Interview, 6PR Mornings with Liam Bartlett

E&OE transcript
Radio Interview 
6PR

LIAM BARTLETT, HOST: ... around about this time but today, sad to say, Andrew Hastie, the shadow Defence Minister, is crook – laid up with the flu. Can you believe it? So, last man standing is the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel, Matt Keogh, who joins us this morning. Minister, good morning.

THE HON MATT KEOGH MP, MINISTER FOR VETERANS AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL: Good morning, Liam.

BARTLETT: Well, when the tough get going. That’s it.

KEOGH: I guess Andrew’s case is an example to all of us if you can go and get the flu shot.

BARTLETT: He reckons – he reckons he has. He reckons he did, but he still copped it. And I can’t believe it. I mean, the mountain from Mandurah has been felled by the common flu bug!

KEOGH: Even the greatest of us!

BARTLETT: Even the greatest – and that’s the nicest thing you’ll say to him all day! But I’m very happy that you’ve spent some time with us. We’ll try to do this again next week, but, Matt, it’s good to talk to you this morning.

Following a recent parliamentarian tradition, I was going to say we could swear you in as Andrew Hastie as well today, so if you have multiple portfolios, surely you can have multiple personalities!

KEOGH: Ha, ha! Look, I’ll leave the swearing into multiple jobs to just one person. I don’t think that’s gone down terribly well with most people who saw what our former Prime Minister did. Even his own colleagues weren’t very happy about it so I’ll leave that to him.

BARTLETT: On a serious note, I think it’s starting – I think it’s fair to say it’s starting to take some heat, isn’t it, for making a bit of a meal out of the Morrison multiple portfolio wrangling. Now that the Solicitor General has found no illegality, although of course, he said it was totally improper, is it time to just move on?

KEOGH: Well, I think this is a great example of it’s the coverup that kills you. The legality issue is one, but it’s the way in which this completely undermines our concept of parliamentary responsibility and representative democracy, where if you don’t tell the people, you don’t tell the Parliament, you don’t tell the relevant Government departments and you don’t tell your Cabinet colleagues what you are doing in swearing yourself into various portfolios, it completely undermines people’s confidence in our system. And what we need to be doing is building greater trust and confidence in the way Government operates. So, it cuts to the heart of the integrity issues that confronted the previous Government. It’s why we’re looking at an inquiry as to the ramifications of what’s happened and what may need to happen as a result to ensure that we do have the transparency that people expect from their Government.

BARTLETT: But I don’t think many people would argue with you, Matt, on the conclusions that you’ve just made, but isn’t a case of, “Yes, well, we now know that”, so again – if you keep banging on about this, politically it could come back and bite you on the posterior, couldn’t it?

KEOGH: Well, to be frank, I don’t think we’re the ones banging on about it. The media are the people talking about it. We have now uncovered it. We’ve got the advice of the Solicitor General –

BARTLETT: No, but you announced another inquiry? Why do you need another one?

KEOGH: We’ll look at whether we should have an inquiry and, as I say, it would go to not just what’s occurred but what should happen as a consequence to make sure that things like this don’t happen again.

BARTLETT: I mean, we see this morning, for example, your leader has just announced a royal commission into the robodebt scandal. That’s a straight political play, isn’t it? Why spend an enormous amount of money on a lawyers’ picnic to put the knife into the Opposition when we’ve already discovered what went wrong? We know what went wrong.

KEOGH: Well, there’s a fundamental issue that actually goes into what happened with robodebt, which is about decision making and how – whether it’s appropriate and the impacts of having computer-made decision making, and how it was that we got to a situation that it was seen to be acceptable for there to be computer made decision making whether the algorithms and processes that were being run through those processes bore no relationship to the legal requirement for those payments. And how was that enabled or allowed to even occur that for months and months, years, senior Government bureaucrats, Government Ministers, multiple Ministers, including the person who then became the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, were standing up and saying, “This is entirely appropriate for this to occur and it’s proper and it’s all being run by a computer and, therefore, it’s accurate”, when what those programs did bore no relationship to what is in the actual law? And so that’s why this needs to be looked into thoroughly.

BARTLETT: But, you know, again, we’ve had pretty much two decisions on this. We had the class action settlement, that was more than a year ago when the Coalition was forced to ‘fess up and pay up, I might add, and then, of course, we had the federal election. Because those –

KEOGH: Yeah, but it’s not about the politics; it is about –

BARTLETT: They would have also punished the Government for it. Why do we need to spend all that money?

KEOGH: The Australian public expect that we don’t just fix problems and stop problems when they’re occurring, but that we make sure they don’t happen again and that we look at how we can improve things, and this is one of those ways. It’s like the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide that’s going on at the moment, which obviously I’ve got a deep involvement in, which is about we know there are problems and we are doing work to try and fix those problems, but we want to have that expert interrogation into what can be done more, what are we missing to date that is clearly not working because we still have some of these problems, so that we can address them properly. And that’s why you have a royal commission. And I think the Australian public expect that Governments will look thoroughly into “How can they do things better?” and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

BARTLETT: Well, using that rationale, how about a royal commission into the abuse of power during the pandemic for all States and federally, that’s Labor Government, Liberal Governments, State based and Federal Coalition?

KEOGH: Well, I don’t accept the premise of the question there, Liam. But I think people are interested in seeing certainly what are the lessons that can be learnt for the nation, – State, Local Government and Federal level – in terms of how the pandemic was managed so that if we ever confront a situation like that again, we can handle it as best as possible, and I think people are very open to that.

BARTLETT: Open to what? The idea of a royal commission into that?

KEOGH: Well, certainly some sort of inquiry and investigation into what happened – you know, what happened process wise, what happened procedurally, how were decisions made, what level of preparedness did we have, what things would we prepare for better to make sure if something like this happened in the future we were best and prepared and in the best position to make the right decisions as we move through it.

BARTLETT: So, you agree that some form of inquiry is needed. You’re not sure if you would go all the way to a royal commission.

KEOGH: Certainly. I think when you go through something like we have and to some extent are continuing to do so with COVID, you absolutely want to get the lessons learnt opportunity to make sure you’re best prepared for whenever something like this might happen again in the future. Hopefully, it doesn’t, but you want to make sure you’re best prepared if it does.

BARTLETT: Eighteen minutes to 10. We’re talking with the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel, Matt Keogh. Matt, take a call for us.

BARTLETT: Bill’s on the line. Hello, Bill. The Minister’s listening.

BILL: Good morning, Liam and, Matt. My question is amongst the veteran community there’s a strong rumour that the Government intends to amalgamate the DVA with Centrelink. I’d like some sort of comment from the Minister, please, as to what is actually going on or what their plans are long term.

KEOGH: Yeah, thanks, Bill. I did hear that rumour as well back when I was in Opposition. I really have no basis for knowing whether there was any truth to whether the previous Government was looking to do that or not. Certainly, the Productivity Commission recommended some structural changes to affect DVA, and I think some people saw that as trying to head down a Centrelink-type route. So, that may be where this has generated from, but it’s certainly not my intention.

BARTLETT: It’s not your intention. So, it’s not – as far as you’re concerned as, Minister, it’s not going to happen. 

KEOGH: No.

BARTLETT: There you go, Bill, that’s a pretty straightforward answer.

BILL: Yeah, okay. It was just that the previous Government did categorically state they wouldn’t go down that path so –

KEOGH: As I just did now.

BARTLETT: Matt’s just given you –

BILL: Pardon?

BARTLETT: Matt’s given you an assurance, Bill, so you can’t get much more straightforward than that.

BILL: No, but we can hold him to it in the future.

KEOGH: Absolutely.

BARTLETT: You’re more than happy for you to do that aren’t you, Matt?

KEOGH: Absolutely.

BARTLETT: Good on you. I know you’ve been travelling, Matt, in that capacity, doing your best to get Qantas back in the black so well done on that level, but where have you been?

KEOGH: Yeah, so my travel was not to support the ailing international airline industry, Liam, but it was undertaking some important roles as Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. We operate, and my department operates, a number of memorial and commemoration sites as well as war graves around the world where Australians have seen significant action and loss of life. So, I was in Sandakan in Malaysia, which is where there was a prison of war camp operated by the Japanese. A lot of Australians were there. Two and a half thousand prisoners of war lost their life in that camp in the three death marches that were undertaken in the last six months of the Second World War. There were only six survivors overall. They were six Australians that escaped from the camp towards the conclusion of the war. There’s a memorial site there at the site of the prisoner of war camp, which I visited for the Sandakan Memorial Day which also coincides with Victory in the Pacific Day, and that was quite a moving service to be a part of. As you’d appreciate, with COVID, there’s not been able to be any Australian Government representative attend that event for a number of years now.

And then I also visited Hellfire Pass in Thailand as part of the Thai–Burma Railway. Again, both sites, significant for Australian prisoners of war and for Australian serving personnel and now obviously for their families and relatives as well.

BARTLETT: Very much so.

KEOGH: And in both sites, local communities were very supportive of the prisoners of war in terms of smuggling supplies in, smuggling in materials they could build radios out of, build prosthetic limbs out of, supplying food to the starving prisoners of war as well. So, to be able to meet with the local communities there who still hold that relationship with Australia in very high regard and to honour and thank their relatives that are there in those communities now is quite a humbling experience, to be honest. And to be able to walk through the cut Hellfire Pass where our prisoners of war were having to cart literally tonnes of rock a day with very meagre rations was, as I say, a humbling experience to be a part of and representing our nation in those countries where such significant sites as prisoners of war.

BARTLETT: And good for you to do as a Minister to do that so you can relate more closely to veteran pain. I think that’s really good, Matt. Trevor’s on the line. Another question for you. Good morning, Trevor.

TREVOR: Good morning, Liam, how are you?

KEOGH: Fire away, Trevor.

TREVOR: I’ve got a question for you. I’m an ex Navy Defence serving member. I received my pension because I did over 20 years’ service. I want to know why vets can’t have their pensions they get tax-free.

KEOGH: Hi, Trevor. Look, thank you for that question. Essentially, it’s never been the case that they would get those tax-free. The pension is obviously an income support mechanism, the service pension, and tax is paid on that. There are other service pensions that are more in the compensation variety where there has been injury and so forth which are received – those elements are tax-free, but, you know, this goes to, Trevor, I think you raised one of the interesting issues, which is the complexity of the system that our veterans confront in terms of the three different pieces of legislation that govern the entitlements and pensions and supports available to our veterans, and that’s something that the royal commission has highlighted in its interim report which we received just the other week and which we’re starting to into now, and it highlights that issue for sure.

BARTLETT: It’s way too complicated, isn’t it, Matt, way too complicated?

KEOGH: Look, I can he tell you as an incoming Minister and I have a legal background, trying to get our head around it is difficult. So, if you’re a volunteer advocate, let alone an ex-serving member or even someone who is currently serving and looking at leaving, it can be very difficult. And I can tell you, in one of those pieces of legislation, the definitions provision runs for over 170 pages. That tells you the level of difficulty we’re dealing with.

BARTLETT: That’s a good way of summing it up. Well, look, we’ll talk about that. I’m absolutely positive in more detail as time goes on. But thanks very much for joining us this morning. It’s a shame that Andrew couldn’t be here but, hopefully, we’ll have both of you next week, so appreciate your time.

KEOGH: Lovely to be with you again, Liam, and I look forward to sparring with Andrew, with yourself next week as well.

BARTLETT: Absolutely. Good on you, Matt. Matt Keogh, member for Burt and Federal Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel.

END

Media contact:
Stephanie Mathews (Minister Keogh’s Office): 0407 034 485
DVA Media: media.team@dva.gov.au

Authorised by The Hon Matt Keogh MP.