Sky News Regional Breakfast with Jaynie Seal

JAYNIE SEAL: Senior Ministers are set to retire and strong performers promoted as part of the government's pre-election reshuffle. Well, joining me live is Minister for Regional Development, Kristy McBain. Minister, thank you so much for joining us. Great to see you. We are hearing this includes perhaps Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Linda Burney, who is possibly set to retire, and Minister for Skills and TraininH, Brendan O'Connor, perhaps quitting the government in the space of the next few days. What can you tell us?

KRISTY MCBAIN: Good morning, Jaynie. Great to be with you. There's always speculation about reshuffles. What our government has provided is a pretty stable government, a stable list of ministers over the last two years. Before that, we've seen this multitude of Prime Ministers, a revolving door of political coups in house. It's really important that we provide stability to the Australian people at a time that they're doing it really tough. We're focused on cost of living measures. Talk about a reshuffle, is just talk at this stage. 

SEAL: All right. Well, talking about the cost of living, we're reporting today, Minister, that economists are warning that a possible rate hike at next month's RBA meeting could, in fact, put Australia at the risk of a recession. And there's a new report from Deloitte. It's suggesting that the rate rise could erase the benefits of Labor's stage three tax cuts and pay rises for thousands of Australians. What would you say to that? 

MCBAIN: The Deloitte Business Review says that we're on the right track. It says turning Liberal deficits into two Labor surpluses is a good thing for the budget, and it puts us in good stead. The RBA has said that those surpluses help them with their job, but we're focused on those cost of living measures. Obviously, from July 1, everyone got a tax cut. We've seen 2.7 million minimum wage workers get a pay rise over the last couple of weeks. We've got those $300 energy bill rebates coming. Cheaper childcare, cheaper medicines and fee-free TAFE are just some of those measures that we've put in place to assist people with those hip pocket costs. We'll continue to work on that and provide that relief to people in their day-to-day costs. 

SEAL: And, Minister, we've seen some councils on the Great Ocean Road, Queensland in Townsville planning to increase parking fees. What would you say to councils on that?

MCBAIN: Councils’ budgets are under pressure too, but it's really important that we are all working together. We’re progressively doubling Roads to Recovery. That's $1 billion fund that will go out to councils each and every year. It's not a grant program. It automatically rolls out to them to help them with the maintenance costs on the roads. We've increased Road Black Spot funding from $110 million a year to $150 and we've put in place a new $200 million Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program. We're always working with councils to make sure that we can assist them and their communities. We've brought them back to the table of National Cabinet for that exact reason. We've now got an inquiry running into local government Sustainability, because it impacts every community member across the country when our councils aren't functioning to their highest degree as well. We're focused on making the changes we can and assisting local communities through a number of those roads packages, and we'll continue to work with local councils on it. 

SEAL: Minister Kristy McBain, we do have to wrap it up, but great to see you. Thank you so much.