ALEX SLOAN:
Joining me now is the new Federal Minister for Population, and that's Tony Burke. Tony Burke, a very good morning to you.
TONY BURKE:
G'day Alex.
SLOAN:
Congratulations on the appointment.
BURKE:
Thank you very much.
SLOAN:
Why have we got this appointment now?
BURKE:
We've never tried to coordinate and bring all the different strands together in this area of policy before. It reaches into almost every policy area. It is not only an immigration debate. It goes to discussions about infrastructure, government services, water, jobs, and it's not only something that hits Federal Government. A whole lot of the infrastructure issues are run by state governments. A whole lot of the planning issues are run by local governments.
SLOAN:
Has it been born out of public pressure, as Bob Carr suggests?
BURKE:
There's no doubt there's been a very strong community discussion on this and the PM's been very mindful of that.
We've been talking about these issues around the Cabinet table for a while and the decision was made that we should have somebody responsible for working on population policy and putting together a strategy ands that it should be based in Treasury.
This is not simply an old-style immigration debate. There are all the different strands of government that need to be brought together to get this right.
SLOAN:
In response to your appointment, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says it's a snub to Immigration Minister, Chris Evans and he says Kevin Rudd has chosen to put a different minister in charge of population to the one in charge of our borders.
BURKE:
He doesn't understand it.
SLOAN:
Well, the rest of Australia might not understand that either.
BURKE:
It's not just an immigration discussion. This is about people in the urban areas as well, who are seeing infrastructure pushed to capacity. It's also about water infrastructure and some areas of the country where employers desperately need more people. If you provided immigration as the answer, without dealing with all the infrastructure challenges, you wouldn't fix anything for them or for their community.
It's about bringing together those different strands and the answers will be different in different parts of the nation.
SLOAN:
How are you going to communicate that to the Australian people? I just put the issue of whether this can be stopped descending into a debate - a racist debate, and also Glenn Milne in The Australian suggests this morning that the argument from the Opposition will be if you can't control our borders why should Australians believe you can get a handle on controlling population?
BURKE:
Let's first of all look at this just in terms of the immigration figures, and then I'll go to the other connections.
On the immigration figures, the number of people coming into the country: 180,000. Same as under the previous government. Number of people coming in as refugees: 13,000, the same as under the previous government. In terms of total numbers there is no difference in each of those sections between what's been happening now, and what was happening when Tony Abbot was a Minister in the previous government. So I think we can calm that part of the discussion down.
We want to look at how to reconcile the employer in regional Australia who is saying, 'My business can't keep going the way it used to, because I can't get anyone to work out here at the moment.'How do you reconcile that with someone who is driving to work in the urban areas, stuck in gridlock and getting to work sometimes an hour later than what would have been possible before the number of people in their spart of their city grew.
SLOAN:
Well, how do you solve that? How do you convince people to go and live and work in regional Australia?
BURKE:
Well, this is where the consultation is real. We're having the discussion today which is good. The appointment was announced on Saturday. I'll be getting my first briefing from Treasury tomorrow morning, and then there will be a very broad range of consultation getting down to how this affects different parts of the country differently.
So far with the debate, in pretty much everything I've read and almost every interview I've heard, including the [Intergenerational Report] itself, we tend to look at this as though Australia is just one global, single-speed economy with a single demand for population and we don't have these deeply significant differences in different parts of the nation.
So working out how you tailor the population policy to different needs in different parts of the nation, that's where the consultation is real.
SLOAN:
In terms of developing a strategy, you're giving that 12 months. Is that right?
BURKE:
The aim is to get that going in 12 months' time. It's something that no level of government in Australia has ever tried before. It's a very big job, but I don't think there's any doubt that there's a need to get a strategy like that into public policy.
SLOAN:
Do you think it will descend into racism, or debate about management? I'm about to speak to Scott Morrison.
BURKE:
I don't think it needs to. I think we're capable of having a mature debate on this. And in terms of total numbers, in Opposition I had the same job as Scott Morrison has now. It was quite possible to have a mature discussion about numbers and there was always a bipartisan approach to these sorts of issues.
I'd be surprised if the current Opposition didn't want to continue on with the work that I will have commenced, should there be a change of government at the end of the year.
SLOAN:
Okay. Lovely to talk to you, Tony Burke, and of course you're also Federal Agriculture Minister and I noticed you Tweeted yesterday that Easter Sunday is probably not the best way to tell my daughter about the work the Government is doing in rabbit control.
BURKE:
I know and they're listening to the interview, so now you've told them.