Transcript - TV interview - Sky News, AM Agenda with Laura Jayes

LAURA JAYES [HOST]: Well, let's look at the Aston by-election. That result at the weekend. Labor overturning 100 years of history. Let's go life to Victoria now, the Infrastructure Minister and Member for Ballarat joins us now, Catherine King. Thanks so much for your time. It's probably hard to resist gloating this morning, but what is your outtake from the Aston by-election result?

CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: Well, it's certainly a historic result and I think we are really looking forward to welcoming Mary Doyle into the ranks of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party. I think she'll be a terrific representative for the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I think she ran an incredible campaign in the general election, had a significant swing to her, and then to have delivered this result is a real testament, I think, to her and her team. But I think also is that people are tired of conflict politics and they want to see someone who's there, who represents them, who wants to really make sure that we're delivering for people in our suburbs. And Mary certainly ran a really positive campaign to be able to do that.

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, fair enough. You talk about conflict politics and a nicer, kinder politic. That's something you talked about during the general election campaign. How do you marry that up with the extremely negative ad campaigns that were run by Labor, essentially making Peter Dutton look like a monster in some of these adverts?

CATHERINE KING: Well, here's some of the commentary about that. My sister-in-law lives in Aston and she was sending me through some of the material that was coming both on through Facebook and on her letterbox from the Liberal Party, particularly around some decisions around road funding that I had made. She sent them through particularly to me. So I don't think the Liberal Party can claim that they ran a positive campaign given the material that I -

LAURA JAYES: Absolutely not Catherine King no, I don't think by any means they ran a positive campaign, but I can't think that Labor can say hand on heart that they ran a completely clean campaign either.

CATHERINE KING: Well, I think that it's important for us to point out really clearly to people that after a decade in office of the Liberal Party, having delivered very little for this area, that for them to claim that they had no solutions and that they were going to continue to be part of the problem, really, with their voting no against every attempt that we've made to deal with issues of inflation, to deal with energy relief, to deal with housing affordability. I think that's pretty reasonable for us to point out the sort of political party that is in opposition today. And I think that negativity, and pointing out that negativity, I think on behalf of the Liberal National Party, I think really did play pretty strongly in Aston. People don’t want to see an Opposition who, frankly has had a toxic relationship with the Victorian State Government and seems set to continue that. Part of the problem we've got when we're trying to deliver infrastructure when we're trying to deliver relief to people, is that we actually need an Opposition who's in people's corner, not in their own corner. And that's what we're saying, unfortunately and the people of Aston have voted against that.

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, I mean, Labor is right to take a bit of a confidence boost out of this, absolutely. But do you see this result is any endorsement of any particular policy? The Voice, for example, where you are on energy policy? Could Labor even look at this result and say, you know what, we had the people's support. Let's scrap stage three tax cuts.

CATHERINE KING: I think that what this result really clearly shows is that the positive agenda that we both took to the general election and are now implementing in government are getting on with the business of governing. Explaining to people where the issues that are complex and hard. Explaining that to people taking people along the journey of what we're trying to do about inflation, what we're trying to do to actually take that pressure off households. What we're trying to do to implement the Housing Australia Future Fund, what we're doing with energy relief and taking people with us and having that agenda and explaining it. I think that is what it certainly clearly said, but also that really strong notion, which was clear in the general election as well, that this is about representational politics. People want to know that they've got a representative who understands them, is in their corner and is going to be part of a team that is actually going to try and address these issues.

LAURA JAYES: But Roshena Campbell is a very accomplished woman, isn't she? I mean she was all those things essentially.

CATHERINE KING: I'm sure she is. I don't know her myself, but I'm sure she is. And I'm sure at some point she'll run for the Liberal Party as well. But it was pretty clear, I think, from this election result, that really what people are after is understanding what the agendas are, what we're trying to do about them, and having a positive plan to actually try and look at getting energy relief, looking at the issues around housing affordability and tackling those, as well as having a strong local representative, which we do have in Mary Doyle. And I think, again, having the Prime Minister so strongly backing her being in the seat a number of times as well, was certainly a positive for her campaign.

LAURA JAYES: Well, Catherine King, great to have you on the program. It's not every day we go live to Ballarat, but happy to say we did it this morning. Thanks so much.

CATHERINE KING: We got there in the end. Thank you.