: Look, you’re one of the OGs and so thanks for coming. You’ve been to every single Bush Summit, and it means a lot to us. But I think off the top we really do need to go further afield. There’s obviously an unfolding calamity in Nepal. What can you tell us?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: People would have seen some of the footage, which is a truly horrific event. At this point there are 34 Australians who are missing. We are asking for those with information and hopefully through this we’ll get you the numbers to put up on screen where people can contact our consular people. At this point, Nepal, you know, is a developing country. It doesn’t have the resources that an event like that would have in Australia. So, information is difficult. Now our thoughts are with all those who will be concerned about their loved ones today.
ENGLISH: Yeah, it’s a really troubling situation. Well, let’s return to the Bush Summit you’ve been to every one. What’s your best memory?
PRIME MINISTER: I think the best memory for me was repeated last night with the award winners, the extraordinary young people that we saw. You know, Holly, from this area, has raised $2 million, taking a personal health tragedy issue that she was dealing with and thinking about others as well. And every Bush Summit Awards, it’s just extraordinary. You know, ordinary Australians doing extraordinary things and it’s a source of real pride and inspiration that people are making such a contribution. And wherever I’ve been and I’ve been at every one here in NSW, and I’ve been at summits from Townsville to Ballarat, and every single time, you walk away thinking, wow, there are these people who don’t ask, don’t ask for much for themselves, but just give. And the speeches that they always give as well are outstanding, just exceptional.
GEMMA JONES, HOST: The Bush Champions are certainly legendary in their achievements overcoming issues in the regions. To your mind, what are the biggest issues that regional Australians are facing?
PRIME MINISTER: Economic development, jobs. I’ve just met with Dubbo Regional Council, making sure that they get their fair share of resources. The issues that were raised there are typical of issues that come up. The airport here, wanting to make sure that it can take bigger jets so that they could potentially be a freight hub, so that for rescue areas, water fighting for during fires can be located here. This is a growing city of Dubbo. So, speaking about resources here, there’s a sporting facility. They want that expanded so that their young people – they have a big First Nations population here and in the region. One of the things about a city like this – there’s a plaque with my name on it here somewhere, we funded this when we were in government last time – is that a city like this, you have to look at not just what it does for people who live in Dubbo, but this services everything west of Dubbo as well. So, that puts a lot of pressure on. And so, making sure that services – the hospital here, we’re put in a Mental Health Clinic here, but they’re after an Urgent Care Clinic. They’ve made a big difference. We’ve got 137 of them, 48 of them are in regional, rural, remote areas. So, those pressures that are on as well. They spoke about migration here and wanting to keep people here. Some people gave a story about people coming to the university here, Charles Sturt, but then going to the big eight universities. They want people to be able to live here and to purchase homes here as well and put down their roots here. There’s a growing Nepalese population, I was told, here as well. So, they’ll be feeling the thoughts of people back home today as well.
ENGLISH: Absolutely. So, obviously the theme today is backing the bush, building the future for the bush. So, one of the hot button issues on that note that I’ve encountered, and our reporters have accounted across Australia, is protecting our farms and backing our farms. And yet one of the most recent events that’s come out, and people are talking about this all the time, is what happened with Rushy Lagoon. So, this is a farm in Tasmania in which a foreign firm outbid local farming interests to buy it, and it was backed by Australian taxpayers to the tune of $69 million through the CEFC. That’s the Energy Corporation. Is that a good public policy of Australia, to enable firms to either greenwash or get carbon credits, when retiring productive arable land?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, we’ve got to get those issues right. And that’s a very controversial one. To be clear, that was a British company buying out a New Zealand company. So, it’s two lots of foreign ownership.
ENGLISH: The New Zealand company was farming. This will no longer be fully farming.
PRIME MINISTER: It had been for sale on a number of occasions because it had stopped farming because it wasn’t sustainable, it wasn’t profitable. So, with the new proposal, there will be some income from forestry plantations, that had been identified by the former government as a potential zone for that. But there will still be farming on part of that as well. I understand that it’s controversial. These things need to be looked at and considered. It’s not a government decision. CEFC operates very independently of that.
ENGLISH: So, it sounds like you recognise that as a principle it doesn’t really pass the pub test that a government organisation should be subsidising a foreign organisation outbidding local farmers.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it isn’t as simple as that.
ENGLISH: But as a principle.
PRIME MINISTER: Should agricultural areas be prioritised? Absolutely, in my view. Absolutely.
JONES: You say that it’s independent of government, and that money of course was. But in addition to that, there’s an $8.8 million Federal Government grant to plant trees there. If the Government had its time again, would it be paying to plant trees on farming land bought by a foreign company?
PRIME MINISTER: Bear in mind, it’s not bought by a foreign company, it was owned by a foreign company, then a different foreign company. So, that’s not new. My view personally is that agriculture and sustainability need to be prioritised. That’s my personal view. I think it’s a legitimate issue that you raise.
JONES: There’s another hot issue that I’ve picked up in Dubbo. Like, I met Robyn in the wool shop. I think she’s here. She was protesting with our most polite protesters, the most unlikely protesters. But she was telling me that her property will be sandwiched on three sides by a solar farm where the panels are five metres high. They’re foreign owned projects here. They’re built mostly by foreign workers. They’re a work camp, she says, so that people aren’t even coming into town to spend money. What message do you have for people here whose lives and livelihoods are being upended, and they can’t understand why?
PRIME MINISTER: That I get it. We need to do better than that. You can’t have – you need social licence in order to operate. There needs to be much better community consultation and engagement on all of those issues.
JONES: Hey, look, we appreciate the audience involvement too, but I think when you’ve got the Prime Minister here to talk to you, I think it’s best to let him speak, because we won’t shy away from asking the hard questions, and obviously we’ll hear what you say. There’s another emissions-free form of fuel though, and that’s nuclear power. We’re obviously sending a lot of uranium overseas so that other countries can take advantage of it. Is nuclear power a no, now and forever, from you still?
PRIME MINISTER: It doesn’t stack up. Find me an investor who’s prepared to invest in it and then we’ll take it more seriously. But the truth is, the economics of it is what stops it going ahead. It was the Howard Government that put in the moratorium on nuclear power, not a Labor government. But it’s the economics of it, because the time between making a decision and actually producing any power is so long that the investment cycle just doesn’t have a bidder, doesn’t have the capital to be provided.
ENGLISH: Well, I think we’re hearing a lot more about that. We’ve got a panel that’s dedicated to that. I want to go back to a personal story that I heard this week and it’s from a colleague of mine. His mum actually had to go to Orange Base Hospital. She was in extreme pain, Beverly Smith, with diverticulitis. She admitted herself at 2pm on Monday. And she was still there at 1pm the next day, having not been admitted into a bed. She was hooked up to a morphine drip. I think it illustrates just the dire state of health services in the regions, and I know you’re particularly aware of it, but we say this every year. Surely, we’ve got to make a bigger effort to provide resources, and I’m told in this situation it’s a lack of nurses in that area. Now, I know that this is a state issue, but NSW gets 82 cents in every dollar of GST that’s collected. So, is there something more that you can do? Is it something that you will commit to, to make a priority?
PRIME MINISTER: We have done something more. We’ve put in $25 billion additionally in the health and hospitals agreement with the states and territories. So, that’s money to the states that they get to allocate. Not through us – that’s increased funding. On top of that, one of the things that we’ve done to look after primary health care is do things like put a Mental Health Clinic here in Dubbo. There is an Urgent Care Clinic in Orange. One of 48. And what that’s about, is if someone has a broken arm or kid falls off the skateboard or a cut, something that is serious and urgent, needs looking after but isn’t life threatening, it’ll take pressure off emergency departments. And so, 48 of those in regional areas. They’ve been a huge success. There’s something like 3 million Australians have been to an Urgent Care Clinic already. As well as we tripled the bulk billing incentive for GPs. That means people are getting greater access to GPs. We realise that’s still an issue in regional areas, but it is making a difference. There’s now 3,800 clinics around Australia. Bulk billing rates are up to 84.2 per cent.
ENGLISH: Do you think we’ve got the balance right in terms of resource allocation between metros and the bush? Because you talk about a lot of money and that’s a good move, but somehow that’s not the lived experience, that’s not actually flowing through lived experience for people who, you know, wallowing away in these emergency wards.
PRIME MINISTER: Sure. These are issues and part of the issues are workforce as well. It’s one of the reasons why skilled migration does matter. You take away the Irish nurses and Nepalese workers in ancillary working in hospitals, and we’ll have a real issue. So, particularly with training of doctors, nurses, et cetera, part of what we’re targeting is training more here and we’re doing that. We’ve just opened a new facility as well for training at Charles Darwin Uni, but we’re expanding where that can happen. There’s still nursing here at Charles Sturt being trained. How do we make sure we provide an incentive as well to make sure that people can come and stay and put down roots in those regional communities. That was something that was raised with me at the Council today as well, trying to get people to – they were talking about, you know, easier access to home ownership. And if you’re a nurse working in a community and you buy a home, you’re more likely to stay there. Now, some 260,000 Australians have benefited from the 5 per cent deposits. 80,000. It’s more than 80,000 now. Was 80,000 a couple of weeks ago, I’m sure it’s a few more, are in regional areas.
JONES: And it’s a sort of sad indictment, isn’t it, on the state of healthcare in the regions that life expectancy here is 2.3 years less than what it is in your electorate in Grayndler and Marrickville. I guess that also leans into migration, as you’ve mentioned, that, you know, that places do rely on skilled workforces that come from overseas. There are reports today that you are going to slash the refugee intake to 13,750. You’ve really stood on principle on having that at 27,000. So, I’d be interested to hear if you’re responding to One Nation, and also that there’s warnings as well that if the backpackers, the holiday visa schemes are wound back, then the regions will really suffer. But if you could sort of talk me through your reasoning, and if you are responding to Pauline Hanson.
PRIME MINISTER: No, we’re responding to the fact that post-COVID when our borders were shut, there was always going to be a spike, and there was a spike, in net overseas migration. We’ve reduced that by 45 per cent. We’ve done that in an orderly way through a range of measures. We tried to introduce legislation, that wasn’t successful, to wind back overseas student numbers. We had to do it through a different method.
JONES: Just don’t tell Peter Malinauskas that, because it’s important to his state.
PRIME MINISTER: No, it’s important. It’s important everywhere. But it’s important that we get the balance right as well. That we get the skilled workers that we need, that we bear that in mind, and that we do two things. There’s two ways you can control net overseas migration. One is people coming here, so you control those numbers. Secondly is, though, people who have lost their entitlement to be here, getting them to leave. That can be more difficult and problematic because of – we have developed over a period of time a reliance upon temporary migration rather than permanent. So, a lot of people on temporary visas who change their visa categories or put in appeals and do that. We’re worried about trying to get the numbers right. Our priority, and what we’re really looking at as well, is people who game the system. So, people who can come in and they can put in an appeal and continue to put in another appeal and go through.
ENGLISH: How are you going to fix that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s what we’re working on, and I’m not here to make that announcement today. Good try, Ben. But, you know, we have been fixing it. That’s how you reduce the numbers by 45 per cent, which is what we’ve done.
JONES: That refugee intake, though, that was a point of principle for you a few years ago, that it be 27,000. It’s going to be cut in half, virtually.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, no, not necessarily. Don’t believe everything you read in the Fin.
JONES: But that would be a response to Pauline Hanson, would it not? That your principle has been sacrificed at the populist –
PRIME MINISTER: No, we’re responding to the national need. Something that we said well before – you know, there is a current spike in the support for One Nation, quite clearly. But we’ve responded, we started lowering the numbers well before that occurred because we recognise that we want to get that right to assist the Australian economy.
ENGLISH: I’d love to litigate this issue for a little longer, but I’m noticing that the time, clock’s going down. So, I do want to talk about water buybacks and, you know, this is another issue that has come up. It’s a hot button issue. It was on the mood of the bush, is that farmers are trying to do their best. We’re right in the middle of the food bowl here, and yet the environmental flows, they’re saying, are punitive. Will you today commit to reviewing that with a view to ensuring that our farmers get the water they need to continue, particularly going into a dry spell?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s occurring at the moment. There’s a review and we continue to monitor those things.
ENGLISH: How far away is that?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, you know, looking at within the next year. But that process is underway and the consultation process is underway there. We’re going to make sure that we get it right. I mean, you don’t have successful agriculture from a dead river. Sure, you need to make sure that that works, but also you need to work on areas such as water efficiency as well with farmers. And farmers are very conscious of that. I’m conscious of it. I was Water Shadow Minister a long, long time ago. We made an announcement of working with SunRice, for example, in Leeton. I’ve been to that factory. I was Water Shadow 20 odd years ago. So, I’m conscious of the work that farmers do and we want to work with them. I spoke with the NFF last week there was a fantastic event in Canberra recognising the $100 billion figure that they were trying to aim at for production by the end of this decade. And they’ve reached it already. $42 billion of increased production.
ENGLISH: Yeah, we’ve got the best farmers in the world. They’re the most innovative, they’re the smartest and they’re the best custodians of the land.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the young man last night was extraordinary.
ENGLISH: Incredible. But look, a year is a long time. Is there any way of expediting it?
PRIME MINISTER: Sure. I’m putting an outside thing, but we want to make sure that we get all of that right as well. I meet regularly with NFF and with farming communities. My door’s always open.
JONES: In the final minute, can I ask you, I surveyed farmers ahead of the Bush Summit today in various states and asked them how much of their week they work for free, administering government bureaucracy. And it ranged from six hours through to three days. It’s a huge burden. It’s affecting the country’s productivity. I spoke to the managing director of Nippy’s in South Australia, it’s an iconic brand of beverages. He said every day you come to work there’s more cost, more regulation. You lie awake at night wondering what rule it is that you don’t know about that’s going to trip you out tomorrow. Does it bother you that in regional communities, farmers see the Albanese Government as the enemy?
PRIME MINISTER: What worries me is overregulation. And we need to do something about it. And we are. And we sit down, you know, we’ve abolished a thousand tariffs, for example, is one of the things that we’ve done. That was creating a part of bureaucracy. One of the themes that the economic summit that Jim Chalmers convened last year was about how do we get rid of excess regulation? You know, a lot of our state, we have three levels of government that can create a problem as well. If we’re starting Australia again, you wouldn’t have three levels of government.
ENGLISH: All right, we’re just about out of time, so. Thank you very much, Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.
ENGLISH: All right, thank you.
