ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES AND MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS: Here in Hume at Bottles of Australia and it is great to have Anton and Rosemary who have welcomed us and given us a tour of their wonderful facility which exports from here in the nation’s Capital all around the world. It is great to have the Prime Minister here and of course the Minister for Energy, Josh Frydenberg, so without further ado I will hand over to the PM.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much Zed, and thanks to Anton and Rosemary and other business owners here in Canberra talking to us about the importance of energy costs and the way in which, in order to remain competitive, we've got to keep energy costs down.
Anton talked about electricity being around 9 per cent in the cost of this business. Datacentre owner 20 per cent. Another business around 10 per cent. One of the business owners was saying to us that if energy prices went up by the 20 per cent that is forecast here in the ACT they’ll have to lay off staff.
Higher energy costs means fewer jobs.
In order for Australian manufacturing and for Australian business to be competitive, we've got to have competitive costs of electricity and that is true whether you're making formwork, whether you are making bottles or whether you're making sausages like the butchers here - very good sausages too!
Energy is critical and that's what Josh Frydenberg and I are focused on.
The reality is the Labor Party's renewables target is completely and utterly unrealistic - $48 billion cost, they've got no plan to integrate, no plan for storage, no plan for transmission.
You see the train wreck that it produced in South Australia. That type of ideological approach to energy, the most expensive and the least reliable electricity.
Imagine what would happen to these businesses if that was the case? Imagine what would happen to the Datacentre if they had no electricity? Imagine what happens to butcher? Well, plenty of South Australian butchers have experienced that, a blackout and all the meat goes off because you lose your refrigeration – that is what happens with Labor's reckless ideological approach to energy.
We're getting on with the job of putting in place already - Josh has got in place measures which are going to slow the increase in electricity costs, but we are doing more. We will deliver a plan, a national plan that will insure energy is more affordable and more reliable and, of course, we meet our emissions reduction targets.
JOURNALIST: How much worse do the polls have to get before you're replaced as leader?
PRIME MINISTER: We're focused on energy costs and we’re focused jobs.
JOURNALIST: Why have the polls gone down? Mathias Cormann this morning suggested it was because the voters are sick of internal fighting. Would you agree with those comments?
PRIME MINISTER: A poll is a snapshot of opinion at one particular time. The election is two years away, at least two years away and what we have seen is, we saw an outburst on Thursday and it had its desired impact on the Newspoll. It was exactly as predicted and as calculated.
JOURNALIST: You’re suggesting that that is why Tony Abbott – you’re suggesting that is the reason Tony Abbott did this?
PRIME MINISTER: As I said, he knew exactly what he was doing and he did it. I'm not going to be distracted by that. It's a fact of life. That's what's happened.
I'm focused on the jobs of Australians that we are protecting by delivering the leadership.
Let me tell you what I did on the weekend, this is what I was doing on the weekend, I was meeting with the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, and we agreed to reduce the Indonesian tariffs on Australian sugar. So that creates more opportunities and more jobs for Australian cane growers, for the Australian sugar industry.
We agreed to increase the weight, increase the length of permits and increase the age for Australian cattle to be exported to Indonesia. That creates more exports, more jobs for Australian farmers.
So that's what I was doing on the weekend. I'm not interested in talking about personalities, I'm not interested in talking about ourselves, the Australian people want me and my Ministers to focus on them, on their jobs, on ensuring the economy grows for them. Others want to play politics, I'm focused on jobs, I'm focused on exports, I'm focused on affordable and reliable energy.
JOURNALIST: Would you say those messages aren't actually getting through to the public though because this isn't the first Newspoll that's been a bad result for the Government?
PRIME MINISTER: The important thing for me to do is to focus on the task at hand.
If I may, with great respect to all of you in the media, you are very readily distracted by personalities in politics. You are much more entertained by conflict and personalities than you are by jobs. You don't seem to have a great deal of interest in the cane growers or the cattle producers or the bottle makers or the Datacentre owners or the butchers who need the support of the government to ensure that they have the export markets to reach out to and the affordable energy that they need to keep their businesses going.
Now, you can focus on the personalities if you wish, that's up to you. I'm focused on jobs, I'm focused on economic growth, I'm focused on ensuring that hard-working Australian families can get ahead, and on that note we must return to Parliament.
Thank you.