Transcript - 891 - 24 March 2010

SUBJECTS: Chloe Fox; South Australian state election; fake family first how-to-vote cards

David Bevan: The two Chris's are busting, busting to talk about the election on Saturday, but let's go to one of the candidates, Chloe fox for Bright. Good morning Chloe fox.

Chloe Fox: Good morning David.

Bevan: Chloe Fox, first of all what news can you bring from the seat of Bright?

Fox: Well I'm afraid I have exactly the same news as you which no news. The counting of the declaration votes begins again on Tuesday and the last thing I heard I had some extraordinary amazing lead of 40 votes.

Abraham: Now is that at the end of counting when? Yesterday?

Fox: I think that was at the end of counting yesterday.

Abraham: And Chloe fox; you did not approve of or allow the ALP to have the fake family first how to vote cards, the fake family first people that were in Newland handing these out in your electorate.

Fox: Well I don't know that they were fake family first cards, that's not what I would call them. But I was asked by volunteers interstate if I would be interested in doing something similar which would put Family First as a second preference and I said no. I wasn't comfortable with that at all and that's actually why I contacted you because I heard you had someone from Hallett Cove call in saying that their vote was stolen. If you lived in Hallett Cove and were voting in Hallett Cove in the seat of Bright you would not have been handed one of those leaflets by those people.

Bevan: Why did you say you didn't want anything to do with this?

Fox: It just made me feel uncomfortable.

Bevan: Why did it make you feel uncomfortable?

Fox: I don't know, it just made me feel a bit edgy. Maybe it's because I've never been great mates with Family First. They send out these flyers saying "we're here to represent you"; well they're her to represent you if you're in a nuclear family and you do everything they want you to do in their right wing evangelical way. I've never been comfortable with them as a party.

Chris Schacht: Well done Chloe, put the boot right in.

Bevan: Now Chloe Fox did you feel uncomfortable about it as a tactic? Some people are saying this is a "dirty trick" by the Labor party. Did you feel uncomfortable with it as a tactic?

Fox: I haven't unpacked my feelings of discomfort to that extent yet. I just want people to know that if they're voting for me they're voting for me. If they're not voting for me that's fine, but I just wanted to make it clear and concise and I didn't want their to be any ambiguity about that.

Bevan: Chloe Fox some people in the Labor party weren't so squeamish.

Fox: Well look, they all look like they're going to win so well done to them.

Abraham: Chloe Fox thank you.

Abraham: Chloe Fox Labor MP for Bright. Now we have Leon Bignell Labor MP for Mawson is unavailable today as he's out thanking the voters in his electorate with a big sign. He says he didn't say they didn't know they were handing out the cards, he just said he hadn't seen them. Is that a bit like his leader saying he never met the man who attacked him with the magazine? Technically he said he had not seen the cards. In the paper there is a picture of his partner handing them out. So she saw the cards, but she's not answerable to him and he's not answerable to her.

Christopher Pyne: I think that's called being caught red handed, when in one newspaper there is a photograph of Leon Bignell sharing a celebratory drink with his partner Sandra De Poi and son Conner and in another paper there is a photo of someone handing out these dodgy leaflets who's name is Sandra De Poi. I think he's been caught red handed. He wants us to believe he didn't know his partner was handing out how to votes for another political party. I think it would be highly unlikely.

Abraham: It was a masquerade. There's not doubt about that.

Pyne: It was out and out cheating by the Labor Party to try and mislead voters as they did in Morialta that took these how to vote cards which had Family First written very clearly on them in Family First colours that they would be supporting the Family First preference flow. Clearly that's untrue. In Morialta Family First gave their preferences to John Gardner and the people handing out cards for the bogus Family first party were clearly trying to mislead voters. That's just cheating.

Abraham: Chris Schacht on election night no one could work out why Tony Piccolo got a swing to him, where everywhere else there was a seven point four per cent swing going on and he won his seat. And no one could work out why Leon Bignell got a swing to him where everywhere else there was a big swing going on against the Labor Party. And is this why, because they handed out bogus how to vote cards?

Schacht: The margins are so big in those two seats. They're now leading by over a thousand votes, that the suggestion that one some booths hundreds of people were mislead, when family first were only getting a handful of votes anyway.

Pyne: (inaudible).

Schacht: If people are claiming that this election was stolen then that's just absolute rot.

Pyne: No one's saying that this election was stolen; the question is whether it was moral and whether it was cheating.

Schacht: In 2006 Robert Brokenshire, who was then the Liberal candidate put out a similar how to vote card.

Bevan: Leon Bignell said he got the idea from Robert Brokenshire. Is that what he's saying and did Robert Brokenshire have people out there in T-Shirts saying how to vote Liberal or vote Liberal?

Abraham: Let's just put the numbers to you. I've got the Mawson numbers up here. In Mawson the vote for Leon Bignell is 7686 and for Matt Donovan 5923; Family First 1239 that's seven point four per cent.

Schacht: That's the sort of figure you would expect for them in that sort of electorate.

Bevan: Yeah, but what if you were going to vote Family First one, and that's why you could afford to do this because they weren't going to be elected, what if you put them one, but then followed this dodgy how to vote card to the Labor second preference.

Schacht: Just let me give you and example. I've just had a text from a scrutineer in Hartley where they weren't used alright. We got 48% of Family First preferences without these which I find an astonishing leakage from the Family First how to vote card.

Bevan: But that's in Hartley. Schacht: Yeah, but what you're saying is that we were getting a big leakage of preferences where they were getting out the leaflet. What you're saying that in Hartley where it wasn't used we were getting nearly half of Family First preferences.

Pyne: Hang on, can I just give you a reality check here. Some people in this studio are so inured to what's right and wrong in politics that they're arguing, they're like the little boy who says I tried to get the bird's eggs out of the nest ,but because I failed I didn't do anything wrong. The point is here is this wrong. Not did it succeed or did it fail and you're now analysing whether it was a good or bad idea. The point is, is it wrong? Now it's not illegal, but it's certainly morally wrong. You tried to mislead the voters.

Bevan: Dennis Hood has rung in, now he's the Family First leader and he's rung in to respond to what Chloe Fox had to say. Good morning Dennis Hood.

Dennis Hood: Good morning David. Just very quickly. Firstly the handing out of these fake how to vote cards did take place in Hartley as well, which is why we're seeing such a strong flow of preferences to the Labor party in that seat.

And secondly in relation to Chloe Fox's comments about her not taking to Family First. Well I find that astonishing because Chloe Fox actually asked me why we didn't direct our preferences to her directly at the last election, and what we did at the last election was have a split ticket in her seat. In this election we actually directed our preferences to the Liberal Party and for her to say she doesn't want Family First preferences on principle are just totally false.

Schacht: Can I just correct myself on what I said about Hartley. The message was the Magill booth, which I stood on for two hours there was no so called (inaudible) and in that booth Labor still got 48 per cent.

Abraham: But they did win, they still used it in Hartley. Grace Portelesi has said "the Liberal party is certainly not beyond its own dirty tricks so my conscience is clear".

Schacht: What you were asking was "did it affect the result?" People want to argue whether it affected the result. It didn't affect the result.

Pyne: You're trying to change the question to "did it affect the result?" when the question is it right to try and deceive voters into misallocating their preferences in a way that they didn't want to allocate them because they've got a dodgy how to vote card? That is the question.

Bevan: As important as this issue is and it's clearly important to a lot of our listeners there are other things that are going to be sorted out over the next few days and that is who is going to be running the state. Gentleman there is no doubt in anybody's mind that Mike Rann will be Premier?

Schacht: No doubt. At the minium Labor will have 24 seats. They'll win Bright. I was just told by a Labor scrutineer from Party office half an hour ago that after the check yesterday her 40 vote lead on the night is out to 150. I hope that's correct. On that basis it's still line ball, but she is ahead and they've got to catch up. If she wins we have 25 and in Mitchell I think Kris Hannah will hang on, but it's literally going to be a 100 votes on whether the Liberal Party comes second or third. If they come third he'll win by 10 per cent.

Abraham: It's been put to me by someone who knows what they're talking about...

Schacht: (inaudible)

Abraham: Chris Pyne.

Pyne: My view is that the most likely outcome is a Labor victory, but it's still too early to concede. It think we'll win Bright. I think once the postals and the pre-poll come in we'll win it relatively easily, by a few hundred votes. We aren't out of the woods in Hartley; Labor isn't out of the woods in Hartley. They have a number of nursing homes and special hospitals and things in Hartley, which favour the Liberal Party and they haven't been counted, but my assessment he we probably won't win Hartley. But the margin will come back from the two point five per cent that it was on the night to a much more marginal 51 or 50 per cent, which is very interesting. So I don't know that Labor should necessarily be claiming victory just yet.

Abraham: Well they're not.

Pyne: I think Newland's probably out of our reach.

Abraham: What do you think about Mitchell? I was talking to a Labor Party person over the weekend who's keeping a close eye on the scrutineering that's going on there and he said it's not impossible that the Liberals could win Mitchell. I mean the mostly likely outcome is Hannah, and Labor, but it's not impossible that the Liberals could win.

Schacht: There would have to be an extraordinary leakage of preferences, with Hannah coming third and his preferences going to the Liberal Party.

Abraham: I just said it wasn't out of the question.

Pyne: I think Adelaide was such a surprise to most people that you couldn't really rule anything out with those postals and pre-polls now.

Schacht: The only way the Liberals can win is if Hannah comes third and there's an extraordinary leakage, over 60 per cent of Hannah's preferences would have to go Liberal.

Bevan: What is going on in the Labor Party? Jay Weatherill's come out from the left, but it's not clear whether he has the support, even within his own faction. My understanding is that Patrick Conlon wasn't consulted.

Pyne: I think it's a Kamikaze trip.

Bevan: What's going on in the left Chris Schacht? He's challenging Kevin Foley for the deputy's job.

Schacht: Well I have to say the Labor party hasn't claimed a win. Isobel hasn't conceded and I agree with all of that. I think it was clumsy of Jay to announce his challenge from Deputy Premier before Labor has actually won. Labor looks like winning the election. All I'm saying is that on the front page of the Tiser on the day after Labor has had a pretty good win, whichever way you look at it. It's not a picture of the Premier winning, it's a picture of Jay Weatherill challenging. Now I don't blame the Advertiser for putting that on, it was a good story, but I think Jay should have waited until at least there is a declaration that the party has won; until both sides have conceded that and it might take three or four days.

And what he said today on your program about a new way of doing things. That's fine, that has to be adopted right across the Labor Party. That is one message that can't be avoided. But remember, Jay is a senior Minister of the left wing faction. He has been involved in running the Labor party internally for 15 years, so Jay as much as anybody has got to accept responsibility, like all of them do about what happened in the election and what we have to do in the four years ahead.

Abraham: Chris Pyne?

Pyne: Well it think it's ironic that last week the Labor party's final message was the Liberals were a rabble, and the first person to challenge anybody is Jay Weatherill to Kevin Foley. I mean talk about spin. Talk about how their message last week was complete spin. What Jay Weatherill has done is basically expose that they are a Hornet's nest of ambition and thwarted ambition in the Labor Party. I think Jay will probably be soundly defeated and what that will leave us with is a Labor party where Mr Rann has been very badly damaged by the election regardless of the outcome, Kevin Foley has been challenged from within his own party, Michael Atkinson has gone to the backbench at the first opportunity, and the Labor party is looking like the rabble when they're the one's who're claiming they've won.

Abraham: Penny from Mt Barker joins us on the two Chris's, C1 and C2 back in action. Hello Penny

Caller 1: Hello, good morning everybody. I'm from Mt Barker and I've done what everybody else did and I voted. But at the Mt Barker school and I'd like to aim this at Chris Schacht. And this is severely dirty tactics by the Labor party because right next to the actual Labor candidate, he had a big black sandwich board with white writing, "four years, four leader's different leaders, Chapman vs. Redmond, who wants this?" Now we complained to the head of the scrutineers in the hall. He came out, he rang the electoral commission and he) was told to take it away, but someone had already tipped it over.

Abraham: Now Penny is it fair to say you were intending to vote Liberal?

Caller 1: That's none of your business. (Laughter)

Pyne: Good on you Penny.

Schacht: All I can say is the rule is you've got to be six meters from away from the declared entrance of the polling booth and there is a limit I think to the size of the placards you can put out. But if you put those out past six metres it is perfectly legal and every side has different placards I was at Magill they were like a proliferation. In my view as a former party secretary they are not worth two wads of goat dung in persuading people how to vote, as far as getting a vote is concerned.

Abraham: Chris Pyne.

Pyne: I've been gone four weeks and the standard's really slipping.

Schacht: The obsession with placards and street posters is irrelevant.

Pyne: Can I tell you a story from election day?

Abraham: Yes.

Pyne: I was absolutely amazed. I set up the Vale Park booth on 8:30pm on a Friday night and then manned with other volunteers until 8:00am the following morning. This was in Norwood, apparently one of the most marginal Labor party seats. The Labor party turned up to set up at the Vale Park Booth at 7:00am on the Saturday morning. And at two other booths, Marden and Norwood West they didn't turn up until after voting had started. When I heard that I said to the people I think Labor's given up on Norwood. I was absolutely amazed; I mean they've always fought for Norwood. I mean Norwood has been like the white whale for Captain Ahab for the Liberal Party, and we've been fighting tooth and nail in that seat for years, election after election and they just weren't on the ground at all.

Abraham: Well they're not going to carry Vini Ciccarello for one more election. I mean there is a feeling that Mike Rann was the de-facto member for Norwood, that he's effectively carried her campaigns. Chris Schacht, did they end up saying "sorry there are others we have to worry about, so do this one by yourself."

Schacht: I've always admired Christopher's obsessiveness about being there 12 hours before the booth opens. Good stuff. (banter-inaudible) All I can tell you is the demography of Norwood is steadily moving against us (the Labor Party) in terms of the people moving in and I've got to say Vini Ciccarello was a good local mayor, a good local member with her own particular style, but gradually the demography moved against us.

Abraham: Was she a good local member though?

Schacht: I think she was a good local member. All I'm saying is...

Abraham: What did she achieve?

Schacht: All I'm saying is the demography slowly moved against the style that Vini won with and therefore in the end I wasn't surprised that we lost. Unfortunate, you don't want to lose a Labor seat anywhere. But of all the seats on the night, it and Morialta were the least surprising that we lost.

Bevan: Now Terry has called from Marion, and he's got a question regarding Vickie Chapman. Good morning Terry.

Caller 2: Good morning. Well firstly I would like to congratulate Isobel Redmond for running a good campaign and doing as well as she did do, but I want to ask Christopher whether the rumour was true that Vickie was seen sharpening her knife?

Pyne: Well I think that's almost defamatory to say there's a rumour that Vickie Chapman's been sharpening her knife.

Abraham: Oh come one.

Pyne: It's a silly question.

Abraham: Terry, can I just say to you, you don't have to worry. No one's going to sue you. I think that's the least defamatory thing that's eve been said on this program.

Pyne: Let me use it as a hook to talk about the Liberal Party because I think Terry's trying to be a bit clever. Out of Saturday has emerged a stronger and more united Liberal Party that has won probably four seats from the Labor Party, maybe five and Chaffey from the National Party. And Isobel Redmond did a sensational job. I am absolutely certain that Isobel Redmond and Steven Griffiths will go forward as the leader and deputy leader team and I can't say the same about the stability on the Labor side. The shoe has moved to the other foot.

Schacht: Can I just say, I just want to acknowledge the fact that you can't ignore Isobel Redmond did a great job campaigning. You may remember on this program nine months ago that I said if I was a Liberal member in caucus when all that stuff with Hamilton-Smith was going down the one person I think you should take a risk on is Isobel Redmond; clean faced, clean skinned, not involved in previous all the previous forty years of faction fighting in the Liberal Party. And it was high risk because we didn't know much about her, but she may be the one that builds the Liberal vote.

The Liberal Party has got to have patience and stick with her for the next four years. If they chop her down, no matter what the reason, and put someone else in they are just again making sure that Labor has a better chance of winning.

Pyne: Well I am very confident that she will lead us to the 2014 election. And to be honest I don't think this election is over yet. About 10 per cent of the votes are yet to be counted. There are very tight margins in a couple of seats and you do not know what will fall out.

Bevan: Chris Pyne are we seeing from you as a leader in the moderate group of the Liberal party an endorsement of a candidate who got there on the back of the conservative faction. So are you saying that both your group, the people that you represent in the party, along with Nick Minchin's group are both backing Isobel Redmond?

Pyne: Look, I'm not getting into the minutiae of who's backing who, all I'm saying is...

Bevan: That would be an admission of your role.

Pyne: Six months ago when Isobel took over the party was something of a wreckage at that point. The Labor Party were already popping the champagne corks. Six months later Isobel has had a really good outcome. I mean to be honest very few people believed the Liberal's would climb the ten seat mountain to win the election and we still can't declare a result. And I'm very certain that the party has learnt that if you are unified and you don't change leaders and that you stick with the team you're going to do a lot better. I always think that changing leaders is extremely traumatic, whether its moderates or conservatives, whether it's whatever, it's always traumatic and I think a little less trauma would be very good for the Liberal Party.

Abraham: Margaret of Wynevalle. Hello Margaret.

Caller 3: Hello. I'm surprised that nobody has brought this up before, but at the Labor Party after party Tom Kenyon jumped up on the stage and said we "bleeped them". The word started with F and I thought that was absolutely disgusting. It was on ABC news and Channel Nine news. And I'm surprise that nobody else has commented on it because just think it was absolute arrogance and really rude.

Pyne: Well I think Tom maybe had a couple too many champers.

Schacht: Well I think on election night there are variations of candidates celebrating or absolutley depressed because they've lost. Whether they're Labor or Liberal I'm always a bit forgiving of what candidates say on election night either side of the thing...

Abraham: Well that's the only time you get actual truth.

Schacht: In some parts it is and I have to say that he won a seat that normally should be a marginal Liberal and he held on and won because he worked so god-damn hard in it.

Abraham: Ok.

Schacht: And the Liberals had a candidate they should not have run with.

Abraham: Chris Schacht, thank you.

Schacht: Thank you.

Abraham: And Chris Pyne, thank you.

Pyne: It's great to be back

Abraham: Yes, it's good to have you back.

Ends