Subjects: Royal Commission into NT youth justice system; US politics.
EO&E…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
RAF EPSTEIN:
Coming up on Fight Club you are going to hear from two of our political representatives. Scott Ryan is joining us. He’s the newly appointed Special Minister of State in Malcolm Turnbull’s Government. Tim Watts will be joining us from the Labor Party, a backbencher from the seat of Gellibrand.
Look, I’m fascinated by the question of who is responsible in the Northern Territory. It is a Government in the Territory, headed by Adam Giles, elected on some really tough law and order rhetoric. I don’t know if you’ve seen the quote that’s being passed around from a few years ago where Adam Giles – I mean this is tough law and order rhetoric, right – he says I would build – this is for criminals, people they would lock up as a Government – ‘I would build a big concrete hole and put all the bad criminals in there. Right, you’re in a hole and you’re not coming out, start learning about it. I might break every United Nations convention on the rights of the prisoner, but get in the hole.’ So that’s the sort of political rhetoric, that’s regular rhetoric in the territory. So is it any wonder that we end up with that dreadful situation, and if the Northern Territory government actually legislated for restraints in chairs to keep kids in juvenile prison, well maybe it’s not that surprising that we ended up with that footage that we saw on Four Corners? The big question now around that Royal Commission in whether or not the Northern Territory Government should be involved? Practically every significant Indigenous organisation in the territory has said the Northern Territory Government should not be involved in that Royal Commission – that inquiry should be independent of that Government. I’d love to know what you think.
I’ll ask Scott Ryan that question, Tim Watts as well.
Scott Ryan too has an interesting job. He’s got to help prepare the legislation for the same-sex marriage plebiscite, so lots of questions to get to there. First, let’s question Shaun Conlon, at 26 minutes past 4 ‘o’clock. He’s from Shaw and Partners. Hi there, Shaun.
[CALLER and RAF EPSTEIN discuss interest rates and CPI]RAF EPSTEIN:
And joining me for Fight Club today from Canberra is Senator Scott Ryan, he is the Liberal Senator for Victoria. He’s got a new job now. Special Minister of State, Minister Assisting the Cabinet Secretary and I think he might be Deputy Manager of Government Business in the Upper House as well – he’s got a crowded business card that he gives away with gay abandon. Scott, welcome.
SCOTT RYAN:
G’day Raf. I have to admit I missed the ‘ding ding’ there, you caught me by surprise.
RAF EPSTEIN:
[Music]RAF EPSTEIN:
Feel better, Scott?
SCOTT RYAN:
Yeah I do, I feel more at home now.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Awesome, good. Tim Watts joins me as well. He is the ALP member for the seat Gellibrand. Despite lots of people, including his good friend and colleague Clare O’Neil getting promoted, Tim Watts remains the humble member for the seat of Gellibrand. Tim, welcome.
TIM WATTS:
Great to be here Raf. I’m getting business card envy from Scott I must say. It’s a very impressive title Scott.
RAF EPSTEIN:
He has to keep getting them changed.
SCOTT RYAN:
I won’t be Deputy Manager of Government Business in the Senate in the next Parliament.
RAF EPSTEIN:
I thought you were?
SCOTT RYAN:
I was in the last Parliament.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Oh that was the last one, ok. So you’re just the Special Minister of State and the Minister Assisting the Cabinet Secretary.
SCOTT RYAN:
Yes.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Ok. And you’ve actually had Minister Assisting the Cabinet Secretary before. That means nothing goes through Cabinet unless Scott Ryan says it’s ok. Is that right Scott?
SCOTT RYAN:
Look it basically means I work with Arthur [Sinodinos] who’s the Cabinet Secretary. I assist him. It’s a lot of – look it’s a very important role that Arthur has and it’s a privilege to work with him, for sure.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Look let’s get into the Northern Territory, and I – look, we don’t have the Northern Territory Government here Scott, so I am going to start with your Government. I want to play you two little pieces from the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Nigel Scullion, who has held that portfolio for quite a while. He has received some pretty good accolades actually in the early part of the Abbott government term, for I guess being a good on-the-ground politician. However his response to the Four Corners documentary has been questioned by some. I’ll play you two bits. Firstly, he wasn’t watching, but the Prime Minister called him and told him to watch. Have a listen.
[EXCERPT]RAF EPSTEIN:
So he wasn’t watching. The other phrase that he used yesterday that he got a lot of criticism for was that ‘the issues had not piqued his interest’. Have a listen.
[EXCERPT]RAF EPSTEIN:
Scott Ryan, he should have been watching and should have known, shouldn’t he?
SCOTT RYAN:
Well let’s be frank here. I actually enjoy the fact that Nigel was being refreshingly frank and honest. Now, he had another commitment, I don’t think that, I don’t know whether he knew about it beforehand. He got a call from the Prime Minister. He made it clear he watched it and spoke to the Prime Minister afterwards. I think what we heard from Nigel there was honesty. Now, that phrase, ‘piqued his interest’, you were fair enough to play the context of that comment not just that one phrase and I think, you know he was essentially saying it had not gathered his attention, he was not aware of it. He gave due credit to the media for bringing this matter to public light and in the course of, effectively less than 12 hours, the Prime Minister and the Government moved to announce a fast-moving Royal Commission. And I think Nigel was being honest and we saw from the Prime Minister a quite appropriate, but rapid, reaction to ensure we address this problem, because the images that we all saw I think shocked everyone who saw them.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Tim Watts? We have got a Royal Commission, that’s a pretty rapid response.
TIM WATTS:
Well it would be rapid if you ignored all of the context around this issue. This is an issue where in the Northern Territory, 96 percent of the population of the juvenile detention system are Indigenous boys. Indigenous boys are 24 times more likely to be in the juvenile justice system than non-Indigenous kids. This is an issue that should have been at the absolute top of Nigel Scullion’s agenda. It should have been at the forefront of his focus and when he know – and we know from the producers of Four Corners that he was trying to get a copy of this television program during the day –it was coming, and he still went out to dinner. If it was me, I would clear the calendar. I know we’re a long way from Darwin in Melbourne, but if I hear that there is going to be a news report in my portfolio area, saying that kids are being frankly tortured, I want to know about that before anybody else, and I don’t need the Prime Minister to call me to get me on to it.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Scott Ryan, they did legislate – I mean there were huge questions around those chair restraints for some time, there were a number of reports – they legislated to allow those chair restraints in the middle of last year. These are not issues with which your colleagues in the Northern Territory Government are unfamiliar and Nigel Scullion is from the territory, he’s known about everything except the footage.
SCOTT RYAN:
And Nigel, as you’ve correctly pointed out has more on-the-ground experience with Indigenous affairs than anyone who’s help the role previously. He’s worked in these communities, he knows the genuine community level challenges that you don’t often see in Canberra. Look I’m not as familiar with the domestic or the internal political debates or legal issues within the Northern Territory. I mean, it is a self-governing territory, for all intents and purposes it is treated as if it was a state, although it doesn’t have the same constitutional status. But that was one of the things that allowed the Prime Minister to move rapidly to announce a Royal Commission. This went to air at 8.30pm Monday. He called the Indigenous Affairs Minister and I think if we can give some credit to him, he was explaining where he was, he did say it was an event with a family of a staff member, so I think – and then he watched it straight away and then in less than, in 10 hours later the Prime Minister was announcing a Royal Commission. So I… (interrupted)
RAF EPSTEIN:
(interrupts) I do give the government credit for that but – and look I wasn’t aware of this reporting, so I am very much prepared to take some collective responsibility. There’s no detail in that Four Corners story that hadn’t been reported by the ABC before. All of that detail, the only thing that was different was the footage.
SCOTT RYAN:
The vision.
RAF EPSTEIN:
So let me out a separate question to you Scott Ryan, practically every significant Northern Territory Aboriginal group – their land councils, their medical service, their legal service, have said today that the Northern Territory Government should not be part of the Royal Commission. That’s a fair point, isn’t it? I meant these issues are well ventilated there. Perhaps it’s better if they weren’t involved, if they were subject to, rather than the party driving, the Royal Commission?
SCOTT RYAN:
Well they’re not. I believe I heard the Prime Minister the other day announce that the Northern Territory doesn’t have a Royal Commissions Act, so this will be a Royal Commission set up under the authority of the Commonwealth. The territory is a self-governing territory, but it is in the end subject to the Commonwealth Parliament. Royal Commissions as we know, and this is why the Prime Minister wants to get it moving quickly, so we can get findings quickly, find out what happened and address the problems quickly, it will effectively be a Commonwealth Royal Commission because that’s the legal authority I understand, under which it will be set up.
RAF EPSTEIN: And I guess no government really has true control of a Royal Commission. I want to hear from Dave, who’s calling from Geelong. Dave, you were in the Territory, is that right?
[CALLER and RAF EPSTEIN]RAF EPSTEIN:
Look Dave thank you. I’m sorry to keep Dave on the line for so long in the middle of a conversation with our politicians. But I want to put that to both Time Watts and Scott
Scott, I’ll start with you because he did raise the point that you know, when it comes to euthanasia, the Government was ready to jump all over the Territory, but I do want to an answer from you, Scott. Why – and this is a bipartisan criticism – we don’t seem to be able to give them the control that everyone says is the answer to so many of their problems. Why not?
SCOTT RYAN:
Well firstly on the euthanasia issue, that wasn’t a government response, it was a free vote of parliament. And it did take legislation, and it’s not something that can be done flippantly or quickly. It was legislation that overrode it in the Northern Territory. So it’s not something that you can do by the stroke of a pen. As I said, it was a free vote in Parliament in both sides voting for it and I wasn’t here (inaudible). Well that’s fine, but it wasn’t a party-line government position. But on the… (interrupted)
RAF EPSTEIN:
(interrupts, inaudible)… But that substantive issue, local control.
SCOTT RYAN:
Can I say, if it was that easy, then someone smarter than me would have done it before. There is a constant tension, I mean it was only a few years ago where there were calls for intervention on an unrelated issue, but it was related to law and order.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Oh that’s 100 percent related, I mean that’s the cause of the trauma isn’t it?
SCOTT RYAN:
(inaudible)… the duty we owe, in this case we’re talking about people who have been incarcerated, but in the other case of the intervention it was about people in their societies and our duty as a decent society to protect our most vulnerable. So all I‘m trying to say is it’s not that simple. I don’t think you can say everyone agrees more local control would solve all these problems. If there was – we’ve got to get past the silver bullet solution to so many of our country’s problems, but particularly Indigenous affairs because I don’t think something like that would solve all these problems. It may be part of it, it may provide part of a solution but it may come with consequences. And I know I have done Senate inquiries where there has been tension between control and intervention because different parts of communities wanted different actions from government. And so, I respectfully don’t think that’s an easy solution.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Tim Watts?
TIM WATTS:
Well of course there are no silver bullets here, but the question we need to be asking is what is the government’s priority in this area? Now you recall that we had a Fight Club on the day of Closing the Gap day earlier this year in February and we had a similarly angst-driven conversation where Scott and I were both saying we don’t have all the answers, we feel very exposed because we don’t have the answers. But on that day, Bill Shorten went into the Parliament and said justice targets need to be – they’re at crisis. They’re at crisis point and they need to be a priority for government. We need to be looking at programs for government like justice reinvestment programs, where we got to local communities and say ‘instead of pouring all this money into jailing your youth, how could we re-invest this money that we would have otherwise spent on prisons, into preventing crime and this kind of societal breakdown in the first place?’ There are trials underway in places like Burke at the moment… (interrupted).
RAF EPSTEIN:
(interrupts) I don’t want to stop you making a partisan point –
TIM WATTS:
Well it’s not a partisan point, I meant this is, what you measure, you act on. And we need to add to Closing the Gap goals, justice targets, so that we can then make this a priority.
RAF EPSTEIN:
And look the territory government, they’ve pointed a lot of the incidents in the Four Corners report happened under territory and federal governments that were Labor. What is stopping us making significant progress?
TIM WATTS:
Well we go back to the fact that there is no silver bullet here, but listening to the communities is crucial and community-driven trials on justice reinvestment are really important. But at the first instance we need a government that recognises that this is an issue that is at crisis point, that when more Indigenous youth – when Indigenous youth are more likely to go to prison than to university, that’s something that should be at the top of the Minister’s to-do list.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Scott, forgive me, I’m sure you’re dying to dive in. I need to give people traffic, but we’ll get back to both Scott Ryan and Tim Watts in just a moment. Chris Miller first with some of those road details.
[TRAFFIC REPORT]RAF EPSTEIN:
Scott Ryan is with me, he’s Malcolm Turnbull’s Special Minister of State. Tim Watts is with me as well, one of Bill Shorten’s backbenchers here in Melbourne. They’re both from Melbourne, Victorian politicians. I want to give Anne a go, she’s in Ballarat and then I know Scott Ryan wants to respond to some of what Tim Watts had to say, but Anne go for it, what did you want to say?
[CALLER]RAF EPSTEIN:
Let’s put that to Scott Ryan. You’ve made the point that he’s not in charge of the Royal Commission. He has made some pretty tough law and order statements, Scott, does he bear some of the responsibility?
SCOTT RYAN:
I did read that statement. To be fair I don’t think it referred specifically to children, the statement he made at the point that Anne mentioned earlier. One of the tensions here is that there has been – and there is in other parts, we’re even seeing it a bit here in Melbourne now – when there’s genuine concern over community safety, politicians can’t dismiss it. Now what the Prime Minister said, he’s going to have a Royal Commission into acts that should not happen in Australia. The stuff we saw on Monday night in video footage and in still footage – the restraint chair, some of the tear-gassing – and that is entirely inappropriate. That should not happen in this country.
RAF EPSTEIN:
It’s legal in the Northern Territory law, though.
SCOTT RYAN:
But I think we need to also understand that we can’t dismiss, when we have genuine community concerns about safety, and that leads to some of the tensions I mentioned earlier where there were calls from community members for a stronger law and order response, only a few years ago. You know I think targets, as Tim mentioned, they may well be important but let’s not pretend, and we can’t pretend, that addressing community safety is not a core function of government. And that is what, to be fair a lot of politicians in my view should respond to as well, because safety is also about people going about their lives in the community.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Tim Watts?
TIM WATTS:
There’s not a politician in the country who says that community safety isn’t important. It’s a complete straw-man. What Labor has been saying is that it’s crucial that this Royal Commission gets to the bottom of this abhorrent behaviour that we’ve seen on Four Corners, but it’s also crucial that the Royal Commission looks at the broader issues in the juvenile justice system in the Northern Territory. 96 percent of the kids in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory are Indigenous. 24 times more likely to be (inaudible)…
RAF EPSTEIN:
(interrupts) Let me ask you about that, is that a race issue? Is there systemic racism that leads to that outcome? Or is it something else?
TIM WATTS:
That’s something that a Royal Commission would appropriately look at, in my view.
RAF EPSTIEN:
That’s an opinion; it’s not a finding is it? I don’t know.
TIM WATTS:
It’s an opinion? No well I mean –
RAF EPSTEIN:
Whether or not racism is part of the problem, that’s a political opinion isn’t it?
TIM WATTS:
If there are – if it’s revealed there are structural approaches with respect to race within the Northern Territory police force, within the courts, within the prisons. There are a whole range of ways that that could manifest in a way that’s not just an opinion and that it’s observable, and that you can take evidence in a Royal Commission. But no-one is saying that community safety is not important here, but what we are saying is that this is a system at the moment that is clearly destroying young aboriginal kids, and that deserves attention, too.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Is racism part of it, Scott Ryan?
SCOTT RYAN:
Let’s have a look. I think to be fair, Tim and I might have a different definition of racism. If you can – my personal view is that if you can demonstrate to me that similar offences are carrying different sentences as has been demonstrated in some other parts of the world, particularly when you look at the US and the difference between African-American and white American, then I think that’s a charge, I regard it as a very grave charge that I think you could look at them. But I don’t think one can simply say that the fact that there are, there is a disproportionate representation in an incarceration system or a justice system on its own, because one of the challenges is disadvantaged groups often live in more disadvantaged communities where there is a higher prevalence of crime. And that’s not the children’s fault, it’s not the fault of any individual, of the community collectively, but it can mean that you have a greater justice issue in disadvantaged communities by their nature.
RAF EPSTEIN: Look if I can shift our political attention. We’ve been talking about politics in the territory, I’m going to ask you both actually, just for some observations on the United States. It’s a fairly intense part of the presidential year – Donald Trump formally nominated last week, Hillary Clinton formally nominated yesterday, and she’ll make her big speech today.
Tim Watts, do you look at American politics and think ‘wow, it would be nice to have some of what’s going on there’? Or do you look at it with horror and praise your lucky stars that we’re in an Australian system?
TIM WATTS:
Over the last few days, I have to be frank and say that my most biggest reaction has been a sense of déjà vu. I see a lot of what Hillary Clinton is dealing as being very similar to what Julia Gillard dealt with when she was Prime Minister in Australia. This is a woman who, on pretty well any objective measure could be the most qualified candidate for the office of President in history, and yet she’s been constantly demeaned and undermined by her own party as well as the other side. Julie Gillard had an op-ed in the New York Times today, drawing those analogies and I think she was right to call that out, and I think that other people in the US system should be calling it out as well. The honesty issue as well, in particular, she seems to have a reputation for being particularly dishonest or distrustful for behaviour that frankly every male politician in the US engages in as well. Why is it special when related to Hillary? I feel a sense of déjà vu.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Scott Ryan what are you noticing the most about what’s going on there?
SCOTT RYAN:
The sheer number of people involved in their political process – I don’t necessarily look at it and say that I want us to be more like them or not, I look at the difference and I studied a great deal of this. But when you see tens of thousands of people turning up to these conventions, I really have always admired the American respect for free speech, and the respect for every being able to mount their case. And you look outside the Democratic and Republican conventions and you’ll see groups gathering, protesting, lobbying about every issue imaginable: some offensive, some quite mainstream. And so I have to admit that one of the things despite the disengagement with politics that people report from all around the world, the American system is unique in involving tens of thousands of people in it. It also is unique in the amount of money that’s involved, so there are swings and roundabouts. But it is interesting to observe its intensity.
RAF ESPTEIN:
Yeah actually I heard an interview in a podcast, there was a Jill Stein supporter – she’s the Green – one of the libertarian supporters, one of the Bernie Sanders supporters, a Hillary Clinton supporter, a Donald Trump supporter, all having a debate outside the Republican National Convention. I don’t know that we get quite that sort of public participation on the streets. But thanks to both of you, appreciate you r time.
SCOTT RYAN:
Thanks Raf.
TIM WATTS:
Thanks Raf.
RAF EPSTEIN:
Scott Ryan’s been in Sydney, sorry Canberra, he’s Malcolm Turnbull’s Special Minister of State. Tim Watts is the ALP member for the seat of Gellibrand.
(ENDS).