Doorstop Adelaide

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Doorstop Interview – Adelaide
Friday 5 June 2015

SUBJECTS: Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption; Nauru.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well this week in the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption there are three quite important issues that have arisen about which Mr Shorten needs to respond. One of those is the revelations about relationships between Clean Event and the AWU where the AWU appears to have sold workers down the river, costing them $600 million in extra wages and conditions that they would have received in exchange for $75,000 of payments from Clean Event to the Union and also signing up all the workers at Clean Event without their knowledge in order to inflate the AWU’s membership numbers for the purposes of having more power in the ALP.

There is also the issue of Winslow Constructions where apparently for some time they paid the union dues of their members, of their workers without their workers’ knowledge under the idea that they were called ‘training invoices’ and that needs to be also dealt with.

Mr Shorten’s response to these claims has been to say that he is not going to give a running commentary on the Royal Commission. That isn’t good enough – he is the alternative Prime Minister of Australia, these are serious claims, he was state secretary of the AWU throughout the period of the 2000s when these agreements with Clean Event were being negotiated. He signed off on the first one in 2004 and agreed to the second one in 2006. He therefore needs to explain what he knew about these negotiations between the AWU and various organisations and when he knew them.

He also needs to answer the questions around how the Australian Netball Players’ Association became members of the AWU without their knowledge and what he knew of those arrangements between his union and the Australian Netball Players’ Association so there are serious claims that need to be dealt with and Mr Shorten can’t stonewall by saying that he won’t give a running commentary – he is not been asked for a running commentary. The Royal Commission has been going on for over a year. On this occasion, these claims are about his union, when he was the state secretary or the national secretary and therefore he needs to address them and the media needs to ask him, he needs to give a full account of what he knew and when.

QUESTION: Are you hoping to get an assurance from him that there was no connection between [inaudible]?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well yesterday I asked… I was asked two questions this week in fact on this matter and both times I asked Bill Shorten to explain what he knew and when. And both times he said he wasn’t going to give a running commentary. Now I don’t know what he will say but he certainly needs to explain whether he knew or what he knew and when he knew it about the Clean Event arrangements, about the Australian Netball Players’ Association becoming members of the AWU, about the Winslow Constructions where payments were disguised as training when they were in fact union dues, why the fact that members and workers of these particular businesses weren’t told that they were members of the union, what kind of power that gave the AWU within the ALP over pre-selections and what Mr Shorten knew about that power and how it would be used.

QUESTION: Is there any way you can compel Mr Shorten to give a response to this?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think the court of public opinion will compel him to give a response because he wants to be the Prime Minister, he can’t simply skate along pretending that he had nothing to do with it. The AWU was one of the country’s largest and most powerful unions. He was the national secretary of it, he was very happy to be a very high profile national secretary of the AWU – we saw a lot of him during the Beaconsfield Mine disaster for example. And when times are not as good, as they are at the moment with these allegations coming public through the Royal Commission, he needs to respond what he knew and when.

QUESTION: [inaudible]

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Ah look I am not going to answer questions about that matter. Mr Dutton has given a full press conference about those issues. I am here to talk about the AWU and the Royal Commission and Mr Shorten trying to duck answering questions about it and those matters have had a very full airing over the last week or so.

QUESTION: In the paper today the Leader of the AWU said the allegations might be a betrayal of the union’s primary purpose to fight for workers. What are your thoughts on that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there is absolutely no doubt that the Clean Event arrangements sold workers down the river. The purpose of the union was to look after the workers, to maximise their salaries, their conditions, to ensure that they are safe in the workplace. And if the arrangements surrounding Clean Event turn out to be true then instead the union leadership in this case surrounding Cesar Melhem, actually stopped workers from getting $6 million more than they would have received under the EBA in exchange for membership lists being provided to the AWU and $75,000 in payments. Now that is an extraordinary betrayal of workers by the AWU and Mr Shorten needs to explain what he knew about it.

QUESTION: Minister, will the Government shed any more light on how it came to be that it took so long to correct the record about the Man Haron Monis’ letters?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that matter has also been dealt with the Foreign Minister yesterday in Question Time. It appears to me simply to be an inadvertent mistake. As soon as that mistake was realised, the Attorney-General contacted the Committee, corrected the record through Julie Bishop because she was the one who answered questions in Question Time and that matter is closed.

QUESTION: It took several days to correct the record, why do you think it took so long to realise that such a mistake was made?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think that it was important to make sure that the Government had all of its facts about whether it was a mistake, how the mistake was made, so it could be properly explained rather than going off half-cocked.

QUESTION: On another matter, Sarah Hanson-Young has made some pretty serious comments that she was followed in Nauru. Tony Abbott was asked about it and said it was more so she was being ‘looked after’. Do you think that is an appropriate response?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yes I think that Senator Hanson-Young might be a bit paranoid when people of her high profile and stature travel overseas especially in countries where Australia has obviously important reasons to be there like Nauru it is quite normal for the Federal Police or whomever on this occasion looked after Senator Hanson-Young to do that job. You know imagine if the opposite was the case and in fact Senator Hanson-Young did get into some sort of difficulty in Nauru and the AFP hadn’t made any attempts to look after her. We would be accused of not protecting people of Senator Hanson-Young’s stature. So I certainly always appreciate the support I get from the Australian Federal Police and in the last twelve months I have had quite a lot of that going to university campuses and so on. So I always welcome their help, I never complain about it.

QUESTION: Minister what is response to the reports out of Victoria that a father is suing his son’s school for playing ‘chasey’?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I don’t know about that story, so I can’t comment on it.

QUESTION: As dealings to education, would that set a dangerous precedence for some schools though?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it would very unwise for me to comment on something that the only thing I know about it is what you just told me.

QUESTION: If we had a case of this, would it set a … there are reports that a father is suing his son’s school … a Catholic Parish school … tripped during ‘chasey’, could you see any problems?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I would need to get all the facts about that, sorry.

QUESTION: Would you be able to provide ae response to the handing down of the report of the child sex abuse Royal Commission that was handed down yesterday for [inaudible], what are your thoughts?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I haven’t seen those findings either so I am afraid I can’t comment on that either, sorry. Thank you very much.

[ends]