Interview - Triple J Hack with Dave Marchese
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESENTER DAVE MARCHESE: So, let's get into this a bit more now with Anne Aly, the Youth Minister. Minister, thank you very much for joining us on Hack. The government hoping to pass its tax cuts for all Australians. The Opposition, calling them a cruel hoax, says Labor's bribing voters. Are you bribing voters?
MINISTER ANNE ALY: No, these are tax cuts. And I think that every Australian out there who knows the value of the dollar, particularly for young people, for whom cost of living is a particularly acute issue that's impacting on them every day, knows exactly what it means to have an extra dollar or two or three or four in your pay packet. These are pretty significant tax cuts. They build on the tax cuts that we already gave. And everyone will remember that if it was up to the Coalition, people earning under $45,000 —which is a lot of young people —would have got absolutely zero, zilch, nothing, nada in terms of tax cuts, according to their plan for tax cuts. So, they voted against the tax cuts today. Shows exactly where their heads are at when it comes to giving a little bit of cost-of-living relief.
MARCHESE: But is it fair everyone gets them? Like, do you think it's fair that a nurse is going to be paying for a tax cut for someone like an MP, like a politician, you.
ALY: Well, we all pay tax according to what we earn. One of the important things to note is bringing the lower tax bracket down to 14,000. And I think, you know, I think most Australians understand the more you earn, the more tax you pay. So, if you're going to get a tax cut, of course it's going to be a bigger tax cut.
MARCHESE: But I guess people are asking, why not give more relief to those who need it, those who below the poverty line? Because there are some people out there saying, we don't need this.
ALY: Whether it's like the largest, you know, increase in rent assistance, 45 per cent increase in rent assistance. Whether it's increasing JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, ABSTUDY, Austudy. You know. The increases that we've made to the minimum wage, the increases that we've made in industrial relations to allow wages to increase. Whether it's energy bill, rebates, medicines, cost of medicines, bringing the cost of medicines down, particularly also for young people, the HECS debt, saving them an average of $5,500. So, it's not just the tax cuts in isolation. And I don't think you could ever just give cost of living relief through one mechanism.
MARCHESE: You mentioned HECS, which is obviously something a lot of our listeners are really keen to hear reform on. You’re promising to cut a further 20 per cent off all student loan debts, but only if you're re-elected. Why do people have to wait for this? Why do students have to wait? Because the government's had three years.
ALY: I think it's got to do with like setting everything up and everything like that. To be honest, you know, that's more of a question for the Minister for Education around the timing of it as well…
MARCHESE: It does affect young people though, and you're the Youth Minister.
ALY: It does, but the thing is. Yeah, yeah, you're right there, Dave, I'll give you that one. But look, I think the thing is that we've been doing a whole lot of reform across the whole education sector. Now when you get into government, there's a whole lot of stuff that you have to do and you do them – you know, sometimes it's incremental, sometimes you can do things straight away, sometimes you can't do things straight away. I tell you what, if I had a magic wand or some kind of superpower, I would have loved to have done everything straight away.
MARCHESE: But do you understand why some voters might think, well, it is a bribe. It's only if I vote that I get this relief that I've needed not just this year but for years.
ALY: I guess that is kind of reflective of also a more broader cynicism towards politics where every measure that we do is, you know, put into the basket of, oh, well that's just a bribe or that's just a bribe…
MARCHESE: Or is it people just saying you've had three years and why can't we see these changes in your term of government? Is it time to give someone else a go?
ALY: Well, if they give someone else a go, that someone else is Peter Dutton. I can guarantee you he's not going to give you any cuts off your HECS debt. I can guarantee you he's not going to give you any cost-of-living relief. I can guarantee you he's not going to fix the indexation or give you a fee-free TAFE. In fact, they voted against all of those things.
MARCHESE: Alright, this is Hack. I'm Dave Marchese getting into the details of the budget with Youth Minister Anne Aly. Hearing from you on the text line. Someone says doing better than the coalition is not a flex. Someone else ‘This is so disappointing and disgusting, never ever voting Labor or Liberal again. And I know a lot of young people doing the same.’ Minister hearing loud and clear from the Hack audience, a lot of them asking about the long term because it is deficits as far as the eye can see. Young Australians are going to be the ones dealing with all this. Is there any plan for how we're going to pay all of this off in the years ahead?
ALY: Yeah, you know, I hear the term deficit and surplus. I'll remind everyone that we did deliver two surpluses in a row and that there are a lot of global headwinds that contribute to the deficits and that the Treasurer has been very upfront in saying that we will be looking at deficits largely due to a lot of global kind of economic trends and activities. I'm not, you know, for the young people that I speak to, Dave, and I do speak to a lot of young people, not just in this portfolio. The starkest and most acute issue is what is impacting on their life currently and that is cost-of-living and that is being able to have the kind of life that they see that their parents had.
MARCHESE: But that won't be possible if there's all this debt that has to be paid off later. Like Australia is spending $50 billion more per year than we're collecting in tax. Shouldn't we be seeing some sort of structural changes in the budget that will paint a picture of how this is all going to be dealt with in the future, how young Australians are going to deal with this.
ALY: Well, the Treasurer has talked about how we've made some structural reform and structural repair of the budget too in terms of banking revenue back into the budget and continuing to bank revenue into the budget as well. What I think I would say is that, you know, in some senses deficit is, as the Treasurer said, unavoidable when there are global kind of economic headwinds at play that we have little control over. The role of a government, a responsible government, particularly at a time where there is high inflation and where people are facing real cost of living pressures, is to really ensure that we give that cost of living, ease those cost-of-living pressures without putting upward pressure on inflation. And we've managed to bring inflation down. I think one of the things that you're talking about here is, you know, long term vision. I would say to you, and I would probably agree with the point that it's when you have three year terms in government which actually effectively work out to about two and a half years of actually being able to work in your role as a Minister or as a representative in Parliament, it's very difficult to instigate and put into place really long term reform.
MARCHESE: But that is the system that we have, and we've had for a long time. And I mean, some of the concern here that we're hearing from listeners. You've got someone on Hack's Instagram now, Danny, that says, you know, ‘This isn't a budget, it's a slap in the face’, is that people think that they've been promised something that hasn't been delivered. That when Anthony Albanese was pitching to be in government at the last election, he was saying nobody would be left behind. But the reality is now we've had the biggest fall in disposable income in the OECD over the past two years, that people are feeling worse off than they were a few years ago at that last election. How do you convince young Australians to vote for you with all of that in mind?
ALY: Oh, we're not sugarcoating anything here, Dave. We know that people are doing it tough. We know that. But I would say to young people and indeed, you know, all Australians, have a look at what we have done. Have a look at what we have managed to achieve in a situation where many, many other countries have been unable to achieve what we have. And, you know, it was, Peter Dutton said it the other day, he said judge people by their actions. And I would say if you were to judge the Labor government over the last two and a half years by the actions that we have taken to stave off for Australians some of the most egregious and worst impacts that we could have had, with global inflation being what it is, with the global economic headwinds being what they are, I think that if you looked at what we've done I think we have a good story to tell. By no means does that mean everything is hunky dory and everyone's doing, you know, ‘beauty one mate’. But it does mean that we are conscious of people doing it tough. There's more work to do.
MARCHESE: I didn't expect you to quote Peter Dutton in your pitch to voters, Anne Aly. But look, thank you very much for joining us. Youth Minister Anne Aly appreciate you coming on Hack.
ALY: Thaks so much Dave. Appreciate you having me on.