THE HON. MARK DREYFUS QC MP
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
POLLIEGRAPH, ABC MELBOURNE
WEDNESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2019
SUBJECTS: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Cardinal George Pell, climate change and energy policy.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN, HOST: Mark Dreyfus is the sitting ALP member for the seat of Isaacs, and he sits on a somewhat marginal electorate. It's quite narrow isn't it Mark Dreyfus?
DREYFUS: Good to be with you Raf. Yes, it's 2.2 per cent after the redistribution in July last year.
EPSTEIN: A closely fought battle.
DREYFUS: Maybe.
EPSTEIN: Maybe. Mark Dreyfus is also the Shadow Attorney-General and you've also got other responsibilities.
DREYFUS: I'm the Shadow Minister for National Security.
EPSTEIN: When you heard the news yesterday about the verdict with George Pell what went through your mind?
DREYFUS: I think I was shocked. Like all Australians the guilty verdict for serious crimes against a very senior churchman shocked all Australians. Id perhaps like to acknowledge, particularly for the very many survivors and their supporters this guilty verdict, the case and the reporting of it, may have brought up painful memories and Id want to say to all survivors should be reassured that they are not alone, and they have our support. But back to the case - it's shocking. This is, as has been widely reported, a finding of guilt against the most senior member of the Catholic hierarchy ever and it not only brings back all of the immense weight of evidence that we learned through the five years of the Royal Commission established by Julia Gillard - the Child Sex Abuse in Institutions Royal Commission.
EPSTEIN: Were you Attorney-General when that was established?
DREYFUS: I was. And I worked hard to make sure that we got the right Commissioners; that the Terms of Reference were right; that the Royal Commission had the powers that it needed. We amended the Royal Commission Act to make sure that Commissioners could both sit alone and also take evidence in private because we were conscious that some survivors might wish to give their evidence in private. And in the end, over 8000 survivors gave evidence in a range of ways publicly, privately in writing. And having read the 17 volumes of the Royal Commission report it held a mirror up to our nation and it's not a good picture.
EPSTEIN: Ill ask a question about the Royal Commission because one of the other people who gave a character reference for George Pell, Greg Craven, believes it was unduly focused on the Catholic Church. But if I can turn to the former Prime minister, John Howard first of all, I think it's worth pointing out, if people only gave character references for those who are innocent and of completely good character there'd be no character references. So the very nature of the system, is that people get found guilty of terrible things yet they still find people who stick up for them. The former prime minister, we did ask him to come onto the program, we didn't receive a response so I'm taking that as a not available. He was one of ten who submitted a character reference for George Pell in his sentencing hearing. Former cabinet minister and former ambassador to Italy, Amanda Vanstone, joined us earlier. She said that she too would have provided a reference. [plays grab]
EPSTEIN: That's Amanda Vanstone speaking to us in the last hour. Mark Dreyfus is with us, the Shadow Attorney-General. I think you heard more of that conversation Mark Dreyfus? What did you make of that?
DREYFUS: Well, Amanda has of course acknowledged, and you've acknowledged Raf, that you only get a character reference after someones been found guilty. And I think it's always a very personal matter. For some people, the crime for which the person has been found guilty is going to be so serious that they think this is not the person that I thought I knew. And that might prevent them as a matter of personal decision from giving any character evidence. Others might feel that they can confine, they can put the finding of guilt in some way to one side and assist the court in the complex process of sentencing.
EPSTEIN: Do you think it was ok for a former prime minister to provide a character reference in this circumstance?
DREYFUS: As I say, it's a truly personal decision but it would be understandable either way and I can conceive that some crimes, as I said, are just so serious that one would not wish to give character evidence. But the courts entitled to take into account good works, other good aspects of the convicted person and it's one of the reasons why judges often say that the sentencing process is one of the most difficult parts of their jobs. If they are assisted by some other people in the community or perhaps respected members of the community coming forward and saying this is what I know of the convicted man then that's all to the good but it's a personal matter.
EPSTEIN: There's a fair bit of commentary in the conservative newspapers doubting the verdict.
DREYFUS: There's a lot of commentary.
EPSTEIN: What do you make of that?
DREYFUS: I would condemn that commentary. This is a finding by 12 members of the jury who heard evidence over about a four week period, who deliberated over three-and-a-half days. The commentators who are keenly picking over what they believe to be small pieces of exculpatory evidence and use that to attack this verdict reached by 12 Australian citizens - I think it's quite wrong.
EPSTEIN: You're allowed to debate things in a free society.
DREYFUS: Lets be very cautious. We set a very high bar Raf for a finding of guilt in our criminal justice system. The 12 members of the jury have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged crimes were committed, and the 12 members of this jury, after three and half days of deliberation have found unanimously that the crimes were committed. No one who is engaging in the commentary today heard all the evidence. They didn't hear the addresses to the jury by the prosecutor, by the very skilled Robert Richter; or the charge to the jury by the Chief Judge of the County Court, His Honour Peter Kidd. And I think that if you haven't heard the evidence, and if you haven't listened to the addresses to the jury or heard the judges charge, you should be extraordinarily cautious, and some of these commentators haven't been, before offering a view.
EPSTEIN: I do want to move on to what might happen if you win the election - things around especially suppression orders and defamation but just on the Royal Commission, you as Attorney-General, set up with the-then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
DREYFUS: Id want to pay tribute to Nicola Roxon, my predecessor as Attorney-General and Jenny Macklin, who is soon to retire because both of them had a very, very big hand in setting it up.
EPSTEIN: I don't doubt success has many parents. Greg Craven says that the Commission unduly focused on the Catholic Church. He is the Vice Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University of course. But he feels that strongly; hes written about that extensively. Is he right?
DREYFUS: Well I think one of the things that the Royal Commission uncovered was an extraordinary extent in very many institutions, in the Catholic Church, in different orders, in different schools, in different institutions as well as looking at, Ill name them, the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, the Salvation Army and Anglican institutions - in no sense was this Royal Commission, and State institutions, State Government institutions, Northern Territory institutions, in no sense was this Royal Commission confined to the Catholic Church. But if quite a lot of its deliberations and very many of the accounts given by survivors were concerned with abuse in the Catholic Church that's because very clearly from the report of this Royal Commission a great deal of abuse occurred within Catholic institutions. And I'm sorry that that concerns professor Craven but that's the direct report of the Royal Commission.
EPSTEIN: Catherine's got a, I'm not sure if it is a question or a comment to be honest - Catherine calling from Cheltenham, what did you want to say Catherine?
CATHERINE: Hi Raf and hi Mark. You're my local member here in Cheltenham so keep up the good work.
DREYFUS: Thank you Catherine.
CATHERINE: No worries. Just a comment. I just read The Age's piece on the Pell case and apparently the lawyer for the defence told the court that he disagreed with the prosecution's submissions that the crimes were a breach of trust. He said that they weren't a breach of trust because the boys weren't known to Pell before committing the crime so there was no existing relationship. But of course in my view that is utter rubbish because unfortunately as we know with those positions of power there comes significant positional trust, if you like, so I think that's just, for someone with that level of experience, I know he's been paid a lot to defend him but just beggars belief that that's an argument at all.
EPSTEIN: Look I wasn't at all aware of that one Catherine. I'm not sure how much Mark has seen of the reporting today. It is always difficult to comment on a case. But just before I leave it, the description Robert Richter gave - he doesn't actually publicly say that he concedes that his client is guilty, but he has to act as though his client is guilty in a sentencing hearing.
DREYFUS: Absolutely.
EPSTEIN: And he described it as plain vanilla offending. There's been a lot of upset about that. Is it fair to use a term like that in a sentencing hearing?
DREYFUS: Robert Richter is saying everything he can to reduce the penalty that his Honour Judge Kidd is going to impose on Cardinal Pell.
EPSTEIN: But is there a community bandwidth you can stray outside of in making those arguments?
DREYFUS: I can very much understand why people were offended to hear that phrase - again I haven't been in court. The context may well have been trying to put a view to the judge as to where the offending, the serious offending fits in the range of offences - that's what he was trying to do. Speaking for myself it is a very unfortunate phrase.
EPSTEIN: Les has called from Yarraville on a far more traditional bit of political discussion. This is PollieGraph. The Coalition is unable to join us today. We actually spoke to the Environment Minister about their newly revealed emissions policy. But Les is calling. Mark Dreyfus has had environment responsibilities in the past. Whats your query Les?
LES: I wouldn't mind Mark your views on the government's bizarre policy of their big stick policy. That's the one Raf where the government, if they are not happy with energy companies, can seize their assets if they think they are behaving poorly. Mark I would have thought this policy might have come directly from Venezuela.
EPSTEIN: It's a soft serve Les. You've got to give him a hard question. Not easy questions. You know he doesn't like it..
LES: Well I think he should be putting greater weight on this Mark because this is a policy that even Fidel Castro did not embrace. I mean it's a policy that is completely contrary to the Liberal party philosophy, private market.
EPSTEIN: Wait, Ill get a view from Mark, Les, just one moment. This is an idea initially it would have given the minister the ability to get an energy company to sell something if they were being uncompetitive, Ill call it that. Now the minister can ask a court to think about getting an energy company to sell off something. They say it's all about stopping the big energy companies making tons of money Mark Dreyfus.
DREYFUS: It's not even clear that that's still their policy. Who would know what the policy of the Liberal party is on energy.
EPSTEIN: Well they said it. Just because they haven't put it up in parliament doesn't mean it's not their policy.
DREYFUS: They haven't put it up in parliament - it's not clear that they are going to proceed with it. I agree with Les that it is completely inconsistent with what we understood to be Liberal party ideology. Market intervention is pretty extraordinary.
EPSTEIN: You are friends of big energy companies. This is a policy that will deliver lower prices. That's the clear argument.
DREYFUS: What nonsense. We know that renewables, more renewables, are going to deliver in the medium and long-term, cheaper prices. We've got a regurgitation of a failed Abbott policy with a new badge from Morrison yesterday. And today we've got a regurgitation of the Turnbull policy on Snowy 2.0 but they're not abandoning their desire, which they keep talking about, to open more coal fired power stations which will make Snowy 2.0 not work.
EPSTEIN: They're talking about the possibility of underwriting them if the numbers stack up compared to other projects.
DREYFUS: And that is directly inconsistent with Snowy 2.0. What Snowy 2.0 needs is more renewables.
EPSTEIN: Can I ask you about Labor's policy? Is it clear? I'm not sure, I don't think it is clear at all. Labor's got a very ambitious Paris target which will clearly appeal to people who want to vote for Labor. It is not at all clear, beyond electricity, how Labor actually gets there.
DREYFUS: We've got a range of policies that we've announced already and were going to be announcing more policies between now and the election, be in no doubt.
EPSTEIN: But transport, agriculture, it's really hard, cutting emissions in those sectors is much tougher than electricity. It's not clear at all how Labor is going to get there.
EPSTEIN: Just remember, we had a comprehensive climate change policy as at September 2013 when we lost office. The Liberals tried to wreck almost all of it. Some bits of it survived like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation; like ARENA. Other bits of it were abandoned by the Liberals and ever since Australia's emissions have been rising. Were going to have a sector specific set of policies which is what is needed.
EPSTEIN: Not much time to have a look at it all. It's pretty complicated stuff.
DREYFUS: Well my colleague Mark Butler has been working for five years on this set of policies some of it has been announced already. We offered to work with the government to have the National Energy Guarantee another policy which the government has abandoned. I think it's shameful that we've got a government that doesn't think it needs to have proper climate change policy and doesn't have a coherent energy policy.
EPSTEIN: Let me ask you a final question on firstly suppression because it's tougher for a federal government to deal with. We only learnt about the verdict on George Pell yesterday because suppression orders were lifted. The Law Council wants this to change you cant have suppressions in a digital age. This story had been written about by overseas media, but we couldn't report on it so the reporters who were in the court room couldn't report on it. Can a federal government change that?
DREYFUS: The great bulk of criminal law in Australia is dealt with by state courts by state legislation. All courts have the power to make a suppression order or at least try to make a suppression order. But the problem of it is in a digital age we don't have a small group of publishers to whom the order can be directed, a few newspapers, a couple of radio stations and a group of television stations. Instead everybody is a publisher. That's what the digital age has given us. And I think were going to have to rethink the way in which suppression orders, whether they're even useful
EPSTEIN: A Federal Bill Shorten Government would want the suppression order regime to change?
DREYFUS: I think that just as the law of defamation, the law of privacy has to now adapt to the digital age in which were all living, so too suppression orders will have to adapt. I don't think we can pretend that the world in which suppression orders were developed when there was a small number of publishers, to whom those orders could be directed, exists anymore. And that's what Arthur Moses at the Law Council was talking about in his statements earlier today saying: we really have to rethink this.
EPSTEIN: So you support the Law Council in that?
DREYFUS: I don't think they've come up with the complete answer yet either. I think we will have to look at it and at the same time ensure as far as we possibly can that people in Australia get a fair trial. We've got a fine system of justice in this country. No one is above the law in this country. But we need to have fair trials and that's really at the base of why we have suppression orders it is to make sure there isn't prejudicial material published that gets to juries and clouds their minds about the facts that they have to look at in a trial. But were in a digital age where there are a million publishers.
EPSTEIN: Ill leave it there. Thank you so much for your time.
DREYFUS: Thanks very much Raf.
