Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited Burnie on April 30. He spoke with The Advocate's Sean Ford.
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00:00Hello, it's Sean Ford here at The Advocate and we're here with former Prime Minister Tony Abbott to talk to the election.
00:07Nice to be here, Sean.
00:09Thank you. Welcome. Welcome, Tony. We'll get straight in here because I know time's limited.
00:14Firstly, what do you make of the Coalition's nuclear policy?
00:17Well, I strongly support it and I think it's long overdue.
00:21And I think there's something weird about Labor's insistence that we can't do it here, given that 30 countries already have nuclear power, civil nuclear power.
00:35And given that another 30 or 40 countries are looking at civil nuclear power, because if we really do need to get to net zero, it's the only way to do it and keep the lights on in a modern economy.
00:48So I'm strongly supportive of nuclear power.
00:51I think the Labor Party is waging an absolutely unconscionable scare campaign against it.
00:57And I think it's just bizarre that a party that says it's in favour of nuclear power at sea in the Orca submarines is for some reason so opposed to nuclear power on land.
01:10I mean, why is nuclear power OK, tied up at the docks, but wrong, just 10 metres away, say, on dry land?
01:20If we are going to be able to sustain the future Orca submarines, as we must, it would very much help if we also had a civil nuclear power industry.
01:32In an economic sense, though, have we left it too late with nuclear? I mean, we've got a long way down the renewables track.
01:39Should it really have been done during the Hawke, Keening and or Howard governments?
01:43Well, what do they say about real estate? The best time to buy was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now.
01:50I mean, yes, of course, it would have been better if we had developed a civil nuclear industry in the 1970s when there were plans to do so.
02:00It would have been better if we hadn't had the anti-nuclear scares of the 1980s and subsequently.
02:07But if we are going to get to net zero and keep the lights on, we can only do it through nuclear power.
02:15OK. What are your reflections on the election campaign so far?
02:20Look, all election campaigns are tough. They rarely go entirely as planned.
02:28I'm a little surprised, frankly, that the Labor Party has been so shameless and indefatigable in telling lies.
02:37And I think it's so important that the public do not reward failure and deceit, which is what the Labor Party has essentially given us in this campaign.
02:51Some of the biggest lies are this claim that nuclear power would cost $600 billion when that claim is the extreme end of a paper put out by a partisan lobby group, the Smart Energy Council, which is a renewable industry shill.
03:14So, look, another one of the shameless lies that we've had from the Labor Party is this claim that Peter Dutton cut $50 billion from health when he was the minister.
03:29In fact, health spending went up every year when Peter Dutton was the minister and health spending went up every year under the previous coalition government.
03:38So I think it's been, in a sense, a disappointing and dispiriting campaign.
03:45But in the end, all that matters is the result. And if after the campaign, we've got the best possible government, and I believe that to be a Dutton government, well, I don't think anything else will really matter.
03:58Things will benefit from the result.
04:00So that is, we have got to take a look at the results from the current federal level of administration.
04:05We'll see you again next week.
04:08I'll see you then.
04:09See you soon this week.
04:10Bye-bye.
04:11See you.
04:12I'm gonna see you soon.
04:14We'll see you soon.
04:15Bye.
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