SUBJECTS: Voice to Parliament Referendum; Snowy Hydro.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Well, let's go back to Sydney now because joining us live is the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek. Minister, good to see you. Thanks for your time this morning. So, how are you feeling about the starter's gun firing in a few hours’ time?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: I'm really excited about the campaign to come. This is a great opportunity for Australia, a great opportunity to take a step forward together, to make sure that our constitution, our founding document, accurately reflects our history and to make sure that when we set up a Voice to Parliament that we're able to make better decisions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians instead of for them.
STEFANOVIC: You're campaigning with Malcolm Turnbull today, who, as we just heard, opposed The Voice when he was Prime Minister, accusing it of being a third Chamber of Parliament and only recently said he still has some misgivings about it. Is he the best person to partner up with today?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I'm here with Malcolm Turnbull, with Lucy Turnbull and with Allegra Spender to show that this is a proposal that has really broad support across the Australian community. And as Malcolm Turnbull said, if the Liberal Party actually had a free vote, you would see a number of Liberals in the Parliament voting for this proposal. In fact, Julian Leeser left the frontbench because he couldn't live with the decision that the Liberals had made. You've seen Andrew Gee move to the crossbench because he couldn't agree with the National Party decision on The Voice. This is something that a lot of Liberals in the community that I represent also support. They see it as a positive step forward. We know that we've tried for many years to close the gap that exists in health, in education, in employment, in life outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. And we've been pretty unsuccessful at that because we haven't been listening to the people most affected by those policies. And when we do, we get better outcomes.
I've spoken before about the fact in Redfern in my local community when we wanted to do something about youth crime, you had Aboriginal leaders getting together with local police, programs designed by Indigenous elders delivered for young Aboriginal people. That's what's made the difference. That's what's made the difference.
STEFANOVIC: There is hope and then there is reality. So, there's still those questions of uncertainty that exist in the eyes of many voters. Where this leads; treaty, reparations, court challenges. Is all of that your biggest hurdle?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, I think there's a lot of scare campaigns being run by the No campaign that have brought in all of these extraneous issues. And the same thing happened when we moved towards Native Title. The same thing happened when we had the discussion about the national apology. It's going to cost billions of dollars, there'll be reparations, blah, blah, blah. All of those scare campaigns have been used in the past. All of them have proved wrong in the past and we've managed to answer those scare campaigns by focusing on the positives.
This is a simple proposition, a very simple proposition. We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution, recognising that Australian history didn't start with the coming of Europeans, that we've got a long history of thousands of tens of thousands of years. That's important. But the practical impact, setting up a voice to Parliament, which will mean the Parliament makes better decisions, that's really important, too. And this isn't about a veto. This isn't about any of the extraneous issues that people are raising, AUKUS and parking tickets and all that nonsense. It's about the things that will make a difference to life expectancy, to employment, to health outcomes, to educational outcomes. That's what we're trying to get right here.
STEFANOVIC: Can I just close Tanya on a different issue here? And it is somewhat related to Malcolm Turnbull. This is the cost blowouts of Snowy 2.0, now upwards of $12 billion. How concerned are you about that? And how much more has it got to go?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, look, I've read those reports in the newspaper this morning, but I don't have any additional information on that. Of course, we need to see a transition to renewable energy in Australia and there have been frustrating delays with Snowy 2.0. I have to say the Liberal government in the past has not had a great record on delivery of these large projects. I don't know about Snowy 2.0, but I know about the NBN, where you had massive cost blowouts and massive time delays. And we're dealing with the results of that now. There's a lot of areas where we're having to clean up the mess of the previous Liberal Government. In my own area, I'd say the Murray-Darling Basin is a great example of a really great project that was absolutely run into the ground by the previous government. And I'm picking up the pieces.
STEFANOVIC: Okay. Tanya Plibersek there campaigning with Malcolm Turnbull this morning in Kings Cross, in Sydney. It is the beginning of a six-week campaign. And thank you very much for your time, Tanya. And that will be announced, that official date, which I think is going to be October 14 anyway, but officially it's going to be done in a few hours’ time.
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