Sky News with David Speers

Subjects: Education Policy; Coalition’s Costings; Syrian Civil War EO&E........................................................................................................................................... DAVID SPEERS: Thanks for your time. I want to start on the policy measures we heard from Kevin Rudd today, the new ones. On small business – he wants a $10,000 immediate tax deduction for small business investments. Is that something that the Coalition would support? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well David the problem with all of Kevin Rudd’s announcements today are that they are just not believable. Kevin Rudd has made these kinds of announcements before. We have heard it all before. In 2007, he was going to take over public hospitals for example. And now in 2013, we are told he is going to take over the TAFE system. Now the problem with Kevin Rudd is you have to look at what he does, not what he says. He is very good at announcement, very poor at delivery. But we will look at all of these policies and if they are, if there are good policies in them and if we should win on Saturday, if we are fortunate enough to win, of course we will look to implement good policy. I note at what they have done with the Tools for Trades policy is a Howard Government policy and they are simply trying to expand it. They are playing catch up because of course we announced during the election that the Certificate III and IV in apprentices we would allow them to have a HECS loan similar to university students which they could use for tools if they wanted to. DAVID SPEERS: Ok, the question – the question is about small business. Now, correct me if I am wrong, the Opposition’s plan is to get rid of the small business instant asset write off, because it was linked to the mining tax? Kevin Rudd is saying you can get a $10,000 instant deduction when you buy a ute or another bit of equipment. What would happen to that under the Coalition? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Kevin Rudd needs to explain where that money is going to come from, David. What the Coalition is going to do for small business is much more expansive than what Kevin Rudd announced today because we are going to abolish the carbon tax which will immediately reduce their electricity prices. We are going to give them a company tax cut of 1.5 cents of the 30 cents that currently exists for the company tax. DAVID SPEERS: Small businesses don’t pay that. A lot of small businesses aren’t companies. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: A lot of them are, as well. And a lot of them have paid parental leave schemes, and they will be able to scrap their own paid parental leaves schemes because the government’s going to do that for them. So … DAVID SPEERS: What about, what about a tradie working in the housing industry, what do they get from you? I mean Kevin Rudd is saying a $10,000 instant asset write off. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Kevin Rudd wants to give them, give to them with one hand and take from them with the other. So we have got a massive carbon tax, which is pushing up their electricity prices, pushing up their costs in their business, we are going to scrap that. We are also going to scrap a lot of the red tape and bureaucracy which is strangling small business and they are very pleased with that. I mean this Government has no credibility on small business, David. They have had six Small Business Ministers in six years. We have had one, Bruce Billson, over most of that time because we take small business seriously. If the Government took small business seriously they wouldn’t have hit confidence and investment as they had for the last three years with all their chaos, division and dysfunction, which has been the hallmark of this Government. DAVID SPEERS: Can I ask about the Coalition’s costing? I know this question keeps coming up day after day. Tony Abbott did seem to acknowledge today we won’t get the full detail until Thursday. Is that right? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well David we’ve released most of our savings measures. We have released most of our spending measures. There are still some policies yet to be released between now and mid-week. And then we will give a budget bottom line in full time before the election and Labor, well before Labor gave their budget bottom lines in 2010 and 2007, when they announced them at 5.00 pm on the Friday night before the election. So Labor is not going to be lecturing anybody on these issues. But quite frankly most of our costings have already been released because we released them as we released policies, like Joe Hockey’s $30 billion of savings announced last Thursday at the National Press Club. So this is… DAVID SPEERS: You haven’t actually released, you haven’t actually released the costings of policies as you have gone. In fact none of the Parliamentary Budget Office costings have been released. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well David that’s not quite fair. I mean we have as the campaign has gone on, announced more and more policies and more and more ways of how they would be paid for. And last Wednesday Joe Hockey announced $30 billion worth of savings measures. And the public know that we are going to abolish the carbon tax, abolish the mining tax, protect our borders by stopping the boats and bring some rigour back to economic management and build the infrastructure that this country needs in terms of roads and so on that will help to grow our economy. DAVID SPEERS: Ok, just clear this up for me, will any of the Parliamentary Budget Office costings be made public? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: All of our policies have been costed or the vast majority of our policies been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. DAVID SPEERS: And will they be made public? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well you will just have to wait and see what they announce on mid next week. DAVID SPEERS: Sure, but will any of them be made public? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well David that will become very clear as the week progressed, but it is a bit of an inside of the beltway conversation because the real issues in this election are who’s going to reduce the burden of the cost of living, who’s going to protect our borders, who’s going to secure jobs, who’s going to build the infrastructure of the future and who will restore some faith in the economic management of the budget, which at the moment is at absolute shambles. DAVID SPEERS: And can I ask you about the comment from Tony Abbott today about Syria referring to it not being about “goodies and baddies” but “baddies and baddies”. Labor has had some fun with that line today. Is that the language of international diplomacy? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it shows the level of sophistication about understanding the civil war in Syria that Labor doesn’t have. Quite clearly what Tony Abbott was saying is that in the Syrian Civil War there is no good side to choose, both sides are arguably as bad as each other. So it actually shows a level of sophistication whereas Labor is trying to look for a “goodie” and a “baddie” and they won’t be able to find one. But we are not going to take lectures from the Labor Party when Kevin Rudd called the Chinese rat-f-ers after the Copenhagen Conference. And this is a guy whose syntax is utterly incomprehensible. Tony Abbott on the other hand is very straight forward and he’s a plain speaker. What you see with him is what you get. With Kevin Rudd you have to spend time deciphering like his disastrous press conference on Friday where no one could work out exactly what he was saying. DAVID SPEERS: Christopher Pyne, we’ll leave it there. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s a pleasure. ENDS