Health News at Your Fingertips

Lettuce just leave this one here. (By the way, it’s iceberg or it’s nothing, right?).

Politicians of various stripes are being asked about electricity prices today in light of the Aemo report on a doubling of wholesales power prices in the past year, and a two-thirds jump in the past quarter (as we flagged earlier).

What’s a curious thing, though, is that as far as the Australian Bureau of Statistics is concerned, electricity prices actually fell marginally in the March quarter. By their measure, they were down 0.4% from the December quarter.

From a year earlier, prices were up 3.5%. While not great for households (since wages probably rise that much), it means electricity was not a major contributor to the 5.1% “headline” consumer price index rate (which would have been higher if power bills had been excluded).

We know these figures because we asked the ABS nicely – they are not featured in the main CPI releases (or at least, they were buried).

What to make of this power price wrinkle? Well, to the extent wholesale prices feed into retail prices after a bit of a lag, it means an additional impetus to inflation is still to come.

Stellar job as always from Amy Remeikis! And hooray for the “start of the back end of this never ending campaign”. I think. Great, now I have the The NeverEnding Story song in my head (and yes, the space between ‘never’ and ‘ending’ must have been swallowed up by The Nothing).

The Labor campaign is in the air and on the way to WA for the official launch of its campaign, while the Liberal campaign continues on in Tasmania.

I’ll hand you over to the wonderful Tory Shepherd now while I prepare for your campaign catch up video. We have a lot to get through this week and three weeks to go. Goodness knows what state we will all be in at the end of it.

Make sure you check back for the Guardian team’s take on the big issues and you will have Murph’s column tomorrow as she takes in the week that was.

Thanks so much to everyone who kept me company this week – I’ll be back on Monday for the start of the back end of this never ending campaign.

Please – take care of you Ax

Donna Lu

Medical experts have called for earlier diagnosis of life-threatening immune disorders in a strategy released today by the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.

The strategy is calling for newborn screening for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a rare genetic disorder that results in a lack of a functional immune system.

SCID gained recognition in the 1970s due to the “bubble boy” David Vetter, who was born with the condition and lived in sterile plastic chambers.

Dr Theresa Cole, president elect of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, said:

SCID is fatal in the first two years of life without definitive intervention. Early diagnosis is vital to allow curative treatment such as … bone marrow transplant.

Screening is also likely to be more cost-effective for the health system than the cost of prolonged hospital and intensive care unit admissions. It should be a health priority in Australia.

SCID is one type of primary immunodeficiency disorder – a group of more than 400 conditions that affect an estimated one in 25,000 people. Victorian research has found the average delay from symptom onset to diagnosis of some disorders in adults is eight years.

Dr Melanie Wong, co-chair of the strategy, said:

Due to their rarity, delays in diagnosis of primary immunodeficiencies are common. For infants and very young children with severe primary immunodeficiencies, this leads to severe complications due to recurrent infections and early death, despite being curable if treated in the first few months of life.

Daniel Hurst

Scott Morrison has effectively accused the prime minister of Solomon Islands of being influenced by the Chinese government’s opposition to Aukus, now that Honiara and Beijing have inked their own security deal.

As readers will have seen here on the blog, Manasseh Sogavare used an address to parliament in Honiara this morning to hit back at criticism from the Australian government about a lack of transparency about his security agreement with Beijing.

Sogavare said he had “learned of the Aukus treaty in the media” and “one would expect that as a member of the Pacific family, Solomon Islands and members of the Pacific should have been consulted to ensure that this Aukus treaty is transparent, since it will affect the Pacific family by allowing nuclear submarines in Pacific waters.”

Sogavare went on to say he realised Australia was “a sovereign country, and that it can enter into any treaty that it wants to, transparently or not – which is exactly what they did with [the] Aukus treaty.”

At a press conference just now, Morrison said he had spoken with Sogavare on the day after the Aukus announcement in September 2021. Morrison said he had spent the two days following the announcement speaking to many leaders around the world.

And then that was followed up with our [diplomatic] posts immediately going and briefing on the nature of what was a highly secure arrangement, which I think our partners and allies understand.

Morrison said Australia had moved quickly to reassure the Pacific about Australia’s ongoing commitment to meet its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

And so I did have that conversation with the prime minister the day following the announcement, and no issues were raised at that time in that discussion. But obviously, as time goes on and new relationships are entered into, there’s obviously been some clearly other influences in the perspective taken by the Solomon Islands prime minister. Now, I understand that.

A journalist sought clarity on what Morrison was implying: Are you saying he’s parroting China’s rhetoric?

His reply:

There’s a remarkable similarity between those statement and those of the Chinese government.

Q: How long are [people] going to be confronted with lettuce at $5, beans at $15 a kilo? Is there anything you can do to moderate those prices?

Scott Morrison:

The external influences on the economy are going to continue for some time, particularly when we see the disruption of the war in Europe and the disruption which comes from the pandemic.

Those are things beyond Australia’s control.

And so that’s why it’s so important, in the budget, we understood the impact that these things were having on Australian families.

And that’s why we took the decision, understanding those pressures, that we had to halve the petrol tax to support families deal with those higher prices. They’re the things we can do. You can’t necessarily change the price of a lettuce, but what you can do is you can halve petrol tax, and that’s exactly what we did.

You can make a $250 payment directly to pensioners and others on fixed-income support to help them with those costs, which we did. You can provide $420 – or not provide – enabling Australians to keep $420 of their own hard-earned dollars by providing that one-off tax relief, which we’re doing on 1 July.

They’re the things you can do to help people dealing with those cost-of-living pressures.

But we also have to be upfront about these pressures being real. And that’s why I keep saying this election is a choice. How you manage the economy does have an impact on all of these issues. How you manage your finances and keeping your AAA credit rating, that’s what puts as much pressure down on these forces as you can.

That’s what pushes as much pressure down on what is a lot of pressure to rise – increase interest rates from what are very historically low levels at 0.1%. So, these are real economic issues that Australian families are facing, and that’s why I say this election is about the economy.

And the issues are real, the economic impacts on household budgets are real, the impact on businesses like this are real. And that’s why you cannot risk the Australian economy with Labor. And that’s why our economic plan is supporting Australians through one of the most challenging times we have had since the Great Depression. Thanks very much, everyone.

Q: The Solomon Islands prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, today has said Australia’s security treaty with his country failed to contain riots in November. And Mr Sogavare also criticised the Australian government for not consulting Pacific nations like his before entering Aukus, saying he found out about the agreement in the media. Are you concerned at the criticisms coming from Mr Sogavare? And are these criticisms further signs his government is turning away from Australia?

Scott Morrison:

I spoke to prime minister Sogavare the day following the announcement, as I spent the two days following the announcement speaking to many leaders around the world.

And then that was followed up with our posts immediately going and briefing on the nature of what was a highly secure arrangement, which I think our partners and allies understand.

And one of the key issues we moved quickly to reassure the Pacific about, with Australia absolutely, without question, meeting our non-proliferation obligations, which I know is a very significant issue within the Pacific.

And so I did have that conversation with the prime minister, the day following the announcement, and no issues were raised at that time in that discussion.

But obviously, as time goes on and new relationships are entered into, there’s obviously been some clearly other influences in the perspective taken by the Solomon Islands prime minister. Now, I understand that.

But the reality is, when I look at the Aukus agreement and all of the discussions that I’ve had about this agreement – and let’s be clear about this is the most significant defence agreement that Australia has entered into since Anzus, and it took a Liberal-National government to conceive this, to work patiently to achieve it over pretty much an 18-month period, and because of the highly sensitive nature of this, then it’s not obviously something that was going to have wide discussion before entering into it.

That, of course, would have been against Australia’s national interests. But once we entered into it and we made our announcement, it was very important that we engage quickly with our allies and partners in the region, which is exactly what we did. Now, you make the point about the riots and disturbances in Solomon Islands.

And immediately upon being requested to send support to the Solomon Islands late last year, we did so. We sent the AFP. We sent the ADF out of Townsville. Our servicemen and women, they didn’t stay home for Christmas last year, they went and supported peace and stability in the Solomon Islands.

Just like our AFP and many others supported that for over a long period of time as part of the Ramsay Initiative. And what I do know is that the people of Solomon Islands greatly appreciate the work that Australia does to support, not only there, but right across the Pacific, Pacific peoples greatly appreciate the direct support that we provide. And we will continue to do that. That’s why, as prime minister Sogavare himself has said, that Australia is their primary security partner in the region. We’re the first call. We were the first call when those things occurred in December and we would be so again.

And it’s our AFP that are on the ground there right now, preserving that peace, which was restored.

Q: You just said there’s other influences? Are you saying he’s parroting China’s rhetoric?

Morrison:

There’s a remarkable similarity.

Q: Wouldn’t Australia be insulated from some of these international price increases if we generated more electricity from wind, from solar, from hydro? Wouldn’t consumers have been better off if we made a faster transition to renewable local energy?

Scott Morrison:

No, well, we have made a very fast transition. Well, we have had record investments and increases in the capacity of renewable technologies and renewable energies. That hasn’t been the issue. The issue is ensuring that we keep pace with reliable, affordable baseload power that deals with the problem with the intermittent-ness of much of our renewable energy generation.

…That’s why we’ve invested in gas-fired generation. Remember, when I came out and said that we needed more gas-fired power, that’s to actually enable the renewable energy that is now in the system.

Because if you don’t have that supporting power – it’s called firming power – then that actually makes the system break down. And that’s why it’s so important that you’re investing and ensuring that you continue to have that reliable baseload power to support your renewables.

Otherwise, they become redundant. And so that’s why we have invested in Snowy 2.0, that’s why we’re doing battery of the nation, that’s why we’ve invested in gas-fired power in Kurri Kurri. Now, Labor were for gas, then they were against gas, then they’re for gas, then they talk to the Greens again and they’re against gas, and it’s really hard to find where they stand on reliable, affordable power.

And so, look, people know where we stand on these issues. We’ve always been consistent. That’s why this election is a choice between a government that you do know, and a Labor opposition that you don’t.

That sound you hear is Murph’s existential scream.

Q: Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese has accused you of trying to dictate when these debates are going to happen. What’s your response to that? And do you think that he is trying to walk away from going face-to-face with you?

Scott Morrison:

Well, I can only take him at his word. He said he wanted to debate me anywhere, any time. Thursday, Sunday – that’s when the dates are. The hall’s booked. I’ll be there. See, look, Mr Albanese has talked a big game for the last three years.

A very big game. He’s had a lot to say about me over the last three years.

In fact, he’s had not much more to say than things about me over the last three years. We don’t really know what he stands for. Everything he’s previously opposed, he now supports. Everything he supports, he previously opposed. That’s the definition of having an each-way bet, by the way.

And so now, when he constantly said, “Let’s debate, let’s debate,” and he has to step up and do it, all of a sudden he’s not available. Now, it’s unfortunate that he obviously had Covid last week, and I’m pleased that he’s rejoined the campaign trail, and I’m pleased he’s well. But we’ve gotta catch up some time there, and I think it’s important that we have those two debates before people start voting, and they start voting on Monday week. And so Seven and Nine have booked the hall. I’ll be there. I’ll get myself a new tie. And off we can go. I hope he decides to come. Because if he doesn’t, well, I don’t know what he’s been saying all these years.

Q: You say your economic plan will put downward pressure on prices, but economists say when you have billions of dollars landing in people’s bank accounts this week, plus you’ve got LMITO coming in after July, that will only add inflationary pressure. So, how do you respond to this idea that your plan is actually contributing to the inflationary pressure that we’re seeing?

Scott Morrison:

Well, the halving of the petrol tax – and just to correct something I said yesterday, it was quarter of a per cent reduction in inflation, as estimated by Treasury [he said half a per cent yesterday, which some might say is a gaffe, and not understanding key numbers of a key policy, but apparently we have moved on from that] – that has a deflationary impact by halving the petrol tax for that period of time.

We’ve also been careful and targeted in the way we’ve done these things. I mean, Labor would have spent an extra $81bn during the course of the pandemic, from their own stated policies.

They were going to spend $6bn giving money to people for a vaccine they’d already had. I mean, it was foolishness.

Even they walked away from it. They wanted to keep jobkeeper going beyond the period that we put it in place. But we had the discipline to stare them down. I remember it in the parliament.

Every day, saying, “You end jobkeeper, and the unemployment rate will go up and people will go out of work”. The complete opposite happened because we had confidence in the policies that we’d put in place. We’d been very clear that they would be temporary and targeted and would be effective, and they were. Labor wanted to keep going.

So, could you imagine how much more pressure there would be in the system today if Labor had been in power and had spent an extra $81bn. That’s almost three times what we spend on Medicare each year.

So, we showed the discipline, even though we had to lean heavily to see the Australian economy through. We had very clear principles and rules that were guiding our expenditure, and that’s why we continue to hold our AAA credit rating, because they could see what we were doing, they could see that it was well-designed, well-targeted, and, wherever possible, ensuring that it was seeking to put downward pressure on potentially inflationary impacts.

Now, the inflationary impacts we’re seeing in the economy, yes, they’re significantly attributable to what we’ve seen with the war in Europe and the impact on fuel prices. I think Australians understand those external impacts. But equally they’re also about the disruption of the pandemic to supply chains and how goods and services move around the world, and we continue to see that right now.

And we see it particularly with China, in a lockdown, and the impact that that has on supply chains, which does put those upward pressures on. So, having a government that knows how to manage money, a government that has turned around the budget by $100m in the last 12 months alone from previous estimates because our economic plan is working, that is the best way to put downward pressure on rising costs and downward pressure on rising interest rates.

Q: Prime minister, a video has been released warning that Australia’s borders are closed to people smugglers. What do you believe prompted the video? And do you believe with Peter Dutton’s comments that people smuggling could restart because of conflicted messages around boat arrivals?

(There are no conflicted messages around boat arrivals. In terms of turn backs, both parties have the same policy. There is no intelligence which has been released to suggest this is even an issue.)

Scott Morrison:

I do agree with Peter. I absolutely agree with Peter. I mean, I’ve lived this over a long period of time. And the decisions of Operation Sovereign Borders to undertake those communications, they are entirely decisions for them. They are not made with any involvement of the government, particularly in a caretaker period. That has been done of their volition.

And obviously trying to send a very clear message that we might not see as a result of the uncertainty of Labor’s policies some drive in encouragement for people to get on boats.

Let’s be clear – Labor have a policy which says they will give permanent protection visas to people who have come to Australia illegally by boat*. That is their policy. And I do not believe that is a good policy to keep borders secure.

Now, I can say that with some authority because, in August of 2008, Labor – thinking that because the boats weren’t coming anymore, when Kevin Rudd was prime minister, they thought they could abolish temporary protection visas and everything would be OK.

They took Australia’s border security success for granted, what had been achieved by the Howard government, and from August 2008, that’s when you can mark the date from where Australia’s border chaos started. And the rest is history. 50,000 arrivals, 800 boats, 1,200 people dead at sea, Labor lost complete control and had no clue about how to fix it.

As shadow immigration minister, I developed the policy of Operation Sovereign Borders, how you make offshore processing work effectively, and the restoration of temporary protection visas, and the boats were stopped. What I find amazing is that the Labor party, even now, after all this time, still don’t get it.

And they think granting permanent visas to people who come, illegally enter Australia by boat, they think, by giving them permanent visas, that won’t set this off again. History tells another story. Labor is a great risk to border security and they are repeating their mistakes and remain clueless about it.

*The temporary protection visas have been granted to people who have been found to be refugees under the Coalition government. They are made to reapply for a TPV and that is the only difference. Refugees would no longer have to reapply.

Q: You have been campaigning on what you have done over the last three years on the pandemic, on economic management, on national security. But if you are re-elected, what will you do? What is your vision for Australia over the next three years?

Scott Morrison:

Well, each and every day, I have been making announcements about the very things we are doing.

The investments we’re making in manufacturing. The investments we’re making in keeping taxes low.

The investments we’re making in supporting apprenticeships and education and training. And reforming that. The investments we’re putting into our medical mental health system across the country, guaranteed by a strong economy.

The investments we’re putting into our defence forces and setting out the upgrades of our major bases and major procurements.

And the investments we’re making in upgrading the data and digital capabilities of our businesses, which will determine their success.

And the investments that we’re making in reliable and affordable energy – some $22bn over the next 10 years to put us on that clear pathway to hit net zero by 2050. Now, all of that is a vision for a strong economy, because a strong economy means a stronger future.

Because my vision for Australians is they get to achieve what they want to achieve, that they get to make the choices that they want to make, that they can buy their home, that they can get that job, that they can get that training, that they can raise their kids in the way they want to raise their kids, that they can save for their retirement and have dignity in their older age.

That’s my vision. And the way you achieve that is by having an economic plan and a government that knows how to manage the economy and a government that knows how to manage money. If you don’t have a strong economy, you’re just making stuff up.

Q: Prime minister, are you worried about losing North Sydney, Wentworth, and even Kooyong to independents at this election?

Scott Morrison:

Well, this election is a choice. And those decisions are in the hands of the Australian people. And they have a choice between a government that has a clear economic plan, that is investing in manufacturing, investing in clean energy, in keeping taxes low, cutting red tape, investing at record levels in skills and getting apprentices on board, that has taken Australia through one of the most difficult times since the Great Depression itself, economically, and has a plan to see Australia continue to grow, and we’ve outperformed the advanced world.

Or a Labor party and Mr Albanese, who has never done a budget. Labor can’t manage money – Australians know that. And a Labor opposition that people don’t even know.

So, there is a choice. And as far as the independents are concerned, well, that is a vote for chaos in the parliament. And what Australia does not need at a time of great uncertainty – economically, and when it comes to international security – is you do not want a parliament that is in chaos, where a government each and every day has to go and bargain to keep Australia safe and to keep Australia strong. One of the great advantages we’ve had as a majority government over these last three years is we’ve been able to get on and do the things we’ve had to do as a majority government. If we had to do that walking into the parliament every day to bargain, well, I don’t think Australia would have had anywhere near the strength of outcome that we’ve had over these last three years.

Q: Prices are going up under your policies now.

Scott Morrison:

Because of the coal price. I mean, there is a war in Europe that forced up the price of thermal coal.

Q: 140% in March quarter, though, prime minister – that’s before Ukraine.

Morrison:

Coal prices have gone up around the world. And now we’re seeing those thermal coal prices come down. But to be fair, Mark, over the course of the first quarter of this year, the tensions in Europe were pretty apparent. It’s not like the war in Ukraine just came out of nowhere.

Those tensions were building up over all of this year. I certainly know it, ‘cause I sit around and chair the national security committee. So, we’ve seen a lot of pressures on energy prices, and they have gone up.

And we will see that change in the months ahead – that’s certainly the forecasts we’re getting. But what you need is the strength to be able to stand up to the big electricity companies. I mean, Labor opposed having legislation that held the big electricity companies to account.

They didn’t just oppose it, they mocked it. But we passed it. We pressed on and ensured we put those protections in place for Australian consumers. We ensured that there was not the sneaky price increases that came through of having consumers to default back to a much higher-priced contract.

We protected those consumers and we’ve kept the electricity companies honest, and that’s why – amongst many other reasons – we have seen under our administration, seen those electricity prices fall. You control what you can control, and that’s what we’ve done.

Scott Morrison:

That’s why we have been focusing on the things that we can control – taking on the big energy companies, putting those legislative mechanisms in place, ensuring that we’re keeping the prices down on gas, and in addition to that, investing in new generation capability, which is affordable and reliable.

We’ve seen the coal price go up and we’ve seen that, if you look at the Aemo report, you’ll see that it had gone up significantly, particularly in the first quarter of this year. We are now seeing that come down and we can expect that to flow through into prices.

But I can tell you what does put those electricity prices up. 46% of your electricity bill is in transmission.

Not the wholesale price – that’s around about 30%. And the balance is, of course, what happens with retail. Now, Labor has a plan to gold-plate the transmission network, to invest in those transmission networks, which the regulator is bound to pass the costs on to you.

And that’s why key energy economists, Frontier Economics, all of these groups, have said that what this does is pushes electricity prices up. You put it in the wrong place, at the wrong time, what that means is you are forcing electricity prices up. So, Labor has a policy just like they did years ago when they had the carbon tax, which put electricity prices up. They’re doing it again by having a policy that gold-plates the transmission network that only pushes prices up. That’s not our policy.

That’s not Labor’s policy either. Labor’s policy is to have an independent group decide what needs upgrading and only if it stacks up. So it won’t be in the wrong place. It was government “modelling” which said power prices would go up under Labor, and the government refuses to release that modelling.

Q: If you win on 21 May, how much will Australians save on their power bills, or will they go up? And on their grocery bills, how can you make electricity cheaper?

The answer has been going for the last five minutes. It’s not so much about what the government will do, but what it has done. And then mischaracterising what Labor’s power policy is.

Scott Morrison:

Well, let me deal with the issue of electricity first. What I do know is, over the last few years, we’ve been seeing electricity prices fall by about 8%, a fall by over 9% since I became prime minister. And there’s a number of reasons for that having occurred and I’d like to take you through how that has happened and what we have done to secure that.

What we have done is we’ve put a number of mechanisms in place. One of the most important of those was the price safety net which minister Taylor put in place, which protected consumers on the default deals that they got from big electricity companies from being hit with higher, overpriced electricity.

Now, our information shows that that saved 680,000 households and small businesses some $350m in power bills. Which is what we’ve done. That mechanism remains in place.

We put it in place.

Secondly, we put in place the big stick legislation, which Labor and the parliament mocked, but we pressed ahead with it.

And we made sure that there were strong protections in place to hold the big energy companies to account when they were seeking to overcharge and price electricity at levels which we didn’t believe was fair. And so we took on the big electricity companies and we put that legislation in place.

We had the big stick in place to keep electricity companies accountable for what they were doing.

We reined in the power of those networks, which saved some $6bn under the appeal decision rights that were changed for the Australian energy regulator, which had Labor had done that earlier, it would have saved some $6bn.

And we also took action to put in place the generation capabilities, which we’re seeing right now in the building of the Kurri Kurri gas-fired power plant and what we put into the underwriting of generation capacity – over a billion dollars into that program – to make sure that we were getting reliable, affordable energy. In the gas market, we put the safeguard mechanism in, and that safeguard mechanism was put in place with the deals we did with the large gas providers, which meant that they had to guarantee supply to the Australian market first.

Now, we didn’t have to use the stick of the gas mechanism because the gas mechanism stick enabled us to get the supply agreements out of the gas companies, which meant that the gas price that people are paying here in Australia is substantially less than the international price that they’re paying in other parts of the world. Now, I mention other parts of the world.

There’s no doubt that what is occurring with the war in Europe has pushed up the prices of energy. It’s one of the biggest energy price shocks we have seen since the 1970s.

Now, they’re things outside of our control.