Sky News PM Agenda

Sky News PM Agenda, David Lipson
10 October 2013

SUBJECTS: Labor Leadership; Senate in 44^th Parliament; Visa arrangements for overseas students.

DAVID LIPSON:        Good afternoon.  First on the Labor leadership ballot, do you see any merit in this process?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Sorry, could you repeat that?

DAVID LIPSON:        Yeah, just on the Labor leadership ballot, do you see any merit in the process?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        The problem with the Labor Party is that they love talking about themselves, David, so they engage in this myopic discussion about Labor and who's going to be leader.  They've been doing it now for over four weeks.  But the problem with Labor is that nothing's really changed.  They can change leader again.  This will be their eighth leadership change in sixteen years so basically they change leader every second year and they love doing it.

They love - now they've got a process which takes a month and they'll really enjoy that but in terms of the specifics about what's good for Australia and for the Australian people, the truth is it's just two factional warlords fighting it out, one from the left, one from the right and they're still opposing the abolition of the carbon tax and they're still supporting immigration policies that led to fifty thousand unauthorised boat arrivals.

So the substance of it is that they'll change the leader but they're still the same old Labor Party.  In fact they're just getting worse.

DAVID LIPSON:        So you didn't see it as a more democratic process than the previous process?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well the Labor Party's processes are matters for them.  Factional warlords control the caucus.  Factional warlords control the rank and file.  So this has been a left versus right battle and what could happen of course is that one leader might win the majority of the caucus and the other might win the majority of the party so we'll have a leader who's supported by his colleagues but not the party or a leader who's not supported by his colleagues but is supported by the party.

So Labor is again divided right down the middle and the losers are the Australian public because Labor wants to keep the carbon tax and not reduce electricity bills and they want to continue with policies that don't protect our borders and allowed fifty thousand people to come in an unauthorised way.

DAVID LIPSON:        All shades of the Labor Party seem to agree that this process has energised the party after what was a pretty big defeat for them.  It's managed to focus their minds on the fact that they are now in opposition, they've got a new goal, a new target and is this something, in light of that another two thousand members have joined up as well, the Coalition may consider this sort of process sometime in the future?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well we believe that the best people to choose the party leader are the people who know him or her best, and that's their colleagues.  So our hundred-and-thirty-odd Coalition members, they know who amongst their number should be the first among equals. And we believe that is a process that's served us well and obviously we've been in government for two-thirds of the last sixty years.  Labor is good at opposition, they enjoy being in opposition because they can engage in this kind of navel gazing, we prefer getting on with the job of trying to make Australia a better place.

DAVID LIPSON:        Well Clive Palmer today has brought another senator under his wing, Ricky Muir.  They're going to vote as a block and really they will hold the balance of power because if Labor and the Greens oppose any legislation that the Coalition puts through you're going to need at least one Clive Palmer United Party senator and if they're voting as a block well they will hold that balance.

Is this going to make your job as Leader of the House easier or harder trying to get legislation through?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well my job as Leader of the House is a lot easier now that we have a ninety seat to fifty-five seat change in the Parliament so we have a thirty-five seat majority over Labor and that makes the House of Representatives much easier to manage.

DAVID LIPSON:        (Inaudible).

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Unlike the hung parliament. Well, one of the other big stories at the election a month ago of course is that Labor and the Greens lost their blocking power in the Senate, which is a big improvement from the point of view of the Coalition being able to get its agenda through the Parliament, almost every cross bench senator in the Senate is a centre right new senator coming in in July next year.

I believe that they will respect the mandate of the people.  I think they won't get elected as conservatives and behave like socialists and I'm looking forward - very much looking forward to working with Clive Palmer and his senators from that party and also Ricky Muir.  I also predict that each one will make their own individual decisions.  Jacqui Lambie from Tasmania, who's notionally a member of the Palmer United Party, has already indicated that she intends to take a very independent minded view. So...

DAVID LIPSON:        She did say today though that she would be voting in line with the decision of the party.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        We'll see.  We will work with everybody on the cross benches to achieve the mandate that the public gave us a month ago and I think they'll respect that.  I think we'll find that we have a great deal more in common with the cross benches than we do with Greens or Labor and I think that'll be good for government in Australia.

DAVID LIPSON:        Are you satisfied with the umpire's decision to conduct a recount of the Senate for above the line votes in WA?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well that's a matter for the AEC.  I think the AEC should independently make these decisions.  Obviously that person doesn't take their seat until July next year so there's plenty of time to conduct a recount in Western Australia and we'll see where the cards fall.

DAVID LIPSON:        And finally on education.  You flagged streamlining visa arrangements for overseas students who study - get degrees here in Australia.  Last time that happened we saw something of a rash of sort of low quality education facilities open up and in many cases sort of present a front so that the foreigners could get work here.  What checks will be put in place to ensure that doesn't happen again?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, David, we're not proposing to extend streamlined visa arrangements to any provider that you've described.  At the moment the streamlined visa arrangements are available to universities but there are numerous very high quality higher education providers in the private sector who could quite conceivably have streamlined visa arrangements and they're the people we're talking about.  As we believe that the sector can manage streamlined visa arrangements, we will extend it, but we certainly have no plans to extend it to the kind of provider that you've described.

DAVID LIPSON:        So how do you test which is a high quality and which is not?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well that's not very hard.  There are obviously institutions like TEQSA and ASQA that regulate the higher education sector.  We know that there are at least twenty or so very high quality private providers that are almost akin to universities.  Why do we know that?  Because they offer degrees to start with.  So you wouldn't find some of the providers that you've described years ago offering degrees.

DAVID LIPSON:        Christopher Pyne, we'll have to leave it there.  Thanks for your time.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Pleasure, thank you.

ENDS