TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC 730
WEDNESDAY, 25 MARCH 2015
VIRGINIA TRIOLI: I’m joined now by the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten. Mr Shorten, welcome to the 7.30 Report.
BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Good evening, Virginia.
TRIOLI: Well, today you announced a policy on
building submarines in Australia that, if accepted, would’ve cost the
budget billions more than if the subs were built overseas. Given the
state of the budget deficit, how was that ever going to be paid for?
SHORTEN: Virginia, I have to just correct the
proposition that building submarines in Australia in the long term is
much more expensive than building them overseas. And remember, before
the last election, both parties, both Liberal and Labor, said we’d build
these submarines in Australia. What we announced today is that we’ve
offered the government a way through the mess they’ve found themselves
in, in the last 18 months with their broken promises and we’ve said
straight up: let’s build, maintain and sustain the submarines in
Australia. Let’s have a transparent bidding process which would see the
four best submarine building nations in the world for our needs, Japan,
Germany, Sweden and France, bid. And what we said to the Government is,
let’s do this together, this can be done in a relatively short period of
time and both the Government and ourselves recognise that this is the
most significant procurement decision which will be made in a generation
for our national security and our advanced manufacturing.
TRIOLI: But all the best analysis seems to suggest
that around about $25 billion to get these subs done, if they were done
overseas, between $50 to $80 billion here in Australia and further, Mark
Binskin says, the Chief of the Defence Force, that where you actually
get your return on your investment if you like, and your investment in
people here in Australia, is maintaining them here over the 30-year life
cycle. That’s surely enough, that’s actually the better spend of the
money, isn’t it, when you have a budget deficit the way that it is?
SHORTEN: Well, again, just to give you a different
set of numbers than the ones you were quoting, we think there’s been a
lot of myth-making about the cost of building submarines in Australia.
Two of the nations who are interested in building our submarines have
indicated they could do it for about $20 billion in Australia. Now, at
one level, a very human level for viewers listening to this, they might
think, these numbers are so big. This is about 12 submarines over a 20
to 30-year life cycle, building the submarines. We think it can be done
in Australia and the other thing is, some of the best submarine experts
in Australia have said that it’s in our national security interests to
build them here. They’ve also said it’s important for our advanced
manufacturing and thousands of jobs, and remember, before the last
election, Tony Abbott’s team said you could vote Liberal and we’ll build
them in Australia, and we said the same thing. What we’ve done today
and one of our key policy announcements is we’ve said that we stand for
building, maintaining and sustaining these submarines in Australia and I
don’t accept the cost blow-out argument which hasn’t been proven by
other people.
TRIOLI: Well the costs are definitely and the
figures are the ones that have been referred to again and again as it
being more in Australia. To move on quickly from this, because we have a
lot to get to today, you can guarantee that if they were built in
Australia, they would come in at the same price as what was quoted
overseas?
SHORTEN: I believe that we are capable in this country of providing, we’ve put three tests, the short answer is yes.
TRIOLI: Let’s just go to that specific question, the
cost. The cost is the issue here and let’s just talk about that. It’d
be the same, would it? It’d be just as cheap?
SHORTEN: We believe based on the information that’s
been put forward in the public domain by other nations who build
submarines that we can build these submarines for a very reasonable cost
in Australia, we don’t buy the myth and the propaganda job which has
been done on the Australian submarine building proposition by those who
might want to rush a deal through for other reasons other than the ones
we’ve stated.
TRIOLI: Bill Shorten, let’s talk a little bit
tonight about management and about leadership. There’s been a lot of
very fine words spoken recently about leadership, particularly with the
deaths of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. You said last November that
2015 would be defined by the power of Labor’s ideas. It’s almost April.
We’re entering a new budget cycle. Where are those ideas?
SHORTEN: Well, we’ve already started to articulate
our ideas. Three or four weeks ago, Labor put forward a comprehensive
costed policy for instance, to crack down on multinationals using legal
loopholes, not to pay their fair share of tax in Australia. This is a
down-payment on our approach. We think that people should pay their fair
share of taxation. We also –
TRIOLI: I just want to move you on again because our
time really is tight this evening. I don’t think anyone’s going to
argue with the multinational one, but the idea of leadership, the big
ideas –
SHORTEN: Well, the Federal Government, sorry, the Liberal Party are.
TRIOLI: The idea of the leadership that you were
discussing was taking big and tough ideas out to the electorate and
prosecuting those ideas. That one maybe not so much. Where are the
bigger ideas when it comes to dealing with an economy where the model is
just not working anymore?
SHORTEN: Well, we have been stating ideas. We’ve
made it clear that on a range of difficult issues from family violence
through to where we spend billions of dollars on our submarines, through
to multinational taxation, which is a big issue, which is something
which the Government hasn’t agreed with our initial proposition, we’re
putting those ideas. To go to the longer-term bigger picture, which
you’re asking for, the Labor Party that I lead has made it clear where
we stand on a range of key policy issues. We’ve made it clear, for
instance, that we support the constitutional recognition of our first
Australians. We’ve made it clear that we support becoming a republic.
We’ve made it clear that when it comes to standing up to outlaw hate
speech, we didn’t support any watering-down of 18C. We’ve also got a
view that to have a growing economy which is fundamental to our future,
we’ve got to make sure that we don’t leave people behind. So when we
talk about key issues like science and innovation, jobs, let’s look at
the Renewable Energy Target. We’ve been standing firm to stop the Abbott
Government, the Liberal National Government in Canberra from trashing
renewable energy. These are big issues. On superannuation, the
Government loves to talk about the crisis of growing old and the aged
pension. Yet we’re the only mainstream political party who says that we
shouldn’t freeze superannuation increases, that we should in fact,
rather than cut pension increases, we should encourage Australians to
save for themselves for the future. These are big ideas. These are big
issues and we’re fighting hard.
TRIOLI: Bill Shorten, the issue of tax revenue is
continuing to decline in this country though is the biggest one that
faces any government. This one or you as an incoming one if you were
lucky enough. What exactly is the fix for that?
SHORTEN: I don’t quite accept that the budget proposition that you’re saying is quite the crisis which the Government –
TRIOLI: I didn’t use the word crisis, Bill Shorten.
SHORTEN: No, I certainly did. What’s happened is
we’ve had Tony Abbott since the last Budget justify the unfairness of
the last Budget by saying that there was a crisis. We don’t accept that.
The challenge for Australia’s economic growth, the challenge for the
issues that you raise about taxation revenue, has to be supporting and
encouraging growth, and has to be doing so through encouraging small
business, through making sure that we have productive infrastructure,
through making sure that our health care system is working at the
primary care level, which is efficient for people being able to go to
work. It’s about productivity and growth. It’s not about this government
sort of flip-flopping about how hard they want to go to cut the incomes
of the less well-off.
TRIOLI: It’s interesting to reflect on this idea of
vision and leadership. I want to quote something to you that you said at
the time of Gough Whitlam’s death. You said “it’s always time for
courage in leadership and to create and seize opportunity.” Given that,
why have you been take making yourself such a small target of late?
SHORTEN: I don’t accept that we have and I don’t
accept that I have. When you’re in Opposition, people aren’t always
rushing to your every view but you want to look at some of tough issues
we’ve seen in the last 12 months, I touched upon them very briefly
before. We’re not a small target when it comes to the recognition of
first Australians in our constitution. I have stood up at the Australian
Christian Lobby and supported marriage equality. On January 25th, the
day before Australia Day, which Tony Abbott then famously took off
kilter with his knighthood of Sir Phillip, I said it’s about time we
have a debate about the Republic. None of these are easy issues. When we
talk about courage, we’ve stood up alongside migrant groups and said
that we shouldn’t be watering down 18C. When it came to metadata and
national security which we think is very important, Labor put a peg in
the ground and said we’ve got to have the ability of journalists to be
able to protect their sources.
TRIOLI: Bill Shorten, on metadata, it’s clearly an
issue where to quote the crossbenchers today you have vacated the field
because there may be protection there for journalists but what about
protection for ordinary citizens? This is where there’s been a complete
about-face that one might be enormously critical of?
SHORTEN: That’s not a fair description of what’s happened since last October.
TRIOLI: It’s certainly the way the crossbenchers see and they’re presenting themselves as the real opposition on this one?
SHORTEN: Far be it from me to interfere with the crossbenchers promoting themselves –
TRIOLI: They may be the people you have to deal with if you’re lucky enough to secure government?
SHORTEN: We deal with them reasonably well. I think
our record compares favourability compared to the Government’s, doesn’t
it? But going to the heart of the matter which you’re saying, what’s
Labor’s role in terms of protecting individual liberties? Labor is
gravely conscious that we have to balance national security and also the
personal liberties of Australians. It is Labor who’s made sure that the
Commonwealth Ombudsman has the ability to investigate breaches of
metadata requests if they were to occur in a way which hasn’t been able
to be done before. Which goes to the heart of what you’ve said and also
whilst I know that you personally are very committed to press freedom, I
would just remind viewers that but for Labor standing up, the
Government would’ve got through its changes without any of the scrutiny
that we’ve put forward. We’ve changed three sets of national security
laws, Mark Dreyfus, Jason Clare and my colleagues have been excellent on
this. I believe that the laws we’ve got strike a better balance than
they would’ve if we hadn’t stood up.
TRIOLI: We do have very short time available
through, but I did just want to ask you – this Government has had so
many troubles that an effective Opposition Leader surely could’ve scored
very big political hits on him by now. It was clear that Tony Abbott
certainly gave Julia Gillard a whole lot of grief. Why haven’t you been
able to?
SHORTEN: I don’t think Tony Abbott’s going that
well, actually, Virginia. I think if we talk to the people in the
street, people are unhappy with his broken promises. I think it is not
simply the case that Labor said no at the last Budget. It’s because
we’ve won the argument in the community. And we are determined when
Parliament rises this week to prosecute the case that pension indexation
should not be cut in the manner in which the Liberal National
Government is doing in Canberra. It was Labor who said no to the GP Tax,
it was in my Budget reply speech. We’ve had a long fight but eventually
we’ve won that argument. Labor has defeated on more than one occasion
Christopher Pyne’s ideas about deregulating higher education and
creating $100,000 degrees. Labor has been, I believe, quite strong and
indeed, eminent journalist Paul Kelly has even criticised us for being
the fiercest opposition since 1975. The real issue though isn’t how
popular Tony Abbott is or whether or not people are happy with a
particular statement or media interview that the Opposition do. The real
issue is the future of this country.
TRIOLI: And also the issue about whether they look
at you and they see a viable alternative. Are you starting to fear that
maybe you’ve played this all wrong?
SHORTEN: Virginia, for me it’s not about me or even
Tony Abbott. It’s about what does this country look like in the next 10,
20 years? Today we announced we want to make an intergenerational
decision on our major national security deterrent. We’ve said to the
Abbott Government, build it here, maintain it here, sustain it here and
do transparently. Yesterday, Jenny Macklin and I said we will fight
against these pension cuts the Government is proposing. We’ve stood at
the political barricades so to speak, in Parliament and stopped
Christopher Pyne’s ruthless deregulation of higher education which would
see cuts. Labor will as we approach the election, we’ll outline our
ideas, I have done a bit of that tonight, but we’ll also do it with
discipline of listening to people. I’m not like Tony Abbott; I don’t
have a thought bubble then turn it into policy then if there is a vote
for a spill on leadership, I might go a different way. I’m not capable,
in the time which Tony Abbott’s done of dreaming up Knighthoods and
Dames, the Labor Party I lead is out there listening and talking it to
people and we’ll do it well and we’ll talk to the experts and we’ll talk
to the people in the street.
TRIOLI: We’ll leave it there, thanks so much.
SHORTEN: Thanks, Virginia.
