Transcript – Joint Doorstop Interview with Senator James Paterson and Mr Nathan Conroy, Carrum Downs

Subjects: The Coalition’s plan to help keep our communities safe; Labor’s cost of living, energy and housing crisis; getting Australia Back on Track.

 

E&OE.

 

NATHAN CONROY:

 

Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for coming down. I’d like to thank Peter Dutton for coming down listening to people who are victims of crime here in Carrum Downs and Senator James Paterson, as well.

 

Cost of living is obviously number one issue right around the electorate but crime is a close second. People don’t feel safe in their own homes, their businesses, taking public transport or even at the shops. You know, there were two incidents I can speak about in the last week. One was a sports injury clinic in Frankston, where someone who was drug-affected went in and chased their staff. Lucky’s Deli in Young Street, knife crime rampant and Jayden, who three young men jumped his fence and looked at the cameras, walked into his house and put a machete against his and his partner’s neck and all he did was prayed and he hoped that the intruders didn’t wake up his daughter. There is a crime happening once every minute in Victoria. People are not safe and I think Jacinta Allan and Anthony Albanese are choosing criminals over people.

 

So, I’ll put you over to Peter Dutton.

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Nathan thank you very much. Great to be here with James Paterson, as well.

 

Firstly, I just want to say thank you to all of the people that we’ve just met in the roundtable. It’s not the first roundtable that we have done in relation to crime and the issue of law and order here in Victoria. I want to say to the people of Victoria, in particular, but many others that we’ve met around the country that we have listened to your pleas and we respond today by hearing what you’ve told us and we’ve been very moved by your stories. Families who have been affected by all sorts of criminal activities, people who have had their homes broken into over the last 12 months or so, the crime rate here in Frankston has gone up by 21 per cent and that is a pretty dramatic increase in just a 12-month period.

 

So, today we announced a $750 million package which is a real game changer in relation to how we can help keep our communities and our homes and our towns and suburbs safe. It is about providing police with the necessary tools that they need, so building up the laws and making them stronger by providing support to community groups and by bringing all of the Commonwealth powers and agencies together to make sure that we can tackle crime alongside the state and territory police.

 

I think Australians underestimate how big an issue this is at this election. People do feel unsafe and people, as Nathan’s pointed out, have their own stories. We met with a lady not too long ago, a similar story. Works at an IGA, just a hard worker and had a machete held against her throat. These are not uncommon stories and we have to respond to it. The Commonwealth Government has a particular role to play, because we have border protection and those services are supposed to be stopping the illicit tobacco and the drugs coming into our country but this just hasn’t been a priority for this Government, so I want to make sure that we can invest into those services. We want to deal with knife crime, we want to make sure that we can provide support to many services, some of them we’ve spoken to today, to make our communities safer. For families at the moment, for elderly Australians who are really concerned about this issue, I want you to know that, if we’re elected on the 3rd of May that this will be an absolute priority for my government. We will work day and night to make sure that your local community, your local suburb, is safer and we’ll work to make sure that our country is safer, as well.

 

As people make their decision and, obviously, pre-polling opens tomorrow, people will be making decisions about are they better off after three years under the Albanese Government? Are you better off financially? Are you safer in your own home, in your own community, in your own business? I want to make sure that we can get our country back on track. We want to be sure that we can improve safety in communities. I want to make sure that we can get young Australians into housing. We’re absolutely determined to manage the economy well so that we can address Labor’s cost of living crisis. Our positive plan goes to providing an opportunity to get our country back on track. If we can do that, we can help improve the lives of Australians very quickly but a Labor-Greens government is just not going to give you and your family the opportunities that you deserve and the bad three years that we’ve experienced now as a country just continue on for another three, with higher costs, with a less safe community and country and I’m absolutely determined to make sure that we can win the next election so that we can make for a better future for this great country.

 

I’ll ask James to say a few words and I’m happy to take questions.

 

JAMES PATERSON:

 

Thanks, Peter.

 

Weak Labor governments who are soft on crime make communities less safe and here in Victoria, they are suffering under not just one weak Labor government but two weak Labor governments. The failings of the State Government when it comes to crime and community safety are well understood, in particular their shockingly soft bail laws that have allowed young offenders to get out and recommit offences after being arrested on other offences. The Albanese Labor Government’s record on crime and community safety is equally weak. We’ve seen the release of more than 300 non-citizen criminal detainees into the community without a plan to protect Australians and of those 300, more than 100 have gone on to commit new offences. The Albanese Government has failed to use the powers that the Parliament granted them to preventatively detain any of that cohort, to get them off the streets, so that they can’t commit horrific crimes against communities. We’ve seen them soften the strong deportation policies that we had in government, that Peter presided over as Home Affairs and Immigration Minister, where he deported more than 6,000 people for committing crimes while they’re here on visas, but in their wisdom, one of the first acts of the Albanese Government was to water that down with Direction 99, ceasing to deport people who committed serious crimes and elevating their connection to the community as a higher priority rather than protecting the community.

 

The consequences of these weaknesses, the consequences of these failings, have been felt by all Australians. Right here in the City of Frankston, crime is up 21 per cent over the last year including a shocking rise of 80 per cent in retail thefts, and whether you’ve been a victim of that crime in a carjacking or a home invasion or your small business has been raided or whether you haven’t been a direct victim, all Australians are paying for it. It’s one of the reasons why there’s been a 35 per cent increase in insurance costs over the last three years on this Government’s watch. So, today we’re announcing a comprehensive plan, Operation Safer Communities, which is backed by $750 million of investment to make sure that our country and our communities are safe again under a Dutton Coalition government. It has many elements but the three key elements are firstly, a $355 million package for a Federal Police-led taskforce that will tackle drug trafficking and organised crime. It’ll incorporate other key law enforcement agencies at the federal level including the ACIC and AUSTRAC, and it will work with states and territories to get on top of a problem which is both across the state borders and transnational in nature.

 

Secondly, we’re going to surge resources to the border to make sure that Border Force and the AFP have the resources and the manpower they need to inspect incoming mail and cargo to intercept the contraband before it gets into our country. There’s been a shocking rise in drugs being imported through the mail including, horrifically, date rape drugs which are then used to go on and commit crimes and we need more resources to get on top of that.

 

We’re also announcing today that we’ll be introducing a disclosure scheme for child sex offenders at the national level. This has been successfully operating in the United Kingdom for more than a decade, as well as in Western Australia, and young people are safer in those jurisdictions as a result of that policy. It allows parents or guardians of children to make a request to police to find out whether someone who has contact with their child is a registered sex offender and allows them to remove their children from that dangerous environment. I am very disappointed that Anthony Albanese has not backed this policy today. Something like the protection of children should be above politics and I would have thought a good idea like this, which is supported at the state level by Labor leaders like Roger Cook and Premier Malinauskas, who’s seeking to introduce it in South Australia, would be supported by our Prime Minister too but I was particularly disappointed to see his senior frontbencher Murray Watt call it a cynical move. I don’t think the protection of children is a cynical thing. I think it’s a critical thing and Peter has shown, throughout his long career, including as a police officer prior to politics, that the protection of children and women is a frontline priority for him and it will be under a Dutton Coalition government.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton you just spoke, on the back of your $750 million plan, you spoke about illicit drugs and how that’s a crime wave. We’ve seen 19 women killed this year. We have one woman killed every four years in Australia. Would you not consider that a crime in itself and what are you planning to do to combat that?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, the incidence of domestic violence in our country is an abomination and we’ll have more to say about our domestic violence policy but I want it to stand alone. I didn’t want it to be part of today’s announcement, because I think it’s incredibly important. What we know out of the research is that an estimated 37 per cent of women aged 16 and over experienced sexual assault when they were a child. Now, that is an horrific statistic. About 2 in 10 young men as well, experienced a sexual assault, so the whole area of protecting women and children is incredibly important to me as you know, and what we do in our announcement today, in our funding today, is provide support to stopping that scourge, to bringing it to an end and, in relation to domestic violence, there’s no more egregious crime in our community than harming a woman or harming a young girl particularly in a place where somebody should feel safe, whether it’s in their family home or in a car or in a workplace. These are places where people should feel safe.

 

QUESTION:

 

So there’ll be more policy coming up?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, can you just walk me through the disclosure scheme, how it would actually work, what would the process be for parents, where do they go, who do they talk to, how long does that process take and is there sort of the responsibility on the parent to know who their child is interacting with in the first place? And also on that, the Prime Minister has, sort of, pointed to the fact that there already is a National Child Sex Offender Register. How does your plan differ?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, I saw the comments of the Prime Minister today, I think he’s being a bit loose with the truth which is his thing but what we know is that in WA the scheme operates now based on a scheme out of the United Kingdom. The scheme that operates federally at the moment is a sharing of information between police agencies so that is not disclosable, it’s not accessible from members of the public and so the Prime Minster is wrong, either deliberately or just doesn’t understand how it works.

 

Our scheme as we propose, as it operates in WA, allows parents or guardians to make application to the police if they’ve got concerns about a particular individual that has contact with their child and then it’s at the discretion of the police as to whether that information is disclosed but if the child is at risk, then the information is disclosed and if you have a look at the experience in the UK there are literally thousands of cases where there has been a disclosure and children have been removed from potential harm, either real or perceived, and that’s something that I think our country could embrace. I don’t understand why the Prime Minister wouldn’t be supporting this on a bipartisan basis.

 

QUESTION:

 

Wouldn’t that fall then more to a state responsibility than a federal one?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

No, it’s not, it needs to be coordinated. As you’ve seen in relation to a high-profile case which is before the courts so I won’t go into it in detail but where, for instance, you have a child care worker moving across state boundaries or territory boundaries, where you have somebody who’s trusted, a swimming coach for example, or a rugby coach or a netball coach that person moving around different towns and jurisdictions, it requires a national coordination. I want to make our country safer and particularly for children and women and this is our next step in doing that.

 

QUESTION:

 

A question for Senator Paterson, if I may. On the matter of the disendorsed candidate, Benjamin Britton, why did you deny connections with him? My colleague Andrew Clennell, I’m sure as you’ve seen, was leaked emails and documents suggesting that you did read his advice in terms of report. Why did you say otherwise at the time when you were asked?

 

JAMES PATERSON:

 

Trudy, you get a lot of free advice in this business and if every person who sent me unsolicited policy advice was an adviser in my team, then I would have literally hundreds of advisers.

 

QUESTION:

 

So, he never worked as a voluntary adviser?

 

JAMES PATERSON:

 

I stand by everything I said to Andrew Clennell and anyone else who’s asked about this issue. I never employed Mr Britton in any capacity, voluntary or paid. Anything he sent me was of his own initiative and it was unsolicited and as he was a party member, I politely thanked him for his correspondence but at no stage has he advised me on any matter.

 

QUESTION:

 

The Australian Institute of Criminology have looked at public registers or registers of sex offenders in other places and found that police actually reported an increase in their workload. Have you consulted with policing agencies here on whether that model is the best thing?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, as we know, it’s worked effectively in the United Kingdom and it’s worked effectively in WA to the point where the South Australian Police Minister, or Premier rather, presumably the Police Minister as well, wants to embrace the scheme as well. There are different ways in which you can have a publicly open register but the policy that we’ve got provides access for parents and our motivation here is to make sure that we can keep kids safe in the playground, on the sporting field, in their street and I want to make that there is a real focus and I just don’t think there’s been a sufficient focus from this government on keeping people safe and we see that in the crime statistics here in the local community. When somebody breaks into your house, when somebody steals your car, they’re doing it either to support a drug habit, to provide debt repayment and generally the people who are buying the cars are outlaw motorcycle gangs and people who are selling the drugs to our kids and the reason they’re breaking into homes to feed that drug habit, outlaw motorcycles gangs and other gang members and so this is a definite way in which the Commonwealth could provide support and that’s why we’re very serious about putting serious money behind it, as well.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, on Russia and Indonesia, the head of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency said in December last year that the country was moving forward on a joint venture with Russia’s state-run space agency to develop a commercial space facility on Biak Island in Papua, so two questions from that. Number one, would this be a threat to Australia’s interests? And, number two, what would you do about it if you were Prime Minister?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, I think the Prime Minister again has, sort of, ducked and weaved on this question today. The Government’s language keeps changing, which just seems strange, and we have asked for a briefing, it’s still not forthcoming from the Government, so what do they have to hide? I just wish this Prime Minister could be open and honest with the Australian people and he hasn’t been in relation to this issue, and Murray Watt’s out there trying to throw out all sorts of diversions but the fact is that the Prime Minister has questions to answer here and for six days he’s refused to do that.

 

QUESTION:

 

What do you think? Do you think it’s against Australian interests, that commercial space facility?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, I’ve given my answer to your question.

 

QUESTION:

 

Have they given you a reason at all, why you haven’t received a briefing?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

No, there’s no reason. I don’t understand why they don’t want to be transparent. What does the Prime Minister know or doesn’t know? Be open and honest.

 

QUESTION:

 

Haven’t responded to you at all?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

No.

 

QUESTION:

 

And your colleague just said, before, that people don’t feel safe going to shops in Victoria. Is that your perspective, as well?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, if you’ve had a crime increase of 21 per cent over a 12 month period and, just speaking to some of the local residents before, people are concerned. People have real concerns and real experience. I just don’t think we can belittle the lived experience of people and people are worried and that is something that’s been relayed to us in various meetings. I mean, you don’t have to live here, as Nathan does, to understand that there is a real issue in the community and the question is, how can we help? At a federal level, if you have a look at the tobacco wars that are going on at the moment, where you’ve got organised crime groups and good work to the Herald Sun I think, had the story today of kids being paid $5 by organised crime groups. That’s not imaginary. That’s lived reality, at the moment, and so somebody pays for that theft. People are paying 35 per cent more for their insurance premiums and…

 

QUESTION:

 

Would you also say people feel unsafe going into a shop?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, clearly they do. I mean you can see these accounts that are detailed at the moment, and there has been a huge debate about the bail laws to the point where the Premier, sort of, at the 13th hour has put in place some changes but there’s obviously real concern. Certainly, it’s not just here in Victoria either and talking to a colleague in WA the other day, out door-knocking, it was the single biggest issue that was raised. People just worried about crime in their in their own neighbourhood and that is the case in New South Wales and in my state of Queensland and elsewhere – that’s the reality.

 

QUESTION:

 

Just on the tobacco wars, the budget revenue from tobacco excise is constantly falling. Do you think the excise on cigarettes is too high and does it need to come down? And if I can in regards to vapes, you previously said they should be regulated. How would you like that to work?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, just in relation to the tobacco issue, I’ll just deal with this issue. I think it’s a huge concern for our country because there is a loss of revenue. I want to see the smoking rates decline in our country but they’re not because people are just buying chop-chop or tobacco from under the counter or from a crime gang, whatever it might be, that’s the reality. So, the taxpayer’s missing out on revenue and the smoking rates haven’t gone down, particularly for younger people, as well. So, I want to make sure that we can stop as much of it at the border as we can and unfortunately the Government’s just taken its eye off the ball. If you have a look at vaping and what’s happened there, again, it’s just another commodity that these crime groups are dealing with. Now, you can either stick your head in the sand and not provide the support, which is what the Government’s done but if you do that, then it leads to the involvement of these crime groups and we’re a less safe community, so I want make sure that we’re a safer country and that’s exactly what this policy’s about.

 

QUESTION:

 

Just on that, though, when it comes to, like…

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

I’ll just go to the next one, sorry.

 

QUESTION:

 

Do you want to finish? Can she finish?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

If you’re happy to give up your question? We work our way around but if we’re working our way around, people can’t have two questions, that’s all, so…

 

QUESTION:

 

So, it’s a ‘one question’ rule?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, it’s an ‘everybody question’ rule so I think, at other press conferences, only a few of you get to ask a question. I’m more than happy to take a question from everyone.

 

QUESTION:

 

I think it’s mostly just a follow-up on whether or not like you’ve said that like, there needs to be an increase in protection at the border but another element of the excise issue is that you have like, people are turning probably to illicit tobacco because it’s so much cheaper. The excise has gone up almost 200 per cent from 2013, so do you think the tobacco excise…

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

We don’t have any proposal to change it, the excise.

 

QUESTION:

 

No proposal to change it?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

No.

 

QUESTION:

 

Oscar Jenkins has been charged as a mercenary. What should the Government be doing, at the moment, to free him?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, we support the Government in any actions they’re taking providing support to an Australian citizen, as you would expect.

 

QUESTION:

 

But are you confident that they’ll be able to free him? And what else could they do, maybe?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, I think, in many of these cases, you’re best not to provide a running commentary and we provide support to the Government as they did when we were in government, to sensitive matters and we want to take care of every Australian citizen but we’re happy to provide support to the Government’s actions.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, the Prime Minister this morning has said that there’s $350 million already at Border Force to crack down on illegal tobacco at the border and organised crime activity. Is this money on top of that? Would you maintain that $350 million? And the Prime Minster also said that, if police and security agencies were seeking more assistance, in a different area, he would respond to it. Is this something that the police and the security agencies have asked of you?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

It’s additional money that we’ve got on the table and we’re very serious about it. We have spoken with police and agencies. There is a very real concern. Have a look at the fire bombings that are taking place now in tobacco shops and the use of illegal tobacco. These crime groups just use it as another commodity and they’re making big money out of it, to the earlier point about excise. It makes it a very valuable commodity.

 

Now, if the Prime Minister’s saying that there’s no problem and that there’s enough resource there and that he’s fixed the problem, I think he’s got a tin ear to the concerns of people in Victoria and elsewhere. Have a look at the hundreds of incidents in this space and we need to do more. The Government’s not doing it and our policy today is a $750 million commitment. It’s a game changer and it’s aimed at helping families live more safely in their homes, in their communities, in their workplaces and around the country and I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to put together. James and other colleagues have put a lot of work into it and I think it reflects the community demand for action here and that’s what we announced today.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, it’s pretty impossible to find a poll that says you’re going to be the Prime Minister after May 3. I wonder if you missed your real calling. Should you have been an AFP Commissioner or should you have been even a state premier, given your interest in cracking down on what are largely state issues?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, I think, if you have a look at what happened in 2019, there weren’t too many people predicting a Coalition victory and frankly, I think a lot of people who are just busy with work, busy in their lives. Many Australians don’t even know there’s an election coming up. There is an enormous soft vote out there, as you know. That’s what you’ll see in all of the pollings and that’s certainly what we’ve heard. I think there’s a lot anger in the suburbs and I think you’re going to see that expressed. We are the underdog and I think a lots of people will be expressing a real protest vote at this election as well because the Prime Minister believes that he’s won this election and he’s lining up for number three but I think a lot of Australians will be asking themselves, ‘well, has Anthony Albanese really made my life easier? Has he kept me safer in my community?’. The people we’ve spoken to feel less safe in their community. Financially, they’ve just been smacked between the eyes, in a way that they just can’t balance their budgets, so why would people reward three more years of that?

 

In relation to crime and law and order, I’ve been very passionate from day one. Part of the reason I came into politics was to keep people safer. When we launched the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, it was a $70 million investment and I did that as Minister because I wanted to save children. There are now something like, correct me on this figure, but something like 40,000 referrals a year to that centre and kids have had their lives saved. Now, if that’s not a good reason to be in public life and to want to be Prime Minister, I don’t know what is, because…

 

QUESTION:

 

It is a great reason but, Mr Dutton, your shadow frontbencher Jane Hume this morning was talking about people in Kooyong having their cars stolen from their driveways. With due respect, these are not the same sorts of crimes and the Prime Minister’s job is not to save people’s cars from being nicked from their driveways, is it?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Latika, my job is to keep Australians safe and that’s what I’ve done as Defence Minister and as the Minister for Home Affairs and as Immigration Minister when I cancelled 6,300 visas of people who have committed serious crimes. The job of the Prime Minister is to keep our country safe as well and, at the moment, you’ve got outlaw motorcycle gang members, some of whom are closely affiliated with the Prime Minister’s CFMEU. Some of whom are involved in the distribution of drugs which destroy lives. Many of us have been to Salvos or to services where we’ve seen people recovering or people who have had devastation in their family because of drug overdose. That is absolutely the job of the Prime Minister, not only to fix up Labor’s mess and they’ve made an enormous mess, economically, they’ve created a housing crisis. We have to clean that up but we also have to clean up the mess that they’ve made in relation to making our country and our communities and our suburbs less safe as well, and I think there are many people, as you’re seeing, you referred to polling before, I think crime is at number three at the moment in a lot of polls.

 

So, if you’re saying that people in a particular part of the country, it doesn’t matter that they get their cars stolen, I don’t agree with that. I just think ultimately, the cars are being stolen to fuel outlaw motorcycle gangs who are involved in selling drugs to our kids. John Howard was a great Prime Minister for doing everything he could to stop drugs being imported and distributed to our children and this Prime Minister doesn’t see it as a priority and maybe he shares your view that it’s not a job for the Prime Minister. I don’t. I have a very different view and I have strong view about it because I want to make sure that women don’t grow up from a young age having been subject to sexual abuse. I don’t want to see a community where we just say, ‘well, we can’t do anything about it or we can’t do anything more about what’s happening in our schools or what’s happened on our streets’ – that’s not been my approach at all.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, on polling, what’s your response to Pauline Hanson saying she’s not going to return the favour in terms of preferencing the Coalition on their how to votes? And pre-poll starts tomorrow, about 50 per cent of people expected to vote before May 3. Can you pull it back from here?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

We can well and truly win the election from here. There’s no doubt in my mind about it because Australians are angry about the fact that they have faced the biggest cost of living crisis in their lives. We’ve had almost two years of household recession in this country, we’ve got less safe communities because of this Prime Minister’s inaction. I want to make sure that our plan to help restore home ownership is understood by young Australians and I think we’ll get support on that basis. I want make sure that we can clean up Labor’s mess and manage the economy so we can get cost of living down.

 

If you vote for the Coalition, there’s a 25 cent a litre reduction in your fuel. You get $1,200 of your own money back to help you deal with the bills that have been stacking up under this Prime Minister, so there’s no doubt in my mind that we can win the election. As I pointed out before, in 2019 I think there was a bigger undercurrent of anger against the then opposition than people realised and I think that’s the case against the now Government, as well, that’s the reality. We’ve got a long way to go between now and then and I think Australians who are looking at are they better off today than they were three years ago, I think people frankly, certainly the ones we’ve met across the country, would be saying, ‘actually, you know what, our lives are much harder today under Anthony Albanese than they were three years ago,’ and I think people will vote on that basis.

 

QUESTION:

 

And on One Nation not returning the favour?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well, the preference stuff is for the Party.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, your policy today focusses a lot on trying to stop crime in its tracks but it does little to fix the underlying issues that lead people in the community to turn to crime in the first place. What, if anything, can governments do to try and address those deep-rooted issues? And if I may, what’s your response to North Bondi RSL banning the two-up tradition on ANZAC Day?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Well look firstly, in relation to two-up, I think two-up’s a great Aussie tradition. I think it should continue, so I’d ask the RSL to reconsider their decision. I think it’s been a great part of our culture since Diggers have come back from war, to be involved in a two-up game and I think it’s part of the Aussie culture and hopefully they can reconsider that decision.

 

QUESTION:

 

Just on the, sorry, addressing the underlying issues in communities that lead people to, can governments do anything?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Oh, sorry. Look, I mean, there are many programmes that we’ve provided support to. The money that we announced only a week ago in relation to housing and providing support to Foodbank and others. There’s housing, there’s food, there are child protection matters, there are NGOs who are involved in the space of providing support. We’ve provided support to a group that we just met with that Nathan had worked really hard with intervening and providing support around kids that either don’t have parents or have parents who are not good role models, or are bad parents. We have to make sure that you can attack it from the crime and law and order side of it but also the interventions and the prevention and that support as well. That is as much a Commonwealth role as it is a state and territory and local government role, so we take that very seriously.

 

QUESTION:

 

Mr Dutton, over the weekend, Senator Jane Hume was reported as saying the Coalition’s ban on public servants working from home was a good policy but at the wrong time. You’ve said the policy was a mistake. Is Senator Hume wrong? And, if not, when will be the right time for this kind of policy?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Mate, I made comments in relation to that last week, I think, so I don’t have anything to add to it.

 

QUESTION:

 

It was reported on the weekend.

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

Yeah, I just don’t anything to add to the issue.

 

QUESTION:

 

Just on that, though, we don’t know what sectors of the public service you’re going to cut. I mean, at the Voice, you argued that people, if they don’t know, they should vote no. Should people vote no if they don’t know?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

We’ve given the detail in relation to that last week, as you know.

 

QUESTION:

 

But you’ve said it’s not coming until after the election.

 

QUESTION:

 

Labor’s fringe benefit tax exemption for electric vehicles has blown out by hundreds of millions of dollars compared to what was first forecast. Would a Coalition government repeal the EV tax break?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

No, we’ve said that what we’re opposed to is the Government’s big tax on hybrids. For example, on a Toyota RAV4 almost $10,000 additional people will be paying if Mr Albanese is re-elected, for a Toyota hybrid. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s $14,000 on a Ford Ranger. I want people to have choice. If people want to buy an EV, that’s fantastic. If they want to buy a Ford Ranger or a Toyota Hilux or whatever it might be, that is a choice that they should have and the Government whacking a new tax on those people who are in the market over the next few years to buy a car. I think a lot of Australians would be shocked to know that Anthony Albanese is proposing a $14,000 tax on a Ford Ranger, one of the most popular cars in the markets so we don’t have any proposals to change those settings otherwise.

 

QUESTION:

 

Just a follow-up from my question about migration on Saturday. Is the Coalition planning to cut parent visas?

 

PETER DUTTON:

 

We’ve said in relation to migration and, again, this is a big difference between the two parties of this election, we’re going to cut migration by 25 per cent because bringing in a million people over two years is a 70 per cent increase in the number of people coming in over any two year period in our country’s history. If you ask why has there been a housing crisis, that is one of the most significant contributors to the fact that Australians, young Australians, have been locked out of housing. That will reduce the net overseas migration figure by 100,000 relative to Labor’s, and I want to make sure that we can get Australians back into housing.

 

Now, in relation to the particular composition, item by item, I think as I said to you when you asked the question last time, we want to make sure that we can prioritise tradies coming into our country, because we’ve got shortages in the construction sector and if we want to build more houses. We can’t continue with the CFMEU edict that they not be on the list. In relation to parents, and I’ve been clear about this, when I was in the portfolio before, it’s an important part of the migration programme and we’re not going to reduce those. We’ve been clear, in relation to it and I believe very strongly that we’ve got the best migration programme in the world but only if it’s well-managed.

 

What the Government’s done is, by allowing people to be released from jail when they didn’t need to be released, by bringing people in from Gaza without the requisite security checks, they’ve made our community less safe as a result of some of those decisions. The decision to bring in a million more people without building homes, in fact, pull money out of infrastructure has made it harder for a lot of families in the suburbs and right around the country. At this election, once people start to vote tomorrow, it’s a choice that people have to make. Three more years of the same of higher costs, higher migration, making it more and more difficult for your kids to buy a house or on the other hand, the Coalition, we have a positive plan to make sure that we can cut the petrol tax by 25 cents a litre, to bring down the cost of living, to make it easier to get into a house, we’ll cut migration and we’ll make sure that we keep our communities safe. That’s the choice that people have when they start to vote tomorrow.

 

If people think back over the last three years, it’s been a rough three years for our country. It’s exactly the reason the Prime Minister doesn’t want to talk about his record, because Australians know that they’ve been under pressure because of bad economic decisions that have resulted in huge cost of living increases and families just can’t afford three more years of an Albanese Government.

 

Thank you very much, thank you.

 

[ends]

 

 

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