Sky News Showdown
12 Feb 2013
Transcipt SUBJECTS: Christopher Pyne’s 20th anniversary; Education reforms; Gillard leadership; Mining tax; 2013 election
E&OE................................
Hon Christopher Pyne MP: Good evening Peter, good evening Julian.
Presenters: Now I have to go straight to, I can put up with a lot of sort of hypocrisy and politicking being politicking. Whether it’s Julia Gillard with her Carbon Tax back flip or whether it’s Tony Abbott with his paid maternity leave back flip from what he said during the Howard years but speaking of John Howard, how on earth can you have John Howard as your guest speaker at your 20 years anniversary in Australian politics? He’s the reason you’ve hardly spent any time in the Ministry.
Pyne: Well I wouldn’t believe everything I read on the Landeryou website. Given the, the problem with that story is that I only told one person that I thought John Howard was coming to my 20th Anniversary.
Presenters: Oh should out who that is on air for us!
Pyne: Look, I don’t want to do that to them but I did ask John Howard and John Howard showed interest, but at the end of the day couldn’t do a function in Sydney that he had on and my function as well, so George Brandis and Amanda Vanstone are going to try and manfully fit in for John Howard at my 20th anniversary. It’s hard to believe that its 20 years, due to my youthful looks ….
Presenters: Peter Costello didn’t want to jump in and take over the reins?
Pyne: No, I asked Amanda Vanstone and George Brandis who are both very good friends of mine and it’s hard to believe 20 years have passed so quickly.
Presenters: Alright, we’ll get on to education now we had..
Presenters: Oh, I’m disappointed!
Presenters: Well one question from Julian.
Presenters: I just want to know what you think of the Brandis/Vanstone double act? I mean, I think that’s got potential to branch out beyond just your anniversary event, don’t you think?
Pyne: Well Amanda is doing a lot of media at the moment so she’s really getting, putting it about out there in the media and she’s doing a very, very good job. Of course both George and Amanda have both got fabulous senses of humour, so I have a nasty feeling it might turn in to a roast.
Presenters: Alright, I think that’s enough of that. I mean the last thing we need is more people competing for airspace!
Presenters: I can’t believe you even raised that. We don’t need more challenges here. Let’s move on to education. There’s enough of that.
Presenters: Are you going to try and achieve education reforms without putting any new money into the portfolio area if you get into Government? Given the sort of fiscal situation the Coalition sees the state of the Budget is in.
Pyne: Look Peter, it’s a very good question and there’s a tremendous amount that we can do in education that doesn’t cost vast amounts of money, especially when you think about how much money has been wasted in education over the last five or six years. Areas like teacher quality, which would make a dramatic difference to the education of our students; we can do a great deal to improve the training of our teachers, the professional development of our teachers pouring money…
Presenters: But that all costs money, the professional development of teachers, and training. I mean I agree whole heartedly by the way. I’ve seen some of the products of education qualifications at university who go on to teach. You mark their essays at university and you’re not entirely confident that they’re going to be able to mark other people’s essays at school, but how do you improve that without putting a significant amount of money into the mix?
Pyne: Well we already spend a great deal of money at university level in our teacher training, in our teaching colleges for want of a better description. It’s just how we’re teaching our teachers to go out into the classrooms. There’s a lot of call for much more practically based teaching methods. I’ve had young teachers say to me that when they went into a classroom for the first time at a primary school, they realised that they’d never been taught at university how to teach children to read. So there’s a lot of changes that could be made to teacher quality without actually changing enormous amounts of money. We could do a great deal to make sure that the curriculum is robust; that in history, in English, in maths and in science we are teaching our students in a way that produces good results. Our outcomes are amongst the worst in the developed world for our young people and we’ve been trying to teach the same ideologically based teaching methods since the 1970s. It’s time somebody said ‘the emperor has no clothes’ and we need to return to much more traditional teaching methods. The same goes for principal autonomy in schools. Now, government schools should have the capacity, in their principals to do the same things that non-government schools do, to introduce flexibility into their schooling, in their curricula and extra curricula choices.
Presenters: There’s been a bit more of that though, hasn’t there, in fairness?
Pyne: Not really. I mean the Labor Party has tinkered around the edges. They’ve got great names for everything. An education revolution which has now given way to the education crusade which is giving way to the national school improvement plan. I just listened to Peter Garret talking on your program. You asked him a lot of detailed questions and he responded with all the same platitudes that he always does. There was no detail. Where’s the meat on the bones?
Presenters: Okay, in that spirit Mr Pyne is there an example you can cite of a successful educational reform that has involved no additional spending but that has been able to address the sorts of issues which you’ve been saying Australia needs to address?
Pyne: Sure. I mean in Cape York for example, where the Cape York partnerships were given the opportunity to do their own thing, to adopt the teaching methods that they wanted and introduced explicit teaching methods, explicit instruction, there’s been a massive increase in the student outcomes for indigenous kids in the Cape York Peninsula. It’s a perfectly good example. Across Australia, when schools are given the opportunity for direct instruction for old fashioned teaching methods in literacy and numeracy the results have been dramatic. They haven’t been massive new increases or injections of new funds. I mean, Peter Garrett himself has talked about how we’ve invested 40% more, in the last 10 years in education and in those 10 years, gentlemen our results have gone backwards. So if it was all about money, our results would have improved.
Presenters: If schools chose not to enforce the sort of back to basics methods that you’re talking about, would you give them that latitude to try a different route even though you think it’s not the best way to go?
Pyne: I am very confident that when decisions are not being directed from Macquarie Street or North Terrace but in fact being decided by local school principals in their communities, as is occurring in Western Australia, principals and teachers will adopt the methods that they know work, rather than the methods they’re dictated to by central bureaucrats. In Western Australia Julian, it’s the only State where there is now a drift from non-government schools to government schools because parents are seeing the benefits of independent public schooling and we know for the last 30 to 40 years, the drift has been in the opposite direction.
Presenters: So can I ask you about a curriculum matter then in terms sort of an inexpensive way to approach reform I suppose, within the system? One of my frustrations at university is students arriving in first year who are unable to write coherent sentences for their essays. Their English grammar basically isn’t up to where it should be at the end of the schooling period. Now Julian’s probably in the same boat, our generation, indeed probably yours as well Christopher Pyne, despite 20 years in Parliament. You know, our generation hasn’t learnt the English language in a grammatical sense the way the previous generations have now why wouldn’t you do something very simple like make it a compulsory subject, not English literature, that can be a separate elective subject along the lines of history or anything else but why not have a compulsory subject that is pure on punctuation, all forms of grammar so at the end of a schooling period every person that graduates year 12 has a really profound strength in that area.
Pyne: Well, I’m much older than both of you but I would suggest that our generation loosely termed, hasn’t had the same opportunities in terms of literacy as previous generations and it’s a very simple change. In the 1970s whole language learning and critical literacy became the latest fad or the fashion in teaching literacy. One doesn’t need to have courses as you’ve described at year 11 and 12, but from reception, from reception right through schooling. English should be taught through phonics so that people do learn how to spell they do learn how to structure sentences and paragraphs and letters and essays.
Presenters: So you’ll change that?
Pyne: Absolutely. I mean one of the things we intend to do through the national curriculum now that the Government has delivered a national curriculum in English, is it gives us the opportunity to direct from reception to year 10 the kind of curriculum that we are prepared to pay for in concert with the States and raising the priority for phonics rather than critical literacy or whole language learning will be very much a part of those reforms. I intend to be a reforming education minister, should I be given the chance to do so and I’m very excited about the prospect.
Presenters: Mr Pyne, in the United Kingdom, the Government’s looking at introducing financial literacy programs in civics courses to try and give I suppose, mathematical education a really practical spin that will help people when they become consumers when they leave school and or university. Is that a measure you would like to see or you would consider introducing in Australia?
Pyne: Well, I don’t want to comment on specifics that the UK are doing Julian but let me say this …
Presenters: Why not?
Pyne: My approach, my approach, well I’m happy to say if the English think that is needed in their schooling, well that’s a decision they’ve made and Michael Gove who is the Secretary of Education there is an excellent education minister and one of the stand out successes of the Cameron Government, but can I just say in general, I think education should be about gaining knowledge. I don’t think it should be about just skills. Skills come with gaining knowledge. And if you gain knowledge through your schooling, you can then use that and adapt that for any matter throughout your life. Through changing careers, if you only learn skills and those skills become obsolete then you haven’t been given the basics to be able to change over the decades that you will live, post school.
Presenters: Can I ask you a separate question about the Pope’s resignation you’re a well know Catholic within the Parliament at the same time as being a moderate within the Liberal Party. At one sense, strict Catholicism and being a Liberal moderate perhaps don’t naturally fold together but what do you think of the Pope leaving? On the one hand, I’ve heard a lot of commentators say it’s a very modern decision that he’s gone and done it, yet he was a very traditional Catholic Pope. No Pope has stepped out since the 15th century. It’s an odd call, don’t you think?
Pyne: Well it’s a big call and when Gregory XII retired in the 15th Century, it wasn’t really by choice. The last Pope to retire I think it was Celestine V which was in the 10th Century, so it certainly is unprecedented and it does show how Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI is a man that’s been full of surprises. I think it’s a very good precedent because of what it says to all Popes is that when you get to the point if you feel that you can’t perform at your peak …
Presenters: But it’s meant to be God’s...God chooses the Pope through the Cardinals or something like that. I mean, I’m not religious so pardon if I’m a bit flippant about it.
Pyne: Let me explain it ….
Presenters: But frankly he’s God on earth, virtually isn’t he? or God’s will? How can he make his own decision that he’s feeling a bit sickly so he moves on? Surely he’s gotta be there til death, doesn’t he? Or to put it another way, isn’t God just another faceless man?
Pyne: Well God is, he’s not God on earth, he’s God’s representative on earth, through the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit guides the hand of the Cardinals to choose the person who will be Pope. Some would say that the Holy Spirit has guided the hand of the current Pope to choose to retire. So, theologically it’s perfectly within the Pope’s capacity, guided by prayer and the Holy Spirit to choose to retire.
Presenters: Do you think the Labor Party could look to the Vatican in terms of leadership transitions?
Pyne: Look, I think the Labor Party might well be past salvation, when it comes to unity. They are divided and dysfunctional. Kevin Rudd is almost cherubic in his excitement at the pickle the Prime Minister finds herself in and even in education, Kevin Rudd on Friday was saying we needed an indigenous education summit and Peter Garrett came out two hours later and slammed the proposal so they can’t even get their lines right in education. Kevin’s off freelancing and no one seems able to pull him back to the confessional.
Presenters: If you had to pick who you think’s most likely and I know that politicians don’t like answering these questions but come on its a Tuesday night, work with me on this, if you had to pick who you think is most likely to lead Labor to the election now, Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard because there are leadership murmurings that are starting to develop. It’s no secret now you know that the Rudd forces at least, are looking for a way to bring him into the Prime Ministership without breaking his word that he won’t challenge. Who do you think is more likely to lead Labor to the election? Honest answer?
Pyne: Well Peter, I wouldn’t describe it as a murmur or as a rumour, I think it’s more like a roar in a wind tunnel. Look, I’m a third candidate man, I’m supporting Simon Crean. I think Labor..
Presenters: Oh, that’s a cop out answer
Pyne: They need the steadying hand of Simon Crean and I know he wants it. I know he wants it, so..
Presenters: If it’s a binary choice, if we’re talking Rudd or Gillard, who do you think is more likely to be there come September or whenever Kevin Rudd decides to call the new election time?
Pyne: Well look, Labor is getting plenty of advice especially internally and I don’t think they need my advice about who should lead them. I think the Australian public deserve a lot better than this divided and dysfunctional Government and I think Labor needs some time out for a few years to sort out their internal differences.
Presenters: And are you expecting the election to be on the 14th of September or have you had to cancel overseas travel plans after the Leaders dictum about not leaving the country?
Pyne: Well I had no overseas travel plans because I have a marginal seat of Sturt to fight and win, hopefully for the eighth time. I don’t think, I think the election will be, could be September the 14th wouldn’t surprise me if Julia Gillard believes that Kevin Rudd has the numbers to win whether she decides to make that trip to Yarralumla as her final act of bastardry against the Rudd forces.
Presenters: Just one final question if I can, a follow up to a question I asked Julie Bishop on Australian Agenda on Sunday. I’m curious whether an Abbott Government if you are successful at the next election, is committed to going to a double dissolution election to remove only the mining tax if you in fact have the Labor Party in the Senate buckle on the Carbon Tax. Now there’s been different messages that I’ve heard. Is it your view, that if the Labor Party refuses to repeal the mining tax, even though it collects very little revenue, would you still be prepared to fight a double dissolution solely on that issue or do you need it to be packaged up with the carbon tax?
Pyne: Look Peter we will, hopefully if we’re elected pass a number of important measures in the House of Representatives. There’ll be the abolition of the carbon tax, the mining tax, the reintroduction of temporary protection visas, the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the paid parental leave scheme that’s the most generous scheme in Australia that’s going. There will be changes in education to do with teacher quality, curriculum and principal autonomy. If the Senate is foolish enough to not understand the will of the people at the election, assuming we’ve won it, then any one of those could be a double dissolution trigger. If we are elected and I certainly hope we will be, but we’re taking nothing for granted, I would hope the Senate would work with the Government to bring about better, a better Australia than try and frustrate it.
Presenters: Alright Chris..
ENDS.