2GB

SUBJECTS: Fair Work Australia; Craig Thomson saga; EMA; Labor leadership

E&OE…………

Alan Jones: Christopher Pyne, good morning. 

Christopher Pyne: Good morning Alan. 

Jones: A terrific job you’ve done.  It takes a lot of energy and a lot of homework to do the job that you’re doing. 

Pyne: That’s very kind of you, but it’s a very bad Government and we have to try and get them out of office.  That’s our number one priority. 

Jones: What do you make of this – coming back to the whole business about Fair Work Australia?  I was just looking at a thing last night here of the Labor Government’s appointments to Fair Work Australia.  The new president has now got Supreme Court status – is a judge, is a former ACTU official Ross.  The deputy president is a former union official Anna Booth.  The appointments to Fair Work Australia by the Labor Party; Susie Jones, a former ACTU advocate; Tim Lee a former union official and Labor staffer; Julius Row, a former AMWU national president; Michelle Bissett, a former ACTU senior industrial officer; John Ryan a former SDA national officer; Anne Gooly, an MEAA assistant secretary; Chris Simpson, a former AWU industrial advocate; Peter Hampton a former South Australian IRC deputy president and earlier a senior public servant.  How can we expect any balance from this lot? 

Pyne: Well, Alan that just represents another one of their broken promises. 

Jones: Are you going to get rid of these people?

Pyne: Well, I guess that’s a matter for Eric Abetz to announce what we’re doing as soon as we get into power.  Some of those people would have tenure for the rest of their lives I assume. 

Jones: You’re right.  Bernie Riordan, Bernadette O’Neil; these are former union officials.  How the hell can the employer get a look in, in any determinations by Fair Work Australia?  No wonder this report took three years. 

Pyne: Before the 2007 election – you’ve probably forgotten now – but Kevin Rudd promised that every appointment to bodies like this would be 50 per cent union people and 50 per cent employers.  Until about two or three months ago I don’t think they’d appointed any employer representatives to Fair Work Australia.  Every one of them was a union representative.  Bernie Riordan would send a shiver down many people’s spines in NSW because he was the president of the ALP who fought Morris Iemma over electricity privatisation if I remember rightly. 

Jones: That’s absolutely correct.  What happened yesterday? 

Pyne: Well, yesterday Labor engaged in a juvenile and pathetic stunt, which was to get Craig Thomson to vote with the Opposition.  Now, why that’s important of course is that we have said that we will not accept Craig Thomson’s vote, voting with the Opposition under any circumstance, even for a no confidence motion because we say Labor should... 

Jones: Just interrupting you there.  What you mean by that is you can’t stop him voting with the Opposition, but you won’t allow a circumstance to arise where that vote has any impact. 

Pyne: Exactly.  If he votes with us, one of us will leave the chamber so that his vote doesn’t count with the Opposition.  We have said that the Government shouldn’t be accepting his vote because it’s a tainted vote and therefore it taints the Government.  Of course Julia Gillard won’t do that.  She has wanted to distance herself from Craig Thomson….

Jones: How can they kick him out of the party and still accept his vote?

Pyne: Well this is the pathetic part, they want to distance themselves from Craig Thomson and pretend that he’s got nothing to do with them, while at the same time they’ve been paying his legal fees, keeping him from bankruptcy, keeping him in the Parliament and keeping his vote. So yesterday they got Craig Thomson to vote with the Opposition to be tricky, which was supposed to be a clever stunt. Andrew Southcott told me he was on our side, and I bolted out of the Chamber to make sure my vote didn’t count. Quite frankly it is a very low and pathetic performance from the Government for that kind of behaviour to be more important than dealing with cost of living issues, carbon tax issues, and job issues and defence and border protection issues.

Jones: How can the Prime Minister meet with union people last Friday and tell them she was furious about what the Government had announced in relation to immigrant workers on a 9 billion dollar mining development when that enterprise migration agreement policy was part of the 2011 budget and when the details of all of this had been doing the rounds of departments for months?

Pyne: Because Julia Gillard is weak, and because Julia Gillard when she sat down with the union leaders wanted them to think one thing, and she wanted the Cabinet to think another, so she for months and months had been part of the Roy Hill project, EMA, enterprise migration agreement, Chris Bowen told the Parliament this week he has briefed the productivity committee of the Cabinet, something he didn’t need to tell us by the way which he’s told us.

Jones: He told you for a reason by the way.

Pyne: Yes, quite right. Yesterday she admitted she had spoken to Martin Ferguson about these matters for some time, and then of course she tried to tell the unions leaders on thing because this is a Prime Minister who chooses the alternative when the truth will do. Why doesn’t she simply have the courage of her conviction if she thinks it’s a good idea to have an enterprise migration agreement, don’t tell one group one thing and another group the other; because both of them now are both dissatisfied. 

Jones: Yea, which is a good idea with a migration agreement, but its implementation is dreadful. There is no advertisement that I can get my hands on which says here are jobs, are there Australians available, this is where they are, these are the skills that are needed, this is when you need to apply, these are the arrangements in relation to housing and then you say hang on, applications went until 30 June we’ve got nothing back, we are going to bring the enterprise migration agreement in to play.

Pyne: You’re absolutely right, and this is a Government Allan that could turn what was supposed to be a good news story into another leadership issue where people are question Julia Gillard’s efficacy and her character and her integrity, and it piles woe, upon woe, upon woe.

Jones:  My understanding is there is a move down there; I don’t know what you’ve sniffed because in politics both sides talk, they’re not worried whether they talk on the record or off the record. My understanding is that there are significant people at the senior levels of the party talking to Rudd and one of the key components of those discussions as I understand it is to do something about this carbon tax between now and July 1, have you heard any whiff of that?

Pyne: I have absolutely no doubt at all; I mean Labor is talking constantly down here to each other and to the members of the Coalition, they will replace Julia Gillard with Kevin Rudd and they will do something about the carbon tax before July 1, all of that will happen. It won’t change the fact that this is a divided, dysfunctional, unstable government but they will try their best.

Jones: Yep, to save some of the furniture, yep. Goon on you, good on you.

Pyne: Thank you.

Jones: Well done, good to talk to you, thank you for your energy. Christopher Pyne does a hell of a job. Their job is to keep a government accountable, and no government has needed that level of accountability applied to it more than this one in the history of Australian politics.

ENDS