E&OE
HAMISH MACDONALD:
David Coleman is the Liberal Member for Banks which covers the Canterbury Bankstown and George’s River Council areas here in Sydney. He’s also the Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister. A very good morning to you, David Coleman.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Good morning Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
The Prime Minister is pro-Vegemite. Can we assume that a Coalition Government would also fight for the rights of Vegemite, globally?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Well indeed Hamish, I mean this is a very grave matter, and I would urge caution in the response. We shouldn’t be pouring our maple syrup down the sink or setting fire to it or anything like that. It is a human right to consume Vegemite, no matter where you are on Earth. And I think what we’ve got is an over-zealous Canadian food regulator who hopefully will take a bit of a backward step, and allow this wonderful product to be consumed by Canadians.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Now, I do need to ask you about some other trade and tariff-related issues. The Coalition reckons that it can work better with Donald Trump, that it can get a better deal on tariffs. Why and how would you be able to do something that virtually no other countries in the world have been able to do?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Well I think the first point, Hamish, is we don’t think the Government leant forward enough in trying to do a deal. We think the Prime Minister should have gone to the US and he didn’t. Now in terms of the future, Peter Dutton has got a very strong track record in terms of negotiating with both Democratic and Republican administrations. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Obviously he was involved in AUKUS with the Democratic administration, which was one of the biggest deals in Australian history. With the previous Republican administration, he negotiated important arrangements around the protection of children from child exploitation, around cooperation on crime, and so on. So there is a track record there. And the Government…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
But it’s a little different this time, right? Pretty much everyone got, ultimately ended up with 10% tariffs. The only countries that didn’t get this were Russia, Cuba, North Korea. Are you saying that Peter Dutton could have done something different?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Oh, what I’m saying is that we would absolutely do a better job in Government than the Government did, and the objectively, Hamish…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
As in, you would have helped us escape those 10% tariffs? Is that seriously asking us to believe that Peter Dutton could have done that?
DAVID COLEMAN:
What I’m saying, Hamish, is that should we become the Government after the 3rd of May, we’ll do a better job. And the objective evidence is that the outcome was not what we wanted as a country. So we are starting from a low point, clearly, and not even the Government can dispute that. And Peter Dutton’s been there, done that. He’s negotiated very successfully with United States administrations. You know the Government says, well you, know we had this phone call or we had these meetings, but the unfortunate reality is we didn’t get the outcome we wanted, and Peter Dutton’s got a track record of negotiating deals and we believe we would be more successful in the future.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Peter Dutton has said that he thinks Trump is a big thinker, how do you think of Donald Trump?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Oh look, I think it’s not really for me to offer character assessments on different world leaders, Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Well, your later Peter Dutton has. He says that he thinks Trump is a big thinker. Do you agree?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Well, look, we’ve obviously expressed concerns about Donald Trump’s statements on different issues. So on Ukraine, very strongly disagree with what he said about the war in Ukraine, obviously very strongly disagreed in relation to tariffs. We’ve known since at least 1930 that tariffs were a bad idea. And so we will express disagreements from time to time. But we also need to be mature about this, Hamish, because the US relationship is our most important strategic relationship. And so whilst people may have disagreements from time-to-time and frustrations and so on, the US relationship is really important. We should acknowledge that…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Has it changed under Donald Trump? I mean this is something I’m hearing from our listeners here in Sydney quite frequently, that our politicians seem to be carrying on as if nothing’s changed, when in fact, America seems to want very different relationships with its allies.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Oh, look, there’s no question that some of the actions of the administration are very different from previous administrations. Tariffs is the obvious one, and certainly there are others. Certainly some of comments in particular in relation to Ukraine are very different than what we’d normally expect from a US administration. But that doesn’t take away, Hamish, the importance of the US relationship. Our security has been underpinned by the ANZUS arrangement for more than 70 years. AUKUS is a modern-day building upon that, and it’s very important. And of course there’s incredibly deep economic links and cultural links between our two countries. So the thing to do is to be mature, to work through difficulties as they arise, but to not lose sight of the fact that the US relationship is incredibly important to Australia.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
These are troubled times, as I think you’re observing. Greg Sheridan wrote in The Australian yesterday that the Coalition actually lacks a specific defence policy because Shadow Cabinet can’t agree on the appropriate amount of defence spending. Can you clarify for us what is the Coalition’s policy on defence spending?
DAVID COLEMAN:
We’ve been very clear that we need to increase defence spending, and we’ll have more to say…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
To what?
DAVID COLEMAN:
We’ll have more to say about that before the election. I sadly am not going to announce that on your show this morning, Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
David Coleman, voting opens in under a week.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Yeah, sure, and we’ll be making announcements on that shortly. But what do we know? We know the Government’s cut $80 billion from Defence.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Respectfully, David Coleman, are you saying that you might be asking Australians to vote without an answer to this question, Tuesday next week, like will we know before then?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Well Hamish, I’m not going to foreshadow the timings of particular announcements, but we have said that we will increase defence spending, we need to increase defence spending. We live in the most uncertain strategic environment since the Second World War. Even the Government says that, but the Government’s done nothing about it. And in fact…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Well they say they’re moving defence spending to 2.4% of GDP ultimately, that’s the destination they say.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Yeah, in more than a decade, Hamish. And under the previous Labor Government, our defence spending reached the lowest proportion of GDP since the Second World War, less than 1.6%. We got it up to 2. But…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
We can all hear you wanting to criticise the Government. It’s just a bit hard to know what your position is, if you don’t know yourself, what you’re saying to us on defence spending.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Well, I don’t think that’s really a fair characterisation, Hamish, because we have said that we will be providing for increased defence spending. We have said we’ll announce further details on that prior to the election. That’s what’s going to occur. So we’re not going to…
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Could you just give us a straight answer then on when, people are making up their minds, people are voting this time next week.
DAVID COLEMAN:
As I said Hamish, I’m not going to announce a particular date this morning, but suffice to say, it will be different to the Government, superior to the Government. The Government’s mishandling of defence has been chronic. They’ve cut $80 billion out of defence and we’ve got a Government that when a PLA warship was conducting live-firing exercises off our coast, needed to be told that by Virgin airlines pilots. And that is amateur hour to the power of 10. That’s what we’ve got under this Government, and the only thing the Government’s really saying accurately on defence is that we live in very challenging strategic times. They’re right about that but they haven’t actually done anything about it, and we will.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
Obviously reports overnight about Russia asking Indonesia to station long-range aircraft in Papua, just to our north. That’s all been denied now by Indonesia and by the Russians. Are you satisfied with those denials, that that isn’t going to be on our doorstep, as it were?
DAVID COLEMAN:
Look, I think the reporting here is from a credible journal that says that the request was made. And what we need to understand from the Government, and perhaps you would have noted the Government is very much avoiding this question, this morning. If this request was made, did the Government know anything about it? And if they didn’t, that is a shocking indictment on the Government’s failure of diplomacy. And it would be of a piece with the failure to know that the PLA warships were going to be conducting live-firing exercises off our coast. One of the functions of diplomacy, to be frank, is knowing what’s going on. And if a request as significant as this one was made, and we didn’t know, Australia didn’t know, then the Government must be held to account for that, because that is very fundamental to what diplomacy and statecraft is all about.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
David Coleman, thank you very much for your time this morning. We really appreciate it.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Thanks Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD:
David Coleman there, the Liberal Member for Banks here in Sydney, the Shadow Foreign Minister, as well.
HON DAVID COLEMAN MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MEMBER FOR BANKS