Julie Bishop - Member for Curtin

2UE, Drive with Paul Murray

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

E&OE…

PAUL MURRAY     Julie Bishop is the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, she is also the Shadow Foreign Minister, she joins us on the phone from Canberra. Julie good afternoon.
 
JULIE BISHOP    Good afternoon Paul.
 
PAUL MURRAY     Now Bob Carr was out there today saying there is no deal what-so-ever between Australia and Indonesia that would have seen Schapelle Corby come back potentially five years early in exchange for some teenagers that have been found early of people smuggling offences. Do you think there is a deal, either formal or informal, to make that happen?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well most certainly the Indonesian government Ministers believe that there is a deal, in fact they believe it was a reciprocal arrangement. So Bob Carr can deny that he did a formal written deal but he is pretty unconvincing. He wants us to believe it is just a mere coincidence that Australia decided to release Indonesian prisoners after several years of Indonesia arguing about this and Indonesia just decided to reduce Schapelle Corby’s sentence.
 
And I watched his interviews; he was being rather tricky and slippery. He was denying a formal agreement, but how does he explain that Indonesian Ministers believe there was a deal, in fact they called it a reciprocal arrangement? 
 
PAUL MURRAY     So do you think it is specific to Schapelle Corby? Is it about getting Schapelle Corby out or is it about lessening the plight, well the situation of the people found guilty of the boat people offences? Who really is the pushing force behind this?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well that is why we need to know what discussions were held and what arrangements he came to and why the Indonesian government Ministers believe that there is a deal. I mean what did he say? What did he offer? What actions did he take that led them to believe there was this reciprocal arrangement?
 
And we need to understand this because there at any time about 1,000 Australians in jails overseas. So if Senator Carr is doing a deal just to reduce Schapelle Corby’s sentence, what of all the others including people who are in jail in Indonesia? Has he done a deal in relation to them or is it just in relation to Schapelle Corby?

Now I welcome the decision of President Yudhoyono to grant clemency to Schapelle Corby for a reduction in her sentence, and it must come as a relief to Schapelle Corby and her family and friends, but I am troubled by these reports that Bob Carr has done this secret deal to release Indonesian prisoners convicted of people smuggling offences in exchange for a five year reduction in Schapelle Corby’s sentence. What other deals has he done for other Australians in jail in Indonesia or indeed elsewhere overseas?
 
PAUL MURRAY     I have got to say also, the thing that I don’t understand the Minister said today is that there was no room in the adult jails that is why the teenagers who are the people responsible for people smuggling – these were the people on the boats, running the boats, bringing people to this country illegally – is that those people are going to be sent back to Indonesia because there is no room in adult jails or the government is of the view they shouldn’t be spending time in an adult jail. Well I thought we had a thing called juvenile detention? I thought there was already a system where if you were a teenager and you committed a serious offence you can get locked up.
 
JULIE BISHOP    Precisely, and if these people, who were at one point considered adults because they have been convicted of people smuggling offences as adults, if they are now proven to be minors – that is under 18 – then they should be in juvenile detention, now that is an argument. If there are other grounds that they should be released back to Indonesia well we need to hear about them.
 
But Senator Carr made absolutely no mention of alternatives, that would apply to Australian minors, that they would be placed in juvenile detention. Nobody wants to see young people in adult detention, but if you were an Australian minor you would then be put in a juvenile detention centre and they have given no indication at all whether that was discussed or indeed part of the negotiations.
 
He hasn’t been truthful with us in terms of the negotiations around this and I have watched him give his answers to this and it looks very slippery and tricky.
 
PAUL MURRAY     Now speaking of slippery and tricky let’s talk about Craig Thomson just for a second. Now there is not going to be a censure motion because the numbers aren’t there because among others Tony Windsor and I think even Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie are not going to support it. Regardless of the Fair Work Australia report there is absolute grounds to censure Craig Thomson based on one person alone.
 
As you know Craig Thomson stood in the Parliament, he made reference to one of three people who had been writing regular letters of support. That woman is a woman that he had some contact with years and years ago when they worked together at a university, she is now a 72 year old woman and says she hasn’t written the bloke a letter in 25 years. In The Australian today she says she ‘hasn’t had any form of communication with him for more than 25 years, I am staggered and shocked and angered that Mr Thomson has stated in Parliament under parliamentary privilege to the contrary’. Now that in and of itself is an outright, 100 per cent lie by Craig Thomson. Why isn’t that the beginning, middle and end of a censure motion on Craig Thomson?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well indeed, the more scrutiny that is applied to his statement to the Parliament the less the truthful it appears to be. And any Member of Parliament who makes a statement to the Parliament has to give a statement that is true and it doesn’t deliberately mislead the Parliament. So only Parliament can judge whether or not a Member has deliberately misled the Parliament, and the government has used every tactic to prevent us from even debating his statement.
 
Now the Prime Minister judged that Craig Thomson is not fit to be in the Labor Party, she has judged that he is not fit to be Labor’s candidate for the next election in Dobell, yet when we seek to debate whether or not he has misled the Parliament we are gagged.
 
And I agree, not only the point made by the woman who has come forward to state that she hasn’t had any contact with Craig Thomson, there are also Fairfax journalists who said they did try to contact him. He in fact sent them text messages even though in his statement to the House that Fairfax journalists had not contacted him.
 
So even if you put aside the 1,100 page Fair Work Australia report that found Craig Thomson had misused half a million dollars of union funds, even if you put aside the finding that he as a Member of Parliament gave false and misleading statements to the Fair Work Australia inquiry, he has given statement about other matters to the Parliament and we should be able to debate that statement.
 
PAUL MURRAY     Absolutely. Julie nice to talk to you.
 
JULIE BISHOP    Thanks Paul.
 
PAUL MURRAY     All the best. Julie Bishop there, Shadow Foreign Minister.