Doorstop Adelaide
11 Jun 2015
Transcipt E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Doorstop Interview – Adelaide
Thursday 11 June 2015
SUBJECTS: Employment figures; Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption; Nauru.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m pleased to be able to report on the jobs figures that have been released. Employment is up, unemployment is down. The seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment is down from 6.1 to 6. This is broadly in line with what we have been seeing from the ANZ job ads over the last twelve months. And it is obviously good news.
We have had 111,000 new jobs since the beginning of this year but there are still 745,000 Australians who are unemployed and we are working as a Government to make sure that those people have a full opportunity to be able to be in work so while the news is good today, particularly good for those people who have found work in both full time and part time work, both of which are up, we still have more to do and that’s why in the budget we had a particular focus on jobs growth. While we have reduced taxes for small business, changed accelerated deprecation to support small business, ‘jobactive’ will be starting in full time by the 1st of July. There are jobs packages, growth packages in the budget to make sure that we are focussed in a very laser beam like way on creating jobs. So that is good news. But I am happy to answer any questions about that in a moment.
If I can turn to the other issue that I am wishing to cover in this particular press conference is the very unfortunate and murky situation now surrounding Bill Shorten as Leader of the Opposition. In the Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption, we have had more allegations being made, more claims being made, this time about Winslow Constructions. Winslow Constructions apparently provided several hundred thousand dollars to the Australian Workers’ Union to pay for their employees union dues, whether their employees were aware of that or not. That was during Mr Shorten’s time as the state secretary of the Victorian AWU. His predecessor indicates that he had nothing to do with this during the time when he was state secretary and it occurred before Cesar Melhem became the state secretary of the Victorian AWU. So this is a matter uniquely within the knowledge of Mr Shorten. Now for Winslow Constructions to provide several hundred thousand dollars to the AWU, they must have been expecting to get something in return. I am sure they weren’t providing it to the AWU because of Mr Shorten’s winning smile. And Mr Shorten needs to explain what on the other side of the ledger was the consideration for that amount of money being paid to the AWU because if it was the workers of Winslow Constructions getting lower rates of pay and less advantageous conditions, then what that shows is that like Cleanevent last week, the AWU union leadership was not putting the interests of workers first. Mr Shorten has said in one press conference six times I think that he wasn’t going to provide a running commentary on the Royal Commission. Well we aren’t asking for a running commentary on the Royal Commission. We aren’t asking him to appear before the Royal Commission although he is welcome to do so. What the Australian people want to know is what he knew and when about these arrangements with Winslow Constructions, matters particularly within his own knowledge. It is not good enough for the alternative Prime Minister to simply come up with a routine patter which is a response to say ‘I won’t provide a running commentary’ when no one is asking for a running commentary. Now this is becoming an open sore for Bill Shorten. He needs to address it, he needs to apply the balm of sunlight to exactly what he knew and when about the arrangements with Winslow Constructions and until he does he will continue to be dogged by this particular issue.
QUESTION: Minister Pyne, Cesar Melhem resigned as Victorian Whip over similar sweetheart deals allegations over memberships in Victoria. Should Bill Shorten resign as well?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Cesar Melhem fell on his sword over the claims made in the Royal Commission to do with Cleanevent which was an arrangement with Cleanevent paying $75,000 to the AWU and apparently in return for that the AWU signed off an EBA where their workers missed out on $6 million of extra labour costs and better conditions; now that matter has been dealt with Cesar Melhem. Mr Shorten is yet to explain what he knew about that matter and when. He is yet to explain how the Australian Netball Players’ Association came to be members of the AWU which he announced to great fanfare in 2005 as the state secretary of the AWU. And now more worryingly he absolutely refuses to explain what he knew about why Winslow Constructions gave the AWU $225,000 when he was the state secretary, what they got in return for that. So whether he should resign or not is the next step. The first step is for him to actually appear before the press and give a full explanation. Now I notice that his frontbench colleagues are stepping away, embarrassingly away, from the camera hoping not to be asked questions about this. And I notice that Mr Shorten has said he doesn’t remember sweetheart deals being made when he was the state secretary of the AWU. But I think that it would be better for him and for the workers who he represented as their state secretary and for the Australian public to hear a full disclosure from Mr Shorten about these matters.
QUESTION: Would you agree with the proposition that this is [inaudible] to what the union movement is all about if this means that Bill Shorten was building his power base in return for lower wages for workers?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well absolutely, and that is why the current state secretary of the AWU has been extremely upfront about how these allegations, these claims are particularly damaging for the Australian Workers’ Union because the union should be representing the workers. It shouldn’t be making arrangements with businesses to boost their membership in order to get more power in the Victorian ALP to affect pre-selections for the lower house and for the upper houses of the Federal and State Parliaments. So make no mistake that was the outcome of these kinds of arrangements. This is a very serious matter and it is not good enough for Mr Shorten to think that like Daniel Andrews before him as the Leader of the Opposition in Victoria, he can simply come up with a line that he repeats over and over again until the media lose interest. Daniel Andrews was running for Premier of Victoria, it was bad enough in his case that he refused to answer questions about the Royal Commission. Bill Shorten wants to be Prime Minister of the thirteenth largest economy of the world and he needs to explain what he knew and when and what these arrangements were and why these arrangements were entered into.
QUESTION: Do you have any evidence that he has actually done anything illegally or wrong?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that’s why I keep putting everything in the terms of claims and allegations. What has become more worrying though is it is not just me that has put these questions to Mr Shorten it is the Fourth Estate that has put these questions to Mr Shorten now on many occasions over many days and he continues to obfuscate. Now the more he obfuscates the more I think the public have reason to suspect that he doesn’t want to answer the questions, because of what the answers might be, but that is a matter for him to deal with and the Government expects him, and the Australian public expects him to stop trying to get away from this matter through routine answers and actually deal with it.
QUESTION: [inaudible]
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that is a ridiculous distraction. There are no claims being made in the Royal Commission about Tony Abbott and Cleanevent or Tony Abbott and Winslow Constructions or Tony Abbott and the Australian Netball Players’ Association and no one is suggesting that Tony Abbott might have entered into these arrangements in order to boost his power within the Victorian ALP. So the idea that there’d be a town hall discussion between him and Tony Abbott is quite frankly slightly ludicrous. Now Mr Shorten should stop hiding behind these artifices probably suggested to him by his office and simply deal with the fact that as Leader of the Opposition and the alternative Prime Minister, these matters have been raised, he was the state secretary of the Victorian AWU, he was the national secretary of the AWU, and he was very happy to be extremely prominent abo these matters during the Beaconsfield Mine disaster and how he needs to explain other matters that he doesn’t want to be prominent about.
QUESTION: Minister, what is your thoughts on Labor’s stance on negative gearing?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, Labor’s answer to everything is to create more taxes or take away tax breaks. So they have a super tax, they want to take away negative gearing tax breaks. They never understand that the other side of the ledger is reducing saving. When they were in Government, they were on a trajectory to have 37% of the Gross Domestic Product of Australia as Government tax take; that is unprecedented. The previous tax take of the Commonwealth Government as a share of GDP was 26.5%. so that was their previous trajectory; they have learnt nothing in opposition after eighteen months they still think they can tax their way out of trouble. Their current attacks on the Australian taxpayer is through housing tax breaks and superannuation; neither of which the Federal Government supports.
QUESTION: Do you have any evidence that the union members weren’t actually well served by the agreement between the AWU and Winslow contractors?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the claim in the Royal Commission for example in Cleanevent’s case the workers missed out on $6 million of labour costs that the Cleanevent would have had to pay to their workers. So we do have claims made about that. In terms of Winslow Constructions, that is a very important point you raise because I think most people watching this would say if Winslow Constructions paid hundreds of thousands to the AWU, what did they get in return? Now most businesses don’t give the union movement several hundred thousand dollars unless there is a benefit to the business. Now what Mr Shorten hasn’t explained is what was that benefit. That is what we want to know. I don’t know what it is and we want to know what it is.
QUESTION: Bill Shorten says that this Royal Commission is nothing more than a witch hunt set up by the Government. What is your response?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He would say that, wouldn’t he.
QUESTION: You don’t think there is some legitimacy to his concerns, that his Royal Commission is nothing more than to tar the Opposition Leader about broad claims about the union movement?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that is not the case, no. For months and months if not years there has been claims. Many of which have turned out to be true, about the union movement operating in a corrupt fashion. Now we have seen the CFMEU and the many allegations and claims and court cases involving the CFMEU. We have seen bad behaviour, unacceptable behaviour from the MUA. So therefore the Australian public and the workers represented by unions have a right to expect that honest union officials are running their unions. We had Michael Williamson and Craig Thomson and the Health Services Union which was extremely high profile as you would remember which showed they were very happy to take the money of the poorest workers in our community and feather their own nests. Now I think that the Australian public and the workers who are represented by these unions should expect that the union officials representing them are of the most honest kind. Now most union leaders are full of integrity and I know many good union leaders that want to do the right things by their workers, and many of them end up in Parliament and make good parliamentarians. But those that aren’t good and dishonest need to be exposed and dealt with and that’s what this Royal Commission is about. It’s making sure that workers are well represented. Now no one is suggesting that Mr Shorten has done anything wrong. Where Mr Shorten is getting himself into difficulty is by not answering these questions and the media will not go away until he does.
QUESTION: Just going back to negative gearing for one moment, what does Labor’s stance say about them at the moment?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What Labor’s stance says about them at the moment, is that they have not learnt anything about being in opposition, they haven’t done the hard yards to reinvent the policy stances, rather than dealing with the spending side of the budget; they always focus on the revenue side of the budget. It is the same way they used to describe taxes as savings measures, and now we are seeing in both superannuation and housing their response to the difficult and challenging budget situation which we are addressing is to keep promising you can spend and much as you want and trying to find the places to spend that is either borrowing or higher taxes and they are choosing to do both. They need to recognise that he Australian taxpayer is already been squeezed enough and new taxes or taking away current tax breaks is not the answer.
QUESTION: Are you concerned about the effect on rent, from that, the effect on people’s rent?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I am concerned about the effect of taking away negative gearing in a number of different respects. Negative gearing does encourage people to build apartments and houses and rent them out. So if Labor want to take that away, how will they explain the impact that will have on people who rent houses or in fact new housing stock. I think we better leave it there.
QUESTION: Quick final question on Nauru, if I could please Minister.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: On Nauru?
QUESTION: Yes. Why does the Government appears to have ignored internal departmental advice which recommended the transfer, sorry, and recommended the transfer of asylum seeker babies to Nauru?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s a question you will need to put to Peter Dutton, sounds like an operational matter and it’s not a matter for me.
QUESTION: Given the evidence though confirmed by the Department of child abuse on Nauru, how can they withstand any court challenge to the transfer?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well again I think that’s a question you need to put to Peter Dutton, or if it is about legal action against the Commonwealth to George Brandis because I am not briefed on that matter. Thank you.
[ends]