ABC 891

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – ABC 891 Adelaide with Matthew Abraham, David Bevan and Mark Butler
Wednesday 5 August 2015

SUBJECTS: The Government's plan for a strong and sustainable naval shipbuilding industry; Reform of parliamentary entitlements; Bronwyn Bishop.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Good morning Christopher Pyne, Federal Education Minister, Federal MP for Sturt, and he’s in the studio. We are Periscoping this as well for those of you who are following us on Twitter and want to look at TV and radio with pictures as it is, Christopher Pyne, welcome to the studio.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning gentlemen, it is lovely to be Periscoped.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well it has been up periscope for jobs in Adelaide by the looks of it, Chris Pyne.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I have been Periscoped before though, I think I have been on Periscope for some time.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: I know.

DAVID BEVAN: How did that feel?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It is quite painless, actually.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler? This is starting to sound like one of those uncomfortable prostate exam, you know, Men’s Health Week exhibits...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You mentioned it. Nobody else said it. There goes the other shoe dropping.

DAVID BEVAN: Mark Butler, Labor MP for Port Adelaide.

MARK BUTLER: With intros like that it makes me glad I am not in Adelaide right now.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It has all gone very pear-shaped here.

DAVID BEVAN: Mark Butler who is not at Rooty Hill this morning. Good morning Mark Butler, Labor MP for Port Adelaide.

MARK BUTLER: Good morning gentlemen.

DAVID BEVAN: Opposition Environment and Climate Change spokesperson, and National President of the ALP, good morning.

MARK BUTLER: Good morning.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Chris Pyne, $89 billion - you’re quite happy to wear the tag of the $89 billion man. It is a lot of money to save three seats in Adelaide – yours, Matt Willliams’ and Andrew Southcott - is it not?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, as a person who used to watch The Six Million Dollar Man in the seventies and early eighties I think Lee Majors was the character, $89 billion sounds like a lot more money than $6 million. I used to think $6 million was a lot of money.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: No, but seriously it is a lot of money, is it not, that suddenly has come out of the ether after you’ve had a Federal Government taking a pounding. You’re getting very nervous here in South Australia. We’ve seen Antony Green’s analysis; he says you don’t have to worry about Nick Xenophon’s preferences, you’ve got to worry about his primary vote taking seats off people like you and suddenly the money’s there for ships. Suddenly South Australia is not only a good place to build canoes; it’s a good place to build ships.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, Adelaide is a great place to build ships and we have the ship building infrastructure to do it and $89 billion is yes, it’s the most historic announcement for the navy in the history of the federation. We’ve never had a continuous naval ship building capacity in this country and it’s very, very good news for South Australia. It’s not about seats; it’s about the fact that our navy needs to be replenished over the next twenty odd years. We’re going to do that here, as Adelaide is the ship building capital of the country, through Corvettes, future Frigates. That’s the first instalment and then hopefully the subs will be the second instalment, but even in the worst case scenario, even if the subs were built overseas, and I don’t believe that they will be because I think Adelaide has a very strong case, over half the spending on subs will be maintenance and sustainment in Adelaide. So this is an unadulteratedly good news story for Adelaide. 2,500 jobs, we’ve ameliorated the Valley of Death left to us by the Labor Party. I’m very proud to have delivered it for South Australia.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: We’re in the Valley of Death now. That’s reality isn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s right, yes … because Labor made no decisions that needed to be made before 2011 to avoid the Valley of Death. In fact every ship building contract Labor awarded was to an overseas builder. They awarded no contracts within Australia in their time in Government and didn’t make the decisions necessary to avoid the Valley of Death. So the good news is that the number of jobs it’ll fall to will be 1,000 around 1,000 which is much better than none and it’ll rise again to 2,500 because of the Corvettes and the future frigates.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: And that’ll be a net increase of around 500 jobs.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: At least, at least …

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: And not just in South Australia? So we have to share that … this is the size of the task facing South Australia isn’t it and it’s a symbolic thing, I know, those jobs. No one’s going to knock it but we’re looking at a net increase of 500 ship building jobs in Australia and we get our share of that as a result of this announcement. That is not going to claw us out of –

DAVID BEVAN: These are direct jobs being employed down there? Now, maybe there’ll be spin-offs as well but –

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …I think you’re being a bit glass half empty here. I mean this is a very, very positive news story and it won’t just be the jobs that are created at Osborne, this will bring other defence contractors, other defence headquarters to South Australia. We will really genuinely be the defence industry State as we have been - a large amount of defence industry’s already spend here but this is going to secure the future for my children, other people’s children for decades to come.

DAVID BEVAN: Mark Butler, it’s interesting that Christopher Pyne said a moment ago ‘I am very proud to have delivered this’, so he is taking credit for this. You’ve got to admit that when Jay Weatherill comes on board and says ‘this is a great day for South Australia; it has achieved the most important thing and that is a continuous build over decades’ … there’s not much place for you to go in terms of being in Opposition.

MARK BUTLER: Well, of course there are very good things in yesterday’s announcement for South Australia, particularly for the community I represent down in Port Adelaide. But it is important I think for people to understand the politics particularly of this. I think this is a pretty cynical political exercise and what I describe as ‘Saving Private Pyne’ and Tony Abbott did nothing to dispel the sense of sort of pretty cynical politics, talking about prizes being given to South Australia. It’s important though that we understand quite what was announced yesterday I mean no one thought that even under this Government the Frigates would not be built in Australia. The last generation of Frigates were built in Australia, the air warfare destroyer is being built in Australia because of a condition in the tender that John Howard introduced that required them to be built here. So an announcement that the Frigates would be built in Australia really is nothing particularly more or less than everyone had expected anyway. So there’s about $20 billion of working going to South Australia from that and that is a very good thing. As for the replacement patrol boats, which is about another $20 billion from the $89 billion, it’s still a little unclear as to how much of the work will be in Adelaide, how much might be in other shipyards like Williamstown in Melbourne but again it’s good that there’s confirmation finally that they will be built in Australia even though everyone expected that that would be the case. The big question mark, the litmus test really about Christopher Pyne or Tony Abbott’s capacity to deliver in this industry will be the submarines and that’s the vast bulk of the $89 billion. Will the submarines be built in Australia? And that’s the worrying thing for me about yesterday’s announcement; that we’re being softened up for a decision that the submarines will be built in Japan not in Australia. And I was particularly concerned yesterday about Tony Abbott for the first time suggesting that the Liberal Party had never promised to build these submarines in Australia. He said that on one of the other Adelaide radio stations yesterday. For the first time in 18 months cynically he tried to suggest that the Liberal Party had never promised to build the submarines in Australia and they had quite clearly.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think it’s a disappointment that here’s Labor who did absolutely nothing in Government to prepare for any ship building to be built in Australia – even Mark Butler admits that the air warfare destroyers are built in Australia because of John Howard – trying to run down an unadulteratedly good decision for his home state and I think it’s odd politics that Labor would keep giving me the credit for this $89 billion announcement.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: How are they doing that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: By saying ‘Saving Private Pyne’ and how I’m the $89 billion man. They’re reinforcing, which seems odd as a politician –

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well, you’d love though don’t you?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: … I’m just surprised as a political person it seems odd to me that they would keep blaming me for this $89 billion announcement. I’m delighted to take the credit for it.

DAVID BEVAN: Mark Butler, it is an odd piece of politics isn’t it? Because Labor has been saying for some time that in the good old days the old guard of Downer and Vanstone and Minchin and Hill, they were powerful people within the national Liberal Coalition scene and they used to deliver unlike the current crop. That was the message. Well, this time round, on your own admission, this has been delivered to save a seat now other people would say it’s not about that, but that’s your line. You’ve been cornered by your own rhetoric.

MARK BUTLER: No, it’s not. I think Chris misunderstands what I’ve been trying to say. What I’ve been trying to say is that these were decisions that any Government was always going to make. We were always going to build the Frigates and the patrol boats in Australia … they’ve been brought forward three years and that’s a good thing … that has been brought forward because one of the first decisions the Abbott Government made was not to allow Australian ship builders to even bid for the supply ships. Now, that was always going to be a very important part of bridging the Valley of Death. Through our period in government the shipyards, the three shipyards at Williamstown, Port Adelaide and also in Newcastle were completely full because of the construction of the air warfare destroyers and the LHD in Melbourne –

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: So do you deny that every single contract you awarded for a ship builder went overseas?

MARK BUTLER: Because the shipyards were full. The decision to bridge the Valley of Death was always going to be a decision that centred firstly around the supply ship replacement and this Government decided to send that work overseas and not even to allow an Australian ship builder to bid for the work …

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler, they weren’t full down the track, they were full at the time. So you don’t award local work?

MARK BUTLER: So the supply ship would have been the first contract which would have started to come on stream at the time that the air warfare destroyer and LHD projects were starting to wind down.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: This is such rubbish … there are ship building facilities in Newcastle, Henderson, Williamstown and Osborne …

MARK BUTLER: And Forgacs in Newcastle has been full preparing the hulls for the AWDs.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And you’re suggesting that if a government came along and said to a private contractor ‘we have a very big contract for you’ they’d say ‘I’m sorry, we can’t possibly increase the size of our ship building construction here’. I mean if you’ve ever been to Osborne there is a tremendous amount of room to expand, which is what’s great news for Adelaide and why we are the centre of ship building in Australia.

DAVID BEVAN: Christopher Pyne, the Coalition has proved very, very wobbly on this issue of the submarines, so why would anybody – and this is Nick Xenophon’s point – why would anybody believe that you’re going to keep this current crop of promises?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, because they’re not promises, they’re decisions; they’re measures that we’ve announced. I mean Nick Xenophon’s got to be careful of becoming a professional critic. He should be a positive contributor.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well it’s served him well so far hasn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well he’s got himself elected to the Senate and he got Ann Bressington elected to the Legislative Council, which didn’t go as well as he’d hoped and Nick Xenophon is a terrific guy, he’s a friend of mine, but I’d like to see him being a positive contributor rather than a professional critic.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler, just to move on to MP’s expenses and perks as some see them, do you think – we have got a tweet here saying does Tony Burke’s trip to Alice Springs pass a sniff test? Do you think it passes the sniff test if you book yourself and your children business class for a holiday in Alice Springs?

MARK BUTLER: Well it is not clear at all that that is what Tony Burke did. I mean Tony Burke has said that there are a number of official engagements that he undertook while in Alice Springs or around Uluru – not quite sure where he was in that part of the Northern Territory. But there is no suggestion…

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: But not the wife and children?

MARK BUTLER: There are no suggestions that anyone has made that any of this attempt to throw this dirt back at Labor MPs in response to Bronwyn Bishops’ egregious breach of the rules involved any breach of the rules. There are no suggestions that have been made about any breaches.

DAVID BEVAN: Well, here is one. Senior Labor MP Tony Burke charged taxpayers to travel to a Robbie Williams concert last year as well as taking his children to a Justin Bieber concert in 2011 – that is according to News Limited. Is that right?

MARK BUTLER: Is that right that he did it?

DAVID BEVAN: Yeah.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Even if it’s in the rules…

MARK BUTLER: I don’t know. But there is no suggestion that has been made in any of these articles that any Labor MP – Tony Burke or anyone else that has breached the rules, which was the gravemente of the allegation against Bronywn Bishop.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Let’s put it another way, Mark Butler, if it hasn’t breached the rules. See Bronwyn Bishop didn’t breach the rules.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It hasn’t been found that she has breached the rules, by the way.

MARK BUTLER: I said, that was our allegation – we would like the results of the Department of Finance inquiry to be released to the public.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: On the basis of that allegation she is no longer Speaker. And there are suggestions that she shouldn’t even stay on in Parliament.

MARK BUTLER: Well everybody is trying to push her under the bus except Christopher Pyne. I mean I admire his loyalty even Tony Abbott is trying to push her under a bus.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: On the basis of the allegations of Tony Burke then, even if it is within the rules, do you think it passes the sniff to take your children and family on a business class holiday to Alice Springs, and you might have a few work things thrown in there, and a Justin Bieber concert?

MARK BUTLER: Well look I am not going to get into the business of commenting on every single claim, that’s been made, particularly claims made within the rules. I think what this whole sort of affair has shown is that there is an expectation that there is a review of these travel allowance arrangements that apply to MPs and Labor has said we support the review that has been initiated by the Government – a review that is going to be undertaken by two very outstanding figures in Australia – David Tune and John Conde – and we support that review to ensure that these travel allowances are in line with community expectations.

DAVID BEVAN: Christopher Pyne, don’t you look a bit silly? All of that support you gave to Bronwyn Bishop and now everybody knows that she had to go, even the Prime Minister has concerned that what she did was wrong, and there you were right until the end sticking up for her?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I actually believe in loyalty in politics.

DAVID BEVAN: Even if the person has done the wrong thing?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bronwyn Bishop admitted she did the wrong thing, she admitted that she made a judgement error; she apologised for it, and paid it back.

DAVID BEVAN: But you’ll back her even though she admits she did the wrong thing, you’ll back her up?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bronwyn Bishop has had a glittering…

DAVID BEVAN: Do you think she should still be Speaker?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …a glittering thirty year political career and I don’t think that one mistake..

DAVID BEVAN: Well it wasn’t one. It was a series of mistakes.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …apologised for, paid back should obliterate the good public service that Bronwyn has given to the Australian taxpayer, to her electorate of Mackellar, to the NSW voters through the Senate.

DAVID BEVAN: Do you think she should still be Speaker?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: She made a decision to resign the Speaker.

DAVID BEVAN: No, no, no, I know she made the decision, I want to know do you think she should still be Speaker?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think she was a good Speaker.

DAVID BEVAN: Do you think she should still be Speaker?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it is a very hypothetical question.

DAVID BEVAN: No it’s not.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It is a moot point because she has resigned.

DAVID BEVAN: No it goes to your character and your commitment, your prioritising of loyalty over standards.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think what goes to my character as whether I am prepared to throw someone over the bus at the first whiff of grapeshot and I’m not.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Chris Pyne, thank you for taking to us this morning.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It is a pleasure.

MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Coming in to this studio.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Lovely to be Periscoped.

[ends]