Transcript
Sky News AM Agenda
With Kieran Gilbert and the Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP
7 April 2014
8:35am
E & OE
Subjects: Japan visit, WA Senate election, Australian Labor Party reform.
GILBERT:
With us now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh and also the Assistant Minister for Social Services Mitch Fifield. Gentlemen good morning to you both. Mitch Fifield, first to you on this Japanese arrangement. Obviously the free trade agreement looking good, the Prime Minister is hopeful. But he’s also looking to secure closer defence ties. This comes just a couple of days after his visit to Beijing. There could be a few sensitivities to smooth out when he arrives in China in just a couple of days from now?
FIFIELD:
In 2007, John Howard entered into a security agreement with Japan. That was a statement that we were looking to have a closer defence relationship. What the Prime Minister is working on is building upon that. We’re looking to enter a closer relationship on defence science and materiel. Australia is very supportive of Japan adopting a more normal security posture. They have been an exemplary international citizen for the past 50 years. So I think what we’re seeing is just a natural evolution.
GILBERT:
Andrew Leigh, is it fair enough for the PM to be pursuing this? He’s going to be the first foreign leader in fact to address a security council meeting of the Japanese security council. Is that going too far in your view? Or is what Mitch Fifield and the Prime Minister are saying correct? Can you nurture one friendship while not alienating someone else?
LEIGH:
Mitch reflects the fact that much of this is bipartisan policy, Kieran. And certainly the security ties were something worked on during the Labor time, as indeed was the trade deal. I remember visiting Tokyo last year and attending senior government meetings pushing the case for a trade deal. We need to be careful on both fronts. Labor won’t be backing a trade deal at all costs, and in the area of security we need to make sure that we’re sensitive to the impact on our Chinese friends. I thought Rory Medcalf’s piece this morning was good on this in terms of recognising that Australia needs to be playing a sophisticated game in Asia.
GILBERT:
Alright, and Mitch Fifield, I’ve just received a text message from a colleague in the same hotel as Andrew Robb, the Trade Minister, apparently he had a grin ear to ear. And he said that there will be an announcement of significance today. So it sounds like they might have got there after all.
FIFIELD:
Well I guess we’ll have to look very closely at the Prime Minister’s body language later today! But look freer trade is a good thing. We have complementary assets and resources Australia and Japan. We are a good provider of agricultural and resource products to Japan. They’re a good supplier of cars and high technology to Australia. We know that Andrew Robb only enters into agreements that are in the national interest. He’s had a pretty good strike rate as Trade Minister thus far. So let’s wait and see what the day holds.
GILBERT:
Andrew Leigh, as an economist yourself, if the Japanese do compromise and halve the beef tariff which currently sits and 38 and a half per cent if they halved that to 19 per cent that’d make a big difference. This FTA, some estimates suggesting it could be worth $40 billion to Australia over the next decade.
LEIGH:
Lower trade barriers are clearly good for Australia, Kieran. And as an economist you wouldn’t expect me to be arguing anything different. The thing we need to make sure though is that Australian jobs are looked after. We need to be wary of things like investor-state dispute clauses, which would allow private firms to take the Australian government to court. And we need to make sure the totality of the agreement is good and fits within a multilateral architecture. Bilateral agreements are always second best to actually doing a broad worldwide trade deal.
GILBERT:
Let’s take a break and when we come back we’ll look at the wash up of the WA Senate re-run.
BREAK
This is AM Agenda, thanks for your company. With me this morning is Andrew Leigh and Senator Mitch Fifield. Senator Fifield, the WA Senate re-run not really a great result for either of the major parties. In fact, when you combine the primary vote of the two major parties, it’s under 60% of the overall vote there in the West. Is this a longer term trend that we’re seeing here? That people are being attracted to the minor parties more and more?
FIFIELD:
What we had in Western Australia at the weekend was a by-election, and the result for the Government was pretty typical of by-election results. In fact, it was a little better than the average. We’ve still got a lot of pre-poll and postal votes to count, so we’ll see what the final result is. But look I think we’ve got to realise that the Coalition received the largest vote of any party at the by-election. In Western Australia we have 12 of the 15 seats. There is no doubt that there is a message from Western Australia that they want the carbon tax gone and they want the mining tax gone. Labor can take no comfort from this particular result. They had a swing against them. This is the second by-election since the general election in which the Opposition have actually had a swing against them. This is unprecedented.
LEIGH:
Well the swing against Labor was of course smaller than the swing against the Liberal Party in Western Australia, Kieran.
GILBERT:
But as Senator Fifield says, normally in by-elections oppositions get swings to them, not away from them. Something’s going a bit wrong here.
LEIGH:
But this isn’t any ordinary by-election. This is unprecedented. And one of the challenges we always knew we were going to face was that low voter turnout. I’m still pretty confident that we’ll get Louise Pratt over the line. She’s a good friend and a great Senator. And I think the below the line votes will favour Louise. I’m keeping my fingers crossed there.
GILBERT:
Well in terms of her counterpart, the person who was number one on the Senate ticket, didn’t help her cause too much did he? By bagging her basically a few months ago.
LEIGH:
As I understand Joe Bullock has apologised for those comments. They certainly weren’t helpful, you’re right about that.
GILBERT:
No. Let’s go to Senator Fifield again on this Senate re-run, because if you look at the Palmer Party, it shows that money works, doesn’t it with advertising? You might bag him as much as you like for spending so much money but the advertising obviously works.
FIFIELD:
I think everyone who works in full-time politics knows that name ID for candidates and also name ID for political parties is important. There is a high correlation between that and the propensity for people to vote for you. It looks like Mr Palmer spent more than the combined ALP and Coalition advertising budgets. So obviously if you’ve got the capacity to raise a profile, that puts you in a better position to get votes.
But Kieran, from where we stand, we’re going to be treating the new Senate with respect, we will work with the new Senate. But in return, we expect that the Senate will respect the mandate that the Coalition received at the September election.
GILBERT:
Do you think it was smart for the Prime Minister to criticise Clive Palmer, saying he was buying seats, now you’ve got to work with him, and very closely to get your agenda through?
FIFIELD:
Elections are a contestable environment. And all candidates put their best foot forward and spruik themselves. The election has been completed but we don’t yet know the result. It may be a couple of weeks before we know the final position, whether Linda Reynolds is successful. I hope she is. But the election is essentially over now, and we look to the new Senate where we’ll be working constructively to get the repeal of the carbon tax and to get the repeal of the mining tax through. And there’s still the opportunity for the Australian Labor Party to come on board, to heed the words of Mark Bishop who basically says that the ALP is talking Martian to West Australian voters.
GILBERT:
Well let’s get Andrew’s response, but also I want to ask you you can respond to Mitch Fifield on that but also in terms of spending, it does seem a bit hypocritical that the major parties criticised Palmer for spending so much which was obviously effective getting more than 12% of the primary vote, when Labor and the Liberal Party for years have spent a lot of money on election campaigns.
LEIGH:
And the great irony of this of course Kieran is Tony Abbott was quite happy to take Clive Palmer’s millions when it was the Liberal-National Party spending that money in Queensland. It’s only now that Mr Palmer is spending the money on himself that suddenly Mr Abbott is concerned about the corrosive effects of money on politics. You know, it’s an issue that Australia will face with rising inequality. You see this in the US with the Koch brothers increasingly having a highly influential role in the US Republican Party.
GILBERT:
And finally, on Labor reforms. Obviously something needs to be done. Senator Fifield mentioned Mark Bishop, but the Opposition Leader was going to give a speech today he can’t for family reasons but he’s saying that you shouldn’t have to be a member of a union to be a member of the ALP, and also wanting to extend the leadership reforms in terms of electing leaders that we’ve seen federally to the state level. Your thoughts? Does that go far enough?
LEIGH:
Well the big story of Australian democracy is progressives wanting to expand the franchise against conservative opposition. And I think we have to do that in our own party too, Kieran. We were a party that used to command one in 100 Australian adults. Now we only get around one in 300, and that collapse is common amongst the main parties. We’ve led the other parties in allowing our members to preselect the leader. I think opening up the Party to small businesspeople will be important too. And perhaps we ought to think about things like for example using party member pre-selections where the membership is strong, but where the membership falls below a certain threshold, perhaps looking to community primaries. All of those things ought to be on the table.
GILBERT:
Andrew Leigh, Mitch Fifield, thank you gentlemen. We’re out of time.
ENDS