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VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Well Peter Garrett and Barnaby Joyce have created the headlines coming out of a busy week in Parliament but for others in Canberra, like Trade Minister Simon Crean, it's been business as usual, and he joins us now. Simon Crean, good morning.

SIMON CREAN: Virginia, Joe.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: It's never business as usual in Parliament really, I guess.

SIMON CREAN: No. There's always a change, every day.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Every day.

SIMON CREAN: You've got to be prepared for it.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Let's talk though, briefly, before we talk about a couple of things I know you want to discuss this morning about those big issues coming out of a very torrid week in Parliament. When you look at the convention of ministerial responsibility, and you've been in this position yourself, and when you're notified again, and again, and again - not on once, not on two, not on three occasion but more - that there are potential serious problems with a policy you're about to implement. Doesn't the buck stop with you?

SIMON CREAN: It does, but I think if you look at the statement that Peter Garrett made in the Parliament yesterday, he identified the steps he took when that advice was received.

JOE O'BRIEN: But clearly the steps that he took did not prevent the deaths that have occurred.

SIMON CREAN: No, and the deaths are terribly unfortunate. That's the fact of life, but if what you're dealing with is state safety authorities and training programs that the employer is required to implement, the fact that you're requiring that of people doing it, it becomes the question as to what you expect the Minister to do. You can't expect him...

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Oh, it's starting to sound like buck passing.

SIMON CREAN: Well, you can't expect him, can you, to really be at every house, asking "have you been trained?" So obviously, there's got to be procedures in place that identify the requirements, and then ensuring that they're carried out in the circumstances. Now, if you...if you look at the comprehensiveness of the statement, what Peter has explained is the steps that he took.

JOE O'BRIEN: But they weren't the steps that people were asking for.

SIMON CREAN: No. I think what people were saying is that - if the training isn't there, if the requirements aren't there, this could happen. The steps that he then took, was to say these procedures should be in place.

JOE O'BRIEN: Yeah, but one of those procedures doesn't start until today. It's a bit late.

SIMON CREAN: Well that's the mandatory nature of them, you know. But...

JOE O'BRIEN: It's too late.

SIMON CREAN: Well, it's too late for the four, clearly that's the case.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Does it - with hindsight though, does it seem as if this policy was rolled out with unseemly haste?

SIMON CREAN: No, I don't - well, I mean, that's a matter for judgement, ultimately. But the truth of it is, this was an important opportunity to do a couple of things. One was to escalate the opportunity to do something that actually reduces greenhouse emissions, and secondly to use the stimulus package in a way that created job opportunities. So, no I don't think that it was rolled out with haste. I think the fact that people took it up, showed that there is a genuine demand out there but people are not prepared to pay the full price for it.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Well, putting on your former ACTU hat for just a moment as well, 'cause I mean you've been on both sides of this fence, are there questions then for the employers to answer here?

SIMON CREAN: Well, there may well be. I mean, obviously the investigations will determine that. But if they didn't have the people properly trained, if they didn't give them the training then that could be a serious matter for investigation.

JOE O'BRIEN: Okay. Well we might turn to other issues now. The regional trade talks; are they dead in the water?

SIMON CREAN: No, the regional trade talks actually pretty well. On 1 January this year, the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement came in. This is huge. Ourt two-way trade with ASEAN as a group of countries, ten of them, is actually as big as our trade with China. Now, people have talked about China being our economic salvation. It's only part of the picture. Australia has engaged effectively with the whole of the region and now we've got a trade agreement in place that will open many more doors for Australian exporters over the coming years. So far as the Pacific is concerned, we're serious - trade in many senses is not the issue for us in the Pacific. What we need to do is to build their economic sustainability so that some of them don't end up as failed states. Huge opportunity, actually, in the region at the moment. If you look at the big gas opportunities in Papua New Guinea, the gold mine in the Solomon Islands, big infrastructure developments in Guam. There's a huge opportunity if we can get the ingredients right to actually train workers in the Pacific for work in the Pacific. And this is why our trade agreement in the Pacific isn't just about trade openings. It's about helping those countries build their skill-base, build their ports, build their roads, so that what they extract, they can actually get to market efficiently.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Now, you're going to be talking in the next little while about, sort of, a guidebook as it were to Islamic finance and Islamic banking.

SIMON CREAN: Yes, that's it. On cue, Virginia. I've got that here for you. I'll leave that.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: How could we get away with not talking about that. Why does it matter? Why do Australian business people need a guide to Islamic finance?

SIMON CREAN: Well, this is very interesting. Coming out of the global financial crisis, Australia is being looked to not just as the country that avoided the recession, but as the country who's banking system didn't take the hit. Now, our banking system had strong regulatory reforms. They've been put in place over the last 20 years. They're not only safe, they've been innovative in the products that they've developed. Not just banking, but funds management, superannuation. The big opportunity is in Islamic finance, because there's a whole population out there that is based on Islamic law. Islamic law says you can't offer a financial instrument that pays interest. It has to be, if you like, an exchange or a profit-share arrangement. This is the challenge to develop innovative products that reflect that requirement. Why is it important?

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: It might be a very big challenge for an Australian business mindset.

SIMON CREAN: It isn't. This is the interesting thing. It struck me when I went to Malaysia, 18 months ago, that they're trying to position themselves as an Islamic financing hub. We can be in that game. We have over 300,000 Muslims in Australia. Why aren't they superannuation funds offering a product? We have Westpac today actually offering an instrument that is compliant with sharia or Islamic law. We want to create the environment in which Australia is more innovative; more offering of that. If we're going to secure our future in the financial services sector, we have to build on our strengths and understand where the rest of the world is at.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Well, look, I did want to ask you, just finally, a question about that part of the world, and there's a report around today that around 50 Labor and Coalition MPs have signed a petition calling for those new charges against Anwar Ibrahim to be dropped. Do you have a view on this? On whether that's an effective and a useful thing to do, or does it cause trouble?

SIMON CREAN: No, it's up to individual members of Parliament what they do.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Is it something you would support?

SIMON CREAN: No, I think that the law has to run its course - we have to respect the legal systems of other countries. The fact...

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Do you have faith in these charges, though?

SIMON CREAN: To tell you the truth, I haven't looked closely at where the court case is, and I wasn't aware until you mentioned it that the letter had been signed. But, look, this is the same sort of argument as the Stern Hu case in China, isn't it? That it's not the legal system we have, but it's the legal system that we have to respect. One of them in the case of their national, the Anwar Ibrahim case; the other in the case of an Australian citizen. Now, as much as we would argue differently in the treatment of people in this country, we can't impose our system on other countries, just as we wouldn't expect their system to be imposed on us.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Simon Crean, good to have you on board. Thanks so much.

SIMON CREAN: Thanks very much.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Thank you.

[ENDS]

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