Topics: RET, Arnhem Land, Iraq, ISIL
E&OE…
Rafael Epstein: And joining me now in the studio is Senator Scott Ryan; he helps out with Christopher Pyne – he’s the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education. Scott, thank you very much for coming in.
Scott Ryan: Good afternoon Raf.
Epstein: Scott is of course part of the Coalition. Today for the ALP, Mark Dreyfus joins us once again; Shadow Attorney General and Member for Isaacs.
Mark Dreyfus: Good to be with you, Raf. Hello, Scott.
RYAN: Hi, Mark.
EPSTEIN: Actually Scott, where’s your office by the way – electorate office?
RYAN: Moonee Ponds.
EPSTEIN: Moonee Ponds; I think I might have asked that before.
RYAN: I grew up out in Essendon.
EPSTEIN: That’s right, good Barry Humphries fan. Look let’s start on the, let’s call it a war. Let’s not worry about terminology for now, but the prospect of how many Australian troops might be involved on the ground in Iraq, the top general in the United States has raised the possibility. The Prime Minister was asked about that possibility in Arnhem Land today and this is what he said.
(Audio of the Prime Minister)
That’s the Prime Minister speaking today. Scott Ryan, I will start with you as part of the Coalition Government. Our soldiers are going to be involved pretty much in the war on the ground, aren’t they?
RYAN: Well I think the Prime Minister was stating the obvious there; that we want to have our soldiers with the ability to defend themselves. But they’re not going with the intention of being combatants but they will be near those who are actually involved in these battles and in this fight. So I think he was stating the obvious; that they’ll be allowed to defend themselves.
EPSTEIN: Why is it an important distinction? I’m not sure why, if we’re willing to send fighter planes and we’re willing to send people to what is undoubtedly a disputed bit of territory, why don’t we just say that they’re going to war?
RYAN: Well, they’re not actually going to war because they’re not going as combatants. They’re not going to partake in battles. They’re not going to partake in offensive situations. They’re being armed to allow them to defend themselves and to act as advisors to those who are partaking in this difficult conflict, and I think that’s a very important difference.
EPSTEIN: Presumably the people they work with, be they the Iraqi army or the Peshmerga – the Kurdish forces – want a bit of tactical help. That’s going to war. If you’re saying: ‘listen, do it this way’ and ‘I’ll stand back here with the officer and work out what you need to do while you’re fighting’ that’s going to war, isn’t it?
RYAN: Well I think the PM made that clear in that part you broadcast of his press conference today; that they will be there. They will be providing advice, but there’s a difference between providing tactical advice and actually undertaking that tactics yourself. So it’s appropriate that they’re armed to defend themselves, but they won’t be taking part as offensive combatants.
EPSTEIN: Mark Dreyfus, is there going to be a point at which Labor departs from the Government? It’s been as one with them so far. Do questions like ‘the significant role played on the ground by troops’ point to some gap between Labor and the Coalition?
DREYFUS: We have been as one with the Government up until now on the humanitarian assistance in northern Iraq, on the arming of Peshmergas with munitions that our planes have helped transport, and on the pre-deployment to the UAE. But the kind of questions that you’ve just been asking, Raf, are ones that I think people are asking right across Australia. We are scarred by the experience of 2003, which was a disaster; it left Iraq in a worse state. And people are entitled to know what it is that the Prime Minister is talking about. What objectives, every step of the way, are we trying to serve? And at the moment we got to pre-deployment, we do need to know what’s proposed; if there is to be a use of the fighter planes that have been sent to the UAE, and what’s proposed if the small number of SAS fighters who are there now are to be deployed in any way. We’ve made it clear that under no circumstances will we support formed combat units on the ground in Iraq.
EPSTEIN: But you can still have a significant role for Commandos and SAS troops on the ground without fighting independently. You could have five hundred Australian special forces people on the ground being involved in a battle without fighting on their own. I mean, they did that in Afghanistan; every single time they went out, the Special Forces, they were accompanied by Afghan soldiers. They strike me all as semantic differences.
DREYFUS: Well that’s why I’m saying that we need to hear from the Government. We need reporting to the Australian people, through the parliament, of what it is that our armed forces are engaged in. That’s what we did in government in respect of the conflict in Afghanistan, very regular reports. We’re expecting the Prime Minister to do the same; but most importantly we need to have the objectives clear before we commit any of our armed forces. We need to…
EPSTEIN: …do you have to have the objectives clear? Often when you got to war and you’re not quite sure. I mean, wars change, wars evolve. That’s the nature of wars.
DREYFUS: You shouldn’t go to war, you shouldn’t’ go into any conflict without knowing what it is that you’re seeking to achieve. And I think, in some respects, we’ve got an agreement with the Government on what objectives there are. We’ve got an objective, a humanitarian objective, of avoiding the murderous activities – stopping the murderous activities – of IS that have been occurring in Northern Iraq.
EPSTEIN: That’s an easy objective to state.
DREYFUS: Sure it’s an easy objective, but how you will achieve the objective; that’s the question, and that’s what the Government’s got to make clear.
EPSTEIN: Scott.
RYAN: I think, Raf, that there’s a difference here between some of the activities undertaken in Afghanistan, and one of my friends was one of those Commandos that you mentioned. There’s a difference between actively directly engaging in combat as our special forces did in that conflict, versus special forces being sent to act as military advisers with the capacity to defend themselves.
EPSTEIN: But one slips into the other very quickly, doesn’t it?
RYAN: Well I think that’s a substantial step, and I think over the last several weeks we’ve actually seen quite a new level, a much heightened level of engagement with the Australian people on a daily basis by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister on what is happening and on the events that have led to the decisions, and also the threat posed to Australia by fighters returning. I think we’ve seen a higher degree of engagement than we probably have on any conflict, at least that I can remember going back to the first Iraq conflict in 1990/91.
EPSTEIN: Look, can I just throw a few complexities at you because it’s; I mean it’s a dreadful mess. I suspect most of us don’t understand what’s going on. I only know from what I read on the web; I’ve never been to Iraq. But there’s any number of groups who we’re effectively teaming up with, and I’ll give you three examples, you can address all of them or none of them. Iraq’s national security adviser has been visiting the Syrian President who we all supposedly abhor and is supposedly one of the worst perpetrators in a war that’s killed nearly two hundred thousand people; so that’s ally number one. Ally number two: the Hezbollah brigades in the League of the Righteous, they’re these little militias and they’re running around the top of Iraq. They’re funded by Iran, that’s fine, whatever.I’m not for or against Iran but they are designated as terrorist organisations by the United States government, and when America bombed northern Iraq they stopped the Peshmerga going in there. So it’s just, it seems to me that for the sake of what seems like a good objective, Islamic State – let’s push them back, we’re siding with the Syrian regime and with militia groups that the US says are terrorists. They seem to be really tricky sands to be stepping into.
RYAN: Well firstly I think this is a very important distinction, our forces that are going over are there to assist the Iraqi forces at the request of the Iraqi government. There’s no activity proposed in Syria, and that would be as the Prime Minister has mentioned himself, and David Cameron has mentioned a very different legal situation, because our forces are going at the request of the Iraqi government. You mentioned there a few of the different groups that are involved, and I think that just illustrates that in this particular field of international relations, and in this part of the world, there’re no easy choices. This action has been provoked by a new and somewhat unique barbaric threat of ISIS or ISIL, or whatever name people choose to use for it, that has glorified violence to an extent we probably haven’t seen. Yes it’s made use of new technologies to do that, but it’s also attracted thousands of fighters from western countries; so it has that new element to a threat.
EPSTEIN: I’m not saying that they’re not unique. I think it’s easy to make a case that they’re unique, but I mean we’re siding with, even if we don’t go and fight in Syria, if you help one side in this conflict because there’s a whole of different people fighting in this conflict. If you fight Islamic State, you’re allies are the Syrian regime and a whole lot of terrorist groups.
RYAN: One of the things that we’ve, the Government has ensured with the relations with the Iraqi government is that, for example, none of the weapons and munitions that have been dropped and that will be used to support will go to the Kurdish People’s Party, which is one of those listed terrorist organisations. It will only go to the Kurdish Peshmerga…
EPSTEIN: Do you think that’s possible in a war zone?
RYAN: I think given the threat that we face, and given that we are working with the Iraqi state and with our allies – Canada, France, we’ll probably see an expansion of those over the coming days – we are confronting our threat in an area of the world where there are no easy choices.
EPSTEIN: Mark, what do you think? Do you think we’re inevitably picking to fight alongside some nasty people?
DREYFUS: The Middle East is a place of shifting alliances. You can use that trite old saying, for the moment, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I think we have to be exceptionally careful, and that’s why Labor wants to hear from the Government what is proposed. You’re right to point out that Hezbollah brigades are running around there. They’re there to proscribe.
EPSTEIN: Yeah, they aren’t – they aren’t actually Hezbollah Hezbollah – they’re named…
EPSTEIN:…and inspired by…
DREYFUS: [Interrupts] Yes.
EPSTEIN:…but they’re still backed by Iran and terrorist groups.
DREYFUS: All of the PKK…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Yes.
DREYFUS:…the Kurdish People’s Party, which has been a proscribed terror…
EPSTEIN:[Interrupts] Yes.
DREYFUS:…organisation here in Australia for well over a decade. They’re fighting alongside the Pershmerga. We need to be aware that that is occurring and…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] And what could the Government say? I mean you’re sort of trying to have it both ways, aren’t you? You’re sort of – you’re making what the Government is doing, yet you want to raise those questions. I mean…
DREYFUS:[Interrupts] Well, they’re ahead of us. They’re ahead of us.
EPSTEIN: Yes.
DREYFUS: That’s why I’ve stressed that up until now we’ve supported the actions that the Government has taken, which have been…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] But once they deploy to the country…
DREYFUS: [Interrupts] Well…
EPSTEIN: You’re effectively going to be backing those people.
DREYFUS: Well, that hasn’t occurred yet. We’ve got a pre-deployment to the UAE with fighter planes and a small number of SAS personnel in place now in the UAE.
EPSTEIN: Yes.
DREYFUS: What is to happen next is the matter that the Government has to be clear about. The Government has to state some objectives as to what’s hope to be achieved by participating. Bear in mind also that this is something that President Obama has been working on. He’s put together something which is a very different situation to where we were in 2003, which is four nations going in unilaterally without any international or UN backing. This is, at the request of the government of Iraq, a 40 nation coalition that’s being assembled…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] There’s not 40 nations worth of soldiers, though.
DREYFUS: Not 40 nations worth of soldiers. And again, that’s one of the factors that the government will have to explain to Australians. Who are we with? Who’s involved? What actions are going to be required of our forces? And there does need to be full disclosure on this.
EPSTEIN: Scott Ryan, do you have a – I don’t know if you feel the need to address some of those questions?
RYAN: Well, I think we’ve actually seen that disclosure over the last few weeks. We’ve seen the case mounted for intervention, and we’ve now seen great detail about what our forces will be doing, and clarification where questions have been raised, and I think the Australian people support that. But this is not a part of the world where there will be a clear strategic map, where we can say we can solve a problem. It may be an intervention that relieves the burden for a while. It’s not my portfolio. It may be an intervention that temporarily addresses a unique humanitarian threat…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Yes.
RYAN: …as we had quite a few weeks ago. So this is, as Mark said, an area of shifting sands and shifting alliances, but there has been that clarity, and to a degree that I don’t recall going back over 30 years.
EPSTEIN: Okay.
DREYFUS: Well, I do think we need the clarity, though. The Prime Minister said yesterday – his words were: “I’m not ruling out action in Syria.” Now, I, at the moment, can’t think of any basis on which Australian forces could be committed in Syria. We won’t have the support of the UN Security Council. We won’t have a request from the government of Syria.
EPSTEIN: Yes.
DREYFUS: So what is the Prime Minister envisaging there? Why is it that he won’t rule out something in Syria? Is he proposing some unilateral action outside the current framework of international law? Australians are entitled to know what it is…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] He has left the option open hasn’t he Scott…
DREYFUS:…the Prime Minister has in mind.
RYAN: He’s also made it clear we wouldn’t be. I mean – but then, when pressed on the issue, he made a comment that Mark, with respect, is taking out of context. You know, the Government has been gratified by the bipartisanship shown by Bill Shorten on this, and there have been briefings, as there normally are, to an opposition.
EPSTEIN: Yes, sure.
RYAN: And there have been detailed public discussions and press conferences. So I think that degree of transparency is actually there in a way it hasn’t been previously.
EPSTEIN: Look, I will get to your calls in a moment and we’ll move on to some other – I think actually also bipartisan, but non-international issues, in a moment. But if you’ve got a query, 1300 222 774 is the phone number. Let’s get a quick traffic check with Dean Pickering.
[Unrelated items – traffic check]
EPSTEIN: Mark Dreyfus is with me. Part of Bill Shorten’s Shadow Cabinet. Scott Ryan, Senator Scott Ryan, helps with the Minister for Education. He’s part of Tony Abbott’s Coalition team. I’ll get to your calls when I can. I do want to ask both gentlemen about the referendum on the saying something about Australia’s – the first Australians. Scott Ryan, I’ll start with you. It keeps getting delayed. Is that a problem?
RYAN: I think that’s a sign of the Prime Minister’s commitment to the project. Artificial deadlines on referenda have seen 36 out of 44 fail. Referenda in this country are notoriously hard to get up because you have to engage the public about the principle and then about the specific proposal. Bipartisanship is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success in referenda, so we shouldn’t be imposing an artificial deadline. The Prime Minister has made clear he would like to outline a timetable and, within that timetable, come up with a specific proposal.
EPSTEIN: Mark, are you okay with the delay?
DREYFUS: Unless we set a timetable we’re just going to be in some kind of permanent drift. I think that’s why Ken Wyatt, a Liberal backbencher who is the chair of the bipartisan committee that’s looking at this referendum – that’s why he called yesterday for it – the referendum to take place at or before the 2016 election. I think the history – Scott’s right, the history of referendums in this country is a dreadful one…
RYAN: [Interrupts] I didn’t say dreadful, though, I said they hadn’t succeeded.
DREYFUS: Well, I think when you’ve got 44 attempts for eight successes, even if you allow that some of the 44 weren’t, with hindsight, well-conceived, a lot of them were, a lot of them – and we’ve actually fallen out of the habit of amending the Constitution altogether.
EPSTEIN: Sure.
DREYFUS: I agree that some care is needed, I agree that we’re looking for bipartisan support, but you have to build a groundswell. I think there needs to be more effort all round. The Prime Minister has put his weight into this…
EPSTEIN: So are you blaming both your leader, Bill Shorten, and the Prime Minister?
DREYFUS: I’m not – I think it’s particularly important for the Prime Minister, who came to office saying he wanted to be the Prime Minister for indigenous affairs to really put effort into this. There’s – the Prime Minister does have a different role to that of the leader of the Opposition. We’ve made it clear where we are: we want there to be this referendum, we want to have recognition of indigenous people in the Constitution, we want to listen hard to what the indigenous community wants and take that forward, so I don’t think anyone can doubt our will. I don’t doubt the will on the other side of the Parliament either, but just saying ‘we’ve got to be careful, we’ve got to be careful. We shouldn’t set a date yet’, we’re going to end up in a drift, and then we won’t have a referendum.
EPSTEIN: Scott, do we need some more urgency?
RYAN: Well, the attitude Mark displayed there that somehow this is a negative record of failure of referenda I think portrays one of the reasons that we do need time. The fact that 36 out of 44 proposals have failed isn’t a – necessarily a bad thing, Mark, and I would have different views: by definition, they haven’t succeeded because the people haven’t voted for them, so that’s a reflection on the proposal and the proposers. Importantly…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Just – I don’t want to get you to name all 36, but could you name all 36 referendum issues? I’m just curious.
RYAN: Quite a few have appears three times, actually, so there’s a bit of double counting…
EPSTEIN: Like conscription…
RYAN: No, they don’t count as part of the 44. They weren’t…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Don’t they?
RYAN: They weren’t constitutional referenda; they were plebiscites.
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] [indistinct]. Right. Okay. Sorry I interrupted your flow there..
RYAN: [Indistinct]
EPSTEIN: You need to do more though – Tony Abbott needs to do more.
RYAN: Well, no. I think the point here is that it’s developing those – the specific proposal, that is, that it – that that always is the bit that people …
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Is the party …
RYAN: … you know, take – need to take time to do. This proposal started when John Howard took it to the 2007 election. I think Kevin Rudd supported it then. But it was a proposal about Indigenous recognition. Since then, and over the last few weeks in particular, there have been a number of other proposals …
DREYFUS: [Interrupts] Yes.
RYAN: … that represent expansions on that. They represent constitutional reform in other ways. Now, that’s a separate debate, in my view, and the Prime Minister has also made clear – and I think anyone with the knowledge of the history of referenda would be that one must be very careful about trying to roll multiple issues into one.
EPSTEIN: Just briefly for both of you, actually, does it make a difference? I will start with you, Mark Dreyfus. Tony Abbott goes up to Arnhem Land. I’ve seen some criticism actually of him. The community he’s in is one of the best resourced in Arnhem Land compared to a lot of others. I don’t know if that’s – if that is a good criticism or not, to be honest, but does it make a difference? Is it worthwhile for the Prime Minister to move his office up there for a week?
DREYFUS: Oh, I welcome the Prime Minister moving around the country. I welcome the Prime Minister going to Arnhem Land. It’s a chance for him to see and hear directly what the effect of cutting $500 million out of the Indigenous budget – in this year’s Budget was. He can hear directly why it matters that North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid are going to shut the Nhulunbuy office in East Arnhem Land because of cuts to Legal Aid. And perhaps this is in Scott’s area – he can hear directly why the truancy program, which has got more children – more Indigenous children back into school – is in fact hitting problems, as we heard on the ABC this morning, because there aren’t enough teachers in the schools because of cuts from the Northern Territory Government. So lots of good reasons for the Prime Minister …
EPSTEIN:[Interrupts] Okay.
DREYFUS:… to go up there. He can hear – hear and see directly – and hear directly from Aboriginal people about what are the problems in their community.
EPSTEIN: On the truancy and whether or not it’s taken tokenism Scott Ryan [indistinct]. Yes. There hasn’t – criticism hasn’t come from Labor, but there’s a fair few letters to the paper and those sort of things [indistinct] …
RYAN: [Interrupts] Well, as I understand the truancy issue is a product of the program being actually rapidly successful. And the Northern Territory and remote areas are not easy places to move teachers into …
EPSTEIN:[Interrupts] No.
RYAN: … and expand the teaching population.
EPSTEIN: Would you accept that it’s a budget problem, the lack of teachers?
RYAN: I’m not aware of the detail of the Northern Territory budget, but the truancy program actually demonstrates probably better than anything that in Tony Abbott we’ve had a – we’ve got a Prime Minister who is probably more committed to Indigenous affairs through time spent there, demonstrated time that people didn’t know about in the years he was a minister, as well as now being Prime Minister, locating himself there …
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Okay.
RYAN:… during some pretty critical national decisions.
EPSTEIN: Yes.
RYAN: I don’t think it’s tokenistic, because I know I would – and most politicians would benefit from a bit more experience that we don’t have, and whether that be someone that lives in Melbourne knowing what it’s like in remote Australia …
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Yes.
RYAN: … or all Australians knowing what life’s like in Indigenous communities.
EPSTEIN: Is Mark right about – I think he mentioned a half a billion – half a billion dollar cut in Indigenous affairs.
RYAN: Well, it depends how you look at the Budget, but I don’t think anyone would contend …
DREYFUS: [Interrupts] I just think [indistinct]…
RYAN: I don’t think anyone would contend that money is the solution to our indigenous challenges; if it was, the problems would have been solved a long time ago, and I can tell you this now…
DREYFUS: [Interrupts] But money is important.
RYAN: But access – but, you know, there are plenty of other issues that indigenous communities approach politicians about that aren’t just about things like legal aid.
EPSTEIN: Sure.
RYAN: Money is important, but as we’ve found out over the past 40 years, it does not solve the problems alone.
EPSTEIN: Okay. Look, I don’t have much time for this one, but I do want to ask it, about just the Renewable Energy Target. It’s not – again, it’s one of those policy issues that people struggle to understand. I might start with you, Scott Ryan. It has been reported that the Government is courting Labor on this: they want to make some – they will make some sort of agreement with the ALP on this. Is that correct?
RYAN: Well, you will have to ask Mark whether there will be an agreement, but I know that the Minister has actually talked about discussions he would like to undertake with the Labor Party because the issue with the renewable energy target is that it is having a different impact to what it was legislated to do. It was legislated to be a 20 per cent target.
EPSTEIN: Sure.
RYAN: It’s going to end up being closer to 30 per cent.
EPSTEIN: What’s wrong with that?
RYAN: It is having an impact on electricity prices. It is a business input tax, so it actually makes things manufactured in Australia that are energy-intensive more expensive than import competition or, indeed, when they compete against other countries in exports, so it is important to conduct, as we have, a legislative review and look at exactly what the burden this places on consumers and businesses.
EPSTEIN: Yes. Mark, is Labor going to agree?
DREYFUS: The Government has not approached the Labor Party over this as yet. They’ve been…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] At all?
DREYFUS: They’ve been talking about doing so…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Okay.
DREYFUS: And there’s a few things you can be clear on: before the last election, Australians were entitled to think that the Liberal party supported the Renewable Energy Target, because they said they did. After the election, they’ve set about wrecking it and before the election you might have thought that the Liberal Party would support a successful Australian industry, which…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Sure.
DREYFUS: Is what renewables are. After the election, they haven’t. I [indistinct]…
EPSTEIN: [Interrupts] Just a quick one. Do the ALP support the real – the Government talks about the “real” red target – you know, bringing it back to a real 20 per cent. Do you think the ALP [indistinct]…
DREYFUS: Well, that doesn’t have a meaning. Our policies are very clear. Before the election and now, we support the legislated target which is 41,000 gigawatts.
EPSTEIN: Okay.
DREYFUS: And all of this talk is actually about wrecking a successful industry. We’re waiting still to hear what the Government is going to propose. It doesn’t sound like they are going to be backing the Warburton recommendations.
EPSTEIN: Okay. I am going to have leave it there. Forgive me, gentlemen. Scott Ryan, Senator, he is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Education Minister. Scott, thank you for coming in.
RYAN: Thanks, Raf.
EPSTEIN: Mark Dreyfus is the Shadow Attorney General. Thanks to you both.
DREYFUS: Thank you, Raf. Thank you, Scott.
RYAN: Thanks, Mark.
*Ends*