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JOURNALIST: It’s a good morning to Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good morning gentlemen.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning everyone from sunny Canberra.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I hope this won’t be like Behind Closed Doors last week, which took us off.

JOURNALIST: Yes! It sounded like an actual transcript, I thought Chris.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Very, very funny, I must say.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well, I’m offended.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You would be.

JOURNALIST: Why are you offended Albo?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Oh, just because I can be.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You were being parodied, whereas I was being promoted.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yeah well you start from a lower base.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You’re a curmudgeon. You’re curmudgeonly old member. That’s your problem.

JOURNALIST: Albo have you caught up with the latest poll figures for Sturt? Christopher, um, on a pretty good wicket based on what The Advertiser released this week, 59-41. You must be feeling pretty comfortable, Christopher.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Anthony has been in Adelaide campaigning against me, and whenever he comes my vote goes up.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’ve got to say, I’ve got to say, I have only ever been to Sturt to do good things for the people of Sturt, as a Minister, because you know someone had to do it, someone had to do it.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The only person who helps me more in Sturt more is Bill Shorten. I might have to get into my seat a few times before the election.

JOURNALIST: So you’re not bracing yourself for a Frank Pangello pitch or anything, Chris?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well actually the most interesting thing, two interesting things about that poll was the complete disappearance of the Xenophon factor. They got twenty-two percent at the election, and in that poll, and of course it’s only a poll, the only poll that really matters is Election Day, they went down to one and a half percent. But the other thing that I thought was interesting was that Bill Shorten had such an enormous unfavourability. 50 percent of people had an unfavourable impression of Bill Shorten, which always puts a smile on Anthony’s face, of course, because he’s the people’s choice. He should have been the leader of the Labor Party.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Now you’re just being mischievous.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What, me? Stop it.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yeah, yeah. Far be it from you to be mischievous.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m blushing on the phone.

JOURNALIST: Hey, guys at 8 o’clock –

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I don’t think Sturt is on our target list. But we’ll be having a very, very close look at Boothby I think.

JOURNALIST: With the help of GetUp, by the sound of things. Not that they’ve-

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, no.

JOURNALIST: - got anything to do with the Labor Party, and the Greens.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No, with the help of Nicolle Flint being one of the first signatories which knocked off Malcolm Turnbull.

JOURNALIST: Here we go. Hey, I want to talk about banks. We revealed at Breaking at 8 that ANZ has only now just become the first bank to get out there on the front foot and say, not just that they are deeply apologetic was revealed in the Royal Commission, but they are actually going to start putting in some real reforms to prevent a repeat of that. This is the big hope for you guys, isn’t it Chris, that between now and the election, you actually get the banks doing some self-flagellation and saying they’re going to make changes?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there are two important things about that – one is that yes, the banks do need to take responsibility for their own actions, and what was revealed in the Royal Commission was startling and shocking and I’m glad that the banks, albeit some of the banks, are starting to understand that they have to put a bit of effort in changing their reputation. Second thing about the Royal Commission is that we have responded. The Government has responded to all 76 of the recommendations and we’re still waiting for Labor’s response. It’s quite remarkable that they’ve made so much of it, and they’ve failed to respond to it.

JOURNALIST: What do you think, Albo? Can the banks can be trusted to do this themselves?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: We know they can’t be. That’s why we had a Royal Commission, in spite of Christopher and his mates voting against it 26 times. That’s why we need structural reform. That’s why the Parliament should sit next week, and the week after, and as long as need be, to put through legislation that puts in place structural changes that are required. We put forward five issues yesterday that should be dealt with through legislation, and the Government should be having the Parliament sit. That’s what we’re elected to do – to legislate, and we should do it.

JOURNALIST: We’re going to wrap it up there guys, you know why, Chris? Because we’re going to play Two Tribes again, and we know that, sorry we’re going to play Blakey again. We know you’re a big fan and we don’t want cut Blakey short.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well that makes one of us.

JOURNALIST: Good on you guys. Playing with fire Albo. Albo, Chris Pyne, we’ll do it all again next week. Thanks for that.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look forward to it.

Media Contacts

Ella Kenny: 02 6277 7800, pynemedia@defence.gov.au
Scott Bolitho: 02 6277 7800 pynemedia@defence.gov.au

Defence Media (02) 6127 1999