5AA Adelaide
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – 5AA Adelaide
Wednesday 03 February 2016
SUBJECTS: Early-Election Talk, GST;
DAVID PENBERTHY: We’ll get to that in a moment because right now it’s time to turn our attention to the federal scene with our guests Anthony Albanese, good morning Anthony.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: G-day!
DAVID PENBERTHY: And Christopher Pyne good morning Mr Pyne!
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Will, David and Albo, it’s nice to be back.
WILL GOODINGS: Guys it’s great to have you back, now yesterday was the first question time for 2016 and also the first party room meeting and caucus meetings for both the liberals and the ALP, at that meeting Chris Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull raised the prospect of a double dissolution election, a full senate election later this year. Do you think he’s trying to call the bluff of the independents or is the Prime Minister genuinely prepared to go to the polls in a double dissolution?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well a double dissolution is a live options for a couple of reasons, one because the cross benchers, Labor and the Greens, but particularly Labor and the cross benchers are combining routinely to stop government legislation, even legislation for which we had a mandate at the last election. Now the latest example is the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission, both of which we took as policies to the 2013 election, and it really surprises me that Labor doesn’t want to clean up the union movement given the findings of the Royal commission of Deyson Heydon, and it surprises me that the cross benchers also are prepared to continue to allow thuggery and standover tactics to continue unabated in the union movement. So yeah if the senate won’t pass legislation which is vital and for which we have a mandate there are very few options available for a government, one of them is a double dissolution election and if that happens, well the cards will fall where they fall.
DAVID PENBERTHY: Would a double dissolution election fought on industrial relations Albo be a dangerous one for the ALP given that, I think quite rightly Chris Pyne has identified some of the pretty tawdry, and in some cases criminal, conduct of some unions in the royal commission and that will be the basis of a very effective campaign for the conservatives.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well there’s your point David, criminal conduct should be dealt with by the criminal law and proper prosecution taken and anyone who breaks the law should face the full force of it. There’s agreement across the board there, what this Government’s about though of course is avoiding scrutiny for its budget, if there’s a double dissolution election it will only be because they do not want to bring down a budget in May, they are all over the shop when it comes to economic policy they changed the Prime Ministership…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Ha! Let’s talk about economic policy please…
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Earlier this year, or at the end of last year, and nothing’s changed. We’ve got the same climate change policy we’ve got the same policy on marriage equality, we’ve got a GST that they don’t know if they are intruding an increase or not, they’re sort of having a faux debate but every time someone takes a position they say oh we’re not doing that. They’re running from the Australian people they should bring down a budget, we have three year terms and they should be judged on the basis of that. When it comes to industrial relations, I’ll be meeting today with the five people who were marched off their ship, the MV Portland that took freight from Western Australia to Victoria in a regular way for more than one of the blokes who I spoke to yesterday worked on that ship for 25 years, what’s going on there is them being replaced by foreign labour being paid $2 an hour, $2 an hour.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Anthony this isn’t a Shakespearian soliloquy…
ANTHONY ALBANESE: …that’s their policy, they want to get rid of unions and they want to get rid of working conditions, that’s what they’re about.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …Got to tighten up your answers fella, or we’ll be here all day!
ANTHONY ALBANESE: At least I turn up! You didn’t even turn up last week mate
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You didn’t turn up the week before!
ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’ll give you the big hint…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Where were you the week before, under a palm leaf somewhere?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: It was a better program last week…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You were lying on a sandy beach somewhere under a palm leaf the week before.
WILL GOODINGS: You’re getting…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: This is commercial radio, you’ve got to keep it moving Anthony!
WILL GOODINGS: You’re getting free drama classes from the Member for Sturt Albo, Probably because he’s got his own TV show.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’m not as a big a show pony, I’ll say that.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Let me say, let me just talk about this economic policy for a minute, last week Labor confirmed what everybody already knew, which is that they are still the tax spend and borrow party that they were under Gillard and Rudd cause apparently they have 37 and a half billion dollars to spend on education which nobody else has but apparently they’ve got it! So Labor’s going to the next election with a policy to increase taxes on cigarettes on superannuation on multinational corporations, they’ve got a policy to increase tax, not reduce any taxes and increase spending! Now I don’t know about Anthony’s electorate but when I go around my electorate they don’t want heavier taxes and more spending, they want a stable, calm government.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: They want schools funding and they don’t a GST at 15%, that’s want they want in my electorate and in yours…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: They know there’s a lot of money being spent on education and they want outcomes. They want teacher quality, they want school autonomy, they want a better curriculum and they want more parental engagement, they know there’s a lot of money being spent in schools but whether it’s being spent on the right things is the big question.
WILL GOODINGS: Chris Pyne, when are you going to make a definitive statement, the Federal Government that is on with regard to your position if there increasing the GST or keeping it the same, because at the moment it appears that you’ve outsourced the entire debate to state and federal Labor parties?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the GST is a state tax that’s the first thing so therefore they’re having their own ding dong argument between Jay Weatherill and Bill Shorten it’s collected by the Government federally and given to the states.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Under federal legislation.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And goes straight to the states. It’s a state tax.
WILL GOODINGS: Semantics aside, you’re the people who have to decide what the rate is though aren’t you Chris Pyne.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, because the law requires the States and the territories and the Senate and the House of Representative to all agree so we can’t just change the rate, no we can’t do that. So Jay Weatherill is having a ding dong argument with Bill Shorten about it because Bill Shorten wants to play politics and Jay Weatherill wants to find a way of increasing revenue.
DAVID PENBERTHY: We do know that though, we know that they’re having a fight, we’ve been covering it every day for the last two weeks, what we want to know is what do you reckon, what are you going to do?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: You’re the government!
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we’ll… Well you’ve worked that out? How long has it taken you to work that out?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well why don’t you act like it?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You were over in the ministerial wing today, you lost your way! What were you doing on our carpet? Trying to re-live the old glory days?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Lots of the Tories want to talk to us Chris…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’ll have a tax white paper this year in the first part of the year and that will make it very clear where the Government is heading in terms of tax policy but at the moment we’re very happy to have a debate we should be mature enough as a country to have a national conversation and we’re having one.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: But you have to say what you’re position is before you can have a debate, you’ve got to have a frame for the debate.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’re not going to fall for the rule in rule out politics of the of old politics, I mean you want to practice old politics.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: A government doesn’t want to rule in or rule things out…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We don’t have to rule anything in or rule anything out at this point, we want to have a national debate about it and that’s what’s going on which is very healthy.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: What’s the frame of the debate?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s about tax! And whether we need to increase taxes, reduce taxes, reduce spending. You want to increase spending, you want to increase taxes, and you want to increase borrowing! We want people to work, save and invest.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: We do want to increase taxes on multinationals, I’ll give you the big tip, we want them to pay something….
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: How much more do you want to tax cigarettes?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What about the tradies, why do you want to tax the tradies even more?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Now you’re just talking nonsense, you’ve never met one!
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But you want to increase… I’ve got a truck! I drive a Ute, That’s what I drive!
WILL GOODINGS: Now Chris this white paper that you mentioned..
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You need to come to my electorate and have a look.
WILL GOODINGS: Laurie Oakes reported last week that there’s a likelihood that the white paper could effectively be the next federal budget where it spells out this is how the Government could operate under a GST of X. Judging from your comments just then, this white paper will be explicit wont it? It will have whether it’s along the lines foreshadowed by Laurie Oakes or not, the white paper it will have a number in it which is a GST of 10 or 12 and a half or 15 or whatever, it will settle somewhere wont it?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the white paper will outline the options for tax reform in the same way that there will be a federation white paper which will outline what can be done to make the federation work better, there will be a defence industry policy statement in the coming weeks which will also indicate how were going to grow defence industry in Australia and use out procurement dollar to create jobs and growth which I’m very much looking forward to as a South Australian, and I mean we’ve got a lot on our plate, we’ve had the National Innovation and Science Agenda which I’m responsible for in December, which I’m now implementing. I mean the government is getting on with the job and first and foremost it’s about jobs and it’s about growth. This is an election year so of course there will be static throughout the year which we’re already seeing from Anthony this morning but the bottom line is this Government knows we have to grow the economy, we know that people are most concerned about jobs, they are still concerned about cost of living and that’s why we have to keep working to keep prices down, we have to keep government spending restrained and obviously work within the parameters that we are given by the parliament in terms of the collection of revenue.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s interesting that a 15% increase in the GST will not keep prices down.
DAVID PENBERTHY: The shadow boxing will have to stop at some point. And that sounds like it will be when the white paper comes out.