Joining me on the phone is the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese. Good afternoon.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good afternoon, Ollie. Always good to talk with you.
PETERSON: You’re riding high after the first week of parliament because you got your tax cuts through, you got the IR laws in the Senate last night. Are you back?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the tax cuts aren’t through yet, but we are very hopeful that just as every Australian will get a tax cut, every parliamentarian will vote for it because it’s the right policy, put up for the right reasons at the right time. And all 13.6 million taxpayers will get that tax cut. Every one of your listeners and 84 per cent of people will get a larger tax cut, including our nurses, our cleaners, our teachers, our supermarket workers, our truck drivers. So, it will be really important cost of living relief, particularly targeted at middle Australia. But making sure as well that no one misses out. Under the previous system it was going to be if you earned $45,000 or less, you got not a single dollar and we’ll get double the tax break for people on average incomes.
PETERSON: How are you going to combat those two hundred and forty odd thousand West Australians though, who’ll be losing out on the changes you made this week? Yes, as you said, they’ll get a tax cut but not as much as they were anticipating. What do you say to those people who say that you lied to them?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, every single person will get a tax cut, including myself, will get four and a half thousand dollars. Now that is a significant benefit. But we wanted to make sure that those people who are on low and middle incomes didn’t miss out. And the other thing is, this is good economic policy and everyone benefits from that. What this will do is add some 930,000 hours of work every single week and that will make an enormous difference to labour supply. That will put the downward pressure on inflation that we need. We’re running an economy where we want people to earn more and we want them to keep more of what they earn. So, those lifts in real wages that’s occurred over the last two quarters, including in Western Australia, will make a substantial difference and every West Australian taxpayer will get a tax cut.
PETERSON: On the IR laws, there’s a three hour time zone difference between the West and the East Coast at the moment, two hours of course, outside of daylight savings times on the East Coast. I mean, you could argue you and I will be talking after hours, Prime Minister. Isn’t this going to create some problems for West Coast based and transcontinental companies under the right to disconnect amendments?
PRIME MINISTER: Not at all. This will just be a common sense approach so that workers can’t be punished for not being available 24 hours a day. And what we’ll see is people having common sense arrangements. This will be, the Fair Work Commission will look at these arrangements. But as society changes, Ollie, and in my working lifetime, I’m talking to you now on a mobile phone. We’re talking and communicating in very different ways. We can send emails at different hours of the day. People aren’t paid 24 hours a day. And for work life balance, what you have is in most cases, common sense, and that will certainly apply here as well. But you can’t have workers to be punished if they’re not available 24 hours a day. So, I’m certain that this will be a common sense proposal which will work its way through the system. And as a part of us adjusting to the new world, as our world changes, our industrial relations laws need to as well. Because one of the things that workers have said to me is that that work-family balance, I mean, there in Western Australia, of course, you’ve had an issue about after hours trading for a long period of time, I know, has been controversial. And that’s been a debate, of course, about that work life balance and all of that. And so this is, I guess, another reflection of that.
PETERSON: Would you like to see those shops open here in Perth before ten o’clock on a Sunday morning? Follow the leaders, South Australia?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s a matter for the good people of Western Australia, and so I’ll stay out of that debate. But I used to work in Sydney when I was a school student. I worked at Maccas, but I also worked at Grace Brothers on what was Thursday night and Saturday morning, shopping at shops open only on Thursday night until nine o’clock, otherwise they shut hours before then and they had to shut at twelve o’clock on Saturday. Now, it’s a different world we live in now. But that’s one of the reasons why penalty rates are important and why the Labor party and my Labor government has fought for people to be paid penalty rates. We do need to ensure that work life balance is present. I myself find after hours shopping very convenient, but I do expect as well that people will be remunerated for it if they’re working very strange hours. I well remember I went and got a job at Pancakes on the Rocks, I’m not sure if their Pancakes Parlours exist there in WA.
PETERSON: We had one in Hay Street for a little while. Yeah, we did.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I used to work the Saturday night shift from 11pm to 7am because you got a big bonus by giving up your Saturday night, which as a young person you should have. And it was interesting. People who get pancakes at three and four in the morning, let me tell you, there were some colourful people in at the Rocks at that time. But that’s part of that balance as well, making sure that workers, if they are being made available at different times that take them away from their family, then they’re remunerated for it, they’re paid for it properly. But also the idea that so many people are saying, well, if you’re online at ten o’clock at night, it shouldn’t be an automatic expectation that you are just available 24 hours a day.
PETERSON: I see that business groups, though, and they pretty much be across the nation, particularly here in WA, believe that these IR laws won’t be doing anything but hurting productivity. There’s a bit of scepticism across business at large. Will this potentially come back and bite you in the same way that work choices did for John Howard? Because have you gone too far here, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: Not at all. And indeed, Tony Burke sat down with the peak business organisations a week ago, last Friday and made amendments to our legislation, some of which were prevented from being moved, it must be said, by an act of petulance by the liberal senators yesterday, but we’ll deal with those issues. –
PETERSON: But that criminal penalty was a bit embarrassing. Who drafted that in the amendment, PM?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it was absurd that it was not fixed and the government tried to fix that issue after proper consultation, and it was the Liberal Party that objected to that by refusing to grant leave for the moving of that amendment. But we’ll deal with that. The new laws, of course, don’t take effect for many months, so there’s time to deal with it. But it was a great example of where the Liberal Party have got to, of just saying no to absolutely everything, even things that they say they support.
PETERSON: Let’s talk about the fuel efficiency standards you announced earlier in the week and take the Isuzu DMAX as an example. This was the third most sold car in Australia last month. The ute is very popular with West Australians. That car manufacturer has got no plans to bring out a hybrid or an electric ute. So, what do you tell them when the fuel efficiency standards kick in next year and that ute is going to be $15,000 more?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s just not the case, there’s the first point. And Paul Fletcher and Josh Frydenberg tried to introduce very similar laws, basically, and they would have had Labors support to do so many years ago. There are only two advanced economies in the world that don’t have fuel efficiency standards. Only two – Australia and Russia. And let’s be clear about what the government’s plans are. And these regulations are that they go across the fleet. So it’s not there’s no ban on any vehicle. There’s no, it only applies, of course to new sales so that we don’t become completely the dumping ground for the world of the dirtiest, most expensive to run cars. And as Paul Fletcher said at the time, this is not expected to have any increase in prices. And that makes sense because what we’re doing here is saying that the same fuel standards that exist today in the United States of America. Now, you might have noticed there’s a few big trucks, and SUVs, and utes, and all of that in the United States. And they are indeed the big car capital, I think, of the world. And they’ve had these standards for a long period of time ,since the 1970s. The rules that we’re putting in place will just bring Australia up to the US standard by 2028. The only countries that don’t have any standards are Australia and Russia, and I don’t think that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a model for anybody, let alone Australia. This is just common sense. It will save money, particularly people who drive further in regional and in remote areas, and in our outer suburbs. It will be a good thing. It is supported by so many of the vehicle manufacturers, and it’s just bringing us into the current century. It’s not telling people what they can drive. It is simply a common sense change.
PETERSON: Industry seems obviously broadly supportive of that, but they tell me that they could see Isuzu, Nissan, Ford, who obviously sell thousands of SUVs, four wheel drives and utes leave the Australian market and put tens of thousands of jobs at risk, just by that ambitious target of 1 January 2025. Are you trying to do it too soon?
PRIME MINISTER: No, we’re not and there’s a real phase in slowly over a period of time. So we reach the US in 2028, not 2025, for example. This is something that will have a common sense proposal. And I mean, years ago, when I was the Transport Minister, I remember going to a conference where the Japanese and Korean and American and European carmakers, none of them are doing research into new internal combustion engine vehicles. What they’re doing is producing a range of new vehicles, those vehicles that are petrol as well are cleaner, and burn fuel more efficiently as well. This is just a common sense approach, and it’s just bring it into line with all of America, Europe, our region to our north. As I said, the only countries that don’t have any efficiency standards at all, Australia and Russia. That’s it.
PETERSON: Prime Minister before I let you go, I know you’re coming to Perth next week and we are as you made mention earlier, talking on a mobile phone. Videos emerged of Barnaby Joyce on the streets of Canberra on Wednesday night about half past eleven on his mobile phone. Have you ever found yourself on the streets of the ACT talking to somebody on the phone?
PRIME MINISTER: Not in that position. I think that, look that’s a matter for, I have seen that footage. That is a matter for Barnaby Joyce to explain the circumstances around that. I think that’s a matter for him. I don’t intend to comment on what is clearly a difficult circumstance for Barnaby Joyce.
PETERSON: Prime Minister, we’ll leave it there. We’ll see you in Perth next week.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, Ollie. I’m really looking forward to, this will be the third meeting of my Cabinet in Western Australia following previous meetings in Perth and of course up in Port Hedland. So very much looking forward to travelling West again.
PETERSON: Anthony Albanese, thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, Ollie.
