TRANSCRIPT - 2GB WEEKENDS WITH BILL WOODS

BILL WOODS: Yes. And this morning, for our Sunday roundup of what's making news, I'm joined by Paul Fletcher, shadow minister for government services, digital economy and Shadow Minister for Science and the Arts and Manager of Opposition Business in the House. So I'd expect he'd be very, very busy indeed. Paul Fletcher, thanks for joining us, mate.

PAUL FLETCHER: Great to be with you.

BILL WOODS: Now, firstly, we'll get on to Tony Burke as we speak spruiking the IR legislation. I know Peter Dutton's already spoken about it this morning on Sky News, so we will get on to that I promise. But I wanted to just touch on a couple of general points and one of which is the number of portfolios you hold, the number of portfolios that are assigned these days. Can you explain how they get awarded? What is the process, whether you're in government or opposition in terms of allocating portfolios and who gets them and why?

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, it's pretty similar across both the major parties. Whoever is in government, the Prime minister chooses who gets what portfolio. Similarly, in opposition, the Leader of the Opposition chooses typically, you know, you have people who've been around for a bit longer and they might get more choice in their portfolio. Certainly in the Liberal Party the deputy leader gets to choose his or own his or her own portfolio. But ultimately it's whatever works for the team and whatever the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition thinks makes best sense.

BILL WOODS: Is there often much dissent? I mean, we heard before the Government settled in that they were saying Tanya Plibersek got a demotion by getting environment for example. That got a lot of attention. From time to time you hear these things, but how is it sorted out?

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, ultimately it is a matter for the Prime Minister or the leader of the day. Yes, there was. You're right. There was a lot of commentary about Tanya Plibersek being appointed to environment instead of education where she'd been the shadow minister. It's more common for people to retain in government the shadow portfolio that they had, but it doesn't always happen. What I think is important is having as much stability as possible and having as much experience as possible. I was lucky enough, for example, to be Minister for Communications and was able to deploy some of the experience that I'd accumulated on the senior management team at Optus, where I served for eight years. One of the problems, of course, that we have right now in Australia is we're seeing this government planning, for example, big changes to the energy system, but there's nobody there with any real experience of working in the private sector. The question of how you allocate investment and the question of how you manage projects. So you get these people who've only ever been union officials or political staffers, and that does sadly describe the great majority of Labour frontbenchers, and suddenly they're making very big decisions for the country and often they don't have very useful or relevant experience.

BILL WOODS: Well, that's a very good point and it's become a bit of an issue just lately and it's good to see the political fraternity talking about it and not just those of us outside the houses and halls of Parliament houses, because it seems to me that in recent times there's been a lot and it's fair to say there's a bit of it on both sides. The staffers who are coming straight out of uni into working for a political party are simply progressing through the ranks. They've never had any real life experience. How do you stop that? Is it up to the parties to do it? How do you do it?

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, look, I think it is about always encouraging people who may not have spent their lives in the political system to come forward and be politicians. Obviously, somebody like Peter Dutton started his life with a huge amount of work experience as a policeman and also, you know, working as a builder and in some private business activities. You look you can look at somebody like Ted O'Brien on our side of politics who's now thinking very hard about the future of Australia's energy system and thinking about it. I'd suggest in a lot more strategic way than Chris Bowen is, and he brings a lot of experience from the private sector as a management consultant and previously working in the banking industry, actually in a series of sales and management roles. So it is important to have that private sector experience and be attracting people in at different stages of their career. Angus Taylor is Shadow Treasurer. For example, came into politics in his 40s after some 20 years as a very senior management consultant, working with the leaders of some of the biggest countries in Australia and around the world. So that sort of experience really is very useful and it's not a good thing if our political system is kind of closed up and the only people who work in it are people who've been in politics throughout their whole career and certainly in the Liberal Party we do think it's very important to try and bring in people with life experience in business or doing lots of other things teachers, farmers, whatever it might be. That is important. Our Parliament should reflect the diversity of work experience of many millions of Australians.

BILL WOODS: The silly thing is though, that when they get into a ministerial or influential position, quite often they get their pass thrown back at them. Oh, you used to work for Optus so therefore you're biassed towards telecoms or you know, whatever. But telcos I should say. But you know, it's silly, isn't it? I mean the you any, aspersions of, you know, preferential treatment aside, real experience is important.

PAUL FLETCHER: Look, experience is important. And the other thing that happens, of course, is that as you become a minister, you start to get a bit more experience. Now, not every idea that the public service puts up is a good idea. I remember when I was Minister for Urban Infrastructure and every year we'd work out the list of road projects around Australia that were going to be funded. It used to really annoy me that the Commonwealth public servants would always have a couple of roads in Canberra. has very good roads. There were bigger needs around the rest of the country and you know, for example, our government put a lot of emphasis into new infrastructure in western Sydney, airport, $5.3 billion. The northern road, 39km now four lanes all the way from Narellan to Penrith. The new railway that the metro that will run from St Marys down to the airport and to the south 23km of that five stations and all that done cooperatively between a New South Wales Coalition government and a Federal Coalition government. You know, just this week we actually saw news that there were there was advice given to the current Commonwealth Labor government about more projects needed in Western Sydney and it seems they ignored that advice which is quite disappointing. But I do think that sort of experience is important and we certainly saw it as a priority with our infrastructure spending to support the growth of our cities, to support the growth of extraordinarily important areas like Western Sydney and certainly Western Sydney Airport will be absolutely critical to the future economic growth of western Sydney. It's been a little bit ironic, I have to say, as the Minister formally responsible for it, to see Mr. Albanese out there, you know, cheerfully claiming the credit when he was the Infrastructure minister for six years and couldn't get it through the caucus. And so nothing happened. On Western Sydney Airport under the last government,

BILL WOODS: The interesting thing with portfolios too is and I think with respect, you've been around long enough to have probably seen this evolution is that in the old days I remember they seemed to be a lot simpler and more overarching, you know, transport, health, education, defence. Now there are far more detailed. For example, of course, government services and the digital economy There wasn't even a digital economy in existence when I was a kid. They seem to have become a lot more specific, haven't they? And a lot more complicated. Is that because our world is more complicated?

PAUL FLETCHER: Look, I think our world is more complicated, but certainly in the Liberal Party we believe that it's very important to let the private sector get on with it. And what we want government to do is establish just enough of a regulatory framework so that the private sector can then do a good and effective job. And if you look at the digital economy, for example, look at the way that millions of Australians over the past few years have become used to digital banking or to using digital platforms like Airtasker to find somebody to help you with a job around the house or Uber or Mabel, for example, which is a specialist disability support platform that connects disability support workers and aged care workers with people needing that support. Now, what is very, very unfortunate about what Mr. Burke, the Minister for Workplace Relations is doing right now, is this new bill that he's going to introduce this week is really a direct attack on the digital economy and on digital platforms. He really seems to hate the idea that Australians would choose to provide their goods and services over digital platforms and other Australians would choose to purchase those goods and services what the union bosses want to do, and therefore what Mr. Burke wants to do, is to try and force everybody back to a sort of very rigid 1950s style economy where there's only one way of interacting, which is informal, full time work In fact, many Australians really value the flexibility that the digital economy provides. And I think it's most unfortunate that this government is trying to stamp out that kind of innovation and flexibility.

BILL WOODS: Yeah, they call it the gig economy, don't they? And we'll get into that in more detail. Please, if you don't mind. Stay with us. The Honourable Paul Fletcher will be back with more of the Sunday sweep right after this. 

BILL WOODS: And for our Sunday sweep today, we're talking to Paul Fletcher, who's also the manager of Opposition business in the House. And if we get time, we might ask him about that because we sort of take that term for granted. But back to the IR laws that Tony Burke is wanting to push through tomorrow, Paul, there's a lot of casual employment in this country and it actually keeps people it keeps industry alive and it keeps people in work. And it's clear that there will be places where people are exploited by that economy.They don't really have too much power in certain circumstances. I think Tony Burke was saying this morning something like $173 million in underpayments in one aspect of or one area of casual employment. However, as you said before the break, there is an agenda here to unionise or at least partially unionise a lot of this gig economy.

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, look, that's right, Bill. This new legislation from Labor is a direct attack on casual employment. It's a direct attack on independent contractors. It's certainly a direct attack on people who choose to provide goods and services over digital platforms and indeed, Australians who choose to consume over digital platforms. The fact is that for many Australians, casual employment suits them. It allows them to juggle employment with their other responsibilities, be it family or study. Similarly, obviously many people operate as independent contractors or as independent businesses, but the union bosses hate it. And what Mr. Burke is proposing to do is to impose rigid new requirements on the way that our workforce operates and on the way that Australians have chosen to structure their lives. Now there's a lot of myths that get pushed by the union bosses and by Labor politicians. There's a lot of talk about independent contracting and labour hire firms, but the facts are that the percentage of work being done through employers of labour hire firms has barely shifted over the last 10 or 20 years. Similarly, the share of casuals. The fact is that many Australians appreciate the flexibility of the way that things operate today and Mr. Burke is trying to impose new restrictions with these laws that he's proposing to introduce. But just also what is very troubling is giving new rights to union officials, for example, to be able to go into any business and demand to see pay records and other confidential information. So putting at risk the privacy of workers. And that can be the case even if there's nobody in that workplace who is a member of a union. So a big part of this is an agenda to try and increase the role of unions. Bear in mind that only about 8% of Australians in private sector employment today are members of unions. Now unions have a role and if Australians want to choose to join a union that's absolutely their right. But at the same time to have a government that is trying to effectively change the rules, to give unions a stronger position is troubling when it's going to have extra cost, extra rigidity, stop Australians providing services and in the way that they've chosen to do and make it much harder and more expensive for many businesses which inevitably will feed through to higher prices for Australian consumers.

BILL WOODS: Well, it's a pretty old argument, isn't it, without wanting to simplify it too much because it is a very complex area, obviously, and you're well aware of that, having had it under your wing on a number of occasions. But the bottom line is about, as you say, this whole idea of people who want to be in a system whereby if they are very good at what they do as a casual or worker for hire, they will be paid accordingly. And similarly, people who aren't very good at it don't deserve to be paid accordingly. However, of course the union line is we should all be brought down to a level of mediocrity and or at least brought up to a level of excellence that we don't deserve. Whatever. But the point is, we need to find a balance, particularly for those workers who might be exploited by certain employers. But also at the same time, we want people to be rewarded for good work, don't we?

PAUL FLETCHER: We certainly do. And of course, if there are workplace safety issues or if there are people being exploited and not being paid, for example, an award wage, then that needs to be properly enforced. But at the same time, the real danger here is that you have draconian, restrictive new rules that, for example, make it more difficult for businesses to organise themselves the way they want to and to reflect good employees and to be paying have a pay structure, for example, which reflects people's experience, how long people have been in the job, and also how good people are at the job based upon objective criteria. And the idea that is all going to be restricted, there will be onerous new barriers to businesses being able to organise themselves in the way that they reward and incent employees I think should be very concerning to all Australians. And of course it will mean employers thinking twice about when they put on additional employees and it will also mean extra costs and extra burdens, particularly on small and medium businesses, which are the ones that don't tend to have human resources departments and specialists, you know, industrial relations staff. But sadly, the unions don't much care about that.

BILL WOODS: Well, I also employ a lot of people. That's critical. Look, before I let you go, just quickly, what is the order of business tomorrow? And I know your other beef about this is that there hasn't been a lot of time to have a good look at this legislation. So what is the process tomorrow and how can you make sure that the that everyone has a good look at it and considers it accordingly?

PAUL FLETCHER: So what will happen tomorrow. We are advised by the government is that Mr. Burke, as the Minister, will give what's called the first reading speech on this bill, what that then means is for the first time the full text of this bill will be available. It's likely to be hundreds of pages long. The Government's been working on this for months, but they've been very, very secretive. They haven't allowed the full text of this bill to be publicly available. A few people have seen it, but the Government's forced them to sign what are called non disclosure agreements. So they're legally barred from telling anybody else the details of what's in there. It'll only be tomorrow that the Parliament and the Australian people will know what is in this bill. The Government then wants the Parliament to start debating it the very next day. You know, this is hundreds of pages, extraordinary detail. It's very important that obviously there's the chance to go and consult with affected businesses and subject matter experts. So, you know, what the Government's attempting to do here, frankly, is a legislative smash and grab raid. They want to try and get this through as quickly as possible. And you'd have to ask and I think Australians will be right to ask, why is this being conducted in such secrecy? What are they trying to hide here?

BILL WOODS:  Well, look, we've run out of time and a happy Father's Day, by the way. And have you got a dad joke for us before we go, listeners, too. Sorry.

PAUL FLETCHER: Happy Father's Day to all your listeners.

BILL WOODS: Yeah, thanks, mate. You got a dad joke before you go

PAUL FLETCHER: Look, not so much a joke, but just reflecting on my father, who my dad, Clive, who sadly passed away a few years ago. But family games of Monopoly all those years ago, he always used to call himself Clive Cheapy stores and he took great pleasure in collecting large amounts of rent whenever he could get the hotels and the houses on his properties. Happy, family memories

BILL WOODS: There you go. Paul Fletcher, have a great day and thank you for joining us.

PAUL FLETCHER: Thanks, Bill. Cheers. Bye

BILL WOODS:  There he is, Paul Fletcher on the Sunday sweep.