E&OE…
PETER VAN ONSELEN
Welcome back to the program. As promised, Senator Scott Ryan from the Liberal Party joins us live from Melbourne. Thanks very much for being there.
SCOTT RYAN
Good afternoon, Peter.
VAN ONSELEN
So what does your new role entail? You are essentially Arthur Sinodinos’ deputy in terms as Cabinet Secretary, is it about trying to keep the Prime Minister in line, keep the Cabinet in line, and maintain the links to the backbench? It is all about using your power broker skills to manage the situation?
RYAN
Well, Peter, more seriously, what my job is about is to work with Arthur Sinodinos – who everyone knows was John Howard’s chief of staff for a decade – on the processes of Cabinet. I work with Cabinet and some of the Cabinet committees to ensure that everything from submissions, consultations, meeting with stakeholders, meeting with members of the Parliamentary Party and ensuring the process works. One of the things that has happened as the media cycle has sped up over the last four or five years has been that sometimes in Canberra we might think we have spoken to everyone about it but in reality the rest of the community is days or months behind us and what we have seen over the last few weeks is the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and other ministers actually try and have a bit of a discussion around what are the priorities and problems we want to fix. For example, in our superannuation system, rather than instantly leaping to a solution which to the average member of the public just comes out of nowhere without there being an agreement to what some of the policy priorities should be.
VAN ONSELEN
Do you think that managing the modern media is more difficult than it used to be? And I am assuming the answer to that is yes, the following question then becomes: is it unmanageable now in terms of a prime minister’s time in balancing their various competing roles?
RYAN
Look, Peter if you are in politics and complain about the media it is a bit like complaining about the weather, there really is no point. It is a different set of challenges, I mean television introduced a different set of challenges for politicians and people in public policy and other stakeholders in the 1950s and 60s and that really drove things in the 80s. Technology, the fact that I can now be emailed different economic models, and different reports whereas years ago I would rely on mail or a smaller number of reports because they took longer to prepare. I don’t think it is worth complaining about or saying if it is more difficult or not, because it brings about a different set of challenges. It also brings a different set of opportunities. The disaggregation of the traditional media model, which Sky is part of because this channel didn’t exist twenty years ago, actually means that we get more opportunities to listen from people, to hear from people and to speak to people about the challenges the country faces.
VAN ONSELEN
It is fascinating though Senator, I agree with your thesis that blaming the media that there is not much point in that. I know you don’t want to look back, you want to look forwards but, I am in the middle of polishing off this book with Wayne Errington my colleague, about what went on in the two years of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership and he did say at the end of it that a febrile media culture has developed rewards treachery. He said that sour, bitter character assassination is now a staple within the media. Do you reject that or do you just take the view that whether that is true or not that it has always been the case and there is no point whinging about it.
RYAN
I can understand how someone who is in the spotlight like the prime minister, honestly in a way that I am not, would feel this a lot more personally. A prime minister is subject to character assassination usually in the media every day, so is the leader of the opposition. That is something that I have always had admiration for those who take leadership positions in because it is tough and most of us don’t have to live with that. We have all had the benefit of character assassinations in some element at some point, but if you go back through history, if you look at the British tabloids today for example, that is a much more intense political and personal discussion of politics, policies and priorities than most other media markets in the world. If you go back 150 years before the rise of mass newspapers, the pamphlets and small scale newspapers that used to circulate even in places like Sydney and Melbourne were pretty vicious, they were scandal sheets. So I think yes, it is worth observing that there are changes, there is a lot more content and I think it is fair to say that there is a lot more discussion of personality in politics than there probably was forty or fifty years ago. But it is also important not to have rose coloured glasses on, I remember the treatment that was metered out to John Howard, and some of that was pretty personal and intense and some of that was only fifteen years ago.
VAN ONSELEN
That is absolutely right. Let’s look forward now if we can Senator, I want to get your views on reforms. I was talking to Senator Cory Bernardi just the other day, he was making the strong case that he would like to see the return of serious IR reform and that it is not enough what we have seen just around things like abolishing and reintroducing the ABCC, and all the rest of it. What is your view?
RYAN
We all have our objectives in politics, I think the lessons of the last decade are that you need to generate public consent and public support. And we are seeing that with this government now. I will turn to the discussion that is happening around superannuation, Scott Morrison has been talking about this for a couple of weeks, some of the challenges for those who have interrupted work patterns, mainly woman but also those who take time out to become carers, he had a discussion yesterday about what is the purpose of our superannuation system. And I think the most important thing to remember when we are trying to generate support for a particular policy proposal is that we actually need public agreement on what the problem is and what the priority problems are to fix. Because we can’t fix everything and there is never going to be a silver bullet that fixes all of our problems in employment or all of our problems in health or all our problems in education. So, what this Government is about is actually having that discussion reasonably, sensibly and talking to people: this is what we think the major problem is, for example, with superannuation. Now, once we get agreement on that as being a priority we will then come up with a policy based on evidence and listening to people and then we will put that policy before the people. I think, to go back to your first question about the impact of the volume of media now, is people can get news from any sources, they tend to talk to their friends and share news sources among themselves and that we can’t expect any more politicians to come forward as we might have done thirty years ago with a big policy saying: here is what we think our solution is without first generating some consent and support with what the problems, priorities and challenges are.
VAN ONSELEN
As the Assistant Cabinet Secretary will you sit in Cabinet?
RYAN
I do.
VAN ONSELEN
Each and every time or just on particular business or just when you are filling in for Senator Sinodinos?
RYAN
I sit in it with Senator Sinodinos, so far regularly and have – without going into it –that is one of my functions.
VAN ONSELEN
Okay, and just lastly on this, I want to go back to the reform agenda. You mentioned the idea that obviously you have to take a package and sell it to the electorate, you also have to sell, don’t you, that the government can’t solve everyone’s problems. There has almost become this attitude over the last eight years, I would argue, perhaps even longer if you factor in some of the fiscal capacity during the Howard years to do more than can now be done with the fiscal climate we are now in, there is a cultural barrier there that is almost hurdle number one for the Turnbull Government. Isn’t it? Overcoming this idea that government is there to solve everyone’s problems.
RYAN
I think there is also another issue there Peter which is: what can government do and what can government do well. For example, at the Commonwealth level with education, my previous portfolio, we have a more direct role in universities than schools but to turn to schools for a moment, we can’t necessarily change overnight what happens in a classroom or the way we teach maths or science to increase participation in those subjects what we can do is say: let’s actually focus on teacher training and teacher accreditation. Which is something that the Commonwealth does have a role in through the universities, and that will lead to change over time. So, part of it is actually explaining what the limits of government are, and also that some of these things do take time. If there were silver bullets to a number of our national problems to health or education or the budget then people smarter than me would have come up with them before now. The truth is these problems and challenges are occurring because they do not have easy solutions. Once we agree on what the challenge or priority is then we may have different views. I am sure I will disagree with the Labor Party and Greens on some policy issues, as we do on the issue of border security, but if we agree on the problem then I think that does give us the basis for a serious national debate on what the solution can be and maybe whether even that is something the government should seek to solve.
VAN ONSELEN
Senator Scott Ryan, I appreciate you time on News Day, thanks as always.
RYAN
Thanks for having me.
(ENDS)