ROSS SOLLY:
Dr Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment. Have we lost the art of being bored, Andrew Leigh?
ANDREW LEIGH:
I’m a big fan of boredom, Ross. I think it does often encourage creativity. It’s those moments of daydreaming when you can get a bit of perspective on a project.
SOLLY:
Yes, I’m with you. I think boredom is fun sometimes. I was interested – you and I have spoken about this before, Andrew Leigh, about social media, and I think you and I are coming from the same page on this. But I was interested to see these 3 leading mental health institutes saying that maybe the approach to banning social media for people under 16 is not the right approach. What do you think?
LEIGH:
Look, I read that with some interest and certainly one of the questions around the ban is how it works in practice, which is why we funded the age assurance trial in the last Budget. But more broadly, I think it’s also about resetting our relationship with technology and understanding that sometimes putting away the phone and being out in nature can make all the difference. I just went up for a run up Mount Majura this morning. Being out there listening to the kookaburras and looking at Canberra from up on high, that’s pretty magical. And no device interaction could have started the day as well as that.
SOLLY:
How were you able to listen to 666 Breakfast, though, while you’re running up there without devices? I suppose you just got back and got someone to fill you in.
LEIGH:
Yeah, I was outside the realm of 666. But I somehow managed to steel myself against that loss.
SOLLY:
All right, well, we’ll let you off this morning at least. You doing something worthwhile outside. Dr Andrew Leigh, are you feeling comfortable at the moment about the relationship between your Party and the CFMEU?
LEIGH:
Well, we’ve seen really serious allegations over the last couple of days regarding the CFMEU construction division in Victoria‑Tasmania‑South Australia and the NSW branch of the CFMEU. That hasn’t affected the ACT CFMEU, but from an abundance of caution, Andrew Barr has said that the ACT Labor Party won’t be accepting donations from the ACT CFMEU. Certainly, this, what we’re seeing, the revelations of the media are shocking. They’re shocking to all Australians. But I think particularly to those of us who understand the value of strong trade unions in improving workers’ pay and conditions.
SOLLY:
Yeah, I mean, this is a difficult issue, isn’t it, for your Party? I mean, you are the Party of the workers, you are the Party of the unions. Yet here you are, probably one of your biggest supporters and you’re now being put into this position where, you know, potentially you’re going to appoint external administrators, the CFMEU is fighting back. This could get quite ugly.
LEIGH:
Well, we’ve got no tolerance for thuggery. We’ve referred the allegations to the Australian Federal Police who work alongside the state police and are investigating these allegations. We’ve also got an administrator coming in, which is the strongest action that we can take, ensuring that the wrongdoing is appropriately dealt with.
SOLLY:
There’s some suggestions this morning that maybe political parties who have received donations from the CFMEU should hand them back. What do you think about that idea, Dr Leigh?
LEIGH:
I think it’s quite extraordinary, Ross, that the Liberal Party is out there saying that the real answer right now is that we should give money to the CFMEU, that there should be money handed over to the CFMEU in the current environment. That is frankly a bizarre proposition.
SOLLY:
Although there is a suggestion here that some of that money that the CFMEU has handed on is ill‑begotten money, Andrew Leigh.
LEIGH:
I don’t see any world in which the right response to these shocking allegations is to enrich the CFMEU.
SOLLY:
Do you think the CFMEU as it is at the moment, can survive or does it need to be broken up completely?
LEIGH:
Well, we’ve put legislation through in the last parliamentary sittings that allows the construction division to leave the union, for that separation to happen. The administrator will look at the appropriate response going forward. I have to say that Peter Dutton is completely wrong when he is calling for deregistration. It was true that the Builders Labourers Federation was deregistered in the 1980s, but that was in a period in which a non‑registered organisation couldn’t play an industrial role. Since Work Choices, a deregistered organisation can go on to play an industrial role and so it would effectively to take itself outside the scrutiny of the industrial relations system. That’s why the strongest action is to appoint an administrator and that’s just what Tony Burke has done.
SOLLY:
Well, some have suggested that the Labor Party only has itself to blame because you got rid of the watchdog, which the previous government, which the conservative government had set up. Do you accept that without the police person on the beat, that this has been allowed to slip through the cracks and they’ve got away with stuff they shouldn’t have been able to get away with?
LEIGH:
I didn’t ever see evidence that the Australian Building and Construction Commission were out there catching a bikie, that they were chasing down drug dealers. That was not the activities that they engaged in. They were engaged in other activities which really seemed entirely unrelated to the misbehaviour we’ve seen here. So, no, Ross, I see no evidence that the ABCC was playing a role that would have stopped this wrongdoing.
SOLLY:
And no reason to revisit it and to maybe set up something similar, maybe not with the same sort of guidelines as the previous ABCC, but something similar?
LEIGH:
The ABCC model wasn’t workable and we’ve put in the administrator in order to deal with this wrongdoing. If people are aware of further wrongdoing, then those allegations should be immediately referred to the state and federal police agencies, who I know are already investigating the shocking allegations, the thuggery, the handing over of money. I mean, this is abhorrent stuff. It’s abhorrent to all Australians, but it’s particularly abhorrent to those of us who understand the value of unions in improving pay and conditions. You know, unions just didn’t just get us the weekend and paid annual leave and sick leave. They’re also been behind arguing for pay equity. Unions are a strong force for a fairer and more decent Australia. And it is my friends in the union movement who I know are most outraged by these shocking allegations.
SOLLY:
Seventeen to 9 on ABC Canberra Breakfast. My name’s Ross Solly. My guest is Dr Andrew Leigh. Just on a couple of other quick issues. Dr Leigh, before I let you go, I’ve been talking about this for the last couple of days, but it does seem that the proposal, the idea to give the ACT extra Senators is now dead in the water. Is that your understanding and is that disappointing? And why is the Labor Party not fighting for this?
LEIGH:
It is disappointing. My understanding from what’s been reported is that we weren’t able to get bipartisan consensus on that.
SOLLY:
Do you not think if you took it to the parliament that you would. I mean, your Party would support it, the Greens would surely support it, you’d think the Independents, it would be in their best interests to support it. Do you not think if you took it to the parliament, you’d get the numbers?
LEIGH:
Look, the reality with electoral reform, Ross, is you don’t want to push these things through with just a single vote in the Senate. You want our electoral system to have broad bipartisan support, because otherwise you can frankly go the way that some other countries have done, in which the party in power changes the rules in a way in which their minority party regards as unfair. I do think having bipartisan electoral reform is important. I think all these sorts of electoral measures should be broadly supported by the parliament.
SOLLY:
And just on one other issue, issue, and that is the tightening of rules regarding charities, et cetera, how they operate. Do you think there’s a feeling in the community that, I mean, we hear so many negative stories, don’t we, Andrew Leigh – of money which we think is going to charities and going to worthwhile causes, not ending up where they should be. Do we need a tightening up of the sector?
LEIGH:
Well, most charities are out there doing a fabulous job, Ross, so they’re out there helping vulnerable, improving the arts sector. You know, this weekend people will be out playing weekend sport that’s going to be backed by charities. So, they’re a power of good in the community. But for the small number of charities that are doing the wrong thing, we’ve got the Australian Charities and Not‑for‑Profits Commission headed by Sue Woodward, which is carefully scrutinising every allegation of wrongdoing that comes to it. We have moved to allow Sue Woodward more powers to talk about ongoing investigations. At the moment, the legislation doesn’t provide enough opportunities for her to talk about issues that she’s investigating. That will provide more transparency and, I think, more confidence in what is a great sector.
SOLLY:
All right, Andrew Leigh, we need to leave it there. Thanks for your time this morning.
LEIGH:
Always a pleasure, Ross. Thank you.