ABC 891

SUBJECTS: Submarines; automatic electoral roll updates

E&OE................................

(Greetings omitted)

Presenter: The big news around Adelaide will be this new defence test site which is going to be set up at Port Adelaide, and yet, and look that’s great they’ve lots of jobs down at Port Adelaide. The Fin Review though reports that we have one of the worst submarine fleets in the world for a country of our standing and that if we are going to try and do this all over again another batch of freshly designed built Australian submarines would cost us $36 billion. Mark Butler as Member for Port Adelaide, how much money can we throw at building subs that really, according to this report, aren’t up to scratch?

Butler: Well this is a great announcement for Port Adelaide and as the Member for Port Adelaide I welcome it. And it is something that we weren’t able to do in previous generations, which is to test the propulsion system of a submarine before it’s actually installed and that is the critical factor about whether or not a sub is going to be quiet, whether it’s going to be detected. So this is a really good announcement and it’s going to significantly improve our capacity to build or to assemble a submarine here in, or fleet of submarines here in Port Adelaide. But the Government still hasn’t made a decision about what of the various options that have been floated is going to be the option for Australia. The non-negotiable is we need a new fleet of submarines. I mean defence experts argue that a range of different types of defence hardware, different planes, surface ships such as the Destroyer, what everyone agrees on though, is that we need a new fleet of submarines. And the demands of Australia, what Australia needs is quite unique. We need a fleet of submarines that has a long range, unlike a lot of, for example a lot of European countries and we have also taken the decision that we will not be going down the nuclear path. So a non-nuclear sub with the sort of range that we want is quite a unique beast and so we’re having to make those kinds of decisions as a government within the confines of the particular needs of Australia.

Presenter: Christopher Pyne?

Pyne: Well the Coalition’s commitment, David, is that whatever decision is made by either this Government or a future government; the submarines will be based, built or assembled, maintained in Adelaide.  Now that is very important for our city and our state especially with the collapse of Olympic Dam and the manufacturing industry being under such extraordinary pressure. So South Australia’s future is guaranteed in terms of submarines. I agree with Mark Butler that a submarine capacity is vitally important to Australia’s defence interests and makes us a serious country in the region to have that kind of capability. And while I read those stories in the Financial Review and elsewhere about supposedly defective submarines, I’ve been in Parliament for almost 20 years and there are always stories about one project or another not being up to scratch and I think that has a lot to do with agendas within defence and within government.

Presenter: (inaudible)…come from a UK submarine expert John Cole is going to be handed to the Minister, and it says that Australia’s submarines are far less reliable then similar fleets overseas according to a highly critical independent review that may kill off the option of building an updated version of the Collins class in South Australia.

Pyne: Well there will be a new fleet of submarines under a Coalition government; my only concern is that with the Government’s extraordinary cuts to the defence budget which has reduced our spending on defence to the lowest level since 1938 as a percentage of GDP, that under a Labor government the submarines simply won’t go ahead because Labor will take another opportunity to save money and spend it on other priorities.

Presenter: Mark Butler another story which is in the national news today is how poorly Australian primary school students have scored compared to, well have scored the lowest of any English speaking nation in an international test of reading. How do you respond to that, after what is it, five years of Federal Labor? Do you take any responsibility for that or is this what we get when we test and we move on from the test?

Butler: Well I think everyone should take responsibility for these results. They are as Peter Garret has said this morning a significant wake up call for all Governments and all education authorities. The test as I understand it was taken in about 2010 which is when a number of our significant targeted funding programs for example to boost literacy, to boost numeracy and for teacher quality were only starting to kick in and since that time we have started to see some pleasing results in parts of the school sector around literacy and numeracy. But we don’t want to embellish what is a very alarming set of results, and they really do reinforce the need for school reform to be a very significant priority for the whole country, not just the Commonwealth Government, although we are a significant player in this, but for the whole country.

Presenter: Were you surprised Mark Butler at yesterday’s Newspoll which shows that Labor is effectively finishing 2012 where it began it and that is in a very bad position?

Butler: Well I think there are a range of stories in that Newspoll. One is that the personal ratings of the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader haven’t shifted that much over the last few months.

The net disapprovals of the Opposition Leader remain very, very low and the preferred Prime Minister ratings remain in a good level for the Prime Minister, but the primary vote change in the Newspoll was disappointing after a number of months of improvement for the Labor Party’s primary vote. But look next year is really the championship year, it’s the year when there’ll be an election and although we all would have preferred to end the year with a primary vote and a two party preferred vote ahead of the Coalition, we’ve toughed it out this year, put through some very substantial, but difficult reforms and we’re looking forward to starting the year with a very positive agenda leading into the election.

Presenter: Christopher Pyne, what’s the Opposition got against enrolling young people who aren’t on the rolls at the moment?

Pyne: Well the problem with enrolling anyone simply by automatic update on computer is that it allows rorting on a grand scale because there is no identification required to sign a form, lodge your enrolment. Now the Coalition’s view is that you should require identification to enrol, you should require identification to vote. My view is that for us to have faith in our democracy we have to be certain that the election result actually reflects genuine Australians going to the ballot box or voting by post in an election and Labor has never had that commitment. The one and half million potentially people who will be potentially enrolled automatically, I just don’t have faith that we will have the same level of scrutiny and accountability that they are genuine voters that we have through having identification for enrolment now.

Presenter: It’s not that this system of automatically updating will capture a lot of young people and according reports those people are likely to vote Labor. Is this some sort of Labor conspiracy, Mark Butler?

Butler: Well if it is a Labor conspiracy that involves the electoral commission, because the electoral commission called for this change in its submission to the recent Parliamentary Inquiry into the last election. It’s a system that the New South Wales Liberal Government operates under; indeed it doesn’t go as far as the NSW system. It’s a system that the Victorian Government operates under a Liberal Government. So to beef this up as some sort of Labor rort really is beyond the pale. I think people that now where they have reliable data sources, like Centrelink, like the Motor Rego Department is really the sorts of sources we’re talking about. Where that information is held by one government agency, it should be shared by another government agency and this really is what we’re doing. And it’s not an automatic enrolment in the sense that as I understand it, what happens then is that the AEC after receiving that data from Centrelink or the Motor Rego Department writes to the person and says well we understand this is your change of details and you have 28 days to let us know if that is wrong, if it is not wrong then your electoral enrolment will change. In a digital age, this is very sensible change.

Presenter: Mark Butler thank you for coming in, and Christopher Pyne thank you, you often come into the studio. You’re not able to do it today but we appreciate the effort that both you gentlemen make to make yourselves accessible to our listeners every Wednesday and we hope can continue it next year. Merry Christmas Mark Butler.

Butler: Merry Christmas, David and to your listeners and to Christopher.

Presenter: And to you Christopher Pyne.

Pyne: Well I’m sorry I dropped out before; I assume Mark didn’t want me to comment on the education results but thank you to all of your listeners and Happy New Year and look forward to the new year.

Presenter: Christopher Pyne, thank you.

Pyne: Thanks you.

ENDS