TRANSCRIPT: PODCAST INTERVIEW - AUSTRALIAN POLITICS LIVE - DEC 12, 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PODCAST INTERVIEW
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS LIVE WITH KATHARINE MURPHY
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2020
(RECORDED THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2020)

SUBJECT: Industrial relations, Parliament.

KATHARINE MURPHY, HOST: Hello lovely people of podcasts and welcome to another episode of Australian Politics Live. You are with Katharine Murphy, Political Editor of Guardian Australia and I am also the host of this show. I've got a wingman with me this week, my colleague, dear colleague, Paul Karp. Might give you a slight hint where we're going this week, and the story of the week really has been industrial relations reform. Final parliamentary sitting week. We’ve brought in Tony Burke who is the Shadow Minister for Workplace Relations. Industrial Relations?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Industrial relations. I’ve made it to the podcast, I’m here.

MURPHY: Yes, yes. Which is delightful. Tony is a listener. And it's delightful to have him on. So anyway, we'll just crack on. The government brought forward the long-telegraphed but little-sighted bills to reform the … well not reform …

PAUL KARP: Dirty word.

MURPHY: Well what is it? It’s sort of like there are a bunch of proposals that involve various … some big things and some fine-tuning things. It's kind of a mix. Anyway. So that happened this week. Outrage ensued.

BURKE: Fair call.

MURPHY: Let's cut to the chase. But strangely, the proposals no sooner landed than the government started signalling that it may, in fact, walk back one of the most contentious elements of the package. So let's start there, Tony. Let's talk about the most contentious element of the package, which is what they're doing to the Better Off Overall Test, or a no disadvantage test if you're as old as me. So let's talk about that and why you object to it in the first instance. And then I want to ask you, basically, if they gut it, if they remove it from the package, which is what they're kind of signalling, whether that guts your whole campaign around these labour market changes. So let's start with the substance. Why do you object to what they're proposing?

BURKE: Okay, can I say before we start on any of this - all of this is complicated. In terms of anything with industrial relations, because we now have so many agreements, we've got fewer awards then we used to have, but there will be aspects of this bill that we do not understand today, that will be understood and will emerge some in a few weeks’ time, some probably in more than a month's time. As we start to work through the impact on different workplaces. Some of that might be good. But in terms of working all of that out, there's a complexity to how this all interacts. But the one that's relatively simple is what they've done with the Better Off Overall Test. Effectively, it is hard to think of a business in Australia where you couldn't have an arguable case that this provision would apply to them. And what it says is that they could bring forward agreements, where you would no longer have to pass the Better Off Overall Test. You'd have a two-year window. And during that two-year window, any agreement that went through would have a two-year lifetime. So effectively, any of the cuts that become part of this could still be around in four years. Four years posts the pandemic is effectively what we're looking at. So it's a big call. But what does it mean? When you put aside the Better Off Overall Test you can't cut the hourly award rate – that's locked in. But you can get rid of any shift penalties, any penalty rates. Now depending on your hours of work, and depending on your job, that can be a very substantial part of your income. And the government, in dealing with this, when you say they've started to backtrack – I'm not really sure if that's true. It's been an interesting thing where normally when … so we're here on the Thursday and this morning in the papers there were … two of the different mastheads had stories sourced from the government saying they were going to start stepping back from it. But there was no evidence of that in Question Time. No evidence at all. The government's sort of backtracking and doubling down at the same time. So I don't think for a moment from our end that it's time to stop explaining this, because the impacts when you get to a worker are extraordinary. So the examples we've used, where we've gone through awards and worked out on different rosters, how reliant might you be on those penalty rates and shift penalties? An aged care worker could lose $11,000 a year. A shop assistant stacking shelves could easily lose $5500 a year. Now you'll find rosters particularly for the shop assistant where those hours are even more than that. And when you think about who these individuals are? People often, and it's common in this building, for people to look back on casual jobs they used to have, and to see who these workers are through themselves at that moment in time. So it's really common that people will say, I used to stack shelves and it was just for a bit of pocket money. And, yeah, I liked the penalty rates but if I don't get them all, that’s okay. I know we get ridiculed for being former union officials. But I spent six years as a local organiser in that industry. About on any night-fill team, you know, you'd have your midnight meeting with them, maybe close to half the people might be students, some overseas, some Australian. The other half are principally women who've had another job during the day, and are doing this job for two reasons. One, because the shift penalties mean in a short period of time it can make a big difference to supplementing their income. And secondly, because it's a job they can do while the kids are asleep. And the impact that we are talking about here is deeply, deeply significant. And people who traditionally are not the sort of people who are in a financial position to take industrial action. If an employer says I need you to accept this agreement or you might not have a job, they are the people most likely to agree to those sorts of agreements. So the different arguments that were being put intellectually, particularly by Christian Porter today saying, “Oh, look, all these horror scenarios, they won't happen”. I know the people I know the circumstances. And I can so clearly see where this sort of exemption leads.

KARP: Do you think the government are looking to tweak it rather than take it out? And is there any way to make it palatable?

BURKE: The way we've effectively explained it is, at this point where we are following, you know, we're not out of the pandemic, but hopefully out of the worst of it. We're not going to support a piece of legislation that involves a pay cut. Now, even if they were to shrink it back a little bit, they'd still be expanding a pay cut.

MURPHY: What about though Tony, it's sort of, it remains to be seen whether or not they will go to the wall on this, as you say there, there is this weird kind of push-me pull-you dynamic happening and where they're clearly working out whether they will try and take this home. But isn't the government benefited - and I'm saying this as a person from the Work Choices era, I was here and reported –

BURKE: That was my first term.

MURPHY: I wrote about this for the Financial Review at the time right. So I have that very clear in my mind. But it's the difference between then and now is that you are looking at workers who, courtesy of the pandemic and courtesy of conditions in the labour market that existed prior to the pandemic, will be genuinely worried about losing their jobs. And if they think it's a trade-off between $1 today and a job it's sort of like, do you think that … like in the Work Choices era, the government would have had no chance of bedding this down. And we saw what happened, right? But now, I don't know. I think it's a bit more mixed. What do you think about that?

BURKE: I think the big difference between the Work Choices era and now is there are more people in insecure jobs. Now, that works both ways. When you say does that mean there’d be more people who might feel if like if this was on the table and you're told it's this or you don't get a job? Would people be more likely to just say, yeah, I'll take it. That might be the case. But I think that actually increases the argument against it.

MURPHY: Well yes. And I'm not saying they like it. I'm not saying they'll say thanks very much Coles or thanks very much IGA or thanks very much, whomever. But it's just like, I just think the backdrop’s changed. So maybe the dynamics of the political debate have changed a bit. I don't know.

BURKE: I think there's something really interesting that happened in terms of the dynamics of the debate between yesterday and today. So yesterday, I think after the government released the bill they were acting as though they were genuinely surprised by the strength of our objection and they wanted to believe it was because of something else. We've got a lot of people who've lived and breathed people’s rights at work. And so the anger that was there in the chamber from our side is real, and you can't make that sort of stuff up. Today, they tried to have a go at seeing whether they might be able to win the argument. And the way they tried to win the argument was effectively to negate what they'd said yesterday. If I can explain that - Christian Porter, effectively today tried to pin everything on the national interest test. So we’d give an example of someone having their pay cut. And Christian Porter's response was to say, well, that would never pass the national interest test, because that would clearly be bad.

KARP: And the Fair Work Commission shall so hold.

BURKE: That's right. That's right. The Fair Work Commission, including the commissioner they recently appointed who has the life-size cardboard cut-out of Donald Trump. But yesterday, Scott Morrison was arguing it was in the national interest to have these sorts of changes because all that mattered was as many people as possible had a job. So the national interest argument that could get pay cuts over the line of the law went through was actually made yesterday by the PM. The argument was put, it was put clearly. Hard to do something more publicly than on the floor of the chamber. And so today they had a go at seeing if they could argue it from a different angle, but I just don't see that that angle will ever fly simply because if you've got an argument that's not in any way grounded in fact, it's hard to get it to fly.

KARP: In terms of the rest of the package, you've talked about the general principle of more security and better pay. But do you have the same objections as the union movement that you can't cop part-time workers taking extra hours at ordinary rates, that you can't cop eight-year agreements for new work sites? Are those red lines for Labor as well?

BURKE: At the moment we've dealt with one part of the bill in terms of an absolute red line. On the others, we're working through the detail but we do have those sorts of concerns. And if I can go through a couple that you've raised. On the concept of greenfields agreements, it's something that we flagged at the election we were willing to look at doing something on greenfields agreements. Our commitment wasn’t stronger than to say that we would consider it but that was to say that we would consider it. When I looked at what the government put forward, the life of those greenfields agreements was longer than I'd expected it to be. And the threshold to be able to get at the financial value of the project was lower than what I had expected it to be. So there may well on greenfields be a negotiation that's capable of taking place. They're effectively the two moving parts. But at the moment, I look at it instinctively and think is that something that I'd want to support in that form? At the moment, I think it, the length of time looks to me to be way too long. And the financial threshold seems to be way too low. On the part-timers and being able to flex up their hours. There'll be examples that the government … And so here if I can explain the problem, rather than offer a conclusion. There'll be examples that the government will describe from union-made enterprise agreements where provisions like that exist. But we need to remember where they exist, they have been a concession in return for a pay rise, they've been part of a negotiation. So to take them as a straight principle that's always okay I think is an unreasonable argument. And the reason they've been used as a concession in return for a pay rise, is they do carry a degree of risk. And the risk is this. We want people to have secure jobs. If you've got your locked in part-time hours, and extra hours become available, the normal way that would happen is you get a roster change that gives you those extra hours as secure as well. What the government's proposing is effectively you would stay as a part-timer at that base rate of hours. And the extra hours you get will always be insecure. Which effectively creates a situation from a worker’s perspective, where you've got a part-time job and a casual job with the same employer. That's effectively how it works. Now, if that means there's additional hours that no one would have got, or that might have been just completely casualised, it's arguably a better outcome. But if it's hours that otherwise would have been given to a part-timer, with a degree of security, that effectively we would be giving away a level of security on this. So this is why, that's the balance. And that's where on the concept of the importance of giving people job security, I really want to work through how this would interact with different workplaces. Because if all we achieve is for a whole lot more people to have effectively still two jobs, just with the same employer, some hours you can rely on and some that you can't, I'm not sure that we've actually helped people through the pandemic.

MURPHY: Okay. Let's think, because I want to not have you in the podcave just talking exclusively about the government. I'm interested to hear a couple of your preliminary thoughts in your portfolio about where Labor intends to go itself by way of policy offerings. I can see from various speeches, yours and some of your colleagues, that you guys are sending up flares about the gig economy, insecure work. You can see that building thematically. It's not entirely clear to me where you’re going to land that. So why don't you take us through that?

BURKE: Yeah, sure. One of the things that I think it’s important for people to start with as a concept is, often we think of the gig economy almost purely in terms of Uber. That's where people's thoughts start. And a lot of people won't recognise that a huge part for example of the NDIS is now done through the gig economy. So workers go onto an app to be able to get their shifts and effectively underbid each other, and a whole lot of government payments that are made that are meant to go to penalty rates. are meant to go towards people’s sick leave, are effectively kept by the platform and don't make it through to the worker. So there's a whole world of the gig economy beyond the apps that people might ordinarily have on their phone, that I think we … it’s just important for your listeners to know that.

MURPHY: Well, I didn’t know that.

BURKE: It's enormous. Now one of the challenges, because some people have said, oh, can we come up with a definition that is sort of half employee, half independent contractor? And that's often put forward as a solution. I’ll reject outright the concept that we just accept they're independent contractors. There'll be some people who work through apps, who are. There'll be some people with heavy vehicles, and they'll carry a mortgage over the vehicle and they’ll employ often a member of the family to do bookkeeping, and they'll run a mortgage through it. Like, they're independent contractors. The person who is an NDIS carer, where they are turning up as themselves, not necessarily with significant equipment other than PPE, they're clearly not running a normal sort of business. Those individuals I just can't accept, with the powerlessness they've got at work as well, that they can be seen as independent contractors. The risk here if we try to simply define, okay, let's come up with a third category. What I think the apps will do is they'll just reorganise how they operate to dodge the definition. So for example, one of the delivery companies some time ago was told that it was more likely their workers would be considered employees if they had a uniform. So the delivery company got rid of the uniform.

MURPHY: Oh my god, really?

BURKE: Yeah, yeah. So …

MURPHY: But why don't just the basic employment tests work? You know, that sort of like, forgive my ignorance, and Paul is way more across this than me, so may have much more well-formed thoughts on this, but …

BURKE: Because the definition of what an employee is is a common law test. The uniform thing comes from a piece of precedent.

MURPHY: No, I get that. But it's like, what I don't understand. In your example, where you've just said the age the age care worker, right? Like someone who is clearly a subcontractor or an independent contractor, because of the way they've structured their business, no contest. A person who is an employee, by any reasonable definition and a legal definition. Why, why doesn't this work? Why doesn’t the existing regulations work in order to capture these people?

BURKE: Effectively, the cases that have come through have defined them outside the employee relationship. And so some people have said, come up with a third definition. My instinct is if we do that the apps will just keep working around to get to the best position. The idea that I've floated that I've got to say I'm very interested in is giving the Fair Work Commission a power beyond the employment relationship to deal with circumstances that are called “employee like”. Because if you give it to the commission to work it out, then if a company restructures the commission can keep following that and chasing it down much more quickly then the legislative process will ever be able to keep up with. And because one of the connections here as well is … some people say and Christian Porter, for example, has when we’ve talked about deaths of Uber drivers, and of rideshare riders, cyclists in particular, has said yeah, well the health and safety is principally a matter for the states. Because in the transport industry in particular, there is a direct relationship between safety and the rate that you’re paid. So I've spoken with riders who’ll talk about the fact that on various apps, the algorithm’s never explained, that's part of the game of the whole thing, but work on the basis that if you take a break for a period of time you are less likely to get the next shift. So working continuously is the best way to get a continuous run of shifts. The faster the delivery happens, then you are more likely to get your different points accreditation that you get. So long as you are still traveling at the correct speed for the sort of vehicle that you're on. So we've had cyclists who’ve caught the train and then they get – I forget the term, but it's a horrific term, it's like being deleted. But it's something even worse than that.

KARP: De-platformed? Cancelled?

MURPHY: Cancelled, exactly. They’re cancelled.

BURKE: It’s like that. So the stories that riders have told me, for example, is if you want to make sure you're getting the money and you're getting the credit, for fast delivery, you just run red lights, you don't stop at stop signs. And most dangerously for cyclists, you ride as fast as you can between the parked cars and the traffic jam, which of course always carries the risk that someone opens a door. And if they open a door on you, you’re suddenly underneath the car that's traveling. So the link between safe rates, which we've talked about previously in the trucking industry, is real right now. And from what I'm told, certainly a cause of injury and probably a cause of death. Now, state-based occupational health and safety laws will never get inside the rates argument. It's only if we give the commission powers that we'll be able to do something about that.

MURPHY: You got thoughts about that Paul?

KARP: When the commission deems them “employee like” - what rights is that going to give them at that point? Because it sounds like you are going back to safe rates for the truck drivers where it has to include pay. So what other rights would be involved in that?

BURKE: We are talking about a spectrum. And there will be some examples where we will say no, no, you're clearly an independent contractor. But arguably, workers’ compensation should apply to you. And they will be other groups where it’s said, look, there should be a superannuation contribution as part. Or there'll be others where having sick leave is really important. And there may be other rules, for example, where there are limits put on what the algorithm is allowed to reward.

MURPHY: But would you leave that all to the discretion of the commission? Or would you set some parameters about that?

BURKE: At the moment I haven't got further in the consultation than where I've taken it here. My fear is always that the more rules you put down, you know these are smart, savvy international platforms that their whole process has been to break apart systems that were already there. That's what initially happened with the taxi drivers, for example.

MURPHY: Move fast and break things.

BURKE: And so the more rigid you are, the harder it is to effectively get some regulation here is, is my instinct on it. And so the most effective way … And, you know, people want the convenience of the app. So I get that. I don't call for boycotts or them or anything like that. It's a service that people want. But people don't want their convenience to be at the expense of someone's exploitation. And, you know, when a whole lot of the issues were raised about this, it was Uber who made the comment of saying, well, they might solve this problem by just getting drivers to bid for the lowest price themselves and then it's not the algorithm to blame. Now, if you get into that world, you're arguably in something even worse. And this is why I say I just I want to be … they've got where they've got by being highly flexible. So my instinct is the way to regulate them is to be highly flexible. And to get the commission that sort of capacity.

MURPHY: That makes logical sense. Just one conceptual question I've got about where you're going in a sense of in a labour market regulation sense, right. You've outlined something quite innovative here in terms of recognising a growing segment in the labour force, recognising the realities of the modern labour market. You know, you're a former union official. Is it time … there’s different ways of phrasing the question which is why I’m hesitating. Obviously union density is where it is right? There's no point in looking at the labour market as if it were the labour market of 30 years ago, it's entirely different. But Labor obviously has institutional links with the trade union movement and you see quite reasonably a role for unions in protecting employees like the people we're talking about, right? But then how do you reconcile those two realities? Because if you continue to regulate a labour market around a kind of labour capital union model while people are moving fast and breaking things behind that whole historical set of propositions, is it time for Labor to think about this in quite different ways? Or is it time to just say, look stuff it, we need to bring unions back and we need to bring unions back hard? I mean, that's sort of the conundrum, isn't it? Do you, do you look at it quite differently? Or do you go completely old school?

BURKE: I think the public during the pandemic has started to shift on this really significantly. It's hard to find a trade union that hasn't had a significant increase in membership, during what we've been through. And if you think about that, that's during a time that people are losing jobs. So it's where the number of people in a position to join a union has reduced, union membership has in fact been going up and going up significantly. So that's the lived experience right now. The other thing, can I can I just say, I think because union membership was so high there's been this obsession of well, what proportion of the public sector private sector workforce is that now, and therefore, to claim that they're not large organisations. They are still the largest organisations in Australia. At a time where across every form of membership or attendance organisation, things are declining. You don't find a larger active paid-up movement, than the trade union movement in Australia. The employer bodies would dream of having the sort of membership of businesses that unions have of workers. And the churches would love to get the sort of attendance for their people. So I've never carried that sort of pessimism. And I've certainly when people have had the argument about the extent of the union link with the Labor Party, I think, well, hang on, we've got our branch network, which I really value, which realistically, for all the major political parties combined is a tiny portion of Australia. And then we've got this union movement that we also have involved, which gives us direct links into the millions of workers. Then I've never understood why it's the union bit that gets questioned. Because and the other thing could I say that it does, which I think is really important and a case that’s not often made. Members of political parties self select, which means we all, even if we've got different work backgrounds, we all to a very large extent will have some similar characteristics. What the unions do is give us a direct link into different workplaces in every industry across Australia. I remember my last day as a union official for the shop assistants’ union. And I remember saying to my colleagues that in terms of understanding and being in touch, it would not matter how well I did my job as a Member of Parliament. There's an aspect of being in touch that a union official has that I was about to lose. Because you can turn up to a lunchroom and you're part of the furniture, you're part of the team, instead of a politician turning up and you're treated like someone special. You get different conversations. And the value of that I just think is an extraordinary asset that in column after column we tend to underappreciate.

KARP: There are structural problems though aren't there that the Fair Work Act is not very friendly to bargaining, that everyone gets the benefit of an enterprise agreement that a union negotiates. And even if they're not paying dues. Would Labor want to tip the balance on any of those issues?

BURKE: Certainly we want to get bargaining moving, certainly we want to get bargaining moving again. And we had I think one of the funniest arguments, sorry to flick back to the government but it's only brief so bear with me. But the government was arguing that one of the things they wanted with this suspension of the Better Off Overall Test was to get bargaining moving because bargaining is the way that you get higher rate of pay. Well, not if the bargain is allowed to cut wages.

MURPHY: Well it depends entirely on the rules, the framework.

BURKE: That’s right. So I want the sort of bargaining that delivers better conditions for people. And there's a few different areas that we're looking at the deal with that. On the issue of the free riders example. Because people have wrestled with this for a long time, because, essentially, at its simplest level, is there an unfairness in some people working hard for a pay rise and other people who didn't work hard for it still getting the same one? I get the sense of unfairness people have in that. But the challenge has always been if you had a differential, what you then do is you make it more attractive to the employer, directly financially, to be employing the person who's not part of the union. And I think that takes you down a really bad burrow.

MURPHY: Let's just, because time is against us, sadly, we could go on for quite a bit, I think. But I want to move on to parliament, because you’re the zoo tamer. Or, you know, whatever, the lion tamer. You obviously manage business for your side in the chamber. What are your reflections about the way parliament's working at the moment? I think you'll have some interesting thoughts on it.

BURKE: I'm really sad about it. In the same way that people here, where we are up in the press gallery, believe in the role of the press as a value effectively, and what journalism can provide, I believe in parliamentary debate, quite passionately. I think it is one of the cornerstones of democracy, that even in a Westminster system where one side, you know the numbers already, you know that you're not going to win the vote. But the fact of having that argument and the people who voted for you, that you stand in there and argue their case, I think is essential. And a change has happened. There'll be different things that people will complain about over the years. There has been a really sharp change since Scott Morrison became prime minister. Or more significantly since the last election. Because when he first became PM it was a hung parliament. So it was a bit different. But from the time of the election, we have still not had a single occasion where Anthony Albanese as our leader has put forward a hostile debate and it's been accepted. Not once. To let you know how hostile things used to be. Even on the day of the dismissal, Malcolm Fraser sought one and Gough Whitlam accepted it and had the debate. Even with all of that. And you know, you can go through every prime minister, it's always been the case that if an opposition demands something, and it's sort of come out of nowhere, then the government doesn't allow it, doesn't accept the debate. But where there is a genuine case that you're talking about something of importance, like, for example, a debate yesterday about whether or not the government had just introduced legislation that potentially was going to permit a pay cut for millions of Australians. It was shut down. No debate happens. The day Angus Taylor had a police raid on him. There was no debate. And to the point now, if you're a Member of Parliament who's just come in this term you have voted to pass legislation in that chamber on fewer than 20 occasions. And you’ve voted to silence your opponents more than 200 times.

MURPHY: So the gag is what we're talking about here, just in case it's not clear. I think it would be to everybody listening but the government's trigger happy when it comes to the gag. What else beyond that? I'm not minimising that, I understand what you're saying. And it is passing strange because, of course, you know, it was sort of the Abbott era that elevated the suspension of the standing orders as a parliamentary bit of theatre. And now in this iteration of the same government we've sort of got the gag as the counter. It's weird, right?

BURKE: Like when it was introduced, it was Deakin who made a speech saying it’ll hardly ever be used.

MURPHY: Yeah, no, it's funny. It's one of those weird sort of, you know, circle of practice things. But so I'm not minimising the gag, I completely understand the comments you make, and I accept the sincerity behind them. What else? Is it just the gag? Or is it beyond that?

BURKE: Facts.

MURPHY: Facts. You old-fashioned person.

BURKE: You can't have a debate, even if debate had been permitted, I don't know how you have a debate if you're not operating from a common set of facts. And when facts are just demonstrably true, which is the definition of fact, whether it's demonstrably true to not have engagement on the different views of those facts. I find astonishing.

MURPHY: Give us an example.

BURKE: Well, yesterday, give the recent one on the issue we've just been talking about. The prime minister's response every time when we talked about the legislation they just introduced was to open with that's not true. On every occasion. And it ended up being Christian Porter, I presume inadvertently, once we mentioned a section number, the lawyer in him couldn't hold back, and he sort of half acknowledged this was what they'd done. But then today, the prime minister was back to “no it's not true”. Now, there is a legitimate debate to be had as to how the law will be used. And I'm on for that debate. But yesterday, we had the government, and again today, we had the government effectively arguing that no legislation existed that had been introduced by them yesterday. They introduced it and within a few hours they were just dismissing that it even existed. Now I'm not sure where that takes us. But if you are confident of your beliefs and convictions, and people are going to have different beliefs and convictions, we end up with better laws if we argue them out. And there have been occasions. They don't happen all that much, and most laws, as you know, never hit the media. They are just sort of agreed and it’s almost an administrative process you'd have to go through. But there have been historically occasions where the parliamentary debate causes something to be dropped. The last one, I remember very clearly, when Peter Dutton tried to change the citizenship laws, and they were introducing the English language tests that they were setting at the same level as you're required to get into university. They ended up dropping the bill because of what was happening in the parliamentary debate. And arguments were, and you could see their backbench looking at each other and thinking we weren't told this was part of it. And eventually the whole thing just disappeared. You can't do that this term, I don't think because I suspect the argument from the government would be “no, we haven't done that”. Now, I don't want to pretend it's Trump. It's not. We're not at that absurd stage. But we are very different to where we were when I first arrived and John Howard was the PM. I can sort of give three key differences. The first, the gag when used was pretty rare. And you would very often have the case where if you've done enough of a build-up there'd be a debate, and John Howard himself would participate in the debate because he thought it was part of his job to defend.

MURPHY: And he also loved the parliament. I mean, that's the principal difference between the two prime ministers. I don't think this prime minister loves the parliament at all.

BURKE: No. And the second one is what we've been talking about with respect to facts. The third area that I think we've got to work our way through. And I went from three to four and I've come back to three and I’ve lost it.

MURPHY: You’ve lost it. It’s okay, it’s the last sitting day, we're all exhausted.

BURKE: Sorry, I’ve got it.

MURPHY: You've got it.

BURKE: Sorry.

KARP: Delegated legislation?

BURKE: No, it's actually the willingness to correct the record when you say something wrong. I remember John Howard gave a ridiculous answer once about climate change. And he was back in there at eight o'clock, just before parliament rose, he’d wait until all the news had run before he did it so that the only place that it ran would be the ABC in the morning, but he would come in and correct the record. And now it's you know, the same as what's happening with the media is happening in the parliament. The concept of misleading the parliament. We get examples now of ministers saying things that are not true and it's just too much for us to even run. And we'll get occasions now where if we do, increasingly and – you know I don't want to downplay the press gallery, I think it's part of the thinning of the press gallery here that's created the problem - that means very few bureaus have someone constantly watching the parliament. And with AAP thinning out as well it's just getting harder and harder. But often issues like whether a minister has misled, we’ll get told when we're trying to get someone to cover the story oh, that's just parliamentary games.

MURPHY: Yeah, yeah. No, no, that is a complaint. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even seek to counter that. I think that's true. And I've got similar concerns to you about these conventions and the diminution of these conventions. I just don't know what we do about it, do you?

BURKE: Well, in part, I think there's got to be, to some extent, a unity ticket. For people who believe in the different institutions of the democracy. I do think there is there was an obligation on Members of Parliament to do what many of us did, not everybody, but to defend that journalism shouldn't be a crime. That was on us to do. I think there's a flip side. I think there's an obligation in the same way for those journalists who think democracy is important to not consider what happens in the chamber as some parliamentary game. But to see it as one of the bedrocks of the place.

MURPHY: And the erosion of truth, facts and speech. Anyway, that's a decent challenge for you to chuck up at the end of this conversation and one we're more than willing to rise to. So thank you, Tony, for your time. I appreciate it. We could yap on for another 15 minutes but …

KARP: I move that the member no longer be heard.

MURPHY: Our producer will kill us so we can't do it. Thank you very much, Tony, particularly for coming in on the last sitting day when you have got to be exhausted. It’s been a hell of a week.