TRANSCRIPT - ABC NEWS 24 AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH GREG JENNETT

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

ABC NEWS 24 AFTERNOON LIVE

6 JUNE 2024


GREG JENNETT: It's already time now to get a liberal take on some of the running events as we routinely do with Shadow Minister Paul Fletcher, who's made it to us from the house. Welcome once again, Paul. Now, the Robodebt National Anti-Corruption Commission has decided there's nothing in this for it to further examine because the Royal Commission had done such a comprehensive job. That's the end of the matter, together with the Public Service Commission's work. Is it as far as you're concerned?

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, obviously the National Anti-Corruption Commission makes its own decisions. They've explained their reasons. On any view, this matter has been thoroughly examined. I would make the point that because of Mr. Shorten's ferocious politicization of what he's called Robodebt, a direct consequence has been that service levels at Services Australia are plummeting. We've seen that come out in estimates this week. The core wait times calling the Australians line used to—you used to wait 21 minutes under us. Now you're waiting 32 minutes, and this story is replicated right across Services Australia. The key reason is that Mr. Shorten has ferociously demonized the use of technology, the use of algorithms, and why would any public servant put up ideas when they might think that under Mr. Shorten there's a risk of them being called before a Royal Commission? So, the fact is that service levels at Services Australia are dropping dramatically under Mr. Shorten, and this is a very serious issue.

GREG JENNETT: You're right. There's actually been a rich vein of material coming from Senate estimates in relation to government services. If time permits, I'd like to take you to some of those. But on the way through, let's go through the abiding feature of the House of Reps, and that was these impassioned debates over the Israel-Gaza war and specifically pro-Palestinian protests outside electorate offices and the like. Leader of the House Tony Burke furiously declared, "Greens' misinformation stops now," in reference to suspension motions and the like. Now, I would suggest that with Coalition numbers and with Labor's, something could be done to thwart these if you view them as spurious. Will you?

PAUL FLETCHER:  I think what we saw yesterday was the parties of government, Labor, and the Coalition making it clear how strongly we disapproved of the conduct of the Greens party. What is very important is that we are maintaining social cohesion in Australia at a difficult time, and I've heard concerns about these issues expressed to me by my Jewish constituents, and I might say by Islamic constituents. And like many Australians, I have constituents of all kinds, like many members of parliament, I have constituents of all kinds of backgrounds who have concerns. Now, of course, this morning the Coalition moved a motion to bring on debate about a bill to establish a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism on campus—a bill developed by Julian Leeser, the Liberal member for Berowra and, of course, a Jewish Australian. Unfortunately, the Albanese government did not agree to that bill being brought on for debate. We do think this is very important because the simple fact is many Jewish students on Australian campuses right now feel unsafe. We have these encampments all around the place, and the vice-chancellors are not doing as much as they should to restore order.

GREG JENNETT: Yeah, the alignment of numbers on some of the threads in this debate do shift from time to time, as you point out. Look, Adam Bandt—we've discussed this on the program—is considering suing Mark Dreyfus for defamation, at least exploring that option actually for comments made on this program. If this proceeded, there'd be a cost to taxpayers, wouldn't there, since the Attorney General needs to be defended by the taxpayer?

PAUL FLETCHER: Look, at the end of the day, every Australian is entitled to access our legal system. That being said, I think many people might wonder why the leader of the Greens, who has a very big public megaphone and certainly gets plenty of exposure on the ABC, if I can make that point, why he feels he would need to go to court as well. But really, that's a matter for him.

GREG JENNETT: Understood. Should Mark Dreyfus be allowed some latitude to express his frustrations or feelings generally because of his religious faith?

PAUL FLETCHER: I'm not really going to comment on the merits of whether or not there is a valid claim for defamation here. I will acknowledge that, of course, Australians of Jewish background, including Mark Dreyfus and others at Labor—Josh Burns and, of course, Julian Leeser, as a Liberal. And, you know, I have in my electorate thousands of Jewish constituents, you know, more than 100,000 Jews around Australia. And I know from speaking to Jewish Australians they are concerned. They feel concerned for their personal safety. And people who came to Australia as long ago as the 1940s and '50s to flee the horrors of World War II, and who have said they've enjoyed a very happy and secure and stable life in Australia and, of course, made a great contribution to our nation—some of those people are now saying for the first time in their life they feel fearful.

GREG JENNETT: Yeah, understood. Now, government services—I promised we'd come back to it, and we don't often get to talk about your shadow portfolio responsibilities, but estimates gave us some material to work with. The Integrity Chief of NDIS, John Dardo, spoke of many weaknesses in the system, and I think Bill Shorten made the point that payments as a system is immature within NDIS. Now, the Coalition shaped many of those systems over nine years. Do you take a degree of responsibility for that immaturity, immaturity that has allowed, let's face it, some really dodgy payments?

PAUL FLETCHER: Look, what happened was that Mr. Shorten himself advocated strongly for the NDIS. When we came to government, we inherited a very, very immature set of arrangements, with bold promises having been made by Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten. Very little done, as often falls to the Coalition. It fell to us to establish structure and order where there had been chaos and very little delivered, and we did methodically build up the NDIS. Now, Mr. Shorten's been the minister for two years. We now know from estimates this week some $2 billion, I think, was the estimate of the amount of money that's being wasted, including on things like cocaine and other illegal drugs, prostitutes, and other things. There is a very serious problem here. Mr. Shorten and the Labor government need to get to the bottom of this. Now, we've indicated, and our shadow minister Michael Sukkar has made clear, our willingness to engage constructively. There are some structural changes that are needed, and that is what Mr. Shorten says his present legislation is designed to achieve. We are engaging constructively, but frankly, Mr. Shorten's been minister for two years. He needs to get on top of the fraud that is occurring. There's not much evidence he is.

GREG JENNETT: And that bill was debated, at least in your end of the parliament, this week. Speechwriters, just finally—speaking of government services, in government you had portfolios through communications, territories, social services. Did any of those departments at any time when you were a minister employ communication specialists or speechwriters at the rate of $300,000?

PAUL FLETCHER:  Every department will have a communications team. What is very peculiar about the arrangement that emerged in estimates this week is $620,000 being spent by Services Australia under a contract to engage a speechwriter writing speeches for Mr. Shorten. I think we've calculated that based on the number of speeches that are on his website, that's over $2,000 a speech. This is a huge amount of money at a time when many Australians are doing it tough. Many Australians will be wondering why we're seeing this waste and extravagance and mismanagement from a Labor government.

GREG JENNETT: Alright, Paul Fletcher. I think that number, that final number, might have been contested by the government, pointing to other speeches that had been written by this individual. But anyway, we're going to wrap it up there. Appreciate you making the time.