2GB – Alan Jones

SUBJECTS: AFP inquiry into Australia day riot

E&OE……… 

Alan Jones: Barbara Shaw, this militant Aboriginal woman and I might add a greens candidate for the Northern territory Parliament  heard about all of this and grabbed the microphone told everyone that Mr Abbott was at the lobby and away they went. The rest we know ugly. Who was the catalyst for all of this?  Christopher Pyne is the leader of the House for the Opposition that is the man who determines business and the Opposition approach to strategy in the Parliament, Parliament meets this week. Christopher Pyne good morning..

Christopher Pyne: Good morning Alan.

Jones: Thank you for your time, your Leader Tony Abbott is calling for an Australian Federal Police investigation. It is hard to believe isn’t that everything that happened wasn’t triggered by the Prime Ministers own staff.

Pyne: Well Alan the Prime Minister’s office got the outcome they exactly wanted on Thursday and the evidence for that is that on Thursday afternoon officers from the media office from the Prime Ministers office were in the press gallery telling journalists that Tony Abbott had just started a riot  at the Lobby restaurant on Australia Day.S o they got the outcome they were hoping r but it was  like the exploding cigar and it blew up in their faces when of course it became known and ray Hadley I think broke the story on Friday morning that in fact the Prime Minister’s office had triggered the sequence of events that you have outlined perfectly that caused the riot on Australia Day.

Jones: I’ve worked in a Prime Ministers office it’s impossible to believe, no-one there ever works alone, that Hodges acted alone.

Pyne: Well Alan, what the Prime Minister said on Saturday afternoon is that three other members of her staff were at the Lobby restaurant with Tony Hodges at the time that he was making these calls to ACT Unions and the Minister for indigenous Affairs and the ACP and she expects us to believe that this newly appointed media adviser just unilaterally decided to pass on this information, and as you said there is no possibility that he could have passed on what Tony Abbot said verbatim because if he had it was so benign and so respectful that nobody  could have taken offence.

Jones: Correct, correct, I mean if I had just told the truth about what Tony Abbott said then nothing would have happened, what Tony Abbott sad was totally unremarkable and perfectly acceptable. Now Julia Gillard has said ia have accepted Tony Hodges resignation because the conduct was unauthorised and unacceptable, if he’d told the truth about Tony Abbott it wouldn’t have been unacceptable.

Pyne: well exactly, and the unfortunately thing for the Prime Minister her alibi creates more questions to  answered  and until she has a full police investigation into this matter it cannot be resolved. For example why is it that Tony Hodges told the Labor, the Prime Ministers office on Thursday afternoon that he’d been involved but no-one thought to tell the Prime Minister until sometime on Friday and then it took a further eight hours for the Prime Minister to authorise her staff to come out and fess up to the fact that her office had been the trigger that began this unfortunate sequence of events and coincidently after six o’clock after the news cycle had finished for the day.

Jones: Yes that’s right, now Kim Sattler from Unions ACT who has been named and shamed by Julia Gillard is now saying that what Julia Gillard is saying Hodges said is entirely different from what she believes Hodges said to her.

Pyne: Well Kim Sattler is the latest victim in the long string of victims that Julia Gillard has left behind in her political career she’s racking up more victims than Richard 111. Kim Sattler is apparently to be the scapegoat the only problem for the Prime Minister and the Labor Party is that she is not a very willing scapegoat and she keeps changing her story but if we actually go back to what she wrote herself on Thursday afternoon on her facebook site that’s where she said that Tony Abbott had said that the Tent Embassy should be torn down and that he was facing a riot at the Lobby restaurant as she was writing those words. Why would she use that description if that’s what she wasn’t told by the Prime Ministers office?

Jones: Now surely the Federal Police should be asked to find out who else in the Prime Minister office was aware of all of this. I mean the reaction off the police initially about all of this was quite extraordinary.. “we believe in being quite flexible in our policing actions with these people “said Sgt Chris Marr of the ACT Police. “We have no intention of arresting anybody for no unreasonable cause”. Is that still the position of the Federal Police?

Pyne: Well I’m not sure exactly what the position of the Federal Police is, they have said that will investigate if they are given a referral and we’ve asked the Prime Minister to refer this matter in full to the Australia Federal Police. Any Prime Minister worth their salt Alan, would want to get to the bottom, of who was responsible, why the information was passed on, what property damage was done, who was personally affected, whether the process and procedures of the AFP were followed or whether they should be reviewed and making sure this never happens again and what role her own office played in this. The fact that she doesn’t want to do any of those things suggests to me that she simply is up to the job of being Prime Minister of Australia.

Jones: But if she deliberately the consequences of what they have done is that Tony Abbot’s name has been besmirched right around the country.

Pyne: And that was the purpose of it, that was the purpose clearly of passing on this information of verballing the Leader of the Opposition and honestly they got what they wanted for a short period of time as you have pointed out and I when I first heard the radio reports on Australia Day I thought why has Tony Abbott said that the Tent Embassy should be bulldozed on Australia Day. Of course that’s exactly what they wanted the public to take out from that story. Now, of course what we have discovered parting very much to the business of the Australian public is that the obsession of the Prime Ministers office with Tony Abbott has reached such depths that they are prepared to verbal the Leader of the Opposition, start such an affray that occurred and potentially put the Prime Ministers and safety and the leader of the Oppositions safety at risk and it has backfired terribly badly the country has been internationally humiliated nobody wants to see a Prime Minister being dragged in a headlock, losing their shoe and being pushed into the back of a COM car in an unedifying way and that all came about because the Prime Minister ‘s office passed on information to protestors which could only have been squed for one purpose other wise it would never have caused an affray.

Jones: How much responsibility do the media bear in all of this who after for hours and hours after what Tony Abbott said didn’t bother to check what he said completely misrepresented what he said without trying to find out the truth of what he said.

Pyne: Well the media the cycle moves so relentlessly Alan I think that they responded in an overheated way to what they were being fed by the Prime Ministers office.

Jones: None the less Friday was a day after Thursday there was a cartoon in the Fairfax media on Friday depicting Tony Abbott punching an Aborigine and letters to the Editor claiming, published claiming that Tony Abbott had pulled the trigger and Tony Abbott was the man whose words caused the riot those were published on Friday.

Pyne: Well, there is a pattern here though Alan in terms of the Labor Party and Leaders of the Opposition let’s not forget when Brendan Nelson was giving his speech in the chamber about Sorry Day, the day of the national apology, Labor staffers turned their backs on Brendan Nelson not Indigenous people, Labor staffers turned their backs on Brendan Nelson , stood up in the Chamber to do so, in order to try to encourage other people to do so which they then did, it was entirely designed to portray Brendan nelson as a racist and of course on Thursday what the Prime minister’s office were clearly trying to do was to damage deliberately damage Tony Abbott as Leader of the Opposition again using indigenous people to do so, it is absolutely sick and the Prime Minister if she was worth her salt would stand up and say enough of this obsession with Tony Abbott with the destroying of the Leader of the Opposition because the public want then to focus the public want them to be obsessed about  jobs about border protection about cost of living concerns not this day to day political survival.

Jones: Good on you good to talk to you thank you for your time.

Pyne: Pleasure Thank you

Jones: That’s Christopher Pyne; Extraordinary, so basically at the end of the day the prime Minister office was the agent of telling lies and the telling of the lies incited violence.

ENDS