E&OE TRANSCRIPT
ALI MOORE, HOST: Well, I wonder whether you feel safe in your workplace. It goes without saying that you should, but for staff at Centrelink, safety has been a real issue of concern. You were hearing in the news headlines there that this follows a stabbing of a Centrelink employee in Melbourne earlier this year. Well, the government has responded to a review of security. It's announced a national overhaul. Bill Shorten is the Minister for Government Services. Bill Shorten, welcome to drive.
BILL SHORTEN, MINSTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Hi.
MOORE: So, what does the overhaul mean in practice?
SHORTEN: There's 318 service centres where people can go and sort out My Aged Care or Medicare or Child Support or various social security payments. There's about 6000 people who work there on a daily basis. What I've noticed when I became the new Minister is, I saw a number of reports of assaults and then what we saw, very tragically about 140 days ago plus, the end of May. A fantastic woman, a team leader, senior team leader, much beloved in Airport West Service Centre, was filling in for the one security guard at lunchtime and a person who was known to the system were told they can't come into the Centre because of behavioural problems in the past, came in and stabbed Joeanne Casser. Now Joeanne is alive, she will have a permanent impairment. I've got to know her and her family since this shocking event, but when I heard about it, I immediately reached out to Graham Ashton, the former head of the Victoria Police Force. So, a cop, not a sort of theoretician or a top end of town consultant, just someone who knows policing. And I said I've got to keep the people here safe. So, I asked him could he do me the principles of reform within two weeks and a full set of recommendations in eight. He did that. He went out and spoke to lots of workers, spoke to the union, spoke to senior management, did a fantastic job. And then I've taken those recommendations to my colleagues in the government and said, right, we need to do these 44 recommendations and some of the headline issues in that. And what's great is, my colleagues, we get money’s tough and tight, but keeping people safe is important. And every day, unfortunately, people in some of our service centres carry additional stress. And this very good ex-policeman, using his decades of experience, has identified things which the system can do better to at least improve the safety of not just the 5000 people who work there, but they get 10,000 visits, sorry, 10 million visits a year.
MOORE: And, Minister, obviously part of it is putting in extra security in places that are deemed high risk. How do you decide where the extra resources are going to go? Is it really obvious where there's a higher threat level?
SHORTEN: One thing I promise you is I ain't deciding it. We've got a security branch at Services Australia, which over the last decade, in my opinion, hasn't been properly funded, so we're beefing that up too. But they make the assessments based on data and incidents and whatnot and they're pretty experienced. There's a lot of quite smart people in Services Australia and they're very committed to their customers. But I also recognise it's only a very small cohort where the problem is, but there's probably about 3000 people who have, I don't judge them in terms of the circumstances which led them to be banned from coming into the office, but they've still got a right to get their payments. But there's people who have had a track record of escalating behaviours and we need to be better at sort of managing the risk.
MOORE: That's the de-escalation training. What does that look like?
SHORTEN: That’s proposed, but the headline issues, we're more than doubling the number of security guards. I never want to have a system again, and I found out to my surprise, where your poor security guard has to go and have a lunch break or a toilet break. And so you got to have two people at some of those places, not one. So, we're putting 250 extra staff on or contractor trained security people. But it's more than that. The staff are trained. There's a lot of brilliant social workers, a lot of people very good. I didn't want Graham Ashton to give me a report, which either said, it's all just about staff training, although there's a bit of that, because that somehow gaslights the staff and says, oh, if you're trained, then nothing, it's on you. And I've been in enough workplaces in my life to know that systems of which are safe shouldn't just always come back to the employee having to have a black belt in karate or a PhD in social work. But I also asked Graham, I said, you can tell me that mental health is a problem in Australia, and it is. But sometimes when we get real day problems, it's possible for experts to just say, the problem is so big, it almost becomes, well, we can't solve everything. So, there becomes a sort of kick it down the road attitude. And for me, this is just about helping staff be relieved of some of their pressure. And the people coming in there, I get there's a lot of moving parts. I don't judge. Every Australian, regardless of their circumstance, has a human right to the safety net, but we've just got to make sure the people who deliver it are not being put in harm's way, unnecessarily when we can do better.
MOORE: And of course, everyone listening would agree with you there. Do you think that the issue of threats to staff has become worse? Are we less well behaved than we were, say, a couple of years ago?
SHORTEN: I think there's an increase, but not at a startling level. Maybe at the low level, rudeness, definite increase, maybe at the very top end of violence an increase. But the people doing the perpetrating, violence, are a very small cohort. So, I think there's things we can do to reduce risk. Now, I get that some people say overhaul the whole social security system. That's true. And we are trying to make it more humane. We had the Robodebt Royal Commission, but I'm not going to put all acts of violence down to general structural problems in society. Sometimes people, whatever their circumstances, just do the wrong thing. And what I discovered is that the public servants, Commonwealth public servants, have fallen between a gap into a crack. If you work at Centrelink or Medicare and you are assaulted and then you see the person who did it around, you personally have to take an AVO under state law to stop them coming near you. I think that if someone who's assaulted at work, it's because they work for the Commonwealth and the taxpayer and the citizens. So, the organisation should take up the shield and follow those matters through, rather than the individual worker having to be their own champion, do it on their own. So, one of the law changes we're proposing, which we'll make into the Parliament, is that the organisation, we talked to the state jurisdictions, can take the AVO application rather than just leaving it to an individual. I think is we are going to increase penalties. I'm not saying that increasing penalties will deter someone who is just determined to do wrong thing, but it does tell the public servants, actually, we do value what you do and we think you're worth that extra bit of effort.
MOORE: Bill Shorten, you're listening to Bill Shorten, the Minister for Government Services. Just before I let you go, can I ask you a quick question about the Israel-Gaza war? And essentially from the perspective of being someone who really understands this city and knows Melbourne really well? Mike Burgess, the head of ASIO, put out a statement yesterday saying he remains concerned about the potential for opportunistic violence with little or no warning. I just want to get your take on how you read the response in this city.
SHORTEN: There are some people who feel incredibly strongly about this, as they are entitled to. For Australians of Jewish heritage, they saw scenes come out of Israel which their grandparents and the survivors of the Holocaust had told them about, and they don't feel safe.
MOORE: So, you think they don't feel safe in Melbourne?
SHORTEN: I think some people don't, yep. Now, I'm not an expert. I get there's a lot of legitimate debates and grievance about how Palestine and Israel can develop a two state solution. But what happened on Saturday has got nothing to do with a long term solution dealing with legitimate grievances from all points of view, that was sanctioned barbarity and torture, using 21st century technology to act in a way that we thought was consigned to the history books. So, I get there's a lot of hurt out there. I know people want to protest and do all of that and I get the right to protest, too, but there is a strand of anti-Israel, which is anti-Semitic. I feel for ordinary people on both sides of those borders, but this barbarity is, I don't equate Hamas to everyday Palestinians. This has got nothing to do with long term peace, security and stability. It's just an unmitigated disaster of horror and evil. And I just say to people here, we don't need to translate those arguments here. Somewhere along the line, we just got to draw a breath and just say, this is just terrible. It's just incredibly tortuous, shocking pain for people. But somewhere along the line, we don't want to bring those arguments to this country. People are entitled to their views. They can be proud of heritage, but people in this country are entitled, to just feel safe.
MOORE: So, should both sides of this conflict be free to hold commemorations, protests, however you wish to describe it, as long as they remain respectful?
SHORTEN: When you say both sides, I don't think there are both sides in this issue. When it's Hamas v. Israel, I don't think Hamas represents, Hamas represents, the peaceful aspirations of Palestinian people. So, I don't know anyone who really would want to protest and celebrate Hamas’ war crimes and murder and anti-Semitism. Why you would go out in the street to say good on Hamas. I can't understand how people think.
MOORE: What about those who are protesting about…
SHORTEN: Yeah, I respect the right of Palestinian people, of Palestinian heritage and people who support them to say, hey, this is a disaster for everyday Palestinians. I really get that, just as I support the right of Australians of Jewish heritage to speak up. But Israel did not deserve what happened on Saturday.
MOORE: Bill Shorten. thank you very much for talking to us this afternoon.
SHORTEN: Thank you.