THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
TODAY SHOW
FRIDAY, 18 JULY 2025
Topics: Mark Latham; New funding for people doing it tough.
HOST, SARAH ABO: Former Labor leader Mark Latham has this week been accused of taking unsolicited photos of female colleagues in NSW Parliament and sharing them in private messages. To discuss, Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek joins us now in Sydney. Good morning to you, Minister. Good to see you this Friday. So, Mark Latham's now being called a “pig” by a member of Parliament. You worked with him. What's your reaction been to what we've seen these past couple of days?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Well, I think the behaviour is the sort of behaviour that will get you sacked in any other workplace, but it's probably consistent with what we've seen from Mark Latham over the last few decades. And he is the guy that said of Rosie Batty, who was Australian of the Year, who suffered the most horrendous domestic violence murder of her son. He said she was waging a war on men. He's the guy who said that men hitting women are doing it because they need a kind of stress release. He's the guy that picked on high school students when they made an International Women's Day video saying that the boys, you know, making fun of the boys for doing that. He just really doesn't get it and he hasn't for many decades. I think, you know, the criticism is perfectly justified. In any other workplace, this behaviour would be completely unacceptable. Of course it's unacceptable in the State Parliament. Of course it is. People, taxpayers, are paying his wages to represent them, not make videos in his office.
ABO: So, why isn't it enough then, Tanya, to get rid of him? I mean, we see so much bad behaviour in politics. And as a senior female Minister yourself, you know, it makes you sick, as you've just outlined, to see this stuff happening even today. How is he still there?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think that's a question for the people who voted for him last time. I mean, he hasn't been a member of the Labor Party for 20 years and, you know, I can't justify or defend this behaviour. I haven't been able to justify or defend his behaviour, frankly, for any of the time that I've known him and seen the sort of behaviour that he's prepared to indulge in. I think the people who voted for him last time will be really thinking, wow, we got a dud. We didn't get our value for money when we voted for this guy.
ABO: How many more examples do we need? All right, Tanya, let's move on now. And given the rise in unemployment figures we saw yesterday, do you feel as though the RBA may have got it wrong last week when they didn't drop rates?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Look, I'm not going to comment on the Independent Reserve Bank, but certainly by international standards and by Australian standards, historically, unemployment is still low and we've got very high participation rates. We've got a lot of positive signs in the Australian economy. Inflation's where we want it to be, but we know that Australians are still doing it tough. And that's why in everything the government does we're focused on helping with the cost of living. Cheaper medicines, cheaper childcare fee free TAFE, university debt relief. We've seen the minimum wage go up by about $9,000 a year since we came to government. We've seen pensions and benefits go up. And today we've got a fantastic announcement where more than half a million Australians every year will receive better and more help from the Australian government for things like emergency food relief, financial counselling, gambling counselling. Just one example, we're tripling the funding of OzHarvest, which does such an amazing job in providing food and meals to Australians who need help.
ABO: Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of Australians out there who do need that help at the moment. Tanya, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
ENDS
