TRANSCRIPT - GARY ADSHEAD, ABC PERTH

E&OE
GARY ADSHEAD, ABC PERTH
16:40 WST WEDNESDAY, 5 MARCH 2025 

SUBJECTS: WA State election campaign, Working from home laws, Citizenship ceremonies. 

GARY ADSHEAD: And joining us in the studio right now, the Labor Resources Minister, Madeleine King, hello.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Good to see you, Gary. 

GARY ADSHEAD: And the Federal Liberal Senator, Dean Smith, g'day. 

DEAN SMITH: G'day, fresh off the pre-poll, Gary. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Pre-poll. 

DEAN SMITH: Madeleine and myself, we were down - I was that at Rockingham today, and ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: And I was there yesterday, yeah. 

GARY ADSHEAD: All right. 

DEAN SMITH: ‑‑ getting a feel for it. 

GARY ADSHEAD: All right. We're getting a feel for it then. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I think you've even got a bit of sunburn, you've been [indistinct] ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH:  Yeah. 

GARY ADSHEAD: I know. 

DEAN SMITH: A little bit. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah, you need one of those big hats, big Panama hat. 

DEAN SMITH: Well, I got the sun burn in the northern suburbs supporting Liam Stoltari and ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: Okay. 

DEAN SMITH: ‑‑ and Scott Edwards. 

GARY ADSHEAD: All right. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: And I didn't get sunburnt, supporting Magenta Marshall. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Okay, all right. This is brilliant, this is brilliant, I could just go now, leave them to it, because there is a State election, of course, it's on Saturday, and you'll be joining us, Madeleine, with the coverage here on ABC Radio, so thanks very much for doing that. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Very much looking forward to it. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Give us a bit of a sense though, because I mean I just wrote a column that would have been published yesterday, I think, for Business News magazine, and I sort of had to look- I started looking at all the numbers, you know, the margins and so on, and just, you know, came up with things like, you know, impossible, improbable, implausible, and so on and so forth, for the Liberal Party to be able to win this State election. 

But a lot of those margins, they just can't be taken seriously given what happened in 2021, can they? I mean you'd both agree with that, that ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It was a very ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: ‑‑ they're artificial margins. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I mean I don't think anyone's witnessed that kind of election where the margin for the Labor Government was so large and called so quickly, and that - no matter who was in government, that can't last forever. It shouldn't last forever really. We need to have strong Oppositions as well. So ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: I'd agree that we need very, very strong and competent Oppositions, particularly when governments have such huge majorities like they've had for the last four years. But I mean every election ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: But that's what the people ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: ‑‑ every election builds on the next election, and I'm confident that, you know, we've got some great candidates across some important seats, and so I think that, you know, I think that Saturday night will turn out to be much more interesting for people than they might have thought, than they might have thought five or six weeks ago. 

GARY ADSHEAD: What's a win for the Libs? Is it 10, is it 12, is it 15 seats back? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It must be at least 12. 

DEAN SMITH: Well, I think there's Madeleine trying to set the expectations. Look, success has ‑ success looks ‑ there are many ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: More than two, I think [indistinct]. 

DEAN SMITH: There are many, many elements to success. One is how the campaign's been conducted. 

GARY ADSHEAD: And-‑ 

DEAN SMITH: One is how individual seats look. I will not be so presumptuous as to sort of make a statement about what looks good bad or otherwise. 

GARY ADSHEAD: If you don't get Nedlands back, if the Libs don't get Nedlands back then you would call that a [indistinct]. 

DEAN SMITH: Well, we don't want to anything for granted but ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: Massive ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: There's a strong Nedlands campaign, there's been a great Cottesloe campaign, there's a great campaign in Churchlands, so we're hoping that voters there will, you know, elect Basil, and elect Jonathan Huston, and ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Cottesloe's one of the seats you hold already of the ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: Only seven, only by  7.6, I think [indistinct]. 

DEAN SMITH: Good fresh candidates. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Can I just say, Anthony Green's in the building, so you know, if he hears me [indistinct] if he hears me, and I say something that I think's you know, brilliant, he'll come in and check me on it, but I have a view that if Churchlands, Nedlands and Carine haven't fallen to the Liberal Party within - back to the Liberal Party - within two hours of the counting started, that it could be a long night for the Libs. 

DEAN SMITH: I don't think it will be a long night for the Libs. I think that in Carine particularly we've had an excellent candidate, excellent campaign in Liam Stoltari, Jonathan Huston's done an excellent job in Nedlands. I was out with Sandra Brewer earlier this week, and she's doing and has done a fantastic job. 

So I think that ‑ and what's important for the Liberal Party, those seats are very important for the Liberal Party because when the Liberal Party's able to restore itself in core Liberal seats then the whole party benefits, the whole party benefits, so I'm very, very confident. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Well, if the swing - if the swing's on, we'll see - if there's a swing on, then we'll see it early in those three, I - that's why I sort of pointed to it. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: There has to be a massive swing of some sort. 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's got to be ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: But I think there are two things to look for, Gary, I think one ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's going to take a massive swing. 

DEAN SMITH: Two things to look for, the first, I think, will be the swing across regional Western Australia ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah, I think regionally you're right. 

DEAN SMITH:  ‑‑ you've got a really rude shock. Secondly, I do think that Labor has, you won't be surprised to hear this, I do think that Labor has taken voters for granted in traditional Liberal seats and it will be very, very interesting to see the strength of sort of anti-Labor sentiment in some of those seats. 

GARY ADSHEAD: All right, 18 ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: On the same side of that though, Dean, the Liberal Party took those same voters for granted, and therefore lost all those seats. 

DEAN SMITH: Well I think the argument that we've been making ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: We may be correct. 

DEAN SMITH: ‑‑ the argument that Libby's been making very, very competently is that the last four years have been demonstrated by complacency on the part of Roger Cook and Labor. This State has benefitted from GST windfalls, good commodity prices, and I think many West Australians are saying what can they see for it, what can they see, and where's actually the vision for the future?  

Roger Cook has, you know, characterised himself during this State election campaign, highly focused on the negative, when he more than anyone else could have been talking up a better story for-- 

GARY ADSHEAD: Made in WA, that's the future, isn't it? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It's funny you should say negatives, there's a lot wheeling around in trailers out the front of the pre‑poll in Rockingham, which is the - one of the first times I've ever seen that ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: We would call that holding Labor to account. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Oh, I don't know about that -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's seven ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: ‑‑ your brand on it. 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's 17 minutes ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: That's a negative, isn't it?  

GARY ADSHEAD: It's 17 minutes to 5. Dean Smith and Madeleine King in the studio with us, 1300 222 720. If you've got a question ahead of the State election or anything else, feel free. 

Do you think this will help Roger Cook or hinder him come Saturday? And of course I think you know what's about to hit you. 

[Excerpt] 

SPEAKER: JD Vance is a -- 

ROGER COOK: Knob. Sorry, you've got to have one unprofessional moment, don't you? That was it. 

[End of Excerpt] 

GARY ADSHEAD: Well, do you? Do you have to have one unprofessional moment? 

DEAN SMITH: You shouldn't, not if you're the Premier of this State, you shouldn't have unprofessional moments, and you shouldn't sort of seek permission to have them either. 

I think a really - well, it just demonstrates my earlier point, Gary, about high level of complacency and taking things for granted when you're in the top job. 

GARY ADSHEAD: That was Leadership Matters Breakfast, I was there, and of course in that room were a lot of people from the mining and resources sector. There was a lot of applause for him. Is that his kebab moment that Mark McGowan had during the pandemic? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I hope it doesn't go on a T-shirt or a tattoo or anything like that. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah, right. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: With the kebab. But I mean the Premier has apologised, he said it was wrong, and I think that's a very good thing, and I wouldn't choose to speak for the Premier on any matter, but I, you know his -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: Would you have - I mean given an opportunity where someone's asking you to finish a sentence, "JD Vance is" - and you know, would you ever think for a minute that you would use something like knob, or -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Oh, goodness, I hope not, but I ‑ you know, he's an elected representative, JD's -- 

DEAN SMITH: Well, to be fair to Madeleine, to be fair to Madeleine though, over the last, you know, over the last few weeks when we've been in here in the studio and on the phones talking to you about these sorts of things, Madeleine has, you know, treated with great care and caution questions around the Trump Administration ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah. 

DEAN SMITH: -- which has been the correct thing to do, and when we think about Western Australia, export-orientated State, when we think about the importance of AUKUS, I think many West Australians would expect their State leader to express himself more diplomatic, with greater caution. 

But there was something else I think he said that I thought was really, really unfortunate, and that was he under sold himself and under sold Western Australia by calling himself a sub‑jurisdictional CEO. Wow. And the man wants to be the Premier for the next four years. That's not good. 

GARY ADSHEAD: He's done that twice, actually. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: [Indistinct] sub-jurisdiction of the Federal Government, and he knows like you know, and everyone knows, that State Governments right around the country don't deal directly with ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: I'd be talking up Western Australia if I was the State Premier ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: But I do think ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: ‑‑ not talking it down. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: ‑‑ Premier Cook, you know, naturally, as many of us did, you know, we reacted quite, I would say, at the unexpected scenes we saw in the White House recently, that was pretty unexpected, and he ‑ I know Roger, I've known him for many years, he thinks about the world deeply, we have discussions about various international affairs, but he knows what State Government's role is, and it's about managing the State and managing it well, and you know, it is unfortunate he said that, he has apologised ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: I take it ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: And he gives it to ‑ the Federal Government has the role of managing that relationship, and he understands that role. 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's not a ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: That's true, but I'll just say this, and I think Madeleine, you would agree, that even in Western Australia right now in terms of AUKUS and all the things that are going to be happening in relation to that, there would be times, even quite recently where Paul Papalia of course, the Defence Industries Minister, might have to sit down with US officials and others, even this week maybe, and suddenly he's got to deal with the fact that his Premier's just called the Vice President a knob. It doesn't help. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, he has apologised for that, he apologised very quickly, as you know. Roger was pretty quick to realise he'd done the wrong thing, but I don't think that detracts at all from what he has done for the State, how he has acted in the interests of all the industries of this State, particularly the resources industry, and you heard from the cheers in that audience, and I don't know if I would have cheered, but ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: Whoa, cheers, cheers, oh, I wouldn't ‑‑ 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, there were, weren't there?  

DEAN SMITH: -- I don't ‑ I don't ‑ well I was not in the audience. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: -- I think he -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: I was, there was applause, there was quite a lot of ‑ I think it was just 'cause it was a reaction that people laughed at. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It's nothing more -- 

DEAN SMITH: Perhaps they were laughing at him. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It's nothing more than reflecting, I think, the unexpected nature of recent events in the White House. 

DEAN SMITH: But this is a pattern of behaviour, because the Premier did have some unfortunate remarks about President Trump during the election campaign as well. So huge, huge cautionary tale now for Roger Cook. 

GARY ADSHEAD: All right. Okay. Now then, let's move on then. What's Peter Dutton got against working from home? Here he is in relation to a plan to tell all of those public servants that have some sort of new deal where they have their opportunity to work from home to come back to the office. 

[Excerpt] 

PETER DUTTON: I think Australian taxpayers who are working harder than ever under this Government and barely keeping their head above water, I think they expect the Government and the Government employees to be working as hard as they are, and people refusing to go back to work in Canberra is not acceptable. 

[End of Excerpt] 

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah. Now is this out of the Trump playbook, this one, where, you know, you pick on the Public Service and you appoint someone to be an efficiency boss, and tsar and all that sort of stuff, or what's it really all about? 

DEAN SMITH: Absolutely not, absolutely not. So what's important to understand here, I'd say, is that there were some previously existing sensible arrangements that existed for public servants who desired to work from home.

Those arrangements have been changed. We're arguing that those new arrangements put a bias, a yes bias in those employment relations, and it also disempowers - the new arrangements disempower managers, because managers are no longer able to stipulate minimum days of work in the office. 

So we argue that there were some sensible arrangements in place not too long ago. Those sensible arrangements have now been abandoned, and I think this statistic is important: almost four out of 10 public servants are working from home regularly.

Now, thinking about this, this is not an opportunity that the small business owner has, this is not an opportunity that the mother who's working three or four part-time jobs has. 

So what we're saying is that we would like Australian taxpayers to have a much higher level of confidence that they're getting good service from public servants. 

We also argue that we think there are productivity gains and improvements to be achieved, so I think what we're saying is we would like a reset. We are post-pandemic now, we are operating in a different environment, and we argue that this is the right time to have a reset, and by letting people know what our expectation is prior to the election. 

GARY ADSHEAD: What do you think's going on here, Madeleine, in terms of Peter Dutton saying that that's one thing they'll look at is the work from home benefits that public sector workers have? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, Gary, I think this is Peter Dutton engaging, as he does regularly, on a misinformation campaign. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any public servants are refusing to go into the office. There are work from home arrangements, as there have been across many industries, it happens in the resources industry, it happens across HR, it wouldn't - it's everywhere, obviously there are industries where it can't happen, and you know, we understand that, and they have other conditions as well. 

Flexibility at work is important, and it is an attack on the Public Service, just like cutting 36 ‑‑ 

DEAN SMITH: No. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: ‑‑ cutting 36,000 [indistinct]. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Cutting 36,000 jobs is an attack. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: So what does that mean for WA? 

DEAN SMITH: Let's stay with working from home for a second -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: No, no,no, well -- 

DEAN SMITH: 'Cause I think I've got an important ‑ I've got a very -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: -- you're talking about the Public Service though, Dean. 

DEAN SMITH: I've got a very interesting question for Madeleine, if I may, Gary. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: And so the Department of Industry sites resources -- 

DEAN SMITH: Does Madeleine -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: -- for one of these groups, who are you going to cut? 

DEAN SMITH: Does Madeleine believe that a manager in the Australian public service should be able to say to his or her staff, "I would like you to be in the office for a minimum two or three days"? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: There is absolutely no evidence that people -- 

DEAN SMITH: They cannot do that anymore. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: --are refusing to work from home, but that's not what Peter Dutton said. 

DEAN SMITH: That's not the question. That's not the question. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: What did Peter Dutton say? Do you want to replay it, Gary? 

GARY ADSHEAD: What in terms of the refusing? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: He said -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: He did say that, he did say that. I thought that was his way of trying to wind it back to be honest. I thought he was now saying, "Look, it's only really those that are refusing that we'll be going after".

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: But no one's refusing, that's the thing. 

GARY ADSHEAD: But if the employee -- 

DEAN SMITH: 185,000 public servants -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: You're making problems where none exist. 

DEAN SMITH: 185,000 public servants across our country, and Madeleine is saying not one of them - she might be true ‑ but I'm saying it's a very big call for Madeleine to say that of the 185,000 Australian public servants that we have at the moment, almost four in 10 who are actually working from home regularly, none of them ‑ none of them are refusing - none of them are refusing to come into -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's who has the power -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: No, I ‑ Peter Dutton -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: Does the employee have the power balance here in terms of saying, "I want to enact what's now there for me under the Fair Work Commission", or wherever it came from. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, at least under Labor they would still have jobs, the Liberal Party want to cut 36,000, is that from NOPSEMA, NOPTA ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: There you go, that's a good point.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: -- social services, is it from Veterans' Affairs, is it from social services, is it from Department of Industry, Science and Resources?  

GARY ADSHEAD: Is it from the ABC, heaven forbid?  

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Is it from the ABC, heaven forbid?  So Dean, what is the [indistinct]?  

DEAN SMITH: The Australian Public Service - the Australian Public Service has grown by 16 per cent under Labor. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I'll tell you why. 

DEAN SMITH: Grown by 16 per cent under Labor. Peter Dutton's point, and I think it's a fair one, are we getting a productivity dividend from that increased level of numbers of public servants? And the answer to that will be no. In addition to that, these are public servants that are being paid for by Australian taxpayer dollars. 

What we're saying again is that this is a prime time to have a reset to make sure that 16 per cent increase on 185,000 Australian public servants, this is not heading in the right direction, that is what Peter Dutton is saying. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Gary ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah, quickly, 'cause I'm going to put Laurence on. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: $20 billion worth of consultants' fees, that's what went out to build the palaces of Barangaroo in Sydney under the Liberal Party. 

GARY ADSHEAD: Well, that's what happens when you've sacked public sector workers, you bring in consultants, yeah. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: So if some of that does come back, I - well, that's what they did, because they had the cap on appointments, and all it meant was that - and God bless the accountant - well, you know, good on you accountants, but I mean do we really need the four big, you know, EYs, and so forth, to have those palaces because we don't want to invest in the Public Service? Well, I don't think we do. I think we need to invest in the Public Service, not least of all for environmental approvals, which we have halved the time of since coming to government. 

GARY ADSHEAD: What do you think, Laurence? 

SPEAKER: Well, I think the thing is that are they refusing to go back to the office, or refusing to work? There is a difference. And I think the other thing is, are they working more from home than they are from the office? And also, I work for an NDIS service provider, and over the last number of months I've had reasons to call the NDIA to get something. Those people are working from home, and I have still got perfectly good service. So I don't know what the problem is. 

GARY ADSHEAD: All right. Thank you for that, Laurence. There you go. I'll allow Dean to respond in a minute. It does seem like he's picked a fight to try and sort of send a message out there that he'll, you know, have a crack at the public sector ahead of an election. 

DEAN SMITH: No, no, I don't ‑‑ 

GARY ADSHEAD: It's popular, isn't it? 

DEAN SMITH: No, well, well, we'll know whether it's popular or not in the not‑too‑distant future, but no, to be fair [indistinct] and the -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: What date is that, by the way? 

DEAN SMITH: Well, you and I think it's the 12th. 

GARY ADSHEAD: That's right, we do. 

DEAN SMITH: Well to be fair to our Queensland friends, who are going through a very, very unusual circumstance now, who knows? But just on this point, I think it's ‑ if Madeleine and her Labor Party colleagues are going to throw the Trump excuse out of every idea that the Coalition brings forward in an attempt to sort of find a better balance -- 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I didn't say that. 

DEAN SMITH: -- to find a better balance -- 

GARY ADSHEAD: That was me.