Triple M Adelaide

CHRIS DITTMAR: Fair to say Roo, it hasn’t been a quiet, nor boring, nor dull week in Federal politics. Not only about Federal politics, but we’ve got some questions about what’s happening here in South Australia with our power.

MARK RICCIUTO: Yep that’s the main thing that people are absolutely pee’d off here in South Australia it’s fair to say and they’ve had enough and they want to know actually when it’s going to be fixed. But there’s no end in sight at the moment.

CHRIS DITTMAR. Yeah. Our very own Federal MP, Christopher Pyne is on the line. Christopher, good morning.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning Ditts, good morning Roo.

CHRIS DITTMAR: Thanks for your time. Now we do want to talk about what’s been happening in federal politics this week, but I have a question. You’re a South Australian, I think you’ve been here this week, there have been power black outs again; everyone’s frustrated, everyone’s annoyed. Malcolm Turnbull, probably quite rightly has pointed the finger at the South Australian Labor Party and asked what are you doing about it, but don’t you all have a responsibility as well? South Australia is a part of Australia obviously, the Prime Minister leads the country. How about he sits down with Jay Weatherill and comes up with a solution instead of pointing the finger and saying the Labor Party in South Australia have stuffed up?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Ditts, I hear what you are saying, but the bottom line is that the South Australian Government; one of their primary responsibilities in 2017 is to be able to provide power in their state and every other state is managing their power and South Australia, lead by Jay Weatherill has an obsession with wind power. We have a reliance in this state of 40% of our power comes from wind and when the wind doesn’t blow like it didn’t this week, we don’t have power. It’s all well and good to say Malcolm Turnbull’s got to do something about it but the reality is, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, WA and Tasmania, they all manage to keep their power. In this state; Weatherill himself said it was an experiment and he had no idea what the outcome would be. We’ve seen the outcome. Businesses are closing their doors, people’s ice-cream down at Glenelg is running out, I saw that yesterday. I mean yes of course we need to be part of the solution and Josh Frydenberg, who is the Energy Minister is working overtime to get all of the state’s and the commonwealth to agree on a way forward, but the bottom line is the buck stops with the state Labor government

MARK RICCIUTO: It definitely does, what about the new coal fired power stations that emit a lot less than the older ones do at the moment. I know Malcolm Turnbull has been pushing them. Do you have any idea of a cost of one that South Australia should build and need to build to get us back on track?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Roo there are 700 clean coal fire power stations in Asia. There are 90 in Japan alone and 45 more being built in Japan alone. And Australia doesn’t have one and yet we produce and export more coal than any other country in the world, so obviously, we should be looking…

MARK RICCIUTO: Do you know how much they are though Chris?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I guess the vary depending on how much power they generate. I don’t know how much the cheapest one is or how much the most expensive one is, but the reality is…

MARK RICCIUTO: Is this the simplest plan now? That we just have to build them?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that should be in the mix, so should hydro-power stations and storage of power. All of those things need to be in the mix. They closed Northern Power in Pt Augusta and congratulated themselves that we were going to have a coal free future, which apparently also means a job free, business free future but that was a big mistake on a base-load power point of you. And I’m a Eastern Suburbs Liberal, I support renewable energy just as much as anybody else does but the government’s still got to provide its base-load power and clean, coal fire powered stations are apparently good enough for 700 of them in our northern neighbours countries but we can’t have one here. This is where ideology is going crazy and the losers are consumers in South Australia, and it’s embarrassing

MARK RICCIUTO: Yeah. It is embarrassing…

CHRIS DITTMAR: It is.

MARK RICCIUTO: We are embarrassed. We’re sick of being talked down in South Australia. What about Malcolm Turnbull. He’s been firing up a little bit this week at Bill Shorten and quite rightly so. But we had a caller who said why does he wait until it’s getting personal to him or why did he wait until his job was on the line before he starts showing a bit of aggression and a bit of passion about his job. Why does he wait. Why hasn’t he come out beforehand and been a little bit more aggressive at times?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think Malcolm see’s the role of being Prime Minister as being an important and serious role and he’s prepared to put up with Bill Shorten piping up every now and again and sort of jumping up like a kid in the fourth grade…

MARK RICCIUTO: It was a good spray mind you!

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think over the summer; he was calling Malcolm immoral and all of these other terrible things. It’s all completely over the top and what Malcolm pointed out this week was that this is a guy who claims to be the workers friend but when he was the secretary of the union, he sold out the Clean Event workers, who are cleaners; took away their penalty rates in exchange for membership lists and cash and can’t wait to get his knees under the tables of billionaires residences in Melbourne and he simply pointed that out.

MARK RICCIUTO: It was a good spray.

CHRIS DITTMAR: Fair enough! Now just before you leave us, Cory Bernardi, you’ve obviously had some time to absorb what happened there and think about it. But what should happen to him? Should the rules change? I made the point earlier this week Christopher that if you are a Liberal voter, you surely voted in Cory Bernardi thinking he was going to be representing your party for the next six years and that’s not the case?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yeah, I think the 345,000 people who voted Liberal in the Senate and Cory was number 2 on the senate ticket, are quite rightly very disturbed and disappointed about Cory Bernardi’s decision. And my view is that he should resign from the Senate and he should re-contest his position at the next election; and if he’s as popular as he thinks he is, he won’t have any trouble being re-elected. But obviously, he didn’t think that at election time being he stayed on the Liberal Party’s ticket. Now I think he has an obligation as an honourable person to resign and re-contest as has happened in other examples in the United States where people have done exactly the same thing.

CHRIS DITTMAR: Yes, good point. Christopher, thanks so much for joining us.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s a pleasure.