Interview with Karl Stefanovic - The Today Show, Channel Nine

KARL STEFANOVIC, HOST:    Well, all hell broke loose during Question Time in parliament yesterday. If you missed it, and let's face it, you probably had better things to do, here's a little taster.

[Excerpt]

KARL STEFANOVIC:    So, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth and Senator David Pocock join me now to discuss. Good morning guys, nice to see you. Amanda, surely you can all do better.

AMANDA RISHWORTH, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS:    Well, look, it was a pretty rowdy day yesterday, but I guess that's the cut and thrust of politics. My six-year-old probably has behaved better. But, look, obviously when passions are high, Question Time can get a bit rowdy. It is an important accountability mechanism. But, of course, we can all do better, I think.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    Yeah. David, this is why you went into politics, right? To see things getting done for the Australian people.

DAVID POCOCK, SENATOR:    Karl, Question Time, I think, is disgraceful a lot of the time. One, it's Question Time, not answer time. You ask questions, you don't get too many answers a lot of the time. And you can see why a bunch of independents in the Senate don't actually go to Question Time unless you have a question, because otherwise you're having to sit through an absolute rabble and people yelling at each other and you don't really don't learn much. So it’s pretty disappointing, and you'd hope that politicians could hold themselves to a little bit of a higher standard than, I don't know, a year two or three classroom.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    Yep, that's what it sounds like to me. Amanda, let's get things back on track. Unions want wages to go up, even though economists say they'll have to be sacrificed if we want interest rates to go down. How will small businesses possibly afford wage rises?

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    I would say we've done a lot of work on making sure that we are getting inflation down at the same time as historically low unemployment rates and we've been able to see real wage growth as well. There is no evidence of a wage price spiral in our economy, and the Reserve Bank has made that clear. People deserve wage increases and that's really critical. Now, when it comes to productivity, we've all got to do better with productivity, and that's been a focus of our Government. But I don't accept, Karl, that you pay people less to get people more productive. That just doesn't stack up.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    So you'll just do whatever the unions want?

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    No. Karl, what we're saying is people deserve wage increases. And we have seen, through enterprise bargaining in particular, where employers sit down with their workers and discuss wage increases. That's not the Government telling it. That's what business and workers are working out. But what I don't accept is the concept that you pay people less to get more productivity.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    David, there are real storm clouds gathering on the horizon. The economy is getting sticky, as you would know. We can't keep spending out of it, can we?

DAVID POCOCK:    Well, I think we've got ourselves into this really tough situation where you have just over a third of Australians with a mortgage. They desperately want interest rates to come down. Everyone else is struggling with cost of living. And so what is the answer here? I think you have to go back to housing. And if we keep treating housing as an investment vehicle rather than something that we want to be accessible and affordable to everyone in our society, then we're in this really tough situation.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    And that's no quick fix.

DAVID POCOCK:    It's not, but it takes political courage and actually being able to talk about things like the tax system, things like immigration and population, and from what I've seen over the last four years in here, the major parties either sling mud on those things, don't engage in good faith or just don't want to talk about them.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    See, Amanda? That's what we need to do instead of just arguing with each other like two-year-olds.

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well, I have to say I'm going to reject David's proposition there. Our Government has been absolutely focused on housing. We've got a range of policies out there to deal with supply, to get more construction. So just because we don't agree on the solution, David, doesn't necessarily mean that we're not absolutely focused on housing and how we increase supply.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    Okay, and you're only a little bit of time behind.

DAVID POCOCK:    Fair enough, but you've just got the supply blinkers on. That’s all you’re focusing on.

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well, we are focused on supply.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    Just finally, I want to get to this because this one really did tickle my fancy this morning. I was doing a bit of reading last night. And David, I hear Labor- I mean, this is just terrible. Labor's trying to stop you from going to the gym during Question Time. I'm not sure why. It's super confusing, all this, but you can't keep a fella from doing weights, Amanda. David, how would you like to respond?

DAVID POCOCK:    Karl, I've been trying to get this report out of the Government into jobs for mates, and they've been sitting on it for over two years now. And so I actually moved a motion to extend Question Time until they provide a report that they said that they were going to provide anyway. We all know jobs for mates is a problem. And so they moved this silly motion to make every single senator sit through this tedious Question Time. It got absolutely slammed by every single non-Labor senator. It was a bit of a stunt.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    Okay, so they're making him sit there instead of going to the gym. Amanda, you're stopping the nation from getting what they want. I mean, how can you prevent the country from seeing this sort of stuff?

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well, Karl, I have to say, there's all bits of our job we don't like. There's people at home that don't like bits of their job. Sometimes you've just got to do it. You've got to turn up. Come to Question Time. I have to. Everyone else has to.

KARL STEFANOVIC:    I'm not the only one in Australia who wants to see more David Pocock. Thank you so much, guys. See you soon.