In Their Own Words

Christine Milne
Australian Greens Leader

Friday 30 November 2012

Press conference

Transcript

Subjects: Palestine vote, RBA inquiry, Leveson inquiry, COAG

CHRISTINE MILNE: First on the vote in United Nations, I am very pleased to see that the overwhelming global consensus is to give recognition to the Palestinians as a non-member observer state in the United Nations. I remain disappointed that Australia wasn’t part of the overwhelming global consensus and the extent to which that damages us in the Security Council over the next few years remains to be seen. If you look at the countries that voted against, only nine of them, and a number of them in our region, and I think that that really demonstrates that we are out of step in relation to where we need to be in the global community with that consensus.
On another matter I have just been to the hearing with the Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens, and I have to say that you really need to ask the question was the Reserve Bank naive, were they turning a blind eye because of the difficult jurisdictions in which these companies were working, in terms of the payment of millions of dollars into tax havens, the fact that you had people inside the bank actually alerting them back in 2007 and yet there was a high degree of naivete, not asking the questions, just accepting reports and so on. I really think the Australian community is really going to be wondering how we had such a failure of governance at the corporate level inside the Reserve Bank.

JOURNALIST: On media reform we’ve seen the Leveson inquiry in the UK release its recommendations overnight, what do you think of that model of reform and are you happy with the pace of media reform in Australia, and thirdly have you had any meetings with Senator Conroy over media reform in Australia?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Firstly to the Leveson inquiry, I welcome the outcome of the inquiry. Of course I’m not across the detail of it, it’s many hundreds of pages, except to say that the overwhelming conclusion, not in the words of Leveson, but it clearly gives effect to it and that is self-regulation is a dead duck. And that’s what’s actually been the recommendation, that every powerful institution needs an oversight, and what Leveson is trying to do is not in any way take away freedom of the press but rather to bring in stronger levels of accountability and that’s what the Greens have always argued for. One of the conclusions in relation to Rupert Murdoch’s influence was that he didn’t actually have to intervene in the sense that many politicians had a coinciding view of the world with Rupert Murdoch so that there was never any discussion of self-regulation or the concentration of media ownership and I would suggest to you that the same thing has happened in Australia where it’s an unspoken thing that politicians are reluctant to look at this issue of concentration of media ownership and that’s something that the Greens have spoken out on for a very long time. And in terms of media addressing the issue here in Australia, the Greens have been calling for it for a long time just as indeed we have been calling for the Reserve Bank to come before the Parliament for a long time, we’ve been calling for that, we’re disappointing that it hasn’t been dealt with by the end of this parliamentary year but we are certainly looking forward to it being dealt with next year.

JOURNALIST: Have you had any meetings with Senator Conroy in relation to media reform in Australia?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Certainly over the last six months or so Senator Ludlam as our spokesperson has met with Senator Conroy and yes we’ve talked to the Minister about this. I know that he is keen to progress media reform and it’s unfortunate it hasn’t got to the Parliament until well, next year.

JOURNALIST: So you would like it to happen?

CHRISTINE MILNE: I would very much like it to come before the Parliament as quickly as possible because we do need to deal with this and it’s going to be very interesting in the UK to see this disconnect that exists between the community and the Parliament. Whilst there may be a coincidence of views between politicians and Rupert Murdoch in the UK, there certainly isn’t as far as the community is concerned, it wants much stronger independence in the oversight of media and I think that’s what the community wants and indeed in this Parliament here at the end of the year.
Overwhelming conclusion you can draw is that the Parliament has obsessed about one thing, the AWU but the community is thinking about entirely different issues. The community is really concerned a) about the extent of poverty in Australia, the inadequacy of Newstart, the charities are really worried about the numbers of people now approaching them for assistance at this time of the year and their inability to cope with that, we’ve got other people very worried about the impacts of global warming, we’ve got these extreme weather events going on around the country right now and the adequacy of the ability of emergency services and health services to be able to cope, and yet we’ve got a Parliament obsessing about who can outdo one another to be as cruel as possible to refugees, and who can outdo each other in terms of claiming corruption for things that happened years ago. I think the Parliament needs to get back in touch with the community, and hopefully that might be one good thing about the summer, people get back to their electorates and have people say to them why don’t you get on with the things that we care about, and that is put money into public education, dealing with the environment, and next week we’ve got COAG coming up and this is something the community’s worried about. To think that the Federal Government would be taking its riding instructions from the Business Council of Australia, and undermining environmental law around the country. People are terrified about what Campbell Newman is doing in Queensland, let alone Barry O’Farrell in New South Wales, Ted Baillieu in Victoria, and Barnett in Western Australia, Lara Giddings campaigning against the heritage listing of the Tarkine, these are things that people are really worried about, it’s going to come to a head next week and this is something that the Government had better realise the community wants to hear why they are abandoning their responsibilities to the states and undermining any genuine environmental protection.

JOURNALIST: Just on the vote on Palestine, there are reports that one of the reasons why the Prime Minister was forced to change her stance from a no vote to abstaining from the vote is because of votes in Western Sydney, with electorates with a high percentage of voters who are from the Middle East, would you be disappointed if that was the case and do you think that that’s what happened?

CHRISTINE MILNE: I have no idea about what goes on in Labor caucus meetings but I do think it showed a lack of leadership. We have to have an independent foreign policy, it’s very clear that under the leadership of Prime Minister Gillard, Australia is falling into the same trap we were in with Prime Minister Howard and that is being the deputy sheriff to the United States. President Obama recognised that the US dropped the ball and needed to get back into the Asia-Pacific area. And Prime Minister Gillard has facilitated that without question, without bringing it even to the Parliament. We’ve got a US base in Darwin, we’re facilitating US access into the Indian ocean, we are now running behind US foreign policy and I think that was the crux of the objection from Labor Party people I’ve spoken to, we need an independent foreign policy, and we’re not going to get it if we’re just being seen to be a lap dog to the United States. And of course Afghanistan is the other classic case, and I am very pleased the Greens were able to bring on a vote in the House of Representatives to try to get a date to get our troops out of Afghanistan, that would be the best Christmas present we can give our troops.

• GST review confirms Greens’ call for plugging MRRT loophole

The release of the GST Distribution Report backs the Greens’ call for the Federal Government to stop reimbursing profitable mining companies for any royalty hikes.

“The Greens want to fund Gonski, we want to fund dental health care and better disability support. Unlike the other parties we have been putting constructive revenue raising policies on the table, and one of them has been to plug this loophole in the mining tax.

“We have a costed policy to cap federal government reimbursements to the mining companies at July 1 2011, a policy that would raise $2.2 billion over the next three years.

“I have raised this with the Prime Minister, I have written to the Treasurer, Adam Bandt has won the support of independent Rob Oakeshott for a Greens bill in the House of Representatives to plug this loophole, I also have a bill to this effect in the Senate, and we have a Senate Inquiry underway looking at how we improve the MRRT.

“We are ready to implement this reform on the first day back in Parliament.