Sky News AM Agenda
Ashleigh Gillon and Mark Butler MP
5 July 2010
8:30am
E & OE
Subjects: Asylum seekers, mining tax, Liberal Party TV ads
ASHLEIGH GILLON:
Joining me now from Adelaide is the Parliamentary Secretary for Health Mark Butler. Good morning to you.
MARK BUTLER:
Morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
And also from Canberra this morning, the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Mitch Fifield. Good morning.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
Mark Butler I want to start with you. The night before Kevin Rudd was deposed he warned Labor not to shift to the right on asylum seekers. Is that exactly what we will see Julia Gillard doing this week?
BUTLER:
Well no, I think what Julia Gillard has been saying over the last couple of days, and the message we got from Caucus from people like Nick Champion and other backbenches who voiced their concerns about this issue, was not necessarily the policy settings that we had in relation to asylum seekers, but a lack of openness that they were, or a sense of a lack of openness that they were getting back from their constituents about this debate. So what Julia Gillard has clearly said over the weekend is she wants people, whatever perspective they take in this debate to feel that they can openly voice their views and have some input into the government as over the next few days it annunciates its policy in the lead up to the 8th of July deadline for the Sri Lankan suspension.
GILLON:
There are reports today that the government is trying to strike a deal with the Karzai government to send asylum seekers from Afghanistan back home. Won’t it be difficult though to guarantee the safety of those people when they arrive back in that country?
BUTLER:
Well I’ve seen those reports and I can’t comment on whether they’re true or not or whether they’re accurate or not and I think we’ve been clear that the situation in Afghanistan is fluid. We put in place a six month suspension for Afghanistan which is only almost half way through so I can’t comment on that particularly, but I think people will have a very clear view about Julia Gillard and the governments perspective and policies on these issues over the next couple of days.
GILLON:
You did mention Sri Lanka. Should the government, will the government be waiting for the new guidelines from the UN High Commissioner for refugees on Sri Lankan refugees and asylum seekers before making a decision? Or can we expect the government will be happy to pre-empt that decision this week?
BUTLER:
Well I can’t tell you that. You won’t have to wait long to find out. But we do know that the UNHCR decision on Sri Lanka is due very very soon and we also know from reports and from what Julia Gillard has said over the weekend that Cabinet will be considering these issues today and over the coming days. So people won’t have very long to wait and see what her view is on these issues. But I think it is important what she said over the weekend that people should feel free to express legitimately held views about these issues. They are important issues. People hold a variety of views about them. And just because you have concerns about asylum seekers arriving at Christmas Island doesn’t mean you’re intolerant anymore than the fact that you have concerns about the previous governments policies, about women and children been behind razor wire means you’re soft hearted.
GILLON:
Mitch Fifield, the opposition would no doubt welcome those comments that we need an open public debate about this issue in Australia. But what’s the opposition’s stance on the ban on processing for asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka? Should that be lifted?
FIFIELD:
Ashleigh, we don’t need the approval of the Prime Minister to have an open debate in Australia and the fact that Julia Gillard is saying now Australians should feel free to openly discuss these issues is a clear indication that under Kevin Rudd, under this Labor government, that there has been demonising of Australians who express genuine concern about our borders and their security. As we anticipate, looking forward, to Julia Gillard announcing her change in policy, it’s important to remember that this is the same person who as the Shadow Minister for Immigration was the architect of these policies. The same person who as Deputy Prime Minister was at the very heart of the government that introduced these policies which has seen 143 illegal boats arrive in the country. I don’t think it’s reasonable to seriously expect Julia Gillard to dismantle the policies that she herself put in place. We’ll see a bit of change at the margins. We’ll see a change in language. But what we won’t see is Julia Gillard introducing temporary protection visas. What we won’t see is Julia Gillard committing to offshore processing in other countries. So we won’t see Julia Gillard committing to those policies which we know work, because we actually put them into effect when we were in office. In relation to the . . .
GILLON:
. . . back to my question though Mitch Fifield about the processing, if we can just get the opposition’s take on whether or not that ban should be lifted or not.
FIFIELD:
That ban shouldn’t have been put in place in the first instance. It’s important to deal with people in a humane fashion and it’s important to deal with people as quickly as you possibly can. Now we argue that people shouldn’t be put in harms way in the first place. We argue that government shouldn’t have a set of policies which provide people smugglers with a good product to sell. This government has done that however. But we’re very much of the view that if people get to Australia, you owe it to them to deal with them fairly, to deal with them decently and to process them quickly. The freeze is inhumane and the freeze is not working. We know because the boats are still coming. People deserve to be treated fairly and decently.
GILLON:
Well Mark Butler we know that when that freeze was first announced the Foreign Minister and the Immigration Minister said that they didn’t expect this to stem the flow of boats in the short term. But what do you make of that point from Mitch Fifield that keeping people in detention without processing for this period of time is inhumane.
BUTLER:
Well we made it very clear that the suspension was a short-term temporary suspension. For us to be able to consider changed circumstances in Sri Lanka, and changing circumstances in Afghanistan, to take proper advice from international agencies so that we would be in a better position to determine whether or not people arriving from those countries were likely to be defined and classified as refugees under the relevant international conventions. It’s been a short-term suspension. Quite where we are this week given the expiry of the three month suspension coming up on Thursday, the pending advice from the UNHCR, we’ll have to wait and see. But I think it was the appropriate thing for the government to do in light of changing circumstances in those two source countries.
GILLON:
Mitch, you would have read the reports that I mentioned earlier in The Australian today, suggesting that the government’s looking at a deal with the Karzai government to send asylum seekers back to Afghanistan. Is that the sort of deal that the opposition would welcome if it were to go ahead?
FIFIELD:
Let’s wait and see what the government puts forward. Whether they have reached a deal. Whether they do reach a deal. We need to look at the circumstances on the ground. Our issue in relation to the freezing of processing, as I said before, is that if people get to Australia they’re entitled to be treated fairly. They’re entitled to expect that they’re processed as quickly as possible. In terms of what the government announce, we’ll just have to wait and see. But the important thing from the opposition’s point of view is will Julia Gillard announce temporary protection visas? I don’t think so. Will Julia Gillard announce processing, if necessary, in other countries offshore? I don’t think so.
GILLON:
Well yesterday on Australian Agenda we saw Tony Burke rule out the re-introduction of TPV’s under Julia Gillard’s government. Mitch Fifield, you keep talking about treating people with fairness and humanity, but mental health experts have argued against TPV’s for a long time now and also the government says that TPV’s actually didn’t work. That when they were introduced we saw the number of asylum seekers go up, not down.
FIFIELD:
If they didn’t work, why is it that there are now more people in detention under this government than there ever were under the previous government? There’s something of the order of 3,700 arrivals have hit Australia under this government’s policies. Surely what’s bad for someone’s mental health is being in detention in the first place. It’s good to minimise the number of people who are in detention. Temporary protection visas are in effect a safe-haven visa. They provide a haven for someone while their country isn’t safe. I think that that’s something that is actually good for someone’s well-being.
GILLON:
Mark Butler, I want to ask you about the mining tax. Of course last Friday we saw the resolution. The big mining companies seemed happy with that compromise. But some of the smaller companies are saying they were left out of negotiations. We know that today a delegation of mining executives from those smaller companies will be meeting with the Resources Minister Martin Ferguson today. Is the government still open to changing that tax after these negotiations today? Or is last Friday’s version of the tax the real deal?
BUTLER:
Well, look, my understanding is that last Friday we released the framework for the new tax arrangements for minerals and also for petroleum. What we also did though was to establish a group, a implementation group co-chaired by Martin Ferguson, the Resources Minister, and by Don Argus, a former Chair of BHP. And they’ll be looking at a range of implementation issues which you’ll understand are incredibly complex in this area. And one of those will be a capacity for smaller miners to raise some of their concerns. But we make the point that we talked to a range of smaller miners over the last several weeks and couple of months. We were pretty clear about what their issues were and we think a range of them are dealt with very well in the package that was released last week. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that absolutely everyone will be satisfied with every aspect of the deal. That’s just not humanly possible. But we think we’ve got the balanced deal that is the best thing we can do for the country. Provides certainty for the future of the mining industry and for our economy going forward. And it particularly provides some very important, some important reforms in the area of superannuation, a reduction in corporate tax which Tony Abbott would increase by 2 per cent and a $6 billion infrastructure fund that will particularly be targeted to regional resource based communities. So we think it’s a very good outcome. It shows that Julia Gillard can get things done. And there will be the capacity for smaller mining companies to raise implementation issues with Martin Ferguson and Don Argus.
GILLON:
Even though there are concerns that the government may not be able to raise the $10.5 billion of revenue that it wants to from the new tax, will Wayne Swan release all the Treasury modelling showing exactly how those figures are going to add up? Because you are getting a lot of criticism saying that now effectively the rate is more like 22 per cent, so if you bring that down from 40 per cent and there’s only $1.5 billion difference, those numbers don’t seem to add up.
BUTLER:
Well we’ll be releasing our modelling and other budget relevant figures in the usual way in the lead up to the election and we’ll do that in the same way previous governments have.
GILLON:
Mitch Fifield, if Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister, is he really going to dump a tax that will bring in that much revenue when the large mining companies are comfortable with it? His stance on this has become a lot more difficult to prosecute, hasn’t it after last Friday?
FIFIELD:
I don’t think so. What we saw at the weekend was the government arguing that this new deal provided certainty. We saw Chris Evans and Stephen Smith at their joint press conference saying that the deal’s great because it provides certainty. Well the only reason that there was uncertainty in the first place was because this government created it. There still isn’t certainty. There’s something in the order of 300 mining companies who’ll be affected by this tax who still haven’t been spoken to. There’s a number of issues to resolve as evidenced by the establishment of the reference group, the Argus/Ferguson group. So there’s still no certainty. But coming back to your question, Ashleigh, in relation to our position, the measure that we apply to tax reform or what should be tax reform are three things. Tax reform should involve the abolition of inefficient taxes. It should involve the improvement of existing taxes and it should involve reducing the overall tax burden. Now this new tax, this new deal, fails on each of those three counts. So why would we continue with it? If we’re in government, we wouldn’t. If you want to end this tax, if you want to stop this tax, then you’ve got to change the government. You’ve got to vote for the Coalition.
GILLON:
But Tony Abbott keeps saying that the outcome on the election will be a poll on this mining tax. That now seems pretty unlikely considering that it has been largely neutralised as an issue.
FIFIELD:
We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. As I said there’s something of the order of 300 companies who’ll be affected by these new taxation arrangements who haven’t been spoken to. Those other mining companies who won’t be affected by these new arrangements are themselves unhappy that they haven’t been discussed, that they haven’t had these issues discussed with them. They’re unhappy that they may be at a relative disadvantage to some of these other companies. So there are a whole lot of issues that are still yet to be addressed. This has got a while to play out yet.
GILLON:
Mark Butler, Colin Barnett, the WA Premier, is saying the new tax may be unconstitutional. Is that a valid concern or does government advice suggest otherwise?
BUTLER:
Ultimately that’s for the High Court but we’re very confident that this is a constitutional tax. Just going back to Mitch’s point. I mean Joe Hockey said when the package was released that this was a cue for common sense. And I think what Mitch has said and what Tony Abbott’s said since Joe Hockey made those comments says a lot about the relationship between common sense and Liberal Party policy. There’s not much there.
GILLON:
Just finally, one last issue. We saw yesterday the Liberal Party launched a new TV advertisement showing Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard as puppets on strings. Mitch, do you really honestly think that Julia Gillard is a puppet and also there has been some criticism about this ad that you called Julia Gillard a girl in the ad. She’s Prime Minister, she’s obviously a women, not a girl. Is it sexist?
FIFIELD:
I’m a boy. You’re a girl. Mark’s a boy. I don’t think we should get too hung up on that and Julia Gillard’s been telling us that she’s not politically correct and that everyone should feel free to engage in open debates, so I’m sure she’s not precious about the ad itself. But sure, look Julia Gillard is subject to influence. She came to power as a result of decisions taken by union leaders such as Mark. This wasn’t the Australian people having the opportunity to cast their verdict on Kevin Rudd. This was a small group of influential people in the union movement who decided that Kevin Rudd had to go. She came there as a result of their influence and she will be subject to their influence.
GILLON:
Mark it sounds like Mitch thinks you’ve got some blood at least on your hands. Are you worried that this is the sort of ad that will feed into that perception, that Labor is run by faceless union men? The way that Kevin Rudd was dumped, it was damaging to the parties brand, wasn’t it?
BUTLER:
Look it was a difficult process but a vast a number of people . . .
GILLON:
. . . Difficult is an understatement isn’t it Mark?
BUTLER:
It was a difficult process. A vast number of people in the Caucus thought that a good government had lost its way and needed to change. It was Caucus members who made that decision. A significant number of Caucus members led Kevin Rudd to the decision that he shouldn’t contest that ballot. A very similar process to the one the Liberal Party’s been involved in on a couple of occasions since the last election. Having said that it was a difficult process but the Liberal Party response seems to be pretty silly and juvenile ads.
GILLON:
Ok, Mark Butler, Mitch Fifield, we’re out of time. Thanks for joining us today.
BUTLER:
Thanks Ashleigh.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Ashleigh.
ENDS