ALAN JONES:
The Prime Minister is currently in Broken Hill and he is on the line. Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
ALAN JONES:
Prime Minister, on behalf of farmers and the rural community everywhere, thank you for your interest. Where have you been and what did you see?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, I went to Bourke yesterday mid-morning and then I went to Longreach in the early afternoon and yesterday evening I came down here to Broken Hill. Look, I happened to arrive in Bourke just as they had one of their heaviest storms for about two years. I guess that was a bit of serendipity. The people of Bourke have been doing it tough. Basically, the flood ended in early 2012 and it has hardly rained since then and that comes on top of seven or eight years of drought in the last decade. So, they have been doing it tough. This is akin to a natural disaster for farmers – not like bad markets or a tough dollar. It’s akin to a natural disaster and that is why offering people help to adjust to a natural disaster is so different from offering business money just to go about their ordinary business.
ALAN JONES:
One hundred per cent. I said earlier this morning this is a tsunami without a United Nations to come to people’s rescue. I just wonder, given that you are determined to chart a new course and you have to on a million fronts, do we need to put the begging bowl away and establish a national disaster fund? So, that things like drought and flood and fire when they overtake us through no fault of the innocent victims there is a reservoir of money that could be managed by former prime ministers like Howard and Keating and co to alleviate the tragedy. Instead, we are always going around with the begging bowl.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that is a fair point Alan. The trouble with any fund that was established at the moment is that it would be a debt fund because we would have to borrow to fill it. I think that is the kind of thing that we could well consider once we got back into surplus. This is the kind of thing that was done in different contexts by the Howard Government in the days when we did have strong surpluses.
ALAN JONES:
Sorry to interrupt, if you were to announce an aid package today, which I presume you are intending to do, that would also be borrowed money.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that’s right and anything that the Commonwealth does at the moment is with borrowed money. We will have more to say on the subject of drought in a few days’ time because I want to finalise the package in the light of the discussions that I have been having over the last day or so. You are right Alan, it is borrowed money. Anything that the Commonwealth spends at the moment is just adding to our debt. This is why it is so important to get our economy more productive, it’s so important to get wasteful government spending down so that we can go back into a situation of strong surpluses and build up savings for the proverbial rainy day or the very dry day, as the case may be.
ALAN JONES:
See, it is beyond the capacity of some outfit like the O’Farrell Government, for example. They have declared there are 20 local government areas across the north of New South Wales, the Armidale region is one, where the O’Farrell Government is providing emergency support. They are talking about $20,000 for farmers to assist feed and water and stock transport and $30,000 for water infrastructure. I made the point and I have made it several times that I went to the Hunter Valley at the end of last year because up there, I mean there is less grass than there would be on a bitumen road. To send a thousand cattle to Victoria on agistment in B-Doubles would cost $70,000. To agist them is $6 per animal per week – that is $6,000 a week. So, the $20,000 doesn’t go anywhere near keeping these stock alive. If you sell them he loses his breeding stock. If you shoot them, which is what is happening now, then we lose our whole agricultural base. This is the challenge facing you, isn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
It is a big challenge and good on the O’Farrell Government and the Newman Government in Queensland for what they have done. Look, every little bit helps here, Alan. These people are doing it very tough, many of them have been doing it tough one way or another for quite a few years now but every little bit helps. I certainly didn’t hear anyone complaining about the O’Farrell Government assistance measures in Bourke or indeed about the Newman Government assistance measures in Queensland.
ALAN JONES:
No, all I’m saying is they are enormous amounts of money, aren’t they? If you just send a thousand cattle on agistment is $70,000 and $6,000 a week.
PRIME MINISTER:
Exactly right, but one of the things that always buoys country people are the acts of kindness and generosity that are shown repeatedly both in small things and big things. One of the things that has happened up in Bourke was that they had got a large convey of hay which had been organised by farmers in northern Victoria and sent up to them. In fact the Ridge’s property that I was on yesterday, they were hand feeing their cattle with hay that had come up as part of this convoy of good will from northern Victoria. So, there are all sorts of things happening out there and while much of it is dispiriting some of it is very invigorating and that kind of concern that Australians have for others is really uplifting.
ALAN JONES:
I know you are not a farmer and you don’t have that background but did the farmers tell you about the long paddock? And for the benefit of my listeners the long paddock is something well known to farmers. It is the travelling stock route where farmers just open the gates put their stock on the road. Prime Minister currently in New South Wales they say in terms of the cattle they can’t afford to feed, turning them out on the roads and the farmer goes with them. There are currently 69,000 cattle on the roads. I am just wondering if you have spoken to Bob Katter because as you know his electorate of Kennedy covers much of North Queensland. He is saying up to 5,000 to 10,000 cattle are dying daily in that part of Australia.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I haven’t spoken to Bob lately but it wouldn’t surprise me that there are lots of cattle on the road and it wouldn’t surprise me that there is a pretty high attrition rate. I was on a couple of roads yesterday which are obviously part of that long paddock system and look, thank God we have got it. These are all part of the range of things that have been done by our sensible forebears over the years to enable us to better cope with these sorts of things Alan. Good on them for having a go and this is the thing, the point that I kept trying to make to people yesterday is that farmers aren’t victims, farmers are fighters. Right now they are fighting for their farms, for their families, for their communities, for their way of life. My message to the farmers of Australia is that you are every bit as much a part of our future as you have been of the past. One day, not soon I hope, one day the minerals will be depleted but we will still have our good earth and that is what is going to sustain our prosperity in the decades and centuries ahead.
ALAN JONES:
Well, just remember one thing I will be going to [inaudible] after 7.30 and of course one of the problems here Prime Minister is that while the towns and the farmers are short of water, the mining companies get all of their water and as much as they want of it for nothing. There is something seriously wrong with those sorts of priorities. Just as the Prime Minister of Australia, what does the nation of Australia say when a property runs out of water? What do we say to families who can’t pay for fodder, can’t pay to keep their stock alive, can’t pay to truck in water, can’t pay the bank overdraft, and can’t pay for food on the table? We are our brothers’ keepers what does the nation say to those people?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the first thing we say is that there is a world of difference between people who are coping with difficult business conditions, which is something every business has to do from time to time, and people who have been hit with an unprecedented natural disaster, which is what a very severe drought is. If you are in a situation where you have got no money coming into the door because your crops have failed and your cattle are too weak to sell. You’ve got, you can’t move, you can’t borrow and you can’t sell and in a situation like that this is where people do need income support. This is one of the measures that I think people can expect will be well and truly ramped up under the package that we’ll be announcing in the next few days or a week or so.
ALAN JONES:
Ok, just a couple of things before you go and I know you are flat out there. Just on Qantas, and accepting the age of entitlement is over and I think everyone listening to this programme understands that and agrees with you and congratulates you for saying it. Clive Palmer says though that he won’t vote to end the foreign ownership restrictions on Qantas. Where do you go then?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the trouble with those restrictions is that they are causing Qantas to compete with one hand tied behind its back. That is the difficulty. Virgin has got very cashed up shareholders and it is competing very aggressively on domestic markets and it has every right to do so and customers are the beneficiaries. So, that is a good thing. The last thing we would want to do is to prevent Virgin from offering people better prices and better services. So, Virgin, they are able to compete because of their strong shareholders and Qantas alas is in a difficult position, a different position, and this is where the Parliament – not just Clive Palmer, the Labor Party as well – needs to understand that if they don’t unshackle Qantas they are going to cause our national carrier enormous difficulty.
ALAN JONES:
You correctly said that you don’t address debt and deficit with more debt and deficit. Now, the Business Council of Australia is saying that the renewable energy target is distorting the $11 billion national electricity market. How can we justify providing subsidies to solar energy and wind power with borrowed money when many of those companies are foreign companies, Thai companies for example?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that is a very fair point Alan, and that is why we are very close to announcing a review into this which will report in a matter of months and then the Government will have more to say because just as the carbon tax is massively boosting power prices, the renewable energy targets are also having an impact on prices. Not as great, but still not insignificant. What this Government wants to do is bear down on prices. Now, we have got to do it in ways which respect the decision that companies and individuals have made in good faith. We cannot do anything that would add to impressions of sovereign risk that the former Government created for our country. Nevertheless, we do need to do everything that is reasonably within our power, Alan, to bring power prices down.
ALAN JONES:
Yes, and don’t we say to foreign companies, if you want to involve yourself in solar power or wind power and set up a business don’t expect money from the government. They are currently getting billions of dollars.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, renewable energy makes a lot of sense.
ALAN JONES:
It’s not affordable.
PRIME MINISTER:
If it goes too far it becomes very, very costly. It is one thing to have solar hot water systems and what have you but it’s another thing to expect that we can deliver base load power with renewables. That is why all of these renewable systems need conventional backup.
ALAN JONES:
Silly to ask you about Badgerys Creek with one minute to go, but are you confident that the briefings you are getting on Badgerys Creek are giving you all the facts? When Max Moore-Wilton, whom you know well, has admitted quite clearly many times that the Sydney airport will be able to double the number of passengers it handles to about 74 million by 2033. You have got Badgerys Creek would need half a million litres of fuel a day – miles out of Sydney. How do you get it there? Do we have tankers on the road? Do we build a [inaudible] 45 kilometres away? Are you getting all of this information in the briefing notes that are coming to you?
PRIME MINISTER:
The Government hasn’t made a decision on this as yet. We will make a decision in the not too distant future. We do need more airport capacity in Sydney and you rightly say that Sydney itself can be part of that. The big problem with Sydney right now Alan, is not that they couldn’t land more planes and take off more planes – of course they could. The big problem in Sydney right now is the enormous bottleneck getting in and out of the airport. That is the big problem.
ALAN JONES:
Sixty-three per cent of the airport’s landing and take-off spots are only being used. There is still a capacity of 37 more. But look that’s for another day. I will let you go. Thanks for your time. We will talk again soon.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you so much, Alan.
[ends]