Joyce: Something has to be done about pokies
18-April-2011
Reporter: Barrie Cassidy
National Party Senate Leader Barnaby Joyce tells Insiders pokies would be banned if they were invented today, but many clubs rely upon them.
BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: Now we'll go to our program guest and this morning it's the National Party Senate Leader, Barnaby Joyce, the shadow minister on regional and local issues. And he joins us from Brisbane.
Senator good morning, welcome.
BARNABY JOYCE, NATIONAL PARTY SENATE LEADER: Good morning Barrie. Good morning everybody else - Karen, Malcolm, Michael.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Well to start with the poker machine debate now.
And given that the extent of problem gambling in this country why has it taken so long to have a national debate?
BARNABY JOYCE: I think it's, look I think that if we invented poker machines today we wouldn't have them. They would be banned.
But they're there and a lot of places rely on them. A lot of places rely on them for income stream, especially in regional towns where they are instrumental in delivering a whole heap of services such as sporting fields, venues to the town.
But no-one likes the mess of someone who sits in the corner and puts the family's savings and the family's income down the slot. And I think everybody acknowledges that. There's no argument about that.
There's a parliamentary inquiry that's going to come out about this. And we hope that the parliamentary inquiry will be acted on.
I think there's a general consensus that there has to at the very least be a voluntary capacity for people to put a limit on how much they can bet. And you know the debate's at foot and let's see where the parliamentary inquiry goes.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Now what about that idea though that you set a limit before they bet and they're forced to stay within that limit? What's wrong with that idea?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well I suppose it's a case of how's it going to work?
I mean I'm not fully across the details of how exactly that would work.
What I do know is that a lot of people have paid a lot of money for poker machines and if you start removing the capacity for them to earn money from a federal sphere then I suppose the Federal Government as the Constitution allows will have to compensate those clubs for it.
So there's a whole heap of aspects to this debate that have to be considered.
Now we've, the state governments have been out there making literally hundreds of millions, I would suggest billions of dollars of revenue out of these things. So everybody has got their hands on the sticky paper on this one.
I think there's a general feeling that something has to be done. We have to start at least curbing the excesses of people who have done their dough through clubs and pubs.
I don't think, everybody likes them who makes money out of them but everybody who sees them has an unerring feeling that there's something not quite right going on there.
BARRIE CASSIDY: And do you think you can curb those excesses without really having a major impact on the clubs and the pubs that employ so many people?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well if what they say, there's only a small proportion of people who are the problem, then I suppose it wouldn't be, it's not going to be sort of an issue.
It's a self-defeating argument for them if they say the people who are causing the problem and the people who have a major problem are the one who generate most of the money for them, if that's the case then really it's a moral question for all of us.
They hope to argue that the vast majority of people don't have a problem and the vast majority of people it's money that they can afford to spend and that's where the majority of the funds come from.
But if we see that the majority of the funds are coming from people who have an addiction then that's almost an immoral form of income stream isn't it?
BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah because the Productivity Commission's figures say that 4 per cent of the population use these things. Fifteen per cent of those are problem gamblers. But of that 15 per cent they make up 40 per cent of the total gambling on poker machines.
So if you made a really serious impact on the problem gambler it's going to eat into their revenue.
BARNABY JOYCE: Yeah. Well and there comes the question to those people who've bought the machines.
They'll certainly be sticking up their hands saying, well we bought the machines so we expect to be compensated for it.
Regional towns will be saying, well how do we actually provide the services which the Government has absconded from providing and now this form of gambling provides it for us?
And the Federal Government will have to answer the question well if we remove this we'll have to compensate.
And so there are a number of issues for the parliamentary inquiry to discuss. And I like everybody else will be very interested in what they come up with.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Now as you travel around the bush is this as big an issue as the carbon tax?
BARNABY JOYCE: No the carbon tax leaves it for dead.
The carbon tax is just infuriating people. They just can't get it. It's like the errant teenager who just won't listen to the word "no".
And now we hear the compensation package Barrie. And that's like the person saying I'm going to set fire to your house but don't worry, I'm going to call the fire truck to come and put it out for you.
You know, why set it on fire in the first place?
And everybody goes back to this basic fundamental principle. This tax is going to do nothing to the climate.
The climate, whether it's getting warmer, colder, staying the same, whether there's global warming, not global warming, whatever your views are, there is one absolute fact that this tax is going to do nothing to the climate.
It will definitely mean that people lose their jobs. And I think that Mr Combet and Ms Gillard should listen to their coalition colleague Senator Dr Bob Brown from the Greens who says that jobs will be lost.
Now they might try the weasel words of oh we'll replace them with green jobs. But I don't think anybody is going to be wanting to be sweeping parks when formerly they were a fitter and turner in a steel works.
I don't think any person in regional or urban Australia is anything but absolutely furious that we are going down this path of this nauseating debate where we're being moralised to, made feel guilty and then made to swallow a tax by reason of a Government that broke its word.
It's just not going to work. The more the Labor Government pursue this issue the more they are peeling off their own people.
And I'd have to say to Mr Paul Howes he's had a dramatic turn of fortune lately. He seems to be listening to his own membership.
Paul, quite obviously jobs are going to be lost. It would be insane to suggest jobs aren't going to be lost.
You can't put up the major driver of an economy, which is the price of power, to make us less competitive than our overseas counterparts in South East Asia or in Europe and not expect there to be some ramifications in that jobs are lost.
And they're going to be your jobs that are lost, Paul.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Well look Paul Howes though sounds like he might be signing up to Tony Abbott's revolution. You might find yourself marching alongside his trade union members.
BARNABY JOYCE: Well I think you know I looked on the CFMEU website the other day Barrie and they don't want the carbon tax.
Now I hardly see the CFMEU as some sort of underground movement for the National Party. So it's just a wide consensus across the community.
The other day when we had Labor Party people parading out the front of Parliament calling people Dungeons and Dragons fantasists, odd balls, that other audience, red necks - well you know you saw the result in the New South Wales state election.
People will not be spoken to from sort of the pulpit of morality from the Labor Party that this tax is somehow good for them when it's never going to do anything to the climate, it will definitely put jobs at risk.
And most importantly there are people Barrie who are already doing it tough who can't afford power as it is, who can't afford fuel as it is, who are struggling with the everyday fundamentals of life as they are and they just go into hyperspace when you suggest a new tax to make them dearer.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But you say that there's consensus across the community. It wasn't so long ago that your party, the National Party, was the only party that was opposed to an ETS. The Liberals now, are they permanent converts?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well I can't help it if we're the forefront of philosophical change Barrie. It's part of the National Party's dictum.
But you know what I can say is people at the start were made to feel guilty. They were made to say, there was just a statement made to them: you must accept this or you are somehow of a moral lesser character than everybody else.
And over a period of time Barrie they've now looked into the details of this and asked some fundamental questions.
What exactly are they intending to do? Who is going to administer this? Is this going to be the same people administering this who administered ceiling insulation and administered the school hall debacle and that's got us $198.2 billion in gross debt? Are they the people who apparently are going to cool the planet?
And how does this affect my life?
And the answer to that is if you've got a power point in your house, if you use power, if you use concrete, if you use steel, if you have a job in an emission-intensive industry you are going to be affected.
And Australia has this innate pride that we want to be a country that makes and grows things. A country that can't make things or grow things becomes a country that has nothing really to offer the world.
What this tax is takes us to a position where we become nobodies. And we don't like that.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Do we also want to lead the world in creating a dirty environment? Because that's what the figures suggest.
BARNABY JOYCE: But Barrie this is absurd to think that somehow from Australia we are the pendulum of political thinking. It's ridiculous.
If we want to go on unilateral crusades then why don't we go on one to have regime change in North Korea? And then we can remove Robert Mugabe. And then we can single-handedly rid the world of malaria.
All these things are noble gestures but they are merely gestures because you know full well you can't do them.
And might I say that they may be far more easier to achieve than single-handedly cooling the planet from a room in Canberra.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay I want to ask you about state politics in Queensland.
Are you relaxed about the Campbell Newman rather unorthodox push to be premier?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well, Queensland is known for being unorthodox. I suppose I'm a representation of that lack of deliberation that sometimes comes into things.
But what we have is something that's been widely accepted by the Queensland community. They see Campbell as a person who's got proven political acumen.
They realise and I hope my colleagues realise that this is a ship and the ship has been launched. And if you think you have a better future in the sea with the sharks well good luck.
The people of Queensland will be furious if this does not come to its fruition.
And I think that Campbell you know has an extremely good chance, not a perfect chance but an extremely good chance of showing to Queensland an alternative form of government which they haven't had for basically a quarter of a century except for two years under Rob Borbidge and Joan Sheldon and they were very tenuous.
So people in general will be furious if this does not you know become fulfilled because they want that change.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But some of your colleagues though in the National Party at the state level have spoken about the impact on parliamentary democracy or the principle of it, that it gives unelected party officials control over elected MPs. Does that concern you?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well no it doesn't Barrie because let's go through it.
First of all what's so vitally different about this, or fundamentally different about this is that Campbell Newman has to receive the endorsement of the people of Ashgrove. So they can knock it on the head straightaway if they really wanted to.
And then likewise it has to be the endorsement of the people of Queensland at a state election.
And then likewise there has to be the endorsement at any time, the endorsement of his colleagues within the party room.
Now this is an entirely different proposition to what Julia Gillard did when she brought in a carbon tax where she said one thing, delivered a different outcome after the election.
We're telling the people of Queensland precisely what we intend to do prior to the election. And it is their right to make a decision or otherwise at the election.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay a couple of quick issues.
This whole concept of women in combat roles, it seems that that's going to go ahead.
BARNABY JOYCE: Well you know I see this obviously what happened with that lady at ADFA was abhorrent.
But let's not confuse that when you're in the military you're not working for KPMG. It is the military. It is not civvy street as they say.
In the military they're training people unfortunately to kill people. And when you're given an F88 Steyr with a five point whatever it was, 5.56 or 5.36 millimetre round, then these things are designed to put you in a very peculiar position in life in that you are designed and trained and expected to kill and maim other people.
Now that means...
BARRIE CASSIDY: But that doesn't in any way justify what happened to her though does it?
BARNABY JOYCE: Not in no way, shape or form does it justify it.
But I think that sometimes there's an overlapping desire to make the military like civvy street and it's not like civvy street, it is actually the military.
And I suppose the first question that needs to be asked as well as this lady finds justice, as she's entitled to, is I'm sure when I had a brief involvement with the military there was a thing about fraternisation between the sexes in the ranks and that's not supposed to happen. So these are some of the problems that happens when that does.
BARRIE CASSIDY: And what about the question, women in combat roles?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well I can only look at this personally. I just couldn't get my head around shooting a woman. Maybe that makes me a bit old-fashioned and I imagine other people get themselves in the same position. Nor would I like to see a lady shot.
And so that for me personally it makes me slightly uncomfortable with it.
I'm happy to go to a position of biomechanics, that if anything you've got to realise that it's, no-one's, you know fighter jets don't get parking tickets and guns and rifles are designed to shoot people and it's all about the biomechanics and the horrible stark reality of the battlefield that if you're on it, you'd better be able to do everything that's asked of you and more. Otherwise you're putting yourself and all those around you at risk.
BARNABY JOYCE: Now just finally the Government has confirmed with Bob Brown they will be setting up an inquiry to establish permanent rules for debates in federal elections.
Now Bob Brown, there's a good chance that he'll be on the panel next time around. How would the Nationals feel about that?
BARNABY JOYCE: We'll be absolutely delighted as long as we're there with them.
I mean the reality is that we have just as many senators as Bob Brown. At the last state election the National Party stood in 20 seats, won 18.
Bob Brown by the way is on 42.5 per cent more money than me. He seems to have sneaked round that one whenever he's parading on about parliamentary pay.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You've done the figures.
BARNABY JOYCE: Yeah of course I have. And so do you Barrie. I bet you you know what you're getting paid.
And you know Bob Brown, if he has got a right to the podium to express the views of the Greens then certainly the National Party has a right to the same podium.
And I'm sure the Australian people would want us there. I mean we have been leading debate on such things as ETS. We're the ones, we're the only that made a public statement about making sure the Singaporean Stock Exchange did not merge with the Australian one. I know Michael doesn't agree with me.
But we have quite a few things to say and deserve exactly the same rights as Bob to say them.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Except that you are in a formal Coalition with the Liberals. The Greens are not in a formal coalition with Labor.
BARNABY JOYCE: Oh come on Barrie. You don't believe that. I mean you tell me how many times Adam Bandt has not ever voted with the Government.
I remember the happy smiley photo of Bob Brown and all the Greens signing the book with Julia Gillard. I remember the media announcement with you know Bob and Julia and Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor all standing out the front.
I mean that is the Government. It's a Green-Labor Party-independent Government, the glee club. They are the Government. We're the Opposition and we're going to try and change them.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Thanks for your time this morning.
BARNABY JOYCE: You're welcome.