ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR SCIENCE, JOBS AND INNOVATION, SENATOR THE HON ZED SESELJA:
Alright well, thanks for coming out. It’s great to be here at Universal Trusses here in Hume. We’re here in the heart of Canberra’s industrial precinct. It’s great to have Arthur and John with us and hosting the Prime Minister and I.
It’s great to see a great local business that’s doing wonderful things and obviously will be benefitting under our tax cuts. So, welcome PM.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thanks very much Zed. Arthur and John, Arthur, your father started this business?
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
Yes, that’s right.
PRIME MINISTER:
A family-owned business that’s been going for 20 years.
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
We’ve been in Canberra for 20 years. The business was actually started in Victoria. We moved when Victoria had its slump under Kirner and John Cain so we came to Canberra and we’ve been here since.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, well that’s fantastic. You’ve got 60 employees?
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
Yeah, 60.
PRIME MINISTER:
They will benefit from the tax relief that starts on July 1.
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
Well they’ll all benefit from that and they all fall into that category of enjoying that tax cut.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah.
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
So I’m sure they’ll have ways of spending that extra money.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, and from your business’ point of view, this is a business that is benefitting from our tax relief for small and medium companies – it’s already legislated. That steps up to include companies with turnovers of between 25 and 50 million dollars on July 1.
I was just talking to John and Arthur earlier and this business has grown - as so many Australian-owned, family-owned small and medium businesses do grow, with retained earnings.
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
That’s right.
PRIME MINISTER:
So the more you can keep of your earnings, the more you can invest in fantastic equipment like the press we saw just a moment ago. That enables you to grow and to hire more Australians.
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
Well, we want to expand the business and continue to grow which means we employ more people and we can pay them better. You know, we need incentive to do that and in the long run, you actually get more tax as we’re more successful.
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s exactly how it works! You’ve summed it up brilliantly.
But Arthur, tell us about the global aspect of your business. You mentioned that you have one of your team is in Eden and is supervising a team in Vietnam that is designing a hotel in Pennsylvania? I mean this is globalisation, tell us about that?
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
Well we offer a design service as well for other truss customers and suppliers of floor systems and engineered product. So yeah that’s globalisation, that’s the world we live in. So you know we have equipment from Germany, equipment from Sweden. We’re doing design work for buildings in New Zealand, all over Australia and America as well.
PRIME MINISTER:
And the truss we were just making there is just going into a-
MR ARTHUR POTTER, OWNER AND DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL TRUSSES:
It’s got to go to a house in Coombs.
PRIME MINISTER:
A house in Coombs? Oh there you go, very local. From Coombs to Eden to Vietnam to Pennsylvania, it’s globalisation, but it shows the energy and the innovation in Australian family-owned businesses.
Now this is not, Arthur and John and his brothers are not a giant multinational. They’re engaging internationally but they’re not a giant multinational. They’re a hard-working Australian-owned family business.
Bill Shorten decided yesterday – in his captain’s call, without any consultation with his colleagues – that he would, if he was elected Prime Minister, put up their tax. Now, what’s that going to do?
This is a business that’s got confidence, that’s making a quid, reinvesting those earnings into the equipment we’ve just seen which enables the business to grow and provide more Australians with employment.
What’s Shorten going to do? He’s going to hit them with higher taxes.
This is an assault on jobs. It’s an assault on enterprise. It’s an assault on innovation and small and medium family businesses. That is the Labor way, that’s what Shorten is threatening and that’s why it’s vital to continue to back our national economic plan that is already delivering record jobs growth.
It’s already delivering record Government revenues that enables us to bring the Budget back into balance – and for precisely the reason Arthur said - because if businesses are getting on and investing and hiring, you get fewer people on welfare.
Do you know, we’ve got the lowest percentage of working age Australians on welfare today than in 25 years? So, that is fantastic – more people in work, more people paying tax, stronger government revenues. Therefore we can put more into roads, into infrastructure, into health, into schools, into national security. We can do all of that, that’s what a strong economy delivers.
And Bill Shorten is the biggest threat to a strong economy. And his assault on small and medium family-owned Australian businesses yesterday is just the latest part of his war on business.
Arthur and John, Zed and I are really honoured to be with you and your team here today. You show the type of enterprise, the type of innovation and commitment and passion that is driving the Australian economy. Zed, we are honoured to be here in your company.
So thanks very much. Thank you.
Well, any questions?
JOURNALIST:
Can I ask Prime Minister, John Lord with front the National Press Club today to tell Australians that Huawei is not a threat, but what national security concerns do you have regarding the Chinese company?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, we don't discuss those matters publically. We carefully consider, obviously, all the national security issues relating to telecommunications. But we’ll continue to consider that and get the best advice on that from our security agencies. But I’m not going to have a public discussion about it here.
JOURNALIST:
Should they play a role in building Australia’s 5G network?
PRIME MINISTER:
All of those matters are under careful consideration.
JOURNALIST:
Is Huawei going to be allowed to participate in building any part of the 5G network, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
Again, all of those matters are under very careful consideration. The 5G is an evolution of wireless telecommunications. It has different characteristics than, you know, what we’re enjoying at the moment, 4G and before that 3G, processing is more distributed. It’s a very different, much more powerful, much more pervasive technology because we’re moving into the internet of everything, where just about everything will, one day or another, be connected to the internet by sensors and so forth. So it’s a big evolution and one that we’re focussed on very carefully and in particular on the national security aspects of it.
JOURNALIST:
PM you’re still negotiating with Pauline Hanson on company tax cuts, will you consider lowering the threshold to $500 million to get her two votes and Derryn Hinch on board?
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m often invited, thank you for your question, I’m often invited to comment on negotiations with the Senate. We have found over the years, that the best way to approach them is privately, constructively and respectfully but not to engage in public negotiation.
JOURNALIST:
Is it out of the question though? Lowering the threshold to $500 million?
PRIME MINISTER:
Again, we don’t engage in public negotiation.
We have had a lot of success by engaging with the Senate respectfully and constructively as you saw last week with the biggest reform of personal income tax in a generation. Now we succeeded in doing that in large part because of our ability to have very respectful, private discussions with the crossbench.
JOURNALIST:
On the National Energy Guarantee, the federal Nationals have presented you with a proposal to make the NEG more popular in regional areas, do you concede you still may have some work to do to convince the Nationals of the merits of the NEG?
PRIME MINISTER;
Look again, the National Energy Guarantee is a technology agnostic means of ensuring that we have the cheapest possible, and most affordable energy and that it’s reliable – that’s the critical thing. Everybody, families, businesses – large and small - need to have reliable and affordable power. So it focuses on those factors above all, and of course enables us to meet our Paris Emissions Reduction Targets. So there is continued work being done on the design and we continue to have discussions. But it is a very powerful part of our energy reforms.
And just remember this - we have turned the corner on energy price rises. We’ve seen for the first time in a long time, energy prices come down, retail prices come down. In terms of the wholesale market, wholesale generation costs have come down by 30 per cent in the last year, thanks to our policies. In large part because of the increased availability of gas, which as you know, I secured in a very effective way by threatening in the first instance to restrict the export of gas on the east coast – I didn’t take any pleasure in doing that, but I was determined to put Australian businesses and families first.
JOURNALIST:
Tony Abbott says he is still willing to cross the floor to vote down the policy-
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m sorry?
JOURNALIST:
Tony Abbott says he is still willing to cross the floor to vote it down, what’s your message to him?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well again, I don’t engage in public discussions with my colleagues.
JOURNALIST:
What contribution does he make to the debate though?
PRIME MINSTER:
Again, thanks for the enquiry, but I will leave the commentary to others. Last question.
JOURNALIST:
Just on foreign interference, is it any coincidence that with these negotiations with Huawei that the legislation is before the parliament this week, and we have seen visits from Solomon dignitaries and Vanuatu dignitaries in the last week?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, no – I mean, you’re trying to link everything together. I wouldn’t, I think all of those events are essentially coincidental.
The Foreign Interference Legislation and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme legislation was passed by the House of Representatives yesterday with support from Labor so it had bipartisan support. We look forward to it going through the Senate this week.
It’s very important, always, to defend Australia’s sovereignty and our position very simply is this - that we want to ensure that the people who influence and make decisions about our democracy are Australians. Foreign interests that wish to influence or have their say in respect of Australian affairs, can do so of course – but they have to do openly and transparently.
So this all about security and sunlight and sovereignty.
Thanks very much.
JOURNALIST:
Any comment on the Socceroos? Have you been texting with Mile?
PRIME MINISTER:
Ah yes thank you. Yeah I have, I have. Well I texted Mile. Look, it was a – the campaign is over for this World Cup but there will be another one. The boys gave, gave the contest everything. They were fantastic. They had some bad luck, that’s football I guess. But they really made us proud. Australia backed them every step of the way and as I said to Mile last night in the message I sent him, will do so again at the next World Cup. And they will be back. Go the Socceroos!JOURNALIST:
Would you like to see Australia host the World Cup?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, well Women’s World Cup definitely! We are in the mix for that, you know that.
[ENDS]