2GB Ray Hadley
E&OE
RAY HADLEY:
Good morning.
MINISTER MORRISON:
G ‘day Ray.
HADLEY:
Two Cabinet Ministers have apparently told Fairfax that talks have been held about dumping Joe Hockey as Treasurer if the Canning by election goes badly for the Government on September 19. I hope it’s not you?
MINISTER MORRISON:
It all speculative nonsense I mean Joe is a great bloke he is doing a tremendous job and we are all focused on the issues of jobs growth and community safety.
HADLEY:
Well what it tells me – I mean I trust that Fairfax aren’t making it up. So I trust the story has some basis in truth.
MINISTER MORRISON:
That’s a big leap. That is a very big leap.
HADLEY:
Is it?
MINISTER MORRISON:
That is a leap of faith there Ray I think.
HADLEY:
Well I think the bloke that wrote the story is out of Melbourne.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Heaven forbid Fairfax make something up about this Government.
HADLEY:
Well it is like suggesting the ABC would have something up about this Government.
MINISTER MORRISON:
God forbid.
HADLEY:
Anyway the bloke who wrote the story is the bloke who wrote a similar story not about the same thing but along the same lines which was discredited last week and that was pointed out by Andrew Bolt on this programme. That was I think the last news cycle which would have been last Saturday week, he wrote a story that was on the front page of The Age.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Oh no that was David Wroe you are thinking about the – about our candidate in Canning Andrew Hastie.
HADLEY:
It’s not Massola?
MINISTER MORRISON:
No that wasn’t James.
HADLEY:
So they are taking turns.
MINISTER MORRISON:
But these stories are better placed in Who Magazine not in a serious newspaper but perhaps that is more a comment on the paper.
HADLEY:
Ok, you are sure Malcolm didn’t talk to Joe – to James?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I wouldn’t have any clue.
HADLEY: Well it is quite possible. If I was framing a market…
MINISTER MORRISON:
I’m sure…
HADLEY:
If I was framing a market like I would in the old fashioned days before corporate book makers and you know I was standing up there next to one of the Waterhouse’s with my betting board and I was looking for two Ministers who were tomato sauce odds – which is an old colloquial way of saying odds on favourites. You know I would have Malcolm at 3’s on to be one of the two that is what I would have if James’s story is to be believed.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well I don’t know if you can believe it. I mean I am not aware of it, so more for the gossip pages rather than the serious policy and politics pages.
HADLEY:
Well speaking of Fairfax and I should declare an interest here because they do have an interest in the radio station for which I broadcast. It was funny when that all happened they said “Hadley will go quiet on Fairfax he won’t mention Fairfax.” Good luck. By the way the new Chairman takes over today Mr. Falloon. Welcome aboard Mr. Falloon.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Very good.
HADLEY:
He is a good man Nick Falloon. Bill Shorten and the Opposition went into melt down over the weekend after a press release went out late last week about an Australian Border Force operation in Melbourne. To a certain extent I can’t blame media outlets for this because it was more the tone of the media release from the Australian Border Force who appear to have gotten a little in front of themselves.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well look those issues will be sorted out within the organisation. But the hysterical reaction from Bill Shorten I think was only matched by the fact that on the day the Australian Border Force was stood up he was asked whether he supported Immigration and Customs merging and he said he would have to look at that. He didn’t realise he voted for it in the Australian Parliament. This is a bloke who doesn’t understand that under Section 688 of the Act Border Force officers can’t just go round asking for these sorts of details; it would be overstepping their powers under the act. Of course that was never contemplated and the fact that Bill Shorten doesn’t understand that I think really plays into the fact that his understanding of national security issues more broadly is extremely superficial. He didn’t serve in the National Security Committee of Cabinet under the previous government and I think he has been caught short a bit here of his understanding of the issues. So the way this works Ray is, as you know, if there was a Victorian led police initiative involving quite a number of agencies and as was the case before the Border Force and post the Border Force where there are issues that come up in a police led initiative that relate to immigration matters they are referred to the federal authorities. That is all that was going to happen here. There was no really difference to any of the previous processes and the hysterical reaction by some – look I would be concerned if there was some suggestion that people were going to go around demanding people show their visas. There was never that suggestion and the over the top reaction was fuelled just by the usual lefties wanting to have a crack at the Government’s border protection record and seek to undermine our border protection policies.
HADLEY:
If I can just got back to the story from the weekend about Joe Hockey. One of my emailers has come up with a wonderful conspiracy theory; it is an attempt by loyalists within the PM’s Department and Cabinet testing anti-Abbott leakers. So in other words they pull them aside and say “listen old mate don’t say anything but if Canning goes west I think you will find the PM is going to give Joe the punt.” And then when it appears on the front page of the Age and the Herald they go back to the Prime Minister and say “I know who the leak is, it’s Malcolm.”
MINISTER MORRISON:
They can leave that all to the court of Elizabeth the First I think with all that sort of intrigue. They will make a mini-series about it I suppose one day.
HADLEY:
Who will play you?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Maybe you can Ray? Maybe you can.
HADLEY:
No, I’ll play an older you. They will have to get Bolt to play you as a younger man. Is he younger than me, Bolt? He may be, I’ll ask him. So Bill Shorten got his knickers in a knot but at the end of the day I would hope that the Border Force executive are called in and say “listen, you have been less than helpful here suggesting even slightly that we would be stopping people for random checks.”
MINISTER MORRISON:
I agree Ray. It was a communication breakdown on those things and that needs to be remedied. But what I won’t cop though is the sort of denegation of the serving men and women in the Australian Border Force. I mean you wouldn’t have copped that sort of thing about people making those comments about the police force or the ambulance service or the fire brigade or the federal police and to treat I think those officers with the sort of disrespect that many of the critics did over the last few days – I mean these people take serious risks for the Australian people to their own person and they should be afforded respect. The way that Bill Shorten leapt on to pile on the Australian Border Force on the weekend showed I thought a lot of disrespect and a complete lack of knowledge about how the Border Force operates and he should know because he voted for it, he approved the legislation, he should know what they can and can’t do and clearly he is clueless on that issue.
HADLEY: Yeah but Bill is under more pressure than Clive Palmer’s belt buckle so he would do anything at all to divert pressure away from himself.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well that and he is trying to mimic Adam Bandt. I mean if he gets any more like Adam Bandt he will have to grow a hipster beard the way he is carrying on on these sorts of issues. He is very quick, very quick to leap on that sort of attack on the Government when it comes to border protection. He always has – this is the bloke who was for turn backs, against turn backs, for turn backs and now whether he does a turn back or not will be dependent on Tanya Plibersek’s advice to him. So you can all imagine how that is going to play out if they are ever elected. She wants to drop sandwiches on Syria with our fighters so…
HADLEY:
She does say some unusual things Tanya.
MINISTER MORRISON:
She does.
HADLEY:
I am fearful that if she were to be there she could possibly be acting Prime Minister from time to time and God knows what would happen.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well we are working very hard to make sure that that is not a possibility.
HADLEY:
Dyson Heydon will announce his decision not at 10 o’clock as perhaps we first thought but this afternoon. Now Labor is going to make a lot out of this either way. If he steps down it looks like they have claimed the scalp, if he stays they will claim the Royal Commission has been compromised. It hasn’t been compromised and now I see they are going after counsel assisting. I mean one of the funny things is it is most unusual for opposition or government to go after members of the judiciary. Be they on the bench or be they prominent QCs or SCs in the case of Mr Stoljar. One of things I know about lawyers having dealt with them in defamation cases for quite a number of year is it doesn’t matter whether they lean to the left or lean to the right. They are all lawyers and when someone goes after lawyers or a distinguished High Court judge who is now a distinguished Royal Commissioner they Labor Party could be biting off more than they can chew. Even the cheer squad from the left of the legal fraternity are backing away from accusations that Mr Stoljar and Mr Heydon have been compromised.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well look what we are seeing here is we have Labor Party who would march in the streets to defend Gillian Triggs but will march in the streets to condemn Dyson Heydon. That I think says everything about their judgment. What we are seeing is the Labor Party and Bill Shorten seeking to bully a former High Court judge out of a job because he is hearing evidence before the Royal Commission which is extremely embarrassing to Bill Shorten. Now we read of more examples of how the Labor Party uses the union movement like an ATM today with $5,000 of undisclosed donations coming from unions to support Bill Shorten’s leadership campaign in the Labor Party. I think this is just further demonstrations of just how tight the money link is between the Labor Party and the Unions. That is why they are trashing the free trade deal with China which is going to deliver thousands of jobs and opportunities for Australian businesses and workers in this country. That is why this is a government that is opposed to the Labor Party when they seek to bully judges when it comes to those judges inquiring into the union rorts and practices that we have seen under them and you know that is why I think there is a clear line of demarcation on this.
HADLEY:
Now you travelled with the Prime Minister last week fulfilling his promise to spend a week each year in remote Indigenous communities. We saw a lot of images of you I think with a paint brush in your hand. Your wife tells me she would like to get that checked.
MINISTER MORRISON:
That’s true.
HADLEY:
That is going into the Album for the children’s 21st because it is the only time you have ever been seen with a paintbrush in your hand according to her.
MINISTER MORRISON:
There’s a strong rumour to that effect.
HADLEY:
Landscaping, other work, what else did you get to do up there and what did you glean of your time there in that community?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well most importantly I am very impressed with the way – I mean this is a community in the mid-70s by the way in Injinoo who had closed down the local public school and turned it into a pub. Now we are light years away from what happened back then in the mid-70s this is a community now with those remote area communities at the top of the cape where we haven’t seen, we are advised, a suicide for six years. We have seen a decline in the number of women in refuge shelters by 80 per cent since 2000; we are seeing school attendance on the rise. Now that is not to say there are still not significant challenges and issues in the northern provincial area – there are, we discussed many of those issues with councilors, with women’s groups, with those working in the schools. I was very impressed with the work being down in both the senior school and the primary school. In the senior school they still do have a challenge with school attendance but in talks with the principal there they are really getting on with that challenge next year. I have nothing but commendation for the selfless people working to make that community better and it shows that in an indigenous community it doesn’t have to be always bad news. They are making significant progress there and I think that says to us that this can be achieved in other places. So I left quite optimistic Ray and in the battle of the footballs up there the NRL is well ahead of the AFL I have to say.
HADLEY:
Oh really? I saw a lot of football jumpers and caps and the like from the NRL.
MINISTER MORRISON:
It is an NRL peninsula. There is a bit of AFL and all the rest of it but we were kicking the footy around with the kids and all the rest of it but it was a great week and commendation to the PM. He was copping flack for not being at a summit when he had given this commitment that he would go and spend this week in the communities and that was well planned in advance and good on him for doing it. It shines a light on what is happening in indigenous communities in the country and that is what a Prime Minister should do.
HADLEY:
I am not surprised by the level of support for the NRL in that part of Australia, far northern Australia, because the only country in the world that has rugby league as its national sport is Papua New Guinea.
MINISTER MORRISON:
True.
HADLEY:
Thanks for your time, talk next week.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks a lot Ray.
(ENDS)