Interview with Andrew Clennell – Sunday Agenda Sky News
ANDREW CLENNELL, HOST: Joining me live is Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, Murray Watt. Murray Watt, thanks for your time.
MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: G'day, Andrew.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Peter Dutton says Penny Wong should be ashamed of herself; he says Anthony Albanese's approach on the synagogue attacks and antisemitism in Australia and the Middle East conflict is the worst thing he's seen in public life. What's your response to that?
MURRAY WATT: Well, my response is that there is nothing that Peter Dutton won't seek to politicise and divide our community over. This was an absolutely horrific antisemitic attack that I think all Australians, particularly our leaders, should stand together on, but of course as he always does, Peter Dutton chooses to try to politicise it and divide our community rather than try to bring us together. Within hours of this occurring the Prime Minister was making very strong statements unequivocally condemning this attack, and of course we've taken a range of actions over the last couple of years to try to crack down on antisemitism as well. So I think it's just very disappointing that Peter Dutton can't avoid politicising these sorts of terrible events.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Why won't be label you a terrorist event?
MURRAY WATT: Well, that is actually something that needs to be done by our National Security Agencies, Andrew, under established protocols that existed under both sides of politics. I mean for me personally, it looks like terrorism, but that's a judgment that's got to be made by our domestic security agencies, and I know that they're working on that at the moment. But whatever we label it, it is an absolute outrage, it should never have happened, and the people responsible have got to be hunted down and pay a price for this.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Benjamin Netanyahu said of the fire bombing attack, ‘Unfortunately it is impossible to separate this reprehensible act from the extreme anti‑Israeli position of the Labor Government in Australia, including the scandalous decision to support the UN resolution calling on Israel to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible and preventing a former Israeli Minister from entering the country’. What's your reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu's words there?
MURRAY WATT: Well, I respectfully disagree with Mr Netanyahu's comments. Of course the action that Australia took recently at the United Nations was to support a resolution that 156 other nations supported, and they included a number of nations that share our values, like the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Japan. So this was not Australia being isolated in taking this position, in fact it was 157 nations including ourselves, as opposed to seven or eight who opposed that resolution. So I can understand why Mr Netanyahu may have his own reasons for making these types of comments, but I think it's completely incorrect to label Australia as taking some kind of a position that's out of step with the rest of the world.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Josh Frydenberg and Nova Peris were out yesterday, Josh Frydenberg's written asking, ‘when will the penny drop on Anthony Albanese and his Ministers on antisemitism?’. What did you make of those comments?
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, well, I mean Josh Frydenberg would have his own political reasons for making these types of comments. And as I say, I think any fair observer of the way the Prime Minister and our Government have handled these matters would see that he has every single time called out these types of events as being antisemitic, un‑Australian and inappropriate. And as I say, not only has he said those things, but he's taken action by banning the Nazi salute and other hate symbols, never been done by a government in Australia before. Only last week in the final week of Parliament our government passed legislation to ban doxing which has involved the absolutely inappropriate release of personal information of Jewish citizens. But Peter Dutton and the Coalition didn't vote for that legislation.
So this is the sort of hypocrisy that we continue to see from Peter Dutton and the Coalition where they want to talk tough, but when Parliament actually sits and has an opportunity to do something on a bipartisan basis, they recklessly decide to vote against that kind of legislation.
ANDREW CLENNELL: So you just think Josh Frydenberg's being political here?
MURRAY WATT: Well, I respect the fact that Mr Frydenberg is of the Jewish faith, and he has very strong feelings about this. But I don't think we can separate the fact that he has a very long career as a Liberal Party politician, and that is no doubt one of the reasons he's made these comments. As I say, any fair observer of what the Government and the Prime Minister have done would see a range of action taken, including in response to this latest attack. We need to see these events stop. It's one of the reasons why we funded security and safety outside Jewish sites, as a government, appointing the Antisemitism Envoy, a range of actions that we've taken, but clearly we will need to do more as things progress.
ANDREW CLENNELL: And what about Nova Peris speaking out?
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, look, I don't understand exactly the basis of her statements. This is obviously again something that she feels strongly about, but again, I respectfully think that her comments are wrong. I don't think it's correct to label the Government as ignoring these issues when we have repeatedly condemned them as they've occurred and taken real practical steps to try to stop these things from happening. We need to see this kind of behaviour stop, and as a government we'll do everything we possibly can to see it stop.
ANDREW CLENNELL: The new wage data that you put out today shows wage increases for miners of 11 percent since 2022, accommodation and food service workers up 16 percent and administrative workers up 12 percent. Do you think all these workers feel better off given the inflation we've had over the past three years?
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, look, these are some really encouraging figures that have just come out, Andrew, that demonstrate, as you say, across every single industry in our economy we have seen average weekly earnings rise since the Albanese Government was elected, and of course that comes after a 10‑year period under the Coalition where they deliberately kept wages low, and deprived people of those wage increases that they desperately need.
Now I recognise that things are still really tough out there for people at the moment with cost‑of‑living pressures, but the point I've been making ever since I've been in this portfolio is that making sure that people's wages are increasing is a really critical way of helping them deal with those cost‑of‑living pressures. And of course that's a very different approach from the reckless approach we see from Peter Dutton, who has committed on the record to unwind a number of our workplace laws if he's elected. I noticed that he dodged that when you asked him in the interview, but he's already on the record saying that he's going to unwind a number of those different workplace laws. That would actually cut people's wages. So at the time when so many Australians are doing it tough, Peter Dutton and the Coalition will actually make things worse, which I think is reprehensible.
ANDREW CLENNELL: We've had inflation of about 15 percent in Australia over the past three years though, haven't we, so the wages aren't even keeping up in many cases, even though they have lifted.
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, look, certainly when we came to office, of course, inflation was running at 6 per cent and was rising, and over the last couple of years we have been able to more than halve that to the point where it's now below 3 per cent, and there's no getting away from the fact that in our first 12 months in office, as inflation was continuing to rise having taken office, then wages weren't keeping pace with inflation. But it's very pleasing to see that over the last 12 months that has changed. We've now seen four consecutive quarters - so 12 months - of wages in Australia rising above inflation, and that's the first time that we've seen real wages growing in our country for several years. And as I say, that's not an accident, that's a deliberate result of the changes that the Albanese Government has made to workplace laws to enable the average working person to get a pay rise that rises above inflation so they can stay afloat.
And as I say, I absolutely recognise that things are still really tough for people, but they'd be a hell of a lot worse if we hadn't seen those wage rises, and if Peter Dutton had got his way when he opposed every single one of those workplace law changes that we made.
ANDREW CLENNELL: The Reserve Bank meets on Tuesday. Is it time for a rate cut?
MURRAY WATT: Well, obviously, Andrew, Government Ministers aren't in the habit of giving the RBA advice about this, but I know all Australians will be watching this closely. You know, I think the figures that we did see from the national accounts last week demonstrated that the Australian economy is running at a quite weak level at the moment, and these are the sort of balancing comparisons that the Reserve Bank has got to take into account when making its decisions. You know, I think it's a guessing game about what they'll do about interest rates, and you know, I'd be guessing just as much as anyone else would be, but certainly from the Government's perspective, we're doing everything we can to take pressure off and to allow the Reserve Bank over time to consider rate cuts. You know, the effort that we've put in to reduce inflation has obviously been critical. I noticed the comments from the Reserve Bank Governor only about 10 days ago where she made the point that government spending is absolutely necessary at the moment to keep the economy afloat. So we'll do our part of this, and we'll obviously leave it to the Reserve Bank to make their own judgments.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Well, just on that, what do you make of the suggestion out of the figures released last week, the GDP, that only excessive government spending has kept Australia out of recession?
MURRAY WATT: Well, certainly it's clear that one of the key factors behind us not being in recession as a country is the government funding that we've provided. Now of course some of that is in the space of social services, but the cost of living support that we have provided that does come at an expense to the government budget has been critical in making sure that our economy doesn't go into recession. And again we see these reckless demands from Peter Dutton and his colleagues to cut government spending. All that would do is drive the economy into reverse. So Peter Dutton's solution for Australia's economic situation is to cut wages and cut government spending. That is guaranteed to deliver a recession if Peter Dutton were to follow those approaches.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Aren't we at risk of going too big government here though. Doesn't the mooted universal childcare policy of the Government just further inflate that big government approach, more subsidies?
MURRAY WATT: No, I don't think so, Andrew, I mean obviously, you know, we're working through those policies at the moment around expanding access to childcare within Australia, but the point is that what we've been able to do as a government is provide increased spending in a range of different areas that desperately needed it while at the same time bringing down inflation. If we were sitting here having this conversation and inflation was continuing to rise at the level that it was under Peter Dutton and the Coalition, it might be a different story, but what we've been able to do as a government is lift wages, lift employment while halving inflation, and that's exactly what we want to try to do.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you accept we've been in a per capita recession for a long time?
MURRAY WATT: Oh, well, I'll let the economic commentators make those sorts of comments and those sorts of analyses, but as I say, I absolutely recognise, as do all of my colleagues, that things are really tough for Australians at the moment, and that's why as a government we've got to keep doing what we can to make sure wages keep rising and to deliver that important cost‑of‑living relief that Australians need rather than Peter Dutton's approach which is to cut wages, cut government spending and cut all our cost‑of‑living relief. Things would be so much harder for Australians at the moment if Peter Dutton got his way.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Mr Dutton also says this week he'll release costings on his nuclear policy. In recent years the popularity of Australia having a nuclear industry has increased. Is the Government doing the right thing by being so adamantly opposed to this policy? He says there could be bipartisan support if Anthony Albanese weren't in the way.
MURRAY WATT: Well, I can guarantee Mr Dutton that we're not going to provide bipartisan support to an energy policy that would lift Australians' energy costs by over $1000 per household. That is another example of the exact wrong approach to take at a time when people are doing it tough. Not only did he vote against our energy bill relief, now he wants to bring in a form of power that will lead to a household energy bill rising by more than $1000. Now I think it's pretty revealing that Peter Dutton is waiting until we're basically up until Christmas before he's prepared to release his costings. You know, we've all heard about politicians taking out the trash in the run‑up to Christmas. Peter Dutton is planning to take out a big bucket of radioactive waste in the lead‑up to Christmas to try to hide the fact that his costings don't stand up, that he'll be making electricity far more expensive, that his policy will only deliver about 4 per cent of our energy needs, and it won't even happen for the next 20 years. It's not a solution to our needs.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Well, he denies that. He denies it's only 4 per cent.
MURRAY WATT: Well, I think we'll all be interested to see when on Christmas Eve when everyone's packing up for holidays Peter Dutton finally slinks out with his costings and his nuclear policy. There's a reason that he hasn't been prepared to put it out before now. And that's because he knows in his heart it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
ANDREW CLENNELL: I think it will be before then, but yeah.
MURRAY WATT: Well, you know, I mean there's so many people already on holidays, and he's finally looking at bringing out this policy. If he was actually proud of his policy and confident of it, it would have been out some time ago.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Just finally, what do you make then ‑ he says, you've said the renewable cost is 122b, and their modellers Frontier Economics say it's 642b and then you haven't denied it.
MURRAY WATT: Well, I'll leave it for Australians to make their judgment about whether they're prepared to believe an independent agency of government which has costed the renewables roll‑out at a bit over $100 billion versus a consultant that Mr Dutton is paying who says it's a lot more. I mean I'll leave that for people to make their own decisions about. Every nuclear reactor that we have seen delivered around the world in recent years has not only cost an enormous amount of money, but it's blown out in cost and been significantly delayed. It is not an answer for the energy needs of Australia and it will actually just drive prices up.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Murray Watt. Thanks for your time.
MURRAY WATT: Thanks, Andrew.