TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW WITH JACINTA COUNIHAN, JANURARY 8, 2024

Subjects: 4-year Parliamentary Terms, Cost of Living Crisis

E&OE 

STARTS: 9:00am

ENDS: 9:10am

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

Can you tell me your opinion on whether the four-year term would be a good idea?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

I'm certainly not against a four-year term. I think what it would do would provide surety and certainty and Governments with the ability to plan long-term. But that said, it does require a Referendum and given last year's Referendum experience, I don’t think people are too quick to want to rush back to the polls. I don't think people, given the fact that they've got a cost-of-living crisis, groceries up, fuel costs up, power bills going through the roof – I don't think they're talking about four-year parliamentary terms, I don't think it's even a consideration.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

At the moment it's three years, do you feel like that is too short? What sort of things do you miss out on?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

Well, it's three years, but when you consider it's not really three years because Governments can call double dissolution elections any time they feel, and we averted that last year with the housing accord. They could quite well have been an election late last year. And given the fact that I've been a Member of Parliament for thirteen years, five terms, I'm now in my fifth term. So, you know, you look at that and you see that we have got an extraordinary number of elections in the Federal sphere, and it does make for lack of certainty, lack of surety, lack of long-term planning. And that's why I think a four-year term would be desirable. But look, that's the last thing I'm going to be concentrating on.

It's the last thing I think the Federal Government should be concentrating on. They need to be really pulling those leaves and adjusting the mechanisms by which the cost of living can come down. They need to address the power bill crisis, that every time somebody turns something on at the power point, it's costing them more. Every time they go to the petrol bowser, it costs them more to fill up their car and every time they go to the supermarket, to check out their groceries getting more expensive. That’s the issue that Labor needs to address – if you go down the main street of Wagga Wagga or any other town in the electorate of the Riverina, people aren't discussing four-year parliamentary terms. Is it important? Yes, I guess down the track it will be. But at the moment we've had three parliamentary terms or thereabouts. We've had the situation the same, it's been since 1900, and the system has worked work well. I get that the United States have that date, they always know that they have that four years, certainly in New South Wales on that last Saturday in March, they're going to have an election and so they know when they can plan, and they can work towards that. But I think at the moment people are more concerned about the cost of living crisis than they are about four-year parliamentary terms.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

Why do you think the Prime Minister brought it up if he thought it wasn't going to be quite viable?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

Oh, this Prime Minister is all about diversion, he's all about making everybody think about something that's got nothing to do with the disaster that is unfolding with the cost of living. I mean, we're talking in the next few weeks we'll be discussing Australia Day and the date of Australia Day. We'll be talking about a republic in the not-too-distant future, no doubt. They're all diversionary tactics, he wasted $450 million on a Referendum last year that only caused the nation to be divided. I mean, this Prime Minister, he's about diversionary tactics and not discussing the real things that really matter to Australians, and that is the cost of living.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

And you said that there has to be changed by a Referendum, what are the chances of that happening?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

Well, very unlikely, I'd say at this stage. I mean, if the Labor Government proposed that we're going to have another Referendum any time soon, people would just realize that this would be just ridiculous. I mean, we had a Referendum last year, it cost $450 million. I mean, you can build and pay for a very good hospital in country Australia for that amount of money.

And yet, what do we get out of it? Nothing. We just got a country more divided, unfortunately, and it has nothing to do with outcomes for Aboriginal Australians and anybody who's visited Katherine and Tennant Creek, those remote places in the Northern Territory knows that these people don't need a legislative voice in Parliament. What they need is outcomes for their mental health, their dental health, and their well-being. That's what they need, that's what we were delivering. And, unfortunately, the Labor Government well they mucked things up with their diversionary tactics about, every potential issue.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

Do you think that people would be turned off by this because of the Referendum or do you think there'd be other reasons?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:

People aren't discussing it, it's not a barbecue stopper. It's not being discussed anywhere other than in Anthony Albanese's mind and even to be fair, even he admitted that it was not on the agenda at the moment. So, yes, it was raised, yes, it's an issue for down the track, but not now. We need to be concentrating on the cost of living. There'll be an election potentially between March and May next year, 2025. Let's work towards that and let's see what the future holds.

JACINTA COUNIHAN:

Thanks so much.

Emma Sullivan