Labor leader Anthony Albanese has offered the party’s most unequivocal condemnation of the ongoing Witness K and Bernard Collaery scandal, speaking in a live interview on Thursday evening for Crikey subscribers with editor-in-chief Peter Fray and politics editor Bernard Keane.
Responding to a question submitted by a Crikey reader, he said was “very concerned about transparency in this case — the idea that there should be a prosecution of a whistle-blower, for what’s a shameful part of Australia’s history, is simply wrong”.
“What happened in East Timor was wrong. It should never have happened.”
We’ve reported before that Queensland MP Graham Perrett has consistently spoken out, while NSW state Labor MP Paul Lynch and Canberra MP Alicia Payne have also voiced their protest. But this is the first time the Labor leader has directly addressed the issue.
Elsewhere, the wide-ranging discussion dug into the role of opposition in times of crisis, the decades long crisis in aged care — Albanese quoted a relative of a facility resident who said the “pandemic is like an X-Ray: it shows what’s broken” — and the ALP’s plan for a post COVID-19 future.
Asked about the tension Labor faces between producing an effective climate change policy and holding onto seats that are heavily resource-reliant — like, say, perennial malcontent Joel Fitzgibbon’s seat of Hunter — he said reports of a Labor party split were “massively exaggerated”.
Albanese said he didn’t believe that climate change was the defining issue of the last election, noting the false dichotomy that had taken hold of the climate change debate.
“It’s absolutely possible to have an effective climate change policy that supports jobs,” he said.
He cited the Boyne smelter in Gladstone in Queensland, the Rio Tinto smelter moving toward renewables.
“I firmly believe that action on climate change is good for jobs and is good for lowering energy prices and is particularly good for regional communities,” he said.
Still on jobs, the ALP leader identified security of work as a key area of reform, noting the role insecure work and “fake casualisation” had played in various flare ups of the COVID-19 crisis.
“A big issue of this pandemic has been labour hire, casualisation and insecurity of work. I think that’s been exposed. The first people to lose their jobs were people in less secure work.”
Later he honed in on aged care, saying, “Owing to a combination of labour hire and casualistation, many in aged care were required to work at multiple facilities, so that aids the spread of the disease.”
And while he didn’t single out the example of Victoria’s disastrous hotel quarantine, he also identified more general long-term problems with labour hire companies undermining conditions, failing to provide sick leave and providing insecure work.
“I think there needs to action taken to stop what is a manipulation of the labour market, that just isn’t fair dinkum.”
On Indigenous affairs, Albanese said a key aim for Labor was that by 2030, Australia “not only recognises First Nations people in the constitution but has a voice to parliament and that we are actually closing the gap”.
He said the decade of failures and disappointments on closing the gap measures showed the need for the “structural reform” of a committed Indigenous voice to the parliament.
“It will be a constant reminder, so we can’t do a big day with all our closing the gap statement and then it disappears,” he said.
“The expectations that were raised at that Garma festival in 2019 were great — if you listened to Ken Wyatt’s speech you would have thought there would be this real progress, and it lasted about two days before pressure was put on for a retraction and a dampening down of expectations.”
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Labor must bite the bullet now, own up to its own shortcomings in the Collaery/K affair, and take all steps needed to get the prosecutions dropped. Legislation must be changed so that “national security” is re-defined to prevent commercial interests being put on the same level and given the same protection as defence and foreign affairs. This cover-up must cease. Australia already looks ridiculous. The whole world knows we spied on a poverty-stricken neighbour under the guise of an aid program to get more than our fair share of Timorese Sea resources. Stop pretending it didn’t happen. Stop pretending it’s connected to “security”. The high moral ground (what’s left of it) is there for Labor to grab. For pity’s sake, do something.
Bless you, Susan !
“this is the first time the Labor leader has directly addressed the issue”
Whatever took him so long? Yes, Labor has fingerprints all over the files ad has done nothing. (They too benefit greatly from the corrupting influence of Woodside donations.)
And yes, the list of necessary repairs is huge.
Fix the Treaty so gas is shared Timor/Aus in the same %ages as oil.
Fix taxation so company tax is not diluted by intellectual property payments to offshore affiliates.
Abolish most of the “national security” legislation which has been abused to seek the prosecution of those who have embarrassed the government by exposing its crimes.
Prosecute the head of ASIS and all with whom he colluded to defraud Timor L’Este.
Compensate Collaery for Brandis’ raid on the privileged documents for K’s defence…
And I don’t think that is the end of it either. Brandis and Porter deserve some sort of comeuppance.
If Labor are finally agreeing with the Australian people that the prosecution of witness K and Collaery is wrong and that the spying carried out in the Dili parliamentary offices of the Timor Leste parliament should never have happened then let’s have an open enquiry.
A Royal Commission may embarrass some retired Liberal identities, in particular Alexander Downer, but that doesn’t mean that the matter should be swept under the rug when the government are so keen to prosecute the whistle blower and his lawyer.
We demand a Royal Commission !
Current one too, young joshy….
So in all the business with spying on East Timor and the then foreign minister responsible for that, later getting a board position on the multinational that benefited, how come there has not been any suggestion that such activities by the Minister might not have been corrupt?
FFS Crikey. You do not hone in on things, you home in. Honing is sharpening blades. I do not need such poor subs in Crikey, there are a;ready enough at News and Nine.
Not the sharpest of grammatical tools in this verbal shed.
Yep – jumped off the page when I saw it.
Strangely, it’s a common error on these pages from other ‘writers’ – grammar is such a hard road to ho that these damp squids are common that towing the line makes one want to cow-toe…
Hitting the ‘n’ key instead of ‘m’ is hardly a major sin; they are next to each other. And the decking autocorrects wouldn’t have picked it up.
Re K and Collaery, suggested reading is George Browning’s piece in JohnMenadue-dot-com today, which reports this:
“ In his address to the festival, Mr Collaery revealed that deceitfully denying the Timorese a fair share of maritime fossil fuel assets may not have been the only element of our government’s duplicity. Mr Collaery told his audience that Australian government officials gave away Helium with a potential value of $8 – 12 billion to Conoco Phillips and Woodside, companies registered in Australia but foreign-owned.”
Could it be that the LNP doesn’t want Howard’s utter mismanagement and Downer’s “nation-building” to be revealed?
Perish the thought, not the Rodent!
The omission of gas from the treaties with Timor is not a result of negligent mismanagement. Every resources deal before and since encompasses oil and gas. Read Collaery’s “Oil Under Troubled Water”
It was corrupt. The taxpayers of Australia and Timor L’Este donated the gas, including the helium, to Woodside and partners.
Woodside is a generous donor to both coalition and Labor.
It can be fixed. Amend the treaty.
And ban political donations by corporations.
And think about how you vote.