ABC 891 Adelaide

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – 891 ABC Adelaide with Matthew Abraham, David Bevan and Mark Butler
Wednesday 7 October 2015

SUBJECTS: Penalty rates; Terror raids.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler is the Opposition Environment and Climate Change spokesman, he is the National President of the Labor Party, a position he got I think in no small part because of the status he gets from coming on to this programme. He’s a Labor MP for Port Adelaide, Mark Butler welcome to the programme.

MARK BUTLER: Good morning everyone.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Chris Pyne, he’s the Liberal MP for Sturt, he’s the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science in the Turnbull regime. Chris Pyne, welcome to the programme.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Matthew, good morning David and good morning Mark.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Chris Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull has been Prime Minister for shy on three weeks and wants to take away our penalty rates – why?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well he doesn’t.I don’t know where that story has been printed, but no, we don’t have any plans to do that but we are having a debate about the future of Australia, whether it is in workplace relations or taxation or revenue or paying our way, trying to reduce our debt creating jobs and growth and I was at the National Summit last Thursday in Canberra with people like Dave Oliver and Ged Kearney from the ACTU and we all agree that rather than getting into the game of ruling things in and out we will have a proper national conversation about what we needed to do about our nation.

DAVID BEVAN: Well the front page of the Fin Review says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has signalled that there would eventually be changes to weekend penalty rates to adapt to the development of seven-day economy. But cautioned the challenge would be to ensure that workers would be no worse off in net terms for many change. So it is definitely on the agenda, and it is heading in one direction.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well everything needs to be on the agenda I mean we can’t have a nineteen century industrial relations system to suit a twenty first century economy.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Why did you start by saying he hasn’t talking about penalty rates…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we don’t have any plans to do that.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: But why did you start by saying that, because that isn’t the truth is it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that is the truth – we don’t have any plans to change penalty rates.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: So he hasn’t said anything about penalty rates?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Matthew, I don’t understand your antagonism.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well I think you need to…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Why are you being so antagonist about it?

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well I think you need to be straight about it with this and it appears, unless you don’t read The Financial Review and unless you didn’t watch Sky News having an extended conversation with one of your South Australian colleagues Jamie Briggs extoling the need to get rid of penalty rates.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the way you put it to me in the opening question is as if we announced a policy to remove penalty rates – we have done no such thing. We are having a decent, proper, sensible mature national conversation …

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: I asked you why Malcolm Turnbull wants to get rid of penalty rates and why does he want to get rid of weekend penalty rates?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well he has never said to me that he wants to get rid of penalty rates so I dispute your assumptions.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Alright. That is playing games though, isn’t it – really? Word games?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It isn’t really, it is statement of fact you know we had a national summit, we are having a decent national conversation including the union movement, including the Labor Party, the Greens and others about the future of our economy, what kind of economy we need to be to take advantage of our intellectual capacity, and this is all part of that debate so…

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: What is all part of that debate?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Our workplace relations system and our structure of course as it should be.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Including penalty rates?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think we have covered this subject.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: No, no, no, please answer the last little bit of that question.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Josh Frydenberg said two weeks ago that penalty rates are part of the national debate - of course.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Okay, so we are having a national debate about whether we should have penalty rates?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I am not going to play the game of ruling in and ruling things out – that is the kind of mindless debate that has caused our country not be able to take advantage of its full potential.

DAVID BEVAN: Mark Butler, does Labor have a similar open mind on the issue of penalty rates?

MARK BUTLER: Well no, we don’t. We don’t and there is clearly a debate starting deliberately, deliberately started, about weekend penalty rates and the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s contribution to the debate yesterday I thought was quite bizarre. He was asked why weekend penalty rates existed and he went off in one of his philosophical musings asking you know he wasn’t quite sure he assumed it was a matter of history as if it was you know something like the Latin mass – well the reason why we have weekend penalty rates because our weekends are still regarded by the community very broadly I think as special. This idea that Josh Frydenberg and Malcolm Turnbull and many others are getting about that we are now a seven-day economy where Wednesday is no different to Saturday, and Sunday is no different to Mondays is complete claptrap. Our labour market hasn’t really changed in any significant way since then the 1990s – the vast majority of workers work on Monday to Friday during the day and the share of people who work on weekends and in evenings has barely shifted at all. Barely budged since the 1990s.

DAVID BEVAN: And that is where you would like to keep us? Back twenty years ago? You’re quite relaxed about this and we don’t need to look at reforming the way we pay people?

MARK BUTLER: Well I think we will know that weekends no longer have any meaning in the Australian community when the AFL Grand Final is on a Wednesday and when Christopher and I come on to the Matt and Dave show on a Sunday morning or Parliament sits on a Saturday in the ordinary course of events. The fact is, the weekends are still important I mean there are some extended operations for retail and hospitality – staffed by some of the lowest paid workers in the community, workers who are effectively in a wage recession at the moment, because we have had the lowest wage growth in twenty-five years at present. And Malcolm Turnbull and his Government want to sort of bolster their reform credentials by going after this group – I mean I just think it is extraordinary.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Your leader Bill Shorten says you need penalty rates to pay private school fees.

DAVID BEVAN: Seriously, and he is talking about people who are on $40-60,000 a year – you seriously saying that you would be able to pay for school fees based on your penalty rates – I mean, what world does he live in?

MARK BUTLER: Well I think what you have done is take one small phrase out of a long contribution that Bill made to the way in which households fund their different costs, whether they are school fees or mortgage fees or rental for young people the fact is that the group of workers that Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg and Jamie Briggs and so on have singled out are among the lowest paid workers in the community working in retail, in hospitality, in aged care facilities and all of those other operations.

DAVID BEVAN: Given the way certain union leaders have ripped off their members, amongst the lowest paid workers in our community, it’s starting to stand a bit thin, isn’t it?

MARK BUTLER: No, as absolutely awful and reprehensible as that conduct has been, I can’t see any connection between the behaviour of a few union officials in the eastern states, and the rights of about 4.5 million works who rely on penalty rates.

DAVID BEVAN: Well it starts to sound a bit hollow when the champions of the union movements get up and see we are looking after the lowest paid workers when we look at the unions who look at the lowest paid workers and there have been some horrible abuses here – I just wonder whether people are looking for the moral authority there that the union movement once had?

MARK BUTLER: Well I think there has been a couple of reprehensible pieces of behaviour…

DAVID BEVAN: Just a couple?

MARK BUTLER: Those people should pay the full penalty and a number of them are – there is certainly one in jail and you know there are charges pending and so on, but that should not besmirch the work of hundred and thousands of hard working union officials and union delegates who go to work every day trying to defend the penalty works against attacks by people like Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: You are listening to Mark Butler and Chris Pyne here on 891 Breakfast, let’s go to Beverley from Athelstone – hello Beverley.

CALLER BEVERLEY: Hello, how are you? I am interested to hear your conversation and I would like to be reassured that if they do change penalty rates and it is a seven-day society now there is no doubt about that whether you like it or not, are they going to change the penalty rates just for retail and hospitality, you want the restaurants open on the weekends and you want the shops open, but what about the Ambos and the police officers and everybody else?

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Good question – Chris Pyne, Liberal MP for Sturt – what is the thinking on that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m not an advocate for altering penalty rates but I am an advocate for debating what’s best in our economy into the future for the jobs market. I think the issue Beverley that people are most concerned about is the fact that restaurants and hospitality recreation find it almost impossible to open in some parts of Australia on the weekend because they can’t make a profit, now if you’re in a café business at Noosa for example and you can’t open because you can’t make a profit then you’re in a tourist town and they’re not being able to take advantage of the tourist. It is also not very good for the visitors who are going to Noosa for their holidays. So there are issues around penalty rates and we do need to discuss them and the facts are that most Australians are working whenever they can, whenever it suits them, they like to have flexible working hours; there are lots of people that like working on the weekends and taking days off during the week and what Mark Butler’s described to us this morning is the hiding under the doona strategy. Labor’s view is ‘let’s not change anything let’s just hide under the doona and pretend the world isn’t marching on’. Well, hiding under the doona strategy is the reason why Labor shouldn’t be in office because they have got no plans for the future of Australia.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler, Jamie Briggs on Sky this morning gave the example of the two half public holidays that were negotiated by Business SA, the outgoing head of that before he went to head up TAFE in a chair capacity and the Weatherill Government and I think the Shoppies’ Union and resulted in on New Year’s Eve for instance restaurants not being able to open because they just couldn’t afford it in Adelaide - isn’t that a stark example of the link between high penalty rates and jobs?

MARK BUTLER: Well look I’m not familiar with what happened on New Year’s Eve…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s just fact.

MARK BUTLER: …but the idea that Christopher’s just talked about that you can find a single café in Noosa or somewhere else and base an entire reform proposal that covers 4.5 million workers around the country ...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s not just in Noosa, it’s around the whole country.

MARK BUTLER: I get about on Sunday and it seems to me that the retail and hospitality industry by and large, overwhelmingly is working find on the basis of arrangements that have existed now since the deregulation of trading hours for 20 years...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s putting your head in the sand ... if you speak to anybody in retail or anybody in the economy in South Australia in the tourism sector they would say that penalty rates are stopping them from opening on the weekend and are stopping, particularly young people, from getting jobs.

MARK BUTLER: Well I can tell you, I was down at the beach on Sunday in Semaphore and shops were open, as they were in Glenelg, as they were in the vast bulk of hospitality and retail settings in Adelaide and around the country. Now of course you can always find an anecdote and try to base an entire reform proposal on that, but I just don’t think that’s a proper, measured, deliberate way to deal with policy.

DAVID BEVAN: So your position on this, Mark Butler, is everything is fine?

MARK BUTLER: Yes. Yes, I think that broadly of course there are always trade-offs, you can always say that if you cut penalty rates or if you cut the minimum wage or if you drop people down to $10 an hour more businesses could open or they could employ people but at the end of the day you have to reach a balance that achieves a proper balance between business interests and the interests of workers who are working in those industries, and I think these are the lowest paid workers who at the moment are dealing with the poorest wage growth in 25 years, their wage increases are below inflation at the moment in retail and hospitality and I think a Government trying to bolster its reform credentials by picking on this group of workers is not on.

DAVID BEVAN: Another topic, this morning our listeners have been hearing raids across Sydney, some children, we have had a fifteen year old arrested in the last few days, the raids in the last twenty-four hours. Young men, between sixteen and twenty-four have been arrested. This follows the murder of a police staffer in Parramatta. There is a chap on the front page of The Australian today, Chris Riley, he is the founder of Youth Off The Street. He is very critical of the way young, especially young Muslim men, are being managed, in Sydney. He talks about how we are celebrating each other’s cultural differences rather than integrating the young men with the broader community. Chris Pyne, Mark Butler, perhaps we will begin with you Chris Pyne, do you think this chap might have a point that instead of celebrating the differences that we all have, some more focus should be given on tying young people to the community that they belong to? That is, the Australian community, not the ethnic community?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I know Father Chris Riley well – he does tremendous work in Sydney and throughout NSW, helping young people who are in danger and getting themselves into trouble, and his opinions are very worth listening to. And obviously we do have some issues in Australia with the radicalisation of some young people and we need to manage this very carefully, our multiculturalism is a great strength. I think it is one of Australia’s greatest strengths that gives us enormous capacity to integrate with our region and to maximise our economy and our growth and our social cohesion. And so I would never be an advocate for downplaying the importance of multiculturalism but we do need to ensure that young people particular are not being radicalised whether they are in schools or whether they are in particular churches or mosques. And I know that all governments – Labor and Liberal persuasions, state and federal are trying to work to ensure that we limit this serious scourge. There have been terror raids in Sydney today, I think five arrests have been made – obviously we live in a very uncertain world when it comes to issues in the Middle East and how they are being played out here as well and we have to be ever vigilant.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler, just quickly from you on that one in closing?

MARK BUTLER: Well I think I agree strongly with what Christopher has said. I mean we need to be very careful about the extraordinary achievement we have made as a multicultural society, better than any other nation I can think of in the world. But also to respond to such a shocking attack on Friday, the idea that a fifteen year old could undertake an execution style shooting in front of a police station rightly has shocked everybody but we need to be measured in our response to this.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well on an agreement note, we will leave you. Mark Butler, thank you.

MARK BUTLER: Thank you very much.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: He is the Labor MP for Port Adelaide. He is National President of the Labor Party as well. Chris Pyne, Liberal MP for Sturt. He is Minister for Industry and he is Leader of the House of Reps. Chris Pyne, thank you.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good to talk to you all.

[ends]