Leader of The Nationals Transcript – Laura Jayes, AM Agenda – 5 August 2024
RANSCRIPT – INTERVIEW WITH LAURA JAYES, AM AGENDA; COST OF LIVING, RBA, REX AIRLINES
LAURA JAYES
Let’s get back to the cost of living crisis here in Australia now. The RBA is meeting today. It is the first day of a two-day meeting as to what it does next on rates. We look at this in the context of what is happening overseas in the US. There are fears now of a shallow recession.
Joining me live now is The Nationals Leader David Littleproud. David, great to have you back on the program. Good to see you once again.
Look, at the moment our jobs market is holding up and the Government is trying to strike that balance between giving cost of living support, not keeping rates, therefore inflation higher than it needs to be. Is that balance right at the moment?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
No, because they are not addressing the fundamentals of what will actually tear away what’s driving and keeping inflation higher longer, and rates higher longer.
I think it is fraught with danger to predict what the RBA will do. I think you need to allow them the independence to continue to do their job and look at the economy in totality.
The Government has a role to play, a significant role to play. And you look at the fact that discretionary spending stopped, we have stopped going to Gerry Harvey, our discretionary spend at pubs and restaurants is reducing. But what is continuing to drive up is your energy bill, it’s gone up 25 percent, your food bill up 11 percent, they’re intertwined because food processors are paying more for their energy, and your insurance and your building costs.
When you’ve got an in IR policy that’s being framed around the CFMEU and the unions, are you going to pay more? And this is where you’ve got to address the fundamentals, you can’t solve the nation’s problems by just spending more taxpayers money. You can use some common sense and pull the levers, and have an energy policy that’ll underpin manufacturing, not have to subsidise manufacturing, because the only way to keep manufacturing going is to have reliable base load power. And then have an IR policy that actually rewards productivity and brings to the essence of what our whole economy and society is built on, the reward for effort, and the harder you work, the more you should get paid and the more the productivity should flow.
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This is where this Government’s ideologies are impractical. And that’s why Australians are paying more. You know we are talking about whether there will be a rate rise or a rate reduction. The fact is, is the lived experience and the human toll that Australians are going without meals at the moment because this Government has pulled the wrong ideological levers and the Government hasn’t been alive to that and they’ve been too slow to react, and the RBA has acted accordingly.
LAURA JAYES
Do you have to give them some credit though for where the jobs market is at the moment? This is a fundamental difference between here and the US now, is that in Australia we’re still at those record low levels of unemployment.
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Yeah and much of that was the stimulation that was done during Covid and then obviously the overhang from that, and the fact that our migration levels dropped significantly, whereas a lot of the other nations, we returned a lot of those citizens back to their own countries.
LAURA JAYES
But they are up significantly now. You know we had 500,000 new migrants last year alone, didn’t we?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Well the economy was primed. And what we needed to do was make sure that we were sensible about making sure the people that we bring to this country come with the skills that we want. We’re giving the greatest gift we can give to any citizen around the world, a ticket to Australia. So, we should determine who comes to this country, the skills that they provide to this country and where they should go in this country. Because it is lumpy, we shouldn’t be just continuing to throw people into Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane when there are shortages in other parts of the country.
And this is where their policy has been open slather. Rather than making the tough decisions about recalibrating after Covid and making sure that stimulus was actually targeted, and making sure that the resources we need, the human capital we need, was actually bought back with the skills we need.
We’ve got a housing crisis, and they weren’t even bringing builders or plumbers or electricians, because the union said they weren’t allowed to. Then we are exacerbating the problems that the states are feeling, and a housing crisis and a rent crisis that young people are feeling.
LAURA JAYES
Let’s talk about Rex because this could be a real crisis for the regions that you represent if it doesn’t survive. At the moment it looks like Rex is looking for a buyer. The Government aren’t saying whether they will bail Rex out with taxpayer funds. I understand why they’re doing that at the moment, they don’t want to declare their hand and just give Rex the easy option in that sense.
What do you think should happen here and do you think the Government is doing the right thing, playing this the right way at the moment?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Well they’re having to play the cards they’re dealt because they didn’t do the job six, twelve months ago when they were warned about this, around the number of slots that Qantas and Virgin control, particularly in Sydney, and the mechanism in which they’re awarded.
And there is blame at Rex’s feet on this, and in fact they shouldn’t have gone ahead with such a big capital buy of those larger jets to compete with Qantas and Virgin until that regulatory reform had taken place, because that actually was very anti-competitive for them.
So what the Government needs to do, is they need to sit down and work through, not just about making sure that there is a sustainable regional airline in supporting us, and this is life and death for many of our people in regional Australia, is that they work constructively with the new buyer and making sure that they solve this problem around competition, and they’ve made it very clear that they’ve preferenced Qantas all the way along. You can go as far back as the Qatar decision about restricting the number of international flights.
LAURA JAYES
But are you saying they have preferenced Qantas even when it comes to those regional routes?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Sorry, it just cut out then.
LAURA JAYES
Are you saying that basically Qantas has been preferenced on those regional routes as well or are you just talking about when Rex tried to expand into the capital cities.
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Yeah that was a bad decision. I mean Qantas and Virgin control most of those intercity metro flight slots, and they controlled that. And to go and make a significant capital purchase without having secured significant number of increased slots was not a very smart business decision. I mean, you don’t have a product to sell unless you’ve got the product.
So what that’s meant is that Rex’s poor decision has put regional aviation at risk. And the fact that the Government was warned about this and should do something about this, about making sure that there was more competition between metropolitan cities, and failed to do anything and now decided, well yes, they’re announcing today that they’re going to do something about it, is a lot too late.
This is serious for regional Australia. I just say to our city viewers, please understand that a lot rides on this for regional Australia. Qantas are in regional Australia in some parts, but only on selected routes. And this is where Rex is so important, and it’s important that the Government works to get a solution for us.
LAURA JAYES
Do you think whatever Rex looks like on the other side, and we hope that they do look like something of a competitive airline, that it should just service regional Australia and perhaps stay out of those capital city roots, capital city to capital city?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Well, I think that’s the big question for the Government to work out, about how are they are going to increase competition between those city destinations. Because what you need is competition to drive down prices and to keep airlines efficient and competitive. If you’ve got a duopoly that is protected, then you don’t bring in that competition, then you actually disadvantage the whole country, not just regional Australia. But we need to make sure that you have an airline that can service and as a core of their business respect regional Australia.
There is already subsidisation for many states now and regulated routes across regional and remote Australia that REX and Qantas both get from state governments. So there is already support for these airlines to fly in regional Australia.
But what the Government’s got to do is make sure that they listen to the reviews that they were handed and actually act on them. Not let them sit on Catherine King’s desk gathering dust, because this is a consequence of what happens if you don’t have that regulatory reform that that independent reviews articulate.
LAURA JAYES
David Littleproud great to see you again. We will see you again soon.
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Thanks for having me.
END
