PETER STEFANOVIC:
There is obviously a bit going on when it comes to politics. Let’s go to Canberra now, and joining us live is the Assistant Treasurer, the Financial Services Minister as well, Stephen Jones. Stephen, good to see you. Let’s start off with the fuel excise cuts that end tonight. Motorists now will be looking at another twenty‑five cents a litre. That is going to put the squeeze on the family budget. Will it add to inflationary pressures?
STEPHEN JONES:
Look, we hope not, Pete. Firstly, can I say, we should not see any immediate uptick in petrol prices as a result of these changes. Most petrol stations will have existing inventories that they’ve paid for on existing prices, not with the change in the fuel excise. So there should be no reason at all for petrol stations to immediately be jacking their prices up over the next 24 hours. We expect at least a week in city areas and longer in regional areas before those inventories are drawn down and they have to be replaced with new fuel. So that’s the reason why we’ve got the ACCC monitoring this very, very closely and they’ll be using all of their powers as necessary to ensure that motorists aren’t being gouged.
STEFANOVIC:
But another fifteen bucks for a full tank of fuel at a time like now. It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?
JONES:
Look, we feel the pain. We know that it is going to hurt households, which is why we haven’t taken this decision lightly. But we’ve inherited a trillion dollars worth of debt, Pete, and we can’t just keep writing $3 billion cheques, as the previous government did, because that debt, every dollar that we spend at the moment in addition to the budget is adding to our debt. And that has to be paid back, and we’re paying interest repayments on the existing debt.
STEFANOVIC:
Yeah.
JONES:
Our interest repayments on the debt alone is more than we pay on Medicare and medicines right now. So we just can’t keep writing cheques that we can’t cash.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Well, on Medicare – of sorts now – back to the Optus hack. Reports that Optus resisted multiple federal government efforts to tighten cyber security obligations. Has the company in your view put profits before the safety of its customers?
JONES:
Clearly Optus hasn’t done enough to protect its customers’ sensitive data. As every day goes by, more information is revealed on the extent of this breach. We now understand that Medicare data has been released. Many people are asking why in hell they had Medicare data in the first place. So we’ll have to look at all of these issues. But right now our priority is ensuring we minimise the harm caused by the Optus breach and ensure that Optus is taking responsibility for doing everything it can to look after its customers, including ensuring that they do everything in their power to recover the information and they minimise any loss to customers. But now there’s a lot of work to flow through as a result of this. It’s put a spotlight on the weaknesses in the government’s architecture for dealing with these sorts of things. But the number one blame, the number one focus at the moment, has to be on Optus and ensuring that we minimise the damage and the fallout from this breach before we turn to ensuring how we minimise the risk of this sort of thing happening again.
STEFANOVIC:
Does the CEO need to go?
JONES:
This is a question for the board. I actually – I think right now, at a time when we’re in the middle of a crisis, what’s most important is we have everybody focused on fixing the problem and ensuring the data breach is rectified, we recover the data and customers are protected in the exercise. I don’t think it’s helpful at this point in time to be speculating on who should go from Optus – whether it’s the chair, whether it’s the board, whether it’s the CEO. I don’t think that’s helpful.
STEFANOVIC:
Right.
JONES:
We want their one hundred per cent attention focused on fixing the problem at hand.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Well, one thing you can do, the one thing the government can do is waive the fees for those who will now need new passports, for those who have been affected. Would you like to see that?
JONES:
The first thing I can say – and I’ve got advice from DFAT this morning on this – is that passports are safe to use as passports. So there’s no need for people to have to rush out if they think they’ve got an overseas trip coming and they need to use their passport. They're safe to use as passports. There’s multi‑factor identification by their very nature involved in a passport, so they’re safe to use as passports. Any cost that is associated with replacing documents, frankly – I’ve been quite pointed about this – if Optus has done the wrong thing, it shouldn’t be customers and it shouldn’t be the Commonwealth government or any other government that is bearing the cost of what is at its heart a fault, a problem, a mistake, a stuff‑up by Optus.
STEFANOVIC:
Stephen Jones, just one more here: you’ve got the Federal ICAC legislation that goes up today, though. And there have been critics about today saying the exceptional circumstances for public hearings waters down the bill. Does it put a brick wall around transparency?
JONES:
Absolutely not. Two important things: firstly, it will be the Commissioners themselves who decide whether a hearing is held in public – not a politician, not the minister, not the parliament, not the government. It will be the independent body itself which determines how an inquiry is conducted and whether it’s done in public. But also a practical matter, Pete: I anticipate that in its first year and probably every year after that there’ll be literally thousands of allegations and referrals from the public that go to the ICAC. It would be impossible for every single one of those investigations to occur in public. So let’s give the Commissioner the discretion to work out which ones are in the public interest to hold public hearings on and which ones, frankly, can either be dismissed or which ones aren’t really in the public interest for that level of resource to be dedicated to a public inquiry. Number one principle: let the independent Commissioner make those decisions. But there’s a practical reason why we’re putting those provisions in place.
STEFANOVIC:
Sure. Well, that sounds like a fair enough point to me. Stephen Jones, appreciate your time. Thank you. We’ll talk to you soon.