Doorstop interview, Adelaide

EO&E…………………………………………………………

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Thanks so much for coming along today. With the Labor Party, there are so often promises to spend spend spend, but the consequence is Australians pay higher tax, it’s a tax tax tax equation from Labor. They spend recklessly, but tax enormously and we’ve seen the analysis in this election campaign that Australians will face $387 billion extra tax bill, and that’s why Bill Shortens out there today making multiple multibillion dollar spending promises because he is going to tax Australians many billions of dollars more as well. Now in the end, it’s how  you spend money and whether you spend it wisely that matters most. Whether you are careful with the way you structure your policies, our Government is proud to have completely overhauled and reformed the way in which childcare subsidies are paid in Australia. We introduced the new childcare subsidy, we did so after thorough analysis from the Productivity Commission, it’s a carefully calibrated program to make sure that we keep prices under control and we’ve seen in the first nine months of our new childcare subsidy, average out of pocket costs for Australian households have gone down by around 9 percent. That means we’ve delivered in terms of more affordable childcare for more Australian families, and the results we’ve seen are more families already accessing more hours of childcare, more Indigenous children and vulnerable children in childcare, because our reforms have worked. But we also know from history that the last time that the Labor Party came along and decided to fiddle with childcare structures and a promise to spend billions of dollars more, all it ended up doing was driving prices up, skyrocketing high prices. So the contrast is clear, the Liberal-National Party reforms childcare and prices go down, the Labor Party spends up in childcare and prices went up, that’s what history has shown us. Our reforms have put a family earning around $80,000 a year far, far better off to the tune if they’ve got a couple of children in childcare about $8,000 a year better off in terms of savings, that they’ll make as a family. But they’ve done so without seeing prices go up, they’ve done so in an affordable way and they’ve also done so that we’ve clamped down on rorting the system. Labor’s reforms would simply risk more rorting, skyrocketing prices and also potentially the viability of childcare centres. It’s a magic pudding equation to pretend that you can somehow have wages going up, prices capped and not undermine the viability of those centres in the future,

QUESTION:

Don’t you think that childcare workers, who are amongst the lowest paid in our community, deserve more money?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

We back the Fair Work Commission to undertake appropriate wage structures. We encourage childcare operators to pay as much as they possibly can, but ultimately you’ve got to be honest about the consequences of policies as well and Bill Shorten is being dishonest, he pretends that you can somehow drive up the operating costs of centres without fees going up for parents at the same time

QUESTION:

I notice that you actually didn’t say well no they deserve more money you left it open, do they deserve more money? Given the importance of the task they do, are they worth more?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Childcare workers do an incredibly valuable task and they ought to be paid in accordance with Fair Work Commission rules just like every other Australian. Ultimately though, Australians need to understand that if you drive up the cost for childcare, fees will go up as well and that’s the consequence of Bill Shorten’s policy

QUESTION:

Ultimately the things that families would care about is having cheaper and more affordable childcare, Labor’s saying they are going to do that, so what’s your response?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

History shows us that when Labor spends on childcare, fees go up. All it means is that Australians end up paying more taxes and yet aren’t any better off in terms of the childcare cost because the fees have gone up as a result of the reckless way in which Labor spends. Let me give you an example in the sense that the Labor Party are proposing to create a tier where there is a 100% subsidy in relation to the cost of childcare. But what we know is when there’s a 100 percent subsidy in place rorting goes up because you don’t have to demonstrate necessarily that there’s a child there, sometimes the way people have rorted the system in the past. We know that the pressure from parents to keep fees down because it’s all paid for by the Government, now ultimately that then drives up fees that hurt other parents, other families and ends up costing taxpayers billions of dollars.  All of it paid for in much, much, higher taxes.

QUESTION:

Who does the rorting?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Rorting, we have seen sadly billions of dollars rorted in the childcare system, unfortunately particularly in the family day-care sector we saw hundreds of people put out of the system by our Government who had been identified as flagrantly ripping off the taxpayer, overcharging, charging where children weren’t in attendance, charging often when children overseas at the time, these sorts of practices have been clamped down because we put in place stronger compliance measures, suspended and ultimately cancelled service licences for a number of providers. Whereas when the Labor Party was last in Government we saw no suspensions or cancellations and very few checks on services.

QUESTION:

The Coalition has been blamed for lying about Labor’s figures, how do you respond to Tanya Plibersek’s claim that you guys are running the dirtiest campaign that she’s seen in 20 years?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

The Labor Party will attempt to create smear or distractions on their side, the simple choice for Australians at this election is do they want to pay $387 billion in higher taxes that’s what they will face under the Labor Party, higher taxes on their wages, higher taxes on savings, higher taxes on retirees, higher taxes on housing. These are facts clearly in Labor Party policy, even if Bill Shorten evades actually talking about the facts of those polices.

QUESTION:

What are the Liberals doing for dental care for seniors and pensioners? I see Bill Shorten promising free dental care for nearly 3 million pensioners

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well if we get to see any details about what this promise is and we know that when Bill Shorten came out and made grand statements about what he was doing in terms of cancer polices, the devil was in the detail he hadn’t properly consulted, hadn’t actually managed to build it to a point where there could be confidence that you would actually get what he was promising. I suspect we’ll see the same with these dental promises, they won’t be all they are cracked up to be, people won’t get the types of benefits he’s promising.

QUESTION:

Your Government has announced today that its capping the number of refugees that come, on top of capping the number of migrants, and yet here you are at a migrant community festival, how do you think they might feel about it?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Australia’s migration program has to be managed carefully to deal with population pressures. Our policy approach is to encourage more migrant settlement in regional Australia to restructure the migration program so that a state like SA that wants to see population growth, can be better placed to get more migrants here. Whereas other places that are feeling population pressure can actually have the confidence that the migration program is structured to address their concerns as well. I’m here at the Indo Fest celebrating the fact that our Government has strengthened strategic and economic ties with Indonesia, a key future trading partner for Australia by signing a trade agreement which the Labor Party says they want to renegotiate and potentially unravel. We can be confident that Australian and Indonesian relations will be in far safer hands under the Coalition, relative to Labor Party who might take us right back to square one with the free trade agreement that we’ve only just signed.

QUESTION:

So happy to trade with you but don’t want too many of you here?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

We will maintain what is one of the most generous migration and humanitarian programs in the world, but will make sure it meets the needs of Australia in terms of dealing with population pressures, targeting migrants to live in the communities where we need extra population and not so much in the communities where there is population pressures.

QUESTION:

How do you go about selling that to a migrant community?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

I think migrant communities want to see Australia thrive and understand that they come here to enjoy Australia’s way of life and that means making sure that the pressures in terms of infrastructure pressure, population pressure in various communities are addressed, and our migration program reflects the reality that some communities need and want more people and we ought to steer our program as our Government is doing to achieve those outcomes for those communities whilst recognising the others that do have genuine population infrastructure pressures in them and would like to see fewer people putting extra pressure on those resources in those parts of Australia.

QUESTION:

You spoke a moment ago of how Labor, if your argument is careless with public money, tax payers money, do you think Clive Palmer is a careful person with taxpayer’s money?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Look I think Clive Palmer can speak for himself, I urge everybody at this election to give their first preference vote to a Liberal or National party candidate. We have problems with the polices and positions of every other political party, ultimately we don’t endorse any of the rest of them, we urge people to vote for our lower taxing, more jobs agenda.

QUESTION:

So you’re happy to take his preferences while he’s happy to take taxpayers’ money?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

It’s up to Clive Palmer what Clive Palmer does, we live in a system where voting requires a compulsory allocation of preferences, everybody will have to allocate their preferences on the ballot paper, we don’t endorse the polices of any other political party we urge people to support the Liberal and National Party first and foremost.

QUESTION:

You are a model SA Liberal, the epitome of somebody who is careful with money, and careful full stop, do you sit there with the preferences and go we have to do it? I’m not trying to say there is something wrong about this process, that everything we know about who and what you stand for must at some point in time give you (indistinct).

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Preference allocation is compulsory on ballot papers in Australia. Yes sometimes it feels like your allocating to the least worst of a whole bunch of bad alternatives, that’s why people should put their number one next to the Liberal and National parties. We don’t expect, we hope that our preferences are not allocated, not distributed in that sense. Our candidates are ideally first around the country and therefore preferences from our candidates don’t come into play. Ultimately, we urge people to vote 1 for our lower taxing, more jobs agenda that’s what is critical to ensure that Australia continues to have budget surplus, pay down Labor’s debt and to be able to afford to invest record sums in schools, in hospitals, in childcare but all of it without the $387 billion in new taxes, and higher taxes that the Labor Party propose.

QUESTION:

It looks like the seat of Flinders is going to turn to a bit of a donkey vote, Julia Banks is going to preference Labor, are you worried about Greg Hunt’s seat there?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

You’ve really got to wonder about the various positions of Julia Banks, who was until not that long ago urging people to vote Liberal and now is suggesting she will preference Labor. That’s up to her to explain, to justify but I think it shows gross inconsistency on her part.

QUESTION:

What do you think it says about the Liberal Party?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

I think it says far more about Julia Banks and the fact that she has walked away from her principles, walked away from what she believed in and walked away from the electorate that she was running for at the last election. Thanks guys.