Topics: Donald Trump, refugee and migration policy
E&OE …
KIEREN GILBERT:
This is AM Agenda. Joining me are Special Minister of State Scott Ryan and Shadow Assistant Minister to the Treasurer Matt Thistlethwaite. Gentlemen, first of all I want to play you a comment made by Cory Bernardi, the Liberal Senator, I spoke to him – the full interview coming up after nine o’clock Eastern time – but I asked him about Donald Trump and whether or not he thinks he can win and he says 100 per cent, he says, he thinks he can. This is him on the implications for the alliance with Australia.
[VIDEO CLIP]
Let’s go to Scott Ryan, the Special Minister of State. Cory Bernardi, here for three months on his secondment and clearly not that critical or concerned about the Republican candidate.
SENATOR SCOTT RYAN:
Well Kieren, I hope you’re enjoying New York, it looks lovely there.
As a Minister in the Government, I’ve always had a policy to not comment on the internal domestic and political arrangements of our allies. I do agree with Cory, when he says the Australian and American alliance can go beyond any particular election. It is deep, it has ranged across areas – from security and defence, to commercial, education and scientific research. I’m not going to comment on domestic political arrangements of another country, I don’t think it is appropriate as a Minister in a Government that is a very, very close ally of the United States.
GILBERT:
Well Bill Shorten hasn’t had the same concerns, obviously, Matt Thistlethwaite. He has been very strong in the language he used about Donald Trump; he might have to backtrack a bit if the Republican candidate wins and ends up in the White House.
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
It’s not just Bill Shorten, it’s many leaders throughout the world who have expressed concern about a Trump presidency, including the US leader at the moment Barack Obama. The US alliance is the foundation of Australia’s security and indeed security within our region. I think you need to, instead of taking the advice of people like Cory Bernardi who have been in New York for any number of days, I think you need to look to comments like former US ambassador and defence minister Kim Beazley, who is an expert on these sort of things and who has said, in his belief, if Trump is the president of the United States, that there would be a risk to the alliance and the way it operates. At the end of the day, this is a man who is espousing views like building a wall between the US and Mexico. The last time that a wall that size was built Kieren, was when millions of slaves were used to build the Great Wall of China and it took close to a century to do. This is the bloke that wants to become president, and some of his views.
GILBERT:
The focus on the economy from the Prime Minister earlier in the day at the US Stock Exchange. He had a briefing with Jack Lew, the Treasury Secretary. Minister Ryan, to you first on this, and it was quite an optimistic message from both men despite vulnerabilities in the US and Australia.
SENATOR RYAN:
I know one of the important issues they discussed was the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Prime Minister’s made some observations about the briefing and the possibility of the ratification of that between the November election and taking office of the new Congress in early January and the new president in late January. That is a very important document, a very important agreement – not only for Australia, but for this particular region. As I think the US Treasury Secretary said, it represents part of the pivot that President Obama announced many years ago from the United States towards an active and constant role in the Asia-Pacific region.
GILBERT:
The Prime Minister also made use of that sort of language. Matt Thistlethwaite, as a supporter of the US alliance and that pivot to Asia, do you recognise as well, that this TPP is important in that context, to continue the US-led, rules-based order in our region?
THISTLETHWAITE:
Freeing up multilateral trade in our region – and globally, more generally – is something that the Labor Party supports. But we have had reservations regarding some elements of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, most notably clauses that allow foreign corporations to challenge Australian legislation in international arbitration and we’ve seen this recently with a number of tobacco companies taking Australia to court internationally for our plain-packaging rules. We also believe in strong labour protections and environmental protections, so there is still a way to go with the TPP but generally the Labor Party does support multilateral trade agreements that do free up and create incentives for freer trade between countries.
GILBERT:
And there is a way to go, of course, in the Congress. Jack Lew’s optimism not shared by a lot of other people, it has to be said, in Washington. I want to ask you Scott Ryan, now, about the Prime Minister’s remarks at the UN refugee and migration summit, saying that the fundamental strengths of our system of securing our borders and then having the social license to increase the refugee intake, while the circumstances are different between Australia and the scale of the problem facing Europe, do you believe this argument that the message, the core framework, that is something that other nations can look to?
SENATOR RYAN:
History in Australia proves that. I just saw your interview with the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who made the obvious observation that Australia has a different geographic capacity in some of these measures because we are an island nation. We have seen some of the world’s most successful immigration policies implemented under the Howard Coalition government and the social license, the public consent for that, was generated by the fact that, in the words of John Howard, we will decide who comes to this country.
Our resettlement policies are expensive but they are incredibly successful at resettling people from some of the most terrible circumstances of anywhere in the world and that does allow us to go to some of these people, who have been waiting year after year in terrible camps, rather than allowing some criminal syndicate to self-select, or people to fly to nearby nations and get on boats.
We saw the consequences of that consent breaking down under Labor, where they unwound those policies. We have, under the Coalition, reinstituted them. We’ve dealt with the legacy of 2000 children in detention, we’ve now got the legacy of Labor’s mess with people on Manus and Nauru and we are busy cleaning that up. But the first and most successful element has to be control of our own borders.
While other nations may face different geographic circumstances, the point that the Prime Minister and the Immigration Minister made, are that the principles that underpin our strong humanitarian and resettlement program have been successful. They’re not theoretical, we’ve seen what happens when Labor unwound them
GILBERT:
Matt Thistlethwaite, are you of a similar view that there is a relevance, albeit different circumstances for different countries, a relevance here in the international community of that position that is now a bipartisan one in border protection in your party and the Government?
THISTLETHWAITE:
Kieren, the first point the Prime Minister should have made in New York is that Australia is a successful multicultural nation. Our economic success, our social success has been built on migration and that we do welcome migrants coming to Australia. The border protection policy, particularly the disincentive to boat journeys, has been a success and that’s something that Labor offers bipartisan support for. But the success of that policy is undermined by the way that this Government has operated off-shore detention and the failures that keep piling up in Manus and Nauru. The fact that they haven’t been able to negotiate a durable long-lasting, third-country settlement option for people who are now lingering in these detention facilities and facing a whole host of social issues, not to mention the ballooning economic cost – there was a report released the other day, which estimated that on Manus, the cost is about $600,000 per person. You could send someone and their siblings through medical school for that cost, so I think that we can’t say that all of this is a success because clearly, the way that they have managed the resettlement, in particular, has been a dismal failure.
GILBERT:
Gentlemen, we’re out of time.