Topics: Cabinet leak, dual citizenship, housing prices, small business package in the House of Representatives.
E&OE…
RAFAEL EPSTEIN
Joining us in our palatial Canberra studio is the Shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, he is the member for Isaacs, he is on the red throne. Hi there, Mark.
MARK DREYFUS
Good to be with you, Raf.
EPSTEIN
And Senator Scott Ryan is on the blue throne – many meters away he can barely see his counterpart. He is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education. Scott, welcome.
SCOTT RYAN
Good afternoon, Raf.
EPSTEIN
Good to have you both here. Scott Ryan, I am going to start with you, what is a ‘come to Jesus moment’? I have never heard that expression before, what does that mean?
RYAN
Look, I think it is an Americanism. I suppose I would describe it as a revelation, someone else described it to me as an epiphany or a realisation, I think that would be the best way to describe it.
EPSTEIN
An epiphany? Wow, Cabinet is rocking! It is pretty amazing to have an epiphany. What do you think was going on, why was he saying that?
RYAN
I don’t want to get into the details of the Party Room; the point is that the article that appeared in the paper on the weekend was disappointing, and the Prime Minister and my colleagues have made the point that that is not the way we run our Government. That sort of behaviour was a daily occurrence under the Labor Party and it is not…
(Interrupted)
EPSTEIN
I don’t know, they had some cracking leaks but they never had transcript from Cabinet.
RYAN
I don’t know, I have been up here for almost seven years Raf, and it was almost on a daily basis. Particularly after the 2010 election, where Kevin Rudd and his team were doing everything they could to take down Julian Gillard.
EPSTEIN
And I will get into that in a moment with Mark Dreyfus, however it is not a good sign for your Cabinet is it, with that sort of leaking?
RYAN
Look, it is disappointing and that is why the Party Room and my colleagues made it very clear that it is not to happen again.
EPSTEIN
Mark Dreyfus, I do want to get into some substance but I want to ask you a comparison question. Which leak is more significant: Peter Hartcher’s remarkable transcript on the weekend of that Cabinet or the dynamite Laurie Oakes Gold Walkley winning leaks that certainly made the 2010 campaign almost impossible for Julia Gillard? Which is bigger?
DREYFUS
I think they are on a par. This was as the Prime Minister apparently said in the Party Room, because we had a leak in the Party Room about the leaks, he said this was bad leaking. He is right; it is extraordinary to get this level of detail direct as it were from the Cabinet Room, and most disturbingly about a matter of national security, where it is now revealed that there is a massive disagreement, and we saw a bit more of it today…
(Interrupted)
EPSTEIN
It is good they are having a hearty argument about an issue like this though, isn’t it?
DREYFUS
I think it is good because it reminds, I agree with you on this Raf, it reminds Australians that having a discussion about national security, and having a discussion about what measures we might take about the shared objective we have with the Coalition Government , which is keeping Australians safe, having a discussion about that is a very healthy thing. Just before we came on you were talking to someone about the immense debate about what is occurring over in the United States over how you balance the objective of keeping the people in our country safe with preserving liberties. The Americans have a better framework for doing it than we have but that doesn’t absolve us of the need for us to engage with the discussion.
EPSTEIN
But you’re not in favour of getting a warrant to have access to my metadata?
DREYFUS
Um, no but what we are in favour of and that is why we pushed for this in the debate we had in the Intelligence Committee after the Government produced its Bill which we didn’t’ think had adequate safe guards and we didn’t think have adequate oversight, we pushed for both of those things to be improved and that happened, and we pushed for the whole of the scheme to be reviewed in four years’ time and the Government agreed to that. There were over twenty significant changes that we made to that data retention scheme. I would say, for the assistance to your listeners, that the scheme here in Australia is a very different one from the one that being debated in the United States. In the United States the telecommunication companies are made to give over all of their data to the government and the government stores it in a vast repository somewhere in the United States. Our scheme is quite different, it is one where the telecommunication companies are compelled to keep data that they already have, but for a two year period and in a standardised form. It is a very different approach than what has been taken and what has caused a great deal of controversy in the United States.
EPSTEIN
I don’t want to get too much into metadata, but Scott quick response?
RYAN
I might add Raf, that the important point is that in this Bill that we also quite substantially reduced the number of agencies that can access the metadata, something that a number of us were quite passionate about.
EPSTEIN
Still don’t need a warrant, but anyway that is my own personal bugbear. What I do want to ask you though is about the citizenship. I think there are some interesting issues coming out of this, but I would like to put this proposition to both of you and I will start with Scott Ryan. There are many people in the military and intelligence communities who would actually dearly love to be able to take citizenship away from a small group of people, they are Australians who are accused of being very senior members of Islamic State and I think it is fair to say that they are. And the reason is that they could then share intelligence far more easily, and they could then be targeted. Scott, isn’t that a far more substantial and important discussion to be having than the sort of dual national citizenship stripping that we are talking about at the moment?
RYAN
What the Government has done is undertake a process updating and reviewing the means by which we can remove citizenship from people who from a more modern sense committing treason like activities, I mean the Act hasn’t been updated in many years and the threats we face are now very different with non- state actors or actors like ISIL. Now we have announced last week, and Labor still hasn’t said whether they support these provisions, moves and legislation that will be released soon to enable the Minister to take away the citizenship of those who have dual citizenship. It is actually a little bit more legally difficult to do it for people who are solely Australia citizens but other countries have done that and we are looking at that.
EPSTEIN
I understand that but isn’t that the most important question? The dual national question is great for partisan advantage and great for…
(Inaudible)
RYAN
It’s not, it’s actually about the fact that we know we can take that step now. It’s easier legally to undertake without international obligations and we are exploring what we can do as the next step. The Australian people expect us to take all possible steps to keep them safe and secure particularly domestically and so we are actually taking what we can do and waiting on hearing form Mark and Bill Shorten as to whether they are going to support that and then we are exploring further options for those who don’t have dual citizenship.
EPSTEIN
I realise it is a million miles from your portfolio but getting rid of the citizenship of those senior Aussies in ISIS, is that something that appeals to you personally?
RYAN
I actually think this is really about updating the Citizenship Act. If you committed treason which sounds like an ancient offence, it is not often used, then you could lose your passport. If you fight in a foreign army that is fighting Australian troops you can lose your citizenship. We now have sadly, Australians tragically fighting in every essence in the same way against Australia interests, and committing in some cases horrific acts overseas. This is about updating our citizenship provision to reflect the challenges of the modern world.
EPSTEIN
Mark Dreyfus, if I can ask you to address what Scott addressed – well actually I am not sure he did, but anyway – the senior Australians in ISIS, shouldn’t that be the priority when it comes to taking citizenship away?
DREYFUS
We’re waiting to see what proposal the Government has come up with here. It has got sense to think that this is not some current Act of Parliament, it was actually re-legislated in full by the Howard government in 2007 and the provision that Scott has been mentioning is a provision that’s been there since we invented Australian citizenship in 1949. That’s a provision, section 35 of the current Act it says: If you take up arms for a foreign country which is at war with Australia, you automatically lose your citizenship. I don’t think many Australians would have an argument with that, it doesn’t matter what nationality, if you are a citizen of at least another country, it doesn’t matter if that country is the one you are fighting for, if you take up arms against Australia in a war then you should lose your citizenship. But what the Government’s proposal is, we still don’t know. Of course, we have made this clear over and over again, we’re standing ready to work with the Government on the shared objective of keeping Australians safe. But at the moment…
(Interrupted)
EPSTEIN
Am I barking up the wrong tree here Mark Dreyfus? Because there is no end of people in the military and intelligence community privately, and ex-people from that community publically saying: the important question is not stripping the passport of someone who went and fixed the wounds of someone in Islamic State, the important point is getting rid of citizenship so you can pass on intelligence and attack the people who are doing really serious damage. Is that not an important issue?
DREYFUS
That is a very important issue and what I am waiting to hear from the Prime Minister is the detail because at the moment we have a Prime Minister talking in slogans, a Prime Minister claiming the Government’s position is clear when of course it is anything but clear, these bad leaks from Cabinet told us this. There is no agreement from at least six ministers and the Government rather than releasing draft legislation, which is what it should do in order to demand a response, has release an extraordinarily scrappy seven-page discussion paper which looks like it was written in a great rush. The Government first started talking about this in January 2014 when Scott Morrison was the Minister for Immigration, it has been periodically rolled out; Scott Morrison spoke about it, the Prime Minister spoke about it through last year and this year it has been ramped up. It is clearly a topic that the Prime Minister likes to talk about, but we are waiting for some action and what action would look, like would be a Bill introduced to the Parliament. So when a Bill is introduced to the Parliament we will be obviously participating with the discussion. Clearly we are dealing now with changed circumstances, you are correctly identifying that there are Australians fighting in Syria for Daesh – ISIL, a dreadful organisation engaged in all sorts of barbarism. If we can formulate legislation to deal with those particular Australians, we will look at it. But the Prime Minister is talking in much greater generalities at the moment and in reality talking in slogans.
EPSTEIN
Scott Ryan, you’re all talk and no action.
RYAN
Well what we have outlined is clear policy with respect to dual nationals. Now, what we have asked to engage with Labor on, because you can have engagement and discussion around principles without necessarily draft legislation appearing on day one, that the Prime Minster has made clear will be appearing very shortly. The point you raised about taking citizenship off people who might be senior in an organisation for intelligence purposes, nothing that we have proposed in any way restricts that. But we do have challenges around acting on people only with Australian citizenship. We are taking the first step with those with dual citizenship that don’t create those legal problems.
EPSTEIN
Well Chris has called…
(Interrupted)
DREYFUS
I find it refreshing to hear a line speaking about the problems, there are constitutional problems, there are international treaty problems.
EPSTEIN
I just want to give Chris in Docklands a chance, he has been waiting patiently, he has just got a perspective on the ‘come to Jesus’ phraseology. Chris, what did you want to say?
CALLER
Good afternoon, no problem waiting, I’m enjoying the program. The ‘come to Jesus’ expression I first came across when I worked for an American multinational. The context it was used in was very much calling a group of people together and to give them the reality check of almost like addressing them saying: this is the way it needs to be. That might have been a revelation for some people who were called to the meeting that didn’t realise that they had done the wrong thing.
EPSTEIN
I think they realised.
CALLER
Yes, essentially it was just laying it on the line that this is the way it is going to be, this is the way it is going to operate and there is no discussion. That was the context of what ‘come to Jesus’ was all about.
EPSTEIN
An American company was it Chris?
CALLER
It was an American company. So that is how I understood it, so when I first heard the expression I thought: gee I haven’t heard that in a while, but I know exactly what it means.
EPSTEIN
Thanks a lot Chris. Scott Ryan, a minor point. It is a bit like the dad saying: you’re going to pay for this. I don’t like to reduce the Prime Minister to that of a parent with his children, but it’s too late isn’t it, to read the riot act after the leaks, after the horse has bolted?
RYAN
I think we can all reflect on what we do every day at work, whether it is professionally or personally, it can always improve. It’s very disappointing that that article appeared. The key thing is that this Government will learn from it, whereas what we saw when Mark was in Cabinet was that it kept happening.
EPSTEIN
Ok, I want to…
(Interrupted)
DREYFUS
Good Government was meant to start back in February.
EPSTEIN
OK, ok I want to give Steven a chance from Parkdale; he has got a query or comment on the dual national issue. Steven, go for it.
CALLER
Yeah thanks Raf, about the dual national situation it’s been raised and I haven’t got an answer yet, if the person has got a dual UK-Australian passport, I’ll just use the UK as an example, and Australia cancels his Australian passport and the UK refuses to take him back, what happens to him?
EPSTEIN
Scott Ryan…
(Inaudible)
DREYFUS
It goes… (Inaudible). Well I’ll answer that because it is a question that troubles me.
EPSTEIN
Ok.
DREYFUS
He goes into immigration detention, Steven, and one of the…
(Interrupted)
EPSTEIN
That would be if he still had a British passport? Is that right?
DREYFUS
If the British will, this is the problem that successive Australian governments have faced with quite a large group of Iranian citizens whose refugee claims have been rejected the Iranian Government has said to successive Australian governments that it won’t take back by way of forcible return an Iranian citizen because Iranian citizens have the right to live anywhere they like in the world. The British Government could say, depending on the particular status of the British person concerned: well, we’re cancelling his citizenship too. And that is one of the policy issues before you even get to how to draft this, whose decision is this going to be, is it to be a judge’s decision of a minister’s decision. Is it going to be after a conviction or is it going to be just on some suspicious report.
EPSTEIN
Well, I don’t think it will be after a conviction.
DREYFUS
Well, we don’t know and that’s why I think it is absolutely vital that we get the Bill. But Steven asks a pretty good question there and one of the things that a lot of the public commentary has been around is: do we really want to get into some kind of tit-for-tat race to the bottom game where…
(interrupted)
EPSTEIN
Ok, let me put that to Scott Ryan. Scott, again I know this isn’t your portfolio. What’s your understanding – I know it is hypothetical – how would it work, what if the British don’t want him back and they want to take citizenship away?
RYAN
Well, firstly we have to draw the distinction between citizenship and a passport. We can administratively remove passports from Australians as it is, to prevent them travelling.
EPSTEIN
Sure.
RYAN
That’s an important distinction. If we are talking about citizenship, I understand that Peter Dutton spoke about this last week on 7:30 I think it was, to a certain extent we are going to be bound if someone did not take them back, we may have a situation where we may not be as easily able to remove their citizenship. But the lack of perfection in this area does not mean that we shouldn’t try anything, the fact that we might find ourselves in an odd circumstance doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a law to allow it to account for all the other circumstances. And that is the important thing, particularly where you have international obligations around stateless people. But that hasn’t prevented the UK Parliament enacting provisions that allow the removal of citizenship from sole UK citizens.
EPSTEIN
Ok, look we will…sorry Mark I just need to get to the traffic.
Break for traffic update
EPSTEIN
Scott Ryan is with me, Senator Scott Ryan, that’s relevant because he is with Mark Dreyfus and I am going to ask them a House of Representatives question. So forgive me Scott, but I will start with you: the Government has been very keen to talk about and pass the small business tax relief measure, the Opposition Leader stood up and proposed that it just be voted through straight away so the Government was then forced against voting on their own measure. That’s a little bizarre isn’t it?
RYAN
Well, what the Opposition tried to do was gag debate on the small business measures, and that wasn’t going to help it pass the Parliament any quicker; the Senate isn’t sitting this week. The real test for the Opposition is going to be when the Senate sits again on Monday week, we have eight sitting days then to pass these measures before the end of the financial year. And that is when Labor’s true commitment to whether or not they will let these pass, or whether or not they will filibuster them will be shown.
EPSTEIN
Why do you need to debate in the House of Representatives if the Government has the numbers? That’s pointless isn’t it?
RYAN
Raf, I think that is a bit unfair on the 150 Members of the House of Representatives. Yes, the Government has the numbers in the House but I know a lot of my colleagues from the Coalition were very keen to talk about the impact of these measures in their local communities and how they had already seen small business respond so positively to them. It was a stunt.
EPSTEIN
I think you’re right, I think it is a stunt. However, this and the debate around house prices, I’ll out this to both of you, the very thing people dislike about Canberra the most is the game-playing around the small business tax relief measure and the kind of ridiculous faux debate we have had around house prices. You seem to have politicians bickering about process and accusing each other of pointless acts of, I don’t know if it is hypocrisy or lack of care for the average Australian, rather than talking about small business or housing affordability.
RYAN
What Bill Shorten tried to do today was stop that discussion, if Labor had let this be debated, it was going to go through the House of Representatives by close of business tomorrow.
EPSTEIN
It is not a real discussion.
RYAN
I think it is important that we actually let Members of the House of Representatives contribute to Parliamentary debate. You do actually learn a lot, particularly when you are from areas in other parts of Australia, regional Australia and regional cities, and it was going to through the House of Representatives this week and get to the Senate Monday week, and that’s when Labor’s commitment to allowing these through or filibustering them is going to be shown.
EPSTEIN
Mark Dreyfus, it is a little unseemly isn’t it? Especially that housing, those questions over housing affordability just seemed to be to me, completely useless.
DREYFUS
I think the way the Prime Minister responded, but let’s stick to the small business. We have had the Government pretending that there wasn’t crystal clarity from Labor about this and there was. In the Leader of the Opposition’s Budget Reply Speech, on Budget Reply night on the Thursday of Budget week, more than two weeks ago, we said: we will pass this measure. And what have we had to endure ever since? We have had to endure the Prime Minister urging us, this is this week: let’s pass this Bill this week. Bruce Billson last week: let’s get this through this place in a hurry and see if Labor is true to its word. Or worse, and this is Bruce Billson, this is why he ran away from Fight Club today:
EPSTEIN
I don’t think that is the case, that’s a bit harsh.
RYAN
(Inaudible)…that’s unfair.
DREYFUS
The only thing people are uncertain about is whether Labor is going to muck around with this, are they going to stand in the road. All of this is complete nonsense. So after the Opposition Leader gave a very clear speech – which made another excellent point that being that the instant asset tax write-off was a Labor measure, which this Government repealed last year, but it seems to have forgotten doing that and wants to claim all credit for this magical new measure which it apparently thought up of all by itself when in fact it is a Labor measure – we support it and the best way to make that point is to say: let’s end the debate here and now, we vote for it. And what the Government did, bizarrely…
(Interrupted)
EPSTEIN
It still sounds like partisan point making, and I would like you to address the housing affordability issue because you have asked lots of questions on it in Question Time, and I don’t see that debate being helpful anyway, from either side of politics.
DREYFUS
We didn’t ask a great many questions. We asked three questions yesterday because for the first time we had the Government’s chief economic adviser saying that there was a housing bubble across Sydney and in some parts of Melbourne, and we are wanting to know how the Government is, if at all, going to respond to that. What we had in response was a torrent of false, false abuse from the Prime Minister asserting such nonsensical things such as: Labor wants house prices to fall. In other words, we do not want house prices to fall, nobody has suggested that, but that is what we have to put up with here in Canberra particularly from this Prime Minister, who wants to pretend that Labor believes in things that we do not believe in, wants to hurl abuse at every opportunity, wants to talk in slogans. I am sick of him saying: Labor has got its hand in your pocket. This is the Government that is attacking pensioners and we had, I just sat through a Question Time, forgive me for getting excited about it Raf, I think it is about time that we started grappling with real things. we have got a real measure the Instant Asset Tax Write Off which may do some good for small business, we support it, let’s get it through the House of Representatives; that’s what the Government has been inviting and weirdly they rejected it.
EPSTEIN
Scott Ryan…
(Interrupted)
DREYFUS
Because apparently they wanted to say – well, who knows what they want to say.
EPSTEIN
I need to get to the weather Scott Ryan, but a quick response?
RYAN
Well a point on house prices is that the problem is predominantly a problem of state governments, usually Labor ones, over the last decade that have restricted supply and put massive new taxes on housing developments. The Secretary of the Treasury was making a point in context of some parts of Sydney and some parts of Melbourne and the Prime Minister made the point that modestly increasing house prices are actually the sign of a strong economy. Where you have seen them collapse, seen them decline, you have seen quite substantial economic distress right through Europe and the United States.
EPSTEIN
Ok, we will get into the housing affordability one day. Scott Ryan, thank you for joining Fight Club.
RYAN
Thanks Raf.
DREYFUS
It’s been a pleasure Raf, thanks Scott.
RYAN
Thanks Mark.
EPSTEIN
That’s Mark Dreyfus, the Shadow Attorney General. Scott Ryan is a Senator; he is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education as well.
(ENDS)