Sky News Australian Agenda Jay Weatherill 14 October 2012

Interview with Jay Weatherill Australian Agenda program, 14 October 2012

Peter van Onselen: Premier, thanks very much for joining us. The Peter Slipper departure, I realise that's the federal domain not your area of state politics, but were you surprised by the way it was handled by the Government?

Jay Weatherill: I've said a few things in South Australia about civility in public discourse in our South Australian Parliament and I've just been staggered at what we have been seeing over recent months, perhaps even years now, in the Federal Parliament. I have got to say I share some of Malcolm Turnbull's observations about the impoverished nature of public discourse and I think that reflects appallingly on all of us. If you've got a positive agenda you're seeking to advance the idea of people behaving in the way in which we've seen in the Federal Parliament I think just diminishes the whole political process.

Peter van Onselen:

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Given the revelation of the text messages that was revealed in the media what would you have done if you were prime minister, would you have sacked him?

Jay Weatherill: I think the problem with all of this is that all of this was known by the Coalition and they continued to pre-select the bloke, continued to cooperate. It's just when things turned badly for them they decide that these are issues that they want to put in the public domain.

Peter van Onselen: In fairness, the text messages were after he was already out of their...

Jay Weatherill: There was a whispering campaign about Mr Slipper. They had information that...

Peter van Onselen: There's a difference between a whispering campaign versus genuine reporting last weekend of those sort of text messages. Surely the Prime Minister should have sacked him to avoid finding herself in the funk she's in now.

Jay Weatherill: I can understand why they would be resisting calls by an Opposition that had full notice of all of the things they were concerned about concerning Mr Slipper. To advance a

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motion of this sort looks pretty disingenuous. But the broader point I make is that the way in which public discourse has been operating at a national level I think is really destructive to the political process. Tony Abbott's decided that he's going to take the most destructive possible way of finding his path that he believes he's making to the prime ministership. I don't know what he thinks he's going to have by the time he gets there because he is, I think, unleashing incredibly destructive political discourse in this nation. The idea that he would tie himself to the remarks made by Alan Jones, I mean I don't know where he thinks he's taking public discourse in this nation.

Peter van Onselen: I don't disagree with you but about what you say about Alan Jones but I'm a bit surprised actually that you're not a bit more strong on this issue given just how strong you were in your own state in dealing with the Bernard Finnigan matter and what you called for there.

Jay Weatherill: The decision I made in relation to Bernard Finnigan relates to his capacity to discharge his office. It's not about making any judgments about what he has or hasn't done, it's just a practical matter about given the nature of the public revelations and what's going to play itself out in the public sphere his capacity to discharge his functions as member of Parliament. It's a seat that's a Labor Party seat, he's since resigned from the Labor Party or allowed his membership to lapse, and so it's a seat that we believe should come back to the Labor Party. So that's the basis upon which we took that position.

Peter van Onselen:

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Just finally on the Peter Slipper matter, what relevance is it what has happened over pre-selections for any number of years with Tony Abbott to the matter of whether or not the Government should have taken a stronger stand about whether he gets to stay on as Speaker given the revelations that came out and given the impact that that has on the standing of the Speaker?

Jay Weatherill: I mean they're questions that you can pose and they are to be answered by the Commonwealth. What I'm saying is I can understand why the Federal Government would take the view it took about Tony Abbott advancing these things. I mean, it really sits ill in his mouth given that he had all of the notice of all of the concerns he had about Peter Slipper, their party was happy to pre-select him and happy to count on him as a supporter, and then to turn around when it suits their political advantage I can understand why the Federal Government would have resisted that.

Peter van Onselen: There's an irony there, isn't there, that the Federal Government are using the fact that there is an ongoing court case to justify why they didn't go along with the motion to have Peter Slipper removed as Speaker yet there you are in South Australia where there is an ongoing case in relation to Bernard Finnigan, who has already stepped down as a minister in your government, yet despite that ongoing case you are calling for him to step down from Parliament all together.

Jay Weatherill: I've made my judgments and it's up to the Federal government, the federal party, to make their judgments.
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Peter van Onselen: But why not change the state constitution then, because the constitution stipulates that once found guilty of that type of offence if he receives a custodial sentence he loses his position in Parliament, you're calling for him to leave Parliament before we even know whether he's guilty or innocent.

Jay Weatherill: They are two separate things. What would happen as a matter of law is one thing, what should happen as a matter of confidence is another. People hold public office for as long as there's confidence in them to do it and if there's public pressure for them to step aside it's fair and reasonable that I give voice to that. I think we're talking about two separate matters. What should happen as a matter of law for the constitution is one thing, what I think should happen politically as a matter of confidence is another thing and I have given expression to that point of view.

Peter van Onselen: But given that he plans to plead not guilty, according to media reports I've read, isn't it prejudicial to his case for you to be saying the things you're saying, that he needs to stand down from Parliament?

Jay Weatherill: I've made no comment about his guilt or innocence. He's entitled to a presumption of innocence, that's entirely a matter for the criminal courts. What I'm talking about is the political process. You hold public office for as long as there is confidence in you to do it,
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and I'm entitled to express a view about his capacity to discharge his functions in these circumstances.

Peter van Onselen: Moving on from politics, and there's been a fair bit of that around, to policy matters. The Murray-Darling is a major issue for you as a downstream state. South Australia doesn't have the benefits, I suppose, of being an upstream state like Victoria and NSW. How happy are you with the way that those states, as well as the Federal Government, have handled this issue?

Jay Weatherill: We need to go to the problem. The problem is the upstream states have taken too much water out of the river over a period of time. It's been happening for decades. South Australia capped what it took out of the river in 1969. The upstream states have been merrily over-allocating the waters of the river such that now 93% of the waters that are taken out of the river are taken by NSW and Victoria. Now what that's led to is a slow degradation of the river, and we saw in the most recent drought how bad things had actually got. Acid sulphate soils, rising solidity, riverbank slumping, on the verge of environment collapse. That's when, of course, the Commonwealth was stung into action and talked about the need for a national solution. The Water Act is now that national solution.

Where we are at the moment is right on the verge of making an historic decision to actually restore this river to life. We've now got the modelling that we've demanded that's now on the table saying 3,200 gigalitres of water is what's necessary to bring this river back to life and we're still seeing resistance from NSW and Victoria playing...

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Peter van Onselen: Why is that?

Jay Weatherill: Because they have decided to put short term political interests ahead of both the long term interests of their states and indeed the national interests. I mean they raise the idea that somehow this is going to be devastating to river communities. River communities will not have a sustainable future unless there is a healthy river. So the economics of this are that you have to have a healthy river if you are to have a healthy and sustainable set of river communities. That's what lies at the heart of the plan, they're throwing up all these furphies now about you can't get water down the river because of constraints. The only constraints that exist are the constraints between the ears of the premiers of NSW and Victoria. They have decided to turn their face against this historic opportunity to restore this river to health. If they picked up the telephone and spoke to the Prime Minister and said we're on board because we're taking a longterm view of what's in our state's interests and we're prepared to join in the national interests, this thing would be revolved tomorrow.

Peter van Onselen: Doesn't the Federal Government need to jump in though and use a stick rather than a carrot? Because at the end of the day upstream states are never going to have the same self-interest that you in South Australia has to deal with the river in a certain way?

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Jay Weatherill: One of the advantages of the Water Act is that we don't need ultimately the agreement of NSW and Victoria. They can make it easier, and I think the Commonwealth is hesitating because they're obviously campaigning very hard against it together with their irrigator communities. If that was removed I think the Commonwealth would find it a lot easier to move, because they've obviously got to manage the politics of the Federal Parliament.

Peter van Onselen: But it sounds like from what you're saying that the Commonwealth Government really needs to do more and move to really force change in relation to the river.

Jay Weatherill: Perhaps, but I would have thought that this is good politics for everyone to be involved in this historic deal to save the River Murray. This is our most important national river, it was on the verge of environmental collapse. We've got the modelling that tells us what we need to make it healthy. I think we have come to this point in history after this Millennium drought, as time moves on the memory of that will fade in people's minds and because we are now in a relatively wetter period in terms of the basin inflows I think people's view of what happened in the past is receding. But the great irony of this, I'm here in NSW and going to Victoria tomorrow advocating the case for saving this river, a lot of the extra benefit of this extra water going down the river is going to save NSW and Victorian assets. So the floodplains in NSW and Victoria, these precious Ramsar listed wetlands that are so incredibly important to the health of the river, South Australians are pushing for this. Where is the NSW and Victorian premiers? Why aren't they standing up for the environmental assets that exist in their own states?

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Peter van Onselen: Presumably the answer to that is that NSW and Victoria are worried about National Party and Liberal Party held seats that the Commonwealth doesn't really need to worry about in relation to what irrigators think and so forth. Isn't that just another reason why it's the Commonwealth that really needs to put its foot down and act on this issue when states like NSW and Victoria perhaps don't have the political capital to act in a way that the Commonwealth could?

Jay Weatherill: Sure, there is a bill role for the Commonwealth there is no doubt about that, but it would be a whole lot easier for the Commonwealth especially about getting this deal through the Parliament if we had the NSW and Victorian governments on side. We're asking them to act in their interests not against their interests. Their long term interests are in having a healthy river. What we're seeing in South Australia is creeping up the river. This rising salinity is something which is going to effect every community, including those in NSW and Victoria. So we're asking the NSW Government, the Victorian Government, to act in their own interests to actually exercise the function of leadership. Since 1969 we capped what we took from this river. During that period we put all of our irrigation under pipes, pressurised them, used drip irrigation. So we've spent their own money. Irrigators have spent their money being the most efficient irrigators in the basin. You can still produce more food. The long term security of the food bowl in the Murray-Darling Basin depends upon us adopting these technologies. Going up the food chain, adding value to food and fibre, that's the real long term future for these river communities not just having open channels pouring billions of tonnes of water and seeing a slab of it evaporate. Victoria and NSW spill more water than we use

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in the Adelaide metropolitan area. I mean it is an absolute environmental shame that that continues to occur in a country of this sort.

Peter van Onselen: BHP's decision not to go ahead with the expansion of Olympic Dam is obviously a body blow for the South Australian economy. How likely is it that they will reconsider that decision in your view and what sort of timeline might we be looking at particularly in light of obviously the kind of pressure, the downward pressure on commodity prices in recent weeks and months?

Jay Weatherill: It was a disappointment, there's no doubt about it. There is no getting away from that. But the trajectory for resources and energy in South Australia has been very strong. So even without the Olympic Dam project, which would have been enormous and transformative, we've seen our mining employment go from something like about 4,000 to 14,000. From four to 20 mines, another 27 backed up behind them. So it's a large and growing sector. But you're right, it's a significant disappointment.

In terms of Olympic Dam it's a world class oil deposit, it's the largest uranium deposit in the world, the fourth largest copper deposit. It's not going anywhere. The underground mine, the existing underground mine still is there, it has a lifetime of another 10 years. So they are going to need to make a decision about how they get at this very substantial oil body.

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I think in terms of commodity prices the long term outlook for copper, which is the principal resource there, is very strong so that part of the economics hasn't changed. That fits into the growth cycle of the Asian economies that are actually moving into that phase of their development where that commodity becomes very important. So we think the long term prospects are good. We don't think there is a near-term decision, although they are asking us for an extension of the existing indenture arrangements so that they can preserve the environment approvals for the expansion.

They say they are committed to the expansion but it won't be in the near term, it won't be in the next few years. They are proving up some technologies to get at the ore using less capital intensive methods.

Peter van Onselen: Just finally, you've taken probably in the worst of ways, I suppose, after a long period in government of a popular premier who became unpopular by the end of his term. You're facing an Opposition that's got more than a few problems of its own yet they are well ahead according to the latest Newspoll. What can you do, I suppose, to become competitive by the time of the next South Australian election?

Jay Weatherill: I think I offer the South Australian community a vision for the future which is persuasive. That's always the name of the game in politics. Polls and elections look after themselves. I want this to be seen as the first two years of the next phase of government in South Australia, not the last two years of essentially the 2002 Government. It will depend on whether we can capture people's excitement about the future of South Australia, offer them a really clear vision about what is, I suppose,

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exciting about South Australia. It's regarded, I think, generally that South Australia is a great place to live, great place to bring up the kids. I think the thing that people want to see is an exciting economic future so that people don't have to travel interstate or overseas. We have a lot of young people that leave. We want to offer people the excitement and the enthusiasm about the future that perhaps has been missing in the past. That's the thing that will, I think, capture people's attention for the future.

Of course we have got to paint our Opposition as a risk to that future. They are. They are the most divided, incompetent and lazy opposition that we have ever seen. Not a day goes by where the poor old present leader isn't undermined by somebody in her own party gutlessly backgrounding a journalist about how she's got to go. It doesn't matter how well she does in the polls, there seems to be always somebody trying to drag her down. So it's an extraordinary opera and she's now - because she's been told her next gaffe is her last we haven't heard from her for weeks. So it's a very strange old opposition. They're hoping that they'll just fall into government and we are obviously offering a positive future for the next term.

Peter van Onselen: South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, thanks for joining us.

Jay Weatherill: Pleasure, thanks mate.

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