Subjects: State of Origin; Press Gallery Midwinter Ball; the Prime Minister’s Canberra Voice proposal; WA’s rushed Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act; disruptive protesters.
E&OE
RAY HADLEY:
We go from Ashley last night at Origin to a gloating Federal Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton. Queenslander!
PETER DUTTON:
G’day, Ray. How are you this morning?
RAY HADLEY:
Oh, I’m all right. Fine voice.
PETER DUTTON:
Fine voice.
RAY HADLEY:
I’ve got neck strain from looking up one end of the field as Queensland scored try, after try, after try. But apart from that, apart from a sore neck from going that way, I’ve commended and congratulated your team on a really, really, really good game of football that they played, the opposition were not that good, but congratulations, they win it again – second straight year. Well done to Queensland.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it was good. I mean, it’s sad in a way that it doesn’t go to a decider, because it’s always a great game, a third game, but hopefully a three-nil sweep and yeah, great effort. The culture there’s just unbelievable and they really step up. So, it’s been a good season all around for NRL.
RAY HADLEY:
Before we get our teeth into the important issues, you had the Midwinter Ball. Where’d you get the suit, by the way? Very stylish.
PETER DUTTON:
Oh, it’s about 20 years old Ray, and I still fit in it – that’s the only thing I’m proud of.
RAY HADLEY:
I thought it was more modern, it had very stylish lapels I noticed.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, no, no, it’s a few years old now – probably due an update, it might have been a little bit tight around the waist, but nobody wants to go to the Midwinter Ball, and I missed watching the bloody game, but anyway…
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah, how did that work out? How’d they have the Midwinter Ball on Origin night?
PETER DUTTON:
I just don’t know, I don’t understand it. It’s the worst night to hold it, and anyway, it followed the night of staying up watching the cricket as well, so I think everyone is a bit tired this week.
RAY HADLEY:
Ok, Chatham House Rule apply in relation to the speeches by the Prime Minister and yourself – off the record, no one can report it. However, I’ve been leaked that a good portion of your speech was about the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – one of your favourite topics.
Now I’m told, and I don’t think this is a problem reporting this, he will be driving people in foreign affairs and the embassy mad after being appointed Australia’s new Ambassador to the US. Is that sort of part of what you said?
PETER DUTTON:
Oh, look, there was a little bit on K-Rudd in there. I mean, the speech is supposed to be a little bit self-deprecating but also a little bit humorous, and we did talk about K-Rudd and I mentioned about the resilience training that might have to take place in Washington – tea being served in the Ming Dynasty tea cup, and the iced vovo at the right angle on the saucer, the endless nights of speeches being written, but nobody reading them. Did speak about his kind offer to the White House to attend briefings in relation to China, and that, given he’s a self-recognised expert, he might be able to conduct the briefings himself on behalf of the Administration. So yeah, no we had a little go, but I couldn’t comment on any of that.
RAY HADLEY:
No, of course, not. I wouldn’t expect you to…
PETER DUTTON:
No, I don’t want to confirm any of that, no, no.
RAY HADLEY:
I wouldn’t expect you to!
Back to serious issues, they’ve got themselves into a bind – and I say ‘they’ I’m talking about the Prime Minister and Linda Burney – over the Voice, because they’re saying a whole range of things and other people who are on the same side of the argument are saying exactly the opposite.
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, I have never seen anything like it in the last couple of decades I’ve been involved in politics. The con job that’s going on here is unbelievable. I can’t believe that a Minister like Linda Burney, in a very important portfolio, can just stand in the chamber and essentially either not have a clue what she’s talking about, or misrepresent what the Voice is about.
They’re setting up a situation here where the Voice will be able to have an influence into every area of public administration. They can advise the Tax Commissioner on tax policy, they can advise the Treasurer on any element of the budget, they can advise the Defence Minister, or the Chief of the Defence Force, about defence acquisitions or where a defence base should be located. It goes into every area of government responsibility. It’ll grind the whole system of government to a halt and the impact will be felt by everyday Australians, whether they live in an Indigenous community, out in the suburbs, or in a regional town or in a capital city.
Honestly, it’s the biggest con job going and the Prime Minister wants Australians to vote for this on ‘the vibe’, but the unintended consequences here are very, very significant and I just think Australians are smarter than what he believes them to be and I just think we need to have an honest conversation. They’re deliberately keeping details from the Australian public because of how severe this thing is, and I think it’s why people are continuing to really turn off when they hear about the Voice.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, this week Dean Parkin – the Yes campaign director, was on Ben Fordham’s programme, and sounding very reasonable, in condemning – to a certain extent – his colleague Thomas Mayo about his inflammatory comments. But then we read today that Dean actually told a religious forum that the Voice to Parliament was the mechanism for Indigenous Australians to influence change on Australia Day, and other issues, despite what Linda Burney says.
Then, today, the constitutional experts who have been saying, ‘Look, we’re going to vote yes because we think that it’s going to be safe constitutionally.’ They’re now saying that Linda Burney can’t say, and can’t second-guess the High Court, because not even the constitutional experts know which way the High Court – with a new Chief Justice – will go. They just don’t know. They’re saying we don’t think they will, but we can’t guarantee they won’t.
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, that’s exactly right. The Parliament can’t out-legislate the High Court. The Parliament can only pass laws that are consistent with the Constitution, and the Constitution is decided on, arbitrated on, by the High Court. So, you’re in the hands of the judges if you put this new chapter into the Constitution. That’s the reality.
As the Prime Minister himself has said, it’d be a “brave government” that ignored the Voice. If the Voice has been given power in the Constitution, when they provide advice, sure, they may not have a veto over policy, but they certainly have an implied right to be heard, and the High Court will find that they – having been given a right to be heard – need to be properly considered.
So, there’s a lot of time there for every government decision. The Voice needs to be consulted on before the Minister can make a final decision. Then you’re in a situation where if the Voice says we weren’t listened to, or it’s not reasonable in terms of the response that the Government’s provided, I think the High Court will say, ‘well, you gave the Voice a whole chapter in the Constitution, so you were serious about listening to the Voice and you can’t just dismiss it lightly’ and then, don’t forget, it’s only a couple of years ago you had the Section 44 issue in the Constitution where members of Parliament were deemed ineligible because of their heritage, and the Section 44 power in relation to office of profit under the Crown – that was never interpreted that way years and years ago, but the High Court found differently. The High Court can hinge on just one word, and they can have a legal argument about it for years, and I think the uncertainty and the danger that the Prime Minister’s setting our country up for, and the division that he’s creating, is quite remarkable.
RAY HADLEY:
Are you across the WA Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Law they want to introduce in about, what, eight days, nine days? Because it’s on the other side of the continent, we don’t follow things as closely as it should, but we’re talking about requiring someone to be paid 80 bucks an hour to 240 bucks an hour, if a farmer wants to dig a paddock up to put irrigation lines in and goes down a foot and 200 square metres.
There’s tier one, there’s tier two, tier three, tier four. There’s 29,000 signatures on a petition, or 30,000 now, and the WA Labor Government’s just saying ‘oh no, we’re going ahead, you don’t get a vote on this’.
PETER DUTTON:
Well again, Ray, I mean this is the question people are asking. I mean, where does all this stuff stop? What does the Voice give rise to? You’re seeing all of this, the reparation payments discussion, the ‘rent’ that Thomas Mayo and others are talking about. You’re seeing this regime now in WA, which, again, should blow your mind because you’re talking about people that – if you live on a block that’s 1,100 square metres or more, so a quarter acre basically, or more – if you want to dig a post hole, if you want to put a pool in, you want to dig foundations for a shed, you need to submit this cultural plan and the government can knock it back, you can be fined. The fine is something up to a million dollars – a very significant fine, and you can be knocked back on your own freehold land from undertaking works that have never required a permit or this sort of engagement.
I really think, again, Australians should have a very close look at it because there are a lot of people in WA at the moment, particularly farmers, and people who are living out in the suburbs who are almost rioting in the streets, and the Cook Government over there is basically snubbing their nose at them, saying ‘just suck it up’.
RAY HADLEY:
You’ve got the Albanese Government, you’ve got Indigenous people saying ‘vote yes’, you’ve got Indigenous people and the Nationals and your party saying ‘vote no’, but then there’s a subculture. You’ve got the likes of Lidia Thorpe, and other Indigenous people gathering in a meeting this week and saying, ‘no, we’re going to vote no because it doesn’t go far enough’. Now I want to play some audio. From a woman called Jenny Munro, who is from New South Wales. She briefly said this the other day:
[excerpt]
JENNY MUNRO:
Our children and our grandchildren belong here. Everybody else got a ticket from someone, from somewhere, that ticket was invalid. Take it back, get your money back and sail back.
RAY HADLEY:
So, she’s been an activist, Jenny, for a long time, but she’s part of the camp. I know it sounds fanciful, but she wants all of us to go, to leave all the infrastructure here, and if my fifth great grandmother arrived on the First Fleet – Mary Phillips, who had a baby who married Charles Hadley – and we’ve been here ever since. Someone who arrived, as, you know, a camel herder in the 19th century; someone who arrived for the Goldfields from China in the 19th century; someone who came here after World War One from Europe; people who came from Eastern Europe, since then Vietnam and other places. Then the Chinese, of course, have come since the gold rush; we’re all supposed to just pack it up, all the cranes will be idle here on the Gold Coast, where I am today. All the cranes in Brisbane and Sydney, and we just go, according to Jenny.
I know it sounds ludicrous that we’d even contemplate that, but that’s basically what they’re demanding in terms of reparation, and they want their land back. I mean, when I say ‘they’, I’m talking about Lidia Thorpe and people like Jenny Munro, and there was a fair gathering of people there at the meeting the other day, and I mean, you think, ‘well, it’s got to be gee-up, they don’t really mean it’, but they do mean it, unfortunately.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, they very much mean it. At the moment, I just worry that they’re getting encouragement from the Government through the discussion around the Voice and expectations have been lifted very high. When the Prime Minister says that he believes in the Uluru Statement from the Heart – it’s not just the Voice, it’s about truth-telling and it’s about making payments. As we’ve seen in Queensland, the Government’s talking about hundreds of millions of dollars being paid to settle claims from the time of settlement.
I think we’ve discussed it on the programme before, but we’ve got a proud and Indigenous heritage and mistakes were made – we acknowledge that, people have apologised for it – but, you know, the migrant who arrived from the UK, or from New Zealand, or from Cambodia yesterday and took out citizenship, they’re as equal Australian as any of us. I mean, my forebears arrived in the 1860s, they were farmers and worked their guts out for generations to contribute to where society is today and we don’t talk enough about our British and our multicultural heritage, and European heritage. Our whole system of government is underpinned by the British and American systems that has provided us the stability that we enjoy today.
The forefathers put together the Constitution – the nation’s rulebook – which has given us peace and security. People have fought in uniform for this country, to say that they don’t deserve to live here or that they should be paying rent is a disgrace and they should be called out for it. And that radical element is a very small part of the population, but it’s being heard because of social media, and as I say, a lot of Australians just want to get on with their lives. A lot of people are hurting at the moment – can’t afford to pay the power bill. You’ve got Chris Bowen running around making all sorts of crazy decisions that will continue to drive up power bills and, you know, people can’t afford their mortgages and you’ve got the Government running off on this frolic on the Voice and these other agendas that aren’t producing national unity, they’re dividing us. And, frankly, I think the Prime Minister’s at a point where, if he realises that the Voice is going down – and that’s what all of the polling is indicating at the moment – then he should make a decision that’s in our country’s best interests and say, ‘look, you know, I’m going to call it off because it’s just going to divide the country down the middle, it’s not going to achieve the outcome that we’re talking about, and there are other ways that we can provide practical support and consideration to Indigenous Australians.’
RAY HADLEY:
NIAA – the $4 billion, it’s there and we can’t get an audit on where the money goes. Sharri Markson illustrated that, of course, and then there’s the other body that is the Coalition of Peaks, doing the same thing.
Now, just on other matters. A couple of other matters to deal with, quickly. We’ve had these protesters, these blockheads. There’s two women, or a girl 16 and a woman 64, on a train at Singleton at the moment. Yesterday it almost resulted in truckies, well they did, they took the law into their own hands in your hometown Port of Brisbane.
We’ve got a woman who’s chained to two vehicles backed together, there’s blokes on the road, the truckies have said ‘we’ve had a gutful, we’re trying to get a quid to feed our families and pay the power bills that Chris Brown keeps imposing upon on us’. So they picked them up and carried them off. So then you’ve got the woman in the middle of the road screaming, ‘get the police! Get the police, quick! Get the coppers! Get the coppers!’ I mean, she’s telling the coppers to go away, and then as soon as the truckies say, ‘no love you’re moving’, ‘get the police, quick! Call the police, they’re going to run us over!’.
I mean, fair dinkum! Where’s it going to stop with these people? And it’s not a discussion we have, apart from me talking about it incessantly, and playing the lunacy of two women – a young girl Ayla, and Kalpa, from the South Coast of New South Wales, who are still, by the way, still on the track. I know what Bumper Farrell would do with him from Newtown Police Station about 60 years ago. There would have been a garden hose sprayed, they would have got wet and got cold and got down. But they’re still there, because we can’t hurt them.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, a bet you London to a brick she’s arguing for police to be defunded, like some of the nonsense that we’re seeing in the United States. Ray, I mean, this is like the juvenile crime problem, unless the police arrest these people and put them before the courts, and there’s a significant penalty, all it does is send a message to the next one that wants to do it, that there’s no price to pay here, and I can get my 5 minutes of fame, I can have my video up on Instagram and TikTok and that’s what they’re after.
So, unless a strong message is sent now, we’ll continue to see this disruption, and if you look at what’s happened in other parts of the world, including London, I mean, these people cause significant harm, and the ones that are impacted most, as you say, are the truckies who are scratching together to make a dollar now, sitting for two or three hours on the side of the road, it’s costing them and their families money, and what are these people achieving? Apart from, you know, self-promotion?
I just don’t think we should accept it. People can protest peacefully on the side of the road, but don’t take it to the point where you’re disrupting others from making their livelihood and supporting their families.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, we had four in front of court, make it five now – all bailed, and told, ‘don’t do it again and don’t go back there’. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. Anyway, we’ll talk again soon. Thank you very much.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, Ray. Take care, mate.
[ends]