LAURA JAYES, HOST: Welcome back. Let's talk trade now with Tim Ayres. He is the Assistant Trade Minister. Tim, thanks so much for your time. Obviously, we heard from Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese saying this is not exactly a friendly move. That's not what friends should do to each other in the United States. But let's try and strip it back a bit because there are some believe in, in the United States that have been close to the White House and Trump before that. There is still a possibility for Australia. So, what is your next move?

SENATOR TIM AYRES, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR A FUTURE MADE IN AUSTRALIA AND TRADE: Well, the Albanese government will keep pressing on. The last round of aluminium and steel tariffs under the last Trump administration took nine months to resolve in the interest of Australian exporters. While there are many things that are similar, this is a different situation. Every, every importer into the United States of steel aluminium is affected by these unjustifiable tariff arrangements. It's not, as the Prime Minister said, a friendly act. But we will continue to press the case in a systematic way because we think that it's in Australia's interests, obviously, but it's also in the interests of the United States. Bluescope Steel, for example, is a very substantial investor in United States steelmaking capability. Bluescope Steel in Port Kembla, just to my north from where I am today, produces steel that feeds into that production process. These tariffs will do nothing to reconstruct the American steel industry. They would just put prices up for American consumers. It's a bad idea. And we will, we will continue fighting for blue collar workers in these sectors and for the firms that have been, I have to say on your show, excellent partners in the steel and aluminium industries in Australia in this process of, you know, fighting for the national interest.

HOST: Ok, well, we can't, I mean, have you been a little naive? And I say this, you know, the way Australia has negotiated as to how much Trump relies on personality, that he's actually a businessman, that he's highly political and he backs winners. That said, don't you think that part of this is just bad timing for the Albanese government just before an election? You know, all the polls show that Anthony Albanese is not going to have an outright majority, could be in minority government at best for Labour. So, why would Trump back someone who would potentially lose? Don't you think there's part of that where he doesn't want to waste that kind of capital?

SENATOR AYRES: Well, I think the problem with that analysis, and it is being pushed around in Canberra by Peter Dutton and his lieutenants, is that no country secured an exemption. No country. Not Japan, not Korea, not the United Kingdom, not the European Union, all big steel and aluminium exporters. No country got an exemption. And it's been clear, as Penny Wong said a few weeks ago, this is a bigger hill to climb than it was in the previous administration. We think that the Americans have got it dead wrong in terms of the approach that they've taken and that the nature of our long-term relationship, the nature of our strategic relationship and our economic relationship for which the Americans have a long standing trade surplus, means that this is the wrong call for the United States and it's the wrong call for Australia. But we'll continue to press that. I know that Peter Dutton's first instinct with these things is rather than get his shoulder behind the wheel and support the national interest, you know, to accept that it's the government's job to, to do this work, his first instinct is always to be Johnny on the spot blaming other people. A bit like Scott Morrison used to point the finger at the States and point the finger at his opponents and blame everybody else for anything that ever went wrong. We're not interested in that. We've been consistently a government, whether it's been dealing with trade barriers in China or this recent set of developments in the United States where rather than yahooing about the politics in Australia, we're just focused on the national interest and deploying every tool at our disposal to get the right result. Now we anticipate this will take month after month. There are further decisions that the Americans have signalled that they're going to undertake. So, this is a rocky road, and we have demonstrated we are best placed to work on these issues because actually we only care about the Australian interest, not about the partisan interest like Peter Dutton does.

HOST: Ok, but I mean like in the interest of being nonpartisan, you're being pretty partisan this morning in terms of. You know what I mean?

SENATOR AYRES: Yeah, I'm a bit sick of the partisan attacks Laura, I suppose.

HOST: Yeah, sure, that's fair enough. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.

SENATOR AYRES: I mean, well, except we've been doing something dramatically different. Right. The Albanese government's approach on trade questions is dramatically different.

HOST: How is it dramatically different?

SENATOR AYRES: Well, because we're focused on the national interest and not crapping on about the politics in Australia, which is what Peter Dutton does.

HOST: But they got the exemption, you didn’t.

SENATOR AYRES: Well, yes, so as I said, a very different situation. And it took that government nine months of consistent patient advocacy and what that government had was a Labor Opposition at the Time that wasn't trying to seek political advantage and undermine the Australian interest, which is what Peter Dutton's been doing, let's be frank about it. He's been talking Australia down, he's been sending every signal that he can overseas that there's discord in Australia on these questions. Everybody should be on Team Australia, look at what's happening around the world.

HOST: I agree with you. So, do you think Malcolm Turnbull's on Team Australia? Can I ask you about this? Because I asked this not as a frivolous point, Tim, but I asked this because we have seen the war of words and the pettiness between Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull, if you like. So, and the reason why that is important because doesn't that prove that Trump is very alive to criticism against him, particularly from Australia? And you know, I say this because it is Kevin Rudd in Washington as ambassador and I have Labor people after Labor person telling me it doesn't matter what Rudd said about Trump in the past, it really doesn't affect the relationship. Surely that's not true. When you see—

SENATOR AYRES: Can I deal with the question how—

HOST: Sensitive Trump is to comments like that. But please deal with the question. But please go to the point about Rudd.

SENATOR AYRES: Can I deal with the Turnbull question and then the Rudd question in that order? Because I think it's a reasonable question, right? I mean, Malcolm Turnbull, I suppose, is entitled to say what he wants to say. For the government's part, we have been disciplined not because, you know, people don't want to say what they think about a particular issue, but because it's in the national interest. Right? That guides what I say to you, that guides what diplomats say in meetings directly with the Americans. We're not loose about these questions, we're tight and disciplined. Malcolm Turnbull is entitled to say what he wants to say. I'd say there's a very strong contrast between what the government's been doing and what some of the commentators have been doing. Now that's ok, that's life. We're a democracy. People are entitled to say what they want to say. I just make the point about Peter Dutton. He hasn't been tight, he hasn't been disciplined, he's been loose and he's been about the party’s interest. Now we'll deal with the Kevin Rudd question as well. Everybody in the system recognises that Kevin's been doing an extraordinary job. An extraordinary job. He has built an enormous coalition of support for Australia in Washington, across the system and amongst, not just in the House and the Senate, but also amongst governors and more broadly in the American political and business system, he's been doing that work matters. Just let me finish this point, but let me finish this point. It doesn't mean you always succeed at the first moment. Nobody is better equipped than Kevin to do this work at this moment. The problem is he's been white handed and undermined by Australians, by Peter Dutton, by poor old Kevin Hogan who's out there on the roadside at the moment outside Tomago Aluminium again undermining the Australian case. So, this is a moment everybody in—

HOST: So Rudd’s been undermined by Kevin Hogan and Trump's listening to Kevin rather than Rudd. Come on.

SENATOR AYRES: Maybe, maybe the Kevin Hogan point's a bit of a stretch because nobody knows what he's doing. But Peter Dutton has been all about undermining the Australian effort here. Kevin Rudd, just like Joe Hockey, just like Arthur Sinodinos, just like Kim Beazley, has been an excellent representative. We've never sought to politicise. Obviously, you know, appointing a political leader into Washington is a sign of the government's confidence in that post. John Howard did it. Previous governments have done it. It's the right thing to do. What's the wrong thing to do is just because the person is from the other side of politics to you, to undermine their work that they're doing not on behalf of themselves, not on behalf of the Labor Party, but on behalf of all Australians, like Peter Dutton ought to have a good look at himself because he wants to be the Prime Minister and he is a danger to shipping on foreign policy, he is a danger to shipping on trade policy and he's a danger to shipping on national security. He just doesn't have the maturity to understand the difference between the national interest and the Liberal Party's interest. Like honestly, this has been a very bad six months of behaviour from this bloke when everybody could see—

HOST: Yeah.

SENATOR AYRES: That these are going to be challenging—

HOST: You say Kevin Rudd's the absolutely right guy, could be the right guy, might be the wrong time and I would have thought some kind of positive outcome for Australia here would have to be the top of Kevin Rudd's KPIs. But as you say, the last exemption was nine months. So, let's give it a little bit of time and see how that goes. I want to ask you about what you do from Canberra now because we don't have a lot of leverage here, but we do have some. We've seen Anthony Albanese rule out retaliatory tariffs, but we've heard from Penny Wong say that the Government could leverage Australia's critical minerals resources in future negotiations with Trump. How does that work?

SENATOR AYRES: Well, certainly it's the right call not to embark upon retaliatory tariffs. All that would do is put up the prices for Australian consumers. Right. When the government is absolutely focused on putting downward pressure on prices, the housing industry, for example, BlueScope Steel's and other steel providers, we want to make sure that prices are kept down, not pushed up in terms of what the government's diplomatic approaches, really. I don't want to comment on your program or any other program about what it is that is being put in those meetings. It's been put in the national interest. Of course, there are very significant benefits for the United States and the Europeans and the United Kingdom in trade with Australia on critical minerals. Penny Wong is absolutely right to point that out. We choose as a government investment in critical minerals. We've got a very big program, Future Made in Australia that is all about getting more critical minerals out of the ground, processing them in Australia and exporting them to our partners overseas. There is a very high level of interest from all of our international partners, not just the United States.

HOST: So, critical minerals could get Trump's attention though?

SENATOR AYRES: Well, it's got everybody around the world's attention. Australia has all of the minerals, not just some, all of the minerals in large quantities required for computer chips. For all of the renewable energy investment that's going on around the world, we've got it here. We've got vast solar and wind resources. That means that there's cheap electricity to process that here. That's our future competitive advantage. The government's got the largest pro manufacturing package in Australia, Australian history to make sure that's all processed here. Now we will choose, we will choose as a government to make sure that we invest there in Australia's interest. Penny Wong's quite right to point it out. We are about the Australian national interest and that is the approach we'll take to these trade questions and it's the approach we'll take to critical minerals and it's the approach we'll take more broadly on trade and security and national security and foreign policy questions. Not big talk and no action, which is what happened for the last decade before we were elected, but actually putting in and developing Australian manufacturing so that we can build a manufacturing future for Australia.

HOST: Alright, I'll read between the lines there, Tim. Appreciate your time. Enjoy. Jervis Bay.

SENATOR AYRES: Good on you, Laura. Thank you.

ENDS.