ROD CORFE, HOST: Have to ask for a little bit of forgiveness from our very special guest, Tim Ayres, how you doing? You're well, Tim?
SENATOR TIM AYRES, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR A FUTURE MADE IN AUSTRALIA AND ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TRADE: G'day. I'm very well. It's good to be on the show.
CORFE: Sorry about having to cut off our little discussion there. We were talking about all the great country music around.
SENATOR AYRES: There's so much great Australian country music out as well. I was really pleased to see Troy Cassar-Daley do so well at Tamworth. It's a really well-deserved terrific album. But there's so much else going on out there in Australian country music, and I know your program does its best to platform as many Australian country music singers as you can. So good on you.
CORFE: No, no worries. And of course, Troy Cassar-Daley, a fairly decent Grafton boy, just like myself. South Grafton boy, he was from Halfway Creek, basically.
SENATOR AYRES: He is from Halfway Creek, and you haven't got a heart if you don't shed a little tear when Troy Cassar-Daley sings River Boy. It's one of the great, great Australian songs about country towns and what it's like growing up in a country town. It's a great song.
CORFE: We need more of him on the radio. Let's just get to the youth crime issue, predominantly a State sort of issue, but the Opposition is running on it federally as well. I think that's probably after the success of the LNP in Queensland.
SENATOR AYRES: It's always all about the politics for Peter Dutton. I mean, day to day, law and order questions in country towns are fundamentally an issue for the New South Wales Police, the Queensland Police, the South Australian police, they are state and territory matters. I don't say that to squib the Federal Government's responsibility here, either Rod, like the difference between us and the previous Morrison government, which is what Peter Dutton would basically be – it's the sort of Morrison second string outfit. The difference between us and them, one of the key differences is we take responsibility and don't point fingers at other levels of government. Don't wander around the country looking for an argument. There is a lot of work to do in terms of social cohesion, in terms of economic responsibility, in terms of economic growth in regional Australia, and we are very focused on playing our role. We support the work of the police. We support all those people who are working hard in communities to lower levels of recidivism, support young people, make sure people are taking responsibility for what they're doing and back in community safety. That's our job. Peter Dutton, you know he will yahoo and blow hard about all of these issues in the hope that he can attract some support. We will just keep focused on the national interest and the interest of communities. That's our job. We're very focused on that. And you know, it's country first, partisan politics second for us, distant second.
CORFE: Alright, the Liberal Party is advertising their leader, Peter Dutton, as being a former policeman, and how he would probably pick up the hose unlike Morrison.
SENATOR AYRES: It's not a very high bar to get over. Is it really, trying to be better than Scott Morrison? We've got our sights set a little bit higher. I understand there's an ad out. I haven't seen it, Rod, to be honest. What's interesting about Peter Dutton is what happens when he doesn't think the camera is running. You know, when it's not a production ad done in the studio, but when the camera is running when he doesn't think it is. I think of two examples. One is yesterday, when he was filmed at a $10,000-a-head Liberal Party fundraiser for their candidate, for Bennelong, Scott Yung. He was on video on, I think it's Rednote. It's the Chinese Government's answer to Instagram, and he was engaged in a lively discussion with Sister Min, who styles her tag on this social media thing is the ‘Queen of Immigration’. And he couldn't wait to say, "We will bring back the $5 million significant investor program," so that is no language requirement, no requirement to learn or speak English, no age limit. You just got to turn up with $5 million bucks and you get in. Peter Dutton talks big about immigration. But the bloke who had 9 million visas he issued, 9 million people on residency visas into the country, 1200 hardened criminals under his watch. But talks big about immigration. Now, I just say there is a big difference between what Peter Dutton says and what he actually is, and what he actually does. He was issuing visas hand over fist. It took a COVID pandemic to slow Peter Dutton down in terms of issuing visas. Now, he complains about migration. He is an utter hypocrite this bloke. We will continue to reform the immigration system. We won't be giving commitments over $10,000-a-head fund raises about the future direction of the migration program like Peter Dutton has.
CORFE: Let's move on to what your government is doing, the Albanese Government, a pledge of $2 billion for new green aluminium.
SENATOR AYRES: Yeah, that's right. I'm really proud of this commitment that the Albanese government has made. It secures the future of aluminium processing in Australia, in Central Queensland, in Gladstone, the Hunter Valley, Portland in Victoria and in Northern Tasmania. The aluminium industry, principally Rio Tinto and Alcoa, employs tens of thousands of Australians from mining in Weipa and Gove, to processing, to aluminium finished products like aluminium windows. This is a critical industry for the future of Australia. We're focused on Future Made in Australia, which is future processing, you know, onshore value adds, making sure we're not just exporting raw but we're adding value here in Australia. This is making sure that a critical industry in aluminium is secured here in Australia. Once again, Peter Dutton and the Liberals are saying no to this $2 billion package. They are the biggest danger to the future of aluminium, and by the way, their nuclear reactor plan, the costings for that are underpinned by forcing electricity intensive manufacturing offshore. And Australia's biggest electricity intensive manufacturer is, of course, the aluminium sector itself. Tomago, aluminium uses about 12% of New South Wales' electricity. Boyne Island in Gladstone, about the same in terms of Queensland's electricity supply. They are critical industries, and Peter Dutton's nuclear reactor plan would see them forced offshore to make way for his dodgy nuclear reactors.
CORFE: And the plan, this is seeing more training and apprentices?
SENATOR AYRES: The first thing is big investments like aluminium mean thousands of jobs. So, in the Hunter Valley, 5000 jobs related to aluminium. But also, as you say, it's not just the apprentices that they employ directly in the aluminium smelter itself, but it's all of the supply chain, all the engineering firms, hundreds of them in the Hunter Valley, hundreds of them in Central Queensland who rely upon the aluminium sector. They are actually the big employers of apprentices themselves. They the supply chain, small and medium enterprises that rely upon aluminium employ far more apprentices than the aluminium smelters themselves do. Under Peter Dutton's reckless approach to the economy and to energy policy, in particular, those opportunities would all be somewhere else. They would be in China or the United States or the Middle East, somewhere else around the world. We are determined to have manufacturing here in Australia. That's what the Future Made in Australia program is about. It'll be in the Senate this week, production tax credits to offer, effectively a tax subsidy to companies that manufacture here in Australia, payment by results, tax subsidies for every tonne of critical minerals that they produce from the Albanese Government, Peter Dutton says he's not going to do that. He's going to tear it down. And that will force the world's best manufacturers to look somewhere else, other than Australia, for their investments.
CORFE: And I suppose that would also be good if we didn't get things built overseas, as governments do at times, Korea, Indonesia.
SENATOR AYRES: Absolutely, whether it's our program in Defence, around bringing ship building and submarines here to Australia, whether it's our approach to all of these sectors, we are focused on Australian manufacturing and building things here. The record of the Liberal Government is forcing the auto industry offshore, offshoring trains and other public transport manufacturing. These guys, again, talk big, but their record is jobs offshore, hundreds of thousands of jobs gone offshore, and thousands and thousands of young Australian school leavers who would want to have a go at an apprenticeship but didn't get a chance because Liberals have offshored their jobs.
CORFE: I look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks.
SENATOR AYRES: Go on your Corfee, catch you later.
CORFE: There we go. Senator Tim Ayres, Assistant Minister for a future made in Australia, Assistant Minister for Trade. Outback Radio 2WEB.
ENDS.
