2GB Sydney with Ben Fordham

BEN FORDHAM: Let’s go to Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese. Christopher good afternoon.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good afternoon Ben.

BEN FORDHAM: Albo Good afternoon.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: G’day.

BEN FORDHAM: Now we’ve got some wild weather in Sydney this afternoon so we’re going to keep this nice and brief this afternoon. I know, you understand Albo , you know what happens here.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I sure do, it’s been pretty miserable there.

BEN FORDHAM: Trees down and flooding and all sorts of other stuff as well, I’ll update everyone on that in just a moment.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Thank goodness for the SES.

BEN FORDHAM: That’s right, now let me go to a few things, well I’ll do 18C first and then we’ll get to the omnibus stuff, the federal government has got an uphill battle to get its changes to free speech laws through Parliament. George Brandis the Attorney General has been blasting the Senate cross benchers for opposing changes to 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It was always going to be difficult for Malcolm Turnbull to win over many parts of his party on this one because the Coalition’s been split on it but he’s got the party across the line, Albo getting the Parliament across the line is a whole other challenge.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It sure is and looks it’s pretty simple, no one in the government can say what they want people to be able to say that they aren’t allowed to say now.

BEN FORDHAM: I can answer that for you, can I have a go an answering that?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yep, have a crack.

BEN FORDHAM: So we want children who are at a university in Queensland to be able to say on Facebook ‘universities fighting segregation with segregation’, and we want cartoonists to be able to…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yeah, but they won that mate, they won that.

BEN FORDHAM: No but they had their lives turned upside down.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yeah, that’s about process though, that’s not about, and we’re prepared to talk about process, and things that are just vexatious should be thrown out.

BEN FORDHAM: We want cartoonists to be able to draw things…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yeah and they can.

BEN FORDHAM: That are going to upset us from time to time.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And they can, and they should and they can.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Section 18C was never designed to make hurt feelings illegal, and that’s what it’s become because it’s been twisted and it’s no longer got any credibility and as a consequence we are returning credibility to it by making what it was suppose to be about, intimidating, and harassing people.

BEN FORDHAM: So who stuffed up the process then Albo, was it Gillian Triggs was it?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well the Human Rights Commission clearly I think have conceded for example that they made some mistakes there and take the Bill Leak example, that cartoon or any other cartoon that he did, and he did cartoons that offended just about everyone at various times, that’s what cartoonists do, that’s why 18D is in the law which provides for the media essentially to be able to say what they want in terms of the role that they play so…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Anthony why should these student in QUT have been put through the misery of the federal court process and the Human Rights Commission process that went on for a very long – not just months but stretching onto a year or more costing tremendous amounts of money when you admit they should’ve never been prosecuted in the first place.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Of course, there are lots and lots of vexatious claims made through various forms of the legal system, you and I both know that, what you don’t do therefore, what you haven’t done is put forward and argument about the changes to 18C.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But when the law is broken, the government’s responsibility, in fact, the Parliament’s responsibility is to fix it, and 18C is not doing the job that it was intended to do when your people introduced it when you were in government.

BEN FORDHAM: It’s made it easier, surely Albo you’ll concede this, it’s made it easier for people to lodge vexatious claims against one another.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, well if there’s an issue there then it should be fixed and I’ve got no problem with that at all.

BEN FORDHAM: Part of the issue’s the law.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No it’s not, it’s not and there is nothing, you still didn’t say in terms of what people were able, you at least had a crack…

BEN FORDHAM: If all you had to establish was that you’re offended by it then it makes it easier for you to make a vexatious claim.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: But that’s not right, it’s not sort of oh I was just offended full stop.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But that’s what’s happened over and over again.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: But it hasn’t happened, no one has been – tell me a case, one person who was found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act inappropriately…

BEN FORDHAM: Yeah, you can do lot of damage to someone in the space of two years when they’ve been dragged through that process, we can’t ignore hat.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And lots of people, as you know, are sued for defamation or sued for lots of things and dragged through processes, you know that happens and we should try and fix in terms of processes to make sure that everything’s done that we can to minimise it but that happens from time to time in terms of the legal system and you can have a vexatious claims across a whole rang of areas. It happens toward the media from time to time with people making vexatious claims whereby they say they’re going to sue and they send letters and letters go back and they bounce around but the fact is here, what I don’t understand and if someone just…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: (inaudible) and cost them their reputation as well, that’s what I want people to be able to say.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s about changing 18C, but they can, show me one thing for which people have been found guilty.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You’re just going to ignore all these cases and pretend they didn’t happen.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No not all these cases…

BEN FORDHAM: The difference between the two arguments here is one says, look it’s the law itself, the other says it’s the process behind the whole thing, but look I think the defence is flimsy here Albo because everyone knows that those kids had their lives turned upside down and that 18C was at the centre of the whole thing.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Correct, and even the Racial Discrimination Commission now…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: That’s not right, everyone knows that if you go and look at the case that there were issues in terms of what happens, I don’t want to re litigate the whole thing, but there are issues with computers that were available to everyone that were available there, they chose to use the computers that were specifically for indigenous students and then they got into an argument over statements that they made on Facebook.

BEN FORDHAM: Yeah, they walked into a room that did not have a sign making it clear that it was for indigenous students, it was an unsigned indigenous only computer room and quite frankly in 2016 or 2017 I don’t like the idea of dividing people up based on race.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But the point is, they weren’t even told it was an indigenous only room…

BEN FORDHAM: I know.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And I’m not saying that they were guilty of anything and guess what, the Human Rights Commission agreed that they weren’t guilty.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But why did they have their lives ruined?

BEN FORDHAM: Alright, hang on a moment and let me finish with this one before I get to some other thunder and lighting, hang on a moment. Christopher, are these changes actually going to get through?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we’ve been told many times over the last couple of years that things have got no chance of passing the Senate and then we find that they do, so with negotiation, which is what George Brandis will be doing with the cross benchers and the work of other Senators I am hopeful that the Senate will realise that this law needs to be improved, strengthened, made fairer, made more credible. I’m certain that a lot of the process changes that we’re putting up, it’s not just a change to 18C, I think they’ve got a fair chance of passage and I think once we’ve had more of the debate, I think the Xenophon Team and others will see the sense of this change.

BEN FORDHAM: Alright, even smooth talking George Brandis, he might even be able to bend Albo’s ear but I don’t think so.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He could talk you around.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well what he could talk to is that we’re not talking about just one or two, thousands of people who will say that they’re being subject to racial vilification that has caused them a great deal of hurt, there is violence also from time to time.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But that’s all going to be illegal under the new 18C. We’re not going to make it legal to be violent against people on the basis of their race.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’m not suggesting you are (inaudible)...

BEN FORDHAM: Thankfully we live in a country where if that kind of thing goes on in public and we see it time and time again on trains and buses and everywhere else, if some nutcase starts abusing the hell out of someone based on the colour of their skin Australians tend to step in and do something about it.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: They do and it’s fantastic when it does but a lot of the time they won’t because there’s no one else around.

BEN FORDHAM: Alright.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And anyone who has a non Anglo name in this country…

BEN FORDHAM: Like Albanese.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Absolutely, I got called a wog when I was a kid, absolutely.

BEN FORDHAM: Mr Albanese, Mr Pyne we’ll talk to you soon.