Topics: domestic security, terrorism, emissions targets

E&OE…

Chris Hammer

Joining us now in the studio is Labor Senator Sam Dastyari from New South Wales and Victorian Liberal Senator Scott Ryan. We’ve seen this rather shocking incident overnight in Melbourne with the two policemen being stabbed and the young man being shot dead. Scott Ryan, can I ask you: do you see this incident as sort of indicative of the threat that the Australian community now faces, or should it be seen simply as a one-off incident?

Scott Ryan

Well let’s put it in context, we know limited facts at the moment. There was a man tragically shot in Melbourne, a young man. That person had previously, and I understand still was, a person of interest in various investigations and was under some sort of surveillance, and was tragically shot dead. But that person did also wound, particularly grievously one officer, and critically who had surgery last night and there’s another officer undergoing surgery today. So there’ll be a coronial inquest, as always, in Victoria to ascertain those specific events but I think it’s important to acknowledge that here we had two police officers doing their job, and that was protecting the community, and that tragically involved the death of someone and the wounding quite grievously of two people serving the community.

Hammer

Senator Dastyari, the Islamic Council of Victoria has criticised the police, not about the incident itself, but about their comments afterwards saying that the connection to ISIL has been overplayed. The Muslim community feels under siege. Do you think they have a point?

Dastyari

No, not really. I think there is this bigger issue and I think, like Scott said before, we only know limited facts about this particular situation. Without wanting to comment too much on what seems like a set of unfortunate circumstances, you have to ask yourself this question: about what is it that is making a group of young, mostly Middle-Eastern, men who’ve come from that part of the world – I actually look at my personal experience and I was born in Iran, I came to Australia when I was five years old – you look at their life experiences in coming to Australia, and I look at my life experience and to me it’s incomprehensible why, you know after having these opportunities, after having these kinds of experiences, that you’d want to fly half way around the world to partake in these kinds of conflicts, or even more concerning bring that kind of fight to Australia. Look, it’s real. The threat is real and I think it’s a huge issue, I think it’s going to grow as an issue. I think there are elements of the Islamic community that unfortunately do feel like they’re under siege. I don’t feel like they have been under siege. And I don’t think it helps when there are ill-disciplined and poor comments from the likes of people like Jacqui Lambie and others, trying to link things like Sharia Law and ISIS and ISIL and all these things together. But broadly the approach I think has been largely bipartisan at the moment, in Australian politics, which is the Labor and the Liberal parties and Government and Opposition really saying we have to tackle this, and part of it has to be sure we’re doing outreach to the Islamic community, that we’re talking to them and we’re bringing them in as part of the process.

Hammer

Ok. Senator Ryan, I mean the Prime Minister has certainly been attempting outreach, he’s been meeting with Muslim leaders, but on the other hand there have been some backbenchers like Cory Bernardi and George Christensen’s comments calling for the banning of the burka, for example. Is that helpful?

Ryan

Well they’re both friends of mine, but I disagree with them. This Parliament has no power to ban the burka. I don’t view the debate as relevant to what we do. There’s no way the Commonwealth could pass a law to do that.

Hammer

So it’s even less useful then?

Ryan

I don’t think, and I did hear an interview with a representative of the ICV on Melbourne radio earlier this morning, I think we’ve got to be very careful about what might be called the root-causes argument, which is a phrase that was used on radio. Violence is never acceptable, and we have campaigns encouraging young men all around Australia that violence is unacceptable when you go out drinking with your friends, that it isn’t acceptable in a family environment, that it isn’t acceptable in a workplace environment. So violence is never acceptable – that is something I’m sure there’s bipartisanship on – and I think that’s the place we need to start from. And all the other issues that might come from the particular groups or particular drivers, we can’t forget that key point that there are certain unacceptable behaviours. It doesn’t matter what the reason, what the circumstances, what the sense of grievance. Now we have in Australia an incredibly harmonious society, people have come from all over the world for a couple of hundred years, and there sadly are groups of people who want to do that society damage. I think that, while the events last night were tragic, they are a reminder that the people who do protect us actually do a very dangerous job sometimes. So there are families in Melbourne now of the two officers who had to turn up to hospital last night or get that nasty knock at the door, as well as the family of the young man that was shot. So I think that is a very important reminder of the dangers that are involved here from a small group of people.

Hammer

Senator Dastyari, the Government is expected to introduce extensions to anti-terror legislation today. How difficult is it to critique the Government’s legislation, if you like, in this atmosphere? We’ve had this incident in Melbourne overnight and we now have police outside Parliament House with assault weapons, is it difficult for Labor to give both bipartisan support those parts of the Government’s program that you want to support, but be also critical?

Dastyari

Look, I mean it’s real and it’s relevant. I think it was a good approach when Senator Brandis actually briefed the Labor opposition, I think last Friday: the deputy leader of the Labor Party and the Shadow Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, have been kind of brought in as part of this process through being briefed and being talked to. There are some Labor suggestions, and some suggestions that others have made that Senator Brandis taken on board, I think that’s the right approach. Look, we’ve got to be really, really careful at this point, in this stage of the political cycle, to make sure you are actually removing this stuff from the heated day-to-day political debate, that’s the challenge. I think Scott here was very, very careful in what he was saying about his colleagues but yeah, having a debate about banning burkas and that is completely unhelpful. And you mentioned before this issue of recourse, and I don’t think that’s the challenge. The challenge is we can have a debate and you can say why people feel this way or whether they have a right to feel this way. The truth is of course they don’t, but they do. The question is: how do you fix it? And the way to fix it is by community engagement, by making sure you’ve got Muslim leaders out there saying ‘this is unacceptable’, ‘this is wrong’. There’s some really good people, people like Dr Jamal Rifi, people like the head of the Lebanese Muslim Association and others who come out really critical of elements of the community and say ‘hang on, we don’t stand for this, we don’t tolerate this and it’s not going to be accepted or tolerated in our community’. Within that context, having a debate about terror legislation and security legislation is always difficult but it’s necessary.

Hammer

Senator Ryan there is, as one might expect, criticism that these new laws go too far, but there are also some criticisms that they don’t go far enough. For example your colleague Jason Wood, who’s a former member of the Victorian anti-terror police squad – so one assumes he has some insights here, says that preventative detention orders aren’t particularly useful. You can keep someone in detention but the police aren’t allowed to question them, and they’re not even allowed to use any information that they volunteer. Does he have a point?

Ryan

Well can I stress one thing that Sam said, and that is the point that I made about root-causes. The point I was making is that we shouldn’t dismiss those basic values about violence never being acceptable. I think, with respect to the law, that is a question that the Intelligence Committee will answer – the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security – to which this bill will referred. It is a matter that they will consider. So Sam there talked about how there has been community engagement, I think it’s also particularly important to note that over the last six to eight weeks, as this threat has become very, very real to Australia, the Prime Minister has actually taken Australians into his confidence and explained  the growing risk almost on a daily basis. An incredible degree of openness about this, as Sam quite rightly pointed out that last week the opposition was briefed by the Attorney General. Earlier this week the Prime Minister made the point that, made his point clear that he was grateful that the Opposition and the Government were standing shoulder to shoulder. And the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, expressed his gratitude for ensuring that the Opposition had been briefed. So I think that is actually a recognition that here we have a real national security challenge. Now the laws about preventative detention that are being extended, as they were passed 10 years ago and would sunset next year, they are one of a whole suite of measures available to state and federal police. So a preventative detention order, the one that was discussed and the one that you mentioned, has a different threshold than does for example the requirement to arrest people and then have the authority to question. So the police have a range of measures at hand, whether something is an urgent matter or something that goes via a court or whether there’s state laws regarding arrest and questioning, they are slightly different although there’s national mirrored legislation. This is one of a range of measures that police have to choose from, but that specific question will be addressed by the Joint Standing Committee which will be referred the legislation.

Hammer

Senator Dastyari, what concerns if any does Labor have about these new laws?

Dastyari

Well look, I think there’s a fair bit of detail that we still have to see. The point that you said earlier abut there are some people who are criticising it as going too far and some people criticising it as not going far enough, my gut normally tells me that that’s a pretty good place to be in in politics. When you’re getting criticised on both sides that’s probably somewhere around where you need to be. Look, the Shadow Attorney General has made it pretty clear that there are some elements that we want to see. We want to make sure there’s some good oversight of these powers, how they’re being used. I there’s some discussions going on, there’s some detail yet to be worked out. Look I’m optimistic and I’m quite positive, that I’m hopeful that some of those details in terms of amendments and that are going to be able to be sorted out. There may be some disagreement around the edges, but I don’t think there’s going to be a big difference in terms of the fundamental principle that we are going to have to be doing something and that’s going to involve some new powers. And it’s also an acknowledgement that the last time we had these debates, several years ago, technology just changes so much and how people access information and how that changes, and your laws need to change to be able to adapt with that as well.

Hammer

Ok, if we can move away from domestic politics and terrorism, well I guess there’s a domestic aspect to it, and that’s climate change. There’s been this big conference in New York, UN conference, the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has been there. She’s restated Australia’s intention not to amend its goal of a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020. But now the whole international debate is moving to a new phase, there’s a big conference in Paris next year. There’s an expectation that countries will put targets out by about March, April next year for future years 2030, 2040, 2050. Scott Ryan, can I ask you where would you like Australia to set its carbon reduction targets in 2030, 2040, 2050?

Ryan

Let’s put the current target in context. Firstly, it’s entirely bipartisan. There’s no proposal for it to be more than five per cent based on 1990 levels. However, it also represents a 22 per cent cut on business as usual and Australia’s a high immigration country, and so for our per capita emissions that represents a not un-reasonable drop. Can I say that there’s probably no area of public policy that needs less promises about things future generations of politicians will have to deliver on. Now this area has been dominated by promises unfulfilled, and so promises for 2050 don’t mean as much as promises for 2020 because Sam and I will get held accountable and how it gets delivered in 2020, or whether we don’t, we make a promise about 2050 and the truth is we’re not actually going to have to deliver that.

Hammer

2030 then, because that’s the next step.

(Interjection)

I think the view in the international community is that the 2020 targets are pretty much locked in around the world. This conference is in 2015, so to give industry around the world, including in Australia, the sort of framework to plan its future; I mean five years, 2020 would be the starting date…

Ryan

But let’s also be reasonable. The promises the people made 10 years ago about 2020 have all changed. We’ve got dramatic growth in the developing countries to our north, particularly China and Indonesia, which have been two of the fastest growing emitters. And so the world is a very different place to when people sat down and negotiated Kyoto. We’ve also got to, as the Foreign Minister outlined, to decide whether we’re going to keep treating developing and developed countries the same way even though some developing countries emit a lot more than developed countries. That’s a huge threshold as well.

Hammer

Just to clarify this: next year the expectation is that major countries – the Europeans, the Americans, perhaps the Chinese, perhaps the Indians – will say are aiming for these targets by 2030, 2040,2050. Some of them may be conditional, as is Australia’s, we had a conditional target of 15% if other countries move. Are you saying that Australia should go to these conferences and have no take at all?

Ryan

No, what I’m pointing out is that when people ask about commitments for 2050, let’s actually look at 2020, the commitment that we’ve made which is legislated, which is bipartisan. And Australia will stick to the commitments that we’ve made.

Hammer

So we should have no 2030 target for example?

Ryan

Well at this stage we’ve got the five per cent bipartisan target, and then there were conditional targets and I understand those will remain in place; if the world moves Australia will move. But we’re not going to impose costs on Australian employers and Australian households because we are only one and a half percent of global emissions, and we can’t solve the problem.

Hammer

Senator Dastyari, is it important that Australia say comes up with a 2030 target, even if it is a conditional target?

Dastyari

Of course we should. There’s nothing wrong with the international world community setting objectives and goals, and I appreciate these things change and they do change, but I’d hate to see the fact that we’re going to be in a space now as a nation where countries like China and that are going to start taking the lead on issues like climate change. This is a space Australia should have been in. Look, obviously there’s a huge political issue, these are debates that have been had in the public forums of Australia for a while now. There’s a big gulf of difference in how those on my side of politics and those on Scott’s side of politics believe in this, it’s kind of a world traverse.

Ryan

We’ve got a bipartisan target. Let’s not overstate the differences here, you’re only committed to exactly the same target the Coalition Government is committed to.

Dastyari

Yes, but our solution is that there should be some kind, we’re still going to go back to the drawing board and work it all out, but some kind of a market based mechanism for dealing with it. And your policy is perhaps more of a direct interventionist …

(Interjection)

Hammer

So what would a reasonable target for 2030 be? We’ve got kind of other countries saying 18 per cent reductions or carbon neutral…

Dastyari

Look I’m not in a position to speculate on numbers, but I think that will largely come down to what the world community does. But yeah, we should be part of the debate. I think it is a place Australia can and should lead on. I think it’s unfortunate we’re one of the few countries in the world that’s actually going backwards in this area.

Hammer

Ok, gentlemen.  Thanks for your time today.

(Ends)