ABC 891

SUBJECTS: Alcohol-fuelled violence; Cubbie Station; Gonski funding

E&OE………………

Journalist: Mark Butler, Minister for Health and Ageing and Chris Pyne Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives. They are both from South Australia; they join us each Wednesday morning. Good morning Mark Butler.

Mark Butler: Good morning.

Journalist: And Chris Pyne.

Christopher Pyne: Good morning David and Matthew and Mark of course.

Journalist: Mark Butler, you are in Perth so early rise we appreciate you doing that for us and our listeners. This debate we are having about alcohol fuelled violence and our concerns about that, mounting concerns, do you support the former prohibition, at least do you conceive, that we have gone too far in terms of trading hours and we don’t need to go back to six o clock trading but something at least shutting at two or three?
Butler: Well I agree with the police spokesperson who you had at the end of that program who said there is no single silver bullet to deal with these issues. There is the question about responsible serving of alcohol within licensed venues. There is a cultural pressure about binge drinking particularly among young people. It is certainly not the first generation of young people to drink too much, being a long tradition unfortunately in Australia, but we do do a lot about in social media and broader advertising with binge drinking. But I do think there is a change in the trading hours of hotels, certainly in the twenty years since I was a young person. And what that has done is it has led to people spilling out of venues very, very late often at four, five am. And although there is still violence within licensed venues that the police spokesperson just said, more security in those venues meant that the violence is increasingly happening on the streets and certainly in the high profile cases especially tragically we have had in Adelaide and we have also had in other capital cities - often involved people being sick in the street away from the licensed venues.

Journalist: Either way, when the police say that 25% of incidents, still very high, happen inside licensed venues, when you add it up, as you said it has spilled out into the streets, it could be a lot higher.
Butler: That is right. And most of the tragic cases we have really been hearing about in recent months have been taking place out in the street. I think there is a question of the trading hours of the venues. And I have heard some of the texts you read out a little bit earlier saying that people would simply start drinking earlier. I think there was a difference back twenty years ago when it was hard to get a drink at 12 o clock or certainly in the city past 1 or 2 am people and tended to go home. And if they wanted to continue drinking or having a party they would do that within the safety of someone’s home, provided they called a cab or could drive of course. So I think there is a question there, this isn’t a matter for the Commonwealth government. It is a matter for the state government that needs to work with the police and the hotel industry and such. This is not a debate that is just happening in Adelaide, it is happening maybe in Sydney and other parts of the country too.

Journalist: Chris Pyne?

Pyne: Well I don’t disagree with much of what Mark has said. Certainly the difference between when I was a late teenager and in my early 20s and today is the fact that the premises are able to be open so long. But I mean as Mark says it is a state matter rather than a federal one so I would need to do a lot more research into all the aspects of this and what the hotel industry would say about that.
Journalist: Well Chris Pyne, moving along then to a federal issue. Is the Coalition going to get its act together over Cubbie Station? Barnaby Joyce doesn’t want the Chinese to buy it. I don’t think you mind.
Pyne: Well Barnaby Joyce is entitled to his view. He is in the National party, not the Liberal party. But Barnaby’s view is not the Coalition policy position, but that doesn’t stop Barnaby or others having different views. That is one of the lovely things about our party.

Journalist: Should it be the Coalition’s policy position? Let’s put it another way, in another words why should the Coalition approve of China buying Cubbie Station as someone said they are basically buying the river?

Pyne: Well the Labor party has allowed the Cubbie Station to be sold to foreign interests. I must admit I do find it a bit offensive that it is always regarded as that somehow the Chinese owners are worse than the United States owners or the Canadian or the British owners or the South African owners. I don’t hear people simply saying foreign investors as opposed to Chinese foreign investors...
Journalist: ...Okay, so you are not offended– should the Coalition’s policy position be that it should not be foreign owned?

Pyne: No. It shouldn’t be our policy position. Our policy position is correct. Government obviously has the same policy position because Wayne Swan and the Foreign Investment Review Board have allowed the sale to go ahead.

Journalist: Is Barnaby playing the race card?

Pyne: I think Barnaby has a strong view about the issues of foreign investment and good luck to him. But Barnaby is not the Coalition’s spokesman on this issue and his view is not the Coalition’s policy position. But we are not a Stalinist party unlike the Labor party and therefore we fully understand people having differing views and they are welcome to express them but that doesn’t mean that it is Coalition policy. We are in favour of foreign investment, we welcome foreign investment.

Journalist: Okay, Mark Butler? As a federal South Australian MP, do you have any concerns about allowing a foreign company own Cubbie Station?

Butler: Well, not as a matter of principle, no I don’t. I mean as a country because we have got such extraordinary natural resources we have never been able to develop them just on the basis of Australian money. We have always required foreign investment whether that be English or American, Japanese or recently Chinese.

Journalist: So the Chinese will make Cubbie Station bigger?

Butler: We simply wouldn’t have the sort of the economy we have today without it. But what we have had is a process through the Foreign Investment Review Board under governments of different persuasions that has ensured that a particular case of foreign investment passes the national interest test. That is something I think that the major parties do agree on. And Barnaby Joyce is sort of bringing it into question. I think that it is a very dangerous debate that Barnaby has started.

Journalist: Just quickly, to both Mark Butler and Chris Pyne. On the Gonski report, just finally. Because of the huge timeframe here, there is a quite good cartoon in the papers this morning with students telling the Prime Minister “you will be Gonski and I will be Gonski by the time this money gets to our classroom”. Mark Butler, do you see the humour in that?

Butler: Well look I see the humour in every cartoon that I read. But at the end of the day it is largely satire. The Prime Minister’s speech this week I think indicated a very ambitious timeframe to get an agreement with the state and territory governments by early next year, so that we would have in place a new funding system to start in 2014. The existing funding agreements are in place to the end of 2013. So look, Gonski himself in his report viewed that this would take a while to transition into. But the Prime Minister’s speech this week was very ambitious and I think had a very exciting timeframe.

Journalist: Chris Pyne, federal Liberal MP for Sturt, do you agree at least as a start?

Pyne: Not really a start. The government has had the Gonski report for ten months. It took ten months to give a speech that the Prime Minister could have given five years ago. There wasn’t very much in the speech that anybody could disagree with. It was all about aspiration and goal and trying to improve the outcomes of our students. We all support that. The Prime Minister’s speech was all feathers and no meat. The one thing she couldn’t do is tell people where the money is coming from. I think that people are getting very cynical about big promises from the Labor party in the lead up of an election that aren’t funded.

Journalist: Chris Pyne, thank you. Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives. He speaks on education apprenticeships and training for the Abbott Coalition. And Liberal MP for Sturt he is. And Mark Butler is the Member for Port Adelaide and for the Labor party and Minster for Mental Health.

ENDS