MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: The coming fortnight will be the last sitting fortnight before the winter break for the Parliament and our Government every single day will be focused on doing everything we can to help Australian households with the cost of living. In eight days’ time every single taxpayer will get a tax cut. For the average family, that means more than $3,000 of what they earn being kept in their pockets, or $60 a week. For a couple with two kids, on average, that will mean an extra $70 per week in their pocket. And at the same time on the first of July, every single Australian household will qualify for $300 off their energy bills, extending the energy bill relief that we've had since we came to government for Australian households. Energy bill relief that it in its first form was opposed tooth and nail by Peter Dutton, in the Parliament.
But while our government is focused on helping Australians with cost of living right now, the only thing Peter Dutton is offering them is higher taxes and higher power bills through his risky nuclear power plan. The Opposition was out this morning on Insiders, again talking about their risky nuclear power plan. And they didn't answer a single question that Australians are asking about this. Most importantly: what's it going to cost? What will mean for our taxes to have Peter Dutton spend $600 billion of taxpayer funds on the seven nuclear power plants. That's equivalent to about 20 years of Medicare spending. What's it going to mean for our power bills to lock Australia into the most expensive form of electricity that exists on the planet? And what's going to happen in the meantime, over these 15 or 20 years - where we know there will be paralysis, investment gone, jobs lost - what will that mean for our power bills?
Every single time the Coalition stands up to speak about this plan, there are only more questions and Peter Dutton, it's increasingly clear, either doesn't know the answers or has deliberately decided to keep them from the Australian people.
Just before I finish and take questions, can I say from the health portfolio as well this week, importantly, the Senate is going to be debating our vaping legislation. This is a huge opportunity for the Parliament to do something meaningful and lasting about the health of young Australians. We are committed to wiping out recreational vaping from this country, because we know it is nothing more, nothing less than a cynical tool by Big Tobacco to recruit a new generation to nicotine addiction. And the tragedy is: right now, that strategy is working. So I call on my parliamentary colleagues, particularly those in the Senate this week, look at this legislation carefully, listen to your school communities and parent communities who are really devastated about what this scourge is doing to the public health of young Australians. I urge them to vote for our vaping reforms. Happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: Do you want to speak on the migration of health professionals, the statistics coming around that?
BUTLER: I've released over the course of the last day or so, some really new statistics about the increase in overseas trained doctors, nurses and allied health professionals that we've been able to recruit over the two years or so that we've been in government. In the first 10 months of this financial year alone, twice as many overseas trained health professionals have come to Australia to do their important work, than were recruited in the final year before the COVID pandemic. We know this is an important part of Australia's health care system: the importation of overseas trained doctors and nurses and health professionals. And we're doing everything we can to make that more effective, to streamline the regulation over the recruitment of overseas trained doctors and nurses, in particular. And that is starting to show fruit. That is a really important vote of confidence from doctors and nurses from all over the world, in Australia's Medicare system.
JOURNALIST: Just in terms of how that marries up with the migration policy. Are we looking at sort of getting less of those people in if we do look at cutting back migration numbers?
BUTLER: I think whether you talk to me as the Health Minister or to our immigration Ministers, Clare O'Neil and Andrew Giles, our Government has a real focus and a priority for the recruitment of overseas trained doctors and nurses. We've made that clear in the processing of visas for those workers, in particular. When we came to government, there were about 1 million unprocessed visa claims or visa applications for Australia - most of them skilled workers who wanted to come and do their work here in Australia. If you talk to hospitals and other health care providers now, those visa processing times have come down to be measured in days, not weeks or months as they were in the previous government. So we're doing everything we can to streamline the regulation of this. There's been a significant review, led by Robyn Kruk, that National Cabinet commissioned, to make sure Health Ministers know how to do this properly. And we're very busy about implementing that.
JOURNALIST: In terms of education on the home front, is there a risk at cutting the number of health professionals - cutting the number of international students - you might get less people studying medicine on home shores?
BUTLER: The number of medical school places won't change there. And you will also continue to see international students flocked to Australia's world class medical schools to train here, as well. But certainly the number of medical school places has expanded as we've come to government, particularly for rural universities. Because we know when young Australians train for medicine in rural communities, they're far more likely to stay there and to practice there.
JOURNALIST: The opposition says there could be multiple reactors on the seven sites. What's your reaction to that?
BUTLER: It just raises more questions. I mean, Ted O'Brien was completely incapable of telling the viewers this morning and telling the electricity industry what share of the electricity market would be taken by their risky of nuclear power plan. I mean, that is utterly critical to underpinning investment in other parts of the electricity system. We saw this over the decade of the last government: we saw 22 energy policies that were not able to land. Time and time again, that government sent a message to the electricity industry that they did not want their investment. That's why we saw six gigawatts of dispatchable power leave the system under the former government and only one gigawatt of dispatchable power come into the system. This is what we're facing again: all of the uncertainty, all of the paralysis that we saw over the last 10 years. We'll see investment go, we'll see jobs go, and we'll see power prices rise, even in the interim, before the nuclear power plants bill. Yet again this morning Ted O’Brien was completely incapable - or unwilling, we're not sure which - of answering a single question of detail at this point.
JOURNALIST: Just on that detail. You know, there's no detail on multiple fronts. What message does that send to investors and international partners?
BUTLER: He's deliberately keeping detail not just from Australian consumers, but from the rest of the Australian electricity industry. We know there needs to be huge investment in Australia's energy system to replace the ageing, increasingly unreliable coal fired power plants and some of the old gas plants that are due to retire now. They were built 40, 50, 60 years ago, they are going to retire. The question is: is there going to be the investment to replace that energy, to bring the jobs with that investment, and to keep downward pressure on power prices? And just the lack of detail, the lack of any willingness on the part of Mr. Dutton or Mr. O'Brien to give answers not just to consumers, but to the electricity industry itself, is going to have a chilling effect on investment.
JOURNALIST: David Littleproud says that the CSIRO estimates it will cost about $8 billion to build each reactor. But that's still way cheaper than your renewables at 1.3 trillion - is that figure right?
BUTLER: It's not right at all. And it was increasingly clear, even with Mr. O'Brien's interview this morning that: they are really playing with figures that have no application to the electricity industry itself. We've been very clear. If you ask the Energy Market Operator, the body that is responsible for running the energy system and the national electricity market, they have said that the investment costs for transmission, for storage, and for generation, out to 2050 of our plan - the Integrated System Plan - would be about $121 billion. Now Peter Dutton’s plan, we hear this morning, alone for seven power plants would cost $600 billion and that would be paid for by taxpayers. As I said, that's equivalent to about 20 years of Medicare, what's that going to do to our taxes?
JOURNALIST: What is this doing to the market certainty for investment in Australia's energy future?
BUTLER: It really has the risk of smashing market certainty. The thing that the energy market complained about right through the course of the last government when they tried to land 22 separate energy policies was the lack of certainty. And as I said, these old plants that were built 50 years ago they are starting to close, whether Mr. Dutton likes it or not, they're just getting to the end of their life and they need to be replaced. That's going to take significant investment from private energy market players. And they need investment certainty to do that. That's what they've got, through our plan that we were able to get through the Parliament: the Net Zero commitment by 2050, the five-year plans on emissions reduction, and importantly, that reliable renewable energy plan that we've taken to the market and took to the Australian people. That's unleashing investment. At the moment, we're approving a new renewable energy power plant about every fortnight, on average, that's what our investment certainty has unleashed.
JOURNALIST: Just with the $600 billion figure that you were referring to earlier. The Smart Energy Council that says the nuclear plant will only supply 3.7% of Australia's energy mix. Is that a valuable return on the investment?
BUTLER: You have to just ask the energy market that. If it was a valuable return on investment, they'd be doing this - but they're not. The energy market and the investors that sit behind energy companies have said, time and time again for years here, nuclear energy is simply far too expensive to invest in, in Australia. The lowest cost form of new energy investment is clearly renewable energy, firmed up by storage and batteries and pumped hydro and the like. You see that through the Integrated System Plan from the Energy Market Operator. You see that through almost every single reputable player in the energy market. That's why Peter Dutton is going to have to dip into the pockets of taxpayers to fund this, because he knows there is not a single investor in this country that is going to put their own money behind Peter Dutton’s risky nuclear power plan.
JOURNALIST: Just aside from the costings, Ted O'Brien said this morning, the final decision whether to go ahead on a particular site with a nuclear plant will be up to the Minister. How does that marry up with repeated references to social licence and the need for social license?
BUTLER: This has been one of the most chilling messages, over the last several days: the conflict within the Coalition about whether communities will even be asked - let alone listened to - about whether they want a nuclear power plant in their backyard. Between the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the National Party, you had completely conflicting messages. And over the weekend, Mr. Dutton has made it clear he doesn't care what the people of Queensland, or the people of Western Australia, or their state governments think, he is going to force his nuclear power plan on them, irrespective of local community wishes. And that really is an extraordinary thing for an alternative Prime Minister to say.
JOURNALIST: Just got one back on your portfolio. On mental health, at the Budget the Government announced a new low intensity digital mental health service and (INAUDIBLE)
BUTLER: In their last review of mental health, the Productivity Commission identified this area as a real gap in Australia's mental health system: supports for people who have relatively mild to moderate needs, but do need support. The “low intensity” therapy services that you see very commonly in other countries, to which we usually compare ourselves. So over the previous 12 months, I sat down with representatives from the sector, with experts, to talk through what we needed to do to invest further in Australia's mental health care system. And this was a very clear message I've got from across the board, from consumers and carers, from providers and experts: that we needed to fill that gap that the Productivity Commission had identified. What that will do is not only provide much more support to people with that level of need, completely free of charge. It will also free up our highly qualified psychologists to provide more specialised psychological therapy to Australians who need that level of mild to moderate support as well. So it's about introducing a stepped system of care that reflects that people, in terms of their mental health, have very different levels of need. And at the moment, we don't have a stepped system to support them.
JOURNALIST: And are you confident that this initiative will fill the entire gap? There's a massive demand.
BUTLER: What it will do is support the people with that level of need. We're still investing in a whole range of other areas. I mean, the Budget last month also included measures for people with more complex needs: refocusing our Medicare Mental Health Centres that we're currently rolling out. I was only at the opening on Friday of one of those out at Elizabeth in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. That was our 25th Medicare Mental Health Centre that we've opened, we're opening 61 of them. They will be particularly focused on people with more moderate to complex needs. Available to walk in clients, seven days a week and completely bulk billed, just expanding our focus on making sure that people have access to the care, when and where they need it in their own community, but also, as affordable or free of charge as possible. Thanks everyone.
ENDS
MEDIA CONTACT:
Enya Pelling - 0423 727 896