02/08/2021 

NATIONAL PODCAST - 2 August 2021

CLANCY OVERELL, HOST: It's been a while since we interviewed a member of the political class, one of the swamp things who spends a lot of time down there in Canberra on our dollar. We've interviewed a fair range of pollies over the years, but it's been a while since we've done this. And maybe it's because politicians go missing during crisis in this country. We've interviewed Anne Ali, we've interviewed John Barilaro of New South Wales Deputy Premier fame. We've actually reached out to Crisafulli, our own opposition leader up here, and Jackie Trad, the late Jackie Trad voted out in Queensland, saved Andrew's arse there, being replaced by the Greens. Yeah, of course, Michael McCormack, the former deputy PM, was one of our last federal politicians we interviewed on here, as well as a whole range of ex-politicians who are happy to talk once they're out of the top job. Christopher Pyne comes to mind, the insider.

But today, today's guest is a sitting politician, sitting MP from the electorate of Solomon in the Top End, voted in in 2016, and former ADF serviceman. Thank you for joining us today Luke Gosling MP.

LUKE GOSLING, MEMBER FOR SOLOMON: Great to be with you, Clancy.

OVERELL: Now, mate, you are living in the true free state at the moment. You're streaming, obviously, coming to us live from Darwin. Tell us a little bit about life up there. It certainly isn't the same as, you know, life in the in the East Coast with these snap lockdowns, or in New South Wales, case, never-ending lockdowns.

GOSLING: Yeah, certainly a lot better than that, mate, although we did have a quick one-week snap lockdown recently, but we bounced out of that after a week. All Territorians did the right thing, and we find ourselves having a following week where we just wore a mask around. Everyone did the right thing and we're free as a bird again. So we've got the Darwin Cup on this Monday coming, so the cup carnival's on. Victoria's out of lockdown. So they're - they they had cancelled their trips to the Territory, but they're on their way back in in droves. So we've taken a bit of a hit in that a lot of people from New South Wales coming up to the Territory for their holidays. But the joint is booming, cause we've done well with COVID and we've played that really vital national role with the Howard Springs facility and getting people back from overseas as well. So every now and again, we have some people come back from overseas with COVID, but they're all handled out at the Howard Springs facility. And yeah, we're doing our best to keep Australia safe.

OVERELL: So tell me about Howard Springs, because everyone talks about Howard Springs. No one really knows what's going on out there. Some of us have seen pictures, you know, it's a little bit of a donga set-up. We kind of talk about this responsibility on the Government to provide federal quarantine facilities. We know that in Toowoomba, the Wagners have been shovel-ready since about December. They've got an international airport there. They could do it. They could get it done in a couple of months. They just need the Government to sign off and probably not even that much government funding. The Prime Minister's continuing to kind of sidestep that one, and will keep them quarantined in luxury hotels inside the CBD of our biggest economy.

Tell us what's going on in Howard Springs. What was it and what is it? Was it there before the virus? And it was an old mining camp. What's going on there?

GOSLING: Yes, so just quickly on Toowoomba, I mean, that's a no-brainer. There's an airport there, fly people in, get it done. And the weird thing is that the Prime Minister asked for advice on how you can get quarantine right last year. And he was given a report in October to say "you need dedicated quarantine facilities like Howard Springs, but around the country, open up more". But now we've had 28 hotel quarantine leaks, it shuts down the economy, costing the Australian economy billions. So well done, Prime Minister, because he was given that advice. He asked for it, he was given it, he's failed to open up more dedicated facilities like Howard Springs, which has played a really important role. It's an old workers camp from the big Japanese gas facility when that was built, Inpex, and there was 5,000 workers out there. They're only using about 2,000 of the rooms at the moment for quarantine so far. Come back from Europe, UK, India, if people come from interstate and it's where there's a lockdown, they spend two weeks there. It costs 10 billion housing fund. And if we get the confidence of the Australian people after the next election, we'll kick that in gear. And that'll be better for people not just in regional Australia, but in the cities as well.

OVERELL: One criticism that Labor copped after the last election loss to the Nightwatchman, a shock election loss actually, on the on the eve of the death of Bob Hawke. But there was a lot of criticism that perhaps Bill and Labor, you know, Labor in general had forgotten what the middle class looked like, a lot of the policies and which have all just been ditched. Actually, I'm not ignoring that as well. A lot of those policies have been ditched, the unpopular ones. But there is a feeling that Labor had gotten to a point where they're looking at an ivory tower and kind of looking back to 20 years ago as to what the middle class looked like, where they I thought everyone looks like Kath and Kim driving a Holden Barina and supplementing their income with a Tupperware party, you know what I mean? And there are a lot more people that exist in that middle now who do have assets and are still very economically anxious but aren't reaping any of the benefits of the policies that came through with that election. How do you reconcile? You know, and I'm sure you've seen it and I'm sure you have no problem bringing it up that you do see people running around, whether they're elected or working as staffers who haven't really lived the life that Labor's trying to advocate for. You know what I mean? You've got a lot of university comrades, maybe packed shelves while they were at Sydney University, but they actually kind of detached from the working man. A lot of chinos with no socks, if you know what I'm saying.

GOSLING: Yeah, I'm hearing you. Yeah. It's a frustration of mine, I guess. When people say that Labor's gone away from our roots, I don't think we can dismiss it entirely. And I've noticed actually, with our preselections for this upcoming election, you've got some people have got a life of working behind them, but there's no doubt that there has been a bit of a political class in uni politics and into local government, or straight into working as an adviser for a federal MP - which mind you, I did that after the military and I saw it as an apprenticeship before running for politics. It was kind of on the back end of 13 years serving the nation and working in Indigenous health and working in the charity sector and working in health services. So I kind of felt like, you know, I've got some life experience, and everyone has different life experiences. And people who are in inner city, particularly Melbourne and Sydney, they might really reflect their communities. But they also need to be very aware that around this country there are a whole bunch of Australians that don't fit into that inner city suburban mould. And I reckon that's why Albo's spent so much time out in the regions over his career, because I think that's where people can - and we do in the Territory from time to time, particularly recently - feel like they're forgotten. And no Australian government is worthy of government if they're leaving any part of the country behind. I reckon we now, Federal Labor, are becoming much more representative of people around the around the country, I'd like to see us win more regional seats and I think we will see that at the next election. But we've got to ensure that we are reflecting and we're much more multicultural. We've got a 50-50 split with blokes and women in our team. So I'm really comfortable in the direction that we're going. But I think we did need to have that adjustment because we were not looking like we represented the whole country.

OVERELL: Yeah, it was kind of a little bit of a - in the wake of Hillary Clinton anyway, there was a lot of parallels that could be drawn. So you think Albo has addressed the fact that, you know, maybe it is worth putting a few blokes who have goatees in as candidates as opposed to, you know, kids with the with the undercut and the and the khaki suit?

GOSLING: Absolutely. Yeah. Heaven forbid someone with a tattoo, a bit of facial hair, or somebody might have said something that they regretted on Facebook 10 years ago. Whatever. Let's keep it real because we know we face real challenges in the future. It doesn't matter whether it's taking our economy to less carbon reliant, the First Nations issues that we've talked about, but real big security issues of the alliance, our relationship with China. And that's why Darwin is so important too, because we are the forward operating base for the nation. We've got the best relationships with our neighbours. I've spent a lot of time going in and out of Indonesia even right at the start of COVID trying to help them with their response. And as soon as we can, we need to get back in there again because our neighbours to our north are just so vital to our future security and prosperity and they're our friends, and we should be helping them a hell of a lot more than we are.

And one thing I've been saying recently is because the government has just ruined the whole narrative around AstraZeneca, for example, we have got millions and millions and millions of AstraZeneca shots, and in September they're going to expire. Now, if we're not going to get to use those, if we're not going to be able to get them