Press Conference - Bankstown

Thanks for coming along. Every week the Government provides an update on fuel reserves. Minister Bowen's away on leave this week, so I'm going to provide you with the update.

Australia currently has 41 days’ worth of petrol on hand, and that's unchanged from last week, we've got 37 days’ worth of diesel and 33 days’ worth of jet fuel. Diesel and jet fuel are down slightly from last week with the usual fluctuations but are still at strong levels. We currently have 6.1 billion litres of fuel in Australia, in total across all of those fuel types.

That's more than the 5.3 billion that we had when Iran was first bombed back in February. We've got 54 tankers on the water to Australia right now and 3.5 billion litres of fuel locked in to be delivered over the next four weeks. So, Australians can continue to have confidence in our fuel security.

What this shows is good, solid supply in the face of the uncertainty and the disruption happening on the other side of the world. Happy to take some questions. JOURNALIST: So how far advanced have we got fuel locked in beyond the four weeks that you mentioned?

I don't have details beyond that, that's the information that I've got, but I'm happy to take that on notice and get some more information for you. JOURNALIST: Just on the cut to the fuel excise that's due to end in a few weeks. Given the situation in the Middle East remains uncertain, is the Federal Government looking to extend the financial support for motorists?

That's a decision the Government will make closer to that time. You know, I guess what is clear is that even though there's bombs dropping on the other side of the world, it's having an impact on Aussies right here and now. We want to see the ceasefire continue, we want to see the war end, we want to see the Straits open, and we want to see things get back to normal as soon as possible.

JOURNALIST: The US president has agreed to more talks with Iran but stressed the ceasefire between the two nations was over. What concerns does the Australian Government hold about the situation in the Middle East? Well, you know, we're concerned about the impact back at home for Australians, you know.

Everybody that puts petrol into their car or diesel into their truck, whether it's here in Australia or around the world, has seen the real‑life impact of this, so that's why we've called for de‑escalation, it's why we want the ceasefire to last, it's why we want to see the war end and things get back to normal as soon as possible. JOURNALIST: Sorry, I know you've sort of touched on this, but do we have enough ships coming with fuel in August, September, October?

Oh, look, you know, in terms of beyond the next four weeks, I'm happy to take it on notice and get some more info. JOURNALIST: Sure. Just on another matter, Telstra has said it will appear before a Senate Inquiry into triple zero outages.

What do you hope this inquiry will achieve? Well, part of that's holding them to account, you know, this is serious. Telstra have let Australians down.

JOURNALIST: Should you tell people ‑ I'm sorry, I was just going to say, that people could have lost their lives, and that's why there's an investigation by ACMA, that's why we changed the law. They're liable to some very serious financial penalties for what's happened here, and I assume that Parliamentary Inquiry will scrutinise the actions of Telstra over the course of the last week.

JOURNALIST: Should Telstra be offering compensation to customers and businesses, or just businesses? Well, look, I'll leave that for others to comment on. There's an investigation that's going on now, and I suspect that it will get to the bottom of why this happened, how this happened, how to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

JOURNALIST: The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the outage could have been avoided if they'd updated an out‑of‑date server. What do you make of that revelation, and does Telstra need to explain if that's the case? Of course they do.

Of course they do. And Telstra need to answer that question, but the investigation by ACMA will help to get to the bottom of that as well. JOURNALIST: Minister, I know Optus had the same thing a few years ago.

Do you think it is acceptable for a major telco to have an outage where people cannot access triple zero? No. Very simple, it doesn't require a long answer.

JOURNALIST: Just on a different topic, Minister, your Government is very big on this respectful workplace standards. JOURNALIST: Just in relation to the Prime Minister's comments on the podcast last week about Kylie Minogue, do you think that the [indistinct] and the Government members staying silent is walking past the standard in a way? Oh, I think when you make a mistake you apologise, and the Prime Minister's apologised, and he's done that publicly, he's made that clear, and that's the right thing to do.

JOURNALIST: What do you make of the storm surrounding the podcast, do you think it's fair or? I'll leave that for others to comment, but you know, the Prime Minister has apologised, and that's the right thing to do, he's done that publicly, done that very clearly and unreservedly. You know, we know, that's what you do.

JOURNALIST: Would you have played such a game in a podcast interview? I'm not going to go there. JOURNALIST: Minister.

I've got a few. So, I might just start on first home buyers. Some of the most recent data shows that a number of first home buyers applying for loans has gone down while debt [indistinct] have gone up.

Given that that data suggests that your Government schemes are not working when it comes to getting first home buyers into the market, do you still stand by the Government spending so much money on those assistance programs? Look, I'd just make the general point that the system's broken at the moment, the system's not working. You don't have to rely upon me to know the answer to that question.

You know, grab a microphone and walk around here and ask anybody aged between 20 and 30, and I suspect they'll tell you the same thing, that unless they've got a lot of support from their parents, they'll feel like they're going to be forced to rent for the rest of their life. I don't want us to be a country where people feel like they're never going to have a chance to own their own home, and the changes that we're making help to level the playing field a little bit, so at auctions today there will be hopefully young people looking to buy their first home, and if there's somebody who already owns one, two or three or four homes, and they're bidding in the same auction but they don't have the taxpayer in their back pocket that's helping them to outbid a young first home buyer.

But the truth is ‑ I'm a lot older than some people at this press conference, about the same age as others ‑ but you know, if we go back in a time machine to when I didn't have grey hair, the average price of a home was a lot cheaper than it is now, it was about probably four times the average income, now it's about 10 times, here in Sydney a lot more than that, and that's making a lot of young people feel like they're never going to get a crack.

The system's broken, we've got to do something about it, and you can either say that it's all too hard and you're just going to let the status quo continue, or you can say you're going to do something to deliver real change for young Australians and that's what we're doing. JOURNALIST: Then I've just got a couple of questions on AI and [indistinct]. The Prime Minister is giving a speech next week on AI.

What direction is the Labor Party heading in when it comes to AI and recognition? Well, I'll leave it to the Prime Minister to go into detail, he's going to make a speech, I think, next Wednesday. But I just make the general point, we've got to make sure that artificial intelligence, that AI works in Australia's interests, that we take the opportunities for us, but we manage the real risks here.

You know, I guess what I can tell you is the work I'm doing, particularly in education, AI's a tool, just like a calculator was when I was a kid, or the Internet. We've got to make sure that young people use it properly. When ChatGPT first came out, we got all the Ministers together across the country to look at how do we make sure that kids don't use it to cheat to get marks that they don't deserve, but also, how do we make sure that if you're typing a question into AI that you don't end up getting an ad sent back to you when you're on the Internet.

There's a lot that we need to do here. You know, I'm worried about the impact that AI can have on how kids learn on their comprehension, on critical thinking, on take‑home assignments, what does it mean for homework? These are big questions that education systems around the world are looking at that we've got to look at here, and this will be one of the things that I talk to Education Ministers about when we meet on Wednesday this week as well.

JOURNALIST: And just more broadly, what do you think are some of the biggest risks when it comes to AI, I'm particularly thinking around copyright laws and also the fact that, you know, Labor is the party of working people, there's a lot of workers out there who are really worried about the impacts of AI. What are some of the biggest risks that you see? Amanda, you just answered, I think a lot of the question yourself, there's big challenges around copyright, there's also challenges around energy, how you source that energy, there's also challenges around workforce as well.

What does it mean for all of the jobs that we all do? You know, I talked about schools. At universities they're looking at the moment about how they change their courses, not just how they make sure that students are learning what they've got to learn, but how do you incorporate AI into every degree, because almost every job in the future is going to use AI in some way or another.

So, it means big change. We've got to make sure that it works in Australia's interest. JOURNALIST: And just finally, Anthropic, one of the biggest growing AI companies in the world has essentially offered to make Australia its second [indistinct] training AI models, and for data centres as well, but only if an agreement can be reached on copyright.

Is there any update on where those kinds of negotiations are at, and what kind of opportunities do you think that AI can offer Australia? Yeah, I don't have an update on that one, Amanda, I'm sorry. JOURNALIST: The Shadow Communications Minister, Sarah Henderson called triple zero earlier this week to test the line, and Senator Kerrynne Liddle suggested a person had died because they didn't reach triple zero, which turned out to be false.

What do you make of how the Opposition has responded to the outage? We all know you don't ring triple zero unless it's an emergency, right? And I was thinking about this when all this happened this week.

Two weeks ago, my four‑year‑old came home from childcare and said, you know, "you ring 000 if it's an emergency." And if my four‑year‑old knows that you only ring triple zero if it's an emergency, then an adult should know that too. And the fact that Sarah Henderson doesn't understand that is deeply concerning. JOURNALIST: Do you think Telstra has responded adequately to this outage?

It shouldn't have happened in the first place. Telstra has let Aussies down. People could have died.

That's how serious this is, that's why these investigations need to take place, that's why we changed the law to beef‑up the fines that telcos can cop. JOURNALIST: Just lastly on the ACMA investigation, it hasn't even released its report into the Optus outage. Do you think the regulator is taking too long to provide information?

I don't have any detail on that, but again, happy to refer that to the relevant Minister. JOURNALIST: Thanks for taking our questions, just on another one. CNN is reporting that they've seen satellite imagery that appears to show that Iran is attempting to rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Can I ask what your reaction is to that, and given the current escalation in hostilities whether the Australian Government has confidence that this is heading in the right direction? Yeah. So, I don't have any detail on that.

Obviously, it's not in Australia's interests, it's not in the world's interest for a country like Iran to get its hands on a nuclear weapon. We've seen what Iran is capable of, we've seen the actions that it's taken that have risked the lives of Australians right here in our own country. What we want is to make sure that Iran does not get its hands on a nuclear weapon.

What we also want is for the ceasefire to hold, for the Straits to open and for things to get back to normal, for us here, for all Aussies, but for the rest of the world as well. JOURNALIST: Sorry, Minister, can I just get you to comment on the Kerrynne Liddle's claim, which turned out to be false, that someone had died because they couldn't get through to triple zero.

Telstra and police have confirmed that's not the case. Yeah, I don't have a lot of detail on that, but obviously, you know, it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that we're providing truthful information, right, to the police and to the public, and if you're relying on false reports or you're making false claims, you don't need me to tell you, my four‑year‑old can tell you that that's the wrong thing to do.

JOURNALIST: Do you think the Senator jumped the gun by making that claim? I don't have enough detail to comment on that. JOURNALIST: Okay.

Good on you, thanks guys.