Interview with Tom Connell, Sky News, NewsDay

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Patrick Gorman, thanks for your time. 43% emissions reduction target negotiations going on right now. So what is on the table? What's Labor willing to compromise on?

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Well, firstly, we want to hear what it is that others want to say. We've been very clear about what we have taken to the election and indeed have a very strong view that we have a mandate on 43% by 2030 and a mandate to legislate net zero by 2050. If there are minor things that people want to put forward and they're good ideas, we're open to good ideas and Chris Bowen is doing that work right now. But those negotiations are ongoing, so I don't want to sort of set on Sky this morning a whole range of parameters.

CONNELL: People always say that, but they are allowed to. I guess the thing is, what are you trying to achieve? You don't even have to legislate it. Are you trying to get the Greens on board because they're a party that's run on the environment? Are you trying to get Crossbenchers on board? Is it as many as possible? What's the point of the compromise?

GORMAN: We want to see this legislation go through the Parliament. That's important because it sends a strong signal to investors saying, if you want to put your investment here in Australia, in renewable energy, then it's going to be a sound investment. We've got legislation of the Parliament of Australia.

CONNELL: So that means getting the Greens approval in the Senate, essentially? That’s what it comes down to.

GORMAN: It could be, it would open to the Coalition.

CONNELL: They’re not going to do it.

GORMAN: There may be a member or two. I saw an article in the last half hour saying there might be a member who is looking to vote for this legislation. I'd welcome that. It is open to anyone to vote for this. The Minister, Chris Bowen will be introducing it to the parliament tomorrow. That will obviously allow more members to have more thoughts on what they may or may not want to see. But what we want and what people are sick of is we've had these wasted decades of inaction on climate change. We want to get Australia moving, we are trying to catch up with our comparative countries in the rest of the world. There is work to be done.

CONNELL: One is detail, a lot has changed even since you made this commitment in the energy market, in particular, around costs and so on. Do we need an update to the plan? In particular, what it will cost business, individuals as well?

GORMAN: Well, what we did, I would think it's important for your viewers to understand in developing this policy, we started by saying, here are all the measures that we're going to put together to reduce Australia's carbon emissions. And then we got that independently modelled, it totals a 43% reduction by 2030. So that's what we are legislating, is to say this is the reduction achieved by the measures we've already outlined and those measures have been on the table for about eight months publicly out there.

CONNELL: But it's not whether those measures change, it's where the use of gas, for example, the key transition fuel, is more expensive. It's whether this plan will actually cost more than you thought it would back then.

GORMAN: Well, in terms of what we're seeking to do is obviously implement those things that we said, things like the electric car discount, things like rewiring Australia, these pieces that actually we know we have to do these things, we have to be moving in this direction. And when it comes to the question of how do you make sure that Australia over time has the lowest cost transition to a net zero world? The lowest cost transition to a net zero world is by us starting to move and starting to catch up with the countries with which we trade.

CONNELL: With which we need to sort of update that. Again, with some of the costs that are flying around at the moment.

GORMAN: There will be two major economic updates. As we know. The treasurer will be giving an economic update on Thursday. You'll have an update in the form of a budget in October.

CONNELL: That’s not going to tell us here what Labor's climate plan will cost, will it?

GORMAN: Well, of course, some of the measures that we have outlined in our election commitments will be in the budget. So indeed, in that sense, it will. You're asking me to sort of speculate on a whole range of things that may or may not happen in international energy markets. I'm not going to do that. I can't do that.

CONNELL: You mentioned that the update, the economic update, the state of the books, if you like, is going to be pretty dire. That's what we're being readied for. The biggest criticism of the government you had was that wages began to slow. We're going below inflation. That was only the final year for the coalition, not previously. It looks like you won't be able to correct that for what, years?

GORMAN: Well, again, there'll be an economic update on Thursday. We're being really open with the Australian people about the huge challenges that we face and that have been left, some because of inaction by the former government and some because of international factors. But there is a huge challenge when we've got inflation currently at 5.1%, in my state of Western Australia, it's above 7%. These are huge challenges. And again, in terms of the differences we're seeing in different parts of the Labour market, different sectors are having different wage outcomes.

CONNELL: Turning that around, real wage increases, is the message that it's years away now?

GORMAN: Well, we want to make sure that people have good, secure jobs and wage increases.

CONNELL: When is the second one going to come? Is it years away?

GORMAN: Well, obviously we had a good outcome just last month when it came to the decision of Fair Work in terms of saying that the minimum wage and award wages would increase that was a good thing. People have started to see that flow through in most sectors into their pay packets over the last week or so. That's welcome. When it comes though to tackling the huge challenges of inflation. These are things that we are going to have to be very open and honest with you. I commended Jim Chalmers for his openness and honesty.

CONNELL: We'll see what the message is and how open honesty is, perhaps on Thursday. What about balancing that? Then again, so wages are going to take a while to catch up. Balancing the spending you might be able to do to help with that against debt. Let's just take one child care fees. Labor has a plan for them. It starts in the middle of next year. Is that too late?

GORMAN: We want to get this done. I've said before, I've even said on this programme, that if the Coalition had wanted to, when they were in government, take our child care plan they could have and that would have got it done quicker. It's a good plan.

CONNELL: But you can do it quicker than the middle of next year? You're in government now. So should you-

GORMAN: We’ll announce the final details of that in the budget. But we're also being respectful of centre directors. I speak to a lot of childcare centre directors. They've got to obviously put this through their system. We do want to get it done because we know it's also going to help on the labour force availability.

CONNELL: So when you say centre directors and viability, is it viable to get started, perhaps the start of next year rather than the middle of next year?

GORMAN: Look, I think we've outlined our timeline for implementing this policy. Minister Aly, Minister Rishworth, Minister Clare, are all working on making sure that this gets done.

CONNELL: It sounds like there's talk of maybe getting it done earlier, if possible. Is that true?

GORMAN: I have to check, but I think the Minister said that if that was possible we're not trying to hold this back for any sort of reason. We know it's good economic policy, we know it's good education policy, we know it's good for working families and it's good for their cost of living. We want to make childcare more affordable. We want to make sure that more parents can get into the workforce, be it that extra fourth or fifth day. That's the benefit we're trying to achieve. And we know that it will have benefit to business because it will mean more people in the workforce to help them with those real pressures that we're seeing with a very low unemployment.

CONNELL: Just finally, hospital COVID numbers are as high as it has been this year and it's during flu season when there's stress on the hospital system. Is it time to consider a mask mandate?

GORMAN: The advice is that people can make their own decision, but to strongly encourage wearing a mask.

CONNELL: Well the advice from Paul Kelly just to jump in on that is that he will never recommend a mask mandate. That's not his job. He says get as many people wearing masks as possible and the government's saying not to, that's fair enough, it's a decision. But why not? Is it that Labor just thinks we can't go down that path anymore of mandates, they'd be too unpopular.

GORMAN: I think we found the point where Australians and the health advice line up. Unfortunately, this virus is going to be with us for a long time. People need to make their own decisions.

CONNELL: Mandates are it's sort of done, don’t you think?

GORMAN: I'm not going to say that because I know that indeed, in some areas we continue to have mandates when it comes to things like flu vaccinations for workers in aged care.

CONNELL: So, the whole population, mandatory measures, you can’t see them coming back?

GORMAN: I think the settings we've got right now are sustainable for the long term. I've been wearing a mask as a personal choice when I've been in the building. I took it off for this interview, I'll put it back on.

CONNELL: I’ll confirm to our viewers you did have that on.

GORMAN: Thank you. That's appropriate. I encourage people to wear a mask if they're in a tight setting where they can't socially distance and I think we've all been doing it for a couple of years now. We know what is and isn't necessary. A lot of us have had COVID, so we know what it is we're trying to avoid or prevent inflicting on others. We've all been through this together, we've all experienced the impact of this pandemic. I think people are smart enough to make their own decisions.

CONNELL: Patrick Gorman, thank you for your time.

GORMAN: Thanks.