Sky News AM Agenda

SUBJECTS: Fairfax/Nielsen poll

E&OE………

Christopher Pyne: Well, these opinion polls are the result of a campaign of personal vilification against Tony Abbott by the Labor Party. They have been demonising Tony Abbott for months and particularly in the last fortnight. They are doing to Tony Abbott what they did to Campbell Newman before the Queensland election, earlier this year, which obviously wasn’t successful. The Tony Abbott that I know is not the Tony Abbott that Labor is trying to portray. The Tony Abbott I know, spent Saturday doing a controlled burn off with his local firies service and on Sunday led a blind person in their first marathon, to finish their first marathon. He is a person of humanity and compassion and caring. He’s a Rhodes scholar he’s also by the way the most experienced would be Prime Minister in Government of any Prime Minister that we might be fortunate to have. So, the campaign of personal vilification from Labor is working. They always reach for the chum bucket when they have their backs to the wall and that’s what they have done in the last fortnight ….

Kieran Gilbert: Do you think it’s totally down to the personal attacks and it doesn’t reflect other elements like for example the cuts we have seen in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria at the State level. Those elements you don’t think are also feeding in to ….

Pyne: Well there are probably other issues involved in it as well but I think that overall, the most important element has been this campaign of personal denigration against Tony Abbott, an attempt to break down his character and destroy him as a human being. Labor has been at it for months pushing stories around from their dirt unit and in the last fortnight they have obviously ramped up their attacks. I think that given their desperation, Australians have woken up to what a terrible Government we have, whether it’s the carbon tax, whether it’s border protection or whether it’s now this $120 billion black hole that they can’t explain how it will be filled …

Gilbert: The coalition hasn’t been shy though in targeting the Prime Minister personally. Her integrity for example has been a constant focus of Coalition attack.

Pyne: Well the Prime Minister said before the last election Kieran, “There will be no carbon tax under the Government I lead”,. She said that six days before the election. Soon as the election was over, within five weeks, she broke that promise. That fundamental promise to the Australian public…

Gilbert: But it’s still been a personal focus though…

Pyne: No, I don’t think so…

Gilbert: How can the coalition say that Labor’s not within its rights to do this?

Pyne: Well the Prime Minister told a bald faced lie to the Australian public before the last election and she’s been called on it. Now the opposition is right to call her on it because our job is to hold her to account for tricking the Australian public in to voting Labor before the last election and now changing her mind. That is a vastly different story from the campaign of personal demonization of Tony Abbott that we have seen from Labor in the last fortnight.

Gilbert: What about Malcolm Turnbull’s rating in the opinion polls? He seems to, well be popular certainly with Labor voters but now a majority of coalition voters, as well. Does that figure surprise you?

Pyne: It doesn’t surprise me because of this campaign of vilification of Tony Abbott. Labor is trying to drive down Tony Abbott’s poll numbers. They’re succeeding in doing that. By Election Day, the Australian public will not be focussing on the campaign of personal demonization of Tony Abbott. They will be focussing on who‘s going to deliver reduced cost of living, which we will do. Lower taxes and we are going to abolish the carbon tax and the mineral resources rent tax. Infrastructure, on Saturday we announced that we would finish the Pacific Highway at a cost of $5.6 billion. They’re the issues people care about, and they will get thoroughly sick, as they did in Queensland against, about a campaign of personal vilification of Tony Abbott.

Gilbert: Mr Pyne, thanks for your time.

Pyne: Pleasure

ENDS