David Littleproud on theToday Show
KARL STEFANOVIC
The inflation rate has now dropped to six per cent, sparking hopes the RBA will keep the cash rate on hold next week. Joining us to discuss is Nationals leader, David Littleproud, and editor of the Saturday Courier Mail and Sunday Mail, Anna Caldwell. Nice to see you guys. David, first up, some relief, hopefully on the horizon for households, but the services side of goods and services doesn't look like those prices are going down, nor are higher power prices?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
No, exactly Karl, and while this may be heralded as a win by the government, unfortunately, households aren't feeling it because while they're reducing their discretionary spend, what's still remaining high and it's going to in fact increase, is the expenses they can't get away from, which is electricity. And particularly your food and the cost of processing your food is going to go up. You're going to see a 29 per cent increase in your electricity bill. This is all because of a reckless race to 82 per cent renewables by 2030. We need to pause, we need to calm down. We've got sovereignty of all our resources. But this ideology isn't matching the practical reality of what's being bled out of household wallets.
KARL STEFANOVIC
And southeast Queenslanders are really coping it across the board with power prices. The uplift in rent has been astronomical. Anna, I'm not sure there's any light at the end of the tunnel for southeast Queenslanders?
ANNA CALDWELL
It certainly feels that way at the moment, Karl. I mean, those figures did come as some relief yesterday, as you say. But you know, we know those big rent increases are going to continue. And we also know electricity prices are going to continue to climb. You know, the news, they've gone up 30 per cent in terms of costs in the past three months, that's going to get passed through to consumers. I think people just continue to remain very worried for how they're going to make ends meet.
KARL STEFANOVIC
That's for sure. Moving on, a concerning development this morning in Queensland with a group of teens armed with firearms on the run after a ransacking. This is the vision here. After ransacking a home in Brisbane’s south, just brazen, there have been a succession of these violent crimes. Now eight out of 10 are getting bail. They have scant regard for cops. They don't care about the law. They just don't care about anything. This is completely out of control, David?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
Yeah, mate. They don't fear the consequences. And I think we need to go back to the past before Palaszczuk, when she got into government in Queensland, and she scrapped these outback camps. You don't need to build new prisons because they don't fear going to detention, because it's playing touch football and playing computer games. What we used to have is send them out to the outback and the closest town was 300 kilometres. You don't need wire, you don't need fences. And you actually learn new skills and they learn about themselves. I can tell you they're in no hurry to leave. There's 300 kilometres to get the nearest town. There's king browns and wild dogs. They're pretty keen to stay and to learn and listen and to understand how they can do things better.
We need to do things differently because what we're doing at the moment isn't working. And this is where some common sense needs to prevail.
KARL STEFANOVIC
I agree. A bit of tough love, Anna. You're in the thick of it there?
ANNA CALDWELL
Yeah, that's right. I mean, it has just been this extraordinary cultural change in Queensland in terms of the expectation of youth crime happening around you. You know, I feel like it's almost difficult to explain to people who aren't living here. I moved back to Brisbane from Sydney in March. And the idea that your car might get stolen, that you might get broken into, people think about that every single day here in Brisbane. The offence rates are through the roof. We're on track to have our biggest number of offences since 2001, which is really staggering. And what's going on here is everybody's just pointing the finger at each other.
There doesn't seem to be any solution. Everybody's got someone else to blame, whether it's the judiciary, whether it's the cops, whether it's the government. At the end of the day, mums and dads go to bed at night wondering if someone's going to break into their home. It's shocking stuff.
KARL STEFANOVIC
Just take that in for a second. Mums and dads going to bed wondering if someone's going to break into their home when the kids are asleep. It's heinous. David, I wanted to talk to you about this story. David, I watched this unfold. 600 West Australian farmers have met to oppose the Federal Government's proposed phase out of live sheep exports by sea and the impact of new Indigenous cultural heritage laws on farmland. David, again, I watched this meeting unfold. I was watching the fallout closely. It takes an awful lot for a farmer to leave their land to protest. I mean, that's how ticked off they are?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD
They are mate. There was 600 there, there was 400 apologies for these cultural heritage laws. It's not just farms, it's actually residential houses in Perth. You can't dig a hole more than 50 centimetres deep without getting a cultural survey. A farmer can't dig if he wants to desilt a dam and lift more than 20 kilograms of dirt without getting a cultural heritage survey, which is about $120 to $190 an hour, $1200 a day. And you are talking, if you're talking fence lines, you are talking kilometres. And unfortunately, what we're seeing in Western Australia, the Albanese Government has an ‘options paper’ that they're going to bring a National Cultural Heritage Act in, which will create another body that'll determine what is culturally significant.
And let me tell you, it will have the power to prevent developments or redesign developments. This is an overreach. We've worked hand in hand with Indigenous Australians, but I can tell you, particularly in pastoral areas that are an intrinsic part, all this is doing for an overreach of these Labor governments, is dividing us, when just some common sense can prevail. And pastoralists actually do respect the cultural heritage there. We all want to preserve it and protect it, but not by overreaching.
KARL STEFANOVIC
I know what to do, David. I know what to do. I think we should send them all out in government to do a bit of fencing for a weekend. Anna, what do you think about that?
ANNA CALDWELL
That's spot on. It is so out of touch. What we're seeing from them, and I reckon you've hit the nail on the head there, Karl, it just feels like people making these decisions who have no idea what it's like to try and make a living from working on the land, this is going to end really badly from the government. It's out of touch. It's an overreach. There's a way to have these conversations without ruining people's livelihoods.
KARL STEFANOVIC
Here, here, good to talk to you both. Talk to you soon.
