E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
BALLINA
WEDNESDAY, 10 APRIL 2019

SUBJECTS: Labor’s plan to step up the fight against smoking, Electric Vehicles, Morrison Government Dysfunction.

JUSTINE ELLIOT MP, MEMBER FOR RICHMOND: Good morning everyone, I'm Justine Elliot, member for Richmond. I'm very pleased to have here today Bill Shorten, Labor leader. We have also got Catherine King here, our Shadow Minister for Health, and also NSW Senator Kristina Keneally here as well, there she is. We have also got Patrick Deegan here, our candidate for Page. First of all, can I say how great it is to have Bill Shorten back here on the North Coast. Bill's been here many times, and he understands the people of the North Coast, he understands our issues. So, welcome back Bill, great to have you here. It's also great to have Bill here making a number of really important announcements. Of course, these announcements are part of our $2.3 billion Cancer Care Package. This is a huge investment, indeed, the largest investment in cancer care in Australia's history. It'll make a huge difference for the people of the North Coast in terms of actually being able to access affordable treatments, diagnoses, when they do have cancer. So, thank you so much Bill for coming up today and making these important announcements, and I'll now hand over to Bill.
 
BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Thank you, Justine. It's great to be back in Ballina, great to be back on the North Coast for Patrick and Justine, Labor's North Coast team for the federal election. I'd like to acknowledge North Coast Radiology for hosting us at the visit. But in particular, before I get into our exciting announcement, I just want to thank Carolyn and Marilyn for taking the time to tell me about their stories.
 
You know, talking to them reminds me of what really matters in politics, very clearly. Politics is about your family and your health. If your family is okay and your health is okay, then you have got all the choices in the world, and all the dreams and thoughts. But if you get a diagnosis of cancer, then all of a sudden, that is terrifying. When I meet Carolyn and Marilyn, I just realise how strong they are. They didn't choose to be strong, they had to be strong. When they tell me that lung cancer can be a very lonely, lonely fight, what they're reminding me of is that there's no good cancer, there's just bad cancer. And lung cancer sufferers suffer a stigma, perhaps unlike other cancers, and I promised Marilyn that I'd say this before I made our announcement. Marilyn, and to all of those Australians who live with lung cancer, it doesn't matter how you got the lung cancer, if it was smoking or if it was through other circumstances. 
 
Not all lung cancer is caused by smoking, but even if lung cancer is caused by smoking, I'm telling you now, when I talk to you, I just see someone who has lung cancer. We make no judgements, but we do recognise that people with lung cancer have perhaps been stigmatised in the more general fight against cancer and today this announcement is not just about our general fight against cancer, and I want to help people with less waiting periods, with making sure that we help people with their out-of-pockets. I just want to say to every Australian who's had a diagnosis of lung cancer, and to every Australian family member of someone with a diagnosis of lung cancer, that Labor understands your particular challenge.
 
Today, Labor is putting forward over $63 million to help in the fight against lung cancer. This builds upon our multi-billion dollar war chest to help people deal with the out-of-pocket costs of fighting cancer. To help with making sure they can get the scans, and the specialist's advice in a timely fashion to reduce waiting lists, to make sure that people in regional Australia are not treated as second class in the fight against cancer because they don't have access to the same resources and quality treatment as people in the cities do.
 
But today's lung cancer package is also about the future. It's about making sure we discourage our young people, the next generation, from taking up smoking. We would like to get rates of lung cancer, and smoking rates, down below 10 per cent. Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death, and we want to change that.
 
Now, we will back in the research and will back in the other measures, but lung cancer has perhaps been neglected, and what we want to do is help people in the fight against lung cancer. But also, we do want to discourage the younger generations from taking up smoking. That's why it’s particularly good to be here with the Tobacco-Free Portfolio push, we are going to provide some money to help the campaign, and we will hear from the remarkable campaigners in a moment. We want to make sure that we discourage investment in tobacco-related companies, so that we can help put downward pressure on the smoking rates.
 
Listen, that's enough from me, but I would like now to invite Catherine and some of her guest speakers to talk about some of our exciting initiatives to talk about the scourge of lung cancer.
 
CATHERINE KING, SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH MEMBER FOR BALLARAT: Thanks Bill. Well some 13,000 people were diagnosed with lung cancer last year, and every year 10,000 die. We know that tobacco smoking is one of the leading causes of lung cancer, but we also know that one in five people who get lung cancer have never smoked. Think about it, those of us in our fifties, we think about sitting in our car with our parents smoking away. You think about the carcinogenic exposure through all sorts of occupations that we have seen. Lung cancer has many causes, but it also has a substantial stigma and we want to call that out today.
 
This package that we are announcing today is comprised of $40 million dollars to restart the national tobacco campaign. We haven't had a national tobacco campaign for five and a half-years, since Labor was last in office. We need that campaign to stop encouraging young people from taking up smoking, and that people are absolutely aware that cigarettes do damage. Every cigarette does damage. We're also announcing support services for people with lung cancer. There are only seven lung cancer nurses across the country supporting over 3500 lung cancer patients. We want to increase the number by another 20 lung cancer nurses, and I want to recognise the Lung Foundation who is here with us today alongside two very beautiful patients that we've heard from today. We are also going to support Bronwyn King's Tobacco-Free Portfolio. Bronwyn was an oncologist at the Peter Mac in Melbourne, and discovered that her superannuation, part of it, was invested in tobacco shares, and wanted to do something about it. She's taken this program, the divestment of superannuation and other investment portfolios from tobacco internationally, and she's been speaking with the World Health Organisation. We want to support this great Australian in getting tobacco funding out of our superannuation. We also want to have an awareness campaign - we are seeing an emergence of lung disease happening in occupations where we thought we had long, long eliminated it. Young people, we had a young 36 year-old die in Queensland just recently who had been cutting concrete for many of our kitchens and benches that we have. We are seeing way too many young Australians begin to get lung disease. We are also going to be focusing on stigma and making sure people understand what happens. The fact that we haven't seen a national campaign for a long period - for five and a half-years - you have to question it. This is a government that still has the National Party taking tobacco donations. Scott Morrison has to step up today and say to his Coalition partners: enough. It took $56,000 from tobacco companies last year, and Phillip Morris is the second largest donor to the National Party. This is absolutely inexcusable, and Morrison has to get behind this campaign and get behind calling his National Party colleagues out and getting rid of their addiction to tobacco donations once and for all. I'm going to hand over to Sanchia Aranda, who's from the Cancer Council, who's going to speak a little bit about the importance of this announcement, and our broader cancer package, and Bronwyn King, from Tobacco-Free Portfolios, will also talk a little bit about her work.
 
SANCHIA ARANDA, CEO OF THE CANCER COUNCIL: Thank you. I'd like to start by calling out how fantastic it is to see cancer put at the forefront through the Labor Party's announcements over the last week. We are excited by the opportunities to really focus on reducing any inequalities in cancer outcomes. We know that the poorest people in our community have 37 per cent higher age-standardised mortality rate from cancer than the wealthiest and that is just not acceptable and so we are absolutely delighted by some of these announcement. In relation to the announcements made today specifically around lung cancer, we absolutely recognise the stigma associated with lung cancer, and in fact with several cancers, but this important campaign shows that it doesn't matter how you get cancer, but actually you deserve the all best treatment that the world can offer, and the best chance of survival regardless of your circumstances. In terms of the money for the national tobacco campaign, this is the first major investment announcement since 1997. In the 1997 campaign, a $9 million investment saved 55,000 lives, and also saved over $700 million in costs across the health and welfare system. So we need to see investment in anti-tobacco as really, really important. What's really important about this is that we know that two things drive down smoking rates. One is taxation, and the other is health messaging. All the national surveys show that at the moment, taxational price is the only driver and that the health driver is falling way behind other drivers of quitting smoking and the end result of that is a slowing in the rate of reduction of tobacco smoking in this country. And so this investment will go a long way to ensuring not only do our young people not take up smoking because of health messaging but that those people who are already addicted and have fallen fowl of the tobacco industry’s terrible attempts to get us all addicted to nicotine are protected from that and given the opportunity to quit. So, thank you to the Labor Party for making these announcements and we look forward tobacco control and prevention at the heart of this next election process. So thank you very much.
 
DR BRONWYN KING FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER  TOBACCO FREE PORTFOLIOS: So thank you very much, my name is Dr Bronwyn King, I'm a radiation oncologist and the CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios, at Tobacco Free Portfolios we are thrilled to hear of Labor's commitment to our work. For many years we've been very busy trying to build a bridge between the finance sector and the health sector on the issue of tobacco. It makes absolutely no sense for Australians to lead the world in the fight against tobacco yet finance tobacco on the other hand, and we will use this funding from a Labor Government to increase our work to escalate our impact and to make sure that no Australian is inadvertently supporting the tobacco industry through their superannuation fund, through their bank or through their insurers. So we're very happy to be here today, we really want to warmly welcome this commitment and we very much support the Labor Government's commitment to all patients who have cancer including those who suffer terribly from lung cancer. Thank you.
 
SHORTEN: Catherine has got one more exciting announcement for the North Coast today, our radiation centres.
 
KING: Also meant to mention that very importantly, one of the initiatives we have announced is thirteen radiation therapy centres across the community, two of which will be located in these communities represented by Patrick, hopefully by Patrick and also by Justine. For Far North New South Wales there will be one located in Far North New South Wales and another centre will be located in Grafton. We know that only one in three people who are recommended for radiation therapy in Australia actually get access to it. Wherein comparable countries it is one in two, we know that there are some 13,000 or 15 per cent recommended for radiation therapy don't actually get access and part of that is because it’s just too far for many people to travel to get access to that radiation therapy, and of course cost is another factor. So these will be very important radiation therapy centres here in the communities along the New South Wales coast. 
 
SHORTEN: Are there any questions on the lung cancer and radiation therapy announcements and then I'm happy to go to other issues?
 
JOURNALIST: Exactly where in the Richmond seat will this radiation centre be?
 
SHORTEN: I'll let Catherine answer that.
 
KING: Thank you. Thanks for that. We'll have to go through a process to determine the exact location but obviously it would either be Ballina or Byron are the two logical locations for this centre.
 
SHORTEN: Any other questions about our fight against cancer and helping people with their out of pocket costs?
 
JOURNALIST: While this will help access for a lot of people, there will still be some people left in the lurch and some of the biggest costs are the travel costs for regional patients, is Labor going to do anything about that?
 
SHORTEN: And I acknowledge that there are travel costs, the best way we're tackling that is we're bringing in the services to the people. Right now people have to travel vast distances, I've just been in Queensland, people have to frequently go to Brisbane to get timely attention, same in regional New South Wales, Victoria, all parts of Australia. So our 13 radiation treatment centres is I think a game changer in terms of being able to provide services. Yesterday we announce $500 million to help our public hospitals that will help reduce the waiting lists for cancer treatment. I don't know if you know but 83 per cent of our fellow Australians who get a positive result out of the government bowel screening tests have to wait beyond the recommended period to actually get treatment. So our public system is spectacular but we ask them to do a great deal with not enough, our staff are fantastic - they do a great job. So we're putting in $500 million, much of that will go to regional hospitals, to be able to provide it. We were in Rockhampton, sorry Gladstone, in Gladstone hospital yesterday – I was also in Rockhampton. What it means by providing assistance with some of this money is that 3000 people live in Gladstone won't have to travel to Rocky or Brisbane to get treatment. So I think one of the best ways we help defray travel costs is to invest in the regions. You know our Medicare cancer plan is actually a regional Australia health plan. Too often the results in regional Australia in terms of fighting cancer are unacceptable. And there's one reason. Because the services aren't close enough to home. Or they're too expensive or the waiting lists are too long. If there are no other questions I'm happy to go to other matters.
 
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten in regards to the fish kill report do you think the Government's response will be enough to prevent a future fish kill?
 
SHORTEN: This government - too little too late. We've got a government in denial about the impact of climate change, we've got a government that is basically letting Australia's largest river system die because they have not allowed enough flow of water from the north to south. This is what happens when you get a crony government who just focuses on one part of the river system and not the rest. So, does anyone think if there was no election the government would have even done this? Labor commissioned the Australian Academy of Science, a peak body of scientists in Australia and they made it very clear that climate change and river flow are the reasons why we are getting unprecedented fish kills. Don't believe the people who say this is always what happens. It is not. This is part of the greater problem of climate change in this country. This government is simply a broken government because they can’t agree on taking action on climate change. We are handing on a more damaged planet to the next generation because this government can't make a decision on climate. I don't know how many of you here have had the chance to see an extraordinary intervention from a group of people who don't normally intrude in the political debate. No less than 23 former fire chiefs, leading experts. the firefighters the front line. the people who we count upon to keep us safe and to protect our property and farms. Twenty-three former fire chiefs today have issued an extraordinary intervention, they have said that the Morrison Government, the LNP Government are not doing enough on climate change. So this government, you know they ignore the scientists they ignore the parents they ignore the environmentalists they ignore the evidence. But how can the Morison Government keep ignoring firefighters? How can we be in a situation where we ask our firefighters to go on the front line to deal with the catastrophic effects of climate change yet not do the policies which will actually make their job easier, which can prevent future expansion of natural disasters? I am pleased to say that my emergency services Attorney General Mark Dreyfus is meeting with the firefighters, with the experts today in Melbourne. I will certainly be meeting with them in the near future. This government, this election, one of the issues that's going to be a referendum on is that we want real action on climate change. This government so far gives you no cause for any optimism that a vote for Liberals will be anything other than a vote for the same inaction, chaos and division on climate.
 
JOURNALIST: Yesterday your shadow Attorney General said Peter Dutton has some questions to answer over cash for access meetings with Mr Huang. Do you have any questions to answer about your own $55,000 paid meeting with the same Chinese donor in 2015. Did you discuss the China Australia Free trade deal?
 
SHORTEN: I didn’t catch that last bit?
 
JOURNALIST: Did you discuss the China Australia Free trade deal?
 
SHORTEN: First of all, we have said that we should not have foreign donations in our system. So the matters to which you refer have already been previously canvassed in the media. I understand the Government wanting to repeat old news to distract from their own problems but Labor took, we imposed a voluntary ban on ourselves not to take foreign donations long before the law caught up with it. We asked the Government, The Liberals and Nationals to do the same thing but they didn’t. They love that money. They did not want to stop it flowing. Now foreign donations have been banned two years later and I am pleased. In terms of the issue arising out of what happened yesterday and the reportage on Monday night, what we see as a business model of the Liberal Party where powerful Liberal lobbyists pocket tens of thousands of dollars for organising meetings with their mates in the government. This is a very bad look. But that almost, believe it or not, that is not the key issue, as bad as that is. What the real problem is that you have the former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, he has been the chair of the National Security Committee. He is the leading spokesperson for three years on the national security of the nation. He has blown the whistle on these revelations. Not the ones which were already out there in the public domain, he has blown the whistle on revelations about this and he has said that Mr Morrison needs to explain this conduct and he has said that you can’t wipe it under the carpet, you can't brush it off as gossip. What we have is the former Liberal Prime Minister accusing the current Government of not dealing with an issue and doesn’t that just highlight again the complete division and dysfunction in the Government? Australians are sick of the infighting of the Liberals, especially when it comes to national security. 
 
JOURNALIST: What about your meeting though, what was discussed there, what commitments were made? 
 
SHORTEN: We have had plenty of meetings with all sorts of people we always talk about foreign policy; you can talk about domestic policy. But one thing is for sure. Any donation that was given to Labor and I thought, to the Liberals, is always disclosed. You might not be aware but Labor has a self-imposed standard that if anyone wants to make a donation above $1000 it has to be disclosed. What we have seen here on Monday is a revelation that senior Liberal powerbrokers are pocketing money for themselves, not even their Party, they're pocketing money for themselves, providing cash for access. But I think, what has compounded the problems for the current Government is that the former Prime Minister, the man who the Liberal Party said we should all vote for in 2016, a man who they said we should vote for at the last election has now blown the whistle on the conduct of the current Prime Minister and his Senior Ministers. How much division under the current Government is this nation have to put up with before this current Government realises they can't just cover up these matters and what they have to do is focus on the national interest of the people rather than their own infighting?
 
JOURNALIST: Is it hypocritical to be criticising Peter Dutton given your own links? 
 
SHORTEN: We have made very clear about donations. The issue here is that it's not me saying that Mr Morrison is wiping this under the carpet, it's Malcolm Turnbull.  What is going on with these Liberals? They are shaking hands and best mates last year. No-one can forget the footage of Barnaby Joyce and Malcolm Turnbull after the New England by-election. Mr Morrison putting his arm around Malcolm Turnbull in August of last year saying that Mr Morrison was ambitious for Mr Turnbull. But because all of a sudden they are so bitter with hate, anything Malcolm Turnbull says is apparently wrong according to Mr Morrison. This is not the way to run the national security of the nation. This is not the way to run the Government of the nation. A party that can't govern itself can't govern the nation. And it is not me saying this, Malcolm Turnbull is criticising this current crew but the people of Australia are fed up with a lot of them.
 
JOURNALIST: Why aren't you marching in the Change the Rules rallies today? 
 
SHORTEN: Because I'm here.
 
JOURNALIST:  If you were in Melbourne would you be marching alongside (inaudible)?
 
SHORTEN: I am not in Melbourne and the point about it is that is, two or three things. One is I am very, very, very proud of the fact that Labor is enunciating a plan to help Australians in the fight of their lives. We over complicate politics sometimes, it is all about the ‘gotcha’ and the division and the personalities. When you strip away the rubbish and the noise and all the coverage of politics, what really matters is your family and your health. I feel privileged to have spoken to Carolyn and Marliyn today. Both these women are very strong. They have had the shock of their lives cancer is not a journey, it is an ordeal, hell, it’s terrifying. I could not be more excited, frankly, about what we are outlining because I realise that what we are doing is going to make a real difference. Forget the noise. Even in this press conference here, even if you did a survey on the street here, one in every two Australians will get a diagnosis of cancer in their life and ask anyone in the street here do they know a family touched by cancer, yes, they do. And we know that the system, as good as it is, is not good enough. The reality is that if you go through the public system, there are waiting times. Great staff, great work but there are waiting times and there are out-of-pocket costs. And a lot of people have to move between the public and the private systems. I think it is a shock to a lot of people before they get that diagnosis of cancer. That not only does cancer make you sick but it can make you poor. The strategy for fighting cancer is to not out wait it on a waiting list to get a life-saving treatment or scan. That is why I am here today. 
 
In terms of what people are saying about wages policy, I understand the frustration of millions of Australian wage earners who are frustrated with the fact that everything is going up except their wages. I mean your electricity bills have gone up 15- 20 per cent under this government in recent years. If you are a small business your energy bills have gone up and up. Your out of pocket to see a GP that’s up 20 per cent. Your out-of-pocket to see a specialist up nearly 40 per cent. There is no action in terms of wages. If you work in hospitality and retail your penalty rates have been cut. Women in industries where they predominantly employee women like early childhood education get paid less than the men do in comparable industries. No wonder people are frustrated with the current system.
 
JOURNALIST: You have set a target of 50 per cent of new car sales being electric by 2030. Have you set a target for how many of them to be built in Australia?
 
SHORTEN: I have noticed that this government, they are so addicted to scare campaigns they ever want to scare you about their own policies because there are a lot of similarities between our policy and that of the Government. I will hand over to a Senator who could host her own motoring show she is that expert on electric vehicles. But the point about it in all seriousness is this, we must have one of the few governments in the world who has not read about the future of electric vehicles. The reality is that all of the big car companies around the world are moving to producing electric vehicles. What we want to do is make sure that Australia is in that debate. We're giving Australians choice for cheaper vehicles powered by electricity. It is very clear and all experts have said that electric vehicles over time over time are going to decrease the cost of owning a car. But we need to send a signal to the world to start selling us cheaper versions of electric vehicles. We want to be a nation that manufactures here, never let us forget that under the current Liberal National Government we lost the car industry. We lost tens of thousands of jobs. Other first world countries are manufacturing cars but our short sighted luddites gave up manufacturing cars in Australia but under us it is going to be different. We have a three word slogan for Australia. It is called made in Australia. So we are going to fund this advanced manufacturing future fund and if electric vehicles are part of a manufacturing future we're going to provide them cheap finance. I would like to see us make electric cars in Australia because Australians are top-class manufacturers when you have a government who supports them. Speaking of electric vehicles let me hand over to the expert.
 
KRISTINA KENEALLY, SENATOR FOR NEW SOUTH WALES: Thank you Bill. To listen to Prime Minister Scott Morrison you would think that the Labor Party was going to sneak into your house on the January 1st 2030 and steal your car keys and deny you any fun on the weekend, towing your boat or driving your Hilux. I know it is only Wednesday and I hate to ruin the Prime Minister’s weekend but Toyota has announced today that they will be making all their vehicles electric including the Hilux within six years. So sorry Prime Minister if you want to drive a Hilux in about six years’ time it is going to be electric. Scott Morrison also said that electric vehicles can't tow a boat. I don't know what kind of boat Liberal MPs get around in maybe it is a superyacht, it's got to be the size I guess that is larger than a plane because there is the point in which an electric vehicle towed a Qantas jet just recently at Melbourne Airport. Maybe the Prime Minister wants to check that out on YouTube.
 
This Government doesn't know if they are coming or going on electric vehicles. We have got Angus Taylor in the Sydney Morning Herald today saying that despite the fact that the Coalition Government has the exact same electric vehicle target as the Labor Party, 50 per cent of new cars sales by 2030 to be electric, Angus Taylor says "Labor's strategy is unsound", despite the policy being exactly the same as Labor's. This is the same Angus Taylor who in October 2018 put out a media release saying that "electric vehicles will soon have access to an ultra-rapid charging network along major driving routes from Brisbane to Adelaide, including around Sydney and Melbourne and separately, separately in Western Australia. The Australian Government, the Morrison Government through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency will provide $6 million, $6 million taxpayer dollars to charge Fox Limited to develop 21 ultra-rapid charging stations powered by renewable energy," thank you Angus Taylor for that. This government doesn't know if they are coming or going, they have Climate Solutions Package. In that Climate Solutions Package there are 200 mega tonnes of CO2 abatement, that is a third of the target that they need to reach in order to reach their Paris Climate Agreement. In that an electric vehicle policy - in fact there is a very helpful chart. You can go and look it up on the climate solutions package right here, there is the electric vehicle strategy. Ten mega tonnes of CO2 that they project that they will remove in order to meet their Paris Climate Targets, how are they going to do that? They are going to do that as they told us in Estimates last week, by 2030 they will have 50 per cent of new vehicles sales in Australia being electric. Where have I heard that Bill? I think you announced that. 
 
Now listen, this government really doesn’t know whether they are coming or going on electric vehicles, they might want to have a look at the long list of people who have endorsed Labor’s policy and I guess by extension and probably endorse the Coalition with their 50 per cent target like the Australians Logistics Council, we have Toyota, we have NRMA, the Smart Energy Council, The Clean Energy Council, the Electric Vehicle Council, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, Atlassian founder Mike Cannon Brooks, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Alex Turnbull, Lucy Turnbull and another guy you might have heard of, Malcolm Turnbull. It is hard not to imagine Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor calling each other on their land lines planning to swap cassette mixed tapes of Duran Duran and Huey Lewis and The News and making plans on Friday night to get together to watch a VHS of that movie Flying High, I tell you what though, here is one man who won't be in that little phone call, who probably isn't part of that special group Josh Frydenberg, and I will end on his words, "A global revolution in electric vehicles is underway, and with the right preparation, planning and policies Australian consumers are set to be the big beneficiaries." Thank you Josh. 
 
SHORTEN: It seems a shame not end the press conference at that stage it was such a good point. Are there any last questions? 
 
JOURNALIST: You sort of touched on it before but does Labor then have plans to offer millions of dollars to these automotive giants to help resurrect the car industry.
 
SHORTEN: We can't put back together what the Liberals have destroyed. We can't bring Holden and Ford and Toyota back. We had a great car industry and it certainly didn't require the sort tax assistance which this government gives multinationals or big banks, but they blew it. They wrecked the car industry and I for one am not going to forgive them for that. But you can't put it back together again. But I don’t want Australia to be a country who misses out on the future. How did we get to a set of circumstances where you ‘ve got a Prime Minister in a government campaigning against electric vehicles? Let's just deal with the scare nonsense, no one is going to take your car off you okay, but why should we deny Australians in the next dozen years the opportunity for cheaper, more fuel efficient cars, world’s best technology. When did this become a country who decided to pull up the drawbridge and say the rest of the world is too hard, we are afraid of the future and we are just going to live in a black and white world, no colour TV, an AM world not FM world, no Wi-Fi, no smartphones. Australians are early adaptors, they love new technology, we will work with industry, we will work with the people. We should be a country in my opinion who makes things, we can make electric vehicles, we are certainly not going to say no, but we have no specific plans of the nature which the Government is trying to cook up at the minute.
 
JOURNALIST:  Will there be a target for how many of those are built in Australia? 
 
SHORTEN: We have to walk before we run, first of all we have to get rid of a government who thinks that electric vehicles are the devil. One final thing just to finish up - I just say to Mr Morrison, for goodness sake mate call the election. I am relaxed when you call it, we're ready , we've got the policies, I've got a united team, we've got a vision for the future. It’s no skin off my nose if you drag it on and on, the people of Australia deserve better from their Government, stop wasting the advertising, let's just call the election. You can call it tonight, you could drive to Yarralumla, you do it tomorrow, maybe you do it Sunday, maybe that makes you feel very on top of everything, but the reality is there will be an election, let's get on with it. The Australian people actually want to make a choice , six years of instability, six years three Prime Ministers, 13 energy policies, enough is enough, times up, let’s have an election. 
 
Thanks everybody.