TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW WITH GEOFF FROST, YASS FM, 31 JANUARY 2025
Subjects: Australia Day, Aged Care, recent storms and disaster assistance, Yass visit, Parliament resuming for the year, election date, small business policy, road death toll, Sheik Abdulghani Albaf, anti-Semitism, Paris Agreement
E&OE
STARTS 8.05AM
GEOFF FROST
We’re going to go straight to Michael McCormack, who has rung in early, up and about early, Michael?
MICHAEL McCORMACK
I have to be up and about early, the early bird catches the worm, so they say.
GEOFF FROST
It’s great to have you on Yass FM.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Good to be here.
GEOFF FROST
Michael, we chatted a little while ago and I guess we got to know you a little bit and a little bit about what was going on but I thought today we might just sort of get a little bit of a rundown about what’s been going on around the Riverina really and in particular as it might relate to Yass. But I’m thinking that you must have been, certainly here in Yass we were very, very pleased with the Australia Day celebrations, they went down very well and very very well supported. Was that the same where you were?
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Look, it was and I went to Wagga Wagga for the Australia Day celebrations. It was a long-standing engagement. I always try to get right across the region so they say, so I try and share my visits around but I did go to Wagga Wagga this year and marked by the fact that so many volunteers, like everywhere, so many volunteers are being honoured for the work that they do. It’s quite incredible to see just how many of our volunteers run our communities, run our areas and I know that, even in Yass Valley, you’ve got Ben McCann who won Citizen of the Year, Bimbi Turner Senior Citizen of the Year, Blake Hollingsworth Young Citizen of the Year. I mean, these people and so many others give so much of themselves to make their communities a better place in which to live and quite a number of people nominated this year. I was pleased with that because it does take a bit of effort to nominate people for those various awards right across our region. And I do encourage and urge those people to get behind, often the council-led, sometimes they’ve got their own little Australia Day committees, but nominate somebody who you think is doing special things in your town, in your district, because they deserve recognition and Australia Day gives them that opportunity to receive the public accolades that they very much deserve.
GEOFF FROST
Yeah, and in particular Ben McCann this time around, I thought it was just brilliant because Ben is so low profile, you wouldn’t know he was there, yet, you know, they’ve done 25, 30 years. He and a little group of ex-Apexians, you’ll remember Apex, I guess.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well Apex is still very much alive and well in Wagga Wagga and it is still around.
GEOFF FROST
Is it? Really? Well, not in Yass. Hasn’t been for a long, long time but that group, who was sort of almost the last Apexians, have created a board for the Apex homes, which was a magnificent project Apex did all the way back in the well ’70s, basically and started off then. And it’s a magnificent facility. I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of being there yet, but they just run it and they do it very quietly in the background and they do so much work. Don’t ever hear any publicity about it, they keep the residents happy and the residents can’t speak too highly of them. So Ben was just an absolute brilliant choice.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well done Apex, well done Ben and of course, you’ve got the Binalong Progress Association Community Group of the Year. You know it’s those sorts of groups who keep the little villages alive. The thing is if your main town, whether it’s Yass or Wagga Wagga or the Gundagais of the world, they’re big centres, but you get those little smaller communities, those satellite towns around the hub, the little villages, they make such a difference too, particularly when they’ve got vibrant, happening organisations, can-do organisations leading way and making sure that they’re better places in which to live. They ease the pressure off the big central spokes, so to say.
GEOFF FROST
Yeah, and I mean they remain there in their communities and they it’s those communities, people like to remain in them as they get older and so there’s a lot of work to be done to be able to facilitate that.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
And that’s where Aged Care really is coming into play and I know how important it is that we’re going to have to provide, whichever government is in, more money for aged care services, more provisions there, because we don’t want our older community citizens to have to move hundreds of kilometres away from where they’ve lived most, if not all, of their lives in their twilight years. We want them to stay at home to be able to age in place, so to say and we want them to enjoy their final few years right where they belong; close to family, close to friends and not have to be shipped off hundreds of kilometres away because there’s not aged care beds and I appreciate this is a difficult area, but there needs to be much more done in the policy space of preserving and protecting our aged care amenities and services right throughout regional Australia.
GEOFF FROST
That’s true. And even at the various stages of aged care to have – I remember a couple of people that I’ve seen from villages, one from Binalong itself, who came to town because that’s where you had to come for the facilities that he needed because he couldn’t drive anymore and those sort of things. and was just so lonely in Yass because he was away from Binalong.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well, you’re so right and the difficulty there, Geoff, is that sometimes their partners who can still drive who like to visit then if they have to ship them off hundreds of kilometres away, well, they can’t do that. It’s just not physically possible. Or economically possible.
GEOFF FROST
Just talking about Wagga, to just change the subject a little bit, you’ve had some pretty nasty storms down there. What happened with those? We had a little of it here …
MICHAEL McCORMACK
The Wagga Wagga City Council is still working with the State Government to get the tick-off for disaster relief. The Commonwealth doesn’t kick in until the State requests assistance because the State’s on the hook for 50 per cent and States always make sure that the storm or the natural disaster is such that it requires that joint Commonwealth-State assistance. the Council is working closely with the State Government as far as that’s concerned, the assessors have been in. Yeah, there were a lot of trees down. There was a fellow at Coolamon, Andrew Roberts, who lost the roof of his house and the difficulty there is it’s only house in the entire Shire to be that badly affected and, of course, because there’s only that one-off incident Coolamon Shire won’t be getting assistance for that and he’s left high and dry without a house, without a roof. But in Wagga Wagga, there was a lot of damage, a lot of trees down, a lot of cars damaged, rooves off, sheds destroyed both in the rural areas as well as the city. A bit like Cowra and, of course, we had that 80-year-old gentleman driving along Lachlan Valley Way, who a tree fell on him as he was driving and killed him. So it wasn’t without tragedy, this storm. A lot of people affected but I’ve spoken to Jenny McAllister at a Federal level, Jihad Dib at a State level, the two ministers there of course, as well as the shadow ministers Senator Perin Davey and Gurmesh Singh from New South Wales about what we can do going forward with assistance and that. And, thankfully the Government’s been fairly responsive thus far.
GEOFF FROST
There was a pretty bad storm here, but we’ve been very lucky we seem to have had quite a lot of trees down but other than that …
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well, of course, Snowy Valleys, which is not that far from Yass, really, neighbouring shire there, it has just received assistance. There was a lot of damage, particularly in places such as Batlow, a lot of trees down and a lot of damage caused but these things happen, unfortunately they often happen in holiday time, holiday season, but I know that there’s a lot of people out there, volunteers and councils, working to clean up the mess.
GEOFF FROST
Okay, and you’re coming to Yass fairly soon, I understand?
MICHAEL McCORMACK
I’ll be coming through there on Sunday actually to come back to Parliament which resumes on Tuesday, but next Friday I’ll be there for a Yass Valley business breakfast and looking forward to a street walk up Comur and I’ll be dropping into businesses and saying G’day, not that it’s the first time I’ve done that, but I’ll be doing it again and Andrew Henderson has invited me over so there’s lots of things to see and do. I had a good meeting with Ben Maguire and his associates with the Yass Picnics racecourse. Of course, the Picnics are coming up on the 1st of March, that’ll be a worthwhile Saturday to get along to Marchmont reserve, but, yeah, there’s lots of things to be done and to see and people to meet so we’re looking forward to it.
GEOFF FROST
Parliament’s resuming – at the end of the last session of Parliament, there was a whole lot of stuff sort of pushed through the Parliament very, very quickly. What are you going to do this time? Do you think has that cleared the agenda?
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well it never really cleared the agenda, there’s always something on, Geoff! But I’ll tell you what, the Nature Positive environmental laws are coming up again and note that the West Australian Premier Roger Cook is really pushing back big time this morning saying that ‘but for our mining here in the west, you wouldn’t be able to be to get your lattes’ and all the other privileges and things that you take advantage of, take for granted and he has really pushed back on this this morning, which is interesting. He’s the Labor Premier up for a re-election over in the West and, of course, he’s pushing back on Anthony Albanese and the Prime Minister here in the east. Of course, the Prime Minister’s the Prime Minister for the whole country, but I don’t think Western Australia are very much in favour of these nature positive laws, which were pulled off the table by the PM and there’s a little bit of pushback there to Tanya Plibersek, so that’ll be interesting as that plays out this sitting fortnight, but, look, no doubt there’ll be lots of things to talk about in the Parliament. We’ve got the Reserve Bank rates decision coming out – that’s coming up in February on the 18th and with the rates currently at 4.35 per cent it would be interesting to see where they go because people are already paying $50,000 more on their mortgages than they were before Labor come to power, so that’ll be interesting to see what, if any, move there is on the rates.
GEOFF FROST
Interestingly, the inflation figures that came out yesterday or the day before – the headline is now in the target range at 2.4 per cent. But I noticed that the underlying rate is still above that, it’s at 3.2 per cent, I think. And it actually went up in the last quarter rather than down, up by 0.5 per cent. It really is going to be a tough one for the for the Reserve Bank to be able to make a decision on.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
And, indeed, the cost of living is gripping everybody. People are paying more, people are paying through the nose. They believe they’re worse off now than what they were prior to May 2022 every time they fill up their car, every time they fill up their grocery trolley, every time they look at their power bill, everything is going up and cost of living is going to be the first, second and third topic of discussion as the election looms.
GEOFF FROST
Okay, so no doubt that you’ll be talking to the business chamber about that, but also, I would imagine, about some of the Coalition’s small business policy, in particular this idea that has been presented as bringing back the free lunch, but I suspect it’s a bit more than that.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well, what it will do, it will provide hospitality and hotel sector with a bit of relief because they employ hundreds and thousands of people There’s many thousands of small businesses. And if you ask people like Stephen Ferguson who runs the AHA or Wes Lambert, who is very, very heavily involved in the hospitality sector – they are key people involved, key spokespeople for that sector. The fact that we’re going to be able to provide a tax deduction of $20,000 for business related meal and entertainment expenses, excluding alcohol, excluding alcohol, for small businesses with a turnover up to $10 million, I think it does enable employers to be able to take their staff out for a congratulatory lunch, if they’ve done a good job, to write it off on their tax. And that not only helps them, it actually, more importantly, helps the hospital hospitality sector. It’s hard to find workers. It’s hard to find chefs. It’s hard to make a buck. You can only charge so much for a cup of coffee and a pint of beer and with the prices going up and up and up, every input going up and up and up on energy, staff, the whole business. It is bad for business and this policy, I think, will help them. It’s only in there for a couple of years for just an FBT exemption there for two years and let’s see how it goes.
GEOFF FROST
Okay, I mean, that’s one of the very first, I guess there’ll be lots of policies announced both by the Coalition and by the Government as well over the next, well, three or four months, depending on your view about when the election might be.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
It has to be held by the end of May, May 17 is probably one of the last dates that it can be held, but who knows? If there’s a good rate decision in February? But the PM will go when the PM thinks he’s best placed and the Government’s best placed to be re-elected. But I do think people have had enough, but let’s wait and see. What we don’t want is a hung Parliament, cobbled together by self-interest groups, what we don’t want is, certainly, the Greens to hold, in my view, the balance of power because that would be disastrous for the country.
GEOFF FROST
Just then a couple of other issues I know being the end of the year, the national road death stats came out about a week or so ago and we’re back up to 1,300 as something that we haven’t been seen for over a decade and, you know, 340 deaths in New South Wales, which is an awful lot of people that have been killed on the road and nobody seems to really understand why it’s going back up with all the improvements.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
And what’s never discussed here either, Geoff, is the number of injuries, the number of people who have been injured on the roads and that always hovers around, and it’s going up too, 30,000, 35,000. Now, that’s a lot of people. I think the roads are in a parlous state, the roads aren’t in good shape. I do think there’s been cutbacks there and I think that does have an effect on the roads, but people’s driving behaviour, too, is unbelievable. I mean, one in 10 fatalities, in a recent report, people had amphetamines, ice, in their system Now, you know, the Police are out on our highways and byways for a reason. They’re in marked cars, they’re in unmarked cars and of course we’ve got those stationary vehicles booking people. I’m a bit against the fact that it’s run by a bank or owned by a bank and commissioned by the State Government to do it but I am in favour of putting the signs up, but people have to change their driving behaviour. They have to buckle up, I can’t believe the number of people who die on the roads, not having had clipping up their seat belt; that is just, in this day and age, just doesn’t even bear thinking about. But people have to buckle up, just drive to the conditions, drive to the speed limits, have a plan B if they’re going to go out and have a few drinks and just be responsible, not only for themselves and their passengers, but other vehicle users on the road. Get to where you need to be. It doesn’t matter if you’re five minutes late, get to where you need to be in one piece and think of yourself, think of other people and just do the right thing.
GEOFF FROST
And interesting this morning, I was looking at some of the Police reports that come in and at Tamworth, at the music festival, the Police did testing both for alcohol but also for drugs and they caught – let’s just say that for every thousand people tested, there were a hundred times more people caught using drugs than using alcohol. It was .2 of a per cent of people had a drink-driving positive result and something like 15 per cent for drugs in the system.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Then we’ve got the Greens who want to decriminalise drug use and so that would only see an increase in the number of people driving around stoned. And that’s the point, that’s as blunt as I can say it, but it’s the truth. Now, I don’t want to be driving up the road with my family, and nobody else does either, with somebody coming towards you who has been shooting up or snorting up. But, unfortunately, that’s what the Greens want. I know they’re lessening the laws, reducing the laws in Canberra. It’s nuts. We want people to be completely sober and alert with all their faculties when they’re driving a vehicle, particularly a heavy vehicle and, you know, it is just unbelievable. The fact that anybody could be wanting to decriminalise drugs in this day and age when you’ve just read out the statistics from a festival. Thankfully, the Elvis Festival at Parkes there back in early January – the Police records and reports were pretty good, as I understand, but it would be nice to see, just occasionally, for the Police not to have to have any reports of any people doing the wrong thing on our roads.
GEOFF FROST
Yeah, it would be. So that might explain a little bit of the high numbers of people that we’re losing and, as you point out, injuries on the roads.
I noticed that you released a press release, probably about a month or so ago, regarding the appointment of a gentleman in Young to a school.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Abdulghani Albaf, yes.
GEOFF FROST
Well, I’ll let you say that, not me.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
He’s a Sheik from Western Sydney who’s been appointed the principal of an Islamic school there and the difficulty is that he’s had a lot to say in the space of, well I call it anti-Semitism and so does everybody else. He denies that, but when you are condemning Zionism, when you are stirring the pot as far as what is happening in this country, it is troublesome and he hasn’t stopped. His rhetoric has perhaps been eased somewhat, but it’s still inflammatory and he’s been appointed to the principal of the school where you’ve got a lot of young people. You’ve got a lot of young, growing minds who don’t need to be influenced by radicalism and I called it out, I said, well, we need to monitor him and certainly I know the Young community is concerned. The Mayor Brian Ingram is concerned. The State Member Steph Cooke also has worries about this situation and we’ll monitor it. We’ll make sure that everything is as it should be because we don’t need young people to be radicalised to thinking that what is happening is one particular group’s, and that is the Jews in Israel, all their fault. The Hamas October 7, 2023 attacks were reprehensible, appalling, and they came from Palestine, which is led by a terrorist organisation, called Hamas. Let’s call it for what it is, but it’s not just confined, this anti-Semitism, to capital cities, it is in regional Australia. It is in Wagga Wagga; I’ve got a group called Sundays for Peace, very ill-named, protest outside my office every Sunday. Why they continue to need to do that when there is the ceasefire happening and the hostages are being released is anybody’s guess, but there’s a fellow who puts some very offensive things in his Fitzmaurice Street, main street window. Words that I won’t repeat here on radio, because I don’t want you to lose your licence, but apparently he’s allowed to do that in his shop front window, against Netanyahu and against Israel. So we need to just take the temperature down in this situation. It’s appalling what has happened. That what happened in Dural the other day in Western Sydney as far as that so-called terrorist attack being averted. Well, at least it was averted, but the potential risk and harm that could have done to Western Sydney or elsewhere is just terrible to think of in this day and age.
GEOFF FROST
My understanding, though, is that the Young community – there’s quite a sizable Islamic community in Young. My understanding is it has been a very, very successful community …
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Most of whom are very, very good people.
GEOFF FROST
… And a great community.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Yes, absolutely. And they are and they contribute mightily to that cherry capital of Australia and good on them for doing so. But what we don’t want to see – we can’t solve the Middle East from regional Australia. The issues there have been going on for many, many decades, longer. We can’t solve it from here and if people are going to make Australia their home, then they need to know that this is a peaceful, democratic society and don’t bring their troubles here. Live in harmony with the wonderful people. It’s a multicultural society. We need to be as one with Aboriginal people, multicultural people, people of all faiths, people of all skin colour, people who speak different languages. We are Australians, we should be all as one. We don’t need the problems of the rest of the world brought to our doorstep. We can’t solve them here. We can contribute as we do in international fora, et cetera, but we can’t solve them and there’s no point bringing in the troubles here.
GEOFF FROST
Well said. Michael, just finally, Donald Trump has well, now President, and has very quickly withdrawn the US from the Paris agreement. Is that a signal that Australia should be re-looking at this treaty?
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Well, we have signed up to Paris some time ago, and many of our trade alliances and markets are such that we do what we can as far as our international agreement is concerned with reducing emissions. And that will continue. We’re a trading nation. We’re a nation that relies on other countries to buy the goods that we dig up, that we produce that we sell overseas and in order to be able to do that, we have signed up to international agreements and those agreements will in the main, stick because we need to be responsible to our farmers and to our miners. It’s those people who kept us going during COVID. It’s those people who enable us to enjoy the lifestyle and the highest minimum wage in the world and that needs to continue. But what we don’t want to see are rushes in policy to renewables, such that we have blackouts, such that we have shortages, such that we have high power prices, so what the Coalition is offering is a national, rational discussion about the prospect of nuclear, what we’re offering is a more balanced approach to our energy mix and we’re offering is a sensible, diplomatic customer for the rest of the world, and that’s what I know that we have provided previously in Government. We very much need to continue to be able to trade with Europe trade with Asia, trade with the rest of the world, including America, and we’ll go on doing that.
GEOFF FROST
Michael, thank you so much for talking to Yass FM. We’ve been talking to Michael McCormack, who is the Member for Riverina and it’s great to have you call in and chat and we’ll catch you in the near future.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Look forward to it, Geoff, thank you very much. Have a great day.
GEOFF FROST
And just a reminder that Michael will be at the Chamber of Commerce Breakfast next Friday, at around about 7.30am-7.45am. And if you want to catch Michael, that’s one place where you might be able to get him in Yass. Michael, thank you again.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Thanks, Geoff, or down the street a little later on that day, February 7, look forward to it. All the best, Bye now.
Ends 8.31AM