Today Show

KARL STEFANOVIC: Good morning chaps, nice to see you all.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Karl and welcome Richard

RICHARD MARLES: Good morning Karl, good morning Christopher

KARL STEFANOVIC: Nice to see you, well Christopher first up, are you planning to ban Muslim immigration like 60% of Liberal voters want you to do?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, we’re certainly not going to do that, we believe in a non-discriminatory immigration policy, what that poll reflects I think is that people are worried about their safety when they see the television or read the newspapers and hear Islamic State or Al Qaeda or any of these other terrorist organisations making dire threats against the west and against Australia, obviously it makes them nervous and I perfectly understand that. And they’ve been nervous for some time, not just since the arrival of One Nation back in the national Parliament and that’s why the government and the opposition have to keep re-assuring people about the strength of our borders, about national security, putting in place the measures to protect us as much as we possibly can which we’ve been doing for the last three and a bit years.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay Richard 40%, a surprising figure I reckon, 40% of Labor voters in that survey want the same ban.

RICHARD MARLES: Yeah look I think it’s a really concerning survey but what it says to me is that we’ve got to have leadership in this country and Christopher talks about reassurance, there’s no reassurance when you’ve got an Immigration Minister who talks about illiterate, innumerate refugees coming to this country stealing our jobs and being on the dole. Now he said that during the election campaign and if you want to give people a sense of confidence about a multicultural society we’ve got to see leadership from our government.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Christopher the PM completely fan-girled over Barack Obama at the UN but then sounded more like Tony Abbott that ever before on immigration, isn’t he having a bob each way?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Malcolm Turnbull and the government are absolutely committed to one thing and that is strong borders. We repaired the damage that Labor did to our border protection policies, under Labor 50,000 unauthorised arrivals on 800 different vessels over 5 years because of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and immigration Ministers in the Gillard-Rudd period. Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott have repaired that and there’s a much better situation, we have a lot more faith in our immigration policies as a consequence, and I’m disappointed to hear Richard Marles not being bipartisan about national security, it seems very surprising to me. We’re not talking about skilled migration versus unskilled migration, we’re talking about people feeling safe at home and so far that’s always been a policy which Labor and Liberal have been able to agree on.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay Richard your policy on asylum seekers was a disaster, the PM says it was a legacy of shame, would you allow more in?

RICHARD MARLES: Look, the Prime Minister is all over the place in terms of his understanding of this issue. There were mistakes made unquestionably during the Labor period but one of the real issues here was the cynical decision of the Liberals not to support the Malaysia arrangement, it had a huge impact on resolving this issue. 670 people perished at sea after the Liberals blocked the Malaysian arrangement, but in the one breath he’s complaining about Labor closing Nauru and Manus and on the other he’s criticising Labor for re-opening those facilities and having offshore processing underway at the moment, the truth is this government doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to Manus and Nauru, they are paralysed by fear, and not only is that a problem for the people who are on those facilities but it ultimately risks our border security because they are (inaudible) facilities at the moment.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And Karl, Labor’s solution to that is to double the refugee intake and simply take all those people on Nauru and Manus Island, sending the green light to people smugglers…

RICHARD MARLES: That’s absolutely not true, that is not true.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Sending the green like to people smugglers saying your business plan is back in business again, now we’re not going to do that.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay.

RICHARD MARLES: Christopher you don’t have a solution for getting those people off Manus and Nauru, we don’t want to bring them to Australia but we do need to get them off those islands because right now we don’t have a sustainable offshore processing system.

KARL STEFANOVIC: We’ve got very little time left Christopher.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What we’ve heard this morning is that if Labor wins again the people smugglers are back in business.

KARL STEFANOVIC: I’m going to get to this you changed the rules in Parliament.

RICHARD MARLES: You’re talking about bipartisanship and you’re trotting all the old lines.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Hey Richard hang on, this is really important stuff this, you changed the rules Chris in Parliament to prevent an embarrassing exit of MPs from the House of Reps, you have got your whip out it seems Chris.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: (laughs) Karl you wish, no obviously…

RICHARD MARLES: That’s real border security.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We are going to make sure that we had no repeats of the September the 1st issues and we’ve got the measures in place to ensure that that happens and honestly it’s such an unimportant story for the newspapers of Australia, how we manage the counting of our members is really not very interesting to people.

KARL STEFANOVIC: I remember the vision of you Christopher of leaving Parliament quicker than a pink flamingo across the Serengeti a couple of years ago.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You won’t find any pink flamingos on the Serengeti, not running across the desert let me tell you, they need water Karl.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Alright, good to talk to you guys, and Richard best of luck with Geelong, the Cats, not too much luck though.

RICHARD MARLES: Go Cats.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Go the Swans.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Thank you.