Topics: asylum seekers, ALP NSW conference, industrial relations, Labor-Greens coalition
Julie Doyle: Scott Ryan to you first, the Opposition maintains that asylum seekers should only be sent to countries that have signed the Refugee Convention, but now Scott Morrison says the convention has problems and doesn’t address the contemporary challenges. Is he being hypocritical on that?
Senator Scott Ryan: Not at all Julie. The Refugee Convention was designed for a different world. It was designed to prevent the tragedy of what happened before World War II, where people did not get access to asylum, and to accommodate large movements of people after World War II. The only point that Scott Morrison was making was that with people moving through secondary and tertiary countries to seek out a fourth or fifth nation, that it wasn’t designed to deal with the massive people smuggling problem that we have. But when we say we want to give people the protections of the Refugee Convention, which is non-refoulement and the protection against particular forms of punishment or access to appeals, that is why we won’t send people to Malaysia, and that is entirely consistent.
Doyle: Do you think though that he is saying that there need to be some changes to the convention?
Ryan: I think he was just pointing out that the world has moved on since 1951 and that we have a major people smuggling problem, which Australia’s laws were changed with and has actually seen that problem exacerbated and those comments have been made by people in our region.
Doyle: Glenn Sterle to you on this one. The Refugee Convention was drawn up decades ago in a different time, do you think it is still relevant.
Senator Glenn Sterle: Julie, what we have is innocent people drowning. If the Coalition were fair dinkum about saving lives, it wouldn’t matter what the convention said in 1951, or what it says now, we have to stop the illegal trade of people. I would encourage Senator Ryan to get into his party room and try and put some sense into Mr Abbott and Mr Morrison.
Doyle: But on this particular issue, do you think there is some merit in the comments that Scott Morrison made about the convention being designed for people fleeing persecution, not travelling from one country to another, choosing where they go to seek asylum?
Sterle: Julie, desperate people will take desperate measures. This is all smoke and mirrors from Mr Abbott, it is smoke and mirrors from Mr Morrison. The truth of the matter is they have no intention to work with the Government, with the Prime Minister, and support the end of people smuggling. I would encourage the people out there to listen to what the Opposition is saying. If they were fair dinkum Julie, if they were fair dinkum, and I believe they are not – although I do say there are some various decent people within the Coalition, Senator Ryan’s one of them – that it sickens them to see these unwarranted deaths or these needless deaths. Don’t worry about what Mr Morrison is saying, what they are clearly doing here is using every opportunity to wedge the Government, they should be working with us, we should be trying everything and Malaysia is the solution we need.
Doyle: Scott Ryan, we heard similar comments from Julia Gillard there. What is your response to that? Haven’t you opened yourself up to this criticism because of those comments by Scott Morrison?
Ryan: Not at all. We had a situation where the people smuggling trade was almost dead. We had a situation where we didn’t have the tragedies we have now, and that was when there were three policies in place: temporary protection visas, off-shore processing under Australian supervision on Nauru, and where it was safe to do so, to tow the boats back out. Now what the Labor Party is doing through sheer stubbornness, is refusing to go back to those policies that worked. They changed them, we are consistently saying, ‘those policies worked’. They are the policies we need to go back to in order to address this problem.
Doyle: Glenn Sterle, we have seen people talking today about Sri Lanka and the fact that that country has intercepted a boat and turned it around and taken it back to port. Should the Federal Government be working more closely with a country like Sri Lanka to try and address this?
Sterle: Julie, the Federal Government is working closely with Sri Lanka. The Federal Government continually works closely in our region with other countries, but let’s go back to the real hard questions here Julie, and I know, because I was the one in Senate Estimates who questioned Vice-Admiral Griggs, when I asked him how would the boats be turned back, to which Vice-Admiral Griggs told me that he was a young commander that did it on a ship twice. Once, it was successful, once it wasn’t. But let’s ask the true question – and I’ll be interested to hear Senator Ryan’s view – how the heck are you going to turn the boats around safely? Would someone please just tell me and tell the Australian public how it can be done.
Doyle: Senator Ryan, that is the big concern that has been raised by various people – the likes of [Admiral] Chris Barry and Paul Barratt – that this can’t be done safely. What is your response to that?
Ryan: Our response is to give that discretion to our commanders at the point that it needs to be done. We’ve seen in Sri Lanka that it has happen, and the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia says it does have an impact. It is part of an important suite of policies, Labor is looking for the magic bullet solution and claims Malaysia will somehow solve this problem. We know it won’t, we know it won’t for multiple reasons, but more importantly it’s because there is a cap on the numbers.
Doyle: Do you maintain though that there will be a situation where it can be done safely?
Ryan: Our position as the Coalition, and this is firmly my position as well, is that we give that discretion to our commanders on the spot. It is not a magic bullet, it is one of a suite of policies …
Doyle: So there may not be a situation where it is ever safe?
Ryan: I disagree. It was safe overnight in Sri Lanka and I don’t think it is up to people in Canberra, like the Labor Party, to simply rule things out. We had a suite of policies, that suite of policies worked and that was part of it.
Doyle: This situation in Sri Lanka Scott Ryan was quite different in that they were returning a boat to Sri Lanka. You’re talking about intercepting boats in international waters or Australian waters and sending them back to Indonesia. Quite a different situation.
Ryan: The discretion to the commander is the same. What we have is a situation where we’ve got people jumping on boats, and while there in Indonesian waters, calling a centre in Australia and saying “tow us in”. That is not an acceptable situation to put our personnel in. That’s not an acceptable situation for Australia’s immigration policies. This is not a silver bullet, it is part of a suite of policies that serve both as a deterrent and as an effective management tool.
Doyle: Let’s move on to the NSW Labor conference. After a public slanging match between the factions, Labor delegates did eventually vote to end the preferential treatment for the Greens. But when the Prime Minister did address the conference the following day she chose to ignore the issue. Glenn Sterle, do you think after such a public debate on the Saturday, that Julia Gillard should have made some reference to it in her speech?
Sterle: Julie, I wasn’t at the NSW state Labor conference, but to answer your question as fairly as I could the NSW state Labor conference has made a decision that would affect seats in NSW both in a federal election and in a state election, so that’s a decision for the NSW state Labor Party and I support them and I think the Prime Minister quite rightly doesn’t need to drag on about that decision that has been made by our NSW counterparts.
Doyle: What was your personal opinion of how this debate unfolded? We saw Labor MPs and Senators talk about trying to differentiate the party from the Greens in the eyes of the public. Do you think that was necessary?
Sterle: Julie I made comment too to The Sydney Morning Herald and to The Age. I am not a supporter of the Greens. I believe the Greens can bring some – very rarely – can bring some intelligence to the debates. I fully endorse the Labor Party standing on its own merits. I fully endorse the Labor Party, for any branch decisions or state decisions, that want to preference the Greens last because quite simply, when we saw the performance of Senator Sarah Hanson-Young on the Oakshott Bill debate with the crocodile tears, along with Mr Hockey I may say as well, with those crocodile tears and then crossing the floor to support the Coalition. Well I’m not uncomfortable with decisions being made by state Labor conferences to put the Greens last.
Doyle: Julia Gillard didn’t talk about the Greens, but what she did talk about in particular was Tony Abbott and workplace relations, is this one where you think it is a weak point for the Coalition? Where the Government has a bit of an advantage on this one?
Ryan: This is a Prime Minister desperate to talk about anything other than her own failures on border security, a Prime Minister who refuses to visit a single small business to talk about the carbon tax, and a Prime Minister who is running away from her own broken promise about that. On the issue of the Greens, this is nothing but a contrived and confected little spat, because the Labor Party – and Glenn is part of it – has a written agreement, a political pre-nuptial, and no one is threatening to tear up that. The Labor Party does deals with the Greens at every election, the Liberal Party has never done one. The Labor Party is in a governing coalition and has a written agreement with the Greens, the Liberal Party doesn’t have one, so that is nothing but a contrived, confected little spat.
Doyle: But on the issue of workplace relations, industrial relations, every time Tony Abbott mentions industrial relations, the Government jumps on it and talks about WorkChoices. Is that a problem for you?
Ryan: Not at all. The Coalition has made its policy clear, WorkChoices is dead, buried, cremated. We had that policy at the last election, we are taking it to the next election. And I tell you, between Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard, only Julia Gillard has a real credibility problem when it comes to trust. She is the one that stared down the barrel of the camera and said there will be no carbon tax and who broke that promise.
Doyle: If your policy was out there at the moment though would that make it easier to combat the comments that we heard from Julia Gillard? But because your policy hasn’t been released yet, it is easy for the Government to attack you on this front.
Ryan: The Labor Party, being so desperate to avoid its own record and so desperate to avoid talking about its own failures, I don’t think anything is going to stop Labor’s lies. We will release a policy on workplace relations before the next election, in due course. We’ve already got two elements out there: the building and construction commissioner and the rules that apply to trade unions to stop scandals like the HSU. We will release it and it will reflect our values and we will stick to those commitments that we have already made. Nothing is going to stop Labor’s desperate campaign.
Doyle: Glenn Sterle, we heard some comments at that conference from John Faulkner for example, saying that the party should be talking about how to boost its primary vote, before it can be talking about how to distribute preferences. Do you think Labor has been spending too much time talking about this issue?
Sterle: Not at all Julie. We’ve had a very challenging term of government, let’s make no mistake. The Prime Minister, who I have the greatest respect for, has been working under extremely different circumstances to put a coalition – oh, I shouldn’t use that word, let’s say a grouping together – of Greens and independents has not been easy. It has not been easy, but she has moved some 300 pieces of legislation. I think the Prime Minister, really unfairly has copped a lot of criticism. She has worked so hard and, it is simple mathematics, of course, crikey, we’ve got to get our primary vote up, but let’s look at the fear campaign led by Tony Abbott and the Liberals. Let’s look at the constant negativity, the sky was supposed to collapse on July the first. We’ve heard all sorts of nonsense rumours and nonsense statements made by the Coalition. I have full support for Labor’s position. I honestly and firmly believe that yes, we do need to get our primary vote up. I think that in the next few months our primary vote will recover because people will actually see the mistruths and the misinformation from Mr Abbott and the Liberals over a range of issues. People are starting to see that the carbon tax has not created Armageddon for the Australian economy. Also, with industrial relations there is talk about that and I am very, very happy and very, very relaxed having a conversation on industrial relations.
Doyle: We might have to leave that conversation for another day, we’re about to run out time.