ABC 891
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – ABC 891 Adelaide with Matthew Abraham, David Bevan and Mark Butler
Wednesday 22 July 2015
SUBJECT: Week in politics.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler Labor MP for Port Adelaide, Opposition Environment and Climate Spokesman, welcome.
MARK BUTLER: Good morning, It’s good to be here. It feels a bit like a teenager’s bed, there’s toys everywhere and your head buried in the screen all the time.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: That’s right, you’ve listened to the programme so you’d be familiar with how we operate.
DAVID BEVAN: We are putting our phones aside and we are devoting our attention to you and Christopher Pyne. Good morning Christopher Pyne.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning David, good morning Matthew, good morning Mark.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: What a shame you couldn’t be in the studio with us Christopher, we’re not feeling the love.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well perhaps next week…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: What if we said Annabel Crabb would be here you would be in here.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that’s because I know how to treat a lady.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Well you are getting her to do your book launch in Adelaide. We didn’t get invited.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Melbourne university.I did invite you. I think your invitation has gone through the junk mail.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Yeah that’s right, it’s in the spam filter.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You got special personal treatment because I sent you a text saying, “are you coming to my book launch?”
DAVID BEVAN: Is that tonight?
MATTHEW ABRAHAM & CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, next week.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Melbourne University publishing, ‘A Letter to my Children.’ Annabel Crabb is doing the launch.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: You couldn’t find anyone locally to do it?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Annabel Crabb is a local, she went to university with Mark and I.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: She hasn’t lived here for a while. Anyway, she’s a celebrity and that’s important to you.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Actually she is an old friend and she is a great writer.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: She is, she’s the perfect person for it.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And I think she is an ABC personality isn’t she?
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: She’s an interstate ABC personality, right.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: (inaudible)…your own talent.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: I’m just saying, here you are defending the ABC in Adelaide against the east coast bias and then go to the east coast to get an ABC personality. I mustn’t knock your selection because it’s a free world Christopher Pyne.
DAVID BEVAN: Let’s just see if Christopher Pyne can defend Bronwyn Bishop. You can certainly defend who you choose to launch your books, can you equally defend Bronwyn Bishop?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But are you coming to my launch? That’s the key question.
DAVID BEVAN: If you could answer the question Minister, do you defend Bronwyn Bishop?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think Bronwyn is doing a very good job as the speaker of the House of Representatives. Obviously she made an error of judgement involving her expense on the helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong and she admitted that and paid it back.
DAVID BEVAN: So it’s just a one off thing? There’s not a series, there’s not a pattern of behaviour here, it’s just a one off mistake. All of us are guilty at one time or another of chartering a helicopter of public expense.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I haven’t chartered a helicopter of public expense. I don’t know whether you and the ABC budget runs a helicopter.
DAVID BEVAN: Has she apologised?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think she did. I watched her press conference, she certainly seemed contrite.
DAVID BEVAN: Did she?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: She also indicated that…She recognised it was a mistake, an error of judgement and she…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: She didn’t apologise though.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: ...paid the money back. The other…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Janet Albrechtson writes in The Australian this morning, “the bru ha ha is made much worse by Bishop’s imperiousness. The Speaker of the House imposes the rules inside the house but pays little regard to the rules inside the House. So much of this stuff doesn’t only fail the sniff test, it stinks to high heaven.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think Bronwyn has been a bit mistreated in that respect. She is a very good speaker and knows the standing orders very well and she does keep control in the House. Labor try very hard to upset the House and to create as much mayhem as possible and I think she does a very good job of keeping the House on track. In terms of that helicopter…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Can I just quote Janet Albrechtson in light of what you said. Janet Albrechtson says, “…and Liberal MPs that try to defend the indefensible just adds to the unbearable stench.” Are you adding to the unbearable stench?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well no, because I’ve said I think it was a mistake and she has admitted it was a mistake, she said it was an error of judgement and she has paid the money back. So I am not defending the helicopter trip was Melbourne to Geelong at all, I am talking about her professional role as Speaker and in that I think she has performed well.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: She hasn’t said she has done anything wrong though has she? She says she has abided by the rules, she has paid the money back. She hasn’t apologised. She hasn’t said, look I’m sorry, I was wrong to do that, it was a bad thing to do. It was wasting taxpayers money, it is a flagrant use of taxpayers money.
DAVID BEVAN: Look, she is hurting your Prime Minister. If she wanted to do the right thing by your Party, she would step down.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think that would b an overreaction, myself. Obviously it was a mistake and recognises that and she said so. I think when someone says it was a mistake, an error of judgement, it is an apology.
DAVID BEVAN: So if she pulled you aside in the corridors in Parliament House and said “Chris, Chris, I seriously think I ought to step down. I’m hurting the Party, I’m hurting the Prime Minister when we are starting to get on a role here against Bill Shorten and the unions and all that stuff. I really think I ought to step down.” You Christopher Pyne would say, “no, no, no, no, stay, you’ve apologised that’s enough.”
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that’s a very hypothetical question and I think it is very unlikely to happen. I think Bronwyn knows she is doing a good job as Speaker as she has said in fact, in her press conference that she is sorry she distracted from Labor’s failure over trade union Royal Commission…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: That’s what she is sorry about Christopher. Isn’t that the ultimate arrogance?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …and distracted from Labor’s carbon tax, wanting to bring back the Carbon Tax.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: That is what she is sorry about. She is not sorry about taxpayer’s money.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well she is.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM : Did she say I’m sorry it was an abuse of taxpayers money? Or is she sorry she distracted from Labor?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I didn’t listen that closely, every word she has ever uttered on the subject. My understanding is that she said t was an error of judgement, she said it was a mistake, she paid back the money with a 25% penalty and that is really the end of the matter. Hopefully, nothing like that happens again.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Mark Butler, she has let you off the hook famously. You must by saying thank you Bronwyn.
MARK BUTLER: Well I did hear what she said and I think many Australians heard what she said at that press conference, and she very clearly did not apologise for hiring a helicopter to take her 80 kilometres or whatever the very short distance is. She did make some kind of party, political point about whether it was distracting from Tony Abbott’s fear and smear attacks on the Labor Party, but that is a long way from the sort of apology that I think Australians expect, whether they are Liberal Party supporters, Labor Party supporters or something in between, they expect from such an egregious abuse of a public position. Now I think Christopher has outlined, I think, a defence very similar to Tony Abbott’s defence and increasing I think it is the Christopher Pyne, Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop show back in town. People don’t understand that these three have had a very close relationship, have had for a long time. There was the extraordinary symbolism I think of Christopher and Tony Abbott, taking Bronwyn Bishop up to the chair when she was appointed Speaker. A very significant difference to the way in which Speakers have been chosen for a very long time in the House of Reps. It won’t come as any surprise to observers of federal politics that Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are locking in behind Bronwyn Bishop. Her position is untenable.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Isn’t it the truth that you all do this? It’s just this is an extreme example of it and you all use taxpayer’s money to be ferried to party events and what you then do, as Janet Albechtson points out very clearly this morning, you then tag on a bit of electorate work, you will tag on an opening or speaking at a nursing home or something like that. So you can then go to your party meeting or factional meeting on the taxpayer.
MARK BUTLER: No, I don’t think that is a proper reflection of what happens at all. It is true that if people are overnighting in Sydney or Melbourne or wherever they happen to be, people will often go to a party event, a sub-branch meeting or do a fundraiser…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Exactly
MARK BUTLER: …that has been the case across the political spectrum and is in accordance with entitlements. As it would be if people stayed in a hotel room and watched TV, overnighting in Sydney.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: It’s a rort.
MARK BUTLER: It’s not a rort, it’s quite clearly within the entitlements. No one could compare those sorts of things to what Bronwyn Bishop did and I think that’s important. If people want to have a discussion about entitlements, that is one thing, but don’t conflate what the proper are, with whether or not Bronwyn Bishop skirted very clearly the boundaries. Because it is quite clear what she did is not within entitlements.
DAVID BEVAN: Do you agree with or support Jay Weatherill’s preparedness to increase the GST?
MARK BUTLER: Well Federal Labor’s position about this is clear, we have a hell of a mess that Tony Abbott has created here, with $80 billion been taken out from school and hospitals funding.
DAVID BEVAN: And that’s why Jay Weatherill has said you need to consider an increase in the GST, because you’ve got to find the money. The question is pretty straight forward, do you support his preparedness to consider an increase?
MARK BUTLER: Well I think Jay and other Premiers will go to the retreat which I think begins today with the Prime Minister, hopefully with an open-mind and try to fix this mess that was created in last year’s Budget. Federal Labor has a view about the way to do that and it does not include…
DAVID BEVAN: You’ve closed your mic off.
MARK BUTLER: Let me finish David. Federal Labor has had a very long standing view, that the GST is a tax by its nature, puts a disproportionate impact on low to middle income families and pensioner households. Now, you can fiddle with the way revenue is distributed to compensate households but if the purpose of this exercise is to fix a spending hole and not to just to do a money go around which is what has been talked about here, then simply raising the GST is we don’t think the way to go about it. I think Jay has made that point.
DAVID BEVAN & MATTHEW ABRAHAM: (Inaudible interjection).
MARK BUTLER: I read the transcript of his first interview with you a couple of days ago.
DAVID BEVAN: On Monday
MARK BUTLER: He made the point about the impact on low and middle income households. The really interesting thing, the astounding thing about this debate, is that the only person not putting a proposition on how to fill this spending hole is the Prime Minister of Australia. It is extraordinary. We have been rolling out a number of different policies about raising revenue. Whether is about multi-national tax, whether it is about superannuation tax concessions…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Carbon tax.
MARK BUTLER: …with nest eggs above $1.5 million. The only person who hasn’t put anything on the table, is the Prime Minister of the country. It is just extraordinary.
DAVID BEVAN: So you do not agree with Jay Weatherill?
MARK BUTLER: We have a very clear position on the GST.
DAVID BEVAN: You can say the words, as national president of the ALP, we do not agree with Jay Weatherill.
MARK BUTLER: Well, we do not agree with any proposal to increase the rate of GST.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: You nearly said it.
MARK BUTLER: Let’s not shy away from this. I mean, this was the case under the Hawke and Keating Governments, it was the case when we were last in Government. You have tension and a competitive tension about ideas, between State and Federal levels, often in the same political parties. Federalism drives people a bit barmy sometimes about having too many levels of Government. But the advantage of it, is that you get that kind of tension in the debate. The thing I have to complain about with in this debate, is that the Prime Minister of this country is not a participant. He is sitting back on the easy chair, watching everyone else do the hard work of coming up with ideas.
DAVID BEVAN: Let’s bring the Leader of the House in, Chris Pyne.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Labor do want to go to the next election with higher taxes, we know that they want to bring in a tax on superannuation and we know they want to bring back the Carbon Tax. They are quite readily saying that they want to increase taxes. Whether the Australian public agree with a Carbon Tax and a super tax remains to be seen. Jay Weatherill before the Davenport and Fisher by-elections was against raising the GST. He said quite decisively that Labor would never support an increase in the GST, so I’m interested that he has changed his mind.
MARK BUTLER: Well, what did Tony Abbott say before the last election?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The Federal Government has no plans to increase the GST, because as you know it is a State tax.
MARK BUTLER: Tony Abbott created the problem and you have no solutions to it.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well you want to increase super tax and want to increase the carbon tax, that’s what you want to do. You want to bring in a carbon tax and you want to bring in a super tax. Now, you have been honest about it, you think higher taxes are the way to go. We are a low tax party, and we are trying to reduce spending and live within our means, which you are busily stopping in the Senate when you can and happily the Greens have outflanked in the Senate and supported things like the indexation of fuel excise, which is not just a good revenue measure, it is a good environmental measure, which Labor found themselves opposing in the Senate and being out manoeuvred by the Greens, because basically Labor is against everything and is only think of how to win the next election.
MARK BUTLER: Again a measure that is hit slower to middle income households harder. That is the sort of thing you get with the Liberal Party.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Labor just plays politics everything. I’m fascinated if Jay Weatherill wants to put that issue on the agenda, it will be discussed at the leaders retreat.
MARK BUTLER: Well Mike Baird put it on the agenda.
(inaudible)
DAVID BEVAN: … Jay Weatherill spoke with Baird and came out and gave him considerable support.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: This is, I won’t call it a stich up, but it is great tactics. You have a conservative Premier in Mike Baird and a Labor left-wing successful Premier in South Australia and they’re getting together behind the scenes and saying “This is what I’m doing Jay.” He has said, “Well listen, I’ve told them I’m opposed to it.” That wasn’t his public statement though.
MARK BUTLER: That is the story, the vacuum of leadership from the Prime Minister of the country. The two most successful leaders in the county at the moment, Baird and Weatherill are having to fill a vacuum left by Tony Abbott. He has said nothing on how to deal with this issue, that he created last year with an $80 million spending hole.
DAVID BEVAN: Now Labor and climate change, you reduce a substantial amount of your climate change policy today. You’re trying to convince people that you can have more wind and more solar, and your prices are going to go down.
MARK BUTLER: Well it’s not me particularly saying that it’s four or five different reports that were issued in response to Tony Abbott’s attack on renewable energy last year. One of which was by his own handpicked panel, headed by Dick Warburton who if anything is something of a sceptic around climate change politics. And that report after very comprehensive modelling said that adding additional renewable energy to the system puts downward pressure on wholesale power prices. It puts downward pressure, and that power prices would be lower with the renewable energy targets still in place and running to 2030 than it would be without it, it’s pretty…
DAVID BEVAN: Why do you…
MARK BUTLER: …it’s a pretty simple application of the way in which the electricity market works.
DAVID BEVAN: Why do you think we’ve got the highest power prices in the nation? And the nation has some of the highest power prices in the world.
MARK BUTLER: Well because the electricity system is going through an extraordinary transformation, there has over the last several years been tens of billions of dollars invested in the electricity system which has essentially been a poles and wires investment. Now, some of these things are frankly going to have to happen and have been happening irrespective of climate policy and irrespective of the extraordinary revolution that’s going on. Not only in renewables but also we’re on the cusp of a revolution around storing it.
DAVID BEVAN: It’s just a coincidence that we have more wind power in South Australia than anywhere else in the country.
MARK BUTLER: - It’s the confluence of a number of different things.
DAVID BEVAN: And we have the highest power prices.
MARK BUTLER: It’s confluence of a number of different things one of which was the need to invest particularly in our networks our poles and wires to deal with new liability standards that were introduced arising out of the black outs and brownouts that happened 15 years ago and what we will see, whatever happens around renewables, what we will see is the need to renew some of our generation stock which is now getting old. Much of it built in the 1960s and 70s.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: If I could just…
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Yes Chris Pyne, are you, is the opposite, is the Government in danger here of not having a climate policy?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well our climate policy, our carbon emissions reduction policy is actually achieving its goal. We’re one of the very few countries in the OECD that’s actually reached and surpassed our goals to reduce our carbon emissions. Now we’re lectured a lot by the Labor party about renewable energy, here’s a classic example of labour putting renewable energy ideology ahead of jobs. The reason Alinta closed its operations in Port Augusta and Leigh Creek, they said was because of wind power and solar power being heavily subsidised by the state taxpayer and making their plant uneconomic. Now we need to have a balance of course, we’ve already reached our carbon emissions reduction target doing things like direct action, uh which is the Government’s policy, Labor’s ignoring that and instead is assuming helter skelter and ideological obsession with renewable energy, which of course we all support renewable energy but still two thirds of our energy comes from sources other than renewable energy in Australia and Labor is putting ideology ahead of jobs and right now in South Australia I don’t think that’s a very good priority for the Labor party.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Will you be turning up to the festival of coal in the hunter valley ?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Do you think it’s a good thing though?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Coal?
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Yes.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well coal provides us with cheap energy in Australia, it’s one of the main competitive advantages that we have, now obviously we want to continue to make our energy cleaner and we want to make sure that coal fired power stations are environmentally friendly as possible but the idea is that you can suddenly stop coal powered fire stations in Australia is essentially a recipe for shutting down our economy. Now nobody wants to see that. Through our direct action policy we are actually achieving our carbon emissions reduction Labor’s ignoring that and we’ll go to the Paris Climate Change Conference later this year as one of the very few countries in the world that said what we’d do and then did it. Other countries like to lecture Australia have massive targets, aren’t even close to reaching them but have blown all of those targets.
MA?DB?: Before you leave, you’re Federal Education Minister, there’s talk again in the last 24 hours of the University of SA and Adelaide University merging. They’re the two big ones in your home town. Minister do you think it’s a good idea?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I don’t, and I don’t support the merger of the universities in Adelaide, I think they all have different strengths they do different things, if the University of Adelaide was to join with the University of South Australia we would lose overnight a top 100 university in the world because it would fall down the rankings immediately and take about a decade to recover .
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: You’d only need, they’d only need one vice chancellor, you’d save about 600 000 dollars wouldn’t you, well more.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You would create a very very big university but Adelaide is essentially a research based university that’s what makes it one of the top 100.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: So you’re saying a merger with Uni SA would trash the Adelaide brand?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It would certainly mean that the new university would drop massively down the rankings internationally, there’s no doubt about that, everyone admits that. Now I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good idea. The University of Adelaide is doing its job very well, the University of South Australia under David Lloyd is doing its job very well I don’t see any economic benefit or education benefit or research benefit for South Australia in that merger.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Just quickly Mark Butler on that?
MARK BUTLER: well look I’m not in this policy area to the degree that Christopher is but I’ll say as a south Australian that we are well served by the level of competition that we currently have in our university system and I wouldn’t like to see that reduced./
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: And you’ve been invited to Chris Pyne’s book launch but you’re not inviting him to yours in a few weeks’ time?
MARK BUTLER: That’s probably a fair comment on both sides.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I didn’t know Mark had a book.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Everyone’s writing books now.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What’s Mark’s book about?
MARK BUTLER: The politics of aging and the retirement of the baby boomer generation.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Oh I did see some coverage of that.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Annabel Crabb will be available for that.
DAVID BEVAN: Christopher Pyne thanks for talking to us.
[ends]