Tonight, on the Nightline, Queensland Senator Paul Scarr joins us. He’s the Shadow Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, and he’s been very vocal on some of the biggest national and local challenges affecting you right now, and we’re going to dive into all of those but the good Senator has just finished a very important meeting, and I’m going to get the inside scoop. Hello, Senator, welcome back to the Nightline.
Senator Scarr
Oh, great to be with you, Cheralyn, and great to be with your listeners again.
Cheralyn Darcey
Senator, before we dive into Canberra Conversations, can you just give us a back door, front door. Little bit of an insider peeked into what went on in this meeting.
Senator Scarr
Look, it was a really, constructive meeting. So just for your listeners. Liberal Party members from all over Australia, Members and Senators came together this morning, and we spent a really productive three hours discussing issues relating to energy policy and emissions reduction, and Dan Tehan, who’s our Senior Shadow Cabinet Minister and very experienced previous minister in Coalition Governments, is overseeing the process, and I think he summarised it really well coming out of the meeting to say it was a really useful, productive discussion, and there are many things which Liberal Party members all agreed on, in terms of energy and emissions policy. We must bring energy prices down. We must bring electricity prices down, absolutely. Also, we need to do our fair share in terms of reducing emissions, and Labor’s current policy has been an absolute train wreck in terms of their renewables only approach. So, there are quite a few things which everyone in that meeting agreed on, as Dan Tehan as the Shadow Minister mentioned when he came out of the meeting.
Cheralyn Darcey
Was there any one thing that stood out that you are really committed to making that happen in the future?
Senator Scarr
We will have further discussions in relation to particulars of policies, but the main issue is, wherever the Members came from, the Senators came from. We are all being told electricity prices have just gone through the roof. We were promised by the Albanese Labor Government that when they went down this energy plan that they presented at the 2022 Election – electricity prices were going to come down $275 a year for every household. We now know that was just nonsense. They are the ones who have taken us down this renewable only pathway, and we are seeing the consequences of that. So, we really want to bring back common sense to the debate and make sure that the focus is on bringing those electricity prices down.
Cheralyn Darcey
We look forward to finding out more about that focus in coming weeks. Okay, let us have a look at what is happening. I am in Hunter Valley. We have a Smelter here, and there is a potential closure of this, and it is a deeply personal issue for families here. From what you see, how did we get to this point, where soaring power costs are forcing this conversation about the future of such a major employer!
Senator Scarr
Absolutely, and the Tomago Aluminum Smelter is such an important industrial complex in our country, and the CEO, as I understand it, when he was briefing the workers and contractors, basically said that he could not secure electricity at a price that would make the smelter feasible in the longer term, and that’s a horrifying thought. So the Federal Government, the State Government, all of us need to work together to do everything we possibly can to try and address that situation, because there are thousands of workers, families in the Hunter region and beyond who depend on that aluminum smelter, and I think every single one of them have a right to ask, how does it come to this? From my perspective, it comes down to energy, comes down to tax, it comes down to over regulation, and because those energy costs under Labor are too high, it is making the smelter not commercially viable.
Cheralyn Darcey
You have raised concerns that more businesses are finding it extremely hard to stay viable under the current energy costs. What signs tell you Senator that this problem extends beyond this aluminum smelter in the Hunter Valley?
Senator Scarr
You can go to my home state of Queensland and Glencore, which runs a copper smelter in Mount Isa and a refinery in Townsville, has had to be bailed out to the tune of six hundred million dollars of taxpayer funds to keep those operational. You can go to South Australia and look at Whyalla, 2.4 billion dollars of taxpayer money. So, every single major smelter and refinery in this country is finding it impossible to continue to operate with electricity and energy prices at the heights they are. It is a systemic problem around the country, and it is something that needs to be addressed.
Cheralyn Darcey
Is the worst behind us?
Senator Scarr
I am not sure to be honest with you and your listeners. I think one of the issues is, when you provide the bailouts, you provide the government funding to some of these major industrial complexes, then, are you making them dependent on the taxpayer in the longer term? We need to do whatever we can to bring down electricity prices, so we can have these major operations in our country. We are blessed with so much in terms of resources in this country. We have our critical minerals, we have ironore, we have copper, we have led, we’ve got zinc, we’ve got nickel. We’re blessed with all these wonderful minerals with which we’ve been blessed. We’ve got to be able to add value to them in terms of smelting and refining. We’ve got to be able to do that in our own country, and I think we need to have a laser like focus to make sure we can bring those electricity prices down and make sure that those sorts of industrial complexes can continue to operate in Australia.
Cheralyn Darcey
So, if the Coalition were in power now, what in the short term could they do? Because we keep hearing about this as we’re at this point now, there’s been mistakes made. If you had a crystal ball or a magic wand, Senator, what could you do in the short term? What would be a viable answer to that?
Senator Scarr
I think we’ve got to be open-minded with respect to all the different energy technologies that are available. We shouldn’t be tying one hand behind our back in terms of any energy source, and I think that’s a crucial point. In terms of reduction emissions, I think there should be an emphasis on different technologies, but taxing is not the way to go, and we’ve got to be realistic as well. There needs to be common sense in terms of this debate. So, during the Coalition Government, we had a focus on bringing on more gas, and some of the states, in particular, Victoria was obstructionists in terms of taking advantage of our gas resources, and I think that’s an example where now you are starting to see the consequences of that anti gas mentality in terms of major industrial complexes, not just smelters and refineries, but in manufacturing, finding it difficult to keep operating in Australia. So, we’ve got to be realistic,
Cheralyn Darcey
The pressure is also hitting mortgage holders hard now. We keep seeing statistics about mortgage repayments jumping by well over $1,000 since 2022. In your view, what’s driving this ongoing pressure and is relief anywhere in sight?
Senator Scarr
Well, we got some bad news unfortunately this week in terms of the inflation figure. The inflation figure has now blown out to 3.2%, and that means inflation has gone up. The unemployment rate is also going up, it’s now 4.5%, and unfortunately, when you’ve got inflation outside of that Reserve Bank range of between 2 and 3%, it makes it extremely unlikely that there’s going to be an interest rate cut next month, and maybe we won’t see one till the end of the year. As you said, that places so much of a strain on people who’ve got mortgages, and people with mortgages are paying something like $1,800 more a month since Labor came to power in 202, so this is having a real impact on families all around Australia. I really feel for families that are trying to make ends meet in difficult circumstances, and they’re having to sacrifice things. I know in my local area, it means that some of the sports clubs are finding that children aren’t participating in organised sport to the extent they used to, because of the cost, because families are just trying to make ends meet. That’s just heartbreaking when families must budget like that and deprive their children of opportunities.
Cheralyn Darcey
While we’re still on housing Senator. You’ve described the Housing Australia Future Fund as collapsing under its own weight. What’s going wrong and why should families be struggling with housing care about what is happening inside this fund?
Senator Scarr
All Australians need to be deeply concerned with what’s happening with this Housing Australia Future Fund, because billions of dollars of taxpayer funds went into this Housing Australia Future Fund, and it’s not delivering. Now, the fund has delivered the equivalent of eight houses in Sydney. Even tho, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, and that’s just unacceptable. We now have a situation where the Auditor General, the Australian National Audit Office, which is the independent agency within government, has decided to conduct an audit in relation to the Housing Australia Future Fund and Treasury’s role. So, that gives you a sign that one of our most important independent agencies is now concerned about what’s happening, and it’s decided to step in and do an internal audit. So, I have grave concerns about whether this fund is really delivering for the Australian people, given billions of dollars of their money has gone into this fund.
Cheralyn Darcey
Senator, something that’s come across my desk all week and for weeks on end, is this Triple Zero outage. I’m going to call it a fiasco because it has been. It has been concerning The Nightliners. We’ve had multiple outages where Australians have been unsure if they can even reach emergency services. You say the Government has not gone far enough to hold telcos accountable. What needs to change right now for people?
Senator Scarr
Well, two things which we proposed and which the Labor Party voted against were first to increase the fines for telecommunication companies who fail to keep the Triple Zero phone line working, so that’s the first thing. So, to make sure that there are consequences if the telecommunications companies don’t keep those Triple Zero lines working, and there must be consequences. Because, as we’ve discussed before, and there’s no doubt, your listeners have raised it with you, and I had people raise it with my office. It is unacceptable that an Australian family in its most dire moment when it picks up the phone to dial that Triple Zero and needs help for a loved one that they can’t get through – it is unacceptable. So, we called for larger fines to telecommunication companies if they fail to keep Triple Zero working, and that would necessarily mean that they’d have to deploy more resources to make sure those Triple Zero phone lines were working. The second thing we sought was a genuine public register operated by an independent authority, namely the Triple Zero custodian, to keep a register of every time there is an outage across Australia, so that information is available to the public. It is available to parliamentary representatives, and we can cross-examine, and ask the questions that need to be asked every time there’s a public outage. You can only do that if you’ve got a genuine public outage register. The government voted against that. So, those are two issues which I think could be helpful to address this issue. Larger fines and a genuine public register. So, we’ve got a record available to the public, available to public advocates, to parliamentarians, about every time there’s a public outage, because Australians deserve to have that information.
Cheralyn Darcey
Trust in communication, Senator is one thing. Trust in information is another. The Bureau of Meteorology is in a bit of hot water themselves. Rolled out a new website, right as storm season began, and many people say it’s hard to use, and they find it very confusing. What concerns you most about that decision and the timing of it?
Senator Scarr
It’s the right of the public to get the information they need, and a lot of people rely on that Bureau of Meteorology website. In my home state of Queensland, Brisbane, where I live, was absolutely smashed by some major thunderstorms. It’s thunderstorm season now, and we’ve had some wild fluctuations in weather up in the southeast corner of Queensland, and people went to the website to get the information they needed, and they couldn’t get it. Because there’d been the launch of a new system – a $4.1 million website was launched, and it didn’t work as it was meant to work. The legitimate question that’s raised has been – why would you launch this in the middle of storm season? Why didn’t you go through the testing and the process that you should have to make sure it was going to work as intended before it went live. It had an impact on people in terms of people trying to understand the direction of a major thunderstorm with major hail, and we all know the consequences in terms of the damage hail can cause in people’s homes and their cars and their motor vehicles. So, people need that information so they can protect their property and their families, and the website failed, and that’s incredibly disappointing.
Cheralyn Darcey
I think a lot of people do not realize that the media relies on that website. That is where we get our information to then share with the public. So, as experienced media people, we found it difficult to navigate. So, we thought, how is everyday people who are not accessing it every hour like we are coping with this. I agree with you. It should have been completely tested. It was ridiculous.
Senator Scarr
It is a good point you make about the media. One of the powerful things about the radio is that lots of people turn to the radio at these times of emergency to get the latest information. If you are driving in your car, you have your family with you, you need that information so you can make choices to protect your property and your family. So, it is a good point you make – the power of radio!
Cheralyn Darcey
That is what we need – a good Bureau of Meteorology website. They need to get onto it. Senator, thank you so much for joining us for Canberra Conversations.
Senator Scarr
Great to be with you.
