RICHARD MARLES MP
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER 
MINISTER FOR DEFENCE 
MEMBER FOR CORIO

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER
MINISTER FINANCE
MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE
MINISTER FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES

LIBBY COOK MP
MEMBER FOR CORANGAMITE 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
GEELONG
MONDAY, 14 APRIL 2025

SUBJECTS: Coalition’s Public Service Cuts; Russia’s Ambassador to Australia; Action to Combat Hate Speech; Lara Incinerator.

LIBBY COKER, MEMBER FOR CORANGAMITE: Well, good morning everyone. I'd like to begin by acknowledging our First Nations people, the Wadawurrung, pay respects to elders past, present and emerging, and to any First Nations people who are with us today. It is my pleasure to welcome our Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service, as well as women, Katy Gallagher, lovely of you to be with us here in our beautiful part of the world. And of course, I would also like to thank Richard Marles, my friend and colleague, Member for Corio and also our Deputy Prime Minister. Well today we stand here to defend our public servants. They do an amazing job. We know that there are 41,000 public servants who are going to have their jobs cut under the Liberals and Peter Dutton. We also know that 2,500 or more public servants are in the Geelong broader region, including Corangamite as well. These public servants do amazing work. We support them in their task to help our veterans, to help our vulnerable, single mums, to help pensioners, to help people– recipients of the NDIS. These people need our support, and public servants are there to give that support. Without them, our waiting lists would be much longer, and we know that what people want when they ring up one of our agencies, they want to hear a person on the end of the line and not an answering machine. I'm out on the doors at the moment, regularly, I have met many people, public servants, who are working with the ABS and Centrelink when I'm out on the doors. What they're telling me is they are angry about the fact that the Liberal Party are undervaluing their jobs and are prepared to cut those positions. It will impact around 500 public servants in our region. Those people do amazing jobs, and at a time when we have cost of living pressures, it is quite a callous thing to consider cutting jobs that are so invaluable to supporting our community. So we stand together in support of public servants who do great work. And I'd now like to hand over to Katy. 

KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE: Thanks very much, Libby. Thanks very much everyone, and it's great to be here with Libby and Richard defending the public service. We know that the Geelong region is the biggest regional employer of public servants anywhere in the country. It's a big employer in town, and we know the Liberal Party have said that they will cut 20% of the public service. That means in this area, in this town and region, that's going to mean about 500 jobs. They're coming from agencies like the NDIA behind us, but also areas like Services Australia and right across the Victorian state you would see thousands of people lose their jobs. So, the Liberal Party doesn't respect the work public servants do, we saw that last time they were in government when they decimated the public service and outsourced it all to expensive labour hire and contracting arrangements. We've started the repair work of that, making sure that every part of Australia and all those departments that are outside of Canberra are actually resourced properly to do the job they need to do, whether it be accessing your Medicare rebates; whether it be lodging your family payments; for veterans, whether you're able to get your compensation claim processed. We know we had 42,000 unallocated veterans claims when we came to government. Since then, they've all been allocated, many of them have been processed, and an extra $13 billion has gone into the pockets of those who served our country. They deserve our respect. And that is the work that public servants do. That is what's at risk under Peter Dutton. Now they've been trying to say that they're not going to sack people, and then the next day they say they are going to sack people. We know what their plan is: 41,000 jobs will be cut, and for a place like Geelong that would have devastating impacts on over 500 families who rely on those jobs to, you know, to keep employed, and that's what we're standing here to defend. We respect our public servants. We defend the work they do. We know how important it is for every Australian. And we want to make sure that when Australians engage with the public service, they actually have people there to do the work they need. I'll hand to Richard now to make a few remarks.

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Well thank you Katy, thank you, Libby. Great to be here with both of you today, although what we're talking about is obviously a matter of deep concern for the people of Geelong. Over the last decade and more, Geelong has become a center of public insurance excellence, it’s become a public service center. 2,500 federal public servants now live and work in Geelong, and there'd be that number and more of state public servants who also work in Geelong across the agencies which are here. And so when people in Geelong hear about public service cuts of the order of magnitude that are being described by Peter Dutton, that represents a material risk for the economy of Geelong. 500 jobs being lost here in Geelong is not dissimilar to the number of jobs that were lost when Ford made its decision to stop manufacturing cars in Geelong. That puts it in context about what we are talking about in terms of a loss of employment, but a loss of resources and income and wealth that comes from that which, of course, supplies a whole lot of the small businesses that you see around us right now, which are here, servicing the headquarters of the NDIA. We have the NDIA in Geelong, we have Government Services Australia in Geelong, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Centre for Disease Prevention. It's actually interesting, when you look across those agencies, we're talking about people who work in policy, but people who are working in terms of providing front line services to the people of Victoria, the people of Geelong, the people of Australia. We're talking about scientists. That is the breadth of employment in relation to the public service and that's what's at risk. Now we hear inconsistent propositions from the Liberals. On the one hand, they will say this is going to be managed through attrition, and yet the highest rates of attrition are in the service delivery sector, and so that is where you would see people who are currently employed in Geelong being on the front line in relation to that. You hear them talking about not frontline services, but behind us is a head office which is supporting the national National Disability Insurance Scheme. You take people out of the NDIA headquarters, and the scheme stops properly running. And we've seen that, as Katy said, in the area of Veterans’ Affairs, when people were taken out of that we had 42,000 claims of those veterans who were seeking their appropriate entitlements. Those claims were not even being looked at in some instances for more than a year. That's what it means to cut public servants. So, cutting public servants across the country will have an impact on the services that are provided to Australians. Cutting public service servants will obviously impact them and their families. But here in Geelong, cutting public servants in a place like Geelong is going to have a massive impact on the local economy, and that doesn't just affect the public servants, that affects the small businesses and the whole economy of the region. Peter Dutton and the Liberals need to make it clear where these cuts are going to come from. 41,000 is a massive number, and Geelong is on the front line. 

JOURNALIST: Is this just a scare campaign? The Liberals have pretty clearly come out, and I don't know if you saw the comments in the paper today, but they've very clearly stated that there's no plans to cut front line services. They're saying, quote, “it’s simply another Labor lie”. 

MARLES: Well, I mean, what the Liberals are proposing is fundamentally scary. I mean, let's be clear about that. 41,000 jobs in the public service going - that is what they're saying. That's not us talking. That's the Liberals who are making that point. And they are saying they'll do this by attrition, but attrition lies in front line services, and so it is going to impact a place like this. And what we're looking at is that when you look at the scale of the public service cuts, the numbers that would then flow through to this community is 500 and that is a massive loss of jobs in a place like Geelong.

GALLAGHER: Yeah, I just want to– I guess the only thing I'd add to Richard's remarks is that the 41,000 extra positions that we've put in place have gone to front line agencies. I mean, that's where the investments have been made. They've been made in Services Australia, they've been made in NDIA, they’ve been made in aged care, they've been made in Veterans’ Affairs. Now, Peter Dutton says he's going to take away all the new positions that have been created under the Albanese Government, that's where they come from. So they're just not telling the truth. You cannot sack 41,000 public servants and not affect the front line, because the vast majority of Commonwealth public servants work in the front line. That's where they work. And they are supported by the back office, as Richard said, because you can't have a front line if you don't have a back office, you just can't deliver the services. So they're just not telling the truth, and they're going to try and skate through till after the election without giving us any detail. That's what they've told us: we'll tell you later, we'll tell you after the 3rd of May. And what we're saying is that's not good enough. You need to come clean so that people who live in Geelong and other parts of Australia understand what those cuts mean and where they're coming from. 

JOURNALIST: So Senator, do you deny it's a scare campaign?

GALLAGHER: It's absolutely not a scare campaign. They've been going on about this for two years. I mean, now in the teeth of an election campaign, when they realize their DOGE-style cuts to the public service aren't as popular as they thought they would be, they start to try and crab walk away from it and go, oh, there's nothing to see here. Now I have been dealing with this, the attacks from Peter Dutton on the public service for the last two years. He has been very clear that he wanted to remove all the positions that we put in place. They thought they could have a DOGE-style campaign and that it would work for them. Well, it's not working for them. And now they're saying, oh, we'll tell you later, we'll tell you after the election, but they remain committed to sacking 41,000 public servants. They're not coming clean on it. They're not telling the truth on it. And we think it's one of the big issues in this campaign. We think they should come out and explain to the people of Australia exactly where those cuts are coming from. 

JOURNALIST: One for the Deputy Prime Minister, if I may, when was the government first made aware of Alexey Pavlovsky’s return to Moscow?

MARLES: Look, I’m not in a position to go into that. 

JOURNALIST: Can you perhaps run us through where the approval process for his replacement is at

MARLES: Again, I'm not in a position to go through that. 

JOURNALIST: Is that because of national security advice?

MARLES: I'm not going to go into that answer now. 

JOURNALIST: Is there any transparency the government can give at this time in regards to the situation?

MARLES: Look, again, I'm not going to go into it now. There may be more to say about it later, but I'm not going to go into it now. 

JOURNALIST: Are you able to detail, perhaps, any contact you've had with the Russian embassy to this point in time?

MARLES: No. 

JOURNALIST: On another matter, I'm not sure if you're aware, outside Senator James Paterson's office in south Melbourne, it was reported yesterday that there's been some presence of neo-Nazi groups, so either the NSN or other groups, in the midst of this campaign. Do you think there needs to be tougher measures for people that participate in this sort of activity, particularly in the context of a campaign. And also, just for further context and a question for you, one of the main people involved in this was Jacob Hersant who's been in trouble before with authorities. Are they not listening to, you know, the authorities that have been trying to pull them up?

MARLES: Yeah, look, I'm not aware of the specific reports in relation to Senator Paterson's office and nor am I going to comment about matters, or comment about individuals, but let me say this: our government has been very forthright in taking steps to make unlawful hate symbols and hate speech. Now, included in that is a range of symbols and actions in respect of Nazism, the swastika, the Nazi salute. We have taken more steps in terms of banning that that has occurred before. Because there is no place for that sort of propagation of hate within our democracy. And it is fundamentally important that that be made unlawful and made clear that there is no place for that. There's no place for that generally, obviously, there's no place for that in the context of a federal election, or, for that matter, any other election. But we've stood very strongly in opposition to that, and that's why we have made a number of hate symbols associated with Nazism unlawful. 

JOURNALIST: As the Deputy Prime Minister and the Defence Minister, what would you say to these groups that are pretty blatantly doing this out the front of the electorate office in the midst a campaign?

MARLES: I genuinely believe that what we are talking about is a very small number of people who are really on the extreme edge of political view in this country. But the fundamental point here is that the views that are being expressed there propagate hate, and it is the propagation of hate which makes them unlawful, and that's why we have sought to criminalize that form of hate activity. There is no place for this in our society today. We are a society that is diverse, that has been built on multiculturalism, that is rich as, a result, in terms of our culture and our practices in this nation. We are a country which is based on freedom of speech and the ability to express that. And that's why it's really important that people are able to do that, to live their lives, to practice their faith, to practice their culture, and to do that without the intimidation of hate. And that's why it is so important that to enable that, we have laws in place, which we have.

JOURNALIST: Deputy Prime Minister, what tangible action have you done to prevent the proposed Lara incinerator that's pretty unpopular within your electorate?

MARLES: Well, obviously this is a matter which is working its way through a number of state processes but I have made very clear my position in relation to that incinerator. In my view, the location of that incinerator is utterly inappropriate. It is between two urban places in terms of the northern edge of Corio and the southern edge of Lara. But in time, as we see Lovely Banks develop, it's in fact going to be surrounded by urban development and an incinerator of this kind and of the proposed size really has no place in that spot. We'll be talking about the chimney that forms part of it being higher than the light towers at Kardinia Park, it is going to dominate the skyline were to come to fruition. But it's obviously not an appropriate development in the midst of housing. Now, that's my view. I've made that view very clear and I'll continue to make that view clear, and I know that Ella George, the state Member for Lara, has been very active in representing the voice of her constituents, mine as well obviously, in terms of the state processes.

JOURNALIST: Do you think the state government should just put a stop to it?

MARLES: It has no place in my view.

JOURNALIST: That’s a yes?

MARLES: I'm advocating that this be stopped, yeah, and that is very much my view. This is not an appropriate place to have an incinerator. And I'm not making a judgment about the technology, but I am making a judgment about the location. And I know that my constituents who surround that are deeply concerned about this proposal, and in my view this should be brought to an end, and the sooner that that happens, the better. It is— you know, I am mindful this is being managed at a state level. But again, I reiterate that the work that Ella George, as the state Member for last has done on this has been fantastic.

JOURNALIST: So if you as the federal Member and the Deputy PM, and Ella George as the respected state MP, have that view why do you think the Victorian Government is still pursuing or at least going through the process like this? Wouldn't that– wouldn't you be able to convince them to stop it

MARLES: Well, look, let's see how this runs. I mean, there are processes that apply here, and I'm not about to get in the way of them. It matters actually that processes are properly applied, so that whatever decision is ultimately made here sticks. But it is appropriate that my voice is heard as a representative of this constituency, and it's obviously very appropriate that Ella's voice be heard, and we've made our voice be known loud and clear. From there, the processes need to play out, and they need to fully play out so that, as I say, whatever is the outcome here is one that ultimately sticks. But it is very much my view that this is an inappropriate development for this location.

JOURNALIST: Do you agree, Libby? Do you agree with what Richard’s saying?

COKER: Absolutely, the people in my electorate are very environmentally aware, and they value amenity, and I think that residents obviously have rights, and there's process as Richard has said. But I certainly on behalf of my community, the neighboring community, certainly back Richard in with this and back in the communities that are standing up and saying they do not want this incinerator.

ENDS