MTR1377 Melbourne radio
22 June 2010
Topics: World Cup; new and tougher aviation laws; election timing; Dorothy Dixers; SocceroosRIDGE: Brendan O’Connor, Minister for Home Affairs, is on the line. A sleepy Brendan O’Connor. How’s the soccer going at the moment, Brendan?
O'CONNOR: Ah, you mean our soccer? Oh, we’re still in there.
RIDGE: Have you been watching it or – I believe you’re a tragic as far as soccer goes?
O'CONNOR: Oh, I am a tragic. I have to admit I’ve had to delay watching one of the games and try not to have anyone tell me what the result was.
RIDGE: Which one?
O'CONNOR: That was the last game we played. I think it was at 4am and I was trying to sort of watch it as if it was starting at six o’clock, you know how you try that?
RIDGE: [Laughs]
O'CONNOR: And then fast forward because I didn’t have an hour and a half to watch it so – I know that’s ridiculous but, you know, look, we drew, we were a little unlucky. I think Harry Kewell was very unlucky and…
RIDGE: Oh, very much so.
O'CONNOR: Don’t you think?
RIDGE: Oh, very much so.
O'CONNOR: I just thought that was pretty unfortunate. I mean, and they did a really good job and now I’ve noticed, like if Germany gets beaten by Ghana and we beat Serbia we can get through but that’s pretty hard.
RIDGE: Let’s think positive.
O'CONNOR: That’s positive. That’s thinking positive.
RIDGE: We’ll assess it all on Thursday night or early Thursday morning.
O'CONNOR: Thursday morning, I think, crazy times.
RIDGE: Brendan, new aviation security laws are coming in, I believe?
O'CONNOR: Yeah look, they've gone through the government's party room, the Caucus this morning. I'd announced the intention of the government just a while ago to toughen up aviation laws by increasing penalties for certain offences, including serious hoaxes where people say bombs are in airports or are in aircraft. I mean these are really serious actions taken by people and there have to be serious consequences so we've increased the threshold from two to up to ten years jail and we've introduced some new offences, including assaults against aircraft crew.
I mean you can imagine the potential dangers that can arise if that were to happen.
So there's a whole array of offences that are being proposed and they'll be introduced to the parliament on Thursday and we want the support of the Opposition. They've already indicated they're likely to support them and that's good. I think this will strengthen the arm of our law enforcement agencies to do their job.
RIDGE: Brendan, do I read it that the increase in the penalties are going to provide greater consistency and in line with the actual criminal legislation as it stands in the country at the moment?
O'CONNOR: Well people have asked me why, for example, increase the two year jail sentence for hoaxes at airports. You can imagine if there's a hoax in an airport, whether it's real or not, the hoax is real, and that leaves the airport to act in a particular manner. For example, they might have to divert planes at very late notice to other airports. There could be all sorts of operational decisions that have to be made which can pose quite dire problems.
So, we've had other offences that were up to 10 year jail sentences. For example, if someone was to say that they'd put glass in baby food in shops, that offence to disrupt the actual shops and so on, that can actually attract offence of a 10 year jail sentence. Now my view is that the hoaxes at airports are comparable to those types of offences.
RIDGE: Brendan, what about Federal Police officers? There was a story going back a little while aiming to recruit 500 new Federal police. How's that going?
O'CONNOR: Look, it's going well and the reason why we're ahead of schedule is we've made a number of announcements to ensure we have more AFP officers in certain areas, certain emerging crime areas.
As you know, the AFP do a wonderful job, work very closely with the Australian Crime Commission and other law enforcement agencies. They have hundreds of officers in countries in our region where we play a leading role. They deal with terrorism, serious and organised crime.
So what we've sought to do is to make sure we fulfil our election promise to have the 500 police over the five year period. Now, we are more than 180 officers in front of that timeline so we've brought it forward. The AFP Commissioner Tony Negus is pleased by that because it gives him more resources and as you can imagine the police associations are pretty happy too.
RIDGE: Brendan, what about the final week of parliament sitting? Does a lot of stuff have to get through? How's that for a technical, political term? A lot of stuff - do you have to get that through this week?
O'CONNOR: Yeah well we do really, we do need to get stuff through. I know you know the technical terms Glenn ...
RIDGE: [Laughs] Exactly, yeah.
O'CONNOR: There are bills are before the house that need to be enacted so we're obviously working pretty hard. We want to make sure that we get the legislation that we've committed to get through the parliament. We've had just only last week the Paid Parental Leave Bill pass both houses and it will soon be enacted. And as you know, as you come to the winter recess there's sort of a backlog of proposed legislation that we need to move quickly through the chambers where we can. But in the end as you know, we're subject to the will of the Senate and the government doesn't control the majority in the Senate, so we have to be compelling and cogent in our arguments and convince the Opposition and minor parties to play ball.
RIDGE: Brendan, when will parliament be sitting again? What's the calendar? Because is there going to be a little votey thing happening in the middle there?
O'CONNOR: Well Glen people are suggesting this may be the last week. Of course it's a significantly long recess. There's eight weeks where of course I'll continue to do the work I do working with the police and agencies. In some ways it’s good as a Minister to get to do ministerial work without having to deal with all the parliamentary obligations that we have. So it's a good time to do that. So it's eight weeks now. The question on everyone's mind is do we return? Look, we are scheduled to return on 24 August and it's just hard to say. Of course we'll have an election, as the Prime Minister said, later this year. So I'm sure people are laying bets as to whether we're going to return or not. I'm leaning towards that we will. I've got some really important legislation that I want to see through the parliament including the aviation security bill, but it's anyone's guess.
RIDGE: Can I also ask - and this is a question without notice - I apologise about that - but in the Herald Sun today, there was an interesting article about question time losing its sting and I've been watching question time. I...
O'CONNOR: For your sins?
RIDGE: [Laughs] oh look I won't go on about it. I find it amazing how anything happens there, but you managed to get things through, so I admire you from that point of view, but there does seem to have been lately a lot of party questions to other party members happening, and it is particularly on the Labor side. I assumed that was what this question time sting article was all about and are we losing the power of what question time should really be?
O'CONNOR: Look, that's a good debate. I mean the parliament can change the rules of parliament. There's no doubt that the way in which the question time is constructed, for many a year, we've had a situation where there are approximately 20 questions that have been given under the Rudd Government time. Indeed it was the same under the Howard Government, and they alternate between government and opposition members to ask questions of ministers. I guess people would argue, if they're going to be government members, they're more likely to give answers we might be able to anticipate let us say, whereas it's less likely we will anticipate the questions from the opposition.
That's been there for years and quite frankly in my portfolio, I'm happy to get questions from the Opposition. You might realise though that they tend to focus on the Prime Minister and he does get lots, he can get up to 10 unknown questions.
Compare that with other chambers under the Westminster system - not all Prime Ministers are subject to that every day. In fact in many cases they are getting questions on notice even from Opposition backbenchers in other jurisdictions. So I think it could be improved, but it's by no means the worst system. You do have half of the questions in Question Time asking ministers, without notice. Yeah it looks a bit silly sometimes on TV and we seem to get overly emotional from time to time but in the end we are, and we should be, accountable to the parliament and in Australia, we're quite frank and robust. Sometimes it comes out and doesn't look that pretty on TV, but better that than not have it at all.
RIDGE: For some reason or somehow things happen, and it does eventuate out of it, from a viewer's point of view, I'm not sure how that does.
O'CONNOR: When the media's not focusing - I mean the media will - of course it's more interesting if there's conflict, controversy and so on. But there are times - I want to let your listener's know this - overwhelmingly where we do work together on a whole range of issues - particularly things that go to national security. We work across the chamber and we do look to do things in the interests of this country and that's not often that sort of interesting because we're agreeing, you know.
RIDGE: I can sleep easy now Brendan. Thank you very much for that.
O'CONNOR: I'm glad Glenn. I'm glad.
RIDGE: Brendan, thank you very much. Brendan O'Connor, Minister for Home Affairs and of course, you, like many others, will be wishing the Socceroos well tomorrow night - or on Thursday morning?
O'CONNOR: Absolutely. I think we're still in it.
RIDGE: Yeah we've still got a chance. Let’s think positive.
O'CONNOR: Fantastic Glenn.
RIDGE: Thanks a heap for your time there.
O'CONNOR: Okay take care.
RIDGE: Same to you. Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O'Connor, joining us there on MTR.
