Transcript - Television Transcript - Sky News with Tom Connell - Monday, 14 February 2022

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Welcome back, the bells have been ringing in the house. They've been ringing in the studio because it's round, I don't know, 78, of Gorman-Falinski going head-to-head. The ideological battle that goes on in everyone's living room on a Monday morning. Afternoon, these days, it's still morning in Perth.

JASON FALINSKI, MEMBER FOR MACKELLAR: The reason it's around 78 is that's about the limit of Tom's counting ability. So that's where we're at, right?

CONNELL: There you go. Jason, might cop it a bit today, we'll see. Let's start off on vaccine mandates. What do you think of the protesters, against in particular, and I want to ask you about the broad mandates on cafes and pubs and people going into office jobs. Should there be a vaccine mandate on them?

FALINSKI: Well, what I want to ask you about is honesty and transparency in politics and where the people receiving donations...

CONNELL: We'll get to Zali Steggall, but what about vaccine mandates?

FALINSKI: But we've only got 12 minutes.

CONNELL: We'll get there.

FALINSKI: Mandates, I think, had a time in place, and there are obviously places where you need to have mandates, for example, in aged care and health care, and arguably in education with frontline teachers. I think time is very quickly approaching where mandates are not actually necessary.

CONNELL: Well, what do you mean approaching? Should they just go now, those broader ones I was talking about?

FALINSKI: The broader ones should go now? Well, the New South Wales they have.

CONNELL: I know.

FALINSKI: See, you're having this discussion with someone from New South Wales, so I find this a kind of bizarre conversation.

CONNELL: Well, you're a member of the Federal Government.

FALINSKI: Yes, I am.

CONNELL: We've heard Scott Morrison say...

FALINSKI: Thank you for the reminder.

CONNELL: Hey, they're not up to us, but I'm after something a bit stronger. What's your view on them?

FALINSKI: Well, who are they up to, Tom?

CONNELL: Well, you know who they're up to.

FALINSKI: Who are they up to?

CONNELL: Well, they're up to state leaders.

FALINSKI: Have you asked them about this?

CONNELL: I ask them.

FALINSKI: And what do they say?

CONNELL: I can't get the Labor premiers on for love nor money.

FALINSKI: Why's that?

CONNELL: Do you have a view on it?

FALINSKI: I have a view, which is, I think the people should follow the lead of New South Wales.

CONNELL: I thought you were going to say follow the state premier, but that's Patrick's normal line. What's your view on this?

PATRICK GORMAN, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA: I support vaccine mandates. I think we needed those mandates to get our vaccination levels high enough to prevent some of the terrible deaths and levels of death that we have seen in other countries. I've been comfortable with vaccine mandates, when they've existed in other workforces at other points in time, as we've seen with flu vaccine mandates for those who work in aged care, and indeed, I was a strong supporter of the Prime Minister when he was Social Services Minister, bringing in further No Jab, No Pay initiatives. I've been pretty consistent on this. I understand that people want to have their voice heard and why they are not super supportive of this, and I respect your democratic right to do so. But I support using mandates to make sure we get the vaccinations levels we need to keep people safe.

FALINSKI: So, would you play Barry Manilow at these protesters?

CONNELL: James Blunt offered his services, which I like.

GORMAN: Maybe the Prime Minister can get his ukulele out?

FALINSKI: Well, I was going to say you and I can go and do karaoke, that should clear the field pretty quick.

GORMAN: That would clear the field very quickly.

CONNELL: But do we have to ask about the, you weren't saying actually health advice there. You're saying you support mandates as a tool to get people vaccinated. That's where we're at, because the health benefit is vanishingly small in terms of, because we know we have breakthrough infections. We can't pretend that someone unvaccinated going to a cafe is threatening health across the state.

GORMAN: Of course, these mandates are underpinned by health advice. I'm not saying that they should just be there because people like imposing their will on others. They are there to improve public health outcomes. And generally, we have had these mandates in a range of areas for a number of years. I think one of the things I find difficult about this debate...

CONNELL: But not to go into a cafe and a pub. So that's the question. Does that need to be looked at soon? Do we need to really think seriously about removing them, in your view?

GORMAN: Well, you can't go in aged care, you can't work in aged care without vaccinations.

CONNELL: We're not talking about aged care.

GORMAN: But generally, this is not a new principle, is what I'm saying.

CONNELL: It is for anyone to just go into a pub.

GORMAN: And in terms of a new and highly transmissible disease where we do not, it's quite a reasonable proposition, so I'm quite relaxed about it.

CONNELL: OK, so...

FALINSKI: Can we talk about coal donations now?

CONNELL: Oh sure. Zali Steggall, she's pointed out she declared all the donations, all the money was declared, but it wasn't declared from whom it came.

FALINSKI: That's correct. So, what we know is that these donations were made on a single cheque and then divided by eight people. So this was a scheme to hide who was making the donations, and it was by someone who ICAC has found, has made an adverse finding against. So that's what we're talking about, and this is what she said two short months ago in the Parliament. 'For too long, money has been hidden from view and public scrutiny. Our democracy has been for sale. We can't let coal companies and lobbyists buy their way into government.' And Tom, what I would say to this is, and this goes across the whole climate 200 and the fake independents who are running, which is don't listen to what they say, watch what they do. In this campaign, we have seen deliberately split money from a single check between eight people, so it did not need to be declared.

CONNELL: We've been playing Zali Steggall statements today, we've invited her onto the program. That's an open invitation for the week if she wants to talk about it. Is this making a case for real time disclosure?

FALINSKI: Real time disclosure is used in the United States to hide how much money is being given to a campaign, because it is split up in real time and no one can actually track where the money's coming from and how it's coming from.

CONNELL: But if you got these donations, and they were put in real time at the time, you could get more questions about them. It doesn't make it easier to hide.

FALINSKI: So, for example, saw in the United States, so the most polluted political system in the world when it comes to money is the United States. They have real time disclosures, and it is used by people there to hide how much money they're giving to campaigns.

CONNELL: But if we have all the same rules except real time disclosure, how does that make it easier?

FALINSKI: We don't have the same rules. We have tougher rules than the United States,

CONNELL: I'm saying if we keep our current rules, and add real time disclosure, that can't make it easier to hide.

FALINSKI: It does make it easier to hide.

CONNELL: How?

FALINSKI: Because let's say Tom, sorry, let's say Pat is going to give me a $100,000.

GORMAN: Don't use me in your hypotheticals!

FALINSKI: He's going to give me a $100,000.

GORMAN: I can guarantee you, I'm not giving you $100,000.

FALINSKI: You heard it here first.

GORMAN: If you're on Jason's campaign committee, you need a better fundraising plan than relying on me giving a single cent.

FALINSKI: Well, you never know. I'll convince you otherwise. But let's say Pat's going to give me $100,000, and we want to hide that. I'll get Pat to give me $1000 for 100 days, and I'll get him to give it through, you know, different entities and different people. And all of a sudden, it looks very different.

GORMAN: You've had a lot of time to think about this, it's very concerning.

FALINSKI: No, I didn't think a lot about it, listen, this is really, honestly, a really stupid idea. You know, it's been tried overseas, and I don't understand why we continue to have this discussion in Australia about these things. It has been done in the United States. It has been proven to be used to actually hide where donations are, and it takes even with, you know, people using algorithms, six months for people to work out, actually, that was the same source of income. What we have in Australia, where you have to bundle up every six months and actually combine what amount of money was given to people in different campaigns. And then the political parties say, actually, you know, Atlassian gave $100,000 to the Liberal Party and $130,000 to the Labor Party through all sorts of different campaigns, but we've combined that to put it together. If you have real time donations, that becomes very difficult.

CONNELL: Well, I see that as problematic, I don't want to get into every little bit of minutia, and they've got so much time. But if you have both, if you still have to give that six months and real time, there's no issue, you can still get that same disclosure. So why do you have to exclude the other process?

FALINSKI: Because then what people say is, to your point...

CONNELL: You don't reduce the scrutiny if you add a bit to it.

FALINSKI: I just think this is, it has been tried overseas, it does not work.

CONNELL: If you keep the six-month element...

FALINSKI: Fine, then kept the six-month element, but why add in something that we know is useless?

CONNELL: If someone donates a million dollars to a campaign in April and the campaigns in May, we should know about it during the campaign.

FALINSKI: You know, like Malcolm Turnbull did.

CONNELL: We didn't know about it.

FALINSKI: Right?

CONNELL: And that's my point.

FALINSKI: What difference did that make?

CONNELL: It's about transparency, knowing where money comes from.

FALINSKI: No, no. It's actually ensuring that we know that when decisions are getting made in government, where our money is coming from, from different people.

CONNELL: But you never know before an election if it happens in the months before an election.

FALINSKI: Right? To what end?

CONNELL: To know during an election what money's just been donated.

FALINSKI: But you can do that at the end of six months or the previous six months.

CONNELL: Yeah, after the election, when you've already voted.

FALINSKI: Sorry, give me an example where this has been a problem.

CONNELL: Well, what about Malcolm Turnbull's donation?

FALINSKI: So, Malcolm Turnbull paid himself a million dollars and he was Prime Minister. So, what was the conflict of interest here?

CONNELL: Well, I'm not saying there was one there.

FALINSKI: Oh, okay, so we don't have a problem here?

CONNELL: Hang on, don't have examples sitting in front of me.

FALINSKI: Okay, well, I'm giving you the example of the United States.

CONNELL: All I'm saying is what's wrong with knowing who made the donations before voter’s vote? Why does it have to come after? Why is that bad?

FALINSKI: Well, it's not bad, but how are you meant to do this? It's not like campaigns have 100 people sitting around just going, oh, I've got nothing to do on the eve of an election. And it's not like that we have, in Australia...

CONNELL: So you're too busy to put in. That's the reason?

FALINSKI: No, it is, this has been done in the United States, has it helped in the United States?

CONNELL: I don't know the ins and outs.

FALINSKI: Let me ask you this question.

CONNELL: Well, hang on, I'm not saying, let's adopt the US system holus bolus, I'm saying...

FALINSKI: I mean, here we have in Australia a real-life example at the moment of how our funding rules have been used to hide a donation from a coal company.

CONNELL: Pat, real time donations disclosure?

GORMAN: Well, we do know that the Liberal Party did try to import US style election law into this country last year with voter ID, let's be honest about that. So it's not beyond the Liberal Party to go, what can we steal from the United States? I've got to say with Zali Steggall's statement that she put out today, that didn't really cut it with me. I think there are still questions to be asked here. We should all strive, whatever our political party, even if that's an independent political party, we should all strive for very high levels of disclosure.

CONNELL: Is that a yes or no on real time disclosures?

GORMAN: Let's start by getting disclosure threshold down to a thousand dollars, let's start there.

FALINSKI: You know what, we've had a lot of Jason, let's have some Pat Gorman, because we saw the Prime Minister's hidden talent, possibly. Patrick Gorman has been hiding this from everybody. Let's take a look.

(Patrick and Family perform Rockabye Your Bear by The Wiggles)

CONNELL: I'm expecting a statement out from The Googles, The Googles that's what my kid calls them, The Wiggles this afternoon, appalled that Patrick is trying to humanise himself via their music so we'll see if that is forthwith.

GORMAN: This is actually me announcing my intention to lead the Liberal Party.

FALINSKI: I was going to say, if we can get an NFT of that, I'm sure we can get $100,000.

GORMAN: There's your donation, Jason!

FALINSKI: There's my donation. See, I knew I'd get this somehow.

GORMAN: You know bitcoin and stuff. If you can figure out how to turn that into...

FALINSKI: Bitcoin and stuff! This is like The Googles.

GORMAN: If you can figure out how to turn that into a non-fungible token, be my guest. I guess you'll make a dollar, maybe two.

CONNELL: So there's no way Labor can criticise Scott Morrison after what we've seen just there, obviously.

GORMAN: Oh, look, I've got plenty of criticisms of the Prime Minister, from how he's handled aged care, how he's handled vaccine rollout, how he's handled wage growth.

FALINSKI: This is why he's better than I am. He just goes straight to the talking points.

CONNELL: You've been quite serious today, the glasses came out.

FALINSKI: I had a serious point, then you moved on to real time disclosure, which is a really dumb idea. Sorry, Pat, you were saying?

GORMAN: Maybe the prime minister is going to have the Parliamentary Friends of Ukuleles.

CONNELL: That's your line? Really?

GORMAN: Might be the only friends he's got the Liberal Party these days.

FALINSKI: He's got plenty of friends in the Liberal Party.

CONNELL: Hidden talent, Jason?

FALINSKI: Well, apparently I'm bringing the saxophone on next time we're in-studio, which won't be until March.

CONNELL: Cam didn't tell me about that. That'll do today. Thanks. I feel like Jason and I need a rapprochement after that. I know how the other Labor backbenchers feel now. That was Jason and Patrick. They'll probably be back next week.