MINISTER TONY BURKE - TRANSCRIPT - RADIO INTERVIEW, ABC RADIO NATIONAL AUSTRALIA, RN DRIVE - THURSDAY, 25 JULY 2024

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW, ABC RADIO NATIONAL AUSTRALIA, RN DRIVE

THURSDAY, 25 JULY 2024

ANDY PARK, HOST: Well, the Federal Government is preparing for a reshuffle. It’s the very first since winning the election. It follows news today that the Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor and Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney will retire at the end of this term of government.

LINDA BURNEY: After 21 years in politics – eight years in the federal parliament and 13 years in the New South Wales Parliament – it’s time for me to pass on the baton to the next generation.

PARK: The pair will step down from their current ministries immediately, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying the nomination process has started and he’ll unveil the new ministry later this weekend.

Tony Burke is a cabinet minister and someone who’s known both Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor for some time. Tony Burke, welcome back to Drive.

TONY BURKE, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: G’day, Andy. Good to be with you.

PARK: How are you feeling today, losing two senior colleagues that have been really by your side for much of your career?

BURKE: Yeah, for all of it, actually. Brendan arrived in Parliament before me and Linda and I both went to the New South Wales Parliament at the same election. So they’re people I’ve worked with the whole of my time in politics, but also both of them are very good friends. Brendan and I share the same department, different portfolios. And Linda and I, when she was a state member, her seat covered a whole lot of mine. So we’ve been very close that whole time.

PARK: Over that time I’m sure you’ve watched as they’ve built their own parliamentary legacy. You must have some stories, too.

BURKE: I’ll never forget when it was quite a cross-factional thing getting – as he then was, Anthony Albanese and myself and Leo McLeay sort of worked together to get Linda over the line in her first preselection. I remember one of the branch members at the time being critical of Linda, because she’d hadn’t been particularly active in the party branches and saying, “Oh, she’s never even addressed the State Electorate Council.” And Anthony said, “No, that’s true. That’s true. But she has addressed the United Nations.”

And Linda is just the sort of person who sometimes – there’s people like Brendan and myself who have come very much through the party itself from a younger age. Sometimes you get lucky with people who you never thought you might be able to have there in parliament with you, and Linda is one of those.

There’s a grace she brings to everything. And for someone who has had so much real hardship in her own life, I’ve never seen her do anything other than focus on the hardship of others. I’ve never seen a single moment where Linda took the sort of care for herself that she was taking for absolutely everybody else around her. It’s hard to find somebody who’s more loved in the parliament than Linda Burney, I’ve got to say.

PARK: I’m not suggesting for a second they have the same reasons for retiring, but why now? Why step down from their current ministries now? Why not wait until the election when they retire from politics?

BURKE: Look, if I had my way, they’d both be staying forever. I think we just have to take people at their face value for the reasons they gave in their media conference.

Both have had real hardship in their personal lives during their time in parliament as well. Obviously with Brendan we had the loss of Jodi, his wife, not that many years ago. He decided to stay on and has done incredible work by staying on. But as his daughter Una has become older, he’s decided that he doesn’t want to miss these next few years with her.

And for Linda as well, she’s made clear there’s still plenty of fight in her, there’s still plenty of things that she’ll do. But she wanted to hand on to the next generation. And as the PM remarked today, most of us – he put it more politely than Keating. The PM today I think said –

PARK: Which is not hard, I must say.

BURKE: Well, the words today were very few people get to leave at a time of their own choosing, whereas Keating always says most of us get taken out in a box. A rather blunt way of putting it. But when people get to a point where they say, “No, I’ve achieved a lot, I’m really ready to move on,” it’s something that, you know, eyes wide open, most of us don’t – most of us try to cling on with our fingernails a bit longer than that.

PARK: Linda Burney did acknowledge in her statement the failure of the Voice and that it didn’t deliver what she had hoped. I mean, how much will the Voice weigh on how she is remembered in the entirety of her career?

BURKE: I think what she said after that really matters, where she referred to progress not running in a straight line. And First Nations Australians know much better than I do in terms of the long sense of progress followed by disappointment followed by progress followed by disappointment.

Linda – yes, that’s in terms of the media focus and everything. I understand why people focus on that. But a lot of people won’t know what Linda did in building the jobs for Indigenous Rangers, in what she’s done on justice in training and remote housing, what she’s done vigorously pursuing and putting the weight on all of her ministerial colleagues making sure that we’re all carrying our weight in closing the gap as well.

If I put it as simply as this: there is no doubt that people in Australia and some of our most underprivileged Australians are living better than they otherwise would have, and are in a better situation than they would have been, simply because we’ve had Linda Burney there.

PARK: You’re listening to RN Drive. The Federal Cabinet is facing a reshuffle with ministers Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor resigning. Senior cabinet minister Tony Burke is with me. With this cabinet reshuffle, Minister, how far-reaching will it be? I mean, judging by several reports, it’s not just these two portfolios that are in the Prime Minister’s sights – it’s Home Affairs and Immigration as well.

BURKE: You’re above my pay grade now.

PARK: Oh, come on.

BURKE: If the PM wasn’t going to answer these ones today, I don’t think I can.

PARK: Do you think Clare O’Neil might be demoted –

BURKE: But full points for trying, I get it.

PARK: – is my question.

BURKE: Sorry, I spoke over you when you were talking then.

PARK: Do you think the shared portfolio partners of Immigration might be demoted – Andrew Giles and Clare O’Neil?

BURKE: I haven’t heard anyone use the word demotion with respect to anyone. In terms of where anyone lands and who gets moved and all of that, I suspect the Prime Minister hasn’t even landed the decisions himself. And, you know, they’re decisions that only he makes.

PARK: What does that mean about your portfolio?

BURKE: They’re decisions that only the PM makes. Nice try, but yeah, you’re going to get the same very boring answer, no matter how outrageous the question.

PARK: Look, Brendan O’Connor remarked today how cohesive this government is. There hasn’t been a reshuffle in this term of government. Anthony Albanese has also talked about stability and he’s said that he’ll be seeking at the next election to be the first Prime Minister since John Howard in 2004 to serve out a term and be re-elected as PM. So what will he be looking for in this reshuffle? Rather than asking which chess pieces go where, what is the intended outcome here, particularly for the electorate watching on?

BURKE: The PM has been really proud of having a government that delivered that sort of stability and also on the extent of experience that he’s been able to draw on. You know, a large number of us had been in cabinet before. A handful of us had been in cabinet the whole of the six years previously and then back in the cabinet room again. So drawing on that experience and also making sure that we’re – you know, that general sense of stability and good order in process has been really important to how the PM wants us to govern.

And after the years that have intervened, like, that election that you referred to, that was my first. That’s when I came to Federal Parliament – 2004. So the whole time I’ve been there we haven’t had an election since when a Prime Minister who contested the last election contested and was re-elected at the next.

And I think most Australians – I do think there’s been a level of frustration at how quickly, people have turned over from different positions not only in the position of Prime Minister but also, stakeholders like over time get used to working with people. And everybody, you know, learns a job over time. So, I suspect that drawing on that experience and delivering that sort of stability will be the two big themes of what the PM’s working through.

PARK: If I can just ask you to put on your ministerial hat, there have been calls for the re‑establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission in the wake of major misconduct allegations against the CFMEU. One former ABCC Commissioner has said he doesn’t have the confidence that the Albanese Government’s handling of the issue would lead to meaningful change in the building sector. Shouldn’t the body be re-established in light of what’s happened?

BURKE: Here’s the challenge – and I get why it’s a good talking point when the opposition run it because it sounds really tough. Everything that we are looking at, every single example of behaviour that is unacceptable and including all those issues that were unearthed during the Nine newspapers and 60 Minutes reporting, all of it was festering and happening when the ABCC was there.

In terms of productivity in the industry the three years before the pandemic after the ABCC was established, productivity went backwards every single one of those three years. And if you think of the logic of it – because a lot of people think, “Well, why on earth did that happen?” And the –

PARK: Was it because it wasn’t funded properly, the watchdog wasn’t funded, didn’t have the right sort of powers?

BURKE: No, it had – look, the first thing is it’s not a criminal body, can’t be a criminal body, never was a criminal body. But in terms of the opposition’s talking points, like, Peter Dutton has even claimed that it pressed charges against people. It just never had that sort of power, nor can something like that be a criminal body.

The other part of it with the ABCC is its whole context pushed people into their corners. It was very much a conflict model. It’s no surprise to me – you push people into increasingly levels of conflict and the most militant are the ones that rise to the top. It was during that period under the previous government where all of these sorts of ideas were floating around and it was all crack down this, crack down that. That was when John Setka rose to power.

So my sense is we have to look specifically at what wasn’t tried before, and that’s look at the organisation itself, put in an administrator, have that administrator with really wide‑ranging powers, being able to say that person needs to be sacked, that person needs to be stood down, that person shouldn’t be part of this organisation.

To be able to look at where the money is flowing and to be able to say, “No, those cheques aren’t going to be signed anymore. That’s not going to happen.” Those specific powers within the union that is what happens when you put something into administration. That’s the one way – that’s the one thing that was never tried in the past, and it seems on every analysis to go to the absolute core of the problem we’re trying to fix.

You know, it’s a tough industry. You’re never going to find construction unions around the world being, you know, incredibly, “Oh, please, is it okay if I do this,” sort of organisations. But they must not be criminal. They must not be criminal organisations. They have to be lawful organisations, and that proposal that you refer to on the ABCC was tried, and everything we’re now complaining about – and I’m complaining about too – festered and grew while the ABCC was there.

PARK: We’ll have to leave it there. Leader of the House and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke. I hope on this day of these resignations you might let me know first if you plan to spend more time at the beach house.

BURKE: That would be forced on me if it happened.

PARK: Good on you, Tony. Thanks for your time.

BURKE: See ya.

ENDS