ABC 891

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – ABC 891 Adelaide with Matthew Abraham, David Bevan and Kate Ellis

Wednesday 29 July 2015

SUBJECTS: Adam Goodes, Entitlements, Immigration, Bjorn Lomborg and ‘A Letter to My Children’

DAVID BEVAN: Kate Ellis, welcome to the studio.

KATE ELLIS: Good morning David, great to be here.

DAVID BEVAN: Labor MP for Adelaide and number one ticket holder with the Crows.

KATE ELLIS: Very proudly.

DAVID BEVAN: And Christopher Pyne, Liberal for Sturt, who couldn’t make it into the studio. Good morning Christopher Pyne.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning David, good morning Matthew, good morning Kate and welcome back to the show.

DAVID BEVAN: You are not a number one ticket holder, but you are a keen Crows supporter.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m a Crows ambassador.

DAVID BEVAN: You’re a Crows ambassador.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m very proud to be a Crows ambassador.

DAVID BEVAN: Well let’s talk footy for just a moment. We’ll get that out of the way. Christopher Pyne your views on Adam Goodes, is it about race, or is it about football? Should people be allowed to boo whenever they like, or should they take up the advice from Andrew Pridham we heard, the Sydney Swans Chairman we heard after seven, who is saying look, if you were in any doubt before, it is racist and just stop it.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m baffled by the booing of Adam Goodes. Adam Goodes is an amazing inspiration, hero, example to young people, in fact all people, around Australia for his amazing skills and abilities and he is also a very good person. I am baffled that the crowd would be booing Adam Goodes. I can understand when the crowd sometimes boos when they think an umpire has made a bad decision that seems to go with football. It is not necessarily the right thing, but emotions do run high.

DAVID BEVAN: Well you’re baffled, but they’re doing and they’re doing it for a reason. Why do you think they’re doing it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I can’t work it out. I mean if it’s racism then it is utterly unacceptable, it’s totally wrong and I think the AFL in fact everyone should stamp down on it very hard. I was shocked to hear that the people who had dobbed in the booers, were then themselves felt that they were so threatened that they left the game because they felt threatened by the crowd. Now, mob rule is ugly and the AFL, and the people associated and the officials associated with this game or any game, need to make sure this does not happen and those that are responsible for it need to be ejected from the ground.

DAVID BEVAN: Just quickly Kate Ellis, your views?

KATE ELLIS: Well my personal view is that there are absolutely racist elements on display here. But I think regardless of what you think is inspiring this behaviour, this is bullying of the highest order and to think that we have a champion of this sport considering his future and considering no longer playing as a result of this sort of treatment I think is tragic and I think all Australians should stand up against and something that I certainly hope my beloved football team, the mighty Adelaide Crows, we show the rest of the competition how it’s done.

DAVID BEVAN: You play politics pretty hard, are you bullying Bronwyn Bishop?

KATE ELLIS: I am certainly not bullying Bronwyn Bishop, I wouldn’t dream of it. What I’m doing is just raising some points and just pointing out some inaccuracies in the various stories that the Speaker has been putting forward.

DAVID BEVAN: The latest of those you are questioning is she went to a wedding Queensland and she claimed that on her travel allowance and has since been questioned about that, saying “well I had meetings”. Now you were on that same committee that she was involved with at that time, you weren’t involved in any meetings, invited to any meetings.

KATE ELLIS: No that’s right David and of course this is high fast now. This is following on from that helicopter ride, from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser. We now have a late Friday afternoon flight to Albury, which coincidently was where Bronwyn was attending a wedding of one of her colleagues the next day, which she stated was on committee business. Now when the other members of the committee have pointed out that there were no hearings there and that they were not aware of any travel approved there or any meetings scheduled. We now have Bronwyn Bishop telling us that it was a confidential meeting that she cannot possibly reveal the source or who she was meeting with or why. I think Australians are rightly raising their eyebrows.

DAVID BEVAN: Are you allowed to do that? Are the rules so slack regarding entitlements that you can say it was a secret meeting and nobody else is able to force the point and ask who are you meeting with? Alright, even if it was a secret meeting and it has to be kept confidential, I mean there are confidential private sector information that’s handed to committees which are held in Canberra. There is a separate part of the Economic and Finance committee in State Parliamentwhich hears all sorts of things over the years. How slack are these rules or can she get away with saying, it’s a secret I’m not telling you.

KATE ELLIS: Well obviously there are occasions where people have confidential meetings. But on an inquiry into childcare provisions, I can’t see why that would be necessary. The other thing is, there are two tests here, one is what passes the rules and the other one is what passes the test of public opinion and the Australian public have made very clear that we’ve had enough of this and it is now time for Tony Abbott to act and show some leadership.

DAVID BEVAN: Christopher Pyne, you said this would all blow over, it hasn’t.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I was referring to the helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong, which Bronwyn of course said was a mistake, an error of judgement and paid it back. Look, this is an area where, say I was chairman of the electoral matters committee, which I used to be many years ago and say I was asked to come and meet with people who claimed to have had allegations of electoral rorting and I went to that meeting say in Alice Springs. That would be perfectly justifiable for me to travel, as the committee chair, or committee member, to meet people who claim to have information of interest to the committee who didn’t necessarily want to share with the general public or with other members of the committee. So I don’t know what meetings Bronwyn had, I don’t know what she had. So, it’s very hard for me or Kate, or for anyone for that matter, to make that assessment. I assume that Bronwyn will go to the normal course on this matter. She will go to the Finance Department and seek advice from them. If it’s within the entitlements, then it’s within the entitlements.

KATE ELLIS: So does she tell the Finance Department who the confidential meeting was with? If she wouldn’t tell the very committee she was conducting business on.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Kate I don’t try and manage the way Bronwyn Bishop spends the tax payer’s resources to do her job.

KATE ELLIS: I wish somebody would Christopher.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The same wayI don’t manage yours, I manage my own.

DAVID BEVAN: Well I’ll ask you the same question Christopher Pyne, how rigorous is the accountability here? Or can an MP just say, no it was secret business and you’re not allowed to push the matter any further?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I’ve never been in that position where I’ve had to…

DAVID BEVAN: So Bronwyn Bishop is taking you to unchartered territory, that’s what you’re saying.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’ve never been in that position where I’ve made a claim…

DAVID BEVAN: You’ve never come across anything quite like this.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’ve never made a claim for travel allowance, or for airfares or anything else, based on a meeting of that nature, so it’s very hard for me to say whether it is justifiable or not.

DAVID BEVAN: This is very unusual. Is that fair?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: LookI don’t know what, in politics you meet with all sorts of peoples, some of whom don’t wish to be, become publically known and lots of those meetings are quite pointless.

DAVID BEVAN: If we can move onto another topic. Anthony Albanese on the weekend at the Labour convention said that he was not prepared to ask people to do anything he couldn’t do himself. Kate Ellis I’m assuming you support Labor’s policy of turning back the boats?

KATE ELLIS:: Well, our policy is that we want all options on the table and I absolutely support that.

DAVID BEVAN: Yep, so are you prepared to, would you be prepared to turn back a boat?

KATE ELLIS: Well, I don’t think that me trying to turn back a boat is a proposition of, what I support…

DAVID BEVAN: I’m putting to you what Anthony Albanese, he set the terms of this debate.

KATE ELLIS: No..

DAVID BEVAN: …you couldn’t look people on a boat and say, “I’m turning you back”. Now you support the policy, could you turn somebody back?

KATE ELLIS: Look, what I support is us doing absolutely everything in our power to have a humane and compassionate approach to asylum seekers, which also does everything it can to prevent deaths at sea. That’s what we’re trying to do and I personally think that we need to be vigilant in making sure that we’ve got the strongest possible solutions in place.

DAVID BEVAN: But Albanese took it to a very personal level, now do you think he’s wrong to do that?

KATE ELLIS: No, My understanding from Anthony and everybody else is that, I mean we have our discussions and debates at national conference unlike the Liberal party, unlike the Greens, we have them in the open, we are very transparent about it…

DAVID BEVAN: But did he set the bar too high? Did he say, look you shouldn’t support this unless you’re prepared to do it?

KATE ELLIS: Well, ultimately after we had those discussions and debates every single member of our team supports our policy and our position. So, of course, whether it’s Anthony or others I’m glad that we have robust debates, I think that’s a really important part of democracy and of strong political parties…

DAVID BEVAN: Would you turn a boat back?

KATE ELLIS: David, the proposition of me being on the high sea, doing that, is not I don’t think a relevant a relevant question…

Christopher Pyne: What if you were the minister; would you order it to be turned back?

KATE ELLIS: Well if I thought…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You might well be the Minister.

KATE ELLIS: Well I’m very fond of education as you know Christopher…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But you might end up as the Minister for Immigration…

KATE ELLIS: If..

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Would you turn the boats back?

KATE ELLIS: If I was the Minister for Immigration I would want to have all possible options on the table and I would want to assess the situation.

DAVID BEVAN: But the question is…

KATE ELLIS: … and take the action…

DAVID BEVAN: But the question is could you exercise that option?

KATE ELLIS: Well I think that, I think that being the Immigration Minister is an incredibly hard job and we heard from Tony Burke some of his personal experiences…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: So you won’t answer the question.

DAVID BEVAN: Well Christopher Pyne…

KATE ELLIS: No no, Christopher I am happy to answer the question that I would do exactly what was required to come up with the best possible option for those asylum seekers and for the asylum seekers more broadly who were considering risking their lives and getting on boats. We are talking hypotheticals here so it is ridiculous…

DAVID BEVAN: Well Anthony Albanese didn’t think it was ridiculous, Christopher Pyne could you turn back the boat?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yes.

DAVID BEVAN: Wouldn’t hesitate?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Wouldn’t hesitate to do so…

DAVID BEVAN: Okay.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Because turning back the boats has stopped the people smuggling trade in its tracks and what we’ve just heard from Kate is exactly the level of confusion and failure to have resolve that we saw in the Rudd/Gillard governments which led to 50 000 boat arrivals, deaths at sea, uncontrollable boarders…

KATE ELLIS: No Christopher what you…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What’s happened since that time is a government with resolve has stopped the boats at the borders and that’s why the people smuggling trade has been smashed.

KATE ELLIS: Actually…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Now Kate Ellis has been unable to answer that question…

KATE ELLIS: Well if you let me speak Christopher I’ll tell you…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …I was asked the question, you had a very good run. Now Kate Ellis was unable to elucidate her position which was exactly the confusion we saw in the last government.

KATE ELLIS:: No…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: … which you don’t see in this government.

KATE ELLIS: Christopher what I just did was articulate that asylum seeker policy is actually incredibly complicated and fraught and it cannot be reduced to three word slogans, which your government has tried to do…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We stopped the boats, you didn’t!

DAVID BEVAN: Christopher Pyne on another topic, Bjorn Lomborg. He’s a very controversial character. The South Australian Government has made it quite clear he is not welcome. Now this is the chap, I think he's from Norway. He does believe and not have any problem with the idea that climate change is a result of human activity absolutely he locks it in, but he’s got very controversial responses to that. He then goes on to say that it’s not the most pressing issue, there are other things, poverty, the lack of hygiene, all sorts of issues facing perhaps the third world which are more important than climate change. Or, he says you’re not going to resolve it with an economic, an ETS solution, it’s got to be a technological solution so he’s a really interesting guy. The State Government doesn’t want a bar of him, and you want to bring him here, how is that going to be resolved?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well fortunately the State Government doesn’t have any say over it and the students and the activists and unfortunately Ian Hunter are sounding more like the red guards of Mao’s Cultural Revolution than they are like sensible intelligent people. Because obviously whether you agree with Bjorn Lomborg’s ideas or not the whole point of the academic exercise and university is to test ideas and I think its tragically sad that those people who are trying to stop the Australian Consensus Centre from being established at a university can’t argue the battle of ideas. Instead they have to try and drown out and shut down those they don’t agree with. I find it utterly remarkable, and I would have thought that the left instead of trying to shut them down would have wanted to have more ideas being debated because if their views are so strong and so sensible surely they will prevail but no, instead they want to bully Bjorn Lomborg and the Australian Consensus Centre out of Australia.

DAVID BEVAN: Now Christopher Pyne is the Federal Education Minister so he’s got an advantage here. Kate Ellis, a question without notice…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well she’s the Shadow Minister for Education…

DAVID BEVAN: I don’t know whether you had any views about this Mr Lomborg but would you welcome him here.

KATE ELLIS:: Well what I think people are concerned about here is that we want ideology to be kept out of the politics around the education portfolio and at the very same time that we have seen Christopher announce massive cuts to higher education and to our university sector, we have then seen that the Government has found a way to find several million dollars for this specific cause, which is controversial and has been a lightning rod for climate change deniers. Now Christopher would have you think that it is just student activists or Ian Hunter who have problems here, that is not true. This is the second attempt after the University of Western Australia already stood up and said to Christopher and Tony Abbott and his Government, no you can keep your money we do not want this on our campus and we do not want this threatening our academic reputation.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Actually that’s not what the Vice Chancellor said at all. The Vice Chancellor of UWA signed a contact with the Australian government to establish the Australian consensus centre, then he was bullied out of it by academics and students at UWA who didn’t want to hear other voices now…

KATE ELLIS:: …so the University of Western Australia said no

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The Vice Chancellor was forced out of it and actually said that in his statement.

DAVID BEVAN: Kate Ellis, would you be happy for this to be just left to Flinders University to decide without pressure from various interest groups? Because it is such a polarising issue and you would like to think the people running Flinders would be independent and they’d be able to make a decision without pressure from people with a religious fervour on either side.

KATE ELLIS:: Well obviously I think that students and academics at Flinders should have the opportunity to have a say in their campuses future. I think that that is perfectly valid. I also think that the South Australian community have a vested interest in protecting our state’s reputation; our future is in renewable energy. We know that we lead the country in this regard and I think that when there are proposals put forward that may threaten that or tarnish that reputation, then people should have a debate about it.

DAVID BEVAN: Does that mean you don’t want Lomborg here?

KATE ELLIS: My personal opinion is No, I don’t think it particularly adds to Flinders University. But of course it is not my view, as a politician to be determining what research should be and should not be supported as a matter of priority. Unfortunately, the Abbott Government has said that, despite their massive funding cuts to universities, for some reason this one centre is a special case and has been awarded millions of dollars.

DAVID BEVAN: Now Chris Pyne before you leave us, and Kate Ellis, you’ve got your book launch tonight.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I do.

DAVID BEVAN: Will Mack Crabb be there along with Annabel?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Mack Crabb has made a star appearance thanks to your radio show last week. Annabel, Mack and Mrs Crabb will all be coming along, which is very exciting, the whole Crabb family.

DAVID BEVAN: Because you do pose this question on the back of your book ,which is ‘A Letter to My Children’, “Why do seemingly intelligent men and women…Why do seemingly intelligent men and women leave their families for more than half the year, to travel to Canberra and spend night after night at electorate and campaign events. Surely there are easier ways to earn a living.” Isn’t the answer ego? And you get out of doing the dishes. I mean really.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Hopefully the answer is contained in the book, but the pithy answer is that a life of service is worthwhile for the sacrifices that are made and unfortunately their sacrifices other people bare. It’s a good question, and hopefully it’s answered in the book and I’m sure Kate will be buying multiple copies.

KATE ELLIS: I’m very excited about it Christopher, as you can imagine, very excited.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I hope you are.

DAVID BEVAN: Chris Pyne, thanks for your time this morning and good luck with the book launch tonight. Say hello to Mack and Annabel for us.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Don’t worry I will.

DAVID BEVAN: And Kate Ellis thank you for coming out.

KATE ELLIS: Thank you David.

[ends]