Transcript - 6PR Perth Live with Ollie Peterson

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
6PR PERTH LIVE
WEDNESDAY, 22 MAY 2019

Subjects: Labor Leadership, Shadow Cabinet

OLIVER PETERSON, HOST: Let’s ask Patrick Gorman, he’s the Labor Member for Perth. Patrick, good afternoon.
 
PATRICK GORMAN, MEMBER FOR PERTH: Good afternoon, Ollie.
 
HOST: To Robin’s point there – are you all a bunch of rabble?
 
GORMAN: Well, look, there’s nothing easy about the clean-up job after losing an election. We lost an election on Saturday and we are now going through the very difficult part of sorting ourselves out. What’s good though is this is happening in a pretty democratic and open manner. It’s not being done 24 hours after polls close where a few people get together and sort it out, because we have to have the voice of our party members included in this process, it actually means we have to give regard to more than just the numbers in caucus.
 
HOST: Alright, who are you going to support to lead the Labor Party?
 
GORMAN: I’m supporting the person to lead the Labor Party that I think can be a Labor Prime Minister in three years’ time. That’s very clearly Anthony Albanese. Anthony is the best candidate in terms of WA’s interests. He’s got runs on the board. He’s delivered projects all across the country, including in my electorate of Perth where he was fundamental in the starting of the Perth City Link project. Anthony will be a good leader at a very difficult time and I believe he has the character to get us over the line when we do eventually face the people again in three years.
 
HOST: Do you expect Jim Chalmers to run, or do you think he will be the deputy of party?
 
GORMAN: I’ve got a lot of time for Jim. I’ve worked with him over many, many years. You may know he and I were both staffers in the Rudd-Gillard Government. Jim’s a really great guy. What he chooses to do is a matter for him and he’s obviously talking to people at the moment. He’s got an important role to play in a future Labor leadership team. What role that is and what he chooses to put himself forward for, I guess you and I will find out tomorrow morning.
 
HOST: He says that Labor needs to rebuild, it needs to refresh, it needs to renew – that’s the tweet he’s put out about an hour ago. Can Labor do that under Anthony Albanese’s leadership?
 
GORMAN: We need someone fresh voices in the team, but we also need some good communicators. Anthony is the best communicator that we have available to us to lead. Anthony is best person we have available to capture the imagination of people here in Western Australia. He would be welcome in any pub in my electorate. But we do need some generational change, and we do need to take a different approach to the one that we took to the last election and that’s obvious. What Jim is saying is what he thinks. We’re all going to say what we think over the next little while. That’s a healthy part of how we adjust ourselves to the future.
 
HOST: That approach that you did take to the last election, what do you think was so wrong with it, as to why you failed on Saturday?
 
GORMAN: We probably didn’t listen enough, we didn’t listen enough to the feedback from our community about the different policies we took, so that’s always a lesson in politics. Listen more, talk less. Probably, locally, I’ve been very open in saying I think we suffered in the West because we did not have enough Western Australian voices in the policy development process. We had no Western Australian members of the Shadow Cabinet. We were being good and appropriate, saying we were going to fix it over time, but it clearly hurt us on Saturday, not having Western Australians involved in making key policies that were going to affect our State. I’ve expressed my concerns to a number of people over the last couple of days about that, and I hope we address that going forward.
 
HOST: Do you believe at least one WA Labor MP will feature in the Federal Opposition’s frontbench? And who would you nominate that person to be – yourself, Matt Keogh, Madeleine King?
 
GORMAN: Matt Keogh, Madeleine King, Josh Wilson, Anne Aly – all strong lower house members. I have never been shy about my own ambitions to serve in a role and eventually become, I hope, a Labor Minister. But, that involves us winning government. But I do believe that we must have some, Western Australians, plural, in the Shadow Cabinet if Labor is serious about forming government, and winning seats here in Western Australia.
 
HOST: So you’ll be pushing for two Western Australians to be in Shadow Cabinet.
 
GORMAN: I think that is reasonable – to make sure we have a diversity of voices, and a diversity of inputs to policies that can help Western Australia. And like I said, I hope Anthony is our leader, and that’s a discussion in coming days. And if Anthony Albanese is the leader of the Labor Party, we’ll start with someone who has delivered a lot for WA, we’ll start with someone who understands Western Australia, and I think he’d appreciate a few Western Australians around the Shadow Cabinet table with him.
 
HOST: If Jim Chalmers is deputy, Labor ends up with two blokes in the leadership – himself and Anthony Albanese – is that a kick in the face to your party who lecture the public about putting women in positions of power.
 
GORMAN: I disagree we lecture the general public about putting women in positions of power. We’re very proud of the women we put in positions of power. Penny Wong, we heard her just a minute ago. Obviously here in Western Australia, we very proudly had the first woman in the Senate in Dorothy Tangney. We see it in our Senate leadership team. My colleague Senator Sue Lines is the Deputy President in the Senate. We’ve got a good story to tell there.
 
HOST: But at this moment it doesn’t look like either the leader of the Labor Party or the deputy leader will be a woman. Is that a problem for the Labor Party?
 
GORMAN: We don’t get too ahead of ourselves about what Jim Chalmers chooses to do, in terms of what other candidates might appear for the deputy leadership. I’m also encouraged by reports that Penny Wong will continue to play the role of Leader in the Senate – a great leader of Labor. And as we mentioned before we’ve got great promising up and comers – Anne Aly, Madeleine King – people who can play a role now, and into the future. We’ve got a good team. One of the good things that doesn’t change after the results on Saturday is Labor’s strength and diversity. The strength and diversity we bring to the Parliament of Australia.
 
HOST: Thanks Patrick for your time.
 
GORMAN: Thanks Ollie. 

ENDS