SUBJECT/S:
Labor Government; Tony Abbott’s unfair Budget; Tony Abbott’s
broken promises; Economy; Immigration; Higher education;
Superannuation; G20; Mini-Budget; Shipbuilding in Australia; ADF pay;
Mining Tax.
LAURIE WILSON: Thank you very much, Mr Shorten, time now for
our usual round of questions. There’s a very long list of
questions today, I doubt we’ll get through all of them. But I
would appeal to my media members to keep their questions to a single
question and keep them short if they could, please. And the first
question today is from Mark Kenny.
JOURNALIST: Mark Kenny, Mr Shorten from Fairfax Media. I
wonder, you’ve been quite frank about the Government’s failings,
I wonder if I can invite you to be frank about your own
party’s failings. If you could outline the main policy reasons why your
party was tossed out in 2013 and yesterday, given that you finished on
the question of trust, yesterday I believe you withdrew an interjection
where you said you will see our cuts when we’re in government. Is that
an accurate reflection of what you said and what do you mean by that?
LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION, BILL SHORTEN: Taking your second
part first, I didn’t say it, so that’s why I insisted the Government
stop saying that. In terms of the debate yesterday, though , and the
Government’s tactics. We know yesterday, as I said in my speech, as
a metaphor for this Government, you know, we all know, Australians know
that this is a Government uncomfortable in the skin of a government,
much preferring the uniform of Opposition. They would much rather talk
about us than talk about their vision for the nation. Tony Abbott would
be better advised to focus on the future of Australia than play politics
all the time. We know this is what he does so I expect the Government
to attack Labor, I just wish the Government would do its day job. I do
not believe after a year and a quarter that the Abbott Government has
made the translation from Opposition to Government. The G20 was
an unqualified failure when it should have been an unqualified success.
What on earth was the Prime Minister and his minders thinking giving
that eight minute excruciating Little Australia rant? Imagine telling
the Prime Minister of Turkey that you’ve got problems with a GP Tax,
when they’ve got 2 million refugees. Imagine telling China the
challenge, or Germany that we want to actually increase the cost
of going to university when they’re desperate to make sure that people,
be in developed or developing economies, go there. This is a Government
who is most comfortable in Opposition.
We didn’t ask Tony Abbott before the last election to make all the
statements he did, but he did. He did because he wanted to win the votes
of Australians. But there is indeed a trust question in this country.
The question of Tony Abbott’s trust and what he did before the election,
like no other politician in the contemporary era, he put himself on a
pedestal, he tried to crucify Julia Gillard and he said that with Tony
Abbott what you see is what you’ll get. He said famously before the
last election when he was asked will you use the Budget upon coming into
power as an excuse not to keep your promises? He said, I’m not that
sort of bloke. And then yesterday he just assumes that the nation
suffers political amnesia and that he can say that black is white and
white is black. So when it comes to the questions of trust, what
Australian people want and what I’m determined that Labor does, is that
they want to see people engaged with the ideas of Australia
and navigating a plan to the future. His Budget, his Budget is lost in
space. His foreign policy reactive, lost in space. These are the
challenges for the Government and if the Government seek to attack Labor
for being a fierce opposition that is their prerogative but
Australians elected this Government to keep its promises and to work on
the future. The attack on higher education is not a future-focus policy.
Not accepting or wanting to work with the multilateral institutions
that a rise in China is seeking to put out in our region, that is not
the future. It is not the future for productivity and workplaces to slam
a GP Tax discouraging people from going to the doctor. So if they want
to have a debate we will give it to them on their policies and a plan
for the future.
JOURNALIST: What about your own policies as I asked you earlier?
SHORTEN: Well certainly before the next election we will
advance the case and what I have said today is that we are sufficiently
ambitious for this nation. We are sufficiently ambitious for Australian
democracy that we will submit a platform which is not just ‘we are not
them’. It is not just a list of Tony Abbott’s lies, compendious as it
is. We will submit a view that at the next election a post grad science
student will look for the Labor how to vote card because we’ve got the
best science policies. Mum and Dad who’ve educated their kids through 13
years of school will know that at least with Labor there’s a reasonable
chance that their kids can go to uni and not have a lifetime of debt.
We want people who are worried about the care of people with
disabilities, their family members, the midnight anxiety of
the 80-year-old parents wondering who will love their children like they
have, their adult children, at least they know when they go to the
polling booth, whenever the next election is, they will know what
Labor stands for. But it will also be the case in small business,
it will be the case in our foreign policy, it will be the case
in innovation. We’re ambitious for this country and we want to have an
election based on the best ideas.
JOURNALIST: David Speers from Sky News. Mr Shorten, in
the vision that you’ve outlined for Australia’s future I don’t think you
mentioned the debt that we all share as a nation. I’m just interested
in the priority you give that in paying it off and whether you will be
honest about how long that’s going to take and whether you’re prepared
to take longer than the Coalition to pay it off. And just to repeat
Mark’s question about the policy problems Labor had at the last
election, are you willing to acknowledge what policy mistakes
there were?
SHORTEN: Good, sorry, I should have addressed that,
sorry, Mark, thanks. Just going to that point, there’s no doubt
that, and we’ve taken responsibility for various matters over the last
year and a quarter. But we missed an opportunity in 2009 with the
collapse of Copenhagen and in hindsight, and I’m not saying I had this
view at the time but in hindsight, and hindsight’s an invaluable tool,
we’ve all used it. Is that we should have pushed for a
double dissolution. And there is no doubt that Tony Abbott ran a very
effective campaign against the high-fixed price on carbon that we put in
that term. So yeah, I get that we need to rebuild trust. We embrace
our responsibility and that’s why in the Opposition that we’re leading
and we are pushing for Australia, you will see us put forward positive
propositions before the next election. And then you asked, what was
the second part of your question?
JOURNALIST: About debt and priorities?
SHORTEN: There’s no doubt the Budget faces pressures.
Chris Bowen, who is here today, has made that point, we all
have. Commodity prices are down and we’ve seen, though, with the Budget
the current Budget that they’ve put, they have torpedoed confidence,
no-one who deals with the high street of Australia thinks that business
confidence is there, so there’s external factors. But there’s also the
dilemmas in the Budget caused by this current Government. First of
all they’ve got the wrong priorities. What they’ve done, and you can
talk to people, high street traders across Australia. But two or
three weeks before the election when the Government brains trust decided
to cleverly, they were dragged kicking and screaming to drop their
Commission of Audit, they deliberately held off after the South
Australian and Western Australia elections, they didn’t provide that
same courtesy to the Victorian Liberals I might add with the Petrol Tax.
But they held off on the Commission if Audit but really from when they
started leaking that, through to leaks in the Budget, confidence has
just flat lined. It has flat lined. So I think they’ve got to take
some responsibility for what they’ve done there. We’ve seen our wages
growth shrink, so I think the challenge in the medium term is to make
sure that our revenues match our expenditures, but what I also recognise
is that the policy prescription to ensure we deal with the issues that
you raise is not to make the income, the bottom half of income earners
in this Australia do the heavy lifting. We need to go for a productivity
agenda which involves making our people smarter. It’s the creation
of wealth rather than an argument about who should get what. It’s the
creation of wealth, it’s the building of opportunity for small business.
It’s support for the many women who are starting their
small businesses. That’s the game in town. It is having a search or a
reach for higher ground, that is how we deal with the issues that you
refer to today.
JOURNALIST: Sophie Morris from the Saturday Paper. Mr Shorten
you’ve spoken a lot about fairness and I want to ask you about Labor’s
approach to fairness to people who come here seeking asylum. Immigration
Minister Scott Morrison is pursuing various bits of legislation to
reintroduce temporary protection visas, make it easier to cancel
citizenship, to revoke citizenship and cancel visas. Do you see merit in
these proposals or do you think that he’s gone too far?
SHORTEN: Well, when we talk about fairness and we talk
about immigration, we talk about refugees, let me put down some markers
which the Labor that I lead believes in. First of all, we
believe unreservedly that immigration has been a benefit for Australia.
We believe that it’s contributed, continues to contribute from great
citizens to broadening the diversity of our community, to entrepreneurs,
to a deepening of Australian culture. Now we recognise that our
immigrants come by various means. Family reunion, skilled migration
and refugees. We do not seek to demonise refugees, but we do also
believe that we need to discourage the people smugglers’ model and I
think that Labor, and I don’t think, I believe, that Labor’s push
for regional resettlement has been the cornerstone upon which the people
smugglers’ model has been broken. In terms of this Government and what
they’re doing in terms of their temporary visas, we need to look at the
detail carefully. I don’t particularly trust this Government about
treating people fairly. On the other hand, we will do what we’ve always
done. We will weigh up the interests of the nation and the interests of
individuals and we will review the legislation, and we will debate it as
it is presented to the Parliament.
JOURNALIST: Paul Osborne from Australian Associated Press.
Thank you very much for your speech. Just wanting to pursue the
question of your budget philosophy. In Government, what areas
would Labor quarantine from cuts or efficiency dividends, and
I’m thinking of things like defence, pensions and so on, and would you
deliver a surplus earlier than Mr Hockey plans?
SHORTEN: I think a lot of this is a hypothetical because we
need to see what Joe Hockey’s going to do. I note that he’s trying
to leave his mini-budget until the last possible moment in the year. I
think that the Government’s got some numbers to front up to the
Australian people and present to us. There’s no doubt in my mind that
they’ve worsened the deficit since they came into power. You know, it’s
been 445 days for those of you who haven’t been keeping count, since
the Government got elected and at some point in that time there going to
have to stop being able to blame the rest of the world or blame their
predecessors and start dealing with the issues. In terms of how we
present our economic policies for the next election, as much as I’d like
to win the good will of the people here, at the Press Club today, these
are still early days for us. But when we talk about priorities and part
of your question went to priorities, the Government needs to dump its
Rolls-Royce paid parental leave scheme. They’ve got to stop going
soft on multinational tax evaders. I think they need to hand back some
of the superannuation tax breaks they’re give to the very wealthy, who
simply don’t need the assistance of the taxpayer to move from $2 million
to $2.5 million in savings. I do also think that if the Government has
troubles with its Budget, which it does, they should stop
paying polluters to pollute and introduce a market-based system.
JOURNALIST: David Crowe from The Australian. Thanks for
your speech, Mr Shorten. There was a startling fact in your speech which
was that by 2050 there will be 2.5 workers only for every person who is
over 65. The trend has got to put more pressure on the pension
system, it’s got to make pensions a bigger share of government outlays
than they already are. Do you see that as a problem that needs to be
addressed? Are you saying that a Labor Government would do anything to
stop that increase?
SHORTEN: There’s a number of levers which governments who
think – I mean your question is dangerously conflicting with the
Abbott doctrine of not just today but thinking about the far
distant future 16 years’ time. I think you’re asking me to think
36 years in advance, don’t ask the Prime Minister. In terms of how we
deal with that, the most successful nations with participation rates are
ones who have the highest education, the highest rates of education.
You look at some of the Nordic countries, you look at nations with
high participation rates their people are well trained, that allows
people to work older in life. The second thing is, of course, the
Government likes to talk about people working longer, but have they
ever tried to change the workers’ comp laws in States so the workers’
comp will cover employees over 65 years of age? This is a Government who
is long on the thought bubble and short on the detail. But one of the
key changes which this Government’s dragged us back and, you know, I
call upon that journal of record, The Australian, the join me in this
issue. It’s the reduction in superannuation, it’s the freezing of
superannuation at 9.5 per cent. What a backward, backward,
backward decision. You know, they said that there’s 3.5
million Australians who earn less than $37,000 a year. Currently
the Government’s reinstituted a system where they’re putting more tax on
their compulsory savings than they pay on the income they earn. Labor
got rid of that but there’s sort of the F Troop of this Government, the
barnacle removing brigade, decided to remove a beneficial tax treatment
which will allow people who earn less than $37,000 a year to save
super. So what we have now, this Government has introduced
an involuntary arbitrage where if you are compelled to save and you earn
less than $37,000 , you pay more tax on your savings than you do on
your pay-as-you-go income. Ridiculous. Only the Conservatives could have
dreamt that up. So the other issue though is by freezing super at 9.5
per cent and not taking it through to 12 per cent as they promised
before the election, of course, they’ve so traduced our expectations of
keeping promises, that’s just one on the list, that’s under the letter
S, you know. What they should do is allow superannuation to go up in
the increments we proposed so we have a larger pool of savings. The
beauty of superannuation is this; the more that we encourage people to
save for themselves the less of a drain it will be on the pension.
I think the other thing they need to do is work on how they treat women
equally because the more that you can encourage women to work, the more
money that people will amass in their time at work, so the less they’ll
have to rely on the savings. So I look with great interest at what the
Government’s going to do on the question of child care. They’ve spent a
lot of time working on the first 9 months of a child’s life, what are
they doing on child care? These are all challenges, they’re long-term
levers and of course there’s higher education generally.
JOURNALIST: Laura Tingle from Financial Review Mr
Shorten. You’ve talked in the speech today about the fact that the
economy’s not doing very well at the moment and you’ve had a particular
focus on higher education. So what I wanted to ask you was, we’re
expecting the mid-year review of the Budget out as you mentioned next
month. What’s the appropriate fiscal policy for - or the appropriate
economic policy for that statement? Should the Government just let the
expected deterioration in the Budget go because things are a bit weak or
should they be trying to offset it? And on higher education, would you
be looking to unwind any changes that the Government does get through on
its higher education reforms?
SHORTEN: Let me deal with your second question first.
There’s a big hypothetical in that. If the Government gets their changes
through. At this stage there is no prospect of that. We believe the
best thing we can do for our universities is defeat these rotten changes
and we start again in the process. So we are not contemplating failure
on our defence of higher education. As Laurie generously said at the
start, you know, Labor’s certainly got its act together this year. We
have been fierce this year. I’m discovering as Opposition Leader it’s a
thin line between being too strong or too weak and some of you helped
me navigate that line imperfectly. But what I do get is that when
it comes to higher education this Government has got a snowflake’s
chance in that hot place where bad people go to get through the doubling
of the bond rate. If they want to get through a 20 per cent cut
to universities that will be the greatest act of vandalism we’ve seen a
political party do to higher-ed. Now I wonder if one of the barnacles
that the Government’s going to remove is higher-ed. I hope for the
sake of the hundreds of thousands of year 11 and year 12 kids who went
to open days this year that is one of the barnacles that
the barnacle-removing Government are going to take off the hull of their
higher education policies.
There was the first part of your question about how Treasurer Hockey
should handle it. Well the first thing is he should just go down
to Bunnings, not Bunnings, go to Kmart or Target, buy himself a white
tea towel, put it on a wooden broom and wave surrender on his silly
changes. The GP Tax, silly, silly, silly. Who on earth – I mean I
just assumed it was a new government and they just, either –
actually, they’re a new government who’s never really liked Medicare and
then what they’ve done is they’ve said well we’re going to somehow find
ways to discourage bulk billing. They should drop their changes
to Medicare full stop. Then while they’re at it, if they don’t do it
before their mini-budget, they should drop the higher education changes.
I think that need to revisit what they do about breaking their promise
to pensioners around Australia. I think they should tidy up the defence
pay deal while they’re there. This Government needs to work on policies
which, as I’ve outlined, they should also drop their paid parental
leave scheme for millionaires. I think there’s opportunities for them to
re-invigorate their auditing of multinational organisations and in
terms of tax, profit shifting. I think they need to reconsider the
tax break they’ve given to a few thousand of our wealthiest citizens who
have multi-million dollar superannuation accounts. I think they do need
to revisit Direct Action. One, Direct Action won’t achieve the targets
they say they will without the expenditure of billions of dollars more
money and two, there are far cheaper alternatives to achieve the same
environmental outcome. So I think in terms of general approach, we’ve
been willing to work in the past on means testing, the baby bonus means
testing, the PHI rebate. But what they need to understand is that if
they want to create value in the Australian economy they need to invest
in people. If they drop the Medicare, I still think they need to
question what they do with research, getting rid of 900 CSIRO scientists
is just shocking. So I think they need to – the reality is they
got into Government without doing much homework except a very narrow
right-wing ideology. And now a year and a quarter in, or 445 days in,
they’re adrift.
[inaudible]
SHORTEN: Sorry, I’m happy to talk to you again later.
JOURNALIST: Nick Pedley from ABC News. Mr Shorten you
described Mr Abbott’s opening speech to G20 leaders as
weird, excruciating and cringe worthy. You had a celebrated speech at
Adelaide ship yards which could be described as, well, celebrated. You
made pledges at that speech that the submarines and the ships would be
built there. Do you stand by those pledges even if the Government enters
into contracts before the next election?
SHORTEN: Well, I also described Tony Abbott’s speech as a
missed opportunity for Australia. I also said about Tony Abbott’s speech
that he didn’t see Obama going or Xi coming. I also said that his much
hyped up shirtfront with Putin turned into a kola photo opportunity. So I
do think that Tony Abbott missed the biggest peace time foreign policy
opportunity that we’re going to get in the foreseeable future. Yes and I
did cringe and I think that a lot of ordinary Australians cringed. When
he complained about the, you know, difficultly – he gave a negative
character reference about the Australian people. We invite the leaders
of the world here and he says ‘I’m have trouble convincing Australians’.
You’re not having trouble convincing Australians, they just don’t like
your ideas. So I don’t think he was in order at all to give a negative
reference about the Australian people.
Then we get to submarine corporation and talking about pledges. Let
me remind you of a pledge that you didn’t go to in your question. May 8th
2013, David Johnston the beleaguered, is he still the Defence Minister?
Anyway, the beleaguered Defence Minister, he promised the 12 submarines
would be built in South Australia. He promised it. He promised it. And
then yesterday he made that dreadful comment, that the ASC, you know,
you wouldn’t trust them to build a canoe. Well if he really believed
that, if we want to talk about authenticity of pledges, does that mean
that the Australian Government should now ask all the submarines built
in that time, because he’s tried to back track ineffectually after
who knows who in the Prime Minister’s office has said you better get up,
you know, and try and mop up the stain of what you said. Then he said,
‘I wasn’t talking about today, I was talking about previously,
historically.’ Well the Collins class submariners are our deadliest form
of defence. They are crewed by system of our most trained submariners
and representatives of the Roya Australian Navy. I’ve had the privilege
to be on them. And what I know is that if he thinks that these are
nothing better than canoes, because they were built in the time when he
was still describing as canoes. If he has any conviction about what he
said, because his subsequent statement has buried him as much as much as
his first statement, they should recall these submarines right now.
They should not put submariners in harm’s way if they think that the ASC
has built bad submarines.
They are providing $500 million a year to the ASC to upgrade our
military hardware. The ASC is in alliance building the AWD, three AWD
destroyers. If they really think that they’re that bad they should stop
right now. This is a Government addicted to politics. As for what I
said, and in the implication of what you said, I do think that they
should build the submarines in Australia. This idea that somehow
this Government’s going to do a contract for 40 years for X billion
dollars, this Government’s not down that path so the question you raise
about contracts is a moot point. It’s a hypothetical. This Government
with its C-1,000 future submarine program has for 15 months literally
been at sea. Their Land 400, the replacement of our armoured
vehicles, hopeless, just all over the place.
And you want to look at the Defence pay while we’re talking about
pledges? The Opposition, now Government, when they were in
Opposition, criticised Labor when there were three years of 3 per cent
pay rises. Stewart Robert, I don’t know, he’s the Assistant Minister,
I think. He attacked Labor when in Opposition said ‘shameful’ that Labor
would only give 3 per cent for Defence per year. This mob are giving
1.5 per cent, 1.5 per cent. Not even keeping up with real wages. And as
for the Defence Minister, didn’t he famously say in October the 22nd
that he didn’t attend the National Security Council because he didn’t
think he had anything to add? So when we talk about pledges, this
Government who loves wrapping themselves in the flag of patriotism,
they love a parade, they love a photo-op with the military and that’s
okay, that’s fair enough. But when it comes to the real things,
long-term decisions, not trashing the reputation of Australia’s
manufacturing, sorting out the matter of pay which they’ve already
Budgeted for, this is a most ineffectual government and a
most ineffectual Defence Minister.
JOURNALIST: Tim Lester, from the Seven Network Mr Shorten. You
say that Tony Abbott’s broken promise’s debase our democracy, you of
course also were in a Government that lost office partly on the back of
an infamous broken promise with regards to carbon. What has this taught
you, how has it informed you about the promises, of the way you will
make promises in the next two years, not whether you’ll keep them, but
your approach to what you’ll promise on and how many you’ll make. And is
it even possible for a leader like you these days to under promise and
over deliver?
SHORTEN: Yes, that is exactly the strategy, under promise and over deliver. Tim, that will be our strategy.
JOURNALIST: You can do that?
SHORTEN: Yes, I can answer questions quickly too.
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten, Andrew Probyn from the West Australian
and you can be more expansive in answering mine. I note that you’ve
suggested that the 2016 election will be a character contest, but I
imagine the economies going to be heart and soul of that election too.
You’ve suggested that there might be, or you’ve said there should be on
changes on superannuation, can you tell us what other changes aside for
millionaires? And on the mining tax you’ve said that you want to bring
that back, how would you do that given that iron ore in now under 70
bucks which is pretty close to breakeven?
SHORTEN: Well you raise and number of points and in reference
to your sort of first humorous reference about being expansive to yours
and Tim’s question, I’m not going to announce our election policies
today. But we understand that the process of forming our policies is
important. One of the things I’ve found instructive about the passing of
Gough Whitlam is not necessary even what happened to them in 74’ and
75’ but in Opposition the way that he worked on his polices and indeed
having a clear plan upon getting to government how they implement them.
So I do believe, in all seriousness, that you don’t have to make a
promise on everything and I’m sure that there’s a lot of political rule
books being rewritten after the debacle of Tony Abbott’s SBS interview
on the night before the election. But we do have to make sure that we
anchor our policies in listening to the Australian electorate. We do
have to make sure that we do it by expand the ranks of the Labor Party
to include groups and segments and voices that haven’t traditionally
been heard. My shadow ministers are working on policies as we speak;
we’ve got a process working in with our National Conference in July of
next year.
So in all seriousness, both Andrew and Tim, we are interested in the
best, broadest, anchored views, talking to people before we make the
promises, listening to the Australian community. That’s what will win
respect. I notice for instance that one of the big debates, to use a
live example and I’m quite impressed by, is the Victorian election. Tony
Abbott’s interested to give $1.5 billion to East-West Link without a
business case, whereas Daniel Andrews has said that through the
privatisation of the ports they’ll build 50 level crossings. Now these
50 level crossings, some of you have raised in Victoria, Melbourne’s a
flat city. It is a ripper of a policy, it’s costed, it’s paid for and it
goes towards improving productivity, the utility of both our roads and
public transport. Public transport in cities is a topic that the Federal
Government has an aversion to. So I think that’s a good example of what
to do.
In terms of mining tax, we’ve made it clear that there were mistakes
and, this perhaps even goes to a couple of the earlier questions
too, it’s another example, where the scale of our aspiration, of my
predecessor ‘s aspirations outstripped the level of detail and of course
we saw the resulting hue and cry about that. So in terms of a mining
tax, we would not do anything before we speak with states and mining
companies and furthermore when we look at these issues you’re quite
right, with commodity prices where they are it’s just not an issue on
the table. But thank you very much for your question.
ENDS
