KATIE WOOLF, HOST: as we have heard, obviously a senior Liberal frontbencher whose role was assumed by Scott Morrison without her knowledge has called on the former Prime Minister to resign from Parliament as he admits the extraordinary move to jointly appoint himself to several ministries in secret was unnecessary. Now, Minister Morrison appointed himself to jointly run the Home Affairs portfolio without ever informing then Minister Karen Andrews. She said that in a statement and said that “it's just unacceptable. And if this is the way that he prepared to conduct himself without an adequate explanation, even though it's now going to be well past the time when such an explanation should have been made, then it is time for him to leave the Parliament and look elsewhere for employment”. That is the statement from Karen Andrews. Now, joining me in the studio to talk about this and plenty of other things is Luke Gosling, Labor's Member for Solomon. Good morning to you, Luke.
LUKE GOSLING, MEMBER FOR SOLOMON: Morning, Katie.
WOOLF: Luke, what do you reckon? Does he need to resign over this?
GOSLING: Oh, he should leave the parliament. Yeah. I saw him in the last sittings and he didn't look like a happy chappy. And maybe it was because he wasn't the Prime Minister anymore. But I think also it's because this isn't going to be the end of it. There's going to be more and more information come out about how controlling, bullying the culture was within his ministry when he was the Prime Minister. It doesn't reflect well on him, and he should apologise and just finish up and do something else.
WOOLF: Yeah, well, I was going to say, do you think that he needs to issue a formal apology? And look, I know there'll be people listening this morning thinking, “oh, come on, Katie, you're asking a Labor bloke whether he thinks the Liberal Party member should be offering an apology and standing down”. But look, it is about transparency here and it is actually about acknowledging that you've done the wrong thing.
GOSLING: Yeah, and that's why they fought so hard against the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. That's why they've fought so hard against a Royal Commission into the banks and the financial sector. That's why they fought so hard against a National Integrity Commission, a federal ICAC. They don't like transparency. Because what transparency does is it makes sure that the power is with the people because they're fully aware of what's happening in government. And when you're dealing with taxpayer funds, the more transparency, the better.
WOOLF: Do you think it indicates that there could be ways that we can do things better in the future, so something like this can't happen again?
GOSLING: Yeah, well, we need to have better people in leadership positions, clearly. I mean, that's for both sides. If there's people who aren't up to the job, who aren't doing the job ethically, responsibly, and with appropriate transparency around their decision-making, obviously there's some things around national security where, you know, you can't have everyone knowing the reasons behind certain decisions. But in general, if he had come out and said, “look, you know, it's extraordinary times with COVID and for some other reasons I'm going to give myself these other powers”. Then people could have thought, “well, is that reasonable or not”? But he didn't do that. He just hid it all.
WOOLF: And not telling those ministers, I think is what I find so astonishing. Is that you're all on the same team and you're not telling your team mate that you've done something. That's the part that I struggle to get past.
GOSLING: Yeah that is shocking. And why he doesn't deserve to keep the leadership of the party or the country as Prime Minister. And the Australian people made that decision, that they wanted to give the current PM Anthony Albanese go to get the country back on track. And I think we've started well in doing that, but I'm not making a political point. Whoever it was that took that much power for themselves without communicating it. I mean, we had a situation where the head of the Home Affairs Department, a public servant, didn't know that he could be told what to do with the Prime Minister directly in areas that were the Home Affairs Minister's responsibility, without any proper process. So yeah, it's a bad look. He should resign and we can crack on.
WOOLF: Well, it is a bad look. And I know that there has been sort of some critics saying, “well, hang on, is this Labor trying to deflect and not talk about cost of living?” But I will say that we've had you on plenty of times, actually, over the last couple of weeks when it comes to cost of living. And one of those issues that has been really high on the agenda is the price of fuel. Now, you and I had a discussion about a week ago about this. We're finally seeing a little bit of movement at the bowser. Not enough. I'll just take you through the prices today. So for your unleaded in Darwin at the terminal gate, it's on $1.55. When you go across to the bowser, the fairest that you are going to find it is $1.83, but the large majority at $1.89. The average is $1.89. Absolutely all of them are at $1.89, some of them 0.5, some of them 0.7, some of them 0.9. But what I can say is none of them – besides Fuel Express, none of them are any different
GOSLING: That’s weird, isn't it, that they're all doing the same thing.
WOOLF: Weird, do you think, Luke?
GOSLING: I think so.
WOOLF: Then when you go across to the terminal gate, $1.77 for diesel, when you go across to the bowser, the fairest you're going to find for your diesel is then at $2.90. So again, absolutely everywhere at that same price, $2.90, 0.9, 0.7, 0.5.
GOSLING: Yeah. And here's something through the chats that we've been having, Katie and listeners that understand in more detail how all this works than I do, have pointed out that the fuel companies buy their fuel for at least $0.08 a litre below the terminal gate price. So the terminal gate price is $1.55. They're paying $1.47. Now, it costs between $0.12 and $0.14 a litre to profitably operate one of these servos, right. But they're making obscene profits, like they're making $0.40 to $0.46 a litre.
WOOLF: So Luke, where did you get that info from, that they're actually buying it for cheaper than what's at the terminal gate?
GOSLING: That's from someone very knowledgeable in the industry who I won't mention on air, but they know what they're talking about. And this is why I'm looking at an inquiry – because I'm now running a committee that does have transport as part of its charter. Now the decision on what we inquire into with my committee is ultimately made by the Minister – not Scott Morrison, but the actual Minister. So it's one thing that I'm looking at, because not only does gouging by these fuel companies concern me, because Territorians and Australians all around the country are struggling with the cost of living. But fuel security, I think we need to look at that as well. We're down to two refineries now, so we need to be able to make our own fuel at affordable prices and have these companies not able to gouge as much as they are.
WOOLF: So Luke, last time we spoke, you were going to write a letter to the ACCC. Did you end up doing that?
GOSLING: I've been speaking when I've been speaking with the Minister who deals with the ACCC, I note that the Chief Minister has, but yeah, I'm talking to our federal ministers. A good thing about being in government now is that when you're talking to the ministers, you're talking to the people that are directly responsible for these issues.
WOOLF: So are you pushing for there to be an inquiry now into these petrol prices? Is that what you'd like to see?
GOSLING: I think I'd like to see something that brings in fuel security as well. So fuel affordability, because it affects so many companies, but also this issue of fuel security, because we used to have – I don't know if you remember, but there was the Energy Minister Angus Taylor, and he bought fuel from America that's sitting in America. But I don't think that's even there anymore as part of some international fuel deal. We might not have that anymore. So we may actually only have a couple of days of fuel reserves. And you can't run a country, you can't run an economy, and you can't provide for your citizens, one, if fuel's unreasonably expensive, and two, if it's not available.
WOOLF: Luke, how soon could we potentially see this inquiry get underway? What are the next steps from your perspective?
GOSLING: Well, obviously, there are some other topics that different members have said that – because it's a big area of portfolio, regional development, well, fuel prices are important to regional development, obviously. It's infrastructure; we know that all the inputs for doing business are going up, and fuel is one of them. But then it's transport as well. And obviously fuel and that diesel price in particular has a big effect on our transport industry. So I'm yeah, working up what I would see is a good terms of reference for that. It's not a guarantee that we'll be inquiring into that initially, because there are other topics that the Minister may have, but it's definitely in the mix.
WOOLF: And you're going to be pushing for it by the sounds of it.
GOSLING: 100 per cent, Katie.
WOOLF: Alright, well look, let's move on because I know that this Friday, just briefly there is going to be a town hall meeting held for arts organisations, and also it's about the national cultural policy. What exactly is happening?
GOSLING: Just before we move on from fuel, I just want to mention, Katie, that we see this time and time again: when we bring attention to the gouging of the retail fuel companies, they drop the price a little bit and hope that everyone gets on with life because we're all busy, but then it comes back up. So we just want to keep the pressure on.
WOOLF: Absolutely.
GOSLING: So thanks for helping with that. So, Susan Templeman has been appointed – she's a colleague of mine from down the Blue Mountains, where she's been appointed by the Prime Minister as a special envoy for the arts. And what we're going to establish is a new cultural policy. We're having a consultation on Friday morning at Brown’s Mart, so come along to that. It's how we can really leverage our arts policy as an economic driver as well. So, one of the best things in Australia is our creative arts, and they actually bring a lot of money into our economy.
WOOLF: Just look at the Darwin Festival right now.
GOSLING: 100 per cent, I was down there last night, I'll be there again to tonight and tomorrow night. It's just incredible. But so yeah, it was a pleasure to launch a new programme that Asialink’s running which will have our art and our festivals interacting with festivals in our Indo-Pacific region. So anyway, Browns Mart, 9.30 Friday morning.
We've also got Amanda Rishworth in town. She's Minister for Government Services, and she's coming to the party with some domestic violence funding. We know that we're well above the national rates when it comes to this. So really welcome that, and well done to Kate Warden for her advocacy there.
And we've got Matt Keogh who's the Veterans Affairs Minister. He'll be joining me out at Bees Creek tomorrow afternoon at 6 pm for Vietnam Veterans Day memorial service. Everyone's welcome to come out to Bees Creek to Reg Hillier House. And I just note that Bob Shewring, who's done a lot of work for Vietnam veterans, is launching a book about Reg Hillier, who was the only Territory Vietnam veteran to die during the Vietnam War. And it's a fantastic book and a great credit to Bob and the work of Veterans Australia NT out at Bees Creek.
WOOLF: Yeah, well, Luke Gosling, we appreciate your time this morning. We are going to have to leave it there, but thanks very much for coming on and having a chat with us.
GOSLING: We did fit a bit in, Katie.
WOOLF: We certainly did.
