Radio interview with Tom Elliott, 3AW
3 April 2019
TOM ELLIOTT: The Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Mr Morrison Good afternoon.
PRIME MINISTER: Hey Tom.
ELLIOTT: I watched Josh Frydenberg’s first Budget last night, is it going to win you the next election?
PRIME MINISTER: Well it’s about it being a plan to actually grow the Australian economy and bring us into surplus and invest in the essential services Australians rely on. The answer to your question is in the hands of the Australian people and the plan we once again put to them last night, I think demonstrates that you run a strong economy, you bring the Budget back into surplus and it means he can guarantee the funding like hospitals and schools that they rely on. I mean, we've already increased funding for both of those by more than 60 per cent over the last five and a half years and we want to keep that going.
ELLIOTT: But do you think the surplus matters in itself to everyday Australians? Because that was the most conspicuous thing in Josh Frydenberg speech last night, the surplus, the surplus, we’re back in black, we've got a surplus. Do you think your average person really cares?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that wasn't just what Josh said last night, that's certainly where he started because getting the Budget back into balance means Australia is paying its way. It means now we can pay down the debt and it means that there’s around $18 billion dollars in interest payments that goes on the debt and you've got to get rid of that, so you can invest more in things like hospitals and schools.
Now last night we announced the $461 million dollar plan to combat youth suicide and youth mental health issues. You can do that when you've actually got the Budget back into balance. You can provide tax relief like we did last night, when you get the Budget back into balance. That's why - I mean a surplus of itself, it’s a means to an end. It's a means to the end of reducing debt and putting funding into the things that really matter to people.
ELLIOTT: Okay so will the ends, you know, the various spending programmes you outlined or Josh Frydenberg outlined, will they win you the election?
PRIME MINISTER: Well again Tom, that's for the Australian people to determine, I'm not complacent about this. What my job as Prime Minister is and the job of our team is to put forward our plans for how we're going to keep the economy growing and keep the Budget in balance. How we’re going to keep investing in the things that actually make a difference to people's lives and in Victoria, one of the biggest issues as you know - your callers call about it all the time and when I'm there this is the issue that is constantly raised - that's managing population growth.
So whether it's widening Racecourse Road out there in Flemington or Napoleon Road in Ferntree Gully with $50 million, all of these projects make the big difference so people get home sooner and safer. The money we've put into extending again, the funding for preschool education for 4 year olds, that makes a huge difference.
ELLIOTT: I was recently wandering around the seat of Kooyong. I don't live there but my daughter goes to school there and I noticed most of the candidates who are running against Josh Frydenberg seemed to be running on environmental platforms, Julian Burnside, Oliver Yates. Should you have done more on climate change to make sure you don't lose seats like Kooyong?
PRIME MINISTER: We’ve got $3.5 billion dollars worth of initiatives we announced in the Budget last night, because we're meeting our targets for 2030, 26 per cent, we're meeting them. I've set out very clearly how every single tonne of that is going to be achieved. Our position is based on you can have your economy and you can have your cleaner environment, you don't have to sell one out for the other. Now Julian Burnside can make all the points he wants, but I mean I don't think I've seen quite a bigger level of hypocrisy being exploited onto the Australian people I'd say. I’d say his hypocrisy is absolutely savage.
ELLIOTT: Is it true that you will go to the Governor-General tomorrow and ask that Parliament be dissolved and an election be called?
PRIME MINISTER: No.
ELLIOTT: No, as in it's definitely not true?
PRIME MINISTER: No, the election will be called in April and it'll be held in May. I made it really clear last year when I said the Budget would be on the 2nd of April that the lead in and all the normal things would be allowed to take place and the Leader of the Opposition gets their reply.
ELLIOTT: But it is April now.
PRIME MINISTER: I know, but I also said that the Leader of the Opposition would be able give their reply. When the election is called, well that will be done in April and it'll be held in May.
ELLIOTT: Which date in May?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I'm not saying at this point, because when I've made that final decision, when I go out to see the Governor-General, that's when that will be public.
ELLIOTT: All right, we'll look forward to that. Now, the energy Newstart policy, I happened to watch Q&A accidentally on Monday night and I saw that Arthur Sinodinos was tackled on why the $75 to $125 energy subsidy wasn't going to people in receipt of Newstart. It looks as though you've backflipped on that. Is that true?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I wanted to see the payment passed through the Parliament and the Labor Party and others, you know, we were aware of the position and I wanted to see passed. I think we were in a position to be able to accommodate that and so it became part of the Government's bill. The reason we could do it is because our position in this current financial year was much stronger as a result of the way we've been managing things.
I mean, the difference between the Budget I handed down in May of last year for the current year we're in and where it's going to end up now, is better than $10 billion dollars. So we're in a position to share that improvement back with people who need it and we took the decision to extend that further in 2018/19, I don't have a problem that.
ELLIOTT: No, no, but it was only a week ago that the energy subsidy was announced and it looks like…
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it was on Sunday.
ELLIOTT: Well exactly, so it was a mistake that Newstart recipients missed out?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I wanted to see it passed through the Parliament and that's what you have to do to be pragmatic.
ELLIOTT: I see, so you made the change so it would be passed through Parliament?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes.
ELLIOTT: OK, very fast trains.
PRIME MINISTER: Better than very slow trains, Tom.
ELLIOTT: Well that's true, if they’re a reality.
PRIME MINISTER: Well that's a very good point.
ELLIOTT: So, I mean, I spoke at a Budget breakfast this morning and I mentioned I'd seen a picture of Malcolm and Tammy Fraser in 1978 getting on board a Japanese bullet train and saying, “This is what we need for Australia.” That was over 40 years ago now. This time around are you actually going to build one?
PRIME MINISTER: Well our form is there for people to see. There are two other very big generationally-delayed projects which we’re now getting on with. One of those is of course the Melbourne Airport Link and that heads of agreement has been signed with the state government with Dan Andrews. That was what we announced in last year's Budget, so we're getting on with that. Up in Sydney, the Western Sydney International Airport has been talked about for 45 or 50 years and we're getting on with that. The dozers are on the ground and it's becoming a reality. So I understand that people can be cynical about these very big projects. That's why we decided in this Budget, we didn’t say we were going ahead with five of these things. We said this is the one you can actually do. The State Government has been doing work on this, we're going to do a bit more work on it. We've got $2 billion down to make it a reality and it's the one that we can actually demonstrate our credentials on.
ELLIOTT: Sorry which one is that? The one to the airport or the one to Geelong?
PRIME MINISTER: This is Geelong to Melbourne, the Fast Rail. The Melbourne Airport Link, that's already happening, we're moving ahead on it.
ELLIOTT: OK so the very fast train to Geelong and back, that's a reality? Or will soon be a reality?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah it will be, both the State Government ourselves have been working towards that. It'll follow a very similar path.
ELLIOTT: You can understand the cynicism though?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, sure.
ELLIOTT: Because we've talked so much over the years about fast trains, they've never, I don’t think we’ve ever had a train go faster than 100 kms an hour.
PRIME MINISTER: Well we're not talking about the bullet trains like they have in Tokyo, by the way. That's not what this proposal is. It is a fast train, it's not the bullet trains that you see overseas. This is a half an hour journey between Melbourne and Geelong instead of a one hour journey. We're doing that business case and we'll continue to work through the technical details of that. There’s still a lot of work to do there, I mean, I've often said I think out of Melbourne you don't get these projects at a drive through, you've got to do the work. They take some time to get the planning right, because if you don't get the planning right, you end up spending a lot of money on something doesn't work.
ELLIOTT: Now today in Parliament you said something I found a little bit odd. We'll just have a listen to it.
“I know what Borat with think of the Labour Party's policies on emissions reduction Mr Speaker; very nice, very nice.”
ELLIOTT: Do you often quote Borat in the Federal Parliament?
[Laughter]
PRIME MINISTER: Not very often but I thought it was very appropriate, because under… this is what Labor's emissions reduction policy is - half of their carbon emissions reductions is actually forcing businesses to buy carbon credits from other places outside Australia. Honestly, I've never been a fan of these arrangements, these foreign - I mean that you've got futures carbon traders, you've got all these sort of merchant bankers moving around these sorts of things. Honestly, they're going to force $36 billion worth, that’s our conservative estimate, that they're going to force business to spend on these carbon credits. Carbon credits from Kazakhstan, so to make my point, the Borat tax is where this ends up. This is not a responsible thing to do Australian business. If you want people to earn more, they don't earn more when the business they work for has to spend billions of dollars buying carbon credits from Borat.
ELLIOTT: Very quickly you popped up on Snapchat in the past couple of days and we in fact played one of your videos yesterday. You got a lot of likes a lot of new friends on this social media platform.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah look you've got to be everywhere to talk to Australians these days and of all ages. I'm happy to do that, I'm happy to meet people in the pub, I'm happy to meet them at the footy, I'm happy to meet him in a nursing home, I'm happy to meet them on Snapchat. But wherever I can engage with my fellow Australians and get across the point that we're making which is if you don't have a strong economy then your investment in the schools and the hospitals and the pharmaceuticals - I mean, last night we've listed a drug that is going to change the lives of people suffering from leukaemia, people suffering from rare forms of skin cancer - I mean these this is why we do this stuff. This is why for the last six years, we've worked so hard to get this Budget back into surplus, so we can keep doing these things.
But again - I know I started with it when we started talking Tom - but this $461 million that we're investing in combating youth suicide, with more Headspace centres a whole range of digital programs, this is something for every Australian I think. Because we're all touched by the issues of mental health and particularly by youth mental health. This is the way you confront it and we're funding that. I would call it my biggest priority in this Budget.
ELLIOTT: Okay, speaking of footy, last time you and I spoke in person I gave you a Carlton football jumper and made you a member of the club. How do you think the Blues will go against the Swans at Marvel Stadium this Saturday?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, well I think the Swans will win, but I'm no expert mate.
ELLIOTT: What?
PRIME MINISTER: I’m no expert. We’ll put the tips in but I was there for the Swans game against Richmond, but they had I say seem to be coming good in that that second quarter and the third quarter, it unravelled a bit. I was there with Josh. I'll tell you what, Josh was pretty excited. It was fun going to the footy with Josh actually, I quite enjoyed it.
But look, I enjoy the spectacle you know and I've had a lot of a lot more people give me a lot more jumpers since then. But how good was the fact that the women's AFL grand final on the weekend set that record crowd for a women's sporting event? Was it 45,000?
ELLIOTT: 53,000 or 54,000.
PRIME MINISTER: 54,000, how good is that?
ELLIOTT: Well it was a great crowd, a record crowd for a women's AFL match. I know you’ve got to go, a busy day. Thank you so much for joining us.
PRIME MINISTER: Good on you mate, cheers.
ELLIOTT: Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia.
