THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
MONDAY, 30 JUNE 2025
Topics: US RELATIONSHIP; DEFENCE SPENDING; ARTIFICIAL INTELEGENCE; EXCISE DUTY RATES FOR ALCOHOL.
NATALIE BARR: Well, let's go to our hot topics now. Two US politicians are now urging our Prime Minister to prioritise visiting the White House to meet Donald Trump face to face and ease strains on our alliance. The senior legislators, a Democrat and a Republican, say the President values one on one interactions and a visit from Anthony Albanese would be a great gesture that would, quote, "go over very well". It comes as our Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, plans to fly to Washington D.C. this week to meet her American counterpart. For their take, let's bring in Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce. Good morning, Tanya. So, now we've got politicians from both sides of the spectrum in the US calling for the PM to make a special trip to Washington. Is he going to listen?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Yeah, well, I'm sure the Prime Minister's very much looking forward to it. We're awaiting confirmation of a suitable time and I'm sure when that confirmation comes through, the Prime Minister will be very happy to visit Washington. He's had a number of calls with President Trump. Our Foreign Minister is off to meet with her counterpart right now. Again, our Trade Minister's met with his counterpart. Defence Minister's met with his counterpart. Ambassador Rudd, as you know, is the energiser bunny of diplomacy. He will be meeting with all of the members of the Congress and Senate and people close to Donald Trump. There's a lot of communication going on both ways, but it's not the sort of thing where you just pop in with a plate of scones, you know, hoping someone's home. The organising of the visit’s in train.
BARR: Ok, Barnaby, is that enough?
BARNABY JOYCE: No, it's not. I mean, Ambassador Rudd might be the energiser bunny, but he hasn't energised a meeting between President Trump and the Prime Minister of Australia and we've got to do that. When two people from either side of the political fence in the United States say, you better get over here, they've obviously had a lot of thought about it. They've sat back and obviously got a genuine bipartisan concern. Our nation was supposed to become as powerful as possible as quickly as possible. We didn't. And now we are completely lacking on our defence side. And this is incredibly important to the, you know, basically to the sovereignty of Australia, that we have the capacity of an agreement that underwrites that we haven't. Our Prime Minister has had four meetings with the Leader of China, but no meetings with the President of the United States. That's, other people read that. You know, you just got it all wrong.
BARR: Tanya, was it telling on Friday, I noticed that the White House Press Secretary said if our NATO allies can lift spending on defence, our friends in the Indo-Pacific region can do as well. Is that sort of saying what President Trump is going to say if he does meet with Albanese anytime soon?
PLIBERSEK: Well, we are raising spending. We've over the four years-
BARR: But nowhere near what the US wants.
PLIBERSEK: -of the forward estimates, [inaudible], $10.6 billion and over 10 years, $56 billion. Last year's spending was around $17 billion, which is $2 billion more than any previous year. So, we are raising spending. The way we make decisions for Australia is we decide what we need to protect Australia. We're doubling the size of the surface fleet compared to what the Liberals planned. We're investing in long range missile capability, including building it here. We decide what we need for Australia and then we spend to buy what we need. And of course also to make sure we've got the personnel we need. They will, of course, the US is talking to countries all around the world about increasing their defence spending. We're doing that, but we will do it in a way that reflects Australian priorities. What we need to do to keep our people safe.
BARR: Yeah. And so we'll just be interesting to see what Donald Trump says about that. Barnaby?
JOYCE: The problem we've got is, of course, many items on the budget are more than they've ever been before. It's called inflation. It's sort of sneaky to say that. It's really what's been asked of us is spend a greater percentage of GDP-
PLIBERSEK: We've got $2 billion extra, Barnaby.
BARR: It's the percentage though, surely, isn't it Tanya?
JOYCE. The NDIS is vastly more than we've ever spent in the history of our nation. Medicare is vastly more than we've ever spent in the history of our nation. It's just the way budgets work. But the problem we've got is when you talk about 10 years, I'd be very doubtful whether you're in the government in 10 years unless you do something remarkable, you'll be there for, you know, maybe three, maybe six, but you're not going to be there in 10. And what happens over the forward estimates? Honest to goodness, you have a look at your forward estimates. Have we ever matched year four? It just doesn't happen. The question you've got to ask yourself is, what have you done whilst you were there? And that's bloody nothing.
PLIBERSEK: What did you do in 10 years? We're actually doubling the size of the surface fleet-
BARR: We're just not going to go back on action history.
PLIBERSEK: And we inherited the oldest surface fleet since the Second World War, Barnaby. So, you had a decade, you did nothing, you issued some press releases, you made a whole lot of announcements and you're [inaudible].
BARR: You know what, you’ve had one term and you're into the next one and Trump is saying you need to spend this, so what we're talking about is, is what your response is going to be and when you're going to meet him. But let's go on to something else, AI. Because people are interested in this one. Some of the world's most advanced artificial intelligence models are adopting concerning behaviours such as lying, scheming, even threatening their creators. One model called Claude 4 recently blackmailed an engineer, threatening to reveal an affair, while ChatGPT was caught trying to download itself on other servers, then denied it. Tanya, is the government worried about how capable AI is becoming and what are you doing about?
PLIBERSEK: It really is like science fiction, isn't it, Nat when you hear those stories. Look, we're working with other countries. There was a Paris meeting on artificial intelligence where 60 countries signed up together to say that we see the benefits of AI. It can really, I mean, a lot of people are using it at work already, a lot of people are using it at home already. It has enormous benefits, lots of jobs. There's 650 companies that are in this area in Australia, we can, we can get a lot of benefit from it, but we have to make sure that it is being used in a way that is beneficial for humanity. So, that work's been going on internationally. We've set up an AI expert group here in Australia to guide out to guide our domestic use of AI and guide the government in making sure that we've got the right sort of guardrails here in Australia. There's already a voluntary code that companies should be checking out because it does give them guidance about how they can safely use AI in their businesses. Look, this technology has enormous potential, but we need to make sure that it's being harnessed for good.
BARR: Yeah. Barnaby, do you think we have any idea what it's capable of? We've had the heads of AI companies resign because they are concerned what AI can do.
JOYCE: Well, no, we don't. And because it thinks for itself and for AI we need also massive power, which we don't have because we butchered our power grid. But even when he worked onto other things like the brain community, computer interface, where right now in the Beijing Tsinghua University in the brain research, neuro, cyber and neurotech area, they're designing things such as a implant which goes under your skull but above your brain actually determines your thoughts, can actually read what your thoughts are. Others have catheter, just goes up your carotid artery and can determine what your thoughts are. Another one is your sagittal, basically up your nose, and can determine your thoughts. Now what that means is, you know, if Shirvo has an impure thought about Channel 7, so, you know, short sharp shock to the genitalia. This, this is where the world is going. It is scary because mass produce that and it can control a whole swathe of the population to their very thoughts. So, they can't have a bad thought about you and AI is yet another section because that's racing that technology ahead. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a scary new world we live in and we're not across it.
BARR: Yeah, it feels like it's slipping away. So, we might have more of a chat about that, that body that's looking into it, the government body that Tanya mentioned. Just quickly, cost pressures are seeing a classic pub shout in decline. 35 per cent of Aussies now less likely to buy rounds for their friends than compared to last year. Tanya, people can't even buy a few drinks for their mates. This really is a cost of living reality, isn't it?
PLIBERSEK: Well, I think a lot of young people are saying, yeah, shouting six or eight or ten people at a table is probably a bit much for the wallet. But tomorrow is the 1st of July and tomorrow wages go up, superannuation goes up, paid parental leave becomes more generous. We've got the $10,000 apprentice sign on bonus, paid prac for teaching, nursing and midwifery students, more investment in women's health, like longer consultations for menopause, cheaper batteries for your home if you've got solar on the roof. There's a bunch of other stuff happening on the 1st of July because as a government we know that we want to take a bit of pressure off Australians.
BARR: Yeah. Barnaby, what's your reaction? Do you shout?
JOYCE: Well, nothing – yeah, I do - but none of those things that Tanya just mentioned is going to bring down the price of beer because I think you'll find that excise also goes up and you know, this is just, you can't just keep putting taxes on people because you actually destroy the whole fabric. In regional areas this is really important because if we lose our local hotel because it's just unaffordable, we lose the last hub of what is a community. We've lost the hospital, we've lost the police station, in many areas we've lost the school, we've still got the pub. But if you make this unaffordable, then you've lost the whole community and we've really got to understand that that is one of the greatest things honestly for mental health and other things, get people in so they at least talk to somebody else and what we're doing with this, with this increase in excise, people are just taking a slab of beer home and sitting in front of the television and drinking it. I don't know whether that's really good for anything.
BARR: Yeah. Interesting point. Yeah, Tanya, last words.
PLIBERSEK: We did actually make some well, we did actually make some changes to both beer and spirits taxes so, we understand-
JOYCE: Did that go down? I mean, I might be corrected on this one, Tanya, and I would accept it. Did they go down? Did the excises go down?
PLIBERSEK: Yeah, I'll get back to you on the details Barnaby.
JOYCE: Fair enough.
BARR: Okay, we'll check on whether the beer excise went down because you're right, it is a gathering spot for so many people. Thank you very much we'll see you next week.
ENDS
