Julie Bishop - Member for Curtin

Sky News, Lunchtime Agenda with David Lipson

Subjects: Schapelle Corby; detention of people smugglers in Australia; border protection; Craig Thomson

E&OE…

DAVID LIPSON    Well the Shadow Foreign Minister Julie Bishop joins me now to respond to this. First of all, what is your response to the release or at least the cut to the sentence for Schapelle Corby?
 
JULIE BISHOP    We welcome the Indonesian President’s decision to grant clemency and that has manifested in a reduction of the sentence that has been handed out to Schapelle Corby, and I am sure it is a great relief to her and to her family and to her friends. And I understand that there is now an opportunity for her to seek parole and I assume that her lawyers or her advisers will be pursuing that opportunity as well.
 
DAVID LIPSON     Bob Carr just then said that the two situations – the minors in Australian prisons and Schapelle Corby – are not linked but he would be very relaxed if they were linked. Would you be relaxed?
JULIE BISHOP    Senator Carr is being very tricky here. He is denying a formal agreement, he is saying there was no secret deal to release Indonesian prisoners convicted of people smuggling offences from Australian jails with a reduction in Schapelle Corby’s sentence. But you will note that he tries to allude that, oh well if that were the case he wouldn’t be uncomfortable with it. Well he can’t have it both ways. Either there was a deal or he did something for the Indonesian Ministers to believe there was a deal. For in fact the Indonesian government Ministers have been quoted as saying it was part of a reciprocal arrangement.

How does Bob Carr explain that he denies there was a secret deal yet the Indonesian Ministers believe that it was a reciprocal arrangement?
 
DAVID LIPSON     He also denies that there were even negotiations though, not just a deal.
 
JULIE BISHOP    I find it unconvincing as best that suddenly out of the blue there is a release of a number of Indonesian prisoners convicted of people smuggling offences and at the same time there is a reduction in Schapelle Corby’s sentence.
 
Now the point I wish to make is, he is being tricky with the truth here. Just be honest with the Australian people and say whether there was a deal done as a reciprocal arrangement. Because that raises a question, what other deals has Senator Carr done for other Australians who are held in Indonesian jails or indeed the 1,000 Australian citizens who are in jails somewhere in the world at any time?
 
DAVID LIPSON     But if he had struck a deal, wouldn’t that be exactly what part of his role is, trying to fight for the early release or at least leniency for Australian citizens who are held overseas?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well the first question is, if he struck a deal why is he denying it? And how does he explain the fact that the Indonesian Ministers are saying it is a reciprocal arrangement? He must have done or said something for the Indonesian Ministers to believe it is a reciprocal arrangement.
 
And if it is a deal lets have the details of it. What were the conditions attaching to it? Why were certain Indonesian prisoners released, on what basis? I note that it was said to be on the grounds that they are minors. Was any consideration given for putting them into juvenile detention? Why were they released rather then detained elsewhere? It raises a whole series of questions.

And if it was done in exchange for a reduction to Schapelle Corby’s sentence then what other arrangements can we expect for other Australians who are held in Indonesian jails?
 
And for Senator Carr to just try and be evasive and slippery over it doesn’t help the situation at all, it certainly doesn’t help Schapelle Corby and it certainly doesn’t help our ongoing cooperation with the Indonesian government.
 
DAVID LIPSON     Do you think the Indonesians should have been released?
 
JULIE BISHOP    I believe that there are certainly grounds for consideration of minors being held in adult detention but I am not sure, because Senator Carr won’t tell us, whether or not there was consideration for them to be held in juvenile detention. And we must send a very strong….
 
DAVID LIPSON     Would you have rather that happen?
 
JULIE BISHOP    We must send a very strong message that people smuggling is illegal, that people smuggling is dangerous and we have to send a very strong message that we don’t want to see people put on these leaky boats and making that dangerous journey to Australia. It puts people’s lives at risk, lives have been lost, and we have to send a very powerful message to the people smuggling syndicates.
 
And the government has gone so soft on strong border protection that we have seen this massive increase in the number of people making that dangerous journey. If this is just another example of the government going soft on people smuggling laws then I would be very concerned.
 
DAVID LIPSON     Just on that, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has again cast doubt on the Coalition’s policy of pushing back seaworthy boats carrying asylum seekers to Indonesia. He has said this week if every is pushed back where would it end, it is a chain? Isn’t it unrealistic for Tony Abbott to say this is a policy that the Coalition would adopt when it seems fairly clear that Indonesia doesn’t want a bar of it?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well I have had conversations with Foreign Minister Natalegawa and I won’t go into the detail of those conversations, it think it is important for us to deal behind the scenes with Indonesia and not have this running commentary, this megaphone diplomacy on people smuggling issues with Indonesia. And I have had very fruitful and productive discussions with him.
 
We had this policy in the past, it worked in the past, and there is no reason why we can’t work with Indonesia to try and resolve this problem.
 
DAVID LIPSON     So you are confident it could happen again and will happen again and Indonesia will accept them?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Imagine if there were Australian boats with Australian crews that were taking people to Indonesia to break the laws of Indonesia; Indonesia would expect us to deal with it. And of course we will deal with Indonesia in relation to Indonesian boats with Indonesian crews under an Indonesian flag who are coming to Australia and breaking Australia’s laws.
 
DAVID LIPSON     On Craig Thomson, Mal Washer has raised concerns about his state of mind, are you comfortable about pressing this hard in the Parliament again today?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well the Prime Minister has a number of very serious questions to answer. She has said that Craig Thomson is entitled to his day in court yet it was Julia Gillard that excluded him from the Labor caucus. She says he is not a fit and proper person to be in the Labor caucus, she says he is not a fit and proper person to be the pre-selected candidate for Labor for the seat of Dobell, why then does she maintain that he is a fit and proper person to remain in the Parliament? So Julia Gillard is the one who has taken action against Craig Thomson yet she didn’t give him his day in court.
 
DAVID LIPSON     But do you have sympathy for Craig Thomson’s position now?
 
JULIE BISHOP    I think that Craig Thomson has got himself into a terrible situation. He has given a number of versions of events to Fair Work Australia, to radio interviews and now another version of events to the Parliament and he is digging an enormous hole for himself. At some point he will have to tell the truth about the findings by Fair Work Australia that he misused $500,000 of union members funds and that he gave false and misleading statements to Fair Work Australia. This is a quasi judicial authority, the government’s independent authority set up to investigate these and other claims and he was found to have given misleading and false statements to that inquiry. He is in a very difficult position.
 
DAVID LIPSON     Julie Bishop, thank you.
 
JULIE BISHOP    Thank you.