Sky News

SUBJECTS: First sitting week of Parliament

E&OE………… 

Kieran Gilbert: Mr. Pyne thanks so much for your time, a busy day, and a busy year ahead. I want to ask you a bit about your portfolio in a moment. But first of all, on the politics of the day, we have just heard from Wayne Swan who has attacked Andrew Robb for not committing to a surplus in the first term of an Abbott government, why has he done that? Why hasn’t he committed to that?

Christopher Pyne: Well Kieran, being lectured by Wayne Swan on surpluses is like being lectured on drug reform by cheech and chong. Wayne Swan has never delivered a surplus budget. He has had four budgets; everyone of them has been a deficit. They racked 167 billion dollars of deficits and they came to power when there was a 22 billion dollar surplus. They came to power with 76 billion dollars in the bank and we now have a 133 dollar net debt position from the commonwealth government. So Wayne Swan should really just get his blocks and his play things and go somewhere else because nobody is taking him seriously as a treasurer. When labour delivers a surplus, then they can start lecturing the coalition on fiscal rectitude and fiscal management.

Gilbert: Well they are on track to deliver a surplus in 2012/2013.

Pyne: Well they have been saying that for years…

Gilbert: Well he has reiterated that again today, despite the softness in the global economy that is something that the Coalition hasn’t been willing to do.

Pyne: The Government’s numbers change every six months Kieran. MYEFO changed last year, we will see how the numbers change in this year’s budget. The numbers change every six months at least with this Government. They are utterly unreliable and all that Andrew Robb has said is when we get into power, and hopefully we will, and we can see what the books are, then we will be in a better position to say when our first surplus will be delivered.  We aren’t backing away from the need to rein in spending and reduce taxes and take the burden off the Australian people, of course we’re not. But we’re not going to be lectured by Wayne Swan on surpluses.

Gilbert: He says that your books aren’t in order to begin with and that Joe Hockey last night on the ABC in now denying that there is a 70 billion dollar issue that the coalition has to deal with in terms of funding your commitments. Is it 70 billion dollars or is it less than that.

Pyne: Well Kieran we are not in Government, so we don’t have any books. I mean the sadness for this government is that they have been behaving like an Opposition for four years, four and a half years. They have never really taken on the handle of being in government and this just confirms Wayne Swan’s confusion.  He is the government, we’re the opposition. By the next election we will have a set of policies with savings measures included, with our tax cuts included, and the fact that we are going to abolish the carbon tax; we will take that to the election. We are happy to put our fiscal record up against the Labor Party’s anytime. The last time the Labor party delivered a surplus was over 20 years ago before Wyatt Roy, the Member for Longman was even born, so lets not get carried away with Labor lecturing us on surpluses.

Gilbert: On the Parliament today, I’m not expecting you to give me your strategy straight off the bat, but obviously the Craig Thomson matter will be high on the Coalition’s agenda. Will you move a no confidence motion in the first week or so?

Pyne: Well Kieran, we will move a no confidence vote when it is appropriate to do so. But obviously this week we need to tease out from the government a number of issues about their integrity and one of those is the ongoing saga of the Fair Work inquiry into Craig Thomson which has now taken longer than it did to build the Olympic stadium in Sydney for the Sydney Olympics. It’s taken longer than the Korean War to start and finish. I mean Watergate took half the time of the Fair Work inquiry into Craig Thomson, so obviously we want to find out about this institutional go slow from Fair Work Australia. There’s the whole Australia day riots which are yet to be tested in the Parliament and the role the Prime Minister’s office played in those riots and of course the broken contract with Andrew Wilkie on pokies is yet to be discussed in the Parliament. All of those things need to be canvassed and we also of course want to continue to focus on job security, border security and the cost of living pressures.

Gilbert: You are the Shadow Minister for Education as well. Tonight you will be giving a speech in which you will be arguing that skills, essentially taking too much of a focus in our school system, that there needs to be a focus more on traditional schooling, on gaining knowledge. Can you give us a quick snapshot on what you are arguing on that?

Pyne: Well my speech today is about the ten principles which will underpin the Coalitions approach to school funding. Obviously beginning with choice and going through to every child being given some support from the Commonwealth Government. That outlines the speech. What I said in general is that education should be knowledge based not skills based. There’s a great confusion, if you like, a split personality in education in Australia about whether we should be teaching children skills like computing, or text messaging, or accounting or whether we should be teaching children knowledge based subjects, maths, science, the classics, English, languages; and I favour a more traditional approach to schooling which gives children the basics of knowledge so that if skills change overtime, their job can change because they’ve go the knowledge to do that.

Gilbert: That skills focus comes at a later point?

Pyne: Well if it’s to be vocation and training in schooling, which there should be, people should make that choice towards the end of their school period. They shouldn’t be dragged in that direction and stream too early in life.

Gilbert: I know you’ve got to get going, one last question relating to the procedure around the parliament. The Speaker apparently going to don a gown, a bit more pomp and ceremony, what do you think of that?

Pyne: Well I’m a great believer in more formality in the chamber so if the Speaker wants to introduce more formality I’m all for it.

Gilbert: And the gown and so on?

Pyne: Well if the Speaker wants to don a gown I’m all for that and I think we should have more formality in the chamber and if he wants to wear the wig, the Opposition certainly wouldn’t criticise him.

Gilbert: Christopher Pyne, thanks for your time.

Pyne: Pleasure.

ENDS