Ali Moore:
Stephen Jones, welcome back to Drive.
Stephen Jones:
Ali, good to be with you.
Moore:
So, why now? Was there an epiphany over summer?
Jones:
Listen, I’d been thinking for a few months now, whether I wanted to run again, you reach an age and –
Moore:
You’re only 59, Stephen Jones.
Jones:
Yeah, I want to do something else with my life after this. I’ve always thought I didn’t want this to be the last thing I did. I don’t know what the next thing is. But I guess I’m taking that leap into the dark. But 15 years, they’re dog years in politics. You’ve generally done your 38 hours a week by Wednesday and then you soldier on and do another 3 or 4 days worth of work. So, it’s time and it’s better that you go when people still want you to stay, rather than staying when people want you to go in this game. I’ve made the decision for not one reason, just a whole bunch of reasons. I think it’s time and appropriate that I go now, hand the baton on.
Moore:
And not to be inappropriately personal, but you were married just over a year ago. Has that got something to do with it, maybe?
Jones:
You might be onto something there, Ali. I want to ensure that it’s one of the greatest cliches when people like me make decisions like this. But I want to ensure that I have weekends, that I spend more time with my wife – who I was married in March last year. It’s a tough life. She’s very supportive of me, but I also promised I wouldn’t do this forever. I was just thinking when you were doing the intro, Ali, I think I did my first interview with you when you were the host of a newly established ABC 24.
Moore:
Wow, that’s a long time ago.
Jones:
It was a long time ago. So, I did my first TV interviews with you way back then.
Moore:
There you go. You do have a good memory. Do you know what, though? The funny thing about you announcing that you’re going to go now is, of course, that arguably your job and the job of the government might just get a bit easier if interest rates are actually cut.
Jones:
I’m very pleased, obviously, with the inflation figures this week. It seems we’ve well and truly turned the corner. They’re half what we were when we came into government. They’re now within the Reserve Bank’s target range. Which means the circumstances are well set, of course. The independent Reserve Bank will make its decision in a few weeks time, but I know all Australians are waiting with bated breath on the outcome of that decision for some relief.
Moore:
Do you think that the timing is going to work for the government?
Jones:
You’d always rather be going into an election with interest rates falling rather than rising, wouldn’t you? That’s just sort of stating the obvious there, really. But frankly, political concerns aside, Australians are doing it tough and that should be our number one concern. How do we help Australians make ends meet on a fortnightly basis, as they’re doing with mortgage payments, insurance payments, health care and school and other costs? We’ve got to do what we can to provide some relief there.
Moore:
You hold the seat of Whitlam by just over 10 per cent, I think, is that right? You will correct me, I’m sure.
Jones:
It’s around about 9 per cent.
Moore:
Nine per cent?
Jones:
Redistributed in the last round, so it’s – it’s changed in shape a little bit, but for argument’s sake, let’s say it’s 9 per cent.
Moore:
Yeah, so is that – I mean, in the current environment – I mean, we’re looking at a by‑election here in Victoria for Werribee, for example, which Labor has held for quite some time and has more than 10 per cent margin. But the government seems deeply concerned about whether it’s going to keep it. Do you think Whitlam is safe?
Jones:
Look, here’s my attitude to this. If you treat your seat as a safe seat, it’ll quickly become a marginal one. If you treat your seat as if every voter and every constituent counts and you’ve got to treat them with respect and dignity and ensure that you’re responding to their needs, then they will treat you as their member with the same courtesy and respect. I firmly believe that and that’s been the hallmark of how I’ve dealt with my electorate since I was first voted in, in 2010. So, I think we’ve seen over the last couple of elections, federally and at state governments, people in what we would consider very safe seats lose their seat and people in very marginal seats maintain or increase their margin and I suspect it’s because of that attitude.
Moore:
We’ve talked on this program about your anti‑scam legislation. I think you’re still hoping to get that through before you leave. I wonder, though, what is the thing that you are leaving undone? What is the thing that you are leaving on the table for your successor?
Jones:
I really believe that we’re custodians in these roles, and I’ll pick some stuff up that was started by others and I’ll start some stuff that’ll be finished by others. But you set the narrative, the direction, the momentum, and you make things unstoppable and there’s a couple of things in the area. I want more Australians to have access to financial information and advice so they can make better decisions.
Moore:
That’s been a very long debate, though, hasn’t it?
Jones:
Exactly and successive governments over the last thirty years have done things which have made it harder. The only people who can access financial advice are very wealthy people now, and that’s just not right. So, that’s a thing. In the area of media, the news media bargaining code and announcing the news media bargaining incentive as a way of ensuring that the large social media platforms are making a contribution to quality journalism in this country is another important work I’d like to see as bipartisan and I’d like to see that passed. That’ll move through parliament by the end of this year. That’s started by me, it’ll be finished by others. So, there’s a few things there I’ve got lots of. I think even my critics would say we haven’t been lazy, we haven’t been idle. We’ve been working on a whole range of fronts to modernise our economy and the machinery and the regulation and the governance of it.
Moore:
Just talking there about the pieces of legislation and the sorts of stuff that you usually come on this program and talk about, which makes this memory that I have of your time in parliament the more extraordinary. Two years ago, you were part of the parliamentary debate about religious discrimination and transgender children, and you spoke about your own child, Paddy, with his blessing. That was a really personal moment. Is that maybe one of your most memorable for your 15 years in parliament?
Jones:
I still get people commenting on it to me. It’s probably one of them. Look, it’s probably the one that touched a nerve the most, I think. Here’s what I think about that, Ali. I think in public life, as leaders, including people like yourself, we’ve got a responsibility for the things we say and the things we say and the way we say them really matter. That’s particularly if the case if you’re an elected official, but it’s also the case if you’re a news broadcaster.
So, that puts a huge responsibility on us and what was really worrying me about that debate is we were as a parliament, and the previous government was letting loose a debate which is going to cause enormous harm and damage to a vulnerable group of young Australians who are trying to come to terms with who they are and we were sending a message from the Commonwealth parliament that they were wrong and that they didn’t fit and that they were somehow a problem. I think that was incredibly dangerous.
I had a nephew who took his own life in those circumstances a few weeks earlier, and I thought I didn’t want any other parent to have to go through that. So, I decided to use my voice and whatever rhetorical powers I had in that debate to say, can we just stop doing this? There are so many more important things that we as a parliament, should be talking about, and culture wars which are victimising young kids are not one of them. Let’s get onto the things that are really going to make a difference to people’s lives and I still believe that today, and whenever I see the emergence of these sort of debates here or anyone where else, it bothers me, that we are using our voice and our power as leaders to do harm and not to do good and that’s not what the great institutions of our democracy are set up for.
Moore:
Stephen Jones, 15 years of being in federal parliament is a fair whack of time. You have said that you’re not sure what you’re going to do next holiday, maybe?
Jones:
Yeah, that’d be good. I want to get my weekends back. That’d be nice. But what really matters to me a lot is to leave well and that means finishing the things that I can finish and ensuring that our relationships are intact and ensuring that people are looked after and that includes in my own electorate, which matters dearly to me. So, I’ll be spending the next 2 months focused on that and then I’ll turn to what I do next after that.
Moore:
Very good. But we may well speak with you before you actually leave, depending on when the election is, April 12’s looking good.
Jones:
Always, always enjoyed our conversations, Ali. So, all the best.
Moore:
Thank you. All the best to you too. Stephen Jones there, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for Financial Services.