Peter Stefanovic, Host: The Federal Opposition has now locked in its climate policy by formally ditching net zero, which was yesterday rubber stamped by both the Liberals and the Nationals. So, it now has a fight to take to Labor and those inner city Teal seats. Joining us live is the Assistant Immigration Minister, Matt Thistlethwaite. He's got a few different portfolios, but that's one of them which we'll get to in a moment. So, Matt, a battle line has been drawn. Your thoughts on net zero this morning and the energy malaise?
Matt Thistlethwaite, Assistant Minister for Immigration: Good morning, Pete. Well, the disappointing thing about the Coalition is that they now don't have a plan to bring on additional supply. What we need to do is ensure that we're generating more electricity for Australians. And we have a plan to do that under the net zero architecture. And that involves investments in large scale renewable energy products like large wind and solar farms. It also includes support for households to increase their uptake of solar and batteries through our battery subsidy scheme. And that's going very, very well. Over 120,000 households have taken up that as a result, Pete, Australia now has the largest proportion of household rooftop solar of any nation in the world. And we're also supplementing it with gas as well. So, new gas projects coming online. So, that's our plan to deliver more electricity to Australian households over the next 25 years --
Stefanovic: Okay, just about net zero --
Assistant Minister: The Coalition have dumped net zero. What’s their plan to deliver that additional supply? We don't know what it is. And that's, that's the issue.
Stefanovic: Well, they would argue their plan is, and it was listed out yesterday, renewables, gas, but also coal and nuclear. That's their plan.
Assistant Minister: Well, I think that the Australian public overwhelmingly rejected nuclear at the last election. In terms of coal, 80% of our electricity is generated through coal fired power stations. At the moment, most of that is owned by the private sector. Those power stations were built in the 50s and 60s. They're coming to the end of their useful life. And the private sector is saying, well, we're not going to renew that because it's outdated technology. But here we have the Coalition saying, well, we're going to prop that up. So, what the Australian public deserve to know is how are you going to prop that up? Are you going to buy those assets? If you are, that would be very, very expensive. Or are you going to subsidise them? Now if you're going to subsidise them, that's going to cost a hell of a lot of money for technology that is outdated. And I was thinking about an analogy for this, Pete, and the best one that I could come up with is Australians used to own VHS. They put videos into those machines to watch movies and things, but that's been placed by streaming. It's equivalent of the Coalition saying, well, let's try and bring back the VHS industry and we'll subsidise it through government support. Now that's crazy, that's nuts. But that's effectively what they're going to do with coal fired power.
Stefanovic: Okay, so a few things the Coalition has in its favour though, and it's folks’ bills, right? They've skyrocketed under your watch and emissions targets which are unlikely to be reached. So, why not go back to basics to help people? Because isn't that at the end of the day what it should be about, to make things cheaper for people?
Assistant Minister: Yes, it should and we appreciate that electricity prices have risen and that's why we put in place rebates to assist people during this difficult period. And they've worked, they've reduced energy bills from --
Stefanovic: Yeah, but they're just band aids. They're just band aids, Matt.
Assistant Minister: Yeah, but at the same time, Pete, that's the point that I'm making. We're bringing on additional supply so we're investing in additional supply of electricity and that's starting to work because the wholesale electricity price is now coming down because we're getting more renewables into the system and that's a cheaper form of generation. Now I appreciate it hasn't flow through to retail prices, but it should start to do so next year. So, we're seeing more supply coming on that will lead to lower power prices into the future. And the additional supply is about 18 gigawatts worth of new supply coming into the system. Now that's going to have an effect in the coming years.
Stefanovic: All right, let's move on to the other topic of immigration that involves you. The Coalition now says that's, that's going to be its next focus after net zero has been moved to the side. So, are you, how are you going to tackle that? Are you prepared to lower your levels?
Assistant Minister: Well, we have, we've lowered net overseas migration by 40% after it spiked during the Covid period --
Stefanovic: Yeah, huge rises.
Assistant Minister: But if you look at our migration program, Pete, 80% of it is skilled migration. So, we need more skilled labourers, particularly in the construction sector, to build more homes for Australians. We know that it takes about four years to train a tradesperson. Now we're making those investments through the Fee Free TAFE and we've got full classes. But that takes time. You can't say to an employer, we're going to deny you the right to bring in a carpenter or a plumber or someone like that to support their business to do that work. So, what the Coalition needs to answer is which skilled trades are you going to cut? Is it going to be those skilled trades workers that are building homes for Australians? Is it going to be the aged care workers that are looking after our elderly? Is it going to be the teachers that are teaching our kids in our school system at the moment? The Coalition needs to come clean and say which skilled trades they're going to cut.
Stefanovic: Ok, that's a question for them. Dan Tehan's actually joining us in about 15 minutes, so some of those questions will go right to him. Appreciate it, Matt, thank you. We'll talk to you soon