ABC 891

SUBJECT: Labor leadership; Illegal boat arrivals E&OE................................ Presenter: Member for Port Adelaide and Minister for Mental Health and Ageing. Good morning Mark Butler. Mark Butler MP: Good morning. I was at the dinner last night and I saw the Jumbo Prince get inducted. If anyone’s able to see a replay of that, it is one of the funniest speeches I think I have ever heard. Presenter: Really? Presenter: Well I saw Phil Coorey from the Fin Review, he was very grumpy that the bells went so you had to leave part way through the proceedings. Butler: We did, but not through, not through Rick Davies’ speech thank the Lord because it was a cracker. It was a cracker. Presenter: Well, Matt Clinch from Grandstand has just tweeted to say that SA Grandstand will replay Rick Davies’ speech this weekend so if you love your sport and your sporting history, stay with us on the weekend and you’ll get to hear Rick Davies’ Speech. Chris Pyne, Liberal MP for Sturt, Shadow Minister for Education, good morning. Hon Christopher Pyne MP: Good morning. Presenter: Did you hear the Rick Davies speech? Pyne: No, I was working in the Chamber. I thought that debates on the Education Bill and the Marine Parks Legislation and the pending seven divisions was a higher priority than going to the dinner in the Great Hall. Butler: Well, if that’s an attempt to make me to feel guilty about going to the Hall of Fame Dinner Christopher, it hasn’t worked. Pyne: Well, you know, that’s what the public expects work before pleasure. Presenter: Now, Chris Pyne, was it two weeks ago you predicted that on June third, three, Kevin Rudd would challenge for the Leadership. He didn’t. Pyne: No he didn’t but obviously the Labor Party is disintegrating before our very eyes if you read the newspapers, listen to the AM program or watch the 7:30 Report last night. So you know you wonder why Kevin Rudd won’t respond to the clarion call from his supporters to, as the Labor Party is saying “save them”. Unfortunately, Labor is only focussed on themselves at the moment. They’re not focussed on cost of living; or border protection; or job security; or economic management and hence of course the jihadist terrorist who was held at Inverbrackie for seven months. Presenter: Well a lot of our listeners have been urging us to take this issue up with you since Monday because they think what you did was just well, it was unfair, it was made up. Butler: … you’ve been proven wrong. Pyne: It wasn’t made up. Butler: Well, he didn’t challenge. Pyne: Well, my sources in the Caucus told me he would. Now I can’t help it if the Labor Party are so hopeless they can’t even organise a challenge amongst themselves but he might still. I mean they’re still talking about it. This is the problem. Labor is running down to election. There’s still 101 days to go. They are obsessively focussed on themselves and not focussed on the public and I think the public’s had a gut full of it. Presenter: Mark Butler, is there any chance at all that the leadership will change before the election? Butler: None. I think it’s fair to say briefly, none. But I can’t imagine that anyone really seriously took Christopher as a reliable source or a commentator on internal Labor Party politics. Presenter: Well, he has been proven correct to a degree, hasn’t he? Although the challenge didn’t occur on Monday, we had yet more leadership speculation from very credible reporters, this has been reported across the Nation and it just … we had Joel Fitzgibbons yesterday, I mean it’s almost like gallows humour within the ALP. You’re all too exhausted to launch the challenge that he predicted. Butler: Yeah, but look, it’s not serious, it’s just not serious. I mean we’re locked and loaded as a team led by Julia. We’ve got an agenda for the next election and we’re going to spend the next 101 days talking about that agenda. Pyne: There’s a campaign strategist in The Australian this morning saying that they’re going to have Julia Gillard campaigning in marginal seats that they know they can’t win because they don’t want her campaigning in safe Labor seats that they’re frightened of losing. That’s how bad Labor are regarding their prospects at the election because of course, they are not focussed on the public. They’re not focussed on mums and dads and their cost of living pressures. They are entirely inwardly focussed and it’s high time we put this Labor Party into opposition where they can get their act together. Presenter: Mark Butler, Queensland Labor MP Graham Perrett was quoted in the paper this morning as saying “Labor is more trouble than Indiana Jones’. Butler: Well, I’ve seen all those films and he comes through with some scrapes and some bruises but he always wins and I’m sure that’s what Graham was saying. Presenter: You think Julia Gillard will save the day? She’ll retrieve the Ark of the Covenant and she’ll make it? Butler: Look, we get a couple of polls every week, at least and there’s no question …. Presenter: They’re all bad, consistently bad. Butler: There’s no question that the polls are very bad for us at the moment but experience also tells us that things do change in the immediate lead up and particularly during a campaign and I’m convinced that we’ve got policies that are exactly what the Australian community are looking for in education in disabilities, supporting jobs, particularly in manufacturing sectors but there’s no question that the whole team – Graham Perrett up to the Prime Minister and everyone in between included, has a very big job at articulating and advocating those policies over the next 101 days. Pyne: But if you are so proud of your Labor policies, why are you all taking all your Labor livery off all of your pamphlets and brochures. Kate Ellis putting out leaflets without any mention of the Labor Party. Presenter: Christopher Pyne, both political parties have done that when they have been in sad straits. We know that. Mark Butler, I was talking to a friend who was dropping his kids off at childcare and noticed that the childcare workers were all wearing protest t-shirts and this is over changes to childcare arrangements and this particular childcare centre was saying we’re going to go bust because of Kate Ellis’s Julia Gillard’s reforms. Now, putting aside the rights and wrongs over childcare, you people can’t take a break when childcare workers are protesting against the Government. You must be at the point of despair? Butler: Well no, I’m not despairing. I’m certainly not despairing about our childcare policies because I think we have an incredibly proud record there. We’ve made childcare much more affordable for parents, increasing the childcare rebate and the question of professional qualifications and staff ratios is something we have been working on for years. I think we signed the agreement with State and Territory Governments on these reforms back in 2009 and my experience has been they resonate very well with parents. Parents want both professionally qualified childcare workers and they want a proper ratio but that doesn’t mean that every single person in the community agrees with these policies, I mean frankly there a very few polices, if anything that you get unanimous agreement around. Presenter: But even the NBN that looked like it was the only room in the house that wasn’t burning down, it turns out it is full of asbestos fibres. Butler: Well I think everyone knew that our telecommunications infrastructure had asbestos in it. Anyone who paid attention to this area knew that’s been the case for simply for decades and a very significant part of this process that essentially is part of the responsibility of Telstra has been to remediate all of that infrastructure to the extent that it’s going to be impacted by the rollout of the NBN. Presenter: Christopher Pyne, Laurie Ferguson said yesterday that the Government has to tackle the asylum seeker issue yet how long, where are you going to take us in terms of asylum seekers should you win the next election in September? Tony Abbott has consistently said “I will stop the boats”. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean that even if your current batch of policies don’t work, you’ll ramp it up even further? At what point do you back away and say look “We’re not prepared to cross a line in order to stop the boats? Butler: Gentlemen, before Christopher answers that can I apologise, I’ve just been called to the Chamber so I’m going to have to leave Christopher to talk about that by himself for the next few minutes. I’m very sorry about this but I have to get up and introduce some legislation. Presenter: Mark Butler, thank you for your time. You’re very generous, Mark Butler Labor MP for Port Adelaide. Christopher Pyne, all of the polls show you’re going to be a Minister in the next Government after September. The question for you is at what point will you back away and say well there are some things that we’re not prepared to do to stop the boats. Pyne: Well, at the moment, the boat arrivals are running at record levels. We have had 35,000 unauthorised arrivals since the Prime Minister took over, Julia Gillard. 43,000 for the entire period of the Labor Government and that compares with 4 people being in detention when we lost office in 2007. So there has been a massive disaster. Now, we have stopped before, we did it through temporary protection visas, off-shore processing and turning back the boats where it was possible to do so. It will take some time to undo the damage that Labor has done but we are very confident that if we have the same measures we used before, we will be able to stop the boats. Presenter: Why are softening your line on stopping the boats? Because it’s gone to stopping the boats to “oh – it’s going to take us some time’. Whereas when Phillip Ruddock and John Howard introduced their hard line policies, there was a very sharp drop in the number of arrivals. It had an almost immediate impact, and yet you seem to be in the last few days, softening people up saying, well it could take some time. Pyne: No, there will be a sharp drop in boat arrivals – I have no doubt about that, once the Senate passes our legislation to bring back temporary protections visas, to turn back the boats where it is safe to do so and to increase off-shore processing. But there is one aspect that Labor has done which is to open the flood gates to the appeal processes in our Federal Courts, which the federal Coalition had closed off when we were in office. That means that a lot of those asylum seekers have those appeal rights and are using them which is slowing down the whole process and clogging up the system. That will take some time to undo – that is what I am talking about. But there will be a sharp decline in boat arrivals under the Coalition because our policies worked before and they will work again. Presenter: Text here saying, that 250,000 people arrived between 1975 and 1983, why didn’t people jump up and down then. What’s the difference between what is happening now and what was accepted by the nation between 75’ and 83’? Pyne: Well there is a very significant difference and that is most of the people who arrive by boat in the Fraser government were people who had fled the fall of South Vietnam when the communists over-ran South Vietnam. And therefore, as Australia had been in that war, trying to defend freedom against communism, we felt that we had some responsibility. Presenter: And a lot of people who are arriving on our shores now are fleeing horrible regimes that we have been involved in fighting overseas. Pyne: What you have to understand about the people who arrive by boat in 75’ to 83’ is that they came directly to Australia from Vietnam. Now most of the arrivals, almost all of the arrivals under Labor, the 43, 000 over the last six years have flown to Indonesia or Malaysia before catching boats to Australia. That is why they are called, that’s why the people smuggling model works. Presenter: Christopher Pyne, thank you for your time. Pyne: It’s a pleasure. ENDS.