JAYNIE SEAL

Well, let's have our weekly chat now with National's Leader David Littleproud.  David, good morning to you.

DAVID LITTLEPROUD

Good morning. Good to be with you.

JAYNIE SEAL

Great to see you, welcome back. How was your well deserved time off?

DAVID LITTLEPROUD

I had a couple weeks off with my wife, so back into the swing of things in Dubbo and feeling the cold I’ve got to admit, I think it was zero here when we got up to do some radio before. So, living the dream in downtown Dubbo.

JAYNIE SEAL

Yeah, very crisp start to the day. Tell us what's happening in Dubbo.

DAVID LITTLEPROUD

Yeah, well obviously Mark Coulton is retiring and we've pre-selected a new candidate in Jamie Chaffey, so we're making sure that we're hitting the ground running, talking about the issues that are important to people out here, regional health, just filling in some potholes, getting some decent roads and making sure that we are getting some real work done, particularly in making sure that we've got the right labour supply out here. There is a shortage and the Government's now talking about taking away backpackers from regional and rural Australia, which will just decimate, not just agriculture, decimate our pubs, our restaurants, our motels. So, these unions are too high up in the stirrups. They're running the show at the moment and they're going to destroy regional Australia in the process.

JAYNIE SEAL

Alright, well yes, congratulations to Jamie Chaffey. We've had him on quite a few times here on Sky News Breakfast, the chair of the Country Mayor's Association and the Mayor of Gunnedah. So does a lot of work, so we'll see, you know, no doubt more of that work.

But let's talk about the RBA. We put the cash, well cash rate on hold and energy prices certainly is going to be one of the key issues as you well know in the lead up to the election.

We've got the nuclear debate as well. What is the latest here because there's an article in the Daily Telegraph, in the News Corp papers talking about nuclear power proponents. They're quite eager to highlight to overseas examples where electricity costs are perhaps less than half of our rates.

DAVID LITTLEPROUD

Yeah, and this is the lived experience of those countries that have nuclear energy, is that you get a payback over eighty to a hundred years, not a wind turbine or solar panel that lasts ten to fifteen years and you have to do it again.

This is something that while there's an upfront cost, the amortisation of the payback is over a lot longer period and there's a lot more jobs. What it also does, is mean that regional Australia doesn't have a future that's littered with transmission lines, with solar panels and wind turbines, your food security being ripped up, your food prices going up and us destroying the very thing we're trying to protect the actual natural environment.

What the world has seen is that in the EU, in particular in France, you've seen that they're paying around $70, which is equivalent to about $30 euro per kilowatt hour. But in Australia you're talking about $110 for what we've got. If you go all solar, experts are saying it'll be even 40% more.

So, this all renewables approach has not been able to support any economy to the industrial size of what Australia is anywhere in the world. You have got to have an energy mix, if you put all your energy eggs in one basket, you create concentration risk, you tear away the opportunity to underpin manufacturing and you're going to have to continue to subsidise, and ultimately Australian taxpayers’ money runs out.

The RBA governor belled the cat yesterday when she said that effectively inflation's going to stay higher longer because we're not addressing the fundamentals of getting base load supply power to drive down your prices. Instead, they're just giving subsidies. $300 will start to hit in Queensland, a $1000, that's inflationary. The RBA governor effectively called that out. So, your rates, your interest rates are staying higher, longer because this Government is fundamentally trying to address the challenges of what's driving inflation with ideology, not practical reality.

And that's where we're going to show strong leadership.  A Dutton Littleproud Government will take this challenge up and will set Australia up for generations to come with reliable, affordable power with nuclear, with gas and renewables, but get the right mix to give us the more affordable prices that we deserve.

JAYNIE SEAL

Let's talk about Rex Airlines. Today we are talking about aviation experts expecting a very concerted effort to keep regional Rex routes flying. What's your take on this? How important is it?

DAVID LITTLEPROUD

Yeah, it's critical to regional Australia. You have just got to appreciate this is a matter of life and death. People use Rex as their carrier to get them into capital cities for medical treatment, and in fact, it's also about bringing medical professionals to us out into regional areas.

So, it's important that the Government works to ensure that there is a regional airline and unfortunately they've been too slow to act on competition reforms that were handed to them. Catherine King has a long history of sitting on reports, letting them sit on a desk without making a decision.

When you're given the privilege to be a Minister of the Crown in this country, you have the opportunity to make decisions, but you've got to make those decisions, when you get reports, independent reports that said that there should be competition reform in terms of the number of slots and who gets those slots to increase competition, you should act on it. And she's been too slow to act on that, she was too slow to act on her infrastructure review, it was meant to be six months that lasted nearly a year.

This is where a government has been asleep at the wheel and we're going to pay the price for this in regional Australia. So, it's important that some sanity prevails, and we hope that there is a commercial solution to this, that someone comes in and buys Rex. There are already government routes that are subsidised to Rex and to Qantas and we just need to make sure that this continues for regional Australia.

JAYNIE SEAL

David Littleproud, great to see you, National's Leader, we’ll see you again at the same time next week and I hope you get a little bit warmer there in Dubbo.