5AA Adelaide

JOURNALIST: Back on deck Chris Pyne and Anthony Albanese for another edition of two tribes, good morning to you both.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning gentleman.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: We’ll start with you if we can Chris, now look obviously the last week has been a bit of a difficult one for the Turnbull government with Tony Abbott, the man who promised no sniping appearing to do plenty of sniping since he made that speech at the book launch last week. There seem to be three paths that your government could take with him, one is to try to accommodate him by bringing him back into Cabinet, the other is for Malcolm Turnbull to call a spill which would expose the very low level of support Mr Abbott has within the party room or the third is just to ignore him and knuckle down and get on with it, which one is the government going to take?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well David the truth is that we’re not going to be distracted by the different views of particular back benchers, one of the strengths of our party is that we don’t take a Stalinist approach to internal views being aired publicly, we believe that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been the most successful political party in Australia’s history in terms of electoral success. And then government and the Cabinet are getting on with the job of doing the things that the Australian public expect us to do, trying to reform child care to make it more affordable and accessible, trying to repair the budget through the Omnibus Savings Bill, reducing personal income taxes and corporate taxes to help grow the economy, and we are getting on with that job and I of course personally am trying to create jobs through the defence industry in Adelaide and in the rest of Australia as well…

JOURNALIST: Do you agree though Chris that all of those things you are doing at the moment are being overshadowed by what’s been going on?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well every member has to examine their own conscience about whether they feel that they are making a constructive contribution, and that’s a matter for each of them but I don’t feel that the government is distracted. I mean we are two and a half years away from an election so we’re not going to be commentators on every view that’s being put, the public expect us just to knuckle down and that’s what we are doing…

JOURNALIST: You’re one of the key strategists though Chris Pyne, have there been any discussions of whether it would be wise for Malcolm Turnbull to call a spill given what the assessment is of the very poultry level of support Tony Abbott has got within the party room?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well of course not and that would just be allowing politics to become a soap opera rather than what it is which is government getting on with governing. Now I’m sure that many people here in the press gallery much prefer to report on the internals of political parties but when I go to the supermarkets and the clubs and so on in my electorate they aren’t talking about those things, they’re talking about the costs of childcare, the cost of living. And in South Australia really the only topic of conversation at the local sports fixtures etc is the cost of electricity and whether there’s going to be another blackout, and because there’s a heat wave in Adelaide again that’s what everyone’s talking about.

JOURNALIST: Over to you Albo, there’s obviously been a hell of a lot of examination of this week’s Newspoll and what a disaster that was on the face of it for the government, but when you look at the actual numbers next to Bill Shorten’s name there’s been no surge in his approval rating and his disapproval rating is still much much higher than his approval rating, is your boss about to become the Steven Bradbury of Australian politics do you think?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I think what the poll shows is that the government doesn’t have, just six months into its term, a sense of purpose…

JOURNALIST: But it doesn’t show that Bill Shorten is surging as a result of that, on the contrary he’s still vastly unpopular with most voters.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well it’s showing that he leads a party that’s on 55% of the two party preferred vote, that’s what it’s showing and it’s showing that Labor has been I think an effective opposition. The fact is that Tony Abbott is able to intervene in the debate in such an aggressive manner because of the gap that’s there, I mean Christopher is suffering from a little bit of delusion there, a bit Abbott like, saying that people aren’t concerned about the direction of the government, they are.

I’ll tell you what they’re talking about today in Adelaide and everywhere else, it’s penalty rates, it’s the fact that you’re going to have a cut in the living standards and wages of people who rely upon those penalty rates to pay their mortgage, to pay their bills, to pay their school fees for their kids, or if they’re students to get themselves through school or university. This is an extraordinary decision where the government seems to be, like on so many other things just throwing its hands up and going oh well we’re going nothing to do with us.

JOURNALIST: Well let’s turn our attention to that, Chris Pyne does the government actively support the decision of the Fair Work Commission when it comes to penalty rates?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the Fair Work Commission is independent of the government and it was set up by Bill Shorten and the Labor Party and this is what somebody said about it “I think the best way to protect Fair Work Australia is to protects its independence” that’s what Bill Shorten said in 2012 when he created this commission, when he sent the reference on penalty rats to the Fair Work Commission, and when they appointed every single one of the Fair Work Commissioners who made this decision about penalty rates on Sunday being the same as penalty rates on Saturday in four awards out of 122.

Now I know Labor would love to run another scare campaign because they have no policies except scare campaigns, but the reality is there are four out of 122 awards affected, penalty rates have not been abolished, but they’ve been made the same on for Sundays as they are for Saturdays and it was Bill Shorten who owns this decision. I mean when he sent that reference to the Fair Work Commission on penalty rates, what did he expect them to do?

JOURNALIST: Well Albo in good conscience, you’ve got the Fair Work Commission that you guys established operating independently as was intended, they’ve made a determination about rates and yet you’re saying this is a problem of the government, how do you in good conscience prosecute that argument.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: What I’m saying is that I’m not caught up in the process here and the discussion here like Christopher just said again about why the inquiry happen, all that stuff. I’ll tell you what your listeners are concerned about, that 700,000 people who are low income earners, that’s why they’re working on Sunday for penalty rates, and it’s about the ability of these people to put food on the table, to pay schools fees, to pay their bills, that is what I’m concerned about and…

JOURNALIST: So there’s a mea culpa then because you guys set up the Fair Work Commission.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Not at all, the fact is that for over 100 years we’ve had versions of the Fair Work Commission or industrial relations commission and no industrial umpire in this country has ever made a decisions that just cut wages and that’s what this decision does, and that’s why we think it’s a bad decision. We’re focused on the impact of this decision on the people, on the 700,000, the government, every time…

JOURNALIST: So did you establish it under the assumption that they would never cut rates?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: In 100 years they have never ever made a decision that simply cut wages, in 100 years.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: So how does Anthony reconcile his current position with the fact that when Bill Shorten was secretary of the Australian Workers Union he signed 9 enterprise business agreements that took away the penalty rates of workers like cleaners at Cleanevent and in exchange for that received cash and membership lists from the company so that he could have more power in the ALP? So on the one hand he’s now railing against the Fair Work Commission, the independent Fair Work Commission but when he was the secretary of the union in EBAs that he signed he took away the penalty rates of some of the lowest paid workers in Australia, I mean the hypocrisy is breath taking.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Enterprise bargaining does happen but there’s tradeoffs, there’s not simply cuts to wages, what we’ve got here is a cut to the wages of 700,000 people and every time in question time I find it extraordinary every day because whether it’s a Dorothy Dixer from their own side or a question from our side, every Minister stands up and they begin the first word they say is Labor, they say well that Labor did this, Labor wants to do that, they don’t talk like they’re a government, they’re not actually acting like a government…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Oh really, well we passed that Australian Building and Construction and Commission, we passed the Registered Organisation Commission…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And it’s no wonder…

JOURNALIST: Hey sorry guys, I just want to wrap it up with one final local question just for Chris Pyne, Chris you would’ve obviously grown up as a child of the Telethon era here in Adelaide, you must be sad to see it falling by the wayside.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m really shocked actually, shocked that the state Labor government would have 767,000 which they could agree in one day to pass for one community a set up charity to campaign against the federal government and hand out how to vote cards on election day and yet they haven’t got a block of land to give to Telethon for their annual raffle. I mean it’s a remarkable thing that Labor would think that they could give almost three quarters of a millions, well in fact three quarters of a million dollars to what was effectively a bogus charity set up to campaign against us and can’t find anything for telethon.

JOURNALIST: We’re talking to Leon Byner about that later on because I’m pretty sure he’s got a call into Renewal SA about the manner in which that was handled. Chris Pyne and Anthony Albanese always a rollicking stoush, thanks for joining us for to tribes.