LAURA JAYES, HOST: Let’s talk Trump's trade war. Now, Australia is not immune, and we've seen a bit of a dip on the market this morning because of the ramifications there. Joining me now as the Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia, Tim Ayres. Tim, thanks so much for your time. How worried are you about this ongoing trade war? I mean, he long threatened it, didn't he?

 

SENATOR TIM AYRES, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR A FUTURE MADE IN AUSTRALIA AND ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TRADE: Well, it's certainly been the case that, you know, there's a change of administration, there is a change of approach on these questions, that's long been apparent that President Trump would take a different approach on these questions. I should say that notwithstanding that there have been changes in the approach in the United States over the course of the last three or four years. In Australia, we have been prepared for all of this.

 

LAURA JAYES: Oh, so you have been prepared for this. You took those threats seriously during the campaign. What have you done in preparation for it?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Well, of course, a government that is focused on Australia's interests, that has, as I've said before in your program, Laura, in real distinction to the previous government. We haven't been blowhards on these issues, but we have worked in a calm and consistent way in Australia's national interest on the trade questions, whether it's the Southeast Asia Economic Strategy in our region, working across the trade and strategic areas, which are closely related now in a way that they weren't perhaps five years ago. We have focused on them, in the relationship with the European Union, where we have taken a calm and consistent approach to that. And because we have not been able to secure the right outcome for the Australian agricultural sector, we have held back from pursuing that agreement. We'd like to conclude it. We'd like to conclude it, but we're focused on the national interest, not ribbon cutting and not headlines. In terms of the obstacles to Australian trade in China, work through those issues in a calm and consistent way. On all of these questions, your viewers, workers who work in export exposed industries, firms and employers can be confident that this government will be focused on the national interest. Yep, we've done the work. We understand the environment that we're in. We're not speculating about what might happen, we're focused on building the relationships that are required.

 

LAURA JAYES. So, building the diversification of our trade trading partners is kind of giving us a bit of a buffer here, or have we not done enough of that?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Well, there's two bits of this, if I can answer it that way, Laura. The first is, of course, we've got to deal with the immediate questions and diversifying Australia's markets is very important. But it's also, as Trade Minister Don Farrell has made really clear, it's also about diversifying the products and services that Australia offers to the world and making our economy more resilient. That's what the Future Made in Australia program is about.

 

LAURA JAYES: Not just how do we make our country more resilient, where we've got the most expensive, expensive energy that we've had in 30 years, and no one can really tell us what the total system cost of Labor's renewable plan is. Can you tell us this morning, what is the total system cost?

 

SENATOR AYRES: I'm very glad you raised it. You don't make electricity prices and energy prices lower for Australian industry and households by making them higher. That's what Peter Dutton’s nuclear—

 

LAURA JAYES: That's not exactly a revelation. I asked you about your plan, not the nuclear plan. Could we stick on that total system cost of the renewable plan?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Let me just make this point, Laura. Peter Dutton's nuclear reactor strategy in terms of aluminium, right, which we're—

 

LAURA JAYES: But I ask about yours? I don't even want to talk about his at the moment. I want to talk about your plan. What is the total. It's a pretty simple question.

 

 

SENATOR AYRES: Yeah, well, it's a question that the Energy Minister would be very happy to engage with you about. I just say—

 

LAURA JAYES: Fair enough. You're not the Energy Minister. Let's not talk about what Peter Dutton says about it. Let's go to someone independent. Frontier Economics. You've used them before. They say it'll cost around $600 billion, well above the $121 billion touted by Chris Bowen. So, do we trust Frontier economics or not?

 

SENATOR AYRES: $121 billion, Laura. That's the answer.

 

LAURA JAYES: No that wasn't the answer from Frontier.

 

SENATOR AYRES: It's a free bit of modelling that hasn't worked out very well for Peter Dutton.

 

LAURA JAYES: Nor have any modelling from any government departments or governments in the past, either. I might say.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Look, Laura, I'm very happy to talk about Peter Dutton's modelling because the costings in that. Assume I want to talk about electricity manufacturing is forced offshore.

 

LAURA JAYES: How can you think that $120 billion is going to be right when Frontier Economics says it'll be, you know, five times that?

 

SENATOR AYRES: You’re raising the modelling, Peter Dutton's modelling with me. It has, as the fundamental basis for the modelling that is done in there, it relies upon the AEMO progressive change scenario and that relies upon halving electricity intensive manufacturing in Australia. That's aluminium and steel gone. So, you add car industry, steel industry, aluminium industry. What else does the previous government? And a future, you know, if Peter Dutton was ever to be the Prime Minister, electricity intensive manufacturing gone. And all of those opportunities for our future squandered. Yeah, and he's out there being a blowhard about these questions. He said again yesterday, it doesn't matter how many times you repeat the lie, it is still a lie. He says 28,000 kilometres of transmission required for the program for rolling out the electricity network. That is a lie by a factor of seven. It is a lie.

 

LAURA JAYES: It's still around $50 billion for the transmission cost. And it's your government that promised $275 off each and every electricity bill by now.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Lower costs than a $600 billion nuclear program.

 

LAURA JAYES: It's gone up $500. So, where's the $275?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Yeah, all of these things are hard work, Laura. That's the truth.

 

LAURA JAYES: We're not even close to that goal.

 

SENATOR AYRES: We’re a long way through the electricity rollout.

 

LAURA JAYES: I mean, you guys said three years and the Ukraine War had already broken out.

 

SENATOR AYRES: In many of our states, over 40%. We have an ageing fleet of coal fired power stations which are responsible for unplanned redundancy every single day of the week over the course of the last two years.

 

LAURA JAYES: I get that but what’s the plan? The batteries don’t hold up. The transmission costs are part of a massive part of our bill. We've got AI as a next frontier. You've got Bill Gates building his own nuclear power centre to build all the data centres. That is going to require the enormous amount of energy. I mean, you're talking about a Future Made in Australia. It's pretty hard to see how a high energy environment, high-cost energy environment is going to be at all beneficial for that.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Don't get distracted by the blizzard of things that, that the Liberals and Nationals say on this question.

 

LAURA JAYES: I’m not distracted. They haven't said anything about. I'm looking at, you know, I'm looking at what's happening in the United States with this, you know, an explosion of AI. Everyone can see that this is where we need to be to be our best. And you know, we're telling people in NSW on really hot days to please turn the air conditioning down. It seems crazy.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Well, Laura, you are right. We haven't heard anything from the Liberals and Nationals on AI because their energy plan forces that offshore, it says, don't bother knocking for investment in Australia on electricity industrial processes, which is what AI is. There is substantial AI investor interest in Australia right now because of our low cost, reliable energy system. Now you move to expensive nuclear, and they're gone. It costs too much. It takes too long. It pushes costs up for ordinary households and as we've seen today, if you've got solar on your roof, well, Peter Dutton's tax on solar in order to make way for his expensive nuclear program.

 

JAYES: Rooftop solar is not going to build data centres or fuel them. But anyway—

 

SENATOR AYRES: No, but households who are getting a good deal out of solar now will get smashed to the tune of $1000 a year.

 

JAYES: They are not getting a good deal.

 

SENATOR AYRES: —will get smashed to the tune of $1000 a year if Peter Dutton introduces this nuclear reactor plan. It is a bad plan, poorly thought through and it requires industries like aluminium that employ tens of thousands of people to go to China or the Middle East, somewhere else to close Tomago and Boyne Island in Central Queensland down in order to make way for dodgy nuclear reactors that will cost too much, take too long.

 

LAURA JAYES: Why are they dodgy?

 

SENATOR AYRES: They won’t contribute enough electricity to make a meaningful difference. Because even under Peter Dutton's costings, they don't shift the dial on the electricity requirement that Australia does. He is projecting a smaller, weaker, less productive, less manufacturing intensive economy because of his ideological obsession and incapacity to grapple with the facts, economics and science, and the interests of regional communities.

 

LAURA JAYES: Ideological? If anyone's been ideological the balance has shifted, hasn't it, between, you know, clean or reliable? We certainly don't have reliable or cheap.

 

 

SENATOR AYRES: Well, why do we have to make regional communities poorer for Peter Dutton to try and succeed? That's what his message is.

 

LAURA JAYES: What's that logic? Sorry, what's that logic?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Closing down manufacturing, closing down electricity intensive manufacturing, which is what his plan does, that is fundamental to the modelling and the costings, the dodgy costings claim he makes. He's closing down electricity intensive manufacturing. So, they say one thing, but their costings rely entirely on a different scenario. It's a bit like, you just have to focus on what Peter Dutton does.

 

LAURA JAYES: The costing and it's a modelling we've been given by every successive government really, over the last 20 years, none of them have been accurate. I mean, that's not right. I mean, and if you want to get down to the consumer base here, you guys promised $275 off each and every power bill and it's not even that much. $275 a year off your power bill is a drop in the ocean. Here we are three years later, and you know, you still can't have any upfront conversation about any Minister in your Government about why that has happened and why they promised in the first place. Because the Ukraine War broke out well after this promise was made and then you can't repeat that. So, going into the next term you're not even willing to make any other promises about the cost of energy coming down.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Well, I'll tell you what's a big number. $1,200 a number that they haven't quibbled with. That they haven't argued with that for the average household. Peter Dutton's nuclear reactor plan will make electricity $1,200 more expensive from day one because of all of the costs associated with building nuclear reactors.

 

LAURA JAYES: But you say day one's about 15 years away. I mean it's pretty telling Tim, isn't it?  This morning when we're trying to talk about your energy plan, all you want to do is talk about his.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Because it's so bad, Laura.

 

JAYES: It’s bad now.

 

SENATOR AYRES: —and because that additional cost is not just about the $600 billion cost of building.

 

LAURA JAYES: The transition hasn't been that great so far, wouldn't you admit? I mean it's more expensive and less reliable. Someone stuffed up along the way.

 

SENATOR AYRES: But it's also about the maintenance costs of trying to keep this ageing fleet of ready-to-close down coal fired power stations alive now.

 

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, but that's not all of the costs.

 

SENATOR AYRES: It is a huge cost.

 

LAURA JAYES: Yeah. And the transmission line being built.

 

SENATOR AYRES: And it just goes to show these guys aren't up to it. Like Peter Dutton and David Littleproud say we should sweat these coal assets for a bit longer.

 

LAURA JAYES: Nor are you.

 

SENATOR AYRES: You would only say that if you had not been in one recently.

 

LAURA JAYES: When are prices coming down? When are going to people be told on a hot day that they to put their dishwasher on at midnight rather than 6:00 PM?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Laura, these, these guys live and hope for there to be some disruption in the electricity system. Just the way that they live and hope for things to be harder.

 

JAYES: This is what really annoys people though, that they're told that the other guys that haven't been in power for three years, it's all their fault. And you're not willing to take any responsibility. Oh, we should have done better. We shouldn't have promised to come off your bill. Instead, there's a tax pay, a subsidy, a rebate that brings it down. Artificially, but that's only because there's a cost-of-living crisis. So, we're all paying for it.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Laura, focus on the facts. You say they're a reliability problem.

 

LAURA JAYES: I am focused on the facts. Where's the $275?

 

SENATOR AYRES: Every day that we're about to have a hot day, Peter Dutton and poor old Angus Taylor and Ted O'Brien, God bless him, are out there predicting that the power's going to go off and it doesn't go off. Every day there's a hot day they are praying for failure.

 

LAURA JAYES: Chris Minns stood up last time. Please don't put your air conditioning on because it’s going to be a 40-degree day.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Yeah, sorry, let me finish the point.

 

LAURA JAYES: And it's not them, it's AEMO, that warned that we're at risk of blackouts. I mean, we get these reports.

 

SENATOR AYRES: Yeah.

 

LAURA JAYES: Constantly saying the same thing.

 

SENATOR AYRES: And you know what? Where there are system failures, it is inevitably because of some storm that wipes out a transmission line or because a coal fired generator, a clapped-out coal fired generator, fails or there’s an unplanned shutdown.

 

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, and renewables don’t step up.

 

SENATOR AYRES: And they step up.

 

JAYES: Nope.

 

SENATOR AYRES: The system is being built. It is being built in an effective way. It is the lowest cost, reliable solution for Australia.

 

JAYES: No, it's not. Not right now.

 

SENATOR AYRES: The nuclear reactor plan for Australia from Peter Dutton is the most expensive proposition. It will cost more; it will take too long because we have never built these things before. It runs absolutely counter to us having the world's best solar and wind resources and building nuclear reactors, imposing them on communities that don't want them. And in the end, after all of this, it doesn't deliver, it doesn't touch the sides of Australia's electricity demand.

 

LAURA JAYES: There are lot of people that don't want wind farms in their community as well. But look, Tim, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to cut you off, but we need a whole hour for this. Let's try and plan and do that. Thank you for joining the program as always. We've got to leave it there. We'll speak to you soon.

 

SENATOR AYRES: I always just say there's a big gap between what Peter Dutton says and what he's done and what he's planning to do. Same thing on big cuts for services for Australians. It's the same thing and the rhetoric's going to catch up with him. See you Laura, good on you.

 

LAURA JAYES: Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

ENDS.