Topics: Hezbollah device explosions; Childcare expansion;
09:20AM AEST
19 September 2024
Laura Jayes: Joining me now is a Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Birmingham. Simon, thanks so much for your time. This is certainly an escalation, a new phase of this war in the Middle East. Does it concern you?
Simon Birmingham: Well, none of us wish to see a situation where the war broadens out into a regional conflict. And of course, we all wish to see ultimately steps taken towards peace. But we do have to remember that Hezbollah is a listed and active terrorist organisation that relentlessly sends rockets into Israel. Just two months ago sent rockets that, of course, killed children in a playground in the Golan Heights, has displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from the north of Israel and from their homes, and acts in constant defiance of a UN resolution that is meant to essentially keep southern Lebanon as a demilitarised zone. But instead Hezbollah are constantly using that as a base for their rocket and military attacks on Israel.
Laura Jayes: How concerning is it, though, that it seems that any electronic device can be turned into a deadly weapon?
Simon Birmingham: Well, these are clearly highly sophisticated attacks and also seemingly highly targeted towards active members of Hezbollah, of the terrorist organisation, and of those responsible for so much death and destruction in other ways. And of course, the tragedy of conflict is the backwards and forwards that can come from it, which is why ultimately, we want to see situations that can achieve long-term peace and stability across the region and to bring these types of cycles to an end. But that’s not achieved by simply turning a blind eye to terrorism, or to tolerating it, or to letting those responsible, the terrorist leaders and operatives, get away with it.
Laura Jayes: What about this development from top spy agency as well? That shows that China has essentially infiltrated dozens of devices waiting to conduct malicious activity.
Simon Birmingham: LJ, I guess if there’s a link there, it shows in a highly technology focused and interconnected world in different ways. Technology can and will be deployed by different actors for nefarious purposes, and that we must all be alert to how we build the protections for it. But in relation to China in particular, this announcement by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia identifying these actions comes, of course, just a day after the revelations that Chinese propaganda was celebrating and glorifying military actions that endangered Australian military personnel. And it’s completely unacceptable to see these types of conduct occur. China is now a great power, a great economic power, and a significant military power, and it should be acting and we should be urging it to act in a responsible way, in ways that actually preserve the peace and stability of our region and the world, rather than undermine it and jeopardise it. Sadly, be it in those aggressive military conduct or in areas of cyber attacks, the actions we see coming from the Chinese government or sponsored or tolerated by the Chinese government all too often undermine that peace and stability.
Laura Jayes: Let me ask you to put your former education minister hat on while I talk to you about the current childcare subsidy and what Labor has proposed today. Is that something the Coalition would support?
Simon Birmingham: Well, LJ, we made significant reforms. When I was education minister. We consolidated a bunch of disparate payments into a single childcare subsidy that had really two goals around it. How to ensure we use the pre-school system to get kids access to early education, and how we ensure the childcare subsidy facilitated workforce participation by giving the greatest support to those working the hardest and earning the least. I think a key thing that we should take out of not just the reforms we undertook, but, for example, the aged care reforms announced last week, is that if we want to avoid Australia being an even higher taxing country, then things like means testing and activity testing are important principles to carry across the public policy landscape, not just to pick and choose where it suits for different purposes. They give us the ability in our pension systems, in our aged care systems, in a range of different ways, to provide strong social supports, but to also try to keep taxes in this country as low as possible for our economic competitiveness.
Laura Jayes: Isn’t childcare different? I mean, it depends if you see childcare as a welfare measure or a productivity one. Isn’t it a productivity one? Isn’t it the latter?
Simon Birmingham: Well, childcare is many different things. It is about early education. But I think there are real questions to be asked as to whether centre based education for nought, one and two year olds is the same as for three and four year olds. Is that really what the Productivity Commission is suggesting? That three days plus is necessary for nought and one year olds, as well as three and four year olds? So I think there are key questions there around educational purpose.
Laura Jayes: For parents working it is.
Simon Birmingham: In relation to then the productivity piece. Yes, of course, it’s important that we have maximum productivity and employment participation and Australia has some of the leading employment participation. But we still have to make sure that it is structured in a way that doesn’t drive taxes and our economic competitiveness down in other ways, which is where effective means testing and activity testing. Ultimately activity testing is about ensuring that places and funding are going to people who are working, looking for work or studying, not people who don’t need those places.
Laura Jayes: Simon Birmingham, always good to talk to you. We’ll see you soon.
Simon Birmingham: Thanks, LJ. My pleasure.
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