TRANSCRIPT - 2SM BREAKFAST WITH RICHARD KING - FRIDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2023
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW, 2SM
BREAKFAST WITH RICHARD KING
FRIDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2023
SUBJECTS: Support for the upcoming referendum across the Parliament, passing the Housing Australia Future Fund, backing the Newcastle Knights this weekend.
RICHARD KING, HOST: Well, as I mentioned earlier, my pleasure now to speak with a man who wears a number of hats, as do many of our Ministers these days. He is the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and our Minister for the Arts. And that's the member for Watson in Sydney, Tony Burke, who's on the line right now. Good morning, Minister.
TONY BURKE, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS, MINISTER FOR THE ARTS: G'day, Richard. Great to be able to talk to you.
RICHARD KING: Yeah, nice to talk to you too. I hope you have a good weekend. Look, we better start with something that's certainly dear to your heart. You wrote an opinion piece which was published in my local daily newspaper, the Newcastle Herald, yesterday, obviously supporting the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Somebody who certainly doesn't support it is the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who actually spoke to the National Press Club yesterday. We might just have a little snippet of what she had to say yesterday.
JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS: The Voice is flawed in its foundations. It is built on lies and an aggressive attempt to fracture our nation's founding document and divide the country built upon it.
KING: Built on lies and misinformation, flawed in its foundations. You obviously disagree with what Jacinta Price had to say, Minister.
BURKE: Yeah, and I think in the current debate, a lot of people have forgotten that the history of this issue actually comes from both sides of politics. Right back in 2007, both John Howard and Kevin Rudd went to that election saying that they'd have a form of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recognition in the Constitution. Then there were committees that were followed through under Tony Abbot, under Malcolm Turnbull, under Scott Morrison, and the process was all to say, “OK, if we're going to do recognition, how can we do it in a way that's meaningful?” And that was where the Uluru Statement from the Heart came from. It was just a response to the request and most of that process was actually under Liberal governments.
What we've come back with is actually a really modest proposal, which is that the way we recognise is by having an advisory committee called The Voice. It's just advisory, but it basically says, we will always be in a position where we want to listen, and that's a decision that people would make. It'd be in the Constitution so that Parliament of the day could change exactly how it worked. They could always do that. But you wouldn't be able to replace it with nothing. You'd have a decision from the Australian people of just saying, we want this to work, you always should listen and we know when you listen, you get better results. For me, this is really straightforward and the history of it goes to both sides of politics over about 16 years, which now has four and a half weeks to run.
KING: The Prime Minister, when he announced the date, October the 14th, a couple of weeks ago in Adelaide, said, we're voting for an idea, but isn't that part of the problem? It's a concept, it's an idea. And I think in a lot of people's minds, it's just a thought bubble. It's an idea, but it's difficult, as you're finding out, difficult to sell an idea, Minister?
BURKE: The first thing to remember is this idea where it came from was from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Governments, both Labor and Liberal governments, put the question out – what would make recognition meaningful? People came back saying, “Can you just have recognition in the Constitution in a way that says there'll always be some sort of advisory committee that you're listening to us?” The advisory committee won't control money, it won't make decisions. If it gives bad advice at any point, the Government won't follow it. If it comes up with an idea that the Government doesn't want to do, the Government won't do it. But it just means there'll always be an approach where you listen. If you read the Uluru Statement from the Heart, there's this great line in it where it goes back to 1967, when we had a referendum to change the Constitution. Huge Yes vote on it. That was because up until that time when we ran a census, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders weren't even counted. The line in the Uluru Statement from the Heart is just, “In 1967 we asked to be counted, this time we're asking to be heard.” It's as simple as that.
KING: Alright, let's just clarify. So, if the Yes vote gets up, it'll then be up to Parliament to sort out what the Voice actually is.
BURKE: That's right. The Parliament then makes that decision and it'll be people like some of the No campaigners who are saying, “What will it look like?” They're actually members of Parliament who'll be part of that decision. The decision from the Australian people is simply you've got to have something. You can't have a situation where you've got no national body that you're meant to at least give people a chance to be heard.
KING: Right. Yeah, okay. I think in a lot of people's eyes, that's the concern. They don't know what it is they're voting for. We're saying, OK, if it gets up, then Parliament will decide what it is. But what it is could be anything, and that's got a lot of people concerned, Minister.
BURKE: No, I'm glad you raised it that way, Richard. What it is is an advisory committee. In terms of how many people are on it, those numbers can change and things like that. But what it is is an advisory committee. An advisory committee just simply giving advice on those issues that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people more than the rest of us.
They're issues like the gap that we've got in life expectancy. Infant mortality, there's some real differences there. For as long as you and I have been alive, we haven't managed to close that gap. So, if we keep doing what we're doing in the past, we can only expect the same sorts of outcomes. A proposal where you listen at a local level, we already know that brings better results. A proposal where you listen at a national level will mean you get some better national decisions.
KING: Right. My guest Tony Burke, Minister for Employment, Workplace relations and also Minister for the Arts. Your signature Housing Australia Future Fund passed Parliament yesterday and hopefully 30,000 new houses to be built over five years, but no time frame. I get a lot of listeners saying, okay, we have a housing crisis, we have a government that wants to bring in hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Who gets priority and where do they all live? And I think that's a fair question.
BURKE: In terms of who gets priority, a whole lot of the reason for the immigration program is to make sure we've got people in the skills that we don't have at the moment. There's been not enough training for a very long time in a whole lot of the skills, and some of those skills are the skills that we need in construction to build some of these houses. If you simply put up the doors on anyone arriving – the housing supply problem, we wouldn't be doing what we need to be able to fix there. A lot of the people who've come – and the numbers are still lower than what had been projected from the previous government. But you also got to remember a whole lot of overseas students during the pandemic left and those overseas students are coming back now. There's a lot of money for the Australian economy that comes from that as well. So, you’ve got to have the other side of the coin.
The problem that we've got as a country is we didn't have a housing policy for a decade. We have fallen a huge way behind even getting this bill through, it should have gone through last year. It's taken longer than it should have, just trying to get agreement across the Parliament because Peter Dutton did what he seems to do on everything and just said no. So, we had to go to the crossbench to be able to get support.
KING: The unemployment rate, the figures released yesterday, 3.7% for August, are pretty much the same. You're probably aware of Tim Gurner, the comments he made, the multimillionaire property developer. He said unemployment should jump to 40% to 50% to increase productivity. Is there any link between productivity and high unemployment, Minister?
BURKE: I want everybody who wants a job to be able to get a job. That's my job. I'm the Employment Minister and I look at low unemployment figures and I celebrate. I look at the fact that we've had the best jobs growth of any new government in Australian history. We've had more than half a million people come into jobs and over the first twelve months, nearly 85% of those new jobs were full time. These are incredibly good employment figures, and there might be some people who say some stupid things at a business conference from time to time. But ultimately, if you've got a job and it's a secure job, and you've got the hours you need, and you're being treated respectfully at work. That provides what you need for your household to be able to get ahead, to keep up with the bills. Anyone being in a job is a good thing, and anybody who has a different view to that, they're on a different side to this debate than me.
KING: Right. You've got limited time. Unfortunately, I've got another 55,000 questions, but I'll leave those aside. Look, I know you're a Bulldog supporter, so you're not exactly supporting anybody at the moment. But I'm hoping you're going to jump on the Newcastle Knights to defeat the Warriors tomorrow over in New Zealand.
BURKE: You can have me in lockstep with you on that one.
KING: Good on you. All right. Thanks for your time. Have a good weekend, Minister.
BURKE: Thanks, Richard.
ENDS