RADIO 5AA WITH DAVID PENBERTHY AND WILL GOODINGS
SUBJECT/S: Medicare; Trump Administration; Ukraine; Chinese Naval Vessels off the Coast of Australia
DAVID PENBERTHY, HOST: What we will do is park our news wrap and get to that a little bit later because we are joined right now on the show by the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister of Australia, Richard Marles. Richard Marles, good morning to you and welcome to 5 AA Breakfast.
RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: It is a pleasure. Good to be with you guys.
WILL GOODINGS, HOST: So, we’re explaining to our listeners before Deputy PM that normally we don’t have you on the show but you’re the one who’s asked. We didn’t ask you, you asked to come on. There must be an election on the horizon.
MARLES: Well, it’s a strange time in the cycle, isn’t it? I think I have been on your show before but very happy. Thank you for allowing me to come on.
GOODINGS: Well look, I was trying to frame it because I was at the event at Norwood High School a few months back where you sort played the attack dog role going after Peter Dutton as the warm up act for the Prime Minister that day. Is that the sort of intention of today’s interview? I mean obviously you’ve got a Medicare message to sell but are we going to be seeing you leading the charge for the negative campaign against Dutton over the coming weeks?
MARLES: Look, I’m just going to answer your questions completely, frankly and forthrightly. That’s my focus.
GOODINGS: All right, well question one. We finally had an interest rate cut last week and the Reserve Bank said don’t get your hopes up. This isn’t going to be the first of 15 in a row. Are you guys trying to blow the budget in record time by plucking $9 billion out of nowhere?
MARLES: Well firstly we did do two budget surpluses something that the Liberals, despite saying they were going to do it each and every year, never did once. And it’s really as a result of how we’ve managed the budget. Firstly that we’ve put down the pressure on inflation which enables an environment where we have seen an interest rate cut. But it’s because of the way in which we’ve managed the budget which allows us to pay for what we’re now doing with Medicare which is the biggest spend in or investment in Medicare since its creation more than 40 years ago. But this is a function of prudently managing the budget and we can do this. And we’re still well ahead of where the Liberals left us when we came to office in terms of the mountainous debt that they had racked up well and surely before the pandemic that we’ve been dealing with. But, this is prudent budget management. That’s how we’re able to do what we’re doing. And this is putting a priority on where Australians want to stay at nine out of 10 visits to a hospital or to a GP, I should say now, will be bulk billed, no gap fee. And that’s a massive difference in what is a cost of living challenge for Australians because obviously health is the most important thing that people have.
GOODINGS: You could demonstrate that commitment to prudent budget management by passing a budget before going to an election. Will you?
MARLES: Well, look the Parliament is scheduled to come back towards the end of March to do that. That’s what I’m working on. Obviously your question is an allusion to when’s the election going to be? And obviously that’s a matter for the Prime Minister.
GOODINGS: Well, it’s allusion to if you’re going to spend all this money and be very prudent at spending it and making sure you don’t over and above. It’d be good to see it in the budget papers before people go to the polls.
MARLES: Yeah, but I mean this will, this, this is a function of how we’ve managed the budget. There’s a whole lot of statements that come out which this will now be part of, such as the pre-election forecast, which is done by the Department of Treasury. And obviously what we’ve now announced will form part of all of that. So, all the announcements end up in the way in which budgeting is done by the Department of Treasury going forward. And when there’s the budget, it’ll be in the budget.
PENBERTHY: Hey, Mr. Marles, we are, you know, unashamedly parochial and proud South Aussies here. So, we love AUKUS, we want to see all the stuff being built here at Port Adelaide. But how should we feel about the fact that we’re now in a major security alliance with a bloke who thinks that Vlad Putin’s not a bad guy?
MARLES: Well, I think one of the things which I’m not about to do is to give a running commentary on the remarks of the President of the US.
PENBERTHY: Well, why not? Shouldn’t we stand up for like-minded democracies? You know, shouldn’t we call out tyrants when we see them and Putin is a tyrant. Why are we playing footsies with this bloke, letting Trump play footsies with this bloke and we just ignore it like we’re a bunch of, you know, saps, or to use a Keating-ism, suck holes when it comes to America. It is ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s a disgrace what Trump’s doing.
MARLES: Well, we are standing well and truly with Ukraine, so. And our position on Ukraine couldn’t be clearer. And I think that the point here is for us to be articulating our voice very clearly and not reacting to or giving a running commentary on the remarks of the President. In terms of Ukraine, we’ve stood with Ukraine for three years. And of course, today is the third year anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion into Ukraine. We’ve spent $1.5 billion in supporting Ukraine in terms of military assistance and that’s been really welcome from Ukraine. We’ve got Australians right now who are engaged in the training of new recruits into the Ukrainian AR forces and we will continue to do that work. And we have consistently been saying that this is a conflict which must be resolved on Ukraine’s terms. I mean, of course, any effort to bring about peace is welcome, but it can’t be any peace. It has to be a peace which is on Ukraine’s terms because Russia is the aggressor. And we’ve been completely clear in terms of what we’re saying there and we remain so, and we will continue to stand with Ukraine. I mean, even today, we have, as part of the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, announced the biggest list of sanctions of Russian entities in the last three years. Back in December, Penny Wong announced the reopening of our embassy in Kyiv and our ambassador is now in Kiev. So, we’re continuing to take steps to support Ukraine and we’ll be really clear in terms of what we’re doing there. And I think that’s the way in which we need to be exercising our voice and how we intend to.
PENBERTHY: We’ve had three Chinese warships as close as 150 nautical miles off of Sydney. We’ve had fights that have been forced to detour around what we’ve learnt was a live firing drill following your government’s or the Australian government’s protestations around what warning was given and the conduct of the Chinese in this case. There’s been a response from the Chinese Defence Ministry have said Australia has hyped up and made unreasonable accusations. That’s just come out in the last 24 hours. What would you say to that?
MARLES: Well, two points. Firstly, we’ve acknowledged consistently that China in this instance is complying with international law, and we’ve not suggested anything differently. But equally, we’ve got a right under international law to prudently observe what China has been doing. And really, in an unprecedented way, I’ve ordered the ADF to make sure that we are tracking this task group since the moment that they came close to Australia. So, as they traversed across northern Australia through the Torres Strait and then down the Eastern Seaboard, we’ve been there watching. The point that we made to China on Friday is that when we do similar exercises on the high seas, we would typically give 12 to 24 hours’ notice of any live firing exercise that we do. And the reason we do that is it means that before any plane takes off, it’s got an ability to navigate around or plan a route around our exercise. That’s not what occurred on Friday when there was very little notice given at all. And it meant that it was obviously very disconcerting for planes that were in the air and they were having to then divert during the flight. Now, that’s the point that we made to China. And we simply sought from China why it was that they couldn’t have given more notice. And what it was that they are seeking to achieve with this exercise. That’s completely reasonable that we do that. And it’s completely reasonable that we are there shadowing what they’re doing. And we will stay on the tail until this, well, for as long as this task group is near Australia. And when it’s all said and done, we will very closely assess exactly what it was that China was seeking to achieve from this mission.
PENBERTHY: Given China’s willingness and now demonstrated capability of operating near Australia, are you still satisfied that the timelines set out in the AUKUS agreement deliver our Navy a credible deterrent soon enough?
MARLES: I am. But again, it’s important to understand what we’re trying to achieve here. I mean, and we’ve made this point a lot. What we need to do is to be in a position over the course of a decade or so where we are able to, on our own terms, you know, not in combination with an ally, but on our own terms, resist coercion from any adversary. I mean, it’s kind of an obvious point, but if there was any great conflict that was out there, we would be in combination with the United States, and we’re not. This is not about Australia seeking to become, you know, a peer military to China because obviously that doesn’t that that’s never going to happen. But what it is about is making sure that we have a much greater capability going Forward into the 2030s and 40s and beyond such that we are able to resist coercion from any adversary. And we’re on track to do that now. Would it be good to have that capability today? Well, of course it would. But you know, we are the inheritors of was a lost decade under the Liberals where really we saw our capabilities deteriorate, where we saw a 10 year capability gap open up in our submarine capability and we’ve done a lot to try and close that over the last couple of years and where we really saw money being taken out of the defence budget over the few years prior to Labor coming to power. So, we inherited what we’ve inherited. But that said, we are putting the country through on a path to much greater capability. We’re seeing one of the single biggest investments in defence in the history of peacetime Australia and that is giving much greater capability and I am confident that we will, that that will give the nation agency and that we will have that in time.
PENBERTHY: Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles, thank you for joining us this morning on 5AA.
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