SUBJECT | Gas prices and strengthening the character test | 16 January 2023
PETE STEFANOVIC: Well, let's go live now to the shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan. Dan, good to see you. A new and big year ahead. Hope you managed to get some kind of rest over the break, but straight into things this morning. Energy retailers have stopped taking new gas customers, and others are ramping up prices. Isn't this what the price caps were designed to stop?
DAN TEHAN: It is Pete, but we all knew, Economics 101, that this is what would happen, and we've seen it happen. And the sad reality is it's going to hurt Australian business, and it's going to hurt the Australian people, Australian consumers. We warned that this would be the consequence. Economists warned that this would be the consequence, and here we are starting the new year, and energy is going to be the number one issue for the government and their first attempt to try to fix it has been a failure. So they will have to go back to the drawing board because they've got an E for their first policy attempt at this.
STEFANOVIC: What did you say they got an E?
TEHAN: Yes, they got an E for their first policy attempt to try and fix...
STEFANOVIC: Not an F?
TEHAN: Well, you could give them an F for complete and utter failure. Yes. If you are marking them, probably as hard as you wanted to. Whatever it is, it's not a pass, and they have to go back to the drawing board.
STEFANOVIC: Right. Okay. So should price caps be modified, or should they be scrapped?
TEHAN: They should be scrapped, and they need to look at getting more gas into the market. We know the issue is supply. That is the one thing that will drive prices down. So they need to get more supply onto the market, so they've got to reverse those policies which were designed at limiting supply, and they've got to be doing everything they can, working with the states and territories, to get more gas onto the market. That is the only why this will be fixed.
STEFANOVIC: Okay. I mean, one of the reasons why a price cap appealed to so many is that it could be a short-term fix. Now, if it's your preference to increase supply, that's not a short-term fix, is it? That will take time.
TEHAN: But it sends immediately market signals that there is going to be more supply into the market, so that then leads to, when it comes to the companies setting the prices into the future, they start to set them downwards, and that's what we need to see. And if all states and territories got together with the Commonwealth and started to take those measures to get supply into the market immediately, we would start to see downward pressure on prices. What we’ve seen, and remembering this legislation was put in in the last week before Christmas, we’re already seeing it put upward pressure on prices and limit supply even further. So over Christmas, their policy is now deemed a failure, so they've got to reverse it immediately, and we all know that the only way you're going to do that is to get more supply onto the market. Now, if they started signalling that that is their number one intention this year then you would start to see those prices come down, and that's what we want to see. We want to see those signals into the market that will drive prices down.
STEFANOVIC: Okay, a couple of quick ones here, Dan, on the return to parliament to a few issues here. When would you like to see a draft bill in The Voice which outlines Labor's preferred model?
TEHAN: Well, we'd like to see it now. We don't need to wait for the Parliament to come back. The Government could release a draft piece of legislation which sets out the details around the Voice, and that would go a long way to reassuring the Australian people of what they have in mind. The key, key concern that a lot of people I've spoken to is how do you prevent judicial activism if you put the voice into the Constitution. Now the Attorney-General, and the Prime Minister, they will not answer that question, and that is absolutely fundamental to our democracy. These are the questions, and there are many more and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton set these out in his letter to the Prime Minister that we need answered. Now, a piece of draft legislation would go a long way to doing that, but we've seen nothing from the Government on that other than arrogance that they think that their way is the best way and they are not going even to take the time or the effort to explain the detail to the Australian people.
STEFANOVIC: Okay. And just finally, you want to strengthen the character when Parliament returns as well. So, how different would that be to what you proposed before the election?
TEHAN: Well, it's exactly the same bill that we proposed before the election that the Prime Minister voted for, that Andrew Giles, the Immigration Minister, voted for. We want to put that same piece of legislation back into the Parliament and get it through the Senate. We tried for five years. At the 11th hour, the government in the lead-up to the election - or the then opposition in the lead-up to the election - passed the bill through the House of Representatives. Prime Minister Albanese and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles have voted for this bill. It keeps Australians safe. It means that if you’ve been convicted of a crime with a sentence of two years or more for child abuse, domestic violence, or assaulting a police officer, you would be booted out of this country. So, I gave Andrew Giles nine months to reintroduce this bill. He was too busy fundraising for Dan Andrews, so I'm going to do it myself through a private member's bill, and I'm hoping that they'll vote for it again and vote for it in the Senate because it will keep Australia safe.
STEFANOVIC: Okay, that's the shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan.
