Patrick Gorman MP on Sky News Sunday Agenda
ANDREW CLENNELL, HOST: Joining me live from Perth in the studio is the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman. Thanks so much for joining me at this early hour in Perth.
PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Andrew.
CLENNELL: Look, a sombre day in a way. Let’s start with this ADF accident. What’s your latest information on it? We’re soon to hear from the PM, I don’t know what you can tell us. Has anyone passed away? How serious are the injuries?
GORMAN: Well, it was a serious incident, but in terms of the update on the injuries, for those 13 Australian Defence Force personnel who’ve been involved in this incident, I’ll leave the Prime Minister to make that update. What I’d just like to say is to the first responders, the emergency services personnel who were there on the scene assisting the ADF. Thank you to them. Obviously, these Australian Defence Force personnel were there trying to help their fellow Australians at a time of natural disaster. It is so unfortunate that they’ve found themselves in this serious incident. But we’ll get an update from the Prime Minister soon. It’s appropriate for something involving Defence Force personnel like this, the Prime Minister provides that update.
CLENNELL: Was it treacherous conditions, or was there driver error? Do you know?
GORMAN: I’m not in a position to provide updates on the details of the operational nature of what happened yesterday, but what I can say is that the Australian Government wants to make sure that every one of those ADF personnel gets the support that they need. And the Prime Minister will make an update soon.
CLENNELL: Now, the WA election results, it was a resounding win for Labor. You’d take, sort of, 58% any day of the week in any election anywhere around the world, wouldn’t you? But, and I’m told there’s confidence here that federal Labor can retain all the seats it won in 2022 and has a shot, believes it has a shot at Bullwinkel as well. But there were big swings against Labor in seats like Hasluck, federal seats like Hasluck and Pearce, more so than in some of those richer sort of seats which were traditionally Liberal. Could the outer suburban mortgage belt hurt you at this election?
GORMAN: Well, firstly, I’d point out to your viewers that those swings we saw last night are off 2021 results. That was in the middle of a pandemic where we had Mark McGowan as, you know, a dominant figure, not just in WA politics, but in federal politics. They’re not off the 2022 results where we did achieve an impressive win of some nine seats to federal Labor for Western Australia, our best ever result.
CLENNELL: They were above the state wide swing, though.
GORMAN: You always see different swings in different parts of the state. You’ve even seen, as you alluded to, some interesting swings where the Liberal Party really underperformed in some of what should have been their easy heartland seats. I mean, they should have been able to win seats like Churchlands with their eyes closed, but instead, they only got a 1.8% primary swing to them. I mean, there’s a lot of questions to be asked for the Liberal Party, and ultimately, when you look at where did that swing come from in some of those other outer suburban seats, those communities still chose to send a Labor MP back into the state parliament with still some pretty significant margins.
CLENNELL: So you’re pretty relaxed about your federal seats, then?
GORMAN: Look, I think every election is its own contest, and I don’t want any of my federal colleagues to think that they take the foot off the gas. They’ve got to go and work every day between now and whatever date federal election might be. They’ve got to work, because you earn every win. And what I saw last night was that those Labor MPs at the state level, who have worked hard in their communities, putting forward their values and their plans, they got a worthy result. So I want to see, and I know that even Sam Lim, one of the best door knockers, not just in Western Australia, Sam Lim is out there door knocking – one of the best door knockers in the country. More of that, please. Because I know that’s what makes a difference.
CLENNELL: Well, that’s a big, big wrap, I’ve got to say, WA is pretty crucial to Anthony Albanese’s prospects, isn’t it? Because Sydney and Melbourne, you’re probably going to lose seats, you’ve got to hold the line here.
GORMAN: I never write off a single seat. And indeed, I always keep my eye on those seats that we can add to the Labor pile. So you won’t get me sitting here any day between now and the election, talking about seats that we might write off. I want to hang on. I want to add a few to the pile, including Bullwinkel.
CLENNELL: What do you make of Basil Zempilas going into the parliament?
GORMAN: Well, I’ve worked pretty closely with Basil when he was the Lord Mayor of the City of Perth, which is within my federal electorate of Perth. I think he has had his first taste of true democratic politics. Obviously, our councils here don’t have compulsory voting. He struggled a little bit in a compulsory voting environment. I don’t think he had the best night last night. I think last night for Basil was supposed to be his second try at mounting a leadership pitch to his colleagues, not many of them, but the colleagues that are there. But we didn’t see that. Instead, he was struggling to hang on. And a huge shout out to Christine Tonkin. I mean, she won Churchlands in 2021 and no one thought she could. She’s had a great team in her office across the four years. They’ve put everything into trying to make sure that her campaign team could hang on for one final term – one extra term, I should say. And they gave Basil a real fight. And again, that just shows never, never concede a single seat.
CLENNELL: There were problems, too, with the WA Electoral Commission and large queues at polling booths.
GORMAN: There are some serious questions to be answered by the West Australian Electoral Commission and Commissioner. There is no doubt that is unacceptable when people are waiting 90 minutes at a booth to vote. I’ve heard reports of people fainting at booths because they were waiting in the sun for more than two hours –
CLENNELL: Good grief.
GORMAN: And it wasn’t a particularly hot day, but you’ve got elderly people who are there just to do their democratic duty, which they’ve done for their entire life. We also had reports yesterday – and I’m hoping we’ll get a proper investigation into this – where some booths ran out of ballot papers in the final hour, disenfranchising voters. Now, one of the fundamental things that the WA Labor government has done in the last term was implement ‘one vote, one value.’ Now, if the Commission can’t ensure people can have their say when they rock up at a booth, they failed. They have got one job every four years. If they can’t do that one job every four years, they’ve got serious questions to answer.
CLENNELL: The Liberals here campaigned on health. I mean, you’re doing the same federally. Some irony there, isn’t there?
GORMAN: Well, actually, I think the timing for my state colleagues couldn’t have been better with our major announcement when it came to Medicare bulk billing that came out just two weeks before the election –
CLENNELL: You reckon you helped Roger Cook out with that?
GORMAN: I know from my work door knocking, being on prepoll, indeed, some of my state colleagues reached out to me and said that that bulk billing announcement made a real difference. It was really welcomed. We do know that here in Western Australia, we need to get our bulk billing rates up, and people do want to be able to see a GP for free. That’s what we’ve put on the table, and it’s been welcomed,
CLENNELL: Even though Peter Dutton’s matched it, it’s still been a benefit to you politically?
GORMAN: Well, I mean, Peter Dutton can follow all he likes, but the reality is, I think even your viewers would know the people who build and invest in Medicare, it’s always Labor.
CLENNELL: What’s the latest on the ex-tropical cyclone, the damage and perhaps, what can we expect in coming days? Because places flood a couple of days after the rain, generally?
GORMAN: Yeah, I think we can expect to see – and all the reports are – that we are going to see more flooding, more, and this is not over, and I wouldn’t want anyone to take too much comfort. I know there’s some 350,000 Queenslanders who are without power. That brings its own complications when it comes to everything from food security to medical needs. So obviously, we’re not out of the woods yet. While it might not have been as severe as predicted, those preparations that Queenslanders and those northern New South Wales put in place are still important. If you’ve got your water stored, if you’ve got your battery packs, don’t put them away. Don’t drain them down. You need to make sure that you’ve got those supplies for the next few days and keep listening. I think one of the things I think, that has been really encouraging for people in northern New South Wales and Queensland is people have been listening to the emergency services’ advice, and that’s how you make sure that you can protect lives, protect livelihoods, and hopefully get those communities back to work as soon as possible.
CLENNELL: There are plenty of people on your side of politics who wanted an April election and not a budget. How are you going to sell forward deficits after delivering two surpluses?
GORMAN: Well, some people want a particular election date. I want an election win. That’s what I’m in for. When it comes to the budget, I think we’ve been really open with people as we’ve put out two surpluses that we have achieved – something that wasn’t in the forward predictions of the previous Dutton Coalition Government, in which he was a senior member. But what we’ll say is that we are in very challenging international circumstances. The inflation challenge we have fought really strongly at home. We have to keep that fight up. But we’ll be open with people when the budget numbers come out. I don’t want to predict what those will be. That’s for the treasurer to release on the 25th of March, but we’ll put forward a plan to make sure that we do the right thing by the Australian economy without doing the wrong thing by Australian households. And that’s my biggest concern about some of Dutton’s plans as well. That you’ll start to withdraw support from households, just as they’re starting to get ahead.
CLENNELL: But your economic narrative has been ‘we put downward pressure on inflation with surpluses.’ Now you going to have deficits. It’s a bit of an issue for you, isn’t it? It robs you of that narrative, to some extent?
GORMAN: I’m really proud of the two Labor surpluses that we’ve delivered. When it comes to what the numbers will show both, because when we put out the Budget, we don’t just put out what is government spending and government revenue. We also put out what are our forward projections on GDP, what are our forward projections on inflation, we put all that in the budget on 25th. We’ve been doing that work for months. I’ve said –
CLENNELL: Are you saying they’ll be good figures? Is that what you’re saying?
GORMAN: No, I’m saying it’ll be a complete story about where the Australian economy has been, where we need to take it. And also some of the investments that we’re making to make sure that we support households through what have been challenging times. And I don’t want to pretend that it’s been an easy ride for Australian households, but make sure that we leave those supports in, while putting in new supports for those things that are really important. And some of the best economic policy you can have is health policy. Medicare is front and centre for us, making sure that more Australians can get a bulk billed GP. You’ll see those sort of things, and I think people will understand the complex circumstances in which we govern. But the clear vision we have to help households in difficult times.
CLENNELL: With this extra time, will you have another crack at the Nature Positive laws? Or as a WA MP, are you just hoping that all goes away?
GORMAN: We’ve been clear that we don’t see a path for that legislation in this term of Parliament. What we wanted to do is to continue the work that we have been doing of improving approvals times. When we came to office, I think it was around 84 days, was the times for approval. We’ve halved that down to about 44 days. I’m really proud of that, because I know one of the things that gives business certainty is knowing that they will get a clear answer in a reasonable time frame. I also believe there’s more we can do to make sure that we have better outcomes for nature. These conversations shouldn’t always be that it’s nature versus approvals times – we can actually have better outcomes in both.
CLENNELL: All right, off the table for now. Will the Government be looking to have increased energy bill relief above the $300 as a hallmark of the budget?
GORMAN: We’ve just been talking about the outstanding success at the state election for Roger Cook and his team. And once again, congrats to Roger. But if you think about one of the things that was campaigned on really strongly by the state Labor team, it was that shared energy bill relief package that we put together. Some $700 per household here in the West. Now that’s still rolling out for many people here in WA. We’ll always look at the best way with the limited funds available to support households. I’m not in a position to announce that today. One thing I can say, though, is that our commitment to Free TAFE – that will be in the budget. That commitment which, again, my state colleagues here were campaigning on, really strongly – free TAFE, in construction, early childhood, all of those key areas that we need more people working in our economy. That’s a really proud partnership. We’ve put that front and centre of our plans. And it’s one thing I can guarantee. It will be rock solid in the budget.
CLENNELL: Are income tax cuts a possibility?
GORMAN: What we’ve said is that when we’ve looked for the best way to help households. In terms of the plans we’ve got out there publicly on the table right now, that’s our Medicare plan. When it comes to income tax cuts, I think everyone knows that we’ve looked for ways to help low and middle income households. That’s what we did with our tax plan that remember, just a year ago, Peter Dutton was saying we should go to an election because he wanted to oppose our plan for low and middle income tax cuts.
CLENNELL: Sounds like he’s going to come up with his own package. So I wonder if you’ll match it?
GORMAN: Well, I’d love to see a costed policy from Peter Dutton. I mean, every time I sit there during the Opposition Leader’s budget reply, I hear these grand plans, they never come up with a costing. Remember the migration policy? Not a costing, not a single number. Three days later, they couldn’t agree on what the numbers were. The nuclear plan. We’ve seen some costings, but there’s not really, like, a proper budget costing. Even the free lunches for bosses. Like, where’s the costings on that? And confusion from even the ACT Liberals about their 36,000 public servants they want to cut. Peter Dutton and David Littleproud, going to cut 36,000 public servants. The ACT federal Liberals are saying, ‘Oh no, no, that’s not going to happen.’ I mean, come on, give us a clear policy, Mr. Dutton, give us a clear costing. I don’t think we’re going to see that in his budget reply. We haven’t seen it in the last three years.
CLENNELL: Now, there’s a deadline here on the steel tariff exemption coming up this week. Is there any chance Australia can get an exemption here?
GORMAN: We’ve put the strongest possible representations to the Trump administration about the benefits of the deep, enduring trade partnerships that we have with the United States. They go across our exports, the many things -you know, we import more from the United States than we export. We’ve got deep capital links, and indeed, the Treasurer, just over a week ago, was there in Washington with Ambassador Rudd talking and hosting a superannuation summit looking at how we can further integrate our economies, because we know that Australians, particularly through their superannuation funds, want to get good quality investments, and there’s a lot of opportunity in The United States.
CLENNELL: Has the PM been trying to get hold of Donald Trump on this in recent days?
GORMAN: What we know is that the Prime Minister and President Trump have spoken about this previously. They spoke quite soon after President Trump outlined his intentions. As for other discussions, I’ll leave that for the Prime Minister to discuss. But what we have had is a multi-level engagement from the Treasurer, our ambassador, Defence Minister –
CLENNELL: Well, what’s your feeling then? What’s your feeling? Because Jim Chalmers said last week on the programme, it would be tough.
GORMAN: Look, of course, it’s tough. I mean, I respect that President Trump has come with a set of stated policy objectives that he went to an election on, he’s been elected to implement those policies. We’ll provide the best advice we can to our friends the United States about what we see is in both their interests and our interests. But it is ultimately up to the United States administration to announce their policies, not us.
CLENNELL: Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister. Pat Gorman, thanks so much for your time.
GORMAN: Thank you. Andrew
https://ministers.pmc.gov.au/gorman/2025/television-interview-sky-news-sunday-agenda