Jamie Briggs MP

Joining me on the program to discuss this and the other issues of the day, from Brisbane, Labor MP Graham Perrett and from Adelaide, Liberal MP Jamie Briggs. Gentlemen, welcome. 

 

Good morning Kieran. 

 

Good morning Kieran. 

 

Graham, first to you. A number of your colleagues would be quite relieved if this pre-commitment technology is pushed out beyond the next election, in fact shelved altogether. 

 

Yeah look I am one of the MPs that had the Clubs Australia campaign in my electorate. I don’t think it was a very effective campaign at all. In fact I think I got responses of about four to one or five to one people saying this is a good thing to address problem gambling. So I wasn’t worried by the Clubs Australia campaign and all the glossy brochures. I know Anthony Ball is saying he has a big war-chest ready to go. I think that we need to do something about pokies and I also know there is a lot of argument, hard to get the facts straight from clubs, their sort of old school 70’s approach to change which was not to do anything. So I am comfortable with making sure that we do get it right also the commitment I saw Jeff Howes, the CEO from ACT Clubs say last night on the 7:30 Report that he’s prepared to do a trial and a trial isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

 

You say that you’re not worried about it. A number of your colleagues have been though haven’t they Graham. They would be happy if the Prime Minister cut Andrew Wilkie loose here and as I mentioned at the start of the program, he is apparently considering walking away. 

 

Well I can’t speak for my colleagues, I can just say that I believe, you know I like my local club, but I think that we do need to do something about pokie reform and that is the commitment of the Gillard Government, that is my understanding. I can’t really comment on the rumours of what Andrew Wilkie may or may not do. I think he certainly seems to be a man of his word and he will do what he can to make sure there is some reform and I’m sure most sensible Australians would agree with that because problem gamblers, recreational gamblers are another thing, but problem gamblers are really are, it is a great scourge.  I’ve got a wife that works in child protection and it’s horrible to see how some of those roads that people travel down that come down from pokie addictions and gambling addictions. 

 

Jamie, we are seeing the reality here aren’t we of the Parliament after the defection of Peter Slipper to the Speakership, that has given the Government a bit more breathing space too. Even if this is delayed, they remain committed they argue to pokie machine reform, but it gives them a bit of breathing space as to how they implement it given they have a bit more time to do it. 

 

Well what you’ve seen is the reality that Julia Gillard will say anything to anyone to keep power. All it is about is being in power. It is not about good policy, and we saw that with the carbon tax. People remember and they will always remember that just three days before the last election, Julia Gillard said there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead. Of course she lied about that. She has now implemented a carbon tax which will start this year, against the face of all international movement. You’ve also got this with the pokie reform. Andrew Wilkie was told, was given a guarantee of his support that they would pursue this, even though it was always impossible to pursue. It was bad policy in the first place. It wasn’t going to work. She promised it to get into power. All it is about for Julia Gillard is power. It is not about good policy. It is not about doing the right thing by Australia, taking Australia forward for the future. It is about Julia Gillard and her own power and that is what we are seeing here. You just can’t trust Julia Gillard when it comes to making the right decisions for the future of our country. 

 

What is your sense of the mood in the electorate? Obviously not every state is like Queensland and NSW, so reliant on the revenues of poker machines or having them so prevalent around their state. What is the mood in your seat? Obviously there are many people who want reform in this area, reform of some sort to deal with this scourge. 

 

Well look I think every state government has become addicted to pokie revenue, certainly the South Australian state government has, even though they are massively in debt...

 

Not WA Jamie. 

 

Well other than WA, you are right, but the South Australian Government certainly has become quite addicted to pokies revenue. Equally, this has been an issue that has been managed by the states from a long time and there are restrictions or inabilities of the federal government to intervene too much in this regard. This still should be something I think that’s handled largely by the state governments in ensuring they get the balance right. You can’t protect people from themselves ultimately. Whether it’s, if you’re a problem gambler and there is certainly a problem with people who get addicted to gambling – there needs to be policies that address that, but just banning things doesn’t necessarily work and what we have seen with this policy was just an announcement for Julia Gillard to get into power rather than to actually address people who have got a sickness which is problem gambling. Andrew Wilkie is the latest who can’t trust Julia Gillard, welcome to the club the Australian people are members of. 

 

Graham, that very point there that Jamie made at the end – are you worried that this is going to end up being another question of Julia Gillard’s character here and whether or not she can be trusted. Obviously that is the way the Coalition is arguing. 

 

No, no not at all. It’s funny hearing Jamie going through his lines reminds me that summer holidays are over, we are back into it. And I’m disappointed to hear Jamie say that he would walk away from this – that it is too hard. The reality is a good federal government leads and we have got a Prime Minister with incredible backbone that knows how to lead and bring the states together on this. And I agree that some of the states are a little bit too addicted to the revenues, but we can work with that. We’ve got a cooperative federal system. We can work with the state governments. We can work and try and do what we can to save people from themselves. So I disagree with Jamie. We can pull a couple of leavers – that was our commitment to Andrew Wilkie and it is a good commitment. Why? Because it is good for all Australians because society suffers when there are problem gamblers giving so much of their money to, to put so much of their money through poker machines and that is why I think it is still good policy, good Labor policy. I don’t know how many poker machines are in Mayo. 

 

But the policy of the government looks like it is going to be shelving it at least to beyond the next election. 

 

Well let’s wait and see. I think a trial is a good thing because we’ve got to get it right. I’m actually personally very supportive of dollar bets. In Queensland we only go to five dollar bets, NSW over the border you go to ten dollar bets. I personally think that if you are doing ten dollar bets every time you press a machine that is too much. Even if it is a dollar bet, you can still lose $200 an hour through a poker machine. I think that is enough gambling. I’m not a wowser at all when it comes to gambling, but I think if you can pump $200 though a machine that’s, and that’s not going to cost $3.5 billion. The current equipment that we have, the current club machines that we have could be changed to have dollar bets, that’s not a bad thing as far as I’m concerned. Obviously the clubs war-chest will be targeting me because I suggest that good policy like that. 

 

Ok, I want to move on if I can to the subsidies for the car manufacturing sector. Jamie obviously this is an industry, a significant industry in Adelaide. What’s your view on this? Nick Minchin, one of the heavy weights from your state from the Liberal Party has made an intervention today, urging the Coalition not to commit to scrap the subsidies. 

 

Well I disagree with Nick, very strongly. The Howard Government, which Nick was a member of the Cabinet, agreed that we should be funding transitional arrangements for the car industry. I mean one of the arguments you hear out of Julia Gillard and I’m sure Graham will parrot shortly is that the mining industry has made it impossible for the car industry because of the dollar. Well that is simple not true. I mean for 20 years the Commonwealth Government has been funding this industry. We keep hearing each time when the next lot of money goes into it that this time it’s about sustainability, it’s about the future, and yet a couple of years go by and we are back to the same place – we are talking about whether we chuck another $100 million, $200 million in, $500 million for the Green Car fund. The word has now changed to co-investment and other words as Kim Carr said, you don’t own a car industry, you rent it. So basically what the Labor Party want to do is to continue to subsidise this industry because they’re playing to, well they are basically giving a great big subsidy to the multi-national car companies. Now the perfect example about this and about how it doesn’t work is Mitsubishi. For 17 years, Mitsubishi received large amounts of government money all on the basis that eventually this will be sustainable and when they left there wasn’t great destruction in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. It wasn’t because there was a great big mine down the southern suburbs of Adelaide at all. There is lower unemployment now than there was. There hasn’t been the great civil destruction that people predicted if the car industry is to leave. I think we’ve got to get to the point where the transitional arrangements that the Howard Government put in place, with these subsidies ending in 2015 have to be followed through. Our economy can’t afford to subsidise one part of it and not another. Small businesses are struggling under financial pressures, due to whatever factors are in the economy – they don’t expect or get a large subsidy from the government. Yet these big multi-national companies threaten the Australian Government, threaten the Australian people and they receive large cheques. I don’t think it is right and I don’t agree with it continuing. For the government to try and blame us when they are the ones handing out this money is just a joke.  

 

Jamie what about the argument though that was put very strongly and continues to be put strongly by the Prime Minister and others that other governments around the world subsidise, in fact wherever there is a significant automotive industry, governments have to subsidise them and also the argument about the impact on other businesses not necessary not in that sector, but suppliers to automotive industries and so on. 

 

Well firstly there are 13 countries around the world that makes cars. One of them is America. They are trillions of dollars in debt. They nearly defaulted on their debt mid last year. It is the same with Europe, we’ve seen a massive debt crisis. Now if we want to go down that path, that’s fair enough and the Gillard Government is doing everything it can to try and take us down that path, but you can’t continue to throw good money after bad when the money is running out and that is what those countries have seen. So that argument is a complete furphy. The second argument about the component industry is largely if you are a sustainable components manufacturer these days you don’t rely on the Australian car industry, you’re part of the global food chain because that is how the industry works. The truth is in Australia, we have a couple of factors right against us when it comes to manufacturing cars. That is we don’t have the scale, we are a small economy so we have to export and when it comes to exporting we are a long way from market, so it makes it very hard for our car industry to compete. The last factor is, the consumers have decided. Consumers buy imported cars because that is their preference. So I think this argument that somehow, and we saw this with Mitsubishi, somehow if the government doesn’t co-invest or in other words nationalise the car industry, we are going to see great destruction throughout suburbs of Adelaide and Melbourne. It is a furphy and it has been proven wrong by what happened with Mitsubishi. 

 

Graham Perrett, I guess that you are obviously going to disagree with Jamie on that and argue that this is important for jobs in the industry. But how long the government need to pick and choose here, to be subsidising one industry but not another, like for example retail which is struggling under the weight of the high Aussie dollar at the moment. 

 

Yeah look, that high Aussie dollar is a big factor and Jamie correctly pointed out some of the problems with our geographic location. But he forgot to mention all those things that do flow from having a car industry, the high end engineering, all of those skills, those skills that would be gone forever and that’s what he forgot to mention about the countries that have closed down their car industry. All those, you know even defence jobs and thing like defence opportunities that flow from having a strong car industry. So it is certainly as a South Australian...

 

What are the defence opportunities? I don’t follow. 

 

The high end engineering and even the technological skills that come from or are associated with the car industry, the innovation of the future, the jobs of the future. We can’t assume that Australia is just going to be able to make some Wine or something like that. We’ve actually got to have a diverse economy and especially a top-end economy Jamie, a top-end economy where we do take our car products to the rest of the world as you pointed out. So it must be tough to be a South Australian MP to go along and say to those people that are exporting their materials around the world because we make top quality products and say no sorry we are not going to support you. And it is tough for me to be supporting Nick Minchin. 

 

That is a very good point. Can I pick you up on that point, that is exactly right – I do have very high end manufactures that make things, who don’t get a government subsidy, and who export to the world. I’ve got great manufactures who do that. The point here is at what point does the federal government, does the taxpayer, who is arguing for the taxpayer in all this, because...

 

(Inaudible)

 

Well hang on, you can play the politics all you like mate but you go and tell your businesses in Moreton why they don’t deserve government subsidies but big multi-national companies in Detroit deserve basically a boost to their bottom line, which is all what this is. 

 

Graham, if I could just put this to Jamie, another point that was made, providing the foundations for manufacturing more generally. Something that Kim Carr said about the manufacturing skills achieved within motoring flowing on to others, even referred to the Joint Strike Fighter project in South Australia. 

 

But what is the evidence of that? I mean it is a nice line but there is no necessary evidence from that. Again we get back to the Mitsubishi example, or the Nissan example – there was great predictions, there was front page after front page about the destruction of the southern suburbs, about how manufacturing would end; it just didn’t happen. It just simple didn’t happen. As I said before, look at the indicators – unemployment is lower, there is still manufacturing in the southern parts of Adelaide. When (inaudible) left South Australia some five or six years ago, again there were the same predictions for the western suburbs of Adelaide. Again lower unemployment. The economy adjusts. 

 

Are you worried though that this might hurt Tony Abbott if he does commit to or retain this commitment to scrap the automotive transformation fund, $500 million, that that will hurt him in terms of his credibility with blue-collar workers, which he has obviously been building up over the last year or two. 

 

Well no because the great hypocrisy of the government here is that at the same time as they are squealing about trying to write out big cheques to multi-national companies in Detroit, they are whacking a big carbon tax on them which makes it impossible for the car industry to continue to compete. I mean absolutely impossible. So there is a great irony here about what the Labor Party is doing. So no, I don’t think Tony, we’ve had very consistent view about this. You mention Nick, well Nick Minchin was in the Cabinet, the Howard Government Cabinet, the view was about transitional assistance. It wasn’t about co-investment, this great new line the Labor Party has come up with, which in other words is nationalisation of the car industry, that we are joint partners to build cars. I mean it is absurd and I don’t think that there is any surprise that the Liberal Party will stand against it. We don’t support tariffs. We don’t support picking industry winners. We support giving people a fair crack, small business a fair crack with the lowest possible tax base that they can pay. 

 

Well you have had a good crack this morning on that one, and let’s move on. Let’s look at border protection. Now I want to talk about this which has been an impasse now before Christmas, there was this sense of urgency about talks between Scott Morrison and Chris Bowen. It seems a bit absurd now, there has been no resolution to the impasse, Graham Perrett. Another boat arrived last night. This continues with the two parties remaining divided. It is a bit of groundhog day as we start 2012. 

 

And look, having been on Christmas Island inquiry, the Joint Parliamentary Christmas Island inquiry, I don’t think this has been Parliament’s finest moment because the reality is the percentages are there, we know that every time someone gets on a boat the chances are, a 4% chance that that person will drown. So we are really as a Parliament I think we need to come together. The two parties need to come together to come up with a solution. I think there is some politics there. There is some obvious politics there. I just hope when I see that footage in my mind of the Christmas Island tragedy and the tragedies that have followed that we can come together and come up with a solution. And look I firmly believe that the Malaysian solution will work, that there will be sufficient disincentive there for people not to take the dangerous journey, especially in the next few months as the cyclone season builds up, I hope we can reach an agreement that means people don’t take that dangerous journey.

 

Jamie, obviously you would disagree with Graham on the Malaysian option, but just generally, it’s time now isn’t it for a resolution to this, for a bi-partisan stance because the Greens aren’t going to compromise. 

 

Well that is a matter for the Greens, what a surprise that their view of the world which has been proven to be completely shown to be a disaster. If you open it up, if you encourage the people smugglers business model, the result is as Graham said, very sadly you will end up with a lot of people drowning, and it is terrible. It is terrible that it is an outcome of a government policy decision. And that is what it is, sadly. That you had a change in policy in September 2008, a system which was working was changed by Kevin Rudd and we’ve seen since that time thousands of thousands of people get on that boat and make a hazardous journey. Now we have said for some time that we are willing to negotiate. We’ve offered an amendment to the bill the government moved. Scott Morrison has been talking to Chris Bowen over the Christmas period and I’d like to see a resolution. I think everyone in the general public for whatever reason would like to see these boats stopped. But the government has got to be willing to compromise here. Just saying we want to compromise doesn’t make it happen. You’ve actually got to do something about that. They are ultimately the government. They are elected to make these decisions and that is how our Parliamentary system has always worked. So look we are willing to be part of it. We’ve offered up a reasonable proposal, including temporary protection visas, which worked before and they will work again including the Nauru solution and the Pacific solution, which worked before and which we think will work again as a plan. We don’t think that just dumping people in Malaysia is the best way to go, but we are willing and we are as Scott Morrison has been talking over this time because we want to see these boats stopped. We want to see the fear of the chances of people drowning on a terrible journey reduced by having policies which stop people getting on them in the first place. 

 

Ok, well Graham, that does make a fair bit of sense doesn’t it, that the government does really need to drive this. You’re in office. The government has got to be accountable for it. 

 

But remember, we’re in office with the support of Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie and other Independents so it is not as simple as Jamie said – that the government just needs to go and do this. The government of 2008, the Parliament of 2008 is not the Parliament of 2012. That’s the reality that the people of Australia have to live with. So we do need bi-partisan support for legislation and it’s not as simple as just go and do it unfortunately because I do think the Malaysian solution could have saved lives and will save lives if we implement it. So I’m sure Minister Bowen is doing all that he can because it troubles him, particularly troubles him and Scott Morrison is an honourable man as well. I’m sure that they will be able to come up with a solution that we can get through the Parliament. There might be a few Independents that don’t support it, but I’m sure the majority of Parliamentarians support something that prevents people from drowning, particularly children. 

 

Ok, Graham Perrett, Jamie Briggs, appreciate your time this morning.