Sky News AM Agenda interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

SUBJECTS: NZYQ; Bushfires; Liberal and National Government failure to act on the renewable energy transition.

LAURA JAYES: Joining me live now is the Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek. Thanks so much for your time. First of all, I’ve just got to ask you about this advice that was given five months before the High Court ruling. Was there – should have there been more of a contingency in place?

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Well, I think there’s a few things worth remembering about this. The first is that Peter Dutton as Immigration Minister personally intervened to allow NZYQ – the person at the centre of this High Court case – to apply to stay in Australia. So Peter Dutton as Immigration Minister helped this guy stay in Australia. Then the High Court says “this guy and others like him can’t be indefinitely detained”. So we’ve got Peter Dutton as Immigration Minister on the one hand, we’ve got the High Court, and as a government we’re now faced with cleaning up the mess created by these decisions. And that’s what we’re getting on with doing.

We’ve put a quarter of a billion dollars aside for Operation AEGIS designed specifically to keep Australians safe, to make sure that people who are released back into the community are properly monitored. We’ve got four levels of protection to make sure that we are properly monitoring these people. We’re cleaning up the mess, and the Opposition are like the pyromaniac that set fire to the house and then stand in the street to stop the fire engine getting to it. They’ve created the mess. We’re cleaning it up. They should get on board and help instead of the constant incompetence and sniping from the sideline.

We’ve now seen multiple reports about the way Peter Dutton managed the immigration portfolio when he had responsibility for it showing that contracts were given to companies that had links with organised crime, with people trafficking, with breaking Iran sanctions. I mean, he presided over a broken Home Affairs Department. We’re cleaning up the mess that he left. And instead of working with the government you see this sort of behaviour trying to politicise the crisis that they’ve contributed to.

And, you know, Laura, at least in part I really believe this is because they don’t want to be talking about the tax cuts that the government is giving. They know that this is the thing that’s top of mind for most Australians and they’re looking for anything to distract from it.

JAYES: So you think this is a political decision to direct every single question to Andrew Giles in Question Time yesterday?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, of course I do. Of course I do.

JAYES: One of the things that was glaring, though, is a lot of the questions that can’t be answered either by the Minister or the Department, including where some of these detainees with pretty serious criminal records are.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, as the Minister has made clear, all of the people who’ve been released are under a monitoring regime, and he’s talked about the sort of measures that are in place for them, including things like curfews and ankle bracelets in many, many cases. We’ve also set up a community safety board. That’s a group of experts that are giving us advice about the appropriate measures for this cohort.

But you have to remember, the person at the centre of this case was able to stay in Australia because Peter Dutton when he was the Minister intervened to allow him to make that application. You don’t hear that from the Opposition, do you?

JAYES: No, you don’t, but it’s also unusual to – for Labor to be taking the argument that Peter Dutton should have been nicer or softer, if you like.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well –

JAYES: Or tougher, I should say. Tougher – sorry, taking the opposite argument, you know what I mean.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, here’s the problem: Peter Dutton wants people to think he’s tough. He wants to talk tough. But when he was actually in charge of protecting Australians, in charge of our borders, he presided over a system that was incoherent and falling apart. Like, we know that the fact that he defunded some of the elements of Home Affairs operations meant that criminal syndicates were using our immigration systems to do things like people trafficking. That’s what the Nixon report found.

We’ve also had the Parkinson report that says that the Home Affairs Department was falling apart under Peter Dutton’s management. We’ve most recently had the Richardson report that shows that hundreds of millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money went to companies that were engaged in all sorts of illegal and dodgy activity overseas because these contracts didn’t attract proper oversight. Like, this all happened on Peter Dutton’s watch.

So, of course he wants to distract attention from that, just as he wants to distract attention from the fact that when he was Health Minister he was voted by doctors as the worst Health Minister in Australian history. I’m not surprised that the Opposition is trying to play politics like this. I do think we need to look beyond the sort of theatre that they’re engaged in each day, look at what’s behind it, look at why this High Court case happened, look at the person of the centre of the High Court case and the role Peter Dutton had in allowing him to apply to stay in the country.

We are a government that has inherited years of incompetence by the previous government. Yes, it’s a big job to clean that up, but we’re getting on with that job.

JAYES: Let’s talk about something that’s more in your portfolio area, and we’re looking at Victoria this morning – 300,000 people still without power. It’s going to take days if not weeks for that power to be restored. Now, under that is a failure of the system in many ways. What does this tell us? Of course the ageing coal-fired power plant has been damaged, but also renewables haven’t stepped up in its place, has it? So there’s a problem with the system as a whole in Victoria.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, yeah. There’s a few things to say about this, Laura. But the very first thing to say is that we are watching with grave concern what Victorians who are facing bushfires right now are experiencing. We know that it is a very difficult time for those bushfire-affected communities and for the emergency personnel who are fighting to save lives and homes. So all of our thoughts are with those communities.

On the issue of the blackouts, look, it’s very difficult when you have catastrophic weather conditions like we’ve seen and poles and wires are coming down, there’s a degree to which that’s unavoidable. It just doesn’t matter what governments are doing – you can’t stop the storm bringing down the telegraph wires.

What we are doing, of course, is working with these ageing coal-fired power stations to replace the capacity that they represent. So the previous government was told that 24 coal-fired power stations were going to close. They did nothing to prepare for those closures. In contrast, we’re investing in poles and wires, we’ve got a $20 billion Rewiring the Nation program and we’re investing in the cheaper, cleaner renewable energy that will power our home and businesses.

Already in my portfolio we’ve ticked off on 42 renewable energy projects, enough to power 2 million Australian homes. That’s what’s going to make the difference. Of course, we also need to continue to make sure that we’re using power efficiently. We need to make sure we’ve got firming capacity behind those renewable projects. That means wind, it it means batteries, it means pumped hydro projects. Of course we are absolutely working as a government to make sure that capacity is there.

Again, in contrast, we’ve got an Opposition who says, “Oh, yeah, the solution to this is nuclear.” I mean, it’s just nuts. They’re talking about something approaching $400 billion – I think it’s $398 billion or something is the estimate of what it is cost. And we couldn’t build any of these for a decade. It’s just – you know, having presided over 10 years of failure to plan for this transition, failure to plan for the 24 coal-fired power stations that said they were going to close, they’re now saying, “Oh, yeah, the solution’s 10 years away and it’s going to cost every Australian taxpayer $25,000.” You know, it’s extraordinary.

JAYES: Well, we’ll get a reply to that from Jane Hume later in the program. Minister, thank you for your time.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And happy Valentine’s Day to all your viewers.

JAYES: And me?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And you, too. Of course, Laura.

JAYES: Okay, appreciate it. We’ll see you soon.