E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
CANBERRA
MONDAY, 2 MARCH 2020

SUBJECTS: Alinta Energy and Foreign Investment Review Board; Scott Morrison’s failure to provide economic leadership or a plan; Reserve Bank decision on interest rates.

DEBORAH O’NEILL, SENATOR FOR NSW: I'm here to raise concerns today about the potential identity theft of over a million Australians. In 2017 the then Treasurer Scott Morrison signed off the deal for the purchase of Alinta Energy by Chow Tai Fook, a Chinese company. One of the conditions that was put forward to Mr Morrison for tick off by the Foreign Investment Review Board was that privacy of Australians was paramount. I have spoken to a whistleblower who knows what's going on inside Alinta. This is a company that has failed to comply with the Foreign Investment Review Board conditions of sale and purchase. The man who was ultimately responsible for making sure that compliance occurred in a timely way for Australians was none other than Mr Morrison our Prime Minister. When Australians need him to stand up for them he is missing in action. He was missing in action over the summer. He was missing when he was the Treasurer and failed to protect Australians' identities. This is a very serious failing by a Treasurer who was more interested in getting the job of Prime Minister than looking after 1.1 million Australians who use Alinta Energy. I'd like to hand over to our Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks very much, Deb. The Prime Minister has very serious questions to answer here. This scandal goes to the very top of the Morrison Government. It involves Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but also Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. The Prime Minister and Treasurer would have known for some time now that 1.1 million Australians' identities could be at risk and jeopardized by a failure to follow through on undertakings during the sale which was approved by Scott Morrison back when he was the Treasurer. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg need to come clean and tell the Australian people what has gone on here. Is their data safe or has it been jeopardized by a failure to follow though? When it comes to rorting taxpayer dollars, this Prime Minister is a micromanager pouring over a colour-coded spreadsheets but when it comes to enforcing FIRB conditions he is missing in action.

He is missing in action when it comes to foreign investment, climate change and on the economy. These are serious times for the economy. We've always acknowledged that the Coronavirus would have an impact on the Australian economy and it's clearly making investors and the stock market jumpy. Because of the inaction, ineptitude, and incompetence of this Liberal National Government Australia confronts the challenges of Coronavirus from a position of relative economic weakness, not strength. The economy has been weak for some time now. We know from the Government's own downgrades to their own forecasts late last year that the economy was weak, wages were stagnant, growth was slowing and has now almost halved since Frydenberg took over as Treasurer. We've got issues with productivity, business investment and household debt. Government debt has more than doubled and it blew out substantially again in the new numbers released on Friday. Frydenberg and Morrison are desperately hoping that people forget how weak the economy was before the fires and before most people had even heard of Coronavirus. They shouldn't be let off the hook for seven years of that economic incompetence and inaction which was delivering a weakening economy before this difficult summer. The Coronavirus and the fires do not on their own excuse or explain seven years of economic failures under this Liberal National Government.

Tomorrow we'll get an interest rate decision. We don't speculate on the decisions taken by the Reserve Bank. Clearly the market is expecting there to be a rate cut tomorrow. Interest rates are already a quarter of what they were during the worst of the Global Financial Crisis. It is extraordinary that rates are already so extremely low by Australian standards. What that shows is that the economy has been weak for some time. It shows that the Reserve Bank is prepared to do its job to try and support the economy but without a Government that has a plan for the economy, the Reserve Bank has been left to do all of the heavy lifting on their own. In these uncertain times Australians are crying out for economic leadership and an economic plan but they're getting neither of those things from this Prime Minister and this Government.

JOURNALIST: To be really clear about these millions of identities put at risk, what exactly has failed to be done that should have been done, to be really clear?

O'NEILL: The Foreign Investment Review Board set the terms and conditions of the purchase of Alinta Energy by Chow Tai Fook. Amongst those conditions were commitments to protect Australians' identities by making sure it was stored on Australian soil for its security. We know from a whistleblower and internal emails that they have at least one third party provider, the one that I referred to this morning is Monster Energy, who have data stored in New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. That is a huge risk to Australians' identities. If you're a user of Alinta Energy, when you plugged in your kettle this morning the last thing you'd be thinking is that your personal data - your Medicare details, your passport, your personal health information because Alinta should know if you have ongoing needs and you need to have a 24-hour supply guaranteed - that that data is now not secure because third party providers are storing data offshore. That is of great concern to me as an Australian and I think it is very worrying that there were 800,000 people at risk when Scott Morrison ticked off this agreement. I was his responsibility to monitor its implementation. There are now 1.1 million Australians at risk. It's down to Scott Morrison and his Government. He ticked it off as Treasurer. He didn't see it implemented before he moved on to the top job he was after and this continues to be a risk for Australians today.

JOURNALIST: Do you believe he knows that this data is being stored offshore?

O'NEILL: That is a question for the Prime Minister to duck and weave as best he can as he seems to do with every other issue but as Jim Chalmers just said he'll be across the detail when it comes to rorting the public purse but they'll want to put the covers over the top of this and pretend there’s nothing here. There are a lot of lumpy questions underneath the covers that they're trying to pull over here but there are one million Australians who'll be saying that you need to reassure us that our identities are safe.

JOURNALIST: For the implementation of these Foreign Investment Review Board guidelines who's responsible, which department is actually responsible for [inaudible]?

O'NEILL: The Treasurer is responsible. The Treasurer at the time was Mr Morrison. The Treasurer now is Mr Frydenberg. It is at the highest levels of this Government that the responsibility lies. There is nobody else. The Foreign Investment Review Board makes a recommendation with a set of elements that require compliance. The person responsible for making them comply is the Treasurer, Mr Morrison at the time and Mr Frydenberg today.

JOURNALIST: So does that mean you could actually expel the company out of Australia?

O'NEILL: These are great questions but they need to be put to the Prime Minister. He is the one who was responsible at the time. That was May 2017. Here we are in 2020 and 1.1 million Australians are now at risk of having their identities stolen.

CHALMERS: It's clear that these issues have been known for some time now. Clearly the Government hoped that these issues would never come to light and that this incompetence on a grand scale wouldn't be revealed to the Australian people. These are not issues that have just come to light today. They've been made public today by good journalism, good work by Deb, and the courage of the whistleblower but these issues have been around for some time. How long have Morrison and Frydenberg known about these issues? Why didn't they act quickly enough to fix them? Why are these issues still not fixed? The Foreign Investment Review Board makes recommendations to the Treasurer. The Treasurer is responsible. It was Morrison and now it's Frydenberg and both of them have serious questions to answer.

JOURNALIST: Is that whistleblower telling you anything about whether data is being sold off? What the extent that they're claiming here?

O'NEILL: I will have more to say about this in the course of the coming week. The requirement to report to the Treasurer is a responsibility that Alinta Energy has failed. It's missed deadlines and to the best of my knowledge there's been considerable delay in responding to information that they became aware of. I have major concerns about what's going on in Alinta. We just need to keep probing to find out the truth of what's actually happening.

JOURNALIST: Is that the extent to which your source is telling you, that this data is being held offshore? They're not alleging anything about the data being sold on or anything like that?

O'NEILL: I think some questions to Mr Morrison might be appropriate about privacy breaches and breaches of the Spam Act, and whether any reporting has come from Alinta. I think that there might be quite a gap there as well from what I'm told by the whistleblower.

JOURNALIST: A question on the economy. With the Reserve Bank Governor dropping interest rates down to ridiculous levels it has to be argued that there's not a lot of influence that the Reserve Bank can put on the economy by dropping the interest rates to such low levels. It might not have any effect at all. It's almost tokenism, isn't it?

CHALMERS: The view of a lot of respected economists is that the interest rate cuts are losing their effectiveness. The Reserve Bank is running out of runway when it comes to actions it can take to support the economy. For some time now the Morrison Government hasn't had a plan to support the work of the Reserve Bank, to do their bit to boost economic growth, to boost wages, or to create new jobs and opportunities in our communities and that's a big problem. The Reserve Bank can't do it all on their own. They shouldn't be left to do all the heavy lifting on their own. When interest rates get this low it has the capacity to puff up asset prices and to hurt people who rely on their savings to get by but it hasn't had enough of an impact on the broader economy. We've been saying for some time including before the fires and before the Coronavirus that there is a role for Government here to support the economy. The economy's been floundering badly on Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg's watch not just because of the virus or the fires but because for some time they haven't shown the required economic leadership and they haven't had the required economic plan to support workers and businesses through what has been a very soft period.

JOURNALIST: Will you be urging and supporting the Government to bring forward these tax breaks that are legislated for? Would you want them to come forward faster?

CHALMERS: We're calling on the Government to bring forward a plan to support an economy which has been floundering for some time. We've said to them in a constructive way that there are a range of things they could contemplate. They could lift Newstart, bring forward part of their tax cuts, bring forward some of the investment in infrastructure, or could have a tax break for business investment. 19 different energy policies in seven years has been a brake on growth and they need to fix that. The absence of a wages policy means that wages are historically stagnant. There are a range of things that the Government should be looking at. We've been saying that since the middle of last year as have peak business groups, unions, expert economists, the Reserve Bank, and the respected global institutions. Morrison and Frydenberg are increasingly isolated when it comes to their do-nothing approach to the economy. It has been clear for some time that that support is needed. That support has not been provided by this Government. They don't have a plan and they're not showing the leadership that Australia needs. Thanks very much.

ENDS