E&OE….
Topics: Antarctica, MYEFO/Budget
MARK PARTON:
You’re a Coalition member, you’ve had enough. You know, you’ve just had enough of all the carry on. You’ve had enough of the polls and the negative media. You want to get away from it. Where do you go? Antarctica.
GREG HUNT:
(Laughs)
MARK PARTON:
That’s where I’d be heading. I got – it sounds like Madagascar 4, doesn’t it? I’ve got Greg Hunt, the Federal Environment Minister on the line right now. G’day Greg.
GREG HUNT:
(Laughs) Sorry, that’s incredibly funny. I hadn’t expected that introduction.
MARK PARTON:
How was Antarctica?
GREG HUNT:
It was fantastic.
MARK PARTON:
Does the phone work down there?
GREG HUNT:
No, sadly.
MARK PARTON:
It’s a good thing, isn’t it?
GREG HUNT:
It’s one of the great things that Australia has is we have responsibility for about 42% of Antarctica. The size of it is just extraordinary. It’s Australia without Queensland, in terms of its size, is how some of the explorers down there described it. And we’re doing this immensely valuable scientific research and so we were down there looking at that. We’re purchasing a new icebreaker for the country which is a huge scientific investment, but to see the work of the scientists and then to see just the sheer scope and scale and the fact that it’s so untouched is just – it’s one of those humbling moments.
MARK PARTON:
How many times have you been?
GREG HUNT:
This was my first time.
MARK PARTON:
First time? Alright and so it really did blow your mind?
GREG HUNT:
It does, it does. And we flew out over the coastline to look at the way the Casey Station, which is our primary base, is configured. To look at the plans for it and then as you fly along the coast where the ice glaciers drop into the sea, you see this majestic coastline with glaciers that are enormously high, then the sea.
You’ve got penguins on little ice floes and this is an area where there’s been increasing sea ice in the last few years on the Australian side of the Antarctic, a bit less on the other side, over on the Latin American side. But it’s just amazing…
MARK PARTON:
So why is there increasing sea ice? Because I thought the planet was warming? I thought we had this disaster going on in Antarctica?
GREG HUNT:
Well, in the Arctic generally there’s been a decline, although this year there was a bounce back. In the Antarctic there’s been a net increase. There’s some debate amongst the scientific community. The best advice is that you’ve got changed wind patterns – higher wind means that you sort of have colder air over parts of the Antarctic sea and also the other view that they’ve got is that if you have an increased melt, freshwater freezes at a higher temperature than seawater.
MARK PARTON:
Alright.
GREG HUNT:
That’s the research that they’re doing at the moment. So it’s not been consistent. Net, all up, they said, the scientists said to me that this was their biggest record year in terms of sea ice.
MARK PARTON:
So, I mean, you’ve spent how long in Antarctica?
GREG HUNT:
Look, I was down there for the day. We have an Australian plane which goes down and lands on the ice runway. We were meant to be down there for 2 ½ days but there was a blizzard on the way in and there was a blizzard coming in for the way out, so it progressively got shortened, but they take people down – it operates as a service and it’s something that the Coalition put together under Ian Campbell.
MARK PARTON:
Wouldn’t it have been more beneficial to be in Lima, Peru?
GREG HUNT:
We had Julie Bishop and Andrew Robb there, so…
MARK PARTON:
Eventually. It took a while to make that happen, but as Environment Minister, shouldn’t you have been there?
GREG HUNT:
Well actually, from day one the way the arrangements were set up for the Government were we’d created a super environment portfolio of climate, environment, water and heritage – that’s a huge domestic portfolio which was two portfolios under the previous Government and the arrangement was that across the whole of Government, international negotiations which had sort of slipped away from Foreign Affairs, were brought back into it.
From day one, ministerial responsibility for the UN negotiations went with Julie Bishop and frankly, she’s first class. She couldn’t have had a better, more profoundly effective year in working with the UN organisation.
MARK PARTON:
Fifteen months in Government and I reckon Joe Hockey’s aged five years and he’s got a rough old day coming up today. These numbers aren’t looking flash, are they?
GREG HUNT:
Look, the honest answer, and Joe will put the final figures out, the honest answer is that as we warned, once you have a decline from near-record terms of trade, which means we were getting great prices for our mineral and energy exports, then you’ve got a problem. So iron ore is almost half of what it was a year ago. We’ve seen dramatic reductions there.
That does have an impact on revenue. What we aren’t trying to do is spend our way out of it and blow the Budget. We are trying to manage our spending so as we’re not leaving a debt for the next generation and that’s just what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to manage the spending so the kids and grandkids aren’t picking up the bill and unfortunately the previous mob left a massive bill for the kids and the grandkids.
We’re determined to slow the rate of spending. That doesn’t mean we’re making dramatic cuts, we’re just – when you look at the overall Budget…
MARK PARTON:
I think it probably does, though Greg doesn’t it? I mean I think…
GREG HUNT:
Well when you look at the overall Budget, we’re going from about $410 billion of national expenditure a year ago, to a very similar level. So essentially we were containing the total expenditure in the Budget, rather than having it go up and up and up and up.
MARK PARTON:
Yeah. We had Andrew Leigh from the other mob on this morning and he was suggesting that in Opposition they’re not as rabid as you guys were. That he thinks that they’re doing more to be responsible in terms of running the country. Would you agree?
GREG HUNT:
Well I guess you’d say they opposed the repeal of the carbon tax, they opposed the repeal of the mining tax and they’re opposing their own savings. That’s the weirdest thing. The very savings they proposed in Government, they’re opposing in Opposition. So that’s a simple test.
Our goal is very clear – to do the things we said we’d do, so the taxes are gone but with a real world impact. Every one of your listeners that is connected to the grid will have electricity bills that are, in the ACT, 10% lower than they would otherwise have been and that’s a real world impact.
The same thing in terms of anybody who’s concerned about lives at sea – a real world impact. So we’re doing those sorts of things. They’ve all been opposed by the ALP, even though we had a very clear, express, absolute election mandate.
Having said that, big things that have been done. The coming year the task is to make sure that we take the pressure off future generations because every time you spend more than you have, as any family knows, as any small businessperson knows, sooner or later, that bill comes home to roost. Somebody always has to pay the bill.
MARK PARTON:
Greg, thanks for coming on this morning. Have a merry Christmas.
GREG HUNT:
Look, it’s been a pleasure and to you and your listeners, thank you and have a great Christmas yourselves.
MARK PARTON:
Thanks mate.
GREG HUNT:
Cheers.
MARK PARTON:
Greg Hunt, Federal Environment Minister.
(ENDS)