Interview with Paul Murray, Sky News
1 April 2022
Paul Murray: For those who believe that nothing is happening whatever when it comes to the national debt, what does this Budget actually do to start to tackle the debt?
Prime Minister: Already in the last 12 months, because our economic comeback has been so strong because of what we’ve done, we’re already $100 billion better off. That’s the biggest economic recovery in the shortest period of time that we've seen in 70 years. And when you support the economy, particularly when it's really necessary to do so, you know when to start and you know where to stop - that’s what drives your growth up. And we've been able to get people out of welfare and into work. And that's what repairs your Budget. That's what brings the deficit down year after year after year.
Murray: Now the election campaign is going to get very personal, and I’ll get to that in a second. But just one line that each-way Albo was pushing around in Question Time today was that somehow Medicare was under threat. Now, this Government is going to spend more money on Medicare than’s ever been spent before. And also, something that they always leave out about health, is that you’ve been able to list literally thousands of drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that means people …
Prime Minister: Yep.
Murray: … are being instantly helped. Yet still, the attack’s going to be that somehow you’ve done something nasty to health.
Prime Minister: Well, that’s a complete lie, and, you know, they do that all the time. Everybody remembers the Mediscare of 2016. Apparently that was the end of Medicare. We have bulk billing now at the highest rate it's ever been. We've got record investments in Medicare, record investments in hospitals. We've had to commit more than $40 billion on health for the public health response to get us through COVID. It's been the strength of our health system that has enabled us to have one of the best, if not the best, health record, pretty much of anywhere in the world, when it comes to death rates from COVID, and saved over 40,000 lives.
But on Medicare, this is what the threat to Medicare is. During the course of the pandemic, yes, of course, we had to lean in. If we hadn’t of leant in and done JobKeeper, 700,000 jobs would have been lost. Businesses would have been emaciated. There'd be no economy on the other side of the pandemic, which many countries are now struggling with. We kept our economy together and to, and we saw it through, but we knew when to stop. You’ll remember that Labor was going, “Oh, you can't take JobKeeper off, you’ve got to keep it there. You won’t have jobs,” and all this sort of thing. Anyway, we just made the hard decision about when to start and when to stop. Now, Labor, had we done what they’d asked, they would have spent another $81 billion during the course of the pandemic. Now, that includes, of course, you know, the $6 billion that they were going to pay to people to have a vaccine they’d already had. Genius, Albonomics.
But putting that together, what that means is $81 billion is almost three times what it costs to run Medicare each year. So that's the threat to Medicare. If you can't manage money, if you can't keep your economy strong, if you don't have an economic plan, you can't pay for Medicare. And you're right about medicines - 2,800 medicines. Now, Trikafta is one of those. We just, we just listed just now. That's for cystic fibrosis. Now I chatted to a lovely young fella, he's just turning 12, and he'll have access to this drug - usually cost you $80,000. Cystic fibrosis is awful. These young kids, they can't breathe, their quality of life is just so, so destroyed. And for many, it's a terrible journey. This drug changes his life. And when I was speaking to him, he says, “I can ride my bike with my mates. I can go and play basketball. I can just be like the other kids.” And these pharmaceuticals, they don’t just save lives, they change lives, they improve the quality of life. And I think one of our best boasts as a country is that we do that. And when Labor were in power and they couldn’t manage money, they had to stop listing medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. If you can’t manage money, you can't deliver on health. So Anthony Albanese, he can say any number of things. He's going to promise to do this, that and every other thing. But the thing that depends on what, determines whether he can do it is if you've got an economic plan, which he's had three years now to deliver. Sorry, too late, mate, buzzers gone, you didn’t have an answer.
Murray: Their Shadow Finance Minister yesterday thought, aha, I’ve found the hole in the Budget, a secret $3 billion cut. Turns out, they don’t …
Prime Minister: Yes.
Murray: … know the difference between a decision that's been not announced versus announced. A $3 billion mistake. Yet it was very barely recognised.
Prime Minister: Yeah.
Murray: What a screaming admission about their inability to manage the country. That's not, that’s not a backbencher. It's not a, somebody freewheeling.
Prime Minister: No.
Murray: That's the Shadow Finance Minister.
Prime Minister: Yeah, and it was sneaky, Jim, too. It was the Shadow Treasurer. He was all very pleased with himself. And I said, “It's really simple, Jim. When you take it out of that column, you put it in to this column over here. One balances out the other. And so no cuts. That's how decisions taken but not yet announced works.” Now, I would know that, as would the Treasurer. Done four Budgets as a Prime Minister, three Budgets as a Treasurer, and an additional Budget as a member of the Expenditure Review Committee. My first budget was back in 2015-16. So that’s eight budgets.
Now, my opponent, Anthony Albanese, he was in government for six years and he wasn't even on the Expenditure Review Committee for anything more than just six weeks right at the end with Kevin Rudd. Now, if they’re not going to trust him when they were in government to sit on the Budget Committee of their Government over six years, then why on earth - if Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for all that time didn't trust him to sit on the Budget Committee - why on earth should the Australian people have him as Prime Minister to run it?
This election is a choice. It's not a referendum, it's a choice, and choices have consequences. It’s not like deciding, you know, who should be voted off the island on Survivor or something like that. It's not a reality television show. Australians understand the significance and importance of elections. So expressing opinion on a poll or tapping on an online survey or something like that, nothing changes as a result of doing that. You get in that booth, you get the pen out, and you pick the Liberal candidate or the Labor candidate, the Liberal Member of Parliament or the Liberal candidate or the Labor Member of Parliament or candidate. What you do in that box determines the economy you're going to live in for the next decade. It's going to determine the national security of this country.
And that's certainly what happened at the last election when people chose to elect us. When I was elected for the first time as Prime Minister just three years ago, I said I’d keep the economy strong, and we have, despite what we've had to face. I said I’d keep Australians safe, and I've put in place one of the biggest defence agreements the country has seen, the biggest since ANZUS 70 years ago, and we have been at the centre of revitalising the partnership with Japan, India and the United States, which is known as the Quad. I said we’d do these things. I said we'd get people into their own homes - 300,000 Australians have got in their homes.
So people know, and they got the consequences they were seeking, which was a stronger economy and keeping Australia safe. A vote for Labor means weak at leadership. It means weak leadership, which means a weak economy, which means they lose.
Let’s talk about me and my team. So it's me or Anthony Albanese. He said in the Parliament today, he was red and green. And I know what he's referring to, but I said, mate, that's truer than you think. You are red and green. You are really red and green. Labor and the Greens. That's who he is. And so when you look at our team, I mean, it's me or Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister. It is Josh Frydenberg or Jim Chalmers. Pretty easy decision on that one too. The bloke who’s done four Budgets as Treasurer, and the bloke who used to advise Wayne Swan on how to do Budgets. Could you imagine, there he is, Jim, if he was Treasurer, getting on the phone, phone a friend, and saying, “Ah, g’day, Wayne. How do you think I should do that?” Well, you know what Wayne's answers would be. And then you got, who do you want, Marise Payne as Foreign Minister, who has worked with me to secure all these incredible foreign agreements, AUKUS and things like this, or Penny Wong. And then defence. You know, you've got Peter Dutton, who we all know is an outstanding Defence Minister, the cyber security package he's brought down in this Budget, first class, absolutely first class. Or you can have Brendan O'Connor. Now people might go, “Who?” Good question. I'll tell you who. He was the bloke who was the Border Protection Minister in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government. He couldn't keep the borders safe. So how on earth does people think he'd be able to keep Australia safe? But, you know, it seems that he might be for the boot. Even Anthony Albanese doesn't seem to think he's the right person for the job, so if he can't get his own leader's confidence, well, goodness me.
So this is the choice - there’s team with experience and a focus and a record and a plan all backed up by a strong economic plan, or the relics of an old failed Labor Government that haven't learned the lessons. They’ve been in opposition all this time, and they still don't have an economic plan. If you don't have an economic plan, you don’t have a plan.
Murray: That's the Prime Minister, I had a chance to talk to him a little bit earlier in the day.
