E&OE….
Topics: 500km Walk for Autism, Bronwyn Bishop, length of parliamentary terms
MARK PARTON:
We can go straight to Greg Hunt right now who is in a beautiful, beautiful part of the world. How much longer have you go to go on this walk, Greg?
GREG HUNT:
So today is Day 10 of 19 days so it’s the middle day. By the end of the day we will be close to 250km through and some of the days next week are a little bit longer because we’re out in the less populated areas of the electorate. But it’s nice talking to people who join you all day long and then standing thigh deep in the bay in the freezing waters of Port Phillip in the evening to chill the legs down.
MARK PARTON:
Yeah, how are the legs holding up, Greg?
GREG HUNT:
Well I would like to say steel springs, but they’re not quite there. Ah look, the walking is really good and so they’re going quite well but you get, oddly enough, heel soreness as well as calf soreness, so just working away, but visiting all the schools and the kids are really aware of autism now and they’re learning to take care of each other.
And those with autism are often talking about it and we have about 230,000 people in Australia with autism and all up what we’re seeing is quite a revolution in the way they’re treated and managed and their capacity to really try as they go through school and leave school.
MARK PARTON:
Five hundred kilometres walking over the best part of a month – could’ve done it in a couple of hours in a chopper, Greg, and I dare say that on your walk, that particular issue must’ve been brought up on a number of occasions by voters?
GREG HUNT:
Oh look, actually very few people whilst I’ve been out walking have raised it, but I’ve certainly heard all the media on it and I did an interview a day before the walk started and I said look, I know this was wrong and it was wrong and I did urge that it be considered as an error of judgement and Bronwyn Bishop has come out and called it an error of judgement and is paying it back and paying it back with a penalty and I think that’s a reasonable thing to do.
MARK PARTON:
I don’t know that it’s done though and I fear that the Speaker will never, ever politically recover from choppergate and the things that follow. I think that it would probably be better for all and sundry if she was no longer in that role.
GREG HUNT:
Look, I respect your views – I take a different view understandably, but this was an error and it was wrong and it’s entirely right and proper and appropriate that it is paid back and it is paid back with a penalty.
MARK PARTON:
Yeah well I think that what the country is going to call for now is a very forensic examination, not necessarily of what’s gone on in the past, but how we can make sure that it doesn’t happen in the future and to, if they have to be changed dramatically, these rules involving parliamentary entitlements and travel and everything else, because people are jack of this – they don’t want it to continue.
GREG HUNT:
Well look I think it’s absolutely critical that everybody, of all sides, doesn’t just abide by the rules, but abides by the spirit of what people would expect as the highest and most proper conduct and that comes with the role of being a parliamentarian. That’s your duty to be an exemplar, not a duty to be somebody who merely complies with the law – let me put it that way.
MARK PARTON:
Greg, an interesting letter to the editor in the Canberra Times this morning we mentioned earlier and it’s drawn a fair bit of discussion. There’s an internet petition that’s amassing a lot of signatures around the country and it is calling for two things and that is for parliamentary terms to be increased to four years, but also to make sure that Members, bar the party leader, can serve only two terms, just two terms and then they have to walk away and get on to being just a regular citizen. How does that idea grab you?
GREG HUNT:
So look I agree with half of that. I would say this because pretty close to a decade ago I wrote an opinion piece to one of the newspapers talking about four year terms. I think that would bring Australia into line with a lot of the Western world. I think that that would be a preferable place to be. It’s something I’ve talked about for a long while, I haven’t spent a lot of my time talking about it but I’m not opposed to that.
The other idea of two terms as a limit, honestly you would – the people you would want as Ministers are those that have developed an understanding of governance and the community and in a Westminster system I think that that part would be a mistake. That’s my personal view.
MARK PARTON:
I can understand why some people are calling for it because there’s a belief that somehow if you’re representing in Parliament that you’re removed from the general population and that you’re not out there on the ground walking from Hastings to wherever, but you’re living in a completely different world and that if indeed we turned over elected members a lot more often, that we’d get people in Parliament who are more genuinely connected.
But I take your point board that, you know, being a part of the machine of government and doing it effectively is not all that easy and experience is needed.
GREG HUNT:
Well look a good parliamentarian has two jobs. One is to represent their own electorate and I talk about this with the kids in the schools and, you know, sleeping out on French Island and meeting some of the communities in the evening and in the morning, we talked about what they wanted on their town, so you’re representing them – on their island and in their town – you’re representing them. But you’re also helping to run a $400 billion, effectively, national budget.
And so when you look at the size of that, you think gosh, a $400 billion budget, managing that is immensely important in and getting the settings right can determine prosperity, happiness or misery for enormous numbers of people if you create projects and programmes that simply cannot work, so that understanding of those two things together is, in my mind, absolutely critical.
MARK PARTON:
Alright. Thanks for coming on this morning Greg.
GREG HUNT:
Ok take care. Bye, bye.
(ENDS)