Transcript of
Senator Mitch Fifield
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary
for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector
Sky News AM Agenda
Ashleigh Gillon and Senator the Hon Nick Sherry
15 February 2010
8:45am
E & OE
Subjects: Peter Garrett, Asylum seekers, health, computers in schools, Pauline Hanson
ASHLEIGH GILLON:
Welcome back to AM Agenda, joining me this morning, the Assistant Treasurer Senator Nick Sherry. Good morning.
NICK SHERRY:
Morning Ashleigh, morning Mitch and good morning to your viewers.
GILLON:
Well you’ve just stolen my next line because Mitch Fifield, the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield is in Melbourne. Good morning to you.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Ashleigh. Good morning Nick.
GILLON:
I want to start on the insulation issue. Peter Garrett of course is still under pressure over his handling of the Government’s insulation program, now we’ve learnt the company that employed Matthew Fuller, who was the first person to die installing that insulation, that company is still operating. Yet another company whose work lead to a house fire was immediately struck off. Nick Sherry is that a decision that the Government should reassess?
SHERRY:
Well I understand that after the first death there was a re-examination of the process that occurred. And subsequent deaths, those companies have been suspended. The first company the old rules applied but their status is currently under examination under the old rules.
GILLON:
Right, so you think that as of these new regulations that that company will have to stop operating?
SHERRY:
Well that would depend on the facts and the circumstances once the examination is completed.
GILLON:
Electricians are meeting in Canberra today to discuss this scheme, but I understand that Peter Garrett won’t be there. He is out of Canberra launching an unrelated program. Isn’t the insulation issue more important at the moment?
SHERRY:
Well this is a meeting of technical officials that will discuss all of the detail and ultimately they will make recommendations to Peter Garrett.
GILLON:
So shouldn’t he be at that meeting though? This is a top issue for Minister Garrett at the moment…
SHERRY:
Well I as a Minister…well there are always important issues for ministers, but there are always lots of technical meetings taking place. I as a Minister don’t attend all the technical meetings on tax law, despite some tax law being very, very important. You then receive advice and make decisions on that advice.
GILLON:
Mitch Fifield can Peter Garrett really be expected to personally be held responsible for those four deaths? Isn’t there a line to ministerial responsibility? Do you think some of your colleagues may have stepped over a line in terms of blaming Mr Garrett for those deaths?
FIFIELD:
Well no one is suggesting that Peter Garrett is personally responsible. What the Opposition is saying is that he is responsible in a ministerial sense. He is responsible in a political sense. And that if parliamentary accountability is to have any meaning at all, then he is also responsible in a parliamentary sense. And that being the case, he should resign. What has happened was entirely expected. When you artificially, dramatically and quickly inflate demand for a particular product or service, you will see fly-by-nighters come in and try and satisfy that demand. And it is within that environment, that environment which this Government has created, that these tragic deaths have happened. They shouldn’t have happened. I don’t think that this scheme ever should have been put in place. And for Peter Garrett to be skiving up to Coffs Harbour when there is a technical meeting taking place in Canberra looking at ways to make this scheme safer, he should be there. No one has criticised Peter Garrett for taking close interest in the detail, he’s been criticised for not taking a close enough interest and I think Canberra is where he should be. Peter Garrett can’t know too much detail about this.
GILLON:
Ok well there are a few issues I want to get through today so I am going to move on to some new data we learned about today from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees showing that applications for asylum globally rose by 5 per cent in the 9 months to September last year, but Nick Sherry in Australia they rose by more than 25 per cent. What is to blame for that if it is not the Government’s immigration policy?
SHERRY:
Well I think there are local push factors on a regional basis and the most obvious example are the circumstances in Sri Lanka where there has been a shocking civil war, which has now come to an end, and there are hundreds of thousands of refugees. So those local push factors…
GILLON:
They’re not all heading to Australia.
SHERRY:
Well a number of them are, a number are heading to Australia. And on a regional basis the outcome and the conclusion of that civil war has been an obvious factor in the increase in Sri Lankan refugees.
GILLON:
Is that a fair enough argument, Mitch Fifield, that the push factors are to blame?
FIFIELD:
Not at all. You never hear the Government talk about pull factors. The fact that this government got rid of the temporary protection visas, they softened their rhetoric, and that they’ve held out the prospect of on-shore processing in Australia. That has given the people smugglers a terrific product to sell and that is exactly what they’re doing. But you don’t have to take the Opposition’s word for this. Overnight we had the figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which showed that in the first 9 months of last year there was an increase in applications by refugees of 25 per cent in Australia, compared to 5 per cent in the rest of the world. So it strikes me as curious that the push factors are something that only Australia is experiencing. The UN data gives the lie to what the Government has been saying. This Government has made it easier for the people smugglers and that is putting refugees, asylum seekers in great danger. We want that to stop. The Government need to admit they have made a mistake and completely reassess.
GILLON:
Well Mitch I understand in your last Party Room meeting last week there was a question from one of your colleagues about this very issue, raising concerns that Tony Abbott has been flagging new policies without running it past the Party Room, for example his idea to turn back the boats. Does this an issue which is still quite a divisive one in the Liberal Party?
FIFIELD:
Well Ashleigh I am in the happy position of not having been in the last Party Room meeting, I was…
GILLON:
How convenient for you Mitch.
FIFIELD:
…sitting in Senate Estimates as Nick can attest. But I think one of the very positive things about Tony’s leadership has been how consultative he has been. How he puts to the Party Room important decisions. He’s been doing that. And there’s practically unanimity in support for the Coalition position in relation to tougher border protection. And at the weekend we had the announcement of the Shadow Cabinet sub-committee chaired by Shadow Customs and Border Protection Minister Michael Keenan, which is going to be putting the focus on even better ways of protecting our borders. We had a system that worked in government. This Government has failed. We’ve shown how it can be done. It is up to this Government to reassess.
GILLON:
Nick Sherry did you like how Mitch said “practical unity” there?
SHERRY:
Well its very obvious there is lots of division in the Liberal Party particularly about economic policy, we saw Senator Joyce’s performance or should I say non-performance in Estimates last week. I mean it is a bitterly divided Party, they’ve had four leaders in less than three years, and differences emerging on policy all the time.
GILLON:
Ok, well it seems though voters like what they see under Tony Abbott, a new Galaxy opinion poll today shows that voter support for Kevin Rudd in the Prime Ministers own home state of Queensland has dropped significantly. Labor’s primary vote has slipped to 39 per cent, Tony Abbott leading the Coalition has seen the Coalition go up to 46 per cent, it means on a two-party preferred basis the Coalition is ahead by two points. As I mentioned to the Health Minister before, 49 per cent of Queenslanders are saying Kevin Rudd is more talk that action, 46 per cent thinking he is arrogant. What’s going wrong for you?
SHERRY:
Look I’ve been around in politics for 30 years and I have seen lots of good polls and lots of bad polls. What governments do and what this Government’s doing is focusing on outcomes, on making sure, for example, Australia’s economy is kept strong, just look at Australia’s economy, our unemployment rate, the strength of our economy, we’ve avoided recession, compared to other countries in the world. Delivering on health for example, what Nicola Roxon outlined earlier, delivering, delivering, that is what we have been focusing on and at the end of the day the people will judge us on that basis.
GILLON:
Do you accept that, Nick Sherry, politics has really shifted over the last few weeks and the last couple of months since Tony Abbott took over.
SHERRY:
Politics shifts every day, every hour, every year. As I say, I don’t get terribly focused on polls, this is a disciplined Government, it is a unified Government, it is focused on outcomes. And as I have said, whether it is maintaining the strength of the Australian economy in the face of the global financial crisis, good outcomes on health, that’s what we are focused on.
GILLON:
Well Mitch Fifield as we heard there the Government is going to be spruiking it’s economic credentials all the way to the next poll, that is something that it certainly is going to get some traction with, Australia did get through the GFC very well compared to other developed countries around the world, is it too early for you to be popping the champagne corks, do you think Tony Abbott might just be experiencing a bit of a honeymoon?
FIFIELD:
The champagne corks are very firmly in place, Ashleigh. We are the underdogs in this contest. What’s changed over the last couple of months is that we’ve become competitive. The Government knows that they have an opposition. We are holding them to account. And as a result of that, the public are starting to see that this is a government that’s all talk, that doesn’t deliver. Nicola Roxon before was talking about GP Superclinics. Well they promised 31 GP Superclinics. They’ve delivered two. Still on health, the Government promised before the last election they wouldn’t means test the Private Health Insurance rebate. They put their hand on their heart. But guess what? They lied. They introduced legislation to do just that. The Government promised that they would fix public hospitals by the middle of last year and that if they didn’t, they’d take them over. Well, another broken promise. They didn’t fix public hospitals and they haven’t taken them over. They haven’t even introduced a referendum bill into the Parliament to try and give effect to that at the next election. So the public are getting used to the fact that this government talks and talks, but it doesn’t deliver. And on top of that they have got to contend with what Laurie Oakes described as the Prime Minister’s verbal sludge. The public aren’t getting a clear message from this Government. They just get spin. They don’t actually get results.
GILLON:
Nick Sherry there is a lot to respond to there but…
SHERRY:
Just on the GP Superclinics, look I will give you an example. 31 were promised, you can’t build them overnight, I had to go to the Doctor, unfortunately a number of times over Christmas New Year, and that’s where they are constructing, it was a construction site, and the GP Superclinics in my own backyard in Devonport will be opened shortly. You just can’t wave them out of thin air and say they will be there tomorrow.
GILLON:
What about the computers in schools program now, the Coalition’s saying this is another promise that isn’t happening. Yesterday it was confirmed that none of the $100 million budgeted to bring in the high speed broadband to schools is actually being spent.
SHERRY:
Over 200,000 computers delivered in schools. 200,000 delivered in the first two years of a Rudd Labor Government. That is decisive action, that is delivering on our election promise. And by the time we get to the election we will be able to benchmark what said, don’t forget Government’s are elected for three years not two years, there is another 10 months…
FIFIELD:
You’re pacing yourself, clearly.
SHERRY:
There is another 10 months and I’ve given…
GILLON:
There is another 10 months is there, Nick Sherry, that’s when we can expect the election to be?
SHERRY:
If the election is at the end of this year, three year terms, so it’s what’s normally expected. I’ve given the example of a GP Superclinic. You just don’t wave these things out of thin air. 220,000 computers delivered in two years, and that is a good effort, just as the GP Superclinics are being rolled out as they are being built.
GILLON:
Ok we are almost out of time, but Mitch Fifield I just wanted to get your reaction to the story today that Pauline Hanson says she’s moving to the UK, she says Australia is no longer the land of opportunity, will you miss her presence in Australia Mitch?
FIFIELD:
Well I’ve spent a little bit of time in the UK. Clearly Pauline Hanson hasn’t because if you are concerned that Australia is not the land of opportunity you sure as heck aren’t going to find it in the UK. Australia is a far better place to raise a family, you can achieve whatever you want in Australia. Good luck to Pauline Hanson searching for whatever she is looking for.
SHERRY:
Absolutely agree with Mitch, I was born in London, I’ve got lots of family there, I go there every couple of years and I can tell you, Australia is the greatest place on this planet to be living and good luck to Pauline Hanson.
GILLON:
Ok well good luck to her, she says she wants peace in her life, we hope she finds it. That’s all we have for this edition of AM Agenda, Nick Sherry, Mitch Fifield thank you for joining us.
ENDS