Transcript - Sky News Agenda - 26 February 2011

SUBJECTS: Carbon tax

Peter Van Onselen: We are joined now in the studio by the Manager of Opposition Business as well as Shadow Minister for Education Christopher Pyne. Thanks for being here.

Christopher Pyne: Good to be here, Peter. Thanks for having me.

Van Onselen: Christopher, can I ask you right off the bat; I mean we've been talking about the carbon tax, unsurprisingly, it's a big issue. But there was something during the week you may not have heard on Sydney radio where the Prime Minister was cross examined on this by Alan Jones...

Pyne: I certainly didn't miss that.

Van Onselen: Let's play a segment of it, because this is before we got to the issue of whether there is a broken promise. This is over the tardiness of her arrival.

Audio- Alan Jones: 10 past seven is 10 past seven isn't it? 

Julia Gillard: Well, I'm sorry about that Allan, but I've been delayed on another interview. 

Jones: Yes, but we have made many requests for you to be on this program, but none of those requests have ever been acknowledged. I understand you may not want to come on or you can't come on, but surely courtesy has to be the way in which the public are treated? 

Gillard: Alan, I believe I am a very courteous person...

Jones: (inaudible)

Gillard: If I could finish my sentence Allan. I'm also a very busy person. 

Jones: We're all busy. 

Gillard: And if I could finish my sentence uninterrupted, I've had media commitments this morning, I was delayed. 

Jones: You had a media commitment at 10 past seven this morning, which your staff agreed to on this program. 

Gillard: Well, Alan I am happy to apologise to you for being here late. I am now here. If you have a question in the nation's interest, then please feel free to put it. 

Jones: Thank you, I've got several. 

Van Onselen: I don't think it's appropriate that the Prime Minister be spoken to like a school girl. What do you think?

Pyne: I don't think it's appropriate that the Prime Minister break her election promise to the Australian people and then expect not to have a serious challenge the day after she's done that.

Van Onselen: I agree. And the substance of the rest of the interview, which was a 22 minute interview, I think Alan Jones had a lot of very reasonable things to say about exactly that, but what about the timing? The PM turning up late, and is pretty busy, and a shock jock having a red hot go at her about it; that's pretty uncalled for surely?

Pyne: Look, you're not going to get me criticising...

Van Onselen: Alan Jones?

Pyne: Not Alan Jones, but particular media personalities, whether it's yourself or Neil Mitchell or Alan Jones or Paul Kelly or Jennifer Hewitt or anybody else. Alan Jones is perfectly entitled to run his radio show the way he sees fit to run it. He seems to be pretty popular with the Sydney listener. The truth is Julia Gillard runs a pretty good show herself in irritating and nasty statements. She is quite unpleasant on occasion in the parliament as we have all seen and she gives as good as she gets.

Paul Kelly: Doesn't the Liberal Party have a problem when it comes to the carbon pricing policy and the view of most experts is the only way we can reach our five per cent target by 2020, which is the Liberal Party's commitment is by putting a price on carbon? What's your response to that?

Pyne: Well, Paul, I think that's the lazy way to reach our target. I know that a lot of experts say we ought to have a tax on carbon to reduce the use of it; that is the laziest option. In the last election we went to the election with a policy that was to change the way we had agricultural business; in terms of soil treatment, planting trees, a million solar houses and through those methods we believe we could reduce our carbon emissions by five per cent. And it was accepted that you could do that.

Now, to go further some people have said you need a tax on carbon, but that isn't really the issue. The issue is the Prime Minister said she wouldn't have a tax on carbon. She made it very clearly, and we've also seen the footage played in the last few days she said there'd be no tax on carbon in any government that she leads. And she also said that the Government would pride itself on keeping their promises. So the real issue here is not whether you can reach one target or another, it's whether this Prime Minister has any credibility or whether she has actually driven a spear through the chest of the Australian people by introducing a new tax.

Kelly: Just on this issue though. We know the Liberal Party is divided on this issue. We all know what Malcolm Turnbull's position is. He supports pricing carbon. He supported the Rudd Government's scheme and voted for that on the floor of parliament. How concerned are you that when this does come to a vote later this year that there will be a number of Liberal defections; people who will vote according to their own beliefs and confidence.

Pyne: Paul that is something so far off into the distance that it's very hard for us to speculate about that. I can tell you this. I can tell you that during about a 15 month period, Julia Gillard determinedly pushed Kevin Rudd towards having an emissions trading scheme, then she pulled the rug out from under him with Wayne Swan's support and others. That they then butchered Kevin Rudd because they changed his mind about an emissions trading scheme at the urging of the now Prime Minister; that she benefited from that Prime Minister and became the Prime Minister and then promised the Australian people she wouldn't introduce a carbon tax in order to win an election. Because during that election a carbon tax was a big issue with the Australian people. She then won the election and now she's reneged on her agreement in one of the greatest breaches of trust in Australian political history.

The Coalition is really on the issue at the moment. The issue is the Government and its breach of trust. I'm quite confident that we are, on the Coalition side, completely united on holding the Government to account for lying to the Australian people.

Van Onselen: The issue definitely is the carbon tax. You'll try, presumably, to stop it getting through the parliament, but if the Prime Minister is successful and it does get legislated for will you pledge to roll it back?

Pyne: Look, Peter, we haven't been through our internal party processes about what action we would take in Government. My very strong inclination and I believe the strong inclination of other Liberals is that we should treat this tax in the same way that we treated the mining tax where we were against it; we said it was unnecessary, it was the wrong thing to do and we would remove it if we were elected. We'd oppose it in the parliament; remove it if we were elected. My strong inclination is that we should oppose this tax and if we are elected, God willing, we will remove it and I think that will be the view of the party. But as I said we have to go through that process and that will take 24-48 hours to do so.

Jennifer Hewitt: A lot of people in the business community, particularly the power industry say that they need certainty. There is no investment at the moment in power generation because there is no agreement in what's going to happen in carbon tax. You're just going to extend that uncertainty with those types of commitments to repeal this aren't you?

Pyne: Jennifer, I think it's the opposite. The Government says they're going to introduce a carbon tax with a fixed price for three to five years. We don't even know if it's three, four or five years. And they're going to have a market price set through an emissions trading scheme after that time. We don't know which year in particular that will begin. So the Government scheme is one full of uncertainty.

The Coalition is the only party, well actually the Greens and the Coalition have completely certain policies. The Greens want a carbon tax and a higher price and they seem to have the whip handle in the Government. The Coalition says we will not have a carbon tax and if elected we will scrap the carbon tax if that's what we end up doing. So, in really we are the only ones with a very clear opposition to a carbon tax. Business can rely on us, business can't rely on a Government that says in August, on August the 16^th there will be no carbon tax in any Government I lead and then in February completely does an about face and says they're introducing a Carbon tax. That's where business says in exasperation, and you can understand that, "How can we governments and politicians when they just change their minds all the time?"

Kelly: I wonder if we can just shift to industrial relations. We had this week a former Howard Government Minister, Peter Reith, come out with a very very powerful statement saying that the responsibility of the Opposition and the Liberal Party at this point in time is to devise a radical industrial relations policy, to walk away from its stance of caution and tackle the Government head-on on this issue. Can you tell us what your response is to that?

Pyne: Well Paul it's not unusual for former ministers, whether they are Peter Walsh, former Minister for Finance, or Peter Reith, former Minister for Industrial Relations, to give advice to their former colleagues in Government or in Opposition. So advice is always welcome, Peter. It's always welcome Peter. And our job of course is to sift through all the advice and decide which parts we should use and which parts we should discard. The truth is that industrial relations is a battlefield in Australian politics. The Coalition's view is that the business community needs to make the case to the public about the need for industrial relations reform. But obviously we were a party of reformers in industrial relations that set us up for the workplace that we left when we lost Government in 2007. Labor has obviously reversed a great deal of that and really it's up to the business community to make the case for reform in the future.

Hewitt: What happened to political leadership?

Pyne: Well look there are some issues, Jennifer, which we know are hot-button issues in Australian politics. Labor would like nothing more, would like nothing more, that to try and make the Coalition the issue in this current political cycle. It's very important that this government is held to account because it's a very bad government. It's in an alliance with the Greens, the Greens are driving the agenda, we have a carbon tax which the Government promised it wouldn't introduce, we have a flood tax, this year there will be a mining tax and it's very important that we don't allow the government off the hook through endless navel gazing about what might be. Until we get into Government there is nothing we can do.

Hewitt: Endless navel gazing about what has always been absolutely conviction politics within the Liberal Party. You're saying it's all just too hard for you now?

Pyne: We've made it clear that we don't intend to change the industrial relations structure until some date well into the future when the public's mood has changed about that matter. If and when it does.

Kelly: So it's all caution?

Pyne: Well it's very important, Paul, that we don't let the Government off the hook on how bad they are and we're not going to let them do that.

Van Onselen: By saying what you stand for?

Pyne: We stand for good government. And we're not getting good government from this mob currently in office, we're getting very bad government from the Gillard Government. They are hopelessly divided not only over the carbon tax but Kevin Rudd is obviously still a major shadow behind the Prime Minister. There are people causing trouble, whether it's Bill Shorten or Greg Combet or Wayne Swan. Poor old Craig Emerson looks like he's in the gun from his former friends in the AWU, no one seems to be standing up for him. This mob is a shambles and now they've reached for a carbon tax to drive a stake through the heart of the cost of living for Australian people. They are going to face new pressures they didn't face before. We've seen that private health insurance premiums are going to go up this year, electricity prices will go up, petrol prices will go up. But in effect the carbon tax will add two and a half cents to the Goods and Services Tax, that's what a lot of experts are saying. The Government is essentially saying lets make the Goods and Services Tax twelve and a half cents from ten cents because it will flow through the entire economy. Because you can't put a carbon tax on one aspect of people's lives and not expect all prices to go up and the public know that. So the Government is essentially increasing the Goods and Services Tax by two and a half cents.

Kelly: One of the big issues of this Parliament will be the Government's review of school funding, government and non-government school funding. To what extent do you think that this is likely to see fundamental changes that will disadvantage non-government schools? I know we haven't got the report, we haven't got the policies, but they are coming. What do your instincts tell you about the way this debate will unfold and how concerned are you about it?

Pyne: Well Paul my instincts tell me that the Government would like to reduce funding to non-government schools. That's what they proposed under Mark Latham when Julia Gillard supported that deal prior to the 2004 election you might remember the private school hit list. I think in their heart of hearts Labor wants to cut funding to non-government schools and the Gonski Review that's going on this year will be very interesting in it's findings towards the end of the year. The Coalition introduced the SES funding model which was designed to be an objective test based on people's incomes and the assets that were available to a school through their incomes. My instinct is that the Government will want to cut funding but when it gets to the actual crux of it there are 1.2 million students in non-government schools. That's 2.4 million parents and 4.4 million grandparents and they will find it very hard to actually follow through with their instincts. That doesn't meant they support the non-government sector it simply means that it's a battle they will find to hard.

Kelly: Would you stick by the SES model?

Pyne: The Coalition will stick by the SES funding model, that is our plan. Obviously we think it can be tweaked and improved, it's been there for ten years. But we will stick by the SES funding model.

Van Onselen: Alright Christopher Pyne we actually are out of time. Thanks to Paul Kelly for at least getting to your portfolio at the very end. It's been a busy week we look forward to how you manage the attack on the Government when Parliament resumes. Can you give us a little snippet of what that's going to be?

Pyne: Well look I think the honest answer to that is that we will have to go very hard against the Government and its tax. It's very very important that the Australian people know what a massive breach of faith this is. It is an enormous increase in people's cost of living. People are feeling enormous pressure at home. I mean I have four children of my own with school fees, with mortgages, with private health insurance, with the cost of things at the supermarket and the petrol bowser.

Van Onselen: So you're not going to take a backwards step. It's as simple as that.

Pyne: Well the Prime Minister has decided to place a stake in the ground and say that's where she stands or falls. My hunch is that the Government will either change the leader by the end of the year as a consequence of this decision or the people will change the government through an election.

Van Onselen: OK Mr Pyne thank you very much for your company. Appreciate it.

Pyne: Pleasure.

ENDS