Topics: Changes to Senate voting, make-up of the new Senate

E&OE …

JON FAINE:

Senator Scott Ryan is Malcolm Turnbull’s Special Minister of State, as well as Minister Assisting the Cabinet Secretary. He is a key powerbroker for Malcolm Turnbull. One of his jobs is going to be to wrangle the just-announced Senate. Yesterday, the declaration of the poll told us that, in fact, the new Senate is perhaps even more difficult to deal with than the one Malcolm Turnbull decided he couldn’t work with last time around. Senator Scott Ryan, good morning to you.

 

SENATOR SCOTT RYAN:

Good morning Jon.

 

FAINE:

You’ve got now an even more fragmented Senate, rather than a less fragmented Senate, so the idea of reforming the election laws that you and the Greens ganged up on in order to achieve seems to have completely backfired.

 

SENATOR RYAN:

Well Jon, I respectfully don’t think so. The important thing about everyone elected to the Senate at the recent election – and we had the results finalised yesterday – is that they all got there on direct votes, numbers in boxes put there by Australians at the ballot boxes. There was no preference whispering, there was no one being elected on half a per cent of a vote …

 

FAINE:

Yes there was!
SENATOR RYAN:

Actually, there were people elected on tickets and, to be fair, even the minor parties got a substantially higher vote, the ones that got elected. But they got there based on how people voted, not on preference deals …

 

FAINE:

That’s what happened last time too. You’ve in fact got exactly the same problem as before, except you pretended to reform it. One Nation, 10 years ago, got five per cent of the vote and no Senators, now they get four-and-a-bit per cent of the vote and get four Senators.
SENATOR RYAN:

There is no one who got half-a-percent of the vote and got elected.

 

FAINE:

David Leyonhjelm?

 

SENATOR RYAN:

[The Liberal Democrats Party] got more than that in NSW.

 

The difference is, Jon, that previously, people didn’t know where their vote was going. You could mark the box for the Liberal Democrats, Motoring Enthusiasts, groups in the past like Liberals for Forests, you didn’t know where your vote was going. None of that happens under the new system. Every person elected got there by virtue of individually numbered boxes on ballot papers.
FAINE:
If we go back to what you, and others, said at the time when you struck the deal against the Opposition but with the Greens and with Nick Xenophon, it was supposedly going to resolve those difficulties and, in fact, I’ll argue with you, it has exacerbated them, it has made it worse.

 

SENATOR RYAN:

Again, Jon, I think there is a substantive difference, a massive difference, between people being elected on the basis of the votes they actually got, versus, people being elected on the basis of votes where people didn’t know where they were going. Everyone who got elected here got elected because people marked the ballot paper in the Senate, like they did in the House. Preferences here weren’t distributed against their knowledge, they only went where people marked the ballot paper. That’s a key difference.

 

FAINE:

And now you’re hostage to horse trading by any disaffected backbencher in the House or any disaffected Senator in the Senate over every piece of legislation, but particularly the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which was, I remind you, the trigger for a double-dissolution election.

 

SENATOR RYAN:

Well let’s remember, the only reason a double-dissolution was called, with the lower quota of election to the Senate, which is different and unrelated to the system of changing the Senate voting system, but the only reason a double-dissolution was called, was the Greens and the Labor Party receiving millions of dollars, in one case, and hundreds of thousands in the other from the CFMEU, refused mandate, after mandate, from the people where it was a clear policy of the Government to reintroduce that body. That’s why the double-dissolution was called.

 

FAINE:

And now we have, in the actual chamber, working alongside you and presumably people you need to sit down and negotiate with, One Nation Senators like Malcolm Roberts and Rod Culleton.

 

In West Australia, Rod Culleton is awaiting trial on serious charges. And I’m not sure if you heard, Senator-Elect Malcolm Roberts from Queensland – the One Nation Senator – speaking to Raf Epstein on our Drive program yesterday, I’m not sure if you heard any of it, but included this extraordinary exchange where he was asked whether or not his climate scepticism translates to also adopting the views of those who think that the United Nations and other climate bodies are trying to control the world. Have a listen to this exchange.

 

[AUDIO CLIP]

 

Senator Ryan, that is the view of the Senator from Queensland with the One Nation Party with whom you now need to negotiate.
SENATOR RYAN:

And the job of Government, the job of every politician, is to work with other people that were elected by their fellow Australians and that’s the job we’ve got. I mean, I’ve sat down with Lee Rhiannon. Lee Rhiannon and I probably wouldn’t agree on anything. Lee Rhiannon was once a member of the Socialist Party that supported, I can’t remember, either the Chinese Communist model or the Russian Communist model. That was a similarly extreme worldview, in my view, but you look for ways to find common ground where you can agree and you can actually negotiate the passage of important legislation that is in the interests of all Australians. Where you disagree, you try and do so respectfully. Occasionally it is forceful and I will maintain that approach I’ve always had to politics.

 

FAINE:

You’re more likely to find support now for some of your legislation from the Labor Party, aren’t you, than from either the Greens on the Left, or One Nation and some of the other representatives like Malcolm Roberts we just heard from there, on the Right.

 

SENATOR RYAN:

Well I think Jon, it depends on the legislation going forward. Bill Shorten said after the election he wanted to be constructive. Let’s remember that the only way the minor parties or crossbenchers have the balance of power is when the Labor Party, the Opposition, refuses to engage with the Government.
FAINE:

Are you able to confirm that Malcolm Turnbull will introduce into the Parliament, as the first item of legislation, the volunteer firefighters’ laws?
SENATOR RYAN:

I’m not in a position to confirm anything, but the Prime Minister and Government have made clear that will be one of the single highest priorities when Parliament reconvenes on August 30. I sadly won’t be there, apart from an hour, I’ll be on parental leave.

 

FAINE:

Congratulations whatever it is that comes your way. That’s also very exciting and far more important than the work of the scrappy Parliament and the Senate. Thank you very much for your time this morning.

 

(ENDS)