Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister
TOM CONNELL, HOST: Plenty on the plate for the government and the Prime Minister in particular. He’s had a relatively successful trip overseas. These are slight thawing of relations with China. He comes back, though, needing an urgent solution to the gas spiralling crisis in terms of costs and supply as well, and, of course, the IR bill. Joining me now is Assistant Minister the PM, Patrick Gorman. And this used to be Gorman-Falinski time. Do you miss your old sparring partner?
PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: I do. I had were plenty of criticisms about the former Scott Morrison government, but I never criticised Falinski/Gorman. That was the highlight, I would say, actually, of the Morrison years.
CONNELL: Maybe that is the problem – the kiss of death from you. But look, I’m pleased to bring to you and the viewers, we couldn’t go on without the other half of this panel. Jason Falinski, the former member for Mackellar, is back. He’s ditched the tie. He’s a little bit more casual, but I’m sure he’s just as erudite and outspoken. Jason, welcome back. Do you want to tell everyone what you’ve been up to?
JASON FALINSKI, FORMER LIBERAL MP: Sorry, Tom, I can’t hear you. You seem to be a long way away. Is everything okay?
CONNELL: We’re going fine here. You have missed a few episodes of Falinski-Gorman. What’s been going on your life?
FALINSKI: Have we had the season finale yet?
CONNELL: Of what? This?
FALINSKI: Yes.
GORMAN: It’ll never end, Jason.
FALINSKI: I missed a few episodes. It never ends. I know just when you thought we were gone.
CONNELL: This is like Neighbours. So, you’re back as well. People will be talking. Is this the start of your campaign for Liberal preselection?
FALINSKI: If you were ever cancelled, Tom, if you were ever cancelled, I absolutely know Amazon Prime would pick you up in a heartbeat, for sure.
CONNELL: All right. There you go. He wasn’t answering the question.
GORMAN: Amazon Prime might take him. I don’t know if they would take you and me, though.
FALINSKI: We’re a package deal. We’re a package deal.
CONNELL: Well, it’s good to have you back in the fold, Jason. We figured you were pretty outspoken before, so it would probably be similar in your opinions here. Let’s get into some issues. The Prime Minister meeting Xi Jinping Patrick Gorman, to you on this. Look, it’s a thawing to a degree. Are we going to get anything concrete out of it? Do you have any confidence that tariffs will start to be removed?
GORMAN: What was important with this meeting was that we always believe that dialogue is a preference to no dialogue. And obviously China is a major trading partner for Australia. We have a range of shared interests. It’s important that the Prime Minister, President Xi, are able to speak about those mutual interests and about those differences and do that in an open dialogue. I don’t think you can expect that one meeting will resolve a range of things where there are differences of view. But what I’ve heard from my community and from leaders across Australia is that that meeting was welcomed. And I think, again, it’s credit to all involved that we are able to continue to rebuild dialogue which is in our national interest, and that’s what drives our actions in this space.
CONNELL: I’m no clear on an answer. I feel like I can be a bit blunter with you too, now that Jason Falinski’s in the room, but look, I’ll take that as we’ll see, Patrick. Jason, what about the Coalition on this? Because we’ve seen the new government able to come in and thaw things somewhat. Had the Coalition lost its way a bit? Was the message just getting a bit blunt under the former Prime Minister?
FALINSKI: Look, I mean, that’s a great question. I’m sure, with the benefit of hindsight, there are things that we could have done differently. Yeah, I think the message was getting a bit blunt, if the truth be told. But I think a lot of good things came out of that message. And I’m sure, Patrick, when the cameras are turned off, would concede that any relationship Australia has with China is going to be difficult because our values are somewhat not aligned. Some of the human rights abuses and concerns that we have going on in China at the moment are difficult for Australians, I think, to accept and not to talk about. But the Chinese don’t want to talk about those things. And ultimately, I’m not sure that it’s good for Australia to have a trading partner that represents 44% of its exports, whereas they now represent a safer 21%. So, the diversification that I think, is healthy.
CONNELL: What does that mean? Keep the tariffs up?
FALINSKI: No, not at all. I mean, because China banned imports from Australia, our exporters and our companies had to diversify their customer base rapidly, which they managed to do surprisingly seamlessly. And now we have a more diversified customer base and no company, no country wants to have that level of situation that we had previously.
CONNELL: So I guess on that, Patrick, that the upside of this being in the freezer for a while has meant that we’re less reliant on China and that there will be no folding, presumably, that we no Australia giving up anything we believe in, albeit even if it is just words on Taiwan or the Uyghurs or anything. There’s no relenting on that. Just to get a better deal on trade?
GORMAN: The Prime Minister said very clearly that Australia’s strategic interests haven’t changed, our national interest hasn’t changed. We will continue to advocate for Australia’s interests as strongly as any government in history, whether it be with China or with any other nation. But what is important is that we are seeking to deal with our diplomatic engagements at a diplomatic level and not bringing them into the domestic policy debate in terms of politicising a range of issues that are more appropriately dealt with in a diplomatic way, and I won’t seek to do that now.
CONNELL: Now, let’s move on to gas and energy. We’re seeing the miners gear up for a big campaign, a lot of money spent. Well, what did you learn from your time working for Kevin Rudd way back when, Patrick Gorman around, maybe, how not to fight off this sort of challenge, because last time Labor basically backed up and walked away.
GORMAN: The circumstances of the two examples you draw are very different. Obviously, the conversation we’re having now is driven by a war in Europe that has pushed up energy prices across the globe significantly. It’s resulting in, for some Australian exporters, some very beneficial terms of trade, but for other Australian exporters, it’s creating real challenges. And so what we’ve sought to do, and I just want to explain to your viewers, is that our approach is in quite unforeseen and indeed very unfortunate circumstances, where Russia has waged an unjustified war against Ukraine, we need to look at all of the policy options available to make sure that we choose the best policy path for our government and for the Australian people in terms of making sure we do what we can to regulate, to keep energy prices within a reasonable band. But we just talked about our relationship with countries that are not democracies. Australia is proudly a democracy. Anyone can engage in our democratic processes. They can spend as much as they wish under the current law.
CONNELL: Spend up big, says Patrick Gorman, come at us with your best lot of money. That’s his message to the mining group. Jason, do you agree with his premise?
GORMAN: Jason, was that what I said?
CONNELL: The miners are making super profits and Australian consumers are losing out. We’ve got this huge natural resource in gas and we’re not getting any advantage from it.
FALINSKI: Well, Tom, with great respect, virtually everything you just said then is not correct. And I keep saying to people who keep talking about charging gas companies more tax because they’re making a profit now is, well, are we going to give them back money when they’re not making a profit? Because when you look at their historical record of profitability for gas companies across Australia, indeed for coal companies across Australia, most of them are marginal operations for a long period of the time. And if we’re just going to start taxing them because they’re convenient political targets, has increased taxes on any company …
CONNELL: Can you just do it while they are making super profit. Could they just not be tapping us in an international crisis? Isn’t that the problem?
FALINSKI: No. So what you’re doing is undermining the entire basis of free market economics, which is that the price signal allow tells people that they need to increase the supply of something. And I feel actually for the Labor Party in Canberra, because the problem is not in Canberra, the problem is actually in the States that won’t allow people to pump out more gas. I mean, Australia is an energy superpower with the most unaffordable energy in the world. And that’s saying something about government failure.
GORMAN: Jason, where were you on the PEP-11 exploration? What was your position on that?
FALINSKI: Mate, I was absolutely opposed to PEP-11 because there was no gas and oil out there and they’d had 25 years to find it and they hadn’t found it. But Patrick, where were you on PEP-11.
CONNELL: All right. Everyone agreed on PEP-11 and I wanted to get the gas out of there if it was indeed in there. I’m going to have to wrap it up.
FALINSKI: There’s no gas!
CONNELL: I feel like you two are warming up again and that’s good, because we’re going to be going every fortnight again. Falinski-Gorman is back.
GORMAN: It’s good to be back.
CONNELL: The big news of the day Jason and Patrick Gorman. Thank you.
