RN Drive Patricia Karvelas

PATRICIA KARVELAS: The savings made from cuts to family tax and welfare have been earmarked to fund the NDIS, but the crossbench is far from convinced. The Government says increasing taxes will be the only way to fund the scheme if the omnibus bill is not supported. Christopher Pyne is the Minister for Defence Industry and the Leader of the House. Welcome to the program.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Patricia, it’s great to be with you again. It’s becoming a regular event.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Yeah, will you consider other options to increasing taxes to fund the NDIS? I mean, isn’t there any other way to do it other than making Australians pay higher taxes?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we have absolutely no desire or intention to raise taxes. Labor is the high tax party, we are the low tax party. It’s Labor that went to the election with a slew of new taxes.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: But the Treasurer put it on the table, why?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, he hasn’t done that, he’s just stated the bleeding obvious which is that if you’re going to increase spending, you have to fund that through either savings, borrowing, or increased taxes. Now, Labor last time they were in government, massively increased spending. They did both increasing taxes and borrowing and left us with a massive debt and a massive deficit. We are a responsible government and we’re saying that if there’s going to be spending measures like the child care reforms which are vital to a million families in Australia who use child care and the NDIS, which we strongly support as a measure, then these things need to be funded. Whereas Labor left government with an NDIS that wasn’t funded.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, what you’re saying is that you need to fund it but you … either way, the Treasurer has put on the table that the option is increasing taxes if other spending cuts can’t be found. That means it’s on the table, doesn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, the reality ..

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Interrupts] So it’s not on the table, let’s just clarify that; tax cuts not on the table?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We have absolutely no intention to increase taxes but the Treasurer’s saying …

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Interrupts] Then why mention it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Because the Treasurer’s saying to the crossbench and to the Labor Party we have a proposal, a sensible proposal, to increase spending on child care, to find the savings in other areas of the social security portfolio, for example taking away the supplement that was a compensation for the carbon tax when there is no carbon tax, it seems perfectly sensible. We’re putting that on the table and Labor is saying they won’t support that, Nick Xenophon is saying he won’t support that so he must have other savings. Now, yesterday he nominated five-point …

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Talks over] He does, he suggest- yeah, defence, that’s right.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He nominated $5.6 billion worth of savings in defence and when I held his feet to the fire on that issue he instantaneously reversed his position and said he wasn’t talking about savings in defence. So, it’s very hard to tie Senator Xenophon down to what he actually thinks we can do to fund these child care reforms and we’re saying to the Labor Party, if you’re against these … ways of funding these spending measures, then you need to tell us how you’re going to do it.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, they have given you some suggestions it’s just that you don’t support them. They have other ways that they believe that it can happen. For instance, getting rid of your corporate tax cuts, not going through with that, looking at negative gearing reform; they have a suite of measures, you’re just not willing to embrace them. The only one you’ve put on the table is increasing taxes.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, they banked the corporate taxes change in the election and now they’re stepping away from that and we are not increasing taxes, Patricia. I have to pull you up on that.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Talks over] Well, you need to actually say that, don’t you?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’re not increasing taxes.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: The Treasurer mentioned it so ever since he mentioned it, now it’s in the discussion.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He’s made a blinding statement of the obvious which is that if you’re going to spend more money, you either have to do it through savings measures, which is our preferred method, or higher taxes, or increased borrowing. That’s a statement of the obvious. It doesn’t mean that there are taxes on the agenda.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: If you’re just tuning into RN Drive Christopher Pyne is my guest. He’s the Minister for Defence Industry and the Leader of the House. 0418226576 is the number if you want to text us. You can also tweet us using the hashtag #RNDrive.

Last year was the year of compromise. This year you seem to be pressuring the crossbench more. I mean, you’ve used NDIS, for instance, as leverage … and with saying that if they don’t support this omnibus bill that the NDIS gets it. Is it time to rethink the strategy? Because it seems that it’s a much more aggressive muscular approach than what we were seeing at the end of last year.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we haven’t said that Patricia. We haven’t said that about the NDIS. The NDIS is going ahead as planned. We will fund it because we are a responsible government. We won’t fund it through higher taxes or borrowings, we’ll fund it through savings and what we’ve simply said is that the savings achieved through the omnibus bill will be applied to the NDIS so that people can actually see where the money will be going. That is not the NDIS gets it, as you put it, if the omnibus bill doesn’t pass. That’s [indistinct] …

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Talks over] Then why were the two linked? Because the two were linked earlier this week.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We’re trying to explain to the crossbenchers where the money will go from the savings. That’s not suggesting that the NDIS is not going to be funded.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Why mention it then?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, because it helps the crossbench to see why they should support the omnibus bill.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Hasn’t really helped, though, has it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, let’s see. We haven’t … the omnibus bill hasn’t come to a vote in the Senate yet.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, you still think they might support it even though the Nick Xenophon team has made it clear that they won’t support it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m a great believer in negotiation.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, it means you’ll have to change your position, doesn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, good governments change their position, good governments negotiate with the crossbench that’s been given to us by the Australian people. Foolish governments refuse to negotiate, refuse to see that 90 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing. That’s the way we’ve operated since Malcolm Turnbull’s been Prime Minister. It’s been a very successful way of operating. Last year we got through significant legislation like, for example, the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission, and large bills including savings measures. So, Malcolm Turnbull’s approach which is to talk to the crossbenchers and negotiate with them is much more sensible than saying 100 per cent of nothing is what we’re going to end up with.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: In releasing its report on the ongoing investigation into this South Australian power issue, the Executive General Manager Joe Adamo – this has just come through – called for a united approach to managing the energy transition in Australia this afternoon. Will you commit to that, a united approach?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, what we want to do, Patricia, is ensure that we have a stable power supply, as lower prices as possible, and a sensible all-of-the-above approach to how we get that energy. So, we’re not going to ideologically oppose clean coal power stations simply because that’s the green left position. There are 700 clean coal power stations operating in Asia right now, 90 in Japan alone and 45 more being planned. There aren’t any in Australia, which is madness.

But we also support wind power, solar power, hydro power; of course we do. Only a fool wouldn’t support renewable energy, but you have to supply base load power as well as having renewable energy options. That’s called an all-of-the-above approach, it’s mature and sensible, whereas Labor on the other hand have described what’s happened in South Australia in recent months as an experiment and a hiccup. Where businesses are closing, people are losing their jobs, the economy is going backwards in my state, and the Labor Party says we’re not going to change our position despite all the evidence showing they are delusional.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Given there’s been no interest from business in building a clean coal-fired power station and that it would take, what, I think the time frame is seven years until you could even get one up and running, do you think it’s a realistic promise?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Absolutely it is. I mean, the reality is that the Labor Party, when they created the Clean Energy Finance Corporation specifically forbade it from investing in clean coal technology which is ideology gone mad and quite frankly just stupid. So, of course there hasn’t been a clean coal-fired power station built in Australia. The Labor …

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Talks over] But there’s also absolutely no interest from business to do it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, because the Labor Party in every state and nationally would send the message to the boards of these companies in Australia and around the world that they are violently opposed to clean coal power stations which is obviously not a sensible position. But for the board, to then invest in a clean coal-fired power station would of course be an interesting prospect. So, what we’re trying to do is create the environment where such an investment can be made. We’re also talking about the critical need to have storage of the power that is being created, whether by wind power or other forms of power like hydro. Labor in South Australia did not commit to any storage of any kind, so when the wind doesn’t blow, there is no power from the wind power and yet 40 per cent of our state’s power is supplied by wind. And the blackout that we had last week was because wind power’s share- the share of power fell to 2.5 per cent. That was the capacity that they could provide. So when the wind doesn’t blow and there’s been no storage, the power goes out. That’s what’s happened in this experiment, as Jay Weatherill calls it, of wind power in South Australia.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, should one be built in your home state of South Australia? Would your government put money into a project like that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we’ll have to wait and see how this …

PATRICIA KARVELAS: [Talks over] Would you like that to happen?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I have absolutely nothing against clean coal power. I am not ideologically driven about clean coal power. If clean coal power will supply the base load power to our state, we should do it. The irony is, last week when we had the black out and the wind dropped down to 2.5 per cent of providing power to my state, we had to suck more energy from Victoria, which is powered by brown coal-fired power stations. That’s how smart the Greens’ and Labor’s position is on these power issues.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Just a final question before I let you go Christopher Pyne. You spoke with the US Defense Secretary last week, did he give you any sense that the end was near for National Security Advisor Michael Flynn?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: [Laughs] No, obviously we didn’t talk about that.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: You didn’t get the scoop then?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, we didn’t get a scoop there. We talked about, obviously, the very strong relationship between the US and Australia, we talked about the Joint Strike Fighter Program and the United States’ very strong commitment to it. Of course, that’s vitally important to our own national security and we are also committed to it and we talked about me meeting him in Washington DC when travel there in April and it was a very, very warm conversation. What your listeners probably don’t know is that Jim Mattis used to be the commander of the corps in the Marines that has Waltzing Matilda as their theme song and the Southern Cross as their emblem because of the relationship that they had with Australia during the Second World War. So, he feels very warmly inclined towards out country.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Many thanks for your time this evening.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We shouldn’t leave it so long next time.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Christopher Pyne there, he’s the Minister for Defence Industry and the Leader of the House.