OLIVER PETERSON, HOST: The Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and the Member for Perth, Patrick Gorman, joins me in the 6PR Jayco Caravanland mobile studios. Good to see you.
PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Good to see you, Oly, and good to be here in the caravan. A great Australian manufacturing business.
PETERSON: It is too. And are you enjoying the Royal Show today?
GORMAN: I love the Show. One of the things I don't think is great about the Show is that, obviously it's not in my electorate of Perth. It's just down the road. It's a real shame. But it's been going strong here in Claremont since 1905 love it every year I get to go and thank you for giving me the excuse to come and visit the Show - without my children.
PETERSON: They'd be a bit upset, I'd imagine. They'd probably be saying, 'Dad, we want to go down to Claremont and get some show bags and have a trot around the Royal Show.'
GORMAN: The show bag orders are very firm and very high expectations. Beyblades, Barbie, and maybe something for me and Jess as well.
PETERSON: Alright, so you'll get into that in a little bit. We've also just been joined by a few of the members of the 'Keep the Sheep' movement, standing with the farmers.
'KEEP THE SHEEP' CAMPAIGNERS: Keep the sheep, Oly, keep the sheep.
PETERSON: There you go. They're down here as well. The Prime Minister was talking to Gary a bit earlier. They were down here. Patrick, anything you want to say to the 'Keep the Sheep' movement?
GORMAN: I'll say to them publicly what I've said to a range of people, including your listeners in the past, Oly, which is, I want to make sure we've got a really strong sheep meat and wool industry here in WA. Our government's view has been for a long time that we don't do that through live export. I've had a chat with the 'Keep the Sheep' crew here at the Show today. I thought that was the appropriate thing to do. They're standing outside your studio now. I thought I'd probably see them, and I wanted to go to have a good chat to talk about, how do we make this a success? We've already got a $107 million transition package on the table. I want to talk about where people say that that's not enough - well, what else do we need to do? If people say that, we need to look at other ideas. What else can we do? I don't think the Senate's going to change its mind -
PETERSON: So, I'd say that they would say, and they probably said, to you today as well. They don't want compensation. Yeah, they they don't want a transition package. They're now going to campaign. And we had Holly and Kay on the show yesterday. They've got a big war chest, and they're targeting a couple of seats in particular, in the federal election, they want to change the government, because the Coalition's now agreed to - if in government, both the Libs and the Nats - they'll reinstate the trade.
GORMAN: Yeah, we talk about democratic outcomes. At the last two elections, we've taken a policy of ending the live export component. But there's so much more to this industry, and I don't want to bring the industry just down to live export. The industry is so much more. It's sheep meat processing here. It's chilled and frozen meats exported offshore. It's billions and billions of dollars. And I think there's a really big, bright future as we continue to bring online more and more trade agreements. As we've seen time and time again, our government has delivered more and more trade agreements. We can do more for this industry. And I think the future is as bright without the live export component, which has been precarious.
PETERSON: Holly Ludeman said yesterday, more than 101,000 people have signed this petition. They thought they'd get about 50,000. War chest is now getting closer to three quarters of a million dollars. They didn't think it would get there. Have you taken the backlash for granted, though, Patrick?
GORMAN: Oh, look, I think people, of course, sign petitions on a regular basis around a whole range of issues. There have been plenty of people have also signed petitions over many years, opposing the live sheep industry. I recognise there's a lot of different views on this. My job now is to say, well, the Parliament has made a decision; how do we make sure the assurances we gave to the industry that we would be there for that transition are there? If that means having ongoing conversations about what we need to do -
PETERSON: So your door is open?
GORMAN: My door is open, 100%. As is the door of the senior minister in Julie Collins, making sure that we look at how do we get that package right and start implementing. I think we can talk about a decision that's already been made, or we can talk about making sure we support the industries going forward.
PETERSON: Alright, I want to get into a couple of other issues with you this afternoon. I might come back to our friends here at Keep the Sheep a little bit later. But, Patrick Reserve Bank's leaving interest rates on hold. Are they doing the wrong thing by Australians?
GORMAN: They're doing their job. But I don't think anyone when they heard that broadcast today on your program or anywhere else, I don't think anyone was particularly warmly welcoming that news. That's tough news for thousands and thousands of people who are struggling to pay their bills, struggling to make ends meet. But what we do need to do is continue the fight against inflation. That's the thing, if we want to talk about what is causing this big cost of living crunch that is in my community, in my electorate, is really stretching people. It's continuing the fight against inflation. And if we continue the fight against inflation, that's how we make sure that people do start to be able to feel like they're earning more and keeping more of what they earn.
PETERSON: And you believe you're doing that? Your Treasurer today saying your policies are helping, not hurting Australians, but Angus Taylor's pointed to migration being the problem that's not being addressed by the government.
GORMAN: We will continue to have a migration program that is in Australia's national interest. That means making sure we've got the skills that we need for things like housing, supporting aged care, supporting our hospitals. We need to get skilled labour in - that's essential. But also making sure that we don't have migration that's not in our national interest. That's always the balance of any government. But one of the other things that the Treasurer has pointed out, that Angus Taylor and others always fail to remember is that we have reduced government spending since we came to office by $149 billion. We saw those figures yesterday. So, we would have had more than a trillion dollars of debt if we'd gone on the Angus Taylor path. We've chosen a different path that is to keep paying down debt, which is one of the best things that we can do as a government to reduce those inflationary pressures. We've made those tough calls and it's slowly starting to pay off, and we're seeing inflation come down from sort of a figure with a six in front of it when we came to office, it's now got a three in front of it. And I'm very hopeful that the data we'll see later this week will show that we're continuing on that path of the fight against inflation, because it's a fight we've got to win.
PETERSON: Are you going to take the Greens' advice and intervene and tell the Reserve Bank to push down interest rates?
GORMAN: Oly, I would challenge if there's any one of your callers who wants this government to take the Greens advice on anything when it comes to economic policy. It was just one of the most radical and irresponsible suggestions to have an intervention in the independent Reserve Bank. Now, if they want to go for those crazy populist policies, then good luck to them. But this is just not serious economics. Anyone knows that if you want to go down the path of government setting interest rates and government sort of intervening on monetary policy, on an ad hoc basis, will have inflation that's not going to have a six in front of it. It'll have a 60 in front of it. We will have radical inflation from the radical Greens.
PETERSON: Opinion polls at the moment, though, they show, and I know pollies don't like to talk about polls, Patrick, but look, the Greens may be very decisive in future Australian governments or parliaments, so you may have to team up with them to form a minority government next time around. So we've got to start taking every policy - radical or not - silly, as they may sound, could be something that everybody's having to grapple with sooner rather than later. I said to Sussan Ley yesterday when she was here as well, do we need to grapple with the idea of getting it back to Labor versus Liberal, and try and get rid of these smaller parties and minorities?
GORMAN: Well, my argument has been that the Greens, over the last 15 years have really changed. I grew up in Freo in the 1980s, 1990s and they used to be a party that cared about the environment and were pretty clear on what they stood for. Now they're a party who is only out for their own self interest. They will go for these really wild ideas. No serious politician would suggest that you should go and intervene, in the independent Reserve Bank. They're saying that they want to do it as horse trading, that if we do this radical intervention, then they'll pass legislation that they agree with. But if they think the legislation is good enough, they should just go and pass the legislation. Simple as that. Which is about improving the government standards of the Reserve Bank. I think when the Greens came out with these radical, regressive policies, they need to be called out. And that's something that I will do, something others will do, because it's not in the national interest, and it's actually offering false hope. And when you offer people false hope, you really end up not solving any of their problems, other than the Greens' problem of relevance deprivation.
PETERSON: The polls, which I just touched on before, we got an election, sometime in the next few months. How close are things in Western Australia, if the Prime Minister's in Perth this morning for a few hours to open a railway crossing?
GORMAN: I think you know, as I know, Oly, the Prime Minister, loves trains, loves infrastructure. He was a very proud former infrastructure minister. If you think about some of the reforms that he did, you know Perth City Link - something he was proudly a supporter of. Gateway WA, proudly a supporter of that. It doesn't surprise me at all that he'd want to come and back in a very exciting bit of progress. When it comes to -
PETERSON: So, it's nothing to do with the polls, there's nothing to do with the fact that the Government might be on the nose in WA? Needs to shore up those votes? He's here for the opening of a railway crossing, Patrick. It's not a huge announcement in the context of things.
GORMAN: I think if you look at the Prime Minister's schedule as he goes around the country, he attends a very wide variety of things. I would always encourage him, if he wants to come to a school graduation in my electorate, you know, a community forum, anything, he's always welcome in WA. And when it comes to -
PETERSON: Well we've been the hot spot this week, right? Because you've had Sussan Ley yesterday, Prime Minister today, Peter Dutton later in the week. Obviously, WA is going to be, you know, front and centre of this federal election campaign, Patrick.
GORMAN: As it should be, it's a really important place. We are the engine room of the nation's economy. We're a third of the land mass. We're great human beings. We've got the Royal Show on this week, which is an extra draw card for some, I always think it's good. And my criticism of anything is there are some people who sit in the federal Parliament who never visit Western Australia, who never come here. So I'll welcome everyone who's here. It's great to have the PM here. And when you talk about WA getting electoral attention - that's been a good thing. And if you think about what happened at the last election, that's meant that, because of the decisions that Western Australians, amongst others, made, we've been able to deliver on our agenda. Make sure we were able to deliver those tax cuts, cheaper childcare, the pension increases, all of those things that we've done. It doesn't just happen. It happens because of the decisions that people make at democratic elections. So -
PETERSON: Power of democracy you're saying?
GORMAN: The power of democracy and the power of more and more people on the East Coast recognising what a great place this is.
PETERSON: As you would say as the Member for Perth, Patrick, I appreciate you coming by the 6PR Jayco Caravanland mobile studio today.
GORMAN: Thanks, Oly.