TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW WITH DAVID EISENHAUER SOUNDS OF THE MOUNTAINS, 3 AUGUST 2023

Subjects: Snowy Hydro, PALM Scheme, Inland Rail and Group 9 Rugby League

E&OE

STARTS: 8:30

ENDS: 8:50

DAVID EISENHAUER

He joins us on the line as Member for Riverina Michael, thank you very much for your time this morning.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well, they were the days and I even recalled in Parliament this week a little conversation I had with Peter Mahoney, who you well know and is still very much doing some good things in the media around the Riverina. How he called me one day when I was driving to Parliament, urging, and encouraging me to write an editorial for the paper because he had no staff and I already been a Member of Parliament for ten years and so I did it for him to help him out. Talked about and wrote about Simon Crean and joining the dots as far as regionalism is concerned and put the editorial in and then Simon used it a week later in Parliament in answer to a question from his own side, a Dorothy Dixer. And it was getting what for from The Nationals and the regional members of the Opposition Coalition at that stage. And then winked at me on the way out, I had a very good relationship with Simon. I gave what I thought was quite a moving address because he needed it, he deserved it. And I spoke to his wife, Carole, there in the Chamber the other day. We need more people like Simon Crean in the Parliament. And I say that even though he was a member of the other side, he was the Labor Leader, but he was somebody who put his arm figuratively around me and guided me, mentored me, and coached me. I think that that is a sort of a lost art when it comes to Parliamentarians these days. It's such a dog-eat-dog world. But Simon was a special, special person and I mourn his loss. I think Australia should feel very sad that somebody of his ilk has gone too soon.

DAVID EISENHAUER

Look you are right Michael, and how many years have you been there?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

I've been here since 2010, so coming up to 13 years.

DAVID EISENHAUER

2010, gee it doesn’t seem that long.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Time flies when you're having fun and look, it is fun, and it is a great privilege and honour to represent the Riverina and Central West. I see that we're potentially going to get more boundary changes and that could mean that anything, quite frankly. Tumut, Tumbarumba, which were once in the Riverina because they're on the border of Eden-Monaro and Riverina and Farrer, often come into consideration when boundaries start being moved. But boundaries are not made by the politicians, they're made by the Australian Electoral Commission. They're supposedly done on an independent basis but on the fact that of course a population shift and change, and all those figures are taken into account, the Census data, et cetera. The AEC commissioners make recommendations, sometimes politicians of course, don't like the boundaries that boundary change. You really just get used to serving a community, the community just gets used to them and all of a sudden, the boundaries change and then the people get uptight with the politicians. But it's not the politicians, if we could make our own boundaries, we'd all be in safe seats – if there is such a thing.

DAVID EISENHAUER

That’s right there would be big marquees everywhere Michael, there’d be fanfare and festive lighting. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. I mean, obviously we still have our merger demerger debate continuing and that prospect looming for the Snowy Valleys to happen.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

That has happened for Tumbarumba, has to happen for Gundagai and Cootamundra, and the sooner the better.

DAVID EISENHAUER

It's interesting, it's going to be a very interesting journey, I think, moving forward. But let's have a look inside the electorate, around the region. And the first thing to think about is something you've been speaking of recently is the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility. That's PALM, the scheme that has Australian businesses the ability to hire workers from nine Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste, where if there's not enough local workers to fill those spots, been talking a lot with orchards and places like that, Michael.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Yes, particularly horticulture and agriculture right through the sector. And there are 40,000 PALM workers in Australia as of May. But what is now going to happen is that it is going to be jeopardised by the fact that Labor has introduced a minimum number of 30 hours a week, every week – completely disregarding the work's seasonal nature in agriculture. And I also appreciate that the workers need to be paid the right amount for the right number of hours that they work. And there has to be some sort of guarantees, of course. But 30 hours a week, we know when there's weather events, we know when the when the crops just don't grow. And for a number of reasons, the fruit's not there to be picked on trees. It's going to be hard for farmers to come up with the 30 hours a week payment and what it's going to mean is it just places the whole situation in jeopardy. And I have to say, many of the jobs that the PALM workers are prepared to do, cannot and will not be done if they're not there to do it. Because, you know, as terrible as it sounds coming out of anyone's mouth, the fact is some of these jobs just simply won't be done by people in Australia, they won't. This is why the PALM scheme has been successful. But workers from overseas have done so many wonderful things. And I know even in Wagga Wagga when I talk about the cricketers, I played with there a couple of seasons ago and people said, oh do they work in agriculture? They were Indians and Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis, I said no, they lecture in our university, and they help run our hospital in a very technical sense. You know, we shouldn't always just pigeonhole people who come from overseas and say, well, they're just going to work in agriculture, because they don't. And they fill many, many voids that are in Australia, particularly the regions, and without them, well, quite frankly, society just wouldn't function as well as it does. And we do have a good standard of living. We do pay the highest minimum wage in the world in Australia and the PALM workers are very well supported, are very well looked after and they help our Rugby League teams and all the rest. And it actually helps in diplomacy with the Pacific and at the moment there is a very contested space with them with the situation with Chinese assertion in the area. And so that's why we need to make sure that everything we do in this space and with the Pacific is as it should be and unfortunately, with this situation, it is not. And so I've asked Labor to go back to the drawing board, have a look at that situation, for once just do a bit of stakeholder engagement with the NFF and other farming groups and see what the situation can be as a middle ground area and work towards that, not just come out and say people should be paid 30 hours a week minimum every week irrespective of how much work is available at the time.

DAVID EISENHAUER

There's also the access, the Medicare, there's a whole raft of changes coming through in this third quarter.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

There are, there are. And anybody is doing their taxes at the moment – just a little sideways movement there – but they're finding that the tax rules have changed too. And they're getting less refunds than they would otherwise have been able to in the past. So, there are lots of changes coming in the 60-day dispensing rules, coming in on 1 September, which means that pharmacists are going to be struggling and they will because they're going to have 60-day dispensing, which, is going to cause problems for patients in the long run and cause hardship for pharmacists who do such a great job on that front line health for so many of our country communities.

DAVID EISENHAUER

We’ve talked quite often about that with the pharmacies, with Luke Peacock, of course, who's been a guest from time to time. But it's interesting times as we move forward, Michael, and we look at what's happening around the region and some real positives. Let's have a look at it, even the high country with our fishing rods. We probably can't take our fishing rods over, we would get stopped at the gates and it's pretty difficult to sneak in there as well, too. It's pretty steep terrain. We're talking Lobs Hole and the tunnel boring machines are making their way through this process, this program its steaming ahead, not steam, it'd be interesting to run these things on boilers. But this project we spoke last week with Dean Lynch, who was here for the business awards.

MICHAEL McCORMACK
A good man.

DAVID EISENHAUER

He’s been busy, he’s done some miles. But this is interesting, the tunnel boring machines working away there at Lobs Hole Ravine, Heather Quinlan and Luke Judd and names like that doing a great job keeping the community up to date. This there's a bit happening up there including of course we talk about employment, a ton of jobs going.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Oh indeed. And the tunnel boring machine, I love how they call them TBM, and I’ll say TGDE everything's an acronym nowadays. This is, of course, The Great David Eisenhauer who I'm talking about. The first machine to start tunnelling on that magnificent, pumped hydro megaproject first completed the tunnel and is now under way on the second tunnel excavation. I know we’ve had a few issues. I know all those issues are always trying to be resolved, but it's all systems are go and that is a great project that Snowy Hydro where we talk to our energy needs in the future. That's what we should be discussing is the energy needs of our nation. I look on Victoria with despair, with the changes they're making, with their timber industry, and of course 70 per cent of the regional domestic product around Tumut, et cetera, Tumbarumba, is of course underpinned by timber. But you look at the situation turning off the gas for new homes in Victoria. And I tell you what, that is a really bad and scary movie coming to a cinema near you and if they're doing it in Victoria, you can guarantee that'll be a test case for the rest of the nation. Why people want to move out of gas when we've got so much of it, when it's such a good clean energy supply, is anyone's guess. I appreciate that you know, there's a movement to stop all fossil fuels, but this is bordering on ridiculous. And then of course, you go next step with Western Australia, where new laws are preventing people from digging a hole more than 50 centimetres or moving more than 20 kilograms of dirt. This is for farmers. This is the thin edge of the wedge. I appreciate things can't stay the same, but by the same token, you can't bring in legislation that is just going to make it more expensive at a time when cost of living pressures are so high and so hard on so many people.

DAVID EISENHAUER

And look, I mean, Frank Seeley, of course, they manufacture gas appliances and they're one of many manufacturers. This is affecting Australian businesses as well when they make these decisions and I know that the manufacturers are putting themselves out there to say, look, this is not going to happen, and we have to keep moving forward and save water and gas is cleaner than the current alternatives and all that sort of things. But it's a bit of a concern for those people that have got them stashed away and trying to sell. Even when we talk at the start of Winter, it usually comes up. Oh, we got bad wood fires.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

I mean, where do these people go that are as you say the gas appliance movers, where do these people go who are stocking the supplies of these goods, whether it's timber for the fireplace or whether it's a gas, appliances for the kitchen, etc. Where do they go and how do they make a quid in the future with this? How do they get a bank loan when there's such question marks and big question marks placed over the viability and the future of their businesses? And this is the sort of thing that when legislators and decision-makers listening to the tiny clamour that are these people who want us to return to the caves, this is what they should be considering. And, you know, when I drove into Parliament early this morning there's you know, there's about half a dozen protesters out there with their big signs. Well, they don't represent all Australians. They certainly don't represent all Australians who are doing it pretty tough. You know, the people who are probably on pretty high superannuation retirement packages in Canberra who might want to hold a couple of signs out the front of Parliament House, are not indicative of the views of people in struggle street in Tumut and elsewhere, who just want to keep their houses warm in Winter and want to keep the food on the table and want to have jobs for the future. 

DAVID EISENHAUER

Well, that includes the single operator out there with a ute and trailer that goes and that's got a bit of land and makes a few dollars by providing those wood-fired appliances.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

But once upon a time if a tree fell over on the side of the road, you could go and you know, chop it up and put it on the back of your trailer and take it home. You can’t do that these days and I get why that is, to keep our roads safe and people not jeopardising others by pulling off to the side of the roads. And there are any number of reasons why people shouldn’t do that sort of thing. But there has to be common sense. And the trouble with common sense these days is Peter Mahoney always said, “it’s not that common”.  

DAVID EISENHAUER

Well, you've got to take into account though when the Government's looking at this, including hydrogen and biomethane, they are subjects that are going to be working through the AGO. The AGO is looking at all these things gas for the future. Of course, it's called Gas Vision 2050.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

We've got the highest take-up of rooftop solar per capita in the world and that came in under the Coalition Government. Now, we don't often get plaudits for what we did in that space. But I tell you what, we were pretty forward-leaning when it came to things such as that and we were meeting all our international obligations, the Paris Agreement, etc. We were meeting and beating all those targets. And yet the people who are pushing these, the ones who are outside the front this morning of Parliament House protesting, they don't accept that. They won't stop until every bit of fossil fuel is kept in the ground. This places a great question mark over such things as the gas industry going forward and what it is always going to mean is higher electricity and energy bills in the future. 

DAVID EISENHAUER

Well, one thing that's going to be a positive I think coming out of this, just recently Michael we had the inquiry came out, the Tumut men at the golf course talking about powerlines and going underground. And that's a huge topic that it tends to simmer a bit, some people say we haven't heard a lot about that lately, but there is some work going on behind the scenes with this one.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Oh indeed. And there's, of course the Upper House Inquiry, the Legislative Council Inquiry that the New South Wales Government is doing. That does need to happen because we need the right outcomes, and you know if it costs more even significantly more, it's something that those in power are going to have to consider. We need the best outcomes for our farmers, we need the best outcomes for our landholders, and we can't just go bulldozing their interests away just with a measure that won't be right and fit for the future.

DAVID EISENHAUER

It’s a concern watching the current debate and the arguments being put up there only just yesterday, details coming through. We had a lot of different emails rolling through, but there was discussion on this and saying, look, it's a National Park to start with. You can't be just putting towers up through parks.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

They've taken evidence from concerned Tumut residents and elsewhere. So that inquiry will be ongoing. And you and I, and everybody else will be monitoring that very closely.

DAVID EISENHAUER

Michael lastly today, we always get an update. This is going to be quite as far as the media is concerned, there’s not a lot of it. The train line, of course, the big freight line that's linking cities, how’s that travelling out there, Inland Rail?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well, indeed it's good and the Australian-owned company Martinus Rails has been awarded a quite a large contract for more than $400 million to design and deliver enhancement works for more than 180 kilometres of track between Albury and Illabo and another 170 km of track between Stockinbingal and Parkes. So, work on those sections is well under way, we've got an Australian contractor awarded the rights to get on with that. That means Australian jobs, it's also Australian steel and of course the Inland Rail is going to make such a difference. It's going to take so many trucks off the road, it's going to bring all sorts of benefits in fact that 200,000 truck movements off our roads. So, if we're talking carbon emissions, the protesters out the front of Parliament House, the bells start to ring here. That's going to reduce carbon emissions by 750,000 tonnes per year. So, for the Greenies who want a figure, there's one – that's by 2050. So that's good, that's happening. Tell you what else is happening is Group 9 is getting towards the pointy end of the season, Tumut going along very nicely. I see they're currently equal second but second on percentages they play Southcity this weekend and they should win that because Southcity hasn't been faring all that well this Group 9 season. But it's a very, very close competition with Temora, Tumut, Kangaroos, Young and Gundagai all very much in the mix for finals contention and premiership contention. So good luck to the Blues as they run around again this weekend.

DAVID EISENHAUER

And of course, it's coming up to your favourite time of year, the cricket bats and Mr Howard and everyone else that's taking part in this cricket season's looming our regional cricket.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well, I might have played in the Parliamentary Ashes in England in recent months.  I might just, I might have a little brag and say, well, I wasn't dismissed. I scored 61 runs, not out, over two matches so it was a bit of fun. But unfortunately, we finished on the wrong side of the ledger twice, but we've won both the men's and women's Ashes against the Poms. It was a great, great series. The women won it far more decisively of course, the men had a two-all series draw but retain the Ashes because they held on to last time from the last Australian series. But well done to all the Ashes participants. That was a great result, and of course, go the Matildas because they are very much in the hunt for the FIFA Women's World Cup and doing some great things on the world scale. Right here for the home crowds and gee how many, how many viewers lined up to watch that the other night. Would I have thought a few years ago that women's soccer would produce such interest? But it is and women's sport in general is making great strides and so it should it's fantastic to see.

DAVID EISENHAUER

Michael there is so many things we can chat about as a member of Riverina, but we're out of time. Thank you very much for joining us for a talk today, covering all things to do each and every fortnight and appreciate your time, of course you’re in Canberra, busy day ahead all the best for the day.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

We'll talk soon. Thanks, David.