Joint Doorstop Interview, Adelaide

Subjects: Visit to South Australia; Olympic Dam project; Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Julia Gillard's mining tax; the Government's failed border protection policies; economic forum; marine parks announcement; Prime Minister's office. 

EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s terrific to be here at Michell. This is an iconic Australian industry. This is a legendary Australian business. I want to thank David Michell and his team for making Cory Bernardi, Senator for South Australia and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to me and for Families and also Sue Lawrie, our candidate for Makin, so welcome here today.

This is my second day in South Australia and I want South Australia to be an economic powerhouse for our country. I don't want South Australia to be just a national park. I don't want it to be just a tourist destination. I don't want it just to be famous for its food and its wine. I want it to be well known as an economic powerhouse and that's why it's so important that iconic businesses like this can continue to flourish. This is why it's so important that new enterprises like Maptek which I visited yesterday can continue to grow. This is why it's so important that the massive Olympic Dam mine expansion go ahead, but all of these vital economic outcomes are put at greater risk because of the policies of this Government. The mining tax, the carbon tax, the additional red tape, the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission all make it significantly harder to run a successful business, to employ people, to put money into families' pockets than would otherwise be the case and that's why the economic future of South Australia would be best safeguarded by a Coalition government in Canberra.

The carbon tax will add many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the power bills of a company like this. This company spends more than $2 million a year on power, gas and electricity. That is just going to go up and up and up under a carbon tax. Of course, their competitors overseas, especially in China, do not pay the carbon tax which is why the carbon tax is like a reverse tariff damaging jobs in Australia and protecting jobs overseas. That's why it's an act of economic self-harm. That's why it is such an act of economic irrationality to be imposing the world's biggest carbon tax at the worst possible time as this Government is.

As the Governor of the Reserve Bank has repeatedly made clear, the necessity for Australia as we go into the future is higher productivity and that's the last thing that we're going to get under the policies of this Government, particularly the carbon tax.

Now, I know so many Australians are desperately, desperately disappointed with the way our country is going and I can understand that. Productivity is flat. Economic growth is flat when it comes to GDP growth per person. Real wealth per head has substantially declined under this Government which is why the Howard era now seems like an economic golden age which has been lost.

What the next Coalition government will do is get spending down. It will get taxes down. It will get productivity up. That means economic growth will be up. That means better wages. It means a higher standard of living. It means more prosperity for all Australians. That's the better way that my colleagues and I can offer the Australian people. 

Just before I ask Cory to say a few words, I should just note the fact that we've had two more boats in the last day or so. That means that we've had 14 boats in just 13 days this month. The crisis on our borders just gets worse. The Government has no answers, no answers whatsoever. They've effectively run up the white flag on border protection just as they've rolled out the red carpet to the people smugglers. That's what they've done and it's happened because this Prime Minister is too proud to admit that she's got it wrong, John Howard had it right and to restore the policies which have been proven to work.

Cory?

CORY BERNARDI: 

Thank you, Tony. I welcome you to the electorate of Makin. It's fantastic to have you here once again and to tour this iconic facility which has been such a part of South Australia’s history. 142 years of family history that Michell Australia has in South Australia and they're going to be dreadfully impacted by the carbon tax which Julia Gillard promised not to introduce and may I say that right across the electorate of Makin, family businesses, large and small, have been saying they feel betrayed by this Government because they know the cost of doing business is going to rise, they were promised it wasn't going to happen as a result of her carbon tax and they feel betrayed by Julia Gillard. The challenge for them is to survive until the carbon tax can be repealed which is a commitment that all the Coalition has undertaken and that will restore hope and opportunity and prosperity for all Australian businesses.

TONY ABBOTT:

Thanks, mate. Do we have any questions?

QUESTION:

Just in relation to your comments about the carbon tax. Obviously, you’d be aware that Julia Gillard says that Australia's economy is strong enough to withstand the change. Do you think it is?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, putting it like that, she at least is admitting that the change will hurt. Of course it will hurt. This is an economic own goal. This is an act of economic self-harm. It is, of course, a bad tax based on a lie and as Australian businesses grapple with the impact of this looming tax, already the harm is being done. This business has had to restructure. This business has had to significantly reduce its costs already. This business has actually had to shed some staff in order to cope with the impact of the carbon tax.

QUESTION:

Last April you said that the carbon tax will wipe Whyalla off the map. Do you still stand by that comment?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I was actually echoing the statements of the South Australian state secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Wayne Hanson. That's what I was doing. He said that Whyalla would become a ghost town under the carbon tax and the truth is that the steel industry has no future in this country under the carbon tax. Even the Government's own figures show that steel production will drop by 21 per cent under the carbon tax. They show that aluminium production will drop by 61 per cent under the carbon tax. The whole point of a carbon tax is to make energy more expensive and the whole impact of a carbon tax is to drive energy-intensive industries offshore to countries that don't have a carbon tax. So, if the Government is serious about looking after Whyalla, it won't go ahead with the carbon tax.

QUESTION:

The Government is saying that this is another example of Tony Abbott exaggerating.

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, from such an ethically-challenged Government that comes pretty rich. The whole point of a carbon tax is to make fuel and power more expensive. That's the whole point of a carbon tax: it is to raise the costs of industries that use an abundance of fuel and power. That's the inescapable, ineluctable logic of a carbon tax and the Prime Minister is in denial to pretend otherwise.

QUESTION:

What about the company tax rate, Mr Abbott? The Gillard Government wants to try and find a way of reducing it and finding concessions for company tax rates. Why is the Opposition playing hardball on that?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, we’re all in favour of a company tax cut. We took a company tax cut to the last election, but the only sustainable tax cut is a cut which is funded through savings or through economic growth. The company tax cut which the Government is now talking about is a company tax cut which is paid for by tax increases and that's not a cut, that's a con. It's interesting that first of all they wanted a company tax cut, then they pulled the legislation. Now, a couple of weeks later, they say they want a company tax cut again because the Prime Minister was desperate to have something to announce after her stage-managed economic forum in Brisbane yesterday. I don't think anyone takes this Government seriously anymore.

QUESTION:

 Isn’t it a bit of a chicken and egg thing, though? Doesn't a company tax cut help foster economic growth?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, the important thing with tax cuts is that they've got to be sustainable and the only way to have a sustainable tax cut is to pay for it through expenditure reductions or through economic growth. The only tax cuts this Government ever offers are cuts that are paid for by increases. It's essentially taking money out of one pocket and putting it into the other pocket. Now, the Australian public aren't fools. The Australian public are not going to be played for mugs yet again by a Government which is incompetent and untrustworthy.

QUESTION:

What's your reaction to the marine parks announcement from the Government today?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, the Coalition has a very strong record when it comes to marine protection. After all, it was the Coalition in government which established the Great Barrier Reef marine park. So, we have a very strong record when it comes to marine protection but this Government has a record of complete bungling when it comes to implementing things, a record of complete failure to consult before making announcements and I have to say that I am instinctively against anything that damages the rights of recreational fishing. I am instinctively cautious about anything that could further damage the commercial fishing industry and the tourism industry because, as we know, the tourism industry is under enormous pressure in this country thanks to this government's policies including the carbon tax.

So do you acknowledge that it is important, though?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think it’s important, but you've got to do things the right way not the wrong way and you just can't trust this Government to get it right. This a Government which has the Midas touch in reverse and I think we can be quite confident, given this Government's record of botching things, that any marine protected area that this Government puts in place will damage the rights of recreational fishermen and will damage the rights of commercial fishers and commercial tourist operators.

QUESTION:

Are you saying it will or you're just fearful that it might?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I think that we have to be fearful because this Government has a proven record of failure. This government has the Midas touch in reverse.

QUESTION:

Are you running a campaign of fear on this one? I mean, you say the Coalition were the first to introduce marine park protections on the Great Barrier Reef, surely those fears were presented to the public then.

TONY ABBOTT:

No, I’m running a fact campaign here. That's what I'm interested in - facts. We know from this Government's record that they can't be trusted to get the consultation right, they can't be trusted to get the implementation right and often enough they can't even be trusted to get the science right.

QUESTION:

Just in relation to a story on AM this morning, what's your response to a supposed dirt unit operating out of the Prime Minister's office?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, this is a seriously ethically-challenged Government and I think it is typical of this Government that a dirt unit should be operating not somewhere in the bowels of Labor Party headquarters but in the office of the Prime Minister herself; operating in her office, under her nose, no doubt with her express and enthusiastic participation. Now, we know that this Government plays very hard and aggressive politics. We've seen in Queensland just how dirty and grubby desperate Labor governments get as elections get closer and I think we're going to see the same kind of grubby tactics from the federal Labor Party that we saw from the Queensland Labor Party in the run-up to the recent election there.

QUESTION:

But don’t all governments operate a similar sort of unit? John Howard’s unit had one.

TONY ABBOTT:

That’s not correct. That's absolutely not correct. There is no suggestion whatsoever that anyone other than Julia Gillard's office has been sending out explicit instructions to ministers' offices on how to dig dirt on their opposite numbers. Now this is a seriously ethically-challenged Government. We saw this Government's standards and tactics at work when a member of the Prime Minister's own staff was complicit in the Australia Day riots. We saw this Government and this Prime Minister try to cover up facts when it came to the Australia Day riot by refusing to make available text messages - sent by her staffer - to the Australian Federal Police. It's an ethically-challenged Government and news of this dirt unit is all of a piece with what we have seen and what we can continue to expect from this Government.

QUESTION:

The Prime Minister says it's a reasonable thing to do, pointing out that MPs have claimed the carbon price will kill coal mining and yet still go and buy coal mining shares.

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, if you look at the Government's own figures - and I challenge everyone here to go and look at the Government's own figures in the documents released on carbon Sunday - the Government's own documents say that absent carbon capture and storage, coal-fired electricity generation in this country drops from over 70 per cent to just 10 percent. Now, what does that spell? It spells the annihilation of the domestic coal industry. Now, the only way the coal industry can survive in this country is if other countries do exactly the opposite to what this Government wants us to do. So, I absolutely stand by my claims that over time the whole point of a carbon tax is to eliminate the use of coal and that spells death for the coal industry.

[ends]