Obviously it’s been a very difficult week. As an Opposition, our focus needs to be on holding the Labor Government to account, and to be frank, there’s lots of matters upon which we can hold them to account, and also building up a suite of policies to take to the next election. So that needs to be our focus, and any time we spend diverted from that focus is not a good week.
Trudy McIntosh
Well on that, then, should the Opposition Leader have been more decisive in either forcing the apology much earlier? It was allowed to bleed on for more than a week. Should that have been more decisive from Sussan?
Senator Scarr
I think Sussan was quite clear in her statement that she wanted to provide Jacinta some time and space in order to assess how Jacinta was going to respond to the issue. That obviously went over a number of days. Jacinta then made the comments which you replayed for your viewers, and in that context, in terms of cabinet solidarity, in terms of Westminster principles, Jacinta’s position obviously became untenable. And it doesn’t really matter who you are, if you’re a member of a Ministry or a Shadow Ministry, you need to be able to express confidence in your leader.
Trudy McIntosh
It seemed to bring up some of these tensions which had been bubbling below the surface about leadership within the Liberal Party. What do you say to your colleagues, including Jane Hume, Sarah Henderson, this week who have been publicly questioning how this has been handled. What’s your message to back benchers? They’re not bound by that Shadow Cabinet solidarity. Should they be a bit more quiet in their criticism?
Senator Scarr
I don’t think it’s up to me to give advice to fellow colleagues. I leave their comments and their approach to themselves. But what I would say is this, it’s pretty well known that being Opposition Leader is the toughest job in politics, and I think we’ve seen one of the reasons for that assessment over the course of the last week. It is a difficult job. The Coalition suffered a very damaging election defeat just a few months ago. Sussan is doing her best taking us forward in terms of providing a responsible Opposition, building up a new suite of policies to take to the next election, but being Opposition Leader is a tough job, and I think we’ve seen a bit of that over the last few weeks.
Trudy McIntosh
Well, let’s get to that rebuild from the election defeat. And I mean, it’s not the first one. There was questions raised in the 2022 defeat as well about how the Coalition mishandled its pitch to multicultural communities across the country. Part of your task is to try and rebuild that. How are you planning to change how the Coalition is viewed amongst those communities?
Senator Scarr
Well, I can tell you today that I was at the Papua New Guinea 50th Independence Day Celebrations with our wonderful PNG diaspora community. I then went to a Filipino Spring Fest Carnival in my hometown of Ipswich, and this afternoon, I went to a family gathering with members of the Rohingya community. So from my perspective Trudy, it’s about getting out there, engaging with the communities, understanding their concerns, and actually advocating for them. So it’s really Politics 101. You’ve got to be out there standing shoulder to shoulder with the communities, listening to their concerns and acting on those concerns, and that’s what the Coalition needs to do.
Trudy McIntosh
Is that a message you’ve been telling your colleagues directly? We saw some of these comments in the last campaign. The Chinese spies comment from Jane Hume jumps out to me. It basically seemed to have single handedly lost Keith Wolahan, his seat in Menzies. How do Coalition MPs ensure that that rebuild task isn’t thrown off course by, you know, silly comments like that?
Senator Scarr
Well, I think there’s a few points to make in that regard. One is, if you’ve got a really strong relationship with the community, if it’s built on really strong foundations, then when there is a bit of a slip up, there’s loose rhetoric or something happens, then you can quickly adjust, you can have discussions with the community and then quickly move on. So that’s the first point. So you need those strong foundations. That’s absolutely critical. The second point I’d make is bear in mind that we are in a contest, and when we do slip up, our opponents, the Labor Party, are absolutely ruthless and exploiting those opportunities from their perspective, and we saw that during the last federal campaign, and in fact, the federal campaign before that. So we need to be cognizant of both things. But really the antidote, if I can put it that way, is developing those really strong foundations in terms of relationship with the community, and then when something doesn’t go according to plan, and that will always happen, then you’ve got that foundation of trust to quickly correct, adjust direction and move on.
Trudy McIntosh
Well, I want to ask you about this Islamophobia report that came out yesterday from the Special Envoy. One of those key recommendations out of it was a commission of inquiry looking into Anti Palestinian views. Is that something the Coalition would be open to?
Senator Scarr
I think at this point in time, the Coalition is waiting for the Government to make its assessment with respect to the recommendations, and then once we hear the response from the government, because it’s their obligation to respond to this report, we will then consider the government’s response. One of the comments that I’d like to make in relation to that report is one of the things it drew out was the position, particularly of Muslim women, and how they’ve been subjected to harassment, to vile abuse and in fact, Usman Khawaja actually wrote the introduction to the report and spoke about how his own mother was the subject of vile abuse at the boxing take day test and you just think, how appalling is this. An Australian cricketer who we cheer on at the MCG at the Boxing Day test – his own mother, whose come along to cheer him on, is subject to vile abuse. So this is a report that needs to be carefully considered.
Trudy McIntosh
Paul Scarr, Shadow Immigration Minister, really appreciate your time this Saturday night.
Senator Scarr
Thanks, Trudy, great to be with you.
