ABC 891
28 May 2014
Transcipt E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – ABC 891 Adelaide with Matthew Abraham, David Bevan and Mark Butler
28 May 2014
SUBJECTS: South Australian State politics
COMPERE:
Mark Butler, Labor MP for Port Adelaide. He’s Opposition Climate Change spokesman, Mark Butler, welcome to the programme.
MARK BUTLER:
Good morning gentlemen.
COMPERE:
And Chris Pyne, Liberal MP for Sturt, Education Minister and new enemy of Martin Hamilton Smith, Chris Pyne, good morning to you.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Good morning gentlemen.
COMPERE:
Are you worried that if you keep pushing Martin Hamilton Smith, keep calling him names, keep calling him treacherous and a traitor that he will, he will reveal some of the dirt he has on the Liberal Party, some of the treachery and traitors who have operated within your ranks?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well Martin Hamilton Smith would want to move on from yesterday’s events because it is the greatest act of political betrayal in the State’s history. Martin Hamilton Smith is a former Liberal Leader and rather than going down in history as a great Liberal fighter and hero, he will go down in history as one of the most disgraceful acts against his own party, against his own family, his friends and his State. This is one of the worst Government’s that I have ever experienced and he has just decided to join it, and help keep it in office. It got 47 per cent of the vote. It is an illegitimate Government and Martin Hamilton Smith has just decided to join that Government. I think Labor MPs will be laughing at Martin Hamilton Smith behind his back, they’ll be horse laughing behind his back, they’ll be laughing behind his hands when they are in the same room as him. And I think it is a sad day that Martin is so deluded that he thinks that he has done the right thing for South Australia.
COMPERE:
You can’t… you wouldn’t rank this as the greatest act as treachery in the South Australian Liberal Party?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I can’t think of a greater one.
COMPERE:
What about Dean Brown’s relationship with Mike Rann while he was a member of John Olsen’s Cabinet?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I don’t think there has ever been a Liberal Leader…
COMPERE:
You know about that…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Matthew, I don’t think there has ever been a former Liberal Leader who has joined the Labor Party in a hung Parliament in order to keep them in Government.
COMPERE:
What about if a former Liberal Leader who was a serving Cabinet Minister was helping the Labor Party get into Government?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I don’t… I am not talking about ancient history. I am talking about what Martin Hamilton Smith did yesterday.
COMPERE:
You wouldn’t regard that as…
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
It is a red herring.
COMPERE:
Really?
COMPERE:
You put this in a historical context, you said this is the worst.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I think it is.
COMPERE:
We can think of something that might rival it.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well, you can talk about that all you like, I am not in the least bit interested in something that happened or is alleged to have happened in the 1990s. I am talking about Martin Hamilton Smith getting elected as a Liberal Member in March, and in May because he wants to be a part of the Government, and be a Minister, and in his own words ‘do things’ as a Minister, has decided to turn his back on the party and the Liberal family that gave him seventeen years in politics and sit on the Government benches as part of the worst Labor Government that I have ever seen in South Australia that is taking our State backwards at the rate of knots.
COMPERE:
Mark Butler, as a Labor MP and besties with Jay Weatherill, what does this say about the talent that is not in the Labor Party in South Australia, if this is where the Labor Party goes looking for its talent?
MARK BUTLER:
Well I think what it says is Jay taking a very strategic view about the Parliament that the people of South Australia delivered, all of us including him particularly as Premier in the election in March. You know, we have a history in South Australia of people taking these decisions, I mean the first Government of the Rann Government 2002-2006 as people would remember had Karlene and Rory in the Cabinet that was regarded then deeply unusual but I think delivered some of the best years of Government that we have seen recently as well. So there is a bit of a tradition here. I understand that Christopher is angry, and I understand that he is shocked. But I have to say if I was in his position, instead of throwing personal abuse as he has been doing over the last twenty four hours, and as Steven Marshall has been doing, I would like to think instead that I would be reflecting on the circumstances of my party, on the depths to which my party had sunk that would drive a former leader to conclude that the only way he could make a lasting contribution to his State is to leave that party and sooner or later wise heads in the South Australian Liberals are going to have to grapple with that question.
COMPERE:
Chris Pyne, is that a fair point? Does this show just an ultimate almost desperate frustration? If you want to have a contribution in Government, and you are a Liberal, well you are not going to in South Australia?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well I think…
COMPERE:
Unless you defect, sorry.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well, you’ll have to ask Martin Hamilton Smith about his own personal motivations for wanting to be a Cabinet Minister in a Labor Government, that’s a matter for him to answer.
COMPERE:
We have asked him, that’s what he’s said, really.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Yes well, I find it extraordinary that Mark Butler would see this through the prism of political tactics. This is the problem with Labor in South Australia. Everything is a political game. They think they are all congratulating themselves because they have managed to suborn a Liberal into taking a pass and joining their Government. What they really need to be doing is getting out of the way of the economy in South Australia and giving South Australians a chance to have a future. Now Martin Hamilton Smith decided to join this rabble and he will go down in history as a political traitor, there is nothing else he can do about it.
COMPERE:
Chris Pyne. Gentleman, thank you very much for joining us. We are sorry that it is a short segment this morning.
[ends]