E&OE
JAYNE AZZOPARDI, HOST: This week as Russia's invasion of Ukraine took a frightening new turn, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong used a speech at the United Nations General Assembly to call on China to do more…
[Penny Wong excerpt] … So it is especially important for countries that play leading roles in international fora and countries with influence on Russia to exert their influence to win this war. In this the world looks to China…
Let's bring in the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in Adelaide and Nationals Leader David Littleproud in Queensland. Good morning to you both. Minister, I'll start with you. We know Australia's relationship with China is fractured at best. Do we really think they're going to be listening to what our Foreign Minister says?
AMANDA RISHWORTH, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: I think Penny's speech was really important to point out a number of things. One is really to call out some bad behaviour by Russia and of course the escalation and for us to call on them to de-escalate. But also I think her focus on ensuring that the world has got to work together. It's not just large countries, it's middle powers as well that need to work together through multilateral agencies and multilateral forums. Her speech was an important speech and one that I think many people would take away as being a positive about actually promoting world peace.
JAYNE AZZOPARDI: David, do you think the Australian Government is doing the right things? Is it doing enough?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD, NATIONALS LEADER: Yeah, they definitely are. I think you've got to give credit where credit's due. Penny Wong has handled this very well and she's right to try and engage the global community to call out Putin who's becoming increasingly desperate. I mean, he's calling up an extra 300,000 troops from civilians. I think it's important that when we're given the platform on the global stage to call them out and to call those influencers out there can actually hold Russia to account hold Putin to account I think it's important that Penny Wong took that opportunity. She did the right thing here. And she has the support of the Opposition in what she's done and what she will continue to do in making sure that we stand up to a bully and this is what this guy is - he's a bully.
JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Well, we can all agree on that. Let's move on to something perhaps we won't agree on. And that is the Government is currently working on its new Budget to be delivered next month, under pressure of course to deliver on election promises without adding to the bulging bottom line. David, it is a bulging bottom line. There's a growing interest bill on all of that debt that was inherited from your previous government, made worse by rising interest rates. You've left the books in a bit of a mess, haven't you?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD: Oh, I have to disagree with that. I'd like to see the return on an extra $50 billion that was found this week in increased receipts from resources and also from reduced payments. We went through this little thing called COVID-19. And if anyone thinks that we shouldn't have paid out JobKeeper and all the measures to make sure we kept the economy going and making sure now we've got an unemployment rate with three in front of it. Well, I mean, let's be serious. There are cost of living pressures and I mean what I'm concerned about is I don't think Jim Chalmers quite understood that he's saying this can be a bread and butter Budget. Well sadly, I think it will be because that's all Australian families will be able to afford if he continues to take the actions and not look at where the real pressures are around childcare, around food. And that's been about a factor - they haven't provided the labour to our farmers. It's been also been our fuel. So there's a whole lot of measures that they can put in place. It's important that the Treasurer understands Australian families are doing it damn tough out there. There is a cost of living crisis. And he needs to understand he got an extra $50 billion courtesy of resources and he needs to make sure that he gives the regions its fair share as well. But I'm not going to pre-empt anything - you've got to give the government the opportunity to put the Budget together. I think it'd be premature to pre-empt too much but when he's not looking at some of these cost, living pressures I'm really concerned about what Australian families might face.
JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Amanda, are we going to see cost of living relief or are we going to see more pain?
AMANDA RISHWORTH: The Government's been very clear that we are dealing with a very difficult set of circumstances. The Liberal and National Party's trillion dollars’ worth of debt, rising interest rates and inflation presents for a very difficult circumstance. We also have in the Budget it has been revealed a whole lot of programs that were it should have been ongoing spending in the budget, but were tricky games were played by the previous government. So there's funding cliffs as well. So we will be doing our best to make sure that we are addressing cost of living. It was interesting to see David mention childcare. It was only Labor that went to an election that actually talked about reducing the cost of childcare. And we will be implementing that election commitment along with our other election commitments as a Government. So we do have to act responsibly though. We can't act irresponsibly. And to be honest, that is what Labor is focused on. How do we get the balance right in paying down our debt, which was left for us, as well as supporting responsibly families when it comes to the cost of living and delivering on our election commitments.
JAYNE AZZOPARDI: We'll be hearing a lot more about all of this between now and Budget Day. Thank you both for your time this morning.