Television Interview - Sky News Afternoon Agenda

TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AFTERNOON AGENDA
MONDAY, 21 APRIL 2025
 

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Joining me now to break it all down is the Assistant Minister the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman and former Liberal MP, Jason Falinski. Not long to go now, gentlemen. Let's begin on polling. It does show preferences still matter. As much as Labor is falling behind. I wonder about this, Jason Falinski, whether the Liberal Party has been outfoxed, and the Coalition as well. You help Labor wins seats off the Greens, at the same time you watch as Labor helps Independents win seats from you. Is there just a fundamental issue here? Have you been sort of out thought on this and the way preferences swill around in key seats?

JASON FALINSKI, FORMER LIBERAL MP: Yeah, we have Tom, and not just this time, but for years. I do not understand, and have never been able to understand, why is it that we make a unilateral commitment to preference Labor ahead of the Greens, but they won't make the same deal with us. Therefore, I think that we should stop doing it, and we should preference the Greens ahead of Labor, until, you know, they're sincere and they have a principled approach to how they distribute preferences, because at the moment, they're happy to see us come last, whilst we continue to preference on the basis of principle.

CONNELL: So that would likely mean Greens are elected, whether it's with help or not. And you'd say, well, fair enough, you're doing it to us, we'll do it to you. And perhaps that sends Labor into majority, needing Greens MPs to help them out.

FALINSKI: So be it, Tom. So be it. This has been a unilateral game for far too long. We've been taken for mugs, and we keep doing it. And this election is no different.

CONNELL: Okay, so we hear Labor are very critical of the Greens, Patrick, but here's the reality of it, on your how to vote cards. You had them ahead of the LNP in Ryan, ahead of the LNP in Griffith. When it comes to your party and the decisions, not the words but the actions, you help Greens MPs get elected. So is it fair to say you prefer the Greens to the Coalition? Is that what you're willing to just come out and say up front?

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Firstly, that was a very reckless comment from Jason saying that he wants to have a parliament of chaos, that is something that he thinks the Liberal Party should help deliver. I don't believe that. The races that you refer to Tom, and I'm in a race here in Perth as well, is where it's Labor who is actually doing the work to try and get fewer Greens in Parliament. I've got the Greens trying to knock me off here in Perth. They try pretty hard. They spend a lot of money. We've got people like Renee Coffey in Griffith, Madonna Jarrett in Brisbane, working to make sure that we can have fewer Greens in Parliament. And now Jason's just let the cat out of the bag, is that they want more Greens in Parliament, not because it's in the national interest, but because they think it's in their political interest.

CONNELL: Well it's a zero sum game with you two. If your preferences flowed the other way at the last election, there would not have been Greens elected in Ryan and Brisbane. That's the cold hard fact, isn't it?

GORMAN: Well, and what you know, Tom, is that everyone has a how to vote card, but everyone owns their vote themselves. And they can allocate their preferences however they choose.

CONNELL: But Labor can shift the dial with the how to vote card. You're choosing not to. I don't, it's not necessarily a problem with this, you're just saying, "we prefer the Greens in the parliament to the LNP".

GORMAN: I would prefer Labor Members in the Parliament, really clearly, including Rebecca Hack in Ryan. I want more Labor MPs in Parliament.

CONNELL: It's not a first past the post system though, Patrick, unless that's the solution, would that be the next referendum?

GORMAN: No, I think we're lucky that we've got both a compulsory voting system here in Australia, and we're fortunate that we have preferential voting as well. I think that that means that people get to have their say, and we could have these debates all day, Tom. I mean, I've seen One Nation pretty high on the preference tickets of the Liberal Party around the country. You know, John Howard had the guts to stand up to One Nation. Peter Dutton is so timid that he's had to crawl to One Nation -

CONNELL: Yeah, well, there are those side deals, and they'll help One Nation out in the Senate, but they won't get them elected to the Lower House. That's just the reality. Anyway, you can see I've been going through how to vote commentary.

GORMAN: Actually One Nation have -

FALINSKI: So Tom, I do need to -

CONNELL: I've got it off my chest.

FALINSKI: There are a couple of things. Number one, John Howard didn't stand up to One Nation. That's just not true.

GORMAN: That'd be news to John Howard.

FALINSKI: Number two, what I'm advocating - well, I don't know about your history books, the ones that you're reading, Patrick, but the ones that I'm reading, he definitely had the Queensland strategy, which was about appealing to One Nation voters. Secondly, what I'm advocating is preferences deals done on principle. And the principle is, if the Greens are bad for us to preference, then they're bad for the Labor Party to preference. But above and beyond all of that, Patrick, I think that you and I both believe that forced labour is not a good practice. So why are you preferencing candidates who have received hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars from an organisation that has amongst its members, companies that have been blacklisted for having forced labour in their supply chain, as reported in the Australian. I think that that, and I'm not putting that on you Patrick, because I know -

CONNELL: Quick response from Pat before I move on.

GORMAN: I agree with Jason. There is no place in Australian supply chains for modern slavery practices. That's something that I have always believed. I know Jason has as well. Indeed, we have the Anti-Slavery Commissioner, who does work, important work, on behalf of Australia, working to eliminate that from supply chains. In large part thanks to the advocacy of Grace Forrest and others, a Great Western Australian. It's good work. I commend the Turnbull Government for getting that legislation moving. We've strengthened it in terms of what we've done -

CONNELL: Okay, I'm going to get moving now to the next one, I feel like we're off on tangents. Jason, let me ask about this, scrapping the CDC. The advice was that this body could help us avoid the next pandemic and state wide lockdowns. Your thoughts on this?

FALINSKI: I'm not in favour of more experts telling us how we should live our lives, Tom. I just, you know, if it has a purpose, if it would achieve the outcome, then we should do it. But at the moment it doesn't seem like that's happening. So you know, that's one of the important things that that we really need to discuss in the next parliament.

CONNELL: Patrick, let me ask you this. I'm just semi-recovering, but it's not clear what it would do is it, would it have any authority? I'll just get through this and you can talk for a while. Would it have any authority? SafeWA wanted to shut down the borders. And you know, block people coming in.

FALINSKI: Would never happen! Would never happen Tom.

CONNELL: I know, what a wild thing to say. Not a good idea?

GORMAN: I'll let Tom have a drink of water while I talk to your viewers about the important work of the Centre for Disease Control. What this was about was learning the lessons of the pandemic and recognising that Australia could strengthen our preparations for what health experts tell is likely to happen again and again, which is future pandemics, and make sure that we had a more coordinated response. We didn't at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and this is about making sure that we are more prepared as a Commonwealth to work together, to make sure that we don't have those sorts of shocks, and that we can keep diseases out of our communities. Now I don't know why this is one of the things that Peter Dutton wants to put on the chopping block.

CONNELL: Well, I've had a quick sip, so I'm back Patrick, you've done well, you've held the fort. But are you going to answer the question? Is it going to be the next emperor of WA will bring down the Iron Curtain again? Should we cop another COVID?

GORMAN: I want us to have a better response than the response we had last time. I remember the last response where you had people queuing for hundreds and hundreds of metres outside Centrelink offices because there wasn't proper supports in the first weeks of the pandemic. I remember where we had very confused messages from the former Liberal Prime Minister telling us what we should or shouldn't be doing. I think we can do better, and I think we owe it the Australian people who did have a very tough time during that COVID pandemic, we owe it to them to do better. That's what the Centre for Disease Control is all about. Peter Dutton is always looking for public servants to sack. He's always looking for things he can close down. He's always looking for the next cut. And that's the problem with this Liberal Party under Mr. Dutton, is that it's all cuts, and the people who pay will be the Australian people. They'll get worse services, they'll have to wait longer for simple payments -

FALINSKI: Patrick, I think Tom's throat is okay now, you don't have to fill in anymore.

CONNELL: It's medium. An outbreak will save me. We're nearly out of time. I feel like you haven't, I'm just going to check, it's like a debate with you two, I think you've had more minutes Pat. So just freestyle Jason, 30 seconds, you can respond to that or tell us how your week's been, or whatever you like.

FALINSKI: I just don't know what country Pat was living in during COVID. We had the best medical outcomes in the world, the best economic outcomes in the world. We gifted the Labor Party two surplus budgets, which they've wasted. And you know, all the failures, as we now know from the Royal Commission that Anthony Albanese promised us but we never had, were at a state government level. Now there is no evidence that this CDC would fix any of those problems. So we're just spending money for the sake of spending money.

CONNELL: Must say, I'll never get past that image of the police tape on those school kids playgrounds because of one suspected COVID case. So, yeah, I don't like taking one side, but I'm probably hinting there. I thought we had some errors to be made. But anyway, I'll leave it there, because I want Pat back next week, Patrick, Jason, we'll talk to you in the final week.

FALINSKI: Good luck with your throat Tom.

GORMAN: Look forward to it.

ENDS

Media Contact:
Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister's Office, Katelyn Stubberfield: 0447 819 253 | Katelyn.stubberfield@am.pm.gov.au