Topics: Same sex marriage, Omnibus Bill
E&OE …
EMMA ALBERICI:
Joining me now is Senator Scott Ryan, Special Minister of State. Thanks for joining us.
SENATOR SCOTT RYAN:
Good evening Emma, thanks for having me.
ALBERICI:
Let’s start off with the issue of the money being allocated to an advertising campaign for the plebiscite. Why do taxpayers need to spend $15 million in a campaign where most people presumably have already made up their mind one way or the other?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, Emma, I’m never presumptuous enough to say the electorate has made up its mind. I’ve seen issues change and evolve over time With respect to the public funding of the campaigns for the Yes and No case, the Government believes this is very important to ensure a fair process This has a precedent, it has a precedent with the 1999 Republican referendum.
ALBERICI:
That was a referendum which was quite significantly different to this. This is more like an opinion poll, isn’t it?
SENATOR RYAN:
No, this is actually asking people in exactly the same we would at a referendum …
ALBERICI:
A referendum is for constitutional change. This is a vote that isn’t actually necessary.
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, this is a commitment the Government made to let the Australian people resolve this issue via a plebiscite and from the experience of the voter, it will be like any election and referendum. We have in fact modelled the provisions of the plebiscite on the Electoral Act and the Referendum Act and looked for what has happened in the past. With respect to public funding, I might say that, in the past, many of your viewers would remember a booklet used to be sent out to every single voter, a Yes and No booklet, prepared by Members of Parliament of opposing views. Now that is actually quite an expensive measure. I don’t think it’s fair to say that that would have the same impact it might have had 30 years ago, so in lieu of the booklet, we are providing for public funding for a Yes and No advertising campaigns by committees appointed by the Government.
ALBERICI:
And who will be on those committees?
SENATOR RYAN:
So the committees will be made up, in each case 10 members – five Members of Parliament, two members of the Government, two members of the Opposition and one member of the crossbench, and five members of the public.
ALBERICI:
Who will select all those people?
SENATOR RYAN:
So like 1999, when the committees of 10 were appointed for the referendum Yes and No cases, they will be appointed by the Attorney-General and myself.
ALBERICI:
Advertising will be submitted to a committee for clearance. How will the committee determine what might be considered bad taste and therefore not allowed?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, I don’t know if bad taste is grounds for not allowing an advertisement, Emma.
ALBERICI:
What will be grounds?
SENATOR RYAN:
In 1999, again we’ve adopted the precedent, what was then called the ministerial committee on government communications – it now has a different name – had to approve the budgets for advertising, of both the Yes and No committees and then it cleared the ads to ensure they didn’t infringe any standards. And that is the process that is being adopted here. Again, there is a clear precedent for it and it worked effectively in 1999. Our party room has, in Malcolm Turnbull the Prime Minister, the chair of the Yes campaign committee from 1999 and in Julian Leeser, a member of the No advertising committee.
ALBERICI:
Well, this is a little bit different, it’s a much more emotional issue, I’m sure you will agree. Will the advertising claims that will be made during this campaign need to be true, or will it be okay, for instance, for the no side to say children being raised by two mums or two dads will somehow be disadvantaged?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals, I don’t think that would be appropriate.
ALBERICI:
But that is the kind of thing we saw in Ireland. Would that be allowed in Australia?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, the guidelines that are currently in place for commercial television advertising, that is the starting point, but again I actually have faith in this process. It has worked before, and it actually ensures that all Australian people will get to hear the case in favour of change and the case in favour of the status quo.
ALBERICI:
One of your own has today said he thinks the whole idea of the plebiscite is an abhorrent idea. Dean Smith objects to it because he says it undermines Australia’s democratic processes, people vote for Parliamentarians to make decisions on such issues where they can do so, with legislation, with no proviso attached to this covenant saying there should be exemptions for issues that prove controversial – his words, not mine?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, look, Dean Smith is a friend of mine and I respect Dean, but I also respectfully disagree with him in this case. We took a policy to the election to have a plebiscite to resolve this issue. It was very prominent over the last 12 months since the Coalition adopted the policy. I think it was a relatively prominent issue during the election campaign we just had. It is an important commitment we made and when we have the vote, if we have the vote on February 11 next year and the plebiscite is carried, the Parliament will then move immediately to adopt the changes to the Marriage Act that will be published beforehand.
ALBERICI:
If Labor votes down the legislation as now seems most likely, what’s the Government’s Plan B for same-sex marriage?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, Emma, with all due respect I’m not going to answer on behalf of Labor other than to say, yes, the Labor Party support for this is important. Bill Shorten in the past has made an observation that he didn’t have a problem with the plebiscite. We think this is the most appropriate measure to resolve this issue.
We took this policy to an election and the only person standing in the way of a public vote which has strong support, my colleagues who support both change and retention of the current definition of marriage agree, that there is strong public support for a vote for this, and we think it is the best way to resolve it.
ALBERICI:
On the other matter of the day, the Omnibus Bill, between the two of you, the Government and the Opposition, you’ve managed to come to an agreement that will see something like $6.3 billion over four years saved but yet that’s only around seven per cent of the job that needs to be done to address the accumulated deficits. Is there more compromise in the Government in terms of perhaps adopting some of Labor’s measures, say negative gearing and the capital gains tax arrangements? SENATOR RYAN:
Well, as the Treasurer outlined today in the press conference, he announced this with the Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Labor’s measures for tax increases are not measures that the Government is interested in adopting. We today, struck an agreement with Labor for the majority of measures that Labor put in their budget costings going into the election, these were Labor election promises, these were things the Labor Party said they would do if they won the election. We couldn’t get all of those measures agreed upon, but this is a very important step in bringing the budget back into balance and meeting our financial targets.
ALBERICI:
But you have agreed, for instance, to scrap the baby bonus, something you hadn’t wanted to do before. That was Labor policy. Would you now consider adopting other Labor policies that might help bring the budget into repair?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, as the Treasurer said today Emma, we are not interested in tax increases, we’re not interested in the policies we think are destructive to a strong, growing economy that provides the employment growth that Australians need, but we will continue to work with the Parliament that the people elected, to meet our financial and economic targets, and budget repair, bringing the budget back into balance is a critical one of those.
ALBERICI:
When will we see the superannuation legislation brought forward?
SENATOR RYAN:
Superannuation is particularly well outside my portfolio and so I’ll leave that to Kelly O’Dwyer the Minister responsible to comment. ALBERICI:
But in fact it’s a very widely understood principle that people within your own party are very uncomfortable with some of those superannuation measures. Therein lies quite a great deal of budget savings. People would expect that that might be – would they rightfully expect that it might be one of the next cabs off the rank?
SENATOR RYAN:
Well, look we are committed to legislating the policies we took to the election. I will say, however, that superannuation is one of the more complex policy areas, and brevity is the better part of valour in this case.
ALBERICI:
Scott Ryan, I won’t press you anymore on superannuation. We will leave it for next time. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us.
SENATOR RYAN:
Thanks, Emma.
(ENDS)