Television Interview, Sky News – First Edition

SUBJECT/S: Tropic Cyclone Alfred; Support for Ukraine; Chinese Naval Vessels off the Coast of Australia; Tariffs.

PETER STEFANOVIC, HOST: Well, also watching things is the Defence Minister, Richard Marles, who joins us now. Minister, thanks for your time. The Prime Minister is in Brisbane at the moment. So, what can you tell us? What, if any, help are you expecting to provide from Defence?

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Well, we are standing ready to work with National Emergency Management Australia to provide all the help that is required. And we definitely are imagining that there is going to be a need for the Defence Force to play a role over the next few days. I spoke with the Chief of the Defence Force last night to make sure that we doing our own planning for all these contingencies, ready to provide support. Right now the big issue is sandbags. Over the course of yesterday and today, Defence are providing more than 300,000 sandbags in preparation. I think over the coming days we are imagining people will need to engage in door knocking in the event that there is flooding over the next few days. Obviously airlift capacity is going to be needed as well. One of the advantages we have here is that Brisbane is actually a big defence city. We've got 7 Brigade, one of our three big infantry brigades based at Gallipoli Barracks in Enoggera. We've got one of the two big air force bases at Amberley, just west of Brisbane. So, these are two of the biggest Defence force bases in the country and it does give us a lot of options to operate from there and to provide support and we will be ready to do everything that is required in the coming days.

STEFANOVIC: That sounds like a pretty significant commitment. What sort of numbers of troops would be on standby then to help out, Minister?

MARLES: Well, I mean, it's going to be whatever is required. And the answer to that depends a bit on what this looks like when landfall is ultimately made. But across these defence bases there are thousands of Defence Force personnel who operate from both Gallipoli Barracks and Amberley. So, we actually have a lot of Defence Force personnel in South East Queensland and obviously they can reach into Northern NSW as well. But the point I really want to make is that in speaking with the Chief of the Defence Force last night, not in the sense that I needed to, but I just wanted to make sure that we were as postured as readily as possible to respond to everything that's required.

STEFANOVIC: Okay. Now to Ukraine, Minister. Some progress this morning on peace talks between Ukraine, Russia and the US. You and I spoke about peacekeepers a couple of weeks back which you were reluctant to provide. Now the Prime Minister says he's thinking about it. So, what's changed?

MARLES: Well, it's just, normally waiting for requests to come in and we are waiting for those requests to come in, but we'll give them due consideration. So, in that sense, nothing has changed. We've, and the Prime Minister made that point yesterday that when, if and when, a request comes in, we will have a good look at it and see how we can contribute. I mean, a point the Prime Minister made yesterday, which is right, is that we do have a significant history of peacekeeping around the world. Indeed, there are Australian personnel engaged in peacekeeping right now in places like the Middle East and South Sudan. And so we will look at what requests come in. The important point is this, and we've been saying this consistently, we stand with Ukraine and Russia is the aggressor here and we will stand with Ukraine for as long as is required for Ukraine to resolve this on their terms. If there is an acceptable peace to Ukraine, that's obviously good, but we stand with Ukraine.

STEFANOVIC. So, we have Chinese warships circling our nation as we speak, which at first we didn't even know about. So, don't we have more pressing military concerns here at home?

MARLES: Well, let's not make assumptions in terms of the questions that you're asking there, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I mean, right now that task group is about 500 kilometres northwest of Perth. We've got three assets, HMAS Warramunga, HMAS Stuart and HMAS Toowoomba now shadowing the task group. And we'll continue to keep a very close eye on that task group as we have from the very moment that this task group entered the vicinity of Australia. And in fact, our Navy have done a really fantastic job in combination with New Zealand to make sure that we have nine.

STEFANOVIC: Wasn't the Virgin pilot aware of it before we were?

MARLES: Well, again, we at that moment, if you're talking about the live fire exercise, we had HMNZS Te Kaha, which was on station at the time that it occurred, that warship, that frigate knew what was going on and was able to observe what we understand today about what occurred on Friday, on that Friday and Saturday. In respect of those, the notification on the Friday, the live firing event on Saturday really comes from the observance that was done by Te Kaha and that was very much part of the coordinated effort that we led. And we've been very, we've been in closely shadowing what this task group has been doing from the get go so that we are able to absolutely know what the purpose of this mission is when it's completed.

STEFANOVIC: I know you've got to go to another interview, but just one more on tariffs and a trade war that's underway this morning. The countdown is now on to our steel and tariff deadline. How do you rate our chances of getting any exemption?

MARLES: Well, look, we'll continue to make the case. And the point here is that there is a trade surplus that America enjoys in respect of the two way trade that we have between Australia and America. And to the extent that we are exporting products, aluminium and steel into America, that benefits American jobs. So, we'll continue to make that case, which we've been doing from the outset. And right now the question of exemptions, as the President himself has said, is under active consideration. All we can do is make sure that we are pressing our cases as fulsomely as possible, which we are doing.

STEFANOVIC: We'll leave it there. Thanks for your time as always, Richard. We'll chat again soon.