Transcript - Interview with Sally Sara, Radio National, ABC

The Hon Alex Hawke MP
Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation
Manager of Opposition Business in the House

Topics: Labor's hatred of scrutiny in the House and Senate, COVID-19, meeting between the U.S and China, Labor's EPBC Bills.

SALLY SARA, HOST:

We're staying with federal politics and this push for more transparency from government. Alex Hawke is the Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation and Manager of Opposition Business in the House. Alex Hawke, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.

ALEX HAWKE

Good morning, Sally.

HOST

Let's look at this issue further. The Coalition teamed up with the Greens and independents yesterday to take a stand on transparency, leading to a marathon Question Time in the Senate. What's the point that you're trying to make here?

ALEX HAWKE

Well, the government has, since its come to office with a 50-seat majority, started down the path of shutting down transparency. They have a Bill before the parliament at the moment to restrict Freedom of Information, both for the media and the public and anyone seeking information from government. And that's a very bad sign. So when the Senate asks for a document from the Executive of the government, it's totally normal. The Senate can ask any time. We would like to see this document. We think the Parliament should scrutinise this document. The government, of course, has said no. And this matters because if freedom of information is restricted under law and there's less access to what happens inside a government and the Senate can't get a document, well, I think the crossbench, the Liberal Party, the National Party: we all agree that's going to hurt the quality of government and the public's access or the right to know about very important matters, whatever the matter might be. In this case, it happens to be very ironic because the government came to office saying the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was a terrible body and they were going to sack everybody and fix it. The upshot for the public is the Administrative Review Tribunal, that they've changed the name of, waiting times have blown out about 10 times what they were originally and the case loads have exploded and there's less efficiency in a citizen getting administrative appeal rights against government agencies, which is a really bad outcome. So this is a big issue.

HOST

Yesterday, a lot of the political manoeuvring was taking place in the Senate, but in the House of Representatives, did the Leader of the House, Tony Burke, threaten to strip committee positions from MPs as a retaliation?

ALEX HAWKE

Well, that was the report in the paper. I engage with Tony regularly. We don't breach our confidences. We talk about government back and forth. I think the idea previously, the Senate did something like this previously and the government then listed some changes to the House Matters of Public Importance. They're still sitting on the Notice Paper, i.e. we'll take away your opportunity to debate in the House. I'm against this principle of retaliatory action between Houses. The Senate is the Senate, the House is the House. But, you know, I'm not going to speak about confidential conversations I have with Tony Burke or the Prime Minister or anybody else.

HOST

So you won't confirm whether stripping of committee positions has been discussed?

ALEX HAWKE

No, it would be inappropriate for me to breach of privacy. I think the government's communicated its displeasure to the absolutely. And they've said, you know, they're minded to have retaliatory action between houses, you know, before now and this time, but I'm not going to go into any details.

HOST

The Morrison Government was criticised for a lack of transparency, including Prime Minister Morrison’s five secret portfolios. Does the Coalition have credibility on this issue?

ALEX HAWKE

Well, the context of that was an extraordinary 1-in-100 year pandemic. Prime Minister Scott Morrison explained at the time why that occurred.

HOST

Was it acceptable?

ALEX HAWKE

If there was no context, it would have been completely unacceptable. The context does - the only reason why that happened was because it was an emergency situation. Yes, it went on too long and yes it should have been ceased at a certain point. Like a lot of things in COVID, it hung around too long.

HOST

Let’s move on to the discussions that have happened between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the trade of critical minerals. What do you think that the outcome of that meeting might mean for Australia’s deal with the U.S. and Australia’s critical minerals processing and exports?

ALEX HAWKE

The Coalition welcomes the meeting. We think it’s good for the two most powerful countries, the United States, our ally, and China to engage at this level. Engagement is the best way. We want to see peaceful relations on trade, peaceful relations in the Indo-Pacific region. It’s a welcome development. I’m not sure Australia would have come up in this meeting given how much there is between these two very powerful countries at the moment. We would like to see a stable trading environment and a stable region, and we think that can only be for the good that the US and China are talking about these very issues.

HOST

The government's environmental reforms, native logging is exempt from current legislation. Environment groups want that removed. Can you feasibly protect endangered species and national biodiversity if our native forests are excluded from national environment laws?

ALEX HAWKE

Well, this is a very complex issue because I generally think the government's laws are not well designed. I think the process they're going through at the moment is on one foot to say let's have streamlined approvals, but then of course they're saying to the public that will be by ministerial discretion. You know, business isn't happy with that. We've seen the Business Council of Australia come out and say they're not happy with the design of the laws either. There needs to be certainty for business and also protection for the environment. The one that we're clear about is another environmental protection body, the EPA, federally, the creation of a new environmental protection body would actually duplicate the states. And this is the one criticism of our federation. There's often two or three bodies, many bodies around the states, and then it's very difficult to get things done in Australia at the moment. So the government seems to be making a hash of the EPBC laws on all fronts. Business isn't happy, environment groups aren't happy, and again, it's hard to see how approvals will be more streamlined.

HOST

Alex Hawke, thank you for joining me this morning.