PRESENTER:
Good Morning Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good Morning.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, welcome to 891 Breakfast - I think the people of Adelaide are jubilant but nervous. When will this deal be signed irreversibly?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we expect to sign the design agreement, the partnership with France, with the French company, before the end of the year. Work will start on that immediately, obviously there will be an election in a few months, on July the 2nd, and so, I don’t expect it will be done before then, but it will be done in the course of this year. We will be moving as quickly as we can, I can assure you.
PRESENTER:
So to date there is no ink on any paper?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, there’s a lot of ink on a lot of paper.
PRESENTER:
Yeah but there is no contract, there’s no..
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no of course, we have not yet signed an agreement with the French and that’s why we said yesterday the selection of France as our design partner for the construction of these 12 submarines in Adelaide, with Australian jobs and Australian steel, that will be commercially negotiated and settled in the course of the year.
PRESENTER:
Can you understand the nervousness in South Australia then?
PRIME MINISTER:
I can understand the really great excitement and optimism in South Australia this is a really momentous…
PRESENTER:
That wasn’t the question. I said people were jubilant and nervous Prime Minister, because we have been down this road before with promises from your Party and your Government.
PRIME MINISTER:
Let me just make it very clear, we are committed, I am committed, the Government is committed to building 12 submarines, our future submarines, our future fleet, in Adelaide, this is a project, a commitment that will be continuous. These submarines will be being built and deployed and maintained right through and past the middle of this century.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, were the subs raised during discussions which led to you challenging Tony Abbott for the Prime Ministership?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I’m not sure. The submarines have been a topic of conversation for a- a big topic of conversation nationally.
PRESENTER:
I’ll be more specific then, I’ll be more specific. Did South Australian MP’s, Liberal MP’s come to you and say ‘we will support you but we want you to change the policy on the subs and commit to building all 12 in South Australia’?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well my, the answer to that is no. But my very strong commitment has always been to build up Australia’s defence industry. I have always thought, I’ve said this for many years, that we need to have a stronger commitment to Australian technology and Australian investment technology, and that’s what our whole innovation science agenda is about.
PRESENTER:
So Pyne and Birmingham didn’t come to you and say ‘if you want us to support you, and we will, you have to commit to the subs, you have to reverse Tony Abbott’s direction?’
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, look I honestly think you are trying to turn a great opportunity, with great respect guys, a really great opportunity for Adelaide and South Australia into a debate about politics. This is about the jobs of the future; this is about the jobs of your children and your grandchildren.
PRESENTER:
Isn’t that why, with respect Prime Minister, isn’t that why it is relevant to ask you, when you are dealing with the top job in the country, and the most expensive defence contract ever awarded, it’s worth asking you what was put to you when the challenge was being discussed.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, all I can say to you is that I am not going to go in to the ins and outs of the change of leadership; I am focused on the future.
Let me give you something really positive that I think your listeners will be interested in hearing. One of my colleagues was talking to a friend in Adelaide yesterday, who has got a son, a little boy, who is really great at mathematics and science, he is a bit of a whiz kid. And his dad has always thought, well you know, he will have to leave here. He won’t be able to get a great job in Adelaide because we just don’t have enough businesses or industry’s in that area, and his dad said to my friend, ‘you know, we are going to have so many jobs in South Australia for engineers, for designers for the smartest businessmen, specialists, we are going to be building the most sophisticated machines, most sophisticated vessels in the world, the jobs that will be available, in South Australia will be extraordinary’. And so that dad, that South Australian dad, he’s thrilled that his little boy when he grows up will be able to get a great job and work in Adelaide, near his parents, isn’t that a wonderful thing?
PRESENTER:
It is - it would be a lovely thing. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, can I share a story with you? A conversation with one of your colleagues who said, ‘if this doesn’t work what more does the state want’ - if by ‘if this doesn’t work’ I think this person was talking about the Liberal party’s electoral fortunes.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I, look I, that’s something you put to me. I’m not sure what the answer is, all I’m saying to you is that everything that I’ve stood for, everything that I stand for today, is consistent with ensuring that we have a strong defence industry for Australia. You see, we secure our future not simply by having the planes and the tanks and the ships and the submarines, and all of the physical capabilities for our defence forces. We secure ourselves by ensuring that we have the defence industry that has got continuous commitment where people will be working for generations where the expertise builds up, and Adelaide becomes a real centre of naval architecture. A centre where people know that there is a, building up a bigger and bigger pool of expertise in the years ahead. This is an enormous commitment but it is above all a vote of confidence that we are making in ourselves. We’ve got the capacity to have a great defence industry to support a great defence force.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, and is that why you have decided not to have a hybrid build with the, in effect the fast tracking on what is slow project at the best of times with these huge mammoth builds. But you have decided on a local build which will mean it will be a slower build, more expensive and the jobs may flow more slowly than they would if the first, perhaps the first one and a half subs were built in France.
PRIME MINISTER:
These, everything you have just put to me there is very questionable. The, can I say to you the, the three; let’s just talk about the French. The difference between the cost of building all of the submarines in France and all of the submarines in Australia- there is a difference, but it is a very manageable one. It is, it’s not the huge figure that people have speculated about. Secondly, it is critically important that with a sovereign defence capability we have the skills in Australia to build it and to maintain it- to sustain it. It is important that it is built in Australia, it is important as a matter of national security.
PRESENTER:
So was it important to also send a signal so there would be no doubt that this would be a local build?
PRIME MINISTER:
We have made our decision based on our commitment to Australian industry, Australia’s national security and supporting the Australian jobs, the Australian technology that will go into this. This will be, yes we are doing this partnership with France and we are starting off with an existing submarine- a French barracuda submarine, their newest submarine which will be the basis for this design, but it will become a French-Australian partnership, and this is…
PRESENTER:
It’s a fair question to ask I think.
PRIME MINISTER:
A submarine is not like an iPhone that you can just buy from overseas and if it doesn’t work you can just buy a new one. This is the most complex, sophisticated technologically advance piece of machinery or vessel that would be built, at the time.
PRESENTER:
You never lost all of your contacts when you downloaded iOS 9.8 then?
PRIME MINISTER:
You should back them up into the cloud.
PRESENTER:
We have now. Prime Minister, do you regard it as passing strains that your defence minister Marise Payne who is a NSW Trade Minister, just a week before yesterday’s announcement of the successful French bid was seeking a meeting with DCNS in France? And you accept her explanation she had nothing to do with it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, have you asked her about it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Can I just say to you, the security, the professionalism of this whole process has been of the highest standard, I’m not going to sort of entertain this, sort of sipping at Marise Payne.
PRESENTER:
I’m just asking if you’ve asked her about it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Just – let me put this to you. Marise Payne has as Defence Minister, as Australia’s first woman Defence Minister, has delivered the Defence White Paper, the first fully-costed assessment of Australia’s defence requirements and how we’re going to provide them. How we’re going to invest. How we’re going to deliver an innovative defence industry. She’s done that. Fully costed, first time since 2000. We have, we are in the process of commissioning 19 and up to 21 Pacific Patrol Boats. We have down-selected to three contenders for the Future Frigates and the Offshore Patrol Vessels. Offshore Patrol Vessels as you know will start construction in Adelaide in 2018 and the frigates in 2020. We have selected our partner after a rigorous process for the design of the future submarines. Now that is what Marise Payne has delivered, all of that, in her time as Defence Minister and she has done it professionally and rigorously.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, before you leave us – the Labor Party will announce today it’s going to have another go at an emissions trading scheme. Will you run an Abbott style scare campaign or would you entertains something like this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we don’t know precisely what they’re going to say. But let me give you a couple of pointers. Firstly as you know, we agreed with the rest of the global community on emissions reduction targets by 2030 and every country has made a commitment and is playing its part. Our commitment is very substantial it’s to reduce our emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on a per capita basis – and remember because we have a strong population growth – that actually amounts to more than 50 per cent cut in emissions per capita. So it is a very substantial cut. Labor is proposing nearly twice as much, 45 per cent. That is well above what we committed to at Paris and will put a very big burden on Australians.
PRESENTER:
But they’re suggesting it can be a fairly benign scheme and still achieve the targets.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well just let me finish. So firstly what they’re proposing is to double the burden on Australia relative to other countries. Secondly, what we do know is that when this, when a similar target was modelled on the basis of Labor’s previous scheme it would have required a very substantial increase in electricity prices. So the bottom line is this; what Labor is proposing is to considerably increase, nearly double the targets that we agreed to with other countries in Paris, which will put a much heavier burden on Australia than we’ve agreed to. It will result in much higher electricity prices, energy prices. Now you know Labor can choose to justify that but what we say very clearly is that our current policies are delivering the targets we’ve agreed to, the targets we’ve agreed to are reasonable, they are part of a global agreement and you know frankly, the key thing with climate change is to ensure that you get global action. So if one country decides to have – let’s say there is a change of government – and they double their particular cut in emissions, that’s not going to motivate others to do any more.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, thank you.
PRIME MINISTER:
I’ll just say - thanks very much - but the critical thing is that as we, as countries increase their emissions reductions targets, we do so collectively. In other words we agree and if we go from 26 to 28 to a higher figure in 2035 or 2040, we do so collectively so we’re all moving together and the burden is shared equitably between the various countries.
PRESENTER:
Prime Minister, thank you for your time you’ve been generous.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much.
Ends