Sky News AM Agenda

SUBJECTS: Gonski; ANZAC Day; National Curriculum E&OE................................ Kieran Gilbert: Today, the Manager of Opposition Business and the Shadow Education Minister, Christopher Pyne. I began by asking him about this warning from the Grattan Institute that Government’s will need to not just reign in spending on welfare and so on but also on education and health. Hon Christopher Pyne MP: The Government has left us a very bad situation in this election year and if we win Kieran, in September, if we’re fortunate enough to get elected we’re going to have a lot of work to do to try and repair the damage of the last six years of a Labor Government. Obviously debt is completely out of control, well up to $300 billion gross debt, we have deficits as far as the eye can see, Wayne Swan’s never delivered a surplus and of course they inherited precisely the opposite so we will outline all of our policies towards the budget before the election and during the election campaign. We don’t know yet until the budget on May the 14th what the terrible situation is and just how bad it is. But we are in crisis. The country is in crisis because of this Government and we have a lot of work to do. Gilbert: The Coalition, obviously well as you say, will release its costings later in the year but will it have to make some decisions that hurt, that hurt people? Pyne: Well, there’s no doubt that Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard are still on the spending spree. They’re still throwing money around, they’re still sending out cheques to people which aren’t linked to any kind of particular spending. They haven’t got used to the fact there isn’t a money tree out in the back yard that they can raid whenever they need it. Now the Coalition’s a different approach when we were in Government we lived within our means, we created the Future Fund the Higher Education Endowment Fund, the Communications Fund, the Health Fund and we kept a surplus Budget. Gilbert: This is going to be tough. John Daley from the Grattan Institute, I spoke to him this morning, he says that it’s not just going to be found in middle class welfare that education, health and welfare all have to be looked at even within your own portfolio you’d have to look at making savings. Pyne: Well I think there are savings to be made just in ‘red-tape’ to start with Kieran in my portfolio but right across government. I mean one of the scandalous things about the last six years of this Government has been the extraordinary level of centralised bureaucracy of dart election of compliance and accountability under the so called rubric of transparency arrangements but it is stultifying crushing of schools themselves let alone all the rest of the economy how much red tape they have to comply with. Gilbert: Joe Hockey wanted to make some savings on the Baby Bonus and he wasn’t able to get that through the Shadow Cabinet, the Nationals didn’t want to accept that so is there really the view within the Coalition I suppose or the support across the board to make the tough cuts necessary. As I say, Mr Hockey wanted to make some, reign in the spending on the Baby Bonus and he couldn’t get that through. Pyne: Well we’ve already made some tough announcements, Kieran. We’ve said we won’t continue with the School Kids Bonus because it’s not linked in any way to education spending, it’s just a cash giveaway which we can’t afford as a nation. Now, of course should we be elected, we’re going to have to make the tough decisions but that’s what the public expects from us, that’s why they are looking to elect a Coalition Government they know that we can’t have the profligacy of the last six years under Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard. Gilbert: Does the GST need to be looked at? Pyne: No. We have said we will not be changing the rate of the GST or the basket of goods and services that it applies to. Gilbert: On the Government’s school funding plan can I clarify what the Coalition’s stance is? If the Government secures the support of some states for example New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland but not a few of the others, WA and the Northern Territory come to mind. If they don’t get two of them for example would the Coalition still seek to revoke the school funding plan for the rest of them? Pyne: Well Kieran, the Government’s education policy is chaos at the moment. No one has any idea what the funding model will be. We are literally only eight months from when this model is going to end and the schools tell me that they need twelve to eighteen months to implement a new school funding model so the Government has left it all very, very late and of course that’s why they’re running into such a terrible storm and Campbell Newman said they could have had the States on side but Julia Gillard pushed them away. Now maybe she set this up to fail. Maybe she’d rather be talking about school funding than the failures of her Government on the surplus, on deficit and debt. Gilbert: Will you revoke the deal if some of them sign up like Campbell Newman, like Barry O’Farrell, Denis Napthine if they sign up, they’ve said they want the extra money. Pyne: Well, we’ve said … Gilbert: Would you take it from them? Pyne: We have to see who does sign up and who doesn’t but if it’s overwhelmingly that there is a new a school funding model across the states, we won’t seek to unpick that. We don’t want to create constant uncertainty in the school funding sector. We want to move on to the issues that really matter to us. Things like teacher quality, parental engagement, principal autonomy and a robust curriculum. Gilbert: So if Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales sign up, and South Australia, Tasmania, but it’s only W.A. and the Northern Territory that don’t, you won’t unpick that? Pyne: Well, we’ll have to wait and see. We can’t have a system where there is potentially sixteen different models. I mean one of the central tenets of the Gonski report was that there is a national, uniform model, and this Prime Minister will potentially have presided over the most dysfunctional model in the history of school funding. Gilbert: But that would be overwhelmingly a new model, at least along the eastern seaboard – the biggest states in terms of population. Pyne: Well Kieran, there are a lot of ifs in this exchange. There are a lot of ifs, and it’s very hard for me to respond to hypotheticals. Maybe all the states will sign up, maybe hardly any will. Neither of us know. Gilbert: It would be hard to take the money from coalition premiers, wouldn’t it. It would be tough to take the money of Barry O’Farrell, Dennis Napthine, Campbell Newman if they do sign up. Pyne: Well so far, not one State nor Territory has signed up – neither Labor states, nor Liberal states, and David Gonski has opposed the way the Government has responded to this reform. So if David Gonski’s not onside then I can’t see why any of the states would sign up at this point. Gilbert: You’re going to make some changes to the national history curriculum, apparently, if you do win in September. What, specifically, do you want to look at? Pyne: Well, our policy all along has been that if we are elected, we will review the national curriculum, review whether it’s the right content, whether it’s being implemented successfully. Now, the national curriculum at the moment is very much a patchwork across the country. Some states have implemented it, some states haven’t. Some states have put off the year from which it’s to begin. In some states it’s in certain years but not in junior school. In other states it’s in junior school but not in senior school. So, the national curriculum is not actually being delivered. The Prime Minister couldn’t deliver a trout in a trout farm, and on this occasion she hasn’t delivered a national curriculum, so we will review its direction and its content to see whether it is appropriate. Gilbert: What specifically are you worried about? There are reports today that you want to restore ANZAC day to a rightful place of respect, but that’s already within the curriculum. Pyne: Well this time, this particular week, we are celebrating ANZAC day on Thursday, and the curriculum isn’t silent on ANZAC day, but certainly ANZAC day is not a central feature of the national history curriculum. Back in the first drafts, the national history curriculum very much propagated the black armband view of Australian history. We don’t hold with that in the Coalition. We think that of course we should recognise the mistakes that have been made in the past, but we shouldn’t allow them to influence how we think of ourselves as a country in the future. We are a confident, positive country. We need to remain that way, and we don’t want to beat ourselves up every day on the basis of mistakes that were made in the past. So I would look at whether the curriculum is appropriate with respect to its treatment of ANZAC day, whether that is centrally important. Gilbert: And finally, I want to ask you about one last story. Tony Abbott has written to the Prime Minister urging the naming of a replacement for the Governor General to be delayed until after the election. There have been suggestions –reports in the Fairfax press – that the Coalition is doing that because of plans to appoint John Howard as Governor General. Would he make a good Governor General? Pyne: Well I’m sure that sounds like wild speculation, Kieran, about as wild as the idea of you or I being made the Governor General. The truth is, the point is the government has been putting a number of people into positions whose terms don’t start until after September. Gilbert: But the caretaker provisions haven’t kicked in. They kick in when the writs are issued in August. Pyne: But it’s one thing to appoint people who need to be appointed because the position is becoming vacant. It’s quite another to be appointing people whose positions don’t begin until January or even July 2014, which is what the Government is doing. We are fearful that they will try and do the same with the Governor General. We think that is a bridge too far. There are a lot of people who would make great Governor General in Australia, but that is a matter for a new Prime Minister should Tony Abbott be the new Prime Minister. Gilbert: Mr Pyne, thanks for your time. Pyne: Pleasure. ENDS.