Transcript：

ypi: Being a Chinese Australian, as a minority in the society, I personally believe that and I think lots of people agree that Australian multiculturalism makes this country stronger. I was told from a Labor’s MP that the White Australia policy was abolished by Labor. Could you tell us the Liberal party’s policy and your thoughts on encouraging multiculturalism in this country and in your electrode division?

Mr. Sukkar: First of all, Liberal party abolished the White Australia policy. In fact, if you look at the pattern of the migration in this country, the Liberal party has always presided much higher immigration than the Labor party. One of the really good example is that the Labor party which are very relying on the unions are running huge scale campaigns saying that the Chinese are coming in and taking all of our jobs. The unions are always the same but the Labor party never challenges the unions on anything, they always campaign with the unions on the exact points. I also want to point out that, look at the Labor’s parliamentary party, we have far people who are sons and daughters of the migrants than the Labor party. One reason is that we completely understand that and want to support people coming to Australia to improve their lives and to improve the lives of their children. My father came to this country in his 18 years old. He did not speak English but he worked hard and created a better life for our family, ultimately I had all the opportunities that he did not have. If we look at the context of Chinese migrants, the Chinese are probably the most entrepreneurial, very family-orientated, and very invested in small businesses. They are, by in large, the values we want to encourage through out our society. The other thing about Chinese is very law-abiding, and if all of our migrants had the same characteristics of the Chinese we would have a lot less issues in our country. So we want to encourage migration, of course we do, but we want to encourage them from the right people, people who are going to enrich our society. We do not want end up with the situation like Europe with these dislocations, with the society are not happy. The migration in Liberal party is always higher. Those facts just do not lie. The sooner the Labor party can remove themselves from being aligned with the unions the better. Because the unions were saying when we signed the Chinese-Australia free trade, I had unions in my electrode division handing out ani-Chinese materials, trying to scare people that China was going to take over Australia. I am product of multicultural society and so are many people in Liberal party. So we absolutely support multiculturalism and we most emphatically support a multicultural society from cultures like the Chinese culture which is so compactible with our values.

ypi: Transportation is a very important sector，Federal government thinks east-west link project is more important than the Melbourne metro rail project. It is really hard to determine which one is more urgent and more effective regarding to ease the traffic congestion. However, in your first speech, you said government can rarely spend your money as wisely as you can. Many people think Victorian government knows better than the Federal government regarding to this issue, what is your preference and why?

Mr. Sukkar: There is one thing that 90% of Victorians agree on. Spending 1 billion dollars to cancel the contract was the biggest waste of money in any level of government in Australia ever. The east-west link could be being constructed at this moment, that 1 billion dollars would basically be the whole contribution that they would required for the stage one of the east-west link. So the east-west link had not commenced, as it should of, would be completed some 7 years before the Melbourne metro. So the Labor party is trying to create this impression that is either Melbourne metro or east-west link. In a city that is growing 100,000 people a year, is should be both and must be both. We need to improve roads, rail, buses, and all forms of public transport. You must improve everything.

The truth is that the Labor party made this decision to try to firm up some city seats where the Greens are active. Because the Greens do not like the east-west link, the Greens do not like, to be honest, any big infrastructure projects. They want everything just to stay as it is. So who suffers the most? Our people suffer the most. Yes, we use trains, I use trains but sometimes I need to use my car. And the other reason why it should not be a choice between Melbourne metro and east-west link, is for some people they have to use the road. Our trucks, our goods from the port, our tradesmen, our builders, they cannot go to a building site with all of their equipment and take them on the train. They got to be in your cars. You cannot get the goods from the port to our supermarkets, you cannot do it by trains, it should be tracks. We need both. The other thing the Labor party did not acknowledge is that when you improve roads, you do improve public transport. Reason being 40% of all public transport journeys occur on the road, in a bus. If our buses are stuck in traffic, less people are going to use them. So to waste a billion dollars, in some parts of the world, there will be public officials who go on trials for wasting that amount of money. That is outrageous.

ypi: So you are saying the waste of one billion dollars is just because of politics, right?

Mr. Sukkar: Yes. But we pay the price. The taxpayers pay, all for politics. We should have both. The east-west link should have been finished 7 years before the Metro. So this idea that is one or the other is false.

ypi: You are an active advocator for small business and you must have contributed much on changing the completion law in favor of small businesses. Why do you think the small businesses are so important to this society? 

Mr. Sukkar: I am very active with small business community. As I mentioned to you at the start, I came from a small business family, so I was one of those, like all kids whose parents run small business, I worked in the small business, so I was swiping the floor in the café, I was cleaning. That is what small business families do. They all worked together. So I want to support them. I was very heavily involved in the section 46 changes to the competition law. The reason being, at the moment the law is just inadequate, large companies just can very easily bully smaller competitors. One of the principles of our economy is that the economy only runs its optimum when there is fair competition. It is not that we doing a favor to small businesses, it benefits everybody. If we have fair competition, ultimately it benefits everyone.

I give you an example, there are lots of what we called predatory pricing, basically could be a supermarket moves in, they have got stores all around the country. They run this store at a loss and they push all the prices down until the smaller competitor next-door dies. And at the minute this one dies, the prices shot up. So who pays the price, the consumers need to pay. So we are not just doing it small businesses, we are doing it for the consumers, it benefits the whole society. So it was a big change, there was lots of resistance, we had a lot of pressure from big corporations who did not want this. But ultimately, we feel we own obligations for small business people. And as I said to you earlier, the Chinese community well-known for being very entrepreneurial small businesses people, family businesses. We feel we are their voice, because the Labor party are the voice for the unions. And the unions do not care about small businesses. We care about small businesses. And one of the reasons, we care so much about them is that so many of us have come out of small businesses ourselves. We know how hard it is. You know people who have not been in a business do not appreciate that you pay the rent first, you pay the stuff second, you pay the electricity third, and the last person who gets paid is the owner. People do not understand this, the unions do not care, they only care about themselves. So we are the only one standing for small businesses. And we take that obligation very seriously.

ypi: What are you opinions about the proposal that was brought by the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that each state should levy their own income tax to pay their own education and public health sectors?

Mr. Sukkar: I thought it was a novel approach. The background ultimately here is the state government keep saying we need more money, and they said we do not care about where do you get them from, we just want more money. Yet, they do not want give up any control over how it spends. So it was a very frustrating situation when Daniel Andrews goes and wastes a billion dollars to cancel a contract and says but I want another one billion dollars to spend on this or that. So Malcolm Turnbull basically gives them a challenge. He said ok you are an elected government, if you want extra money we will give you some power but you gotta go out and make the argument to convince people why they should pay more tax. Why should we be the one to go out and try to raise more money from taxpayers not for our spending but for your spending? And we do not trust them with this spending. They waste to much money. Now it was very interesting that they came back and said no no no we do not want that power, we just want you to find the money. So the prime minister said that is really good. You do not want to raise the taxes, we do not want to raise taxes. So now we agree that neither of us want to raise taxes. We have to stop having the states just coming to us saying more money. They have to spend their money more wisely. That is the key point. So I support the prime minister in that but we got a clear position now. That state do not want the power to tax so that is fine it is off the table. We are not going to propose this again but it is a bit sad when our state government do not have enough, particularly this Labor government in Victoria, do not have enough confidence they would be able to effectively manage that. Why do we need to have the state parliament if they cannot do that. So it is a lot about state government mind set.

ypi: Do you think the cut on education funding and polarizing the gap between the public school and the private school?

Mr. Sukkar: There has been no cut to education funding, not cut at all. So in the last four years, Federal spending on education, so the grants we gave to the states, increased by 22%. Last year it increased by 9%. Now the Labor party keep saying the cut, they are running a big campaign they want more money. And we are saying to them, where is the money coming from? Borrow more? Tax more? So, this is the ultimate point. Education spending has been continuingly increased. And if the state governments want more money, I refer you to the earlier question. We have increased by 22% and the other statistics which is interesting, in that same 4 years period, the state government has reduced their contribution by 7%. So there has been no education cut.

I want to say this, every Chinese Australian, this might be their first election or they might have seen 10 elections. Every single election in Australia, the Labor party say the Liberal party is cutting education. Every election, they say the same thing. Regardless of how much more it is. I mean they have been talking it for last 50 years, we have been cutting education. Our schools should be disappeared by now, if we kept cutting education like they claimed we have, there would be no school left. So again, this is political argument. The statistics is very clear. A broader point I want to make is, you could always spend more money in health and education, if we have unlimited amount of money. There is always something good you can spend on. But the one thing that differential us with Labor party is that the Labor party willing to borrow, borrow, borrow to pay for promises. But we want to run a balance budget. And there is where I get back to our Chinese community, if any community understands this is the Chinese. You cannot spend more than you earn. You cannot keep putting things on the credit card because at the end of the day someone has to pay. And this is the problem, Labor everything goes on the credit card, and we have to come in and pay for it.

ypi: In you first speech you said you believe that family will always be the most important unit in our society. I think Chinese community feel much related to this value, because we believe that harmonious families are essential to the harmony of the society. Could you tell as a little bit more your plan to create a harmonious society in your electrode division?

Mr. Sukkar: There has been no cut to education funding, not cut at all. So in the last four years, Federal spending on education, so the grants we gave to the states, increased by 22%. Last year it increased by 9%. Now the Labor party keep saying the cut, they are running a big campaign they want more money. And we are saying to them, where is the money coming from? Borrow more? Tax more? So, this is the ultimate point. Education spending has been continuingly increased. And if the state governments want more money, I refer you to the earlier question. We have increased by 22% and the other statistics which is interesting, in that same 4 years period, the state government has reduced their contribution by 7%. So there has been no education cut.

I want to say this, every Chinese Australian, this might be their first election or they might have seen 10 elections. Every single election in Australia, the Labor party say the Liberal party is cutting education. Every election, they say the same thing. Regardless of how much more it is. I mean they have been talking it for last 50 years, we have been cutting education. Our schools should be disappeared by now, if we kept cutting education like they claimed we have, there would be no school left. So again, this is political argument. The statistics is very clear. A broader point I want to make is, you could always spend more money in health and education, if we have unlimited amount of money. There is always something good you can spend on. But the one thing that differential us with Labor party is that the Labor party willing to borrow, borrow, borrow to pay for promises. But we want to run a balance budget. And there is where I get back to our Chinese community, if any community understands this is the Chinese. You cannot spend more than you earn. You cannot keep putting things on the credit card because at the end of the day someone has to pay. And this is the problem, Labor everything goes on the credit card, and we have to come in and pay for it.