DAVID KOCH:
Joining me now, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Treasurer, good morning to you.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning to you Kochie.
DAVID KOCH:
We’ll talk about the announcement in a tick, but first the Prime Minister has conceded he could’ve handled the bushfire crisis a bit better. Newspoll in the Australian shows the Coalition trailing Labor two party preferred for the first time since the election. And Anthony Albanese leads Scott Morrison 43 to 39 as preferred Prime Minister. Newspoll says it’s changed its methodology for conducting polls since the election. What do you reckon because Scott Morrison has a long way to go to recover those figures, hasn’t he?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well we’ve heard the message from the Australian people that in these unprecedented national disasters they expect their Federal Government to be playing a very direct role in responding and that’s what we are doing with the unprecedented compulsory call out of ADF reserves, the establishment of the National Bushfire Recovery Agency and the initial and additional $2 billion commitment. So we’re absolutely focused on getting support to people on the ground and that’s the message that we’ve heard from the Australian people and that’s what we have underway.
DAVID KOCH:
Looking a bit further out, Scott Morrison is seeking a Royal Commission into the bushfire crisis. What changes need to happen? Is this going to recalibrate the Government’s thinking on things like climate change, response and national coordination a lot quicker?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well I think the first point to make, Kochie, is that there will be significant lessons to be learned out of this bushfire season and where the Prime Minister has signalled his focus to be is on understanding and ensuring that for future natural disasters, and whether they be floods, cyclones, or bushfires that we have the right preparations in place but also the right sets of rules and responsibilities between the Federal and the State government to operate accordingly. Also our climate is getting dryer and hotter and that is impacting on the bushfire season and other events and it’s really important that we have the resilience, the adaptation and the mitigation strategies in place to respond to that.
DAVID KOCH:
And hopefully this becomes a really significant sort of turning point, if you like, for this country because it should be management of national parks, it should be water management as well. It’s got to be big picture vision here doesn’t it?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Yeah the building up of fuel stocks in our forests, the natural vegetation laws and how they are operated, where people live. There are lots of questions and lots of solutions that need to be put in place to prevent a tragic loss of life that we have seen in these bushfires.
DAVID KOCH:
Hopefully something really significant comes out of this tragedy that sets us up for the future including looking after our wildlife. The Coalition has committed to $50 million towards wildlife and habitat devastated by the fires. Experts say over a billion animals have been killed in New South Wales alone. How will these funds help? What’s being set up to direct it?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, firstly, this is an initial contribution of $50 million, there will be more money to come and 25 million dollars will be setting up an Emergency Recovery Fund which will effectively be led by Australia’s threatened species commissioner Dr Sally Box working with the CSIRO, working with our leading universities, working with our zoos to map the damage to our habitat, to our flora and fauna from this ecological disaster and to put our recovery plans in place to protect our wildlife. And then there will be $25 million that will also be going to the various volunteer groups, Greening Australia, the Conservation Volunteers Australia, to our zoos who are doing important work in looking after these damaged animals.
DAVID KOCH:
Great initiative. Treasurer, thanks for joining us.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good to be with you Kochie.