5AA

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – 5AA with David Penberthy, Will Goodings and Anthony Albanese

March 9 2016

SUBJECTS: Cabinet in Adelaide; SA Defence Industry Announcement; Nikki Savva’s book; Liberal leadership; Tony Abbott

DAVID PENBERTHY: The day that Canberra has come to Adelaide really we go to two tribes go to war each and every Wednesday after eight thirty it’s a news making segment every single week however this week as I say we’re talking about the fact that the Federal Cabinet has come to Adelaide the Prime Minister is spending a couple of days in town in fact probably more broadly I should say South Australia not just Adelaide because today part of the trip involves heading up to Whyalla to talk with the deputy major Tom Antonio about the future of that town heavily reliant as it is on Arrium and the steel works so without further ado Christopher Pyne good morning

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Will good morning David and good morning Albo I assume!

DAVID PENBERTHY: Yes he’s here good morning Anthony Albanese

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning

DAVID PENBERTHY: Chris Pyne it has the feel of an election campaign at the moment there was you and the Prime Minister and the state opposition leader Steven Marshall standing together is this the dress rehearsal, the sort of dry run?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there’s an election due in the second half of the year so I guess people are starting to think about you know the choice between a Government that has the team to make the transition in the economy versus Bill Shorten and his team who want to take us back to the Rudd-Gilliard-Rudd period and I guess that people are thinking about the election at some stage down the track

DAVID PENBERTHY: Anthony Albanese I think second half of the year, I think July 2 just counts in that, by that measure are you guys on an election footing?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well the Government doesn’t seem to know when the election will be when the budget will be, or what it stands for I mean on any economic policy I think it’s quite astonishing and if they go to an election early which July 2 would be, that’s because they’re hoping to escape to an election without saying what they stand for I mean this a Government at war with itself but Malcolm Turnbull is at war with himself with his own positions on climate change, marriage equality the republic everything else it, the Malcolm Turnbull that people thought they were getting they’re not seeing.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Is that a fair criticism do you think Christopher Pyne that you guys, shearing all Albo’s trademark theatrics that you haven’t actually got like a tax policy out you haven’t got, or Malcolm Turnbull what will be his first Budget out. Has it created a little bit of a vacuum for Labor to capitalise on?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we know what we don’t stand for and we don’t stand for Labor’s disastrous negative gearing and capital gains tax policies

ANTHONY ALBANESE: See if you say what you stand for-

DAVID PENBERTHY: Let him go.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Which will smash the economy and smash house prices before Labor’s even got out of the box. We know we’re not going to that to the economy. We’ve got National innovation science agenda, the Defence White Paper, the Defence Industry policy statement which is great for South Australia; the media ownership law reform; Senate reform; we’ll have a tax package in the next couple of months; we’ll have a Budget in May and by the time the election is called the Australian public will see the very stark choice between Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals who know what they are doing and Bill Shorten’s Labor Party who want to smash house prices and smash investments with the Capital Gains Tax changes.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Chris Pyne just on the Defence White Paper are the SA Liberals all on the same page with regard to the offshore patrol vessels that it’s still yet to be determined where they will be built. We’ve got Simon Birmingham previously saying that they will be built here, Matt Williams saying well that’s not the big issue. Are we all on the same page with the fact they should be built here?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we’re all saying the same thing and the most important thing is that South Australia wins the subs contract. We’ve already won the future frigates contract-

DAVID PENBERTHY: What about patrol vessels?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Hang on. Future frigates is $30 billion, submarines is over $50 billion. I think the point that Matt Williams is making which I’ve made is they’re the two big parts of this Defence spending agenda for Adelaide. Now the Offshore Patrol Vessels, and the only point that I’ve made all along is that sure, Adelaide could win that, it’s part of a competitive evaluation process and there’ll be an announcement about that. But that’s $5 billion so rather than focusing on the smallest part of the agenda, I’m focusing on winning the two biggest parts, future frigates and submarines, which will secure jobs and growth for South Australia for decades into the future. That doesn’t preclude winning the offshore patrol vessels but I think people who are obsessing about that, are missing the bigger picture.

DAVID PENBERTHY: I’ve got a question for both of you, Chris Pyne and also you Anthony Albanese, arising from the Nikki Savva book. Now we’ve got no intention of rehashing the more scurrilous allegations that are made in that book about Mr Abbott and his former Chief of Staff Peta Credlin, and I thought Chris that you were well within your rights to bat away any questions along those lines. But I do want to ask you, was it the case that you were convinced that you would lose Sturt if Tony Abbott remained Prime Minister?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No of course not. I mean, I always take my seat seriously. I’m never complacent, neither is Anthony in Grayndler. Any Member of Parliament that is doesn’t last two decades like Anthony and I both have. I’m never convinced I’m going to win it, I’m never convinced I’m going to lose it. I always battle and fight for it right up until 6 o’clock on Election Day and I think that’s what every good Member of Parliament should do.

DAVID PENBERTHY: But do you think that having a leader now who’s more in the small ‘L’ Liberal tradition that probably fits a bit better with the general political vibe here in South Australia, has put you in a better position?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well look you don’t have to be Paul Kelly the analyst at the Australian to work out that the Government’s fortunes in the polls have improved dramatically since Malcolm Turnbull was leader. Now twice as many people want Malcolm to be Prime Minister, as Bill Shorten, which makes it very hard for Labor. And obviously, we were behind in every single Newspoll for two years and now we aren’t so, you know.

DAVID PENBERTHY: I’ll shift over to Albo if I can. Albo, I don’t raise this in a teasing sense but I can remember during the Rudd-Gillard period, there was that occasion when you became so distressed by the level of abuse and vitriol within your party that you actually broke down at a press conference. Reading the extracts from the Nikki Savva book this week, and I’d ask you not give a partisan answer here, is there a really disturbing sense where politics has become this really cruel blood sport now in Australia, where it’s changed so much in the last decade, that it’s actually making it hard to govern?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I think um, there’s a lot of thought that has to go into what the changes in the media cycle and the sort of 24 hour view of the world that’s out there, the impact that’s having on politics. So I think it is quite sad when relationships completely break down, as frankly they did with people in the former Labor government of which I was a part. And quite clearly they have in the current Government as well, and on a personal level, that has an impact. You know can I say about Peta Credlin, that all of my dealings with her were extremely professional. She was you know, a very strong advocate and I had to deal with her as the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff but previously as the Leader of the Opposition’s Chief of Staff, so I feel some sympathy. Whilst I don’t have any sympathy with Tony Abbott or Peta Credlin politically, that’s a tough thing that people have gone through and other people who’ve lost their positions – Eric Abetz and others.

DAVID PENBERTHY: How have you, I’ll jump back to Chris Pyne if I can Albo, how have you found it Christopher? Because inevitably from transitions like this, and it’s been reported that this is currently the state of your relationship with your former boss Tony Abbott, you do end up with friendships that are just shredded and you can’t piece it back together. How do you continue to work as a Government after that has happened?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the Government gets on with the job and we are a professional group of men and women and we are getting on with the job. I certainly feel that I never had a difficulty with Peta Credlin ever, and that’s acknowledged in Nikki Savva’s book. I found Peta Credlin to be a wonderful work colleague and I didn’t have any of the experiences that other people seem to be relating and Tony Abbott’s and my relationship has started to repair itself. I think it would be disingenuous to claim to the, to your listeners that obviously having supported Malcolm Turnbull last year, Tony’s and my very long standing friendship remained entirely intact and didn’t skip a beat obviously it did skip a beat but in the recent couple of weeks, recent weeks it has started to recover and I’m glad it has because I don’t take things personally in politics I regard it as a profession, as a calling, a vocation if you like and I think everybody wants to do the right thing by their seat, their state, and their country and I think the personal should be kept out of it which is one of the reasons that Anthony and I have got along quite well for you know more than a decade, we understand that we both play hard at the ball but that doesn’t mean you have to be hateful towards each other.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I think one of the reasons for, I say this in a nonpartisan way, I think objectively one of the reasons for the fall in Malcolm Turnbull’s support is that people did look forward to a sort of break in the old politics I do think that Tony Abbott was sort of associated with conflict, the politics of conflict. That’s what he did that was his whole imagery and when Malcolm took over there was a sigh of relief and I think he did quite well in the initial stages saying he was going to be thoughtful and we were going to have mature policy debates and I think there’s a sense of disappointment out there that hasn’t happened, some of that is I think his fault, some of that is I think an underestimation of the fall-out of what was inevitably going to occur when you knock off a first term elected Prime Minister.

DAVID PENBERTHY: But the contrast to that though Albo surely is I mean it wasn’t like the Abbott Prime Ministership suddenly ushered in the uncertainty I mean we had the unseemly situation where you had Wayne Swan going on the 7.30 Report to tell the Australian people how psycho Kevin Rudd was I mean it was a continuation of the horrors that the country endured.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And that’s the concern that people have. I think that people don’t want that. I don’t think it’s seemly, and I think it puts people off. It’s the old politics if you like and when Malcolm took over and Christopher used to use the term in forums like this that we did speak about now we’re doing the new politics but what they’re seeing is the worst of the old politics being played out in a very personal way and I think that is most unfortunate and not what the mob want. You know we did, I did a, I marched in Mardi Gras on Saturday night with Trent Zimmerman was there, newly elected member of north Sydney. Trent’s someone I’ve known for a very, very long time through his engagement with the tourism transport forum, he’s an out, the first ever declared homosexual member of the House of Representatives that takes a great deal of courage I thought his first speech was a terrific speech and so we took a photo on Saturday night together and tweeted it out, it had an enormously positive response. To see a Labor person and a Liberal person standing there not bickering, engaging in what is a major community celebration here in Sydney and I think people want more of that and less of politicians yelling at each other.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Yeah

WILL GOODINGS: Well said.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Both interesting insights

WILL GOODINGS: Yeah

DAVID PENBERTHY: -And very sort of you know, bit of a chip there at the end from Albo towards Turnbull but I think that both Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese were pretty upfront there about the personal side of politics so thanks to both of them we’ll do it again next week.

[ends]