a government." We bring the laws into Parliament and then the Opposition goes and votes against the laws which were introducing the criminal offences that they had been calling for, that we recognised were needed as part of improving community safety after that High Court decision. The Opposition's criticising us for doing exactly the thing that they said was necessary, that we recognised was necessary, and then they've went and voted against it.

GARY ADSHEAD: Does that mean he wants to protect paedophiles, though, does it? The Leader of the Opposition?

MINISTER KEOGH: Well, that was the upshot of what he was doing.

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, Gary, Matt's a faithful soldier, so he's spruiking the talking points today, but he doesn't believe that. No one believes it. This is a distraction put up by Labor because they've released 141 criminals, including sex offenders, murderers and bikies into our community without any controls. They've been passive, flat footed. They failed the Australian community, haven't protected us --

MINISTER KEOGH: That is just so not true --

ANDREW HASTIE: They're deflecting. They're casting aspersions on Peter Dutton, who, as a former policeman and as a very tough Home Affairs Minister, has a strong record, particularly when it comes to deporting child sex offenders from Australia.

MINISTER KEOGH: Well, I think it's been clear, actually, this week that Peter Dutton's record as the Minister for Home Affairs hasn't been that great at all. We've had to fix up other legislation which we told him at the time would likely be unconstitutional. That was very necessary legislation and that's been also struck out by the High Court, and we've had to come in and fix that because I can tell you now, laws to protect the community don't protect the community if they're unconstitutional. They're not good laws, that's what we've had to fix.
But it's really important that we're clear about this, Government didn't just decide to release these people. The High Court made a decision where we had to release them and as a consequence of that, we have brought in urgent legislation to make sure that there was good community protection, that there were adequate criminal offences, that we were able to monitor these people once they'd been released into the public.
And we're now bringing in further legislation next week to have a preventative detention regime now that we've seen the reasons from the High Court, which only came out this week, and yet amongst all of that, we've got the hysteria from the opposition who then don't vote for the very legislation that they're saying that we should have brought in. It’s just crazy.

GARY ADSHEAD: Why didn't you? Why didn't you, Andrew? Why didn't you?

ANDREW HASTIE: Gary, let's go back, Matt's suggesting that this is all because of the High Court --

MINISTER KEOGH: Well, it is because of the High Court --

ANDREW HASTIE: You're a lawyer, mate.

MINISTER KEOGH: I am and you're not.

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I'm not trying to get into a legal argument here with you. The simple fact is that the Government has had since June or so, they knew that the High Court could rule in this way and yet they had nothing ready to deal with the consequence of a mass release of criminals into our community.
In fact, Peter Dutton, in the last sitting, had to become the de facto Prime Minister when Anthony Albanese was racking up more frequent flyer points than Phileas Fogg and stepped up and suggested a bunch of amendments which your government accepted. Three weeks ago, I went on Sunday Agenda on Sky and said they should be considering a preventative detention order. And now you are.

MINISTER KEOGH: only 35 pages, the High Court decision. So, you could go and read it and you might even understand it, because what it makes very clear is that we couldn't draft legislation in advance because we needed to know the basis of the High Court's decision. Those orders, If you go and read the orders, there was two different questions the High Court was asked. You needed to know which way it fell on those two questions to know what legislative fixes may be needed.
And in terms of preventative detention, it was absolutely going to be an open question about whether the High Court would accept that or not. Now, as soon as we got those reasons on Tuesday, where the High Court itself says you could have a preventative detention regime, we said, "great, we will go and do that, and we will legislate that”. It'll come into the Parliament next week, you and I, will be voting on that on Thursday.

ANDREW HASTIE: Do it today, Matt. Do it today.

GARY ADSHEAD: Okay, I'll be back in a minute to address a little bit more of that and then we'll change the subjects. A good result in terms of inflation this week, that's for sure. Peace in our times, we'll be back soon.
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GARY ADSHEAD: Yes, they are in the Canberra studio. Glenice is on the line and has a point to make. G’day, Glenice.

GLENICE: Hi, Gary. Yes, Glenice is my name. I just want to say that it is totally unacceptable that Clare O’Neil cannot put a constructive different point of view without her nasty vitriolic coming into play. Dutton is an ex-policeman and he would never support paedophilia. An apology is required at the very, very least.

GARY ADSHEAD: Well, I think – yeah, what do you say, guys?

ANDREW HASTIE: You have me in fierce agreement. Thank you for that comment.

GARY ADSHEAD: Okay. I’ll go to Anne then. G’day, Anne.

ANNE: Good morning to you all. Look, I’m quite sick of the hypocrisy of this detainee situation. We had Dan Smith was actively trying to get a man who had committed a sexual act against a child, get him released. And also, how did a murderer from Malaysia get in under Dutton’s watch? And also, are we going to keep these people locked up for decades and decades? Some of them have done very minor crimes.

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah.

GARY ADSHEAD: Let’s just change it to - the subject to inflation. Now, you’re both in fierce agreement that falling to 4.9 per cent ahead of the RBA’s meeting next Tuesday could bring about a hold on interest rates, and that’s a good thing.

MINISTER KEOGH: Absolutely that would be a good thing for everyone who’s paying mortgages that if interest rates don’t go up further. We completely see the impact of inflation on household budgets, on cost of living. People are really struggling. You know, Andrew’s and my communities are very similar and they’re really facing it hard, whether it’s mortgage payments, whether it’s rent.

But what we have consistently seen over the course of the term of this government is that inflation – the rate of inflation has continued to fall. That’s a really good thing. That is as a consequence of the packages that we’ve delivered through successive budgets now that have dealt with cost of living pressures – making medicines cheaper, making child care cheaper, improving access to doctors, making sure there’s more bulk billing, more fee-free TAFE. And what we’ve seen from the Reserve Bank, the Treasury, the ABS and even now the OECD highlighting that it’s the policies that we have introduced that have seen inflation fall in Australia.

Obviously, we would like it to continue to fall, and so we don’t have those pressures on Australian families, and we’ll continue to work on those cost of living pressures because we know they are biting. But it’s good to see that our policies are working, and we are seeing that inflation rate continue to decline.

GARY ADSHEAD: Does that dent some of your argument, or will it dent some of your argument going into next year, Andrew, in terms of cost of living?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I think inflation is quite sticky still. Now, the Treasurer used 4.9, but if we go by core inflation, which is what economists use, which excludes volatile price changes in food and energy, for example, it’s actually dropped 5.4 to 5.3, so only 0.1 of a per cent annualised since October last year. So it’s – we’ve still got a long way to go. There’s still a lot of pressure on families, particularly with those mortgage payments. And the reality is this government has not come up with a plan to get us out of this cost of living crisis and get inflation down.

There’s fiscal policy, which is the responsibility of the Federal Government, and there’s monetary policy, which is the role of the RBA. And this government has delegated the task of getting inflation down to the RBA. And the RBA has only a very blunt instrument, and that is to raise interest rates, and that’s why people are suffering. Because this government does not have an economic plan for this country.

MINISTER KEOGH: That’s completely untrue, because we have, as I just outlined, took a suite of policies to our first budget and our second budget that are having that impact. So, you know, cheaper medicines, better access to bulk billing, fee-free TAFE, being able to get greater discounts and subsidies on childcare. All core costs for families and, critically, that has had a deflationary effect of 0.75 per cent. Of course core inflation is more stable, that’s the nature of core inflation. But it itself has also fallen. Thing are going in the right direction. We’re not saying they’re great yet. We’ve got more to do. But our policy settings are the right ones and are delivering that reduction in inflation from where they were under the previous government, which were much higher. We are seeing that trend now in the right direction, and that’s good for families. But we need to keep doing more. We get that.

GARY ADSHEAD: Matt Keogh, as Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel and, of course, you as Shadow Defence spokesperson as well, Andrew, this launch today of a family and domestic violence prevention and response strategy around Defence, I’ve been talking domestic violence this morning because embarrassingly, a safe night place for women is going to close its doors. Why is this important in the defence world?

MINISTER KEOGH: So what we’ve – we’ve introduced this strategy because, you know, family and domestic violence is across the Australian community; it’s not unique to Defence. But there are some unique elements. Defence families move around the country frequently. It means that families are often not connected to their – the family they’ve grown up with, their friends from where they grew up with, they may only be in places for short periods of time, they don’t get to build those deep links into community, which means they do need additional support if they find themselves in circumstances of family and domestic violence.

And at the other end, family and domestic violence is completely contrary to Defence values. And so it’s important that we deal with that appropriately within the defence context as well. And there’s certain supports that are available to families for when their family member is serving in Defence, like housing, for example, or relocations that are only available or have only been available when they are together with their Defence member. And we need to make sure – those sort of create special vulnerabilities - and we need to make sure that we have a proper approach to support families that may be experiencing family and domestic violence and we deal appropriately with perpetrators. And it’s important to recognise that, you know, the victims of domestic violence can be members of our Defence Force as well, and we need to make sure that they’re properly supported within the Defence Force.

So, it's about engaging with some of the unique aspects of Defence service and the impact on Defence members and their families to make sure that we get the settings right, just as we need to deal with family and domestic violence in all communities across the country.

GARY ADSHEAD: All right, Andrew, just quickly – and I mean quickly – was this sort of program, was this sort of issue front and centre in Defence when you were there? Or is it something that’s, you know, needed?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, it’s something that we support obviously. Service values of courage, respect, integrity, excellence, that’s what inspires our ADF personnel, but it’s not something they just do at work; it has to happen at home as well. And we want healthy families in the ADF because then our soldiers, sailors and airmen can deploy and fight for us if necessary and protect our country and our interests. And so that’s why the emphasis on healthy families is so important.

GARY ADSHEAD: Andrew Hastie, Matt Keogh, appreciate it, as always. Thanks for your time.

MINISTER KEOGH: Thanks, Gary.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks, Gary.

END

Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or the Open Arms website. Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072. Defence All-Hours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or the Defence Health Portal. Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608