Subjects: Closure of Manus Island detention centre; omnibus bill; Prime Minister’s economic address; Section 18C; Labor’s stance on pairing; Long Tan cancellation.
EO&E…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Senator Scott Ryan, he’s the Special Minister of State and the Minister Assisting the Cabinet Secretary, welcome.
SCOTT RYAN:
Good evening Patricia.
KARVELAS:
Also Jim Chalmers, the Shadow Minister for Finance. Welcome to you, too.
JIM CHALMERS:
Hi Patricia and Scott.
RYAN:
G’day Jim.
KARVELAS:
Now Jim before we get on to the issues of economics, that’s how the day started. It started as an economic day –
CHALMERS:
Seems like an age ago now.
KARVELAS:
It does, that’s the news cycle we live in. Can I get your response to those comments by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton on the closure of the Manus Island detention centre? Are you satisfied with that response? That clearly we’re going to see a sum of money, we couldn’t determine it, but he did say it would be substantial, being given to PNG to try and resettle these asylum seekers after the closure of the Manus Island detention centre in PNG.
CHALMERS:
Well it’s very difficult to respond in detail to the comments that Peter Dutton just made, having only heard from the Papua New Guinean Government a short time ago about the plans. As you discovered in your interview with the Minister, there isn’t a timeline, there isn’t a cost, all those sorts of things. And we haven’t been – as far as I’m aware – briefed yet, on the arrangement that has been struck with Papua New Guinea. So until we get all those kind of details I’m reluctant to comment.
KARVELAS:
Okay, fair enough we’ll leave it there and I won’t go to you on it Scott, if you don’t mind because we just had the minister at length – you’re probably glad anyway.
RYAN:
(laughs)
CHALMERS:
I can hear you crossing out questions with your pen Patricia.
KARVELAS:
(laughs) Well I did have a very substantial, long interview with the Minister.
Okay, so Scott, the Federal Government will be – let’s get to the economics – the Federal Government will be introducing an omnibus bill when Parliament resumes at the end of the month. It’s worth $6.5 billion in savings aimed at balancing the budget. You can’t really expect Labor to agree wholesale to this. This is an attempt to wedge Labour, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you quietly have gone to them and said ‘look, here it is, this is what we’re going to do here. We need you on board, let’s get the budget under control’?
RYAN:
Not at all, Patricia. These are things that both sides announced during the election campaign. These are Labor policies. When the Prime Minister said in his speech this afternoon, is to work with the Parliament the people voted for. And Bill Shorten said after the election he wanted to work productively. What this bill contains is the things that the Labor Party and the Coalition agree on, the things that the Labor Party announced during the campaign that they were going to do. The things that Sam Dastiyari said last Sunday on ABC TV that the Labor Party would of course support the measures that they announced during the election campaign. So this is actually about trying to find some common ground.
KARVELAS:
Well Jim, you’ve heard that. You did, actually, I mean I’ve heard you announce these savings during the election campaign. What’s the hold up? Surely it’s pretty easy that you would support something you already believe in anyway?
CHALMERS:
I think it speaks volumes that you said to Scott, ‘hey, if you wanted to be bipartisan shouldn’t you have had a yarn with the Opposition?’ And he said ‘not at all!’ Of course not. I think that really gets to the bottom of what happened today. Of course the position that we take in the Parliament will reflect and be consistent with the policies and the positions we took to the Australian people. But today was really about two things: it was confirmation that the so-called economic leadership that Malcolm Turnbull promised amounts to nothing more than a slogan without a strategy, taking money out of hospitals and giving it to big business, and asking Labor to clean up the mess they have made of the budget. If he was genuine about working together to fix the budget, he would pick up the phone, he would consider our tax reforms and he would not proceed with this budget-busting $50 billion gift to big business.
RYAN:
Jim there didn’t actually engage with the question, a key question here Patricia. These are things that the Labor Party announced during the campaign. A responsible government that’s trying to pass the necessary savings measures – we’ll try and find the common ground. We can argue about the tax cut. There’ll be a time and a place for that. But these are the things that both major sides of politics announced they were going to do. And we had a close election result, if the election had been slightly different and Jim had been in office then he was going to do this. So this is actually an entirely responsible way. Now, when a party announces something, when they put out press releases, when they put out documents during a campaign, I think we should be able to take at face value that that is a policy they support.
CHALMERS:
I’m happy to tell you again Scott, what I just said a moment ago, which is that the position we take in the Parliament will be consistent with the position we took to the people. But it is not right to separate the $50 billion dollar tax cut to big business from these considerations. Because if you were serious and the Prime Minister was serious about fixing the budget, you would not proceed with that. That is the biggest single new policy in the election campaign.
KARVELAS:
If I can intervene here, you know Patricia Karvelas, RN Drive, this is the show I’m mediating fellas – If I can get in there, I get your point, in fact I think even Scott Ryan just conceded your point. Of course you can argue about the tax cut, you clearly don’t support the tax cut, but this is stuff you do agree on, Jim Chalmers. This is – it’s clearly something that you’re in favour of.
CHALMERS:
Yeah and I’ve said that our position will reflect what we took to the people. I’ve said that three times now. But the point I’m making is, if you’re fair dinkum about working across the aisle to fix the budget, you wouldn’t proceed with that tax cut. You can send us some of the proposals that we put on the table, and probably most importantly you would have actually picked up the phone and tried to talk to us about it. And I think the fact that none of those three things are happening, reveals that this is a political ploy like it always is.
RYAN:
We have a different approach, Patricia, and we have not supported the approach of Labor’s, which is to increase taxes. We don’t think investment-busting taxes are actually going to help drive economic growth and jobs growth and we were explicit about that in the budget. We’ve been explicit about that for years, and indeed the rationale behind the corporate tax cut is the same rationale that was underpinning the Henry Tax Review that was bought out when Wayne Swann was treasurer. And it was –
CHALMERS:
(interrupts) It wasn’t paid for by taking money out of hospitals and schools, Scott.
RYAN:
Well Jim that’s not true.
CHALMERS:
The country can’t afford it now.
RYAN:
Jim that’s not true. What the country can’t afford is your taxing agenda that will drive away investment, that will ensure that a capital-dependent country like we are is not internationally competitive for corporate investment. We need that investment, that’s what drives our growth.
KARVELAS:
Okay just one to you, Jim Chalmers, do you think this has to be passed because we have to avoid this risk to Australia’s triple A credit rating? Do you see it that way?
CHALMERS:
Yeah the risk to the triple A credit rating is real and it’s very important because it flows through importantly in our economy and it has impacts on ordinary working people in the economy, so what happened with the triple A was hard-won under Labor. All three ratings agencies’ triple A, it’s at risk now because the Government’s gone and blown-out debt by more than one hundred billion dollars, tripled the deficit since 2014, got spending at GFC-levels. We want to help fix the Government’s mess, we’ve put constructive proposals on the table, we’re prepared to play our part. We’re not prepared to smash Medicare or hospitals and schools just to give money, $50 billion dollars to multinational corporations.
KARVELAS:
All right, if you’re just tuning in to RN Drive, quite a bit of politics tonight. The Manus Island detention centre is closing down. We’ve spoken to the Immigration Minister and right now we’re talking with Jim Chalmers, he’s the Shadow Finance Minister. Also Scott Ryan, he’s the Special Minister of State – the Special Minister, makes him sound special –
RYAN:
My son loves it.
KARVELAS:
Yeah I can imagine, the Special Minister of State, whatever that means – but we know what jobs you do. Scott, I want to change the conversation a bit.
Today the Prime Minister gave that big speech where he outlined these things. But his first major address since the election also was, well it was derailed by those protestors. How did that happen? Do we have a bit of a security issue? They were right on stage with him.
RYAN:
Well I note the AFP has said they’re going to look at what happened. I was sitting there in the front row, but I also note that one of the organisers –
CHALMERS:
(interrupts) Oh you’re such a teacher’s pet, Scott. In the front row.
RYAN:
(laughs) Well it was the front table.
KARVELAS:
(laughs) Have you ever been in the front row of a Bill Shorten address?
CHALMERS:
There he was, clapping away at every line (laughs).
RYAN:
I’m sure Jim, you’ve been on table one on more than one occasion, I wasn’t (laughs). But I notice one of the [protest] organisers was interviewed this afternoon on television and they basically said that they lied their way in. They said they lied about their names, they lied about the media organisations they represented to get into the room. And look that’s disappointing that people are – particularly radical left-wing protestors – rather than make their view known, they seek to disrupt other people hearing views with which they disagree.
KARVELAS:
Okay, but let’s get to the substantive part of the issue which is that they’re pretty upset about immigration detention and I reckon quite a lot of people are upset about immigration detention, Scott Ryan, particularly after we saw the Nauru files. This is becoming really a hot button issue for you. I know that conventional wisdom has been the Coalition wins when it’s tough on immigration detention, but it seems to me that there’s a substantial part of the community now who want some action to ensure there aren’t abuses in detention centres and that –
RYAN:
(interrupts) To be fair, I don’t think anyone wants abuses in detention centres. The point I’ll make is-
KARVELAS:
(interrupts) Well there is a view that the Government has been weak in its response to this.
RYAN:
There are people out there who have constantly sought to undermine the policies that John Howard put in place and now that we’ve put in place under this Government again. They don’t like mandatory detention, they don’t like turn-backs, they don’t like temporary protection visas. Labor agreed with those policies, implemented them, we had the disaster, and now it’s been – now they’ve implemented that they support some of our policies on border protection. Now these people have always been noisy and they’ve always sought and been explicit that they want the policies changed. Now we don’t agree, and I’m pretty certain that the Australian public, particularly when they see what’s happening in Europe, particularly when they see how divisive illegal immigration is in the United States at the moment, do not want that to happen to Australia.
KARVELAS:
All right we’ve only got a couple of minutes left because of how overtime I went with the first interview, so I’m owning that everyone, listeners, everyone – but I am going to ask you once, Scott and then on to you Jim on different issues if you don’t mind?
RYAN:
Sure.
KARVELAS:
Scott, Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi has vowed to move an amendment to overhaul section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act when Parliament resumes in two weeks. This is getting embarrassing now, isn’t it? I mean he’s now putting forward an amendment to try and get people to oppose Government policy.
RYAN:
Well no, the bill was in the Senate before the election. I’ve always viewed it as a positive that members of my party have freedom of conscience when you’re not a member of the executive, to vote according to their conscience and deal with issues the way they see fit. And I –
KARVELAS:
I know you have historically been in very much in favour of free speech. Will you be voting for it? Will you cross the floor?
RYAN:
As a Minister I will not be, but as I’ve said before, I view the time when the previous prime minister said we weren’t going to move on that as one of the more disappointing moments in my political career.
KARVELAS:
And Jim Chalmers quickly on pairing. Labor seems to have changed its line today after going pretty hard yesterday via Tony Bourke. Did Tony Bourke over-egg it?
CHALMERS:
Oh look the point that everyone’s been making is, if Malcolm Turnbull really had a workable majority then he shouldn’t need special arrangements. I think it’s just common sense for us to say we won’t be petty or irresponsible about it, but we’re not inclined to give special arrangements to a Prime Minister who says that ‘everything is fine, we’ve got a workable majority and it’s all business as usual’.
KARVELAS:
Okay well Scott Ryan well after the way you guys carried on during the Abbott government, do you blame them?
RYAN:
Well we didn’t get a very good public response when we did. I had a particular issue that – well in the Senate of course it’s always different. There have always been pairs and as far as I know they’ve never broken down. I expressed my view at the time – Barnaby [Joyce] supported me actually, in a discussion with some senior colleagues and staff, that that wasn’t the right approach to take, and to be honest –
KARVELAS:
(interrupts) So you opposed that approach under the (inaudible).
RYAN:
Well I said so, I said I disagree, but I was a Senator so it didn’t impact me because the pairs stayed in the Senate, and I think if Labor take that approach they’ll find they get the same public reaction we did at the time and it wasn’t good.
KARVELAS:
And just, Scott Ryan, the Government must be very upset about this Long Tan commemoration being cancelled?
RYAN:
I think Dan Tehan summed it up well today when he said it was a kick in the guts and I think his press conference outlined the feelings probably of most people in the Parliament.
KARVELAS:
Yeah, absolutely. Well I’m going to leave it there. I wish we had more time, but I really appreciate you both coming in, thank you.
RYAN:
Thanks Jim, thanks Patricia.
CHALMERS:
Thank you.
KARVELAS:
That’s Jim Chalmers in Brisbane, he’s the Shadow Minister for Finance and Scott Ryan, he’s the Special Minister of State, joining us.
(ENDS)