NEIL MITCHELL: But first today, again, as part of the decision makers series, Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull good morning.
PRIME MINISTER: Good morning Neil. Great to be with you.
NEIL MITCHELL: Thank you for your time. Prime Minister, New South Wales Parliament has formally branded Donald Trump, “a revolting slug” and condemned “his misogynistic, hateful comments.” Is that a reasonable thing for the NSW Parliament to do?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’ll – look I’ll just say this, I have condemned his remarks, a number of them in fact. In fact I described them as loathsome and said that they deserve the universal condemnation, but I will limit myself to that, I’m not going to engage in the American election. I don’t think Australians would expect me to and I don’t think Americans would either.
NEIL MITCHELL: But my point is should the NSW Parliament take the same approach?
PRIME MINISTER: Well look, that’s a matter for them, Neil. It is – you know – the reality is that this is a critically important election for America and indeed for the world, and indeed for Australia. But it is being decided by Americans and we should respect their democratic process and let them get on with it, just as we’d expect them not to weigh into an election contest in Australia.
NEIL MITCHELL: If he were to win though, I wonder how that sets the style for relations between Australia and the United States if you’ve got the new President having been described as a ‘slug’ by one of our Parliaments - a ‘revolting slug’.
PRIME MINISTER: Well it’s the Upper House of the NSW Parliament. I don’t think, august chamber though it is, that their judgement will feature prominently in the considerations of the American people.
NEIL MITCHELL: One of your own senior Ministers, Josh Frydenberg has repeated his description of Donald Trump today as a dropkick. What about that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I’m – look it’s for others to run these commentaries, I am the Prime Minister of Australia -
NEIL MITCHELL: Yeah but he is one of your senior ministers, will you tell him to pull his head in?
PRIME MINISTER: He is – Neil my focus is on government, my focus is on delivering for the people of Australia and that’s what we’ve been doing this week. As you know, we got our CFA legislation -
NEIL MITCHELL: Can we get to that in a moment, but really I mean you’ve got a senior minister doing what you’re saying you won’t do. Do you carpet him or not?
PRIME MINISTER: Neil, I’m not going to engage in a – I know you would like – Neil you and I know that Donald Trump’s remarks, a number of them, have been met with condemnation, they have appalled people, they have disgusted people. They have been rightly described as loathsome - they have been condemned. Now that’s the fact, having said that, having said all of that, as your Prime Minister, it’s my job to lead this nation and do so in our engagement with other countries in a manner that respects their own internal democratic processes. So I am not going to go any further into engaging in the US elections.
NEIL MITCHELL: But I’m not asking you to, I’m asking you about one of your frontbenchers. Will you carpet him for describing Donald Trump as a dropkick? And I doubt whether he knows what that means.
PRIME MINISTER: Well Neil -
NEIL MITCHELL: It’s quite obscene.
PRIME MINISTER: Neil, I’m not going to run a commentary on my colleagues in that regard.
NEIL MITCHELL: What about Tony Abbott, he says Donald Trump’s policies are mostly reasonable? You’ve got your backbench and one of your ministers buying in to it. And I understand why you don’t entirely; my question is whether you will ask your party to shut-up?
PRIME MINISTER: Neil it is a vibrant democracy both here and in the United States, and I’m sure Mr Abbott has carefully read all of Donald Trump’s policies before he made that comment, but I’m not going to buy into the policy debate in the United States.
I have to say, however, that I have very strong views and the Australian Government has very strong views that the United States should ratify the Transpacific Partnership, that the Congress should ratify that. You would have seen yesterday the Prime Minister of Singapore and I, calling on the American Congress to do that. It is manifestly in our national interest that the United States Congress do that, and we believe, Prime Minister Lee and I agree, that it is manifestly in the interest of stability in our region, upon which all of our prosperity and economic growth depends.
NEIL MITCHELL: Ok, I’d suggest Mr Frydenberg look up what dropkick means. That’s the only thing I’d suggest to him.
Onto something else, the head of the NAB, I’ll have on the programme later and we’ll ask him this as well, but would you support the proposition that banks be legally required, legally required to offer home loans linked to the RBA rate, the so called tracker mortgages?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I know that that’s been canvassed in the banking hearings, in the Economics Committee.
NEIL MITCHELL: And the ASIC Chair has said he supports it.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s a question – it’s really a question that I think needs further discussion, I mean the banks have made the point that a loan of that kind would be – this is what I recalled from the hearing – that the loan of that kind, the rate isn’t likely to be competitive or attractive to householders. But I think this is a – this issue of whether a product like that should be available or would be available is something that’s being debated but certainly the Government doesn’t have a – hasn’t concluded a policy on that, nor is it likely that we would do so in the course of a radio interview.
I run a very considered Cabinet Government and we take these issues very seriously and we will consider them seriously.
NEIL MITCHELL: Well we’ve got the head of ASIC saying that the system is not fair and that should be considered, would it be fair to say it would be examined?
PRIME MINISTER: Well any recommendations that come from the House Economics Committee will be very carefully examined. So this is appears to be one of the matters that’s being considered, that committee which is being very ably chaired by David Coleman and has of course, Melbourne’s own Julia Banks on the Committee who did an outstanding job on it, the Member for Chisholm. They will present a report as committees do, and the Government will take on board whatever recommendations they make.
NEIL MITCHELL: Do you agree, it does look like a fairly fair system if you’ve got a home loan in lockstep with the RBA rate? I can’t see a problem with it, whether it’s enforced legally or not is another matter.
PRIME MINISTER: A bank can link a home loan rate to; theoretically it can link it to anything it likes, but it’s got to work out what that is going to mean in terms of pricing, what that means in terms of competitiveness of course. The Banks have made the point that their funding costs are not the RBA cash rate, that is a benchmark. So you know, their funding comes from a variety of sources, at a variety of costs. And so – this is something that I think you should unpick with Andrew Thorburn when you have him in the studio.
NEIL MITCHELL: Well I’ll ask him a question from you – what is it?
PRIME MINISTER: Sorry what is the -
NEIL MITCHELL: I can ask him a question from you. I’ll say to Mr Thorburn, the Prime Minister needs an answer to this; what do I ask him?
PRIME MINISTER: The question that I think would be useful for him to answer is to actually explain carefully and cogently and in simple terms, straight forward terms, what goes in to the cost of his providing a mortgage. You know, what does it cost, he would say, well I have to borrow money from all these sources and this much costs me that and this much costs me that, and then he’s got to talk about the equity he has to hold and talk about the cost of equity.
So I think the banks, despite the fact that they have vast armies of PR people and media advisors, probably more than the government, they have not done a very good job, in fact they by and large have done a woeful job in explaining their business and this is one of the reasons why I’ve arranged for these regular Economics Committee hearings, because I think the banks need to be more accountable and Chief Executives need to get out there and actually explain their business. In the same way that I explain what the government does, they’ve got to explain what they do. And can I just leave you with a compliment, it’s great that you’ve got him on the programme, and the senior executives of the bank should be regularly doing programmes like yours. They’ve got a big problem, they’ve got a big public perception problem, they’ve got a big issue about transparency and accountability and they should be more upfront more regularly.
NEIL MITCHELL: Okay, well we’ll put that to him later.
On to other issues, do you have full confidence in your Minister, Kelly O’Dwyer.
PRIME MINISTER: I do indeed. I have full confidence in Kelly. She is very, very capable. She has done – look at the great job she’s done on superannuation. Now I know we’ve discussed that and we both know it’s a hugely complex area.
NEIL MITCHELL: She made an error though and that caused a mess. And everybody makes errors but she didn’t handle it well then and didn’t even know an answer to her own legislation. I mean how do you maintain confidence after that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I do maintain confidence in her but you know, as one of the Saints said, to err is human and so we all make mistakes.
NEIL MITCHELL: Well she hasn’t apologised yet.
PRIME MINISTER: Well she’s, Neil she is – I think actually she did acknowledge that she’d slipped up.
NEIL MITCHELL: And what about Michael Keenan, that was his second strike, I mean he was part of the first muck up when he caught a plane and sneaked out of Parliament and caught a plane. Has he got full confidence as well?
PRIME MINISTER: I have full confidence in all of my ministers. The moment I cease to have full confidence in a minister of course they cease to be a minister.
NEIL MITCHELL: Anybody shaky?
There’s a perception of chaos around the government though isn’t there? Parliamentary chaos.
PRIME MINISTER: No there’s not Neil, seriously.
NEIL MITCHELL: Two bad stuff ups.
PRIME MINISTER: Seriously, Neil. Let’s get real. The Labor Party had a success because, you know, our guys weren’t paying attention and they got an amendment up which was then corrected. Okay, that is one of the very few pleasures of opposition and I don’t begrudge Bill Shorten from savouring it. But, what did we do; we got income tax cuts for half a million middle income Australians through the Parliament, we secured the legislation to protect 60,000 Country Fire Authority volunteers in Victoria from a takeover by a militant trade union.
NEIL MITCHELL: How did you go on the plebiscite for marriage equality?
PRIME MINISTER: Well just hang on, hang on, hang on Neil. And we had a visit from the Singaporean Prime Minister, which we signed off on an expansion of our free trade agreement that opens up substantial new opportunities for Australian exporters, particularly services exporters in to Singapore. Now that’s just, you know, that’s just this week.
NEIL MITCHELL: When are we going to sort out politicians entitlements, I mean this has been going on for so long the gold card, particularly the ex-pollies, the retired pollies. When are we going to tighten all of that up, it’s been going on for so long?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes it is – as you know, there was a High Court decision about that. Well Scott Ryan, again, like yourself a great Victorian, the Special Minister of State, he is handling that. There’s been quite a lot of work done on it. I think again, entitlements - firstly we should get rid of that word entitlement.
I mean we are not entitled to anything, what we are talking about in terms of MPs and Senators is basically business expenses, it’s office expenses, travel expenses. There has been far too much, I think ambiguity, which raises problems and so what we are doing is we are in the process of clarifying that and Scott is working on a reform of that. And the idea is it’s just got to be, it’s got to look more like the way a business treats its expenses, travel expenses etc. for its executives.
NEIL MITCHELL: Well that will certainly affect post retirement wouldn’t it? I don’t think when I leave here 3AW will be flying me around the country. Will you be fixing that as well?
PRIME MINISTER: I would doubt that. Well of course the issue there is retrospectivity because people - the complaint that former members make is that they say well you know they were there and this is a part of the deal. I think what used to happen Neil, to be honest with you, is that in years past, politicians were reluctant - many years past - were reluctant to increase their salaries and so compensated themselves by having more generous, if you like, fringe benefits and perks – gold cards and that sort of thing.
NEIL MITCHELL: Superannuation…
PRIME MINISTER: It is much better, it is much, much better to have a completely transparent system, where, as is the case now, where your pay is set by an independent remuneration tribunal and everything is completely above board.
NEIL MITCHELL: Just finally, the death of the King of Thailand, does that jeopardise stability in the region?
PRIME MINISTER: I would say this Neil, we are deeply saddened by the passing of His Majesty and we offer our condolences to the Thai Royal Family and the people of Thailand.
As you know, the King reigned from 1946, so he was the world’s longest serving head of state. He is a major figure in modern Asian history, under his reign, Thailand’s population grew from just under 20 million to over 67 million and of course the strides in economic and social development have been enormous. The Thai community in Australia, which is close to 50,000, will particularly feel the loss of His Majesty. He is a very, very revered figure and as I said, our condolences go out to the Thai Royal Family and the people of Thailand.
NEIL MITCHELL: If I may finally on the plebiscite, have you really given up? Is there any hope of this being sorted in the life of this parliament?
PRIME MINISTER: Neil the important thing to remember is that the Bill is still before the Parliament. It hasn’t actually yet passed the House of Representatives. The Labor Party who have said they oppose the Bill and won’t vote for it, have listed additional speakers on the Bill, so it wasn’t passed this week through the House but it will be passed through the House, I’m very confident of that. And we are yet to see how it will go in the Senate. I know the Labor Party has said they will vote against it, but there are crossbenchers, there are -
NEIL MITCHELL: So you haven’t given up hope that you can get it across?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely not. My commitment was to give every Australian a say in a plebiscite on this issue. So we have drafted a bill, it’s a fair process, we put it in to the House, it will get passed by the House and then it’s up to the Senate and we are calling on the Senators to support it.
NEIL MITCHELL: Thank you so much for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Great to be with you.