SKY NEWS AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH ANDREW CLENNELL - THURSDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2023

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW,

SKY NEWS AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH ANDREW CLENNELL

THURSDY, 30 NOVEMBER 2023

SUBJECTS: Preventative detention legislation, Closing Loopholes legislation passes House, Israel-Hamas conflict, Restoring Our Rivers legislation passes Parliament. 

ANDREW CLENNELL, HOST: Joining me now is the Leader of the Government in the House and the Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Burke. Fair bit to get through. You're kidding, aren't you? Calling Peter Dutton a paedophile protector?

TONY BURKE MP, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS, MINISTER FOR THE ARTS: What we've been referring to is a vote in the Parliament and the vote in the Parliament is something which he has to own. I for the life of me never expected going into that. Let me just explain what that law was to do. They had suggested the amendments to say it should be a breach of a visa condition for these individuals if they are to loiter near a school, some of them being convicted paedophiles. The legislation that we then brought in at the start of this week said it should also be a criminal offence. Why on earth they voted against it being a criminal offence for one of these convicted paedophiles to loiter near a school is beyond me.

CLENNELL: Didn't they say: “let's wait for the reasons of the High Court, let's wait for your preventive detention model and then we'll vote for the whole lot?”

BURKE: They came into the chamber and voted “No”. That's what they did. You own it in Parliament, you own how you vote.

CLENNELL: I'm telling you what they're saying. They were saying, let's wait for the reasons and get it right. Do you accept that?

BURKE: I don't accept for one minute when you walk into the Parliament -

CLENNELL: What so this thing that they opposed -

BURKE: They voted against it. When you vote “No”, you have opposed something.

CLENNELL: Yes, but only because they say they were waiting for the full reasons. If that is the case, is that not fair enough?

BURKE: If that is the case, what they should have done was voted for the legislation. If they were serious about that, and then dealt with amendments in the Senate, that's what normally happens. And in Opposition for years, we did the exact same thing. When you've got something that's about people's security, if it's not – as you would regard – perfect you don't say we're now going to vote against it. Imagine if they'd been successful in voting against it. What does that do? It stops the Bill. That's the reality of voting no.

​CLENNELL: Do you think there's anyone in Australia watching this who thinks Peter Dutton, who used to lock up paedophiles as a cop, is a paedophile protector?

BURKE: I don't think there's anybody who would really have expected the Opposition to vote the way they voted this week. I didn't expect it. I'm sure Sky News didn't expect it and I'm sure some of Peter Dutton's own colleagues sat there thinking, I'm not sure why we're voting this way.

​CLENNELL: It's like you're worried about this bloke, the way you're attacking him at the moment. You're worried he's going to take the election off you.

BURKE: We're calling him out. It's the Leader of the Opposition. Every election, every party starts at zero votes. That's how elections happen in Australia, you take them all seriously. But he might think that because he talks really tough, that people won't look at what he does. What he did when he walked into the Parliament was to vote against it being a criminal offence for particular convicted paedophiles to loiter near schools, and he's got to own up for that vote.

​CLENNELL: Well, he'll vote for it next week anyway. What is the process now for this preventative detention legislation? Does it get introduced in the Senate or do we get extra House days next week? How's it going to play out?

BURKE: What I expect will happen. Different people are still working through the court's reasoning because there's a lot in working out how you deal with all of this. But what I expect we'll see next week is extensive amendments happening in the Senate and then we'll have legislation which, on Thursday when the Reps are back, we'll have a question before us as to whether we agree with those amendments.

CLENNELL: Okay. Will there be a Caucus meeting to endorse the new laws?

BURKE: In terms of processes, we don't have them yet. You're talking about things that we don't yet have and you're talking about legislation that will have to be dealt with in the Senate before the Caucus can next meet. We've got a series of Caucus committees and other processes that deal with these.

CLENNELL: Well, fair enough. Now, your plan for the end of the year was to push through these IR reforms, that seems to have been thwarted. Is there any chance you'll try to get that through the Senate next week and try and get, say, Lidia Thorpe and David Van or Pocock to support it, with the Greens?

BURKE: At the moment – I can't see a pathway through, at the moment. I would have loved to have got the whole Bill through, as you know. My view with all of this. There's no point shouting at the Senate. You've just got to deal respectfully with all the different crossbenchers, and if you find a pathway through, you grab it. Certainly, whenever we can get this through, and more likely we're talking early next year, if we get there, then it will make a categoric difference to the wages of a whole lot of Australian workers. There's a theme in this Bill as to most of what it does. It deals with underpayment, whether it's wage theft, labour hire loophole, gig workers. It deals with people who are currently underpaid and brings their wages up.

CLENNELL: It's shaping as your key cost of living measure, isn't it? So, it's kind of ruined your end of the year not to be able to deliver it.

BURKE: We've ended up with a situation that I guess is consistent with the battle lines this whole Parliament where the Government is arguing for measure after measure that will get wages moving, and the Opposition, in turn, says no to each of them. My view here is really simple. You can't be serious about improving people's cost of living unless you want to increase their wages.

​CLENNELL: Now, we had this incident at Sydney Theatre Company the other night. I believe you were there with actors wearing keffiyehs. Allegra Spender's brother, Alex Schuman, has resigned from the STC board over this. Do you have a view on this?

BURKE: There's two different sorts of protests that I can give the contrast to explain, and respect people will take whatever action that they take on the Sydney Theatre Company. The protests that happened in Melbourne, where it was aimed at people who are grieving, I find disgusting, and unequivocally condemn. Any protest that involves hate speech, I'll unequivocally condemn. Beyond that, when people are simply presenting a different view or support in different ways. In recent times, I've seen arts events where people have worn colours that are representative of the Palestinian people, colours that are representative of Israeli people, colours that are representative of Ukrainians. I've seen it all, and I think that will always happen. Had they been wearing symbols of Hamas, that would have been appalling.

CLENNELL: You have no objection to it personally.

BURKE: I don't think the Arts Minister should be engaging, like you'll get artists who will show colours in different ways. But can I say, had it been as Paul Fletcher implied in an earlier interview on this network today, had it been something that was about Hamas, then I'd be out there unequivocally condemning.

CLENNELL: There was a story in The Daily Telegraph today that your colleague Jason Clare has told Arab Australians he's fighting in Cabinet for a more pro-Palestinian government position. Are you and Ed Husic doing the same?

BURKE: I've made my comments very publicly with respect to this. I've spoken, and my views on the issue have been known for a very long time. I don't talk about what I do inside the Cabinet room, and I certainly support the decisions that the Cabinet's taken. I represent a part of Sydney which isn't only in a situation where people are similarly grieving, as many of the families who we just referred to had been the target of that protester grieving, but who also constantly put a view that the history of the region did not begin on October 7. They're wanting to make sure that we can take the steps towards a ceasefire. They want to see a ceasefire in my community. They also want to make sure that the outcome is an ongoing solution with justice, rather than a continued situation that we've seen for too long of two state being put off and off and off and seemingly never getting there.

​CLENNELL: Alright, finally and briefly, I've got to ask you about what David Littleproud said about you and the Murray Darling Agreement. Sounds like he was more a fan of you in the job than Tanya.

BURKE: There were opportunities to act in a whole lot of ways, and the structure of what I put in place, a lot of it didn't change with the change of government. A lot of the structure stayed. There some things, cap on, buyback, things like that, but a lot of the structure didn't change. The problem was they stopped acting under it, so they stopped, in fact, acquiring the water. And there's a whole lot of things you can do to help to protect the health of a river system. You can't do much without water. And effectively, the decision the Government took today was a stronger decision than I took ten years ago, because we've had ten years where what needed to occur just didn’t.

CLENNELL: Tony Burke, thanks so much for your time.

BURKE: It's great to talk.

ENDS