Topics: Clive Palmer, Sunday penalty rates, the Prime Minister’s Indonesia visit and Climate Change
E&OE…
Kieran Gilbert
This is AM Agenda, thanks for your company. With me now, Labor frontbencher Matt Thistlethwaite and Liberal frontbencher Scott Ryan. Gentlemen, good morning to you both. I want to look at this row, the latest row between the Government and Clive Palmer. He made some comments last night saying that the Paid Parental Leave Scheme of the Government is basically to, in part; benefit the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. I spoke to the Foreign Minister this morning about this; this is what Julie Bishop had to say.
(Footage of Julie Bishop & Clive Palmer)
Gilbert
Clive Palmer unrepentant, Senator Ryan.
Scott Ryan
Well the comments he made yesterday were quite frankly just grubby. He should be repentant, he should say sorry. There’s a place for political debate in this parliament. He said this morning at the front of Parliament that there is a place for policy debate. What he said had nothing to do with that and he should apologise.
Gilbert
Matt, your thoughts on this story this morning and Clive Palmer’s behaviour?
Matt Thistlethwaite
They’re inappropriate comments, Kieran. I don’t think it’s appropriate for MPs in the parliament under privilege to be attacking other MPs’ staffers. Staffers are really like our families, they’re not the elected ones who are here doing the job. They’re here as ordinary workers and they don’t deserve to be attacked in the parliament. So they’re inappropriate comments in my view.
Gilbert
The issue is that you’ve got to deal with Clive Palmer, you colleagues in the Senate. It’s going to be an eventful few months, isn’t it? Given the acrimony that’s there between both sides, quite clearly.
Ryan
Well, we’ll deal with the crossbenchers in the Senate with respect. They got elected, they have a position in the Senate and the Prime Minister’s made it clear that we will deal with them respectfully. We’re not going to be making comments like that. I don’t think anyone in Parliament will be making comments like that, and I just think they’re inappropriate. And as Matt said, our staff work pretty long hours here, they don’t come here to be in the public light, and they don’t deserve to be publicly attacked. I don’t think anyone thinks those comments were appropriate and Clive could show he’s a decent person I think by saying ‘I went too far’ and saying ‘sorry’.
Gilbert
Is the Government nervous though about the prospect of having Clive Palmer, and his four senators essentially, in the Senate holding the fate of your agenda in their hands?
Ryan
Governments have long dealt with crossbenchers in the Senate. It’s been a rarity for a government to have a majority in the Senate. ..
Gilbert
There’s a lot of personal animosity that Palmer holds towards elements of the Liberal Party, not Malcolm Turnbull obviously…
Ryan
I’m not going to make comments on Clive personal, I don’t know him. What the Prime Minister’s made clear and what our Senate Leader Eric Abtez made clear is that we’ll talk to the crossbenchers, we’ll listen to their concerns, but we do expect the Government will be able to get its Budget through. These are necessary decisions and we can prosecute that case with the public and the crossbenchers.
Thistlethwaite
That’s the normal course of events usually in the Senate. But I think what Clive should have done is stuck to the issue of the actual policy. There’s no need to attack people personally. This is a pretty dud Budget and I think the Australian public know that. If he had of stuck to the issue, on Paid Parental Leave and the wider Budget, I think you’ll win the support of the majority of Australians and that’s the way Labor’s going to approach this. It’s purely about the issue and its effects on Australians and we’ll negotiate and work to try and stop many of these elements in the Senate.
Gilbert
I want to ask you about a story on the front of the Australian now; ‘Business push on Sunday penalties’. Sid Maher reports that major business groups will embark on a community and industrial campaign to cut Sunday penalty rates across a range of sectors, arguing that it will increase consumer access to weekend trading and provide more youth employment. What’s your response to this campaign led by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry?
Ryan
Our response to this campaign is that this is a matter for the Fair Work Commission. That’s the policy we took to the last election, that’s the policy we’re committed to, and I note that the campaign that is being put forward is actually about appealing to the Fair Work Commission as awards get reviewed. Recently there was a Fair Work Commission that did concede that penalty rates have an impact on employment and that they have that power to make awards and penalty rates for weekend work, for late night work and for public holidays. So this is entirely consistent with the Government’s policy, which is that the independent umpire makes these decisions and people put their claims and their arguments to that independent umpire.
Gilbert
If you’ve got situations, Matt Thistlethwaite, where small businesses can’t open on a Sunday; say in outer suburban areas, those on the fringe of our capital cities because of penalty rate which are uniform. Should we have some flexibility, some greater flexibility, in that area to give people in their areas a chance to work?
Thistlethwaite
Where there is flexibility in the system, Kieran. Individual businesses can negotiate individual agreements with employees, with groups of employees, so long as they don’t go below the award base level. I used to represent many low-paid workers who used to rely on penalty rates in a previous role and there are certain characteristics of low paid workers. They don’t have annual holidays, they struggle to find money to fix the car when it breaks down, they get by from week to week and they rely on penalty rates to get by. And I don’t think we need to be talking about cutting these people’s wages, which is effectively what will happen particularly in an environment such as Sydney where cost of living pressures are huge.
Gilbert
Do you accept that it’s a Fair Work Commission decision, that it’s at arms-length of the Government and they’re taking an entirely reasonable approach on it?
Thistlethwaite
I do accept that and I used to represent those low- paid workers in those Fair Work Commission hearings, and the point that we would make constantly is that there’s no economic evidence that cutting low wage workers’ penalty rates will result in increasing employment. In fact, the opposite is generally the case because if low-paid workers have less money in their pocket, it means that don’t have the spending capacity in the wider economy. And that has an effect on aggregate demand and ultimately affects jobs. So there’s no evidence, no economical, credible evidence that represents the fact that if you cut low-paid workers’ penalty rates that you’ll increase employment.
Ryan
The Fair Work Commission recently conceded that the cost of labour can have an effect on the demand for labour. I know of small businesses from my work in my previous portfolio which could not afford to employ people on Sundays, so Mum and Dad took turns at working every weekend because they couldn’t. So the issue with penalty rates is that it is quite rightly a matter for the Commission, but that the Commission is considering the impact on the cost of labour and the demand for labour. As it should, because for so many people, particularly for those seeking their first job, these early hospitality rates, these retail jobs that are often on weekends – like they were for me when I pushed trolleys around a Safeway – they’re often your first footstep into the labour market and that’s why they’re so important.
Gilbert
Alright, that debate continues obviously as the Chamber of Commerce and Industry try and push ahead with their case. I want to ask you now, to turn your attention to foreign policy. The Prime Minister departs tomorrow for a very important trip on a number of different levels. One, President Yudhoyono has talks with him tomorrow, and from what the Foreign Minister told me this morning, the Government’s hopeful of securing a code of conduct in the next month or so. Well before the next president is in place in Indonesia, but obviously it’s a challenging time in that relationship, Scott Ryan, after the last visit had to be postponed.
Ryan
Well Indonesia is a critical relationship for Australia; it always has been and will continue to be. And the Prime Minister has made clear, and I think his actions display this, that he is committed to making the best possible relationship with Indonesia a core part of our foreign policy, and so this is a meeting that has been rescheduled because of Budget commitments early last month.
Gilbert
Matt Thistlethwaite, it’s a good isn’t it that the Prime Minister has go these one on one talks tomorrow with President Yudhoyono and that the Indonesians want to get this secured before the next president is sworn in? That is the code of conduct to normalise relations again and that’s what, as I say, the Foreign Minister told us this morning that she is confident it will happen before the presidential election.
Thistlethwaite
Well it’s very important, Kieran, that Australia re-establish formal relations with Indonesia. As Scott said, it’s a very important trading partner; it’s a very important neighbour. The relationship has soured. The re-establishment of those relations has been stalled, I think, because of the Government’s approach to asylum seeker policy. But I am pleased to see that the Prime Minister is going there, it’s a priority that needs to be dealt with and we need to re-establish relations with one of our closest and most important neighbours.
Gilbert
Then on to Washington next week after Europe and the D Day commemoration, but Washington DC, the Prime Minister’s first talks at the White House with President Obama. The two men have a very different world view, do you accept that?
Ryan
Look, I think that what’s common between Australian leaders and the leaders of the United States; they have much more in common than they do in their differences.
Gilbert
That’s true isn’t it, Matt?
Thistlethwaite
Oh I’d love to be a fly on the wall when carbon pricing, when action on climate change, is being discussed in the oval office. I think we’ve seen that the rest of the world are led by the United States in taking concerted action against climate change, they’ve read the science appropriately. It’s a shame to see Australia moving away from that and going in the opposite direction. I think that sends the complete wrong signal to Asia, and in particular to the pacific, where the impacts of climate change aren’t a looming threat, they’re a present danger.
Gilbert
Do you accept that after years of saying ‘we’ve got to wait for the rest of the world’, well actually the rest of the world is moving now, particularly with this big announcement overnight? A centrepiece of the Obama climate strategy.
Ryan
Well let’s just put this in context. The President of the United States is using his executive power to regulate emissions solely from power plants. It doesn’t have legislative support from the Congress of the United States; it’s an executive action…
Gilbert
But they still have to do it.
Ryan
Yeah, that’s right. But it only regulates power plants…
Gilbert
That’s 40% of the economy.
Ryan
But it’s nothing like Labor proposed here, and put in place with the Greens, which was an economy-wide carbon tax that increased costs without reducing emissions. What Matt doesn’t tell you is that under Labor’s plans emissions continued to increase along with the cost of living you talked about earlier, and our plan actually talks about cleaning up power plants. The other aspect of this is that in America reductions in emissions have primarily come from the use of a different fossil fuel, that is natural gas through shale gas. Under Labor’s plans for Australia they hit every fossil fuel with increases in costs, whereas we want to use targeted measures through our Direct Action Plan to reduce the emissions.
Gilbert
We’ve got to go. Scott Ryan, Matt Thistlethwaite, thanks gents.
(Ends)