Topics: Made in Australia Bill, Nuclear, Economy, More lies on stage three

E&OE

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

Time to talk federal politics with the Shadow Treasurer and Member for Hume Angus Taylor. Angus, good morning.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

G'day Stephen, good to be with you.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

Lots to talk about at the moment. The Prime Minister seems to be hanging his reelection on this Future Made in Australia fund. Now, I've got no problem with trying to rebuild our manufacturing base. In fact, I think it's something that subsequent governments have failed to do for many, many years. But the three things that I see government being able to do to improve our manufacturing situation is one, create a workplace relations environment where it's easy to employ people and easy to do business, cut red tape, but most importantly, provide cheap, reliable base load energy. They're three things that are not going to be achieved by this fund.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Exactly right. I think you just nailed it. They are exactly the three things that I think are the key to manufacturing. I worked in manufacturing for much of my career, in food processing, in the minerals processing sectors, and if you don't get industrial relations, energy, and approvals and red tape right, then you end up with a failing manufacturing sector. And that's exactly what we've seen. And it means it costs way too much to build any facility, and it costs way too much to run them. And that's exactly the situation that we've seen our manufacturing sector heading into. We're seeing closure of jobs. We saw Qenos closing just about a week ago, also over in WA we've seen an alumina refinery closing, and we've seen closures really starting to happen on a widespread basis. And it's because the government hasn't got these three things right. I tell you what the answer isn't. It's not to throw government money around - hard earned taxpayers' money shouldn't be used to try and subsidise the failures of the government on energy and industrial relations and deregulation.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

Well, it's interesting you say that, because if it was about fair dinkum getting a manufacturing base up and running again, most people - and the polling shows that most people don't have a problem with governments investing money into that - but when you pick winners in particular sectors, particularly given this great desire to create solar panels here in Australia, we're never going to be able to compete with China when it comes to producing solar panels. So this is just going to be money over money over the never never. Because I mean, you can't - any business that is actually created under this fund is never going to survive on its own two feet.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, it won't. And that's a problem. You've got to get the fundamentals right. If you want any business to survive, if you want private sector to survive in any sector, it's got to work on the fundamentals. And right now, the fundamentals are all wrong for a successful manufacturing sector. There's another piece to this that I think is all wrong, which is that we've seen a similar act going into place in the United States called the IRA, so called Inflation Reduction Act. Well, I tell you what we're seeing in the United States, inflation going up. When government spends more money inflation goes up. You said it in your editorial a moment ago, it's absolutely right. This is something we know from history. It's one of the clearest lessons of economics, big spending governments drive up inflation. That's exactly what's happening in the United States and we're going down exactly the same path.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

Angus, the other issue is that the Coalition, well it would appear and the Leader Peter Dutton has said as much, that you're gonna go to the election with a nuclear energy policy. The reports out in the last 24 hours are that the Liberals and the Nationals are at odds about where power stations might go. Look, I think there's obviously some concern as to is how you're gonna manage this policy, but Chris Bowen seems to, he wants you to do it on his timetable.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Yeah, well, this is all coming from Chris Bowen, who hasn't got a clue, by the way. I mean, our policy is about affordable, reliable energy as we bring down our emissions. Nuclear is part of that story. But there's other parts of that story that are incredibly important. It is something, that whilst renewables are an important part of the mix, we're not going to have a renewables only strategy like Chris Bowen, which is failing and will fail. I mean, that's very, very clear. Labor's policy has not delivered the $275 cost reduction that they promised. They're not delivering the reduction in emissions that they said they were going to deliver, which is extraordinary, isn't it? And it's completely falling. So when it comes to the location issue, which you just raised a moment ago, we've been very clear, build these things where you've already got transmission lines, which is where you've had coal fired power stations that are closing or are closed. It's not complicated. That's been our position for some time. That's confused Chris Bowen because it means he can't build his 28,000 kilometers of transmission line. He doesn't like that, he wants to build all these transmission line, which I tell you, are tearing up rural Australia right now.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

I was just gonna say, so I mean obviously, the Hunter Valley, Muswellbrook is an obvious because you've got two power stations there about to close that would, and they are towns that are going to be crying out for employment once those power stations close, there's no two ways about that. Where else do you see these going? And from a political perspective, which is obviously going to be a concern, are these going to go into National Party seats? Are they going to go into the Labor Party seats? Where are they going to go? Because that is obviously going to be a concern in the lead up to an election?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Yeah, well, the first thing I'd say is that they're the obvious places to put new power stations, because you've got transmission lines, and that prevents spending what will be an extraordinary, you know, over $100 billion on new transmission lines, which is what Labor is heading towards with it's 28,000 kilometers. Second point I'd make is we've said very clearly, they'll only go in sites where the community is supportive. And that's been the experience internationally, you go to the UK or the US, they've typically run processes to assess the community's support for it, which is exactly what we did with uranium waste, nuclear waste, in South Australia. We ran a very successful process where we got the community support over 60%, supporting having nuclear waste in that area, which Labor has not honoured, they've ditched it. But that kind of process we know can work, has worked. And we'll have more to say about that in the coming months. But the idea Chris Bowen's peddling around, I mean, Chris Bowen is failing on his own policy, and he should spend a little bit more time getting his policy to work, which it's not, it simply isn't working.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

Well, if Liddell and Bayswater are two of the sites that you're thinking about, I can tell you as somebody that spent quite a bit of time in that part of the world, the community will bend over backwards to have nuclear power stations built there, and it'll be the CFMEU driving the charge to bring them in, I can tell you. The IMF has apparently ranked Australia second for budget management in the world.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, they haven't. This is a Labor Government that's loose with the truth. They ran around a few days back saying the IMF has ranked us second, they've done no such thing! It's not in any of their documents. This is just made up by a Treasurer, who just loves patting himself on the back and keeps telling Australians how good they've got it. But I'll tell you, when I'm out and about, I don't hear that, Stephen. I hear people suffering from the cost of living crisis, the likes of which we haven't seen since I was a kid. And there's a pain out there that they're not acknowledging. But they're very quick to tell us how good they are. Well, the IMF has made no such pronouncement. The truth of the matter is, this is a government that's allowed our standard of living to collapse, and they've got no plan to restore it.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

The first of July will be the first sweetener that they'll try and convince us to vote for them again, with the stage three tax cuts or modified stage three tax cuts. Now, for the life of me, I don't understand why this was such a big secret. But it turns out now that the Treasurer's office actually asked for advice on the stage three tax cut changes back in June of 2022. Now given that you know, electorally putting money in people's pockets and offering tax cuts to people is generally a good thing, I don't know why they were so secretive about this.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, let me say a couple of things about this. The first is that on at least 100 occasions, they said they had no plans for changes since the election, 100 times. Then we discovered that a month into their term of government, they were asking the department for advice on changes. Now, you know, the first point to make here is, this is a government that is loose with the truth. They were loose with the truth on the IMF report I just talked about. They're loose with the truth about what they plan to do in the future. They were loose with the truth on promising $275 reduction in people's bills, none of which they've delivered. The second point to make about this, is that we're all in favor of lower taxes for Australians. We've seen a 23% increase in personal income taxes being paid under Labor, we need some of that going back into people's pockets. But what we don't support is paying for it by tax rises for other people. And a tax rise, which was promised 100 times wouldn't happen. So this is a government that can't be relied on. They don't say - they don't do what they say they're going to do. And here's just another instance of exactly that.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:

Yeah, it just seems like a bizarre thing that, you know, I mean really, bracket creep was something that desperately needs to be addressed. And that's something that hasn't been addressed with these changes. Angus it's good to talk to you. We'll catch up in a couple of weeks.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Thanks Stephen.

ENDS.