Well, great to be here today in Lennox. And of course wonderful to have our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, back on the north coast. And of course, the Prime Minister knows our area well, he knows the people here very well, we’re really pleased that he’s here again today. And of course, we’re making an important announcement that a re-elected Albanese Labor Government will deliver a million dollars to Ballina Shire Council, a million dollars to Byron Shire Council, and a million dollars to Tweed Shire Council for really important infrastructure measures that go towards crime prevention and community safety. Now we know we’ve had increasing crime in our region, particularly youth crime here in Lennox Head. So many people have raised their concerns with me. And of course with this funding, I know the council are keen to use it for CCTV, which is exactly what the community have asked for. But we look at that million dollars, it can be used for a whole range of measures that go towards community safety. It may be CCTV, it may be lighting, maybe bollards, maybe fencing, it may be landscaping, all of those evidence based measures that do actually go towards keeping our community safe. And as a former frontline police officer, my main priority is community safety. And I would like to acknowledge all the police in our region who’ve been doing an incredible job as always. I’d also like to commend the New South Wales government. They sent 17 more recruits up here. We do have those stronger laws, the youth offender bail laws and also Jack’s Law as well. But I really would like to acknowledge and thank our fantastic local community. We have our wonderful mayor, Sharon Cadwallader, and we also have Damian Loone, the Deputy Mayor, and Alison Vickery. Where is Alison? Over there. A very strong community advocate. Because today really is a community victory. All of you united have made your voices clear about how important it is to have measures like this in place. And I do want to thank everyone who filled out my crime survey as well. The overwhelming feedback on that was we need to have CCTV, we need to have lighting, we need to have measures within our community. So I thank all of you, and all of you who are here today, and it is, of course, absolutely wonderful to have our Prime Minister with us here today in Lennox.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks so much, Justine. And it is wonderful to be here in Lennox Head, this beautiful part of New South Wales and indeed, of Australia as well. And one of the things that I know about this North Coast community is that there is that sense of community and belonging. Whether people have been here for generations or they’re new people who’ve moved up here for obvious reasons, with the lifestyle, on a day like today, it’s a fantastic place to live. And we want to make sure that people can enjoy the quality of life which brings them to be here in the first place, and to stay here and to raise families here in this community. And it’s terrific that I’m joined by the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Ballina Shire, but also Alison Vickery from the local community group as well.
This is a great example of this fantastic local member here, Justine Elliot who understands, of course, issues of community safety, as a former frontline police officer who understands what her local community want because she engages with them. And Justine’s been a very dear friend for a long period of time, but someone who, when Justine knocks on your door and says “I really think this is the priority” you know it’s been thought out, you know it stacks up and you know it will make a positive difference. So to you, Justine, thank you so much for what you contribute to the team. Not just as a local member as well, but for the work that you’ve done in family violence and across a range of areas as a member of the frontbench team, as well as being the Member for Richmond.
This $3 million, a million dollars each for the three shires along this coastal strip, Tweed, Byron and Ballina, will make a difference. We know that by giving it through local government as well, something I’m a passionate advocate of community infrastructure not being decided in Canberra but being decided by the local councils. What are the priorities? How can this million dollars make a difference? CCTV, additional lighting, making sure that practically on the ground every single dollar is well spent and makes a difference. So congratulations to the community really, for everything that’s involved here. Congrats to Justine for your leadership on an ongoing basis. And I do think this is a really important announcement today. It’s a commitment that we are making. We already, of course, are putting substantial funds, I’ve been a regular visitor to this part of the world with the considerably more funds that were put into major infrastructure, of course fixing up the Pacific Highway here in particular, but other projects as well. I don’t know if the mayor wants to say something, but I’ll give the mayor the plug. Never let the opportunity for a mayor to have something to say go by is my experience as a local government minister as well. But congrats, and you might want to talk practically about the sort of things you’ve got in mind.
SHARON CADWALLADER, MAYOR OF BALLINA: Sure. Thanks, Prime Minister. Good afternoon everyone, it’s just delightful to be here in this beautiful space which is part of the Lennox Head Village Vision Upgrade that we’ve been able to deliver for you. Thanks for coming out today to hear this election promise should the Labor Government be re-elected, that will be a deliverable for us. We thank the Prime Minister, we thank Justine for listening to the community, what’s really important to them. And we know through our community surveys, our Micromex survey that safety and security is paramount. It’s at the top of the list that we, that the community want. And if we can help New South Wales Police do their job, be more effective and efficient, well then that’s what this is about. Cameras, CCTV cameras help policing. Now we all know that we’re experiencing a lot of crime in our shire and that’s no different, I don’t think, to across the country. It seems to have been since the floods that our town has been inundated now with makeshift camps. In fact we have 35 to 40. Last night I received a call, late last night, to say there was a makeshift camp near a school and a fire had started. Thank you to the police that went out there to check that situation out. I sent it on to those that needed to know about it and I’m getting calls like this all the time. We have to do everything we can to take our community, to take our shire back from what’s happening to it. It’s not working for us at the moment and if we get these cameras, if we can get these cameras funded, that will help us. We have the lowest rates on the coast because we understand the cost of living pressures to our community. We understand how tough people have been doing it since the floods and that’s why we haven’t had any major rate increases like a lot of councils are doing across the state. But we will continue to try and as much as we can to keep those rates as low as we possibly can. We will in the future have to look at it because of the cost of things, construction going up. Keeping pace with our growth in population, keeping pace with the infrastructure that’s required for our community is our biggest challenge. And Prime Minister, we need airport upgrades. We need that extra apron, we need that extra bay, we need extra parking. We lost our funding at the last election – we had to loan fund it and we’re maxed out with loan funding now. But we do need that funding to make sure that our airport keeps functioning and providing that service not just to Ballina but to the region. This is what we need. It is integral to our economic development. We have, we were at a peak of 635,000 passengers coming through Ballina Airport. Now it has dropped slightly, about 625,000 passengers. So our airport is critically important. We have the Alstonville Cultural Centre – it’s been vacated. It was going to cost $750,000 to replace the roof. That was throwing good money after bad. We cannot afford to do that. We need a new rebuild there and we’ve been trying to apply for federal money for many years now. And that’s another critically important project because our community in Alstonville have nowhere to meet and it was used as an evacuation centre during the floods. It needs a new library. The library is not much bigger than what we see between these two trees. With our growing population, as I said, it’s infrastructure keeping pace with population growth. we’ve got a real challenge on our hands here and we are working as hard as we possibly can to deliver. So all the help we can get from federal government, We say thank you very much and we welcome this announcement today should you be re-elected. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks so much, Sharon, and thanks for your service. I think we’re happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: PM, obviously, youth crime is a big issue everywhere at the moment if you’re re-elected, will you look at putting some more money into maybe tough toughening up like bail laws and changing some of the laws?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, a lot of law and order matters are of course course done by state governments, state laws and state courts. But one of the things that we do constantly is to cooperate with state and territory governments. We know that government’s priority, first priority, is always keeping people safe in security. If you’re not secure, it’s hard to focus on your education, your health and other things as well. So, we’ll work cooperatively with the Minns Government here in New South Wales in particular.
JOURNALIST: Given the security threats towards the federal MP in New South Wales, are you looking at a review of security for federal MPs?
PRIME MINISTER: We constantly monitor security for Members of Parliament, including myself. The truth is that we do live in circumstances where the number of threats that have been made towards elected representatives has increased substantially. That’s been reported on by the Australian Federal Police and by the intelligence agencies. We also need to look at why some of this is happening. Part of what I have tried to do as Prime Minister is to turn down the heat on some of the issues as well. People will say things on social media that they would never say to you face to face. And they engage in a way that seems to ramp up from 0 to 11 straight away. We need to be able to have civil discourse in this country. I don’t want to see the sort of polarisation that we see in some of our democracies around the world happen here. Which is why I’ll continue to engage in the way that I do, constructively, with people. But why as well I think that we all have a responsibility as leaders at different levels, but also people, everyone with a phone pointed at us here has a publishing device. Now, that wasn’t the case when I first came to this beautiful part of the world, you know, as a little kid, people were just engaging with each other and playing and doing all of that. We are taking a range of measures to try to get that community responsibility back. One of the good things about what’s happening here with the work that Alison’s done with Justine and the Council is responding to local needs in a way that’s civil, coming up with solutions as well.
JOURNALIST: PM, why did you fly from Townsville to Brisbane to go to a Labor fundraiser?
PRIME MINISTER: I was in Townsville yesterday and I was in Townsville, too, with Premier Crisafulli. I spent Wednesday night with Premier Crisafulli. I was there in the floods in Townsville. I visited Brisbane and I launched a campaign in Brisbane. I had meetings, formal meetings, and launched a campaign of our candidate for Brisbane, along with our candidates for Griffith and our candidates for Ryan. I then went to Alice Springs. I was in Alice Springs overnight. I had a meeting this morning with the Chief Minister, Lia Finocchiaro. We announced $842 million to assist with people in remote communities. I did an ABC radio interview. I met with the Mayor. I’m busy. I’m busy. And here, I’m now in Ballina.
JOURNALIST: What were the other events you attended in Brisbane?
PRIME MINISTER: I’m now in Ballina. I work hard. I work hard. I have meetings. I make no apologies. And what’s incredible about this, is people in the Coalition, Hollie Hughes in particular, saying that somehow me taking up the invitation of the LNP Premier, David Crisafulli, to be with him and our Minister, Jenny McAllister, who’s been there all week, our member Bob Katter there. These are things that should be above politics. Fortunately, fortunately, the people that I worked with, including Phil Thompson there in Herbert who I had a discussion with, understand that these things are above politics.
JOURNALIST: But Mr. Crisafulli didn’t invite you to Brisbane for the fundraiser did he, Mr. Albanese?
PRIME MINISTER: I was with the Premier in Townsville.
JOURNALIST: Peter Dutton says that he will support, or has indicated he may support, Donald Trump’s ban on transgender women competing in women’s sport. Is – do you have a view on that?
PRIME MINISTER: Peter Dutton can speak for Peter Dutton and other leaders can speak for themselves as well, around the world. Look, I’ve said I’m not going to have a running commentary on comments made by the President of the United States. My responsibility is to look after, look after Australia. That’s my priority and I do that in a diligent way. And one of the things, as we just heard, is I work hard.
JOURNALIST: It’s coming up to the third, third year anniversary of the 2022 floods. If re-elected as well, will you put any more money in towards recovery efforts for the Northern Rivers?
PRIME MINISTER: Well we have, together with the State Government, put in $1.2 billion for the flood recovery. I visited the flood recovery as well, at that time, and was there on the ground with Premier Perrottet working across federal and state governments. That’s what people want to see and that is what we have done, including a range of measures including the purchasing of properties that are in low lying areas that are likely to be flood affected in the longer term. We’ll continue to engage. This has been a really tough time. I’ve spoken a number of times over the period with the Mayor of Lismore and I know that my Minister, Jenny McAllister, who’s actually from Kingscliff, just up the road here, she’s very familiar with this part of the world. She engaged with the Mayor, my understanding is, today.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) the Commonwealth will match the funding. Would you support that being reviewed? That Tranche Two should have – we’ve heard the Mayor of Ballina say there’s a big increase in homelessness as a result of the floods and all of the Northern Rivers communities are suffering. Would you support a review of Tranche Two funding for the Northern Rivers?
PRIME MINISTER: We will always – policies always have an objective of ‘how can you do better.’ But we have done substantial efforts. The leads of course in these issues are always state governments and they are in this area as well. Whether it be the former state government or since the election, the Minns Labor Government. We engage in a really constructive way. I know that, as well, in addition to that, can I say that we have in place the most significant plan for housing of any Federal Government forever. Because it’s comprehensive. Whether it be the increased funding that we have for social and affordable housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund. Part of that funding is for homelessness and is for addressing women and children escaping domestic violence. We have our Build to Rent initiative that’s about encouraging private sector investment in rental properties. We’ve had a full 45 per cent increase in rental assistance in our last two budgets. We have our Help to Buy scheme that finally passed the Senate in December. That’s really important as well. Those programs combined add up to $32 billion. So, we don’t count the funding, for example, of purchasing of properties around Lismore, et cetera towards that. But we engage really constructively. Thanks very much.
