TRANSCRIPT: RADIO INTERVIEW - ABC RN DRIVE - MONDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC RN DRIVE
MONDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 2021

SUBJECTS: MP safety, extremist protests, vaccine mandates, religious freedom laws, federal anti-corruption body, Scott Morrison’s latest lies about his Hawaii holiday.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: The Leader of the Opposition says he's more concerned than ever about the safety of politicians. You've been a sitting member since 2004. How do you view the threat?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Oh, it's real. But you just have to live on the basis that if you're given advice for any particular precautions, that you take them sensibly, you can't have any bravado of pretending that you're somehow untouchable. But you also have to then just live as normally as you can and live as though you're possibly more invincible than you in fact are. I think that's the only way you can do it without ending up in a in a situation where you're constantly on guard. You need to trust that the security that's required and the intelligence that’s required is going to be there.

KARVELAS: Are you comfortable with the level of security heading into an election campaign? And are you worried that the environment could be quite – I’m not sure if dangerous is quite the word. But you know, are you worrying for an election campaign?

BURKE: I certainly hope it's all there. I don't get the security briefings so I don't know that part of it. But I will say my bigger concern with the rise of right wing extremism is the threats to people who are not politicians, who are not famous at all, not in the media at all. A lot of these right wing extremism, we’re focused on the part of it at the moment that's been about the lockdowns but there's a whole lot there that's often very anti-Semitic, that's often very Islamophobic. I'm worried about a whole series of different ways that could present itself to people whether or not they're in public life. And we are watching that really be on the rise at the moment. There's been security warnings that more needs to be done about right wing extremism for a long time. It hasn't happened, the organisations have not been proscribed. And it's why, you know, the doublespeak that we've heard from the Prime Minister, I'm more worried about these groups being emboldened in how they act to the whole community than I am about specifically Members of Parliament.

KARVELAS: The Labor Party has been questioning the Prime Minister's stance on compulsory vaccination or mandates. Do you support mandates?

BURKE: Looks there's a series of mandates that that I live by in Sydney and they're all there to make people safe. So I've got no problem with the fact that when Skye and I caught up with a friend for dinner at the pub on the weekend, and we had to show our vaccination certificate to be able to get in and you do that. And it creates a safe environment at the stage of the pandemic that we're at. I expect it won't be around forever. But at the stage of the pandemic we're at it's just common sense public health, I would have thought.

KARVELAS: That's an interesting point you make, at this stage of the pandemic, because Senator Jane Hume just told me that she thought you'd get to a stage where you need to take that off. And the Prime Minister's clearly making the point that that point is 80 per cent vaccination. So if your community is 80 per cent vaccinated, individuals who may not be vaccinated should be able to go into a cafe without having to prove that they're vaccinated and that it doesn't matter that they're not vaccinated. Do you agree?

BURKE: My part of Sydney is well past 80 per cent and the state government’s put health orders in that say we have to present our vaccination and I support that. Let's not forget, protection against the spread of the virus - people who are not vaccinated are more likely to spread it, they're more likely to get it and if they get it they'll have worse symptoms. And if you've got worse symptoms, then you spread it more. That's how it, that's how it sheds. So the reality that we have is, it's not only relevant to the individuals there, it's relevant to everyone they have come in contact with. So, to say that we're already at this situation and 80 per cent was the threshold where we had to have no more rules – you know there's a politics in this, where I live it's a Liberal state government, and I've got no objection with the public health orders that they've put in place. And I think Mr Morrison just cornered himself because he wanted to have a go at a Labor government in Queensland, and didn't stop to think that the exact same public health orders were in place in New South Wales.

KARVELAS: The religious discrimination bill is set to be discussed at the Coalition’s joint party room tomorrow. What detail does Labor need to see in order to support the bill?

BURKE: It'd be a start if we knew what was in it. Talk about having a sense of the theatrical and the building-up of suspense. This was an election promise last election. Mr Morrison says we're already in campaign mode now that we're in this pre-caretaker period and we still don't know what's in it. So it's difficult to provide too much commentary. If you look at my part of Sydney, the main issue that does get raised with me is the fact that if someone's abused at Lakemba or Punchbowl Station and vilified in some way, if they were vilified on the basis of their ethnicity they'd have some legal recourse, if they were vilified on the basis of their faith they have no protection at all at the moment. Now, that's the main issue that gets raised with me. But I suspect whatever's in this bill tomorrow, there'll be nothing there to protect people from hate speech.

KARVELAS: So does that mean you think that Labor should be wary over supporting this bill?

BURKE: I just don't know what's in it. You're presenting me with a closed box and asking me if I like what's inside the gift? What I will say though is, I don't pretend there's not a problem. My electorate, well on previous census, I’m not sure about the latest census, but we used to have the highest level of religious observance in the country. But the big issue that is consistently raised with me has been about people being abused in public for their faith. And if you look at this government's record on hate speech, the one thing I pretty much guarantee they won't do anything about will be protecting people from hate speech.

KARVELAS: The integrity commission isn't yet listed but do you expect it to be?

BURKE: This is another one that they promised before the last election. I forget the date when they promised this but it’s been around for ages. There's a reason why they haven't put it in. And there's a reason why if we ever see something it will be one of the most lame organisations in the country. And the reason is that this government’s steeped in corruption. Like we've had a series of issues that have dominated the parliament this year. Whether it be the uploading of a forged document to discredit the Lord Mayor of Sydney, or whether it be the purchase of land at Leppington, purchased for $30 million but valued at $3 million. And then when they went to rent it back to the owners, they reduced it, they said oh no, suddenly now it's worth less than $3 million. Like, this is the sort of thing that an anti-corruption commission, with all the powers of a Royal Commission, would be right into, getting through all the detail, working out exactly what's happened here. And putting some sunlight over what on the face of it, is hard to see it as looking like anything other than corruption. They are deliberately on a go-slow on this. And if they ever present us with something, they might not, but if they ever do present us with something you can guarantee they've delayed it so that it can't catch the corruption that's happened so far. And it will have very few powers.

KARVELAS: Just finally in question time this afternoon, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed he texted the opposition leader to let him know he was holidaying with family in Hawaii in 2019. But he did correct the record after the Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he was not told where the Prime Minister was traveling. Why is Labor pursuing this?

BURKE: What happened today in question time, there’s a phrase I often hear on The Party Room podcast where you'll say that “this one does my head in” and that’s how I feel about this one.

KARVELAS: Thank you for quoting me to me.

BURKE: But it does do my head in. Because we have a question about why did you not tell the truth about this trip? And it was asked by Fiona Phillips, whose electorate was on fire at that time. Why did you not tell the truth to the media about the trip? And he responds with a lie! He responds by saying, Well, when I was in flight, I texted Anthony Albanese, it's all his fault, blame Labor and I told him where I was going. And Anthony stands up straight away and says, No, you didn't. And then the PM’s back on his feet saying well it's all your fault. And then it's only an hour later, when I presume they got their reports back from the press gallery that this story wasn't going well, that he says are maybe this is a lie I can't get away with, tells the truth about what he said and then still blames Labor. I think what we get out of this is what we saw with being told that we were at the front of the queue on vaccines. What we saw when he went from hating electric vehicles to claiming that the technology was good again. His first instinct is to not tell the truth. His first instinct every time is to provide information that's just not true.

KARVELAS: But on this one, does Labor's case stand up? Because yes there may have been a delay but it was only an hour, he clarified, he wasn't lying. He said, okay, I texted the opposition leader but didn't say where I was going.

BURKE: When his office told journalists that it was wrong that he was on holidays in Hawaii, that was a lie. Today when asked about that he stood up in the Parliament, and said that he had sent a text to Anthony Albanese - got a habit of disclosing private text messages I’ve got to say – but said that he'd send a text to Anthony Albanese saying where he was going. That, again, was a lie. And it took more than an hour before I presume his office got hold of him. And the only reason he ended up fixing it was because he'd been caught out. When he makes claims at the moment. You can't get it from the TV coverage, but it's extraordinary in the room the number of times where he would just say, “oh, I didn't say that”. And on the opposition side, everyone just bursts into laughter and on the government benches, everyone just goes stony silent. People are working Mr Morrison out. And that doesn't help him.

KARVELAS: Thank you so much for joining us.

ENDS