LUKE GRANT: Lindsay Tanner, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation is on the line. Morning, Minister.
LINDSAY TANNER: Good morning, Luke.
LUKE GRANT: How are you doing this morning?
LINDSAY TANNER: Very good, thanks.
LUKE GRANT: You happy with the way the poll looks? I suppose on one side of the coin you'd have to be thinking, gee, Abbott's getting a bit close for comfort now.
LINDSAY TANNER: Oh look, things have been very tight for a month or two in opinion polls. But they don't necessarily tell you where things will be in a few months' time, whenever the election's going to be held. So we're obviously pretty focused on doing our best to govern well and invest for the future of Australia's economy and do the right thing. And we'll be judged accordingly, Luke.
LUKE GRANT: Yeah, but nothing's moving, is it? I mean, these are disappointing numbers for the Government. They seem now set in stone.
LINDSAY TANNER: Oh look, there's a slight improvement in the support recorded for the Government on a two-party preferred measure in this particular poll. But it just indicates that the election contest that we're facing is going to be pretty tight and it'll be a, you know, a bit of a 50-50 contest, which is, most of the time tends to be the case with federal elections.
LUKE GRANT: Yeah. Everyone is saying that the Government needs some sort of circuit breaker. Now, we've heard of this $11 billion deal, NBN Telstra, on the weekend. Why is that such a good thing for Australia, and will that be the circuit breaker you think you need?
LINDSAY TANNER: I wouldn't speculate on what impact it'll have on people's views of the politics, but I think it is crucial for Australia's longer-term future. We've been going backwards relative to the rest of the world on broadband for a decade, and that was because the previous government privatised Telstra without reforming the industry structure and it left a giant private monopoly pretty much dominating the whole industry, and that's not good for competition or innovation. The new structure we're building separates the infrastructure from the people who deliver services, and we've reached this agreement with Telstra, or the Broadband Network's reached the agreement with Telstra so that they will partner and we'll now have a modern industry structure that will be good for innovation, we'll get much better broadband services that'll be cheaper and more broadly accessible. And Telstra will be really well positioned to be a big player delivering more services and earning better value for its shareholders in this new world.
LUKE GRANT: Someone said on the Steve Price show this morning - it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, someone that worked in IT - that over the last 10 years we've gone from dial-up speeds to where we are today, improved the speed of download by something like a hundred and it's cost the government nothing. Yet, this $43 billion cost will only get us an improvement of three times. Is that a concern for people like me who's, you know, looking forward to using fast broadband at home?
LINDSAY TANNER: Well, I'm sorry for disillusioning you, but that person doesn't know what he's talking about.
LUKE GRANT: Okay.
LINDSAY TANNER: In fact, first you've got to compare us with the rest of the world, and we have slipped down to very poor rankings compared with comparable countries in broadband, whether on price or n speed. Second, the typical kind of products available these days in the kind of one meg, two meg sorts of areas. It does vary, obviously, but that's the kind of typical sorts of things. We are building a network that's going to have speeds up to a hundred megs, and where we would expect to see typical products being offered of 20 megs, 50 megs, for prices that will be broadly comparable or better than what people are getting for much lower speeds now. And that's certainly what's occurring in Tasmania with the very early stages of the rollout where some taste of price is being offered by companies. So there's no question this will be a very big step forward.
LUKE GRANT: How far away are these speeds from suburban Melbourne?
LINDSAY TANNER: Oh look, I can't give you details about the timing of the rollout, Luke, because that's ultimately a matter for NBN. They - this is an eight-year program, and of course, there are - part of Brunswick is part of the initial rollout. But what they did was picked up five or six different areas around the country that were designed to reflect the diversity of circumstances around Australia just as the very initial parts of the rollout. So it will proceed according to engineering dynamics, essentially, not according to any politician getting out maps and saying, well, you get it next week and you get it next year.
LUKE GRANT: Righto. As you know, the top mental health adviser for the Government, John Mendoza, has resigned. And look, there has been some commentary suggesting that you said there's no more money for mental health, and he and many of his like are pretty disappointed with that. Is that the case?
LINDSAY TANNER: No, it's not. In fact, these claims are a hundred per cent false. I have not made any statements of that kind, nor do I have the authority to make statements of that kind. In fact, contrary to the views of some, the finance minister does not have unilateral power over spending. These decisions are made collectively by the Expenditure Review Committee and ultimately by Cabinet. So I have not made any such statements nor would I. And the question for Professor Mendoza is that if this is a basis for his resignation, why has he not asked me whether these statements are true? Why is he relying on third-hand scuttlebutt for this resignation, if this is a basis for his resignation? As far as I can determine, nobody in my office has been contacted by him. He has not asked me certainly whether these statements are true. It strikes me as very odd that a person would do something as serious as resigning from chairing a very important government committee on the basis of such statements…
LUKE GRANT: Yeah.
LINDSAY TANNER: …without actually finding out whether or not they're true.
LUKE GRANT: Well, he resigned to the Health Minister. Did she contact you and say, look, we don't want to lose this bloke, what's going on?
LINDSAY TANNER: I haven't spoken to her about these claims and she hasn't spoken to me about these claims about things I'm alleged to have said. So I don't know whether he's said anything to her about them. But I'm the person who's alleged to have said these things. You would think that if somebody's relying on them for a major decision - and I'm only going on reports here; maybe he's relying on other matters - you would have thought he would have asked me directly are these claims true.
LUKE GRANT: Do you think this government's done a good job in dealing with mental health?
LINDSAY TANNER: Oh look, I think we've made some important steps forward, but there's no question there are more things to do, and it's not just in mental health; there are a number of other areas. We've got big challenges in aged care, for example. So I think there have been some important steps forward. There has been a substantial injection of additional money, for example, increasing the availability of the headspace program for young people. But there's no question that we start from, in this country under governments of either persuasion, a low base and there's a lot more to be done.
LUKE GRANT: You see, the numbers we've got are that in the most recent budget there's $7.2 billion for health but only $175 million for new funding for mental health. Now, on the surface, those figures do look a bit light on, don't you think?
LINDSAY TANNER: Well, that's a slightly misleading picture because parts of the $7 billion do involve services that will be of benefit to people with mental health problems. For example, big investments in step-down sub-acute beds in the health sector will be of value to people with mental health problems as well as people with other problems. So that new money, of course, is primarily focused at fixing public hospitals and fixing our public hospital system across the board, so reducing the waiting times in casualty or emergency departments, reducing the waiting times for elective surgery, improving prevention and primary care. So all of those things also have some indirect benefits as well. But those numbers are broadly accurate, but they're slightly misleading because they miss out on some of the benefits that flow across the board from the broader spending.
LUKE GRANT: All right, thanks, Minister. Good to talk to you. Appreciate your time.
LINDSAY TANNER: Good to talk to, Luke.
LUKE GRANT: Okay, that's Lindsay Tanner there.
-ends-
| Media Contact: | Website: |
|---|---|
| Nardia Dazkiw - 0418 144 690 | www.financeminister.gov.au |
