Interview with Ashleigh Gillon - Sky News

ASHLEIGH GILLON, HOST: For more on that story, let’s bring in live now the Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, Murray Watt. Appreciate your time, Minister, what do you make of John Setka being given a $450,000 golden handshake?
 
MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: Well, g'day, Ash. Good to be with you. Look, I'm still just trying to find out exactly what this payment involves. To my understanding is that it does involve the lawful entitlements of Mr Setka. So, obviously, any employee who resigns or is terminated or their employment comes to an end is entitled to a payout of their entitlements. I think the issue here is that we want to make sure that there's nothing dodgy that's gone on in terms of the payout to Mr Setka. That was a decision made by the union. And it would be up to the union and Mr Setka to be able to demonstrate to the union's members that the use of those funds has been appropriate. We've seen in other cases in other states that some branches of the CFMEU have made inappropriate transfers of members funds. For example, in NSW, a payment of about $2.5 million paid to lawyers representing the Former Secretary and Assistant Secretary has now been recovered by the administrator. And I'm sure the administrator will be taking a close look at this to ensure that nothing dodgy has gone on here as well.
 
ASHLEIGH GILLON: You’d think so. Let's look at what's happening in the Parliament today. It sounds like a deal has now been done with the crossbench. Is it really good for the democratic process? Is it best practice to guillotine debate and rush through some 30 plus bills in the last day of Parliament for the year? What's the rush? Has the PM got an election to call?
 
MURRAY WATT: Well, you're right, Ash. Literally, as we're speaking, the Senate is debating a motion to facilitate the passage of around 20 different bills. The vote is happening as I'm speaking to you, but we're confident that we will be able to get that up with the support of the crossbench. And that includes really important things for the country to assist people with cost of living issues. The Build to Rent bill, which is all about building more apartments to deal with some of the housing challenges the country is facing. Our Future Made in Australia legislation, which is all about creating more jobs in the manufacturing sector into the future. We've got some important safety legislation in there to keep Australians safe. So, these are all important issues that we think really need to be dealt with on the final day of Parliament for the year. I know there have been some people who've been critical about these all being lumped together on the last day. In some cases, these are bills that were introduced into the Parliament last year, not this year. Almost all of them have been to Senate inquiries and have been thoroughly considered. Unfortunately, because the Government doesn't have the numbers in the Senate, we have had large blockages to getting our legislative agenda through this year. So, it's no real surprise that that's all piling up at the end of the year. In some ways, this is no different to what we see on the last day of every sitting year. There's always the drama, there's always confusion about what bills are going to be passed. But it looks like we're on track to finish the year very strongly with the passage of 20 bills today, in addition to, I think it's around 14 that we've passed over the last fortnight.
 
ASHLEIGH GILLON: Minister, can you clarify for us, is the social media ban to be included as part of that guillotine? I'm hearing that that and the migration bills aren't listed as a result of the government's deal with the crossbench.
 
MURRAY WATT: Those two bills are not included in the motion that's currently being debated in the Senate. Of course, it's well known that The Greens Party doesn't support either of those pieces of legislation. But it remains open for the Opposition to come to an agreement with us today to secure the passage of the social media age limit legislation and also the migration amendments that we want to pass. The only thing stopping those pieces of legislation being passed right now is that we haven't secured the agreement of the Opposition to do so. But, you know, it's only about midday. The day is still young. We can be here all night if we need to be. And I would certainly hope that before we rise tonight, we might see the passage of that legislation if the Opposition can back us in on it as well.
 
ASHLEIGH GILLON: Murray Watt, as the Minister in charge of the country's workplaces, I'm keen for your view on what's been happening in your own workplace: Parliament House. If Senator Lidia Thorpe displayed the sort of behaviour that she has in the Senate in recent days in any other workplace - if a workplace had to install extra security guards to protect staff from one of its own employees, would you suspect the employee would no longer have a job? What's your view on what's been going on there?
 
MURRAY WATT: Look, I think what we've seen from Senator Thorpe is escalating levels of behaviour that is unacceptable for an elected representative of the Australian people. Unfortunately, Senator Thorpe is always very interested in trying to seek attention for her behaviour. She's done it again today, she's done it several times over the last couple of weeks, rather than actually trying to get things done for the people that she represents. So, frankly, I'm not really interested in sort of attention seeking stunts from Senators, whoever they might be. What we're here to do is to actually get things done for the Australian people. And as I say, hopefully by the end of the day we will have got a lot done for the Australian people on things like cost of living, housing, some of those safety issues that are really important to people. That's the Government's focus rather than entertaining this kind of attention seeking behaviour from an Independent Senator.
 
ASHLEIGH GILLON: Minister Murray Watt, really appreciate you making the time for us on a hectic day there in Canberra. We'll let you get back to it. Hopefully you're not there into the late hours or early hours of tomorrow morning. Really appreciate it.
 
MURRAY WATT: You never know, Ash, it's the last day - anything could happen. Thanks a lot.