ABC News 24

SUBJECTS: Fairfax/Nielsen/News Limited polls

E&OE…………

Michael Rowland: The Opposition's education spokesman Christopher Pyne joins us now from Parliament House. Mr Pyne, good morning to you. As you would have already seen, Labor gaining small rises in the primary vote in both polls but in both polls as well Julia Gillard out rates Tony Abbott as preferred Prime Minister. In the Newspoll she has a 14-point lead, the biggest lead she's had in more than a year. How do you read those polls?

Christopher Pyne: Good morning Michael. Well what we're seeing is the politics of personal denigration written large in Australia. The Labor Party has spent the last two weeks and the better part of the last few months demonising Tony Abbott in the same way as they did Campbell Newman before the Queensland State election. They want to destroy his character and Tony Abbott is being painted by the Labor Party is not the Tony Abbott that I know and in fact just this weekend Tony Abbott, as well as doing interviews and doorstops, spent Saturday doing a controlled burn-off with his local volunteer fire service and yesterday guided a blind runner to the end of their first marathon as their partner so the Tony Abbott I know is a caring, compassionate human individual, a man with a Rhodes scholarship, a man who went to Oxford and the most experienced would-be Prime Minister in Australia's history in terms of being in Government.

Rowland: Taking into account everything that's gone on in Federal politics, you believe the polls are solely result of from what you see as the denigration of Tony Abbott. No super trawler or off shore processing? Nothing else?

Pyne: I'm sure there are other aspects to it, but I think the primary purpose of the Labor Party's campaign of personal denegation of Tony Abbott in recent weeks has been to drive down his poll numbers. That is working but I don't think at the end of the day the Australian public will buy a campaign of personal denegation, of vilification. Unfortunately with the Labor Party, Michael, when they have their backs to the wall and they've tried everything else, they eventually turn to the chum bucket. That's what we've seen in the last fortnight. Turning to the chum bucket, throwing as much muck as they possibly can and hoping some will stick.

Rowland: Tony Abbott hasn't been guilty of negativity?

Pyne: Tony Abbott points out the deficiencies of a very bad government.

Rowland: He's run a relentless negative campaign, as you know, against the carbon tax. I'll quote you some of the viewer comments we are getting this morning. Ron on Facebook: "The public's growing tired of the opposition's continual negative campaigning". Helen on Facebook: "People are getting sick to death with Abbott and his attitude." What do you say to those concerns amongst voters?

Pyne: Well what I say to them Michael is that running a campaign against the carbon tax which the government promised not to introduce before the election and then introduced it is vastly different from a campaign of personal vilification of an individual which is what's happened to Tony Abbott in the past few months. Running a campaign against the carbon tax, against the government's failed border protection policies, against the government's inability to explain where the $120 billion is coming from for all their unfunded promises, that's politics. That's what people in politics should be doing, holding a government to account, not this campaign of personal denigration of Tony Abbott that we've seen in recent weeks.

Rowland: What about the campaign of denigration regarding the Prime Minister's past as a lawyer?

Pyne: Well the campaign that has been in the papers or the stories that have been in the papers are based on documents filed in the Federal Court, based on interviews with the Prime Minister when she was a lawyer at Slater and Gordon and her senior partners. They surround why she left Slater and Gordon. There are many questions left unexplained but that wasn't run by the opposition. That was run by those people involved in that case who were horrified at what's happened so you can't compare a campaign of personal vilification against a campaign of holding someone to account for matters that happened some time ago that are fully documented and you can read 'The Australian' to get all those stories.

Rowland: It wasn't ignored by the opposition. Come on, Christopher Pyne, Tony Abbott did pick it up. He used it to further raise questions about, as he saw it, the Prime Minister's character.

Pyne: Michael, you cannot compare the documented Federal Court documents detailing the involvement of fraud in the Australian Workers Union several decades ago or in fact 20-odd years ago with a personal campaign of denigration. Trying to make them relatively the same is really pretty disgraceful actually. The truth is one is documented fraud in the Australian Workers Union involving the former boyfriend of the Prime Minister. All of that is on the record. The rest is sheer conjecture, sheer hearsay, smear and innuendo and trying to put the two together is really quite wrong.

Rowland: By saying this is all about the personal denigration of Tony Abbott, these opinion poll results, are you conceding, Christopher Pyne, that the opposition's campaign against the carbon tax has been a bit of a squib?

Pyne: Well, you ask any Labor member that, Michael. I don't think you'll find that they think the carbon tax is very popular amongst voters. Everywhere I go in my electorate voters rail against two things primarily, one, they absolutely hate the carbon tax and the effect it's having on the cost of living, on electricity prices in particular and, two, they thing it's extraordinary that the government would have come to power and changed the border protection laws and we've had tens of thousands of illegal arrivals since then, 10,000 alone just this year which is now costing us billions of dollars a year in money we could have been spending on infrastructure or on other things of importance to the Australian public.

Rowland: Nielsen has Malcolm Turnbull 63% as preferred leader, Tony Abbott 30%. Are you going to be the one who taps Tony Abbott on the shoulder therefore, Christopher Pyne?

Pyne: Michael, you can try as much as you like to try and create leadership tension in the Liberal Party. It just isn't there.

Rowland: Coalition voters support Malcolm Turnbull over Tony Abbott. This isn't just general voters and Labor voters.

Pyne: I'm sure our friends would rather focus on trying to whip up leadership tensions in the Liberal Party than focus on the fact that Kevin Rudd is back and bigger than ever and doing his best to try and put himself back on the agenda. I know the press gallery don't like to write about Labor Party leadership, they much prefer Liberal Party leadership. The truth is there isn't any tension in the Coalition at all. Our job is to hold a very bad government to account and on behalf of the Australian people, try and get policies in place that will reduce the cost of living, protect our borders, restore integrity to the government and restore the budget bottom line

Rowland: Do you and Tony Abbott and the rest of the leadership group in the Coalition, Christopher Pyne, see any need to recalibrate your political strategy in the wake of these opinion polls?

Pyne: I think we need to keep doing what we do best which is to put out our own excellent policies like the return of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, maternity leave scheme, talk about the things that we're going to do. I think on the weekend Tony Abbott announced that we would built the Pacific Highway, finish the Pacific Highway at a cost of $5.6 billion, put out our own positive agenda while holding a rotten government to account and that's what we intend to continue to do.

Rowland: Christopher Pyne in Canberra thank you very much for your time this morning.

Pyne: Pleasure Michael, thank you.

ENDS