transcript: INTERVIEW WITH JACINTA COUNIHAN, 27 DECEMBER 2023

SUBJECTS: Riverina storms, Riverina 2024 goals, Pacific Portfolio Op-Ed

E&OE 

STARTS: 8:30am

ENDS: 8:45am

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

It has been a wet few days for the electorate, what is your reaction to that? 

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

Well, certainly areas in Grenfell, Coolac and Gundagai were hit on Christmas Day, indeed they received a white Christmas, but it was the unwanted white Christmas. There was hailstone as large as golf balls and in some places even larger than that! These have smashed parts of the Riverina but what I urge people to do if they are affected, if they are impacted, is to contact their insurance company and put that claim in straight away. Don’t leave it, do not delay – I appreciate it is the holiday season but get that claim in.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

Was there any significant damage that you knew of?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

Lots of people have reported hail damage to their cars, people have reported their perspex over their barbecue areas which have been completely smashed and in some cases, rooves have been badly damaged. But overall no injuries to speak and I suppose that is positive. It just came out of the blue and left a white sheen over paddocks, suburban areas of Grenfell, Coolac, and Gundagai – I mean people said they had never seen anything like it – they had a white Christmas.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

You said you were chatting to the Insurance Council yesterday, what sort of advice have they given you?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

I spoke to the Insurance Council of Australia yesterday, and they have said that they encourage people to get those claims in right away, it is the holiday season and people have other things on their mind. But if they have difficulties my office will be open soon, give my office a call when it does reopen in the first week of January and we will see what we can do.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

Thank you so much. Looking forward into the next year what are the top three things you would like to see in your Electorate?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

I am really pleased that the multi-storey Murray Darling Medical School is going to be completed. They have an intake of students now and that will eventually make sure that the doctors’ crisis is not resolved but certainly eased. People who need to see a doctor they do tell me that it is a hassle, and it is a hassle. We need to make sure we have more doctors for the bush and that is one of the campaigns I have led right throughout my political career, I mentioned it very early on in my political career and I am pleased the Murray Darling Medical School is going to be opened. That multi-storey building opposite the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital is going to provide training for young doctors and some perhaps not so young, but from start to finish. So it's the first time in regional New South Wales that is going to be possible. So doctors can do all of their training right here in a country setting. We do have unique issues with country medicine, there are accidents and there's crashes and snake bites and those sorts of things that doctors in city areas, city hospitals, never have to cope with. They do here in NSW, they do here in regional areas. And that's going to be something that is going to be quite significant.

The completion of Dunns Road, I'm so pleased that that's going to finally be complete, and I know that it was an election promise in 2016. It's taken this long, way too long to be completed, but working with Council, we've done just that. I want to make sure that the Government is held accountable for the cost of living and certainly, cost of living is a massive issue for so many people. The difficulty here is that people are paying way too much when they go to the petrol bowser for their fuel, the grocery store, when they pay for the goods that they need to sustain themselves. It's just such an issue right across the region and the Government has got the levers to be able to pull, to be able to ease that cost of living. And yet they're speaking and talking about things that quite frankly don't have a lot to do with everyday Australians.

Household bills – they're not actually addressing the issues that everyday Australians are having when they are doing the household budget. So that is a concern, I'll keep the Government accountable for that and also to monitor, of course, the progress that's going on in our Defence bases in Forest Hill, RAAF Wagga and certainly the Kapooka base, where we're spending $1.4 billion over coming years on infrastructure. That's going to be so significant for this region, which is a Defence strategic area, which is the only regional inland centre with all three arms of the Defence. We've got the Navy, we've got Air Force and we've got Army, and their training facilities are being upgraded thanks to the work that I did when I was Deputy Prime Minister and even before that to make sure that we got that infrastructure for Wagga Wagga.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

What would you like your message for the New Year to be to the community?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

For people to have hope, whilst I appreciate that the Murray Darling water legislation is through and that's going to cause higher grocery prices because there's going to be less productive water for our farmers to grow food and fibre. Whilst I appreciate that people are doing it tough every time they go to the petrol bowser, every time they go to the supermarket till, everything costs more, but have hope.

There is hope. We live in the best country on Earth, and we've got some great things to be thankful for, but also to take it carefully on the roads. Indeed, the roads are in the worst state that they've been for many, many years. There are any number of reasons for that. But we need to make sure that when we're on the roads when we're using the roads, to be careful to think of ourselves, the family that we're driving with and other road users who will never meet. And we don't want to make them by accident. We don't to have a situation where the road toll just continues to go up and up and up. And I'll be keeping the Government accountable for the infrastructure spend, for making sure that they do spend money on regional roads. We've seen so many regional projects cut in the infrastructure pipeline – simply not good enough. Particularly when the road toll is up, particularly when councils are crying out for money to be able to have those sorts of amenities and services that city people take for granted.

We need those services here in NSW, regional NSW, right in the Riverina, and I'll be keeping the Government to account very much for the Infrastructure spend that they have.

A note on my portfolio – the difficulty that the International Justice Mission has identified is that Australians account for one in five abuses of child exploitation in the Philippines. That is abominable, that is just depraved, and I know that authorities are doing everything they can, but we need to do more. We need to spend more, and we need to have that issue certainly looked at far more closely by the authorities to stop this child sex trafficking, to stop that child exploitation in the Philippines and the Australian usage of it on the dark web and elsewhere.

It is just appalling, and the fact that Australians account for one in five of these abuses internationally is something that I think would be of concern to every normal-thinking Australian and something that as the Shadow Minister for International Development in the Pacific I'll certainly be turning very much my focus on in 2024. Of course, the Pacific is a huge area, it's a huge area for us for workers, it's a huge area for us as it is right in our backyard. We need to make sure that the Pacific can be the best region it can be. Australia has a huge responsibility in that regard and in my portfolio area I'll be certainly looking to see what we can do to even further strengthen ties diplomatically and elsewhere in the Pacific.

 

Emma Sullivan