Sky News Agenda

SUBJECTS: Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper scandals;   E&OE……  David Speers:  Manager of Opposition Business, Christopher Pyne, joins me now from Adelaide.  Thanks for your time.  You’ve been calling on the Prime Minister to take action on both of these men, Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper, she now has.  Has she done the right thing? Christopher Pyne:  Well what the Prime Minister has confirmed is what the Opposition knew all along.  That it was absolutely intolerable for her government to be propped up by the two pillars of Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper.  But her magic tricks would put David Copperfield to shame given that really she hasn’t changed the status of Craig Thomson at all.  He will continue to vote with the Government.  So in fact she has lost nothing on the floor of the House.  And while she’s been prepared to disown Craig Thomson today, three years after the Opposition called on her to do so, three long years, she hasn’t disowned his vote.  In other words she hasn’t changed her position on the floor at all.  She’s simply trying to trick the press gallery and the people into thinking she has taken action when she hasn’t.  This is all just smoke and mirrors. Speers:  Well let’s go to each of them individually.  Craig Thomson, what more could the Prime Minister actually do?  It’s up to him once he’s left the Labor Party and is sitting as an Independent to decide which way he votes isn’t it? Pyne:  Well it’s taken three years for the Prime Minister to realise what the rest of the country knew three years ago.  That was Craig Thomson shouldn’t be sitting in the Labor caucus while these very serious allegations hang over him about his activity as secretary of the HSU.  She could take further action, David.  She could announce that Labor refuses to accept  Craig Thomson’s vote until the cloud hanging over him has been cleared.  These are very serious allegations.  The Howard Government refused to accept Mal Colston’s vote when he was in a similar position and the Government could refuse to accept Craig Thomson’s vote.  If it doesn’t, and it looks like the Prime Minister’s not going to take that action, then essentially she’s trying to just trick the Australian people into believing that she’s shown leadership while in fact she continues to get his support in the House. Speers:  But didn’t the Coalition accept the vote of Mary-Jo Fisher in the Senate when she was facing charges? Pyne:  Oh David this is a very poor argument from the Labor Party that Anthony Alabanese and Julia Gillard have been trying to push around for the last ten days while they were defending Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper and while they were clinging to them.  The truth is there are civil matters and there are civil matters.  There are all kinds of legal actions.  If you are being sued as one of thirty directors of a company it is a very different matter to be sued for sexual harassment and being accused of fraud against the Commonwealth.  Mike Kelly, for example, right now is being sued by Crosby Textor for defamation.  We’re not demanding that he stands down as Parliamentary Secretary because we recognise there are different kinds of civil matters.  The matter involving both Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper is vastly different to those and everybody knows it.  It’s the common sense test. Speers:  I don’t dispute that these are very serious matters in relation to the civil claims against both men but it wasn’t a civil matter in relation to Mary-Jo Fisher and the Coalition did take her vote. Pyne:  And that matter was dealt with and she defended it.  But that is really very much old news and their was no conviction recorded against Mary-Jo Fisher. Speers:  But before that point when she was still facing charges and hadn’t yet had her day in Court the Coalition accepted her vote. Pyne: That’s a real red herring, if you seriously think that the matters involving Craig Thomson, which are the miss use of hundreds of thousands of dollars of members of the HSU’s money on prostitutes, on personal goods, on overseas travel and campaign expenses which have been involved in a three and a half year investigation by Fair Work Australia, been the subject of Ian Temby QC doing an enquiry into the HSU and the government even moving for them to be placed into administration and being expelled from the ACTU can be stacked up along side the matters involving Mary Jo Fisher, I think you’d be the only person that thinks that. In the court of public opinion, the matters involving Craig Thomson are tremendously serious and if the government was serious about disowning Craig Thomson, they would disown his vote and they won’t do that because this government is about propping up its own sorry hide rather than doing the right thing by the people and the parliament. Speers: Now what about Peter Slipper? We’ve had the situation all week where the governments been arguing that he should be entitled to resume the Speakers chair as long as the criminal allegations are dealt with. Even if the civil claims remain they were happy for him to resume the chair. Now the Prime Minister has taken a different position, why do you think that is? Pyne: well, that’s a very good question David. It was only in the last few days that Anthony Albanese was declaring Peter Slipper to be as innocent as a rose and being entitled to resume the chair even before the Federal Police investigation has been completed, in stark contrast by the way to what they said about Craig Thomson. Julia Gillard was backing Anthony Albanese’s view, this week Phil Shorten parted company with those two and he came out and said that these matters were very serious and the Speaker shouldn’t resume the chair while they were going on, and he presumed the Speaker would come to that view. Seems to me, that Julia Gillard arriving home from overseas, realising the dire state of her leadership of the Labor Party, and the fact that people are moving like a stampede to other candidates in the Labor Party, has decided to cauterize the bleeding from her own leadership support and that’s why she’s decided today that she’s going to change her position one hundred and eighty degrees. She said in her press conference David, that a line had been crossed. Quite frankly she couldn’t then explain what that line was because this is all about political expediency; it’s about propping up her leadership, rather than putting the public and the parliament first and the public is sick of it, we need an election to get a government to get on with governing. Speers: There has been, in relation to the claims against Peter Slipper, a theory doing the rounds that the Coalition was some how are of or involved in putting all of this together. Tony Abbott’s been asked about this and said that not to his knowledge. So can I ask you, did you have any knowledge and did you have any contact or did your office have any contact with James Ashby, the staffer who’s made these claims? Pyne: Look, the first I knew of the Federal Court action David, is when I read about it in the News Limited Press Saturday week ago and I think everybody is in the same boat. I had no specific knowledge of these claims before that, of course I’ve had contact with the Speakers office, as Manager of Opposition Business over the last six months, but I had no knowledge of these extraordinary serious alligations until I read about them in the newspaper in the News Limited Press. Speers: So you did have contact with James Ashby in his office? Pyne: Well, how could I not when I walk into the reception in the Speakers office, Speakers staffer there, I’ve said hello to all of them, so I past the time of day with all of them. Speers: But did you ever talk to him about any of these issues? Pyne: No. Speers: Not about the misuse of cab-charge dockets, not about text messages, not about any of the stuff that came out in those court documents? Pyne: No. Speers: Alright, Christopher Pyne, Manager of Opposition Business, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Pyne: Pleasure ENDS