Sky News – AM Agenda

SUBJECTS: Nielsen Poll; Media laws; Asylum Seekers

E&OE................................

Hon Christopher Pyne MP: Well the Prime Minister is the Prime Minister, she’s not giving up the job easily, why should she? She’s being white anted by Kevin Rudd and his supporters as well as other members of the Labor party who have their own agenda. While all this is going on, we are in the middle of March, this is the time that Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard should be framing the budget for May. Instead they’re completely inwardly focussed obsessively about Kevin Rudd and his supporters and the country are the poorer because Julia Gillard is not focussed on what’s important to them.

Kieran Gilbert: Good luck trying to talk down these polls though 56 - 44 and as John Stirton refers to in the Financial Review today, for 27 straight polls since the election of 2010 the Coalition’s been in front.

Pyne: Well you know this is true. There’s been 137 polls since the last election and we’ve drawn with Labor in 2 of them, sorry we’ve, Labor’s led us in 2 of them out of 137. So, look the polls are very bad for the Government and for Julia Gillard. But we’re still focussed on just getting through to the election, putting our positive agenda out there for the Australian people, not taking anything for granted; the polls will tighten in the election they always do. And Labor will fight and Julia Gillard will fight to the end.

Gilbert: As we sit here now six or so months out from the election, what’s the biggest risk for the Coalition?

Pyne: Well we’d like there to be an election so that the public can actually get a government of adults in the room who are putting their issues front and centre. Whether it’s..

Gilbert: In terms of you loosing focus or discipline, what is the biggest risk for the Coalition? What do you have to avoid?

Pyne: Well I mean in politics there’s risk around every corner. But I mean we are just focussing on our positive agenda, we won’t lose our focus, we won’t delve into ill-discipline and disunity. We are we believe the Australian public deserve a much better government and a government that is focussed on cost of living and job security and border protection and good economic management; we haven’t got that now. I think when we, I move amongst our supporters and out in to the in the community in my electorate, what is clear is they’re fed up and they want an election and they are sick of games in Canberra. So rather than commentating on the game I think what we need to do is focus on the issues.

Gilbert: On the media regulations, the Joint Parliamentary Committees underway this morning looking in to the broadcast legislation. I know that the Coalition is supportive of the idea of reducing the license fees for free to air television networks. Is the Coalition willing to back some of the isolated elements of these Bills, even though you’ve ridiculed other elements of it?

Pyne: Well that’s a matter for Malcolm Turnbull to announce at the appropriate time. Obviously if the Government was prepared to split the Bills up in to different parts then we might well consider different aspects of it more favourably than the ones that are curbing press freedoms, but at the moment this Bill looks like it will pass. I think the Crossbenches will do their dance of a thousand veils which they always do. But at the end of the day they’ll end up voting for the changes. And so by the end of this week barring extraordinary circumstances these new media laws will be in place.

Gilbert: What is your sense of the numbers at this stage?

Pyne: Well we always do this game with the crossbenches, Robert Oakeshott and Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie and Adam Bandt, less so in his case, they hold out the prospect of voting against the Government. But almost always when the votes are cast they end up voting with the Government and I think that’s what they’ll do again.

Gilbert: Okay. And finally on the issue of border protection, there’ve been five boats in just two days. This is an issue where Tony Abbott has repeatedly said the Coalition’s going to stop the boats.

Pyne: That’s right.

Gilbert: Now that is going to be, that’s going to be a tuff ask if you don’t do it, it’s going to be a promise that he has not, he has not met but made many many times.

Pyne: Well Kieran we’ve done it before, we’ve stopped the boats before. John Howard wore all the pain. And then for some unknown reason the Government decided in August 2008 to change the laws to put the people smugglers business model back in the game again. Now we can stop this, we can bring back temporary protection visas which takes away permanent residency which is the sugar on the table. We can turn the boats around when it is safe to do so, which sends a very clear message to people smugglers and their consumers.

Gilbert: But there’s a risk that you won’t achieve this commitment and you’ve talked up an enormous game.

Pyne: Well there’s always a risk that we might not be able to completely stop the boats instantaneously because there’ll be some lag time between the time we change the laws and the time the message gets though. I am very confident that over time, over the course of the next Parliament the message will get to the people smugglers that there will be no more permanent residency for people who come by boat, that we’ll turn the boats around where it’s safe to do so, that we’ll have offshore processing which is meaningful, that the appeal process which the Howard Government altered and again the Labor Government changed will be reviewed and looked at to ensure that we can’t, refugees can’t or that asylum seekers can’t hold us over a barrel for years in to the future at great cost. And with those various measures that we implement I am very confident that we’ll stop the boats.

Gilbert: Mr Pyne, thanks for your time.

ENDS.