Joint Doorstop Interview with Mr Campbell Newman, LNP Leader, Narangba, Brisbane
Posted on Monday, 16 May 2011
Subjects: 2011 Budget; carbon tax; Australia's forgotten families.
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………
TONY ABBOTT:
It’s great to be here at this iconic business. I want to thank the Packer family for making us so welcome. It’s good to be with Campbell Newman, my distinguished state parliamentary friend and colleague. It’s also good to be here with Senator Sue Boyce, Senator for Queensland, who is the duty Senator. Look, this is typical of the businesses that will be damaged by the Prime Minister’s carbon tax. The annual electricity bill here is about $600,000. So with a carbon tax that’s about $150,000-a-year hit on this business. Now, this is a business which employs about 120 people. It’s under a lot of pressure with the high Aussie dollar and about 80 per cent of their produce exported, and this is just another hit that they don’t need. So, I say to the Prime Minister, listen to the people of Australia. The people of Australia are saying no to this toxic tax because they don’t want the hit on their cost of living and they don’t want the hit on jobs.
I should also point out today that we’ve got new analysis from the Minerals Council which suggests that a carbon tax will cost 23,000 jobs in mining, about 11,000 of those jobs will be here in Queensland; there will be about a 30 per cent reduction in coal production by 2020 if the carbon tax goes ahead. This is a hit on the Queensland economy that we just don’t need and I call on the Premier to stand up to the Prime Minister. I think that it’s high time that Premier Bligh declared exactly where she stands on the carbon tax. I call on her to stop making excuses for a bad government in Canberra and to stand up for the people of Queensland and say no to this carbon tax. Now, obviously the coal belt of Queensland would be seriously impacted. I think just as Whyalla and Port Pirie would be potentially wiped off the map economically by a carbon tax, Gladstone, I think, is going to become economically a ghost town if this carbon tax goes ahead and, as I said, it is high time that the Premier of Queensland becomes a Queenslander, not an apologist for the Labor Party in Canberra and stands up against this carbon tax. But no one should think that it’s just the coal industry, that it’s just heavy manufacturing centres like Gladstone. Here we are outer metropolitan Brisbane at a leather factory and this is typical of the tens of thousands businesses, the hundreds of thousands of jobs right around our country that would be at risk if the carbon tax goes ahead. So, let’s stop this toxic tax before it does irreparable damage to our country and to our way of life. Campbell?
CAMPBELL NEWMAN:
Thanks Tony. Look, it’s a great pleasure to be here today with Tony Abbott, Senator Boyce and Reg Gulley, our candidate for the local area for the state election. I echo what Tony has said today, this is a business employing 120 Queenslanders. It is a business though that is competing against people on the world market and every time that Anna Bligh and her Government have put up things like power prices or water prices through their botched so-called reforms, or increased environmental compliance levies and other state government charges and fees, they further put pressure on this business.
The Premier at the last election told us it was all about jobs but the Premier and her cabinet and political colleagues are doing their very, very best to actually put pressure on businesses like this to actually go overseas. The other thing today is the issue of the carbon tax. A carbon tax would further increase the energy costs at this particular business. Now, they have seen a 40 per cent increase in water prices in the last two years, they’ve seen a 54 per cent increase in their electricity bills since the last contract – you can get the details from them if you wish – but a carbon tax would further increase their power bills, as you’ve heard from Tony. The other thing I’m very, very disturbed about today is this latest analysis from the Minerals Council about the impact of the carbon tax on coal mining in Queensland. I mean, coal mining is the backbone of this state. A 30 per cent decrease in production within ten years; a cost of 11,000 jobs in Queensland. These are truly terrifying figures and, as Tony said, I totally agree and I’ve been calling on the Premier for the last month to do this – stand up against Julia Gillard, Premier, stand up for Queensland, say no to this tax. Last week we saw the Premier waffling on in parliament about a eight point, or eight questions that she had on the carbon tax. We have a single point, a one point plan on the carbon tax – the answer is no. We want the Premier to have the same position for Queenslanders.
TONY ABBOTT:
Thanks Campbell. Ok, any questions?
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, to what extent are the polls out today a reflection on the Budget?
TONY ABBOTT:
I’m not just going to comment on polls. That’s always my practice not to offer a running commentary on polls but I think what we’ve got is a Prime Minister who plainly isn’t listening. The families of Australia are under pressure and the working families of 2007 are the forgotten families of 2011, and I think that it’s high time that the Prime Minister stopped making excuses for bad policy and started listening to the forgotten families of Australia.
QUESTION:
Are the polls a sign of confidence in your government or a rejection of the Government?
TONY ABBOTT:
As I said, I think this is a Government which plainly isn’t listening. It’s a Government which is at war within itself. No credible Prime Minister would have undermined her own Treasurer the way this Prime Minister had by releasing new border protection policies just a day or so before the Budget comes out. I really don’t know what the Prime Minister was trying to do to the Treasurer’s Budget by releasing her already failing Malaysian ‘swap the boats’ policy just a couple of days before the Budget. I can’t imagine…
QUESTION:
Are you suggesting that relationship is at risk now?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, I’d like to know whether the Prime Minister informed the Treasurer and what kind of reaction she got from the Treasurer because plainly the most important thing that a government normally does in any one year is to set out its fiscal blueprint and the fiscal blueprint that the Government announced on Tuesday night was completely derailed by the Prime Minister’s botched announcement of the Malaysian ‘swap the boats’ policy.
QUESTION:
Does this poll though show that you’ve got Julia Gillard’s measure?
TONY ABBOTT:
As I said, I’m just not going to offer a running commentary. I think that what Australians want is a government which respects the Australian people and any Prime Minister who announces before the election ‘there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’ and then a couple of months later says ‘well I’m sorry but there will be a carbon tax under the government I lead’, you’ve got to ask yourself how honest is that Prime Minister and who is really leading the Government. And it was pretty obvious last Friday when Bob Brown said ‘look, there’s not going to be any election’ who is actually running the show and I say again to the real power in the Government, Bob Brown, and to the Prime Minister that the honourable thing to do would be to say to the people ‘ok, we’ve changed our mind on a carbon tax, give us a mandate. Let’s have a fresh election before this way of life changing, way of work changing tax is brought in’. This is the biggest change that any government has inflicted upon Australia in at least a generation. It dwarfs the GST because this is a tax that is deliberately designed to change the whole way we live. John Howard had the guts to go to an election saying ‘give me a mandate for the GST’ and Julia Gillard and Bob Brown should be just as honourable and just as upfront with the Australian people.
QUESTION:
Do you think Julia Gillard will still be Prime Minister going into the next election?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, that’s a matter for the Labor Party but, as I said, I think there’d be a lot of people inside the Labor Party today shaking their heads at the Prime Minister’s judgment. I mean, why on earth, going into a tough week, bringing down a budget which is supposed to be a game-changer, would she have announced the already failing swap the boats policy?
QUESTION:
Given the Greens and the independents are saying that they’re happy, is it a waste of energy to keep calling for an election?
TONY ABBOTT:
It’s never a waste of energy to stand up for decency in public life and, look, a decent government would not say one thing before an election and do something quite different after the election. An honourable government would say that, ‘ok, we’re changed our minds. We are going to go back to the people and seek a new mandate.’ Now…
QUESTION:
That’s exactly what you guys did with the GST though.
TONY ABBOTT:
That’s exactly right. We went and sought a new mandate but…
QUESTION:
John Howard declared it would never, ever, ever happen.
TONY ABBOTT:
And you know, he changed his mind and he announced that to the public and he said, ‘I am now going to seek a mandate’. So, there is a million miles of difference between John Howard and Julia Gillard because John Howard did not run away from a fresh election when he wanted a mandate for a new tax.
QUESTION:
Mr Newman, you said that the coal industry is the backbone of Queensland’s economy. What needs to be done over the next 10, 20, 30 years to change the coal industry or clean it up in Queensland? What’s your view on what needs to be done?
CAMPBELL NEWMAN:
Well firstly, I support the coal industry and I’ve got to challenge the assertion a bit in your question. Coal and coal exports are incredibly important to our overseas customers. I mean, our economy is built – and I’m talking about the global economy – is built on the need to use steel. And steel requires coking coal. This state of Queensland provides some of the best quality, most competitive, coking coal and indeed environmentally the best coking coal that you can get in the world. It’s low in nasties, nasties and the by-products that will be created from that. So, it’s vital that we do supply to the world. So, my position is that the coal industry needs to be supported with approvals for new mines and the appropriate infrastructure. The issue about global carbon emissions is a different thing that needs to be tackled in a global framework. The problem with what is going on in Australia that Mr Abbott’s been pointing out is that we are so far out in front you’d think we were trying to win the Melbourne Cup. I mean, there’s no first prize for winning the Melbourne Cup of carbon taxes. We will trash our economy and that’s why our position is so adamant in terms of saying this is insane; it is economic insanity. So, if there is a global compact to then deal with emissions, then we start to get somewhere and that’s what our position is.
QUESTION:
So, nothing should be done to change or clean up the coal industry until there is a global…?
CAMPBELL NEWMAN:
Well, no. No, no. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that we are the people, if you like, in the world who operate one of the cleanest, most economically viable coal industries supporting, if you like, the global economy and we need to continue to do that because the alternative is to take coal that is a higher polluting coal from other countries around the world. What we need to do, though, is work on the Queensland economy over the coming years to strengthen other areas. I’ve always been a big supporter of our push into biotechnology, to new media, to film and TV, to a strong services sector in Brisbane, indeed throughout Queensland. That’s what I’ll do if I am premier.
QUESTION:
You say there’s no prize for coming first but won’t lagging behind mean some industries are behind?
CAMPBELL NEWMAN:
We’re not lagging behind. Now, with what the Prime Minister is pushing on, we will be right out in front as the country that brings in a carbon tax in this way and we will destroy our economy, we will see 11,000 jobs lost in the state of Queensland, the state I seek to lead. That’s real damage.
QUESTION:
Doesn’t that depend on the price on carbon which we don’t know yet?
CAMPBELL NEWMAN:
Look, when you’re putting a tax like this into place and we go to our example today, these people here, the Packers, are competing in a global economy. People can go and run an operation like this anywhere in the world. It’s the same with, say, the alumina refineries. A carbon tax will see the alumina refinery in Gladstone probably non-viable; it certainly won’t see any upgrades or investment in the future. Why would you then smelt the bauxite or create alumina in Australia when you can do it in a country that has a lower labour cost and a lower price of energy? And that’s what will happen to our industries. That’s an example. Gladstone will be hurt. It will be hit hard. Townsville, with its nickel refineries will be hit hard. That’s why this is so dangerous for Queensland.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, do you think this is the Abbott and Newman show happening? Are we going to see a bit more of that in coming months and do you think we’ll see as much of the Julia and Anna show?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, as I said, I just think it’s very, very important that the Premier stand up for Queensland, demonstrate that she is a Queenslander first and a Labor apologist second. So, I just think it’s very important. Now, I am full of admiration for Campbell Newman. I think that Brisbane is by far the most go-ahead city in Australia, thanks to Campbell’s administration over many years. I think he can bring the same dynamism to running the state that he brought to running Queensland and I’m very pleased and proud to have him as a friend and colleague and ,yeah, I’m happy to be on the hustings as often as I humanly can be with Campbell. But it’s not just a challenge for Anna Bligh standing up for Queensland, what about the Queensland Australian Workers Union? I mean, its AWU members who worked in the aluminium smelters in Gladstone and in Townsville, its AWU members who are working in some of the other energy intensive industries like cement which is also a very big employer up there in Gladstone. The state branch of the AWU in South Australia has had the guts to say ‘look, this carbon tax can’t go ahead because it will turn Whyalla and Port Pirie into economic ghost towns’ and I call on the Queensland AWU to have the same robust defence of workers’ rights here as the AWU in South Australia has shown. So, this is a real challenge for anyone who is a friend of the Australian worker to stand up for Australian jobs, stop making excuses for this toxic tax that has been put in place by this bad failing Government in Canberra
[ends]