29 May, 2012
Sky News AM Agenda
With Kieran Gilbert and Nick Champion MP
28 May 2012
8:45am
E & OE
Subjects: Labor’s Enterprise Migration Agreement, Labor leadership, Carbon Tax compensation
KIERAN GILBERT:
Joining me now, Liberal frontbencher Senator Mitch Fifield and Labor MP Nick Champion. First of all, I’ll go to Senator Fifield to get the Coalition response on these Enterprise Migration Agreements. The mining industry supports it and we’ve heard various business groups backing it as well. Tony Abbott has refused to back it just yet, these EMAs or Enterprise Migration Agreements. Why is that?
MITCH FIFIELD:
We have no problem with these agreements in principle. I think it’s important to recognise that with the one in question, if you have guarantee for the project, what that leads to is Australians being employed. I think that’s something that the unions and the Prime Minister haven’t fully appreciated. We don’t have a problem with them in principle.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Why won’t Mr Abbott just say straight out, yes I support it.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Obviously we have concerns about this Government’s capacity to do anything properly. Their ability to implement anything properly, that’s our big concern. Yes, you do want to try and ensure that Australians wherever possible can get jobs but you do want to provide certainty for big ticket projects.
KIERAN GILBERT:
So he’s not just being populist in not wanting to back something where Australians might miss out on a job?
MITCH FIFIELD:
Tony Abbott’s concern is this Government’s capacity to get anything right. It’s also to make sure that every step has been taken to ensure that Australians who can fill jobs do so. We introduced 457 visas. We want to make sure that businesses get the employees that they need and that employee shortages don’t stop important projects going ahead.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Labor Senator Doug Cameron has had a few comments to make on this this morning. He’s a very strong opponent of the idea. He was on the doors of Parliament House.
DOUG CAMERON (file footage):
My view is that the priority should be that if any Australian worker wants a job in the mining industry, they should be able to get that job. Only after that’s done, and only then should we be looking at bringing foreign workers in.
JOURNALIST (file footage):
Any truth to the leadership rumbles this morning?
DOUG CAMERON (file footage):
I won’t comment on leadership. These are issues that have been determined by the caucus. The caucus has determined that Julia Gillard is the leader of the Labor Party and that’s where it stands.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Senator Cameron speaking to the media this morning. Nick Champion, apparently he’s going to move a motion in the caucus tomorrow opposing these Enterprise Migration Agreements. Can you understand where he’s coming from, particularly today when we’re seeing more job losses? The engineering company Hastie is set to announce some 2,000 jobs to go.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well look, I can’t comment on what people may or may not do in caucus. I mean that would be remiss of me but I might just point out that these matters went through caucus a year ago. This particular deal, sure there are seventeen hundred 457 visas but they’re to support 6,000 Australian jobs. And to get the 457 visas, they have to go before a jobs board first to make sure that any Australian who wants those jobs and who is qualified to do those jobs can get those jobs before a foreigner. So there are plenty of safeguards in this, and the most important thing about this deal is that it supports a $2 billion, over $2 billion resources project in the north of our country. While I understand unionists’ frustration, particularly in the southern part of the country where they’re dealing with manufacturing losses, I’ve dealt with that sort of transition, I remember being at Blundstones when they closed. It’s a terrible thing to have to deal with redundancies and there’s always a frustration around that. There’s always going to be, I think, a difficulty matching workers who are losing their jobs that might have a particular set of skills at one end of the country and the job opportunities in the north of the country. So obviously we’ve got big investment in skills. That’s one of the things that Prime Minister Gillard has put in previous budgets. And it’s an important thing for us to do.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Sure. Why has it become such an issue now? The Sydney Morning Herald describes it on its front page as a question of the Prime Minister’s integrity over this matter as to what she knew and when.
NICK CHAMPION:
I think that’s totally overblowing the situation. I mean this is simply, it’s going to be a difficult transition for the country, economic transition, because we’re dealing with massive growth in the north of our country.
KIERAN GILBERT:
The PM says she knew two days before, other colleagues say it was a few weeks before. Can you explain?
NICK CHAMPION:
But when people start talking about he said, she said, I mean that’s not really the policy point the country has to grapple with. And the position that we have to grapple with as a country I think is that we’ve got massive growth in the north of our country, a massive investment pipeline, huge jobs growth up there, and it’s matching that growth in the other part of our country. Just to go back to your point.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Just quickly please.
NICK CHAMPION:
The reason Tony Abbott won’t give the press gallery a straight answer is because he’s playing a gutless, populist game. A couple of weeks ago, oh yes I’m all in favour of 457 visas, this is going to be a great policy. And then when he has to actually front up, he’s nowhere to be seen.
KIERAN GILBERT:
It’s a pretty strong outlook. It’s $500 billion in the investment pipeline; it’s an extremely positive outlook, isn’t it? If you look at the policy mechanics of this, it’s hard for the Liberal Party to disagree with the measures that have been put in place, that’s the bottom line here isn’t it? When you look at the strength of the mining sector, they’re backing this policy, beyond all the drama within the Labor Party, the actual policy, it’s a decent one.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Kieran, we introduced 457 visas. We don’t want to see businesses who need staff not able to get them. Our concern is Labor’s capacity to actually do things properly. Full stop. That’s the issue. I can understand why the caucus and the union movement are confused. On the one hand, you’ve got the Prime Minister and the Treasurer signalling that individuals in industry should be attacked. I think Paul Howes really belled the cat when he said hey, I thought we were meant to be attacking these guys. He’s there with his nunchuk, he’s there with his baseball bat, he’s ready to roll. And all of a sudden, the Government says look, we actually want to help the mining industry. So I can understand why Paul Howes is confused. This Government never should have targeted individual business people. I’ve never seen a Prime Minister in Australia before personally target and vilify individual business people.
NICK CHAMPION:
Some of these people are self-identifying. You must confess that they do a fair job of identifying themselves, it’s not the government. They’re larger than life.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Wayne Swan has construed the role of treasurer like a character from Romper Stomper when it comes to some of these individuals.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Let’s look at Joel Fitzgibbon, his tweet yesterday where he thanked colleagues for the publicity but ‘no one does more to support the PM and the Government than me’. He tweeted responding to suggestions that he’d shifted and now thinks that Kevin Rudd should be the Prime Minister once again. It wasn’t a great rebuttal.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well it seems to me his tweet is pretty emphatic, but nothing is ever good enough for the Coalition and the media.
MITCH FIFIELD:
I’m convinced.
NICK CHAMPION:
Let me just say, we had a caucus ballot, I accept the outcome of the caucus ballot, the caucus accepts the outcome of the caucus ballot. You know, that’s it.
KIERAN GILBERT:
That’s it?
NICK CHAMPION:
That’s it. You know, that’s what happened.
MITCH FIFIELD:
It’s a truly bizarre situation where you have the Chief Government Whip communicating with his colleagues and the Prime Minister by tweet.
NICK CHAMPION:
No, no, well journalists should stop asking.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Don’t worry Prime Minister, I’m right behind you. Here’s my tweet.
NICK CHAMPION:
What was he supposed to do? If he hadn’t answered then he would have been in strife as well.
MITCH FIFIELD:
He could have done a doorstop, he could have actually tweeted ‘the Prime Minister has my complete support and I have no doubt she will lead us to the next election’. He didn’t do that.
NICK CHAMPION:
What form of words would satisfy you?
KIERAN GILBERT:
Well to be honest it’s not that emphatic.
NICK CHAMPION:
It is pretty emphatic.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Oh give me a break.
NICK CHAMPION:
What are we, are we in China now where we sort of divine out every single syllable of someone’s statement. I mean, how much more emphatic can one be?
MITCH FIFIELD:
It was as half-hearted as you could be.
NICK CHAMPION:
Give me a break, you’re reading far too much into it, you know. It’s pretty simple.
MITCH FIFIELD:
There’s very little there to read anything into it.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Let’s move on now. Just finally, the carbon tax compensation goes out today, or starts. The pensioner increases, one-off payments and so on. The Government is adamant that pensioners for one, others as well, but millions of pensioners will be better off. But it must be frustrating to you and the Government that there’s just not that sense in the electorate about this. They feel they’re being dudded.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well I think the proof will be in the living of it. The Coalition have inflated expectations of the carbon price to such an extent that people think, I had a fellow the other day, how much a piece of steak would go up, and he said ten to fifteen cents. It’s more like half a cent. This has been so overblown that when people actually see the reality of it, the reality of the compensation they’re getting $250 for single pensioners, $380 for couple, the tax cuts, the schoolkids bonus, all the other sort of things that we’ve done to support family income and when they actually see the actual reality of the impost of the carbon price, I think the Coalition’s going to have some explaining to do for the inflamed rhetoric.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Ok, we’ve got fifty seconds left Senator.
MITCH FIFIELD:
If people aren’t being hurt then they don’t need to be compensated. The fact that people are receiving compensation not unusually leads them to think that we must be going to suffer a penalty as a result of this carbon tax. The public aren’t fools. They know prices are going up and that they will go up by more because of the carbon tax. They can’t be fooled.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Senator Fifield and Nick Champion, good to see you both. Have a good week.