RICHARD KING, PRESENTER: Good morning, Pat.
PAT CONROY, SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: Good morning, Richard. How are you?
KING: Yeah, very well thanks. Drawing to a close, good luck on Saturday.
CONROY: Thank you very much, three days to go.
KING: Yeah, three days to go. Yes Matt Canavan’s been in our neck of the woods here on a number of occasions suggesting that Labor will introduce a sneaky carbon tax. Is it in fact the case?
CONROY: Absolutely not. Matt Canavan is the greatest fraud in Australian politics. This is a consultant from the Gold Coast who smears coal dust on his face before he does television interviews all in order to scare coal miners and their community. He’s just like Scott Morrison – they’re really desperate at the moment, and they’re just throwing lies and scare campaigns to try and deceive voters into voting against their own interests.
We are undertaking no such plans, and that’s been confirmed by independent expert after independent expert who says that our policy is simply an extension of what the current government is already doing.
KING: So what is this safeguard mechanism that Labor if elected - as I understand it, you’re going to enhance this safeguard mechanism?
CONROY: Yes, so Tony Abbott in 2013 put in place the safeguard mechanism which applies to 215 of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas in the country – they’re large industrial facilities – and basically what happens is they impose a baseline so that these large factories and mines typically can’t go over their baseline in terms of emitting carbon dioxide.
So we’re using exactly the same scheme that Tony Abbott put in place. All that we are doing is following the advice of the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group and we’ll gently over time reduce those baselines so each year those emitters will invest in technology to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. So all we’re doing is using the Liberal Government’s policy to reduce emissions.
But the key point is that we’ve been very clear from day one that no industry that’s trade exposed like coal mining will be put at a disadvantage against their international competitors, and that’s been confirmed by our independent modelling which finds that not a single job is lost in coal mining, not a single coal mine is closed because of our policy, and in fact we will grow 600,000 jobs in Australia, 500,000 of them in regional areas like ours.
KING: Alright, just again what Matt Canavan had to say on this program last week:
GRAB OF MATT CANAVAN: We’ve got to invest in reliable energy, we’ve got to invest in baseload power, and I’m not confident that the Labor Party will do that when they want to put a carbon tax on 10,000 jobs in the Hunter region.
KING: They want to put a carbon tax on 10,000 jobs in the Hunter region is absolute baloney?
CONROY: Absolute lie, and that’s been confirmed by independent experts. There was a fact check released by the ABC earlier this week that had in it experts again confirming that it’s an absolute lie. All he and Scott Morrison are doing is scaring coal miners and their community in an effort to win votes. It’s disgraceful, it’s unprincipled, and if they really cared about coal miners in our communities, they would be supporting Labor’s Same Job, Same Pay to tackle the number one issue that coal miners face which is labour hire and casualisation undermining wages and conditions in our coal mines.
KING: Right. The Coalition released their budget costings yesterday – or their election commitments yesterday – and it’s basically reducing public sector spending. Labor will be releasing your costings tomorrow. Can we expect national debt to increase under a Labor Government?
CONROY: Oh Richard, I don’t have insight into what our total costings are. Sadly I’m not the Shadow Treasurer or the Shadow Finance Minister, but I do find it rich for the Government to try and attack us on this given the fact that they’ve blown out debt to $1 trillion, and they’re running an $80 billion deficit this year. This Government has no leg to stand on when they come to attacking Labor’s economic credentials, and they doubled the debt before the COVID pandemic even occurred.
KING: Simon Birmingham, our Finance Minister said yesterday and I am quoting here “Labor’s reckless spending will add extra pressures that mean Australians pay via higher taxes and interest rates”. Your response to that, Pat?
CONROY: My response is this is a government that spent $5.5 billion on French submarines that delivered zero submarines. This is a government that spent tens of billions of dollars on JobKeeper subsidies that went to companies that actually increased their profit during the pandemic. This is a government that wasted $3.7 billion on helicopters that didn’t have a wide enough door so that we could have a machine gun firing at the same time as troops were coming out, and they’ve just scrapped the helicopters before they enter service fully.
This Government is the most wasteful, corrupt government in the history of this country, and for them to lecture anyone is just rank hypocrisy.
KING: I mentioned a few times, the survey results that came out late yesterday – Resolve Strategic, the poll done for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – which shows 34 per cent of all voters rejecting the major parties in favour of independents, the Greens, and smaller parties. Why do you think that is, Pat?
CONROY: I think people are very disillusioned with politics at the moment and the major parties. One reason is the scare campaigns that are being thrown about. The other is the failure to act on corruption. Whenever I am out doorknocking, people desperately want a National Anti-Corruption Commission. They desperately want one. They want confidence restored in Federal politics.
Labor has obviously committed to one. We’ve been committed to one since 2015 and we’ll establish one this year if we’re elected, and Mr Morrison has refused to do so and in fact he walked away from his promise a couple of weeks ago to implement one. And I think that’s the main reason people are disillusioned with major parties, is they say ‘well, what are you scared of? Why aren’t you having a National Anti-Corruption Commission to make sure that federal politics is clean?’ That’s why a lot of people are disillusioned.
KING: Alrighty, are you going to be having a sausage somewhere on Saturday?
CONROY: I’ll have a sausage, I’m hopeful for a bacon and egg roll at one of the schools as well.
(LAUGHS)
It’s a day where there’s a bit of stress eating involved, but it’s a great day, and when you look at what’s happening around the world particularly in Ukraine, we are really lucky (INAUDIBLE)
KING: Yes, yes we live in the lucky country. Alright, well good luck on Saturday. Thank you very much for your time this morning, Pat.
CONROY: Thanks Richard, have a great morning.