Doorstop interview - Parliament House, Canberra
E&OE Transcript
MURRAY WATT: The Government is ready today to debate and pass our legislation, which would enable me, as the Minister, to decide if it's in the public interest to appoint an administrator to the construction division of the CFMEU. So, we are ready to debate and pass this legislation today. So, the question now is, are the Coalition and the Greens ready to support Labor, to take the serious action that is urgently required to reform the CFMEU and ensure that it returns its focus to the best interests of its members? Yesterday, the Opposition lodged a motion, which will be debated in the Senate today, to set up a Senate inquiry into the CFMEU that would not report until March next year. This is simply a delaying tactic from an Opposition that likes to talk tough about the CFMEU but doesn't actually do anything to fix the problem. The idea that this issue would go on until March is absolutely ridiculous. The Opposition has got to come on board, as have the Greens, back this legislation so we can take the action that is desperately required.
JOURNALIST: Minister, why is it so important that you get the CFMEU legislation passed? And is it frustrating to have this delay?
MURRAY WATT: It's incredibly frustrating to see more delay tactics and political games from an Opposition and the Greens who've been talking about needing to clean up work sites, inject better culture and now have the opportunity to do so. It is really important that we get this legislation passed. I think all Australians are really disturbed by the constant revelations that keep on coming out, including more today about thuggery, bullying, intimidation and in its worst examples, criminality and corruption that unfortunately have infiltrated this union. We need legislation to reform this union and ensure that it gets back to focusing on its members interests rather than some of the activity that's been going on?
JOURNALIST: Given that there are all of those allegations, don't you think that there needs to be some kind of review into this, given that there's been so many terrible allegations?
MURRAY WATT: I think the last thing we need at the moment is another longstanding review or inquiry to look into issues that have been going on for a long time and that have been inquired into to death. It's not just the government saying this. The Master Builders Association of Australia, one of the key employer groups in the building industry, has said they don't support a Senate Inquiry. We need action, not more delay and more grandstanding.
JOURNALIST: Under this legislation, you could put the CFMEU administration for three years. Are you confident that these issues as broad as they are, as entrenched as some might be, can be resolved in three years, or are you open to extending them?
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, I'm confident that the three-year timeframe is the right one. We recognise this is something that just won't be able to be dealt with overnight, and so it does need a bit of time. But we do think that three years is an adequate period of time to undertake the kind of reform that's needed. Of course, there would always be the opportunity to amend that legislation in the future if it was decided that more time was needed. But we think at the beginning, a three-year period is the right one.
JOURNALIST: Just on gambling reform, do you think that the government is putting the interests of commercial media above the interests of public health?
MURRAY WATT: No, what we're trying to do here is come up with a balanced approach. I think many Australians, including myself as a parent, are concerned about the amount of gambling advertising that we do see on TV and in other media forms as well, like social media. But what we need to do is balance that concern with the reality that gambling advertising is an important revenue source for free-to-air TV, which, as you know, is under threat from social media enterprises at the moment. It's also an important revenue source for sporting codes. So, I know that the Ministers, Amanda Rishworth and Michelle Rowland, are working through this, talking with stakeholders to come up with that balanced approach that recognises community concern about gambling, while also recognising the impacts that a total ban would have on sport and on free-to-air TV.
JOURNALIST: Just on a different topic, outside the portfolio, I know on the AUKUS agreement treaty documents, this one-year notice period that will need to be given for an exit of the US or UK, is that at all a cause for concern? Even if it's unlikely, that would leave a worst case scenario where Australia doesn't get nuclear submarines.
MURRAY WATT: I'll leave it for the portfolio Ministers, including Richard Marles and Pat Conroy, to give you some specific detail on that. But we need to remember that the agreement that was entered into last week really just provided the legal underpinning to what had previously been announced. But, yeah, I'll leave it to my colleagues to give you a bit more information on that.
JOURNALIST: And just on wages, we've got the wage price index coming out today. There's been some pretty consistent criticism of the government in terms of increasing wages and how that's impacting inflation. Do you think the government needs to cool off when it comes to increasing wages, given that inflation is a continued problem?
MURRAY WATT: There's no evidence whatsoever that increasing wages is contributing to inflation. What's contributing to inflation? Some of the longstanding international pressures that our economy is facing. What I think and what our government thinks is that increasing wages is critical for Australians to be able to deal with the cost-of-living pressures they're facing. Of course, we provided a whole range of relief, our tax cuts, our energy bill rebates, even the announcements we've been making about childcare in recent days. But the other part of the equation is making sure people have the wages they need to deal with those rising prices and I'm very proud that a Labor government is delivering those wage rises.