Transcript of
Senator Mitch Fifield
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary
for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector
Sky News AM Agenda
Kieran Gilbert & Mark Dreyfus QC MP
7 September 2009
8.30 am
E & OE
SUBJECTS: unmanned aerial vehicles, stimulus, Senator Ryan, whistle blowing
KIERAN GILBERT:
Good morning and welcome to AM Agenda. Parliament returns today with the debate over the Government’s economic stimulus set to dominate. Also this morning, Sky News has been reporting a major new capability for Australia’s troops in Afghanistan. Joining me on AM Agenda to discuss these and the other matters of the day, Liberal frontbencher Mitch Fifield and Labor MP Mark Dreyfus. Gentlemen, good morning to you both.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Kieran.
MARK DREYFUS:
Morning Kieran.
GILBERT:
Mark first to you, we, on Sky News we’ve been reporting, as I say, this new capability, an unmanned aerial vehicle in Afghanistan, the Australian military acquiring the capability to provide greater surveillance for the troops. Any advance, any boost like this would have to be welcome, you would have thought.
DREYFUS:
Well it would be welcome and I don’t really feel in a position to comment much more on that Kieran because it’s a matter for the Defence Minister.
GILBERT:
And the Government is yet to make the formal announcement Mitch, but what do you make of the story more broadly? I mean obviously, the minister just last month said that the Taliban remains a resilient mobile force. Anything like this I suppose has got to be a boost for those on the ground.
FIFIELD:
Indeed, but it is instructive to look at the background of the UAV. About a year ago when Joel Fitzgibbon was Defence Minister, he announced the cancellation of the UAV project, something which had been initiated by the former Government. It was one of Greg Combet’s first clean up jobs. Greg Combet had the responsibility of getting to the bottom of the maladministration of that project by this Government. So this Government actually cancelled the UAV project. When the Defence Whitepaper came out there was a passing mention of the UAV, so it’s good to see the UAV is back on the agenda. It is something we’ve always thought should be part of the ADF capability, and I hope that this Government can get it right.
GILBERT:
Alright. Well let’s look at the political debate right now. The economic stimulus is going to be, will dominate throughout the week, you would have thought, Mark. The Coalition says Australia should be looking at its own circumstances not dictated by the circumstances of other countries around the world, specifically referring to the G20 and the fact that Wayne Swan says there is an international consensus, Malcolm Turnbull says Australia should be making decisions fit for its own economic circumstances.
DREYFUS:
Kieran there is an international consensus. We’ve heard from the IMF, from the OECD, we’ve heard from just about every credible economist in the world, we’ve had governments around the world Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and a whole range of other world leaders all saying that economic stimulus is the right thing to do at the present time. And against that, really, we’ve got Malcolm Turnbull out on his own. I’d say Kieran this is just another example of misjudgement, bad judgement being shown by the Leader of the Opposition. If we had listened to Malcolm Turnbull earlier in the year there would have been no stimulus at all, and that would have led to, almost certainly Australia being in recession, it would have led to higher unemployment, and that’s not what we want, we want to be supporting jobs, not having people thrown onto the dole.
GILBERT:
But given the economy is holding up as well as it is, and given it looks like the RBA’s next move is going to be up with interest rates, isn’t it now a time for the Government to be considering winding back the stimulus, so that, as the Treasurer says, it has been in the past, that monetary and fiscal policy are working in tandem.
DREYFUS:
I think it is important to note Kieran that the economic stimulus package has, built into-it, it’s a, I’ll start that again. It is a temporary program. It is a temporary and targeted program. And it has built into it a tapering affect, in other words it ends over time. It’s an emergency measure, but over time it’s going to come to and end. We’ve already seen the first part, the cash payments, they’ve had their immediate affect and have helped keep up retail sales and we’ve got the next part, and its biggest impact is in the September quarter which is the construction program that is coming through. Over the course of the rest of 2009 and into 2010 we’re going to see a tapering of the stimulus package. So that’s built in. But no credible person is saying that now is the time to bring the stimulus package to an end.
GILBERT:
Well let’s just recap a little bit of what the Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull had to say yesterday, then I’ll come back to get Mitch’s comments on it.
OPPOSITION LEADER MALCOLM TURNBULL:
The situation in other economies is completely different from Australia. I mean, you know, you’ve got to tailor your economic response to the circumstances. In the United States unemployment is nearly twice as high as it is in Australia and you can say the same thing about a lot of European economies. I mean the fact is we have a stronger economy in Australia because we started off in a stronger position, thanks to the good economic management under the Coalition.
GILBERT:
Mitch Fifield, Malcolm Turnbull there yesterday on the Nine network, but I suppose the point that Mark makes and has been articulated by Wayne Swan in London that all of the G20 Finance Ministers agree that now is not the time to be withdrawing stimulus, that they need to lock in a global recovery first. Why are you right, why is Malcolm Turnbull right?
FIFIELD:
Well this Government is determined to throw good money after bad. It’s important that any stimulus program is appropriate for the economic circumstances in Australia. Now we started this situation in a much stronger position than any comparable nation. We had no net government debt. We had a surplus handed across from the previous Government. Our economy was growing much more strongly than many comparable nations. So our starting point was very, very different, and therefore that required that the Australian stimulus package was crafted for those circumstances. Now we’ve never argued there shouldn’t be a stimulus package. What we argued is that it should be much smaller, and much better targeted. That it should be primarily focused on helping build the productive capacity of the nation. That’s what we argued. Now, this Government runs the very real risk of overshooting the stimulus package. Sure, Australia dodged a bullet…
GILBERT:
And dodged it well, the fastest growing economy in the advanced world and in fact the only one to register positive growth over the last year.
FIFIELD:
That’s right but we didn’t dodge the bullet because of this Government’s stimulus package.
GILBERT:
Not at all?
FIFIELD:
We dodged it because we had a better starting point. We dodged it because of trade with China. We dodged it because of the devaluation of the Australian dollar. We dodged it because we had a better starting position. And because we had world class financial regulation. Now it’s important to appreciate the limits of fiscal stimulus…
GILBERT:
But the stimulus in the June quarter had household spending up 0.8%. Household spending was up 0.8%. That was a direct result of the cash payment.
FIFIELD:
Fiscal stimulus can only make a difference at the margins. If Australia was going to head towards a deep and prolonged recession, no amount of stimulus would stop that. And if Australia is to come out, as it looks like it will, without a sustained recession, that’s not because of the stimulus spending, it’s because of a range of other factors.
GILBERT:
Alright, well I just want to play a little bit, I’ll come back to you Mark in one moment, but the Greens leader Bob Brown is calling for the Treasury Secretary Ken Henry to be brought back before a Senate committee to explain why the stimulus needs to stay in place. Let’s hear what Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday on this.
GREENS LEADER BOB BROWN:
The economic situation has, and is changing, hopefully changing for the better. So I will be moving in the next week or two to get Ken Henry back before the Senate Economics committee so that we can get a reassessment of Australia’s position in the recession, how the global economy is going and whether we do need to continue full on with the roll out of the $41 billion spending.
GILBERT:
Bob Brown there on the Ten network. Mark Dreyfus what’s wrong with bringing the Treasury Secretary back, it makes sense, doesn’t it?
DREYFUS:
It’s a matter for the Senate, the way in which, and perhaps Mitch is better placed to comment on this for me, but it is a matter for the Senate. And if the Senate wants to have an inquiry, if the Senate wants to call people before it. I want to pick up on something Mitch said before which is…
GILBERT:
Do you think it’s a good idea?
DREYFUS:
It’s really a matter for the Senate. The Senate is free to inquire of senior public servants, indeed any public servant, about the affairs of government. And I’m more interested in what Mitch said before, which was, I take this as an acceptance by him, that the stimulus was a good idea but like the Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, Mitch is not saying which parts of the stimulus shouldn’t have been implemented. He’s not saying…
FIFIELD:
Very happy to. Very happy to. Pink batts. Bike paths. The quantum of the spending on schools is excessive, it’s being rorted. How’s that for a start?
DREYFUS:
I would say that a smaller stimulus would have meant that Australia would by now have been in recession. A smaller stimulus would mean that we would have had people thrown on the dole queue. And the Liberals appear to think that unemployment is cost-free to the government. Of course it is not. People thrown on the dole queues means that those people will be on Newstart, on unemployment benefits, which is equally a cost.
GILBERT:
Well what about the integrity of the spend? They’ve been reports in the last few months, first of all about the Education program, that some schools are receiving buildings they don’t want. And now reports, and the opposition is obviously going to target the insulation program this week, suggesting reports in that program as well. Has the speed made the quality more vulnerable?
DREYFUS:
It’s not possible to do a stimulus package on this scale and this speed, without, as the Prime Minister’s put it, a few bumps in the road. But I don’t think that is in any sense a reason for abandoning the program.
FIFIELD:
There are a lot of bumps.
DREYFUS:
Which is abandoning stimulus, which is what the Liberals seem to want to do. It’s a bit like saying Kieran, that the Bushfire reconstruction program in Victoria, which is immensely important to the affected communities by those, communities affected by those fires, should be brought to an end because a few of the houses are late. That’s not the way we approach social policy, that’s not the way we approach economic policy in this country. We look at the big picture objectives, the objective here was to restore confidence in the Australian economy, to support jobs, to avoid Australia going into recession, and that’s what we’ve done. That’s what the effect has been of this economic stimulus package.
GILBERT:
In terms of the suggestions, claims at the weekend of bias, what’s your response to that? Scott Ryan, the Liberal Senator has done some analysis of the spending for example in the Science and Language Centre program and it shows that Labor seats have benefited far more than Coalition seats.
DREYFUS:
Well I could make the point that there are more Labor seats but I could also make the point that every single primary school everywhere in the country has received construction funds. And nobody can suggest that there is any selectivity in that.
GILBERT:
That’s true, and there are more seats.
FIFIELD:
The analysis which Senator Ryan has done is very specific. It also looks at marginal Labor held seats. And if you look at marginal Labor held seats and the program that you refer to Kieran, those seats, on average, receive a million dollars more than other seats. So put aside Mark’s argument about the obvious fact that Labor have more seats, therefore in total it mightn’t be surprising that Labor seats receive more money, but when you look specifically at marginal Labor held seats they receive on average, a million dollars more than other seats. Now that is a rort, it’s something I hope the auditor-general looks at.
DREYFUS:
Well it might be that the Liberal Party focused on the marginality of seats, Kieran, but this program, the Secondary Schools program, the one that you mentioned was directed at need. And if you look at the schools that have received assistance with the Science Labs or the Language Labs, you’ll find that they are the neediest schools in Australia, either on the basis of the socio-economic background of the community for those schools or the actual or existing infrastructure in those schools.
FIFIELD:
But money has been pulled out of that program and pushed towards primary schools, who weren’t going to make the cut. So it’s not entirely on the basis of need, because money is being pulled from that program.
DREYFUS:
And I say Kieran there is no cut for Primary Schools. Every single school on the basis of size, the number of students in the school, receives funding under the Building the Education Revolution program.
GILBERT:
Just one final issue before I let you go. I want to ask you about the front page of The Australian newspaper today, that a whistle blower from Customs went to the former Shadow Minister Anthony Albanese’s office, now the Manager of Government Business in the House of Representatives, gave him some information about security problems at Sydney airport, two months before that information The Australian newspaper. What do you make of this story Mark Dreyfus, as you read it this morning?
DREYFUS:
Well I read the story in The Australian Kieran, I don’t know anything about the actual circumstances of whether or not Alan Kessing went to Anthony Albanese’s office, Anthony Albanese then being in Opposition. But what I can say about this story is that it is a tremendous demonstration of the need for a scheme of whistleblower protection for the Commonwealth Public Sector. Our Government came to office committed to introducing such a scheme, the Howard Government did nothing over its eleven and a half years in Government…
GILBERT:
To protect people like Alan Kessing?
DREYFUS:
To protect people like Alan Kessing. The committee that I chair, the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee produced a report at the end of February this year, the Government has committed to enacting legislation based on the report, and I am looking forward to that legislation being introduced to Parliament either very late this year or early next year.
GILBERT:
This man admits freely to leaking the information to Anthony Albanese, but denies leaking it to The Australian newspaper. What do you make of that element to this story?
DREYFUS:
Well I say again that the story itself, because there were allegations there of mal-administration in an important part air traffic safety of the Australian Public Sector, the story demonstrates the need for a comprehensive scheme for whistleblower protection.
GILBERT:
Ok. Any thoughts?
FIFIELD:
Well it beggars belief that Anthony Albanese can not remember if Mr Kessing visited his office and spoke to his staff. This is an issue which was on the front page of the papers, day after day after day. It was a major story. And Mr Albanese seriously expects us to believe that he can’t recall Mr Kessing visiting his office? Well I don’t buy that. But we’ve got to look at this in the context of Labor’s commitment in Opposition to greater openness and transparency in Government, particularly with FOI and whistleblower legislation. On the FOI front, FOIs, they’re taking longer, they’re more expensive and you’re less likely to get the information you’re after. We’re still waiting for the Government to progress with the exposure draft which they have released. And in relation to whistleblower legislation, this Government promised to do something about it. They’ve been in office for over a year, they are yet to draft legislation. They’re yet to do anything practical to enhance openness or transparency. And they’ve been all talk to date.
DREYFUS:
And I will gratefully accept that as a statement of support by the Liberal Party for whistleblower protection legislation when it is introduced to the Parliament. On FOI, Kieran, the Government has already acted to abolish conclusive certificates which is passed through the Senate, and that legislation is coming to the House either this week or next. And as Mitch has quite correctly conceded, Senator Faulkner as Special Minister of State has introduced, has published a very detailed exposure draft of the most major reform to FOI since it was introduced. And there’s a whole range of other things in the transparency area that this Government has done.
GILBERT:
Gentlemen, appreciate your time, a big week ahead. Thank you very much.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Kieran.
DREYFUS:
Thank you Kieran.
ENDS