KATIE WOOLF, HOST: As I mentioned, federal parliament resumes this week and there's no doubt going to be plenty on the agenda. Joining me on the line right now is Labor's Member for Solomon, Luke Gosling. Good morning to you, Luke.
LUKE GOSLING, MEMBER FOR SOLOMON: Morning, Katie. How are you?
WOOLF: Not too bad. There's lots happening, Luke, and I know that Parliament's obviously resuming as well. It seems like there's a push from the Greens to legalize cannabis. There's also a bit happening when it comes to the ICAC legislation, but I might go to the fuel excise first because it's something that you and I have spoken about on a lot of occasions and that cost of living. What do you think is going to happen when that excise comes to an end on Wednesday, I believe it is?
GOSLING: Hopefully the fuel retailers around the country respect Territorians and other Australians around the country and don't go back to their gouging ways. And you could even argue that it hasn't really stopped. Treasury in the NT confirms that they were very slow to pass on the saving when that came through. And I ask the help of your listeners to keep an eye on your local petrol prices because there's something like 700 million litres of the cheaper fuel still out there in the market. So there's no reason for that, for those prices to immediately go back. That's a lot of fuel that was essentially a whole lot cheaper for these companies. And then, of course, we know that they've been having very, very good profits for a long time. So what I've been doing down here is working with our ministers to see what pressure through an inquiry we can put on to the fuel retailers and have a look at what it looks like going forward. But it is a situation where we need to get that that money through that excise for our roads. We know that deaths on our roads can sometimes be attributed to the poor state of the roads. And we know that good roads are good for the economy. It was always intended that it would be a temporary measure and the opposition – or the previous government, now in opposition – said that that was always their plan as well.
WOOLF: So Luke, why exactly has the Federal Government decided not to extend the fuel excise? Is that the reason? Because they want to continue to invest money into our roads?
GOSLING: Yeah, that's a big part of it, Katie. And we've also been left with one trillion dollars in debt from the last government, and that's just a matter of fact. And what that means is that paying back the interest on our debt is becoming massive. It's becoming almost one of the biggest expenditures that our Federal Government has. And we've obviously got to provide a lot of services to Australians and we can no longer afford to have all that revenue not used to pay for the things we need to pay for.
WOOLF: So what do you reckon can happen? Because Luke, I understand what you're saying. Obviously, the Federal Government can't afford to give Aussies handouts or, you know, to do this long term. I think we all get that. But what do you reckon can happen here to make sure that we're not getting gouged? Because you and I have spoken about this on a few occasions, and it does feel, particularly here in the Northern Territory at different times, look like we are getting, you know, the rough end of the stick.
GOSLING: Yeah, no, absolutely, Katie. I mean, we've really worked it out, working with some people in industry, worked out that the retailers are probably earning around three times more than what a profitable service station needs to be profitable, about three times that which is obviously taking the mickey. And I think it's incumbent on them to have a serious look at their role in helping their fellow Territorians with the cost of living and adjust their prices fairly. The other thing is that it's very inflationary and we've got increasing inflation at the moment. So it's a fine balance between getting these settings right, which is why the previous Federal Government always only saw it as – well, to be honest, a pre-election sweetener. But when asked about it on the weekend, they said that it was a decision for us, but essentially that they understand that it always should have been a temporary measure.
WOOLF: So we reckon an inquiry could happen, Luke? Because I know that again, that's something that you'd sort of raised with us before. When do you reckon something like an inquiry could potentially happen?
GOSLING: I'm working on that with my colleagues down here at the moment and obviously as soon as I can say more, yeah, I will, Katie. But there's a number of things that the ACCC have been given resources to do as well, and you'll hear a bit more about that this week in terms of keeping an eye out. But I reckon, just, you know, just your listeners, I really appreciate their feedback too. If you think a local service station is chucking the prices up too quick, knowing that they have all these cheaper fuel in reserve, they were very slow to reduce the price of fuel when the excise was taken off. Now that it needs to come back on for all those reasons, they shouldn't be putting it on by too much and too quickly.
WOOLF: Yeah, people have been very fired up about it. Luke, please do keep us up to date with that. I want to move on and just talk quickly about workforce shortage here in the Territory. We know last week we spoke to a couple of Territory businesses who in the hospitality industry who'd spoken to us about people being deported from the Northern Territory. We did ask to have the Federal Minister on about this, but I'm keen to find out is this something that's been raised with you at the moment?
GOSLING: Every day, Katie.
WOOLF: Really?
GOSLING: Out of my four full time staff, I have one of them just doing immigration stuff, trying to help people with their visas, trying to help people to stay. And of recent times just before the Jobs and Skills Summit – and we'll be having the Minister come up to give a debrief on that jobs and skills summit to the industry soon and I'll let you know about that, Katie. But prior to that we had a consultation with industry and NGOs here, right across the board. That was down at Silks, an excellent event hosted by ISAC. And that was to give all the feedback from industry. But there's just this common theme for everyone in industry around workforce. So we've done a fair bit. We've put a lot more staff on in the Immigration Department to get through the huge backlog of visa applications, whether that be to extend or to [do other things]. We've got a lot of businesses, particularly in the hospitality industry, that are looking to keep their experienced people on. And one of those we talked about last week that I'm having meetings about again this morning, he's only got a couple of weeks in which we need to get him some guidance on how to apply for a visa that will allow him to stay. Now, this is just an example of one bloke, but he's a young Bangladeshi fellow. He's really come to love the Territory. He's been unfortunately involved in some horrific car accidents while he's been here, but he loves the place and his employer wants him to stay. And that's what we're working on at the moment. And there's a couple of weeks yet to turn that around. But every day I'm getting approached by both employers and –
WOOLF: Wow.
GOSLING: Yeah. It is continuous.
WOOLF: It seems unbelievable. Because you kind of think to yourself, you know, we've got this workforce shortage. We know that obviously the Jobs and Skills Summit had happened. And they spoke about the the cap being being lifted, or the number of people able to come to Australia to work being lifted. And then you've got these people that are already here that are hard workers that have integrated into the community. And you just think why are we in a situation where we're looking like we're going to deport them?
GOSLING: Well, the answer is because when you've got a Coalition Federal Government that strips the guts out of the public service workers that process the applications, you get left not only with a massive backlog where people don't know what's happening with their lives, employers don't know whether they're going to have staff or not. And then putting staff back into that system, getting them trained up to get those applications moving again. And it's got to be a proper process. You just can't tick everyone off. You've got to look at the individual circumstances and look at whether there's been any issues with their time here. We want to make sure that there's people in Australia that are contributing. But every day we are working to help reunite families, in some cases, but to do what we can to respond to the need in our industry and our community organisations for people. We need a lot more people and that's what we're working on at the moment, in particular for Labib, who is in that difficult situation at the moment. I'm having further meetings about him today.
WOOLF: So Labib is obviously the gentleman from the Tap Bar. We did speak about this last week. We spoke to Martin from Phat Mango. We also spoke to Christian who has got one of the Litchfield premises. And I tell you what, it is something that's a concern. So I'm pleased to hear that you are on to it. Please keep us up to date with how things are progressing in that space. Luke, I want to ask you very quickly, we know that the Greens are apparently pushing to legalize cannabis this week in the Federal Parliament. They say that there's a constitutional basis for introducing legislation this year that would allow the regulation and sale of cannabis and will announce their intention to do so in Parliament this week. Greens Senator and the party's justice spokesperson, David Shoebridge, has apparently told the media – well, he said in his first speech, actually, to Parliament that he would legalize cannabis and said that experts and government inquiries kept pointing to the failure of the war on drugs and how heavy-handed policing and the criminal justice system is causing harm, not fixing the problem. Luke, do you think that this has got any merit?
GOSLING: Yeah, well it's obviously high up on the Greens’ agenda and I'm a big supporter of medicinal cannabis and we've been working actually on a couple of proposals for growing cannabis for medicinal purposes in the Territory over the years. But Katie, to be honest, I was hoping you were going to ask me about the federal anti-corruption commission that we’re introducing today –
WOOLF: I will ask you about that in a sec.
GOSLING: Oh, you beauty.
WOOLF: I'll definitely get to that in a sec. But yeah, on this cannabis, what do you reckon? No go?
GOSLING: We're going to have some discussions about that this week. But I think it's a health issue. And the health minister – what happens, and it's the same with ICAC, the federal ICAC, that we're trying to legislate or introduce to the parliament this week. That is on a Tuesday morning, we meet, have our caucus meeting and get briefing on issues like this, because whether it's our piece of legislation or the Coalition's legislation or the Greens, we've given an update from the relevant Minister about the validity of the legislation, and I always welcome feedback from the members of the community and health professionals about it. It is about harm minimisation at the end of the day and let's see what the legislation that the Greens have put forward entails.
WOOLF: We've already got messages coming through on this front and people saying “I would implore the Greens to have a look at the psychiatric administrations in the Northern Territory that have resulted from smoking cannabis”. So certainly lots of opinions in this space, and we'll get to those after.
GOSLING: That’s why it’s a health issue, Katie.
WOOLF: Yeah. We do know that obviously this national ICAC legislation, it's due to be introduced, as I understand it, or there's going to be meetings this week within the Labor Party before that legislation is introduced into the Federal Parliament. Luke, how extensive is this legislation going to go?
GOSLING: Yeah. It's going to be pretty broad ranging. Again, it's something that we've had as a policy for a long time. It's something we went to the campaign talking about, putting it into place as soon as we could. We're talking with both the Coalition opposition and the crossbenchers about it at the moment. But it's so important to get back the trust or more trust in our institutions and in fact, our whole democracy. If we haven't got a powerful national anti-corruption commission, then that trust in our institutions is just going to deteriorate further. So we'll introduce it in this this week and then we'll establish it in the next session of Parliament. And we're talking to all stakeholders about the final details at the moment.
WOOLF: Luke, some would argue here in the Northern Territory, you know, when you look at the Northern Territory's ICAC that it hasn't been money well spent or resources well used. What would you say to Territorians that are wondering if this national body is going to, you know, to be a bit of a toothless tiger or ineffective?
GOSLING: We're absolutely committed as in Federal Labor, the current Federal Government, we're absolutely 100% committed to a body that doesn't take its orders from Government. And so we will be establishing a federal ICAC. It's something that Australians want, it's the right thing to do, but it will inquire into what it believes needs to be inquired into, where they see potential corruption. And let's face it, it's most important at the federal level because that's when we're talking about the most amount of revenue being spent on things.
And if there is corruption either within the political elite in the public service or others, then it needs to be looked into. Because you want to have people that might be thinking about doing the wrong thing, just thinking, “hey, I don't want to come under the National Anti-Corruption Commission”. So I think it's a powerful tool. It's long overdue. It's something that the Liberal and National Parties fought against. They're having a bit of a change of heart now that we're going to put it through, and we're talking to them and the Greens and the crossbenchers about the final details. But as you said, Katie, tomorrow we'll be discussing it from our Labor side, the Government side, from our point of view. But it's going to be strong, it's going to have teeth and it's going to be independent of government.
WOOLF: Well, Luke Gosling, the Federal Member for Solomon, we appreciate your time this morning, particularly at short notice. Thank you for having a chat with us and we'll talk to you again very soon.
GOSLING: Perfect timing Katie, the bills are going, I’ve got to get down into the chamber.
WOOLF: You get in there, Luke. Thank you.
ENDS
