5AA Adelaide Radio

SUBJECTS: Labor Citizenship Referrals; Sam Dastyari;

JOURNALIST: Chris Pyne and Anthony Albanese, good morning to you both.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning gentleman.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: G’day.
JOURNALIST: Now Chris I’ve got to say you picked a bad week not to be in Adelaide, it’s day 5 of the test today.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I know.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Wow.
JOURNALIST: There’s been quite a bit of sledging out in the middle, it’s felt a little bit like an episode of Two Tribes at times out there.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But Anthony and I are always on the record, so we can’t be too unpleasant to each other.
JOURNALIST: So Will and I are the equivalent…
ANTHONY ALBANESE: And we’re good humans.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And we like each other deep down, very, very deep down.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Don’t tell anyone that.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Very, very deep down.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well both get into trouble.
JOURNALIST: You’ll lose your act!
ANTHONY ALBANESE: What’s the story with this South Australian trumpeting for the Barmy Army?
JOURNALIST: We’re going to find out soon Albo.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s very Dastyari level.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Now, now.
JOURNALIST: We’ll see if he gets accused of treason like Sam has.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yep.
JOURNALIST: The big story is citizenship at the moment, there’s apparently 10 Labor MPs who are under a cloud. What’s the status there, Chris, of whether the government will be referring them to the High Court or not?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well let me be very clear about this, Bill Shorten demanded that the government establish a register for people to declare their citizenship or otherwise. We’ve done that and we have John Alexander facing a by-election in Bennelong because he did the right thing, we have Barnaby Joyce, who faced a by-election in New England. Bill Shorten said there were no Labor MPs at any time who would be caught up in the same net, now as it’s turned out there are at least 4 members of the House of Representatives who were UK citizens from the Labor Party when nominations closed for the 2016 election. They are all dead cert candidates to be referred to the High Court, either Labor can do it or the government will do it but they will be referred to the High Court. They are Justine Keay in Braddon, Susan Lamb in Longman, Josh Wilson in Fremantle and David Feeney in Batman and Katy Gallagher, the Senator in the ACT, Labor, will also be referred by the Senate to the High Court. So there are 5 MPs about whom there is no doubt that they need to be referred to the High Court, and Bill Shorten said there were none.
JOURNALIST: He’s also said this morning that David Feeney would be sent to the High Court, Albo will there be any others that you guys will send for a look?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well there’s only one Labor MP, and David Feeney has been clear about that, who hasn’t been able to obtain the documents that he needed. He says that he did renounce his UK citizenship but he hasn’t been able to find, essentially, the documentation, neither here nor from the British government. And what he said is that if that doesn’t occur by tomorrow then he will ask Tony Burke to refer him to the High Court for that matter to be considered. As for the others that Christopher has mentioned, all of them took the reasonable steps that are required under the law, all of them applied to have their citizenship renounced, paid their fees, put in the necessary documentation. If it is the case that the completion of the process by another government is the determining factor then what that would leave open is for some bureaucrat in the UK or anywhere else to sit on documentation, not process it, and there for to determine whether or not someone can be in the Australian Parliament, and that’s why the High Court, when they’ve considered these matters have spoken of, and determined indeed, that it is the reasonable steps test that would be considered. Now we’re looking at these issues, we’re also looking at the failure of government MPs like Jason Falinski, Julia Banks, Alex Hawke and others to provide the documentation.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s a desperate, desperate smoke screen.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: That is required. Well the documentation hasn’t been provided…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Rubbish.
JOURNALIST: Can’t you say the same about Steve Georganas?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And Maria Vamvakinou if we’re going to go down that track or Mark Dreyfus for that matter.
JOURNALIST: Some of them, with respect, I don’t want to sound like a cynic, heaven forbid, some of them seem to be using the ‘I had it but the dog ate it’ excuse don’t they?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, what…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Nobody in the Coalition.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: That’s not right, what some of them have done is say that, Nola Marino for example says that she’s got legal advice but hasn’t provided it…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Nola Marino’s husband wasn’t even an Italian citizen when they got married.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Or any other information. Well I don’t know whether that’s the case or not.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Labor is just making things up, Bill is making this up.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Clearly what needs to happen is that the government and the opposition need to sit down, if people need to be referred to the High Court then that should happen.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We will not be referring any Coalition MPs to the High Court, we’ve done that, we’ve got John Alexander in Bennelong in his by-election, we’ve had Barnaby Joyce dealt with, we referred him, we will not refer any Coalition MP’s.
JOURNALIST: So no more Chris even if they’re possibly under a cloud.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: None of them are under a cloud. Now Labor is pretending, because they’ve found themselves in this embarrassing situation…
ANTHONY ALBANESE: What about Julia Banks?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Julia Banks has been cleared by the Greek government of not being a citizen, never being a citizen and Labor is just making things up to hide their embarrassment that they have at least 5 that are factually not entitled to sit in the House of Representatives if the High Court rules that way.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: That’s not right
JOURNALIST: We’re going to change tack anyway guys, we’re changing tack to another topic. Hey Albo we mentioned Sam Dastyari in passing at the start of this
segment today, and last week you were particularly strident in your defence of the Senator. In fact, more so than Bill Shorten who later that day came out and slapped him. Subsequent to our conversation, though, more information came out, including that tape of him contradicting the Labor Party policy on the South China Sea. Is your position changed on Sam Dastyari?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Clearly the documentation that came out that wasn’t available when I spoke indicates that Sam Dastyari, whether advertently or inadvertently wasn’t correct when he characterised the nature of those comments at the press conference that was attended by Mr Huang. Clearly the tape indicates that he made comments that I believe are quite inappropriate. He has, of course been sacked from the positions that he’s held and he now sits as a backbench MP.
JOURNALIST: Should he leave politics in total?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: He’s been elected mate, he’s been elected by the Australia people.
JOURNALIST: No, but the Libs yesterday were saying that you had said to journos in the gallery that he should just go.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, what Malcolm Turnbull was trying to do was to verbal comments that certainly weren’t mine.
JOURNALIST: They certainly weren’t yours on 5AA last week.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: No no, what I do is I say my views on the record, I said them on 5aa last week, I’m saying them today.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But the truth is, give Anthony a break he’s had quite a run, the truth is that Bill Shorten…
JOURNALIST: (laughs) you’re a generous man Chris.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Seems tied to Sam Dastyari in a way that I haven’t seen two people tied together in politics in a very long time and I think the issue here is that Sam Dastyari had a lot more to do with the election of Bill Shorten as the leader of the Labor Party in 2013 than we actually understand. Now there has been calls for an investigation in New South Wales into the rorting of the leadership ballot, I’m sure Anthony doesn’t want to comment on it, and I understand that, the rorting of the ALP leadership ballot where 50 ballot papers went to Sam Dastyari’s office rather than homes of the people who are members of the Labor Party, or purported to be members of the Labor Party. None of these questions have been properly dealt with or investigated by New South Wales Labor or the federal executive of the Labor Party and there has to be a reason why Bill Shorten feels so compromised by Sam Dastyari.
JOURNALIST: Chris Pyne, how do you respond to the criticism of your policy response to this Dastyari situation announced yesterday regarding foreign agents, or agents who do the bidding of foreign states, ostensibly to undermine Australian policies? Your former colleague Andrew Robb described it as a political stunt, what do you say to Andrew Robb?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Andrew Robb is a terrific guy and I wouldn’t be criticising him, in fact I never have, and I don’t think he is criticising the government. I think if you look at what the government’s done we’ve said that we want transparency. Now people are very welcome to get jobs with overseas companies or overseas governments for that matter, as long as it’s transparent and if you’ve got nothing to hide then you’d be more than happy to register yourself as a lobbyist. These days there is so much lobbying going on in politics that the more transparency the better, and if you’re worried about the transparency then you shouldn’t be doing whatever it is that you were going to do.
JOURNALIST: Chris Pyne, Anthony Albanese always great to catch up, we’ll do it again next week, thank you.