National Drought Summit; Future Drought Fund; Nauru
Prime Minister
GRANT DENYER: The Prime Minister has announced a new $5 billion future drought fund at the National Drought Summit which is happening in Canberra today and he is joining us on the phone right now, Prime Minister Scott Morrison welcome.
PRIME MINISTER: Hey Grant how are you mate?
GRANT DENYER: Really, really good thank you mate, obviously regional issues and drought is close to my heart we live in farming communities and we’ve seen them do it very, very tough a lot of them unable to afford to pay their bills and feed themselves at the moment. This initiative sounds massive.
PRIME MINISTER: Well it is, as you’d know with drought it’s all about getting the immediate relief and we’ve being doing that through increased mental health support, increasing support through the Farm Household allowance and doing things directly to support people where they are right now, but then it’s about the recovery and then it’s about the long term resilience to drought and this drought future fund is basically what it is, is a big fund that will grow over time up to five billion dollars it will start just under four and we’ll be pulling down the earnings of that fund so it will be earning money every year we’ll pull down 100 million each year to invest in things like water infrastructure and supporting farmers on their farm to have better practices and all of these things that help them longer term. You’ve got to do the immediate relief but you’ve also got to think to the future so this is putting some money away for a non-rainy day.
GRANT DENYER: Yeah long terms plans are obviously important when it comes to drought because one really severe year of drought can take five years for a farmer to recover so it’s a great idea, but in the previous government, money that was handed out to our farmers we found that everyone just couldn’t access the money, is it going to be easy for them to access because not one farmer we knew could access the previous government funding that was given to them. It was just too much paperwork sometimes 100 pages of paperwork.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah well and I know, when I was out in Quilpie, it was my first trip I made as Prime Minister up meeting the Tullys up there in Quilpie and I talked to a lot of the farm councillors up there and they relayed the same story now we’ve cut that back by a third just over a third and we’ve put more councillors out there to help them get through all that but the other thing we’ll be announcing today is that we’ll be working closer directly with charities because they like groups like the CWA and groups like that who connect and are out there in these communities all the time and they can get a lot more of this assistance to those farmers and farming communities a lot more quickly cos we also have to remember as you know, it is the famers of course but it’s also the towns as well and the towns go through it tough. Now we’re putting a million dollars into every single drought affected shire in Australia and will be expanding that to some more shires today because sadly the drought is going into parts of South Australia and more parts of New South Wales and into Victoria and so we’ll be extending that support as well and we’ll have a program today which is supporting on farm water infrastructure with some small scale grants, now I know I’m getting into a bit of detail but is a pretty comprehensive plan because we’ve got to deal with the relief now, build for the recovery and have the long term resilience.
GRANT DENYER: Awesome. That’s fantastic news, thank you so much.
ASH LONDON: Hello ScoMo, my name is Ash and I hope you’re having a wonderful day thanks for coming on the show.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s a pleasure.
ASH LONDON: Not only are we members of Australia, but we are all members of planet earth and for me I spend a lot of time instagramming and tweeting you every day I feel like we are twitter best friends with questions about our immigration policy. Now I don’t want to believe and I do not believe until you tell me that you really do have a statue of a boat with the comments “I stopped these” on your desk. So once and for all can you just explain that that is hopefully not true?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I was given it by a bloke in my electorate who was very, very committed to ensuring that when we got elected back in 2013 that human carnage we were seeing at sea stopped and I got to say that was a very hard period to live through, what we were seeing people just turning up and kids face down in the water and it was horrible and it had to stop and our government did stop it and I want to get these kids off Nauru but I don’t want to put more on. So we’ve got to make sure we get that balance right.
ASH LONDON: Can you understand that many people would look at what’s happening and look at the plight of these children it seems they are being ignored and it seems that doctors all around Australia and the world are putting their hand up and saying these children are suffering they are in a gaol this is on our watch, surely.
PRIME MINISTER: Ash, they are not in a gaol.
ASH LONDON: They can’t leave.
PRIME MINISTER: They can’t leave Nauru, that’s true but they live like the other kids who live on Nauru, there’s a lot of kids who live on Nauru. There’s a population of 10,000 people…
ASH LONDON: Can you look at that situation and say on my watch and I am ok with the fact that these kids are suffering they want a better life, you would want a better life for your kids as well.
PRIME MINISTER: I do, Ash we’ve got over 200 children off Nauru and we’ve got more off just in the last few weeks.
ASH LONDON: There should be zero. There should be zero children on Nauru.
PRIME MINISTER: And that’s what we’re working towards and that’s why we’ve got the arrangement with the United States and that’s where many of those children have gone. We are going to keep doing that because I agree, we’ve got to get that down. What I don’t want to see happen is I don’t want to see the boats come back and the children being put at risk and dying at sea and then being put on Nauru if they get here you don’t get children off Nauru by putting more on. And so you’ve got to work both of those issues and it is very difficult, incredibly difficult.
ASH LONDON: Of course it’s difficult but as human beings do you think we need to show more compassion?
PRIME MINISTER: Look we can always do that, of course and that’s why we are doing what we are doing. But in government you have to deal with all the hard issues. And we can potentially go down one area and then you open up the problem again. I mean that’s what happened back in 2007 John Howard had this thing all under control and then Kevin Rudd came in and changed it all and look what happened, I mean how would we feel if that was the product of any of the actions that we took. So we are going to keep getting it right and keep getting the kids off Nauru as we’re going to keep doing that, I mean kids have come off in the last couple of weeks, over 200 have come off. There were 8000 children in detention when we were elected, and in Australia there are no children in detention today. We got them all out and closed seventeen detention centres that’s what happens when you get the bits right.
GRANT DENYER: All right, Scott Morrison welcome to your new job.
ASH LONDON: I’ll keep tweeting you, maybe you could tweet me back one like an emoji thumbs up, thumbs up emoji or I hear you Ash stop embarrassing yourself, something like that.
GRANT DENYER: Give her something mate she’s @ashlondon give her something she needs it.
ASH LONDON: Underscore in there.
GRANT DENYER: Underscore as well. Alright, hey do you want to have a go at the secret sounds, this is not a stich up. We’re giving away $84,000. I may as well.
ASH LONDON: If you win the $84,000 you don’t get it.
PRIME MINISTER: I’ll put it into the drought community for the CWA, how about that.
GRANT DENYER: Ok this is the secret sound.
[Sound plays]
What does that sound like to you Prime Minister Scott Morrison?
PRIME MINISTER: I didn’t even hear it.
GRANT DENYER: One more time.
[Sound plays]
PRIME MINISTER: Oh is it something in a shoe box or something? Like something dropping in a shoe box.
GRANT DENYER: Oh no he’s addicted. He’ll be on the website all day. Scott Morrison we’ll speak to you next time.