Bronwyn Bishop - Australian Agenda - Seniors
04/09/11
The Hon. Bronwyn Bishop MP
Shadow Special Minister of State
Shadow Minister for Seniors
Member for Mackellar
Interview with Peter Van Onselen, Paul Kelly & Steve Lewis
Australian Agenda
Sunday 4 September 2011
Transcript
Peter Van Onselen:
Welcome back, this is Australian Agenda, I’m joined by Steve Lewis from News Limited and Paul Kelly from The Australian and we’re joined now by the Shadow Seniors Minister, Bronwyn Bishop. Ms Bishop, thanks for your company.
Bronwyn Bishop:
It’s a great pleasure.
Peter Van Onselen:
Can I ask you straight off the top, Tony Abbott has made it quite clear that if he wins Government the Seniors portfolio that you hold is going to become a cabinet portfolio. What does that mean from the Opposition’s perspective, what is the significance that is being placed on this portfolio that hasn’t been placed to date by previous governments, by making it a cabinet post?
Bronwyn Bishop:
It means that we acknowledge the importance of the seniors cohort, which is anyone over 50, and that’s 40 per cent of voters, that’s a huge and important voice. We’re talking about the people who really have major workforce issues , who have investment issues, to whom things like private health insurance and the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card are very important issues, but it’s looking at the fact there going to live long, healthy lives and that’s a cause for great celebration and not to be called ‘a problem’ and ‘a challenge’ as the Government likes to do.
Peter Van Onselen:
Fair enough, but what about superannuation? I mean, the Government are looking to move from 9 to 12 per cent superannuation, I mean surely, given that most experts say you need somewhere between 15 and 18 per cent to live comfortably in retirement, that’s got to be something the Opposition has to look at.
Bronwyn Bishop:
Even Ken Henry was opposed to moving to 12 per cent, and I think what people are concerned about, and it certainly became apparent after the financial crisis, was that people who thought they’d invested quite prudently found themselves that in fact their investments could be frozen because of the Government action to protect the banks and some of those funds are still frozen. So it means looking at new products, new ways of people being able to access equity and being able to have sound investments and that’s why I talk about the concept of having long term Government backed bonds, I mean 30 year bonds.
Paul Kelly:
Bronwyn, to what extent can you provide extra and new financial assistance to seniors, given the condition of the Budget? I would have thought your options there would be very limited.
Bronwyn Bishop:
It’s not a question of giving money away, Paul, it’s a question of meeting the needs that they have. Now the most important thing is workforce issues, three out of every five people who retire early do so involuntarily, and the fact of the matter is that we have a huge capacity for skills in that older cohort rather than just importing them. Germany, which has a much lower birth rate than we have, realised that it had to look at its older cohort of workers, its mature aged workers and BMW has put in place a fantastic new scheme where all the workers in a new plant they’ve built are over 50.
Paul Kelly:
So what do you do to encourage more workforce participation from seniors?
Bronwyn Bishop:
The first thing you’ve got to do is dispel the myths. People had gotten used to the fact that there was this great cohort of baby boomers, of which I’m part, where the birth rate was over three per female and it was easier to push out the expensive employees and replace them with the cheaper, new baby boomers, well they didn’t get replaced, so we need both. When the Government starts to look at a program like mentoring they do it with the idea of getting the older person to pass on their skills to the younger person and then shove them out the door. Wrong. IBM, for instance, has got an excellent program whereby they get the younger worker to work with the mature aged worker, keep them up to date on their technical skills with the aim of keeping both in the workforce.
Steve Lewis:
Mrs Bishop, we are already going down the path of doing things like lifting the retirement age and the age for the pension and things like that, should we be doing more in that particular area to increase the cohort of older workers in the workforce?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Well the first thing we should be doing is getting the Government to agree to my Private Member’s Bill when I was removing discrimination that’s in the law against mature aged workers. By law, if a worker in the paid workforce turns 70 the employer has an option to pay their superannuation entitlement or not and if the worker turns 75 the employer, by law, is not permitted to pay their superannuation entitlement. Now I brought in a Private Member’s Bill to remove that, a pretty iconic point, and the Labor Party, and the Independents; Mr Wilkie, Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott; all voted it down.
Steve Lewis:
Bronwyn, don’t you think we run the risk of going down the path of a ‘work till you drop’ scenario?
Bronwyn Bishop:
No.
Steve Lewis:
I think it was Peter Costello that introduced some budget measures some years ago and there was some criticism of that ‘work till you drop’ type scenario playing out. That doesn’t concern you?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Absolutely not, there are so many people out there who are desperate to stay in work.
Paul Kelly:
I wanted to ask you about the political disposition of seniors. I mean, you travel around a lot, you talk to a lot of community groups, what’s your reading about the feeling of the seniors community towards the Gillard Government?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Well firstly, one thing they do know is that the carbon tax is a threat to their standard of living, they know they’re on, many of them, are on defined incomes and the more the cost of living, food, electricity, and every aspect the carbon tax will touch on increases, the less is their disposable income.
Peter Van Onselen:
The Government has put a lot of concessions into the model they’ve got according to the Treasury information that you read for seniors.
Bronwyn Bishop:
Yes, Treasury says ‘we’re going to injure you’, they’re going to pay compensation. You only pay compensation when you injure somebody, and they’re only going to injure you $9.90 a week and then Treasury says ‘Wow, we’re going to give you $10.10 a week’ - they’re not impressed. They know that this carbon tax, which is a cascading and compounding tax, is going to hit them hard, so I am invited in by community groups into Labor electorates where you would think that at least a good 50 per cent of those people who attend will have some sympathy for the Labor cause, they don’t.
Paul Kelly:
So do you think the seniors are going to be fundamental in terms of the next election? They’ve always been seen as very much part of the Coalition constituency, is that becoming more so or not?
Bronwyn Bishop:
I think that the important thing there Paul is we lost the advantage we had with the seniors’ vote in 2007 when we lost the election, so it’s important that people know that seniors need to be listened to, that their wisdom and their experience is important, their voice is important. I say to them this: ‘Thank you for listening to my point of view, I don’t mind whether you agree with me or disagree with me, make your voice heard’ and what I do at my senior’s forums I don’t just take questions I say: ‘statements please’ because I want to hear what they’ve got to say.
Steve Lewis:
Mrs Bishop, talking about the 2007 election we saw John Howard reappear during the week, promoting, I think, the new paperback edition of his book.
Bronwyn Bishop:
Yes, it’s a bestseller.
Steve Lewis:
It’s a bestseller, I think it’s outstripped Peter Costello’s book, but let’s not talk about that! One of the points he made during the interviews was that he does believe there needs to be further deregulation of industrial relations system. Is that a viewpoint that you share?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Look, we’ve made it quite clear that WorkChoices is dead and buried.
Steve Lewis:
It seems the Coalition is very sensitive about WorkChoices…
Bronwyn Bishop:
Yes, absolutely. Because with WorkChoices we lost our direction, we forgot about the individual and we went for a collective outcome and we paid for it.
Peter Van Onselen:
Ms Bishop, you’ve made it quite clear that ‘WorkChoices is dead, buried and cremated’, Tony Abbott’s words as well, but workplace reform this week doesn’t look like it’s dead, buried and cremated, Tony Abbott made some comments during the week, lets just take a look:
Tony Abbott (footage):
We need freedom. I think we ought to be able to trust the businesses and the workers of Australia, to come to arrangements which suit themselves…
Peter Van Onselen:
Can you really trust businesses and workers to come to arrangements to suit themselves when unions keep telling us that individual employees don’t have the bargaining weight if they don’t act collectively?
Bronwyn Bishop:
I think the important thing is this, the Fair Work legislation, this new legislation, it is being worked through to see what it means, whenever you get new legislation you have to see court decisions and see it tried out. It is up to industry to make out their case for where they see problems.
Peter Van Onselen:
But they’ve been commenting for a long time, they’d like to see the Opposition take up the cause of IR reform.
Bronwyn Bishop:
I think it’s important for them to work through the existing legislation and that it is important that we make it clear that we are not revisiting WorkChoices in any shape or form.
Steve Lewis:
Mrs Bishop, do you share the concerns of some of your colleagues, who privately at least, are saying that Tony Abbott is just being too oppositionist and that he needs to start talking about some of the policy agenda reforms which the Coalition has. Do you think there is now a responsibility on Mr Abbott to start promoting some of those reforms?
Bronwyn Bishop:
I think the reality is this – until Tony Abbott became leader of the party we were going to lose 20 seats at the 2010 election. We in fact won the primary vote, almost won the election, which nobody really won, and he is a fantastic leader. He’s not too negative, he is doing what oppositions should do.
Steve Lewis:
So you’re happy for the current strategy to continue?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Absolutely. When we go into the election, when the election is called, so far as I’m concerned the sooner the better because we don’t have a legitimate Government, we have a Prime Minister who was installed after the assassination of the existing one, we went to an election where there was no winner. The Prime Minister stitched up a deal with the independents and the Greens to enable her to go to the Governor-General and say: ‘I can have the appropriations bills passed’, that’s all she needed.
Peter Van Onselen:
The Coalition would rather take on Julia Gillard than an alternative leader though wouldn’t they? Liberal MPs that I’ve spoken to, they feel like they’ve got Julia Gillard’s measure and given Tony Abbott’s personal dissatisfaction numbers of 55 per cent according to Newspoll, they don’t want to risk a honeymoon for a new leader if Labor manages a transition effectively.
Bronwyn Bishop:
It doesn’t matter who the leader is, the problem is the party and the policies and the only way you could change those policies is to change the Government. So we need an election.
Paul Kelly:
Do you think the Parliament will go full term or not?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Look, my personal feeling is ‘no’.
Paul Kelly:
Why not?
Bronwyn Bishop:
I don’t know what the catalyst will be but I just know that it is just not tenable the way it is. You know I walked through, I was in K-Mart yesterday afternoon, a lady just walked straight up to me and said ‘Can’t you get rid of this Government? We’ve just got to save the country’. It doesn’t matter where I am, a supermarket, or K-Mart, or wherever, I get this message continually, they want an election.
Steve Lewis:
Do you think there’s any sign of the Independents wavering? Do you think there’s any chance that you can, the Coalition can, persuade Oakeshott and Windsor in particular to essentially reverse the decision they took a year ago?
Bronwyn Bishop:
I know that we keep up a dialogue with the Independents, we’re polite when we deal with them. We go to them when we ask them to support our legislation – I went to them and asked them to support my legislation but they wouldn’t, they stuck with the Government, so it is important, I think, that we go to an election.
Peter Van Onselen:
One final question on Peter Slipper. Now I know that he has pulled back a little bit from some of his remarks quoted in the paper yesterday but he was pretty unimpressed with the idea that the head of his electorate council would become Mal Brough. There’s a lot of speculation that Mal Brough wants to run for his seat at the next election, Slipper’s seat this is, the last thing the Liberal Party wants, isn’t it, is to lose one of its people in the lower house if he was to sit on the cross benches or if he was to become more willing to break away from what the Coalition wants like he did when he ran for the Deputy Speaker’s position?
Bronwyn Bishop:
All I can say about Peter Slipper is that he always votes with us and that he doesn’t miss a division. I don’t see that he’ll change from that.
Steve Lewis:
But don’t you see this as a threat by Peter Slipper where he said it would be untenable if Mal Brough became the Chairman, and of course, this has occurred? You don’t see this as a risk.
Bronwyn Bishop:
No, I see his record is that he turns up to every division and he votes with us and I don’t see any reason why that will change.
Steve Lewis:
But he also accepted the Labor Party gift of the Deputy Speakership against the wishes of the Coalition.
Bronwyn Bishop:
Well there are a couple of people who would have liked that gift, you know, who are other folk, even from Queensland, but the bottom line was that Peter gave the undertaking that he would always vote for us and be there for every division and he is.
Peter Van Onselen:
Sorry, I’ve said that was the final question, but one quick question. You’re in line to become a cabinet minister and Seniors Minister in Government, but you’ve previously shown an interest in the Speaker’s position, do you absolutely rule out, if Tony Abbott wins, showing any interest in being Speaker instead?
Bronwyn Bishop:
Absolutely. I’m looking forward to being the Minister for Seniors and delivering for them.
Peter Van Onselen:
Ok. Bronwyn Bishop, I appreciate your company on Australian Agenda.
Bronwyn Bishop:
It was a great pleasure.