Doorstop

SUBJECTS: Education system, Fair Work Australia investigation into Craig Thomson, pokie reform

E&OE… 

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think in a bizarre twist today, Julia Gillard has described the Australian education system as the runt in the litter and also saying that we are falling behind our Asian neighbours in terms of education outcomes.  Apart from being a bizarre turn of phrase and a strange twist in the Prime Minister’s description of her own education system, it surprises me that the Prime Minister would be making these statements as though somehow she had nothing to do with the education system for the last four years. 

Julia Gillard has either been the education minister or the Prime Minister for those four years.  She was behind the peculiarly-dubbed education revolution and she has been behind almost $20b of spending of tax payer’s dollars on school halls and laptop give-a-way programs and somehow she feels she has nothing whatsoever to do with the education system for the last four years.  She is the minister that decided to abolish the literacy and numeracy tuition vouchers of the Howard government and she has been the Prime Minister when programs for maths and science at schools and universities and for students have been abolished.  Those are the basic bread and butter programs for reading and writing and science and maths that parents expect and yet she has today decided to wash her hands of the so-called education revolution and pretend this is somebody else’s problem.  Julia Gillard has I think today misfired badly. 

It reminds me of the time where she said that parents should be rousing teachers for bad results something she stepped away from very quickly and I think it indicates she is under enormous pressure.  In another area where Julia Gillard is under enormous pressure is what she or what her office knew about the Fair Work investigation into the Member for Dobbell Craig Thomson back when it began in 2009.  In August last year, the revelation became public knowledge that Ben Hubbard, the Chief of Staff to Julia Gillard at the time, contacted Fair Work Australia to enquire about the investigation into Craig Thomson the Member for Dobell, an investigation that has taken 3 years and still not completed and we want to know from the Opposition’s point of view and I think the Australian people want to know, just what involvement Ben Hubbard, her office and herself had in the protection of Craig Thomson and the discussions about the Fair Work Australia investigation.  It beggars belief that an investigation could take three years into this matter which for most people would be an open and shut case.  The Prime Minister needs to explain what role she and her office and Ben Hubbard in particular had and the conversations they had with Fair Work Australia at the beginning of that investigation almost 3 years ago.

JOURNALIST: (Thomson recently stuck his head in the paper yesterday, what’s your view on that?)

PYNE: I think Craig Thomson feels very confident now that the government is entirely reliant on him to stay in office.  He can basically say and do anything he wants knowing that Julia Gillard’s future is tied inevitably to him.   They are basically like those two characters in Papillon, Dustin Hoffman sees Steve McQueen and neither can operate without the other and he (Thomson) knows it and he will stick to Julia Gillard as she will stick to him if she wants the government to continue to survive.  A Prime Minister with any courage or a Prime Minister with any integrity would end this farce of a hung parliament reliant on a tainted Member of Parliament for survival, call for an election and allow for an unambiguous result so that the public can have a government that focuses entirely on cost of living pressures, the issues to do with job losses and on the concerns about education that have been highlighted today rather than a government that is totally focussed on survival and protecting the skin of the Prime Minister which is all this government does from day-to-day.

JOURNALIST: Is the Coalition still planning a vote of no confidence?

PYNE: We haven’t indicated that we would be moving a vote of no confidence.  What we have said is that a vote of no confidence is a very serious matter.  The Opposition would move it when it feels that the evidence is overwhelming of maladministration and failure of this government.  It has certainly has reached a nadir this year with the removal of Harry Jenkins, the dispatching of Andrew Wilkie in the last weekend and now the entire reliance on Craig Thomson to stay in office and Peter Slipper to remain as the speaker.  We will examine the answers we will get from the Prime Minister when Parliament returns about Craig Thomson.  She is yet to answer any of our questions in Parliament about Craig Thomson and the Fair Work Australia investigation. She has not made him make a comprehensive statement to the Parliament about all the allegations that surround him.  I think the pressure is now insurmountable given that she relies on him to stay in office and for her to do that and for her to answer the questions we have put to her in Question Time in the last few months.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

PYNE: Well certainly the government’s grip to power is shakier than a wet dog that has been left out in the winter and you would think that if the government had any integrity, if the prime Minister genuinely believes in Australian democracy, she would recognise that confidence in the Australian economy amongst the business sector, amongst Mums and Dads is at such a low ebb that we had a net loss of jobs last year.  People are hanging on to their money, businesses are not investing and the economy is languishing and the Prime Minister should give the Australian people the opportunity for an unambiguous government which can govern with a clear majority in the House of Representatives, whether that is Liberal or whether that is Labor. That is the foundation of the affluence and the prosperity of this nation going back 100 years.  We are not seeing this now and this has gone on too long and it is time the Prime Minister put an end to this farce and called an election or for the Parliament to vote her out in a vote of no confidence. 

JOURNALIST: We have just seen a lot of jobs go through this Toyota cut.  Considering the pressure on people and job security, do you have any concerns on the future of Holden and manufacturing here in South Australia in the wake of those job losses?

PYNE: Look, I think anybody who studies the manufacturing sector, the issues to do with the Australian dollar, our competitiveness in the labour market in comparison to other countries would be concerned about the manufacturing base here in South Australia. Holden has been a net exporter of vehicles and is in a strong position, but obviously with Toyota’s announcement at Altona, that would send fear through the workforce at Holden, and there is a billion dollar taxpayer subsidy for the car industry. It’s very important that we protect our car industry and protect those jobs and for that reason it is the worst time possible to be introducing a new carbon tax which will hit the manufacturing sector, the steel industry as heavily as any other, if not more than any other industry. So obviously a Coalition Government would not be introducing a carbon tax. Right now the workers at the Holden plants do not need the extra pressure of a carbon tax on their business, which must be requiring the executives at Holden to be thinking why they would keep investing in Australia when they are whacking another tax on top of all the other costs we have to pay.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

PYNE: We will continue to oppose the carbon tax. If we are elected at an election we will remove the carbon tax that will instantly reduce the pressure on Holden and Ford and Toyota and we therefore believe that is the best solution to the problems the manufacturing sector faces today. To remove carbon tax, to remove the uncertainty of an ambiguous Government we have today.

JOURNALIST: Julia Gillard has blamed the education results on previous Governments, what’s your view on that?

PYNE: Well, it’s farcical for Julia Gillard to return to that time honoured tradition that she has always done of blaming everybody else other than herself for a bad result. The truth is the Prime Minister can not get out from under the rock that she has created for herself in education. She is the Minister who coined the term the Education Revolution, it’s been a dud. The results released from the NAPLAN tests yesterday show either stagnation in the results or decline in the results. She spent close to $20 billion on school halls, on bricks and mortar and on laptop giveaways and the result of that has been a decline in Australia’s relative performance against Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea and Singapore. For the Prime Minister to try and blame a five year old former Government on these results is quite frankly a farcical and adds to my sense that I have that she is desperate and is lashing out with bizarre and peculiar remarks as she has today by describing our education system to be the runt of the litter and saying we are losing some imaginary race in our own minds against our Asian neighbours. We aren’t in a race with our Asian neighbours for education. We are trying to bring out the best in our students here in Australia. We want them to be the best in the world. They used to be the best in the world and in fact as recently as 12 years ago they were at the top of the tables. The Prime Minister only has herself to blame for the state of our education system. It is time she took responsibility for it and rather than trying to push the blame off to others and playing the blame game.

JOURNALIST: In regards to Pokies, do you think what they are doing in Canberra is a scam?

PYNE: I’m very concerned about the trial in Canberra for the mandatory pre-commitment scheme. When we go back to parliament I think we will need to start asking questions about that. We know that the ACT clubs, the pokies clubs there, provided donations to the ALP, I think it was $600,000 for the last election, but have been traditional supporters of the ALP, and so providing them with $36 million for the mandatory pre-commitment trial smells very much to me like the deals that we have been used to from the Labor party that line their own party coffins for election time. Nobody could forget the Centenary House debacle when the Labor party ensured that they would build a building in Canberra, charged extraordinary, extortionate rents, I think they were the same rents, if not more so than New York, London and Paris at times and they cleaned up as a political party. It seems very peculiar to me that ALP clubs or ALP affiliated clubs in terms of ACT pokies places would be the recipient of $36 million of taxpayers subsidies. And if any of that finds its way back to the Labor Party through donations in the next election, it would be utterly scandalous.

So I think the PM should today rule out receiving any donations from the ACT clubs for the next federal election. That is the only way she can guarantee that the taxpayers funds will not find their way, inadvertently or deliberately back to the ALP coffers for the next Federal election. If she was to indicate that she would not receive any donations from the ACT clubs that would put an end to the prospect that the ALP could benefit from the $36 million of taxpayer’s money going to ACT clubs.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

PYNE: Well I think if you check our electoral returns you will find that the ACT clubs have never made a donation to the Coalition.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

PYNE: Well I cant think of any pokies clubs that make donations to Coalition but we are talking about the ACT trial and there are $36 million of taxpayer’s funds being channelled to those clubs for the trial and the Prime Minister should today rule out receiving any of that money for donations from the ACT clubs, and the only way she can do that is by ruling out any donations from the ACT Clubs that are involved in this trial.

JOURNALIST: Just on the topic of 2012 and the New Year, in terms of key topics in this year, do you think immigration and the Australian asylum seekers policies will top that list?    

PYNE: I think there are two issues that will headline what I think will be an election year, and they are border security and economic security. The two issues that are of most concern to the Australian public are cost of living pressures, job insecurity and the question of new taxes. Aside from that the other great concerns is that our borders aren’t well protected,  the Labor party in abolishing the Howard Government’s policies in 2008 have opened the door to asylum seekers, the boat people and the people smuggling trade. So they will headline this year, there is no doubt about that.

Ends