5AA Adelaide Radio

JOURNALIST: Well I hope the constitutional crisis yesterday didn’t ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the Melbourne Cup.

JOURNALIST: No, I wouldn’t have thought, not ours, not ours.

JOURNALIST: The race that stops the nation and the resignation that stops the functioning of the Senate it would appear, Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese join us, good morning.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Will.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning.

JOURNALIST: Now Chris we want to start with you if we can, I know this is obviously a matter for the High Court now but do you as a member of the federal government have a view about whether Bob Day was validly elected and also whether the Senate spot that he held should remain with the Family First Party?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I don’t have a view about whether he was validly elected or not, that’s a matter for the High Court to decide, not a matter for me to have an opinion about, and the High Court will also decide as it has before on numerous occasions over many decades who and how that person – he will be replaced, he’s resigned now. This has happened before and it’s not new to the High Court and they will know how to resolve the impasse. Obviously he’s resigned from the Senate, so that therefore definitely means he has a vacancy that needs to be filled, whether there’s a count back, whether Family First get to replace him as has happened before with One Nation for example some years ago is a matter for the High Court to determine.

JOURNALIST: What’s your assessment of it Albo, is Labor all over this because you’re excited by the possibility of getting the former South Australian Senator, Labor’s Anne McEwen back into the Upper House?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well we’re all over this like the Australian public, I think we want to know when the government knew there was an issue here. It says that it got advice last Thursday, the question is when did it ask for advice, how long have they known that there’s a big question mark over whether Bob Day was eligible to ever sit in the Senate, if they knew that but were happy to count his vote in why has this issue just come up know, why was there no transparency over this issue? It’s not like there hasn’t been a focus on Bob Day I’ve got to say in the last few weeks, maybe it’s – I was wondering why Christopher Pyne was gagging debate on bills like the ABCC and a range of other legislation in the last week…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s ridiculous.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: They rushed it through to the Senate but given the Senate wasn’t even sitting maybe now that makes a bit more sense.

JOURNALIST: Is that a fair assertion Chris, was the government trying to sort of you know squeeze the remaining drop of political life out of Bob Day to seed its legislative agenda?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the ridiculousness of that statement is proven by the last thing that Anthony said which was that the Senate wasn’t even sitting, so why would I…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It was the week coming up, you were pretty keen.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Please, stop this nonsense and your conspiracy theories. I was getting the legislation through the House of Representatives because the Senate only has 12 sitting days left for the rest of the year and as Anthony well knows the Senate doesn’t deal with government business for all of those twelve days, it spends plenty of time giving speeches about matters of interest to them. And I wanted to make sure they had all the legislation the government wants through waiting for them when they get back and therefore we got it through the House of Representatives in due course.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: When did you know there was a problem with Bob Day though Christopher, when did you know?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yesterday.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yesterday, that’s the first time?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s right.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: They didn’t consult you even though they got legal advice last Thursday.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s right.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: You’re the leader of the government in the House.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bob Day…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Your show’s more dysfunctional than I thought.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bob Day doesn’t sit in the House, Bob Day sits in the Senate, it’s a matter for the Attorney General.

JOURNALIST: Can we set aside the politics and the constitutional element of this and focus on something that we’ve done this morning on the program; we spoke with Aaron earlier who’s one of the people that’s been left out of pocket and left without a home as a result of Homestead Homes falling down and starting this whole mess. I want to get a sense from each of you and perhaps we’ll start with you Albo, of your assessment of Bob Day’s handling of this entire scandal in its entirety given he’s not now speaking to the media, he’s given no explanation to people like Aaron who we’ve spoken to on the program about his current predicament. What’s your estimation of Bob Day’s handling of this entire scandal?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I think Bob Day’s handling of the issues relating to his business going back now a very long time, back to when he was head of the HIA and arguing to privatise everything on earth, has been appalling. People have been put in a terrible predicament, I saw on TV last night the footage of homes where the wall doesn’t meet the ceiling and where quite clearly people are massively out of pocket. I saw contractors who are owed thousands and thousands of dollars, the human dimension of this is just terrible and Bob Day, who liked to be all pious and lecture people, has I think a lot to answer for about the role that he has played here and it’s not good enough for him, who was quite prepared to be in the public eye, to just disappear and pretend, you know, nothing to see here. Well there’s a lot to see here and explanations needs to be given.

JOURNALIST: What do you think Chris, do you think that if he had his time over he could’ve handled it differently? We’ve had a lot of people on the show who are owed large amounts of money and are none the wiser about whether they’re ever going to be getting it from him.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well look I’m not going to join an all in brawl on Bob Day. I think it’s very sad that Bob Day’s business has gone under; the truth is it was a very sound business until he bought Huxley Homes in New South Wales. Obviously Huxley Homes has mishandled very badly their business, I don’t think you can blame Bob Day for the fact that there was poor workmanship on the homes that he was the owner of the whole business, he wasn’t turning up to work every day doing that work. I mean certainly Huxley Homes have got a lot to answer for and Bob Day has said that because of the insurance provisions of his business all of those people’s homes will be properly restituted and so they should be.

JOURNALIST: Because he’s also admitted himself that maybe he took his eye off the ball by embarking on a political career when he still had a very important day job building people’s houses, often building people’s first houses. I mean you know how serious a proposition a political career is, you can’t do two jobs at once.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I agree with you and I agree with him, I mean I think he’s very regretful, very regretful that he didn’t put the proper provisions in place for Homestead Homes, his overall business. I think that’s a great shame for him, he was a very sound businessperson, I think the fact that he was in the Senate meant that he couldn’t do both jobs as well as he would’ve liked to have, I don’t think we should be attacking him personally for that mistake, people do make mistakes and I think Bob Day is a very solid citizen. I think it’s a great shame that those people’s homes need to be fixed and that’s a matter for the businesses but I don’t think you can seat all that blame back to Bob Day. I’m not going to sort of turn up with burning embers and a pitch fork and say, you know, burn Bob Day politically. I think that’s ridiculous, obviously businesses do go through and this is what’s happened here and Bob Day is very upset about it, I don’t think he’s pleased about what happened and I think if he could have his time again he would do things very differently.

JOURNALIST: I think the thing that a lot of our listeners are struggling with now though is this sense that there’s so much clamour over who fills the casual vacancy now there’s a constitutional fight about which party would fill the casual vacancy and there’s a sense that in the pecking order of importance the people that erase thousands of dollars are somehow being forced right down to the bottom of the list.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that’s only the media’s obsession with this latest thing, I mean the truth is the number on priority for those people’s homes to be fixed, for them to get their contracts fulfilled, that’s the number one priority. The High Court will decide how Bob Day’s casual vacancy is filled, the most likely outcome for that is that there’ll be either a count back or Family First will fill it. If there’s a count back it’s very unlikely that anybody other than Family First’s second candidate will fill it so people should take a cold shower and calm down because there’s not going to be suddenly another Labor Senator in the Senate. There isn’t going to be a bi-election, the High Court will make the decision, what’s happened in the past is that sometimes the casual vacancy’s been filled by the political party who the member represented and other times there’s been a count back in the Senate and usually the person who was number 2 on the ticket gets elected.

JOURNALIST: Okay, we’re going to have to leave it there, Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese thanks very much for joining us as ever on two tribes.