15 October, 2012
Sky News AM Agenda
With David Lipson and Nick Champion MP
15 October 2012
8:30am
E & OE
Subjects: Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Fair Work Act
DAVID LIPSON:
Joining me here in the Canberra studio is the shadow disabilities minister Senator Mitch Fifield, thanks for your time this morning Mitch. And in Adelaide, Nick Champion Labor MP, thanks for your time this morning as well. I want to start with Afghanistan, these trips Mitch Fifield are important from the Prime Minister aren’t they? You must welcome the scaling back of combat operations as well.
MITCH FIFIELD:
It’s always a good thing when the Australian Prime Minister visits our troops in theatre. Julia Gillard has visited Afghanistan a number of times. Kevin Rudd did. John Howard did. Tony Abbott has as well. And that’s good. Our troops need to know that they’re supported and that we will give them whatever they need. It’s important that Australia was part of the coalition in Afghanistan. There’s a timetable now for an orderly withdrawal, which is a good thing. We want to see the troops home as soon as possible. We want to see them safe.
DAVID LIPSON:
Nick Champion, this as Mitch just pointed out is an important thing for any prime minister to do and particularly at this important time in this conflict.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well it’s certainly important for me. I was at a farewell parade for our troops in my electorate who are about to go to Afghanistan so I think they’ll take heart in seeing the prime minister there and obviously basically keeping an eye on what’s happening on the ground and in particular the plans for the transition to hand over security to the Afghan National Army in Uruzgan province by 2014.
DAVID LIPSON:
And she’s headed to India next Nick Champion. No deal on uranium trade just yet, it would be some time away if a deal is to be made but with so many warning bells about the security and the safety of India’s nuclear industry, how can we justify exporting uranium there?
NICK CHAMPION:
Well we have safeguard agreements with 22 countries to which we sell uranium to and obviously that’s about two things. About having an agreement, safeguard agreement to make sure that our uranium is only used for domestic energy purposes and is safely, you know, dealt with. That’s something we’ve got with 22 other countries. I think it’s entirely possible and probable that we’ll have it with India as well. This trip is about building relationships and paying due attention to what is a very important country in the region.
DAVID LIPSON:
Mitch Fifield, how important is India in the region and I’ll ask you as well about the uranium issue.
MITCH FIFIELD:
India is incredibly important. A growing economy. A growing middle class. An important market for Australia. But this issue of uranium exports to India is just Labor all over. In 2007 the Howard Government commenced negotiations with India to export uranium. Kevin Rudd as Opposition Leader said it was an appalling thing. Shouldn’t happen. Made great play of it. That damaged our relationship with India. Kevin Rudd ceased the work that we had undertaken. Then all of a sudden Julia Gillard wakes up one day and decides that exporting uranium to India is a good thing. We’re glad that they’ve seen the light on this issue. Yes, there do need to be appropriate safeguard agreements. We have those with China. We have those with Russia. But one of the reasons why it’s so important for this to go ahead, apart from the economic benefit for Australia, is we want to see living standards rise in India. So we want them to have access to cheap energy. And if you take this government at their word that they want to do something about greenhouse gases, well surely you would want India not to be reliant on coal. This is an important opportunity that had gone begging. Thank goodness they’ve changed their mind.
DAVID LIPSON:
Mitch Fifield, your leader Tony Abbott is in Indonesia at the moment and he’ll be meeting with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on a range of issues. But he’ll also be telling a business lunch today when it comes to asylum seekers, if Australia wants Indonesian cooperation in dealing with our first order issues, we need to cooperate even more closely with Indonesia on its first order issues. That’s being read as tying more aid for Indonesia to receiving help on people smuggling. Is that an accurate analysis of that statement from Tony Abbott?
MITCH FIFIELD:
I don’t think Tony is suggesting that we tie aid to particular policy agreements in other areas. We will always support Indonesia with aid, and with humanitarian development and with assistance to develop economically. That is a given. What Tony is saying is that if we help Indonesia with the issues that are important to them, that will create trust. It will establish a stronger bilateral relationship. And other aspects of the relationship therefore will be easier. That really was the point that Tony was making. But more than anything, Tony wants to send a message to Indonesia that there’ll be a “no surprises” approach under a Coalition government. Whenever there is to be a significant policy change we will workshop that with Indonesia. They won’t read about it in the papers as they did with the debacle over live cattle exports. We want to see a closer relationship. We want to see the establishment of essentially a new Colombo plan. A two-way exchange. We educate people from Indonesia. Indonesia educates people from Australia. That’s the sort of relationship that we want to pursue. Not the “surprise a day” as we’ve seen under this government, where announcements such as a proposal for offshore processing in East Timor is announced and Indonesia find out about it when they read it in the papers.
DAVID LIPSON:
Nick Champion, a response to that. Tony Abbott’s talking about a “no surprises” principle. It’s a pretty obvious dig at some of the problems that Labor have had with their relationship with Indonesia over the last few years.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well I don’t think there have been any great problems with the relationship with Indonesia, I find it very strong. It’s a bit passing strange that Tony Abbott says no surprises on the front page of the Australian today but in the past he’s been all surprises. On tow backs he’s completely ignored what the Indonesians have said and on overseas aid he said he’d cut overseas aid to Indonesia, in particular a Howard Government program to schools which was enormously important. It’s in our vital interests to have Indonesia as a growing neighbour, a neighbour with a growing economy and a nation that’s developing properly in order to avoid instability and terrorism. So we want to support Indonesia where we can, we want to have a good relationship with Indonesia. I think it’s incumbent on both parties to deal with Indonesia in a mature way and I think, you know, where we can we should avoid domestic politics, you know, in our relationship with them and have as close as we can a bipartisan approach.
DAVID LIPSON:
Mitch Fifield, just a very quick question. Will Tony Abbott raise the issue or policy of turning back boats?
MITCH FIFIELD:
One thing that we’ve been determined in our dealings with Indonesia is that we don’t conduct discussions through the media. That we don’t practice megaphone diplomacy. That we talk about things face-to-face. So as to the content of Tony’s discussions I’m sure he will brief and the Indonesians will brief about the broad range of areas covered. But our policy in relation to dealing with asylum seekers is well known. Indonesia knows we have a policy of turning back where it’s safe to do so. It was the policy under the Howard Government. No surprise there.
DAVID LIPSON:
We’re expecting an announcement today from the Workplace Minister Bill Shorten when it comes to industrial relations and more particularly, recommendations from the Fair Work review that is being backed by both unions and employers. So these are the more simple reforms to the Fair Work Act and they relate to, for example, costs being payable to parties who are deemed to be acting unreasonably, for example in unfair dismissal negotiations. Nick Champion, how important is it to conduct this reform of IR to satisfy business and unions?
NICK CHAMPION:
Well look the important thing about this issue I suppose is that first of all we have low unemployment, which helps workers get jobs. We’ve abolished WorkChoices which helps them with their security of jobs. And what this is is less a reform as it is a refinement of the act, of the Fair Work Act to make the system work better. And that’s a sensible thing to do after we abolished WorkChoices and put in place a new Fair Work Act, it made sense to have a review after some time to see how it was working. So we’re now doing that. These changes have been agreed to by the employer groups and by the unions and so this is where there is common agreement. It won’t make many headlines I don’t think. When people are in furious agreement it doesn’t make for good news or good reporting but this is a good thing. Its people working together, it’s refining an act that’s working.
DAVID LIPSON:
But is it an admission that it hasn’t been working so well?
NICK CHAMPION:
Well no, what it’s an admission of is that the Government is pragmatic and sensible about the operation of an act. Whenever you bring in a new law you’re going to have issues with it and the parties on the ground, unions and employers are going to test the limits of that law. Sometimes you need to refine it and that’s what’s been happening now and that’s why this process up until this point has been relatively trouble-free. But, you know, the important things are a growing economy, keeping people in work, the abolition of WorkChoices, keeping people secure in work and the real question about industrial relations in this country is when the Liberal Party are going to reveal the policy they’ve got. They’re keeping it in the bottom draw until five minutes before midnight, until the latest possible moment because they’ve got real problems in their own internal deliberations. Some like Jamie Briggs, who is now on the frontbench, want to be more extreme than those who are politically pragmatic. People who want to keep it hidden and slowly reveal their policy over time.
DAVID LIPSON:
I want to get a response from Mitch Fifield to that but also, is this the sort of reform the Coalition was interested in? Refinement within the current framework?
MITCH FIFIELD:
What the Fair Work Act review recommended was essentially a series of minor housekeeping matters. Now Bill Shorten wrote the terms of reference. Bill Shorten had his handpicked team of people to conduct the review, so not surprising that it was only minor changes that were recommended. Most of them are unremarkable. We’ve supported the majority of them. But it’s interesting to go back to when the Government introduced this Act. They promised that there would be some sort of industrial nirvana. That it would be a happy and glorious world for all workers. That’s not been the reality. You’ve only got to talk to people in business, you’ve only got to talk to employees to know that there are serious disincentives in the current system to employers taking on more people. Unfair dismissal is one example of that. Even this government had to concede through this review that unfair dismissal laws as they currently stand are a disincentive to taking people on board. And we’ve also seen with the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission militant unionism on the rise again which we’ve seen in Melbourne. Whenever there’s tweaking to the Act by Labor, that’s ok. When we release our industrial relations policy, which won’t be ideological, which will be responding to practical problems, it will be minor changes. But you’ll see the Labor Party saying it’s the end of the world as we know it.
DAVID LIPSON:
Mitch Fifield, Nick Champion, thanks so much for your time this morning.