E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SARAH FERGUSON, HOST: Welcome to 7:30.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS, AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good evening, Sarah.
FERGUSON: Now, you've just delivered your valedictory speech. We've just seen some excerpts of it. How will history describe you?
SHORTEN: We'll have to find out. I think it's been a complete privilege to serve in Parliament. No one in my family has ever been a politician. I think I've been exceedingly lucky. I'm grateful to the voters who sent me to Parliament six times in my area. I feel very lucky to have served on the front bench continually and I'm rapt to have met so many great Australians and helped work on important projects like fixing the NDIS, creating the NDIS, fixing Robodebt, and indeed leading our great party for nearly six years.
FERGUSON: I want to ask you a question about one of the things you said today. You urged your colleagues sitting around you today to be ambitious. On tax reform is one of the things you said. So, what would have to change before another Labor leader decided to be as brave or maybe as reckless as you were on tax?
SHORTEN: This nation needs to make sure that we hand on a better set of conditions to the next generations than we currently have. At the moment in Australia, property is taxed preferentially, that's ok. But income tax is taxed too highly. And the truth of the matter is that our young people are the victims of the status quo of the tax system. We don't want to be a world where the best predictor of someone in their 20s and 30s ever owning a house is their bank balance of their parents.
Speaker B. So, what does that mean about the ambition of your Labor colleagues who are listening to you today? Do you think they wanted to hear you make that message, be more ambitious on tax?
SHORTEN: I was actually challenging the whole Parliament. It wasn't just one party. I wasn't saying anything new that I hadn't said before. And I think that when Jim Chalmers modified the Morrison tax cuts for just the top end of earners and made sure 13.6 million people got a tax cut, there was tax reform. But yes, tax is a journeyman issue of politics. We need to constantly say, is it fit for purpose in the 21st century? And it is fundamentally unfair that you can buy a 10 or $20 million building, do nothing with it, and then get a discount tax rate when you sell it and on the profit. And yet people go to work every day teaching nursing, doing the garbage, you know, working in universities, and they've got to pay higher marginal rates of Tax.
FERGUSON: So, come back to my question. What would have to change before another Labor leader was as ambitious on tax, especially going into an election, as you were?
SHORTEN: Well, first of all, the current government has got a lot of ambitious policies, so I'm not going to.
FERGUSON: Is that ambitious enough for you?
SHORTEN: They've got ambitious policies. I'm going. But I did want to challenge the Parliament in the future. The Parliament's where we're meant to deal with the big ideas. The core of my story was a call to arms. It was on all of us, the Liberals, the Labor, the Teals, even the Green political party, to say that this nation needs us to work together. I declare today I'm proudly a moderate, I'm in the centre. But I do think we can probably do better with our First Nations people. I do think that we need to be a good neighbour in the Pacific. I do think we need to revisit our tax system. Is it fit for purpose for 2030 and 2040? And we absolutely need to get a better deal for our young people.
FERGUSON: Alright, I just want to come back to you sitting, as I've watched you sitting in Parliament many times when you're sitting there, as you do sort of towards the end of that front bench, do you ever look over at Anthony Albanese at the dispatch box and think, that could have. That should have been me?
SHORTEN: No.
FERGUSON: That never crossed your mind?
SHORTEN: Yeah. I lost the 2019 election. Bitterly disappointing, bitterly disappointing. But I dusted myself off because at the end of the day, it's not about us, it's not about the individual parliamentarians, it's about the people. And I guess I've been on a journey in the last 17 years. You know, it's a very tribal party warrior and that's fine that we have a party political system, but these days I'd rather argue about what's important and not worry about what's not so important. Also, I've learnt, don't worry about what you can't change, worry about what you can change. And Anthony gave me the opportunity to help fix the NDIS, which of course I've been intimately involved with since before its inception. I did have the chance to make sure we had a Robodebt Royal Commission. I did have the chance to reduce call waiting times at Centrelink. So, you can be a person who worries about what you don't have, where you can grab every opportunity. And being a parliamentarian is incredibly lucky and privileged and use every thankless political minute and run 60 seconds of complete effort.
FERGUSON: There you go with your Rudyard Kipling. Peter Dutton has been a very effective Opposition Leader. Now, with the bit of distance that you have and knowing exactly what that role is like, how should the government be countering that effectiveness? He's effectively stolen the agenda from the government for parts of the year.
SHORTEN: I don't think he's really stolen the agenda. Not that Peter would ask my advice. He's not a bad person personally, but he wouldn't ask my advice. But I'll give it. I'll do some more homework. This country can't just rely on knowing what you're against. They've got to know what you're for. And the only policy that really has emerged from it is this sort of unfunded economic nuclear fantasy where, frankly, it'd be the. The biggest government intervention in nuclear industry since the Soviet Union. They got. It's a Seinfeld burger. It's a. It's a lot of. It's a, you know, Seinfeld. There used to be shows largely about nothing. Pete's got to do some more homework.
FERGUSON: Your ability to-Your ability with lines hasn't gone away. It's obviously going to travel with you into your next job.
SHORTEN: Now, you said it's all about just. People don't want to hear crap. They want to hear you answer the question. And my honest answer is, I don't think the opposition's ready for government. I think they're risky.
FERGUSON: What is it about a life in politics that you won't miss?
SHORTEN: The travel. Some of the toxic debate. Social media is the Wild West. Some of the.
FERGUSON: Has it got harder to be a politician since you started out?
SHORTEN: I think so. Also, what's happened in social media is it's encouraged people to sit in echo chambers and get angry with people who agree with you. But there's a lot of good things about politics. You have the ability, if you work hard enough, to turn an idea into an outcome. When I started in politics, there was no NDIS, and for all of its failings, we've now created an institution which now supports 680,000 profoundly disabled people. I said in my goodbye to Parliament that occasionally the Parliament gets it right. Medicare, compulsory superannuation. Now, the NDIS, I think they're examples of Australian exceptionalism. There was a famous 19th century poet, Aussie poet, said, you know, one of the great attributes is that be strong in your own troubles and kind in another's. And the Australian exceptionalism means that we've got a pretty good national health system, a pretty good pension, you know, compulsory super system, and we are getting towards a good disability system where you, I or anyone we love has a profound disability. We can look after them.
FERGUSON: What happens to the old numbers man, Bill Shorten? Where does he go?
SHORTEN: Oh, that suit's hanging up in the, you know, in the garage. I'll take it down to the Vinnie's.
FERGUSON: There'll be lots of people queuing up for it. Bill Shorten? Congratulations on your farewell speech and thank you very much indeed for talking to us.
SHORTEN: And I'll see you soon.