TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - THURSDAY, 16 JANUARY 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH TOM CONNELL
THURSDAY, 16 JANUARY 2020

SUBJECT: Sports rorts; bushfires; climate change.

TOM CONNELL: Tony Burke thanks for your time. The report into the sports grants Labor is describing as “industrial scale pork barrelling”. The minister’s pointed out there's no actual wrongdoing and all grants given out were assessed as eligible.

TONY BURKE: Wow. That's an extraordinary way to deal with what would have to be the most explosive report from the Auditor-General that I've seen. Let's not forget, the Auditor-General says not only was criteria being taken into account that was not allowed to be taken into account, but the minister was making decisions where there was no clear legal authority for the minister to even be the decision maker. We've had different occasions including the regional rorts of the Howard Government, there were different times where allegations have been made that a minister interfered more than they should have or something like that. I can't remember a time where there's been a Auditor’s report saying the minister didn't even had the legal authority to be the decision maker, and then having taken it over from an independent agency used criteria that were not allowed to be used. And it's not a case of oh we're alleging they used criteria. There was a spreadsheet. There was a spreadsheet taking into account criteria that were not allowed under the guidelines. There's lots of times that we'll have stories about whether money's been spent the right way. I cannot remember one where there's been documentation of it being done the wrong way and a report from the audit office saying there's no legal authority for the minister to even be spending the money. It wasn’t hers to spend.

CONNELL: A couple of things, I mean when you say the wrong way, they were eligible for the grants given out, they met the eligibility criteria for these grants. That's true.

BURKE: Well there are two things here. One is, eligible simply means that you're a sporting organisation. It doesn't mean that you're the one who should have got the money … It doesn't mean - and that's where for the viewers I don't want them to hear eligibility and think oh that means they should have got the money - it doesn't mean that. You always have more applicants then you have money available. And what has happened here is applicants that fulfilled the criteria that had been assessed by Sports Australia as being deserving of that money and that they should have got it, have missed out because of the minister's interference in this without any legal authority.

CONNELL: On the legality aspect, shouldn't someone in the agency have spoken up about this. Why did they just allow the minister to ride roughshod?

BURKE: This is one of the questions that we've got to work through. Like why would a minister do this when her own department, and it was under the Department of Health, had provided information to the audit office that they believed if the minister wanted to do it they needed to get fresh legal advice because they didn't believe she could, and Sports Australia had already determined that they believed it was their decision to make because of the statutory basis of that organisation. Now you know you're right there's more questions to be answered as to how it happened – but it doesn't get you past the first point, which is how on earth can a minister having been told it's not your money to spend say well I'm going to do it anyway?

CONNELL: And I understand that point, you've made that, the Minister's been asked that this morning and I'm sure she'll be asked again. Doesn't it make you a bit concerned though about whether people have backbone within the bureaucracy and they're willing to say this is what we firmly believe. Why weren't they saying this before an election before this could have happened?

BURKE: And the only way I can … we're talking about information that we don't have on that part of it, on the bureaucratic part of it. I hear your point and the only thing that you can start to put it down to is that Scott Morrison is putting an impression out there, throughout all his ministers, all the way through to the public service that this is how he expects people to behave. That he expects it to be taxpayers’ money is a personal marketing fund for Scott Morrison and if it helps with his marketing then he wants it to go through and he'll use his full authority to make that happen.

CONNELL: Grant systems like these, are they broken? Do we need to have a way of taking them out of ministerial hands regardless of what happens?

BURKE: Well the thing here is we have one that by law and in the view of Sports Australia and clearly the Department of Health they believed had been taken out of the minister’s hands … We're talking about legal advice. We're talking about legal, the legal view of an act that had gone through the Parliament. So according to Sports Australia, according to the Department of Health, the Parliament had already decided this was not the minister's decision to make. All the extra probity levels that you quite rightly are saying hang on do we need these in place? Here's an occasion where they were. And that's why I'm saying there's no parallel for one like this. This is where the Parliament had already decided it's not for the minister to make the decision.

CONNELL: Will you be seeking to do something in Parliament about this?

BURKE: Look we don't want to wait for Parliament before there's action taken here. I don't see how Bridget McKenzie remains a minister. I don't see how she does. And Scott Morrison needs to draw the line on everything being his personal marketing strategy, and getting back to a level of due process and making it clear to his ministers and to the bureaucracy that that's what he would expect.

CONNELL: All right couple other topics. We know Labor's initial criticism of the Government response to the bushfires, the Government wasn't acting quickly enough and so on. Is anything missing now? After a slew of announcements?

BURKE: Well I think importantly what was what was announced yesterday in the joint media conference from Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten: the concept of having an individual point of contact will make a huge difference for people. It will make a huge difference. So that if you're a family that's lost everything, if you can be in a situation where instead of going on to a new on-hold service, department by department, if you can have one person, the same case manager each time who you call who can do the liaison for you and chase things up in different ways.

CONNELL: Can you do that overnight? I mean how does that work in practicality? It sounds great. I mean I wish I had it every time I had to call up My Gov but we don't get it. How does that work in practicality?

BURKE: Look it's been done previously following natural disasters and that's the reason …
 
CONNELL: You basically ramp up staff in certain areas of that time. So each person has one, that what you’re saying.

BURKE: That's right. That's right. And yeah we'd all love it all the time but it's a bit different when you're a family that’s just lost everything.
 
CONNELL: Yes, wasn’t meaning to be flippant, I'm just saying that obviously that would be the preference. But you're saying that that would be doable, stroke of a pen whatever it might be?
 
BURKE: Nothing is stroke of a pen but it should be able to be done very quickly and it's something that could have been started some time ago. And it's something that has happened previously. Obviously we also are going to need to have action on climate change. And this Government is just showing themselves incapable of it. You know there's not that many parts of Australia at the moment in any cities where you're breathing clean air. Sure there are some cities not affected at the moment but you know you can travel from this part of Australia to another and you're not breathing in clean air. People are seeing – and you know, the old thing about individual events, you can't pick which is the climate change one and which isn't - this is not one bushfire. This is not one individual event. This is a country, a continent that has been getting drier and drier with more days of extreme heat, where everything that was predicted has happened. I mean I remember as Ag Minister, it would have been ‘08 or something like that, reciting in Parliament the projections about future bushfire risk and being ridiculed as it being a scare campaign. The predicted date for massively increased bushfire risk was 2020. We’re living exactly what scientists said would happen.
 
CONNELL: The Government is taking some action. Labor says more, but Labor doesn't have a policy right now on exactly what you would do either.
 
BURKE: Well hang on. We've just lost an election.

CONNELL: I understand that.

BURKE: But anything or anything that we develop is relevant to potentially be implemented by Australia at the next election in 2022, and to start to be implemented from then on. And yep as we get closer to that all of that expectation’s there, and every election -  our record’s pretty clear – that every election serious action on climate change is something that Labor has done and the others haven’t. But we can't wait for that. We can't wait. And if I just give a very simple test: Scott Morrison says they'll meet and beat their emissions reduction targets. Now their emissions reduction targets are lower than is required to keep below 2 degrees in terms of global effort.

CONNELL: But Australia couldn’t tip the balance on the global effort …

BURKE: In terms of country by country what needs to happen. if you get down that argument –
 
CONNELL: I know but Paris is a voluntary commitment. So it’s how long's a piece of string as to what we need to get there.

BURKE: Well first of all, and I want to get back to the concept of the accounting tricks that they wanted to play. But the if you start to argue “Oh yeah but is the rest of the world, who else will do will do what?” you end up becoming like the person during water restrictions out there watering their driveway and saying it won't make any difference. You know, you have to pull your weight. In a country where we are experiencing what we're experiencing, where we are more vulnerable to climate change than any other developed economy, then there is an impetus on us. But in terms of getting to the targets at the moment they're not even on track to get there. They want to use an accounting trick from a different agreement to the Paris agreement to try to claim that somehow they can count that in, which the rest of the world is saying they shouldn't. The rest of the world is saying no and the Paris agreement doesn't invoke the Kyoto credits in any way.
 
CONNELL: It is one of the things Labor has said it will do in terms of that policy it won't use the Kyoto carryover. In a broad sense though. So we had the May election, we had Labor's policy, took to that election 45 per cent emissions reduction. Since then we've had this bushfire crisis, the drought’s become worse. We've heard a lot from Labor, a particularly the leader, about how serious this is. This is a harbinger of climate change. Does that mean you couldn't possibly have a reduced target at the next election?
 
BURKE: Well as I say we're not we're not going to be announcing it today. But because our policy has always been science-based, you know what we need to be able to do is to be able to get as far below two degrees in terms of global warming as possible and Australia needs to –
 
CONNELL: You're saying that that was our contribution to getting Paris done at the last election. The Paris commitment hasn't gotten any better. We're not on any more on track. So you couldn't water down that target by rationale?

BURKE: If I could just finish where I was. Our policies have always been science-based to keep as far below two degrees as possible getting, down as close to one-and-a-half as possible and making sure that Australia plays its share in that global effort. That's what we need to make sure of and our policies will be science-based. Now they're going to need to be science-based, based on what's required for 2022, not for now because we're not in government now. We lost the election. So in terms of a policy for what should be happening right now: this Government has been incapable of delivering a policy. And I'll give a simple example of that Tom. We were told - and you had people in this, well it wasn't this studio, it was your old studio – time and again say the National Energy Guarantee, this is members of the Government, the National Energy Guarantee if implemented would reduce emissions, would reduce energy prices, would encourage investment and create jobs. They abandoned the policy that they said would do all of those things.

CONNELL: And we know what happened, there was a leadership change, and so on. But the principle of what Labor did, and the 45 per cent you had. The task hasn't changed. It seems as though the warning signs are flashing more urgently. So it would be hard to imagine Labor from the rhetoric we've heard from your leader then water down the target.

BURKE: But what you're also saying is in terms of we go to you know what when the 2030 targets were first being spoken about you had much more than 10 years’ lead time –
 
CONNELL: It’s going to be harder to get there.
 
BURKE: Let's not pretend that electing a Coalition government doesn't have consequences for Australia acting on climate change. It has real consequences in terms of making sure investments there in energy, in terms of making sure energy prices are down, in making sure that jobs are being created. All of these opportunities get lost when you've got a Government that keeps developing policies it says will do all these things and then keeps abandoning them. Because they give in to people who I've got to say their arguments are not that different to the anti-vaxxers in terms of saying I don't care what the science is, I have this particular view and I'm just going to say we shouldn't adopt a policy.

CONNELL: But just in summary, essentially you're saying if it's not possible to get to that 45 because of a shortened timeframe, that might be the issue and might be why it’s a smaller target for Labor at the next election.

BURKE: You've added a whole lot of words that I haven't said. I've simply said at the next election the context is different. We need to develop policies in that context.

CONNELL: Tony Burke, thanks for your time.

BURKE: Great to be back.
 
ENDS