TRANSCRIPT - SKY NEWS WEEKEND EDITION WITH TIM GILBERT

PAUL FLETCHER MP

Shadow Minister for Science and the Arts

Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy

Manager of Opposition Business in the House

TRANSCRIPT

SKY NEWS WEEKEND EDITION

9 SEPTEMBER 2023

TIM GILBERT:  Joining me at the desk is the Shadow Science and Arts Minister, Paul Fletcher. Minister or shadow minister. Good morning. You're the voice. Try and understand it. Yeah. You guys jumped on that very quickly.

PAUL FLETCHER: Yeah Tim. Well look, the question for Australians when they come to vote in October is does this mechanism that is proposed to be entrenched in the constitution by the Albanese Labor Government make sense as far as you're concerned? It's very clear that Australians feel enormous goodwill towards Indigenous Australians. It's very clear to me from my constituents that it's very clear to me there's very wide support for constitutional recognition. But the question is whether the mechanism that the Labor Government is proposing for the voice makes sense and Australians want to know what the details are, how many people will be on this body, how will they be chosen, what issues will it be empowered to make representation about? What will be the consequences of a minister makes a decision and is found not to have adequately consulted with the voice. So these are all the issues of detail the Australian people want to know about and I think that'll be a top of mind for people when it comes to them casting a vote.

TIM GILBERT: And that's the connection, isn't it? Because I think, you know, you're 100% right. Most people want to see some of those statistics or all of those statistics change, those early mortality statistics and everything else, but they want to know how this is going to help that. And somewhere in the middle there hasn't been enough education for people to understand, and many people are struggling. So they're thinking, well, this is priority 600 for me to even try and want to read and find out exactly what it is.

PAUL FLETCHER: Look, I think that's right. And I think unfortunately Prime Minister Albanese is making has made a deliberate decision to try and give as little information as possible, trying to get people to vote on the vibe. That is, I think, not necessarily making sense to a lot of Australians. And the other thing that he's done is he's deliberately turned away from what had been a very bipartisan approach on this for several terms in Parliament we had parliamentary committees co-chaired by a Liberal MP Julian Leeser and a Labor senator, Pat Dodson. That bipartisan approach had gone back as far as the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government and a bipartisan approach with the then Tony Abbott led opposition. Mr. Albanese chose to go off in a direction of his own. He politicised this and that's, I think, very, very unfortunate. I think there's no doubt Australians have an appetite for a national unifying moment as we saw in 1967 on the question of recognition of Indigenous Australians. But Mr. Albanese has mishandled this. And so that I think will be the question in the minds of the Australian people when it comes to voting on October 14th.

TIM GILBERT: Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong are doing a better job with China than Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton though, aren't they?

PAUL FLETCHER:  Well I'll I'm not sure I'd agree with that proposition at all, actually.

TIM GILBERT: Really?

PAUL FLETCHER:  You know, the fundamentals between Australia and China are and this was very clear under the Morrison government, we want mutual, respect. Obviously we regarded the trade relationship as enormously important, but at the same time there will be issues of difference between our two countries, including human rights issues, the treatment, for example, of an Australian journalist who's been incarcerated and other such matters. So going forward, stating those differences where they exist in a firm but mutually respectful way was a principle the Morrison government pursued. And it's interesting on the fundamentals, if you look, for example, at the support for AUKUS, a very significant achievement of the Morrison government. This government, to their credit, has maintained support for AUKUS. We want a peaceful Indo-Pacific in which all countries respect each other and respect the international rule of law.

TIM GILBERT: I think there will be We haven't got time. There will be a school of thought that say that they thought that Morrison Dutton were a little bit bolshie with that relationship. But let's move on to these IR laws because we just had a good conversation with the Chief executive Officer of the Business Council. Small business is struggling. Aspiration is hard to find because people have got red tape, they've got challenges ahead of them. Whether it becomes, whether it's supply, whether it's staffing, this is just another layer on top. It's a problem.

PAUL FLETCHER:  It's a huge problem. Small business is the very heart of Australia's economy. Many, Australians work in small businesses. Many Australians take the step to establish a small business. But it's hard. It requires a sustained effort and all too often when sales are down and a business is going through a difficult period, it's the business owner who reduces what they take out of the business so they can make sure they're still paying the salaries and super of their employees. Now, what Labor has already done through the draconian industrial relations changes it's already made in legislation passed last year is they've made it harder for small business. But now these new laws that Mr. Burke is trying to put through, the Industrial Relations Minister would make it harder still. For example, they're proposing to give union officials a right of entry into businesses around the country if they merely have a suspicion that there's been underpayment of a worker. So you can be a small business person in your shop or indeed if you're working from home or you own a farm, you could get a knock on the door from a thug from the CFMEU, a convicted criminal. And we know that there are CFMEU officials who have been convicted on a range of charges. They could knock on the door saying we've got a suspicion we demand to see the records of what you've paid your employees personal or private information, sensitive information but they would have the right to require that under this law that Mr. Albanese and Mr. Burke are putting before the Parliament. Now, the Senate last week thankfully supported a Senate inquiry, so that'll allow the details of what's contained in this 278 pages of legislation to be examined and that will allow Australians, including small business people, to better understand what's proposed here. But in short, it's terrible for our nation. We know our economy is slowing. We know productivity is a huge problem. Productivity is going backwards under this government. And yet a whole series of changes that this government is making, including a sustained attack on the digital economy under this legislation as well. Really bad news for Australia. This government is taking us in the wrong direction on this as on so many other issues.