Union

BA history & Politics

Dip. Professional Writing & Editing

Dr Richard Di Natale talks to the ETU

It’s likely that the Green’s will have the balance of power in the Senate, and be in a position to achieve their policy aims like never before. How will this change the character of the Greens party?

I don’t think it will change the character of the party at all. We’ll still continue to represent the things we’ve represented from day one; fairness in the workplace; making sure we treat refugees and asylum seekers compassionately; action on climate change; jobs in the green economy. All of those things we’ll continue to represent as before…

With a balance of power comes accountability. Will you have the courage to stand and deliver on your IR Policy?

Yes, absolutely. We’re a party of principle and always have been. If you look at the way the Greens have conducted themselves over the duration of this Senate, we’ve had Rachel Siewert who has continued to be a very strong advocate of the Greens IR policy for much more fairness in the workplace and the abolition of the ABCC. And just today I’ve returned from the rally outside the ABCC headquarters where I spoke against the ABCC. It’s bad law and needs to be repealed.

We had to stand up for a decision that wasn’t very popular which was the emissions trading scheme. The scheme, as it stood, was a bad policy and needed to be voted down. Now we knew by doing that some people who were supporters of the Greens wouldn’t agree with that decision but we took the principled stand that it had to be voted down because it was bad policy.

And you can rest assured that IR policy will be one of those things that we’ll take forward into the life of the Senate… We know that Gillard is not committed to abolishing the ABCC but with Greens balance of power in the Senate we have much more scope to push her on that particular policy position.

Beyond the removal of the ABCC what industrial relations changes will you advocate?

Right of entry, I think we’ve got to make sure we maintain those sorts of things; we certainly don’t want to see the reintroduction of Workchoices. We’ve argued passionately that it was bad policy. There are a range of laws around industrial relations policy… and our IR policy is there for all to see. One of the things I will do is work with people within the union movement to make sure we’re pushing for the things they want. I know that here at the ETU there are some issues around licensing and they’re the sorts of things we want to make sure get a good airing. So it’s a question of working with the people we see that we want to have a relationship with…

All politicians say they’ll create jobs! It’s rhetoric because they don’t employ people. So, how can the Greens, as their policies claim, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs?

It’s about introducing the right settings into the economy that actually stimulate the development of particular industries. For example, introducing a gross feed-in tariff… At the moment that occurs but it’s implemented in a way that actually doesn’t encourage the development of decentralized power generation, through solar panels and so on. But by putting in a gross feed-in tariff that actually gives people money back for the amount of power they generate rather than a net tariff, we’ll end up with much bigger numbers of people who want to implement solar panels. So, we suddenly get the development of the solar panel industry. Modeling done by the ETU themselves demonstrated that the introduction of a gross feed-in tariff would be worth about 20 000 new jobs… Also, making sure we’ve got either a carbon tax or an ETS in place stimulates growth in the renewable energy sector; again a very jobs rich sector. And you only have to look at the situation overseas where they’ve done some of those things and it has resulted in enormous growth.

Many workplaces are environmental polluters. Which comes first in Greens politics, the environment or the workplace?

I don’t think you make that distinction. I think they’re both important and what you do is you make sure you have good policy that addresses both issues and it’s not a question of sacrificing one for the other. You can have a fair workplace and you can have a clean environment and you shouldn’t be trading one off for the other.

There are a number of ETU unionists who are shooters, fishermen and four wheel drive enthusiasts. How can they relate to the Greens; why should they see you as more than tree huggers?

I’m a fisherman, I don’t shoot, I used to have a four wheeled drive. There’s a time and a place for most things. On the issue of fishing, the Greens have always supported recreational fishing. There’s a place for that. It’s important that we do it sustainably. That’s the key to all of these things; you do it sustainably. Four wheel drives, well we don’t think people should have four wheel drives just for taking their kids to school, but they’ve got an important role. People should be allowed to use their four wheel drive recreationally. I had my four wheel drive when I was up in the Northern Territory and it was a necessary bit of equipment up there… I think for people who enjoy getting into the great outdoors it’s often a necessary piece of equipment. I think it’s just making sure there’s a balance…

The Greens say high-quality health care should be resourced through the public health system. How can Greens policies achieve it?

My background is health and it’s an area I’ve been fighting in for a long time. The first thing to say is that we need a much bigger investment into prevention, so we’ve got to try and stop people from getting sick in the first place… There are a lot of simple things we can do such as banning advertising of junk foods to young kids; making those who do advertise junk food pay a small levy that we can use to promote good, healthy foods. We want a much bigger investment in mental health… early intervention programs… more funding for supported accommodation for people who’ve got mental illness as an issue. And then a much bigger funding for dental health… we want a universal dental health scheme.

All of that can be funded in a variety of ways… one way is the private health insurance. What we’d like to see is that the Government supports private health insurance; that the rebate be re-directed into the public health system. First and foremost the country needs a high quality universal public health system. People should be free to choose a private health system if they want but the Government’s responsibility should be to make sure that the public system is working well…

The Greens draw attention to the fact that today’s politicians benefited from free high quality public education; are you advocating the same for future generations?

Sure. We think that the first issue should be a high quality education system; and we think that government schools are under funded particularly in Victoria which has got the lowest government funding for any state. We think that education is a life long process so we need to start early and we want two years of free pre-school for all children. We can afford that. We want smaller class sizes and we want to make sure that people do get access to a free university or tertiary education… We can do it. HEX could be abolished very quickly; it’s not a difficult process. We could make sure people could come out of universities without a huge debt hanging over their heads.

 So where would the money come from to pay for it?

There’s an interesting debate going on at the moment around the mining resources tax. It’s interesting that we’ve probably lost about eight billion dollars as a result of the changes that the Gillard Government’s agreed to. We reckon that eight billion dollars would pay for all of those things and give us money left over for a whole bunch of other expenses as well. There’s this false argument that we as a nation can’t afford to do those things, we can; it’s just a question of priorities…

Do the Greens see a difference between legal and illegal asylum seekers and the way they should be treated?

It’s important to remember that every single person coming to this country has the legal right to seek asylum. So there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker. The question is, are they found to be genuine refugees or not; there’s a process for determining that and where they’re not found to be genuine refugees they’re sent back to their country of origin…

You’ve been highly critical of Julia Gillard, saying she is moving to make East Timor a warehouse for our refugees, and that Australia is forging a reputation as a selfish nation. What should we be doing?

I think it’s pretty straight forward. Because the numbers are so small, we could easily process people here in Australia. We process them for security and health checks; a short process, less than one month…  Once their claims have been processed, ninety percent will be found to be refugees and can be settled in this country and the other ten percent can be sent home. Not only is it a more humane, compassionate way to do it, it’s also a much cheaper way of doing it…

During the Howard years he took it to another level and what we ended up with was an attempt to make a political issue out of it to try and win votes in the lead up to an election; and we’re really playing politics with people’s lives; that’s what I was getting at when I talked about us forging a reputation as being a selfish nation…

Finally, can you sum up your vision for Australia with a Greens balance of power in the Senate?

What I want to see is an Australia that’s fair and decent and compassionate. An Australia where we have clean air, clean water; we look after our environment, where there are jobs in industries that are good for the economy and good for the environment, say in renewable energy, public transport, those sort of things; and in politics where people work more constructively.

We’ve got this adversarial model at the moment. So what I’d like to see is a much more constructive way of doing politics and maybe with the Greens in the Senate we can try and start moving towards that.