Transcript - Meet the Press - 13 February 2011

SUBJECTS: Liberal Party, Health reform, Youth Allowance bill

Paul Bongiorno: ... And welcome back to the programme, Christopher Pyne. Good morning, Mr Pyne.

Christopher Pyne: Good morning, Paul. Good to be with you.

Bongiorno: You're a bit of a multimedia star yourself this morning, Mr Pyne. You're in the 'Great Weekend'. In fact, it has a cover of you and it's asked the question, "is this the most annoying man in Australia?" What is the answer?

Pyne: Well, that is for others to judge, Paul. Others to judge.

Bongiorno: You wear it as a badge of honour, of course if the government thought that.

Pyne: The only people that I want to annoy are the Labor Party out of office and that is what we are trying to do federally and we have had a good run in the last 12 months and we're going to keep going at it.

Bongiorno: Moving on to the report today that Andrew Robb says he wants Joe Hockey's job. What do you make of that?

Pyne: I think the advice to all my colleagues would be that the job that they should all want is the job of their opposite number in government. So I want Anthony Albanese's job as Leader of the House and the Education Minister's job as Education Minister, and Tony Abbott wants Julia Gillard's job, and we all have to work to make sure that is what happens.

Bongiorno: It is one thing to harbour ambition, I suppose, but it is another thing to put it out there on the record. It is basically destabilising. It is almost a declaration of war between Mr Robb and Mr Hockey, isn't it?

Pyne: I think all colleagues should have ambition. It would be a strange kind of political world if we did not all have ambition. But what is important is focusing on our opposite numbers and working to remove the Labor Party because it is a very poor government.

Bongiorno: Are you disappointed that Andrew Robb put that on the record?

Pyne: I do not know the circumstances of that interview. It could well be an old interview for all I know. What is important is to focus on the government because their health reforms have unravelled, they are introducing three new taxes this year, that is on top of the new taxes that they introduced in the last couple of years in Alcopops and tobacco. This is a poor government that has split itself between Bill Shorten and Greg Combet and Steve Smith and Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd. We saw even in your introduction, cabinet ministers leaking against Kevin Rudd. The war in the Labor Party continues unabated.

Bongiorno: Well, that report refers to Andrew Robb as straight talking. I've known you for a while and you're pretty straight talking. Do you want to put on the record your ambition? Do you want a Julie Bishop's job?

Pyne: Look, Paul, let me make it absolutely clear, I not only do not want Julie Bishop's job, but if anybody else might think they wanted, they will have to come through me first. The leadership team is 100% behind Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz and George Brandis, Joe Hockey and me as Manager of Opposition Business. There isn't a piece of cigarette paper between any of us and that's the way it's going to stay.

Bongiorno: Those leaks that surged out of Shadow Cabinet in the week clearly infuriated your colleague, Eric Abetz. Here he is.

Erich Abetz (THURSDAY): I think we all know and who the leakers are and as happens with leakers, they carry neither the respect of their colleagues. People that leak are people they cannot be trusted.

Bongiorno: Mr Pyne, did you hear that? Did you hear Mr Abetz?

Pyne: I am sure Senator Abetz is as frustrated as any of us when things go slightly off the rails in terms of people being a bit loose with their language. But Eric and George and all of us are focused on one thing, and one thing alone, and that is highlighting the flaws of this government and presenting a decent alternative.

Bongiorno: But if I can put did you this way, when Eric Abetz says that he knows who the leakers are, and then agrees with the reporters that they are gutless, he is referring to colleagues in Shadow Cabinet. That is hardly one big happy family, is it?

Pyne: We saw the effects of unhappy families last year in the middle of the year when the Labor Party butchered their own Prime Minister and we saw the impact that the public took from that. They did not appreciate it and they gave the Labor Party a great drubbing. This week has not been a good week for the government. They have lost important votes in the House of Representatives and in the Senate and their health reforms have unravelled. They are essentially handing $16.5 billion to the States and trying to claim it's a reform. It is very important for the Labor Party to be put on the griller because that is what our supporters expect us to do, to hold the government to account. I notice in your report that Anna Bligh has appointed herself head of the reconstruction in Queensland, as is appropriate. The Labor government has appointed a former Liberal Minister, John Fahey, because they have no confidence in their own team. I think that speaks volumes for Wayne Swan and Penny Wong's abilities.

Bongiorno: Time for a break. When we return with the panel, a war story full of fury, but no sound. Begging the question, can a politician lost for words survive? And it seems the Prime Minister doesn't like men with a lean and hairy look. In Question Time she had an unkind cut at Independent Rob Oakeshott's new hirsute visage and earlier it was gallery stalwart Dennis Shanahan who copped it.

...

Bongiorno: You're on Meet The Press with Manager of Opposition Business, Christopher Pyne. And welcome to the panel, Jacqueline Maley, 'The Sydney Morning Herald', and Marius Benson, ABC News Radio. Good morning, Jacqueline and Marius. Whatever else you think about it, Tony Abbott's refusal to speak on Tuesday was riveting television. But the Leader has form as a Trappist monk. Back in October it was bizarre when he refused to confirm that he backed Joe Hockey's nine-point bank plan. He refused at a doorstop and again later at a viewing of the John Howard portrait.

Tony Abbott (27 OCTOBER 2010): I have this instinct to talk, but Clare does her best to restrain it. I'm going to be restrained.

Reporter: Cat got your tongue?

Marius Benson: Christopher Pyne, you were having a good week last week. You started with a good Newspoll and things were going well for you. It came to a bit of a shuddering halt with the incident where Tony Abbott was silent on camera for 24 long seconds. Do you think that was, as many people called it, a judgment call mistake by Tony Abbott?

Pyne: Look, I do not think so. I think the reaction from the public was the right reaction. I think the Australian public are full of common sense. They can see a set-up when it occurs. And they saw it was a bit of 'got you television' which went wrong and they reacted with great sympathy for Tony Abbott.

Benson: Regardless of whether it was a bit of 'got you television', it was the response from Tony Abbott that really derailed the week to an extent for the Liberal Party. Would you advise Tony Abbott to take that approach again, because he has form as we just pointed out? It is something that he has done before.

Pyne: I think, Marius, one of the amazingly the good things about Tony Abbott is that he is a real person. There has never been a question about whether we have a fake Tony or a real Tony, unlike Julia Gillard when we are never sure whether it is the fake Julia or the real Julia as she said herself at the beginning of last year's election campaign. She was flicking the switch to real Julia, having not been sure of what we had before that. But Tony Abbott, you see what you get. I think Tony Abbott is a real person. His reaction to Mark Riley was one of fury. And also I think, shock. He was rendered speechless for a few seconds. I certainly do not think the public regards it as anything other than a human reaction.

Benson: But the question is he may be a real person, is he a real prime minister? Should a prime minister be mute with fury? Can you remember John Howard for example ever displaying that level of emotion?

Pyne: Everybody is different, Marius. Everyone has their own way of expressing their emotions and when Tony Abbott was shocked, and I think angry, that this was put to him, the suggestion that he would make light of the death of a soldier, which is a pretty outrageous slur. When that was put to him, his reaction was to say nothing. If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all, probably was the motto of his upbringing.

Jacqueline Maley: Mr Pyne, just on the health policy that the government gave us detail of on Friday, Tony Abbott using perhaps an ill-timed military metaphor, saying it was the biggest surrender since Singapore, it is easy to attack the back down that the government has made. What does the Coalition actually think about the policy?

Pyne: Look, the embarrassing thing about the government, Jacqueline, is that they cannot deliver anything. They are very good at announcing things. Last year, Kevin Rudd, yet again in Kevin Rudd hyperbole described this is the greatest reform since the introduction of Medicare. It would change medicine as we knew it in this country, turn the relationship between the Commonwealth and the states on its head. Of course, it has done nothing of the sort. Julia Gillard signed up to all that hyperbole and repeated it all as prime minister. She said the buck was going to stop with her on health reform. Well, the buck has stopped with her. At $16.5 billion, it has stopped with the Australian taxpayer. It is a handover of money to the States. It is a win for Colin Barnett and Ted Baillieu. On the score, it's Gillard zero, Baillieu and Barnett at one. And of course, the States are signing up to it because they have effectively forced a capitulation by the Federal Labor government. Julia Gillard is so desperate, Jacqueline, to have any kind of win that she is prepared to abandon reform of the health sector, just so that she can get something off the agenda. The truth is, the taxpayers have been sucker-punched for $16.5 billion, and the states do not have to offer anything in return. There's a few items for a press release to fill it up, about goals, there are always goals in the Labor Party, and targets, but I think I will be an old man before those targets are met under this government.

Bongiorno: Mr Pyne, Tony Abbott is now being accused of trying to spark a constitutional crisis by tempting Independent MPs to support a Senate bill that spends more money on regional students. The Government says it's not on and the Liberals know it.

Robert McClelland (THURSDAY): This does up-end constitution principles, and that has been confirmed in advice for instance going back to 1962 from Sir Garfield Barwick, the then Liberal Attorney-General.

Maley: So this is no less of you than the eminent Garfield Barwick telling us that this Bill would be constitutional. This is just classic wrecker politics, isn't it? You do not care about the Bill.

Pyne: Unfortunately, the Labor Party is hiding behind legal technicalities in order to deny rural students thousands of dollars that is due to them. Put aside the whole issue of where the Bill originated, the Senate President John Hogg, who is a Labor Senator, he says it is not an appropriations Bill, it is perfectly constitutional. The government says it is not. Put aside all those arguments about technicalities. At the nub of this is should rural students in inner regional areas get more support under youth allowance in order to access university?

Maley: Mr Pyne, it is the technicalities that will get the Bill through or not get the Bill through. Has the Coalition sought legal advice on whether this is constitutionally possible?

Pyne: I'd hate to disagree with you, Jacqueline, but of course, it's not really. If the government wanted to pay rural students more youth allowance so that they could get to university, they could adopt the Coalition's Bill immediately. We would welcome that and it will sail through the House of Representatives and all those thousands of rural students will get the funds that is due to them.

Bongiorno: The government says you are willing to spend money that you have not paid for, that there is no commensurate savings. In other words, what you wanted to do is to go further in deficit.

Pyne: The government is telling a bald-faced lie. Those funds are entirely available in the education investment fund where there is $2 billion available to be spent. We have said that we would fund it out of that money in the short-term, have a full and thorough review of the youth allowance and once that review has been completed, we would fund it in an ongoing way through the budget process.

Bongiorno: Thanks for being with us, Christopher Pyne.

Pyne: It's a pleasure. Thank you.

ENDS