SUBJECTS: Grocery Choice, paid maternity leave, Work Choices
STEVE CHASE
Mr Bowen, this $13 million that the Government is reportedly going to give to Choice - money well spent do you think?
CHRIS BOWEN:
Well, we said on the day that we launched the GroceryChoice website that we'd love to see more information put on it over time. We've been working away at that. Choice has a lot of expertise in the field and there are constraints on how much information the ACCC as the regulator that can provide to consumers.
So we do think there are synergies there, which we are working through and the indication from the public has been, that the more information we can give them the better - and that is what we have been working away to do.
CHASE:
A lot of commentators this morning are suggesting that the website has been given a reprieve that is indicative of, you'd have to say, the public's perception that the GroceryChoice website hasn't been that great.
BOWEN:
The feedback to me has been that's it is a good start, we like the information, but we'd always like more. Now we are happy to provide more where we can - there is a choice here - some people on the other side say the public doesn't deserve the information. We say the public deserves more information, that's the essential difference.
CHASE:
But you are still not running it, you've had to farm it out to make it more palatable so to speak.
BOWEN:
Well as I say, the ACCC as the regulator has some constraints - you can't as the regulator, put specials on your website etc because you'll be, as the regulator you're responsible for ensuring truth in advertising. If you are repeating advertising of retailers that is a something conflict of interest.
If you can get a third party to do it and in such a way that it doesn't provide a conflict of interest for a government instrumentality, that's certainly worth exploring.
CHASE:
What difference will it make that Choice is going to run it now. What tangible differences will there be on the web site?
BOWEN:
We'll bring out more details in the not to distant future about the discussions with Choice - we are not in a position to announce those as yet. But Choice and the Government agree that if we can provide more information on the web site, all the better.
CHASE:
And of course the decision has had some ramifications within Choice, there is already one board member has resigned over this. Do you think that you're helping to compromise Choice by this action you're taking?
BOWEN:
That is entirely a matter for them, Choice came to us with a suggestion for improvements. We like to listen to any organisation when they come to us with those sorts of suggestions. I understand there are some internal issues about a range of matters in that particular case but that is really a matter for them.
CHASE:
If I could ask you another matter in the bailiwick of you being the Assistant Treasurer, one of your colleagues Tanya Plibersek this morning suggested that the country can't afford the maternity leave scheme, is that right?
BOWEN:
We examine all these matters, as the Treasurer's made clear and the Parliament's made clear, in the budgetary context. Times are tough; we need to weigh up all the priorities of the time of the next budget.
There are lot of calls, as there always are, for more Government expenditure. We've moved quite a long down the paid parental leave road, but we'll need to assess the priorities and the budgetary calls on us in that budgetary context weighing up the needs of the time.
CHASE:
You're a family man, where do you put the priority for paid maternity leave?
BOWEN:
Look, as I say as a member of the Expenditure Review Committee and the Government we'll need weigh up all these priorities. There are a lot of legitimate calls for Government expenditure, every Minister who comes before the Expenditure Review Committee has a very legitimate case. It is our job in the budgetary context to weigh up those and prioritise those with one eye on the macro economic circumstances at the time, that's what we'll do.
CHASE:
One of the other things you have to do in that context is to look at wage pressures. The IR laws that are going to be debated by Parliament, are they going to, in the form that they are that we understand, are they going to place pressures of the budget?
BOWEN:
No, this is a very significant day; of course this is a very significant day in the end of the former Government's Work Choices legislation. It's a day that Julia Gillard has been working away at for a very long time and I'm sure she will be making more statements during the day. This is a good, well balanced and well thought through package which is in not only the economic interest of the nation, but the interest of individual employees and employers.
CHASE:
Businesses today are suggesting that it's a throw back to the Keating era.
BOWEN:
You are always going to get strong views on both sides. That indicates to me that the Deputy Prime Minister has got the balance right.
When you've got unions saying that they'd like it to go a bit further, and businesses saying it goes to far - you are always going to get that, nobody has ever been able to come up with an industrial relations package which everybody is absolutely, entirely, rapturously in favour of - and this will be no different.
CHASE:
Mr Bowen we'll leave it there.
BOWEN:
Always a great pleasure Steve.