Doug PollardTranscript (updated) - Adam Bandt
Terribly sorry folks. Due to an oversight, the first five minutes of this interview were accidentally omitted from the original transcript and podcast. Here's the full version!
Doug
DOUG: Coming up now, joining me in the studio we have our newest Greens MP for Melbourne, Adam Bandt. Fresh from doing battle with Bob Katter [laughs] good morning, Adam.
ADAM: Good morning, Doug.
DOUG: Interesting times.
ADAM: Certainly. We always knew it was a prospect that – m’mm, things would end up like this. But basically, since I woke up and read the paper on Sunday morning after a very fun Saturday night - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ADAM: - - and then basically, it’s been non-stop since then.
DOUG: Now, this has put the Greens in what I believe is called: the box seat – in many respects. Everyone’s heard an awful lot about the independents and they of course have three – or four, depending on how you count it – seats to play with in the lower house. But you are going to have the balance of power in the Senate - - -
ADAM: M’mm.
DOUG: - - - come July. So, that gives you a good deal more leverage than might otherwise appear than being a lone, green petunia in the onion patch so to speak; do you think that you are going to be able to exercise significant influence?
ADAM: Well, we’ve – so, we’re in the situation where we just yesterday have signed an Agreement with Labor to say that we would support Labor over Liberal, being the government – and we will support supply m’mm, so, the Bills to get the ordinary business of government ticking over. We’ve reached that arrangement for a number of reasons. One, is that we – during the course of the election campaign people asked me if we found ourselves in this situation, who we would support and for a variety of reasons [indistinct] position on climate change and asylum seekers and so on, we decided to that although we were really disappointed with Labor, that we would prefer Labor over Tony Abbott.
DOUG: Yeah – before you go on – I mean, you made that clear before you even started negotiating with them. Do you not think that weakened your negotiating position by giving that away before you even went into the talks?
ADAM: Well – look, I mean, this wasn’t really about buying a car and trying to get the best price out of it. It was – m’mm, an election for who is going to be the government and sitting in one of the more if not, one of the most progressive electorates in one of the most progressive states in the country and people were asking me “what way would you go” and I think people were entitled to an answer and I gave it to them and that’s the way that we’ve stuck since then so – m’mm, on one reading, yeah, you might be right. We could be like the independents but we’re not. We’re a political party and we stated what our preference was - - -
DOUG: Yeah. I think one commentator put it – you know, the independents are dropping their seven veils one by one but you went naked, into the conference chambers as the old phrase has it [laughs].
ADAM: Yeah. Well, look – we were just up-front about who we would prefer to see and what we thought would give us the best opportunity to achieve the kind of reforms that we want to see in this parliament and we felt that the – m’mm, better way to go was to support Julia Gillard over Tony Abbott and what we’ve spent the last week-and-a-bit doing is working out exactly what that might mean.
DOUG: Yeah, a lot of people have said this is a very strange Agreement because it doesn’t include anything specific on carbon tax, it doesn’t include anything specific on refugee policy. It doesn’t include anything specific on equal marriage among other things, could you not come to any kind of agreement on those issues?
ADAM: Yeah. Look, there’s other things that aren’t in there as well, that are pretty dear to our hearts – forests, for example, m’mm – isn’t included in there. Marine reserves – m’mm, a range of things, they – what this is, is an arrangement as to who out of the two, major parties we would support when it comes to vote as to who should be in government. It’s not a coalition, it’s not an alliance what it means is that we maintain our independent, legislative agenda and one of the exciting things I think, in the Agreement if it sticks and if Julia Gillard forms government, gets the support of the independents is that it will allow us for the first time to introduce our legislation into parliament and have it debated and have it voted on – m’mm, so, it can’t languish down the bottom of the notice paper. It has to be progressed in the same way that government business has to be progressed and that’s a pretty exciting opportunity for us during the life of this parliament, to progress those issues – like, you just outlined.
DOUG: But aren’t you in danger of being – I’m just going to talk about same-sex marriage because - - -
ADAM: M’mm?
DOUG: - - - it’s the easiest and it’s the one that’s obviously dearest to a lot of our listeners’ hearts but take it as read, the same kind of arguments apply to everything else you’ve mentioned. Isn’t it going to be the case that, this doesn’t really get us any further forward because if both other major parties vote on block against something you bring up – okay, you’ve had time to have something debated – well, okay, it’s been put there on the floor of the house but at the end, there’s going to be Labor and Liberal over here and a little posse of Greens over there and that’s the end of the story. You haven’t really progressed anything, anywhere?
ADAM: I think change comes about when you speak out in favour of a position and begin to argue it publicly and this gives us, now, another forum in which to do that and to advance the argument and it’s a priority issue for me and for the Greens and we’re going to keep arguing it – in the hurly-burly of the last couple of weeks I think one of the things that’s been perhaps overlooked is that the election certainly in Melbourne but across the board was pretty historic. I mean, the biggest swing in this election was to the Greens - - -
DOUG: Indeed.
ADAM: - - - and one of the reasons that I’m very proud to say that the seat of Melbourne changed hands was the campaign around same-sex marriage and I think that, of itself, was a clear message. But what we’ve now got is and certainly, what I’d like to do – yes, we’ve got the legislation on the books, Sarah Hanson-Young has it ready in the Senate, we’re introducing it on Day One – m’mm, but – and I’ll be interested to hear what Rodney Croome has to say because I think we’ve got a really exciting opportunity now to spend the next couple of years using this what I hope is a guarantee that legislation will be debated and voted on, to start to bring one or both of the major parties around – either to the position of a conscience vote or to get them to change their policy. M’mm, I mean, there’s a number of seats now, looking ahead to the next election in places like Sydney - - -
DOUG: We were talking about Grayndler earlier on - - -
ADAM: - - - exactly. Where if they change their position you’d think, from their own narrow perspective that’s going to help them in some of those seats so, we’ve got a huge opportunity now for me and the other Greens to agitate within parliament, to work – I guess, hand-in-glove with the – the fantastic campaign that’s been run so far and I think this takes us another step forward to getting a reform in this term of parliament.
DOUG: Well, we’ve had a few messages in for my current guest who is Adam Bandt, the Greens MP for Melbourne. One here from Corey Irlam: “Adam, you’ve indicated that one of your first priorities is legislation on same-sex marriage. In nine months time the Greens will control the balance of power when the newly-elected Senators take their seats. The ALP’s national conference is also in July 2012 and it’ll be that time the ALP’s platform [indistinct] would be re-visited; this means there could be unique opportunities to progress the proposed legislation as new year comes around during this parliamentary term. Given that a bill introduced in Parliament is generally done only once in each House per Parliamentary term what do you see as the best timeframe for introduction, debate and the vote for this legislation to give it its best chance for success” in other words, what’s a good time to bring on the Marriage Bill?
ADAM: Yeah, it’s a really good question and – m’mm, we’ve got the legislation in Parliament already, ready to be debated. The – and this is what I was referring to before, one of the things I’d like to do now is sit down with Corey and others and actually work-out a bit of an action plan. Because I think well, yes, it’s important to keep this debate alive in the public sphere and that’s one of the things I want to do. But I think we’ve got a real chance of – m’mm, getting a change in this parliamentary term and I think if we can work together I’ll be the advocate and the voice in Parliament but – I mean, let’s work together and develop a bit of an action plan so when my feet finally touch the ground - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ADAM: - - - after – m’mm, I’m not even official yet. I’ve had to spend the week sneaking in on a visitor’s pass, into parliament so - - -
DOUG: Yes.
ADAM: - - - when things become official that’s exactly what we should do. Sit down and work these out because I think they’re really good questions.
DOUG: Yeah – so, technically I should refer to you as MP elect?
ADAM: Yeah – elect, that’s right - - -
DOUG: Shouldn’t I – m’mm, another question here: “We know that the Greens are committed to marriage equality but suppose Labor puts up a national civil unions scheme instead of fully equality and the Coalition maintains it’s current opposition to such a scheme - - -” would you go for that or would you vote it down until marriage is achieved?
ADAM: Look – again, I’d work together with the people who have been campaigning for this for some time. My inclination would be not to support that, I think that it may be that we get one shot at this and it may be that that actually puts it off – m’mm, that if we vote for that then we’re entrenching two tiers of relationships but – I mean, I – that’s my inclination but I’d be quite happy to work with the – m’mm, to – sort of, take some advice on that.
DOUG: Right. In the ACT Labor agreed on a set of policy outcomes in return for Greens support. In Tasmania, the Greens got ministries in return for their support. The latest agreement you’ve signed federally seems to be weaker with fewer, real outcomes – how will you deal with actually getting issues up like marriage equality and other concerns for LGBT people?
ADAM: Well, one of the differences that we’ve got compared with ACT or Tasmania is that in both of those places the Greens in our own right had the numbers to decide who would be in government whereas we’re not in that situation here. There’s five cross benches - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ADAM: - - - of which I’m one so we have I think just on the basic mathematical analysis, markedly less bargaining power than either of them did; having said that, what’s going to happen now as a result of the Agreement we’ve entered into is that every piece of legislation that comes up during the course of this three years – if the Agreement sticks – they are going to need to negotiate with us and get our support in order to get it through the Lower House and then of course when we have balance of power in the Senate nothing gets through without the agreement of two parties in the Senate. So, Labor if they’re in government either has to talk to the Coalition or has to talk to us. Starting now but especially, come 1-July of next year we’ll have that – m’mm, greater ability to negotiate around legislation but we’re not in a position yet. Not at this election, maybe next election – m’mm, that ACT or Tasmania was.
DOUG: Okay – a couple of people are interested in your position on trans and intersex issues. Trans and intersex as we know tend to get left behind, we get progress on gay issues but trans and intersex comes usually a long way after. M’mm, Bain McGregor has messaged in saying: “Would you cross the floor and side with the Liberals on any votes where there may be more pro-GLBTI than Labor and when their amendments would improve GLBTI-related legislation?”
ADAM: That’s certainly open, yes – I mean, in this Agreement we’re not and I want to make this absolutely clear, we’re not in a coalition or alliance with the Labor Party. We’re simply saying faced with the choice between the two on a bare bones basis we will pick one over the other. There’s no requirement apart from supply and confidence motions, there’s no requirement to vote with Labor at all. So, that’s – I’ll be looking at certainly as far as issues – those sort of issues are concerned, what is going to best advance our policy and best advance the interests of the GLBTIQ community.
DOUG: (and)Bain’s brought up – it’s a very long question and I want to try and summarise this very quickly because it brings up an awful lot of issues, important issues such as: moratorium on irreversible, intersex genital surgery – a campaign to address GLBTI youth suicide especially the most at risk transgender and intersex members of the population, probably most important federal anti-discrimination legislation that protects gender expression as well as sexual and gender identity.
ADAM: Yes. Certainly on that last one in particular that’s something if you have a look at our policy platform you’ll find that we’ve given this a fair bit of thought and would like to hope that we’re not late comers to this debate. Having sexual expression, identity included in federal anti-discrimination laws is a key thing that we can work on in this term.
DOUG: Labor have(sic) said they’re going to bring in some anti-discrimination legislation of some sort if they take power. They were talking in terms – well, somewhat similar to when they brought in their 85 changes to improve the situation for same-sex couples they’re going to review all the anti-discrimination legislation and they’re going to bundle it up into one, big portmanteau – Act, as they’ve done in the UK with one system for addressing discrimination. But they haven’t made any specific commitments on sexuality, gender identity and expression and so forth – m’mm, will you be pushing to include that?
ADAM: Yeah, absolutely and I think that whilst its good in principle to have omnibus legislation it has to be on the basis that no-one goes backwards and you don’t have the lowest common denominator but you have the highest standard. That’s something that we’ve been pushing for a while including here in our State Parliament as well.
DOUG: When it comes to anti-discrimination legislation one thing, we were just talking to Gregory Storer from the Secular Party so the issue came up there, it’s come up in other contexts as well. We have the vexed issue of religious exemptions from this kind of - - -
ADAM: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - legislation. First of all do you support those religious exemptions and secondly, if you don’t how can you get them out of there?
ADAM: We don’t support them and at state level we’ve already moved amendments in parliament to try and remove the – those exemptions, unfortunately, we didn’t get the support of the major parties. M’mm, that’s something that’s been on our radar for some time – m’mm, there are still similar exemptions in workplace legislation federally, as well and they need to be removed. (and)We’ve attempted in the Senate to move amendments to remove those and we’ll continue to do that every time the legislation comes up plus, in our own right.
DOUG: One last question came in from David, he said – I’ll paraphrase [laughs] because I want to be polite, he said: your first negotiations with Labor and you squibbed(sic) on the issue of a conscience vote for same-sex marriage”.
ADAM: Well, I don’t think we’ve squibbed on anything – I mean, over-arching all of this was the question of who’s going to be prime minister. Do we want Tony Abbott in or not, what’s going to be better for the things that we care about and the things that we want to advance and is there going to be a greater likelihood of that happening if we have Tony Abbott or if we have Julia Gillard. We have maintained to ourselves in this Agreement that we’ve reached, the right to pursue our own legislative agenda and really, right up the top of that for me is removing discrimination against same-sex marriage and it remains a priority.
DOUG: Now, you mentioned I think in an article in The Age that the mechanism that could be used to bring this issue on this parliament was via a private members’ bill, am I correct there?
ADAM: Yes.
DOUG: M’mm, when you talk about being able to bring on Greens issues in Parliament are you talking generally about using the private members mechanism rather than bringing it on as a party issue?
ADAM: So, the – if you’re not part of the government, if its not government-sponsored legislation it’ll be referred to as private members - - -
DOUG: Right.
ADAM: - - - legislation so it’ll come up as part of our party but the technical terminology in the Lower House will be that I’m bringing it on as a private members’ bill.
DOUG: If we’re not going to have conscience votes and we can argue about whether conscience votes actually are a good idea or not which is another whole issue - - -
ADAM: That’s right.
DOUG: [laughs] ‘Cause I’m not too keen - - -
ADAM: I don’t think we can rule out not having a conscience vote – I mean, let’s be clear. This is a simple agreement as to which of the major parties would be better to be in government; now, we’ve still got – this is, we’re a week-and-a-half in after the election - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ADAM: They haven’t even declare the results in half of the – in most of the seats – m’mm, we’ve not got the next step which is right, no-one in this government has absolute power - - -
DOUG: M’mm?
ADAM: - - - and so there’s going to need to be some give-and-take over the next three years - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ADAM: - - - on a range of issues - - -
DOUG: Indeed.
ADAM: (and)So the question we’ve got now is, right, what are the issues that are important to us – and I’ve said that(sic) what’s important to me and the question is: how are we going to get this through?
DOUG: So basically what you’re saying is you couldn’t nail down anything very specific at this early stage. You don’t at this moment have bargaining power to do that I think that’s one point you make, you just don’t have enough clout at this point to push for more than you’ve got?
ADAM: Well, we’re sharing it – we’re sharing the cross benches - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ADAM: - - - with a number of people who don’t come from the same ideological - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ADAM: - - - background. So, Labor’s job presumably at the moment is they’re trying to bring - - -
DOUG: Well you’re obviously not going to get Bob Katter on side.
ADAM: - - - no.
DOUG: I wouldn’t have thought - - -
ADAM: His first comment to me: you might be the Green in Parliament but I’m the anti-Green - - -
DOUG: - - - yes.
ADAM: So, I think - - -
DOUG: Yes, I rather like your line about – the one and only time you find yourself sitting to the right of Bob Katter when you were at the National Press Club - - -
ADAM: Look, I want to repeat the point, too, that this Agreement – there are lots of things, Bob Brown has spent his life campaigning for forests and the protection of - - -
DOUG: Yes.
ADAM: - - - Tasmania’s forests and – m’mm, it drives him. It is what he is now there’s no reference to that in the Agreement.
DOUG: True.
ADAM: M’mm, treatment of asylum seekers there’s lots of things that aren’t in this Agreement and that’s because this Agreement isn’t our whole plan for the parliamentary term. This Agreement, we’ve found a couple of areas of common ground with Labor. So, the creation of a Climate Change Committee and some movement on a high-speed rail – and dental care, m’mm – but same sex wasn’t one of those areas of common ground and - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ADAM: - - - as we’ve just found out from having fought a tough election in Melbourne and elsewhere.
DOUG: M’mm. M’mm, still a contentious issue but becoming I think less so, as time goes on.
ADAM: I think that’s right and I think your conscience-vote point is a good one. I don’t know we’re(sic) necessarily presume that when I introduce my bill to end discrimination in the Marriage Act at whatever time it is and following chats with Corey and the like about the appropriate time to do that – m’mm, maybe we’ll be at a stage where we might be able to get a bit more than a conscience vote?
DOUG: M’mm.
ADAM: Maybe they’ll say: oh, actually, this is something that’s gaining in support, this is something that means we start losing seats maybe we should change our position on it?
DOUG: M’mm - - -
ADAM: So, I think that there’s still a fair bit to be played-out over the next couple of years.
DOUG: I think there probably is and I also think there’s a danger in going for a conscience vote. Again, as we were talking to my earlier guest that once you put it up as a conscience vote issue it stays a conscience vote issue. It becomes very difficult to make it a party issue thereafter.
ADAM: Yes.
DOUG: (and)I’m not at all sanguine at this point in time anyway, that you could get the thing over the line on a conscience vote.
ADAM: No, that’s right especially if the Coalition doesn’t allow their members to have a conscience vote then you can see pretty clearly how the numbers – m’mm, the numbers would fall - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ADAM: - - - and – m’mm, there’s a real question about whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, whether we keep it on the agenda or so on. These are questions now – I mean, at the very least there’s someone in Parliament who will – m’mm, who – who will help push this along. That’s what I’m really looking forward to.
DOUG: Well, you know, we – they say it’s an old curse, may we live in interesting times and we certainly do and you’re actually right there in the middle of the interesting times. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on you from all sorts of angles from your constituents, from your party, from Labor – how do you think you’re going to stand up to it all?
ADAM: Oh, I’ve had a great time so far and – m’mm - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ADAM: - - - its – I’m not even official yet. So, I’m looking forward to it immensely.
DOUG: Well, you hang-on in there. Adam Bandt, thank you for joining us this morning.
ADAM: Thanks, Doug.
