Transcript - ABC Insiders - 14 February 2010

SUBJECTS: Peter Garrett; Stephen Conroy's $250 million gift to media; Opposition unity

BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: To our program guest now. And it was a quite a week for the strategists and the tacticians in the Federal Parliament. Our guest is the Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives Christopher Pyne who joins us from Adelaide. Good morning.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE, MANAGER OF OPPOSITION BUSINESS: Good morning Barrie. Good to be with you.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Do you now accept the reality that Parliament is not sitting this week, Peter Garrett has probably ridden out the storm and he will survive?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, I think there's a long way to go in the Peter Garrett story. And if he does survive it will really hang around the neck of Kevin Rudd for not taking the tough action necessary to remove a minister who under the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy a minister is responsible for the administration of their portfolio. There has been massive maladministration in this portfolio. There are least a thousand rooves that are electrified. There have been at least 86 fires that can be put down to this new insulation as part of this program and there have been four tragic losses of life as a consequence of this program. So Peter Garrett under the old fashioned way of looking at the Westminster system should resign. And if he won't resign then Kevin Rudd must remove him. And if Kevin Rudd doesn't remove him then it's become Kevin Rudd's problem and therefore he'll have to wear it.

BARRIE CASSIDY: I want you to have a look at something that Kevin Rudd said this morning on Meet the Press about the Opposition's approach on this issue.

KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINSTER (excerpt from Meet the Press, Channel 10): What Mr Abbott has done in this case is go out there, step right across the line, accuse Peter of industrial manslaughter without any of these independent investigations having concluded. I think this shows extremely poor judgment. And not only is this extremely poor judgment. Even Barnaby Joyce thinks it's gone one step too far.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And what Barnaby Joyce said is that Peter Garrett cannot be held personally responsible for those deaths.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Barrie you know Kevin Rudd will do anything to try and muddy the waters about this issue. That's part of the process of spin. If you can't get a positive line out there try and muddy the waters. Nobody has suggested in the Coalition that Peter Garrett went up and put people into the cavities of these houses while they were electrified and caused their deaths. That would be taking personal responsibility. What he has to take responsibility for though is that he was the minister responsible for this program that was given at least 13, some would say 17 warnings from everybody from industry to the union movement to the Opposition right back into February and March last year. And on April the 29th last year a meeting of bureaucrats of state, territory and Commonwealth Government said that this program needed to be changed. Now there were paper changes. But commonsense dictates that the minister's job is to look at the overall program and say: is it because we are rushing money out the door that dodgy people are getting involved, the regulations aren't good enough and there could be fatalities? Now after the first fatality in October the Electrical Contractors Association wrote to Peter Garrett saying there would be more fatalities and it took three months before anything substantial has been done. Now it's more in sorrow than anger that the Opposition says that Peter Garrett has to go. We all think he's a decent bloke but clearly under the Westminster system he is responsible for his program. He's been...

BARRIE CASSIDY: Yes but you talk about the Westminster system; in fact you talked about the old-fashioned concept of ministerial responsibility. It's so old-fashioned that it predates the Howard years.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well be that as it may Barrie, putting that to one side I mean I'm not responsible for what's gone in the past. But I've been in Parliament 17 years and I actually think the Parliament is important. And I think if a minister will not take responsibility for a program that is massively over budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, has been responsible for four deaths, has a thousand electrified roofs and at least 86 house fires that can be proven as a consequence of badly installed insulation; if that minister is a first class minister according to the Prime Minister well I'd hate to see what a second class minister looks like.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Look Tony Abbott talks about it being akin to industrial manslaughter in New South Wales yet he once delivered a speech - and in fact it's still on his website - arguing against the concept of industrial manslaughter. And then he made this point: ""Workplace safety is a shared responsibility between employers and employees."" Now that's the nut of the problem, isn't?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well the nut of the problem is that the Government with great fanfare announced a $2.5 billion program to put insulation in the rooves across Australia. It didn't have the processes set up to protect the workers and it allowed hundreds and hundreds of people to become preferred providers as registered providers of this service without the proper training being in place. And when the warnings started being put in from February and March, April the public servants gave the warnings after the first death, the NECA wrote to the minister again. I mean there've been 17 warnings according to some people and yet nothing of substance was done until basically the last fortnight.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And yet houses have been insulated...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Now if the minister is not responsible for that, what are they responsible for?

BARRIE CASSIDY: But houses have been insulated for many, many years and so I go to that key point that when it comes to the actual insulation the responsibility rests between the employer and the employee to make sure that the job is done safely.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But the motivation for rushing out poorly installed insulation was because of the billions of dollars that the Federal Government put on the table without the protections. At the 29th of April meeting last year that was the nub of the point that they made. They said: this program is not regulated well enough, training is not in place, there are too many people out there installing this insulation and something needs to be done about it. And basically I think because the Government was so determined to be able to take credit for getting this insulation out there, they dragged their feet, they made paper changes. Now it's the minister's responsibility to bring commonsense to the table and they are responsible for the decisions that are made in the end. Now Peter Garrett quite frankly must resign and if he won't resign then Kevin Rudd is responsible for this minister.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But are you looking for scapegoats? Let me again go back to that Tony Abbott speech when he was talking specifically here about slipshod safety procedures, he was defending employers against industrial manslaughter. This is what he said: ""We should beware of the tendency to be wise after the event and seek scapegoats rather than solutions"". Isn't that exactly what you're now doing? You're naming scapegoats rather than seeking solutions?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Barrie we are the Opposition and the Government must come up with the solutions. But we said last year that this program should be suspended until proper inquiries were made into whether it was being operated successfully. We asked the Auditor General to inquire into this program mid last year, Greg Hunt the shadow minister. And the department seemed to have convinced the Auditor General that an inquiry wasn't necessary. So the Opposition has been on this program since last February when Greg Hunt first started raising concerns and we first started calling for the suspension of this in October last year. So we have not been dragging our feet. The people who've been dragging their feet are unfortunately the Government. Four people have died as a consequence of the maladministration of this program. There are a thousand rooves that are electrified. There have been at least 86 house fires as a consequence. And the person who has to take responsibility for that is the person at the top. Now it's not much fun if you're the minister to have to take responsibility for it but you do and that is how our system works. And if this minister doesn't go then Kevin Rudd is essentially saying to his ministry: you can be as bad as you like and you will not be dismissed. And I thought Kevin Rudd was going to usher in a new culture of government. That's what he promised, a new way of governing. Well this seems like a very old fashioned way of governing to me, an old fashioned Labor way from New South Wales, straight out of the New South Wales book.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Well even if the Government has lost a bit of skin over this haven't you got the longer term problem, because Barnaby Joyce's reputation goes to the heart of the Coalition's reputation as economic managers?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Barnaby Joyce has put debt fair and square on the agenda. Now he might do it in a colourful turn of phrase. What he said of course was very similar to what Paul Keating said 12 months ago about the United States' economy. So Barnaby Joyce was kicked to death this week by the Labor Party because they are determined that he not be able to get his message out to the public. But I didn't see them kicking Paul Keating to death 12 months ago when he said very similar things. So there's a double standard applying here. I think what's happening though in Australian politics Barrie is that people are moving from the era of spin to the era of real politics. Now Barnaby Joyce certainly puts things in a colourful way but he's talking about debt. And I spent the last weekend talking to people in my electorate. I was out at Gilles Plains in my electorate yesterday which is a pretty strong Labor area. People were saying to me: Barnaby Joyce has put debt on the agenda because debt is a big problem. Labor doesn't like it and they like the way he expressed it. But quite frankly trying to line up Barnaby Joyce alongside Peter Garrett who is a minister who has been responsible for a program that's been so maladministered that people have died because of it, quite frankly it's a little bit inside the beltway I think. I think we might be losing our sense of perspective.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You say that Labor doesn't like it but some within your own ranks don't like it very much either because there are any number of Liberals who would make very good shadow ministers for finance.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Barrie we're in the fortunate position of having an embarrassment of riches of talented people in the Coalition, (inaudible) an embarrassment of riches, all who could be in the shadow cabinet. Now Barnaby Joyce has that job as minister for finance. I'm very confident he'll do it well. I don't think Labor will like the fact that he will continue to place debt on the agenda. And I think he knows that he needs to get his billions and his millions correct in the same way as the Prime Minister needs to get his mega tonnes and his giga tonnes correct which he made a mistake on himself in the last week when talking about climate change. So people make slips of the tongue. It's a big difference between a slip of the tongue and a maladministration of a program which has caused the damage and the potential risk into the future that Peter Garrett's program has caused.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What about Stephen Conroy's visit now? He went skiing with Kerry Stokes while in the United States just before handing back about $250 million to the networks. Are you troubled by that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think Brian Toohey hit the nail on the head. The actual visit and the skiing with Kerry Stokes is not nearly as important as exactly what is going on in the communications portfolio with this minister. The minister seems to be the minister for good times. He's got a $450,000 job for an old mate in the national broadband network, a $17 million tender for the national broadband network which ended up going absolutely nowhere and has just lost money, except for the people who were paid the $17 million. He's given $250 million to the commercial television networks. Now what we want to know is how did he arrive at that figure? He hasn't yet explained how he arrived at the figure, what the money is exactly to be used for and what guarantees he's received from the commercial networks that it will be used for something that the public will see the benefit. And I think while Stephen Conroy likes to have a good time he actually needs to be a good minister rather than just be having a good time.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But up until now the Opposition has said very little about this payment. Is that because nobody wants to upset the networks in an election year?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No it's because we had a week basically that was jam packed with issues that we needed to raise. We had the emissions trading scheme, the great big new tax, the Mike Kaiser appointment, the $17 million tender falling through for the national broadband network, let alone Peter Garrett and the maladministration of the insulation program which took up a large part of the week. And of course we continue to press the Government on its broken promises in areas like Indigenous Australians and homelessness and hospitals. So we have at the moment a lot of issues running against the Government that we want to hold them to account for and that is one of them. Tony Smith our shadow minister for communications has been commenting on that issue and it will get more prominence when we get back. But obviously it's, you've only got so many questions. If the Labor Party will give me 20 questions a day Barrie, I'll take them.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Well I'll give you one more question on this. Do you regard the payment as outrageous?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look I think we need to get to the bottom of how it was arrived at, the $250 million payment before it's described as outrageous. The minister needs to actually come clean with what it's for, how he got 33 per cent in one year and 50 per cent in the other or whether he just pulled these figures out of his ear. Now if he can explain it we'd like to hear it. If he can't explain it well then that puts a different colour on the money.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay there does seem to be, somebody described it as a veneer of unity within the Coalition at the moment. But certainly there is this sense of unity. Is that because the moderates are giving Tony Abbott more of a go than the right ever gave Malcolm Turnbull?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look you know to be honest I think it's because we spent two and a half years being traumatised by the defeat in 2007. I think a lot of people were quite unused to the prospect of being out of government, to having their hands off the levers of power as they say. And we basically spent most of 2008 and 2009 really inwardly focussed. We've come back from the summer. It's obviously an election year. We want to do as well as we can for the good of our party and for the country. Tony Abbott has got off to a great start and there's a long way to go between now and election day and obviously the Labor Party is as you said before in the box seat and we are the underdogs. But there are a few straws in the wind like the by-election in Altona yesterday, a few good polls that are giving us heart and making us realise that the shine is coming off the Rudd Government. People are starting to question why this man can talk so much but can't actually do very much. And the young people on Q and A on Monday night I think gave us all the inspiration to realise that we need to hold the Government to account. So we are unified, we are focussed and we need to have some really good policy announcements between now and election day so that people want to tick the Liberal box.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Well you say that Tony Abbott has got off to a great start. As a supporter of Malcolm Turnbull's, are you surprised by that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Barrie I support the Liberal Party. I've been a member for 17 years of Parliament. I've been on state and federal executives. I did support Malcolm Turnbull. I voted for Malcolm Turnbull and I think he is a great figure in Australian politics. But Tony Abbott is doing a great job and I believe that we need to make sure that the party is absolutely competitive at election time. I've known Tony for a very long time. He's described as a conservative but I would say that he was a conservative more in the John Howard mode, which is to bring everybody in the party together to give us all an important job. I mean the leadership team of the Liberal Party is completely unchanged other than Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. But Julie Bishop, myself, Joe Hockey, Nick Minchin, Eric Abetz are all in exactly the same positions we were in before.

BARRIE CASSIDY: With the exception of Barnaby Joyce who is far more prominent than he was before.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And that's a good thing. I think bringing Barnaby into the tent is a sensible move and I think he will do a very good job in the end.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Okay Christopher Pyne, thanks for your time this morning.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Thank you for having me.