Doorstop interview, Parliament House, Canberra

PETER DUTTON:

I firstly wanted to congratulate Andrew Wallace on being elected by the House to be the next Speaker. Obviously, Tony Smith has done an incredible job and he has left big shoes to fill. Andrew Wallace is an accomplished person. I think he'll do a great job as Speaker of the House of Representatives and the last couple of weeks of Parliament are always a joy for everybody. So he’ll have his work cut out for him.

And secondly, I wanted to make some comment in response to Senator Wong's very irresponsible speech today. Senator Wong delivered a speech that could have been written by Paul Keating. It was such a sop to Paul Keating, it was quite embarrassing and at a time when our country needs to be united and the spirit with which Mr Albanese claimed he supported AUKUS – that has now been abandoned – that that spirit should be everlasting. It's obvious now that that's not the case. The Labor Party is crab walking away from AUKUS and it's demonstrated again today by Senator Wong's comments.

The fact is that we have a very serious situation in Indo-Pacific. Let's be very clear about it. That's not just the assessment of Australia or our allies. It's the assessment of others in Europe and right around the world. The Chinese Communist Party has a presence in 20 different locations in the South China Sea. They're butting up against the Japanese shipping vessels in the East China Sea and there are many other points that you can identify in our region and around the world where there is concerning actions by the Communist Party of China.

I've been very clear that we want prevailing peace in our region, and that is the absolute first priority. I've been clear about that, and that can only really now be delivered by the Communist Party of China. Threats that they're going to go into Taiwan and threats and grey zone activities as we're seeing across the Indo-Pacific, is completely unacceptable. The international rule of law should prevail and people, including our country and every other country, should adhere to that law. At the moment, there are many aspects that China is not adhering to, and I think that should cause concern.

So for Senator Wong to come out with a speech today, shows that the Labor Party is not up to the task of the national security requirements of this country and we should call them out for it.

QUESTION:

So what exactly in relation to AUKUS that Senator Wong said, most concerns you?

PETER DUTTON:

There was no equivocation at the time from Anthony Albanese, and now we have this soft language, the diplomatic language that will excite some of Penny Wong's supporters, but it's clear that the Labor Party has a very different position when it comes to the alliance. I think some of the comments today by Senator Wong need further analysis as well and I think it's also important to point out that no such qualifications were provided by Anthony Albanese 68 days ago when he said that he signed up to AUKUS. So I think the Labor Party has demonstrated, just as they did on boats – I mean they promised the Australian public before the election that they'd be no different to the Howard Government on boats and of course when they get into government, they go week at the knees – well Penny Wong's demonstrated today already, that the Labor Party has gone week at the knees and we're not even through the election, let alone through to the other side.

QUESTION:

Minister, you said in Parliament that Senator Wong doesn't stand up for Australian values. What do you mean by that? And is that a dog whistle?

PETER DUTTON:

Well just give me the quote. What is the quote that I said?

QUESTION:

I’ll get it up for you, but you said… 

PETER DUTTON:

…you don’t have to quote, I'll give it to you. So the statement that I made in Question Time was that the Acting Ambassador is attacking Australian values and that Senator Wong wasn't standing up for those values.

QUESTION:

So she doesn’t stand up for those values? On what basis do you make that claim?

PETER DUTTON:

Well, she should have been condemning those comments today by the Acting Ambassador.

QUESTION:

Is that a dog whistle, are you engaging in a dog whistle today?

PETER DUTTON:

Senator Wong should have condemned the comments of the Acting Ambassador today. Instead, she didn't; and I think that says a lot about Senator Wong, and it says a lot about her approach. I can't recall in my 20 years of Parliament, an Ambassador from any other country carrying on the way that the Chinese Ambassador has. The issuance of the 14 points that Australia needed to act on or to perform on before the relationship could be normalised and the comments again today by the Acting Ambassador should be condemned by the Labor Party, and they weren't.

QUESTION:

Senator Wong doesn't stand up for those values, is that a dog whistle?

PETER DUTTON:

No, no, I've answered that and I’ve given you the context of the quote and what I said and what I said in relation to both the Acting Ambassador and her comments.

QUESTION:

What is it about the ANZUS Treaty that, that in your view, locks Australia into joining the US in defence of Taiwan? It doesn't mention anything about Taiwan. It deals with an attack on either of the parties of the Treaty, and an obligation to consult…

PETER DUTTON:

Again, I would point you to the comments that I made on that occasion, probably in the same sentence; I said that our first priority was to preserve peace in our region. I want peace to prevail in our region. There are millions of people across Southeast Asia, across the Indo-Pacific who enjoy a lifestyle today and a peace and prosperity only because of peace in our region. Since the Vietnam War or since other conflicts in Malaysia and Singapore and the Second World War, we live in a peaceful time. We want it to continue; and Australia needs to provide a deterrence against actions, including by the Communist Party, because the Communist Party has been very clear about their intent in relation to Taiwan. Don't look at the comments that Senator Wong or I have made in relation to Taiwan. Look at their own comments. I mean you've reported on these comments. They've been very clear that by 2049, some action takes place in relation to Taiwan.

Now, I said in response to all of that, that if there was a situation where, first condition China went into Taiwan, second condition that the United States responded and was involved in an action, that in my judgement, it would be inconceivable under the alliance that Australia wouldn't go to be standing by the side of the United States.

Now, I don't think there's anything remarkable in that statement. It wasn't a pre-commitment, it wasn't anything other than a statement of reality and if the Labor Party has a different position, I'd like to hear it because it seems today that they do have a different position. If Senator Wong has a different view than the one I've just expressed, she should be clear about it; and if Anthony Albanese wants to try and shake off the obvious tag of him being weak on national security – which is what the Australian public realise of him – then he should stand up and clarify what it is she said because I think the ambiguity that she's created today is a real problem for the Labor Party.

QUESTION:

On China related matters, you have advice sitting with you from your Department on the Port of Darwin. When are we going to see the Government act on that advice?

PETER DUTTON:

Once it's been considered, we'll provide that response, but not yet.

QUESTION:

How could you let that Port of Darwin…sorry, review go ahead, given the tough comments you have put out about China? The lease, sorry, the lease.

PETER DUTTON:

Well, we've commissioned a review. We've asked Defence to look afresh at the issue and we've got that report back, and I'm considering that. 

QUESTION:

What’s the time frame on the review response.

PETER DUTTON:

We'll consider it. There are internal processes to go through. I'm not going into national security and timetables and all of that as you'd expect. So, there's a process that we’ve laid out, once that process has been complete, we'll respond.

QUESTION:

As the most senior Queensland MP, have you or will you have any discussions with some of your colleagues who have threatened to either cross the floor or abstain from voting in regards to vaccine mandates?

PETER DUTTON:

Well, for my sins I’m the Leader of the House, which is the most joyous task in the House, particularly in the last two weeks, so I've had lots of comments and discussions, conversations with my colleagues, as you would expect. I've got the utmost respect for my colleagues, even in circumstances where I don't agree with what they're saying or what they're proposing. There are some very firmly held views that people have and they're passionate about those views and I'm respectful of that. I think we're a Party, we're a Parliament of diverse views, and this is a place in which people can express them, debate them, prosecute them, and they can win over people or not.

QUESTION:

Are you concerned about how that looks ahead of the election? Has the Prime Minister lost control of his Government?

PETER DUTTON:

No, he hasn't. I just think when you look at where we are compared to anywhere else in the world, it's been quite a remarkable outcome in Australia. We're not through COVID yet, and we're obviously concerned about what we see in Europe and what's happening in Germany and elsewhere at the moment. I've sat on the COVID National Security Committee since day one, and we've made some tough decisions in relation to closing borders, in relation to cruise ships, in relation to manufacturing domestically, masks and ventilators. We faced a pretty dire situation at the start of this. We dealt each day with the CEOs of all of the supermarkets when we were running out of different product lines in supermarkets, and there were distribution issues, and we've worked through every one of those issues over the course of the last couple of years. The vaccine rollout, people were critical of that at the start. As it turns out, we've ended up essentially with the timeline that we'd originally laid out and people now need to start to get their booster shots.

So I think when you look at what we've achieved so far, the obvious next step is to make sure that we can help our economy recover. We're all in jobs where we probably haven't missed a day of pay. There are many Australians who have lost their homes, who have lost their businesses, whose kids are out of work, who are devastated by their personal impact and there are others who feel strongly about vaccines or in any aspect relating to it.

The Government’s job now, which the Prime Minister has been very clear about, is that we are going to help rebuild this country and we're going to help rebuild the economy so that those people can get back into work, their businesses can reopen – if that's possible – and that's the best Christmas present, frankly, that we can give anyone.

And Labor going back into more debt, spending money on pink batts and school halls and all the rest of it, which they did before, it would have been a disaster over COVID, and it will be a disaster if they're elected at the time of the next election.

QUESTION:

Do you believe Australia should join a diplomatic boycott of the Chinese Winter Olympics?

PETER DUTTON:

Well, the short answer is no, but that's an issue for others to consider, if that's something under consideration, not a conversation I’ve been a party to.

QUESTION:

Just on that though, the Chinese President has just commented on AUKUS and actually said they are preparing to establish a South East Asian Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Weapon Treaty. Can you comment on that? 

PETER DUTTON:

Well, all I can say is that we've been very cognizant of our non-proliferation commitments, and it's very clear that we don't breach any of those commitments with a nuclear propelled submarine. We deliberately didn't go for a nuclear weaponized system, as you're aware, and that's quite different to what the Communist Party of China has. At the moment in the Communist Party of China's fleet, they've got 355 ships and submarines, that goes to 460 by the end of 2030 or by 2030, I'm sorry, within the next nine years. So you see the ramp up.

On analysis that I've seen, they spend about 10 times more on their defence than we do in our country each year, and they are producing, on a tonnage rate, more ships and submarines on an 18 month basis than the Royal Navy has in its entire fleet. So if the acquisition of eight submarines by Australia is causing some arms race in the Indo-Pacific, I'd like to understand that analysis.

The Communist Party of China is engaged in a very deliberate act on the border between China and India, where that's been publicly commented on. This is not in the 1960s when there was a conflict before. This is now, right now. The Communist Party of China is involved in dressing up PLA officers and the militia in the East China Sea and involved in ramping up tensions with the Japanese. The Japanese have been very clear about that. There's obviously difficulty between Thailand and China at the moment. There's difficulty in Vietnam. The Vietnamese have been very clear about this. We've seen coercion and grey zone activity and cyber attacks on our country, on our near neighbours and all of that is on the public record and so much more is not.

China has a very responsible role to play here as a great power in the world, and we want to normalise relationships with China as quickly as possible. We want them to play by the same rules as we do, and PNG does, and New Zealand does, and Canada does, and Indonesia does, nothing more, nothing less and so to stick your head in the sand and to pretend that nothing is happening, I think we do our country and our region a great disservice.

QUESTION:

The Veterans Royal Commission begins this week, are you confident it will address the problem in Australia and that there is enough support available for people here? 

PETER DUTTON:

I certainly hope it does. I meet with veterans regularly and we're a safe country and a strong democracy today because of the sacrifice of many hundreds of thousands of men and women in the Australian Defence Force who have either lost their lives or have come back scarred from their time during different conflicts. And also their family members; the children who are growing up in a family of domestic violence or where there's been separation and pressure financially on spouse and the ADF retired member. There are different iterations when you speak to people about their own circumstances, which we need to take into consideration.

I think it's important to point out that there's no one solution here to decide how we resolve the problem. There are many other cases where there are ADF members who have been under pressure, but when you look into their circumstances, you know there’s been difficulty right back to their childhood. So there are contributing factors to self-harm or to suicide. They’re human beings, so they are no different to the rest of us in society and relationship breakdowns and the rest.

All of those factors could be taken into consideration by the Royal Commission and we eagerly await, I certainly do, the outcomes, the recommendations from the Royal Commission because even though we’ve spent – dramatically ramped up the amount of money that we spent supporting our veterans – clearly there's more that we need to do and I think this is one of those bipartisan issues where we do want to provide whatever support we can to our veterans, both past and present and we want to get it right for tomorrow as well.

QUESTION:

Minister you’ve been very harsh on Senator Wong, but not even the Prime Minister has used some of the language that you've used, and he's taken a more cautious line as well. Are your comments some of the more provocative ones?

PETER DUTTON:

Again I just ask you to point to where there's something I've just said, I mean go through the transcript today or yesterday, whatever, and point to where I'm factually incorrect. Now, it might be diplomatically more adequate for me not to make mention of some of these facts, but I think it's really important that we understand what point in history we are. We can pretend that nothing's happening and we can pretend that it's going to go away. We can pretend that China is like it was 10 years ago. It's not. It is a very different country under the current President. I want relationships to normalise, and I want peace to be prevailing in our region, but when you've got the Germans sending a frigate to the Indo-Pacific, when you've got the Brits ramping up their presence, when you've got Japan and India in near conflict with China; you do worry about miscalculation, and I'm just not going to be dishonest about the relationship. I'm not going to be dishonest about what I see, what I read and the intelligence that's presented to me.

My job is to keep Australia safe. My job as the Defence Minister is to make sure that we adequately deter any sort of aggression, whether it's from the Communist Party of China or anywhere else and that's what I'm dedicated to doing. I want to keep our country safe now and into the 2030s and the 2040s and decisions that we make today are going to impact us over that period.

I just make this final point. There's a great need for people to be realistic about the situation, and that's all I ask. I don't want to get into tit for tat with the Acting Ambassador. I want to have a cordial relationship, as I have with every other Ambassador and every other High Commissioner. It's not just here, I mean this is not Australia that's changed or not Australia that's provoking anything. Look at the comments that China's made toward other countries, even in Europe; Nordic countries and others about where they've called out China. I mean, it's the same sort of [inaudible] diplomacy, and it's unacceptable in our country.

We want to have an important trading relationship. I want to see China grow. I want to see more people come out of poverty and enjoy a life that they could never have imagined a generation ago and I celebrate that for China, and I want it to continue, but the threats of violence in Taiwan, what we've seen in Hong Kong, what we're seeing now, what we've seen potentially with people who have reported to go missing or have their social media accounts wiped out. I mean this is all for us, but for the media to comment on as well. We shouldn't shy away from it or pretend that it's not reality. Nobody's making this up and I think if you stick to the facts, then people can criticise me for speaking too harshly, whatever else, my job is to stand up for Australia, and that's what I'll do.

QUESTION:

Minister you say the Government is focussed on recovery from COVID. So how frustrating is it for you that some of your colleagues are distracting from that message?

PETER DUTTON:

Well again, I just don't agree with that. I think there are strongly held views in relation to this and I think the Prime Minister’s made statements in recent days, which have been statements of the obvious. There's a National Plan that's been laid out and the plan is that once you got to 80 per cent, then there was a different arrangement. We had to live with it.

I've just come back from overseas, and in all of those countries, people are having to live with it. In the United Kingdom, at the moment, tens of thousands of people are catching COVID or suffering from COVID, but they're getting on with their lives and we can't pretend that we're going to lock ourselves in until we reach 99 per cent or 100 per cent.

When the Premiers made a decision at the start that the vaccine wasn't going to be mandatory, well by definition, there was always going to be a small number of people who weren't going to get vaccinated. I don't agree with their position. I strongly argue against it, and I've advocated for people to be vaccinated from day one because that's our pathway out of this thing.

But there are many people who…you know, you will have your own friends with kids who have had mental health issues over the course of COVID, people in Victoria who don't want to go through another lockdown. So there are steps that we go through.

I think we stick with medical advice. We stick to the National Plan that the Premiers have signed up to, that the Prime Minister’s provided leadership on. If we do that, then I think we're in the best position. All right. Thanks very much, thank you.

[ends]