6PR Perth Live

JOURNALIST: Politics of course, one very senior Cabinet Minister, the other part of the setup of the opposition frontbench and has been a Cabinet Minister in the past. Christopher Pyne, first to you, good afternoon, welcome to Perth live!

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good afternoon, it’s great to be with you for the first time in a coupling with Anthony Albanese in Western Australia.

JOURNALIST: And Anthony Albanese, thank you very much for making sure that we got the two of you together, the odd couple once again.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Absolutely. I look forward to continuing to have these discussions next year.

JOURNALIST: Indeed we do. Let’s start first of all with the citizenship declarations that have been made today and I will ask you first Anthony Albanese, David Feeney has been the first Labor MP who says he is prepared to refer himself to the high court. Now should the others do the same?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well David Feeney has said that he is prepared to do that in terms of if there is a doubt. If he can’t find some of the documentation or evidence of it by Thursday then he would be prepared to do that. I haven’t had the opportunity to examine all of the documents, obviously that have been put in place just this morning but it’s clear there are some issues from people across the parliament and no doubt the parliament will be considering this once we get through the marriage equality issue in the next couple of days.

JOURNALIST: Does this put egg on the face of Bill Shorten and Labor because he certainly and constantly said that all Labor MPs had crossed their T’s and dotted their I’s on the citizenship issue.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well not at all. What we’ve argued for very clearly is for transparency and for the process that is happening. We argued that this should happen, from the very beginning, it has been difficult, clearly for some people have just said, my understanding is some people have said from Christopher’s side of politics that we have renounced our foreign citizenship but haven’t been in a position to produce any documentation so I think there’s a need to look at this objectively where there is a genuine doubt as to eligibility then of course people should be referred.

JOURNALIST: Ok, Christopher Pyne we also saw here on the home front West Australian Labor MP Josh Wilson may have a few questions around his citizenship, how do you view the way Labor has handled the declaration process?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there are a few grey areas, there’s no doubt about that, and between now and Thursday they’ll be considered. But there are no grey areas when it comes to David Feeney, your own Josh Wilson from Fremantle, Justine Key who is a Labor MP from Tasmania and Susan Lamb who is a Labor MP from Queensland. So there is 4 Labor MPs who were citizens of another country when they nominated for the 2016 Federal Election. Bill Shorten has been harbouring these people for the last 6 months. We did the right thing and Barnaby Joyce has had a by-election and been spectacularly re-elected in the best result since 1911 for a government. John Alexander is currently involved in a by-election in Bennelong. He resigned, he did the right thing. I think Bill Shorten thought he could skate under the radar and nobody would notice that these people had this problem. He’s been shouting from the rooftops like an angry rooster every morning about the failures of the Government but in fact it’s turned out he’s got quite a canker in his own side with these four MPs are London to a brick heading for by-elections.

JOURNALIST: Yeah well the reset button, Barnaby Joyce, Malcolm Turnbull said on the weekend, was set on the weekend with Barnaby Joyce’s by-election. Do you feel the mood is changing there in Canberra both Anthony Albanese and Christopher Pyne, do you think the government is starting to get the upper hand?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well the fact is that the polls showed this week a 53-47 lead for Labor.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: A gain for the Coalition by the way…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It does say something that the Coalition was celebrating getting to 47 of the two party preferred vote.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’ve had a bit of a messy month and the Labor Party should have …

ANTHONY ALBANESE: You’ve had a messy term

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The Labor Party should be miles ahead and yet we gained two points, two-party preferred, in the Newspoll. Now, and Malcolm pulled further ahead of Bill Shorten as the preferred PM. The truth is, as we all know it, and your listeners know it, Bill Shorten is toxic in the electorate.

JOURNALIST: Interesting you say that Christopher Pyne because if you look at the IPSOS poll yesterday, it does indicate that on the two party preferred question here in Western Australia it is actually the Coalition that leads Labor 57 – 43 and when we polled Perth Live listeners here on 6PR on our talkback number 92211882, 82% of 6PR Perth Live listeners said they would prefer to vote for Malcolm Turnbull over Bill Shorten, so there certainly is a problem in Western Australia, Christopher Pyne and Antony Albanese that Labor in particular is not cutting through here in Western Australia at a Federal level.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Bill is about as popular as a pork chop in a synagogue and Anthony Albanese is, quite frankly, going to be the big winner from that, and it’s not going to last on the Labor side and they’ve got big problems with Bill Shorten because people just don’t trust him. They think he’s shifty.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well it’s very brave of Christopher with respect, he does, he has raised the issue of synagogues, I mean talk about chutzpah, in terms of, you know you have Coalition chaos here. You have people openly defying the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. You’ve had New South Wales Deputy Premier call for him to go and give Australia a Christmas present. You’ve got absolute chaos on their side. We can never take WA for granted. WA historically has been very difficult terrain for federal Labor. Particularly since Kim Beazley left the leadership. That’s why I’m a regular visitor to WA. That’s why I was very pleased to be able to get a regular spot on your program.

JOURNALIST: Well I was too, Albo. It was great to see you standing here opposite us a few weeks ago here at the 6PR studios.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I’ll be back there in January.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Albo thinks Western Australia is difficult. I think it’s quite nice! I quite like it!

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well you should visit it more. Malcolm Turnbull should visit it.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I do! I’m very popular in Western Australia.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: During the last campaign he dropped in for about 5 minutes.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You should go down to Henderson where we’re building all these ships. You’ll find I’m actually quite popular down in Henderson.

JOURNALIST: You would be Christopher Pyne if you went to Henderson.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well you’ve got to be popular somewhere Christopher. You know that chance are if you pick random areas there’s got to be somewhere in Australia in our vast country where you’re popular.

JOURNALIST: Gentlemen, let me ask you this afternoon as well, foreign donations will be banned by the Prime Minister; I see he used Question Time today to attack Anthony Albanese, your colleague, Sam Dastyari, saying that he sold Australia out, should Sam Dastyari resign?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No he shouldn’t. He’s resigned from the positions that he’s held and we should ban foreign donations, that’s been Labor’s position for some time and we shouldn’t have people from overseas political organisations donating essentially to influence Australian political parties and that’s my view and it’s the Labor Party’s view, and I’m pleased that Government has now come on board.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: If you look at the register of foreign donations, of donations to political parties, Labor had twice as many foreign donations in terms of value than the Liberal Party in the last election. So if any political party is getting foreign donations, it’s the Labor Party. So we are banning foreign donations, Labor had a completely inadequate bill, we have fixed it and put in a real regime around foreign donations and goodness knows who is going to pay the Labor Party’s personal bills now…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: You haven’t even introduced the legislation yet!

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …because that’s what Sam Dastyari had donors doing in NSW before he resigned for the first time. The only way that Bill Shorten can prove that he’s in bed with foreign donators is to tell Sam Dastyari, you can’t sit in the Labor caucus and until he does that he’s not really serious about foreign donations, just as the same as he’s not serious about getting the union movement, like the CFMEU out of politics.

JOURNALIST: The same-sex marriage debate is obviously on in the House of Representatives, Christopher Pyne I see you just spoke to it a short time ago. Will any of the amendments that are being moved by some of your colleagues in regards to religious freedoms have any chance of passing the Lower House of the Parliament?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well that will be a matter for whether the people who are proposing the amendments can gather the numbers for a Private Members Bill which is a conscious vote on our side of the house to actually agree to those amendments. Now I have just spoken in the House of Representatives, I made it clear that I think the protections in the bill as they stand now for religious Ministers, for defence pastors, for religious intuitions are quite adequate, I don’t believe in putting superfluous amendments into a bill, I think the bills need to reflect what they need to reflect and they shouldn’t be based on, what I think is a misnomer that somehow religious freedoms are not protected here in Australia, we have other laws in place to protect religious freedom, we don’t need to put those in this bill and I won’t be voting for any amendments to this bill, I’m quite satisfied that the protections that came down to us from the senate in the bill will do the trick in protecting the religious freedoms in this country that we’ve cherished since Federation.

JOURNALIST: Well I see that Fairfax is reporting this afternoon that with your statement today is does appear as though the numbers are there to block any of these changes so the bill should go through the Lower House as it is proposed by obviously Senator Dean Smith.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I hope that is the case. This is an area where Christopher and I agree and it is very clear that...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We both agree on Bill Shorten too, I’m sure…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well I voted for Bill Shorten as Prime Minister, you voted for Malcolm Turnbull but…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s true…

ANTHONY ALBANESE: With regard to this issue, it’s important that people know that the Dean Smith bill, of course a WA Senator went through a whole process in the Senate, so already compromise has occurred. The protections were included in the bill, indeed they’re in the title of the bill, it’s about marriage and religious protections and because of that I think Christopher is quite right and I will also be opposing amendments, both sides, all sides of parliament have a conscience vote on these issues but I think dean Smith deserves a great deal of congratulations for getting this right and I think once this occurs as well, people will really wonder what the fuss was about, because for most of your listeners it will have no impact of course on their lives, on their marriages, on their relationships, on their family, all it will do is just give some people who currently don’t enjoy what myself and Christopher did with our respective wives, Carmel and Carolyn, the opportunity to celebrate that relationship in front of their family and friends. And one of the things that will happen; I’ll put my Tourism Shadow Minister hat on here is, this is a huge boon for the economy, there will be a big economic boost and Australia as an international destination and I would hope that WA will get more than its share of that people it is such a good tourist destination, will see people coming to Australia.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Anthony and I love a wedding. It’s the only place my children are prepared to allow me to dance on the dance floor; anywhere else would be completely unacceptable.

JOURNALIST: I was an MC at a wedding a few weeks ago and it was fantastic.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You would have been boogieing the night away

JOURNALIST: Were you DJ as well?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He does love the DJing

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I did a whole range of things. It was actually someone who Christopher knows, Allan Griffin who was a former Minister

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Of course, I saw he married again.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It was a fantastic celebration, I mean it really is an occasion where people come together and just are able to celebrate essentially, a couple’s relationship but also you run into people who you, this wedding was in Melbourne, I saw people I hadn’t seen in years, so it’s a great thing.

JOURNALIST: It certainly is. Anthony Albanese, Christopher Pyne, we will wrap up our first edition of the Odd couple here in Perth Live on 6PR.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Great to be with you.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Thanks for having us

JOURNALIST: Really appreciate your time.