Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Assistant Minister for the Public Service
KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli says the government is paying a heavy price over its failure to tackle the state’s youth crime crisis. Let’s bring in the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman. Thanks for your time. The Opposition Leader in Queensland says it’s not federal issues, the results out of Queensland at the weekend. You’d agree with him on that, I guess?
PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER AND ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE: Well, I mean, they are two by-elections, so of course they’re about local matters. But I also have seen the comments from Steven Miles where he’s acknowledged that the state government there in Queensland have heard the message from Queensland voters. They expect more. I think voters always expect more of their governments. Sometimes they express T the ballot box, sometimes they express those views in a range of forms. But obviously it’s a message for the Queensland Government. They have put out some signs that they’re hearing that, you know, I would expect no less. We have obviously got two opposition leaders from Queensland. We have got the State Opposition Leader there, but also the Federal Opposition Leader is from Queensland. I’m sure he will probably try and tell us that it’s all about federal issues. I don’t know if he said that yet, but I would expect that that is the sort of thing we would see, which is always looking for a problem. Peter Dutton, everywhere he goes he looks for one and I’m sure he’ll find one in this as well.
GILBERT: The Queensland election scheduled for October, so it seems –
GORMAN: Another great state with fixed term elections.
GILBERT: Yeah, indeed. But it looks like the implications for the federal election would be that the Prime Minister, and to be fair to the PM here, said he’s going to go full term, which means March, April, May, next year for the federal election. But that would also make sense politically because you get that Queensland result to wash through before you then go to the polls federally.
GORMAN: Well, I’ll leave you to think about what it means in terms of the timing of elections. Obviously, Queensland does have an election in October. The Queensland State Government have acknowledged that is going to be a tough election, but they’re in that fight to win it. And I know that Steven Miles, he’s only been in the job a few months, he is already making his mark on Queensland, already trying to get things done for Queensland, acknowledging they’ve got more work to do. They have been in government nine years. But I remember the last government. I remember the Campbell Newman government and what they were like when they were in office. I think they sacked about 4,400 health workers, about 10,000 public servants in total sacked by the last LNP government. They were trying to privatise assets left, right and centre. It wasn’t a great government. It only lasted one term. There was a reason that it only lasted one term. And I think it’s just worth remembering that you always want your elected officials to deliver to the absolute best of their ability, but the last thing you’d want is to go backwards. I think that’s the real risk.
GILBERT: The Tasmanian election is this Saturday. The last Liberal Government in Australia. Last one standing for the moment. Do strategists within the Labor party, Paul Erickson and others, look to see just how the Labor brand is travelling, even though it is a state?
GORMAN: Oh, look, I’m not going to speak on Paul Erickson’s behalf, but I’ll say in terms of what I look at when I look at the Tasmanian election, I think there’s a real focus from Rebecca White and the team on cost-of-living relief for Tasmanians. Obviously recognising that people are doing it really tough at the moment. That’s a pretty hotly contested election. They have got an expansion in the size of their parliament. It’s going to be interesting to see how that works. I am sure sometime on a Saturday you’ll have someone explain on this programme or on your election coverage, the Hare-Clark system, something that I think only about three people in all of Australia fully understand. I am sure you’ll have one of them on this panel explaining it for all of us. But look, it’ll be interesting for Tasmanians to have their say. I wish Rebecca and her team all the very best. But again, I’m a West Australian. I know we have state elections in Western Australia. They’re about state issues. I think Tasmanians are pretty parochial in a similar vein. They will be voting on what’s in the interests of Tasmanians.
GILBERT: And our viewers saw on the bottom of the screen there the promo for our people’s forum with the Premier and Opposition Leader at 4:00 p.m. On Wednesday. So, make sure you join us for that as we take the questions to undecided voters and see what they think. Let’s talk about the federal issues now as we face the final two sitting weeks of the autumn session and then a break before back for the budget sitting. This detainee question is a huge amount of uncertainty. Dan Tehan, the Shadow Minister, is out there saying there’d be another 100 to 150 detainees, potentially released, hardened criminals is how he put it. Does the government need to fill the vacuum a bit more with some information? Because this does allow the Opposition to create uncertainty around the prospects here.
GORMAN: I think it’s also a reasonable expectation that when you’ve got statements like that from an Opposition Shadow Minister, that he backs up those statements with facts. I think, I assume, and I don’t know, I assume he’s talking about the case that the Government, the Commonwealth Government recently won in the Federal Court, that we are currently defending in the High Court. I don’t know if that’s the case, but just to have that irresponsibility of always looking for the politics, always running out there saying, ‘oh, look, here’s something that we’re worried about’ without actually having clear facts to back up what he’s saying. I mean, that’s actually not a responsible way to run an Opposition. What we have done every single day is to make sure that community safety and acting in accordance with the law is our priority. That’s what we’ve done. That’s what Minister Giles has done. It is what we’ll continue to do. And what we see elsewhere is real misrepresentation of facts from the Opposition, but also always this drive to get to the politics rather than the facts or the policy matters behind it.
GILBERT: Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman. Appreciate it.
GORMAN: Thank you.
