Today Show
04 Mar 2016
Transcipt E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – Today Show with
Friday 4th March 2016
SUBJECTS: Defence White Paper, Negative Gearing, Cardinal George Pell;
KARL STEFANOVIC: Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese join us now this morning, nice to see you guys good morning
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Karl
KARL STEFANOVIC: Nice to see you, nice to see you.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay, let’s start, Christopher have you spoken to Tony Abbott this week?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yes of course I have, Yeah I’ve spoken to Tony Abbott several times
KARL STEFANOVIC: About the leak?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I wouldn’t talk to him about that no, because there’s an AFP investigation into the leak of classified National Security Council documents and that needs to happen, needs to serve its course obviously.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Chris despite stuff like that happens it’s pretty simple to ask someone if they leaked the document.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there’s only very few people who would have had access to that document so we’ll see how the investigation goes but no I wouldn’t be raising matters like that with him because I wouldn’t immediately assume it was him.
KARL STEFANOVIC: So how many people would have known about that document?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Oh a handful of people.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay so you know who those people are?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m not going to prejudge the AFP investigation, they know who they are and they-
KARL STEFANOVIC: [Interrupting] no but you know who they are already, that’s ridiculous you know who they are, you can just go say, who leaked the document?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You can’t accuse all of them of leaking the document can you?
KARL STEFANOVIC: No but you know exactly who it was
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Karl I don’t know who it was, no.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay. the point is that this is continuing to destabilise Malcolm Turnbull, have you had a word to Tony Abbott about just keeping his mouth shut?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we don’t feel in the least bit that the Government’s destabilised in fact we’ve been getting on with the job as we always have, issues like the defence white paper, the defence industry policy statement, the innovation agenda, we will be preparing now for a tax package in the Budget-
KARL STEFANOVIC: [Interrupting] So you don’t think that this is destabilising the Government?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I don’t. we had good news this week on the economy, 3% growth last year, we are doing the things that the, Australians want us to do, focused on jobs focused on growth, next week there’ll be more announcements around this and on the other hand on the Labor side we have a negative gearing policy which will smash housing, push down prices for existing houses,
KARL STEFANOVIC: You continue to have problems with that-
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, no Karl, there’s no problems there’s two types of housing, there’s new housing, and there’s old housing. So existing housing the prices will be going down-
ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s slightly concerning you’ve got no policy-
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I would rather have no policy than your policy.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: So you concede you have not policy?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, there’s not point having a bad policy.
KARL STEFANOVIC: I just want to finish off on Tony Abbott before we move on; you’ve got no dramas with Tony Abbott in your party
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I don’t have any dramas with Tony Abbott.
KARL STEFANOVIC: The PM doesn’t have any dramas? Unless you get your house in order there’s going to be big problems for you.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, that’s an opinion, I feel the Government’s doing very well and I think the public feels the Government is doing very well
KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay Albo how do you see this? You’ve got experience in this sort of thing.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well, we were promised new politics and what we’ve got is an old vendetta. And I’ve seen this movie and I know how it ends.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Right.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: What we’ve seen from Christopher there was a big concession that they have no policy, when he says better no policy than the policy that we’ve got, that’s the position that he’s put. I put the challenge to Christopher last week which is to work out in the last 7 days that he’s actually the government, and we’ve had another week of drift, another week of conflict. This is like watching the Sharknado movie as they eat each other on the other side.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Wow.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s rubbish.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Have you seen Sharknado, that’s exactly what happens.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I haven’t seen Sharknado
KARL STEFANOVIC: Maybe you should, Scott Morrison had an appalling week didn’t he?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, I mean you can’t just make assertions Karl and pretend that they are questions. Scott Morrison did not have-
KARL STYEFANOVIC: How would you rate his week then?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He had a very good week, we actually exposed the fact that the Labor party’s negative gearing policy is to abolish negative gearing on everything other than new houses delivering a massive shock to the economy, pushing down house prices, pushing up rents, pushing down house prices for existing houses, I mean Labor’s negative gearing policies they’ve done no modelling on it Karl, they have no idea the damage it could do to the economy-
ANTHONY ALBANESE: [Inaudible]
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’re having a considered, methodical well planned policy, you’d rather have a bad policy.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’ve got a document, which the authors of it said themselves it had nothing to do with Labor’s policy.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You ought to wish that the BIS Shrapnel policy was your policy.
ANTHONY ALBANESE [inaudible]
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You ought to wish that the BIS Shrapnel was your policy, because it was a lot better than your terrible policy
ANTHONY ALBANESE: [inaudible]
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Labor’s policy is actually worse because it reduces the discount on capital gains tax by 50 per cent.
KARL STEFANOVIC: We’re going to finish on this one, because it’s been a long week also for the Catholic Church how do you think George Pell went Anthony?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: I think it was very disappointing and it would have been very disturbing to the victims. I think the problem here is that it’s very obvious that for so many years, senior people in the church put what they saw as the institutional interests of the Church before the actual parishioners. And when you’re talking about young kids I think it’s very disturbing and the Catholic Church needs to come out and just say sorry and make recompense and show I think a lot more humility than we’ve seen up to this point. My old principal from my old school pleaded guilty this week to multiple charges, and you know this is just a very disturbing, and I felt sorry for the victims this week and I’m quite pleased that one of the tough things we did in Government was to establish that royal commission, that was a tough decision that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard deserves absolute credit for.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Christopher Pyne, Cardinal George Pell was not good in the witness stand it was a revelation I guess for many people that he had not focused any attention on those victims at all had tried to ignore it, he knew about it and ignored it that was a revelation to a lot of people. Should he go? What should happen to George Pell?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Karl, I don’t think that Cardinal Pell admitted that he knew about it and did nothing; I don’t think that’s what happened at all-
KARL STEFANOVIC: Yes he did, yeah he did.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I’m not here to defend Cardinal Pell.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Yes you are, you just said he didn’t say that and he did.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m not here to defend Cardinal Pell, or the Catholic Church’s handling of paedophile priests but I just think it needs to be clear what happened. I do think it’s good that Cardinal Pell met with the victims yesterday I hope they get a audience with the Pope, I think it’s important for the victim’s sake that there’s closure in this matter because obviously it’s a tragedy for them and their lives, not to mention those people who have not made it this far. You know those who have committed suicide over the years because of their treatment at the hands of paedophile priests and paedophile, anyone, anyone who’s been a paedophile. This is a very awful part of our society which we have to face up to. I think it’s good that the royal commission has put these issues on the agenda, that people are getting the chance to air their terrible experiences but I hope for their sake that they get to a point where they can say I feel like I’ve had a chance to talk about this, I’ve got some closure and I can move on because it’s obviously a very tragic area.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Alright Chris thank you for that and thank you Anthony I’ll see you next week at The Rocks in Sydney.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: With bells on.
KARL STEFANOVIC: That’s going to be scary.
[ends]