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E & OE
(Greetings omitted)
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Stephen, let’s start with you. How seriously is the government looking at a total ban of live exports overseas?
STEPHEN JONES
The minister needs to be congratulated for acting quickly…
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Well that’s not what Andrew Wilkie and the Greens were saying today. They were saying that it was too slow…
STEPHEN JONES
As soon as the evidence became available about the widespread mistreatment of cattle coming from Australia, he banned the export to those sheds and has put in place the investigation. All options are on the table including the options that are being called for by the independents and the Greens and others to ban exports to those countries. My own view is that when I see cattle being loaded onto live export ships I see Australian jobs. I’d like to see more emphasis put on us doing the processing here in Australia.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Yeah, and that’s certainly what we’re hearing the Greens argue for as well, and Andrew Wilkie, and even the Meat Council getting on board with this as well today. Scott Ryan, the Coalition has been saying the economy will suffer if live exports are banned, but you would have just heard those arguments backing these calls, saying that jobs aren’t going to be put at risk – that there is room for an expansion of the industry here at home.
SCOTT RYAN
Ashleigh, I’ll start by saying that I think there is universal agreement that what we saw on Four Corners last week was horrific. I think Warren Truss had some good words to say about this to start with, which was that the people that would have felt most strongly about this would have been the producers who breed and nurture these very cattle. The truth is that while the government knew this episode of Four Corners was coming, it left it until last Monday to act. The truth is also that a lot of the places in Indonesia that see Australian beef don’t have refrigeration facilities, so the capacity for us to export processed meat is very limited.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
OK, we are going to look at quite a few other issues on this program. There’s plenty to get through today. We’re going to look at how the government is planning to treat unaccompanied minors who come to Australia by boat, and also the lack of support today in yet another poll for Labor’s carbon tax. Do stay with us.
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Welcome back. Today another poll has found the carbon tax is deeply unpopular. A Galaxy poll found 58% of people oppose a carbon tax, while 64% support an early election on the issue. Just 48% of people think the carbon tax would only have a very minor impact on the environment. Stephen Jones and Scott Ryan are with me on our panel of politicians this afternoon. Stephen, despite those rallies you saw over the weekend in support of the carbon tax, this is yet another poll – and it’s one in a long stream of them now – showing that when it comes to the carbon tax, Labor is losing this debate.
STEPHEN JONES
Look, when we get the full information of our package out there – and that’s only weeks away – I’m confident that people are going to see that what the Opposition has been running is a mindless scare campaign and that not only will our package and our plan to deal with pollution have a great impact on improving the future prospects for our kids and our environment, but it also won’t have the dramatic impact on jobs and households that the Opposition Leader had been running around banging on about. We’ve heard just today, eminent economists saying that all of this nonsense about job losses, increases in cost of living, it is nothing more than a scare campaign. It’s baseless. The real objective is for us to get out there and put a price on carbon so that we can start the job of turning around our economy and improving environmental outcomes.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
What if you’re wrong, and you’re on this show in three months’ time and the polls are still showing this is a deeply unpopular tax? Julia Gillard, of course, we’re reminded every day she said there’d be no carbon tax under a government she leads, and she said she wouldn’t implement this unless there was a community consensus. If there’s no clear community consensus, Labor’s still going to go ahead with this, aren’t you?
STEPHEN JONES
Ashleigh, we’re committed to taking on the reform agenda that we did go to the last election on. We did say that we wanted to ensure that we can put a price on carbon to do our part to reduce carbon emissions. We’re one of the highest per capita emitting nations in the world. So we’ve got an obligation, an obligation to do our bit. We know that reform’s tough. If you look at all the big reforms that Labor or the Liberals have taken on over the last two decades, they have all seen opposition. Whether it’s finance markets reform, whether it’s opening up our economy to the world, introducing the GST or reshaping our economy to make it less carbon intensive – they have all been met with a significant degree of opposition, but we know that when we get our package out there, we talk about the tax cuts and the benefits to households and the assistance to industry that people will come around to it.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Scott, as Stephen pointed out, we have seen a number of releases today from economists saying ‘yes, this is the right way to go’. Last week, we saw a wide range of people from different spectrums from former politicians to actresses, doctors, a group of people coming to Canberra last week to really put that point to the Opposition that this is something that needs to happen and basically calling on you to stop this scare campaign.
SCOTT RYAN
Well Ashleigh, it’s not a scare campaign. It’s a campaign based on holding the Prime Minister to the very words she uttered. Stephen’s being a little bit disingenuous there, talking about implied promises for a price on carbon. The Prime Minister said, “… there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.” What the poll just shows today is that people are rightly annoyed at the fact the Prime Minister has completely broken that promise, that this government lacks legitimacy, this policy lacks legitimacy. Stephen mentioned all the important reform agenda of the 80s and 90s. The key difference with all of those is that Australia was going to benefit from acting alone on all of those. What Stephen doesn’t want to mention – and what I’m sure he didn’t tell the 5,000 steelworkers at Port Kembla – is that this carbon tax, unilaterally introduced, is going to make their jobs and their household budgets harder than ever before. It’s going to make it harder for them to hold their jobs, because that steel plant is going to be less competitive than it would be without the carbon tax.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Still, though, the Coalition’s plan would see taxpayers having to spend billions of dollars on this direct action plan that you’ve put forward. Why are you putting it forward when we hear – almost on a daily basis – Coalition MPs saying that they don’t think that whatever Australia does is actually going to make a difference to climate change anyway?
SCOTT RYAN
The commitment to five percent reduction in our emissions is a bipartisan target. This is not a debate about climate change…
ASHLEIGH GILLON
One that you’re going to spend billions of dollars to achieve…
SCOTT RYAN
What we’re going to do is do it the same way we buy medicines, the same way we fund our health system, we will do it through the tax system. What Stephen doesn’t want to tell you is how many billions of dollars the carbon tax is going to collect, and that it’s going to be a redistribution mechanism. It’s going to be handed out to people that they determine are going to help their re-election. The poll today simply reflects people’s anger about being lied to. We don’t need another election because of the poll, we need another election because the government lied before the last election and its election – and this policy – lacks legitimacy.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
OK, well cabinet is apparently discussing this very issue today, and apparently hopes to have the details Stephen was talking about finalised in just a few weeks, so we don’t have too long to wait until we can actually assess the fine details. I do want to move on to another big problem area for the government, and that is the Malaysian asylum seeker deal. Today, the Labor MP Melissa Parke – she’s the Member for Fremantle – she’s spoken out against that deal, saying she can’t support it unless the UN High Commissioner for Refugees gives it his backing. Stephen, you’re the convenor of the Labor Party’s Left faction – would you be able to support this deal if it doesn’t get support from the UN?
STEPHEN JONES
What I said right throughout this process is that we are all committed to ensuring we’re able to stamp out the people trafficking trade that runs throughout our region. We’re all committed to doing that. We’re committed to getting a regional solution, and Malaysia is key to that, because they are a departure point for people smuggling within the region. But what we’re not willing to do is to compromise important human rights standards in the process. So I welcome the fact that overnight the UNHCR is giving their encouragement to the negotiations that are going on at the moment, because they understand getting an agreement with Malaysia is critical to getting a regional solution.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
But, are you with Melissa Parke on this? If, in the end – and we are, again, waiting for the details and the final document, the deal with Malaysia to be signed off on – if in the end the UN says, ‘we can’t back this, it doesn’t give us enough confidence that human rights will be upheld’ would you side with Melissa Parke on this and say, ‘well, you don’t have my support either’?
STEPHEN JONES
I’ve been around negotiations long enough to know that you don’t judge them by the rhetoric that the parties are putting in them in the process of negotiation. But what I will say is that the UNHCR endorsement of the process and endorsement of the outcome are very important to our caucus, because none of us wants to see us putting in place a process that doesn’t look after fundamental human rights. That will be something, and I know the minister, I’ve spoken to him personally on this issue, and I know he takes this matter very, very seriously.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
But you don’t think the caucus would let this deal go ahead if the UN didn’t back it?
STEPHEN JONES
I’ll say the same thing again – we are not going to judge the outcome by the rhetoric that is surrounding the negotiations. We’re going to judge the benefits of this agreement on the outcome, not the rhetoric that’s going into it at this point. So, too early to call – we’ll look at the outcome of the negotiations.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Nice avoidance of the question, there…
STEPHEN JONES
No, no, it’s a fundamental…
ASHLEIGH GILLON
But isn’t it fair enough to give your view on this, to say ‘no, if the UN…’
STEPHEN JONES
… and I’ve given my view on it. I’ve said that we all want to see stamping out of people trafficking within the region. We think Malaysia – and getting an agreement with Malaysia – is critical to that, because it’s a destination point for people trafficking within the region. So we have to engage with Malaysia, we can’t go it alone, and yes, we need to have the UNHCR seal of approval on it as well. So I don’t think I could be more clear than that.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Scott Ryan, would unaccompanied children be sent to Nauru under the Coalition’s plan?
SCOTT RYAN
Well, Ashleigh, if I could address a couple of things Stephen said there…
ASHLEIGH GILLON
Let’s just get that one out of the way first.
SCOTT RYAN
There were less children in detention, a lot less, when we left office…
ASHLEIGH GILLON
So just to clarify that, it is an important point, though Scott, because we’ve been having this debate about the fate of unaccompanied children. Would they be sent to Nauru under the Coalition’s plan?
SCOTT RYAN
Well Ashley, off the top of my head, I’m actually not familiar with the answer to that question. What I will…
STEPHEN JONES
How about pushing the boats back if they had kids on them…
SCOTT RYAN
Stephen, I’ll just try to finish. The Labor Party made this announcement before the deal was ready. The deal has been unravelling. You talk about human rights, yet we read today that the term ‘human rights’ cannot even be in this written agreement itself. So as this deal with Malaysia unravels, we find Chris Bowen saying, ‘no children will be sent’ then we find out on the weekend that it will be on a case-by-case basis. Today we find out the term ‘human rights’ cannot even be in the agreement. What you won’t say is what specific commitments you have got from Chris Bowen – given your outspoken history on this issue – to guarantee what we can guarantee as a Coalition. We will know exactly where asylum seekers are when they’re on Nauru. We can guarantee that there will be no corporal punishment. We can guarantee their human rights will be protected. You can’t do that with Malaysia.
ASHLEIGH GILLON
OK, we’re out of time now. We could keep debating this all afternoon if we had time, but we need to get back to the news. Stephen Jones and Scott Ryan, thank you both for joining us this afternoon.
(ENDS)