Doorstop Interview – Kalgoorlie | Prime Minister of Australia
PRIME MINISTER, ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s fantastic to be here at Kalgoorlie School of the Air. This amazing facility has been teaching our youngest Australians here in the Goldfields and throughout this vast region since 1962. And what is happening here is a major upgrade from the National Broadband Network. As part of the 4,800 homes and businesses that will be upgraded with Fibre National Broadband Network here in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, it will make an enormous difference. It will make a difference to people who live here. But importantly, it’s overcoming the tyranny of distance for these young students. There’s over 100 students at this school and I spoke to many of them from their properties, from the stations just a little while ago. One of them lives eleven and a half hours from here, and all of them are at least seven hours from here. What high-speed broadband will do is benefit them, benefit their parents, benefit their teachers, and make an enormous difference to the quality of education they can receive. It’s a part of our almost two and a half billion dollar upgrade to the National Broadband Network. We always understood that fibre was better than copper and that putting in a second rate network meant that you would have to go back and retrofit. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. In one and a half million premises around Australia, 600,000 of them are in the region’s including right here in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
JOURNALIST: School of Air has come a long way since the peddle radio, Prime Minister. Technology in places like Kalgoorlie and other regional centres if you have a look at the mining industry today, I mean, it’s revolutionised living in the bush hasn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER: Technology is the way that we overcome the tyranny of distance. And it means that people can enjoy a quality of life that the parents that I was speaking to here today can take comfort from the fact that their young ones education won’t be disadvantaged. Indeed, they’ll get access to the research that they need. It also it means that it’ll take pressure off parents who work damn hard from day to day on these stations. And what it will do is make an incredible difference, and make it more attractive as well for people to move to, and live in the regions. Earlier today I visited the Super Pit here in Kalgoorlie. They want workers. They have jobs available right now, skilled and unskilled. They will skill people up for high paying jobs, secure jobs, if they’re willing to move here. Part of that attractiveness in regional Australia is giving the same access to broadband that you would expect in the cities. That overcomes the tyranny of distance and puts businesses close to markets, both domestic and international as well, and makes such an enormous difference. So, whether it is about educating a six year old or whether it’s about providing productivity benefits for a major company in the mining sector, a high-speed National Broadband Network is making an enormous difference.
JOURNALIST: Despite those communication developments, it’s something clearly not being heard. Can I just ask you about their complaints that problems, very big problems, have arisen particularly with alcohol abuse over the Government’s decision to scrap the cashless debit card. Was that a mistake?
PRIME MINISTER: We took the evidence from the reports that were given to us when we made that decision. And what we know is that the issues in many of these communities go to intergenerational disadvantage. There are these complex problems that require all of government and the community to work together. It requires us to listen to the communities. And that’s why today I’ll be meeting in a little while with the Mayor here in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, that is overwhelmingly where a majority of the recipients of the CDC came from. But why also Assistant Minister Elliot travelled earlier this year and met with the Mayor of Laverton and other communities. And we will continue to engage with the different levels of government. But we know that this requires an enormous effort by all levels of government.
JOURNALIST: Speaking of Laverton, they wanted you to come here. I know you’ve decided you’re not going, But they wanted to impress on you, they appear to be united, that that’s been a mistake, that the problems with alcohol violence that it’s caused is now getting out of hand.
PRIME MINISTER: We’ll continue to engage with communities.
JOURNALIST: You won’t re-institute the cashless debit card?
PRIME MINISTER: That decision has been made. There is a facility available as well for people to be able to not just have income management, but to get income management with some supports around it. And that was one of the weaknesses of the CDC was that there weren’t the support networks around it. What we’ve done is to establish a system whereby people will have that.
JOURNALIST: Can I just ask, we spoke to a woman by the name of Janice Scott, she’s up there in Laverton as well. She said, talking about the Voice, they don’t care about the Voice, they’re all trying to do survive day to day and you haven’t won them over with push you push to support the Voice.
PRIME MINISTER: Overwhelmingly, the Voice isn’t something that’s come from me or from the Government. It came from a meeting at Uluru in 2017. That came after thousands of meetings in communities, in remote areas, right around Australia. And what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people said is that they want recognition in the Constitution, we don’t have that yet. After 122 years it should not be beyond us to recognise First Nations people in our Constitution. And that they wanted consultation on matters and affect them with the national Voice.
JOURNALIST: How is the Voice going to help someone like Janice Scott?
PRIME MINISTER: What you will have, as indigenous people have said themselves, is that where Indigenous people have ownership of programs, get to have a say, and that sense of ownership, then you’ll get better outcomes. And we’ve seen that with programs like Indigenous Rangers Programs, community health programs, the programs for justice reinvestment that have occurred in communities like Moree and Bourke in New South Wales that have been put in place, to their credit, by the former Coalition Government. And that’s why every single state and territory leader, Labor and Liberal, is supporting this constitutional referendum that has the support of the business community. It has the support of sporting organisations, it has the support of faith groups, as well, who see this as important. But most importantly, it does have the support of, overwhelmingly, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are the group that put forward this request to non-Indigenous Australia to join with them and walk on the journey of reconciliation.
JOURNALIST: Any regrets about not going to Laverton now?
PRIME MINISTER: I can’t go to every single place in Australia on every day. What I do, though, is get out and about. This is my ninth visit to Western Australia as the Prime Minister. I’ve been the Prime Minister now for under nine months and so I think my commitment to Western Australia is very clear. As part of that, I’ve been to Albany, I will be in Port Hedland tomorrow, I’m here in Kalgoorlie-Boulder right now today. I’ll continue to have a big presence. And that stands in stark contrast to what previous Prime Ministers have done over the previous decade. And might I say, some who are critical of me as well in terms of the Opposition leadership team, I put my record of visiting WA and engaging with WA communities throughout this great state with them any day.
JOURNALIST: It seems that leaders, they don’t seem to be able to actually go and see these people in their homes and the sorts of housing they are living in and their problems.
PRIME MINISTER: I go out and about. And I was out and about sitting down in Fitzroy Crossing talking to the people who were suffering from that flood where they were. I was out and about in Albany. Today, I’ve been out and about here talking to parents from stations who are here with their children. Some of these parents and families live up to 1,000 kilometres and more away from where we are now. I have engaged with them personally as the Prime Minister, people from north, south, east or west of here. One of the reasons why I wanted to come here to the School of the Air is to engage personally with them. And I’ll continue to do so. I’ll continue to be a Prime Minister who gets out and about and doesn’t just sit in Canberra or Sydney. Gets out and about right around this great country – which is why this is my ninth visit. I’ll be back in March. That will be my tenth visit, well ahead of what the target was which was to visit WA ten times each year. Thanks very much.