20/08/2018
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA
SUBJECTS: Liberal Leadership, Energy
KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: Let’s go to Labor’s Peter Khalil now, and for you this is all just a gift, Peter Khalil.
PETER KHALIL, FEDERAL LABOR MEMBER FOR WILLS: Oh, look Kieran I’m actually, you know, like most Australians crying out for some stable and sensible government and, you know, we’ve had such division and dysfunction in Australian politics for, what is it? A decade now? It’s good for you guys in the media, not for us, but I think Australians are thoroughly sick and tired of it. And all I’ll say about that is that, you know, even in opposition Bill Shorten has lead a team that’s been very, very united in a very difficult period, and you know, if present behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour I think a Shorten Labor government will be very sensible and very stable.
GILBERT: In terms of this energy discussion as well are you, are you, well I guess it’s hard to know exactly what to do on it when remains a state of flux within the government and just in terms of leadership of where this energy thing lands in the end.
KHALIL: Well, we’re all trying to figure out what the actual energy policy is from the Coalition, I think people were saying, I think Bill said last week it was a ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ of a policy, you know, limbs falling off, getting chopped off, putting back on. It’s changing every 24-hours, and that’s something that is again feeding in to the instability in our current political discourse. We want to see a workable solution, we’ve got our commitments to 45% reductions to emissions by 2030 and 50% renewable by 2030, that’s what we’re taking to the people in an election but we want actually having a sensible approach going forward and that’s not what we’re getting from this government.
GILBERT: It would be better, wouldn’t it if you weren’t dealing with a blank sheet of paper when you win the next election as is most likely right now, it’d be better if there was some sort of bi-partisan framework within which you could start.
KHALIL: I think that is the right assumption, you want to ensure that there is some bi-partisanship around this, such an important issue for the future of the country and the future of the planet, really. We want to have that as a starting point, unfortunately we’ve got wreckers inside the Coalition who just don’t want to go there, who are willing to blow the show up in order not to have any commitment at all, whether it’s a Paris Agreement, or whether it’s any actual sensible climate change policy and you’re seeing that play out in the politics, and some people say that they’re using it as a proxy for their personal vendetta’s, that may be so, but that is a very, very selfish position to be taking, given how important this is for Australia and for the globe.
GILBERT: Peter Khalil, thank you, we’ll talk to you soon. After the break, Liberal MP Tim Wilson.
ENDS