May 28, 2013 ... Minister Gary Gray and Arthur Sinodinos, the Shadow Parliamentary ... Mark
Dreyfus detailing what's been discussed in caucus and no doubt ...
ARTHUR SINODINOS AO Senator for New South Wales Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition
TRANSCRIPT PM AGENDA INTERVIEW BY DAVID SPEERS SKY NEWS 28 May 2013
E&OE... Topics: Electoral Funding, ASIO, Asylum Seekers DAVID SPEERS: Welcome back to the program and welcome to our panellists now. Joined by the Resources Minister Gary Gray and Arthur Sinodinos, the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary and Liberal Senator, welcome to you both. I want to start on an issue that’s been close to both of your hearts in various capacities over the years. Minister your previous role was as Minister for Special State, and Arthur Sinodinos, you’ve been the president of the Liberal Party as well... ARTHUR SINODINOS: Sadly yes. DAVID SPEERS: This is an issue of electoral funding of course. And today we’ve heard the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus detailing what’s been discussed in caucus and no doubt between the two parties about a new way of funding political parties. And surprise surprise, tax payers are going to be coughing up more for the big parties. Explain it to us, well in fact Arthur Sinodinos, first to you, is this the right balance that’s been struck here with this package? ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look as far as the public is concerned, you can never get it right. If the Government provides more public funding, people say here they are, they’re all on the public teat. If you say, well
we’re going to rely more on corporate donations or union donations or the rest of it, then you get people saying, well they’re in the claw of vested interest. So... DAVID SPEERS: It seems to me you’re still getting the corporate donations and increasing the public donations. ARTHUR SINODINOS: But the cap, as I understand it, has been lowered to 5 thousand, I mean the Minister’s the expert... GARY GRAY: For disclosure. You can still donate as much as you want. [inaudible] ARTHUR SINODINOS: But the fact of the matter is by lowering the threshold, you will capture more people in that, because I’ve no doubt there would have been some people who would have donated multiple times up to the cap. So this will assist with all of that. I mean I think it’s a common sense change and it recognises the fact that at the state level in NSW, my State, for example, where we’ve had donations reform for State electoral purposes, we’ve gone in the same direction of more administrative funding, administering caps. In that State we also identified certain areas or groups of people who could not donate for a variety of reasons... DAVID SPEERS: So your pretty [inaudible] with this balance... ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look, I’ll leave it to our principal spokesman to sort of express that happiness, but it seems to me that a balance is being struck and I think it’s unrealistic of the Greens and others to jump up and down about all this, when they know that if we don’t go down this route, we essentially stay with a system, which they’ve criticized more heavily in the past. DAVID SPEERS: Well the Greens are particularly upset and you’d think they’ve got some grounds to be so because they did a deal with the Government at the start of this term to form Government that said you’d lower that threshold for disclosure to 1 thousand dollars, what happened to that?
GARY GRAY: Well we introduced a bill and the bill itself has been sitting in the Senate, while we’ve had in that time, a couple of meetings of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and these meetings run for 4, 5, 6 months and do substantial reports on a range of matters. They did a third one, and that third one was into issues that arose out of the Health Services Union, which was then a consideration of the Fair Work Australia Report that they did at about this time last year. Out of that dropped a range of recommendations. The most important of which is around compliance and the Australian Electoral Commission and the way in which it might work in a new environment. So we had an opportunity, looking at two reports of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and then the Fair Work Australia Report that was done in the middle of last year and a real opportunity to look effectively as parties of Government, the Labor Party and the Coalition, to say how would we best build a framework that’s sustainable, that is transparent and which works in a fair manner to all concerned. DAVID SPEERS: OK just explain to me then why that limit isn’t a thousand dollars, as Labor said it would be. GARY GRAY: It’s very simple, and that is because at the end of the day you carry out a negotiation that works. Now that $1000 was first speculated upon in the middle 2000s and it’s indexed to inflation. The $5000 is not indexed. So if you say a $1000 in the year 2000, by 2021 that will be worth $8000, but the $5000 we’re speaking of will be worth $5000 in 2021. DAVID SPEERS Nonetheless was it a bit silly to promise this only 3 years ago? GARY GRAY: In the business of politics you do things that are the right thing at the time. I understand that, I understand why the Government made both the decision that it made, and also the long standing policy position of my party on that issue. But we’ve actually got a better, more robust, more sustainable package out of this process than ever we thought was possible. DAVID SPEERS: Now just because you both know there will be a lot of taxpayers out there grumbling that more money is going to the big parties out of their pocket. Why do you need this administrative cost? It will be $1 per vote, both Lower and Upper House over three years. Why do you need that administrative cost? GARY GRAY:
Should I go for that one Arthur? See I used to be the National Secretary of the Labor Party and as National Secretary of the Labor Party, just come election day itself, you’re coordinating activities across 150 Seats and with Senate candidates, half a dozen in every State, now the administration of that, getting the policy framework right, getting the quarterly reporting processed, how parties work, how they run right, is a very expensive business. DAVID SPEERS: I’ve got to interrupt you there Minister, because there is a division in the in the Lower House, that you have to go for. In a hung Parliament, we don’t want you to miss a vote on [inaudible]. While Gary Gray takes off we’ll just, ok, return to Arthur Sinodinos. We should explain that we are living, this is live television for you, we’re living in a hung Parliament situation and when Parliament is sitting as it is today no Member of the House, whether you’ve got a sick kid, as talked about a couple of weeks ago, or whether you’re doing a television interview, can miss a division in the House, otherwise there will be real trouble. Fortunately Arthur Sinodinos is in the Senate and the Senate is not sitting this week, you’re in Senate Estimates. ARTHUR SINODINOS: Built for comfort rather than speed. DAVID SPEERS: We saw you earlier in the Senate Estimates, trying to get some answers on this ASIO, this report that ASIO has had its blue prints for its floor plans stolen and that it may be China that’s behind it. You didn’t get a lot of answers in the Senate Estimates this morning, but how worried are you about this? ARTHUR SINODINOS: There is a bit of a paradox here, because as you say, we were pursuing this matter in Estimates this morning and the officials and the Minister at the table, Senator Conroy, was saying, well you know we, it’s the practice not to comment on these matters. And that was the comment of the Attorney General this morning. I understand the Prime Minister this afternoon said that, was essentially trying to dispel the idea that this had been the case, without wishing to go into it any further. So we sort of... DAVID SPEERS: And she used the word inaccurate in relation to the report. ARTHUR SINODINOS: Yeah and I think it’s unfortunate here, because the Government either sticks to the line they can’t comment on these matters. But the minute you say it’s inaccurate it suggests or
implies there is something wrong with the assertion, or the Four Corners story in this case, in which case, if it’s wrong, tell us that it’s wrong and tell us why it’s wrong. DAVID SPEERS: But can Governments really do that? I mean you’ve worked as Chief of Staff to John Howard for many, many years, can it really talk about National Security matters that openly and say, look this part of the story is right, that part was wrong? ARTHUR SINODINOS: The point I’m making is that the very fact we’re asking questions now about what the Prime Minister has said, she should have shut it off by saying, like Dreyfus did, I can’t comment on this. She sort of left it hanging, it’s inaccurate, and it’s exactly what you say, people then say well which parts are inaccurate? Now Senator Brandis and Julie Bishop, our Deputy Leader, I understand, will get a briefing from ASIO about all of this. Now that will obviously be in camera and they won’t be able to talk about it, but we welcome that. Because that’s an opportunity for us to clarify, at least in our own mind, what is going on here. The point I was making at Senate Estimates today was that if a judgement was made that a hacking has occurred, that being the assumption, if that has compromised the building and the servers and the other stuff in the building, then at some stage, and this is where Estimates becomes relevant, the question of whether you proceed with the building or whether you have to take action, remedial action, on the building. At some stage there was even speculation you might have to change buildings, that is relevant in a sense to Senate Estimates. Now it appears we’re obviously a long way away from that judgement, but they are the sort of questions you have to ask in Estimates because they have implications. DAVID SPEERS: Sure and the Attorney General has at least said that they won’t have to gut the building and redesign it, they’re going to move into it later this year. ARTHUR SINODINOS: And there is already, by the way David, been some delay in them moving into the building... DAVID SPEERS: There has. ARTHUR SINODINOS: Which raises the question of whether at some stage they picked up information about this, and made changes, but I am only speculating. DAVID SPEERS:
Can you speculate about the sort of activities that China is engaged in, when it comes to cyber attacks?
ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look I think it’s true to say, and here I commend the Government that it has put more emphasis on cyber security in recent years. It’s built on a trend we’ve seen there for a while, we also looked at this, but I think the Government is right to put more and more resources into it. There is a lot more of this happening and we shouldn’t just say it’s about China, it’s happening in a lot of contexts, both the national security context, it’s happening in a commercial context, it’s becoming a very big problem and being smart in that sort of area is very important for us in protecting our critical infrastructure going forward. DAVID SPEERS: And don’t you think in a national security sense we should be worried about asylum seekers? ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look, the pub test on this, is that if you go and talk to people in the community and they say well if someone can get in without a proper security assessment, how can you rule out X, Y or Z. It’s a very hard question to answer... DAVID SPEERS: But what do you think? Do they pose a risk? Should we conflate these issues? ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look, if you’re asking me does every asylum seeker pose a security issue, that’s a generalisation that goes too far. Can you rule out individual asylum seekers being potential security risks? No you can’t. DAVID SPEERS: Does it help though for leaders like Tony Abbott to put these two issues together? ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well, it’s an issue in the mind of the community and so as a Government you have to be seen to be...it’s like the whole border protection issue, unless you address it and look like you’re in control of your borders, the public then start to think about whether they support the whole immigration program. Because I think, well if you can get here any way you can, then what control have we got as a country? DAVID SPEERS:
Liberal Senator and Parliamentary Shadow Secretary Arthur Sinodinos, we’ll have to leave it there. Thanks for joining us. ARTHUR SINODINOS: Thank you.
