TRANSCRIPT – Paul Murray Live, Sky News

Angie Bell MP

Shadow Minister for the Environment

Shadow Minister for Youth

Federal Member for Moncrieff

TRANSCRIPT

Paul Murray Live, Sky News

22 October 2025

Subjects: US relationship and Kevin Rudd, Critical minerals, EPBC reform.

E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………………

PAUL MURRAY:

Two people that I love having on the show is none other than Angie Bell. She’s, of course, an MP on the beautiful Gold Coast, Shadow Environment Minister. She joins us now from, we can’t quite say God’s country at times, but still, kiss the ground for me. And Stephen Conroy, who’s always here to help. I love you, brother. All right. Now, let’s get to a couple of things here.

ANGIE BELL:

I love you, Paul.

PAUL MURRAY:

Thank you. We’re all in love tonight. I’m just, you know, it’s one of those moments, I just think, you know, sort of TV sometimes, it’s just this blah, machine, right? Occasionally, human beings should actually say human stuff on the television. Why not? Okay, so, Stephen, now, I’m just going to ask you one little thing, okay, about the US thing, right? Do you think the term triumphant might be too much? Like, very good, very successful, like, you know, yes, you know, sure, the bar that had been lowered to the stage where, you know, and the fun little moment with Rudd, and if nothing else, it was fun because just for one minute he was reminded. Just one minute he was reminded about how little tinsy-tiny he can be. And again, oh, everything’s fine. He still doesn’t remember what he looked like. Never forget that bit, right? But to me, Triumphant. Triumphant. Like, okay, like in the same way sometimes I might be too hard, they’re too soft if they think this is triumphant. We’ve still got a tariff on us and we’re still paying $300 billion for some subs. Settle down.

STEPHEN CONROY:

Look, I think I wouldn’t use the word triumphant or triumphal. I think that would be over the top. I think, you know, Albo, the Prime Minister, absolutely deserves credit, though. By his time, he waited for his opportunity. He built the case to demonstrate to Trump that the AUKUS deal, the rare earth deal, these were valuable. Australia’s participation in the alliance, these were valuable to America and to the UK. So, I think he built the case over time. And Kevin Rudd, you know, many people love him and hate him, but he deserves credit. I think even Tony Abbott has said today he deserves credit. He has protected and ensured that Australia’s most lethal defence capability, those Virginia-class subs, when we get them, they are the most lethal weapon on earth. And even Tony Abbott is giving Kevin Rudd credit today. So, I think you could describe this as a success. You don’t want to be besties. You’re not picking up the phone to each other every day.

PAUL MURRAY:

Triumphant.

STEPHEN CONROY:

You just want to have a professional relationship with the US, and I think he achieved that. And I think he, you know, the media in Australia built it up to be, oh, my God, what we really want is to see Trump slap around like he did Zelensky. We want him to spank Albo. I mean, no issues around Palestine. All those issues, people could say, oh, my God, Trump’s never going to speak to him. That was an Australian media creation. It wasn’t coming from the White House. It wasn’t Albo saying, oh, I’ll do this and that.

ANGIE BELL:

It’s enough.

STEPHEN CONROY:

So, I think a significant success for the benefit of Australia.

PAUL MURRAY:

No, correct. So, Angie, did your leader and Sussan Ley fall into the hole of falling into the Rudd of it all? Now, she’s walked it back 24 hours later, but did she end up tripping over a trap that many people had laid, but yesterday was the day just to tick and flick, right?

ANGIE BELL:

Well, it’s very tempting and probably only on your show to sort of say K Rudd, K Dudd. But, you know, notwithstanding, it took him a year to get a meeting. I mean, come on. When we had Joe Hockey going to the US. I remember, I’m a good friend of Joe’s. In fact, Joe’s been one of my friends and mentors for many years. And he was out playing golf with Trump and having cups of tea with Hillary Clinton before either of them were in the White House, building this rapport and having this relationship on the golf course with President, who’s now President Trump again. Trump 2.0. But you know the point is it shouldn’t be taking a whole year to get a meeting in the White House and it was probably an embarrassing moment for Kevin Rudd, no doubt. But look, when our Prime Minister goes overseas, we want our Prime Minister to be successful. And the critical minerals deal that he struck is, of course, I wouldn’t use the word triumphant either Paul, but certainly it’s good news for our national security in Australia and for our future, particularly with the submarines. Deterrence is the best measure.

PAUL MURRAY:

Yeah, and if anyone thinks that wasn’t the term that was used, check the same tapes that I can check because I’ll gladly play tomorrow if you would like me to correct the record. In the meantime, you know Rod sort of the Dennis the Menace of international politics right? Kevin, like just enough go away, go away. So, can we just get to this game Stephen a lot of people have been very, you know, critical minerals, very important. Critical minerals, just critical minerals, right? I think 80 per cent of people in the real world have no idea what they are, right? They actually don’t know what, they go, okay I get it. I get it’s a good thing. If it buggers up China, good, I’m in the front row. Can you give me the idea, right? Because theoretically all minerals are limited, right, and difficult to find. What is a critical mineral? I know I’m going to cop it for asking the question, but I’m going to ask it on behalf of the kids in the back row.

STEPHEN CONROY:

Yeah. No, look, firstly, most of them are almost unpronounceable tongue twisters.

PAUL MURRAY:

Right, okay.

STEPHEN CONROY:

But critical minerals are almost microscopic. You find them inside iron ore. They’re not just lying around. They’re inside other deposits. So, they’re hard to find and hard to identify. So, a lot of them, so terbium, there’s one I can pronounce, is used in things like naval sonar, in sensors. So, to give you an idea already, if you don’t have these things, your sonars on your subs don’t work. Okay. Some of the others are used for magnets. Now, I don’t know how this happened. The F-35, our main fighter plane, one of the US’s main fighter planes, they rely on this magnet. And this magnet is produced, believe it or not, in China. One tiny piece that makes a magnet. So you can see that when China decided to turn off the tap, they caused havoc to the AI industry, to the tech industry, to medical research. All of these critical minerals are used in the most incredible parts of society. And as you said, I think you’re being generous when you say 80 per cent. I’d say 99.9 per cent of Australians, you know, who don’t work in this field.

I just had to Google, just so we’re clear. I just had to Google some of these facts so I can actually answer your question. I’m not pretending I know anything about this.

ANGIE BELL:

Let’s see if the Shadow Environment Minister can do so without the Google, right? Because, look, I know there’s other issues in the environment to discuss here.

ANGIE BELL:

They’re the isms.

PAUL MURRAY:

What did you say? They’re the what?

ANGIE BELL:

The e-ums, I-U-Ms, the lithium’s of this world.

PAUL MURRAY:

There you go.

ANGIE BELL:

Look, the things that go into, you know, mobile phone screens. And obviously, Stephen mentioned their defence capability. Those critical minerals are important to build the defence capabilities that we buy from the US as well for the ADF. So, very important for that. Look, I’ve just come back from Yandi up in Western Australia there to BHP’s open cut iron ore mine and to see the amount of iron ore that we export that goes overseas to South Korea, to China, to other countries in the region to build steel, but to also build those capabilities that critical minerals are used for. And so, iron ore, I would consider that to be pretty critical. I’m sure Roger Cook thinks it’s critical because about $2 billion worth of royalties going to Western Australia alone.

PAUL MURRAY:

Well, correct, but as I pointed out before, again, each way Albo is what I would say, foot in both camps, but okay, you know, climate change and mining, there’s the crossover here. At some point it’ll be noticed by the rest of the media, but again, rose petals for triumph, rose petals for triumph. All right, but Angie, we see that Murray Watt as Environment Minister, what was nature positive legislation now perhaps getting a little bit of a rebadge. He decided to give the coalition a little bit of a whack, even though he’s asking for your votes to help get a version of this through the Parliament. Roll what the charming bloke had to say.

[start excerpt]

MURRAY WATT:

We’ve always said that we’re open to passing this bill with the support of either the Coalition or the Greens, or preferably both. I don’t have, I’m not entering these negotiations with a view that we want to do it with one side or the other. I think both the Coalition and the Greens paid a heavy price at the last federal election for being seen by the Australian public to be blocking changes, blocking legislation, obstructing progress. And I’d like to think that they take that into account and don’t want to see a repeat of that when we come to tabling this bill.

[finish excerpt]

PAUL MURRAY:

Settle down. You paid off billions of dollars of student debt. There was an awful lot of other little Trumpian, running against Trump and then there was interest rate changes. Settle down. But Angie, the question is, people like Matt Canavan, your colleague in the opposition, has said things like nature positive, don’t go anywhere near it. Is this watered-down nature positive? Is this different to nature positive? What the heck is being negotiated and how close are you to a yes or a no?

ANGIE BELL:

Yeah, sure. Well, Murray’s just released some draft legislation, and it’s been rebadged as net gain and that is the detail that we’re looking through at the moment. But roughly speaking, it’s talking about, I suppose, when you’re building a development, you’ve got to put more in than you take out when it comes to matters of national environmental significance, known as MNES. So, it’s complicated. We entered in good faith negotiations with the government, and my feelings are hurt on what Murray just said. No sooks here, right, Paul?

PAUL MURRAY:

Well done. Come on, toughen up.

ANGIE BELL:

Absolutely. But certainly we’re looking through the detail. We’ve got about, we think about maybe half or 70 per cent of the legislation, a draft now that we’re looking through. The devil is always in the detail. And there are many things in that draft legislation that I haven’t discussed with Murray. And so, working through all of those, I’ve had four meetings with him. I had a meeting in West Australia with the West Australian Premier’s Office while I was there as well to talk to them about their concerns and of course stakeholders, environmental stakeholders as well. So, it’s going to be difficult to strike a balance and it’s going to be difficult to strike a deal.

PAUL MURRAY:

All right. Excellent. Watch this space. Thank you so much. Always here to help is Stephen. I’m pleased that he too was Googling. And, again, if you’re one of the people who’s glad that we had that conversation, send me the damn email, okay? Paul@SkyNews.com.au. Thank you, Angie. Thank you, Stephen. We’ll talk to you very, very soon.

ENDS.