Brian Mitchell MP

An interview with Brian Mitchell MP, who is the member for Lyons. We spoke at Deloraine House about a range of topics and what it’s like to be a politician spending time here and in Canberra.

Matt Taylor: Alright, Brian Mitchell MP. Can you please talk about why you entered politics?

Brian Mitchell: That’s a good question. Well, I’ve been interested in politics since I was so high to a grasshopper. My mum was Irish Catholic and she was very interested in politics. I learned at her knee, basically. We always talked about politics and current affairs.

I was taught from a very young age, Labor for the working man, Liberals for the rich, and nothing’s changed since. And all the years since, that still remains the same today. And I’ve been on Labor Party booths since I was about 12 years old. My dad used to hand out for the Labor Party. He was never a member, but you know, election day we’d come along, he’d get the call up and he’d take me along and I loved it.

So I’ve been interested in politics for a long time. I was a working journalist for many years, so I was not active in politics during that time. And then I got back into it in my mid to late thirties. And it was like a lightbulb moment back in 2013. I just decided I really want to be an elected representative.

I can make a difference. So if you go back to my first speech in parliament, that outlines some of the reasons I stood. And the key one is I don’t want Australia ending up like America. We were on a trajectory at that time with low wages and insecure employment. Rising inequality in Australia.

And we were just taking on some of those American features of our economy. And I wanted to put a stop to that. We’ve always been the country of the fair go. Egalitarianism, a lot of social mobility. If you work hard no matter where you are, where you start off in life, you can get ahead in life.

It doesn’t matter who you’re born to, and I want to make sure that we keep those qualities in Australia. So that’s a very long answer, but that’s the reason.

Matt Taylor: Can you talk a bit about your day to day work and what that involves?

Brian Mitchell: Oh, it changes all the time.

Every day is different. So there’s obviously my work in the electorate. The electorate of Lyons takes up about half the Tasmanian mainland, about 35,000 square kilometers – the best half in Lyons. And it stretches from Derwent Valley, Brighton, Port Arthur, all the way out to Sheffield. I’ve got St. Helens up on the northeast coast and all the guts in between, you know, the Midlands and the Central Highlands. So there’s a lot of traveling to do, particularly as the member for Lyons. I don’t spend a lot of time in the office, so I’m out on the road a lot and that means I’ve got to have my workflow change for that reason.

One of the things I’m doing here today in Deloraine is having what we call a mobile member day. So I come out to Deloraine. I meet people in this community. They can share their issues or concerns or have a chat with me here in Deloraine rather than having to make the trek into Perth where one of my offices is or down to Bridgewater where the Southern office is to see me there.

I come out to the community and see them. So I do these mobile member days regularly here. There’s Deloraine, there’s St. Helen’s, there’s Campbelltown – all over the state I’ll be doing mobile member days. That’s a lot of what I do during the week.

And obviously things like site visits – seeing businesses, seeing some of the organisations that managed to get federal grants. It’s fantastic always, as a local member, to go out and support local organisations.

And then there’s the work in Parliament in Canberra. You put on the suit and tie and you head to the chamber, you vote, you take part in legislation.

I’m currently the inquiry chief of an inquiry into Australian live music. So I’ll be heading off at the end of next week to go interstate for hearings, where we’re looking at, some of the reasons why live music is dropping off and we hope to have some solutions for that.

So it’s a very busy job with lots of different moving parts and they change from day to day.

Matt Taylor: Can you talk about some of the key issues in the electorate or Tasmania as a whole?

Brian Mitchell: The cost of living is the number one issue and has been for the last probably three or four years at least.

Just people keeping their heads above water. So we’ve got a few issues and a few initiatives that we’ve just implemented as a government to tackle some of that. Tax cuts, the $300 power bill relief, wage increases after a decade of wage stagnation. So that’s the key issue that we’re trying to address.

Access to health in Lyons is always an issue. Whether it’s GPs. Or nurses – just general health issues. We’re addressing some of that with the introduction of Medicare urgent care clinics. We’re backing in innovative models of practice for GPs. We’re doing that in partnership with the state government.

So that’s really good. And another issue is telecommunications. So that’s been a big one for me ever since I was elected. It’s a bit of a pet project of mine is to improve telecommunications throughout regional lines of regional Tasmania as a whole, because there are particular challenges in Tasmania.

Lots of hills, lots of bends, lots of trees, and that’s not great for line of sight with towers, but people need mobile phone coverage, they need broadband coverage. So we’re making a big push to try and improve that, particularly after the last decade where not much happened. Probably the three big ones, you know, cost of living, health, telecommunications.

There are a range of others. Obviously, Tasmania’s education standards are pretty poor. And we’re working with the state government to try and improve that. And housing – access to housing in Tasmania. Tasmanian housing used to be pretty cheap and pretty available, and that’s changed in the last few years and we’ve got a plan as a federal government to really boost the amount of supply. We need to build more houses and more units. And we’re facing a couple of blocks in the Senate with the Greens and the Liberals teaming up to try and block some of our key legislation there, which makes it easier to rent and easier to buy homes. So we’re hoping they’ll get out of the way so we can get on with the plan.

Matt Taylor: In terms of the people that you work closely with, can you talk a bit about your team here and the people that you work closely with up in Canberra?

Brian Mitchell: I’ve got a terrific team. I mean a really hard working team. My face and my name is on the side, Brian Mitchell MP. But it’s the team that does a lot of the work. We make a really big effort to look after people’s needs at a very local level. So our constituents, they’ll come to us with a range of issues regarding pensions, NDIS, taxation, immigration, even state based issues or council issues.

And we try and help everybody. So we’ve got a really big constituent caseload. And my staff do the heavy lifting on most of that. And of course there’s all the day to day running of the office. I pay tribute to them every day. In Canberra, I bring a couple of people up usually with me to make sure I get to where I need to be on time.

And and other than that, then I’ll work with my parliamentary colleagues in Canberra when we’re what we call the caucus – that’s the parliamentary Labor Party members. We have committees, we have various party meetings and we’ll get together and to try and progress government legislation.

Matt Taylor: Is there any colleagues or MPs that you work with more than others or get along with more than others?

Brian Mitchell: Oh, I get along with everybody. I’m so friendly. One of the great myths, I think, of Australian politics is that we all hate each other, you know, Liberals and Labor hate each other and the Greens hate you.

Behind the scenes, there’s a lot of really collaborative stuff going on. I work quite closely with Bridget Archer up in Bass. She’s a Liberal. She’s the deputy chair of my communications committee for the live music inquiry. We talk a lot to make sure that we’re on the same page with things. The more we can do together, the better, because the less areas of conflict there are, then the more we can progress.

So we try and iron out as much conflict as we can. There’s always going to be areas of conflict because you may have just vastly different ideas on how something should be progressed. And that’s fair enough in a democratic system. Not everybody thinks the same. But let’s try not to sweat the small stuff, let’s agree where we can, find consensus where we can, and then only really fight about the stuff that has to be fought about.

And we have those fights, those contests, both between Labor and other parties, and also within the Labor Party itself, we’ll have discussions about it. Within the Labor Party we’ll have discussions internally about how a matter should progress.

And then we come to a decision as a Labor Party on how that should progress. And once the Labor Party as a group comes to that decision, having had an internal debate, then that becomes the Labor Party position and that’s what we progress forward with. So people know what they’re voting for.

Matt Taylor: Politicians sometimes don’t have a great reputation. How do you feel about that or can you do anything about that?

Brian Mitchell: Look, you should always behave better. I think it’s really important to just be authentic and real and honest and I’ll talk to you and your viewers. Same as I would talk to anybody in the street.

Don’t change who you are. Don’t put on the face or the mask. And also I think people having crack at pollies it’s a bit of a release valve. It can take a bit of pressure out of people’s feelings if they can yell at the tv, you know, I’ll do a better job.

That can be a release and that can be a healthy thing. It can get a bit unhealthy. We are seeing aspects of that at the moment with the Gaza situation. And some of the, frankly, the criminal damage that’s been done to MPs offices. It’s gone way beyond what it should and what is legitimate protest into criminal vandalism.

And it’s getting pretty close to the wind in terms of what we want to avoid – physical assault and verbal assault. We don’t want to see those sorts of things coming into Australian politics. So there are limits. But generally politicians are just people, we have families we are members of the community.

All of us no matter what party we’re in, are there to do a job on behalf of the community. Most of us try and do it to the best of our abilities and with principles behind us. But we also went into it with open eyes knowing that people will have certain expectations and it’s fair enough for them to come to us and say, “Hey, look, you know, why aren’t you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that?”

We should always be held accountable for what we are doing or what we’re not doing.

Matt Taylor: You’ve been in politics for a little while. Do you have a favourite memory or moment that you’ve had so far?

Brian Mitchell: Look, that’s a good question. It moves pretty quick. I mean, I’ve been here for eight years and it feels like that. People say, “oh, politicians, he’s been there for 20 years.“

It feels like a long time, but I can see how it just goes so quickly. And you’re always learning.

In terms of really good memories, what I point to. And it goes to what I was talking about earlier about making a difference. We make a difference at the top end. So I was pretty involved in making sure that we got the tax cuts recalibrated from the old Stage 3 to make sure they were recalibrated. So that ordinary workers got a bigger share. I was really proud of my involvement in that. I wasn’t central to it, but I was certainly involved. And I was really proud of that.

But as an MP, one of the things that happened fairly early on a staff member who’s since retired.

She worked really hard with this constituent who was owed superannuation. And he was owed like $400,000 or something. And he had a few issues in the way he dealt with people. So he would be given short shrift. People would be keen to get rid of him because of the way he behaved.

But she stuck with him this former staff member, sat him down and said, “look, I really need the information. I need this number. Let’s really try and work this through“. And she worked through his difficulties and got him his superannuation. I mean if it wasn’t for her it wouldn’t happen.

This guy would still be on the streets. He wouldn’t have had access to that money that he was owed – simply because he had no way to access it because of the way he behaved. So it’s little things like that. What we do as MPs at a local level makes a difference to people’s lives.

It can be as simple as helping somebody get their pension like they’re owed. We certainly can’t circumvent the system, but we can know where the problems are and say, “right, well, let’s fix it“.

So you’re making a small difference in individual lives. And that to me is a very rewarding part of this job. Because we know that if we weren’t there, those things wouldn’t occur. So that’s my favourite part of the job.

Matt Taylor: There’s been some talk recently about passenger rail returning to Tasmania. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Brian Mitchell: I would love passenger rail in Tasmania. I would love it. I think it’s a great tragedy that we don’t have passenger rail in Tasmania but I think that ship has sailed, sort of the mixed metaphor. I can’t see it happening. It would be incredibly expensive to lay the line to and to operate the trains. It would be terrific to have a line going from the northwest into Launceston, maybe out to St Helens, given the topography, but certainly down the guts to Hobart and maybe a coastal route.

It would be terrific and then you’d be able to develop the nodes all the way along and really open up the interior. But I just can’t see the practicality of it. We’re heading into some really interesting times in terms of where transport’s going, obviously with electrification and renewables coming online, and different fuels.

So that’s going to be interesting in itself – how that changes the mix of what we do. I unfortunately can’t see rail being part of that. The current state government made a big noise about backing rail. You may not be familiar, but in the northern suburbs of Hobart, there’s a disused line.

So it’s still there. And they made a big noise about it. ‘We’ll re-energise that’. But they’re not going to do it. I mean even for that section that’s still there, it’s too expensive. So they’re going to turn that instead into like a a bus route.

It’s basically going to be a bus route. And that makes sense. It’ll be a bus route. But it won’t be a train so if you can’t even get that up where there’s a train line and the infrastructure’s there. They still can’t make that economic, how on earth will you develop a train line through the middle of Tasmania, when we saw how much the middle of the highway just cost, they’d have to do that again.

Yeah, I wish we could do it, but I just can’t see it.

Matt Taylor: I’ve got a question from one of our readers, Rob. He wanted to know about Macquarie Harbour. Do you have any thoughts on the leases and decisions that need to be made there? They’re being considered, I think, at the moment.

Brian Mitchell: So there’s currently a process that’s with the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek. She has a legal obligation under an environment law that John Howard brought into being.

So you’ve got the Liberals, crashing on about, do this, do that. This is a Liberal law that is being applied. So Tanya Plibersek has a legal obligation, given that the reference was made to investigate and adjudicate on the future of this threatened species (Maugean Skate). She’s currently doing that and there are implications in terms of salmon farming.

I’m a huge supporter of the salmon industry, I think it’s so important for jobs and regional development, pays really good wages and isgreat for the future of Tasmania. But obviously she (Tanya Plibersek) has legal obligations to assess it according to the law that John Howard put in place.

There’s not much wiggle room there. She has to apply a set of standards that are set in legislation. Now I don’t know where she’s going to land on it. I don’t know what information she’s taken or what evidence has come before her. I don’t know. So we’ve got to wait and see.

Matt Taylor: One last question, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on whether you think that the Teals will do as well in the next election.

Brian Mitchell: They don’t make a big impact here because they didn’t really run in Tasmania. They’re very climate focused obviously, and they’ve traditionally run where there’s a big moderate Liberal vote, because obviously the Liberal party has moved so far to the Trumpian, American right style of politics in Australia that they’ve just totally disenfranchised a whole bunch of their moderate base.

So the Teals that are in Canberra, I can’t think of one of them who would not fit comfortably as a moderate Liberal within a broader church Liberal party. But they’re not welcome in that sort of environment now because the Libs have basically excised all the moderates.

They’re just all the right wing nutters. I mean, Bridget (Archer) is very unhappy, I would imagine. She’s talked publicly about how she feels. She’s certainly not within the inside group.

She crosses the floor on issues that she thinks are important. And she has a fairly unhappy time in the deeply conservative right wing liberal party.

So in terms of how the teals will go this time… They’ll be looking at metropolitan seats on the mainland, I would think. I don’t imagine they’ll make much of a foray into Tasmania because you’ve got Wilkie who holds Clark. I don’t think they’ll be taking him on. He’s pretty much a muchness with them in terms of his politics.

So we’ll see. It’ll be an interesting election no matter what. I always say you never take anything for granted in Australian elections, and neither should you. You put yourself forward to be judged on by the voters on the work you’ve done, on the promises you’ve made and have you kept those promises?

What sort of a job are you doing if you’re in government? Are you doing the job you were elected to do? And then what’s your plan for the future? And Australians will make a judgement on that. That’s the way elections should go.

Thank you, Brian Mitchell.

Thank you.