Transcript - Two Chrisses - ABC 891 - 10 May 2010

SUBJECTS: Budget; scare campaigns; Rudd's broken promises; books; burqas

Matthew Abraham: Welcome to the studio; Chris Schacht, former Labor Senator, former ALP State Secretary, one half of the famous Two Chrisses. Good morning Chris Schacht.

Chris Schacht: Good morning, good to be with you.

Abraham: And good morning from Canberra as he awaits the Federal Budget with breathless anticipation, C2, Christopher Pyne, Federal Liberal MP for Sturt, Shadow Minister for Education and Manager of Opposition Business in the House. Good morning to you Christopher Pyne.

Christopher Pyne: Good morning Matthew and David and C1.

Abraham: And I should announce that I've had a call this morning from Alex Bond; Bond, Alex Bond, who has taken a week to get back to us. He said he had had no messages from us on his phone. I suggested he maybe needed to have a closer look at his phone, but his father has rung him and said that he'd heard that we were looking for him. But he couldn't say anything anyway. But Alex Bond is 19 years old and is throwing his hat into the ring for the federal seat of Kingston for Liberal pre-selection.

David Bevan: There's an irony there isn't it? A young man who works in a call centre and we can't reach him.

Abraham: That is right.

Schacht: He's not in Bombay is he?

Abraham: No. It's quite interesting by the way. We sledge him....

Schacht: (inaudible)

Abraham: He's not in Mumbai as it's now known, but he does work at a call centre and is also studying criminology in his own time. So he can work full time and is studying criminology through the open universities program from Griffith University so (inaudible)

Bevan: I think it's good to see him getting involved.

Schacht: Absolutely.

Bevan: Not tired and burnt out.

Schacht: (inaudible)

Abraham: Chris Pyne

Pyne: Yes?

Abraham: The Federal Budget; there is talk that the budget will be back in the black. That would make your job a little bit harder in terms of trying to demonise the Government.

Pyne: Well, if you can believe what this Government says; they've made all sorts of claims in the past which haven't turned out to be true, regarding their deficit, regarding their debt. They made a promise of course that they'd be fiscal conservatives and that they wouldn't go into debt. And that's been rather spectacularly broken. So if you can believe what they say, sure that would be a good outcome for Australia quite frankly.

Abraham: Chris Richardson at Access Economics thinks that's likely to be the case.

Pyne: Well Chris Richardson's a very good fellow, but I would point to what he said about budgets in the first term of the Labor Government. He said opposite things before the budget than after the budget so I think that economics is a rather inexact science as we all know and rather (inaudible), but I have a lot of respect for Chris Richardson, but just because he says something, doesn't make it true. And I would be very surprised if most people would believe much of what the Labor Party says about their budget tomorrow and I think you'll find that all the promises about debt reduction strategies and surplus budgets years into the future - because Mr Rudd thinks he can get away with making a promise about something in 2020 - where's I think most Australians want to see action now.

Abraham: Chris Schacht?

Schacht: Well, there's no doubt that over the next two to three years the budget is going to come back to a very strong position because we're the only country in the OECD or the advanced economies that didn't go into recession. We're the only country that didn't have a massive increase in unemployment and by all comparisons of any question of debt levels; the Australian Labor Government has done a fantastic job. We were told eighteen months ago we would have eight per cent unemployment in Australia. We got five. That three per cent difference, on employment figures in Australia is close to 300 thousand people kept a job when they were predicted to lose them.

Bevan: But the big problem for Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan is that there might be a growing perception that we were always going to survive; now that's with the value of hindsight. But that doesn't matter. If people are of the opinion, "no, we probably would have survived anyway, then why have you wasted all this money?"

Schacht: Well, if we hadn't had the stimulus, which the Liberal Party voted against, we might have had 300 thousand extra unemployed. And that would have devastating in the economy.

Pyne: That's not exactly true C1. Let's not let the facts stand in the way.....

Schacht: Hang on. We've just got under five per cent unemployment in Australia.

Pyne: The Coalition voted in favour the first stimulus package.

Schacht: You've voted against everything else since.

Pyne: We said the second stimulus package was a bridge too far, and I think with the benefit of hindsight we've been proven to be correct....

Schacht: In hindsight?

Pyne: Hang on. We said the second stimulus package was unnecessary, but we supported the first one. The Government started with 45 billion dollars in the black. They had a surplus budget of 22 billion dollars. They had a future fund, which the previous government had established. They had a higher education fund, which the previous government had established, and the health fund which we had established. Now they've eaten into all of those things except for the future fund, although they've stopped putting capital into the future fund, and are spending the interest. Now they have a massive budget deficit and of course have borrowed heavily. I think most Australians would say, as David said, perhaps the Government should have listened to the Opposition, at least on the second stimulus package and recognised that it wasn't necessary. We also have a Government that is now snuffing out the mining boom by imposing the heaviest tax regime in the world on mining, wondering why people like BHP and RTZ are saying we might instead promote our mines elsewhere.

Bevan: Christopher Pyne, you've got problems of your own. Those ads that are running - Phil Courier tells me for several weeks now, although I've just seen them today - those WorkChoices ads sponsored by the union movement.....

Pyne: Scare campaign ads.

Bevan: Well, scare campaigns work....

Schacht: (inaudible)

Bevan: How are you going to deal with the ghost of elections past? That is, WorkChoices and quite a scary looking Tony Abbott saying, "the phrase is gone, the phrase WorkChoices is gone." Actually it's not a phrase, it's a word.

Pyne: Well, I think a lot of Australians have been quite surprised at the Tony Abbott they are getting to know since December because they only ever saw one side of Tony Abbott during the Howard era because he was kind of the Government's head kicker during that period, which meant that he never got the chance to be fully rounded out as a candidate for prime minister. I think people have been quite surprised since December in seeing different sides of Tony Abbott, which they rather like. I mean, let's not be coy about it. On the polling in today's AC Neilson Poll and the Newspoll, Tony Abbott is in positive territory and Kevin Rudd is in negative territory on both of those polls. People are seeing Tony Abbott for the whole person that he is, rather than just the one dimension, and I don think if the Labor Party believe they can run a scare campaign based on policies of the previous government then they're more out of touch than I thought they were. Because what the Australian public want to know is, what's going on now and what's going to happen in the future. They rarely mark down political parties who spend all their time talking about the past. If that's what Labor wants to do, good luck to them. And it wouldn't surprise anybody that the unions.....

Abraham: So you won't have any ads harking back to the previous record of the Labor Party?

Pyne: No, what we will do I assume is tell people what the promises of Kevin Rudd.....

Abraham: You won't hark back to the past?

Pyne: Matt, it's perfectly justifiable to explain to the Australian public that you can't believe anything that Kevin Rudd says now, because look at what he said before the 2007 election about lowing the cost of living, lowering grocery prices, lowering fuel prices, fixing the health system. What's wrong with reminding people about the promises Kevin Rudd.....

Abraham: What is therefore wrong then if the Liberal Party says to the Australian public, as Malcolm Turnbull did, that WorkChoices is dead. Now you have a leering Tony Abbott saying well the phrase WorkChoices is dead. What does that mean? I mean I'll ask you Chris Pyne. Is WorkChoices dead, or is WorkChoices not dead?

Pyne: WorkChoices is dead and buried and six foot underground. Even Nick Minchin......

Abraham: So why is it just the phrase that's dead?

Pyne: Well, did you ask the question because you already knew the answer you were going to give yourself or did you genuinely ask the question?

Abraham: No.

Pyne: Every spokesperson for the Opposition.....

Schacht: (inaudible)

Pyne: WorkChoices is dead and buried and six foot underground. Even Nick Minchin said on the weekend that WorkChoices went too far, as has Joe Hockey, as has Tony Abbott, as am I saying, as has Eric Abetz our spokesman said. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the union movement chose to ignore all of those statements and pretend that WorkChoices will come back. It is gone. Everybody recognises that it went too far and nobody is going to bring it back, and when you see our policy on industrial relations, which will be released in the next few months, everyone will say, well you'll see the Liberal Party is being completely up front about that. But if the Labor Party wants to waste their money and the unions want to waste their members' money on scare campaigns on IR, well then good luck to them. The Australian public want to know about the future, not about policies that are four years old.

Schacht: I have to say, I think the fact when you Chris Pyne, have to rely on Nick Minchin, your factional enemy in the Liberal Party of 25 years.....

Pyne: (inaudible)

Schacht: This is the first time I've ever heard you quote Nick Minchin positively in 20 years, well I'll give you 15 then. You expect a large number of working people in this country to have the belief that Tony Abbott wasn't sincere when he said it's only changed in name and you've got all of these senior right wing members of the Liberal Party; Eric Abetz, who I think is going to be the new Senate Leader....

Pyne: (inaudible)....You're just trying to distract people from the fact that they made all of these promises before 2007 which you and I knew.....

Schacht: C2, I gave you a fair whack because I think you were building a pretty good scaffold for the Liberal Party once you started talking about WorkChoices and explaining how everybody's gone mum on it, saying it was six feet under. I mean, I think it's like one of those Count Dracula movies, the body will rise from the coffin if you won the election. You people can't help yourselves on industrial relations; it's always been the case. Of course the union movement is going to defend itself. Of course you're going to run campaigns. And I have to say these polls in the last couple of weeks; I am in one sense of a Labor supporter very pleased that they have come out, because I think it is a really good reminder to the Labor Party first of all that no election is a given and secondly it is easy now for the Labor Party to say, it's not just a protest vote voting Liberal at the end of this year. If you vote Liberal, you'll have Tony Abbott as Prime Minister.

Pyne: I think people want to change the Government.

Schacht: Well hang on, I think a lot of people at the moment want to kick the Labor Government in the shins a bit, including some of their own supporters. Always the case.

Bevan: Well, the risk your party runs is that if you kick him in the shins you might cripple him.

Schacht: Absolutely, you might kick to high and, to use the phrase in football kick him in the groin. All I am saying is that I think it's a very good wake up call to both the Labor Party and the public that this coming election is not a foregone conclusion. Vote Liberal and you may get Tony Abbott.

Abraham: Chris Schacht, of course it did occur to me that the Liberal Party could run an ad that says if you vote Labor, you'll get Kevin Rudd.

Schacht: Of course, of course and I'm happy for them to say that, because he's the elected Prime Minister. All I'm saying is if you vote for the other mob you get Tony Abbott, it's a darkness in the void.

Abraham: Good morning Elizabeth.

Caller 1: Good morning guys. I'm listening to Chris Schacht talking about WorkChoices and the Liberal Party, so if we go around and say it's dead and gone forever, what does Chris Schacht think of the Prime Minister when he talks about the single biggest moral issue of anyone's lifetimes, about the ETS. And we're talking about all those other things with his hand on his heart; not to touch the 30 per cent rebate. Why don't you try and defend the Prime Minister about those things? That's what we want to hear about. We don't want to hear anymore about WorkChoices. (inaudible) I think you'll find that people are very board by it, and the fact that you're using union's money to promote this. You try and defend your Prime Minister on these issues where he's done a back flip on, the asylum seekers, all sorts of things. He's lost total credibility. I'd like to listen to you saying to us why you can change your mind and why he should still be our Prime Minister.

Schacht: Well I have to say politically I was very frustrated that in 1998 John Howard introduced a GST saying never, ever, never, at an election and won the election. He lost seats, lost a lot of skin, but still got elected, changed policy several times during the 11 years of his Prime Ministership. And Liberal people said that's just being flexible, listening to the public.

The ETS legislation as I understand from the Prime Minister's announcement, has been deferred a couple of years. I bet you in the coming Federal Election the Liberal Party will run ads saying that the ETS will come back if you elect a Labor Government, and it's going to be a ripper new tax on everybody. You watch, there will be a fear campaign running by the Liberal Party saying that the ETS is not dead and buried, it's going to come back if you elect a Labor Government.

Pyne: Well, I think Elizabeth summed it up pretty well. I agree with her. I think the WorkChoices ads by the Labor Party and the union movement are boring and tedious. I don't think anybody wants to hear all that nonsense. I do think the public want to know when the emissions trading scheme, which was "the greatest moral challenge of our times", could be junked without so much as a (inaudible) by the Prime Minister in the hope that he could win the election and then bring it back in the future. They do want to know with interest rates rising six times in the last eight months, putting real pressure on mortgage holders that he could say that he was going to reduce the pressure on working families and reduce the cost of living when quite the opposite has occurred. I was out at Dernancourt on Saturday morning Supermarketing and I was shocked at how angry voters are with Kevin Rudd making so many promises before the last election.....

Abraham: (inaudible)

Pyne: Well I've been supermarketing for 17 years and I can tell when people want to engage with you and when they don't; when you're in trouble and when you're not. I knew I was in trouble before the last election because of supermarketing on the Saturday mornings. The last few times I've been out supermarketing; Dernancourt last week, Gillies Plains a couple of weeks before that, people are genuinely coming up and expressing real frustration about the cost of groceries, the cost of petrol, the increasing interest rates, and the fact that Kevin Rudd promised all these things and hasn't delivered. And when he's making all these new promises they're judging him on his past promises, which he hasn't delivered on.

Abraham: Alright Elizabeth, thank you that was a good question. Geoff from Collinswood. Good morning Geoff.

Caller 2: Good morning Matt and Dave and the two Cs. Christopher Pyne said that WorkChoices is dead and buried. Well in the 7:45 news this morning, Tony Abbott stated he would bring, if he's ever elected Prime Minister he would bring back WorkChoices and leave out one tiny little thing which was a terrible disaster, I can't remember what it was.

Abraham: Maybe the unfairness test or something?

Caller 2: Yeah, I think that's right.

Abraham: We're just trying to find that story for you. Thank you for that.

Caller 2: Ok.

Abraham: Thank you.

Schacht: Thank you Geoff from Collinswood. I don't care what either of us say as representatives of either party, it is always going to be an issue with a large number of people about industrial relations and WorkChoices and job security and the conditions of your employment. And it always has been in Australian politics and thank goodness it is and always will be. And both parties will be judged accordingly.

Bevan: Samantha has called from Norwood. Hello Samantha.

Caller 3: (inaudible)Look I'm sorry about this. It's a silly question, but I'm setting my own agenda here. I wanted to ask Christopher Pyne this for a few months now. I've got a copy of the Australian literary review here where you list your favourite book of all time as Lives by Plutarch. Why, and have you actually read it?

Pyne: It's called Lives of the Athenians by Plutarch and it's one of the early books about the people who were statesmen in Ancient Athens and of course I have a great interest in classical history and so it's one of my favourite books.

Abraham: Can you get that at the supermarket?

Pyne: Well, you can get all sorts of books at the supermarket. I don't think the lives of the Athenians is going to be one of them.

Abraham: The Lives of the Athenians....

Bevan: Is it a ripper of a read?

Pyne: Well it is actually. It's a sensational read. So is Suetonius's Twelve Caesars which is about Ancient Rome.....

Abraham: You can't put that down, once you start that one....

Pyne: If you tried to read it, you'd find it very exciting. The Literary Review covered the readings of politicians and we were asked to choose three books of on a different milieu and one of my favourite books was great expectations by Charles Dickens and one of them was the Lives of the Athenians and the third one was The Making of the President 1960 about the election that elected John F Kennedy. So....

Schacht: Never let it be said that we have similar reading tastes, but ancient history is one of my hobbies and I have to say one of the best books I have ever read is Gibbons the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is a fantastic read. It talks about the human capacity for evil, good, double crossing, the politics - even though in those days you got your head chopped off if you opposed and lost something - the detail of that human emotion and how it plays is still really the best......

Pyne: The Twelve Caesars was made into the television series I Claudius, which nobody could forget.

Abraham: Chris Pyne....

Schacht: (inaudible) The book I Claudius by Grieves is based on those books. A great read in itself and a wonderful television series.

Bevan: Christopher Pyne, just before we leave you. What do you think of Cory Bernardi's call to ban the Burqa?

Pyne: Well the Liberal Party does not....

Bevan: I didn't ask you what the Liberal Party thought. I would like to know your views.

Pyne: Well I think a lot of Australians do find fellow Australians wearing the Burqa a little confronting, and the Liberal Party's policy is that people have to make their own choices. We don't have a policy to ban it and I think Senator Bernardi was responding to a story in a newspaper about an alleged armed robber who dressed in a Burqa in order to affect their robbery and the media leapt on the story, but I think it was bit of a beat up.

Bevan: Well I think he leapt on the story didn't he?

Pyne: Well the media leapt on his blog, but obviously it's not the key issue of the election campaign.

Schacht: Can I just say as someone who's visited, many years ago now, Sudan where you have a government that follows Sharia Law and to see women in the full Burqa is very distressing; as any human being in a temperature of nearly 40 degrees, 80 per cent humidity and I presume women, not just covered in a scarf and a bib, the full burqa and you couldn't even see their eyes. You couldn't tell the back from the front with these people. If that is not a - in the way they run that country - in my view is beyond an issue of terrorism.....

Bevan: So you agree with Cory?

Schacht: No I don't. I don't agree with Cory the way he went about it and raising it as a fear campaign on terrorism. What I say is as a non-believer in organised religion, I don't think any religion, Christian or Muslim or Hindu should have the right to get laws in countries to force any group of people, and particularly women to wear that sort of clothing as a sign of this is the religion of the country. I have to say as a humanist I don't like it. I think it is form in those countries of oppression. Fortunately we don't have that in our country, in Australia. You can choose to wear it or not to wear it and it's not part of the law and neither it should be. But I have to say in the community where there should be separation of church from the state, I saw it in Sudan and I've never forgotten it in those conditions. I am very uncomfortable that in a democracy a religious rule, a religious view can encourage people to say you have to wear this type of clothing.

Bevan: Chris Schacht, thank you for talking to us. Former Labor Senator and former ALP State Secretary. And Christopher Pyne, Federal Mp for Sturt and Shadow Education Minister and Manager of Opposition Business in the House.

Ends