SUBJECTS: VOICE TO PARLIAMENT, NATURE REPAIR PLAN, TIKTOK ON GOVERNMENT PHONES.

PETER STEFANOVIC, HOST: All righty. Let’s go to Canberra. Joining us now is the Environment and Water Minister, Tanya Plibersek. Minister, good to see you. Thanks for your time this morning. Before we get to matters in your portfolio, I do want to ask you about the Voice because it’s to be introduced in the House of Representatives this morning. Many constitutional legal experts still reminded divided though over the legalities. Despite a feel good factor, the wording could lead to legal challenges. Do you think it’s been undercooked?

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: No, I don’t think that at all. And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have a good hard look at the question and the proposal itself, but we keep going back to first principles and asking: What’s this about?  Why do we want to do it?  We’ve got 65,000 years of culture in Australia. We are the only country on earth that has 65,000 years of continuous culture. And our foundational document, our national Constitution, doesn’t recognise that in any way. So, we want to recognise that incredible history so that all Australians can be proud of it. I’m super proud of it.

STEFANOVIC: Sure

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And then the Voice is about advice. The Voice gives advice. If the Parliament doesn’t take it, that’s up to the Parliament. If different departments don’t take it, that’s up to them. It is about recognition and advice. It’s as simple as that.

STEFANOVIC: The first part I don’t think many people have a problem with at all.  I mean, that’s a fair enough point. It’s just the second part that’s the issue. It’s the advice that’s the problem. And there’s a point that’s been made this morning that suggests the draft wording goes beyond ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have a right to participate in decision-making that affects them, because it inserts race into the Constitution in a way that undermines human rights principles of equality. That’s come from Lorraine Findlay. She’s a Human Rights Commissioner.  So, does the wording need to be wound back?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, I think the wording is the product of an enormous amount of advice and consultation, including with very senior ex-judges, constitutional law experts and so on. I think the wording is appropriate and it’s really important to focus on what is being enabled here. The first thing we want to do is make sure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples are giving advice on the matters that relate to them. If everybody thinks that things have been fine, that the 10-year life expectancy gap, the problems with remote Indigenous housing, problems with violence, the gap when it comes to educational attainment and employment – if we’re just going keep doing more of the same, we’ll get more of the same results. Listening to people is how we get better results in all of these areas. It’s a very sensible step forward.

STEFANOVIC: Okay. You’ve introduced a proposal for nature repair, basically creating a nature repair market. Landowners - folks, if you don’t know, landowners essentially get paid for restoring their own land. Minister, how much, say, would a landowner get for reforming a habitat, just one example

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Oh, look, it really depends on the project. But the first thing to say is that it is completely voluntary.  So, a landholder, like a farmer or Indigenous landholders like First Nations communities, would say, “We want to do this project here. We’re going to fence this vulnerable bit of grassland and exclude the cats and the goats and the pigs so we can release bilbies and see the bilby population restored.”  You get a payment up front to do the work and then payments each year for maintaining that piece of land. But the types of projects will be very varied.  So, it can be restoring grasslands, planting food trees for koalas, restoring seagrass meadows in an estuary where the water quality has been improved so you can see the fish and the crab life come back. It could be protecting an older forest, making sure that you’re excluding feral species or weeds. Cool burning. We’ve got a lot of support from the Northern Land Council and Kimberley Land Council and others like that because they have seen the benefits of cool burning for keeping weeds like gamba grass for areas that they’re responsible for. So, it’s any number of projects that you could do, and the value placed on those projects would vary depending on the size of the land and the complexity of the work.

STEFANOVIC: The Greens say that it wouldn’t help koala populations at all and I suppose my question is does this mean developers can just set the price for nature?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, not at all. Not at all. The reason that so many conservation groups are supporting this is because they know that as well as Government effort, on top of Government effort, having more private sector investment in restoring nature means that we can deliver better for the natural environment.  So, we’ve got a number of environmental organisations, the Australian Landcare Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, Landcare, supporting it, and the Northern Land Council, the Kimberley Land Council. They see this as an opportunity of building on Government investment. Getting private sector investment into land repair and conservation as well.  So, I’m not sure why anyone would think it’s a bad idea to have more investment in nature.

STEFANOVIC: Just a final one here, Minister, on TikTok, you’ve got one of the larger TikTok followings in Canberra. Has Home Affairs warned you that you might have to delete your account?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I don’t have it on my phone. We use a completely separate phone.

STEFANOVIC: Would there be a difference between whether it’s under your name or whether it’s a Government device?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes, of course. It’s not linked in any way to any information. None of my emails. None of my work – 

STEFANOVIC: So, it’s on a private phone.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes, exactly. It’s not in any way linked to my email system.

STEFANOVIC:  So, you’ll keep that.  So, is there a suggestion that TikTok is still going to be allowed on Government devices out of fear that China might be offended?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, I read that report this morning. I’m sure that we won’t make any decision based on something as loose as that. We’ll take the advice of our security agencies when we make decisions like this. But I don’t think it’s a big deal to have a separate phone to do this sort of communication. I think it’s good to communicate with people on the platforms that they use most often. I see how often my kids are on TikTok and I think being able to talk to people about what the Government is doing and what we’re doing in the environment portfolio, it’s a great opportunity to do that. I just don’t want to have any potential compromising of my official data, so keeping the two things separate makes sense.

STEFANOVIC: Okay. Tanya Plibersek, we’ll leave it there. Thanks for your time.