Topics: Labor’s cost of living crisis; Treasurer’s blame shifting; Labor’s economic mismanagement; collapse in Australians’ living standards; Labor’s big spending; CFMEU; soaring energy prices under Labor; income tax; Budget in Reply

 

E&OE

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Time to talk federal politics with the Shadow Treasurer and Member for Hume, Angus Taylor. Angus, good morning.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: G'day, Stephen. Good to be with you.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Despite what I've just said, the latest Freshwater poll says that you guys are going backwards. I mean, Peter Dutton is out there, but the rest of you seem to be a bit invisible.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, I don't know how many interviews I did yesterday and I'll continue to do them today. I'm in a blitz around the east coast of Australia, Victoria yesterday, off to Tasmania today, back to NSW after that and will continue to be. And we'll send a very simple message which is that we can't afford another three years of Labor. They have failed us. We've got a Treasurer who is all excuses and no plan. This bloke has a PhD in blame shifting, Stephen. He will blame Vladimir Putin, he will blame Donald Trump, he blamed President Xi, he's been blaming Cyclone Alfred, but he has a plan for nothing and will take responsibility for absolutely nothing. When we know this is homegrown, it's worse than that, Stephen. This is the biggest hit to our standard of living, what our incomes can buy, in practical terms we've ever seen. We've never seen a hit to our standard of living like this. Worse than any of our peer countries right across developed countries, across the world. We're down almost 8% in terms of what we can buy with our incomes. Other countries are nothing like that, way ahead of us. This has been an abject and utter failure. I realise that mudslinging can work in the short term, but I think Australians work it out and the one thing they know above all about Peter Dutton is he is strong. Anthony Albanese is weak. And right now we need strength, not weakness.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: But the problem with that is, and you're right about blaming everybody else and we've got Katy Gallagher out there saying that they need another three years so they can hire more public servants and she actually said that yesterday, which I thought was extraordinary. But you talk about the lack of plan from the government, there's gotta be a plan from the Opposition too. And unfortunately for too long in, and look, I don't think it's ever worked, but for some reason political parties can't wake up to the fact that we expect explicit policies and we expect an explicit plan. It's not good enough to just have a few headline statements there. As an alternative government, you've gotta have a plan to do things differently.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, absolutely, and we do, Stephen. I'll challenge you on this one. I mean, we have laid out and been laying out for months and will continue to over the coming weeks on how we'll beat inflation and boost growth. That means cutting waste. It means slashing red tape and getting rid of the barriers to growth. We have been clear that adding 36,000 Canberra-based public servants at a time like this is the wrong thing to do. We've been unambiguous about that. We've opposed over $100 billion of bad Labor spending, power lines to nowhere, so called housing policies that haven't delivered a house, so called manufacturing policies as manufacturing is going backwards in this country because they don't get the basics right.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: But Angus you're telling me about what they're doing wrong

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: You asked me what my policies are, Stephen, and then you cut me off. If you want to know what the policies are, I'm happy to tell you, and they are important.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Angus, the reason I interrupted you is because you gave me a list of what they did wrong.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: No, I've been laying out what our policies are. I talked about how the public service is too big and it needs to be smaller under us. I'll talk about how we've got to slash red tape because red tape in this country is out of control. I have laid out in a speech just a week ago how in financial services, in energy, in construction, we're seeing barriers to growth. Just yesterday we laid out how we're going to take on the CFMEU, which is a lawless union. Look, we have a union which is essentially a criminal enterprise. We will deregister it. We will bring back the ABCC. We will put laws in place so that it can't act in the way it is, laws that were effective in the United States against the Mafia.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Let's talk about that. I do want to talk about this, I'll get on energy. But I do want to talk about the CFMEU thing because I think this is an important point. But surely if we are going to enact RICO style laws, it's got to go broader than just the CFMEU because organised crime is rampant right across Australia, not just in the building industry.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, let's get started on one of the most lawless organisations we've seen in the history of this country. An organisation where we saw footage on Sunday night on 60 Minutes was just absolutely shocking about how union officials are behaving. An organisation that means we are paying more to build a road, to build a hospital than almost every other peer country in the world. Deregistering it, bringing back the ABCC, putting these laws in place so that you can chop the head off the snake, you can go after those kingpins who are actually causing this in the first place. These are the right things to do.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: The ABCC thing, I agree with you and the RICO laws, and as I say, I just think they need to go further because it's not just the CFMEU. But people in the building industry concerned about deregistering the CFMEU, actually making the landscape even more lawless than it is. And if we look at when the BLF was deregistered and we got the CFMEU out of it.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Yeah, that is correct. But we didn't have an ABCC, we didn't have those laws in place. And we will do that if we're in government. We've learned from that past experience. And I would also remind you that that was with a Labor Party in place in the country. You might remember, it was in the mid-80s when that occurred. And I don't think there was ever the resolve inside the Labor Party to see the end once and for all of what was then the BLF and became the CFMEU. So, you've got a different set of circumstances. And we will get rid of this lawlessness because we cannot afford it as a country. I was getting onto energy. You know, there's no small target policy in taking nuclear to this election, but we'll also, in the shorter term, focus on getting more gas into the system to get prices down. I did that when I was Energy Minister. It works, it will work. We need Australian gas working for Australians. We've seen abject failure. Even today we see that Labor has taken their plans, their original plans, the $275 reduction, off their website because it's failed. It's just not a policy that has worked.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: How do we get more gas into the system? Because the gas industry in Australia is broken and there's a lot more that need to be done before you can actually just say, well, we're going to burn gas to create electricity.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Except that I did it, Stephen. I've got a track record. We've got a Treasurer here who has a PhD in excuses and blame shifting and he doesn't know how to do anything. When I was Energy Minister, we worked, sat down and worked with the three big gas exporters and we said, it's a simple deal, you put more gas into the network and in return we'll help you get gas out from under the ground. We'll help you with approvals, we'll help you for pipelines and storages and that is what we did. You remember the national gas infrastructure plan? The gas fired recovery was about doing exactly that. The day Labor came in, they got rid of it all and we are paying a price for that. This is not complicated. We know how to do it. We have done it before. It got gas prices down into those single digits that we needed to and we know exactly how to do it again. And longer term we need to have nuclear in place. In financial services, I didn't get to, I've laid out over recent months how we need to make financial services more accessible, more affordable and we need to make sure that we're not in a position where Australians are under advised, underinsured and underbanked and that's where we're going right now. That's where we've been going and that means preventing overreach by our regulators. We have seen real overreach by APRA, by ASIC, by AUSTRAC, right across the regulators, they've been resourced up under Labor and they are spending their time making it harder for people to get a loan, make it harder for people to get access to the advice and insurance that they need. So, these are the policies that will really move the dial. On small business. Stephen, accelerated depreciation, we know that that drives investment which creates jobs, drives up wages, drives up people's incomes. We know it works, it's worked in the past and it will work again. Labor hates it because they hate small business.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Angus, you floated, I mean it's almost been put out there that you're considering tax cuts. So, I guess the two questions about that is how do you afford it and secondly how do you not do it now that you've teased it?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, all we have said is that the average Australian family is paying an extra $3,500 since Labor came to power despite the stage three tax cuts. That's for a single income family, double income, $7,000. Now the best way to beat bracket creep, which is a big cause of that, is to beat inflation. And I've been talking about how you beat inflation and boost growth. That's the number one, that has to be the top priority. We also, as Peter Dutton has said in the last 24 hours, as have I, we're always open to lower, simpler, fairer taxes but we have to do it in a way that's not going to boost inflation and that will always be the balance. We will see what's in the budget next week, how much money Labor has wasted and spent and how much room there is for these things. But we did the stage one, stage two and stage three tax cuts and we're more than capable of doing that sort of thing again, that we have to see what's available in the budget and whether it's going to be inflationary because we're not going to do something that's inflationary.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: So, how important is Peter Dutton's budget in-reply speech given the context of where we are at the moment?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, it's important. It's important. At the end of the day, a budget in-reply, a reply to a budget. So, we've got to see what comes through in this budget. But I'll tell you what we will see, is lots of excuses, no plan. Jim Chalmers looking for anyone to blame for his complete failure. Jim Chalmers demonstrating why he has a PhD in blame shifting. And the Labor Party failing Australians again. We just can't afford another three years of this. There is a better way. It is back to basics. It's not throwing money around, it's not giving handouts. It's getting back to those core liberal values and we can do that. And it will work, Stephen, because it's worked before and it will work again.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Well, Angus, next time we speak, I think we'll well and truly be in an official election campaign and we'll know exactly what the budget and the budget in reply speech have entail. We'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: Good on you, Stephen. Good to be with you.

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Angus Taylor, Shadow Treasurer and Member for Hume.

 

ENDS