TANIA LAWRENCE, MEMBER FOR HASLUCK: Good morning. We all know that when we are healthy, we’re happy and we’re productive, and that extends to society when we have a healthy society.

So as the federal member for Hasluck it is my great pleasure today to have the Prime Minister, the Premier of Western Australia together with ministers, the executive of the St John of God hospital here in Midland, together with Trish Cook, the candidate for the seat of Bullwinkel, to be able to talk to this incredible announcement around further investment in our health care, right here at this amazing hospital, the St John of God Hospital in Midland.

And this is on the back of already our determined commitment to ensure that health care is affordable and accessible to us all. From having free TAFE for enrolled nurses, to paid practicums, reduction of HECS debt for students to incentivise them to study in this incredible ecosystem that is our health field. But we go further than that, it's our commitment to ensuring that there is accessible access to doctors that are bulk-billed, with a goal of nine out of ten GP visits being free. We have our Urgent Care Clinics now which have had a tremendous impact on my community. I have one here in Midland and in Morley, and on the success of that, the demand, the growth of those centres alone, has meant that we, if elected, will secure a commitment for another one in Ellenbrook, and one in the electorate of Bullwinkel thanks to the advocacy of Trish Cook, in Mundaring.

Because already we’ve seen the reduction in category three four presentations of urgent care at this very hospital thanks to the introduction of the Urgent Care Clinics under Prime Minister and Minister Mark Butler. And then the reduction of the cost of prescription medicines.

When I campaigned here nearly over three years ago, the cap of the prescription medicines was sitting at about $74.60. We’ve reduced that, and now our commitment is to reducing it further to a cap of $25. This is the type of cut that we are encouraging because we believe in focusing on health care and on the cost of living because we can do both.

And to that end, I hand over to the Prime Minister to speak to this incredible investment. Thank you.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much Tania and it’s fantastic to be back in Western Australia for my 30th visit as Prime Minister. I committed in 2022 to come here ten times a year. I've met that KPI and I'll exceed it, because chances are, to the Premier, I'll be back over the next over the coming weeks, absolutely. And it's great to be here with Tania Lawrence, the local member, and Trish Cook, our candidate for the new seat of Bullwinkel, of course named after one of Australia's most famous nurses. And we're running a nurse and midwife.

Nothing says Western Australia more than a nurse who worked in the offshore resources sector. And that is Trish Cook. She will be an amazing member of Parliament here, joining the fantastic team that I have from Western Australia, that of course, was added to in 2022.

Now this is a choice, this election. It's a choice between Labor building Australia's future and strengthening Medicare, and a Coalition led by Peter Dutton that wants to cut everything except for your taxes. A Coalition that will cut Medicare as sure as night follows day, because they've got to find $600 billion for their nuclear fantasy, including a nuclear power plant down there at Collie.

He hasn't actually bothered to visit that site up close. If he did, he'd see what is the real future of energy in WA which is renewables, backed by gas, backed by firming capacity, including batteries that are being built there on site to connect up with the transmission lines that are currently used by the Collie coal fired power plant, which will close this decade, and which will be replaced by what is WA’s future energy needs, led by the Premier Roger Cook.

We will invest $200 million to renovate and extend St John of God Midland Public Hospital to deliver more beds and a new emergency department. Only Labor is strengthening Medicare, the largest investment that we have seen in 40 years is our tripling of the bulk billing incentive. So whether it be our funding for public hospitals, our health and hospitals agreement delivered $1.7 billion extra this year, an agreement that we signed up with states and territories earlier this year. You have then the tripling of the bulk billing incentive, $8.5 billion to make sure that people can see a GP for free. And, of course, our 50 new Medicare Urgent Care Clinics. These Urgent Care Clinics are making such a difference. We have eight already in Western Australia. We will build and fund another six. That will make a substantial difference. They've been seen by about 1.3 million Australians already.

These measures of course, added to by our cut to the cost of medicines, down to just $25, the same price that they were back in 2004. We believe that Medicare is absolutely critical and that Australians should just need their Medicare card to get the healthcare they need, rather than their credit card. And it's a big distinction between the Government and the opposition at this election campaign. This is joint investment. It follows the announcement that the Cook Government gave during their campaign that they are adding to.

It's an example of the partnership I have with my friend Roger Cook. We've known each other for 40 years. Sorry to give up our age here of both of us. We've been friends for all of that time and it is an absolute privilege to be in a position of a bloke that we used to have a beer with 40 years ago, and chat about footy and chat about life, to actually be in a position to make a difference for Western Australians.

I regard Western Australia not as an add on, not as an afterthought. That's something that's front and centre and has been front and centre since I've been in public life. I first came here in 1983-84. I had Christmas Day here in 1983 over at Rottnest Island as a very young man, Latika. I was very young at that time and I spent a couple of months here, and I came to love this great state and its people. Ever since then, I've returned and returned as a public officeholder to make a difference.

This joint investment will deliver 60 new medical and surgical beds. It’ll deliver six critical care or intensive care unit beds, taking the ICU here from 12 to 18 beds, more same-day beds, two new operating theatres, a redesign of obstetrics and the neonatal unit. It was a great pleasure today to have a cuddle with young Amber, just 27 hours old - and I do want to pay tribute to all the doctors, nurses and health professionals here.

You do such an extraordinary job. It's an incredibly difficult but an honourable job that you do looking after our fellow Australians. We want and I want to lead a Government that is committed and as determined to deliver healthcare for Australians that they deserve, as strong as your personal commitment. I'll turn now to the Minister and then we will be happy to take some questions. The Premier.
 
ROGER COOK, PREMIER OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Thank you very much, Prime Minister. It's great to be here at Midland Hospital once again, with Trish and Tania. Also, I'd like to acknowledge Minister Mark Butler and our new member for Midland, Steve Catania, who's joined us as well. I'd like to thank Kerry Sanderson, the chair of the board, chair of St John of God, and Royce and their team for having us here at the Midland Hospital. My vision for WA is for Western Australia to be the healthiest state in the nation. Not only do we have the strongest economy and the fastest growing economy, we have the fastest growing population in the nation as well. And that's why we're working to support and invest in WA’s world class hospitals.

Our Governments’ joint commitment today of $355 million to expand the Midland Health Campus is an important next step to ensure that the people in these north eastern suburbs get the healthcare they need when they need it. Combined with the Urgent Care Clinic expansion that's gone on out here, you can see how we're really setting up people in the north eastern suburbs to continue access to quality, world class healthcare.

The $200 million investment from the Albanese Government comes on top of our $105 million investment commitment by my Government for upgrades here at the Midland Health Campus ED. And today, I can reveal that my Government will contribute a further $50 million as part of the upgrades that we're announcing this morning. Part of the great partnership between the Albanese Labor Government and the Cook Labor Government.

The expansion will add 60 more inpatient beds, two more operating theatres, a new ICU and as well as the new emergency department. And this will slash waiting times, tackle ambulance ramping and upgrade the facilities for patients and staff. We will also increase the size of the ICU by 50 per cent, which means we can care for more chronically ill patients but also undertake more higher risk operations as well.

This investment with, in collaboration with the Albanese Government, is yet another example of our commitment to reduce pressure on Western Australia's health system, and we're building the infrastructure we need to reduce wait times and tackle ambulance ramping. My Government has invested an unprecedented $14.3 billion in new funding for our health care system since 2021. We've added more than 700 beds, the equivalent of a large tertiary hospital, and we continue to invest to make sure we have the expansion in hospitals here, like St John of God Midland. It's another way that we're delivering projects and making sure that people have access to world class healthcare, and we can make a difference to the experience of patients coming to this hospital.

But we know there's always more to be done. That's why my Government has worked hard to increase WA’s health workforce by more than 30 per cent, great nurses and doctors coming to work in our hospitals, and we've stabilised the health system. We're now doing more elective surgery than ever before, reducing elective surgery wait time. And today's announcement is about taking real action to continue to make sure that our health care system is setting Western Australia up for the future.

And now I'll hand you over to Mark Butler.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: Thank you, Premier. Thank you, Prime Minister. It's so good to be here at the Midland Public Hospital. I want to thank St John of God for the work that you do delivering the services here. You've been delivering hospital services here in Western Australia since the late 1800s. You are really an institution in this great state of our federation.

It's great to be here with my colleague Tania, but also with Trish Cook. I met Trish about 12 months ago at an International Melanoma Institute conference, where she was presenting her findings in her PhD study as a nurse and midwife about the benefits of delivering chemotherapy and immunotherapy to patients in the home. It would be just terrific to have another nurse in our caucus. We already have one, Ged Kearney, who adds an enormous amount to the health discussions in our Government, and we're so excited at the prospect of Trish coming and joining us and bringing her long experience as a nurse and midwife, and her determination to expand her understanding of good modern health policy and health delivery as well.

When I was a very young Assistant Minister for Health, I remember Kevin Rudd announcing a $180 million commitment to build this hospital. We shared the funding to build the hospital back when $360 million brought a little bit more than it does today, perhaps, Roger. But we built this hospital together, the Commonwealth and the Western Australian Government. And I'm so delighted that we're here today to say that together we will extend this hospital to meet the growing needs of the north eastern suburbs of Perth and right into the Wheatbelt as well. The Prime Minister and the Premier have already expanded on what this is going to deliver to this fast-growing community, and it's a really exciting announcement that we're able to make together.

But also, I want to say to those hard-working doctors and nurses and health professionals and orderlies and cleaners and everyone else working at this hospital, that this Government has your back.

That is why we delivered every single one of you a tax cut last year, something that Peter Dutton opposed at the time when we wanted to deliver working people a bigger tax cut rather than people at the higher income levels, making sure that every single taxpayer got a tax cut, not just some of them. It's also why we legislated top up tax cuts over the next two years for every single taxpayer. Again, something that Peter Dutton has promised to repeal and take away from every worker in this hospital. But it's also why we delivered $60 million in funding to the Western Australian Government last year to help smooth the path of older patients in hospitals.

We know this is a challenge for every single of the 700 public hospitals across Australia, and we're determined to work with state governments like Roger’s to help smooth that path. It's also why we've opened eight Medicare Urgent Care Clinics here, including here in Midland, which has already seen more than 15,000 patients, every single one of whom was bulk billed and most of whom would otherwise have ended up in the emergency department here at the public hospital. And it's why we've promised six more, including one at Ellenbrook in this catchment and one out at Mundaring, where Trish is a local councillor as well. But it's also really importantly why we have promised and will deliver an 11 per cent increase in hospital funding to Western Australia next year, 2025-26. That's an additional $370 million from the Commonwealth, the biggest increase in many, many, many years, to help Roger make sure that the hard working doctors and nurses and health professionals at this and every other public hospital in Western Australia is able to deal with the growing pressure that every hospital system is confronting. The legacy of COVID, a growing older population with more chronic disease.

So this is that reliable, constructive partnership that the Prime Minister and the Premier talked about so much. And it couldn't be more different than the record of Peter Dutton. When he came to government as the Health Minister, he tried to cut $50 billion from public hospitals, not do the sorts of things I've just outlined that would have cut more than $6 billion from Western Australia's public hospitals, making it just so much harder for all of the doctors and nurses and staff working at this public hospital and every other one across the state to do their job.

He said two weeks ago, judge his future actions on his past performance. Well, that was his past performance. There's the clearest possible choice at this election between a prime minister who will cut your taxes, or Peter Dutton, who will cut Medicare.
 
JOURNALIST: I'll start with a reader question, if I may?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Sure.
 
JOURNALIST: This one's from Nathan, from Griffin in Queensland.
 
PRIME MINISTER: Nathan, my favourite name.
 
JOURNALIST: Considering Dutton has announced $400 million for youth mental health, what are you doing to help people access mental health services and make it more affordable?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks. I'll ask Mark to add to this, but one of the things that we've done on top of Medicare Urgent Care Clinics is to have Medicare Mental Health Centres. Now, we've funded these. These are making an enormous difference. And that comes on top of the specific programs we have for youth mental health as well through the centres, one of which is in my electorate in Ashfield. That has made a substantial difference.

Mark.
 
BUTLER: Thank you, Prime Minister. Well, we've done a range of things in mental health. We know there's very significant pressure in the community around this. But the most important thing we do, first of all, is to expand bulk billing access to GPs. GPs do more mental health work than any other part of the health workforce. The investments we've made in bulk billing cover mental health items for GPs to be able to do that work as well. We've also expanded headspace. Only a very short time ago, we announced a range of expansions to headspace, including modernising the model of care there, working with a whole bunch of people who set that model up. After all, these Medicare mental health centres that the Prime Minister talked about, they're bulk billed. Importantly, they're bulk billed, available on a walk-in basis, just like Urgent Care Clinics, we’ll open 61. We've already opened…I've lost count. We're opening them every week, almost at the moment, over 35 of them. And on the 1st of January, we will open for the first time, an early intervention service available to every Australian without a doctor's referral on the phone or on digital. This is something that operates in the UK and most other countries to which we compare ourselves, and it will provide much better, free of charge access to mental health services early when people need it.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Peter Dutton has said that if he were to be elected, he would live in Sydney instead of Canberra. What do you make of those comments?
 
PRIME MINISTER: A fair bit of hubris behind that comment, I think. Measuring up the curtains. I don't take Australians for granted. And as Australia's Prime Minister, my job is to represent the country. One of the frustrations, I think, that was felt from people in the west was that previous occupants of The Lodge, of the Prime Ministership, saw themselves as being Prime Minister for Sydney.

It's extraordinary that I'm a Sydneysider who's lived there my whole life, but I've chosen to work and live in the national capital. I do spend time in Sydney obviously, my electorate is there, but I believe the Prime Minister should live in The Lodge. And secondly, I believe there's been a lot of hubris from Peter Dutton. We've seen that, I've seen the comments.

He says he likes the harbour. You know, everyone likes the harbour, but your job is to be close to where the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is, where meetings happen almost every day, when I'm in Canberra, I'm at a meeting, I'm in the Cabinet Room. I'm in the secure room, working away. It's up to him to make those declarations, I guess. But certainly I don't take the privilege that I have of being Prime Minister for granted. I'll work each and every day to make sure that I can continue to be there.

Just through there, because you missed out yesterday. So I do try and even these things up.
 
JOURNALIST: It's been reported this morning that a Chinese research vessel, which doubles as a spy ship, is currently circumnavigating off the coast of southern Australia, inside our exclusive economic zone. What's your reaction to that? Are you concerned by it?
 
PRIME MINISTER: It's been in New Zealand on a joint research operation. And this isn't the first time that a similar vessel has been around the Australian coast. It occurred in 2020, for example. Just to give one example, Australia, as you would expect, is monitoring this.
 
JOURNALIST: You're not concerned about the spy ship at all?
 
PRIME MINISTER: [inaudible]
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, how many times will you debate Peter Dutton in this campaign?
And one for the Premier if I can. You've got a rugby league double header coming up here on April 12th. The PM's team I think is in town for that. Is that a good time for North Sydney –
 
PRIME MINISTER: They are. I can confirm that they are. I know the draw.  
 
JOURNALIST: Is that a good time for Bears fans to think there might be an announcement on their future coming up, or given all the cameras are here, can you put them out of their misery now?
 
PRIME MINISTER: On the first issue re debates, the secretaries are discussing these things. A range of people are proposing debates. One of the proposals is for the National Press Club, if Peter Dutton can find the National Press Club that’d be the thing, last time round there were a range of debates as well. I certainly have agreed to the first debate. We're awaiting an answer from Peter Dutton as to whether he agrees on that first debate, and then that discussion will continue.
And the Premier.
 
ROGER COOK: Okay. Onto the Bears. Look, we continue to have discussions with the NRL about the possibility of bringing a franchise to Western Australia. As I've said on many occasions, only WA can put the ‘N’ in NRL and we'd obviously welcome the opportunity to be able to have a team here. But, but it has to be on the basis of value for money, value for money for Western Australians, value for money for WA taxpayers.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, during the recent state election campaign, Roger Cook repeatedly blamed a shortage of GPs and aged care beds for WA hospitals’ problems. He's announced his own $140 million package to fund builds of aged care beds, appointed his own minister for aged care. Does that suggest you're failing to do the job?
 
PRIME MINISTER: We need more GPs, on the first thing. That is part of the announcement that we made. On aged care, we have the biggest reform for aged care this century. We inherited an aged care crisis. It was inherited in every state, every territory, every city, every region of the country. There was not enough investment. The aged care workforce was underpaid. The Aged Care Royal Commission that was established under pressure by the former government, described the state of aged care in its interim report in its title, one word – ‘Neglect’.

What we have done is pay aged care nurses more, pay aged care workers more, in excess of 20 per cent. We have added billions of dollars, including in this week's Budget, to make sure that there is a fit for purpose aged care workforce. We at the last election as well, said that we would put the nurses back into nursing homes. The Coalition said that's impossible. Can't happen. Well, 99 per cent of the time there is a nurse in every aged care residence. 99 per cent of the time. And there have been millions of additional hours added for care for our older Australians. I think our older Australians deserve to live in dignity and with respect. That is what my Government is determined to do. Mark.
 
JOURNALIST: So is the Premier wrong? When he says you need to step up more?
 
MARK BUTLER: I couldn't agree more with the Premier and his description of what we inherited at a Commonwealth level. As the Prime Minister said, an aged care sector that was in crisis following a decade where a government had not done the hard work to reform aged care and get it ready for the very big demographic lift in demand that we're facing over the next few years as the first of the baby boomers hit aged care age. Aged care facilities are full right now. Aged care was not an investable sector before the changes we made last year to the Aged Care Act. Aged care providers were telling us that here in Western Australia, as well as the rest of the country, that's why this has been such a focus of the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Finance Minister, as well as Anika Wells and myself. And we're confident now the aged care sector is investable.

The best time would have been to do this five years ago, frankly, and we would have been in a much better position. But we've had to compress an enormous amount of reform into just two years. And I pay credit to the work of Anika Wells in that respect. In terms of doctors, you're right. We were in a real crisis in general practice, I said that as a Shadow Health Minister as well as the first day as Health Minister, we now have more junior doctors, this year, training as GPs than we have ever had in this country's history. And we want to grow that number even further. We also now have expedited pathways for specialists to come in and buttress or build the workforce for Roger and other states. We have expedited pathways for psychiatrists, for anaesthetists, for obstetricians and gynaecologists, from jurisdictions where we have high levels of confidence in their training system. That means over the last two years, we have added 17,000 doctors to the Australian health care system, a bigger number than at any time in more than a decade.
 
PRIME MINISTER: I’d already said Latika, so –
 
JOURNALIST: – So on this research vessel, it's come back for a second time. Do you know –
 
PRIME MINISTER: No, it’s a different –
 
JOURNALIST: Sorry, do you know what it is researching? What have you done to protect our undersea cables from any monitoring or sabotage? And have you communicated anything to the Chinese Government about this?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah. What we have done is we're continuing to monitor it. We won't, for obvious reasons, broadcast everything that we're doing, but we're keeping an eye on this as we do.
 
JOURNALIST: But what does keeping an eye mean?
 
PRIME MINISTER: As we do. Well –
 
JOURNALIST: Have you sent Defence? What does monitoring actually mean?
 
PRIME MINISTER: What it means is that the Australian Defence Force are monitoring what is happening. It's going from New Zealand. We expect it to go around to China, around that way.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you have concerns about it, Mr Albanese?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Of course I would prefer that it wasn't there. But we live in circumstances where, just as Australia has vessels in the South China Sea and vessels in the Taiwan Strait and around a range of areas, this vessel is there. Our task is to make sure that we represent Australia's national interests. We do that each and every day. And I have every confidence, every confidence, in our Defence Force and our security agencies to do just that.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you've promised to deliver, or create, an environment protection agency if you're re-elected. You made the same promise in 2022 and failed to deliver it. Why should we believe that you'll be able to do it this time? And a question for Premier Cook on the same topic. Your Government was obviously clearly opposed to the model that the Government was seeking to legislate. Can we expect you to continue that opposition if the Government is re-elected?
 
PRIME MINISTER: We won't be legislating the same model. Point one. What we'll be doing is attempting to legislate an EPA. We have 25 votes out of 76. I'm yet to see a list published, including by the Guardian, that shows a majority, 50 per cent plus one of the Senate voting for any of the legislation that's put forward. That's just a fact. What we did was take the recommendations from the Samuel Review. Importantly, that was a review initiated by the Coalition, not by us, initiated because the EPBC Act is out of date. We know that that is the case.

What we will do, if we're elected, is sit down – and I had a discussion with Rebecca from the WA Chamber just last week, just last week. There are industry and environmental groups who both recognise that it's not fit for purpose. What we'll do is work it through, we'll consult widely, make sure that we get it right and that is what we will legislate, something that provides certainty for industry and the way that processes occur, but also provides for sustainability. That's what we're after.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, 850 Australian Muslims are celebrating Eid today. Peter Dutton visited a mosque yesterday. Do you have plans to do the same?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Not today. But I visited a mosque in Edmonson Park just a couple of weeks ago. I had a meeting – that was one of the mosques that had been the subject of threats, online. Some of what has occurred online, with the threats, talking about Christchurch and the need for it to be repeated, are quite frankly reprehensible. I've issued a statement of respect for those of Muslim faith who are celebrating Eid today. Eid is a time where the end of the fast, the breaking of the fast, the members of the Islamic community have been going through the period of Ramadan, which is a time for them to renew their faith.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you believe you're welcome within Australia's Muslim communities?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I was very welcomed into that community. I thank Mazhar Hadid for welcoming me there in southwest Sydney, and I have discussions regularly with members of the community.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, a couple of tax questions. The Council of Small Business is asking both sides today to commit to a further cut in tax on small business, from 25 to 20%. I get your response to that. And also because you're in the great mining state of WA, could you rule out further changes to the fuel tax credit for the mining companies?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Of course, on the latter – yes. We have a tax policy we announced last Tuesday – our tax policy is to give every Australian a tax cut. Every single one, all 14 million of them. One of the big distinctions in this campaign is a Labor Government wanting tax cuts for every Australian, and a Coalition promising to actually introduce legislation to increase income tax for all 14 million Australians at the same time as they're cutting essential services.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, do you believe that the North West Shelf gas project should be extended, and will approvals to that project be further delayed by Labor's plans to reintroduce Nature Positive legislation and the Environment Protection Agency?
 
PRIME MINISTER: On the latter, no they won't be delayed by that. They'll be considered in accordance with the law. But I make this point: Peter Dutton – for people who haven't followed, perhaps, the details of the way that the law works – in him declaring and pre-empting an announcement and a decision on North West Shelf, what he is doing is ensuring that it gets delayed. That is what he is doing. And the former government did the same thing with PEP11 – the exploration licences off the coast of New South Wales.

By pre-empting it, meant that it got delayed and took a long period of time for, eventually, Minister Husic was given responsibility for it, uh, in accordance with the law. And that issue is now settled. If you go out there and you pre-empt the law which says that consideration must be given objectively by the Minister, then you, by definition, put yourself in a position of legal challenge.

There is no question that if the Coalition were to succeed and Peter Dutton were to move to Kirribilli, on the harbour, then what would happen would be, there would be a legal challenge, which is a bit of a lay down misère, frankly. You could get any lawyer from random, pick them out, and they could win that case because it is shut – you know, a shut case. It is not sensible to do so for an alternative Prime Minister. And there are so many ways in which the alternative government of this country shows that it is not ready to form government. They’ve been in opposition for under three years. What this shows is that they need more time.

Tom.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, can you clarify, is the RepuTex modelling on power prices still any part of Labor's energy policy offering at this election?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Our energy policy offering is all out there. RepuTex modelling was RepuTex modelling that they put out. Our policy –
 
JOURNALIST: You adopted your policy target based off that modelling and your 82 per cent target, why are they still your targets if you are now distancing yourself from the model?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I hope when you get the chance on the next leg, where I assume you'll be following around – to ask Peter Dutton what his 2030 target is.
 
JOURNALIST: I will. I’m here with you.
 
PRIME MINISTER: He doesn't have a 2030 target. He doesn’t have a 2030 target. We have a 2030 target. We're confident we'll meet it. And our policy is very clear. Our policy is for – same as this bloke's policy, that he just got elected and won a few seats, 46?
 
ROGER COOK: 46.
 
PRIME MINISTER: 46 seats here in WA, and the Liberal Party were reduced to seven and they just pipped the Nats on six. Our policy is for renewables backed with firming capacity of gas, batteries and hydro. That's our policy.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, a former immigration detainee has been arrested and charged in Melbourne after allegedly charging at officers with a metal pole. He was released after that High Court ruling. Did your Government do enough to keep the community safe?
 
PRIME MINISTER: The DPP charged the bloke, the Commonwealth DPP charged the bloke. We want people, and we've introduced laws to ensure that happens, most importantly as well, we've introduced laws. We want these people out of the country. But you can't override the High Court. And that is just something that we have had to deal with. Peter Dutton would have had to deal with the same thing.
 
JOURNALIST: Your predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, says Donald Trump plainly doesn't believe in the international rules-based order, and his worldview actually aligns with Vladimir Putin more than our own. Given Trump's, in the last few months, spoken openly about, you know, taking over and controlling Gaza, annexing Canada, controlling Greenland by any means, why is Malcolm Turnbull wrong?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Malcolm Turnbull can speak for himself. I'm not going to comment on all of the views of former prime ministers. I speak for Australia, and the Australian Government's position is that we continue to enjoy a strong relationship with the United States.
 
JOURNALIST: How will Labor be preferencing the Greens at this election? Can we expect you to preference them second?
 
PRIME MINISTER: That's a matter for the organisational wing. But I make this point as I've made it again because there was some reporting of something in spite of the 385 times that I have said we will not govern in coalition with anyone, including the Greens.

I rule out, I rule out, just to be really clear, again, if you ask me, “do you rule out governing in coalition with the Greens?”, the answer to that is no. I don't negotiate with the Greens. I'm about – my campaign team in Grayndler is about campaigning against the Greens. And I'm very confident that we'll be successful given that the Greens were rejected the last time they ran in my part of the world.

The Inner West saw a Labor majority, an absolute majority on the Inner West Council. Now, if in the inner west of Sydney, for those of you familiar with the demographics of Sydney, if the inner west of Sydney can deliver a majority of the Labor Party to govern the Inner West Council, then I'm pretty confident that I can deliver a majority of Labor Members of the House of Representatives to govern the nation.

Thanks very much.
 
ENDS