Transcript on Two Chrisses on ABC 891 05-05-081

ABC 891 SA Radio

Excerpts of “Two Chrisses”

5 May 2008, 10am (CST)

Journalist/Chris Schacht:

(Discussion surrounding WorkCover changes in South Australia following an interview from the Hon. Frances Bedford MLC. Ms Bedford attempts to blame the Opposition for passing the legislation. Schacht discusses the fact that Labor MP’s who cross the floor in Parliament are expelled.)

Christopher Pyne MP:

The WorkCover legislation is a Labor Party Bill, they’re in Government, they’ve been in Government six years. When they got elected six years ago there was a $60 million unfunded liability for Workcover, that’s my recollection, now it’s going to be $944 million, and last year the loss was $191 million, so if anyone needs anymore examples that Labor can’t manage money then they don’t need any other than that in my view… So it’s close to a billion dollars, so therefore the Labor Party has taken some action to deal with that, they’re the government, they’re responsible for that, the buck stops with them, and I think it’s embarrassing really for a Labor Party MP at the state level to attempt to blame the Opposition for the government having to take action than just taking responsibility themselves. But it’s an interesting issue about crossing the floor – one of the reasons I am in the Liberal Party, not the Labor Party, is there isn’t that ironclad discipline in the Liberal Party that automatically expels you if you cross the floor, and last year Gary Humphries, an ACT Senator crossed the floor. Petro Georgiou, Judy Moylan and Russell Broadbent all crossed the floor in the last year of the Howard Government, and they’re all still sitting in Parliament. While we don’t like an absolute lack of party discipline there is still a sense in the Liberal Party that we represent our constituencies first and if we can’t agree over an issue, while it is frowned upon, it is still accepted as part of a Liberal MP’s responsibility with no automatic expulsion. While I’m a Liberal for a lot of other reasons, I don’t want to be told by anybody else, whether it’s a factional warlord or a party that if I don’t do something my career is at an end.

Caller/Journalist/Schacht:

(Raises Morris Iemma being thrown out of the Labor Party in NSW)

Pyne:

Interestingly over the weekend, I’m told that the Unions who run the NSW State Conference have said explicitly that any Labor MP who doesn’t abide by Morris Iemma’s choices about privatisation will not lose their endorsement. Those Unions will back the MP’s over Morris Iemma, we now have a situation where Morris Iemma wants to go in one direction even if his caucus doesn’t follow him, what would normally happen of course is you’d expect the party to back the leader, but the Unions have said they will not take away the endorsements of MP’s who do not back the leader.

Journalist:

(Could there be a similar situation in SA over the WorkCover legislation?)

Pyne:

So it would be exactly the same situation with Frances Bedford, or any other MP, saying ‘no I’m going to cross the floor’ – I think it’s fair to say she wasn’t enthusiastically supporting the WorkCover legislation from what we heard before and the Unions would say ‘we’re not going to expel Frances Bedford because she is doing what we want her to do and we are going to back her’ - it would be the same corollary.

Caller/Journalist:

(Caller expresses discontent with both sides of politics. Journalist raises Christopher Pyne’s push to have a directly elected Liberal Leader.)

Pyne:

What David (Caller) is saying is not unlike what we hear in journalism and politics all the time, that’s why my suggestion to give the ordinary party member a vote for party leader as they do in the UK Conservative Party, the Likud in Israel, the French Conservative Party, the Democrats and the Republicans in the US and in the Canadian Conservative Party - so its is hardly a new idea - to give them the vote would hopefully bring an influx of new members into politics, average, good Australians, who’re keen to be involved but feel that by been involved they don’t get anything for it and they’re not really listened to…There are two very important protections that the UK Conservative Party have already built into their system which we could just lift and have here. One is that the Parliamentary Party chooses the candidates that are offered to the membership, they choose two people, so you’d expect those two people would have at least some support in the parliamentary party, and their colleagues have seen them operate and know they can perform and then the membership chooses from those two candidates. The second protection is, and I think quite cleverly, the UK Conservatives have said that the leader who is deposed or resigns or retires cannot re-stand for re-election by the party membership in the… subsequent ballot to elect a new leader. That means the deposed leader, who has obviously lost the confidence of the parliamentary party couldn’t then appeal to the party membership who sometimes has a different view…The membership could not initiate a spill, it can only be initiated by the parliamentary party…The UK Conservatives have always had that system, the membership can’t initiate the actual ballot, but they get to vote for the Leader and by doing that as they have in the Likud, the Canadian Conservatives, the French Conservatives, the UK Conservatives, they’ve essentially revitalised their base of membership.

Media Contact:      Adam Howard

                0400 414 833