Sky News Richo

E&OE TRANSCRIPT Interview – Sky News Richo with Graham Richardson 16 April 2014 SUBJECTS: 2014 Budget; Education Funding; NSW Premier; 2014 South Australian State Election GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Education Minister Christopher Pyne, good evening, how are you Christopher? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Good evening Graham. I am sorry to hear you are unwell today, hopefully it will be a passing phase. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: I’ll battle on, I always do. I know you’ve been an ERC today, I don’t expect you to reveal all of the Cabinet secrets, but can I just say to you that on the day before the election, your Prime Minister, our Prime Minister, the Leader of your party said, there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to the pension and no cuts to the ABC. Are all of those promises going to be kept? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, yes they are, Graham. We are going to keep all of our election commitments. We are the Government of no surprises. The budget objective is to start returning the budget to a surplus over time, to doing the kind of repair work that Labor left us to do. We also want to have a safe and secure Australia and build it to be a prosperous nation and that can only be done by the Government living within its means by tightening our belts, but we will also keep all of our election commitments and start paying back the $127 billion of accumulated deficits Labor left us. And the $667 billion of debt that we were heading to under Labor. That is a very big task. You’re quite right, but I’m absolutely certain that Tony Abbott will keep our election commitments and don’t forget Graham he said that if we were going to change anything that we hadn’t promised before the election, we would take it to another poll in 2016 and give the people the chance to cast their judgement on that. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But how do you do that, I mean you look at say, health with the health budget is growing at far greater than any CPI, I mean it just goes up and up and up. There is almost no break on it. And therefore you get talk from Joe Hockey and obviously we are being softened up for this $6 co-payment, are you now telling me that won’t happen? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well what I’m saying is that the public know that we have a Mt Everest to climb to solve the damage that Labor left us with, and they know that we all going to have to bear some of that burden, whether people in the health system, whether it is members of Parliament themselves, we all are going to have to bear some of that burden. And that will all be revealed in the budget. But we have to overcome Labor’s failures first, once that is done we will start to be able to grow the country again. But I can’t reveal budget secrets tonight, you know that. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Why not? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You’d love me to. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Exactly. I am quite happy to hear them. All of our listeners would love to hear it. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That would improve the ratings. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: It would indeed. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I would say this, we will keep our commitments, but the public expects us to make the decisions that are necessary to start repairing the budget. They didn’t change the budget for the fun of it, they changed the Government to adults that they thought would stop the division and dysfunction, would focus on them and their outcomes, rather than hanging, clinging onto power by giving away goodies all the time, which we could, which they know we couldn’t afford. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But you have goodies you want to give away, but let me just go first off on this co-payment, what you are really saying is that the co-payment is going to happen, but that is not a cut? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I am not saying that because there hasn’t been any decision made around a co-payment. What Peter Dutton is saying to the public in his column today and generally, is that the health system is an archaic system founded in the 1980s that needs to be reformed. And we are the kind of Government that will make the tough decisions to reform it. But we are also going to do things like massive infrastructure spending across Australia in every capital city and the regions, because that boosts the economy, makes us more productive. So we are going to focus on good outcomes, productive outcomes, not what Labor did through things like the cash splash Kids Bonus, which was not linked to education spending. Labor was throwing around… GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Can I just interrupt, I have to interrupt here. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You’re welcome to. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: You’re not going to splash the cash around, but there are people going to get $75,000 year in Paid Parental Leave in a scheme that costs billions but you are not going to splash money around. What do you call that? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, the Paid Parental Scheme as proposed by the Prime Minster at the election, is not a welfare entitlement, it is a workplace entitlement. We want women… GRAHAM RICHARDSON: It is not an entitlement. It is middle-class welfare. It is throwing money at people. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We want more women to choose to have children and return to the workplace. That’s good for the population, it is good for productivity, it’s good for participation amongst women in the workforce. And you can only do that if women feel that they are not going to take a massive cut to their incomes if they stop working for a period of time to look after newborn babies. That is a, that is an economic measure designed to make the economy more productive and to make women participate more in the workforce. So that is not a welfare entitlement, that is a workplace entitlement. It is a very exciting time. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: It is not an entitlement. I’ve got to say, if it’s all that good I mean I don’t know how religious you are whether you believe in the power of prayer, but a lot of your people are prating that the Senate ball this over so they don’t have to worry about it anymore, would that be true or not? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Graham I do believe in miracles and that’s of course how I got elected to Parliament in the first place and keep getting elected. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: There are a few people who would agree with you there, I am sure. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Sure. But what the Senate decides to do is a matter for the Senate. We have a mandate for that policy. Our mandate was the last election, strongly supported by the Australian public, we were completely up front about the Prime Minister’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme. He is absolutely committed to it, as is the Liberal Party and the National Party and we will legislate for that because it is good for the economy, it is for families, it is good for individual women. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But Joe Hockey was completely opposed to it. Totally and utterly opposed. Now obviously you have a bit of Cabinet solidarity and you are all going to you know up the flag pole, you are all saluting but the really is most of people in the Cabinet wanted him to drop it, didn’t they? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You know that I can’t possibly answer that comment, Graham. It’s about Cabinet deliberations, and you are verballing poor Joe Hockey who is not here to defend himself. But I can tell you that as one of my valued colleagues, Joe is as enthusiastic about that policy as I am and as the rest of the Government is and it will be legislated and we expect the Senate to pass it because we want to make the economy more productive. And in this budget a lot will be revealed how the Abbott Government expects to take the country in the next three years and I think the public are ready for a Government of adults who make the difficult decisions, explain them to the public about why we are doing them, because they know that in the long term and the medium term and even the short term it will be good for jobs, it will be good for growth, it will be good for the Australian society as a whole to stop bleeding debt and spending and start focussing on living within our means. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But living within your means, I think what you have said tonight though that despite the (inaudible) have massed at your gate, you’ve fought them off and there is no cuts to education at all. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We always said we would not cut the overall spend on education, but we did say that obviously our priorities would become the education spending which means a re-adjustment of spending within the education portfolio. But our promise was not to cut school education and in fact we have increased school education by $1.2 billion that was cut by Bill Shorten when he was the Minister for Education, sneakily, just before the election in the Pre-election Fiscal Outlook. We put that money back in, I delivered a national education system, by bringing Western Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory in and I found $1.2 billion to do it. So we are spending more money on education. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Can I remind you that, you were out there for a week trying to tell us that it all wasn’t going to happen and then of course because of the public reaction was so bad, the ERC sat around I think it was on a Sunday I think wasn’t it, all around and said whoops, got this one wrong, ‘I found the money’. Is that a fair rendition of what happened? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it was a long time ago, Graham. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: And you’ve forgotten. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It was a long time ago and when we first got elected, a lot of things happened in those weeks following the election as we found new staff, and re-adjusted to Government, but I can’t remember all the details but I can tell you the outcome and the outcome was $1.2 billion more spending on schools, than Labor would’ve spent if they had been re-elected. And that is a big tick for parents, and for students and will deliver better outcomes along with our four pillars of a robust curriculum, parental engagement, principal autonomy and teacher quality. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Well I notice that today on a different subject in terms of forgetfulness, there is a new word memory fail, I mean I would’ve thought failure would have been the right word – memory fail – and Barry O’Farrell’s premiership is at an end. I found that stunning and just an incredible shock. What about yourself? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it was an absolute shock. It was a shocking day for Barry O’Farrell but also for the state of New South Wales. Barry O’Farrell has been a terrific Premier of this state for the last three years. I think that it will be a great loss to the polity in this state for Barry not to be Premier. Obviously he has acted in an extremely honourable way, I don’t think every leader or politician would have seen things the way Barry did and decided to go. I thought it was an act of real honour and he should be congratulated for it. And his loss as Premier, is New South Wales’ loss. But I know that the Liberal Party in New South Wales will rebound, they will circle around a new leader, a new Premier, and they certainly are the best alternative as a political party for Government in New South Wales. Labor has yet to learn the lessons of the last election here in New South Wales and I hope that they will be Government for a very long time to come delivering things like transport infrastructure, better schools, better hospitals as they have been trying to do for the last three years. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: God, you sound like a politician sometimes, I’ve just got to say it’s remarkable. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It takes one to know one, Graham. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Now, look one last question, very quickly. Why didn’t the Liberal Party win that election in Adelaide, now I know you got 53 per cent of the two party preferred, so there is a gerrymander of a kind in place, but you only needed 2 per cent swings to win a whole range of seats. Why didn’t you get them? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we did get 53 to 47 per cent against Labor. In any other State or Territory apart besides perhaps Tasmania that would have led to a landslide victory. So there is something very wrong in the state of Denmark, or in this case the state of South Australia to borrow a line from Shakespeare, and that needs to be closely scrutinised by the politicians in South Australia but also the Electoral Commission. But how could they get it as wrong as they have, that Labor could win with 47 per cent of the vote. It is not good enough for them to simply say that Labor ran better campaigns. The legislation in South Australia is the only one of its kind in Australia that requires the Electoral Commission to draw the boundaries to the party with 50 per cent plus one wins 50 per cent plus one of the seats and yet they stunningly failed to do so. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: John Howard won in '98, didn’t he? He didn’t get the two party preferred vote when but he won the election. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It was very marginal. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Yeah but you can’t always guarantee 50/50. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: 51, 51 and a half ought to get you over the line. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Absolutely right. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: That much we can agree. Listen I want to really thank you, I know it was difficult for you to do this show tonight. I appreciate it very much. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It is always a pleasure. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: We wish you well. We will talk to you soon. I CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It is a pleasure, thank you Graham. [ends]