PVO NewsDay
30 Nov 2015
Transcipt E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – PVO NewsDay
Monday 30 November 2015
SUBJECTS: Week in Parliament
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good afternoon Peter.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: I hope you’re not going to gag debate today if the Labor party decide to talk about Mal Brough again; I wasn’t very impressed by that last week. I think it’s the parliament is about the democratic debate flowing writ large ever if you don’t like what the other side are offering
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m sorry that you weren’t impressed I exist to only impress you; that’s why I come to work every day, is to get your approval. We often gab the debate, especially when it’s political stunts form the Labor Party in that we’re trying to last Thursday was a political stunt, there’s no new information that has come to light about the involvement of Mr Brough in these matters and Labor are simply trying to find something that will play them back into the agenda like their ludicrous 45% target for the reduction of carbon emissions without any money associated with it, without any plan associated with in and without explaining to the Australian public that such a target would smash household electricity budgets and smash jobs and the economy, yet Labor’s obviously trying to find a way into the debate and last Thursday they spent it attacking Mal Brough so I wasn’t going to accommodate them.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Well, warning there for Manager of Opposition business tony Burke if you chose to go down that path again this week but let me ask you thing the Prime Minister is away, he’s in Paris. It’s been put to me that some of these target that’s you mentioned that the Labor Party have been proposing is rather significant targets is perhaps nothing more than a distraction or an attempt at a distraction from the approval ratings of the Opposition leader. Do you comply or concur with that sentiment?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think Labor is very much struggling to come to terms with the new political paradigm that we exist in where people want to hear about what our political parties are going to do to create jobs and growth. The government has a plan and an agenda which will be even further expanded next week when I hand down the national innovation and science agenda with the Prime Minister. Labor has been coasting for 2 years; they haven’t done the work that Oppositions need to do to re think their own philosophy and their own agenda. They believe that they would get back into government on the back of unpopularity of the current government and they’re finding that that’s not the case, and certainly the feedback in the electorate is very positive for the government whereas for Labor they have disappeared from view and I think they’re trying to find any headline grabbing issue. Most Australians know that if we had a 45% target reached by 2030 for carbon reductions that we would need a carbon tax that was twice as high as the previous Labor carbon tax. Now, we’ll get to our own targets, 26-28%, which is comparable to most other countries like Australia, through our direct action policies without having the hit to households and businesses with a massive new carbon tax.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Well we had Kate Carnell on our program on Sunday and she was horrified form a business prospective at those targets, and the other issue though in the mix at the moment is the Fairfax reports, this one of five part series form Peter Hartcher in relation to picking through the entrails, I suppose, of what went on with the change of leader, suggestions around the role of Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop as well. Is there a risk here for this government that this sort of throws it off course over the course of the summer we also saw the poll that you wouldn’t see in the Australian Financial Review over the weekend suggesting that while the opinion polls are good for the government in terms of preferred ratings, when it comes to managing policy issues it didn’t quite look as rosy at that sort of breakdown as it does of the personality level of the Party.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think the entrails been well and truly picked over Peter, not least of which by yourself and in your book shirtfronted or battleground, was it called battleground the shirtfronting of Tony Abbott I think you called it…
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Words to that effect, yes.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think we’ve been through the entrails, yes, Published by Melbourne University Publishing and available at every good book store, but I think those entrails have well and truly been picked over and the government has moved on from that period but what the poll on the weekend in the Fairfax press showed is that we need a lot more policy balanced in to the future which will be providing starting next week with the national innovation and science agenda. We’ve already done significant things around domestic violence and mental health and on the economic front. We are getting things passed through the Senate under the leadership of Malcolm Turnbull and the Treasurership of Scott Morrison and over the coming five or six months leading up to the budget you’ll see even more domestic policy balance being added to the government and I think then you’ll see those kinds of more in depth polls reflecting that the public is seeing that we have a plan to create jobs and growth.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: You mention the Senate, how concerned are you about the Senate over the course of the next six to twelve months leading up to a possible election late next year because we see these budget figures, we see the forecast from Deloitte with Chris Richardson talking about how much worse things are getting. A lot of what the government has been proposed over the last who or so years has been rejected by the Senate. Are you worried that fixing the budget is, perhaps, something that neither side of politics can necessarily do, because of the problems in the Upper House?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, a lot of good work has gone before over the last two years by the Abbott administration and we are building on that as a foundation, a strong economic foundation, not least of which was the small business budget in 2015 and the 2014 budget that was design to reset the economic parameters. I do think the public are not worried about the Senate because I do think the public see that we can only do as much as the Senate allows us to do. In terms of passage of legislation, and the Senators themselves will be answerable to the electorate for the decisions that they’ve made over the course of the last couple of years and the next 12 months before the election but I think the public knows that the Senate doesn’t pass a lot of the government‘s agenda and they take that into account. I don’t think we’re being marked down for that, I think we are marked for effort, and of course much is passing through the Senate because we are negotiating with the cross benchers and increasingly with the Greens. The Greens passed legislation last week, for example, about the foreign investment rules, which Labor was blocking in the Senate. The Greens saw that we were making good changes and we negotiated with them and if the Greens continue to play themselves into the equation, Labor will continue to become more and more irrelevant.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Let me explain, if I can sort of jump in on that, my issue is not so much whether you’re going to cop the political flack or not for what doesn’t pass the Senate, it’s more just the concern that you and others in the Government might have about the being able to tackle the deficit irrespective of whether you don’t get the blame for that reality because of the senate, and obviously in conjunction with the Opposition because it seems that there is such a barrier there that event if you get a mandate at the next election for example, there’s no guarantees that the recalcitrant Senate isn’t going to do the right thing and get out of the way and respect that mandate – it’s a worry for the economy.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m worried that the government gets its legislation through both Houses of Parliament, of course I am. We put up legislation to improve the budget position because we want to see it passed and I believe we’re working better with the Senate now. I would never describe them as recalcitrant,I think many things can be passed through the Senate with hard work and negotiation, some things won’t. Some of the cross benchers, the Labor party and the Greens will combine to defeat Government legislation, I think that’s a great shame, but that is the political realpolitik of a system where the Upper House is being controlled by somebody other than the government, for all but three years since 1980.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: This is our last Parliamentary sitting week chat on a Monday because, of course, Parliament rises at the end of the week and won’t be back until 2016. We know that Labor are in caucus…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m going to miss you.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Well, you can always come in next week in a non-sitting week to talk about your Innovation Statement…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’ll be happy to.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Well, we’ll line that up, we’ll take that as offer and acceptance but I do want to hear your views about what’s going through the Parliament this week….
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I can’t do it on Monday.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Okay, we won’t do it on Monday but we’ll look to do it next week once it’s announced. But what’s happening this week though, it is the last sitting week, there’ll be a lot you’ll want to get through, particularly in the Senate as well over the course of it. We’ve seen that Labor, its caucus has agreed to the citizenship laws just earlier this morning, what else is on the agenda for the week?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we will pass the Australian citizenship laws through both houses of Parliament this week, we also have childcare reform tweaking to be introduced this week, because we’re hoping to reach agreement with the Senate about our reforms to childcare and the family tax benefit. There are important pieces of legislation around the treatment of multinationals etc. that we want to pass this week so it will be a busy week and we will be sitting late most nights this week, but I hope by the end of it, going into the Christmas season, that we’ll have enough runs on the board to have made it all worthwhile over the last few months and I believe we will, we already have and I think we’ll have more this week.
PETER VAN ONSELEN: Christopher Pyne always appreciate our time on Mondays of sitting weeks but this isn’t goodbye for the year because we’ve got the agreement for next week so I’ll see you again next week.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Indeed, thanks Peter.
[ends]