ABC News Radio

SUBJECTS: Carbon Tax; Coalition Speakers List; Labor Leadership; Asylum Seeker Legislation

E&OE… 

Marius Benson: Christopher Pyne, the big issue this week in Parliament, obviously with the carbon bills that the Government introduced.  Malcolm Turnbull says those bills now introduced before Parliament, the scheme proposed by the Government, is pretty much that which was backed by John Howard and likewise negotiated by him and Kevin Rudd.  Is this pretty much the Howard Scheme you’re debating now? 

Christopher Pyne: Well, any scheme that’s a carbon tax or a carbon price, an emissions trading scheme or a carbon pollution reduction scheme has similar features, but the point is the circumstances in the world have dramatically changed since then.  The failure of the Copenhagen conference at the end of 2009 meant the good will that existed in Australia towards creating such a scheme has evaporated because the rest of the world is not moving in the same direction. 

Benson: Can you shed some light on one of the footnotes in the debate this week which involves Malcolm Turnbull, and he was asked about it last night on Lateline, which was he had to remove his name from a speakers list on the bill which caused some embarrassment suggesting some dissent on his part.  There was the suggestion that you might have put his name on the speakers list.  Is that the case? 

Pyne: No.  If anybody seriously thinks that I’m the person that puts names on the speakers list I think we’ve reached a stage of absurdity.  As the Manager of Opposition Business, obviously I don’t trundle down to the Whips Office and write the names of my colleagues on the speakers list.  I have about two and a half billion more important things to do.  Speakers lists are put together by the whips office and I think there was an inadvertent mistake that all Shadow Cabinet ministers were put down on the list, but Malcolm will speak when he chooses to speak. 

Benson: Malcolm Turnbull backs you up in the view that that level of detail wouldn’t involve you.  He said you wouldn’t be involved in that sort of administrative detail, but he says the person asking the question knows Christopher Pyne very well.  He’s very cunning.  Do you recognise yourself in that description, very cunning? 

Pyne: I don’t know what Malcolm said on Lateline so I won’t be commenting on it. 

Benson: That’s what he said about you in general terms that you are very cunning.  Is that accurate? 

Pyne: I think he meant that in a friendly way.  Malcolm is a very good friend of mine. 

Benson: Malcolm Turnbull made another point on Lateline when he said that he thinks Kevin Rudd will return to the top job.  Do you think Kevin Rudd will be Labor Leader again? 

Pyne: I certainly think the Labor Party is struggling with a political message and a level of incompetence and ineptness which is quite unprecedented in modern Australian history and how they choose to manage that in the future is really a matter for them.  If they change to Kevin Rudd it won’t remove the foundational problems that the Labor Party has; that they don’t believe in anything anymore and they don’t know who they should be appealing to in the nation.  And that is not going to change whether the leader is Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd. 

Benson: What about the original decision to get rid of Kevin Rudd.  Malcolm Turnbull describes that as a collosal error.  What do you think? 

Pyne: There’s no doubt that the move against Kevin Rudd when he was the Prime Minister by a panicked Government, as it was then, dealt Labor a mortal blow and the Australian people punished them on election day at the end of 2010 and still feel that they never had the opportunity themselves to remove Kevin Rudd, which they wanted to do in terms of the Australian people because it was denied to them by the Labor Party. 

Benson: Can I go to next week when the Government says it will introduce legislation to ensure it has the power to send asylum seekers offshore after the high court decision, which undermined that power.  You the Opposition are saying you won’t be supporting any bill which sends people to Malaysia.  Is that the case? 

Pyne: We haven’t even seen the legislation yet because the Government hasn’t produced it.  The policies of the Howard Government did work and they should return to Nauru and Temporary Protection Visas and where possible turning around the boats. 

Benson: I’ll leave it there.  Christopher Pyne, thank you very much. 

Pyne: Thank you Marius. 

ENDS