Politics with Michelle Grattan

John Blaxland on The Secret Cold War - The Official History of ASIO

In the third volume of The Official History of ASIO series, historians Dr John Blaxland and Dr Rhys Crawley examine the organisation’s role in the years leading to the end of the Cold War.

Blaxland tells Michelle Grattan that this is a story about looking at Australia in the ‘70s and '80s “through the glasses of an ASIO officer or an ASIO agent”.

During the period covered in the book, Blaxland says the Soviet Union was so active in Australia the work of ASIO was not sufficient to cover their activity.

“Effectively, ASIO found itself dealing with a grown Soviet presence and a proliferation of Soviet Bloc consulates and diplomatic presences that were simply beyond it. They weren’t resourced to monitor them all. And so we now know that while ASIO was doing what it could, it was in a position where it was simply outpaced. They did not have the number of officers and agents in place to monitor the incredible growth in the number of diplomats-cum-spies operating in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere,” he says.

In this final volume, which was preceded by The Protest Years and The Spy Catchers, Blaxland and Crawley draw upon ASIO archives and interviews with former spies to piece together a history of one of Australia’s most secretive institutions.

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Music credit: “The Spirit of Russian Love” by Zinaida Troika, covered by Kosta on the Free Music Archive.

Stirling Griff and Skye Kakoschke-Moore on life in the Senate

Nick Xenophon’s two new Senate colleagues, Stirling Griff and Skye Kakoschke-Moore, are no strangers to the political process, having both worked with Xenophon behind the scenes.

In a joint interview, they tell Michelle Grattan about their contrasting experiences in becoming politicians. Kakoschke-Moore says she has had the benefit of being around Xenophon for nearly six years. “So I understand the way he operates,” she says.

Working as a Xenophon adviser, she learnt the ropes of the Senate. “It is so rule-driven and so procedure-driven that I have a great deal of sympathy for people coming into this who have had no exposure at all to the inner workings of Senate procedure.”

Stirling Griff, on the other hand, has had a “huge learning curve”.

“I’m following behind Skye like she’s the mother hen and I imagine I’ll be doing that really for another few more weeks,” he says.

With the government’s industrial relations legislation before the parliament, the Nick Xenophon Team is looking for some amendments.

“Particularly in relation to the building code and requiring building projects, to the greatest extent possible, to use Australian goods and services. So we’ll be looking at the bills closely but we’ll also be keeping an open mind to amendments,” Kakoschke-Moore says.

The pair are dismissive of any move by senator David Leyonhjelm to push for concessions on gun laws in exchange for passage of the industrial relations bills.

“They’re not related and we don’t want to play those games,” Griff says.

Tanya Plibersek on marriage equality and education funding

In the wake of Labor’s rejection of the proposed same-sex marriage plebiscite, speculation has fallen on whether Labor will maintain their planned policy of enforcing a binding vote on marriage equality after the next election. Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek tells Michelle Grattan she doesn’t think the issue will come up at the party’s next national conference.

“I know that the Liberals are trying to whip up some notion that this will be reexamined at the next national conference. I don’t hear anybody in the Labor Party calling for this to be reopened at the next national conference,” she says.

Plibersek, who is Labor’s spokesperson for education, says the government needs to properly fund the university sector.

“When it comes to undergraduate students in particular I’m very concerned about where this government is headed. You only need to look at the United States to see university degrees that cost an arm and a leg, hang a debt sentence around the neck of students and in many cases don’t even have the pay-off of leading to higher paid jobs,” she says.

“So I think we need to be careful about loading students up with debts that really become a burden for them. … You’re talking about students at the same time in their lives as they’re finishing university, they’re often establishing relationships or families, they’re looking to buy a house. It comes at a very difficult time and the inter-generational effects of the type of debt that this government is proposing for students I think has broader social consequences than just being a disincentive to education for many people.”

Plibersek also defends Labor’s criticism of Education Minister Simon Birmingham for raising the possibility of cutting funding to wealthy private schools.

“It’s a distraction. Is he really going to take money off schools? Is he prepared to tell you which schools and how much money? And this is a smokescreen. He would love us to be having the old sectarian fights: state against state, independent verus public, versus Catholic, and frankly none of that matters. What matters is that we properly fund our schools system and they’re not going to do that.”

Mark Dreyfus on George Brandis’ solicitor-general controversy

A contentious move by Attorney-General George Brandis to restrict access to legal advice from the solicitor-general is continuing to raise controversy and questions about its legal validity. Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus tells Michelle Grattan that he sees this as “the most extraordinary power grab by the Attorney-General in the history of the office”.

“We already know that he’s held up requests. Why? I can’t say, but the deputy secretary of the department giving evidence to the Senate committee last week said that one of the requests had taken 10 days.

"Now very often it’s urgent that you get legal advice. It’s never before been the position that secretaries of commonwealth departments, other ministers, the prime minister, the governor-general have been told that the written consent of the attorney-general is necessary before they get the advice of the solicitor-general,” he says.

The solicitor-general has to be the primary source of advice on the most important matters of the government, Dreyfus says.

“I’m not for a moment suggesting that in a complex, large government with 168,000 Australian public servants that every single legal question that the government comes into contact with has to go to the solicitor-general. Clearly that at a practical level couldn’t be the case but matters like the plebiscite bill, which the parliament is now dealing with, or the prorogation of parliament that occurred earlier this year or the citizenship bill - they are matters that the government should go to the solicitor-general [with] first.”

On the question of whether Labor should stick with its planned policy of enforcing a binding vote on marriage equality after the next election, Dreyfus says he thinks it is a “human rights matter”.

“That’s my own view and I argued in favour and voted in favour of the binding vote and that would remain my position…and lets see if it’s the position that would give difficulty because by the time of the next Labor conference, this matter may well have been dealt with in the parliament.”

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Music credit: “Storytime” by Dlay on the Free Music Archive

Simon Birmingham on the new VET loan scheme

A new vocational education and training student loan scheme will aim at putting a stop to rorting by dodgy private colleges. Education Minister Simon Birmingham tells Michelle Grattan the new scheme is being built from the ground up. 

"First and foremost, [there will be] strong barriers to entry for the types of vocational education providers who can offer loans as part of it," he says. 

The reforms will see the number of courses available drop from than 800 to "somewhere around the 300 or 400 mark", Birmingham says. "There are a range of different areas that have been subsidised over recent years - but certainly very odd areas - such as Chinese veterinary medicine, will no longer make the cut. A number of I guess lifestyle-type courses is the best way to define some of them."  

Birmingham also talks on his negotiations for a new school funding agreement, and says he will soon announce a new higher education policy to start in 2018.  

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Music credit: "Natural", by Dlay on the Free Music Archive