Transcript - Radio Interview - RTRFM On The Record with Danae Gibson - Tuesday, 11 August 2020

Subjects: Deferred Parliamentary sitting, Community Question Time, bicentenary of Perth, social housing, family and domestic violence, offshore detention and immigration processing, Parliamentary committees, report into the City of Perth, RTR Radiothon

DANAE GIBSON, HOST: Our first guest this morning is the Federal Member for Perth Patrick Gorman. Good morning.

PATRICK GORMAN, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR PERTH: Good morning, thank you for having me.

GIBSON: You're very welcome. You should be in Canberra, shouldn't you?

GORMAN: Yes. I am enjoying some time, more time in the electorate than I had expected a few weeks ago because Parliament was cancelled. And we found out this morning quite curiously that even though Parliament is cancelled and there have been all these precautions put in place that somehow the Liberal Party has still managed to be organising fundraisers in Canberra in a couple of weeks’ time. So you always have to be suspicious when you sort of see democracy cancelled as to whether it's done for serious reasons or whether it's done because sometimes democracy's really hard. Scrutiny is really important.

GIBSON: Why aren't you Zooming in for Parliament?

GORMAN: There is a view that our entire Westminster tradition has been built on us talking face to face. It is quite a conflict driven and live -

GIBSON: Adversarial?

GORMAN: I think it's close to running the AFL via Zoom. I mean we do lots of our committee meetings via Zoom. I'm on the Procedure Committee, we meet via Zoom. The Foreign Affairs Committee meets via a secure platform. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say what it's called. So, lots of that is happening, but I think when we do see that people can have meetings, can have conferences, there are things happening across the country. Indeed, here in Western Australia we've got 30,000 people going to Optus Stadium. There are ways of doing things with large numbers of people. Parliament House is purpose built to hold Parliament. Our first goal should be to make Parliament work in person and my sense is we haven't really tried hard enough on that.

GIBSON: And so, when will you go back, is there a date set?

GORMAN: So, we'll back on the 24th of August. The requirement to make that effective is the Victorian colleagues have been requested that they isolate for 14 days prior to entering the Parliament. So some of my colleagues have flown to Canberra. They are isolating in Canberra for those 14 days. Some have locked themselves at home in Melbourne and are not able to leave for 14 days. That's really tough for them. I really feel for them, it's tough for those with families, it's tough for those with caring responsibilities for elderly family members. It's a really difficult time. But that's what's been determined to allow democracy to function.

GIBSON: That's the responsibility of the member isn't it? To represent, to get involved, to be there, to turn up to work.

GORMAN: Of course. And I've been spending more time in the electorate with Parliament not on. People do have that sense that you're not doing a full job if you're not their voice in Canberra, or they might raise something with you and say "well can you raise that with the Minister for me". And the reality is, well yeah you can track them down on the phone but it's not the same as grabbing them after Question Time and saying this thing in my electorate really needs to be fixed.

GIBSON: How many people are employed by Parliament House and what's that community like in Canberra?

GORMAN: Yeah. So let's put it in perspective. So within that building there are about 2,700 clocks. So if you just think of that, a building that base 2,700 clocks is huge. It's about 4,000 people that work in that building on a Parliamentary sitting day and that's everything. It is a four-story building that has everything from its own audio-visual department, it's got a childcare centre which I use for my two year old Leo when he comes over with me. It used to be a bar and they converted the bar into a childcare centre which I think is a great progression for the space. You've got staff who do everything from taking Hansard the official transcripts of the Parliament, those that do the broadcasting of Question Time, and then of course there's all the politicians; 227 of us.

GIBSON: So around 4,000? And so what does it take, Victorian members are going be in quarantine and then you'll sit on the 24th. Will all four thousand staff be at Parliament?

GORMAN: It's going to be as very paired back operation. So I don't imagine that many staff or advisers will be flying in from other parts of the country and in that sense with fewer people in the building, the politicians themselves become a bit closer which is a nice thing because you maybe don't have all those intermediaries that manage thing things in between, we've actually we got to talk to each other directly. So there's some small positives coming out of it in that sense but it is a really tough time.  And obviously those advisers and people working in politics are also having huge disruption to their workloads, and it's been disruptive for the press gallery too. They've had to pair back the number of staff that are in the press gallery. You see these press conferences where they have had to spread out across the entirety of the Prime Minister's courtyard. It's a strange time.

GIBSON: You are holding a community consultation in lieu of sitting in Canberra this Thursday. How will that take place?

GORMAN: So at the Inglewood bowling club at 2 pm on Thursday. I've invited people from the Perth electorate to come along and ask me a question. You can't complain about democracy not operating and then not doing something to fill the gap. I'm the elected member for Perth. I'm accountable to the people of Perth. They have a right to ask questions of me and get information from me. If I can't answer something I'll follow it up with the relevant minister or shadow minister. So this is going to be sort of a Q&A session, we've called it "Community Question Time" to sort of say, well if the real Question Time is not happening at 2pm, we'll do something here instead.

GIBSON: The Federal Member for Perth, where does your electorate cover?

GORMAN: People say it's a weird name, they sort of think of the metropolitan area of Perth. It's effectively the Perth CBD, all along the Swan River to Bassendean and over to Morley and then back towards the freeway.

GIBSON: And how many voters are in there?

GORMAN: You've picked up that I like a few numbers. 102,000 voters. Um. But we have about 160,000 - 170,000 residents. So obviously you've got all those who are under 18, a lot of people who move here might not be voters, might not be citizens of Australia, come to the CBD to start their adventure here in Australia. So we have a lot of people who aren't voters but you have to represent them as well. Particularly those who one day will become voters if they are under 18 or they become citizens. So it's a big, diverse electorate.

GIBSON: Before I get to the questions have been sent RTRFM via the email, Boorloo, the Noongar name for Perth, who was Perth? Why are we called Perth? Who is, where was?

GORMAN: Perth was named as such in 1829, named after the Scottish city of Perth. I'm happy to be corrected by yourself for or any of your listeners. Well it's a really interesting thing when you start talking about the names of places and how do you most appropriately recognise Indigenous Australia, and the first and continuing owners of this land. I travel around Australia a lot, I think Western Australia does quite well in terms of how we have over time continued to recognise Indigenous owners. In the part of the world that we are in, Mount Lawley, Highgate, Perth, it's a very European set of names.

GIBSON: We will probably keep talking about this until 2029, at the very least because it'll be a bicentennial of settling. Are there plans to keep rolling out the co-naming of places in Western Australia?

GORMAN: Yeah, I've seen some reports that the State Government is very open to that initiative, and I know that a number of councils have continued to look at ways they can appropriately recognise Indigenous names. There was a project from the state lands office that  started to map out Indigenous place names and Indigenous places over the top of what we know as the current geography of the inner-city area, and that was a really good initiative. There's a lot of different ways that people can learn about this and on that question of the bicentenary I think that for Western Australia, this is going to be a real challenge about how do we reconcile the 200 years of settlement with have 40-60 thousand years of continuing culture. I think it's a real opportunity to do more in that space, because if you look at the debates and discussions around Australia Day and how we appropriately recognise that date, for us here in the West that bicentenary is going to be a really difficult time. And I think the best way to deal with that is to get ahead of it and to actually start to talk about what do we do at the bicentenary that shows that we are walking together, that shows we are on that continuing path to reconciliation. We can't say we will be well and truly reconciled by 2029, that would be false hope, but we can say that we'll make some large steps along that path.

GIBSON: I'm chatting with the Federal Member for Perth Patrick Gorman and we are taking some questions from email. Thomas asked about homelessness and social housing. Homelessness is a leading issue in the race for the City of Perth mayoral election. What's your plan for providing homes and social support for homeless folk in Perth?

GORMAN: Thanks for your question, Thomas. One of the things I do love about this part of the world is that a lot of people are passionate about the individuals who are homeless as opposed to some of the views we get which is about the bother of those who are homeless to businesses. So I appreciate you asking the question. When it comes to what I've been advocating, one of them is to wipe what is known as the state housing debt, that's the debt that the state owes to the Commonwealth. It's about $343 million dollars. That debt when wiped for Tasmania was put into social housing question. Imagine if we had $343 million dollars of social housing investment right now. I've also advocated for those Common Ground facilities that I'm pleased to see the State Government has initiated, be funded through the Perth City Deal because there's a lot more that can be done in that space. And nationally, the Labor Party is advocating for social housing to be part of COVID-19 recovery package. We'll see that package released probably in the budget in October. I'd really like to see social housing as one large part of it. It's one thing we know you can build very quickly. There's a lot of different diversity of housing stock you an build. More appropriate houses for families, while you do the planning for those apartments and other high-density pieces. And just down the road here, obviously there's some progress happening on Stirling Towers and some of the projects the State Government has in the inner-city. The difficult thing on some of these is the Federal Parliament is the funder of many of these projects but they are implemented and initiated at the state level. I'll always be a strong voice for social housing.

GIBSON: What committees do you sit on, Patrick?

GORMAN: I sit on six. Now I'm worried I'm going to forget them. The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee dealing with Australia's foreign relations, the Procedure Committee which deals with how Parliament operates. At the moment we're doing an inquiry to Question Time and looking at how we can make Question Time more accountable.

GIBSON: Before you go on, what sort of questions are you asking? About style and content or substance?

GORMAN: We deal with the procedures, so these are the formal rules of the parliament. So we're looking at how long Question Time should be, should there be allocated days for certain ministers, should we have more restrictions on what can be asked and what can be answered.

GIBSON: Should you use Zoom?

GORMAN: Can we have more detailed scrutiny like the Senate has in terms of senate estimates. So those sort of things, but really about how do you lift the standards, that's the real question. I know that people see Question Time as a bunch of politicians arguing with another bunch of other politicians. It's really about trying to make sure that Question Time meets community expectations. We know hundreds of thousands of people watch it every day because it's broadcast on the ABC. It is many people's main road to their democracy so we've got to get it right. Corporations and Financial Services which deals with ASIC and corporations law in this country, that is very interesting. We are doing a current inquiry into litigation funding and how people can access justice in this country. The Privileges Committee which deals with  matters of parliamentary privilege.

GIBSON: Is that a busy committee? Do you meet often?

GORMAN: Yes, but we don't talk about it much. It's a committee that operates quite privately. It deals with questions of members' disclosure of their pecuniary interests, questions of appropriate conduct of members.

GIBSON: It sounds like an internal tribunal.

GORMAN: We're much more kind to one another than that. It's more about maintaining standards and also protecting parliamentary privilege. Making sure that parliamentarians when they go into Parliament can say whatever they wish. Now some people abuse that privilege but it's a really important principle of democracy that members of parliament can go in and say what they need to say and not be worrying about the legal consequences of defamation or other things. If someone get upsets about what is said in Parliament i.e. you are free to go about your business as a parliamentarian on behalf of your community. And there's two Publications Committees that I sit on. One is the House Publications Committee, one is the joint have potential to be one of the Joint Publications Committee, and they're really one. Then finally Communications and the Arts, something that I really love, looking at all things within the Arts portfolio, Screen Australia, ABC and communications. So how do we make sure that we get everything right from 5G rollouts to spectrum auctions, all those sort of things. That's six and a half.

GIBSON: I don't want to use the word "nerd", Patrick, but it's in a word cloud nearby.

GORMAN: I'm tough, I can handle it. You can call me a nerd, I've been called far worse.

GIBSON: You are the Federal Member for Perth and have you been in Perth the whole time since late March because of COVID-19?

GORMAN: No, the Premier and Police Commissioner very kindly did give us exemptions to travel to Parliament. So I did travel to Parliament in late March, and that was to pass the first stimulus package. We went to Parliament in May and again in June. So Parliament has been sitting a little, we have sat six of the weeks that we were due to have sat by now. We should we should have sat 12, so we've sort of got a 50 percent, we're just going to pass, but not a high distinction.

GIBSON: I've got a couple more questions from the email. Studio@rtrfm.com.au if you've got a question for the Federal Member for Perth. I'd like to ask you about the National Cabinet that has taken place. What are your thoughts on how it's worked?

GORMAN: I worry that some of that unity is fracturing, not just at the National Cabinet level, but in terms of how things are being approached across the country. What I liked about the National Cabinet was that it was showing people that things could get done. That you didn't have to wait months, years, decades for reform. That with proper co-ordination and determination we could fix stuff, we could act. And that's what I really liked. The other thing was that people were actually, premiers and chief ministers and the prime minister, were there talking about the interests of people not just for their specific state or federal-based political views. So I think there's a lesson in that for all of us as backbenchers, and people as we move through our political careers, is if you stay focused on people, if you stay focused on what they want, and if you can do something to help them, do it quickly. I think those lessons will last for a long time.

GIBSON: I've got a question from Sasha who wants to know what you're doing about domestic and family violence especially during this period of COVID-19.

GORMAN: Sasha, that's a really good question, and these are really tough situations to deal with. What I would just first say to anyone listening who might experience domestic violence or fear for their safety in the house they are currently in is that, even in COVID times, there is help available and there are people who will help you leave. We fund a lot of services and there's been extensions to services that have been rolled over so they haven't had to go through the bureaucracy to get their funding. Going forward there's been a lot of changes to Centrelink which have been very beneficial for those leaving domestic violence situations. That is, easier access to payments such as JobSeeker, and even when people might not have legally separated, not being reliant on the income of their former partner or spouse. There is a lot more we should do, that's the simple answer. I don't want to pre-empt Labor's policies for the next election but my view is -

GIBSON: Is it a priority?

GORMAN: Yes, it is a priority. A good friend of mine, Jenny McAllister who is the Assistant Shadow Minister for this area is doing some really important policy work.

GIBSON: And I have another question from Chris. So we've asked about social housing and family and domestic violence. You are obviously very concerned about vulnerable people especially in 2020. It's been a difficult year for so many people. This question from Chris is about your policy on offshore immigration detention for asylum seekers.

GORMAN: Chris, so I'll probably disappoint you with my answer on this, we have said that we will continue an offshore detention regime. We have said that we will continue a regional processing arrangement and resettlement. These are the toughest of decisions in terms of how do you stop the flow of people across the globe, and indeed the challenge is only going to get worse as we see people lose faith in the governments in the countries in which they live because of the handling of the coronavirus. So these challenges are going to get much harder.

GIBSON: Not only the COVID-19 pandemic but the climate change challenge. The reasons for people to seek asylum in other countries is just growing.

GORMAN: It's climate driven. It's driven by breakdowns in democracy. It's driven by a huge human rights abuses. And of course, I'd like to see Australia do more in terms of preventing some of those things happening abroad such as expanding our diplomatic network. But the thing to remember is there's always ministerial discretion. There is always the ability where there has been a genuine injustice in terms of how the system works for the minister to intervene. There's obviously a few cases where that could be happening right now, the Biloela family for example are currently in detention, but on the broad policy settings you won't be seeing much change from the Labor Party. We’ve been through a range of different policy options to get to that point, I support where we've landed.

GIBSON: Patrick Gorman is the Federal Member for Perth. How long have you been the Federal Member now, Patrick?

GORMAN: Two years.

GIBSON: What's your... I don't want to say motto... What are your core values?

GORMAN: For me: opportunity and fairness are the two things that really drive me; making sure that you give everyone a fair go. That means everything from making sure Newstart is at a reasonable level that people aren't stuck in poverty. It means making sure you have a tax system that has incentives but doesn't let people make [inaudible]. It means making sure that when people want to lift themselves up there is actually a TAFE system and university system that's there for them to bring them in rather than says these fees are so high that you are going to have to second guess what you actually really want to do. And opportunity, it's really about saying this is the lucky country, how do you make sure we share that luck. How do you make sure that everyone has a sense that there is opportunity. How we address things such as Indigenous disadvantage. Closing the gap is really just about getting to a point where people feel like they have that opportunity to go further. Fairness and opportunity are the two things for me. And I should say democracy too. Actually making sure that we have a vibrant democracy where people can have respectful disagreements. They can put their views forward; they can have an argument and they can have their voice heard and do something about it if they don't feel happy with how government has treated their particular situation.

GIBSON: Do you think, there's another report about the City of Perth that's coming out right now, will there be another dent in the trust from the community in the trust in the system?

GORMAN: Well obviously, you look at what has already been reported about the City of Perth, let alone what we're going to see coming out of that report that hasn't even been released. Yeah that will dent people's faith. I think it will also put a harder lens of scrutiny on those who are standing for Lord Mayor of the council. They are going to be the most scrutinised council that we have seen ever. And that's a good thing. I mean they should have the same levels of scrutiny applied that applies to me. I have to declare every gift received over $300. I have to disclose who I bank with, I have to disclose whether me or my wife owns a house. I have to declare my son's bank account. And that's a good thing. I think we need to see that level of scrutiny because it makes people go, "okay, I have faith that there is enough scrutiny and therefore we can not sort of second guess everything that's happening, we just focus on the issues". So getting governance right, getting accountability right is a huge priority for whoever is successful. And I won't ever feel sorry for them when they go, "oh, the scrutiny is too much, there's too many questions about my private dealings". That's why it's called public office.

GIBSON: A quick one before I ask you about Radiothon. Where is the wage case for parliamentarians federally at the moment. Have you had a pay cut during this period?

GORMAN: No, we have not. We have had a pay freeze. I mean those really are ultimately things that I imagine, federal politicians wages, members of the court, judges etc, senior public servants, they're all within the government's purview if they choose to change them. I'm not a populist on these things. I don't go out for the cheap headline. I recognise and it's a reminder this year just how privileged you are to serve your community and to serve in Parliament.

GIBSON: And it's a difficult time for people who are underemployed or unemployed and need the services and support of the community and government.

GORMAN: And that's why I'm really interested in what happens with Newstart, now called JobSeeker, going forward. It was good to see that have a serious increase at the start of this pandemic. I'm interested to hear people's feedback about what happens as it drops down to $850 per fortnight. I'd be really worried if it was lower than that in the near term because I think that will really push people back into poverty. I think when we're winding back money for our poorest and lowest income Australians, we need to do that incredibly carefully.

GIBSON: Patrick Gorman, you are local to RTRFM/The Sound Alternative.

GORMAN: I walked here.

GIBSON: What does Radiothon, what does the station mean to you?

GORMAN: This station means to me that there is actually a vibrant community hub of people who want to engage. It is an engagement through music, engagement through talk, engagement through speaking and hearing from fellow citizens. I love the history of this station. I always have a little chuckle whenever I play pirates with my son; I say "RTR" and he goes "arrgghh". He doesn't know what's going on in my head but our RTR listeners will. And I love the history of it too and its longevity is a real testament to those who have helped to run the station over the years, whether it is behind the mic or behind the computers, I'm sure there was a time when even RTR didn't rely on computers. So yeah, just that sense of community.

GIBSON: Well thank you for coming in to chat with us ahead of the Community Question Time that's on Thursday at the Inglewood Bowls Club.

GORMAN: At 2.00pm for a 2.30pm start. Yes there'll be coffee, yes there'll be biscuits, there'll probably be some cakes.

GIBSON: And you need to register, just because of coronavirus restrictions. Head to Patrick Gorman's website, I imagine, or Facebook, or you can call me at the studio and I will help you out. Patrick, thank you for coming in.

GORMAN: Thank you for having me.