THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
SYDNEY
SUNDAY, 3 MARCH 2024
SUBJECTS: CLEAN UP AUSTRLIA DAY; DUNKLEY BY-ELECTION.
PIP KIERNAN, CHAIR OF CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA: It’s Clean Up Australia today, we've had over 750,000 Australians joining us to clean up. It's wonderful to be here with Minister Plibersek, cleaning up with locals at Rose Bay in Sydney. It's been just an incredible turnout this year. We're delighted to have Australians join us on this wonderful day of practical action for the environment.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thanks so much, Pip, and thank you for all of the work that you and the team put in all round the year to make Clean Up Australia Day such a success. It makes such a difference for local people to have the opportunity to clean up their local environment. We know what a difference it makes to the amount of rubbish in our environment, but it also connects Australians to their communities and to the environment they live in. Of course, we need to work hard to reduce the amount of rubbish going into the environment in the first place. We need to reduce, reuse, repair and recycle. And that's why our government, with state and territory governments, and with industry, have invested more than a billion dollars upgrading our recycling capacity so that we can recycle an extra 1.3 million tonnes of rubbish every year, keeping that rubbish out of the environment and out of landfill and giving it a valuable second life. Any questions?
SPEAKER: What does the swing against the Government say to you?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: I think it's a marvellous result in Dunkley and I really want and congratulate Jodie Belyea for the positive campaign that she ran. She was out talking to loads of people every day about what mattered to them. And, of course, as we know, cost of living is top of the list of concerns of Dunkley residents. That's why our tax cuts that will benefit 13.6 million Australians were so important in the Dunkley byelection. It's why cheaper childcare, more paid parental leave, additional pensions and payments, higher rental assistance, free TAFE, electricity bill relief, why all of these things mattered in Dunkley. I'd say that this is a result that Peter Dutton should be quite concerned about. The average swing against the government in a byelection is more than 7 per cent. He achieved less than half of that. And I think that says a lot about Peter Dutton and the Liberals campaign [inaudible]. Anything else?
SPEAKER: [Inaudible]
TANYA PLIBERSEK: We decided that it was important that every Australian taxpayer get help with the cost of living so 13.6 million Australians, every single Australian taxpayer will get a tax cut on 1st July. And people with middle incomes and low incomes will get a much bigger tax cut than they were expecting. In fact, people on low incomes would have missed out entirely under Scott Morrison's old plan. We made a decision to give more taxpayers a bigger tax cut, and I'm proud of that.
I might just say a quick something about the relentless negativity of the Liberal campaign in Dunkley. I think it's very telling that Peter Dutton wasn't campaigning in Dunkley yesterday. It shows that Victorians have seen through Peter Dutton and his relentless negativity. We also saw some extraordinary comments late last week from the Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley, but that sort of comment doesn't have a place in a byelection like this. Nor does the massive spend of Advance on running really quite untrue advertising campaigns. I think it's reassuring that the people of Dunkley saw through the negativity and misinformation.
Thanks.
END
