Topics: Bill Shorten’s appearance before the royal commission into trade union corruption, Minister Turnbull’s speech at the Sydney Institute, Government boycott of Q&A, Ray Martin’s comments concerning Q&A.
E&OE…
SALLY WARHAFT
Welcome to Fight Club and in the ring today is Senator Scott Ryan, the Victorian Senator and the Liberal Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education. Good afternoon.
SCOTT RYAN
G’day, Sally.
WARHAFT
And Anna Burke, former Speaker and Member for Chisolm. Hello.
ANNA BURKE
Hello, we’re outdoing the men in Fight Club today, so it’s very exciting.
WARHAFT
That is very exciting, there we are, Scott?
RYAN
A nice change in politics.
WARHAFT
Indeed. It’s been a very big week yet again, of course, and I guess the story of the day is Bill Shorten, the Opposition Leader’s presence all day at the Royal Commission into trade unions. He said ‘bring it on’ and now it’s on. Anna Burke, a tough day for your leader. How do you think he’s going?
BURKE
Oh look, I think this is just an absolute sideshow. Eighty million dollars could have been better spent enquiring into various aspects of life here in Victoria, it could have been better spent on education, it could have been better spent on health, it could have been better spent on education. And I think the more we go on and on about it, we just keep giving justification to something that had none.
WARHAFT
That may well be, is your view. But it is happening, the money has been spent; is it damaging him?
BURKE
I don’t think so, and we’ll wait and see. You know, these things come and go and I think he’s…I haven’t listened to it. I don’t have pay TV in the office and I wasn’t going to spend all day tuning into something, so I really haven’t listened to it. I’ve listened to the comments on the radio, it’ll be for the public to decide. But if there was a ‘gotcha’ moment, I failed to see how it happened. If there was a ‘gotcha’ moment when they had Julia Gillard in there, I failed to see how that happened as well. So I think it’s more a question of saying: is this money well spent by the government? As opposed to: does Bill Shorten of Julia Gillard come out of it well or not? And if it is about non-disclosure of various aspects, then well fine. The Prime Minister, the Treasurer, everybody else has been in that boat. So, maybe we should call them to an enquiry into why they don’t put things onto their AEC declarations earlier as well.
WARHAFT
Scott, what’s your reading of Bill Shorten’s performance today, and also in answer to Anna’s response, that this is just a big waste of money?
RYAN
Well, like Anna I will confess to not having been glued to the screen; I caught about half an hour of it over lunch and then heard the radio reports. I think the Labor Party’s hysteria to always say that these things are a waste of money is already belied by the facts. Let’s put aside the late AEC declaration that Bill talked about today at the Royal Commission, because Anna has rightly said…
(Interrupted)
WARHAFT
We won’t put it to one side because you’ve brought it up, it’s a forty thousand dollar donation and we’ve got a little bit of Bill Shorten actually explaining why he failed to declare that amount of money.
(Clip of Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten)
Incomplete paperwork, a forty thousand dollar donation.
RYAN
And the point Anna made is that people on all sides have made mistakes like that, I’m just trying to put that to one side. I’ll take that comment at face value from Mr Shorten. However, what we have uncovered through the process of this Royal Commission is a massive amount of money flowing between some businesses and some union leaders, that is not transparently disclosed, that we never knew about before, that provokes a lot of questions including: why then do those companies seem to get different employment arrangements that are lower than some of their competitors when there works could easily be seen to be worse off? Even today, Mr Shorten did admit to the employees at Cleanevent seemingly having been worse off under the agreement negotiated by the union than they would have been under the award. None of this has been known before, none of this has been disclosed and the Australian people, and every worker covered by these agreements, and indeed every union member has a right to know: what are these companies getting for these hundreds of thousands of dollars? This sort of secrecy, lack of transparency about money flows, wouldn’t be tolerated with any government contract. It wouldn’t be tolerated in other parts of the corporate sector, and I’ve heard Labor scream blue-murder about commissions and things like that before. This hasn’t been known and the royal commission has uncovered this. When it’s lifted the rock, the community hasn’t liked what it’s seen.
WARHAFT
Anna?
BURKE
Well what did Hon Kong Kingston Investment Company get for their $340 000 Liberal Party donation? What did the Registered Clubs Association in New South Wales get for its $180 000 donation to the Liberal Party? What did the ANZ bank get? What did the shareholders of the ANZ bank…
(Interrupted)
RYAN
Well Anna, you know all those. That’s the point, they’re all publicly disclosed. The point I am making is that of the secret donations that have been going to the unions from…
(Interrupted)
BURKE
No, no, I am not finished yet let’s talk about the next lot, let’s talk about the Warringah fund…
RYAN
They’re all disclosed…
(Interrupted)
BURKE
And the thing about this is that, is it political donations or is it in the context of how modern trade unionism works? I mean, we’re forever being told that we don’t understand how business works because we haven’t worked in business, but somehow every Liberal Party member is an expert in trade unions. Which one of them has worked in a trade union to understand how they work?
RYAN
(Inaudible)…Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of secret payments to union leaders that don’t go to union members. Secret.
WARHAFT
Alright, this is the argy-bargy though isn’t it? Whenever there’s a Coalition government there’s going to be a Royal Commission into trade unions, whenever there’s a Labor government you’re going to have these accusations of private undisclosed business donations. Is it worth it?
RYAN
All the ones that Anna read out are disclosed. Some of them are, I accept, that is why I conceded earlier that people on both sides make late disclosures, but all of those are on the AEC website that any citizen can look at. What we’re hearing about now are secret payments.
BURKE
The question is, now going back to it in a broad sense, is what do you get for any of these?
RYAN
Don’t try and conflate the two. Secret payments versus disclosed political donations.
BURKE
I don’t know if they are or aren’t secret payments, and is it about how unions work in relationship to businesses? Because some trade unions offer services to businesses, they actually do their training and their OH&S work.
RYAN
Offers that you can’t refuse sometimes, like the CFMEU.
BURKE
Well if you’re going to go there, then actually present the evidence and go and take it to the police; have them charged.
RYAN
Well, the CFMEU is in the courts all of the time.
BURKE
If, at the end of the day, this Royal Commission is going to actually uncover something, go for it. Because in the trade union movement, as I said I worked for a trade union. I would hate to have thought that any of the union members that I represented, who paid their wages, were ripped off. Then actually go and charge those individuals, actually go and do what the HSU are currently doing to the Liberal Party’s hero, Kathy Jackson, and take them to court.
RYAN
The Labor Party’s blocking a number of provisions that we’re trying to put in place to enforce transparency, so we know that unions are held as accountable as businesses are for that very point. And you are voting against it.
BURKE
Yeah but, businesses are not held accountable because you cannot tell me that every shareholder of ANZ, or NAB or Westpac understands what their donations, their money, is giving to the Liberal Party…
(Interrupted)
WARHAFT
I’m going to move on from this topic because we could talk about it for the entire segment, obviously, and it is age-old argument, isn’t it? It happens every time there’s a change of government but it reverses. Malcolm Turnbull, last night in a speech to the Sydney Institute, it looked like an interesting intervention to me; a different take on the rhetoric of national security than that of the Prime Minister. So let’s have a little listen to Malcolm Turnbull last night.
(Clip of Malcolm Turnbull)
Talking their about Islamic State, and it’s a very different tone. What do you think was going on there, Scott Ryan?
RYAN
I think this is one of those examples where, you can jump on to Malcolm’s website if you want to read the full speech, comparing a lengthy, considered address to what might happen in a doorstop interview I think is somewhat unfair. If you read all of Malcolm’s speech, you do see that he does talk about how he thinks the government has struck the right balance. He thinks that these are difficult decisions and all members of parliament, right across the chamber, weigh them up and they aren’t easy.
WARHAFT
I read all those parts of the speech, but I think there is absolutely no doubt that it was a different message than that of the Prime Minister.
RYAN
With respect, I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency because Malcolm talked about how respect for our legal traditions is actually reflected in the laws that the government proposed, which are now at the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security, because what we’re doing is updating section 35, if my memory serves me correctly, on citizens’ actions that will automatically strip them of their Australian citizenship. Rather than adding new provisions that give ministerial discretion we’re using existing provisions, and updating them to reflect the fact that Australians now can effectively commit acts of treason by fighting for a non-state actor like IS, as opposed to in the formal army of a foreign nation.
WARHAFT
The rhetoric of the Prime Minister, and this has been widely discussed – particularly in the last couple of days, has been: IS, they’re coming to get you. The Foreign Minister talked too about it being the most dangerous threat to civilisation since the past fifty years. Do you think that’s leaving enough room for the government to actually then progress on national security as an issue, if and when their really needs to be something happen?
RYAN
Well I that we also need to put in context that the Prime Minister has been discussing this for over a year, and in fact last year when he first did start talking about the risk of IS some people said: well, that risk isn’t really there. And I have long said that I thought the fact that he discussed it for two months before the tragedy of Numan Haider in south-eastern Melbourne and the tragedy that happened in Sydney actually did help to prepare the country, and I think our country handled that extraordinarily well for the first examples of domestic terrorism that most people in our lifetime can recall. So, I think, with respect to the Prime Minister he has actually made it very clear and made some very strong statements about how we need to interpret the risk of IS and their motivations particularly with respect to Australia’s very diverse Islamic community. I think Malcolm’s speech, a long considered address, actually matches up quite well with everything the Prime Minister has said when we take it in context where he has spoken about the strong support for Australia from the overwhelming majority of Australian migrants. When he spoke about the fact that we cannot assign the motivation of IS as a religious motivation as well as comments that you referred to.
BURKE
I thinks this is an absolutely difference of opinion here and it started when we had the leaks from a Cabinet meeting that was discussing national security. If you are not going to see differentials coming along when you are leaking things from out of the Cabinet and then reinforcing that from his speech, the rule of law should have applied, that ministerial intervention should not have been there deciding factor to whether you lose you citizenship to this country or not so I think there is a fine line there. But I think Malcolm actually brings up a good point, should we be letting the terrorist win so to speak? Are we going to give in as a nation as a citizenship to say: we are all living in terror. Isn’t that when they win if we are all living under a cloud that it is going to happen. Yes, we need to be concerned, but, we also need to draw the line and not let them think they are terrorising us or they have won.
WARHAFT
One of the interesting quotes that I thought from the speech was: that people who equally oppose terrorism could have different views about the right balance between securities and liberties. Now that is not something the Prime Minister would probably want said from a frontbench communications minister.
BURKE
Some of the concern with some of the legislation we have seen is that we are actually giving up our liberties in respect of giving into the terrorists and I think Malcolm said that a lot of people have grave concerns about that. People who actually understand this space don’t want to say: yeah it is all never going to happen here. But at the same time why are we giving up more and more of our liberties. I think the Prime Minister would be aghast at that comment.
WARHAFT
I would love to hear your views on this, 1300 222 774 is the number but time first for a traffic update.
(Traffic update)
WARHAFT
And you are listening to Fight Club with Senator Scott Ryan the Victorian Senator and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Anna Burke former Speaker and Member for Chisolm. We have just been discussing Malcom Turnbull’s really interesting contribution to the national security debate at the Sydney Institute last night, we have got a little fraction of audio here of the kind of rhetoric that I think people have been discussing here about the Prime Minister’s way of talking about the war of ISIS and us.
(Clip of the Prime Minister)
WARHAFT
‘It is coming after us’ do you feel like it is coming after you?
RYAN
I think the point the Prime Minister was trying to make, and this is what Malcolm highlighted in what I think was a very thoughtful address last night, the nature of the new threat from this group is that it is reaching into our community in a way that during the Cold War and during other dangerous times an enemy has not been able to. When you look at the example of the young man from Craigieburn who was allegedly a suicide bomber earlier in the year in Iraq I think it was, what we are seeing is a rapid, unpredictable radicalisation of some our younger people particularly our younger men, I think that is what the Prime Minister is referring to. This is not as easy to protect our community against as previous threats were because of the nature of social media, the internet, the recruiting tools they use, the very slick electronic operation they seem to be able to run which means that people can go from disengaged vulnerable members of the community or angry members of the community to being radicalised or dangerous much more quickly than previously.
WARHAFT
Is the tone right?
BURKE
No, I think it is because exactly because of what Scott has just described. We need to get a more nuanced tone out there because actually using the word ‘cult’ actually feeds into this idea that they are using out there in the internet, recruiting people with. I think we need to be far more subtle than this sort of over the top national security waving the flag. Don’t get me wrong, there is an issue out there and we need to address it and we need to be serious about it but having it in these very extremist tones sort of signals screams: let’s look at national security and not look at the economy, let’s look at national security. The number of flags increasing every time we see the Prime Minister, I don’t think the tone is right, I think there is a better way of dealing with it that doesn’t actually feed into actually recruiting people to go off and lose their lives and destroy other people’s.
RYAN
One of the things I have long thought can poison politics in this country, I try not to do it – I am not perfect – and it can often be done inadvertently, is trying to assign a motivation to someone else’s behaviour. I do not think it is fair for anyone to say what Anna just did: talk about national security so we don’t talk about the economy. There is nothing that any one from the Government has said that leads people to a reasonable conclusion about that. I think that…
(Interrupted)
BURKE
No I am not saying that, what I am saying is that it is the actual tone, that’s what you think because of the overblow rhetoric.
RYAN
But there is also something, as well as…
(Interrupted)
WARHAFT
That is not actually what Anna said, it was actually about that can we in Australian political life be subtle about anything?
RYAN
I think there is a challenge around that. I also think that there is a time for nuance and there is a time for black and white language. The reason I say that is, yes we do want people who are tempted by this to be scared of the consequences of that happening. Fear can be an important reason that people take a second look at themselves or speak to someone who might be more responsible before they get sucked into this. It is not just about, to be honest, engagement programs which are very important, it is not just about making people feel like they are at home. It is also about that moment when someone might make a dangerous, rash and stupid decision, fear can make them have another look at themselves.
WARHAFT
Look, I know that Malcolm Turnbull will be very disappointed that we are going to keep talking about him for another moment more but of course we all need to see…
(Interrupted)
BURKE
He might not get to talk about it himself on Q&A next Monday, we will need to wait and see.
WARHAFT
Indeed, indeed. Do you think that he will appear and should he appear?
BURKE
I think he should, I think it is, you know, you don’t vacate the field and if there is an inquiry going on to the issue then let’s have it, having been on Q&A twice now, with protesters on both occasions.
WARHAFT
Oh, yes, you always attract trouble don’t you?
BURKE
I attract trouble; I think people should be there to be heard.
RYAN
I always thought you were a trouble causer Anna, no that’s unfair, I don’t. Look I am always a believer in making our case, but I am also conscious I don’t always make the right decision. I am not a particular fan of Q&A, I got more coverage I think when for saying: my week starts better when I don’t watch it. I think it has become particularly introspective and tabloid. My concern with what happened that time is that we have national programs on anti-violence in the workplace, no bullying no violence when people go out on Friday nights, and the tragedy and scourge of domestic violence. It would have been inconceivable to have a person who had been convicted of one of those offences and unrepentant about it on a program, live television discussing one of those issues. And I think it is a profound misjudgement and I don’t think it should be underestimated.
WARHAFT
Is the response from the Government though an own goal, here is Ray Martin talking yesterday in response to the boycott of frontbenchers.
(Clip of Ray Martin)
Don’t you have to be in it to win it?
RYAN
Well, Barnaby has said he is not a member of the Liberal Party, he is a member of the National Party before, he is a good friend but Barnaby has never been shy about saying that. I think Ray had to be a little big careful and Gerald Stone his former producer who does think quite highly of Ray did comment yesterday that he thought Ray was getting into a bit of dangerous territory by commenting on this while he was investigating it: does that prejudge the inquiry? And I think to be fair if you are conducting an inquiry like this, it is best not to provide public commentary on it.
BURKE
I don’t think he was commenting on the inquiry, I think he was commenting, and that was my comments, that don’t vacate the field. There is a show that is live to air and people should be hearing the Liberal view, the Government of the day should be there and they shouldn’t be boycotting.
WARHAFT
We have to end this discussion, it has been fascinating and great to meet you both, Senator Scott Ryan, the Victorian Senator and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, and Anna Burke, former Speaker and Member for Chisolm, thank you so much both of you for coming to Fight Club.
RYAN
Thank you, Anna. Thank you, Sally.
BURKE
Thank you, Scott and thank you, Sally.
(ENDS)