5AA Adelaide Radio

JOURNALIST: Two tribes at a special time this morning, Chris Pyne and Anthony Albanese join us, good morning to you both.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning gentleman, good to be with you, thanks for accommodating my time change.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning and that’s yet another favour that Christopher owes all three of us, again.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I wonder if we can get our (inaudible) this morning.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: That’s a bit earlier.

JOURNALIST: Yeah, it is a good hour, half an hour earlier, you’re not a morning person Albo.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’m very much a night person, my Italian genes shine through there.

JOURNALIST: That’s right dinner at 9.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: DJing at 11.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I have been known to see your good self David very late at night.

JOURNALIST: Yes, that’s happened a couple of times as it has also with Chris over the years too.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: But what goes on tour stays on your.

JOURNALIST: Stays on your,

JOURNALIST: That’s getting into dangerous territory I feel this conversation.

JOURNALIST: Ask a question Will.

JOURNALIST: Yeah okay let’s get to the issues. Now Chris one of the things you’re going to be doing today is addressing a subs conference in Canberra today and it seems like that’s suddenly taken on new importance given comments attributed to Rudy Giuliani in the US overnight. The front page of the Australian this morning, he’s expecting to the be Secretary of State under the Trump presidency, he’s talked about a massive increase in this size of the US military and an increase in its Navy capacity too, it means that nation would have the scope to fight what they call a 2 ocean war, do you welcome this apparent commitment to the Pacific or do you fear that a build up like this might be destabilising?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s very much in Australia’s interests that the United States has a very deep engagement in Asia so any comments coming out of the new administration that indicate that they will not be taking their eye off our part of the world are very welcome, whether that’s economic or military or in other soft diplomacy ways we want the United States to be deeply engaged in the Asia pacific region and so those comments are a good sign from Australia’s point of view that we’re not going to see an isolationist America in the future.

JOURNALIST: What’s Labor’s assessment of this Albo, I saw Paul Keating last week on the 7:30 Report, obviously like a lot of people on the broad left no fan of Donald Trump and he was saying that he thinks the Trump Presidency could be used as an argument for Australia to perhaps not back away from ANZUS but to temper the relationship, make it less slavish, our relationship with the Yanks, and start going our own way with more joint partnerships like the one Mr Keating pulled off with President Suharto.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I think certainly the future of Australian foreign engagement has to be three pronged, the alliance with the Unites States, but also very importantly engagement in our Asian region as well as engagement through multilateral forums like the United Nations. Under the Keating government in particular there was a pivot to Asia, I must say that that’s been largely continued in a bipartisan way in terms of the engagement. I noticed the first country that Malcolm Turnbull visited as Prime Minister was Indonesia, and that’s a good thing, we are a part of Asia but it’s also good if the US is engaged in our region but I think at this stage there is a bit, I understand it, we’re all sort of trying to reinterpret what US policy will be but I think it’s a wee bit early yet. President Trump elect gets sworn in in January and I think between now and then there’ll be people trying to work out what exactly it means, and I suspect that we won’t know until some time into his presidency given his lack of experience in terms of an administration.

JOURNALIST: There’s been a lot of talk in the last week about the implications of the Trump presidency and the fact that political parties now have a real challenge across the western world to bring the people who feel like things like free trade agreements that the world has passed them by, that the opportunities that they keep hearing about haven’t manifested themselves in their neighbourhoods and so forth. There’s a question for both of you, and Chris I’ll put it to Albo first because Labor’s sort of lead the charge on this one area but I want to give you a chance to respond. Labor’s position Albo on 457 visas, foreign workers coming into Australia, that looks very much to me like an attempt to try to capitalise or mollify the sort of Trump style sentiment that exists among blue collar workers in Australia.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well it’s consistent with the position that we’ve held for a very long time, we’ve spoken I’m sure about the coastal shipping issue and that’s the best example in my portfolio whereby Australian seafarers used to take a vessel, the Portland, from Portland in Victorian across to Western Australia and back again and they were replaced as a result of the government granting a temporary license, so-called, for something that’s a permanent task, so they were replaced by foreign workers being paid foreign wages and that is completely unacceptable. We do have in the legislation there an Australia first policy if you like whereby if an Australian manned ship is available then it has to be used but that legislation was ignored and that’s a major campaign that we’ve taken up over the last 18 months with regards to the maritime sector in particular.

JOURNALIST: What do you think of the criticisms that have emerged this week Chris Pyne, do you think that the 457 arrangements need to be tightened up or do you sense that there’s a bit of, it’s more about politics than policy.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: David Labor are very much Johnny come lately to the tightening up of the 457 visa class, in fact it’s this government under Tony Abbott and now Malcolm Turnbull that have been tightening up the 457 visas requiring local labour market testing to be done, reducing the number of days you can stay after your visa’s expired and your job is finished so that you can’t compete for another job. And in fact when Bill Shorten was the Minister for Employment that’s when 457 visas spiked in spite of the ANZ job vacancies measure remaining static under Bill Shorten 457 visas rose to 60,000, 60,000 457 visas when he was the Minister for Employment so we’re just seeing Bill Shorten trying to wear Donald Trump’s clothes on this particular subject but in fact of course Labor don’t want to support all of Donald Trump’s policies because they were the people that allowed 50,000 unauthorised arrivals to Australia, Donald Trump has a very firm views on borders as has the Abbott Turnbull government over the last three years.

JOURNALIST: Albo just before we let you guys go can I ask about a South Australian political issue, is it time do you think for Jay Weatherill to drop his push for a nuclear waste facility in this state given opposition within his own party and now on the other side of politics?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Look that of course is a decision for him, but it’s clear that there’s substantial opposition to such a proposal. My understanding is that he’s proposed having a vote, I don’t know that that will be a any different from the panel type system that he set up to assess public opinion and certainly unless there was complete bipartisanship on a proposal such as that I can’t see it being adopted.

JOURNALIST: Do you think most federal Labor figures would be against it Albo?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’m not sure how much they’ve thought about it, I think they probably bring their own views to it.

JOURNALIST: You’ve got the Greens breathing down your neck in your seat in Marrickville there in the trendy inner west of Sydney, you’d be less than thrilled.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No they’re way back David, you should follow the news mate, they’re third.

JOURNALIST: I know you beat them but they haven’t exactly gone away.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: They came third, I beat the Greens and the Libs combined, I make the decisions, a decision on this should not be based on politics it should be based on principles and that is what the South Australian government should do.

JOURNALIST: What do you think Chris, are you surprised that your friend and in a way one of your acolytes Steven Marshall has come out so implacably against an idea that a lot of Liberals think has got merit?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m not surprised that he’s done that because when you delve down deeply into the issue the so-called benefits seem to be quite inflated when this was first raised. What surprises me is that Jay Weatherill is running such a chaotic government that we now have poor Kevin Scarce the former governor being used to do a report and putting a great deal of effort into producing a very considered report which Jay Weatherill then puts to a citizens jury who didn’t even hear evidence from ANSTO or ARPANSA, the national organisations that deal with nuclear issues in this country and yet heard from the Australia Institute and then obviously inevitably rejected the idea of an international waste dump in northern South Australia which Jay Weatherill seems to have set it up to fail and now he’s talking about a referendum so I’m scratching my head as I’m sure a lot of South Australians are about what the purpose of the South Australian government is, it seems to be lurching from one fiasco to another.

JOURNALIST: I think based on our interview with him yesterday Kevin Scarce isn’t that thrilled with any of them at the moment but look we will leave it there, Anthony Albanese, Christopher Pyne always great to catch up, thanks for joining us.