9 June 2009
DAFF09/121T
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Tony Burke
Sky News AM Agenda - Kieran Gilbert
E&OE
SUBJECTS: Cabinet reshuffle; industrial relations reforms; Coalition and pumping water from northern Australia; CPRS legislation; Senator Bob Brown; British PM Gordon Brown
KIERAN GILBERT: In the other matters of the day, Labor Cabinet Minister, Tony Burke, and former Liberal Minister, Bronwyn Bishop. Thank you both for joining us. Great to see you.
I want to ask you first, Tony, this new look team, is this a balance by the Prime Minister between factional paybacks and promotions on merit?
TONY BURKE: This is entirely on merit. And what you can see when you look at this reshuffle is the Prime Minister’s re-shaped the Ministry to meet the biggest priorities that we now face: that’s to support employment through investment in infrastructure. If you have a look at the promotion of people like Mark Arbib, Maxine McKew, Jason Clare: all into portfolios and areas or responsibility that are about supporting jobs. The Ministry is reshaped in that way today and that’s why the Prime Minister’s made those decisions.
KIERAN GILBERT: So factional politics haven’t played any part at all, you don’t think?
TONY BURKE: This is not a case of the old days where you’d get somebody who would have four supporters and they’d be able to demand a position on the frontbench. The Prime Minister changed those rules at about the second meeting of caucus after we came back and made it clear that it would always be the case now that the Leader would chose every single position. He said before the election that if we won that’s what would happen. And what you’re seeing now is the old days of the factions being in charge of those decisions are well and truly gone.
KIERAN GILBERT: Do you think people like Mark Dreyfus, the QC from Melbourne, the Member for Isaacs in Melbourne, will he be scratching his head as to what he’s done wrong to miss out on a promotion?
TONY BURKE: It’s not a case of having done anything wrong. To have a back bench with a large number of people capable of taking front bench positions is a very good problem to have. And it’s a problem, well and truly, that this Government has, and is pleased to have.
There’s nothing wrong with having depth. There’s nothing wrong with having a caucus which includes a large number of people who are capable of stepping up to the mark. And Mark Dreyfus is an example of that. There’s a number of very good, talented people who are currently serving on the back bench. And that’s a problem that is not quite as dominant on the other side of politics.
KIERAN GILBERT: Well, Bronwyn Bishop, to you. Do you think that Malcolm Turnbull will look to reshuffle his team to freshen up his team in the wake of the Rudd Government’s new appointments?
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well I don’t know whether he will or he won’t. But I think the important thing to say about the Government’s reshuffle is it’s a big win for the NSW right. It certainly is about factional politics. And the reason you haven’t seen any women who are promoted is the Labor Party doesn’t have any factional heavies who are women. So Greg Combet, a win for the unions, and NSW right did very well. So to try and deny it had anything to do with factionalism is just a nonsense.
TONY BURKE: That’s extraordinary to claim that Kate Ellis, in taking on the extra responsibility for childcare hasn’t enjoyed a promotion, that she’s kept all the responsibilities that she had and she’s also taken on extra responsibilities in the major election commitments we’ve made with respect to childcare. To claim that’s not a promotion, I think is an extraordinary statement.
BRONWYN BISHOP: I don’t think it’s relevant to say that because she got an extra bit of responsibility that that adds to the number of women on your front bench. It doesn’t. And the reason that none of them got promoted is none of them are heavy factional players. It was a factional deal.
KIERAN GILBERT: Ok, Bronwyn Bishop, I just want to ask you about your side of politics for a moment. Malcolm Turnbull, you said you don’t know whether he will, but should he freshen up the front bench and put some new faces and rework things to put his best foot forward off the back of the Rudd reshuffle?
BRONWYN BISHOP: Look, I think our front bench is doing ok. I think we’ve got some very tough arguments coming up that are going to have to face. We’ve got some issues that are very important, particularly on the ETS issue and I think we’ll be focusing on getting those things right rather than messing about with who’s who in the zoo.
TONY BURKE: Does that mean that you don’t see there being any need to have more women on the Liberal front bench, given that there’s only four?
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well I’d be always pleased to see women on the front bench but the point I was making before about women was that they never got a look in with your reshuffle because they’re not factional players.
TONY BURKE: Well given that we’re close to double your figures…
KIERAN GILBERT: Ok, Tony Burke, do you think that this has been a blessing in disguise in some ways, Joel Fitzgibbons’ resignation last week in the sense that it has been a catalyst for a reshuffle and a chance to rework things and put it on an election footing.
TONY BURKE: well there’s no doubt that the Prime Minister’s taken the opportunity that was then there. Nobody sought the circumstances which brought it about but once the situation had emerged the Prime Minister decided to take the opportunity and use it to reshape the Ministry.
KIERAN GILBERT: It seems that some people did seek the circumstances, certainly if you listen to the outgoing Minster he’s talking about Judases and so on, so some were obviously seeking it.
TONY BURKE: I don’t think he’s talking about anyone within the Ministry there.
KIERAN GILBERT: No, not within the Ministry but within Government ranks, anyway, if you want to carry on about the opportunity it provided.
TONY BURKE: Well the opportunity it’s provided is, as you say, at the next election the issue of supporting jobs is going to be critical. We’re supporting jobs through investment in infrastructure and the portfolio changes have been done to reshape the Government’s focus squarely on that agenda.
BRONWYN BISHOP: But the only problem with this line about supporting jobs is that the new IR changes are simply going to stop other people getting jobs. People who have been retrenched, it’s going to stop them getting back into the workforce simply because the IR laws that [Deputy Prime Minister] Julia Gillard brought in in times of prosperity are just not on in times of desperation for some people.
KIERAN GILBERT: Well on that issue Bronwyn Bishop, Julia Gillard apparently, according to the Financial Review today, journalists Steven Scott and Mark Scully are reporting that Julia Gillard is considering striking special deals with more industries as she has done with the restaurant sector. This is part of the Award modernisation process to give some special treatment to other sectors, would you welcome those noises from the Minister?
BRONWYN BISHOP: Absolutely. Two things to say about it. Firstly, it is proof that the changes they made to IR laws are penalising people and the second thing to say is that we all know Julia Gillard wants to be Prime Minister and to have a beat up on the her friends the trade unions may give her some credibility, she might think. So I think it’s a clever play by her, for being seen to be at odds with the unions but more importantly I think she’s starting to realise that the new IR laws are costing jobs and she’s going to have to ameliorate those policies.
KIERAN GILBERT: Tony Burke, is that what this is about, you’ve seen the report in the Financial Review about the potential special treatment for industries, I mean last week you saw Julia Gillard at the ACTU Conference being heckled. Is this about picking a fight that she actually wants to have?
TONY BURKE: What Julia Gillard’s been doing is carrying through on what we said we would do before the election and that’s what the arguments that happened at that conference…
BRONWYN BISHOP: She’s having to make exemptions.
TONY BURKE: There have been calls for there to be a further round of IR changes, beyond what we said we would do at the election and Julia Gillard’s been holding firm. The other area of the jobs package though, that the Opposition don’t want to go to, is the jobs that are being supported through the stimulus package. You’ve got there in the order of 200,000 jobs, the unemployment figures would be significantly different were it not for the underlying support for stimulus in the economy – stimulus which they voted against.
BRONWYN BISHOP: The trouble with claiming the support for jobs is that you can’t prove it either way, but you can prove that the new IR laws are in fact preventing people getting jobs. Small business, the biggest employer, is again nervous about having ‘go away’ money to pay. People are not taking on the money that is being paid by Government to give a subsidy to wages for six months because they feel, what happens after six months? We might be stuck. This is a real impediment to people getting back into the workforce.
KIERAN GILBERT: I just want to ask you, do you think it’s likely that we can expect these special deals done, beyond the restaurant sector.
TONY BURKE: Well the arguments that were there for the restaurant sector were explained as Julia Gillard put them for the particular challenges within that sector. I’m not in a position to answer as to whether that applies elsewhere.
But I do want to take issue with the comment that Bronwyn Bishop made that we can’t actually establish whether or not the stimulus packages are supporting jobs. You only have to look at the retail spending figures to see the real jobs in retail underlined by the stimulus payment. I don’t see how anyone can argue that we’re going to have something in the order 35,000 infrastructure projects going on around the country, in every electorate, in every part of the nation and to say that that doesn’t create jobs. I mean, who’s going to be building this infrastructure unless there are jobs being created? That is all possible because of the stimulus packages which the Coalition chose to vote against.
KIERAN GILBERT: Bronwyn Bishop, I’ll let you respond before I want to move on to something else.
BRONWYN BISHOP: I was just going to say that the important thing about the stimulus package is that it has to build something that is really for the future. Now if we started to look at a project that was, for instance, bringing water from the North of Queensland down to the Darling River which would then give prosperity down into that food bowl which would start to address some of the real problems for our future then you would have something to really be proud of. But the Government chose not to do that and the $43 billion, which was the splurge, is something that will have a very short-term outcome.
TONY BURKE: Kieran, I know you want to move on but we’ve just heard something for the first time from the Coalition which I have never heard before: the Coalition seriously arguing that it makes economic sense to pump water from the north of Australia down into the Darling.
If that is what the Coalition is now putting forward, the economic argument that they’re arguing is extraordinary. We’re talking about one of the heaviest commodities; completely contingent on fuel prices: if that is what the Coalition’s position is now then we’ve just seen a marked change in their position on water.
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well I’m just telling you that there is a very good plan out there with work that has been done by many people that brings it in at a very affordable rate.
TONY BURKE: Would your party support it?
BRONWYN BISHOP: It’s a point of view that I’m putting forward and I will go on arguing for it because I think it is really important that we do it. If you look at the scheme that is being developed by people who have worked in America, where it has worked, and you can look at solar power being used at the pump it is a very viable scheme and would cost in today’s terms about the same as the Snowy Mountain Scheme would have cost all those years ago.
KIERAN GILBERT: Let’s wrap that up there, we’re going to take a short break. After the break we’re going to move on to a few other discussions as well as an enormous debt that the Green’s Leader, Bob Brown is facing - a legal bill that could threaten his seat in the upper house. Stay with us.
Welcome back to AM Agenda, and with me on the program this morning is the former Liberal Minister, Bronwyn Bishop and the Labor Cabinet Minister, Tony Burke. I want to ask you, Tony, about the reshuffle again just quickly. Greg Combet has been told by John Faulkner and the Prime Minister that his top priority in his new portfolio is going to be defence, not climate change. Does this mean that the Government has relegated his role in the ETS, that you have basically given up on the ETS and trying to get that through?
TONY BURKE: That’s certainly not the case, the Government is continuing to pursue that and when the Parliament returns next week that’s straight to the front of the agenda.
KIERAN GILBERT: Is it a double dissolution trigger?
TONY BURKE: No, there’s tremendous work to be done in defence and I don’t think there’s any argument with that. We’re at the point now of moving down the implementation phase of the White Paper. We’ve got two new Ministers and it’s natural that that’s going to require a very high level of priority. But if issues were as you describe them then climate change wouldn’t be part of his portfolio at all and it is.
KIERAN GILBERT: Ok, Bronwyn Bishop - some enormous challenges for you, just quickly, on the ETS as we go into that vote next year. It doesn’t look like the Coalition is going to budge in pushing for a delay. In the longer term, what would be your advice to Malcolm Turnbull as to how to unify what is a divided Coalition on this issue of emissions trading.
BRONWYN BISHOP: Right now, we are in fact quite united in opposing the ETS legislation because it is bad, flawed legislation which is incapable of being redeemed and we will vote against it. What really disappointed me was that for the first time we were actually able to start to debate this issue and yet the Government guillotined it to the extent that people who spoke on the 2nd reading got ten minutes then the Minister chopped it off at 10:10 one evening and I got to have five minutes in the consideration of detail. That is not my idea of a fair dinkum debate and I think this one needs a long, good, hard debate. But it’s in the Senate now and we will vote against it.
KIERAN GILBERT: Tony Burke, if the Government is blocking debate and not allowing Members substantial say is it really the way to try to foster a bit of support for this Bill if you really do want to get it through?
TONY BURKE: Well I think the time that Bronwyn just gave as to when the debate concluded gives an indication that debate certainly was being allowed, it was being fostered. It was important that we got the Bill across to the Senate and that’s why the debate within the House of Representatives had to stop. You can’t continue to debate a bill in the House of Representatives when it is before the Senate, so that’s the reason that happened.
BRONWYN BISHOP: But it didn’t need to go…
TONY BURKE: If you have a problem with the gag, where were you last term. I mean, bills were being gagged routinely in the previous term whether or not they were required in the Senate or not. Just because the previous Government stopped that…
BRONWYN BISHOP: You know and I know…
TONY BURKE: I never got to speak on WorkChoices!
BRONWYN BISHOP: You know and I know that this was a piece of the most controversial pieces of legislation we have seen.
TONY BURKE: And WorkChoices wasn’t?
BRONWYN BISHOP: And I get five minutes to debate it?
TONY BURKE: I got no time on WorkChoices.
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well, WorkChoices had been on the agenda for a long long time, we’d had several charges of it, this is a one-off piece that is going to penalise a hell of a lot of Australians if it got through.
TONY BURKE: WorkChoices came on to the agenda after the election, nothing was said about it beforehand.
BRONWYN BISHOP: I was due to speak at 11 o’clock, I was perfectly happy to speak at 11 o’clock but ten minutes I would have got instead of five. Whoopdedoo. What we need is honest-to-God debate and the Lower House is just as important as the Senate. Even though you’ve got the numbers.
KIERAN GILBERT: Well let’s look at an issue facing someone in the Upper House now. The Greens Leader, Bob Brown, he’s facing an enormous legal bill, $240,000 to be paid by the end of the month. Forestry Tasmania demanding the money to be paid back. This goes back to a legal challenge that Bob Brown put in place in 2006. He took Forestry Tasmania to court to stop them logging in an area north of Hobart to protect the swift parrot, wedge-tailed eagle, as well as a beetle of some sort as well. Let’s hear what Bob Brown had to say yesterday about the nature of the Bill that he faces.
BOB BROWN: They might apply the pressure and they might think that the effect of an order of this variety will have us back-off. Not now, as I say, not ever. The real pressure that I feel is every time I fly to Canberra and look down on the rapid destruction of the living fabric of Tasmania, the logging, the firebombing, the erosion of the wildlife habitat of this magnificent island.
KIERAN GILBERT: Tony, is it appropriate for a state-owned entity, which Forestry Tasmania is, to be threatening Bob Brown with bankruptcy? In this letter that they sent to him, they know what the outcome of bankruptcy would be – he can’t stay in the Senate. Bankrupts aren’t allowed to stay in the Parliament.
TONY BURKE: Well, you’ve got a situation where a legal case has been run and those legal proceedings, including costs, are still being worked through. I do think it’s fair to say, across the Parliament, that while people have very different ideas as to the particular issues that Bob Brown’s pushed from time-to-time, there is a universal view that people hope that we don’t end up with his career concluding in this particular way. We’ve got a way to go before we know whether that happens or not.
KIERAN GILBERT: It would be a shame, wouldn’t it Bronwyn Bishop, if Bob Brown had to leave the Senate because he was made bankrupt by these people?
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well there are two things to say. Firstly, I find it very strange that the Greens have come out and said quite deliberately that Bob Brown took this action himself, without their backing and therefore it’s not their problem. Secondly, that Bob Brown in doing so had not put something in place by way of a fund to fight the legal battle he wished to engage in. Now I have no doubt that he’ll probably find some supporters around the place to come in and assist him paying the bills. But it really was a bit of hubris to simply say that I took on this great fight and now I’m facing this plight when he would have known that from the beginning. So, I think he really should have listened to his party in the first place.
TONY BURKE: It may well be, as you say, that supporters are found.
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well supporters may be, but it doesn’t seem to be his party which is a bit odd.
KIERAN GILBERT: Ok, well lets turn now from one Brown to another Brown in trouble. Gordon Brown – he has survived a critical meeting of Labor members though in London. Jane Kennedy though, his Environment Minister, was the latest Minister to quit overnight and took a good old decent spray at the Prime Minister on the way out. Let’s hear to what she had to say.
JANE KENNEDY: I just don’t think that the style of government that he has brought to Downing St, which is the briefing against individuals, the smear campaigns that are orchestrated from his office is a style of politics that I want to be associated with. I don’t want to see it in the Labor party, I resent it bitterly when I see it in other parties.
KIERAN GILBERT: The latest in a string of ministers to go. Tony, is there any chance that Gordon Brown can survive? I mean, he survived this meeting of Labor party backbenchers but nearly a dozen Ministers resigning over the last week or so.
TONY BURKE: As a Government, similar I guess to the previous government, we don’t comment on the actual fortunes of governments overseas. Certainly, when we’ve dealt with Gordon Brown, including the role he played at the G20, he’s played a very important, constructive role. No doubt there are challenges he’s currently facing, as you’ve just reported there. But the Australian relationship with the UK Government remains very good and governments, when they have been in for a long time, do face new sorts of challenges and that certainly appears to be what’s happening there.
KIERAN GILBERT: Bronwyn, it looks like the Tories, you know, a drover’s dog would win the next election, as they say in the classics.
BRONWYN BISHOP: I think first I’d like to say I understand why Tony doesn’t want to comment on the Labor Party in Great Britain because they’ve modelled themselves very much on that Labor Party model. Like all Labor governments they always end in tears. But unfortunately so do the people. So I think the sooner the election is brought on in Britain and they get a change in Government, the better, because obviously it is a terrible, terrible mess.
KIERAN GILBERT: The Tories would have to be planning their Government strategies and so on, David Cameron would have to be considered a ‘lay down misere’, wouldn’t he? To win the next election.
BRONWYN BISHOP: Well, I would say it’s looking pretty well like. They certainly look like they’re going to win. But the important thing to say is this, that Minister who just resigned was complaining about spin and the spin used against people. I support…poor old Joel Fitzgibbon probably feels like he was on the receiving end of some of that. But spin was the characteristic of Blair and of Brown and spin is the characteristic of Rudd here in Australia. As I say Labor Governments always end in tears.
KIERAN GILBERT: Ok, former Liberal Minister Bronwyn Bishop and Labor Cabinet Minister Tony Burke, great to see you both this morning on AM Agenda, thanks for your time.
TONY BURKE: Good to be with you Kieran.