Today Show

LISA WILKINSON: Well, it took 18 months but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appeared to finally find his voice this week and boy, was it loud. Joining me now for our regular Friday chat in Adelaide, Chris Pyne and here in the studio Anthony Albanese. Good morning to both of you. Good morning.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good Morning Lisa. Good morning Anthony.

LISA WILKINSON: Christopher I'm going to start with you. Where has this PM been hiding?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think the Prime Minister basically just wants to get with the job of implementing good policy and he's been prepared to ignore Bill Shorten for a long period of time. But Bill spent a lot of summer describing Malcolm Turnbull as immoral. Now, he can hardly complain when Malcolm Turnbull points out that this was the union leader who sold out the workers at Clean Event in exchange for membership lists and cash from the business when he was the secretary of the AEWU. Some of the lowest paid workers in Australia of course, cleaners of major events and yet Bill Shorten certainly wasn't their friend. So he wants to be the worker's friend but on the other hand he's prepared to really rub shoulder with some of the richest people in Australia while selling out some of the poorest.

LISA WILKINSON: Did you write that speech for the PM?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: [Laughs] No, I didn’t do that…

LISA WILKINSON: It sounded like it when you spoke to Ben Fordham on radio this week.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, I simply pointed out that as Leader of the House we have to choose whether we speak on such motions and whether we cut those motions off and we decided that the Prime Minister was prepared to explain a few of the home truths about Bill Shorten, so that we would speak to the motion and I provided Malcolm with some of material that I keep in my own hands but all those best lines were his lines.

LISA WILKINSON: That sounds like you wrote that speech for him. Because you were seen handing him notes beforehand.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Exactly. That's exactly my job as Leader of the House is to assist and make sure we put our best foot forward. But I can tell you that Malcolm Turnbull, was entirely responsible for that speech but I will always help anyone speaking at the dispatch box. The only role I had was deciding with should go ahead with it and speak to it rather than use our numbers to shut it down.

LISA WILKINSON: Alright. Well you and the PM were accusing Bill Shorten of hypocrisy and hanging out with billionaires. This is if same Prime Minister who accrued enormous wealth working for Kerry Packer and who didn't blink donating almost $2 million of his own money to get re-elected. Isn't that hypocrisy right there.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Absolutely not. Malcolm Turnbull has worked incredibly hard. He's done very well. He's had a lot of luck as he says himself and if he wants to give his own money to causes he supports including the Liberal Party good luck to him. Bill Shorten on the other hand received a $40,000 donation from the Uni Belt in 2007 and didn't remember it until he had to appear in the Royal Commission in 2015. That is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is spending $26.5 million dollars of union member's money campaigning against the Turnbull government and then singing to their tune on the Australian building and construction commission.

LISA WILKINSON: Albo I think a lot of people listening to the speech this week did wonder why Bill Shorten would have spent so much time with billionaires over the years. Can you explain that?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: The issue here isn’t who is friends with billionaires. The issue here is why is the Prime Minister wanting to distract from the real issue which was being debated in the parliament which was Bill Shorten defending the million Australians who will miss out as a result of the cuts to family payments. Some of the poorest families in our community will be hit by the legislation that's before the parliament. And what Bill Shorten was doing, is what Labor always does, stand up for the people who most need assistance from government. This is a government that has been prepared to attack those people over and over again. They did it in the 2014 budget. Now, they'll say they only give any support for child care if they take money away from these families who need it. Carers, disability pensioners, aged pensioners will all be hit by the package

LISA WILKINSON: That's true Christopher?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No. It’s absolutely untrue. I mean, the thing about Labor is they always have other people's money to spend. Now on the one hand the Labor Party says we need to get the government back out of debt and reduce our deficit on the other hand they go to election last year promising to increase the deficit by 16.5 billion dollars. What we want to do is expand child care to the largest in a generation more affordable, more accessible especially low income workers….

ANTHONY ALBANESE …By cutting payments that were put in by Howard and Costello by cutting payments, I think you had a fair go this morning Christopher.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I didn’t interrupt you Anthony. Am I allowed to finish or are you taking over the show?

LISA WILKINSON: Very quickly Christopher we have a couple of other subjects we do want to get to.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: People on lowest incomes will be paying $15 a day for child care. At the same time we want to take away a supplement that the Howard government introduced when we had a 22 billion dollar surplus. Now I don't know where Labor's money tree is but I have never been able to find it. I've never been able to find it. The Howard government introduced a supplement when the times were booming and we had a 22 billion dollar surplus. Well, we don't anymore. Thanks to Labor.

LISA WILKINSON: Alright. Let's move on. We've talk about this energy crisis gripping South Australia. The Prime Minister is blaming the state's renewable energy targets for this week's blackouts. Albo I’ll go to you. Jay Weatherill’s Labor government is pushing for a target of 50% renewable energy by 2025, Bill Shorten believes 2030 is more realistic. The PM has labelled them insanity and it seems residents agree.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I tell you what Lisa, the issue at the moment where you're about to get the hottest day and days that we've seen for some time in Sydney, the electricity here we're being warned might be turned off between 5:30 and 7:30 for many people. There's an issue with the warming of the planet and what you have is a government that's prepared to just play politics with all of this. What happened in South Australia this week, was that at Pelican point the gas fire distributor wasn't turned on. It could have been turned on. That was a decision of the national regulator, which is responsible to the national minister, Josh Frydenberg. It wasn't turned on. Instead of examining why that occurred, what you had was a government that once again just played politics.

LISA WILKINSON: Final word Christopher…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the Labor Party are living in a parallel universe. The reality is, in South Australia, before Labor's obsession with renewable energy at the expense of base low power before they helped shut down the northern power station, we didn't have four blackouts in six months that wiped out the entire state on one occasion with 1.7 million people without power. The truth is what has changed is Labor's obsession here with the renewable energy target which is vastly in excess of what is realistic. I support renewable energy, but you have to have base-load power otherwise you won't have jobs or businesses and in the end the economy just simply will not operate and that's what is happening in South Australia.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: You had it at Pelican point Christopher and you know that's the case.

LISA WILKINSON: Meanwhile residents of NSW and South Australia have got their fingers crossed today they will not get hit by the shocking heat wave, particularly if that blackout happens. We’ll have to leave it there…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And meanwhile 2016 was the hottest year on record. Second hottest year was 2015.

LISA WILKINSON: That's true.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: There just could be something in the climate change stuff…

LISA WILKINSON: And those are not alternative facts, those are real facts. Thank you. Albo and to you Christopher. Have a great weekend. Over to you Karl.