Sky News View Point

SUBJECTS: School funding; Election 2013.

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

Chris Kenny: Welcome back to View Point, I am Chris Kenny.  I am joined now by Shadow Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, thanks for joining us.

Christopher Pyne: Chris, good to see you.

Kenny: Kenny: We’ll talk about some broader election issues in a moment but I wanted to start off with education especially given your dramatic backflip on Friday on the Gonski reforms – the so-called Gonski funding.  Up until Friday you were telling us that Gonski was Conski, so why have you signed up to a con?

Pyne: Well the truth is that the government is not introducing the Gonski report because that would require $6.5 billion of new spending every year which over the next four years would be $26 billion.  So it’s true to say that the Gonski – the so-called Gonski model that Labor was introducing - was a con, a smoke and mirrors trick…

Kenny: But you’ve just signed up to it – you are saying that you will match whatever funding arrangements they strike and they have now signed up Victoria and Queensland.  I mean they have won this debate hands down and you’re matching them.

Pyne: No, not really because what we have said on Friday was that schools needed certainty in 2014 so there’s absolutely no incentive for states like Victoria or Queensland now to hold out because we have also said that we would dismantle all the central command and control features of the model from Canberra. So we will dismantle the red tape, and the bureaucracy, and we will give them the same money…

Kenny: That is the change that Kevin Rudd has seemed to agree to with Victoria and probably Queensland as well…

Pyne: Well I don’t believe anything Kevin Rudd says and I can’t imagine anybody else would.  But now the states know that the Coalition, if we win, will give them the same amount of money without the central command and control features with less red tape and bureaucracy I think they are pretty comfortable to go ahead with that certainty.

Kenny: But you have been running around the country criticising this deal for years calling it a con, saying that in some states funding would actually go backwards, I mean you must have got dizzy with this backflip?  When did you first find out that Tony Abbott was going to do this backflip and you had to go along with it?

Pyne: Well I am the Shadow Minister for Education, Chris, and I have been driving this policy agenda for the entire four and a half years that I have been in the job.

Kenny: So you decided, you decided to agree with Labor?

Pyne: I decided that it was important that schools have certainty in 2014.  Labor has created an absolute mess over the last six months.  They had four jurisdictions in, four jurisdictions out.  They had a $325 million cut over the next four years but with all these side deals and secret arrangements we have no idea what the amount of money is that they are now spending, but it’s not fair on schools, their parents or their principals to not know what their funding model is going to be next year so we have said that we will give them complete certainty, there isn’t separate paper between us and the Labor party on the funding.

Kenny: Exactly.

Pyne: But we will remove …

Kenny: You and Labor are the same on education?

Pyne: We are absolutely the same on education.  Except we will remove the central command and control.

Kenny: So over the next four years, over the forward estimates, what will it cost?

Pyne: Well until we see the PEFO we don’t know what these secret deals mean.

Kenny: So you have signed up a funding agreement and you don’t even know how much it will cost?

Pyne: Well we know that our funding envelope will be exactly the same as Labor’s.  So if you vote Liberal or you vote Labor you will get exactly the same funding envelope.

Kenny: Aren’t you sounding a bit like Bill Shorten when he said he agreed with the Prime Minister no matter what it is?  You are saying that you will agree to Labor’s education funding no matter what it is?

Pyne: I am saying that schools need the certainty and states need the certainty to know that whether they vote Liberal or Labor they will get exactly the same amount of money.

Kenny: So we don’t really know whether we can afford this, I mean my inclination in this area is that Labor is making grand promises a long way out and we don’t really know their affordability given that we are running budget deficits and now the Opposition are just signing up to that for political purposes, at whatever cost it is to the economy.

Pyne: Well we know over the next four years it was a cut of $325 million but they have offered $603 million to the Catholics, $150 million to the Independent Schools Council of Australia, extra money to the Tasmanians and the South Australians and the New South Welshman.  We don’t know what the secret deal is with Victoria or Queensland, they offered $600 million to Western Australia, so we know it is no longer a cut but we have to see PEFO to know exactly what the new amount of money is.  We are happy to match that funding envelope in order to give schools, parents, and school councils certainty.

Kenny: Well you know it worries me that if there is economic irresponsibility in this funding package, we have got neither side of politics is going to pick it.  We have just agreeing to spend it regardless.  But I need to move on to the general election campaign here.  You have obviously just said you don’t trust Kevin Rudd on anything he says, you have been hyper critical of this government, then you will be expecting to march on to an election victory then?

Pyne: Well we hope that the Australian public will see that on the one side of the ledger there is a stable certain opposition that has had the same leader for four years, roughly the same front bench for four years, we have the polices in place in the ‘Our Plan’ document to try and stabilise Australia to restore confidence to economic management, to try and stop the job anxiety that people have, reduce the cost of living by abolishing the carbon tax and the mining tax, and of course we have a plan to stop the boats and to protect our borders after Kevin Rudd opened our borders again in 2008.  On the other side we have the frantic, chaotic, dysfunctional Labor Party which has had in my portfolio four higher education ministers in four months, six small business ministers in six years, two, three Prime Ministers is six years.

Kenny: Yeah there has been an amazing turnover.  There has been four immigration ministers and of course they have never delivered a budget surplus in fact they have promised surpluses…

Pyne: That’s right.

Kenny: …and delivered deficits.  We have had the 1100 deaths at sea with the borders reopening – they promised not to introduce a carbon tax and they brought one in…

Pyne: You have got all the lines down pat.

Kenny: Yet you are 50/50 in the polls – what does this say about the Opposition when you have so many government failures, yet the Opposition seem to be scratching to get ahead?

Pyne: Well that hasn’t been the case of course, since, in the last three years…

Kenny: It is now since the return of Kevin Rudd…

Pyne: …since the Coalition has lead in every poll in the last three years and Labor is yet to pull ahead in any poll. But of course you would expect Kevin Rudd to be having a honeymoon period, he’s the …

Kenny: Why?

Pyne:...shiny new toy of Australian politics.

Kenny: He is not the new toy, he is the man that people elected in 2007.  Why has he made it so competitive when as you say there is a litany of failures that you could be pointing to, and should be pointing to, to win over the Australian public.

Pyne: Well you and I have been observing elections for a long time, well over twenty years and when a leader changes there is always a honeymoon period and Kevin Rudd has been having his honeymoon period but I think that is about to fall off the cliff.  I have been out supermarketing in the last few weeks in my electorate, a few weeks ago he was a lot more popular than he was yesterday when I was out supermarketing and that’s why of course he has called an election because the faceless men have said you have to get off to the polls as soon as you can.  He wanted to go Kevin 747 to St Petersburg and to New York and do all that.  But of course winning an election from Opposition is like doing Mt Everest – it’s not easy.

Kenny: So Tony Abbott says…

Pyne: We don’t change governments very often.

Kenny: You were sounding rather confident there a moment ago…

Pyne: I am very confident that the Australian, I have great faith in the Australian public that they will not want to wake up the day after the election and have re-elected this dysfunctional, chaotic, divided government that has given them cost of living pressures, job anxiety, 50,000 new boat arrivals and eight deficit budgets on the trot one after the other. 

Kenny: Now we began by talking about the funding for Gonski and of course we had the economic statement from the government on Friday, a lot of economic bad news in there.

Pyne: Yeah.

Kenny: Including tax increases to pay for it and the like.

Pyne: Three taxes in five weeks.

Kenny: But we need to see from the Opposition, you are confronting the same budget pressures, we need to see the detailed costings from the Opposition – when can expect to see them and how accurate can they be given the sorts of open ended promises we have heard on Gonski?

Pyne: Well the problem with the Labor Party’s figures – the numbers that the Labor Party keeps announcing is they change from month to month.  Two months ago Penny Wong said that the numbers in the budget were irrefutable and set in stone.  And then of course last Friday she said well you know I might have said that two months ago but we just change our figures like we change our outfits or our suits.  It’s very hard to rely on the government’s numbers…

Kenny: But you will put all your, all your numbers into the Parliamentary Budget Office which is of course is independent of government and will verify all of that?

Pyne: Well as you pointed out last Friday the government issued their apologia for their hopeless economic management over the last six years.  We have got three taxes in five weeks, 4,000 boat arrivals in the last four weeks since Kevin Rudd has been the Prime Minister.  $3 billion a week they were spending above what they were expecting in the budget.  So we have now got a $30 billion deficit this financial year.  They have given us the most accelerated debt figures in any government since federation.  No one has raised debt as quickly as the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government has.

Kenny: So the time should be right for some honesty for the public.  Will the Opposition detail, will the Coalition detail serious cuts, substantial cuts to government expenditure as required or will we see the same old routine where if you form government you have a Commission of Audit and then you outline a whole lot of drastic measures?

Pyne: Well I am very confident that Tony Abbott will not promise anything that he can’t deliver and that he won’t do anything that he doesn’t promise.  So I think the Australian public will have a very clear choice by Election Day between an Opposition that is telling them exactly what we will do and a government led by Kevin Rudd which let’s not forget in 2007 he said he would fix the DFRDB pensions for the veterans, abolished it in 2008.  Last Thursday he announced he would fix it again but of course he won’t do it in 2014.  This is a guy who said he wanted to level with the Australian people in his rather surprising press conference this afternoon.  He wanted to level with the Australian people. He said six weeks ago he couldn’t see any circumstances out of any kind in which he could be Prime Minister again and yet he is running for election as Prime Minister.

Kenny: He is certainly Prime Minister again and he has changed the game.  Just speaking of unusual press conferences, just before we go, Tony Abbott says he is ‘fair dinkum’ – what do you understand by that expression? What does that say about what he is trying to…

Pyne: But I think what he is saying is that what you see with me is what you get.  Whereas with Kevin Rudd of course we don’t see that.  So in 2007, he said he was a conservative economist.  We discovered after that that he used to describe himself as a Christian Socialist.  He spent $254 billion more than he has raised…

Kenny: But Tony Abbott is talking about himself.  Tony Abbott says he is ‘fair dinkum’…

Pyne: That’s right.  Because he is fair dinkum.

Kenny: It’s about contrasting with Kevin Rudd.

Pyne: Well what you see with Tony Abbott is what you get.  With Kevin Rudd you never know, he says he is changed, but a leopard never changes his spots and the Australian public are not stupid.

Kenny: Christopher Pyne, thanks very much for your time.

Pyne: Pleasure.

ENDS.