ALAN JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
‘Morning, Alan.
ALAN JONES:
Where on earth have you been? You’ve been in what’s called remote communities – and I noticed you preached the mantra to Indigenous Australians: kids go to school, adults go to work, communities safe. Where did you live?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I was on Thursday Island for a couple of nights and then I was in Bamaga at the tip of Cape York for three nights and it was part of my commitment pre-election to spend a week a year as Prime Minister in remote Australia, focusing on the issues of remote Australia and particularly the issues of remote Indigenous Australia and while there are still a lot of problems, Alan, I think there are some very encouraging developments in remote Australia. First of all, thanks to explicit and direct instruction in the schools where this is being put into place, there is drive, focus, discipline in the classroom and this was wonderfully encouraging to sit in these classrooms and see these bright kids so obviously enthusiastic and so obviously learning.
ALAN JONES:
All Indigenous?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, one or two…
ALAN JONES:
Anglo Saxons?
PRIME MINISTER:
…Anglos, if you like, but these were 95 per cent indigenous schools.
ALAN JONES:
And you said that within five years you reckon we’ll have a large number of remote Indigenous schools with 90 per cent attendance and you said everyone will be either working for a wage or working for their social security?
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s exactly right – and if you’ve got enthusiastic, motivated teachers and if you’ve got enthusiastic, motivated kids, you will get at least 90 per cent attendance in these schools. And with the change in the teaching methodology away from child-centred teaching which has been a disastrous failure in remote schools and in many struggling communities…
ALAN JONES:
All schools, change that to all schools! Yes, go on.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, certainly where you’ve got kids that aren’t from highly motivated families, this just doesn’t seem to work. So, they’re much more structure classrooms, they’re much more ordered lesson plans and the kids that I saw in the Torres Strait and on the Cape are responding magnificently to this.
ALAN JONES:
You said if the Government gets two terms – your Government – there’ll be no ‘sit down money’ anywhere in Australia for people who are capable of work in Indigenous communities.
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s right. As well as visiting classrooms and sitting in different classes watching the lessons take place, I also participated in a rather impressive working bee at the Injinoo community hall on Cape York…
ALAN JONES:
Yes, I saw you up there.
PRIME MINISTER:
…and this is part of the new Community Development Programme which is replacing the previous work for the dole schemes which didn’t really function very well, and the essence of the Community Development Programme is that if you’re an able-bodied person in these welfare dependent communities under 50 it will be continuous, it will be compulsory and if you don’t turn up you won’t get your social security benefit. Now, I am convinced from working with Indigenous people last week in Cape York that they want to have a go – they really do want to have a go – and a lot of the people I was working with are very capable people, they’ve got a good sense of improvisation, if they haven’t got the regular tools they’ll improvise something and make it work and they want their communities to be lifted up. They want their communities to be places that people can be proud of and this will enable that to happen.
ALAN JONES:
You’ve been in the job a fair while – both as opposition leader and as Prime Minister – people don’t seem to really know who you are, do they? Here you are up there talking to Indigenous Australians and it is fair to say there are people out there and you’ve seen in on social media they “hate” Tony Abbott.
PRIME MINISTER:
They hated John Howard, too!
ALAN JONES:
It’s very hard for people to understand how that could be when they listen to your articulation of that sensitive approach towards Indigenous Australians. If I could just say – and we don’t ever talk about polls but your Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is well ahead of the polls, yet we have a Royal Commission in place, none of this is made up, it’s been established that there were kickbacks to Bill Shorten and his union from employers. A $40,000 personal gift for Bill Shorten, wages for a full-time worker on Mr Shorten’s 2007 campaign to get into parliament paid by somebody else, disguised by the employer, never declared to the Electoral Commission. Another donation to Mr Shorten – $14,000 to the Shorten campaign – never disclosed. He then appeared before the Royal Commission, two QCs, a former Federal Court Judge working for him – Finkelstein – junior barristers including Judge Finkelstein’s former associate, former associate to the High Court Judge, ex-Morris Blackburn industrial lawyer. God knows what in the commercial world this would be worth. Never disclosed as it should have been within 28 days of the benefit being received and then only this week that in the campaign against Anthony Albanese for the leadership he was funded via a slush fund which took the money from the Labor union cooperative retirement fund – one of Australia’s largest industry superannuation funds and of course now involved in a cage fight to discredit Dyson Heydon. In the world of sport that you once inhabited, are you letting the opponent off lightly?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don’t think that’s right, Alan. We set up this Royal Commission to get to the bottom of union corruption and to expose what we thought was a dodgy business model where unions rip off workers to help the union and ultimately to promote union officials into positions of power and influence in the Labor Party...
ALAN JONES:
But it appears the alternative prime minister’s been ripping off workers?
PRIME MINISTER:
…and this is the reality of the Labor union business model: the workers are exploited so that union officials can boost their political power through the Labor Party and through campaigning for the Labor Party at elections. And what we have seen regularly in recent times is the massive manpower, the massive resources of the union movement totally mobilised, not to get better wages and conditions for the workers, but to get Labor governments elected. That’s why the next election is going to be such an extraordinary fight. Even though Labor is promising to bring back the carbon tax, to bring back the mining tax, to slug people’s superannuation, to hit negative gearing, to tax bank deposits. It’s a massive taxing agenda from the Labor Party but the unions will try to obscure this.
ALAN JONES:
But they’re not – they’ve got plenty of dough you see. The average union due is about $900 a year. If you take about 1.8 million workers that multiplied by 900, they’ve got $1.6 billion a year to spend on this – untaxed!
PRIME MINISTER:
Yep, and they’ve probably got an army of maybe 10,000 organisers around the country that are deployed all the time as campaigning shock troops for the Labor Party and this is the modern reality, Alan. Now, I’ve been talking about this for years as Industrial Relations Minister then as Leader of the House of Representatives, as Opposition Leader and now as Prime Minister. I’ve been talking about this for years and this is the reality of modern politics and this is why it’s so important that people who want to have a go, who believe in freedom, who believe in traditional values rally to the support of politicians and political parties that uphold them.
ALAN JONES:
Just come to all this talk, I’ve just said earlier today that there’ll be all this talk about economic growth, but out there, the people who they’re talking to it just goes over their head, it’s all obscure, it’s arcane language. I made the point this morning – and I’d just like your view on this – I mean, the way I see this, we’ve got about 8.17 million very small businesses out there that could be increased by about 3.64 million to about 11.8 really small businesses, and some bigger businesses, 2.1 million. The really small ones are people like Ross who’s sitting here next to me and his little business has got a capitalisation of $100,000 – that’s his salary – $100,000. Now, they’re all listening to you, every day they hear what you have to say and yet they know that basically about 68 per cent of his $100,000 goes in taxes, rates, fees, levies, charges, special levies. In other words, the biggest cost in Ross’s life is government.
PRIME MINISTER:
And that’s why you need a government which wants to get spending down so that we can get taxes down and that’s why the fact that we’ve got $50 billion worth of savings over the forward estimates is so important. The difference between this Government and the former government is that we are desperate to get spending down, are desperate to get taxes down and we’ve proven that we’re fair dinkum about getting taxes down because we’ve scrapped the carbon tax, we’ve scrapped the mining tax, we’re not going to proceed with Labor’s bank deposit tax. We’ve delivered to people like Ross a small business tax cut and we’ve given him the instant asset write off, so if he buys something for his business worth under $20,000 he can write it off instantly against his tax.
Now, I’m not saying for a second, Alan, that things are perfect. There are too many burdens on people, but in the marrow on my bones, in the DNA of my Party, we want to be open for business, we want to encourage people who are having a go. We trust the people and Labor regrettably trusts the officials. Labor thinks that government knows best, we think that citizens know best, and this is a fundamental – absolutely fundamental – distinction between the outlook and the orientation of the two parties.
ALAN JONES:
Well let me just take another fundamental one which I know is sort of not negotiable territory so to speak. But just supposing you sold – which I think would be easy to sell – an increase in the GST from 10 to 15 cents, and I’ve said easy to sell because your wife doesn’t wear pearls, mine does, I’ll pay more tax. Your wife’s happy to drive an old broken-down Holden, my wife wants a brand new Mercedes, I pay more tax. Your wife wants to eat out every night, my wife’s happy to sort of cook at home, I’m going to pay more tax. So, the GST is a tax which you could legitimately avoid. If you went from 10 to 15 per cent and you cut back the exemptions, because welfare looks after that, you’d find yourself with another $40 billion. Couldn’t you sell to the electorate, ‘Now with that $40 billion I’ll knock back company tax, I’ll knock back personal tax’ because, really, of the 33 countries which have similar taxes, only three have a GST like Australia’s? I mean, the average GST is about 20 per cent. Couldn’t that story be sold knowing that you’re not increasing taxes by increasing the GST, you’re actually going to use that to reduce it for everybody and then Ross goes out and he can buy a carpet, get new curtains, buy a washing machine, and so on?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, that’s I think a very powerful point that you make, but it’s got to be done – if it’s to be done – in the context of an overall lower tax burden. That’s the point. Now, this is something that we’re looking at as part of the tax reform white paper and we’ll have more to say about this in the months ahead but fundamentally, Alan, the overall burden of tax must come down. Now, I agree with you that there is an efficiency argument for taxing earning less and taxing spending more…
ALAN JONES:
Correct, correct. Good on you.
PRIME MINISTER:
…I accept that there is a strong argument…
ALAN JONES:
Good on you.
PRIME MINISTER:
…but it’s got to be in the context of overall lower taxes and the problem with a lot of the people who are saying ‘Just whack up the GST’ is that they want the overall burden of tax to go up, they want government spending to go up.
ALAN JONES:
Yeah, keep spending as it is and just increase revenue. Well that’s nonsense.
PRIME MINISTER:
Exactly, and that’s just wrong – just wrong.
ALAN JONES:
Good on you. Ideologically brilliant. Now, just a quick one before you go, I had Julie Bishop on the programme yesterday. She made the point – and I’m just interested in your views – there is, is there not, a powerful case for the world helping to prevent Islamic State committing atrocities? You do have a request from Washington, don’t you, to extend our air campaign beyond Iraq into eastern Syria? You’ve got RAAF super hornets there participating in the coalition air campaign. When will you be making a decision as to how you respond to President Obama’s request?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, the Defence Minister has been out of the country for the last 10 days or so having important talks with our partners and allies and I didn’t want this decision to be made in his absence. As soon as he’s back next week we will be making this decision. I don’t think there’s any great secret that this is a Government which is utterly committed to the campaign against the Daesh death cult. This is unspeakable evil. As we talk in peaceful, decent, civilised Australia, there are monstrous atrocities taking place in parts of the Middle East because this is medieval barbarity.
ALAN JONES:
Your enemies say, ‘Oh there’s Abbott, he’s just introducing this to sort of frighten people into the Canning by-election.’ What do you say to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it’s nonsense. Turn on your televisions, look at what’s happening. I mean, the latest atrocity apparently was four young men being strung up and burnt alive. I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it. These people boast about their evil. This is the extraordinary thing: they act in the way that medieval barbarians acted – only they broadcast it to the world with an effrontery which is hard to credit and it just adds a further dimension to this evil.
ALAN JONES:
We’ve got to go. Let’s talk again soon. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks so much, Alan.
[ends]