9 March 2011
TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR
INTERVIEW WITH LOIS CHISLETT,
COUNTRY VICTORIA TODAY PROGRAMME,
3YB ACE RADIO REGIONAL NETWORK, VICTORIA
Subjects: Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; milk prices; Newspoll; flood reconstruction.
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………
LOIS CHISLETT:
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott paid a visit to our region before Christmas, so we thought we’d catch up with him again on Country Today this morning. Tony, how are you going?
TONY ABBOTT:
I’m pretty good.
LOIS CHISLETT:
Fantastic. Now, you’re in Melbourne this week. What’s the purpose of your visit to Victoria?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, I guess my prime purpose at the moment is to highlight the threat that the Government’s carbon tax poses to people’s standard of living and to jobs, particularly jobs in manufacturing. I’m just about to go out to OneSteel here in Melbourne. But Alcoa have got 1,800 jobs at risk in Geelong and Portland. Exxon has 350 jobs at risk at Altona. Ford Australia has jobs at risk in Geelong and at Broadmeadows. The economic consultancy Frontier Economics predicted 45,000 jobs would be lost if a $25 a tonne carbon price were imposed in the energy intensive sector and just about every manufacturing plant in Australia depends critically on a lot of input of electricity. So this is a very serious issue and the Prime Minister shouldn’t try to impose a carbon tax without first seeking a mandate.
LOIS CHISLETT:
It certainly is a very hot topic at the moment the carbon tax, and a lot of community feedback and backlash about it. Do you think that the Prime Minister will have to do a bit of a turnaround here and back down from this?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, it’s a bad tax based on a lie. It’s a bad tax because there are better ways of reducing emissions and it’s based on a lie because she said before the election “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.”
Now, lots of people, including politicians, change their minds, but politicians shouldn’t change their minds without first going to the people and seeking a mandate for the new position. Now, she deliberately tried to put this whole carbon pricing thing off the agenda before the election. I mean, the whole point of that climate change peoples’ assembly was to make people think that there wasn’t going to be an emissions trading scheme, wasn’t going to be a carbon tax, it was all going off to a talkfest. She said ‘we wouldn’t do anything until we’ve achieved a deep and lasting consensus.’ Well, the whole thing was a con frankly, and if the Prime Minister is going to be honest with the public she’s got to go to the election and seek a mandate for a carbon tax or she should drop the whole idea.
LOIS CHISLETT:
Now, if we look at the effects of carbon tax on a more localised level for us with Portland Aluminium Smelter, what sort of impact will it have there?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, it will instantly raise the price of the electricity that Portland is using and aluminium smelting is probably about the most electricity intensive activity on the planet. So there are I think 1,800 jobs in Portland and Geelong and all of those would be at risk because it’s a very competitive sector. These big companies make decisions about manufacturing in different parts of the world based on the comparative cost and if our comparative costs have gone up vis-a-vis the comparative costs in other places our plants close – and that’s why the head of BlueScope described this whole carbon tax thing as economic vandalism designed to drive manufacturing offshore.
LOIS CHISLETT:
We’ll certainly be watching the outcome of that very closely. I just wanted to touch on our milk pricing war at the moment, of course, south-west Victoria very big dairy industry, dairy area, many people are concerned about it, the farmers, the producers. What do you think needs to happen here?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, I think we need a very thorough ACCC investigation to ensure that we aren’t seeing predatory pricing. Now, as a consumer it’s good to see competition driving prices down, but as a producer you don’t want to be driven out of business by a big company, kind of ramping the market and so it’s got to be a balancing act here and the ACCC is supposed to be the body that looks at these things to make sure that no one is being ripped off. Now, we need an investigation, it has to be urgent and obviously the sustainability of the current prices has got to be the key issue.
LOIS CHISLETT:
Yes, it certainly is a big concern for our region. Now, Prime Minister Julia Gillard is overseas at the moment meeting with Barack Obama but her Labor primary vote has collapsed to its worst ever Newspoll of 30 per cent and her own rating approval has also collapsed to an all time low. Will they see through a full term of government?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, that’s not in my hands. That’s in the hands of the Prime Minister herself. She’s the only one who can go to Yarralumla and call an election or it’s in the hands of the crossbench members of parliament, whether they decide to continue to back the Government is their choice. But my job, Lois, is just to keep being an effective critic where the Government deserves criticism and to be a credible alternative, and the interesting thing about the Prime Minister in Washington is that certainly in all her Australian interviews she sounded more like an alternative opposition leader than a fair dinkum Prime Minister.
LOIS CHISLETT:
It certainly has been a very hectic start to the year as well. We’ve had a lot of floods and so forth. There’s still a lot of people calling out for help out in country areas. They feel like they’ve been a bit neglected.
TONY ABBOTT:
Yep, they are entitled to feel that there’s been a bit of a conspiracy against them because on top of the usual problems that we have in regional areas Mother Nature has certainly unleashed its fury. So look, I can understand that. Now, government can’t solve everyone’s problems but it needs to respond sensitively and effectively and swiftly to all of these issues. I get the impression that the Victorian Government is doing a good job in getting the infrastructure back up and running in those parts of northern and western Victoria that were badly flood impacted. I’m not so sure how well the Queensland Government is going but I guess they had a bigger whack in Queensland. But certainly we owe it to people in these impacted areas to do what we can to help as quickly as possible.
LOIS CHISLETT:
Well, we know you certainly are a very busy man as Leader of the Opposition, Tony, and we do appreciate your time this morning on Country Today and we look forward to catching up with you later in the year.
TONY ABBOTT:
Thanks so much Lois.
[ends]
