ABC 891
23 Apr 2014
Transcipt E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview - ABC 891 Adelaide with Matthew Abraham and Mark Butler
23 April 2014
SUBJECTS: Budget 2014; Labor Party; Royal Visit.
COMPERE:
Labor MP for Port Adelaide, and Environment and Climate change Spokesman for the Opposition, and Christopher Pyne, on the phone Liberal MP for Sturt, Education Minister, welcome to the programme, Christopher Pyne.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Thank you Matthew, good to be with you, and Mark.
COMPERE:
Christopher Pyne, it looks like you’re going to slug us $6 for a trip to a doctor where a doctor bulk billed previously it was not costing you anything, why so?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well there have been no announcements made about a Medicare co-payment. And there won’t be ahead of the Federal Budget.
COMPERE:
Lots of leaks, though?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well there is always lots of speculation before budgets as you would be well aware, being a veteran of the media. This month before federal budgets there is always a great deal of attempts to sift through the end trails of sacrifices etc and try and find out what is going on in Canberra but…
COMPERE:
But usually, as a veteran of budgets, I know that most of the leaks usually come from the government.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well of course I am part of the Cabinet.
COMPERE:
Yeah.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I know what is going on here in Canberra and that is where I am at the moment.
COMPERE:
So you can rule out the $6 co-payment?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
And you would know that I am not at liberties to talk about matters that are potentially going to be announced or not announced in the budget but I think that most Australians do recognise that we do need to tighten our belts and that the health system is growing exponentially in terms of cost and unlike Europe where they haven’t taken the measures necessarily to ensure they have sustainably economies into the future, this Government isn’t going to do what Labor did which is bury its head in the sand. We are going to make the tough decisions necessary to ensure we have a growing economy, an increasing the standard of living and not burden the future generations with hundreds of billions of dollars of debt that Labor did.
COMPERE:
That’s a very long way of saying that people will have to pay something, by the sounds of it. Mark Butler?
MARK BUTLER:
Well it’s crystal clear that this will be a budget of broken promises, promises made very clearly by Tony Abbott when he was Opposition Leader as late as the day before the election last September. And it will be a budget as every budget is about priorities, but these are emerging as very twisted priorities and social services for example it appears crystal clear that some sort of attack will be made on the aged pension in order to pay for the Liberal Party’s exorbitant Paid Parental Leave scheme that hands over $75,000 to wealthy couples to have a baby.
COMPERE:
Well they’ve flown the kite, but pulled it down, didn’t they?
MARK BUTLER:
No, they’ve pulled down one element of it only, and that’s in relation to the asset test. It is still quite clear that the retirement age and the eligibility age and the question of indexation, the increases that the pensioners receive every year, is still very much left on the table by the Treasurer. And in health as you say, this was as solid leak as you can get yesterday; a $6 fee for people who go to the doctor is almost certainly going to be in the budget. As are the abolition of a whole range of Medicare Locals, which was covered by 891 yesterday, a promise again made by the Prime Minister during the election debates. So on the one hand, you’ve got money coming out of health there, but still the Liberal Party is committed to reintroducing taxpayer subsidies for the highest income Australians to pay for their private health insurance, so it’s about priorities.
COMPERE:
Whoever was going to be in Government benches, whether it was Labor or Liberal, would have to do something about the budget.
MARK BUTLER:
Of course, and we had for five years we had in very difficult budgetary circumstances, but these questions are about priorities. So in social services, you either hit aged pensioners or you give money – you either hit aged pensioners or protect them, or you give money to wealthy couples to have babies. In health, you can either continue to subsidise highest income Australians to pay their private health insurance rebates which is exactly what the Liberal Party wants to do, or you can protect Medicare. It’s about priorities, and the wrong priorities are clearly going to be laid out in this budget.
COMPERE:
Christopher Pyne, you have got a good opportunity to pull down any of these kites. There has been a lot of kite flying going on about pensions, about the age of entitlement being over, about being having to tighten our belts. And then on things such as the pension, we have seen the Prime Minister have to say, ‘oh no no no we aren’t going to break any election commitments’. Why fly a kite and worry people if it is not going to happen?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well with great respect, I don’t think the Government is flying kites. There is a lot of speculation coming out of the Canberra press gallery who are all trying to outdo each other for who has the scoop. The reality is we will keep all of our election commitments, we promised that we would not cut overall spending on education, and health, and that commitment will be kept. But Labor has an, apparently, magic pudding, they haven’t changed at all from the six years they were in Government where they just kept making spending announcements or promises on the never-never and racking up debt, we were rising to $667 billion worth of debt owed by the Government when Labor started with $0 net debt. In six years they racked up $667 billion. Well, that’s where we would be heading if we didn’t make any measures. Now, we never promised that we would keep all of Labor’s programmes, and all of Labor’s spending otherwise why would the Australian public have bothered to change the Government? The public changed the Government…
COMPERE:
Well, you did promise no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to ABC, no cuts to SBS and no cuts to pensions.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
That’s right. And we will keep all of those commitments. Of course we will.
COMPERE:
Really?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
But Labor is trying to confuse cutting their programmes with cuts to, in my portfolio education. Now I am very upfront – we aren’t going to continue all of Labor’s programmes – we have our own priorities and our own programmes and that means that there won’t be any cut to education overall which is exactly what we promised.
COMPERE:
Okay, Mark Butler and Chris Pyne. Mark Butler we had Bill Shorten yesterday saying that he is going to modernise the Labor Party. I notice Miranda Devine writing in the Sydney Telegraph that all that means is more room for the loopy left and the nutters to get involved in the Labor Pary.
MARK BUTLER:
Well it is unusual for Miranda Devine to contribute such an objective view about the affairs of the Labor Party so I won’t comment necessarily on that article that I haven’t read but I think that what Bill id yesterday is completely natural thing for the leader of a Labor Party or any major political party to do after what has been a very difficult period for our party. Not so much here in South Australia where I think we have performed very successfully but at a federal level we have had a very difficult period and a substantial loss at the election last year and some of the big states particularly NSW we have had a very challenging period as well indeed. So what Bill has done I think is entirely natural to devote some time and some energy to thinking about rebuilding the organisational strength and the policy platform of the party. And the thing I particularly liked about Bill’s speech yesterday is I think he was the first of the Labor leaders that I have seen try and grapple with this, focus on the key thing which is to build a growing active rank-and-file membership that has more influence in the affairs of the party.
COMPERE:
So Bill Shorten agrees with Senator Joe Bullock, the much derided newly elected Senator from WA, who has been written off by his unsuccessful running mate as a homophobe. He branded the Labor Party’s membership, this is according to Miranda Devine’s article, as “mad and warned uncoupling from the common sense ‘ballast’ of the unions would leave Labor open to every ‘every weird lefty trend that you can imagine, and there’d be no party left’.
MARK BUTLER:
Well I don’t agree with that. I mean I think that we have been talking about this idea pretty much in the abstract now for many years but what we saw late last year was the first example as actually trying a process that enfranchise the members which was the election of the leaders.
COMPERE:
You were a product, the fact that you were a frontbencher, the fact that you served as Minister, the fact that you got elected in the first place to a safe Labor seat, you were a product of the union system. And the union control of the Labor Party’s pre-selection process, and the union controlled Labor Party. Are you not?
MARK BUTLER:
I am. I am also someone who has been advocating for more than a dozen years greater influence for party members in the affairs of our party, right up until including…
COMPERE:
After the unions put you in…
COMPERE:
No, before I was preselected to this seat. It is wrong to see this as some zero-sum game between union involvement in the party and party members having a vibrant say. It is about redistributing power from the few to the many, from factional leaders to a growing and active rank-and-file membership of the party. And that’s why I think Bill has got this right. There is much more detail to flesh out, but Bill I think has chartered the right direction.
COMPERE:
Chris Pyne, you’d be applauding Bill Shorten on this, surely?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well as usual Labor is busy talking about themselves, it’s their favourite subject. You’re either reading about Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard again in the papers today, or Bill Shorten talking myopically about the Labor Party. But there are some things that Miranda Devine has written that are quite right of course the truth is that Mark Butler will be applauding more grassroots involvement in pre-selections because that tends to favour the left. And Mark Butler is from the left. And what this is all about is Labor trying to combat the Greens as we saw in Western Australia, Labor’s vote fallen to 21 per cent...
COMPERE:
How does that work though if you are encouraging the left – aren’t the Greens the left of the spectrum?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well that’s right you see and what they’re trying to do in the Labor Party is make the Labor Party more left-wing so that they can actually counter the Greens on the left…
COMPERE:
But you’re saying they’re trying to divorce themselves from the Greens agenda…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well I wish they were, but of course they are not – they are still voting with the Greens in the Senate to block the repeal of the carbon tax and to block the repeal of the mining tax. So Labor is politically schizophrenic on these issues. But opening up to the membership is designed to help them compete with the Greens to the left of this spectrum which is of course means that the Coalition is the only mainstream political party – the only national party that is worth supporting.
COMPERE:
And Chris Pyne, are you supporting my push, my personal push, to get baby Prince George into more contemporary clothes so he doesn’t look like something out of the Victorian era, sepia photograph? Can we get him into some maybe some (inaudible) track pants for little bub?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I think that is very unkind.
COMPERE:
No, no, but do you think that would be a good look?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I don’t think we should be giving any advice to the Royals about fashion. I think they lead the fashion rather than you and I or Mark Butler.
COMPERE:
Not the baby, the baby doesn’t. Mark Butler.
MARK BUTLER:
You can’t see the shirt that Matthew is wearing, Christopher. And I think this is a man who you should not be giving fashion advice to anyone.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Yes, I agree with Mark. I agree with Mark Butler about this subject.
COMPERE:
Mark? Would you like to see more contemporary – the Royal baby – you are gutless, so gutless…
MARK BUTLER:
The dress of anyone of any age…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Whatever you do, don’t ask Ian Henschke what he thinks. I have seen pictures of what he wears every day.
COMPERE:
Waiting for the sledge of Ian…
COMPERE:
Yes, we were sorry you weren’t around the other day because we did have a glass blower on the programme and he actually blew us away…he was fantastic.
COMPERE:
And today he has got a basket weaver…
COMPERE:
…his name is Nicholas Mount,
COMPERE:
…underwater basket weaver I think.
COMPERE:
In fact I think he is actually creating a piece for you.
COMPERE:
Chris Pyne, thank you.
[ends]