Interview - ABC News Breakfast with Lisa Millar

Topics: Australia’s Economic Accelerator; Aged Care; Prime Minister’s Press Club Address

E&OE-------------------------------------

Lisa Millar: 
The Prime Minister will address the Press Club later today, a key part of the speech will include greater investment in the Education sector. I'm joined now from Canberra by the Acting Education Minister, Stuart Robert. 

Good morning minister. Tell me about this $2.2 billion. What's it going to achieve?

Stuart Robert:
This is all about commercialisation and how we take our universities and their world class, blue sky research and commercialise it. It will take the great work our researchers do, and then build our economy through it. So it is a substantial step forward in taking our universities into that commercial space. It is a bit like CSIRO who developed Wi Fi, or the Defence Science Group who developed the black box to make real world differences from our great research.

Lisa Millar: 
There is a bit of irony isn't there in that it this is for a sector that has felt completely neglected over the last couple of years?

Stuart Robert:
Well, not too sure I agree with you in that respect. There is over $2.8 billion that goes into research every year. A lot of it blue-sky research. This is now about saying let's anchor that now in our six modern manufacturing priorities. And let's get that research commercialised and turned into jobs. And of course, economic activity. 

Lisa Millar:
So this is the start of the election cash splash.

Stuart Robert:
That's a bit cynical, not at all. It's about taking our world class research into world class commercialisation.

Lisa Millar:
Well, we've got this announcement, we've got the $800 for aged care, we knew that there was money that had been set aside but hadn't been assigned in the end of year financial document. I mean, this is really the first signs of what appears to be an election war chest minister.

Stuart Robert:
When we look at it commercialisation and steering our universities towards that we’re putting in $150 million into the CSIRO Main Sequence Venture Fund. There's a lot of time and effort and work that's gone into developing these and putting these together. This is not something that's been quickly thought through. And this is all about working with our universities and our industry and bringing them closer together. CSIRO’s Main Sequence Venter has already invested in 39 different corporations and seen over 1000 jobs created in the technical field. We want to see more of that.

Lisa Millar:
And how much of you and other MPs sweating on the Prime Minister being able to hit the reset button today at the Press Club?

Stuart Robert:
The Prime Minister every year does the Press Club. It sets out the national agenda as he should. It gives the media the opportunity to question it. It's always a great event because it sets out where we're going for the year. I'm looking forward to it.

Lisa Millar:
Well, where are you going is into an election campaign that has Newspoll, putting you well behind Labor on two party preferred basis 56 to 44. You've got to think this speech is slightly more critical than others.

Stuart Robert:
The speech happens every year. 

You saw Mr. Albanese give his speech last week and he rolled out precisely nothing. 

Today you'll see the Prime Minister roll out a strong positive agenda for how we'll continue to take our country forward. An agenda on post-COVID recovery and what that looks like, to give a lot of certainty and hope for the Australian people.

I think it'll lay a great foundation and also outline exactly what the Government's achieved.

Lisa Millar:
We seem to be seeing a trend in those polls firming up of the discontent in the government. Can you turn that around in four months?

Stuart Robert:
Well, again, you and I will respectfully disagree. The Government's…[interrupted]

Lisa Millar:
What do you disagree on? The two-party preferred is 56 to 44. We saw an earlier poll it suggested people are pretty unhappy.

Stuart Robert:
Okay, I understand your fascination with the polls…. [interrupted]

Lisa Millar:
No I am fascinated by the views, the Australian views of the Government.

Stuart Robert:
I'm actually fascinated in serving the Australian people as are the ministers in the Morison Government. And that's what we do every day and we'll continue to do that every day. 

We've been through a one in 100 year pandemic. It's been two extraordinary years. And I understand the frustrations of the Australian people. 

But great to see kids back at school. A lot of parents are very excited by that 4 million children over the next two weeks. And we're going to continue to build that momentum and continue to build our economy going forward.

Lisa Millar:
Minister, when you say that you're concentrating and your government's concentrating on serving the Australian people one of the areas, aged care has been neglected. Booster shots haven't been delivered in time. Rapid Antigen Tests haven't been available for them. We've heard horrendous stories in an overstretched industry. Will $800 payments really make a difference at this point?

Stuart Robert:
You saw in the Budget last year over $17 billion as our interim response to the interim report of the Aged Care Royal Commission, a Royal Commission of course that we started. We have put in place an unprecedented investment and support into our aged care sector. Over 7.6 million Rapid Antigen Tests have gone into that sector. And of course, we've got 89 million ordered and you've seen over 50 million pieces of medical equipment out of the PPE stockpile. So enormous support in to our aged care sector. We've done a range of payments in the past to support them in a very difficult time… [Interrupted]

Lisa Millar:
But you can’t be happy with what you have seen. You can't be possibly sort of rattling off all those figures and suggesting that the aged care sector has been looked after. We've had hundreds of deaths in the past month alone.

Stuart Robert:
The Government's response to the pandemic has seen over 45,000 Australian lives saved. One of the best responses internationally to the pandemic. Now sure mistakes have been made because there's no rulebook for what we're doing. 

Now in aged care we understood the issues, we called the Royal Commission, we've delivered our interim response and we have put funding into the aged care sector at a level unprecedented in Australia's history. We will continue to do that. We will continue to serve the Australian people and we will continue to support the wonderful men and women who work in that aged care sector every single day.

Lisa Millar:
So you think $800 payments will make a difference to staff and convince them not to walk away even though they're completely overworked.

Stuart Robert:
Well we've seen a range of payments through the pandemic in recognition of the hard work these beautiful people are doing, and this is a continuance of this. So that to say we understand and we respect the work they're doing and we want to continue to build into it. And that's the basis of why the payments are being announced. 

Lisa Millar:
Alright Stuart Robert, thanks for your time this morning.

Stuart Robert:
Lovely to talk to you.