E&OE TRANSCRIPT
4BC BRISBANE MORNINGS WITH PATRICK CONDREN
INTERVIEW
TUESDAY, 21 JANUARY 2014
PATRICK CONDREN: The Griffith by-election will be held on February the 8
Th. Bill
Shorten, the Federal Opposition leader and ALP leader is in town, he’s
allegedly helping the local candidate to campaign in that electorate.
Bill, good morning, thanks for your time this morning.
BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Good morning, and congratulations on the new show, I hope it’s a success this year.
CONDREN: You’re very kind. Leave your money on the fridge as you go, all donations gratefully accepted. Can you win Griffith?
SHORTEN: Yes. Our candidate’s Terri Butler, she’s a working
mum, a professional lawyer with a distinguished record. It’s a close
election though, and for us the issues will be making sure that in
Griffith people have a candidate who will stand up to the Abbott-style
cuts to the healthcare system such as we’ve seen done by Campbell Newman
to Queensland’s healthcare system.
CONDREN: But it’s a bit rich to claim the underdog status, when history shows us that incumbent governments never win by-elections?
SHORTEN: Well, I never take any group of voters for granted.
That’s why I think it’s close. This election is about the future, it’s
about how do we have a good quality healthcare system, how do we make
sure that a local community gets strong representation which is not a
rubber stamp for Tony Abbott.
CONDREN: Why is it important – I mean, obviously there is a
degree of need for you to win this election. But why is it so important
that you win this election, is it because it was Kevin Rudd’s old seat?
SHORTEN: Well, I think it’s important that the voters in
Griffith have a clear choice, that they have someone who will stand up
for them. Now the families in Griffith, there’s 47,000 households. These
are people who in many cases get up and go to work every day, lot of
double income families, mum and dad are both working, they’re trying to
raise their kids the best way they can, they want to make sure they have
a quality healthcare system, they want good schools. They also want to
make sure there’s good meaningful jobs in the community, so it’s
important to have representatives who are in touch with what goes on in
the mainstream of people’s lives.
CONDREN: Will it come down to preferences?
SHORTEN: It could do, yes. I would expect that is a complete possibility.
CONDREN: So the Greens are preferencing, you know, Mr Ackroyd, who is a Kevin Rudd lookalike, I suppose.
SHORTEN: Ah, yeah. You know, by-elections bring out the weird
and the wonderful. Our candidate Terri Butler is trying to get people’s
first vote. Sure, there’ll be plenty of individual parties running, and
that’s people’s democratic right. But Terri Butler, our candidate, is
running to win. It’s the first time she’s run for politics but as I
said, she has a distinguished career in the law standing up for people
and she’s got two kids just below school age, so she understands – her
and her working husband – that the real world is tough. You’ve got to
make sure you can pay the bills, that you’ve got good healthcare and
you’ve got good hospitals.
CONDREN: One issue that has been running red hot with us,
certainly yesterday, and more broadly around the south-east in recent
weeks is alcohol-fuelled violence. I know you called for Danny Green’s
‘One Punch’ ad to be taxpayer funded. What else can be done within, or
from a political perspective to tackle this problem?
SHORTEN: Well first of all, you’ve got to recognise it’s a
real issue. And I’m a dad, I’ve got a young boy who’s, you know, early
teens. I worry dreadfully in 5 or 6 years if they’re going out that they
too could be ambushed by a coward. So I think that part of the issue is
indeed the availability of you know, late night, people being able to
go and get a drink anywhere at any time.
CONDREN: Well Campbell Newman, obviously the LNP Premier here
in Queensland, has rejected calls from the legal fraternity to cut back
on the opening times or the closing times by 2 hours.
SHORTEN: That may be part of the answer. I also think though
that we’ve got to make it clear that if you do this, you will pay a
penalty. So I actually think some of the people who do this, and I’ve
got friends who run pubs and have been around handling hoons and louts
for a very long time, and I’ve said to these publicans – and people who
run pubs, they want to make sure their customers are safe and that they
run responsible venues, they don’t like this violence – I’ve said what
do you think is the makeup of these people? And they’ve said to me that
someone will do a king hit, someone who thinks that they’re some sort of
street fighter martial arts star and they want to demonstrate on
victims, you can’t deter them by just appealing to their better nature,
you do need strong laws deterring them.
CONDREN: Ok. Mervin’s rung in 13 13 32 if you’d like to join the conversation. Good morning Mervin.
MERVIN [CALLER]: Good morning Pat, good morning Mr Shorten.
Thanks for having me on this morning. I live in the Griffith electorate
and have voted for Kevin and the other team a few different times. I was
listening to your opening comments Bill where you said that Terri
Butler, who I believe is a fine candidate, but you said that she’d be
able to stand up to and basically win against Tony Abbott’s health cuts
or anything else that’s bad for us. But to be honest, she can’t do that,
can she? How can she do that from opposition?
SHORTEN: Oh, never underestimate people power. I’ll give you
an example: before the election, Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott said
that they would be a unity ticket with Labor so that you’d see good
funding for our schools. Then after the election Christopher Pyne said
‘no, actually that was then, this is now, bad luck, all bets are off’.
The public outcry forced them back. So yeah, I do believe that strong
representatives can create such a fuss that bad ideas and broken
promises don’t happen. Yeah, I believe in the power of people to say no,
stand up.
CONDREN: Mervin, thank you for your call. Can I put you a
couple of questions, Mr Shorten, just on federal issues. Do you support
any changes to welfare rules as flagged by Kevin Andrews?
SHORTEN: To be fair to the Government, the budget’s a
challenge. We’ve got an economy in transition, and we’ve got concerns
about the prospect of more unemployment, so it’s not easy. But what I
don’t support is this discussion that age pensioners should be the
answer to solving the problem of the Abbott Government. You know, you
can’t stop growing old, it’s the best outcome, there’s no doubt. The age
pension is not a ticket in TattsLotto, it’s not a Rolls Royce. It’s a
modest fortnightly payment. Today the Abbott Government’s floated well,
you know everything’s on the table, and maybe we shouldn’t increase the
age pension by a regular amount that it has been in the past. So yeah,
do I think that there’s a challenge in our economy to make sure that we
can prepare it for the future? Yes. But I don’t think that people on the
age pension should be the people that have to pay the price for the
Abbott Government trying to work out how to run Australia.
CONDREN: Should job seekers be forced to take work even if it’s more than 90 minutes drive away?
SHORTEN: That’s hard, it depends on the personal circumstances of people. In my experience –
CONDREN: They might not earn enough to pay for the petrol to get to the 90 minutes away.
SHORTEN: Well, when I used to represent fruit pickers up in
the bush, some of them would drive an hour each way but at a certain
point it becomes uneconomical. You’re paying more to get to and from
work than you are in the actual job. The other thing is some people say,
‘oh well, the unemployed should just get up and move to the other side
of Australia’. You know, that’s a nice theory but it’s not as easy as it
sounds. So do I think that we need to encourage unemployed people to
work? Yes we do. But what I also know is that if there was a simple
solution then someone would have already done it. Life’s more complex,
so you’ve got to work out how do we ensure people get good education
because then they can find their own jobs and they’ve got the right
skills. How do we make sure that older people don’t get discriminated
against? A group in the population who no one ever really talks about,
people who might be 55 or 60, older people, men and women. Somehow we’ve
got a bit of a bias, maybe its unconscious in our country that if
you’ve got grey hair and you’re out of work, somehow then your
experience and skills are worth less than some youngster just because
they were born three decades after you.
CONDREN: But that’s the reality of working life these days. That is not a complaint that has gone away.
SHORTEN: Yeah but Australia can’t afford to waste the talent of older Australians.
CONDREN: Well I agree, but the reality is employers tend to be biased against them.
SHORTEN: Well our challenge then is to encourage employers to
relook at older Australians. So, when we talk about – this discussion
has come out of the question about unemployment and what can we do? The
first thing we do is we don’t give up on Aussie jobs. So just giving up
on the car industry and saying ‘oh, it costs too much’, well there’s
tens of thousands of people who once that happens we’ll never see again.
And what we need to do is stand up for Aussie jobs, and start promoting
the benefits of older Australians.
CONDREN: One quick question finally, will you lead Labor to the next election?
SHORTEN: Yes.
CONDREN: Fair enough. Unequivocal?
SHORTEN: Yes, and that’s proof that I can give a quick answer.
CONDREN: Well I’m pleased, you don’t come across that often in
modern politics. Bill Shorten, thanks for your time this morning.
Federal Opposition leader Bill Shorten in the studio.
ENDS
