2GB Ray Hadley
E&OE
MINISTER MORRISON:
G’day Ray.
HADLEY:
Don’t want to talk about rugby league but your club is in the news today so let’s start with Cronulla. What should they do with the Fifita twins if in fact they were responsible for the horrible abuse of an official?
MINISTER MORRISON:
They should take the action that everybody expects them to take; you can’t go around setting that sort of an example particularly at junior rugby league matches. It is very disappointing and that is a matter for Lyle and for Damien and the board and I am sure they will take the appropriate action and I hope they would.
HADLEY:
You were the architect of the successful Operation Sovereign Borders to stop the boats. You reintroduced Temporary Protection Visas and you got them turned back. I think people are sitting on the edge of their seat across the country, even though it is no longer your portfolio, as to what they came up with at the national conference over the weekend; an option of turning back boats.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Oh look it is a joke. It is a very bad karaoke version of the Coalition’s policy; I mean it doesn’t even approach it. It can’t be an option it has to be the option and the big difference between the Coalition and the Labor Party on this is – this is I think their twelfth position on this issue, we have had the same position over exactly the same time and it has been the positon that has actually worked. We were able to stop the boats because I had the support of my Prime Minister, the Cabinet and my Party Room; all of us of one mind and of one resolve to stop the boats. Bill Shorten doesn’t even have his Deputy Leader and Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong that is at least three members of his would be Cabinet. So if he can’t keep his own Cabinet together on this in the Opposition how on earth would he implement a policy like this when the bellows come from his backbench and the ABC and Fairfax and everyone else, I mean for goodness sake it is as hopeless joke.
HADLEY:
Look you made the point I think when it was first raised last week after our conversation and I think it is a most important point; you must have the will to make it happen. You can’t go in half, there is a very course expression I won’t use, half-baked is another version of the expression I was going to use. You can’t go in half-baked about it you have to be really, really strong and in light of criticism you’ve got to make sure you are prepared to cop it and carry through on what you said you would do.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Because that is the only language and the only actions the people smugglers understand. I mean who are the people smugglers going to believe the Coalition who has demonstrated their commitment to this or the Labor Party who oppose what we wanted to do, said it could never be done, then refused to believed it had been done and now only as an election approaches Bill Shorten out of complete political self-interest makes this feigned suggestion that he will consider it as an option. I mean it is absurd and on top of that they are going to abolish Temporary Protection Visas, which is what actually started the whole madness last time when Senator Evans did that. I mean these guys only voted against turn backs last November so they are not convincing anyone and certainly not convincing your listeners. People have the choice between the real deal which is the Coalition on this issue or the very poor impersonators.
HADLEY:
In relation to Chris Bowen and Tony Burke, who was there for only a short period before they lost government, I mean for them to feign you know the fact that you know it did work eventually – I mean Bowen sat where you are sitting right now and argued till he was blue in the face when I said you know I would play the noises [sound effect]…
MINISTER MORRISON:
Haven’t heard that for a while.
HADLEY:
Haven’t heard that for a while, nearly heard it last week or this one [sound effect], I mean he would say “no, no” [sound effect]…
MINISTER MORRISON:
Hasn’t been one of those for over a year.
HADLEY:
People on Christmas Island looking outside the window now to see what is there. But I mean to have them now change their position, everyone is entitled to change their position, but to forget what their position was before they change their position and not try to justify it is just ridiculous.
MINISTER MORRISON:
They not only said it couldn’t be done, that is turn backs, they said it shouldn’t be done in terms of turn backs and so you can’t have any confidence in their ability to implement a policy that they clearly don’t believe in.
HADLEY:
Ok, we go from that to Joel Fitzgibbon; Bill Shorten went to great lengths late last week to claim the ETS is not a carbon tax. Yesterday on the Bolt Report on the Ten Network Labor front bencher Joel Fitzgibbon declared “you can all call it a tax if you want.” Let’s probably go back now for people that didn’t catch this yesterday.
JOEL FITZGIBBON:
“People can call it a tax if they like, well you can call it a tax if you like. I don’t care if people call it a tax.”
HADLEY:
Well because it’s a tax.
MINISTER MORRISON:
It’s a tax.
HADLEY:
Joel…
MINISTER MORRISON:
It’s a tax and Joel has belled the cat on this and it is not only that the ETS which will be a tax, it is also the RET of 50 per cent which they voted on on the weekend which will increase electricity prices, particularly for the most vulnerable in our community. That will mean that I suspect that at some point when they do this they will have to increase welfare benefits to compensate for the increased prices and all of these sorts of thing so the taxpayer will get hit again and again. I mean what we saw from the Labor Party’s conference on the weekend was polices that will weaken our economy and weaken our borders. That is what happened in one big sop to the left and a party complete divided on these issues.
HADLEY:
Now we go back to your portfolio and a call I just took from one of our listeners in Brisbane, Adam Brookman back in court today and he will be dealt with by the courts in relation to his support of Islamic State, arrested and returned to Australia on Friday night in the company of Australian Federal Police because he wanted to come back and they escorted him back here. But then the fact – and I am sure I just read 2010 to 2014 he is overseas, he has got a wife and five children who in fact you may well be looking after. Now I know you can’t for privacy reasons disclose anything to me or my listeners but will you be having a look to see how the Brookman family has been sustained in his four year absence.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well we are always keen to look at the integrity of the system and I should stress that it is the Department of Human Services that looks after those issues so I don’t have direct access to that information that is through Marise Payne. You are right there are privacy issues…
HADLEY:
But you get on very well with her don’t you?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Of course I get on very well – we work very closely together.
HADLEY:
So you can pick up the phone and say Marise can you check this for me?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I look at all of these issues Ray and I do because it is important that people have confidence in the integrity of the system. But look where people have met a technical eligibility and requirement then the government’s options there are very limited that is why I am always looking at ways that we can continue to try and work on the eligibility so it is fairer and that we can direct the resource where it needs to go most.
HADLEY:
I am a bit confused about Wyatt Roy, the youngest MP in Parliament, and appearing on what they call a Q&A panel hosted by Tony Jones at a music festival. Is this a recorded Q&A or is this a quasi Q&A? I am not quite sure about…
MINISTER MORRISON:
I don’t follow Q&A terribly closely Ray so I couldn’t…
HADLEY:
I am asking a bloke a question I don’t know the answer to because I don’t follow it closely either, I thought you may enlighten me.
MINISTER MORRISON:
We are both in the dark on this I am afraid, so no I couldn’t tell you.
HADLEY:
I was trying to work out whether it’s – you know sometimes you take shows on the road…
MINISTER MORRISON:
Maybe they have I don’t know.
HADLEY:
And you do a pretend show, even though it doesn’t go to air, at the Blues Festival up there on the north coast of NSW and then you might take some excerpts of it if it makes it on air. So in other words you’re telling me for the first time in our discussions over a three year period you don’t know?
MINISTER MORRISON:
It would seem that is the case.
HADLEY:
I am disappointed because in the past even if you don’t know you tend to make things up which is wonderful as well for our listeners. I am talking jokingly of course.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Of course.
HADLEY:
So you don’t know?
MINISTER MORRISON:
No I don’t. I am sorry.
HADLEY:
And finally, front page of the Fairfax newspapers political donations and they are talking about money coming from the gambling lobby to a fundraising body supporting front bencher Kevin Andrews at a time when he was formulating the Coalition’s poker machine policy. He says in a statement today to suggest his decision making was influenced by donations is wrong and offensive and it takes it through in that, and I’ve read it all of that, that the decision and the policy formulation was well in advance of whatever money may have come from those involved in the gambling lobby.
MINISTER MORRISON:
I mean Kevin had always taken a very transparent position on this issue in Opposition and we followed through that on government. I am now working through processes of where we go forward on things like a lot of those illegal offshore betting sites and things like that and working with industry on those issues. I think a lot of people are very concerned about those issues at the moment. I am certainly concerned about how our mobile phones are turning into casinos and the way that people’s lives can be destroyed by that. So we will be working through a process on that, these are important issues that need to be resolved and I think to suggest in the way that I think was implied in that report today against Kevin Andrews is very unfair. I know Kevin very well and he is a guy of very high moral standing.
HADLEY:
Appreciate your time as always, talk next Monday.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks Ray, just before I go can I just raise one thing that did come up on the weekend on this issue of a conscience vote. I mean what we saw…
HADLEY:
Are you talking about gay marriage?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Yes, what happened on the weekend is Labor basically traded away a conscience vote. I mean this is quite a bizarre idea that they put a time limit on a conscience vote for Members of Parliament. I mean what is next odds and evens day when you have conscience votes in Parliament?
HADLEY:
It was a deal done late in the conference and people might not have caught up with it. It was a deal done and Penny Wong said it was her proudest moment in the Australian Labor Party perhaps you can explain to the uninitiated exactly what the deal is? It is not for the next term of Government as I understand it but they are making some sort of promise for the first 100 days that they will come to the conclusion that it will be a forced vote. So if you are a Labor MP sitting in Parliament, either in the Senate or in the Lower House, and the Bill comes before the House you won’t be allowed to vote anyway other than on Party lines. Is that basically what it is about?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Yeah, after 2019. What it does is just makes a mockery…
HADLEY:
So it is a four year window? It is another term on?
MINISTER MORRISON:
You either have a conscience vote or you don’t and you either believe it or – I mean the Liberal Party we have conscience votes on everything. We don’t kick anyone out of the Party for not voting on the Party line. I mean there are free votes and there is Party policy but the Labor Party kicks people out of their Party if they don’t vote according to the Party policy and they are saying that on an issue of conscience on that topic, which people have strong views about on both sides, they are saying there will be no conscience vote after 2019. The fact that you can just trade away a Member’s conscience and that that be done by a union driven conference as opposed to members themselves making this decision I think says everything you need to know about the Labor party and for them to now be lecturing others about conscience votes I think makes a complete mockery of the whole argument that Bill Shorten is trying to make.
HADLEY:
Ok, thanks for your time.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks Ray.