Anika Wells MP on 4BC with Scott Emerson
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
4BC DRIVE WITH SCOTT EMERSON
FRIDAY, 25 MARCH 2022
SUBJECTS: Federal budget, cost of living, election campaign, Brisbane flood recovery.
SCOTT EMERSON, HOST: Every week we have our own version of Question Time here on 4BC Drive with Labor's Member for Lilley Anika Wells and the LNP Member for Ryan Julian Simmons. How are you both today?
ANIKA WELLS, MEMBER FOR LILLEY: Good afternoon. I'm doing well.
JULIAN SIMMONDS, MEMBER FOR RYAN: Very well. Thanks mate.
EMERSON: All right, then. This first to you Julian. Next week, we have the budget handed down on Tuesday night. I'll just remind listeners that we do have a budget special on Tuesday night headed up by Brooke Corte. I'll be joining our federal political editor Michael Pachi and John Stanley for our coverage of the budget. So next Tuesday night, it's going to be an important one for the government, because it is a pre-election budget. Julian, what can people expect from the budget? Is this is going to be a big spending budget to try to win over some votes ahead of a May poll?
SIMMONDS: Well, look, I spoke to the Treasurer today, and I begged him for an exclusive to give to you this afternoon Scott. But unfortunately to no avail.
EMERSON: Oh, Josh, Josh, Josh!
SIMMONDS: Yeah, I’ll take that up with him later. But I think that's…what you will definitely see, you’ll see us continue to lock in that economic recovery. You’ll see some spending to help people with the cost-of-living pressures that we know people are under. Some extra defence spending, which we’ve already announced. We had a few good announcements, like the one today on endometriosis, our funding to help families through that. Which you know, is near and dear to mine and Maddie’s heart. So you'll see lots of things targeted for families. And yeah, locking in those strong economic conditions that we need to make everything else work.
EMERSON: Yeah, that was a good announcement today. A very important issue. And I know one in nine women in Australia suffer from some form of endometriosis. So that was a good announcement. Anika, look, as I said, a pre-election budget. Are we just going to see the cash splash, because the Coalition wants to win the votes ahead of the election?
WELLS: Perhaps in some places, Scott, but the experience is not everywhere. I mean, the past two years, I've delivered my Lilley budget submission to the Treasurer. Which has been a big community consultation through mobile offices and online surveys. And our budget submission outlines the sporting infrastructure, the roads and transport, urban congestion, health, education, community infrastructure that we need funding for on the northside. And that by together identifying those gaps and you know, filling them, fixing them, we could create new jobs on the northside and boost our economy. And last year, the Treasurer ignored my community’s budget submission. I hope he pays more attention this year, to be honest.
EMERSON: Well, you’ll have your own. Well, Julian do does the budget favour Coalition electorates over Labor electorates?
SIMMONDS: We've got hundreds of thousands of people, more people in jobs than before the pandemic. And we've had a pandemic and a lot of money go out the door to make sure people keep their jobs and businesses stay open. So, you know, if there's…if there's projects that will create jobs, this government is very much for funding them.
EMERSON: Well Anika, it sounds like Julian is saying, “look, if you’ve got a decent proposal, it'll get funded”.
WELLS: Well, I'm not sure that's the case because the Lilley community budget submission is excellent.
SIMMONDS: No doubt.
WELLS: I can take it over to the Westside if you’d like a tutorial on it. I would say, like the jobs issue, people are buckling under the cost of living. I'm sure Julian's getting it just as I am every single day. The median house prices increased by over 38 per cent last year in a number of my suburbs, Aspley, Kedron, Wavell Heights, Stafford and Geebung. I'm sure that's the same over your way west, Julian. And rents increased by up to 11 per cent. So I think we're really looking forward to something on Tuesday night to address that spiralling cost of living.
EMERSON: All right. Well, Anika on the Tuesday night, we see Josh Frydenberg hand down his budget. On the Thursday we'll see the Opposition leader Anthony Albanese have his budget in reply. Will he then, in his budget reply, detail a list of cost-of-living initiatives to deal with that issue? Will he outline what he would do if he won the election?
WELLS: Yeah, he will. I mean, the difficulty for us is that we've got to wait till Tuesday night, and we've got a 48-hour turnaround to consider those proposals, what we'll agree to, what we would do differently. But we will do all that, Thursday night. And we will address things like wages, like cost of living. Because despite what I'm sure I'm about to hear from Julian, real wages have only grown 1.4 per cent since the Coalition came to office. That's total. That’s not per year, that’s total. And people need wages to go up when everything else is going up.
EMERSON: Well, Julian, we're expecting to hear a response then to that.
SIMMONDS: Well, well, there's I mean, we've discussed this previously. You know, there's…there's nothing like a tight labour market like we're seeing at the moment with unemployment heading towards a three in front of it, to boost wages. But cost-of-living pressures is a big issue that will be addressed in the budget. And look, there's a lot of families that are saying in the western suburbs, they aren’t necessarily disappointed about seeing extra value in their homes over the last little while as well.
EMERSON: Now, Anika Wells, speaking of elections.
WELLS: Scott Emerson {laughter}.
EMERSON: It is less than two months before we go to the polls. How’s the campaigning going in your seat? Have you got…have you got an LNP opponent against you at the moment?
WELLS: I don't. It's been a month now without a friend out in the field with me. I don't know when I'm getting one. But it doesn't change what I do does it? As the heralded title holder of the most marginal seat in Queensland. For me, the campaign's been going since the day the election count was declared back in 2019. And this week, I've been to Harmony Day activities in Sandgate, I’ve presented leadership badges at a couple of school ceremonies, I've held meetings with stakeholders. We had our Toombul shops, pop-up town hall yesterday. People had some bad news there. Tomorrow, I'm door knocking, going to a community centre, presenting some sports awards. And then Julian and I are off to Canberra on Sunday. So I mean, I love it. That's my job. And I'll keep doing that every day whether or not the LNP offers someone to contest it.
EMERSON: Well, it's not a bad situation. I do know there was unfortunate circumstances for the LNP candidate. I don't want to play that down at all. But look, it's not a bad situation. If you are the most marginal seat in Queensland, not to have an opponent for the major opposition party to you, running at the moment.
WELLS: To me Scott?
EMERSON: Yes to you Anika. That's not a bad situation is it?
WELLS: Not a bad situation? Well I do have other candidates, from other political parties and independents who are out and about. But it doesn't change the nature of what I do as the MP. It is my hope that we will have a full roster of candidates, so that when community groups put on their town halls in the formal election, they can hear from each party what they're offering by way of policy at the elections.
EMERSON: Right now Julian Simmonds, I think I drove past you the other day, I saw you out in the streets. I think it might have been Coronation Drive when I was heading to work there. You were waving to the traffic. How's your campaign going out there? You do have a Labor opponent in the field.
SIMMONDS: Yeah, yeah, look, half your luck if you don't have a candidate against you. But look certainly doing a lot of the roadside, doing a lot of the school activities. And I'm at a school fun day this afternoon, actually, which was there’s a bit of noise in the in the background. So it's good to see people get together both after this COVID period, but also after the flood, of course. This has really been the first opportunity they’ve had to acknowledge and come together as a school community. So we're doing a lot of that.
EMERSON: And just on the floods, you mentioned there and I mentioned Coronation Drive. A lane of Coronation Drive is going to be closed for up to six weeks to deal with the Drift restaurant. It's going to cause a bit of chaos. That's not necessarily a good outcome. Having a bit of chaos and gridlock on a road in your electorate in the lead up to an election is it?
SIMMONDS: This issue just drives me nuts. Because we went through, you know, I was in the council before federal government. And we went through this after the 2011 flood. You know, that Drift restaurant should have been taken away at that point. And we've begged the state government to cancel, cancel the lease. But Mark Bailey, I’ve got letters from me to him, begging him to cancel that lease, and to tow that thing away. And they just wouldn't do it. And now we're in this ridiculous situation where Brisbane’s busiest bikeway is unavailable. And it's putting people…putting cyclist’s lives at risk. So I’m pleased the council's going do a temporary bikeway. But honestly, we didn't need to be in this position if the state government had acted after the 2011 flood.
EMERSON: And Anika Wells, we spoke to Barry Herman a little bit earlier from A Place 2 Meat.
WELLS: Mmmm, the butchers.
EMERSON: Exactly right! At Toombul shopping centre. A lovely bloke; determined to get back in there. But we heard reports today, six months, maybe a year before Toombul reopens. It's in your electorate.
WELLS: That's right, at least six months. And the impact of that is just enormous on my community. It's a massive hub for us. And that's 140 retailers whose livelihoods are gone. That's hundreds of their staff who've lost their jobs. That's the community who's lost access to their shopping centre and all the things that come with that -banks, doctors, dentists, pharmacies, public transport. Because Toombul has a train station, whereas the nearest shopping centre Chermside, does not have a train station. So a lot of people, particularly elderly residents, have reached out to me to say how distressed they are about losing their local shops. And the complexity of the assistance required is going to take months because it's not just whether you've lost your goods that weekend in the floods. But a shop owner Juliana, her insurance company’s told her they can't progress her claim until she commissions her own hydrologist report. Which is a very lengthy and expensive process. And the insurance company says they can't find one themselves. I'm not sure how Juliana is supposed to find a hydrologist to do a report? So I think people need to come forward and ask people like Julian and myself to help if they've got difficulties with their insurance. I am meeting with the Insurance Council of Australia next week, when I'm in Canberra for budget, to make sure that these kinds of things are being looked into.
EMERSON: Anika Wells and Julian Simmons, we will speak next week after the handing down of the budget. Thanks for being on the show this afternoon.
WELLS: Always a pleasure.
ENDS
