Subjects: Labor-Greens alliance, Labor’s carbon tax, free trade agreements
EO&E
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Let’s talk to Greg Hunt the Environment Minister, he’s here in Perth he talks to us live now, we’ve been promo-ing it throughout the afternoon. Thanks very much for your company.
GREG HUNT:
A pleasure Peter.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
I want to get onto your portfolio, I also want to get your take on some of these issues around whether or not there will be an alliance between Labor and the Greens. I note that the Greens Leader is over in WA with you – I assume you’re not travelling together.
GREG HUNT:
No I’m not. We’re not in the alliance. I can guarantee though that if they need it Bill Shorten will jump at it. Of course he’ll do it.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Well I want to talk about that because actually we had Greens spokesperson Nick McKim on the show for To the Point with Kristina Keneally and I, yesterday, and he basically said what you’re saying there, which is that Labor always says this but then ultimately it will do a deal if it has to.
GREG HUNT:
Exactly.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Is it a guaranteed thing that the Liberals wouldn’t? I mean there’s no ideological similarities there between Liberals and the Greens in many respects but isn’t it just a case of if you need to do a deal, either side of politics will do it if they can, it’s just less likely that the Greens would go with you guys.
GREG HUNT:
No, no, it’s guaranteed that the only alliance that would be formed would be the Greens and Labor.
And it’s actually very logical because the only circumstance in which it arises in the House of Representatives is when there’s a hung Parliament and the Greens will go with Labor, Labor will go with the Greens.
Julia Gillard of course said there would be no deal with the Greens, she said there’d be no carbon tax, there was a deal with the Greens, there was a carbon tax. Bill Shorten said there’d be no deal with the Greens.
Of course they’ll be a Labor deal with the Greens and of course there’ll be a carbon tax, which is even higher and even heavier and only today in Queensland we’ve seen the Queensland Government make it clear they want a second double-whammy carbon tax so electricity prices up and the sugar industry in Mackay is desperate to see Bill Shorten, I would say to him, you’re in Mackay, will you see the sugar industry today, please see the sugar industry today, because the workers, the farmers, they want to see you about the impacts of your carbon tax on their operations.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
But the sugar industry and sugar cane farmers, they couldn’t be too happy with the Government either could they? Every free trade agreement that’s been struck and lauded as a success by the Government over the last two and a half years has always excluded sugar from it.
GREG HUNT:
No, with great respect that’s incorrect. You look at the North Asian free trade agreements and I went through this recently when I was holding a seminar in my electorate. Significant increased opportunities for Australian sugar.
Now I understand our job is to fight to get 100 per cent perfect access but significant increases in volume across the overarching free trade package of North Asia and the TPP or the Trans Pacific Partnership.
So again, whether it’s beef, dairy, wine, sugar, whether it’s environmental goods and services, real opportunities, and this is part of our broad national plan where we’re building jobs and growth through exports, versus a massive hand break on the economy with electricity taxes, electricity taxes, electricity taxes. Pretty clear choice actually.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Just back on the issue of dealing with the Greens and the likelihood or otherwise of Labor being prepared to do so in a hung Parliament situation. Isn’t that a good reason for the Liberal Party to direct preferences to the Greens in inner city marginal seats, because you’re a real chance if you did that of knocking out Danby, knocking out David Feeney, knocking out Anthony Albanese, possibly even a Tanya Plibersek and then you leave yourselves in a situation where the Labor Party, it’s almost impossible for them to form government without an alliance with the Greens and then you can really hammer them on that?
GREG HUNT:
Look, I think there is a very important point here and that is our goal is to win every single seat we can. I’ve just been in Fremantle. Now we could, on that analysis, be trying to run dead there. We’ve just been with a magnificent candidate Sherry Sufi, local guy, committed to, you know, Green Army and teams like that. He’s running to win. In every seat, we run to win. We don’t run to come second or third.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
But you know it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to be realistic. They’ve got no chance in a place like Fremantle whereas if you direct your preferences from running dead to the Greens, they could actually knock-off the new Labor candidate, particularly with the retirement of Melissa Park.
GREG HUNT:
You know in, well you mentioned Melissa Park and that’s a classic example of the split within the ALP. You have the MUA on the one hand, the sort of old guard union movement. And then you have the hard green left on the other. She and her successor are completely split and so we try to run and win everywhere. And so that’s what it’s about. We want to do that.
The ALP and the Greens, we know and they know and the Australian people know; it doesn’t matter what Bill Shorten says now, of course he’ll do a deal. He’ll do a deal and sell anybody out, at any time, on anything, if he thinks it’ll benefit himself.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
So is that you saying that you don’t think that the Liberal Party should preference the Greens above Labor, or you think it should be a live option?
GREG HUNT:
Oh no, I think the talk should always be about us running and winning each and every possible seat around the country. Just that example today of where I’ve been in Fremantle and then we’re in other Liberal held seats throughout today and tomorrow but what’s interesting is, I’ll leave those questions for Tony Nutt and the Federal Secretariat but around the country we run to win in our own right and Labor and the Greens will plot and connive and it doesn’t even matter what happens in the House, to get legislation through the Senate Labor would need the Greens.
So whether it’s a formal alliance or a de-facto alliance, Labor and the Greens will be in alliance if Labor has a sniff at the opportunity.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Don’t you think that it’s just as disingenuous for the Government to refer to Labor’s ETS scheme as a carbon tax as I believe it’s disingenuous for Labor to try to claim that your superannuation policy is retrospective? It’s not retrospective but equally their ETS isn’t a carbon tax, it’s not a fixed price.
GREG HUNT:
Look, I agree with the point about superannuation. I couldn’t be more strongly in agreement on that. But I respectfully but categorically disagree on their so called ETS versus carbon tax.
They’re both means of taxing electricity, the whole family is called a carbon tax, one version is a fixed price, which Tanya Plibersek has apparently said in the last couple of days was a mistake.
Their entire policy, which they demanded we implement, was a mistake because of the alliance with the Greens. Well they’re about to do it again.
There should be an apology to the nation if they think that was a mistake. And then the second thing is you have a floating price version. Well Warwick McKibbin says that it’s likely under Labor to go to over $200 per tonne, much worse than a fixed price, it’s a carbon tax because it drives up electricity taxes and the Treasury, when Labor was in government, on Labor’s time, looking at Labor’s policy, which is incredibly similar in the target range to their current policy said also over $200 a tonne.
What it means is a 78 per cent increase in wholesale electricity prices. What that means for families and for pensioners and for small businesses is that they will get hit to the eyeballs with higher electricity costs. There’s a really clear choice; a genuine plan, a genuine plan that’s going to improve jobs and improve growth or a massive hit to electricity prices, which every listener will pay.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
But whether that is true or not, isn’t the political reality that the Government has to call it a carbon tax because if you call it an ETS then Malcolm Turnbull is arguing against himself, or at least what he was in favour of when he was Leader the first time, you need to pin it down as a carbon tax so that there’s no egg on the Government’s face.
GREG HUNT:
Well even Julia Gillard and Joel Fitzgibbon have called their system a carbon tax. And it doesn’t even matter what the semantics are, for me, knowing this space reasonably well, it’s the family of carbon taxes – fixed price versus floating price. For the public, what matters is, it’s a massive hit on their electricity prices. It was done before, it will be much worse now.
And if, as we see, they will embrace an alliance with the Greens, it will be even worse in the future. And for all the talk about an alliance with the Greens, that’s the focus on the House, in the Senate, by definition, the Greens are going to demand their pound of flesh. And that pound of flesh always comes in the form of higher electricity prices, higher gas prices, higher refrigerant prices, things that affect the cost of living and the ability of Australians to make their way forward. It really has an impact and it’s all without any significant outcome in terms of emissions reduction.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
You mentioned the Greens in the Senate, isn’t there a greater risk that the Greens can control the balance of power in the Senate because of the Senate reforms that were pushed through the Parliament jointly by the Government and the Greens? It takes the micro-parties out, possibly not at a DD election but over time it certainly will and it is likely to entrench the Greens as the third force, that’s not a good thing if you think that the Greens having such influence is a bad thing.
GREG HUNT:
Look I’m not sure that I agree with the analysis but I’ll leave that to the pundits and the psephologists. What I do think is that is one of the key reasons for this election. So you’ve got an economic plan and part of that is reform of the workplace to get rid of union thuggery. And this is a double dissolution election, as you say.
If we are successful we will take to a joint sitting of Parliament, laws to clean up thuggery and costs in the construction and workplace environment and we will take a registered organisations bill, which is all about ensuring that union leaders have the same degree of accountability for the money they manage, which is the money of hundreds of thousands of members, as do corporate directors.
So accountability and responsibility and then reduced costs, which reduce the costs of the economy operating and indeed not just commercial and industrial premises but also in particular inner city but residential – so things that flow through the economy. So, there are big, big matters to play for in the election.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Greg, I’m just going to ask you one final question about what was an awkward moment in media conference in the electorate of Lindsay between Fiona Scott and the Prime Minister when asked about who she voted for. There’s been these rumblings about whether or not Tony Abbott has withdrawn support in terms of duty senator or duty electorate responsibility for Ms Scott. She wouldn’t say who she voted for, the Prime Minister confirmed that that’s reasonable, it’s a secret ballot.
This is more of a sort of political science question than anything frankly. Do you think that’s right? Do you think that representatives on all sides shouldn’t be required to say who they vote for? I mean obviously Ms Scott or anyone else is there at the behest of an electorate.
I just wonder whether voters have a right to know in leadership contests, for all parties by the way, whether or not they voted for person A or person B. As a representative rather than an individual in the secret ballot of a general election for example.
GREG HUNT:
Well look it is a secret ballot. I haven’t seen the particular conference in question because I’ve been on the road all morning and I apologise for that. I guess it’s the same as saying you’re a journalist and a representative, and I don’t mean this in a critical sense, but it applies to everybody in the media. You are giving views – is the public entitled to know your political view and how you voted and how you will vote? My response would be, Peter Van Onselen, or any other journalist is entitled to the secrecy of the ballot box.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Yeah, it’s probably not unreasonable. Just for the record I always get fined because I always forget to vote. But that’s another discussion. That’s another discussion. I’ll get in trouble on social media for that one. Greg Hunt, we appreciate your time. Thanks very much for joining us live from Perth.
GREG HUNT:
Thanks Peter.