Sky News PM Agenda

E&OE

DAVID SPEERS:

Minister thanks for your time, and thanks for waiting with us while we have had a few technical issues here, we appreciate your time this afternoon.

MINISTER MORRISON:

Hi David.

SPEERS:

So this Bill was rejected by the Senate last night, the first time it has been rejected in the current form but you have indicated you will bring it back again. Are you willing to make any further changes, what I am interested in discussing is there room for more softening of this Bill?

MINISTER MORRISON:

I am always pleased to engage with people who are interested in getting to an outcome but the Labor party and the Greens are certainly not interested in an outcome. They would oppose people not being able to access a benefit in this situation for 30 minutes let alone 30 days so I don’t think the Labor party would engage in good faith on this but the crossbenchers know that my door is always open and we can always work through any issues that they have with this Bill.

SPEERS:

And that is the key, if the crossbenchers are going to be won over what are your talks like – I mean I don’t want to go into detail but is there scope do you think with those crossbenchers to find some compromise?

MINISTER MORRISON:

Well we will see, I am working with them on a number of other measures at the moment as people know with the Jobs for Families package and the associated savings measures and we are working through those issues very constructively. The reason why we are going to go forward with this measure, David, is because in a similar measure in New Zealand 40 percent of those who went into this four week waiting period didn’t end up being on benefits on the dole four weeks later. Now that is an outcome I would like to see mirrored in Australia and that is why we are going ahead. But what we have seen is the Labor party they opposed it at six months, so we came back and we said well there is $330 million more in youth employment programmes which we have done and we will make it a four week waiting period, we introduced additional exemptions to ensure that those who might be at risk would not be affected but they still oppose it David and what we know is that they are going to oppose whatever we put up because that is their game plan, they are playing politics with this issue, that is their choice, I will continue to work with those who are going to be sensible in the Senate.

SPEERS:

The New Zealand example is an interesting one; a striking one that 40 per cent who had to wait a month for the dole did actually find work and didn’t end up going on to benefits. What though was the difference in the – and I don’t know the answer to this – the unemployment rate, the jobs market – the ability to find a job, was it easier in New Zealand than it is right now with an unemployment rate of 6.2?

MINISTER MORRISON:

No I don’t believe so. As I said, 40 per cent of those people waiting actually got themselves into work or got themselves into training or education and these are all things that we want to see young people move into. We want to see them exercise the ability to get themselves into a job. We have got 19 per cent of families in this country where someone hasn’t got a job. That’s 560,000 children or more under the age of 15 who are growing up in a family where there is no job. So job ready Australians, particularly job ready young Australians, we want to have that incentive for them to get out there and get into work and have a plan and look for those opportunities….

SPEERS:

Sorry, I was going to say, that sounds very positive and sensible but you know there is a lot of pockets in Australia where youth unemployment is very high but the prospect of these under 25s finding work may not be as easy as it sounds.

MINISTER MORRISON:

That is why we invested $330 million in programmes to address the blockages and the challenges that those particularly who are long term unemployed for youth to help them get over those challenges. These measures don’t deal with those individuals, these deal with job ready young people who are in a position where they couldn’t go home because of family violence or something like that, they are exempted, they are not young people who have come out of some form of detention or something like that or with a mental illness or disability, all of those things are exempted, this is about job ready young people. We also had evidence before the Senate which showed their survey, the Department of Employment, showed that more than 20 per cent of employers advertising low skilled jobs were finding it hard to fill those jobs. So you have to bring these two things together, you have got to have the encouragement through programmes which we have invested in but you have also got to say you can’t go from the school gate to the Centrelink front door, and the Labor party says you can.

SPEERS:

Let me ask you, Scott Morrison, about the big story of the week and I know you still take a big interest in this as a former Immigration Minister, the decision to take 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees has been warmly welcomed. Why now though given these people have been in these camps for three, four years, millions of them in fact in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, why now?

MINISTER MORRISON:

It is not just now David because more than two years ago we started this process and we have already resettled over 7,000 refugees and humanitarian entrants from Syria and Iraq over the last two years.

SPEERS:

We did our annual programme. I am talking about why now this special one off talk of 12,000.

MINISTER MORRISON:

Well hang on a minute David, not just within our overall programme. Because we were able to stop the boats we were able to increase the size of the humanitarian programme from around 500 to over 4,000 in our first year and our second year, so we freed up space, space that was being taken by those who had come on boats and we were able to fill those places with refugees and humanitarian entrants coming out of Syria and coming out of Iraq. We’ve now made a decision to go further than that, and that’s 12,000 which we’ll take through those normal processes but it will focus on persecuted minorities in Turkey, in Jordan and in Lebanon and we’ll work through the process of identifying those individuals, particularly women and children and families. It’s a big task. My department settles all refugees and humanitarian entrants who are settled in Australia and it’s a big job. It’s not a cheap job, it’s expensive, but that money is well spent because it helps people integrate into our country and be citizens.

SPEERS:

I want to ask you a question on that aspect of it as well, but just, not diminishing the credit you deserve for stopping the boats and allowing those places to be filled by refugees from those camps, but what we’re talking about this week is an additional 12,000 one off, on top of our annual programme. I’m just wondering why now, the government has decided to do this–obviously a lot of people are supporting it, but why not previously?

MINISTER MORRISON:

Well because we’d already started acting and I think the crisis has moved into another phase and that phase is being exemplified by I think many realising who may have been in camps or things like that, that they’ll be waiting longer to go back to their home country and there has been this massive movement of people across Europe and that has caused the distraught scenes that we’ve all witnessed.

SPEERS:

And that’s what I want to get to, it’s because of those distraught scenes and that mass movement that we’ve seen action.

MINISTER MORRISON:

Well we were already acting though, David. 7,500 or thereabouts of Syrians and Iraqis we’ve already taken in the last two years. We’ve already done that in the last two years. People will be arriving next week, next month, next quarter, already through the pipeline of people we’ve already identified to respond to this. We were making those decisions before people saw these scenes on their television screens. We were making those provisions two years ago when we came to government. We acted and now we’re going to act more and move it into a higher gear.

SPEERS:

Let me just cut to the chase here though. What is your message? Should people in those camps really be making that mass movement into Europe, attempting the journeys they are?

MINISTER MORRISON:

No, I don’t believe they should but the persecuted minorities that I’m particularly referring to–

SPEERS:

So should we be reacting to that?

MINISTER MORRISON:

–the persecuted minorities I’m particularly referring to, many of them aren’t even in camps David, because they face persecution in the refugee camps and these are individuals who will never be able to go home. I want to stress, the 12,000 places we’re providing are permanent visas in Australia. They are not temporary visas, they are not safe haven visas, they are people who will come to Australia and become citizens eventually should they satisfy those additional requirements. That is different to what is being done in Europe. Europe is dealing with a mass movement of people and that is what Germany, France, the UK and others are focusing on. We are focusing on trying to resettle the most persecuted minorities in the Middle East. They happen to be Christians that is not because of their faith or belief or religion that we will be taking them, it is because they are the most in need.

SPEERS:

And the logistic question here which is part of your portfolio, can they be resettled 12,000 in a space of a financial year?

MINISTER MORRISON:

Well this is a very difficult challenge and what the Prime Minister has said is we will move as quickly as we can but we are not going to compromise the processes, David. You do not rush to failure, you never do that. What you do is you make a clear commitment and then you work through the very robust processes we have to ensure we can best identify, assess and prepare people and then bring them to Australia and then ensure we have a place for them to come and live and be part of a community and be successful here. You do not rush that process, you get it right and that is exactly what we will do. I met yesterday with Paris Aristotle, who you would know, and we have immediately begun work on this process of planning how we will be able to resettle this large number of people. There is an important meeting tomorrow with a lot of the affected community groups here in Australia as well as some of our best settlement services providers and there will be further meetings and planning and we are about the task and we are on it.

SPEERS:

Scott Morrison, Social Services Minister good to talk to you, thanks for joining us this afternoon.

MINISTER MORRISON:

Thanks a lot David, always good to be with you.