ABC 891
04 Sep 2013
Transcipt Subjects: Carbon Tax; Election 2013 campaign
EO&E.......
(Preceded by song and interview with band The Beards)
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Rowan Ramsey’s got a beard.
PRESENTER:
He has got a beard…
PYNE:
He looks like a US Civil War general. Yes, he’s got a very nice beard and we can all move to Grey on that basis and vote for Rowan Ramsey.
PRESENTER:
In that case we’d be in even bigger trouble. Good morning Mark Butler.
BUTLER:
I try to grow a beard every summer, but in vain.
PRESENTER:
Mind you, your predecessor in Port Adelaide had a beard did he not?
BUTLER:
He was a bearded man, he was a bearded man for the 20 years he represented Port Adelaide…
PYNE:
He was a bearded man. When I grow a beard it grows red…
PRESENTER:
Really?
PYNE:
Yes, a red beard - it’s bizarre. I have photographs of me as a child…
PRESENTER:
With a red beard?
PYNE:
No, no, not with a red beard. No.
BUTLER:
That awful image is going to stay with me for years.
PYNE:
If I could finish, when I was 10 or 11 I had bright red hair and then so therefore obviously my true colour is red and then when I grow a beard, it’s red. But I’m not red everywhere.
PRESENTER:
It would be the only red thing about you.
PRESENTER:
Sorry, what do you mean, you’re not a natural? What do you mean you’re not red everywhere?
PYNE:
Well I don’t know why my beard is red because I’m not red anywhere else.
PRESENTER:
No.
BUTLER:
Can we move on from this.
PRESENTER:
We’re not talking about the map of Tasmania here.
PYNE:
No stop it, I’m talking about my hair being red.
PRESENTER:
Oh sorry, the hair on your head? Oh, sorry sorry. When you say…
PYNE:
The hair on my head.
PRESENTER:
Sorry, sorry. I thought you said…
PYNE:
God, you people are hopeless.
PRESENTER:
It’s like that Rooty Hill interview we did with Mark Butler.
PRESENTER:
You’re not a Fanta pants?
PYNE:
Stop!
PRESENTER:
Alright, alright. Mark Butler is there anything you want to share?
PYNE:
This is the worst interview I’ve ever done in my life.
PRESENTER:
Is there anything you want to share with us Mark Butler?
BUTLER:
No no, I think I’m just dry retching.
PRESENTER:
Mark Butler where are you?
BUTLER:
I’m in Melbourne at the moment.
PRESENTER:
You’re in Melbourne, because Chris Pyne is in our studio for better or worse.
PRESENTER:
Yes, yes. We should say that.
PRESENTER:
You’re on 891 ABC breakfast. Mark Butler, on a serious note here. You are the Minister for Climate Change, do you seriously think that the ALP will want to front up, if you lose the election on Saturday and the polls say you will, we don’t know that. If you lose the election on Saturday, will you want to front up and fight a campaign on a carbon tax?
BUTLER:
Well, there was a bit of commentary on this yesterday and I tried to suggest to people they are getting a bit ahead of themselves, the election is not until Saturday. We don’t know what the result will be, we certainly don’t know what the result of the Senate will be. But I was making the point that there are certain core policy decisions the ALP has been advocating for years and in the area of climate change we’ve had this position since late 1980, before the Australian Greens existed as a political party and we’ve taken essentially the same Emissions Trading Scheme model to five elections in a row now and the idea that hypothetically if we lose the election on Saturday we would simply dump that policy position, dump that long standing policy on say industrial relations is a fantasy. It has never worked that way. It didn’t work that way in 2007 for the Coalition. And I don’t expect it to work that way after the election if we lose.
PRESENTER:
But at what point would Labor recognise that the Coalition would have a mandate on the carbon tax? Would it be if you get a huge majority, a small majority, at what point, what is the tipping point, what is threshold?
BUTLER:
Well I’m not going to get into those sort of hypotheticals, but this new theory of mandate is a fallacy. It has never worked that way here in Australia. And I don’t think it would be healthy in terms of a vibrant parliamentary debate for opposition…
PRESENTER:
Kim Beazley took a very different view didn’t he after the election?
BUTLER:
Kim Beazley did it in one election…but let’s think about …
PRESENTER:
He said, he said, the people sent a very…
BUTLER:
He did in one election which he lost anyway…
PYNE:
So did Paul Keating…
BUTLER:
…but in 2007, the first, the first parliamentary vote in 2007 after the WorkChoices election, we introduced legislation to abolish workplace contracts, individual contracts and the opposition voted against it. We took an Emissions Trading Scheme to the election as a core election promise in 2007, our first act was to ratify Kyoto, Indeed, the Liberal Party…
PYNE:
You’ve had a good run, Mark.
BUTLER:
…took that same policy proposition and voted against it…
PRESENTER:
Chris Pyne?
BUTLER:
This idea of a mandate is a new invention.
PYNE:
He’s still going.
PRESENTER:
Chris Pyne, Chris Pyne?
PYNE:
Well two things. Mark Butler has made it absolutely clear that if you want to vote to get rid of the carbon tax, you have to vote Liberal in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. In the seventy two hours left in the election, this election is all about a referendum on the carbon tax.
PRESENTER:
It’s not about stopping the boats?
PYNE:
If you vote Labor, if you vote Labor you will keep the carbon tax. If you vote Liberal, you will get rid of the carbon tax. Mark Butler couldn’t have made the choice starker and I thank him for doing it.
PRESENTER:
Okay, if the reality is however that you win a majority in the lower house and you do not in the Senate, and the Greens block a combination of the Greens and the ALP block your attempt to repeal the carbon tax – what do you do there, do you seriously think that people have the stomach for another election campaign?
PYNE:
Well let’s not put the cart before the horse. Firstly, there is an election on Saturday that hasn’t been won by anyone yet. Secondly, Labor hasn’t yet decided to commit political suicide twice by opposing the abolition of the carbon tax. And I would be surprised if wiser heads didn’t prevail in the Labor Party post the election should they lose on Saturday. But what they have done is made the choice very stark. If you want to abolish the carbon tax, you must vote Liberal in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Mark Butler has made this election in the last three days about the core issue, abolishing the carbon tax.
PRESENTER:
Christopher Pyne…
BUTLER:
What we made clear is a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister and I, that if re-elected, we would move from the carbon tax to a fully-fledged Emissions Trading Scheme from next year. This is the policy that has been adopted all around the world, the policy that John Howard adopted late in his Prime Ministership and took to the 2007 election. So there is tosh about the carbon tax should be put to one side…
PRESENTER:
Mark Butler…
BUTLER:
We have made it very clear we would terminate the carbon tax if we are elected.
PYNE:
Oh you haven’t terminated the carbon tax… you are forecasting it to rise to $38!
BUTLER:
There is draft legislation out there and the commitment by ours that if elected the carbon tax goes, we move quicker to an Emissions Trade Scheme, so it puts this carbon tax costs to one side…
PYNE:
Mark, PEFO, PEFO, the pre-economic forecasts say that you are planning to raise $250 million more in revenue in the next twelve months from the carbon tax. So you hardly are abolishing it.
PRESENTER:
Mark Butler, does this, does this reflect on your campaign that after five weeks Tony Abbott has got you right back where he wants you, talking about the carbon, talking about an unpopular tax?
BUTLER:
Well, no. What happened is that this debate stated with Tony Abbott’s address to the Press Club where it became utterly clear that from the first time he admitted he was not going to be able to reach the target of a 5% reduction in carbon pollution by 2020 with his dud of a policy Direct Action. Expert after expert has been saying this for months, that this policy simply won’t deliver the sort of reduction in carbon pollution Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt said it would and if it were to do so they would have to spend billions and billions of dollars more. So this is what started the debate, it was a debate about Direct Action Policy…
PRESENTER:
Okay.
BUTLER:
…which, which we have been saying, and expert after expert has been saying it simply a dud of a policy…
PYNE:
Well, for three years…
BUTLER:
A model that only the republican party…
PRESENTER:
Chris Pyne?
BUTLER:
…and the Liberal Party advocate.
PRESENTER:
Yeah, okay. Chris Pyne, when you promise to cut the cost of energy bills by removing the carbon tax…
PYNE:
Yes.
PRESENTER:
…do you mean power will be cheaper than it currently is, or is it one of these trick promises oh it will be cheaper than it would otherwise be if the carbon tax was put on top of it?
PYNE:
The South Australian energy regulator says that if the Coalition wins the election and abolishes the carbon tax, there will be an immediate cut in electricity prices…
PRESENTER:
So, under, you are promising…
PYNE:
A cut in electricity prices. That’s what the South Australian energy regulator has said.
PRESENTER:
But hang on, I want to know what you are, you are promising that my power bill and all the power bills of our listeners would be cheaper than they are right now?
PYNE:
Correct.
BUTLER:
Well Christopher Pyne should catch up. South Australian power prices aren’t regulating anymore.
PRESENTER:
Ah, Mark Butler…
PYNE:
He was talking about, the energy regulator was talking about the outcome of a cut to the carbon tax. And Mark Butler said that Tony Abbott put this issue back on the agenda on Monday. We have been saying we would abolish the carbon tax from the moment that Julia Gillard broke her promise that there would be no carbon tax under the government I lead. Mark Butler on Tuesday went off the script and said that Labor was divided over what Labor should do about the carbon tax post the election. Kevin Rudd tried to clean up the mess and ever since then because of Mark butler’s engagement in this, we have been debating the carbon tax.
PRESENTER:
Mark Butler, just some final thoughts, this is the last time we will talk to you in this sort of formal titter tat with Chris Pyne before the election, we hope obviously to continue after the election, do you, in your, you are very much involved in the Rudd campaign, do you think, do you muse what would have happened if you stuck with Julia Gillard, would you be better off or worse off at this point of the campaign?
BUTLER:
Well no I don’t. I mean after, after the weekend I am sure, win, lose or draw, both Christopher and I will reflect on what has happened particularly out of the last five weeks, we all do, but when you are in the middle of a campaign, particularly in the last week of the campaign, you just focus on the job. Our job is to argue of the policy proposition that we are putting before the people and that’s all I am focussed on until Saturday night. And I will be watching the football.
PRESENTER:
You’ll only be watching the football?
PYNE:
Well, I’ll be watching, I’ll be watching the election night coverage.
BUTLER:
Well I’ll have two, I’ll have two TVs going, two TVs, one with the football, one with the election coverage.
PRESENTER:
You expect it to be over, that is the election, fairly quickly on?
BUTLER:
I can watch two TVs at watch.
PRESENTER:
Okay.
PYNE:
I think you stumbled there again, Mark.
PRESENTER:
Will last as long as a footy game?
PYNE:
I think the truth is that if they stuck with Julia Gillard they would be doing much better in Adelaide because Julia Gillard is an Adelaide girl and Kevin Rudd spent three years undermining her, cut her down politically and I think that in Adelaide particularly not just the federal electorate of Adelaide, the metropolitan area, I think the public have some sympathy for the way Julia Gillard was not allowed to get to an election by Kevin Rudd and the faceless men of the Labor Party.
PRESENTER:
And if Tony Abbott had not won the leadership ballot against Malcolm Turnbull by one vote, would you be sitting even in a more comfortable position in the pols?
PYNE:
I think four years is a long time in politics and I don’t think musing on what would have happened if that hadn’t been around the other way, if it had been the other way.
PRESENTER:
Now you are apparently, we will get this from Mark Butler as well, your pre-election night feast is a cheese burger and…?
PYNE:
Quarter pounder with cheese, a cheese burger, a regular thick shake and regular fries.
PRESENTER:
Do you throw up after that?
PYNE:
No, it isn’t that much actually. And I do it every election, it is my, it is one of my superstitious things, and it is my, it is the only time I rarely eat McDonalds. In fact, somebody very rudely said that I got somebody else to take a bite out of that quarter pounder with cheese on Sunday.
PRESENTER:
Now Mark Butler, Mark Butler?
PRESENTER:
Do you have any superstitions?
BUTLER:
This is only my third election and I haven’t yet developed a habit like Christopher has but if I had it certainly wouldn’t be a quarter pounder with cheese.
PYNE:
Yum. I love it.
PRESENTER:
Mark Butler, thank you for talking to us.
BUTLER:
Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks Chris.
PRESENTER:
Federal Labor MP for Port Adelaide, Minister for Climate Change. Christopher Pyne, Liberal MP for the federal seat of Sturt and he is Shadow Minister for Education. Both of them really at the centre of their respective campaigns and we look forward to talking to them next Wednesday if not sooner.
[ENDS]