ABC 774 Jon Faine

SUBJECTS: Election of the new Speaker

E&OE…… 

Jon Faine: Christopher Pyne, good morning to you. 

Christopher Pyne: Good morning John. 

Faine: If you could get the numbers to knock off the Gillard Government you’d need someone from the Labor side too wouldn’t you? 

Pyne: Look, I think John it’s important that principle is placed in front of political survival.  John Howard told me a long time ago that how you get the leadership or the Prime Ministership determines the kind of leadership or Prime Ministership you have and Julia Gillard has in true Macbethian style yesterday sacrificed yet another of her Labor colleagues for her own political skin.  First it was Kevin Rudd and now with the same knife, just a different victim, she has dispatched Harry Jenkins. 

Faine: I take your point, but you didn’t answer my question.  If you could get the numbers by grabbing someone in the Labor side, you would too wouldn’t you?

Pyne: Well, we haven’t and Labor has.  So I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating and Julia Gillard needs to explain today what she knew and when.  We’re already seeing Labor MPs like Mike Kelly tweeting “Harry has taken one for the team, Dougy Cameron saying Harry has put his party before himself.  Everyone apparently in the Labor Party is admitting to knowing that Harry Jenkins was pushed yesterday so that an Opposition member could be made Speaker in a short term tactical victory, yet the Prime Minister still insists that she knew nothing about it.  Now, she needs to come clean and come out today and do a proper press conference on this subject and not go to ground. 

Faine: Why does she need to?  It was muck up day yesterday.  You’ve all finished for the year.  By the time you come back for the serious business of running the country next year none of this will matter, it will just be ancient history. 

Pyne: Well John, I don’t think that’s true.  I think the problem for what happened yesterday with the Prime Minister is that yet again she has been involved in a side deal.  On Tuesday she had a secret deal with the Green for the mining tax, she has deals with all of the cross bench independents…..

Faine: That’s politics isn’t it?  That’s what you guys do, except that she’s won and you’ve lost. 

Pyne: I think the public take out of this, the public will view this as yet another shabby special arrangement from a Prime Minister who always puts her political survival ahead of political principle.  I’ve been in Parliament a long time and you’ve been in the media a long time and I think you would agree those parliamentarians that put principle first last the distance and those that put political survival first usually come to a sticky end. 

Faine: You and Tony Abbott, your side of politics, has been arguing since we’ve had this hung parliament that it’s a bad thing for the country to have a Government that clings on by narrowest of margins, that it lacks authority.  Could you argue here that what she’s doing is what you’ve called for her to do, to make safer her majority in the House of Representatives? 

Pyne: Well, what we’ve been saying for a year is that the only way to have a confident country is to have a strong, clear Government in Canberra.  That means an election, where people get to decide and to cast judgement on the broken promise that there would be no carbon tax under a Government Julia Gillard led.  The people can make a clear choice about who they want to have on the Government benches in Canberra, that’s what we’ve been arguing. We haven’t been arguing that Julia Gillard should have paean written for her and a tribute down Northbourne Avenue because she’s managed to have a short term tactical victory by breaking a long standing Westminster tradition in this country that a government MP fills the role of speaker. 

Faine:  There’s another aspect to all this which intrigues me as well if I may trouble you about it Christopher Pyne.  When you and Tony Abbott, when your side of politics, was negotiating with the independents, with Oakeshott, Windsor, Katter and Wilkie to try and form government we learned after those negotiations that they were all critical of Tony Abbott’s style.  And what’s happened here is that in a way you’ve startled or frightened one of you own ranks into jumping ship and going the other way with Peter Slipper now doing the same thing.  It suggests that the no-holds-barred-take-no-prisoners approach to politics of Tony Abbott has in some way pushed Peter Slipper into the deal with the Labor Party.

Pyne:  Well I think if you’re talking about a no-holds-barred approach to politics, I think a Prime Minister who is prepared to trash every political convention in order to cling to power is the person who has the no-holds-barred ruthless approach to politics.  That’s what Julia Gillard put on display yesterday.  In terms of Peter Slipper, members of Parliament face pre-selection pressure often in their careers.  I’ve been challenged in pre-selection, it was a long time ago but I was and I succeeded.  I defeated a sitting Liberal member of Parliament in pre-selection.  It is not unusual in politics for political parties to have pre-selection challenges for sitting members of Parliament.  It is how you respond to those that determine whether you continue as a Member of Parliament and Peter Slipper has changed his stripes, he’s become an independent, and Julia Gillard has had a short term tactical victory.  But in the long run the public will view this for another shabby arrangement, another Sussex Street death squad taking out an honourable and fair Speaker in Harry Jenkins simply so the Prime Minister could get another vote on the floor of the House and sideline Andrew Wilkie.  Andrew Wilkie is the biggest loser from what happened yesterday because the Government no longer needs his vote.

Faine:  He loses leverage.  Just for a moment were you even tempted when you were nominated as the Speaker?

Pyne:  Not in the least bit John.  I think what Tony Windsor did was simply demonstrate the high farce that the Prime Minister visited on the Parliament yesterday.

Faine:  Yes it certainly seemed to be a theatrical moment.  But more seriously when the dust settles Christopher Pyne you all go off, you have your holidays, you have a break, you re-charge your batteries.  When we come back next year does not the Coalition side need to reinvent itself?  Don’t you need to re-think your strategies?  This year it was all about trying to push the Gillard Government to the brink, trying to force an early election, trying to reinforce the notion of instability.  Don’t you need a new narrative for 2012?

Pyne:  Well Oppositions have two jobs.  The first one is to hold the Government to account and I think most commentators would accept and the public would agree that we’ve done that quite successfully this year.  Certainly the polls would indicate that and the field evidence I get in my electorate is that the public believes that the Opposition has held the Government to account for its broken promises and its incompetence.  The second thing that Oppositions have to do, of course, is be an alternative government and all year Tony Abbott has been giving important speeches about political subjects and policy matters and all our policies from the last election are still current unless they are changed.  So we are not a policy-free zone by any means.  If we were to form a government tomorrow there are sixteen members of Tony Abbott’s front bench who were ministers in the Howard Government.  When Julia Gillard, well when Kevin Rudd, formed a government four years ago there were two people in the Rudd Government who had been ministers before.

Faine:  Alright well one more thing… Merry Christmas. 

Pyne:  Yes well Merry Christmas to you and all your listeners too Jon.

ENDS