Warren Truss MP: Transcript - Doorstop, Parliament House
01-June-2009
Transcript
Warren Truss
Leader of The Nationals
Doorstop, Parliament House
1 June 2009
E & OE
SUBJECTS: Labor’s outrageous road and rail funding claims; Rudd Labor’s ETS
Warren Truss: I understand that the Rudd Government today is going to criticise the Coalition for voting against road funding. Let’s make it absolutely clear: it’s the Rudd Labor Government that is cutting funding for roads.
In spite of all they say about infrastructure and nation building, Labor will actually spend less money on roads and rail than the Coalition had committed at the last election. The changes we’re proposing are to prevent Labor from changing the Black Spots program and the Rural Strategic Roads program. Under these programs, the Black Spots program provided funding to get rid of accident spots on local roads and streets. Labor proposes to spend that money on the national highway. The Regional Strategic Roads program, they are going to abolish and take the money away from regional roads and spent it in the cities.
We’re not proposing to spend less on roads; what we’re proposing is to keep the programs that have been in existence for many, many years and are widely respected in the community.
Journalist: But your changes won’t get Government support, so you will vote against the package?
Truss: We’re supportive of additional funding for roads. We promised more at the last election than Labor will be delivering in their roads program. We want to keep the Black Spots program which has been has been delivering projects to get rid of accident spots on local roads and streets. Labor’s proposing to put that on the national highway which is already the most generously funded section of the national network. And they’re also getting rid of the Regional Strategic Roads program which spent money in regional areas, and they are going to spend it in the cities.
They are turning it into a Labor slush fund to pay for their election promises.
Journalist: What are you going to do if your changes are rejected?
Truss: We’re going to move those amendments to restore the programs to their original intent, and of course we’ll support those amendments. If anyone blocks this legislation, it will be Labor and it will be because they are taking money away from local roads and streets and trying to spend it on the national highway and they are trying to take money away from regional roads and to spend it in the cities to meet the slush fund promises of their candidates at the last election
Journalist: What happens if you can’t get those amendments up? Will you vote against it?
Truss: Well, the Labor Party will surely recognise that these are valuable programs. They want the money spent, we want the money spent. We’re just asking that it be spent as it was always intended.
They didn’t go to the election promising to take money off regional roads and to spend it in the cities. They didn’t tell people living in local suburbs and in towns and on rural roads around the nation that they were going to take money away from the Black Spots program.
They weren’t honest. We’re just asking them to honour their election commitments.
Journalist: On climate change, Malcolm Turnbull says there will be an ETS. Will the Nats ever support that?
Truss: Well, he didn’t quite say that. What he said was that in the event of the world coming to a conclusion that there should be an emissions trading scheme and countries around the world adopting such a scheme, that the voters would expect Australia to follow suit.
That’s an entirely different question, and I think that in the event that there is a global response - that all countries decide that they want to work together to achieve worthwhile things on emissions trading - then Australia would be a part of that kind of a program and the National Party’s objections which are about the unfair disadvantage being imposed upon Australia by the Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would dissipate.
Journalist: Mr Truss, you say that the current scheme as it is, with a 5 percent unconditional 2020 production target, is a job destroyer. Now if it’s at the mercy of the Greens, which is what your decision to defer a vote is doing, aren’t you worried that would destroy more jobs and that’s entirely your fault?
Truss: Well certainly the activities of the Greens are designed to destroy as many jobs as they possible can. Greens believe in reduction of emissions by destroying Australian industry. They want to send those jobs, it seems, to other parts of the world where in fact the same products will be manufactured with much greater levels of emissions.
Now I am sure that neither the Government nor the Opposition believes that it’s a good idea to be destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs. The Greens proposal is even worse than Labor’s.
Journalist: Then why don’t you seize some gumption and take on the power-broking or negotiating role yourself instead of leaving it at the mercy of the crossbenches?
Truss: Well, I think we are showing a great deal of gumption to try to protect Australian jobs. We want to do good things for the environment and the best thing to deliver a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is for Australian jobs to be kept in Australia where there are high emissions standards and where we will ensure that appropriate measures are taken to do our share as part of an international plan.
If in fact these jobs just go to China or to another country, then in fact the emissions will rise.
Journalist: Are you worried about what effect negotiating with the Greens will have on emissions trading?
Truss: Certainly I’m worried about the impact of the Greens on emissions trading. I don’t believe that they’re coming into this with the interests of Australia first at heart.
We share with them a desire to do whatever we possibly can to keep the planet and our environment as pristine as it can be and to pass onto future generations a country of which can be proud of its environmental record.
So we will also be aiming to achieve higher environmental standards, but we won’t be doing it at the expense of Australian jobs.
Journalist: Just getting back to the US, so you’re saying that if the US does set up its own system (inaudible) the Nationals will agree to emissions trading?
Truss: It couldn’t be the US alone, it would have to be international response that fell broadly along those lines. What is interesting about the US proposal is that it ties reductions to greenhouse emissions in the United States, in particular sectors, to a commensurate reduction in other parts of the world. Now I think that’s an interesting idea and one that Australia should also consider.
Journalist: The Nationals would get on board if the US and the rest of the world acted?
Truss: We’ve always said we were prepared to play a constructive role. We utterly reject Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme because it is job destroying and will not deliver reductions to greenhouse emissions. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not prepared to do our share to deliver a good outcome.
Source: Warren Truss MP
