Border protection; Australia’s and WA’s economy; Wages; Parliamentary priorities; Curtin preselection; Victoria; Power planet proposals; Investment in WA; Tourism
Prime Minister
NICOLE ROBINS, LIBERAL CANDIDATE FOR FREMANTLE: Good morning, my name is Nicole Robins, I’m the Liberal Candidate for Fremantle and it’s my pleasure to be down here this morning at BAE Systems in the electorate of Fremantle. I’m here this morning with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Senator Linda Reynolds.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much. Well it’s great to be here in WA again. I have just come down, as you probably know, from Christmas Island last night where I can report the facilities have been stood up. The medical facilities have been put in place, they will respond to demand as is necessary. The estimated cost that people are aware of, that’s around about $1.4 billion over the next four years. But of course, that depends on the level of demand. So how much it ultimately costs - it could be much less than that, and I believe that the measures that we’ve put in place to ensure, wherever possible, what Labor has done in weakening our borders, we’ve been able to strengthen them so we can limit that cost and limit the number of people who would try and game the system and the loopholes. As you know, we’ve had to open Christmas Island on the advice of the Department of Home Affairs, their clear advice, that was given to us as well after Labor’s laws were passed through the Parliament. That was done on their advice, and that’s why we’re taking that forward. A key reason for that is also to deal with those who are on Manus Island now, and in other places you’ve seen in today’s media reports, and the declassified material, individuals that have been involved in seeing and posting material that is promoting terrorist causes, those who have been up on charges of rape and all sorts of hideous types of behaviour who should never be allowed to come to Australia. But because of Labor’s laws that they put through the Parliament, we will be forced to take should they go through that process. The only place they’re going to see is the inside of a room at Christmas Island’s hardened detention facility. They won’t be walking the streets of Perth, I can assure of that, so long as I’ve got something to say about it.
But it’s great to be here in Western Australia, and it’s great to bring $1.3 billion with me under the GST deal that you know I initiated as Treasurer, secured in legislation as Prime Minister and that ensures that Western Australia is getting the fair deal on the GST that they have deserved for a very long time. I’m very pleased to have played my role in that, Western Australians know where I stand on that issue because I promised and I delivered and on this visit, I can confirm that that additional top-up to get to the 70 cent mark will be provided and that’s $1.3 billion to support Western Australians. So the Western Australian state government can get on with providing the services that Australians rely on. My only request to the state government, to Premier Mark McGowan, is spend it wisely. You now have those resources, make sure it’s getting to the places that it needs to get to and that’s obviously a responsibility of the state government.
But here we are today at BAE Systems. And Minister Reynolds, my newly minted Cabinet Minister, and congratulations to you in your home state, Linda, for your elevation to the Ministry, to the Cabinet. This is part of an economic powerhouse that is needed to continue to drive our economy forward. A loan here to contract some $900 million for the sustainment, maintenance and upgrade of these frigates. Now these are intergenerational jobs that you are seeing sustained here and that will be created here for generations to come over the life of these sustainment and maintenance contracts. There are people who have been working here, as I learned this morning, for 32 years. Their children are also now working here. I’ve met apprentices this morning who are working here and I have no doubt they’ll have a long career here and their kids will work here too. Because of the long-term investment we’ve made in our naval ship building industry. Now in Western Australia specifically, there is $1.5 billion that is going to those projects and the setting up of the base infrastructure that is required to support that. You’ve got some $4 billion that is going into the offshore patrol vessels which are also being built here in Western Australia.
This is how you drive your economy forward. Our economy is facing stiff headwinds and that’s why you must have a plan, as we do, for lower taxes, supporting small and family businesses, expanding our export markets with the Indonesian Agreement signed only this week. But it’s also about supporting our traditional industries, our minerals and resources industries. Resources industries that Labor has always wanted to tax more and drive out of the industry, drive down our economy and we’re seeing that continue now with the Labor Party and Bill Shorten’s view which is hostile to our minerals and resources industries. But here in Western Australia, it’s also about our defence industry. The investments we’re putting into this industry will ensure jobs and growth for the future of the West Australian economy and our national economy. That’s how you drive wages forward, that’s how you drive jobs forward. You invest in projects like this and supporting contacts like the BAE which keep the Western Australian economy moving forward. So that’s my plan, that’s the plan I’m sticking to, investing in infrastructure, defence capabilities, to ensure the economy moves forward. So I’ll allow Linda to take you through some of the more precise elements of what’s happening here and then we’ll here from BA. Thank you.
LINDA REYNOLDS, MINISTER FOR DEFENCE INDUSTRY, EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND NORTH QUEENSLAND RECOVERY: Well thank you very much Prime Minister and it’s wonderful to welcome you back here to Henderson. Today, there is no prouder Senator for Western Australia standing in front of the HMAS Perth and HMAS ANZAC behind us. Having both of these frigates being fully refitted by hundreds, actually thousands, of Western Australian workers here it is a very proud moment. As the Prime Minister said, we’ve got generations of Australian workers, Western Australian workers, working on these frigates. There is great capability across Australia in many industries to support our defence personal and as the new Defence Industry Minister, I am incredibly proud that there are so many West Australian workers here making sure that our men and women who serve in uniform here in Australia and overseas have the best possible equipment and ships that they can serve on.
So as the Prime Minister has said, this Government has committed over $2.5 billion in West Australian businesses and industry here. And that means that the men and women we have seen here today, their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will have work here on our naval ships. Not only in the build of the ships, which we’re very good at, we’re doing 31 of the 53 new service combatants and submarines that we’re building here in Australia. But most importantly for Western Australia is not only do we build and maintain defence vessels, we’ve also got a fantastic commercial ship building industry here. So what this additional investment in Henderson, in Garden Island and our defence industry means is that there will be thousands and thousands of West Australian jobs.
But also uniquely here in Western Australia, many of the men and women we have met here at BAE systems today and right across the Henderson strip have come out of the mining sector. So it is a great, sustainable way to keep all of these capabilities in Western Australia. So Prime Minister, welcome back and it’s wonderful to see you here.
LUKE SIMMONS, GENERAL MANAGER BAE HENDERSON: Welcome everyone, my name is Luke Simmons, I’m the General Manager of BAE Henderson. It’s been a pleasure to have the Prime Minister and Minister Reynolds here today. This is a great program that we’ve got here, upgrading and maintaining the ANZAC Class frigates. As mentioned earlier, we have generational people here. I’m third generation in the business and I’m proud to work in the defence force industry. We will be maintaining these vessels for the next 20 years of their life until the new Hunter Class frigates replace these frigates in the future. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much Luke. Look, we’re happy to take questions obviously. Maybe we deal with the issues we’re here talking about sustainable maintenance contracts or defence procurement policy and defence industry and then happy to deal with any other issues you’d like.
JOURNALIST: On jobs generally, you mentioned jobs and wages going forward, but with economic growth stalling at 0.2 per cent, do you see wages growth as outside your control?
PRIME MINISTER: Wages growth will come with economic growth. Wages growth won't come with higher taxes, which is what Bill Shorten is proposing. Wages growth will come with continued growth in jobs and the strength of the economy. We're growing at over 2 per cent, 2.3 per cent, which is still outstripping the majority of developed economies in the G7. It's only the United States, I understand, ahead. I mean, there are very strong economic headwinds. I've been warning about that for some time and I think yesterday's national accounts are a reminder to Australians that economic growth cannot be taken for granted. That's why we're making these investments here in Western Australia in the defence industry. That's where it comes from. I mean Bill Shorten, when he talks about wages - the only wages I can be certain he's going to increase is the wages of people smugglers, because his policies will only see a boost to their incomes, while smashing the Australian Budget in the costs that we saw last time Labor were in power and their border protection debacles cost the country an extra $16 billion.
JOURNALIST: The RBA Governor says there's something deep and structural going on with wages growth. Can you identify what it is?
PRIME MINISTER: When I was Treasurer, a number of years ago, I gave a fairly detailed presentation on this topic and one of the things that had been going on in incomes and wages in our economy has been the hangover from the mining investment boom, where wages maintained at a particular level and there was a gap that needed to be closed between producer and consumer wages. Now, those two lines are now starting to come a lot closer together and as we've seen with wages growth over the last six months or so, as the Reserve Bank governor has illustrated, we have seen a turning point when it comes to wage growth. We now have wage growth running above 2 per cent. It was sub-2 per cent prior to that. And so the way to support wages growth in the future is to have lower taxes, to invest in infrastructure, to support small and family businesses, to grow the size of your export markets, which are so critical to the Western Australian economy. To support all industries, not just the bright, shiny new ones, which we do support, but to support industries like mining and resources and agriculture and forestry and fishing. These are big industries that support a lot of jobs and the Labor Party is walking away from these traditional industries to chase the support of the Greens and others. Not the Liberal Party. We want to see all our industries go forward, particularly our mining and resources industry which is so critical to the Western Australian economy.
JOURNALIST: It's still sub-2 per cent in WA. Are bosses being too greedy?
PRIME MINISTER: We need to see more growth and Western Australia has been coming back from one of the biggest knocks to its economy that they have ever seen in Western Australian history. $80 billion was ripped out of the Australian economy on the down side of the mining investment boom and pretty much the majority of that hit here in Western Australia. So when you come off the back of a mining investment boom here in Western Australia, it hits hard and Western Australia is fighting back, it’s making its way back and we're supporting that by these types of projects. $900 million in investment in sustainment and maintenance for our frigate program. $1.5 billion going into infrastructure to supporting the biggest naval rebuild in Australia's history post-war. We will get back to 2 per cent of the size of the economy by 2021, ahead of the schedule we promised for our defence spending. When we came to office, that was 1.36 per cent, I think it was, the lowest level since before the Second World War. That was Labor's investment in our defence industries. Our investment in our defence industries is creating generational jobs.
JOURNALIST: Nationals MPs are publicly rebuking your Parliamentary tactics on the big stick power legislation. Why won’t you force it to a vote in the final days?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, my priority as we go into the Budget sitting are the Budget and the key Budget bills and appropriation bills and we've got a couple of days there and we'll address those as a priority. Another bill that I know will be very important to North Queensland MPs, and Linda has a close association with her other responsibilities for the North Queensland recovery, is the bill we will have to introduce to deliver that support to livestock industry, particularly cattle station-owners and managers up in North Queensland. They're my priorities going into that sitting - to ensure we're delivering the support for farmers affected by drought. In the last parliamentary sitting, Labor voted against us establishing the National Drought Future Fund. They voted against a drought Future Fund at a time when our farmers need our support, we’re delivering it, Labor voted against that bill. My priority going into that week will be to get the Budget handed down, the first surplus we've seen in 12 years. It's a long way back. You vote Labor once, you pay for it for a decade and that's what the experience has been in getting our Budget back into balance. That's what it has meant in getting our employment as a share of the working age population to its highest level we have seen on economic record. It took us 12 years to get back there after Labor were voted in in 2007. So I'm just saying to Australians the economy you live in for the next decade will be determined by the choices that are made at this election, just like they were back in 2007, and we've been paying for Labor being voted in on that occasion for the past 12 years.
JOURNALIST: Is Australia in a per-capita recession?
PRIME MINISTER: This is not an economic term that any economist has any recognition of so I'm not going to engage in the made-up statistics that the Labor Party are talking about. That's just a straight lie from Labor and you know that. So I'm not going to indulge Labor's posturing on this. These per-capita outcomes we saw under the previous Labor government and under the Howard government on a number of occasions. The real indicators of living standards, as you know, go to the national income per capita and these have been rising, as you know, over the past year and I welcome that. But our economy cannot be taken for granted. More than half the Australians voting at this next election will not have experienced a recession during their working lives. And so I can understand that you need a long memory to understand what it was like to work through that type of an economic period of time. I did. I came out of university back the '90s, in the early '90s, and I went in to that period of time. Friends, others, couldn't get jobs. We had a million people out of work. That's not what I want to see for the future of our country. And our plans here, like what we're seeing with our investments in industry, in infrastructure, in defence, are going to ensure against going back to those terrible times.
JOURNALIST: There’s been an internal brawl here over the Curtin preselection. What do you want to see happen with that?
PRIME MINISTER: The preselectors will gather on Sunday and they’ll make a very good decision.
JOURNALIST: Are you concerned about the internal fighting over that?
PRIME MINISTER: No I don't accept... This is a preselection. There are a number of candidates. They'll stand up on Sunday, preselectors will make a decision and they'll make a good one.
JOURNALIST: Is that tit-for-tat between factional heavyweights in that preselection…?
PRIME MINISTER: I think all of that is very overstated.
JOURNALIST: The Liberal Party was punished in the state election there. What has changed since then and what’s your message to people in Victoria?
PRIME MINISTER: In Victoria?
JOURNALIST: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, in Victoria, I'm working closely with the Victorian government to deliver some of the biggest infrastructure projects the state has ever seen. The Tullamarine Rail is going to completely transform the city of Melbourne and we put $5 billion, hard cash, equity, into that investment to transform Melbourne’s infrastructure and the shape of their city into the future. The congestion-busting projects which we've been putting into Victoria, led by Alan Tudge, that is ensuring that the choke points that are frustrating Melburnians so much are being alleviated by the targeted nature of our congestion fund. When it comes to energy, the announcement I made in Tasmania last week about the Marinuslink, that will unlock 400 megawatts of power which is just sitting idle in Tasmania, which will help get electricity prices for people who live in Victoria. I will work closely with Dan Andrews, I’m going to work closely with him to deliver the infrastructure that Victorians need and to deliver the jobs and standard of living that Victorians are looking for and we've got the plans to achieve just that.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER: Sorry. I couldn't hear you.
JOURNALIST: Offers have come through to build two High Efficiency, Low Emissions coal generators in NSW. Will you Government approve or underwrite them?
PRIME MINISTER: They're projects for the New South Wales Government. We don't have any involvement in those.
JOURNALIST: Has the Commonwealth assessed whether those plants stack up commercially?
PRIME MINISTER: They're not projects that relate to us.
JOURNALIST: Will you allow federal taxpayers subsidising of coal-fired power stations?
PRIME MINISTER: Those projects have nothing to do with our Government, we have no involvement with them, and I have no planned involvement with them.
JOURNALIST: Our Premier Mark McGowan yesterday said he’s hoping to ask you for more federal funding for projects like METRONET and regional roads. Do you have any plans to invest...
PRIME MINISTER: Look, I work well with Mark McGowan and just like I do with Dan Andrews. As Prime Minister you work with the Premier who is there and I appreciate the working relationship I've had with Mark McGowan. But, you know, they've got to spend the money we've already sent them. They haven't even been able to spend the money on Metronet that we've committed to them. We have record investment, some $11 billion of commitments to infrastructure here in Western Australia. On this visit I've come with $1.3 billion to honour the GST arrangement I've put in place. Too much money never seems to be enough sometimes with state premiers, but I don't think the Western Australian government in any way, shape or form can say that this Commonwealth Government and myself as Prime Minister and indeed prior as Treasurer, has not gone above and beyond when it comes to the fiscal needs of Western Australia. I delivered on the GST deal. I promised I would. Bill Shorten was all over the place. Western Australians know they can trust me when it comes to supporting Western Australians. Linda?
MINISTER REYNOLDS: Thank you, Prime Minister. Today we've talked a lot about infrastructure and jobs of the future here in Western Australia and I'd say this today to Mark McGowan, to the Premier. Use some of this $1.3 billion the Prime Minister has brought with him today, right here at the Henderson precinct. The Federal Government has committed and is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars of $1.6 billion in this broader precinct. The state government today has spent not a cent. So what I would say to Mark McGowan and to Paul Papalia the state minister, you know what needs to be done here. We’ve reviewed it for the last 12 months, we’ve done a Commonwealth and state review. You know what has to be done, we need roads, rail and infrastructure here. We need new warfage, we need a new channel, we need infrastructure right here. We have companies who want to expand here, we’ve got companies that want to come down here and build multi-generational jobs, but we don’t have the facilities. So Premier McGowan, please use some of this $1.3 billion and start work underway here. The Federal Government has put our money where our mouth is and investing in the area and it’s time now for the state government to do what it knows needs to be done here at Henderson.
JOURNALIST: Have you had any overtures or contact from the Premier since you were elevated to Cabinet on the weekend?
MINISTER REYNOLDS: Not yet, but I work very closely with the Premier and also with Minister Papalia. So we know… we’ve done all the work, we know what needs to be done to grow the jobs and the industries here. He’s just got to put his hand in his pockets and get the work under way.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, as a former tourism boss, Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon are currently on holiday in Canarvon.
PRIME MINISTER: Great.
JOURNALIST: How much is Tourism Australia paying them to be there and how much…
PRIME MINISTER: Oh look I’d have to refer to the Tourism Minister on that, I’m not close to those arrangements. But what I do know is that Australia has always had the best product to sell to the rest of the world, the greatest experiences, the greatest people, the greatest environment and I’m not surprised that they would be so willing to come and participate. So I think it’s good news for Western Australia, I think it’s good news for Australia and you know, what we’re seeing in tourism jobs, hospitality jobs all around the country is incredibly important to drive our economy forward and you can rely on us to continue to invest in that tourism sector. As you know, I’ve got quite a bit of experience in the tourism sector and I’m always thrilled to see it going ahead in leaps and bounds. Thank you.