2GB with Ray Hadley
‘E&OE’
RAY HADLEY:
Good morning
MINISTER MORRISON:
G’day Ray.
HADLEY:
Question, Bill from the CBD is on the line, why are these men still getting welfare when overseas fighting with terrorists? A story that is published today, can you answer the question?
MINISTER MORRISON:
The decision as to whether someone continues to receive benefits because of national security reasons is one for the Attorney-General and one for the security agencies. They are the ones who are in a position to tell us whether to switch payments on or off and that is how the system works particularly with the changes which were brought in last year. It really is a question, I suppose at the end of the day, to the Attorney-General and the security agencies.
HADLEY:
Surely you can say to the Attorney-General, George we have got all these pelicans fighting overseas can I stop paying them please?
MINISTER MORRISON:
That is effectively how the system works.
HADLEY:
But you are a common sense bloke, I mean it is objectionable to everyone that these bastards are getting money out of our taxes.
MINISTER MORRISON:
And that is why I understand the Attorney-General and others are saying that there are requests and instructions that are on their way to me. But it is important to know how the system works. Our Centrelink officers aren’t the people who can determine whether someone is a security risk or not, that is just not their job. That is the job of our security agencies, the Prime Minister will be standing up…
HADLEY:
Well why is it taking so long Scott? You can change things with the stroke of a pen mate. Surely George Brandis can say these are the blokes who are fighting overseas. It’s beyond contempt that they are getting money from the public at the moment. Stop it immediately.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Ray, there are people overseas currently who have had their payments stopped because they will have it stopped for a whole range of reasons, inclusive of the fact that they have been away from Australia and their payments stop for those reasons. There have been over 100 or so people who have had their payments stopped for a raft of reasons. When it comes to someone who may be in Australia today still and whether their payments would be stopped that has got to be done on the basis of a security assessment and security advice and an instruction that comes ultimately from the Attorney-General. If I get one of those, that switch will be flicked immediately.
HADLEY:
Ok, let me just cut to the chase, are there people fighting with ISIS in Syria or Iraq getting the DSP as I speak?
MINISTER MORRISON:
That is a matter only the Attorney-General could advise because he knows who those people are and he would be the one who would have to tell me to turn those payments off.
HADLEY:
Well let’s hope that sometime today he finds it in his diary enough time to go to it and get something done now because it..
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well I am sure he is very focussed on it.
HADLEY:
Well let’s hope he is even more focussed on it because most people are like me they think it should be done immediately not – we shouldn’t have a committee meeting about it. You have been forthright in your comments about the John Lyons story, let me explain what happened on Saturday, as you know you have been a guest on the programme. I reported Mathias Cormann’s denials of the story as expressed to Sky News, I received an open line call from the author John Lyons who is a respected journalist who said his sources were 100 per cent correct, he stood by the story he couldn’t see any reason why Mathias Cormann would deny it and that he stands by the story again today. Now you were part of all of that, it is now confirmed without any objection that the Department of Defence, those leaders did not receive a phone call from the Prime Minister. So it appears we had a comment, I’d like to do this, maybe we should get 3,500 troops and liven these bastards up or something like that and all of a sudden it has turned from a thought bubble into policy.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well as I said on Insiders on Sunday, I was a member of the National Security Committee of Cabinet at the time. I have absolutely no knowledge of this whatsoever, I have never heard that suggestion put around, I haven’t heard any others who have suggested that was the case either so I think it is complete nonsense. I think it is fanciful as the Prime Minister has said. It is a ‘he said, he said’ thing as others have commented today. I really do think this is getting into jumping the shark territory with the sort of manic obsession that is coming around whether it is the Prime Minister’s office or other things. I said yesterday we can confirm the Prime Minister has no plans for a manned mission to the moon or anything like this as well. It is really getting just a bit silly and frankly the government has more important things to focus on and that is the job we have in front of us rather than responding to every piece of Canberra gossip.
HADLEY:
Yeah but hang on it is not gossip and…
MINISTER MORRISON:
I think it is Ray actually with all due respect.
HADLEY:
No, with all due respect to you Warren Entsch has made the point today there are some cockroaches inside Cabinet and they need the Mortein or the Baygon out and they need to be got rid of. Because John Lyons would not have knowledge of those comments as they – and it appears they were made but certainly not in a fashion that would say it is policy. There was a discussion about it or suggestions about maybe we need to get some troops over there, see what the Americans think, and have a discussion about it or whatever and someone has leaked it to John Lyons as they have leaked stuff in a story he has written today about Peta Credlin. Warren Entsch is right there are cockroaches inside the Liberal party who are trying to destroy the Prime Minister.
MINISTER MORRISON:
In terms of the story that John Lyons has written about that alleged position on troops I mean that matter was never discussed in Cabinet or anywhere else. I don’t know how people can be suggesting that Cabinet ministers are involved in this. There is a lot of gossip…
HADLEY:
Warren Entsch is saying it.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well Warren Entsch isn’t in Cabinet, he wouldn’t know. There is a lot of gossip going around Ray down here and it is getting to sort of fever ridiculous pitch. Lots of people might say things to other people but frankly that doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t make it news and it doesn’t make it relevant to people out there who just want the government to get on with its job.
HADLEY:
But Scott, you’d have to accept ok if it is not Cabinet and we know that some Cabinet Ministers voted for the spill and the majority didn’t. But you would have to accept given the level of intelligence that you have that there are people inside your party trying to undermine the Prime Minister and you know it starts at the right and works its way left. I am not accusing Mr Turnbull of being one of the cockroaches as Mr Entsch said but he wants to be Prime Minister, the only way he can be Prime Minister is to get rid of this one. If there are agents acting on his behalf they are causing mischief and plenty of it.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well I am just not indulging in conspiracy theories Ray, I am too busy frankly and so is the Prime Minister, and so is the Cabinet, and the government. We have got real things to deal with, not the mutterings going on in Canberra corridors which basically is just keeping them all terribly interested. It is not assisting getting on with the job and that is why I am frustrated, I am not going to be distracted by it, I don’t think the Prime Minister should either. Others who want to carry on in this way and gossip and offer commentary should just pull their heads in.
HADLEY:
It is obvious 39 voted for the spill, 39 voted. Among the 39 there are Cabinet Ministers despite your protestations and they are still causing problems. That is my point and I maintain that point. They need to be squashed as Mr Entsch as suggested. Mr Entsch at least has had the courage to come out and challenge the Prime Minister as part of the spill. He has nailed his colours to the mast and good luck to him but there are other people acting surreptitiously and they are behind the scenes who are trying to undermine the Prime Minister and I think there has to be an acceptance of that. It is not water-cooler talk, it is not whispered. There are people plotting to destroy the Prime Minister and they need to be outed.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well Ray I am not aware of those things because I am frankly too busy doing my job…
HADLEY:
But you are aware 39 voted for the spill.
MINISTER MORRISON:
There was a spill motion Ray and the backbench sent a message to the front bench. The message has been dealt with loud and clear. That is the way we deal with things in our party. I think that was a very transparent, very direct way of raising concerns some people had and they have been raised in the most brutal way you can imagine in politics and that has been done. So having that been aired and dealt with over a week ago the government is at work as we always have been. We are just not going to allow ourselves to be distracted – if there are those who are up to those games, that happens on both sides of politics, we have seen it before, it doesn’t help the national interest, it doesn’t help the government do its job and most importantly the Australian families that expect us and elected us to get on with things. That is what they want us to do and that’s what I am doing.
HADLEY:
The Prime Minister will talk at 11 o’clock we believe about what happens from here on in after this report. Now it doesn’t blame any one person or agency but you are a proud resident of NSW.
MINISTER MORRISON:
I am
HADLEY:
You and I have had discussed things about this on air about the failed bail system. I am not apportioning blame to the former Attorney-General. He is rather litigious. But let me just say that if we didn’t have the bail laws in place as we had them when he appeared on those sexual assault charges having appeared before a same court on accessory to murder charges, he wouldn’t have been in a position to go to the Lindt caf? or anywhere else outside probably of Long Bay or Silverwater or Goulburn had he been where he should have been.
MINISTER MORRISON:
I think there is nothing clearer than that and I think frankly that is what the report says along with if he had never entered the country, been given citizenship, been given a protection visa, if the assessments of him had been consistent and I think what the whole report shows is that while in individual instances for every agency their actions can be explained, as a system it let us down and that is what the Prime Minister I think will be addressing today. There are a number of ways you can address that but frankly at the end of the day what matters is our agencies talk to one another, that they share information that when one plus one is added up it equals two and someone knows the answer to that and then someone takes action on the basis of that. As Immigration Minister I was responsible for agencies that had frontline responsibilities and you can fix these things. We can go back to when Khaled Sharrouf left the country. When that happened we were operating on the exact same system as was occurring under the previous government. That had $700 million cuts to our border agencies. We reversed that in the budget and changed the procedures and practices for accessing intelligence on people moving through the airports and put a counter-terrorism unit in which has had a major impact on how that matter has been managed since. So you can change things to make them better. You have to learn the lessons from what has happened in the past and you have got to act on them and that is what I believe we are doing.
HADLEY:
Ok well just one thing about that and you enunciated all of that, Monis came here on a fraudulent business visa application and that wasn’t picked up. But we have two blokes in custody, one came via boat, the other bloke came here on a false passport. Now let’s just pretend, we go back to 1996 or 2000 or 2004 how in god’s name does someone get citizenship based on the fact they are a fraud – forget about whether they were a terrorist or has links to a terrorist organisation, surely under any test that surrenders your right to become a citizen of this country if you lied to get here?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I don’t disagree with you Ray. I think the system here has shown to have some very significant failures and the Prime Minister will be having a bit more to say about that in terms of the benefit of the doubt. But the key is the agencies have to work together. I go back to the first question you asked me today – the Social Services Minister has to work closely with the Attorney-General when it comes to these payments. We both have important jobs to do. I have to run a payment system with Marise Payne the Minister for Human Services, the Attorney-General has to run the national security architecture which tells the rest of the system who we need to be watching and whose payments need to be terminated. The system will actually fix a lot of that as well. As I said over 100 people have had their payments cancelled for a variety of reasons but on this specific issue of whether people need to have their payments cancelled now we will take those directions when they are given.
HADLEY:
Sunday Telegraph through Samantha Maiden yesterday reported the Productivity Commission’s report into child care a call for child care rebates to depend on a child being fully immunised. Now I notice you are not ruling anything in or out in the article by Samantha but surely if people are going to be so irresponsible as not to immunise their children we shouldn’t be paying for them to go into child care should we?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Look I am very sympathetic to that view and Mike Baird has already taken action on that in NSW with pre-schools .I commend him for doing that and we will work that through the proper policy process. I think that is a very sensible suggestion and I know there will be people who won’t like that. At the end of the day when the government is going to make payments to people to help them with particular issues then it is not unreasonable for broader policy issues like immunisation to be part of those decisions. Already the child care benefit is dependent on immunisation. Already family tax benefit payments are conditional on immunisation. So it isn’t a big extension to take that into a new system that we would be considering.
HADLEY:
Ok. Alright thanks for your time as always we will talk next week. Thanks Minister
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks a lot Ray, good to be with you and hopefully the Sharks will have a better time next week.
HADLEY:
[laughs] You live in hope.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Always.
HADLEY:
Leaving that porch light on for a former Prime Minister.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Good on you Ray. Cheers.