2GB Ben Fordham

Subjects: Peter Beattie

EO&E......

Ben Fordham: He is sometimes described as the Coalition’s attack dog, Christopher Pyne, good afternoon to you Christopher Pyne.

Christopher Pyne: Good afternoon Ben.  Great to be with you and your listeners again.

Fordham: Do you like being known as the attack dog?

Pyne: Not really.

Fordham: Why not?

Pyne: Because I am a warm, friendly kind of person.

Fordham: I just showed you this video, before we get into the news of the day with Peter Beattie, I just showed you this video that Andrew Bolt has posted on his blog of a school visit yesterday in Sydney involving Kevin Rudd and a five year old boy by the name of Joseph, Joseph Kim who had been hamming it up to the cameras and stealing a lot of the limelight from the PM and then afterwards when they were saying goodbye, KRudd went to give him a high-five, he left him hanging there for a while, the little boy did Joseph, he eventually gave him a high-five and then he seemed to grip his hand for some reason, the little boy, and then the little boy, for some reason said ouch at the end of it.  I’ve got a lot of people on the line who have watched this who aren’t a fan of what Kevin Rudd was doing.  What did you think? I’ve just showed you the video.

Pyne: Well, Kevin hates anyone else getting in the limelight of course so he might not have been happy with Joseph Kim pushing him out of the television users.

Fordham: Oh hang on, you think this is payback?

Pyne: No I don’t.

Fordham: This is retribution? Rudd style?

Pyne: Maybe.

Fordham: You think it was the Latham/Howard handshake moment?

Pyne: Oh, of course.

Fordham: The infamous…

Pyne: In 2004…

Fordham: The Mark Latham/John Howard handshake outside I think it was the ABC studios or something.

Pyne: I think so. It sort of marked that whole campaign with Mark Latham but…

Fordham: Mark Latham brought John Howard in nice and close and stood over him…

Pyne: Very tight. A bit tight.

Fordham: Yes.

Pyne: Well poor old Joseph Kim did say ouch.

Fordham: Well what has gone on here?

Pyne: I am going to give, I am going to give Kevin Rudd the benefit of the doubt.

Fordham: All right. Let me…

Pyne: I doubt he would have hurt a five year old because he took the limelight from him.

Fordham: Let’s see what Sam thinks, Sam, good afternoon Sam.

Caller Sam:  Oh good afternoon mate well I was watching that directive before anyone made any comment and I had a very uncomfortable feeling I thought the man was very angry and just held it tight.

Fordham: Why are you laughing Christopher?  You don’t believe him? You don’t believe Sam?

Pyne: Well I think it’s unlikely that a grown man would deliberately hurt Joseph Kim because he has stolen the limelight from him.

Fordham: I love how you all of sudden referring to, you’re such a politician, referring to Joseph Kim by the full name. Mr Kim it will be next.

Pyne: Mr Kim, Mr five year old.  I have got a five year old, I don’t think you know...  

Fordham: Let’s see what Graham thinks next now, this is Christopher Pyne live on the air, the Coalition’s attack dog, counselling you - the listener. Graham, hello.

Caller Graham: Graham, Ben.

Fordham: Yes, Graham.

Caller Graham: Ben, a high-five is a high-five and that is that - touching of fingers.  Obviously KRudd was upstaged by this five year old Korean in the background.  And it is was obvious from the TV that the kid said ouch.

Fordham: Okay, well what do you say to Graham, Christopher?

Pyne: Well Graham, Graham is not giving the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt; there is no doubt about that. He is not.

Fordham: Hang on, hang on. David is on the line.

Pyne: Maybe we should ask Joseph Kim what he thought?

Fordham: Hello David, how are you?

Caller David: Yeah, good.

Fordham: What did you think?

Caller David: Well I haven’t seen the video but…

Fordham: Well David, he hasn’t seen the video.  I am not going to talk to you, David.

Fordham: Sarah, hello.  Oh wait till you hear what Sarah wants to talk about. Hello Sarah.

Caller Sarah: Hi Ben, hi Christopher.

Pyne: Hi Sarah.

Caller Sarah: I just want to say, hi Christopher, I think you are such a fantastic performer in Parliament.

Fordham: What!

Pyne: You can ring up anytime you like.

Fordham: What is going on here?

Caller Sarah: I honestly … you are my hero.

Fordham: What?

Pyne: You are not the only one I have to say.

Fordham: Please!

Pyne: You are not the only one.

Fordham: Sarah!

Pyne: I honestly…

Fordham: Why do you like him Sarah, this has turned into love song dedications! Why do you like Christopher Pyne?

Caller Sarah: I just think that you know he is the way, he okay, I know he has that attack dog you know nickname…

Fordham: Oh yeah, fierce. He is.

Caller Sarah: …you do the best job Christopher Pyne, I aspire to you.  You do the job on behalf of the Australian people, you’re doing the job that the other side isn’t doing and you are fantastic.

Fordham: Do you think he should be the leader, Sarah?

Caller Sarah: Perhaps yes I think he has got potential.

Fordham: Well ok there you go. See where we have gone here, thank you for the call Sarah, we have managed to go from little Joseph Kim and his fingers to leadership, Sarah wants you to lead…

Pyne: It’s a big leap.

Fordham: Sarah wants you to lead Christopher. I mean I was planning on talking about Peter Beattie and we haven’t even got there yet.

Pyne: No.

Fordham: Do you want to talk about Peter Beattie instead?

Pyne: I think there’s more chance of Joseph Kim being Prime Minister than me, Ben.

Fordham: Oh really?

Pyne: In the years ahead.

Fordham: Oh be careful.

Pyne: In the years ahead, Joseph Kim.

Fordham: Be careful, I have got the words of Julia Gillard ringing in my ear.

Pyne: Western Bulldogs…

Fordham: ‘There is greater chance that I would play full forward for the Western Bulldogs than I would be Prime Minister’…

Pyne: We have a great leader and I hope and pray that he would be Prime Minister in 30 days.

Fordham: Okay, let me touch on what has happened today in Queensland.  Peter Beattie is now back.  He is part of the team.  Are you rattled, Christopher Pyne?

Pyne: Well I think that we have one narcissistic egomaniac from Queensland in the Parliament already.  I don’t know why we need to have two of them. I don’t know where Kevin Rudd and Peter Beattie how they are going to fit their head through the doors of the Parliament, together.  So, I think…

Fordham: Oh hang on, hang on.

Pyne: I think Peattie’s a dud.

Fordham: What?

Pyne: Beattie is a dud. I think Peter Beattie is a dud.

Fordham: How have you described Peter Beattie there? Just got the pen out.

Pyne: I just said... narcissistic egomaniac from Queensland?

Fordham: Really.

Pyne: We have got one of those already in Kevin Rudd, we don’t need two.  Peter Beattie is a self-described media tart, and Kevin doesn’t seem to shy away from the camera.  I don’t know how those two are going to get along.  We know that they despise each other which is why Kevin Rudd didn’t even know Peter Beattie’s announcement until this morning.  They are like the cobra and the mongoose when brought together.

Fordham: So who did the deal?

Pyne: Well Peter Beattie has been, there has been rumours about him wanting to return to parliament for some time.  I thought it was going to be through the senate.  They are pushing poor old Des Hardman out of Forde to put Beattie in but I don’t think Beattie is going to trouble the scorer.

Fordham: Not at all? Not even?

Pyne: I think he is a dud.  He left Queensland with a massive debt and deficit, underinvested in infrastructure, a string of scandals involving some of his ministers, some of whom went to jail! I don’t think…two years ago Peter described himself as being ‘passed it’ – saying it was ‘too late for him to go into parliament!’ and now all of a sudden that’s all forgotten.

Fordham: You don’t think he will win the seat?

Pyne: I think the public in Queensland is far too smart to get caught up in celebrity flim flam candidates.

Fordham: Your boss used that phrase today, didn’t he?

Pyne: Flim flam, flim flam man?

Fordham: I don’t like flim flam.

Pyne: Why not?

Fordham: I don’t like that as a phrase.  Well I just don’t like it.  Well I mean what is flim flam again?

Pyne: Well just like a word like flambé isn’t a good word.

Fordham: Yeah, I know well it isn’t a strong word.

Pyne: Or flummery.  Remember the word flummery?

Fordham: They’re soft words.

Pyne:  They are soft, it is a soft word.  But it sums up Peter Beattie and Kevin Rudd.

Fordham: Well when they are coming out of Tony Abbott’s mouth I don’t like hearing Tony Abbott saying flim flam.

Pyne: They are both flim flam men, Rudd and Beattie.  And they… I can’t imagine how they are going to share the limelight because of course the real reason Peattie, Peter Beattie wants to come to Cabrera is because he wants to be the leader.  So we have had Gillard vs Rudd, and Rudd vs Gillard and now we are going to have Beattie vs Rudd or Beattie vs Shorten. Peter Beattie isn’t a team player and neither is Kevin Rudd.

Fordham: Do you reckon Peter Beattie, in all seriousness, do you reckon Peter Beattie has moved himself today into, I mean well not number two position well then there’s a question about who is number two Bill Shorten – where has he moved himself to, has he potentially moved himself to the number two position?

Pyne: Well Peter Beattie wouldn’t be wanting to come to Canberra to be other than anything other than number one.

Fordham: Because there is plenty of people who have got question marks over Bill Shorten even though he is the so called anointed one.  There are plenty within the party who go ‘no no no, he is not going to be able to carry it on’.

Pyne: Well Bill Shorten is a bit like a racehorse that has snapped its femur in its last, last straight.

Fordham: How?

Pyne: Because he stabbed…

Fordham: I am just holding up a number here because I want to go to (inaudible). You’re looking at me thinking ‘what is he doing’? Just hang on.

Pyne: What is he doing that for?

Fordham: Who did he stab?

Pyne: Well he stabbed Gillard, Rudd in the back to put Gillard in and then he stabbed Gillard in the back to put Rudd in.  So in three years he has stabbed two Prime Ministers in the back.

Fordham: Okay, we have got another one of your fans on the line here, we are going to take a break in a moment and come back with more of Christopher Pyne because we, why do we owe the pleasure by the way, why are you in Sydney?

Pyne: Well I have got the Today Show tomorrow morning, so I am in Sydney to do the Today Show.

Fordham: Oh, that is quite convenient isn’t it. Well why don’t we go to Angela. Hello Angela.

Caller Angela: Hi. Look I’d like to say to Christopher Pyne, I am another big fan of his.  I always enjoy…

Fordham: This is a love in.

Pyne: Get in the queue, Angela.

Fordham: Please!

Caller Angela: But I love your conviction, your energy and the way you give it to them the way they deserve. And that comment – I love it – two narcissistic egomaniacs – yes, yes, yes.  I tell you what we do have a very good man who will be the next Prime Minister, but if you’re ever offered the job you should take it.

Fordham: Oh, really.

Caller Angela: Yeah.

Pyne: That is very kind, Angela. But I am happy to be a supporter of Tony Abbott’s.

Fordham: Angela, you really got a thing for this bloke, don’t you?

Caller Angela: I love him.  I love him, he is, and he fires up and he loves this country and he loves the Australian people. Everyone is good, good like the Australian people. These clowns, you know.

Fordham: Angela, thank you.  Do you get this everywhere you go?

Pyne: No.  Only in your studio.

Fordham: Good, Christopher Pyne is here.  The Coalition’s vicious attack dog.  Live in the studio on Sydney Live and he has described Peter Beattie’s news today as, Christopher, just another?

Pyne: Just a great big yawn of old Labor, more old Labor.

Fordham: Another…

Pyne: Big taxing, big spending…

Fordham: Narcissistic egomaniac?

Pyne: Another narcissistic egomaniac in Canberra.

Fordham: How many of them are there in Canberra?

Pyne: Well, there is one big one from Queensland, and we are about to get another one. Well they want to get another one.

Fordham: Is Tony ready, you reckon, is Tony Abbott ready?

Pyne: Well he isn’t a narcissistic egomaniac.  Tony Abbott is so ready, he is primed for the Prime Ministership and I think the public recognise it.

Fordham: You’re not going to believe it, these emails coming in about you.  Look, I want to apologise to anyone who is listening who isn’t a Christopher Pyne fan, because I could understand right now you would be going ‘this is ridiculous’.  But here is some of the emails. And you know what this means, because we are in an election campaign, I now have to offer joint time to someone like Albo to be in here to hear all of these wonderful...

Pyne: Hope he doesn’t sleep in.

Fordham: I don’t know whether he would get the same kind of love mail that you are getting at the moment. Joyce says ‘Hi Benny, I love Christopher Pyne, he is quite a smooth operator.  He is the reason why I watch Question Time, he is so calm and full of conviction with a little bit of a naughty twinkle in his eye’.

Pyne: That ought to  be my aunty Joyce I think.

Fordham: ‘I love Christopher Pyne’ says Rebecca, ‘he is cute, smart and I love the way he talks’.  Are you rigging this?

Pyne: Ben, are you writing these?

Fordham: No, look, look I am passing them, look look, I am passing them across the desk, you pick them up and I know there are people’s email addresses on them.

Pyne: I must say, I am shocked.

Fordham: Kathryn says, ‘Love Christopher Pyne, such a wicked sense of humour’, I’ll throw you that one as well.

Pyne: Oh goodness. I’ll take these.

Fordham: What do you say to these people?

Pyne: I say to them, I will take these and show these to my wife, because she never gives me this kind of praise.

Fordham: Okay, Peter was called in. Hello Peter, how are you?

Caller Peter: Oh hi Ben, yes I agree that Christopher Pyne is a very, very good politician.

Fordham: Okay.

Caller Peter: I think he is an asset to the Liberals but that’s not why I was ringing.  It’s regarding this little Korean boy that was…

Fordham: Yes.

Pyne: Yes, Joseph.

Fordham: Yes, Joseph Kim.

Caller Peter: Yes, now early this year in the western suburbs of Sydney there was a lollipop man.

Fordham: Yes.

Caller Peter: Who was sacked from the job…

Fordham: That’s right.

Caller Peter: Because he was high-fiving children.

Fordham: Well he was certainly ordered not to high-five them anymore. That’s right.

Caller Peter: Yes, cross the road to go to the school…

Fordham: Well Kevin Rudd is allowed to high-five them because he is the Prime Minister and he’ll do whatever he likes.

Caller Peter: Well there is one rule for him and one rule for everybody else…

Fordham: Well we can’t ban the high-five though Peter.  Christopher, surely please tell me this is not going to... you’ve backed him this this afternoon on the Joseph Kim issue…

Pyne: Well I said I don’t think he would deliberately tried to hurt a five year old boy.

Fordham: You have not backed Kevin Rudd this afternoon on the Peter Beattie matter, but you have backed him on the Joseph Kim incident.

Pyne: Well I don’t think he deliberately hurt a five year old because he was stealing the limelight.  But I do think that Kevin’s high-fiving or ‘high-elevening’ as he has been known to do which seems a bit oxymoronic doesn’t it?

Fordham: What’s the ‘high-elevening’?

Pyne: Well it’s when he holds up both of his hands and then a finger straight afterwards.

Fordham: Oh.

Pyne: He once said to ‘give me a high-eleven’ to some poor child in a school.

Fordham: Oh really.

Pyne: Because all this kind of grubbery is fake, you see.

Fordham: Grubbery?

Pyne: It’s all grubbery.  It’s not really real.  It is fake Kevin, not real Kevin.  Because we know that real Kevin is really disliked by his cabinet colleagues because seven of them resigned the day he became Prime Minister.

Fordham: Okay, let’s explore the grubbery though.  Because is there a chance, you know that is almost like fast food because it is not real food, you know it just fast food but a lot of people eat fast food.  The grubbery it might be grubbery but a lot of people might consume that and say ‘oh look at him he is high fiving and he is just like me?’

Pyne: I think people see through Kevin Rudd, that’s why I think his numbers have collapsed in the last three weeks.  He has gone from plus nine, sorry plus something to minus nine, dropped sixteen points.  Because I think that they see through him and they just want their Prime Minister to be you know adult, be smart, to be articulate, to be hard working and all this kind of going around primary schools high-fiving and elevening unsuspecting children.

Fordham: Do you take selfies?

Pyne: No.

Fordham: Okay, Peter, hello.

Caller Peter: Hi.

Fordham: Take it away, your question for Christopher Pyne.

Caller Peter: Good evening Christopher and good luck in next election.

Fordham: Go right ahead.

Pyne: Thank you.

Fordham: What’s your question, because we’ve only got a few minutes.

Caller Peter: My question is I think I read in today’s paper where the Liberal Party will give their preference to Albanese in the seat of Grayndler. Why are we helping the Labor Party.

Fordham: So you are giving preferences to Anthony Albanese ahead of the Greens?

Pyne: We have got to choose between the Greens and between Anthony Albanese.  It’s called Hobson’s Choice.  But the Greens are doing a lot of damage to the country.

Fordham: And Albo wins.

Pyne: Well Albo won last time when we preference the Greens but that decision hasn’t been finally made.

Fordham: But maybe you and Albo need to go out and have a beer and sort it out? You and Thommo?

Pyne: The Belgian Beer Café?

Fordham: You and Thommo and Albo?

Pyne: Anthony has a big of explaining to do – he slept in this morning…

Fordham: What do you mean his slept in this morning?

Pyne: Well he missed the AM program this morning that he was supposed to…  the radio program, because he apparently missed his alarm clock.

Fordham: Okay. I’ve done that before.

Pyne: He was at the Belgian Beer Café with Craig Thomson.

Fordham: Thommo.

Pyne: Who is in a different faction to him, they’ve never had anything to do with each other.

Fordham: They only had one beer, he wants to make it clear that there is... don’t, hold the front page, we only had one beer.

Pyne: He is probably talking to him, this is where he has got to clear up, what were they talking to him about a hung parliament next parliament?

Fordham: What were they chatting about, do you reckon?

Pyne: Well if there is a hung parliament, Albo would have been trying to lock in Craig Thomson’s vote.  It is all about NSW deal making and grubby backroom deals.

Fordham: You think he is already looking ahead to the next election what might work out, there is no chance of him returning to the Labor Party is there – Craig Thomson?

Pyne: Who would know, I mean there is nowhere Labor won’t go, I mean Sam Dastyari is locked in some legal battle with Chris McArdle about the $35,000 that Chris McArdle alleges Dastyari promised him.  Craig Thomson is running again and Anthony Albanese needs to explain was he talking about exchanging preferences, supporting Labor in the event that there is another hung parliament.  Was he talking about paying the legal fees? Anthony is being very non-specific about what they discussed.

Fordham: Okay, well we will love to ask those question to Albo whenever we get the chance to get him on soon. Christopher, good luck.  Who are you up against tomorrow morning because on the Today Show on Friday mornings you have one from each side, head to head?

Pyne: It’s me and Anthony Albanese.

Fordham: Oh, it’s you and Albo!

Pyne: So I will be able to put some of these questions to him, hopefully he’ll answer them.

Fordham: So you’ll be, will you be asking him about, I know that…?

Pyne: Certainly I will.

Fordham: Well, particularly after this afternoon you have almost become a co-host this afternoon, you have taken over.

Pyne: I didn’t do anything.

Fordham: There are a lot of people who probably would prefer you hosting the show based on some of the women who are star struck by you… mesmerised…

Pyne: I’ll be elbowing Lisa and Karl out of the way.

Fordham: Are you going to grill Albo tomorrow morning on the Today Show about the beer with Thommo?

Pyne: I certainly intend to.

Fordham: Well tune in.  What time is it?

Pyne: 6.10am.

Fordham: Oh, wow. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.  And thank you very much for coming in this afternoon.

Pyne: It’s a great pleasure, thank you for having me.

Fordham: Christopher Pyne who is the Manager of the Opposition Business in the House of Representatives and he is also here in Sydney this afternoon live in our studio.

ENDS.