Interview with Leon Byner, 5AA Adelaide
17 September 2018
LEON BYNER: Let’s welcome to 5AA and across South Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Prime Minister thanks for joining us today.
PRIME MINISTER: Hey Leon.
BYNER: Look, some would suggest, including the aged care sector, that there have already been so many inquiries and they’re saying; “Why aren’t the recommendations from those inquiries being fully implemented?”
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s what we are doing. Just in the most recent Budget and last week I announced $106 million that was going into increasing the capacity of regional, residential care facilities, increasing the resources for the policing of standards and there’s around $50 million to increase the standards themselves. We’ve got over $80 million going into mental health care support in residential aged care facilities. So, we’re going to keep doing all of those things. But what really troubled me Leon, is when I saw those incident statistics of what was happening, with the risks that were there. The con-compliance, I mean, once facility is being closed down a month, since Oakden.
Now that asks one question; “How much more widespread is this?” All Australians deserve to have assurance that answers that question.
BYNER: And what’s happened to those people who were in those institutions that have been shut, where do they go?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they won’t be allowed to go and set up new ones, that’s for sure.
BYNER: So, where do they go?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh I see, you’re talking about the residents, I thought you were talking about the people running the facilities.
BYNER: Yeah, no, no.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there’s about 2,000 people who are affected by what was happening across the sector, 300 of them had to be placed in other facilities. The others were able to be accommodated with improvements made in various facilities. That is how the issue has been managed, people aren’t left out on the streets or anything like that, of course that wouldn’t happen. So that’s what’s been managed across the sector.
But because we’ve been doing more policing work, because we’ve been doing unannounced visits, because we’ve been doing the monitoring of the standards, that is what has been showing this up. Now, it may well be that in the past, these things were underreported and the problem was much higher then. But the fact is, we know what it’s like now. For every Australian who has to make a decision about the care of one of their loved ones, who are at the most vulnerable time of their lives, they want to be assured. And it’s not specific to one sector. We know in Oakden, I mean that was a government-run facility for goodness sake. So it’s in the not-for-profit sector, it’s in the for-profit sector, it’s in the government sector. It’s in rural, it’s in metropolitan. It’s in large facilities, it’s in small facilities.
BYNER: How much do you think this Royal Commission is going to cost, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: We’re currently finalising the terms of reference and how many commissioners and the length. But the banking one we’re anticipating is between 50 and 75. So there’s no reason why we’d be thinking about it in different terms to that at the moment.
BYNER: So $50 to $75 mil?
PRIME MINISTER: That’s what we currently have allowed for the banking royal commission. At the moment we haven’t gone anywhere near those costs in that royal commission.
But look, that’s what we’re working through right now and that won’t come at the expense of frontline service delivery. That will be accounted for in the Budget and that’ll be tidied up in the Mid-Year Statement at the end of the year.
BYNER: Any idea who will head the commission?
PRIME MINISTER: No, we’re still working through those details.
BYNER: Right, I believe the commission will also be looking at young disabled people that are kept in aged facilities?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah that’s correct. The Royal Commission is 100 per cent focused on the things the Commonwealth is responsible for. For younger people with disabilities who are living in an aged care or residential aged care setting or receiving those types of services, that will also be a focus. Now that may give rise to observations to why people are finding themselves in those settings, which relate to services provided at a state level or in other areas. That’s fair enough. But I said yesterday, retirement villages for example, they run under the authority of the state governments. I’ve said to the states in a statement yesterday and I’ll be in touch with them, that if they want to be involved with this in terms of things that they’re responsible for, well, there’s an open invitation there. But I’m not going to let that slow us down in getting on with this.
BYNER: Your adversaries in the Parliament are saying that you ripped almost $2 billion out of the sector when you were Treasurer. How do you respond to that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it’s just a complete lie. We’ve put $1 billion extra into aged care every year since then. It was $17.1 billion in 2016/17 and in 2017/18 it’s $18.6 billion. Over the next four years as it grows by another $5 billion to $23.6 billion.
Only Labor could go; “One plus one equals zero.” I mean that’s their financial management. You know what? I just wish this was something we didn’t have to fight about, Leon. I mean the fact that Labor are already today, when I’m calling for bipartisanship on this issue, want to get into the politics of that, I think it’s disappointing. I hope they reconsider going down this path of telling lies like they always do, trying to scare people about an issue where I don’t want to fight about it, I just want to fix it.
BYNER: Alright, I just want to list a few issues, because the one thing you need now Prime Minister, to have a hope of winning the next election whenever that’s going to be, maybe May of next year, you need some clear air. First of all, are you concerned that some of your colleagues may decide to support a Labor push to refer Peter Dutton to the High Court, to determine if he’s eligible to sit in the Parliament?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I don’t believe that’s going to happen.
BYNER: You don’t think it will?
PRIME MINISTER: No.
BYNER: Have you spoken to your colleagues, like Julie Bishop about this?
PRIME MINISTER: I just don’t think it’s going to happen Leon. We considered this matter in the Parliament just over three weeks ago and resolved not to do that, as a Parliament. There’s nothing to change that view.
BYNER: Have you been given a briefing on the strawberry contamination which has now spread to SA?
PRIME MINISTER: Greg Hunt made mention of that in our press conference yesterday, so I have basic understanding of it. But no, I’d prefer that any specific inquiries be directed to the Health Minister.
BYNER: I want to ask you about a situation with electricity. Because I know you’ve got your new Minister who is the “Minister for bringing power prices down”. I want to give you a scenario that I’m aware of. We’ve got a local business here who are going to save $100,000 a year on their power bill by going to biofuel generation. He’s going to do it. We’re going to see more of this, what’s your reaction to this?
PRIME MINISTER: I think we may see more of that and it’ll be driven by two things. At the moment it’s being driven by the fact that prices are just too high now and even things which are expensive, seem less expensive, particularly for commercial industrial users.
A lot of that has to do with the availability of gas, Leon. We’ve got gas locked up in New South Wales and Victoria and parts of South Australia and the only state that hasn’t done that, is in Queensland on the eastern states. That’s why they’ve got a lot more gas than everybody else. The Northern Territory is opening up their gas and of course Western Australia always had it. That’s why their power prices are cheaper.
I was in Dallas earlier this year in Texas, their prices are about a third less or half less than what we pay here. That’s because they’ve allowed people to get the gas out from underneath the ground. I think that’s an important issue, particularly for commercial industrial users. But the other part is ensuring that we have a good investment environment for reliable, what I call reliable power supply, which is fair dinkum power supply. Stuff that works when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. We’re working to provide a more certain environment for that. The ACCC, when I was Treasurer, the report I commissioned, gave us some very good suggestions of how we can achieve that. Angus Taylor, as you rightly say, the Minister for getting electricity prices down, is pulling that proposal together as we speak.
BYNER: Look I need to ask you about power companies gaming. Because when the interconnector was down recently, they pulled a cool $28 million which cost every South Australian twelve bucks. They were gaming the system, according to the experts. Are you going to make that illegal?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that big stick on the electricity companies, the energy companies, is part of our plan. Those powers range from everything from the most basic which is warning notices but to forcible undertakings and ultimately that will involve divestment. That’s a pretty extreme power.
BYNER: When is this going to happen?
PRIME MINISTER: Angus is working on all of that right now. So I’m always one to get it right before I take it forward and so we’re going through that process right now. But we’ve already seen, when it came to gas and even with retail electricity providers, that when we put them in the room and we made it very clear what we expected of them, we did get movement. I think we need to get more movement from them.
BYNER: Do you want more female representatives in the Liberal Party?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes.
BYNER: How are you going to get it?
PRIME MINISTER: By ensuring we’ve got candidates coming forward who can be successful at pre-selection. That they have a good understanding of what life in federal politics is all about. It’s very tough. I mean I’m blessed, I’ve got a wonderful wife Jen and we can manage our family life and we can manage our political life together. It’s got a bit tougher of late for obvious reasons. But I’ve worked with a lot of women in Parliament here, Kelly O’Dwyer, Sophie Mirabella, who have been raising young children while they’ve been here and this is why I’ve got so much respect for Kelly. Because she’s demonstrating that it can be achieved. She’s a competent, highly proficient, successful Minister in the Government and she is a great mum as well. You know, she’s making it happen and we need more examples of that. That’s why I’ve always been so supportive.
When I was a state director of the Liberal Party, I was well-known for recruiting women into the Party and getting them into Parliament and ensuring they could get through that process. So I’ll always, if there’s the opportunity to get a good female member into the Parliament, I’ll always do that. But at the end of the day, in the Liberal Party, it’s the best candidate that should be selected and that’s what’s just happened recently in the seat of Wentworth with Dave Sharma, who is an outstanding candidate for there and I know he’ll do a great job.
BYNER: Well Kerryn Phelps, with the preference help, is going to be a formidable opponent isn’t she?
PRIME MINISTER: Well from what I’ve seen, she’s basically supporting the Labor Party. So a vote for Kerryn Phelps is a vote for Bill Shorten.
BYNER: Can you confidently say that there’s no bullying, particularly of women, in the Liberal Party?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, in terms of how people understand that term, there are many different opinions and perceptions about what that term means, but certainly in the parliamentary Party, which is what I’m responsible for, I’ve been talking to my female colleagues and the whips have been managing the issues that arose out of the leadership spill a few weeks ago. They are times of intense lobbying, but we’ve got around the colleagues and we’re dealing with those issues the same way the Labor Party dealt with them when they had similar challenges. You do it through the party whips who are the pastoral councillors in the parliamentary team. In the state divisions and in the organisational wing, I’ve raised this as an issue of concern. It’s one that I would expect the party organisation to deal with.
BYNER: One question, when do you think power prices will start coming down?
PRIME MINISTER: Well we already saw Leon, in the June quarter of this year on the Consumer Price Index, it was a very small change, but it was down just over one per cent. So we are starting to see the worm turn on this. We saw it on wholesale prices as well in gas, which were down quite a bit. We saw it on South Australian prices as well. So we’re already starting to see this turn. The issue is to ensure that we continue that downward trend and that’s certainly what we’re working on.
The alternative that Labor will into law is a 45 per cent emissions reduction target. The target we have and has been the commitment of the Government for many years now, of 26 per cent, that will have a material impact on electricity prices. That’s my advice. But to take it to 45 per cent will pretty much shut down every coal-fired power station in the country and it’ll increase people’s power bill by about $1,400 on average for every single household. That’s Bill Shorten’s plan.
So if you want lower electricity prices, support mine and Angus Taylor’s plan to get electricity prices down.
BYNER: Is CKI going to be allowed to buy the APA gas pipeline?
PRIME MINISTER: One of the changes that has happened Leon, is that when you move from Treasurer to Prime Minister, those are no longer calls I get to make. Those calls are made, actually specifically under the law, by the Treasurer. Now as you know, the ACCC has considered the competition issues and they’ve said that there isn’t an issue there. But there will remain a number of other issues that I know Josh Frydenberg as Treasurer will be looking at very closely. There’s the Critical Infrastructure Centre which we established. I was a key part of forming that to ensure that our national security agencies and other key agencies examine these issues very closely. I can assure that’s exactly what will happen as both the Foreign Investment Review Board and ultimately the Treasurer make their decision.
BYNER: Thank you for coming on Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks Leon, great to talk to you as always and g’day to all your listeners as well.
BYNER: Good on you. Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
