01 April 2011 in Media
Subjects: Welfare reform, NSW election
(Greetings omitted)
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Jamie Briggs, Tony Abbott has announced a suite of proposed welfare crackdowns. Why are these policies necessary?
JAMIE BRIGGS:
Well you have a situation in Australia where we are getting to the point, because of our strong performing mining sector, where we are facing challenging labour market conditions. It should always be the aim of government to create circumstances where as many people who can get a job can, and that welfare is a last resort. But there are of course barriers to those, particularly in the long-term unemployment queue from getting into and getting their chance at a job. They include disincentives through the welfare system, and I think what Tony has highlighted and outlined today is a strategy to try and remove some of, or one of those barriers. Other barriers are of course training these people to ensure that they’ve got the skills, because many have had difficult social circumstances or under-skilled or under-educated in many cases. The final of course, and the most important barrier in some respects is ensuring that your labour market is flexible enough that people get an opportunity at a job. So these three big barriers that Tony has addressed, one of them today, through a series of approaches. It’s a long-term commitment that Tony has had.
CURTIS:
Ed Husic, the government is preparing its own suite of measures, isn’t it, to focus on productivity and getting people back into the workforce in the budget, isn’t it?
ED HUSIC:
Well we’ve said that productivity is the big economic challenge, and trying to address particularly in terms of the interrelationship with welfare and work is something that we are focused on. But in terms of the issue that Tony Abbott has raised, or what he has put out there, I mean it’s clumsy, unfunded and rehashed. This idea about suspending unemployment payments in areas where there are shortfalls, I’m waiting for him to reach out of his bag of worn one-liners to start labelling the jobless as he called them before, he called them job snobs. I mean this is, whenever you need to reach in…
BRIGGS:
Ed, come-on.
HUSIC:
Well hang on a second; I listened to you in silence. I mean this talk about job-snobs, I got to say the electorate I represent out in Western Sydney, I went to 25 schools through the course of December to see the presentation days, and these are young people who are hungry, who have got a great deal of skills, and some of them say to me for example that they’ll go for jobs, but they won’t say they’re from Mt Druitt or some of the suburbs I represent, and the reasons being because employers won’t pick them up. There is equally a case that there are employer job-snobs that put in the way of the jobless barriers in terms of getting engaged, and they equally should have a good hard look at the way that they select people who are keen, hungry, ready to take up the responsibility of contributing to our economy.
CURTIS:
Jamie Briggs, when Tony Abbott took very similar proposals to the Shadow Cabinet at the end of 2009, there was a reported cost put on that of nearly $11 billion. Is that the sort of cost that you are looking at for the proposals that he’s announced today?
BRIGGS:
Well look there are some costs, and those numbers, we will in due course leading into the election highlight and outline in detail. But of course there will be some upfront costs for some of these policies because you need to create a carrot and stick type approach. But at the end of the day, you need to find ways to remove the barriers to get into this large pool, the hardcore pool of people who are in a long-term unemployed situation.
CURTIS:
Does business need a bit of a shove as well?
BRIGGS:
Well they will have a shove because it’s going to be harder to get workers. There is an economic shove out there which is coming, which is already developing in certain parts of the country. If employers don’t take on good, hardworking people then their businesses will suffer. But secondly, where the government can certainly make a difference, I notice Heather Ridout yesterday, Labor’s preferred business adviser when it comes to employer organisations, was scathing about the impact of Julia Gillard’s fair work laws, and those laws are part of the problem which prevents this group of people getting an opportunity at a job, because employers are not willing to take a chance on some of these people because they are concerned about being caught with them. Now Ed will claim, he will raise the scare campaign I’m sure as soon as I dare mention that the Fair Work Act has gone too far, but the simple truth and the simple fact, and Heather Ridout yesterday belled the cat, is that Labor’s IR laws, their wind-back, their fair work laws have gone too far, and they impact on the very people that we are talking about with these changes. They are the very people that Ed was talking about just a minute ago.
CURTIS:
Heather Ridout also sent a message to The Opposition as well, but Ed Husic does the government need to look at changing the Fair Work Act and does it need also to look being tougher on those on welfare in order to provide the pool of workers you are going to need to ease the labour shortages?
HUSIC:
Well two things, one is Jamie I am always happy to discuss particularly in terms of workplace reform the differences you and I would have in relation to this policy area. From my perspective I always believe that the reforms that the former government put in place were a heavy-handed response to the warning signs given by the Reserve Bank in the early part of the last decade which said that capacity constraints brought about skill shortages and infrastructure blockages were going to lead to problems with inflation and I think that Workchoices was a very heavy-handed way in terms of suppressing wages. That’s my view, I respect you have a different one. The second point in terms of getting the jobless out, there is a mismatch. You’ve got this demand, huge demand for labour in certain parts of the economy, but in certain geographic areas where as in seats I represent, there are scores of people who are jobless across generations, are you seriously saying that you’ll get people from Western Sydney to move out to North Western WA, how will that happen? I’m sure some people would jump at the chance to take that work on, but there are some barriers there that need to be tackled, and we need to look at that in a measured way.
BRIGGS:
Sure, I don’t disagree Ed. They’re all, that’s a reasonable comment. But you need to have a look at it and I think the point that Tony’s making is you do need to have a look at it. You need to have policies to address what is a challenge, and it’s good to hear that Ed is willing to have a discussion rather than launch a scare campaign which is what many of his colleagues do, as soon as you talk about workplace laws.
CURTIS:
If we could move on to someone else taking up a new job. Ed Husic, John Robertson has become the new NSW Labor leader. He was heavily criticised by Paul Keating the other night on 730 for his record. But you support him, why do you support him?
HUSIC:
I do support him; I support John Robertson on a range of levels. Look we are going to go through a long period of introspection and examining what we need to do to be in a position to regain the confidence of the people of NSW, and that’s going to require, that level of introspection is going to require stability and we do need to start basically regrouping to undertake that process.
CURTIS:
Is he the person who is basically in the job to take to the blows until the next Labor leader comes into Parliament?
HUSIC:
Well I think any person that undertakes this role is going cop as you say the blows. I was around when Bob Carr had to take up the position of Opposition Leader after a devastating election loss in 1988. I thought Bob Carr was the benchmark of a person who went out there and undertook, at that point what he called the Labor listens program, and went out in the community and listened to those issues and started rebuilding the policies that required to make the opposition something that could represent an alternative government. Predictions about whether or not John Robertson will be the next Opposition Leader come the next election or whatever, people talk that stuff up now, I think frankly it’s ridiculous. He is taking up the roll. He will do a good job. He comes back from a Western Sydney stock of 20 years living in Western Sydney, knowing the people and think he is going to do a great job.
CURTIS:
Jamie Briggs, on your own side after the 2007 election, you had three Opposition Leaders. Being an Opposition Leader after a defeat is a thankless task isn’t it?
BRIGGS:
It is a very difficult task. It’s a difficult task to hold the party together. Of course the 2007 election loss, when the Howard Government lost the election, compared to the election loss we’ve just seen in NSW is very different circumstances. The Howard Government was extremely competent and I think you’ll find that most people would yearn for the days of the Howard Government management of the Australia’s economy and Australia’s borders. Whereas of course the NSW Government that lost last Saturday has been completely discredited. It has left the state in a mess. Left Barry O’Farrell with a huge job to fix, all these mistakes, all these wrong-headed policies, and of course you’ve just put in one of these people who was responsible for some of the worst of what happened in NSW. Paul Keating, who I don’t often agree with, belled the cat on John Robertson, in a letter in 2008 and again on the ABC just two nights. John Robertson is an economic meanderthal, lets be honest. He wants to take Labor back to the bad old days of big union bosses controlling Labor policy. It’s a mistake, it’s a big mistake.
CURTIS:
Ed Husic, how do you get around the criticism that John Robertson at least in part is to blame for some of the woes that NSW Labor suffered?
HUSIC:
Oh well some of those comments, it’s sort of like pull a cord and get the comments streaming out. We just had an example of that a few moments ago. I mean you can run those one liners, that’s fine. It makes for good moments of air-time. But the fact of the matter is that John Robertson in his role within Unions NSW at that point was doing his job representing people that were under threat by privatisation. There are those people that had interests in seeing privatisation go through are putting the boot in right now because it serves their interest to have a get-square. Ultimately though where does it take the show? It doesn’t take it much further. There are people trying to fathom where we went wrong and how we have to move forward, the Labor Caucus has made a decision today to rally behind one person and we’ve just got to get on with the job.
CURTIS:
Jamie Briggs, does Barry O’Farrell have a job ahead of him too? Because he has at least in the transport area, a very big platform of promises and not a lot of money to pay for it.
BRIGGS:
He has a massive challenge, and he’s already made commitments in relation to the, he is going to fight with Julia Gillard to have what his plan for transport in NSW funded by the Federal Government, and not Julia Gillard’s thought bubble of an election promise that came up last year, because Barry knows that problems in the NSW are deep-seeded. The Transport Minister has a huge challenge ahead of her to fix what is a broken system. So Barry has an enormous challenge, but he is a very capable individual. All credit goes to Barry O’Farrell to the performance of the NSW Opposition over the last four years to be in a position to deliver such a huge victory last Saturday night. Much talk has gone on about Labor and it should about Labor’s performance, but not enough has focused on just how well Barry O’Farrell performed over a long period of time, and I think he’ll be an excellent Premier.
CURTIS:
And gentlemen, Ed Husic and Jamie Briggs, that’s where we will have to leave it for today.
ENDS