Topics: Barnaby Joyce; aged care; reopening the Australian border to tourists and other visitors; Australia’s strong border protection policies
DAVID SPEERS: Karen Andrews, thanks for joining us.
KAREN ANDREWS: It’s a pleasure.
DAVID SPEERS: And I do thank you for stepping in at short notice. I appreciate it. Have you had a gutful of being asked to mop up when the blokes won’t front up?
KAREN ANDREWS: You know, it’s interesting. When I made that comment about having a gutful, I really didn’t think about how often I’d get those words repeated back to me. But, look, can I say, David, I’m very happy to be on your show this morning. I’m very happy to talk about many issues that are important to us. In my case, it’s specifically about national security.
DAVID SPEERS: Ok, we’ll come to that. Let’s start, though, with this integrity question. Have you ever known Scott Morrison to tell a lie?
KAREN ANDREWS: No, that’s not been my experience of him at all. Look, I’ve had a couple of robust discussions with him, as you would expect, but I’ve always found him to be respectful to me, to listen to what I had to say. He doesn’t always agree with it, but we work our way through it. Now, you would expect that to happen in any workplace and Parliament, Cabinet, you would expect exactly the same thing to be. So, I haven’t found him to be anything but respectful to me.
DAVID SPEERS: Have you spoken to Barnaby Joyce at all about why he did feel Scott Morrison was a liar?
KAREN ANDREWS: No, I haven’t. My discussions recently with Barnaby Joyce have been exclusively in relation to some local airport issues that I have in my electorate. So, no, I haven’t discussed that with him and, to be quite honest, I probably won’t because I understand there’s interest from some people, particularly in the media, about the goings-on, but, for me, it’s really quite simple. It wasn’t Barnaby’s finest hour by a long stretch but he apologised; the Prime Minister accepted that apology. He offered to resign; the Prime Minister declined that offer and they’ve indicated that they’re going to work together. Now, I know that Scott Morrison absolutely will work in the national interest. He demonstrated that when he was Immigration Minister, he demonstrated that when he was Treasurer and he’s demonstrating it now as Prime Minister.
DAVID SPEERS: Okay. You can understand the interest legitimately in this, though. I mean, trust matters. Integrity matters. You’re asking us, the Australian voters, to re-elect a Prime Minister, you know, who’s been called a liar and not just once and not just by his now Deputy Prime Minister, who even offered to resign over this. It’s a pretty big deal.
KAREN ANDREWS: Look, integrity is absolutely important and I’m not going to dismiss or attempt to dismiss any of that. But I would also say too that we’re coming up to a federal election in the next couple of months, and what Australians will be asked to decide on is who is going to lead the country. That includes not just the issues we’re discussing today, potentially tomorrow –
DAVID SPEERS: It’s a big part of it, though, Minister: whether we can trust him.
KAREN ANDREWS: Look, and I would say to the people of Australia that my experience of Scott Morrison is that he has always been respectful and willing to listen to my point of view, but he’s also got a very strong record and that is as Immigration Minister, as Treasurer and as the Prime Minister. And let’s put this into some context as well that Scott Morrison has been the Prime Minister during a particularly difficult time in Australia –
DAVID SPEERS: And I want to come to –
KAREN ANDREWS: This is a one-in-a-100 year event.
DAVID SPEERS: Just on this issue, finally, the Deputy Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister, the French President, they’ve all at various times accused Scott Morrison of being a liar. Does all of this, along with where you are in the polls and some of the problems in managing the pandemic, make it harder to campaign with Scott Morrison at this election?
KAREN ANDREWS: We always knew that we would have our work cut out for us. This is a particularly difficult time in Australia and globally. We always knew that was going to be the case. Can we do without distractions? Absolutely. Is it predictable that the opposition leader and Labor are going to go for a personal attack on the Prime Minister? Of course, it is.
DAVID SPEERS: We’re talking about your own colleagues attacking him, to be fair, sorry I’ve got to butt in there. Again, is Scott Morrison the asset that he was three years ago for you in the campaign?
KAREN ANDREWS: Circumstances are very different now. He’s a great campaigner. He was a great campaigner in 2019, and he connected very well with Australians. He has been very focused on the job of getting us through the pandemic –
DAVID SPEERS: It’s different now. Is that what you’re saying?
KAREN ANDREWS: We need to get him out: out talking to people, out in the communities, out in Queensland, out in New South Wales, out in Victoria, out in all of the states across Australia. We all need to be doing that. It’s been an incredibly difficult time for everyone and we all need to make sure that we’re properly connecting.
DAVID SPEERS: He’s not quite the asset he was three years ago.
KAREN ANDREWS: It’s a different set of circumstances now, but the Scott Morrison that was there a couple of years ago back in 2019 is the same Scott Morrison that we have now.
DAVID SPEERS: Let’s turn to the aged care crisis. The Jeta Gardens home is not far from where you are, I think it’s just outside our electorate, 15 residents there have now died with COVID; 100 residents and 82 staff have tested positive. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission issued that home with a noncompliance notice in October, and last week it warned there was “an immediate and severe risk to the safety, health and wellbeing of residents”. What is going on? What’s the Government doing?
KAREN ANDREWS: Look, it’s an appalling set of circumstances at that facility. So, I was horrified when I was reading about what was happening at that aged care facility. And, look, let’s be clear: These people are very vulnerable members of our community and no one wants to see them in dire situations, which seems to be what’s happening at that facility now. The Government has stepped up. The Commission has, as you’ve indicated, issued notices last year. It’s now given directions. There are a lot of questions for management there. We need to understand what the workforce issues are, the extent of what the training issues are, because that’s what the Commission has been talking about.
But I go more broadly to what we are working on with aged care, and I’ll start with workforce issues given that that is one of the issues at that particular facility. We know that there are serious concerns about workforce availability in the aged care sector. That’s why we work very closely with the private health sector and, to date, over 78,000 additional shifts have been worked by private health sector workers to actually step up and support the aged care sector but also –
DAVID SPEERS: Just on this home – that might be the case nationally, what’s happening right now? What are you doing to fix the crisis right now at that facility?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, the Health Department is certainly involved. The Quality and Safety Commission is involved. They’ve issued those directions. Management has to step up. It has to deal with the training issues that are there. We will look at what we need to do with bringing in part of the surge workforce directly into there because the situation that is happening at that facility cannot be allowed to continue.
DAVID SPEERS: Can the Government guarantee aged care facilities won’t be forced to shut down as a result of these workforce problems?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, we’re doing absolutely everything we can to bring the workforce that is needed. I mean, you’re talking about guarantees, and I understand that you and many others like to talk in terms of absolute. I don’t believe that that is a possibility at this point in time –
DAVID SPEERS: So, some might have to shut down? Is that the reality?
KAREN ANDREWS: I don’t believe that is the reality. That is the last thing that we would want to be happening. We are surging the workforce in. I know that there have been discussions in relation to the Defence Force. They have been brought in to help us all deal with the pandemic at various times as well. I know that they stand ready to assist, but at this point in time we do have the surge workforce that is going into aged care facilities, and they are supporting staff who have been there working around the clock, who are very tired, very fatigued and are affected by COVID themselves.
DAVID SPEERS: On your portfolio, Minister, when is the international border going to open to tourists?
KAREN ANDREWS: So, that is a priority for us now. And I know that the Prime Minister and I know that I have been working over the last few weeks in particular to make sure that we are ready to open to international tourists as soon as it is safe to do so. So, we have been speaking with health professionals. We are getting ready to open as soon as we can. So, we’re not at that point now. We actually went through a process. We’re delivering exactly on the process that we said we would undertake. We opened for families. We opened various pathways, including from Singapore, Japan, South Korea. We’ve opened to economic cohorts. We’ve opened to international students. The next phase is to open to tourists. We need to bring those back so as soon as we can, we will be opening to international tourists – it’s imminent.
DAVID SPEERS: But it sounds like you don’t yet have the recommendation from the AHPPC on this.
KAREN ANDREWS: We don’t have all the information that we need to be able to take the decision to open, but we’re very close to being able –
DAVID SPEERS: They haven’t yet recommended it, but I think you’re meeting tomorrow, are you?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, we’re going through the process of preparing to open and we will continue to talk to the health professionals so as soon as they say yes, we will work with the states and territories and we’ll reopen our international borders to tourists.
DAVID SPEERS: As part of our preparation, one of the issues – and we certainly saw this with the Novak Djokovic situation – was the difficulty of assessing whether someone is vaccinated and whether they have an exemption if they’re not, and at what point you make that decision. How will this work when you’ve got thousands of tourists wanting to come in? Will they be assessed and will a decision be made when they apply for a visa or when they land in Australia? Could someone be turned away after arriving in Australia?
KAREN ANDREWS: It is possible that someone would be turned away when they attempted to enter Australia. The visa process is very different to the entry requirements that apply at the border. So, many people would already have visas. Some have had those for many months, if not going into well over a year. When people come to Australia, they have to have a valid visa, but they also need to meet the entry requirements to come into the country. Now, at this point in time, to be able to enter Australia if you are a non-Australian, you need to have a valid visa and you need to be able to demonstrate that you are fully vaccinated or you have acceptable medical evidence to say that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. And if you speak specifically about Mr Djokovic, the issue was he couldn’t prove that he had a medical reason for not being vaccinated.
DAVID SPEERS: And once you do open the border, will it stay open? Can you give the tourism sector that certainty?
KAREN ANDREWS: We will be doing everything to keep it open so, as I say –
DAVID SPEERS: It doesn’t sound too certain.
KAREN ANDREWS: Look, we need to understand that we have gone through two years of uncertainty. I was very keen to reopen our borders to the economic cohorts and also to international students on 1 December. But then we were hit with Omicron, which meant we had to pause for 14 days. So, I’m not going to sit here and say absolutely guarantee because we don’t know what might be coming our way. No government does. No country does. We are prepared to deal with what comes our way and, hopefully, once the borders are open they remain open.
DAVID SPEERS: A year ago, your predecessor as Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, released a bunch of detainees from the makeshift detention facility at the Park Hotel in Melbourne. He said at the time, “It’s cheaper for people to be in the community than it is to be in a hotel.” Why are those who have found to be refugees who don’t pose a security risk still stuck in that hotel?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, we are working through a process with the United States in particular to resettle some of those people in the United States. So, we have an agreement for about 1,250 people to be resettled in the United States. We’re in the final stages of coming up with the last people who will be part of that 1,250 cohort. We’ve always been very clear that if you arrive illegally by boat in this country, you’ll never be able to settle here –
DAVID SPEERS: I understand your position on that. I’m just wondering why some of these people can’t be held in community detention. Mehdi Ali arrived by boat when he was 15. He’s now 24. He’s stuck in that Park Hotel. He has been approved for US resettlement. Why can’t he be in community detention, rather than in that hotel?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, I’d have to check the specific details in relation to that case in terms of when his imminent departure is. But yes, we have had many people move from detention in a hotel facility into the community, particularly while they are waiting to be resettled into other countries –
DAVID SPEERS: That’s what I’m asking. Why some and not others?
KAREN ANDREWS: Because we’re at various stages in the process of determining how and when these people will be resettled. Some people do pose a risk and they are better to remain held in a detention facility, whether that be in a hotel or elsewhere. Others we are quite comfortable being out in the community. I’ve dealt with many applications in the time that I have been Home Affairs Minister and I will continue to do that. I rely on advice from the department but I look at it all very carefully. I’m very mindful of the impact on those individuals and I do want them resettled in another country as soon as possible
DAVID SPEERS: Just finally, you announced more than $60 million in extra funding to counter violent extremism the other day, is any of this in response to the anti-vax, anti-mandate protests that are gathering in Canberra and other places? Is any money going to be directed towards those issues?
KAREN ANDREWS: Not specifically because we are talking about violent extremists, not the anti-vaxxers as such. Look, we do keep a very close eye; our intelligence agencies and our law enforcement agency certainly keep a very close eye on who is attending those rallies, what the activity is. That’s part of their normal, everyday work, but they are very focused on what is happening with potential extremist views in our community. But the $62 million that we have announced is going towards countering violent extremism, particularly in rural and regional Australia, to stop it before it starts.
DAVID SPEERS: But amongst those protesters, your Queensland LNP colleague George Christensen; he was there yesterday live streaming himself to his followers, his supporters. Is that helpful?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, look, I don’t agree with many of the views that George has been espousing of late. I don’t think that it’s appropriate for him to be attending those sorts of rallies, but he is a Member of Parliament who can make his own decisions in relation to that. But I’m talking about quite a different cohort, if you want to call it that, and that’s violent extremists, and I don’t think that anyone would put George Christensen in that category.
DAVID SPEERS: Karen Andrews, thanks for joining us.
KAREN ANDREWS: It’s a pleasure; thank you.