Subject:
Australian Cricket Team; Julia Gillard; Industrial relations, Bennelong, coal shipping
E&OE...
LAWS:
Good Morning Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning John, nice to talk to you again.
LAWS:
Thank you very much and nice to talk to you. You're in Sydney aren't you?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am briefly in Sydney, I'm going back to Tasmania. I went to a breakfast this morning to welcome back the Australian Cricket Team.
LAWS:
Yeh, what a team.
PRIME MINISTER:
Wonderful team and what a great bloke Glen McGrath is.
LAWS:
Isn't he a good fellow?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeh he is and he's just such a likeable ambling country boy but a menacing fast bowler and the greatest of his generation.
LAWS:
Yeh, well I suppose he is, quite easily.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh you'd have to rank him with Lillee and Lindwall, as the three great fast bowlers this country's produced. He's been terrific.
LAWS:
You're quite right about...something about fast bowlers; Dennis Lilllee's a good bloke too.
PRIME MINISTER:
Terrific fellow.
LAWS:
A bit of a larrikin. When the cricket was on, do you stay up all night and watch it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I did on some occasions but not on every occasion, I do have day job, but I certainly watched quite a lot of the last game.
LAWS:
What's your comment in relation to what Bill Heffernan said about Julia Gillard?
PRIME MINISTER:
I said it all yesterday. It was wrong, I rang him and hold him so in no uncertain terms and he's apologised. People should not talk about those things. What people do with their lives is their own business and I have never regarded the question of whether you're married or have children as being a criterion to determine whether or not you're fit to hold high office, that's a matter of your ability and your performance, and your integrity and your commitment.
LAWS:
Yeh I agree with that, I think most of Australia would....
PRIME MINISTER:
Simple as that. And I don't really have anymore to say than that. I've made my position very clear. Bill knows it in no uncertain terms.
LAWS:
I'll bet he does. Do you think that Julia Gillard was treated fairly by the press when she made a slightly clumsy sporting analogy on this show on Monday? Did you get the impression from what you heard that she was threatening the corporate sector?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes I do, I'm sorry, I don't with...I heard what you said earlier to the caller, I think you're, with respect John, I think you're being a little charitable in your interpretation. When you start talking about it being a tough contact sport that is clearly saying to the business community, look, you stay out of this and leave it to the professionals because you might get hurt. Now that is quite menacing. And one of the reasons why I say this is that the Labor Party has history. You may remember in 1993, the election between John Hewson and Paul Keating.
LAWS:
Yes, I do well.
PRIME MINISTER:
The Housing Industry Association very strongly supported the Coalition's policies, particularly on industrial relations. The Housing Industry Association represents a lot of small businesses in the home construction industry. And when Mr Keating was returned, for two years at least, government Minister's refused to deal with the HIA, they were openly persecuted in their relations with the government and I know that for a fact because they told me and it was an open secret around Canberra that the government wouldn't have anything to do with them, wouldn't deal with them, because they had openly supported the Coalition in the election campaign. Now the unions can openly support Labor. Every night they can go on the airwaves and they can attack me, and they can attack the Government's policies, they can say quite outrageous things about links between the business community and my Government, as was said last night by Sharan Burrow, but the business community dare to offer a view, and the business community is a lot more restrained in the way it criticises Labor then the unions are in criticising us, a lot more retrained, and I therefore saw in what she said a menace, and I think she deserved what she got from the media because I think it accurately reflected a deep seated retaliatory mentality inside the Australian Labor Party on these issues.
LAWS:
I've got to say I didn't think it was menacing, I thought it was very clumsy, perhaps a bit silly, but I didn't see it as being menacing.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it was betraying an attitude of mind, a threat. You talk about body contact sport, and you talk about getting injured, it can't mean anything else other than to say you stay out of this. Well I would never presume to tell the unions to stay out of a debate.
LAWS:
No, no.
PRIME MINISTER:
Mind you there's a different association between the union movement and the Labor Party. The union movement and the Labor Party are joined at the hip.
LAWS:
That will never change.
PRIME MINISTER:
That would never change and we're actually seeing that. I mean the big reality of the last week is that despite all the sweet talk from Mr Rudd, and to some extent from Julia Gillard, but particularly Mr Rudd, the Labor Party is still being told by the unions what to do and the real difference between our industrial relations policy and the Labor Party's is that Labor's industrial relations policy entrenches again the dominant position of the union movement whether workers want it or not. That's what collective bargaining is all about, that's what getting rid of AWAs is all about, that's what a return to compulsory arbitration is all about. It's about reasserting the role of the union movement, giving them a monopoly over the bargaining process in our industrial relations system. That's the crucial difference, that's why they don't want AWAs. Greg Combet has admitted.....
LAWS:
That the AWA's good...
PRIME MINISTER:
...are good and that in the mining industry people are better off. So therefore if he's interested in workers, why is he against them? He's against them because AWAs do not involve a union. Now we don't say unions can't be involved. What we say is that whether they're involved is a matter for the individual worker and there are many employers under our system who've made collective agreements with unions and they're quite happy to go on doing that, and we encourage them, if that works well, to do so. But we also say that if a union...that if a worker wants to deal directly with his boss and negotiate an agreement, or if a group of non-union workers collectively want to negotiate with their boss, they should be allowed to do so. But by opposing AWAs and in the same breath admitting that people aren't worse off under them Greg Combet is giving the game away, he is saying to the world, this is about union power, it's not about workers jobs.
LAWS:
Well that's exactly what the inference is because I know that he said that they, he thought they were good. But you talk about the....
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they're good, well if they're good for the workers, well why on earth shouldn't we keep them if they're good for workers?
LAWS:
It seems that the mining industry likes them. I had many, many, many calls yesterday from people who didn't like them one bit, but I get the impression they didn't understand them and I don't know that its been sold very well by the Government?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we can always do a better job in relation to selling and explanations and that's a matter I am aware of. AWAs of course have been around for ten years.
LAWS:
That's right.
PRIME MINISTER:
There is a mistaken impression that AWAs arrived with WorkChoices. AWAs were brought in when Peter Reith amended, with the help of Cheryl Kernot, the industrial relations law in 1996. Now Labor opposed that. Why? Because AWAs meant the possibility of an agreement between a worker and an employer.
LAWS:
Yeah. Leaving the union out.
PRIME MINISTER:
Leaving the union out. Now that is what this debate is all about. Its about union power, not worker protection.
LAWS:
I took a call from a cleaner yesterday who felt very intimidated having to make his own case for pay and conditions. What sort of comfort can you give callers and emaillers who face real problems at this sort of level because they don't have the ability to be able to negotiate?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you can have somebody negotiate for you.
LAWS:
Yes, but if you do...?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you can have a union official negotiate for you. There's nothing in our law that says a union official, a shop steward or a union delegate can't do the negotiating for you, nothing at all. And if you're talking about an individual negotiating in a small firm with an employer, well that was the case before WorkChoices, if there was no union involved in that particular activity. And of course, the other comfort I can give to that person is of course the minimum guaranteed conditions under our law which include, unlike the Labor Party, actually include a guaranteed minimum wage. John, do you know one of the interesting things that's come out this morning and become apparent is that Julia Gillard's policy does not include a guaranteed minimum wage for people who aren't in an industry covered by an award.
LAWS:
But the AWAs do guarantee a minimum?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, the AWAs don't guarantee the minimum, our law guarantees the minimum.
LAWS:
Okay, so...
PRIME MINISTER:
So once again this illustrates that the Labor Party's policy is all about award reliant employees and that means unions, because awards are things to which unions are respondents, are parties. And if you have somebody in an industry that's not covered by an award under the Labor Party's policy as released at the weekend, there is no minimum wage that applies.
LAWS:
Now I know that there are plenty of contact lines for people who may have trouble with AWAs, there are plenty of advice lines available aren't there?
PRIME MINISTER:
There are plenty of advice lines yes.
LAWS:
And I think people should be aware of that and I think people should make use of them.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well look I think you make a very valid point that part of the difficulty some people have, and I acknowledge there's criticism of aspects of WorkChoices, of course I acknowledge that, but its been fundamentally very good for the economy and it would be a tragedy if the AWAs went and the unfair dismissal laws were brought back and union power was reinserted into the bargaining processes. Because after all, they are the three things that are really at stake. Nobody wants a situation where workers are worse off. The intention of WorkChoices has not been to make anybody worse off, the intention of WorkChoices is in fact to provide more flexibility and through that to make people better off. I mean what interest does any Government have in making people worse off and what interest does a Coalition Government have in not ensuring that people share to the full the benefits of a booming economy? And if you look at the employment figures they're wonderful.
LAWS:
Yes, they're very good.
PRIME MINISTER:
Two hundred and sixty three thousand new jobs over the last year and the most heart warming figure of all is that the long term unemployed, that's the people who can't get a job after being out of work for a year, has fallen by 22.5 per cent in the last year and its at the lowest level its been since those statistics began to be kept in the 1980s. Now that is a testament to a strong economy but it might also be a testament to the fact; I can't prove this, but it could be the case that its testament to the fact that with the new industrial relations system small employers are emboldened because the unfair dismissal laws are no longer there, to have a go with some staff that they may not have been willing to have a go with 12 months ago.
LAWS:
Well that's true. Tell me, there's talk about Labor's fair work authority being unconstitutional. Do you have a good legal opinion on that?
PRIME MINISTER:
The view of the Attorney General's Department is that it is unconstitutional and I personally thought it was when I first heard reference to it because I can remember from my law school days, a fair while ago now, being told about a High Court decision in the boiler makers case. And it was a case there the High Court held that a federal body could not exercise judicial and non-judicial power. And I think I am correct in recalling that years and years ago, what is now the Industrial Relations Commission used to be called the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration and then in the mid 1950s because of this decision, because of what the High Court said it was split and we had the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission emerge and a separate industrial court emerge.
LAWS:
Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER:
And that has been the case ever since and what I think is wrong with the Gillard prescription is that it has within the same body albeit in separate divisions or arms, but an arm is still connected to the body, it has both judicial and non-judicial functions so I think it is unconstitutional. And I am sure that at some point down the track that will be acknowledged and you'll end up instead of having the one stop shop that we've been told about, you're going to have the emergence in their policy, or if they were to win government in their enactments in government of a separate body dealing with judicial processes.
LAWS:
Are you going to ask the Labor Premier of Western Australia to stand up for Western Australian jobs?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'll do it now over your program. I will say Alan Carpenter, if you are faithful to the true interests of Western Australia you will defend to the end the maintenance of AWAs because it is in the interests of the Western Australian economy that AWAs be preserved. They've been there for a decade by their thousands and the mining industry is so much at the heart of the Western Australia economy and it's beyond belief, particularly - if I can go back to this point - Mr Comet has said people are better off under AWAs. Well if they're better off, why on earth get rid of them if you care about workers? There has to be another explanation and it's union power.
LAWS:
That's exactly what it is.
PRIME MINISTER:
That is what this whole issue is about and it's crystallised into that. It's union power, not workers interests.
LAWS:
I suppose that Greg Combet, who I'm sure you would agree, is a pretty smart fellow. I suppose he as you would and I would, have to stand up and do the job that is expected of you and after all he is a union leader so I suppose he has no choice but to protect the unions.
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't so much object to Greg Combet, my criticism is of Mr Rudd. It's very interesting to compare Mr Rudd with Tony Blair. When Tony Blair became the Leader of the British Labour Party in opposition, one of the very first things he said to the Labour Party was that in order to govern Britain well we have to put away some old attitudes. You have to as a union movement he said to the British unions, accept essentially the industrial relations changes made by the Thatcher government. He went on to become Prime Minister of Great Britain and he told the unions that fairness in the workplace started with the chance of a job. Now the contrast with Mr Rudd could not be starker. There was Mr Blair willing in the national interest to stand up to the unions and say you have to change, Mr Rudd will not stand up to the unions. He didn't at the national conference say to them it's in the long term interest of this country to have AWAs. We see the mining industry being at the heart and soul of our, a lot of our economic growth, it's not the only explanation. It's in our interests therefore the nation's interest to keep AWAs even if the unions don't like them. He didn't display at the national conference the courage that Tony Blair displayed. I think that's a very interesting comparison and it's I suppose in my mind because Tony Blair is about to retire and I've been asked to reflect for a British newspaper on some of the things that he's achieved. Even though he's Labour and I'm on the other side of politics, he at least had the courage to call it for Britain when he became Opposition Leader and tell the unions that they had to change. I think Mr Rudd should have done that and he has failed a very, very big policy test. Now...
LAWS:
And you're prepared to give Tony Blair credit?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am. I disagree with Tony Blair on a number of things, but I give him credit for modernising the British Labour Party in its attitude towards unions and I contrast that with the failure of Mr Rudd to modernise the Australian Labor Party in it's attitude towards unions, the comparison could not be starker.
LAWS:
And can you tell me what swing would be needed by Maxine McKew to upset things in Bennelong?
PRIME MINISTER:
She would need a swing of just over or just under 4 per cent. I have a marginal seat, I know that and I do not take her lightly as an opponent, I do not take any of my Labor opponents lightly. It's going to be a tough fight for me but it has been for some years but it's a bit worse this time because the redistribution has sliced a bit off me. My meat is leaner and so it's just going to be that much tougher so I don't take anything for granted John. It's, that's the nature of Australian politics and I accepted that when I went into it and although my seat has got worse over the years through redistribution. But those things happen and I'll be working hard and I've never taken the people of Bennelong for granted and I won't be about to change. I'm working hard as a local member consistent with my...
LAWS:
Pretty hard to do both isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you have to juggle both, but you do it. I mean, I, on an occasion like ANZAC Day you go to some local events on the ANZAC Sunday and then as Prime Minister you're in another part of the country including in Canberra, but you just have work harder and exercise more and sleep a bit less.
LAWS:
Finally Prime Minister, there are something like 70 ships sitting off the coast waiting to load coal in Newcastle and more elsewhere. Regardless of who's fault it is, surely the Government can fix that can't they?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well not immediately because we don't control the port, the port is controlled in the first instance by the New South Wales Government and of course the coal loaders there are privately operated. What I'm going to do is have a further discussion with Mr Iemma, a discussion in good faith. I'm going to give him a call in the next couple of days and say look, are there things that we together can do?
LAWS:
Is it a state responsibility or a federal responsibility?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the laws directly affecting the port are in the hands of the state, but I'm not trying to get into the process of blaming people and of course there are private operators in relation to coal loaders too so...
LAWS:
Well they could be at fault as well.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well exactly. Now what I'm saying in response to your question is look, let's put aside for a moment who's to blame. Let's try and see if there's something that the two governments together can achieve in order to fix the problem, recognising that some part of the problem may not be capable of being fixed immediately because there are private interest involved and sometimes when private interests conflict the public interest is not always well served. Now I'm not saying that's the case here but I am saying that we have this wonderful circumstance where people want our coal in abundance and we're very keen to sell it and if things are being held up and there's further things that government's together can do we should do them. If governments together can't do them then you may have to shift responsibilities from one government to another and ...
LAWS:
But it's not good for our reputation...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no it's not but also let's keep it in perspective. One of the reasons we have got this problem is that there's been an extraordinary demand for our coal.
LAWS:
Okay Prime Minister, I appreciate your time very much and thank you as usual for it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]