TRANSCRIPT - ABC Afternoon Briefing with Greg Jennett

PAUL FLETCHER MP

Shadow Minister for Science and the Arts

Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy

Manager of Opposition Business in the House

TRANSCRIPT

ABC Afternoon Briefing 

1 AUGUST 2024

Greg Jennett: We're going to bring in Opposition frontbencher Paul Fletcher now to get across a number of current issues, perhaps including indigenous disadvantage too. 

Paul Fletcher joins us live from Melbourne. Welcome back to the program, Paul quick one on your leader, Peter Dutton. Of course, he's been in the Middle east as I understand it, his Israel trip would almost be due to wrap by about today. He'd be well advised to leave, wouldn't he? Do you know if he has?

Paul Fletcher: Thanks Greg, and as you rightly say, yes Peter Dutton has been in Israel. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle east. It's a longstanding ally and security partner of Australia. It's been an important relationship and it's very important also that we are demonstrating our support for the people of Israel, the nation of Israel, after the appalling October 7 terrorist attack in which almost 1,200 people were killed, there's still over 100 Israelis being held hostage in Gaza, under the Gaza Strip, being held by the murderous terrorist organisation Hamas. Now, Anthony Albanese has not been to Israel to demonstrate Australia's support. I think it's highly significant and appropriate that Peter Dutton has done this.

Greg Jennett: Ok, and he's, you know, safe and being moved safely around, is he?

Paul Fletcher: Well of course, as a former Minister for Defence, former Minister for Home Affairs, Peter is well used to some of the risks and dangers that come with these kinds of portfolios, but of course the trip is being managed in accordance with all of the security protocols.

But the most important thing is demonstrating our support for Israel and the people of Israel. We all want to see peace and stability in the Middle East, a highly volatile region. The situation was gravely disrupted by the appalling terrorist attack by Hamas, and one of the worst consequences of that attack is that it has undoubtedly put back efforts to achieve a long standing peace and efforts to achieve the two state solution that we all want to see.

Greg Jennett: Well quite, and we will explore that with other analysts on the program later, Paul Fletcher, which means we might move on to some domestic politics. 

So the matter of PsiQuantum, it's been the recipient, or will be the recipient of a combined almost $1 billion from the Federal and Queensland governments to establish this quantum computing facility in Queensland.

You've succeeded, people may not be aware of this in our audience, with a request to the Audit Office to look into the processes behind the federal grants here. You raised 42 concerns along the way. Has the audit office indicated to you that they'll be looking at all of those or only some of those?

Pau Fletcher: I have written to the Auditor General, highlighting the Coalition's concerns about the allocation of almost a billion dollars of taxpayers money to the American company PsiQuantum. As yet, the Auditor General has not yet indicated whether the Australian National Audit Office will conduct an investigation. 

I've made the point that under the Act, there's a clear basis for such an investigation because of the very serious questions which arise. 

Why is it, for example, that as we now know from documents obtained by the Opposition under Freedom of Information, the government and Minister Husic were in discussions with PsiQuantum as early as December 2022 about an unsolicited proposal from that company for the Australian government to invest?

Minister Husic went to visit PsiQuantum in Silicon Valley in January 2023. It was only in August that an expression of interest process was carried out, where only then were Australian quantum companies given the opportunity to put in a proposal for funding. 

Now, there are leading Australian quantum companies, companies like Quantum Brilliance, Q Control, Diraq, Silicon Quantum Computing. These are companies that are working to commercialise the fruits of research done at leading Australian universities. They are well respected around the world. Yet oddly, curiously, Minister Husic made what appears to have been a captain's call that Australian government money would be put into this American company.

We know that indeed, Export Finance Australia was already working on the funding deal to get money to PsiQuantum even before the expression of interest process had closed and time had been allowed for the outcome to be assessed. So it very much looks like this expression of interest process was nothing more than a sham.

It was an effort to reverse engineer what looked like a competitive process when a decision had already been made. So there are very serious questions about whether this is an appropriate use of public money and whether proper processes were gone through.

Greg Jennett: Thank you for clarifying the fact that the Audit Office hasn't actually taken up your request. I think that's important point out. Along the way we also discover more recently, Paul Fletcher, that PsiQuantum achieved a very similar deal with the City of Chicago. Is it your suggestion that Australia should have blocked out exclusivity as a condition of the granting of public money?

Paul Fletcher: Well, I think it raises a very obvious question as to a degree of commercial naivety shown by Minister Husic and by the Labor government, because we saw this announcement in April this year that there was a deal done, with Australian taxpayers money going in almost $1 billion dollars, Australian and Queensland governments, and in exchange for that, we were promised we were going to get a building in Queensland which would have the world's first, fault tolerant, error corrected quantum computer.

Now, we know that the semiconductors, were not going to be manufactured in Australia, they're going to be manufactured in the US and Germany, but we were told, first building, first quantum computer.

We now know it was announced just a couple of weeks ago by PsiQuantum and the government of the US state of Illinois that that government is providing PsiQuantam US $500 million to build an error corrected quantum computer in Chicago.

So it now seems that Minister Husic did not even bother to get exclusivity when he did this deal, when he threw almost $1 billion dollars of taxpayers money at PsiQuantum, and it just raises another question about whether Australian taxpayers have been treated as mugs and whether in exchange for this very large amount of taxpayers money, we're not, as a nation, getting anything like the value we ought to be getting.

Greg Jennett: Alright, we'll see what the Audit Office comes back with. I'm sure you'll alert us to that when a response does come. Paul Fletcher, can I pick up on the point raised just before our discussion by Malarndirri McCarthy, now the Minister for Indigenous Australians.

She has suggested that she wants to personally work towards bipartisanship with the Coalition and other entities in the parliament. She didn't specify on what particular measures, but are you broadly open for a more collaborative approach on all of the key indicators, on Closing the Gap with her?

Paul Fletcher: Well of course, our Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Jacinta Price, has made it clear that she is open to having constructive discussions. Let's be clear, all parties, all Australians want to see Indigenous Australians have the same life opportunities, have the same educational opportunities, have the same health outcomes as the broader Australian population, and these numbers that have come out today under the annual Closing the Gap process tell us that in some areas we are seeing progress, for example, the number of Indigenous children in preschool education, but in other areas, we are not seeing, the progress that we should be seeing, for example, when it comes to life expectancy, where both Indigenous men and Indigenous women still have materially lower life expectancy than non-Indigenous men and women.

So I think we're all aligned on the objectives. Now, we are critical of the fact that the government, the Albanese Labor government, spent 14 months on the Voice on an issue to do with changes to representative arrangements, which inevitably distracted it from the practical realities.

We've called for practical measures like a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in remote Indigenous communities. It's a difficult topic, it's an unpalatable topic to talk about, but the reality is there is a problem there and if a young child is not feeling safe and secure at home, and feels that he or she needs to walk the streets to avoid the risk of being sexually abused, then issues like getting to school and getting a good start in life inevitably get very seriously disrupted, let alone the fact that every child is  of course entitled to a safe and secure childhood free of child sexual abuse.

So we've been quite specific in some of the things we want to see but, of course, we approach this topic with goodwill.

Greg Jennett: Of course, alright let's see what new endeavours are initiated by the new Minister, Paul Fletcher, we'll wrap it up there and talk again soon.

Paul Fletcher: Thank you, Greg.