E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2022
SUBJECTS: Federal Integrity Commission, cheaper childcare legislation, financial law/payday lending reforms.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: Time to catch up with the Federal Member for Canberra, Alicia Payne. Alicia, good morning.
ALICIA PAYNE MP, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Good morning, Stephen.
CENATIEMPO: I want to start off with this Federal ICAC. There seems to be now be an agreement between the government and the opposition on how this is going to move forward. But it's, I think you need to be careful here with a lot of the crossbenchers wanting to have these public show trials, which I think is going to be detrimental to the actual cause of this thing, if it if indeed it gets up.
PAYNE: Well, this has been a commitment of Labor's for many years. And I'm really proud that we're doing it so early in, in our government. When it comes to public hearings, what's been proposed in the legislation is that the majority of hearings wouldn't be public, but they can be when they need to be. And the reason for that is exactly some of the issues that you talked about before, in that the Commission needs to be able to actually have those hearings and question people without it being made public, which could ruin someone's reputation and career before we actually find out what's actually going on. And also could even put people safety at risk. So that's that's an important part of the commission. It doesn't mean that we've backed away from the public hearings commitment, because that's certainly something that commission can still do, where appropriate. But it's an independent commission and it would be deciding what it looked into and the way that that should be done.
CENATIEMPO: Because that's the sticking point, my understanding is, is who and how it will decide when a hearing has to go public. I would have thought that there was a fairly obvious, and New South Wales has been a classic example of that. I mean, if it is found that there is a case to answer, a case to be investigated, that would be the point where you went public. But everything before that should happen behind closed doors, I would have thought.
PAYNE: The previous government committed to introduce this, and then never introduced the legislation. And we, in opposition, we're not going to support the legislation and one of those reasons was that we thought that the powers of the model that they proposed were too weak. And one of those sticking points was public hearings. So public hearings are absolutely part of our proposal. But exactly, as you say, it's where they're appropriate. Not every single hearing would be public, but when they need to be,
CENATIEMPO: Why should the unions be quarantined from this?
PAYNE: Well, this commission applies to all government employees. It's around politicians and government employees, and it's very broad in its powers. I don't believe unions are quarantined.
CENATIEMPO: Okay. My next question, and this is the one question nobody can ever answer. And regardless of who I ask, is where is this evidence of wholesale corruption at the federal level, that we need this added added level of bureaucracy?
PAYNE: Well, every other state and territory government has an anti-corruption body...
CENATIEMPO: But that's because they're closer to the coalface then the federal government is.
PAYNE: Well, there's certainly things that could happen at a federal level that may constitute corruption. And we've seen many things over the years that many would feel should be investigated, or that our federal politicians should certainly be held to account in the same way that our state and territory level politicians are.
CENATIEMPO: No, no doubt about that. And I've said this all along that I already believe there are mechanisms in place to do that. But let's use a couple of examples that you as an opposition, when I mean you, I mean, you know, the current government is in opposition in the lead up the last election, talked about sports rorts and carpark rorts and all of these kinds of things. None of these things would be investigated as corruption. They're just bad policy.
PAYNE: I just want to say again, first and foremost, the body once it's established will decide what it does and doesn't investigate. That commission is independent and it will decide what it investigates. But as Mark Dreyfus has said, some of these examples around what pork-barreling, where politicians are seem to be giving things to certain electorates for a political gain rather than the good policy or in some cases, the public service's advice as to where money should go, many of these around discretionary grant programs. So they absolutely represent a misuse of taxpayers money, if money is not going where the evidence shows it should go. But it's probably not corruption.
CENATIEMPO: Because my, and let's use you as an example. As the member for Canberra, say for instance, there's a grants program and whoever the Minister is doles out the money to various electorates left, right and centre. But Canberra misses out. Isn't it your job to then go to that minister and say, "Hang on, the bureaucrats have got it wrong here. You need to change your mind".
PAYNE: It is, every electorate has its needs. I think with some of the programs that we we're talking about in the last term, there were things where the Public Service had put forward advice and some of it was ignored. And some of it appeared to be very unfair in the allocation of some of the money. And then with the with the carpark rorts, which was around car parks at train stations. There was money that went to electorates that didn't even have a train station. So there are examples like that, where it clearly it's not the best use of money. And I think with the sports rorts as well, Canberra did miss out. And I think that's because it does tend to be progressive leaning, all three of our electorates. And there were some examples of sports clubs in Canberra that were recommended by the Public Service to receive that money and didn't under the former government.
CENATIEMPO: When they're safe seats, it doesn't matter who's in power, you're not going to get the money. So whether Labor's in power or the Coalition. Let's move ahead, cheaper child care legislation. I think most of us would agree that this is, in principle, a good idea. But my only concern is, is whenever you offer, you increase the grants for childcare, the price goes up rather than comes down.
PAYNE: Well, this is a really exciting thing, last week that we introduced this legislation. It was obviously a key election commitment of ours. And one of the first major commitments that we made in the last term. And something that Canberra parents talk to me a lot about, because we do have some of the highest cost of childcare in the country. And so this will make it cheaper for 96% of families and no one will be worse off. And so it will make it that little bit more affordable for all young children to access to the great benefits of early learning, but also helping parents to get back to work or increase their hours of work if they want.
CENATIEMPO: Financial law legislation that the government is looking at, particularly governing payday lending. This is a huge problem. I mean, payday, and I guess it's going to be difficult to actually get the mechanisms right here because we find people, particularly with the cost of living the way it is, at the moment, more and more people trying to access these things, but only getting themselves into more trouble than they're already in.
PAYNE: That's exactly right. So another piece of legislation that we introduced last week, which has probably received less attention, but I feel it's a really, really important one is around reforms to payday lending and consumer leases and the like. And for listeners who may not be aware payday lending is all these ads you see, where you can get a quick loan for something that you need right now and then pay it off. Unfortunately, the problem is that we see some really predatory behavior in that space, and they can, as you say, just spiral into more and more debt and people needing to take out loans to cover the debt that they're paying on the original loan. And small amounts, really mushrooming into huge debts that can just really cripple people financially. So this legislation was partly in response to a report that was handed to government in the last in the last Parliament, which the former government did, I think, did sort of seem to be saying they would support but then never introduced the legislation. Our legislation does what they were going to do but also goes a little bit further. And one of the most important reforms in it is around capping the amount that can be lent to 10% of people's income so that we're not targeting, really, people already in financial stress with these quite predatory loans.
CENATIEMPO: So not $1 amount of such but a percentage of somebody's income that I think that's a good idea.
PAYNE: Yeah, correct.
CENATIEMPO: Brilliant Alicia. Appreciate your time. catch up again in a couple of weeks.
