Doorstop - Parliament House

E&OE TRANSCRIPT Doorstop - Parliament House 17 March 2014 SUBJECTS: Abolishing the Carbon Tax and Mining Tax, South Australian election, repeal day CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well good morning everyone. Over the next fortnight there are a number of tests for Bill Shorten and there will be a focus on red tape in the Parliament. Obviously, the Coalition still wants to pass the Carbon Tax Repeal Bills through the Senate and Bill Shorten continues to stand in their way. On the one hand he wants to be helping to reduce cost of living pressures on families, on the other hand he stands by a tax which demonstrably adds to the cost of energy prices and therefore increases the cost of living. He also wants to, he says, he doesn’t like the mining tax and would like to see the mining tax changed. On the other hand he stands in the way in the Senate of abolishing the mining tax as we speak. So on two fronts, he could vote to abolish the carbon tax, he could vote to abolish the mining tax. But Bill Shorten doesn’t know what he stands for from day to day because he runs a tactical campaign not a strategic campaign. Bill Shorten’s problem is, as a politician, all he wants to stand for is being Prime Minister, he doesn’t realise he has to do the hard yards in a policy sense to get there, and he needs to be consistent. The Coalition is consistent. We want to reduce the cost of living on families by abolishing the carbon tax. We want to free the mining sector from a job destroying mining tax. Also over the next fortnight, we will have repeal day of red tape. Thousands of regulations, dozens of bills, acts of parliament will be abolished freeing up the business community and individuals from strangling red tape. On Wednesday we will introduce those omnibus bills and the necessary requirements to abolish the regulations and the following Wednesday we will debate that and we would hope that Labor will want to also lift the burden of red tape from business and from the community. So that will be our focus, freeing up the community and business from red tape, freeing up the community and business from the carbon tax, freeing up the mining industry from the mining tax. QUESTION: On repeal day do you think that a weeks’ time, for the various, for Labor and the Greens to go through what you want abolished before passing it through the Senate? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that’s the normal process. Governments would introduce a bill on one day and give the parliament a week to consider it… (interruption) QUESTION: But there‘s a lot, there’s a lot of bills that you want repealed. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I don’t think that Labor or the Greens, well I can’t speak for the Greens since they’re anti-business, but Labor, I would assume, would want to reduce regulation and red tape and abolish superfluous acts of parliament and regulations. Normal processes are, a bill is introduced and sits on the table for a week giving the parliament time to, well the political parties, time to think about it. And then it will be debated the following Wednesday. We will devote the whole of that Wednesday to that debate and I think that is sufficient time. QUESTION: The Liberals were expected to win comfortably in South Australia when can we expect the bloodletting to begin? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Latika, again, the Liberals have won 53% of the two party preferred vote in South Australia and Labor has 47%... QUESTION: But you didn’t win where it mattered… CHRISTOPHER PYNE: They seem comfortable to continue to govern in spite of the electorate indicating that they don’t want them to be in power. That happened of course in 2010, but you’ll find if you go back over the last twenty years, Labor has only won the two party preferred vote once in the last twenty years of elections in SA. So, the public have spoken on Saturday. They wanted to elect a Liberal government with 53% of the two party preferred vote. There are still 260,000 votes to count in South Australia, so we have the possibility of 4 or 5 seats that are very close to the 50/50 margin. Any combination of those could fall the Liberal Party’s way. So we are a long way from saying that the election is over and I think that Geoff Brock and Bob Such, the two independents, will think very carefully about who they think is best for the state to grow jobs, to help the economy also who won the election in terms of the popular vote. So I think we are days and days away from being able to declare South Australia. QUESTION: Mr Pyne it’s been clear the polls narrowed in the last week significantly against the Coalition right at the time the Prime Minister was campaigning and at his most visible in Adelaide. Is there any concern about where the polls went when the PM was there? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I’m not concerned about that Tim and I would say that an interesting point you’ve raised of course is that most of the pre-poll and postal votes would have been cast when the polls were indicating that the liberals had a stronger level of support so that will probably be reflected in those pre polls and postal votes. Labor ran a very personal campaign against Steven Marshall, also against many candidates individually in their seats. When Labor’s back is to the wall they always fight dirty. We expect that. They did that in this campaign. So they’ve won some individual contests but in a few of those contests they shouldn’t be popping the champagne corks just yet. QUESTION: When it comes to this poll on Medicare co-payments do you see that a sign as perhaps the electorate looking at trying to balance the budget is willing to take on some pain, some responsibility, that you might be able to make changes that might not be as politically unpalatable as it usually would be? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we don’t have any plans to change the way medicare is paid for by individuals at this stage but I can say that I think you’ve made a very sophisticated point and that is over the last 7 or 8 months it’s been quite clear to me that the Australian public elected the Government to make the difficult decisions that they knew would be necessary to balance the budget to get the economy moving again, to create jobs, and that is why they are being very tolerant if you like of the Government having to make decisions over the last 6 or 7 months and potentially into the future that politically you would not normally expect Governments to make from a popular point of view. By contrast Bill shorten is still pretending that the Labor government of the last three or six years is a popular one that the people wanted to re-elect. Bill Shorten has to recognise that we won over 50% of the two party preferred vote and over 90 seats of 150 seats because the public wanted to change the direction of the previous Labor Government. Bill Shorten is still fighting old battles and Graham Richardson wrote a very good column on Friday which I would refer Bill Shorten to and that is hanging onto policies that have been rejected by the Australian public is not smart politics. QUESTION: When it comes to this repeal day, quite a lot of these things are things that haven’t been used for decades aren’t they? Isn’t it a bit token to be worried about repealing these? Shouldn’t you be getting on with the difficult issues? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we are, we’re getting into the very important difficult issues. Abolishing the Carbon Tax, abolishing the Mining Tax, reforming the Tertiary Education Regulator in my portfolio… QUESTION: That’s not really red tape is it? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m getting to my red tape answer bit. There are at least 8,000 regulations that are being abolished. Many of those are superfluous you’re quite right. There are many Acts of Parliament are being abolished that are also superfluous. But they should be clear off the decks. Why would you leave them on the Notice Paper, why would you leave them as operational when they are superfluous. But there are many regulations and acts of parliament that we are abolishing that are alive today. I’ll give you one good example Kung Fu Panda or Frozen had to get different classifications, different forms, different fees for all the different types of movies whether it was 2D, 3D, blue-ray etc. Now that’s a small change if you like but just another irritant for the business community that they have to think about when they come to have their movies classified. Same movie, just different versions of it. That’s just one good example. QUESTION: Do you envisage that these repeal bills have to go off to a Senate enquiry for potentially months on end. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I doubt it, only if Labor and the Greens want to keep heavy regulation on the business community and individuals. But you know they haven’t been making very good decisions lately so the might make that decision but I’d be surprised. Thank you. [ends]