Interview with Paul Murray, Sky News
3 April 2019
PAUL MURRAY: Prime Minister Scott Morrison thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks Paul.
MURRAY: This is a very natural couch setting that we’ve set up for you.
PRIME MINISTER: Welcome to my couch.
MURRAY: Appreciate it. Just a couple of questions, I was planning to go to the footy on the 11th of May, the 18th of May or the 25th of May.
[Laughter]
Which ticket should I hand back?
PRIME MINISTER: I think you should go to the footy every opportunity you get.
MURRAY: Yeah, right okay.
PRIME MINISTER: That's my policy.
MURRAY: What if there was a Saturday night going and I really had to cover an election? The 11th, the 18th, or the 25th?
PRIME MINISTER: Mate you can always do it from the stands, I think it’d go really well with the coverage. I think your viewers would love it.
MURRAY: Okay, I was asking for Speersy and he just wants to know whether we can have a night off, is it the 11th, the 18th or the 25th?
[Laughter]
PRIME MINISTER: He can take his pick. Maybe he could decide and he can tell me.
MURRAY: Okay, the reaction to the Budget seems to be pretty positive, but there's a couple of things that I wanted to jump into that aren’t as obvious a headline to everyone else. I think that regardless of who is Prime Minister or what Party is in power, I love that we live in a country that yesterday made a decision that leukemia drugs shouldn't cost $140,000, they should only cost $40.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, or even less on a concession that's right, $6.50. I agree. I think our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - and we've had over 2,000 medicines now listed on it since we've come to government and it's costing over $10 billion dollars - but I think this says something amazing about Australia. I mean, that's actually what civilization and society and a good-hearted country looks like, it’s when you have a PBS. I've met so many of those who have been on clinical trials, on these drugs. I met a chap the other day and he actually used to work for the Productivity Commission many years ago. He was an economist and very excited about the Budget coming up. But he had a very rare form of skin cancer and this is one of the drugs we listed in the Budget. Now he was in a position to actually pay for this. Now that is a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was thrilled - he knew he'd been able to put himself in a position to do that, but anyone else would not have. The look on his face when he shared the news was just wonderful. This is what a great country does.
But it can't do it, if you haven't got a strong economy. That's the point we've been making; you run out of money as Labor always does, then they stop listing medicines and that's what they did.
MURRAY: But it's something that just as a bloke, it’s got to feel good. You look at your time in office, reaching the highest office in the land and you've been able to help those people?
PRIME MINISTER: I mean last year when we did the Budget - I think I remember talking about spinal muscular atrophy and how that's changing the lives of young Australians and their parents - the letters I've had, the stories I've heard, I mean Greg Hunt has the best job in the world I think as the Health Minister to be able to make these changes. But I got to say the other one that I felt very strongly about and I put at the top of the list for what we had to do in this year's Budget, that was our $461 million investment in tackling youth suicide and youth mental health. I don't think I've met anyone who hasn't known someone or heard of a story, whether through a friend or God forbid, their own family where they haven’t in some way been touched by youth suicide. Greg Hunt tells the account of after he became Health Minister and he went up to the north coast of NSW where they’d one of those horrible clusters of suicide events amongst young people. We put a Headspace in there and he told the Parliament today, that there hasn't been a report of one since. Now I hope that's true and have I know Greg hopes so as well.
We can make a difference in this area. So 30 new Headspaces that will be put in place as a result of this. But it goes down to things – you might know with your own kids - but Smiling Minds is that little (inaudible) and I mean, my daughter used to use it. There's some work that we're doing with that group and it's the smallest things to help build children's resilience and to deal with mental health issues as they grow older. Then there is just the heartbreaking events of what is occurring in remote Indigenous communities and we've talked about that off air as well before. I mean that's what was happening over the summer and that was just chilling.
MURRAY: That’s it, clusters of as you say, clusters of teenagers, kids as young as 12 and even younger. The fact that you are so hopeless.
PRIME MINISTER: They decide not to live, that seems to them the right option for you. Now there's mental illness that's attached to that. There's desperation, there's hopelessness and as a nation as big, as generous and as strong as ours, that's something we have to tackle and beat. As Prime Minister I want to beat it.
MURRAY: One of the knocks that seems to be coming from the obvious sections of the media, most likely informed by your political opponents, is the only way you get to surplus is because somehow you're skimping on the NDIS. I'm assuming this is something you believe not to be true.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it's a lie and it's a stupid lie. Look, there's a reason why Labor clearly haven't been able to deliver a surplus since I had long curly hair and I understand Josh had a mullet.
MURRAY: And I was thin.
[Laughter]
PRIME MINISTER: It’s because they don't even know how Budgets work. The NDIS is fully funded. Every invoice paid, every invoice presented, paid. The way it's funded is, as much as is needed, is provided. You make estimates from year to year, you work with the states and go; “We think it will cost that much this year.” When demand is expected to be less than that, then there's an estimates variation. It's not like there's some money that is being held back, that's not how the Budget works. It works with things like carers payments and Newstart and all the rest of these things. You make adjustments as you get a better handle on what the actual demand will be.
Now the NDIS is the biggest social project that the government has been embarking on, for many, many years, probably since Medicare. So it's big and it still has a lot of kinks to work through. I know there are still frustrations, but the per person funding that is available in that scheme didn't change. It was just an adjustment in how many people we expected to have to have to pay for it in that year. We now believe we'll hit the target of how many people will need it in the current year, one year later. That's all it means. So I thought it was this very disingenuous from Labor. If they knew that, then I think that's pretty crook to be using the NDIS in that sort of political way. If they didn't know it, well, they're just stupid.
MURRAY: But do you care that something as clearly inaccurate as that, takes hold in the media as quickly as it does? It frankly flushes out the people that, it wouldn’t matter if you gave people $100,000, they still would have found a way to say; “Terrible Budget, they're on their way out”
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I mean if that's what the Labor Party have to rely on - and I thought their response today to the Budget was the most feeble I've seen in a long time. If that's all they could talk about, some concocted story like that which was misusing politically the National Disability Insurance Scheme which is supposed to be a bipartisan initiative - if that's how desperate they are, well I think that reflects very poorly on them and anyone else who was suckered by it.
MURRAY: A lot of people watching us are involved in small business. This is going to be one of the big fights of the election, not just about the impact of minimum wage changes, but most importantly for one of the big boosts - and you could feel it a few years ago when the Government did it - which was the asset write off.
PRIME MINISTER: Yep.
MURRAY: The fact that even more companies will now be able to claim up to $30,000, This means you get to, people reinvest in their business and now they get to keep even more of their own money.
PRIME MINISTER: Well that's how the economy grows; small and family businesses employ people, they invest, they develop new products, they open new stores. They buy a new coffee machine, they buy new fridge, they get a new toolmaking unit or whatever it is. Up to $30,000 now for businesses with a turnover up to $50 million, I mean business is up to $50 million employing more than half of the workforce in Australia today. That is who is driving the economy forward.
You know, I don't know what would be the point of working hard under a Labor government. I mean, how do you work the more tax you pay. The more regulation, the more they interfere with you. I mean under their new carbon trading scheme that they're talking about and their electric vehicles strategy - well, there's nothing wrong with electric vehicles - but what they've got planned is, they want to tell you what to drive and they want to tell you what to put in the kid's lunch box. I mean Bill Shorten fingers are everywhere.
MURRAY: Good luck with that.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, good luck with that.
MURRAY: So this is the thing; the commentariat, the polls whatever, we all know the game that exists now. But isn't it interesting that when the NSW election was 50/50 in the polls, the media covered it in a completely different fashion that meant Michael Daly blew himself up in the last week, it mattered. For you, you’re hopeful - and you go into every day as 50/50 no doubt - but do you think that if people reset, went back to zero and went; “Okay it's 50/50 from here,” that the campaign is going to look a whole lot different than one where people think the outcome is already clear?
PRIME MINISTER: No I don't think – increasingly - that people do think that it’s clear. I think as we get closer to the election, the issues will be come into sharper focus. I mean the thing I love about Australia and politics is Australians aren't that interested in politics most of the time. They’re more interested in the things that matter to them each day, whether that's their family, their kids, their work or indeed the bills they’ve got to play or their team on the weekend. They're the things they're really passionate and focused about. I mean, there are others who are more interested in politics, but as we get closer - and we saw this in the state election too - people focus and they sharpen and they look at what the options are. They look at what the issues most important to them are.
So this will be an election like all the ones that have gone before it. Australians will weigh it up and they'll make a call and there's a fairly straightforward choice; higher taxes under Labor, lower taxes under us. You get Bill Shorten or you get me.
MURRAY: To those people that, either in the past have strayed, or find it hard to go as hard as they may have in previous years, what do you say not to the paid-up and proud members of the Liberal Party, but the person who has voted more than not for the Liberal Party, about why they should fight just as hard in the next couple of months, as they did six years ago?
PRIME MINISTER: Because the country they're going to live in for the next 10 years is going to be determined by this election.
Last night we got back to surplus. A surplus Budget next year, for the first time in 12 years. The last time we saw one, was when another Victorian Liberal came to the dispatch box in Peter Costello. It's taken 12 years to get back to that point. Today we have more people employed of working age as a share of that population, than at any other time in our history. The previous record was set in 2007, just when Peter Costello and John Howard left office. We just got back over that mark in the last 12 months.
You vote Labor once you pay for it for a decade. I don't want to see another decade that starts with a Labor government coming and unravelling all the great work we've put in place. Not for us, but because of what it means for the economy that your kids are going to have to find a job in. That the business you're running is going to have to survive in and with all these headwinds.
I find it interesting when people put this question to me about the Budget; “Oh, there's all these headwinds, is now the time that you would have tax relief?” Well, this is the best time to have it. I have no idea how the economy can be more resilient, by taxing it more. I mean it's like, you know, someone is doing laps in swimming, and saying: “Here, put his weight belt on, I'm sure that's going to help you a lot going up and down the pool.” But that's what Labor wants to do.
And so I'd say to all of those Australians; this is really going to make a big difference. It did last time when they switched from John Howard and Peter Costello to Kevin Rudd. We all remember how that went, we all remember vividly. And this mob are worse.
MURRAY: Just finally, Married At First Sight sadly beat the Budget in ratings last night. Any plans on putting those couples into the Senate just at the last minute?
[Laughter]
You know, captain’s pick candidates, one of those crazies?
PRIME MINISTER: No, but I suspect there may be other parties that will give them a run.
[Laughter]
Who knows, that’s why elections will bring the great and the good and sometimes the ‘a little odd’ as well. But look we are coming up to an election and that’s something special in this country. I know as a country, we don't have the same sort of politics that they do in the United States or the UK or places like that. I always think that's a good thing here in Australia. You know, people turn up, they'll take the decision seriously. They understand the responsibility and what is at stake and I'll be talking to them about that decision and I'll be respecting them in how I engage with them on that. Because you know, a stronger economy, that is what enables everything else. That's what opens the door to everything else. We are a strong, prosperous country thank God and I want to make sure it stays that way, because I want my kids to grow up and one just the same.
MURRAY: And one as we mentioned before about the PBS, that was actually able to help people last night.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s it.
MURRAY: Prime Minister congratulations and thank you.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks mate, cheers.
