TRANSCRIPT: TELEVISION INTERVIEW - ABC 24 - THURSDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2019

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC 24 WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
THURSDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2019

SUBJECT: Bushfires, climate change, unions, wage theft.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: I want to bring in my first guest on this issue and other issues, Tony Burke. Welcome.

TONY BURKE: Hi, PK.

KARVELAS: I want you to put your former environment hat on for some of these questions and they're pretty big questions at the moment. We've known for some time that Australia would eventually face fires like this. Have state and federal governments done enough to prepare?

BURKE: Look, as you'd expect, I'm not going to use today as an opportunity to have a slanging match with the Government over all of this. The sort of warnings you refer to, you can go back to 2008 for me, before I was Environment Minister, as Agriculture Minister, where I referred specifically to what was projected to happen with bushfires by 2020. At the time there was a fair bit of ridiculing of that. We always have to respect the science. Now that goes to a few different angles. It doesn't only go to how you deal with climate change policy. It also deals with how you work towards adaptation for what's already happened. It goes to making sure you've got the emergency services work all together - and all of that's a conversation that there will be a time to have. But I think this week we have had some pretty awful moments of politicians using tragedies to try to drive home particular political points. I'm not going to add to that today.

KARVELAS: The Federal Government will meet with a group of former fire and emergency service chiefs next month. They argue we don't have the resources we need to properly handle this intense fire season. What do you make of their critique, though?

BURKE: I think you always have to listen to the experts. When you've got people who really understand the frontline, they deserve a hearing. They deserve a hearing by someone who has enough power to be able to fix the issues they raise. You can be guaranteed when it comes to anything that would end up with, if the Government wants to take any action in terms of making sure our emergency services are better equipped, you're not going to find arguments against them from Labor on that.

KARVELAS: Former RFS chief Greg Mullins says Australia needs to have more fixed wing water bombing aircraft available. Is it too late to get those additional resources in place or do you think this is an urgent priority?

BURKE: Well, I think every Australian seeing all of this as urgent. The challenge that we have now, as I understand it, and I'm not the spokesperson and so I won't have all the details at my fingertips on this. But it's not that long ago that we had a fire season that didn't overlap with the fire seasons in North America. And there was more sharing of equipment that was always going to be possible in the past than is available now. When you've got the crossover it means we can't rely on the opportunity to be able to borrow equipment in the same sort of levels because other countries quite rightly will say they're now having a longer fire season too and it's equipment they can't share. When it goes to the specifics of the types of equipment and what they need, my view is if the experts say they need equipment, then they probably need it.

KARVELAS: We know that Greg Mullins and the other fire chiefs wanted to meet with the Prime Minister. They’re going to meet with David Littleproud. The Greens have moved this motion in the Senate, using the Senate week to put pressure on the Government for the Prime Minister to meet with them. Do you think the Prime Minister should be doing that?

BURKE: I don't see how there's a more important issue in Australia right now. I don't see how there is. So Scott Morrison will have his own reasons for saying he's refusing the meeting but I can't make sense of it.

KARVELAS: A lot of experts say the problem with hazard reduction burns is it's either too wet because it's just rained or too dry to do safely. Where does that leave us?

BURKE: If you want the old environment hat on, I think there is an interview I think you ran on your program yesterday , I heard it on Radio National yesterday, which is something I've been arguing for a long time which is the Indigenous rangers program has always shown there is a way of making sure that we are dealing with ongoing burning in a way that absolutely works for the environment and works for people to make sure that when burning happens it's in the cooler weather, so that you don't end up in the same level with the catastrophic fires. That happens in a very active way across the north of the continent and in a much more limited way across the rest of the continent. There will be a time later in the year and early next year when I hope we have a very big national conversation about expanding that program. When Barnaby Joyce says they knew to be able to burn and that's it, that's true. But there's a whole level of science around exactly when you burn, how you do it, the mosaic method of burning. We know it works for this continent because it's been done since pretty much the first sunrise. The last 150 years or so is the aberration. And it's in everyone's interest we expand that footprint.

KARVELAS: You mentioned at the beginning Labor has said this isn't the time for politicians to be bickering about the cause of the problem. Will you commit to working with the Government to finding solutions and not just stopping the bickering this week, but stopping the bickering full stop?

BURKE: When it comes to trying to act on the big issues here, I think it's hard to argue that we're the ones who have been creating the bickering. We've been working for solutions on this as long for as I've been in the Parliament. And the political games that have caused us to not have policies in this area that have been lasting, have largely not been run from our side of politics at all. If the Government wants to come to the table and be constructive in this area they'd only be answering what we've asking for for more than a decade.

KARVELAS: Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hanson clearly weren’t ready to vote for the Ensuring Integrity legislation. It's now confirmed to be delayed until maybe those last two weeks. Were you surprised by it.

BURKE: No. I've always been hopeful that as people looked at the detail of this legislation they'd realise it's not as the Government has described. The Government wants to describe this legislation as though there is only one union it’ll impact and there is only one union official they’ve got in their sights, which is John Setka. They’ve wanted to frame all of it that way. As people look at the detail, they realise a few things. They realise first of all the union movement now is predominantly female. The biggest union is the nurses' union. The sorts of impact this legislation has, that would cause people to lose their elected status as union officials, could see an entire organisation deregistered, are the sorts of things like protests from nurses about staff-patient ratios. They're the sorts of breaches. And you add to that - the paperwork breaches that can now cause officials to lose their jobs and workers importantly to lose the organisations that they've been wanting to join to rely on.

KARVELAS: I need to challenge you on that. You haven't seen the amendments. So what's your evidence that's the case? I've heard this paperwork argument but you actually haven't seen the amendments. How do you know it's going to happen?

BURKE: I'm describing what's in the bill right now.

KARVELAS: There are amendments to the bill and that's what I'm asking about. You haven't seen them, have you?

BURKE: No. I haven’t seen the amendments and that’s why I can't comment on them. I can comment on the Bill. If you want comment on the way the amendments are being described then they don't fix any of the issues that have been raised. If they end up producing amendments that are completely different to how they've been publicly described then the whole thing is an odd exercise in communication.

KARVELAS: Senator Lambie is worried about the impact the bill would have on nurses and teachers. Has Labor been in talks with her to vote against this bill?

BURKE: Labor's talking to all the crossbench. Whatever amendments come up, we don't believe this Bill's capable of being salvaged. In the final instance we'll be opposing the Bill in whatever form it ends up in. That's not where the crossbench is coming from. They're in a world of wanting to work through different amendments. We're talking to the crossbench. Our starting points with everything is we want them to oppose the Bill because effectively this is a Bill that punishes workers. And the irony of this is at a time where the biggest industrial relations issue that people are talking about is wage theft, the approach from the Government is to weaken the organisations that combat wage theft. And that point hasn't been lost on the crossbench here.

KARVELAS: She wants - and this is Jacqui Lambie I'm referring to - she wants the Victorian CFMEU boss, John Setka, to resign. Has Labor lost any influence it might have to persuade him to do that? You can't do anything at all? It seems his union wants him to stay.

BURKE: That's between him and his members. We made a decision that his values weren't consistent with the Labor Party and he was expelled from the Labor Party.

KARVELAS: Do you find it odd his members think his values should represent their union?

BURKE: People choose their own representation.

KARVELAS: My question is do you find it odd they would think this?

BURKE: It's not the decision I'd make if I was a member of that union. But I'm not. Christian Porter, if he ever needed legal representation in a dispute, he would be allowed to choose whoever he wants. He wants to intervene on workers and say they can't choose who they want. All the different freedoms - this program has had a lot of interviews where they've dealt with freedom of the press. We've had a lot of conversation over the last couple of weeks about freedom to protest. This is simply the freedom for people to associate. The freedom for people to join an organisation and choose who will represent them. It's all part of the same story. Whichever one of those fundamental freedoms are, they're all part of being a democracy. Freedom of the press, freedom to protest, and freedom to associate. Scott Morrison's attacking all three of them. I know we like to compartmentalise them but they are all part of the same story from this Government.

KARVELAS: The Senate has voted for a Labor proposal to establish an inquiry into wage theft and superannuation. What's will scope of that be?

BURKE: It's wide and the senators who are on it will run it. And Alex Gallacher will very much be taking the lead on it for Labor. But effectively we want to be able to get to the bottom of just how widespread the problem is, because every time we think we've reached the bottom of the barrell a new scandal comes out. And we want to work through what's the full range of issues to be able to deal with it? To be able to prevent it from happening and make sure the proper penalties are in place, and also to be able to make sure if someone has been underpaid there's a way of getting to the bottom of it quickly and getting them paid back quickly and on to the right rates of pay again. Think about the number of people who are out there at the moment who don't even receive a payslip. The criminal standard issues the Government's looking at are a part of the entire story. But there's no way that's the whole story. And the worst thing to do at the moment would be to be getting stuck into the organisations that spend most of their time combatting wage theft.

KARVELAS: You just mentioned it but you said the Government doesn't care about the issue but they have actually proposed laws to criminalise wage theft and backed a union plan for quicker settlement of smaller underpayment claims. It's not that they don't care, they've been foreshadowing action on this.

BURKE: The critical word there PK is foreshadowing. We're yet to see the action.

KARVELAS: Well, you have to draft the laws.

BURKE: Yeah. Well, it didn't take them long to draft the laws that were about getting stuck into unions, trying to tie them up in paper work and deregister them and have them cease to exist. Suddenly it takes them a hell of a long time to be able to act on the criminal part of this. But that's only one part of the whole equation. The biggest problem here is a young worker who doesn't even receive a pay slip, how is their problem ever going to come to light if you don't get the opportunity that a union official will be at their workplace at some point and the challenge will be raised and they'll know what to do? If you take away that organisational capacity which is fundamental to workers even finding out whether or not they're being ripped off, then this problem only gets worse. The committee will be able to go through that in all its different layers. But the thing the committee guarantees: the Government won't be able to get away with pretending that one piece of legislation with a few criminal thresholds that very few people will meet – that that is somehow a fix to a problem where we are increasingly seeing companies where ripping off their workers has become part of their business model.

KARVELAS: I want to get you on that because if you look at the list of companies now - and I'm exaggerating very deliberately – but you have to find the company that's not doing it. It's become that common, story after story, and big companies that you wouldn't expect it. Is this just a normal practice in Australian workplaces? It's kind of surprising to see just the level of this?

BURKE: Look, there will be some cases where it's deliberate. There will be some cases where it's inadvertent. But even where it’s inadvertent, it’ll be companies that have spent a fortune making sure they don't pay too much tax and they spend a whole lot of money on their taxation compliance but have spent almost nothing on making sure that they're paying the workers the right amount of money. So even when a company says “honest mistake”, there's still the structural problem. Why do you invest so much with accountants and you're making sure you're obeying tax law but you spend so little making sure you're obeying employment law? When I hear them argue that somehow the awards system is too complex for them, you know you'll have awards that will run to a series of pages and there’s a Taxation Act in volumes that they managed to comply with. If you don't take it seriously, it's not enough to then say, "Sorry, it was inadvertent." And that all will come out, I suspect, in a much stronger way during the course of the inquiry because I suspect we'll get more people telling stories, reporting abuses and going well beyond what's already in the public domain.

KARVELAS: Tony Burke, thank you for joining us this afternoon.

BURKE: Great to be back on the show.

ENDS