Julie Bishop - Member for Curtin

2GB, Nights with Steve Price and Andrew Bolt

Subjects: border protection; relationship with Indonesia; Labor-Greens alliance

E&OE…

STEVE PRICE    …we have found the reference to the Prime Minister calling Tony Abbott a coward. Now she said yesterday, apparently, accused him of being a “coward” when it came to border protection, as both sides of politics focussed on the role of defence personnel intercepting boats. Now I wonder what the Shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman makes of that, Julie Bishop joins us on the line, thanks for your time.

JULIE BISHOP    Good evening Steve and Andrew, good to be with you.

STEVE PRICE    Pretty appalling language from a Prime Minister.

JULIE BISHOP    Well I don’t intend to be lectured by this Prime Minister on how we should handle our relationship with Indonesia. After her appallingly inept and incompetent handling of the relationship over the live cattle ban I don’t take any notice of what the Prime Minister says when it comes to handling one of our most important bilateral relationship.

ANDEW BOLT    I will ask you some questions in a second Julie because I have got to prove that I am even handed.

STEVE PRICE    You are even handled

ANDREW BOLT    I am struck by this. You are being accused of not discussing with Indonesia beforehand what you have got in mind for boat people, did the Prime Minister discuss beforehand with the voters what she had in mind with the carbon tax? And which is worst?

JULIE BISHOP    I don’t think the hypocrisy is lost on anyone! And let me make this point Andrew, we intend, should we form government, to carry out discussions with foreign governments quietly, behind the scenes, working diligently to get an outcome, not having a running commentary through the media, and particularly, not surprising, countries like Indonesia with announcements that go to the very fundamental basis of their economy, that is the importation of live cattle. And Julia Gillard didn’t so much as pick up the phone to speak to Indonesia.

ANDREW BOLT    I don’t think she spoke to East Timor’s government either about the ..

STEVE PRICE    Well she rang the wrong person!

ANDREW BOLT    She rang the wrong person in East Timor about the detention centre she was going to whack there.

JULIE BISHOP    That’s right, that is why the East Timor solution unravelled so quickly when it transpired she hadn’t spoken to the government of East Timor.

ANDEW BOLT    Alright, now give her credit Julie, in a couple of years she might have picked up one or two hints about diplomacy. Can I just ask you, now that we are all taking our cues from the Prime Minister on how to do it, have you or Tony Abbott in any forum with any Indonesian minister or government representatives raised the issue of sending back boats?

JULIE BISHOP    Of course. I have meetings on a consistent and regular basis with the Ambassador from Indonesia, in fact he came into our party room and spoke to Members and Senators, and In the last sitting week we had a private, off the record conversation with the Indonesian Ambassador. I have regular meetings with the Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and the Indonesians are well aware of our position.

ANDREW BOLT    So it’s not a secret, they know, you know and everyone knows their positions?

JULIE BISHOP    Well Andrew they can also read the Australian media. Our policy has been articulated many times.

STEVE PRICE    And I presume the message is aimed squarely at the people smugglers Julie?

JULIE BISHOP    Of course it is and this is the nonsense that comes from this government. They want us to spell out our tactics which is meant to be depriving the people smugglers of a product, it is meant to be dismantling the people smuggling trade and yet Julia Gillard is calling on the Opposition to outline our tactics. We will work effectively and quietly, behind the scenes with Indonesia. The policies worked in the past, they will work again.

ANDREW BOLT    But it is no secret of course that Indonesia will not want boats towed back. I mean they want these people to leave not come back, not boomerang back, how do you get over that little hump? Do you think it is something that you can negotiate away, you’ll be sweet, you’re going to offer them something? How is that resistance going to be overcome?

JULIE BISHOP    These will be matters for specific negotiation should we be honoured to win government. Of course Oppositions don’t negotiate the detail of agreements with foreign governments. I mean next minute Julia Gillard will be calling on us to negotiate a defence treaty from Opposition with Indonesia!

ANDREW BOLT    Well that is what I was wondering, I thought it was all getting really too strange. Look so you’re not going to say how you think that resistance from Indonesia is going to be overcome? You don’t whether it is a question of a deal or whether they’ll just have to accept the reality of the situation when it happens.

JULIE BISHOP    Andrew we did it in the past. The Howard government was able to turn back boats, it did it on a number of occasions and the effect was to stop the boats. No one can argue with that logic, that is why the government should put back in place the policies that worked. They have tried every other alternative…

STEVE PRICE    Every which way.

ANDREW BOLT    Would you have sent back this latest one? This one, this boat is nearly within…

STEVE PRICE    There has been two since then Andrew.

ANDREW BOLT    You can almost see the coast! The one that sent a distress call just 51 nautical miles from the Indonesian coast line, still in Indonesian territorial waters, still in Indonesian search and rescue area, would you have sent that back or asked for the commander, the Australian Naval Commander, to examine whether that boat could be turned back? Do you think that would have been a candidate for your policy?

JULIE BISHOP    Absolutely, but it would be a matter for the Navy to take account of the circumstances at the time. Obviously you would do it where it was safe to do so, but this is the sort of thing that happened in the past under the Howard government. We did it enough times to send a message to the people smugglers that we will dismantle their trade and we did. In the three years after the Howard government implemented those deterrents there was one boat a year, now we have had 340 boats, about 20,000 people, 500 deaths at sea and a multibillion dollar blow out has been picked up by the Australian taxpayer.

STEVE PRICE    While we’ve got you there, what do you make of this weekend spat between the Greens and the government with this Sam Dastyari claiming the Greens are a bunch of loopies? Do you agree with Tony Abbott this is some sort of choreographed game being played between the two of them?

JULIE BISHOP    Well it is obviously contrived otherwise Julia Gillard would have ripped up that leather-bound pact that she signed with the Greens. Do you remember that…

ANDREW BOLT    With the sovereign pens.

JULIE BISHOP    …ceremony where they sat down with the leather-bound pact and signed it and everyone was standing, Wayne Swan and the Greens were standing around.

STEVE PRICE    Wearing sprigs of wattle.

JULIE BISHOP    Yes, wearing sprigs of wattle. It reminded me of a scene out of The Addams Family actually. But there they were, standing around and if she is now serious about it she would have ripped it up. But now you’ve got the situation where the Prime Minister is clinging to power through the support of a group that her party call “extremists”, a menagerie of independents…

Addams Family She’s got a formal deal with them! It doesn’t make sense.

STEVE PRICE    It doesn’t make sense.

JULIE BISHOP    Exactly, it is a formal alliance. And I think Greg Combet said on radio this morning that they weren’t in an alliance with the Greens. Well yes they are; I have seen the document. It is an agreement that the Greens will support the Gillard government and the Greens call it a power-sharing arrangement. So if they really have had a spat, let’s see her rip up the agreement.

STEVE PRICE    Well they have betters access to the Prime Minister than her own…

ANDREW BOLT    Backbenchers.

STEVE PRICE    ...caucus.

JULIE BISHOP    Absolutely. She has weekly meetings with them, they get Treasury briefings, they have briefings all the time, and Labor have adopted the Greens’ policy on climate change and they have adopted the Greens’ policy on border protection. There is no walking away from that.

ANDREW BOLT    Julie there is one bit of news that I saw in the Bangkok Post - I snuck it in my blog if anyone is interested - that hasn’t been reported in Australia and I thought was really quite sinister and I wonder whether you’ve got any reaction to it, whether you know something more about it. Thirteen Afghan illegal migrants, including several believed to be ex-militants, were arrested at the airport in Bangkok for illegal entry. They hadn’t had their travel documents, the immigration stamps and their passports, they were on their way they think to Cambodia where they would have made their way to Australia, presumably by boat I don’t know, a couple of people smugglers were arrested with them. Does that worry you where the police major general involved who, in talking to the Bangkok Post, said “initial questioning revealed that some of them were formal members of an armed group in Afghanistan”?

JULIE BISHOP    Of course that is deeply concerning. This is why we will also put a real focus on people who come to Australia without their travel documents. I mean they have got to get to these countries by using travel documents – passports, visas and the like – but when they get into the hands of the people smugglers somehow their documents are gone.

ANDREW BOLT    But what I am getting back to is I remember the big fuss Labor made when Wilson Tuckey was still with you suggested that 1 in 100 might be someone who poses a security threat on the boats. When you hear this does that make you think that Wilson Tuckey was right?

JULIE BISHOP    Well Wilson Tuckey was right at the time and I remember Canada at that time had rejected an application for asylum from somebody who turned out from a terrorist organisation, as I recall. So this of course is a concern.

Do you remember John Howard saying, “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”? These people are self selecting and we have to put integrity and order back into our border protection system so that we decide who comes to the country. We have refugee and humanitarian applications that can be made, people need to be vetted, we need to know who is coming to the country and of course it is deeply disturbing to hear these kinds of reports.

STEVE PRICE    Julie Bishop, thanks for your time very much.

JULIE BISHOP    It has been my pleasure.