Subjects: National Cabinet, Neil Prakash, cost of living
E&oe:
STEVE PRICE: Tonight we found out that the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has come down with Covid. Now, no one likes to see anyone with Covid. It’s an awful thing to get. That’s the second time the PM’s had it. But I’m a little surprised to learn today that a scheduled meeting of the national cabinet, this is the replacement for what was once the Premiers conference scheduled for Sydney on Wednesday, has now been cancelled. Now that means that these discussions about what to do about soaring power prices are now being delayed. Join us on the line is the opposition Shadow Home Affairs Minister, Karen Andrews, great to catch up with you again. Does that surprise you that the PM couldn’t Zoom into that meeting and go ahead with this very important discussion?
KAREN ANDREWS: Absolutely. I was very surprised to hear that. And that sort of leads me to think either of two things. He, he’s either much sicker than we think, and I hope that’s not the case. I genuinely hope that he’s okay, or he just doesn’t wanna have the meeting because there is no reason why in this day and age Zoom meetings can’t be held. I mean, he’s got access to secure facilities, so he should be able to make a call at whatever level he needs to, but in any case, this is very important that he goes ahead with that meeting. So I am surprised and in incredibly disappointed that he’s not going ahead with it.
STEVE PRICE: Do you suspect that he realizes he’s gonna be up against a brick wall when you’ve got the premiers of New South Wales and Queensland both saying, okay, if you wanna put a cap on the producers, we’re gonna have to have compensation because we’ve got deals with them already and he knows that he’s not gonna be able to talk them around on that?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, I think he knows that he’s in a whole world of pain where energy is concerned because he’s made a series of promises. He knows that he can’t deliver. He knows that the situation is not good and it’s going to get much worse, he can’t see clearly a resolution to this with the states now arcing up and saying, well, if that’s what you want, that it is going to cost you. So, you know, there’s an argument there that is in fact buying time to try and come up with a solution, and that’s not good enough. That’s not what the Prime Minister of Australia should be doing.
STEVE PRICE: We’ve probably going to get the eighth in a row interest rate rise on variable home loan rates today when the cash rate goes up again from the Reserve Bank, you’ve got the pressure on energy prices, food prices as well. Cost of living is soaring. Where are the answers and where are the delivery on the promises? Because I thought we went to an election in May where we were told we’d get $250 relief on energy and the cost of living would come down and wages would go up. None of that’s happened.
KAREN ANDREWS: No. No. And in fact, what Australians have been hoodwinked with is the promise that things would be better under Labor. And the reality is that they are far from that. And the Prime Minister has refused to confirm the commitment of a reduction in energy prices at any point in time. He’s not dealing with energy. He’s not dealing with overall cost of living. Now he talks about wage increases for people. And, you know, of course we want to make sure that people paid appropriately and there are wage increases for them, but you’ve got a skyrocketing cost of living. So those increases are going to disappear very, very quickly. It seems that people are already eating into their savings and they’re using those to spend up for Christmas. There was a lot of activity over the Black Friday, cyber Monday weekends where people were obviously doing all they could to prepare for Christmas. So I think post-Christmas and post the sales, what you’ll find is people seriously tightening their belts. So, you know, it is, effectively the perfect storm for cost of living issues. And the Prime Minister and the Labor government are not really promising that they will do anything now to help Australians. And that’s concerning. And I think that the thing that is missing in the argument is a serious discussion now about housing affordability. And particularly when you talk to young people, they can barely afford to pay the rent, it’s hard for them to save to buy a property, but they are really struggling with the cost of housing at the moment. And some of them are really feeling particularly hopeless about that perfect storm.
STEVE PRICE: So what should we be doing about it?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, I think that firstly, the Prime Minister needs to live up to the expectations that he created going into the election, that things would be much better. He needs to come up with a sensible solution to energy prices for the short, medium and the longer term. Now they talk about renewables and many people are supportive of renewables, but there’s got to be a pathway from where we are now to where we can get to renewable electricity. We’ve got aging coal fired power stations. I haven’t heard a word from the government about what they might do to try and extend the life of coal fired power stations whilst they deal with the issue of increasing renewable capacity. And, storage is shut down any discussion about nuclear energy, which quite frankly, people are interested in. He should be talking to industry about the way forward on nuclear and small modular reactors for our large scale energy users. But instead, all he’s doing is shutting down any discussion with the Australian people and even with the South Australian Premier. So he needs to be more open to solutions.
STEVE PRICE: Yeah, I spoke to Peter Malinauskas on the program earlier today, and you know, his view was that we at least have to have an open mind to it, and yet the Prime Minister has come out and said it would be full hearty, it doesn’t add up. It’s essentially the problem every five years we have an economic analysis of whether nuclear power stacks up, and every time it’s rejected and asked whether he would support nuclear energy, this is the PM, if it did stack up economically in the future, he said no one would invest in it. Really?
KAREN ANDREWS: Yeah, well that’s the argument that he’s trotting out now. But a similar argument was run about renewables, sometime ago as well. Now, I think it’s extraordinary that you’ve got the Prime Minister of Australia shutting down any discussion about how he’s going to deal with the energy crisis here in Australia. Yes, there is a lead time to get nuclear here, but there are ways to be able to achieve this at this point in time. We don’t have sufficient battery storage to deal with what we are going to do to store the power from renewables. So, I mean, he’s defeating his own arguments with what’s happening with renewables. And I think it’s just, it’s disappointing for all of Australians that that’s where the, the Prime Minister is. I mean he came in on promise that he would work with Australian people. Well, he’s not. He’s only working with people who are like-minded to him.
STEVE PRICE: It’s always a pleasure to catch you, and your former role as home affairs minister, you would’ve been aware of the accused Islamic State Neil Prakash, are you comfortable with the fact that he’s now back in Australia and will face court here?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, look, I think it’s always better to have an open process as much as possible, taking the concerns about national security into consideration. Look, I am pleased that once he arrived here, he was arrested and he has now been charged. I think that that’s good, we’ll see what happens with that. The disappointing thing is that Prakash’s Australian citizenship was reinstated following the high court’s decision a few months ago, now in terms of whether or not Australians could have their citizenship stripped if they were dual nationals, what is disappointing about that is that the current Home Affairs Minister talked about urgent legislation, but we had nothing introduced into parliament before we rose for the year. Nothing has been put to me from the government about ways to resolve that issue. So again, what we’ve seen from the Labor government is all talk and very little action. But, I am pleased that Neil Prakash was arrested on his return that he has now been charged, and it will be up to the courts to determine that matter.
STEVE PRICE: Indeed. Thank you very much for talking to us. It was a pleasure to catch up.
KAREN ANDREWS: It’s a pleasure.
STEVE PRICE: You take care, Karen Andrews.