Doorstop - Parliament House

SUBJECTS: Labor Leadership; Education funding E&OE................................ Hon Christopher Pyne MP: Well good morning everyone, today is the third anniversary of the day Julia Gillard became Prime Minister after the visit to Kevin Rudd of a Sussex seat street death squad. She at that time promised to do four things. She said she’d fix the mining tax, she would address climate change, she would stop the boats and she would deliver a surplus Budget. I think it’s perfectly apparent three years later that the Prime Minister’s solution to climate change, which was a citizens assembly turned into a broken promise to introduce a carbon tax. She said that she would fix the mining tax. The mining tax is now collecting one tenth of what it was predicted it would collect. In terms of stopping the boats, there have been over 37,000 unauthorised boat arrivals since the Prime Minister said she would stop the boats. And of course on the surplus, there a deficits stretching out as far as the eye can see and in fact she’s delivered $178 billion worth of deficits over the period of the Labor Government. So on any measure the Prime Minister said that the Government was a good Government that had lost its way, well if the Rudd Government was a good Government that had lost its way the Gillard Government has done a Strzelecki and disappeared altogether. Journalist: Are you measuring up the curtains, Mr Pyne? Pyne: No we’re not because anything can happen in the 82 days between now and election day. And the public would not reward any political party that was over confident. The Labor Party will I’m sure narrow the gap between now and Election Day. The poll today won’t reflect the result on Election Day. The important thing for the Coalition though is to focus on being the adults in the room since the Government is focussed on internal division. To talk about the issues that the public care about, job security, cost of living, border protection and economic management, and to let the Labor Party disappear off in to their own idyll of leadership woes and arguing about their own internal dynamics and apparently blaming the media for it. Journalist: If Kevin Rudd is elevated back in to the job, should his numbers be tested on the floor of Parliament? Pyne: If Kevin Rudd becomes the Leader again, which is entirely a matter for the Labor Party we will address those issues as and when that occurs. I mean it may occur this week. If the leadership issues in Labor are not resolved this week of course Labor can change their Leader any time between now and really the 33 days before the Election Day. So nothing will be resolved. The internal divisions in Labor are so dysfunctional, they are so divided, the poison has seeped in so bitterly in to the Labor Party that the only way of resolving it is for Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard to both depart the political scene. Journalist: We just had Andrew Leigh asking, not us so much about leadership and issues like that and perhaps asking you about more detailed policy, and when we’re going to see some of those detailed policies such as in health? Pyne: Well I’m not surprised that you’re lifting Andrew Leigh’s questions and putting them to me because he did do a bit of a Fidel Castro out here earlier in his door stop. Look, Labor will do everything they can to blame the media for their leadership woes. It’s perfectly apparent that the media are only reporting what they are being told by the Labor Party. As you pointed out, Craig Emerson spent six minutes talking about nothing else but leadership when he did his press conference this morning. The truth is the media would not be reporting the division and dysfunction in the Labor Party if it wasn’t so perfectly apparent to everybody in Australia. Journalist: Chris, when will we see your Education Policy? Pyne: Well, Mr Abbott has put out more policies to this date than any Opposition Leader that I have ever experienced and I’ve been in Parliament for twenty years. The bones of the Education Policy are very well known so pretending we haven’t released an Education Policy is not really an excuse. We will keep the status quo in terms of school funding for at least a year until we can sort out the chaos that Labor has created. We’ll keep the AGSRC indexation rate which means that no school can be worse off and we’re the only political party that can promise that no school will be worse off. In Victoria there are 270 schools worse off; in Queensland 160; in the Northern Territory 60; under the new school funding model, if it goes ahead. We’ve also said that we’ll focus on teacher quality; on a robust curriculum; on parental engagement and on principal autonomy and I’ve given about a dozen considered speeches about education which I’ve outlined all of this and I can go on at great length like Andrew Leigh if you want me to about the Education Policy. Journalist: Foreign languages for students what’s your view? Pyne: Well, we’ve already announced the policy in that area so it’s good of you to raise it. We’ve indicated that we want to have forty per cent of year twelve students studying a foreign language in the next ten years. We believe that’s achievable but we have to undo the damage that Labor has done in the last six years federally. In the last ten years state wise, in terms of the number of foreign language teachers that are available to teach. So that goes very well with our Colombo Plan Policy which of course brings students from overseas and sends Australian students overseas at the university level and I can go on and on about education but I fear that there may be others who wish to make comments this morning. Journalist: Are you concerned if Kevin Rudd does become the Labor Leader again that it could in fact narrow the gap, narrow the competition when it comes to.. Pyne: Well the Coalition is not obsessed with the Labor Party Leadership like Labor is. Journalist: But would you rather face Julia Gillard? Pyne: What I want to do is get through to the election on September the fourteenth to outline the Coalition’s plans in education and elsewhere for my colleagues to do the same in their portfolios. If the public are good enough to elect us on September 14, hopefully there’ll be an adult government for the first time in six years that will get on with focussing on job security, cost of living, border protection and economic management. Whoever leads the Labor Party, it is still the horror show that we’ve been watching for the last three years and nothing will change that. And as I said last week, you can put a lick of paint on a haunted house; it’s still the white anted, rat infested haunted house that it was before. Journalist: And how’s your hand? Did you get the rat that bit you? Pyne: Well it is remarkable but the rat that supposedly bit me died of bubonic plague, not long after biting me. So unfortunately it was in reverse… Journalist: Does that mean you were infected and you infected it. How does it work? Pyne: It was a joke. Okay everyone happy? Thank you. ENDS