5AA Adelaide Breakfast Radio

JOURNALIST: It’s a very big good morning to Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning David and Anthony.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning Team.

JOURNALIST: Now guys, we missed it last week because you were both away but the big story in the world over the last week obviously has been the US’s decision to intervene in the situation in Syria in light of the Assad regime’s use of suspected Sarin gas against its civilian population. To you first Christopher, did you support what Donald Trump did there?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Very much so, the role of the United States in the world is to ensure that regimes like the Assad Regime don’t believe they can get away with what is effectively a war crime. And the use of tomahawk missiles to bomb the airfield from which the war crime emanated is a proportionate and reasonable response to a hideous act on behalf of the Assad regime so I do strongly support it.

JOURNALIST: What’s Labor’s position on this Albo, were Labor in favour of the US’s actions in intervening in the manner in which it did?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well Labor supported it as well, we were properly briefed as is appropriate for national security issues by the government. Chemical weapons have been outlawed by the United Nations along with cluster bombs, along with land mines and the idea that chemical weapons would be used on children is just abhorrent and we need to never see their like again, and hence I think there obviously was a need for the international community to have a response. Syria is a complete mess, I don’t think there are simple solutions to the Syrian issue, I think actually that Julie Bishop as the Foreign Minister has handled Syria in all its complexity as good as anyone could have.

JOURNALIST: To you again Chris Pyne, how worried are you, I noticed Albo just mentioned the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, a couple of weeks ago she talked about the briefing that she had had about the potential for North Korea, if not now then possibly within a couple of years to reach Australia through some kind of nuclear attack, be it in some kind of retaliation to what the US does or off its own bat. It’s pretty hard to get a bead on exactly what is happening in Pyongyang but it’s disturbing the manner in which the North Koreans are behaving isn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it’s incredibly disturbing, the North Korean situation I think is the most dangerous in the world right now. I know it sounds surprising to say so but there is a predictability about the war in the Middle East, in Syria and Iraq and of course the allies there are winning that war slowly but surely and there will be a solution at some point which probably won’t be perfect but we know generally how that will all end whereas in North Korea there’s an unpredictability about the regime. And of course this also has quite significant capability which it keeps proving through its missile testing so it is a very dangerous cauldron in North Korea led by a man who is not only delusional but also probably brainwashed over several generations in what’s called the hermit kingdom into believing that he has an exceptional status. So the United States and China and of course Japan and South Korea, Australia and others need to play a very significant role in containing the North Korean regime and when I was in Washington last week obviously our discussions with Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis about these kinds of maters and I think China needs to play a very significant role in making sure that North Korea doesn’t make a misstep.

JOURNALIST: Shifting gears now guys, and I’ll start with you if I can, sorry Albo.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I think on that if I might make just one comment, South Park a couple of years ago, the creators did a satire about North Korea and I think it was a very brave move because it’s not clear whether it’s satire or a documentary.

JOURNALIST: Team America.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: This guy is a complete fruit bat and that is a real concern.

JOURNALIST: Chris Pyne I think where David was about to take you was the events that came out of the showdown on the weekend with regard to racism and Albo I’ll be interested in your take on this too. There has been some words written this morning by Mark Robinson that suggests that the issue of racism is somehow a particularly South Australia one, do you think we have a particular problem here in your home state?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I don’t think so, I think the issues around racism in sport have unfortunately been dogging sport for a very long time and there’s no place for racism in sport, it’s quite pathetic quite frankly in this day and age that we even need to deal with these kinds of issues and I think Port Adelaide took the right step in suspending the membership of their supporter who had been racially vilifying one of the Crows players and it’s a pity that the Crows supporter who was vilifying Paddy Rider got away without any sanction because they weren’t able to be identified and disappeared. But clubs and the sport in general need to take a very firm line, they do, I think they basically get it right and basically fans have got to pull themselves together and stop behaving like idiots.

JOURNALIST: Albo you’re a Hawks man and obviously three of the player who’ve brought so much joy to the fans of the Hawks over the last decade, one of them is no longer there, Lance Franklin, but thinking about Burgoyne and Rioli, these blokes have brought so much to the game. Do you think that as Port’s Justin Westhoff has said this morning that we should consider life bans for people who can’t behave like civilised human beings at the football and racially vilify players?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I think that’s a pretty reasonable response frankly. One of the fantastic things about footy is that everyone is just a footballer on their field, you have people of different ethnic background now, as well as the first Australians, making contributions, doing their best for their team but I defy anyone who’s a supporter of any team to watch Cyril Rioli’s performance in the grand final a couple of years ago and just not say wow what an athlete. How people look at colour when they’re looking at these magnificent athletes who are, you know, Christopher and I and you two just dream about, doing one of the things that they do just on…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah, my footy days are well and truly over, like your runway days Anthony.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: If ever they’d begun.

JOURNALIST: Did you play for Saint Ignatius Chris?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Of course I did but Anthony’s runway days are over, my footy days are over.

JOURNALIST: You would’ve been a small goal kicking forward pocket I reckon Christopher Pyne, is that accurate?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think I was in the very very back farthest pocket in the defence, which is where all the most useless players seem to end up at Saint Ignatius.

JOURNALIST: Could’ve been a centre half bench, which is always much worse.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’ll say this, I was – it’s not just (inaudible) AFL, I was at a rugby league game a few years ago and people were getting stuck into, it happened to be they were getting stuck into a South’s player on the basis of his aboriginality and all of the people around them dealt with it really really clearly.

JOURNALIST: In a traditional South’s fashion mate?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well the bloke left.

(Laughs)

JOURNALIST: I’ve been to a few of those games.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: The bloke left and that was a good thing, they just made it uncomfortable for him, no one threatened him, but they just said mate just leave, they said it a little bit less politely than that but they dealt with it. And I reckon that overwhelmingly supporters are disgusted with this when you have a gentleman like Adam Goodes, you know, treated the way that he was for a period there, you know it is unacceptable and people go to the footy because they respect each other and it’s good that the clubs really do take action and the AFL I think has done a magnificent job ever since, well before, but the Michael Long incident I think really was the turning point.

JOURNALIST: Well it’s taken the Assad regime, Kim Il-sung and racist football fans to do it but after about a year and a half we’ve finally had an outbreak of total consensus on two tribes.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: We’re together, fighting with you guys.

JOURNALIST: Good on you guys, thanks fellas we’ll do it again next week.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good on you.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: See you, thank you.