ALI MOORE:
Well, if you still use cash, do you think businesses should be forced to take it? The government is planning to require businesses to accept cash for essential services. The question, obviously is what exactly is essential? Stephen Jones is the Assistant Treasurer and the Minister for Financial Services. Stephen Jones, welcome back to Drive.
STEPHEN JONES:
Good to be back with you, Ali.
MOORE:
So, which businesses will be in and which will be out of the cash mandate?
JONES:
Look, there’s some obvious ones, supermarkets, so the ones who are retailing your groceries; pharmacies, that’s obviously an essential good; fuel, so, your petrol stations – they’re obvious ins. There’ll be some obvious outs as well. We’re not trying to make life harder for very small retailers, people using a small tap‑and‑go machine at a country market, that sort of stuff. But we are responding to what is a strong view amongst consumers, about 1.5 million of them, who use cash for the majority of their retail transactions. We’re responding to a very strong view from them that they still want to be, they want the legal right to be able to use the legal tender if I could put it that way. And that’s what we intend to put.
MOORE:
Are you going to put Canberra’s Parliament House cafe that Bob Katter got upset at under essential?
JONES:
I’ll talk to Bob about that; I always enjoy conversations. They never go in a straight line, but I’m sure that we can work through his issues as well.
MOORE:
Well, where would you put cafes? Would you put them in the essential category?
JONES:
You know, Ali, that’s exactly why we’re going to have a period of consultation between now and the end of the year. I get a mixed view when I talk to cafe owners, to be honest. Some see it as a market advantage if they always take cash. Others acknowledge that there’s a cost in using it, but there’s also a cost in using electronic payment mechanisms as well. So, give ourselves a couple of months of consultation ahead of legislation next year.
MOORE:
So, the issue obviously is with cash is that as we decline – our use declines, and as you said, a lot of people still want to be able to use it, but generally, our use has declined dramatically. It means it’s much more expensive to move it around and to transport it. So, do you think that if you’re going to mandate cash, the government will also end up having to pay for some of that movement and transportation of cash so that the cost of that doesn’t get passed on to the consumer?
JONES:
We’re working with banks, with the large retailers, the Australia Post and Armaguard, who are now the sole distributor of cash in Australia at the moment, there’s a settlement in place and we’ll work through what the long term arrangements look like. But you can’t hide it from you or your listeners; the less cash that is used, the more the unit price increases, particularly to deliver it to far locations. All the more reason that we send a signal earlier rather than later and send a signal now that we expect Australians to be able to access and use cash. So, we’ll work through those access issues, but we want to send a signal early that this is going to be a part of doing business in Australia.
MOORE:
Another issue, Stephen Jones – this is what’s happened in Parliament today. The Opposition saying it’s going to vote against your legislation that will impose or would impose caps on the number of international students. Is that legislation now doomed? The Coalition and the Greens plan to vote against it.
JONES:
Well, it’s an odd hill for the Coalition to fight on, I’ve got to say. They’ve been saying that immigration’s too high. Yet we have a situation at the moment where our universities and vocational education sector are determining immigration policy in this country. If you can get into a uni or a VET course, you can come to Australia. And we think that whilst the education sector is critical and we want to still have a flourishing foreign student basis here in Australia, we haven’t got balance at the moment, we haven’t got balance inside the university sector and we don’t have balance in our immigration policy as far as higher education goes –
MOORE:
But what does that mean, Minister?
JONES:
It means ensuring that we don’t have vocational education in particular, but also higher education used as a front door to permanent residency in Australia. It means that we don’t have a situation where universities determine how many people come to Australia every year based on how many positions they can fill in their undergraduate and postgraduate courses. We have a whole heap of other things we’ve got to consider, not the least of which is where are these people going to stay? Are our infrastructure arrangements up to place? Have we got accommodation and transport arrangements?
MOORE:
It also means you will potentially be going to an election with a much higher immigration number than you would want. Because if there’s no, you know, if there’s no cap on international student numbers, that was one of the things that was going to bring down those migration numbers.
JONES:
Rather undermines Mr. Dutton’s point, doesn’t it? He says, on the one hand, we’ve got immigration too high, but on the other hand, says we’ll do nothing about it. It rather undermines his point and puts a spotlight on the fact that it’s probably more about politics than policy.
MOORE:
Stephen Jones – just a final issue Dan Tehan, Shadow Immigration Minister, was on Mornings this morning here in Melbourne. He’s got a petition seeking to stop Victoria’s or Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop. Here’s a little of what Dan Tehan said.
[Excerpt]
DAN TEHAN:
Victoria cannot afford it. Victoria has seen its debt skyrocketing towards $180 billion and more, and this has the potential to double that amount of debt. Secondly, it is the wrong priority. We need to put that money into fixing our existing road infrastructure.
[End of excerpt]
MOORE:
That’s Dan Tehan speaking to Raf this morning. Stephen Jones is speaking with you right now. Stephen Jones, his point is that a third of the $35 billion‑odd dollars it’s going to cost to build the Suburban Rail Loop is going to come from the federal government. 2.2 – you have $2.2 billion you’ve committed so far, but you’ve yet to release it. Dan Tehan says that Anthony Albanese should just tell the Premier that it’s too expensive and spend the money elsewhere. Do you reckon it’s money that’s going to be well spent?
JONES:
Well, that’s what we’ve got Infrastructure Australia and our relevant agencies doing the detailed assessment of. But, I will make this point. I just don’t think it’s really good for social cohesion and for policy determination, if we say the only way that we can get a road built or a rail built in Victoria or anywhere else, is if we set up a competition between rural and regional Victorians and urban Victorians, I just don’t think that’s a good basis on which to build public policy. We’ve got to increase and improve our infrastructure right across the board and that’s what we’re focused on doing. We’ve invested more than a billion dollars in Victorian roads this year and we’ve significantly increased, I think we’ve doubled, in fact, the Roads to Recovery funding. So, we’re committed to doing this; I just don’t want to see this issue sort of unfold as if it’s city versus country because I think that’s a pretty dangerous debate.
MOORE:
I know I’m pulling you away from conversations in Parliament around the Scams Prevention Framework. We’ve talked about that before with you. You’re confident it’s going to get through Parliament in its last 2 weeks?
JONES:
It has to get through Ali. By the end of today, $7 million will have been lost to scammers, and by the time the Parliament gets up at the end of the week, we’ll have lost over $40 million so the longer we wait, the more money is lost and older Australians are losing the most. So, you can’t talk tough on law and order on Sky News or in the telly and then go weak on it in the Parliament. This is about keeping Australians’ money and information safe. There’s a way to do it. We’ll have the toughest prevention framework anywhere in the world. We can put the green lights on that if we vote it through Parliament before we get up at the end of the year.
MOORE:
Minister, thanks for joining us.
JONES:
Good to be with you.
MOORE:
Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones.