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JOURNALIST: Good morning to Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning gentleman.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Greetings.

JOURNALIST: Now we’ll kick off with you Chris, as we normally do. The government’s clearly taken a bit of a hit in the polls with the distraction caused by the citizenship drama, but do you think that Bill Shorten is being a bit cute by refusing to release documentation proving once and for all that he and other Labor MPs are not dual citizens?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Anthony Albanese’s released his documentation, so if it’s good enough for Anthony it should be good enough for everybody else, and the question here is why would Bill Shorten be refusing to release his documentation? Well the answer is, obviously, that he is worried that there are Labor MPs who don’t have documentation and so if he releases his, others will be forced to release theirs, and we’ll discover potentially that there are Labor MPs who should be referred to the High Court, so I guess he doesn’t want to break the dam wall by releasing his. But I notice Anthony’s released his birth certificate showing that he didn’t know that he had an Italian father and that’s the end of that matter from his point of view.

JOURNALIST: To you Albo, has your decision to do that caused a problem for Bill Shorten?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I haven’t done that; don’t get sucked in by Christopher’s absurd spin. I mean for goodness sake, I released a book, it’s written by Karen Middleton, available in all good book stores, including there in Adelaide, called Albanese, Telling it Straight and it outlines in a great deal of detail my origins and that’s what I’ve pointed people towards, it’s there for all to see in 320 pages.

JOURNALIST: But didn’t you do something extra, though, in the last 48 hours, because the way it was written in the Australia it sounded to me like you had shown that report of your citizenship papers to knock the citizenship speculation on the head.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, I don’t have citizenship papers, people who wanted to see my birth certificate - I haven’t released it, but people have seen it and that arose out of talking with journalists about how silly it was that, in spite of the fact that we had this rather comprehensive outline of my somewhat unusual circumstances of my birth, people were still carrying on and it led to David Speers making a bit of a joke on Sky News that I was the Jon Snow of the federal Parliament in a Game of Thrones reference, and Game of Thrones is a bit like federal Parliament from time to time.

JOURNALIST: I think federal Parliament’s more bloody.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But you did show people your birth certificate, so that’s showing people your evidence.

JOURNALIST: Well Chris Pyne, will you guys proactively refer members of the Labor Party to the High Court to get this matter resolved?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look I think the Australian public are pretty sick of this issue and that’s why it needs to be resolved by the High Court. Now there are a lot more important issues around at the moment, things like creating jobs, creating investment…

JOURNALIST: Sure, but with a view to ending it, will you be referring their members over whom there is suspicion to the High Court?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the High Court has a directions hearing on 24 August, they’ll start the process of deciding what section 44 means in the constitution in the modern period. I think they’ll resolve it pretty expeditiously and we’ll all be able to move on one way or the other. I think most people think it’s just not common sense that you could have absolutely no idea that you were a citizen of another country, but somehow that means you have an allegiance to a foreign power. The High Court is the right place to clear this up and I’m quite happy to leave it to them while I get on with my job…

JOURNALIST: I’ll try this one more time, so then have you made any decision yet about whether you will refer any of those Labor MPs over whom there is a suspicion to the court?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I haven’t made a decision about that.

JOURNALIST: Okay.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, and of course they won’t because such an action would mean that majority governments in future could refer people who they don’t like to a court, I mean that would be just absurd. This is an attempt to reverse the onus of proof, Labor has rigorous procedures in place and I’m absolutely confident that there are no issues with any Labor MPs; it’s as simple as that.

JOURNALIST: But the doubt still remains Albo because…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Oh there is no doubt, it’s like…

JOURNALIST: But there’s no compunction for them to release documents, or indeed in some cases there are no documents anyway, so it can’t be proved or disproved.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well why should they…

JOURNALIST: Well, can I ask you the question backwards then. Should Bill Shorten and the other Labor MPs including Penny Wong do what you’ve done, either through showing…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: What - have a biography?

JOURNALIST: Have a biography, revealing their own background?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Have a biography revealing they didn’t know who their father was...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You released your birth certificate; you showed your birth certificate to the Australian.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I have not released my birth certificate.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You showed your birth certificate to the Australian, it’s a lot more than Bill Shorten has done.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well, this is absurd, Labor has appropriate mechanisms in place, and this is just an attempt to cloud the fact that since the Liberal Party went out there, I note there’s no Liberal Party members have issues either, Labor and Liberal both have their act together. The problem here is the Greens and the Nationals who have real issues in terms of the suggestions of breaches of the constitution. There’s people who are putting their hand up, I read today Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan both conceding before the court in their submissions that they were citizens of another country apart from Australia, and that hasn’t happened with either Labor members or Liberal members.

JOURNALIST: Just finally, and I’ll just get your thoughts on this Chris for time reasons, are you comfortable with the manner in which Tony Abbott is using his fairly booming voice to urge people to vote no against same sex marriage on the basis of other extraneous issues, political correctness and so forth?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the only question before the plebiscite is: ‘do we believe it’s time to change the law to allow same sex couples to marry?’ That’s the only question, there are no other issues, Tony Abbott is very good at campaigning, particularly about something which he feels strongly, he campaigned against the republic, and the line that he used is you shouldn’t trust politicians with the republic, in spite of the fact that he was a politician himself. So he will try and find a line to undermine the case for yes for same sex marriage, I don’t think the Australian public believe this is a vote about anything other than allowing same sex couples the same rights to marry as non-same sex couple. I’m not in favour of marriage equality in spite of being a conservative, I’m in favour of it because I’m a conservative, and I think more people should have access to the institution of marriage. I think the children in same sex households should be able to have the stability that that union brings. And while Tony Abbott might well try and muddy the waters and make the vote about something other than what it is, it’s a pretty straight forward question: ‘do you or don’t you agree that same sex couples should have chance to marry?’

JOURNALIST: Chris Pyne, Anthony Albanese, thank you both for your time.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Bravo, I do think that Tony Abbott is reminding people not that he’s an effective politician, but that he’s an effective wrecker.

JOURNALIST: Good stuff, Albo, Chris Pyne, we’ll do it all again next week, thank you.