THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
MONDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2023
SUBJECTS: POLLING; INQUIRY INTO SUPERMARKETS; ENERGY PRICES.
NATALIE BARR: Anthony Albanese has been labelled weak and ineffective by soft voters who have accused the Prime Minister and his Labor Government of failing to tackle the cost‑of‑living crisis. Comments gathered during focus groups by pollster RedBridge got highly personal with one voter saying the Prime Minister was "missing in action and running off overseas". Another brutal assessment from a Queenslander described Mr Albanese as a "weak beta male who was a follower instead of a leader". Let's bring in Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce. Good morning to you, Tanya.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Good morning, Nat.
BARR: This is good to wake up on a Monday morning and have to respond to this. What do you reckon?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I mean what Australians are interested in is not these sort of personal comments but in fact what we're doing to help them day‑to‑day. And we're getting wages moving, we promised we would. We're getting wages moving. We promised help with the cost‑of‑living and we're getting on with that. We've got cheaper childcare, cheaper medicines. We have made it easier to go and see a doctor, bulk billed. Cheaper electricity. You know, all the way through what we've had is Peter Dutton being relentlessly negative and voting against most of these things.
BARR: Is it cutting through though, because one person said, "Not being Scott Morrison will only get Albanese so far"? Maybe you're doing that stuff, but people aren't listening. Is that a worry?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, look, I saw the reporting of that polling too. I saw that people were critical of Peter Dutton as well, you know.
BARR: Right.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Australians don't like politicians. Big surprise, hold the front page.
BARR: Okay. Barnaby, is that all it is, people sort of are asked these sort of things in a survey and they think, 'Pollies, we'll attack them" or they don't like them?
BARNABY JOYCE: They like Tanya and me.
BARR: Besides you ‑ present company excluded.
JOYCE: Look, I think that cost of living is really biting, and the problem is the Labor Party went to the election promising they'd do something about it and obviously they haven't. And power prices are the cornerstone of that and they're power policy of going this sort of ridiculous 82 per cent renewables just means that people are ‑ their power prices are going through the roof, reliability is going through the floor. Overseas companies, the money's going overseas. They go into the shops; they can't afford the groceries. Everything flows through.
Yet the farmer recently has not been getting a great price in the sale yards but the price in the shops is through the roof. You know, we've got sausages over $10 a kilogram. It's just fat, poor cuts of meat and water. It's not the best part. No one seems to want to address that and say, "Well hang on, what's going on here?" The price of ‑ the difference between spuds in the paddock and spuds on the shelf is massive. It's 3, 400 per cent write up on the price. And these are the things that a government that's competent has got to be dealing with, has got to sort of really get down in the weeds of these things, like they're doing everywhere else in the world, it's got to say what is more important, 82 per cent renewables or the standard of living of the people who vote for us?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Hang on, Nat, here's the thing about Barnaby.
JOYCE: And I tell you which ones. The standard of living for the people who vote for us.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Here's the problem with Barnaby, right. He's voted against cheaper energy bills.
JOYCE: I haven’t got any problems.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: He's voted against the inquiry into the supermarkets ‑‑
JOYCE: No, no.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: ‑‑ to encourage the prices to be brought down. He votes against all of the things that would make life a bit easier for Australians. You can't go into the Parliament ‑‑
JOYCE: No, that's not correct.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: ‑‑ and vote against these things, Barnaby, and then complain outside.
BARR: Barnaby, are you against this inquiry ‑‑
JOYCE: When you talk about your so‑called power reduction it didn't work.
BARR: ‑‑ because we're about to have a Senate inquiry into the supermarkets?
JOYCE: I don't believe in 82 per cent ‑ oh yeah, I think we definitely need an inquiry into ‑‑
NATALIE BARR: So, you're for it?
JOYCE: ‑‑ what's happening at the supermarkets. I'm 100 per cent for it, I think that's a good idea.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: But your party's not.
JOYCE: I think we need transparency of exactly what's going on here. I think what's also really important ‑ well they might be talking about exactly the terms of the reference, but they wouldn't be against getting an inquiry into exactly how the supermarkets work. But what I'm not for is your desire for 82 per cent renewables which we know do not work.
BARR: Okay.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Because they're cheaper, Barnaby, we know they're cheaper.
JOYCE: We know it's incredible dear. And of course ‑ well it's not, look at your power bill. See, this is why people are losing faith in the Labor Party. It's just a different planet.
BARR: So, let's talk about the supermarkets for a start because that is what everyone has to eat, right, and the prices are high. Are the Nationals against this Senate inquiry into the supermarkets and why we're all paying so much at the grocery, at the check‑out, Barnaby?
JOYCE: I listened to the leader David Littleproud just the other day on television. He seemed like a person who was in support of it to me. Like he was in support of making sure that we get a fair price.
BARR: Okay.
JOYCE: A fair price for products and the differential between what they pay in the paddock and what you get it on the shelf. And I tell you right now, there is a massive difference between what we're getting here on the farm and what you're paying at the shelf.
BARR: Exactly.
JOYCE: And we've got to find out why that is.
BARR: Tanya, you will implement what the inquiry finds?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, well we think an inquiry is really important. Between them, the two big supermarket giants made $2.7 billion worth of profit last year. And as Barnaby says, it's not because they're making the farmers rich. So it is well worth seeing what the problem is with the supermarket system in Australia. Between them Coles and Woollies control two‑thirds of the industry. It'd be great to see a bit more competition in there.
BARR: Okay. Just before we let you go. There's mounting pressure on the government to lift your ban on nuclear energy. We've got French President Emmanuel Macron calling on Labor to change its policy after the Government shunned a declaration endorsed by more than 20 countries, the big countries around the world, to triple nuclear energy globally by 2050. Macron says nuclear is a source that's necessary to succeed for carbon neutrality by 2050. Tanya, why is your government against nuclear power when you've got the big countries of the world taking it on?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Because it's slow to build and it's expensive and we've got ‑‑
BARR: We're outlier, though, by the sound of it?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: ‑‑ endless amounts of cheap solar and wind in Australia and that's what we're getting on with building. We've got, as Barnaby keeps saying, an 82 per cent renewable energy target because it will bring down power prices and it will do it in a way that doesn't damage our environment.
BARR: Tanya, it's slow though, isn't it? I mean, you know, we're not going to do this overnight, we all know that, so should we take on more options like big countries like the UK, America, France, you know, are doing around the world?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, well nuclear is much slower to build. We're talking about under Barnaby's plan 80 nuclear reactors right around Australia, and it's ‑‑
JOYCE: No, not really.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: ‑‑ fantastically expensive. It is absolutely fantastically expensive.
JOYCE: That's not right.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: If Barnaby thought it was a good idea he had 10 years to begin to do it and he never did it.
JOYCE: That's not right. Well, Tanya, I'll challenge you. Get rid of the prohibitions, get rid of the prohibitions at a Federal level and a State level and let the market decide. So you've got nothing to worry about. If it's fantastically dear no one will bother building it. Why do you need these prohibitions in? Yet what we've got is France on the left, we've got England on the right, we've got the United States on the left, we've got Sweden on the right. They're all saying you've got to go nuclear. But I don't know why ‑‑
BARR: So Barnaby, why didn't you, if you ‑‑
JOYCE: Mr Bowen’s worrying about global warning because he's on a different planet.
BARR: Barnaby, you were in for, what, 10, 11 years, why didn't you start?
JOYCE: Because at that point of time we had coal‑fired power stations all across the nation and they were going very well ‑‑
BARR: And you thought that would ‑‑
JOYCE: ‑‑ producing cheap power.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: They were closing under you, Barnaby.
JOYCE: As you're moving out ‑ as you're moving out of coal‑fired power stations you've got to another form of baseline power.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well why didn't you plan for that?
JOYCE: Nuclear is what the rest of the world does.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Why didn't you plan for that? There were ‑‑
BARR: Barnaby, this didn't happen overnight.
JOYCE: You don't have to worry about the rhetoric of the ‑‑
BARR: People didn't just think we're going to run out of power a year ago, did they?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No. Nine power stations closed under Barnaby, and they had no plan to replace them. That's the problem. No plan to replace them.
JOYCE: Well here's your plan ‑‑
BARR: Barnaby, last words.
JOYCE: Your plan, your plan is the power prices going through the roof. We're seeing that.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: You voted for power prices to go up, Barnaby.
BARR: This is the reality, Tanya, you are the Government. It is a fiasco.
JOYCE: The power prices are going up under you. Racing through the roof.
BARR: Okay, Barnaby, last word on why you guys didn't think of this before last May?
JOYCE: Well the ‑ I've always been pro‑nuclear, and I think it's really important that now as you get the decommissioning of coal‑fired power plants you should be at the very least removing the prohibitions on building nuclear power plants.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: You were the Deputy Prime Minister; you should have done it when you could ‑‑
JOYCE: You can't say, you can't say ‑‑
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: ‑‑ if you believe it.
JOYCE: ‑‑ it's going to be so dear, but we won't remove the prohibitions because that's saying, "No, it's not actually energy", it's your philosophical issue against nuclear.
BARR: Okay.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: You were the Deputy Prime Minister, if you wanted to do it you could have.
BARR: Exactly. But also, Tanya, the other countries are doing it so maybe we should look at it.
JOYCE: So if you've got any better, Tanya, why don't you do it.
BARR: Okay, we've run out of time. Thank you both, think you've both had your say. See you next week.
END
