Transcript - ABC 891 - Two Chrisses - 5 July 2010

SUBJECTS: Upcoming Federal Election; Labor Leadership Coup; Coalition Mental Health Policy; Immigration

David Bevan: The Federal Coalition is in a deep trajectory, is it not, Chris Schacht? Julia Gillard is the flavour of the month. We've just heard Tony Wright saying the women's magazines can't get enough of her and you know what a grilling she's going to get in Woman's Day.

Chris Schacht: There will be some good questions in Woman's Day and Woman's Weekly. I think that she'll handle them very well and very openly. And people will read it and say, "What a great personality she is, what a great person to be Prime Minister and she's our first woman Prime Minister. Game, set, match.

Bevan: Yeah, game, set, match, exactly. Is Tony Abbott in big trouble, Chris Schacht?

Schacht: Well, I always thought he was going to be in big trouble because of what his policies were, but three or four weeks ago he had a chance according to the opinion polls. Now I think that chance is diminished. Now, I never bet on football or politics, but you'd have to say over the next couple of months that unless the Labor Government does something catastrophically stupid she'd have to be favoured to win the next election.

Matthew Abraham: It is one of those things though when you'll have this great PR atmospheric going on, but out there people waiting with baseball bats. Or not?

Schacht: People are never waiting with baseball bats. They're only....

Abraham: Kevin Rudd?

Schacht: Even with Kevin Rudd it was disquiet, but it wasn't like 13 years of the Hawke/Keating Government or 11 years of John Howard. We're only in the first term of a Labor Government, and since 1931 every Government at least has got two terms. And with Julia now leading it means we have a chance, I wouldn't put it higher than that, we may even increase our majority in the lower house.

Abraham: Ok. Chris Pyne, for somebody who's seat would be one they'd like?

Christopher Pyne: Look, the fundamental problems with the Government and it's failures are still the same fundamental problems. Just because you change the jockey doesn't mean you change the horse. And what I'm picking up in the electorate is people are still concerned about the junking of the emissions trading scheme. They're still concerned about waste and mismanagement of the school hall program, the pink batts program and of course the constant arrival of boat people. We've had over 6000 since they weakened the border protection laws. They're still concerned about the mining tax and of course the alcopops tax and the tobacco tax....

Abraham: People have forgotten the alcopops tax.

Pyne: No they haven't.

Abraham: Ok.

Pyne: They haven't forgotten....

Abraham: Kids are just going out and buying flagons now.

Pyne: Well they are.

Abraham: And they get two litres of coke they just mix the grog in.

Pyne: It's been a hopelessly failed policy but the public have not forgotten the underlying problems with the....

Abraham: I mean, you're trying to remind them of some of these things, but I'd say....

Pyne: That's our job to do that, to remind them of the failings of the Government....

Abraham: So when you run through a list like this, no offence....

Pyne: You let C1 speak without being interrupted, but that's alright. It's your program.

Schacht: I was making good common sense.

Pyne: No, no, no. It's your program.

Abraham: Yeah, that's fair enough, but I was just saying when you're running through these things; I'm just questioning you because they probably will remember the pink batts and the school building program, there's some residual ; I would think the alcopops tax you're sort of reaching a little bit back.

Pyne: No, it's our taxes. Its taxes versus low tax party. Labor introduced an alcopops tax, a tobacco tax, the big mining tax, all because they had to feed their spending addiction. The debt is still the same; it's still $96 billion. The deficit is still $57 billion. Sure we are in a honeymoon period for the new Prime Minister. There's a particularly heightened honeymoon period because she happens to be a woman, but when the election is announced, the clock goes back to zero. People will still be questioning the fundamental failures of the Government and they will be things like boat people policy, a school hall program, the pink batts program, the junking of the Emissions Trading Scheme, the introduction of new taxes, and deficit. And the Opposition simply has to get through this period of the honeymoon which is obviously going to happen.

Abraham: You're not going to have a lot of time are you?

Pyne: We've got plenty of time I mean you'd be surprised how the public aren't quite as easily fooled as the Labor Party thinks they are, but this has been a tricky decision to change the leader in the hope that the public will think, "Right, Well then we should vote for Julia Gillard because they have changed the leader." But the fundamental problems of the Government are still present.

Schacht: (inaudible)

Abraham: Chris Pyne, watching the Channel Seven news in Sydney on Friday night, I really was gob smacked because in their little promo they had Julia Gillard sitting at the news desk - thought maybe she's on the plasma screen there - then when they came back, there she is sitting up with the news reader, another woman and they proceeded to have a chat. An 'interview', but I can tell you, it wasn't Laurie Oakes.

Pyne: The same for Tony Abbott this week; I assume they'll do the same.

Abraham: Well, I, is that a first?

Pyne: Well I've never seen it before, but you know -

Abraham: That's what you're up against

Pyne: What the Labor Party will try and convey is that basically they have a kind of talk-show host as the Prime Minister now and we should all be in love with them. What the people want is a Prime Minister who can competently manage the country and in the last three years they haven't had one - they haven't got one now. I mean, let's not forget Julia Gillard was the Deputy Prime Minister while all these decisions were being made. What, is she now trying to convince people that she was against weakening the border protection laws is she? Is that her position?

Abraham: She's now changing.

Pyne: Has she actually opposed Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister and a member of the gang of four? She opposed the great big new tax on mining?

Abraham: But she's fixing it now.

Pyne: Did she oppose the alco pops tax? Did she oppose the spending on school halls? Actually she was responsible for the five billion dollars minimum waste in the school hall program.

Abraham: You can't beat her up. She's a girl. Is that a big problem you've got?

Pyne: Look, nobody wants to beat anybody up. It's a bad choice of words, particularly in relation to women. But the point is she will have to be judged on not just the last two weeks but on the last three years. She was responsible for the Medicare Gold policy. She was responsible for the private school hit list policy.

Abraham: That goes back to the Latham era.

Pyne: Sure, but she has a history of being a big spending, big taxing person who cannot manage a program's delivery.

Bevan: This is the two Chris's. Christopher Pyne Liberal Member for Sturt and Chris Schacht former Labor Senator and former ALP State Secretary. Our phones are open. 1300 222 891. Anne has called from Goolwa. Good morning Anne.

Caller 1: Yes, good morning. Just a small comment for Christopher Pyne; quite frequently when you change the jockey, the horse does race much better. That's all I need to say.

Pyne: (inaudible)

Abraham: Thank you; that's why good jockeys get paid a lot more Chris Schacht?

Schacht: Dead right. I have to say, listening to C2, he listed off his litany of problems for the Government but never once did he promise, and this is the problem Abbott's got, a genuine comprehensive alternative of what else they would have done instead.

Pyne: Yes we have

Schacht: No you have not.

Pyne: I will if you like.

Schacht: You have not, you have not.

Abraham: I think you have had a fair go Chris Pyne, once I stopped interrupting.

Schacht: You have not, for example, and the positive things for Government, I'll just say a couple of simple things. We put the stimulus package in and 300 thousand Australians didn't lose their jobs in the Australian economy. The only OECD economy that did not go into recession. That is a simple, 15 second television ad that is going to be very hard for you to beat, even when you list off all the individual little bits and pieces, the general management of the economy is 300 thousand Australians did not lose their jobs.

Pyne: Totally unprovable.

Schacht: Well if you go back, I've said this before on this program; go back to the budget papers in 2009 and it predicted eight per cent unemployment. And the unemployment rate was just over five per cent. That's about 300 thousand jobs.

Bevan: Ok.

Schacht: If the Opposition are just going to run a policy in the campaign of just consistently attacking the Government about so-called "what they did wrong" without talking positively about what they're going to do, they certainly will lose the election.

Pyne: The public.....

Bevan: Phillip Adams, ABC Radio National broadcaster announced on the weekend that he was not renewing his Labor membership I think after 50 years.

Schacht: I think he's announced that about ten times over the last 20 or 30 ...

Abraham: Do you mean Phillip Adams is a member of the Labor Party?

Bevan: Apparently.

Abraham: Is he? I've never picked that up from his work.

Pyne: Hold the front pages.

Bevan: But, and here's the problem; when Phillip Adams says 'I am not renewing my membership of the Labor Party because of the factional thugs and the way they've treated Kevin Rudd', have you got a problem?

Schacht: I don't think the punters are going to line up and say "Goodness me Phillip Adams has not renewed his membership of the Labor Party, therefore we're not going to vote Labor."

Bevan: But have you got a problem with the factional nature of this because Chris Pyne and the Coalition have already brought out their latest ads, saying that Julia Gillard is just a puppet?

Schacht: The only thing: they look desperately around for something they could run on and they've picked on that and they're trying to beat it up and so on.

Pyne: It doesn't have to be beaten up. It's all there.

Schacht: I mean, there was no more factional going on in the Labor Party about changing the leadership than the factions in the Liberal Party changing their leader three times in the last three years.

Pyne: It's not the Prime Minister.

Schacht: What?

Pyne: (inaudible)

Schacht: If your mate Costello had had a bit more spine .....

Pyne: There have been six Opposition leaders in the last six years.

Schacht: If your mate Costello had had a bit more spine he would have knocked off John Howard as leader while John Howard was Prime Minister.

Pyne: That's got nothing to do with it.

Schacht: You wanted change; your mate didn't have the spine to take it on so it didn't happen. But since then we've had four leaders since election night in the Liberal Party from 2007. The major question is, the factional leaders in your party and in our party - and you're one of them in your party, cannot get change in the leader; cannot take place unless there's an overwhelming view amongst the rank and file.

Abraham: Okay, so the Labor Party does have factional heavies, but they're better at it.

Schacht: Of course, but they're better at it. But the one thing is, they were told overwhelmingly by backbench members in all factions, they wanted to change and would be happy to change the leader.

Abraham: Chris Schacht, most of the back benchers didn't know the change was happening.

Schacht: No, sorry, when the feeling was so strong and they went back to say "would you support the change?" overwhelmingly across all factions they said yes they would.

Pyne: Hang on, on the night of the coup, ALP members of Parliament including members of the Cabinet were leaving Parliament House to be interviewed and poo pooing the ABC and saying, "You seem to think you know more about what's going on in the caucus than we do; we happen to be members of the caucus." As it happened, the ALP were the ones that knew and the members of the caucus found about it the next day. The ABC knew. So the next day the ALP caucus told and people who changed the Prime Minister of Australia were not the ALP caucus, it was the Australian Workers Union, the Health Services Union, the Electrical Trades Union and Paul Howes belled the cat on Lateline on the Wednesday night in a chilling interview where he said we've had an AWU phone hook up today and decided to axe the Prime Minister.

Schacht: But the point is, is that if there had been a ballot there would have been 70 votes to 30.

Pyne: So it's okay if there's six changes?

Schacht: No, no, no. I'm just going to say, the feeling in the caucus, whether you agree with it or not was overwhelmingly underneath they wanted a change. That's the only reason the factional leaders, so-called could organise a change because the rank and file wanted it.

Abraham: Monday July 12 - ... kicking it off at the Daws Road recycling centre ... broadcasting from the can recycling area there and I have been accumulating a few cans.

Bevan: We expect you two fellas to come along.

Abraham: That'll be good.

Schacht: I'll be in Darwin.

Abraham: It'll be warmer in Darwin.

Bevan: Look, if that's the case can you give your empties to Chris Pyne and he'll bring them along on your behalf?

Schacht: My wife collects all the empties and takes them down to the recycling ...

Abraham: Can she bring them in?

Schacht: She'll be with me in Darwin.

Pyne: All the vodka bottles and gin bottles ...

Schacht: Yes that's true. All the Australian wine bottles etc. You're the Moet man. The Burnside elite.

Pyne: You've been living high on the hog for so long.

Schacht: Drinking Champagne.

Bevan: The way this works is that you bring your bottles in and you get your money and then you put the money in the donation.

Abraham: Some of it or all of it or more if you want, or you can just come and give money to the tin. You'll be alright.

Schacht: Well I'll speak to my wife in the next round and when she gets the money we'll make an appropriate donation.

Abraham: That's good. There's no compulsion.

Pyne: (inaudible)

Schacht: Oh no, I just don't want people to say, "That rotten Schacht didn't make a donation isn't he mean, and he's not going to the recycling plant in Darwin."  A bit of social pressure here from the Matt and Dave. We wouldn't let that Schacht get out of town without putting some money on the table.

Bevan: Fair enough, how much are you going to put in?

Schacht: I'll put in what we get the next time we take all the cans.

Abraham: Martin of Craigmore. Hello Martin.

Pyne: You'll think Led Zepellin's been over the shots when you see their recycling.

Bevan: Let's go to Craigmore. Hello Martin.

Caller 1: Just quickly. I just want to go back to the first week when Gillard came into power in this country and where a lot of the rhetoric around the Labor Party was that the decision to put her in there was not poll-driven. Now to me that is the biggest load of crap that I have ever heard in my life. It was totally poll-driven. The Labor party have accused the Liberal Party of many a time in Parliament of taking some front page headlines and putting them across in Question Timesaying that they don't do their homework, they don't get their facts right. Who woke up in the Labor Party and saw the front page headlines in the paper that said, "Labor is going to lose the next election?"

Pyne: Well, Martin makes very good point. The axing of the Prime Minister or the butchering of the Prime Minister in the first time in Australia's history was of course entirely driven by the factional bosses and particularly the New South Wales factional bosses deciding that they had to be in power because the Labor Party has become a party of patronage and free kicks and giving their friends opportunities and they have to be in power to do that. That's the story of the New South Wales Labor Party and New South Wales Labor has come to Canberra.

Schacht: Well all I can say is that in the old days in the 50s and the 60s the Labor Party would have a leader that would be let go ahead and lose three elections in a row and the Labor Party got belted all the time. And the Liberal Party thoroughly enjoyed that system that the Labor Party had, that we used to keep....

Abraham: Chris Pyne said, "they were the good days"

Schacht: They were the good days; Bob Menzies had a wonderful time, the Libs had 23 years in power because Labor made themselves unelectable; had leaders that could be let to run for three elections, losing three elections in a row, keep loyally putting them back as leader. Unfortunately, for the Liberal Party now, the Labor Party is not sucker bait any more. We are going to always try and win an election

Pyne: So you're going to be ruthless and butcher the Prime Minister. He stands between you and power.

Schacht: And just as you people butchered leaders in the past, whether in government or not.

Pyne: We stuck with John Howard for the last 11 and a half years.

Schacht: When the Labor Government became competitive politically from the seventies onwards, State and Federal, the Liberal Party doesn't like it.

Abraham: Did you say 'you've put up with John Howard for 11 and a half years?'

Pyne: No. I said 'we stuck with John Howard for 11 and a half years'.

Abraham: Well you were stuck with John Howard.

Pyne: No, we stuck with him; we stuck alongside John Howard for 11 and a half years, even though the polls were indicating we were in deep trouble. We didn't say, "Let's look after our sorry arses and butcher the Prime Minister." We stuck to him.

Schacht: Only because Costello didn't have the spine to take him on in a ballot. He didn't have the guts to do it like Keating did. And so that's why you lost.

Pyne: Let's face it, the factions in the New South Wales said, "Come on boys, we can't afford to lose an election, if we lose the election we're going to stop giving out free jobs to our mates."

Abraham: Gentlemen.

Schacht: Costello didn't have the guts to do it. And therefore you lost.

Abraham: You're in a loop. Robyn of Wynn Vale, hello.

Caller 2: Chris Pyne I wanted to thank you for the work that you have done in the past in introducing the Better Access Scheme that made early intervention in some mental health problems so much more accessible to people. I am a mental health social worker and I am one of the people who will be losing my job when Labor, if Labor gets back in, in April and that Medicare rebate is just annihilated. And I just wanted to express again my support for what you've done Chris Pyne for the better access scheme and also to say to you Chris Schacht, what are your thoughts on what Julia Gillard are planning to do to fix this major policy mess when they've decided to gut the early intervention into mental health care for Australians?

Abraham: Chris Schacht, are we seeing, for instance Tony Abbott on some pretty sound policy issues making the running, for instance on mental health with his pledge last week for increased spending and here you've got Julia Gillard saying, "Well I want you to say whatever you want about asylum seekers but I can tell you what you're feeling -" she said, 'you're feeling anxious'.

Schacht: All I can say is, of all the things Abbott has said since he's become the leader, most of them are crazed. But the one he said about mental health I give him a tick for and I have to argue for C2 a bit of a tick for what he did when they were in Government as Parliamentary Secretary in Mental Health and as a result there's now going to be, in my view, a genuine debate about mental health and intervention and the Federal Government is going to have to respond because what the Liberal Party has put up is a decent debate to have. And I have no hesitation in saying so and after nine months or whatever it is as leader, Abbott actually may be, because his mate C2 got onto him and pointed out a few of these things, I don't know, but it is a decent debate to have.

Remember the Labor Government at the last election promised to continue the program in funding terms that C2 and the Howard Government had announced before the election. We didn't say we were going to abolish it, we actually said, that funding will continue.

Pyne: But you have unfortunately.

Schacht: And now some of the bean counters, I presume in finance or somewhere wanted to make a saving so they went 'whack'. I don't have much time for the bean counters in finance departments but they're always around the place. So I just think that there will be a genuine debate. The lady who rang in will be part of that debate and would mean that if the Labor Party doesn't respond to it, there will obviously be some issues at the election.

Bevan: Now I just take it that you'd agree with that lady and we can move on?

Pyne: Well I'm just going to compliment C1 on his very honest answer to the question .

Schacht: I'm always honest.

Pyne: And I wanted to thank her, Robyn, I don't know Robyn, but thank you for ringing in.

Schacht: You're going to find out who she is real quick.

Abraham: Auntie Robyn of Wynn Vale.

Pyne: It was very kind of her.

Bevan: Robyn had rung in earlier on this very issue, so thank you Robyn.

Bevan: 28 past ten. Greg from Port Adelaide, hello Greg.

Caller 3: Yes, good morning there. Asking the Two Chris's their position on decentralisation of Australia's population away from the capital centres to regional centres. I mean (inaudible) from the Whitlam Government days; we're 30 years behind the times here. We need to move to regional centres with our growing population.

Pyne: Well, that's a very good question. In the Howard Government we introduced extra points for new migrants, skilled migrants in particular who chose to go to a place outside Sydney and Melbourne and that meant Adelaide got a higher share of new skilled migrants. The Labor Party has reversed that decision or they've made changes which mean that those five extra points are no longer making the difference. And that will be bad for South Australia in terms of the new skilled migrants and we'll be back to the old days of people going back to Sydney and Melbourne. That's a mistake they've made, of course they can reverse it and they should reverse it. It will have a deleterious impact on our state. We do need.....

Abraham: You can't force people to live in particular areas can you?

Pyne: No look, what you can do is if you give; what the Howard Government gave them extra points if they chose to live outside the major capital cities and by doing that South Australia benefited and that's very important if we're going to expand Olympic Dam, expand Prominent Hill, maintain our manufacturing base and defence industry and the wine industry; we're going to need workers to do so. And the bright lights of Sydney are very attractive to a lot of people and if we can encourage them to get out of that that will be better for us.

Schacht: But there's one problem, in that outh Australia was given as a whole an extra five points for the whole of South Australia as a region; it meant they came to Adelaide. T hey didn't go to the non-Adelaide areas.  And secondly once they were here for a while there was nothing to stop them going back to Sydney or Melbourne.

I notice in today's paper the regional mayors are raising the issue about how do you get them into the regional areas? Well, the next thing is, you've got to have jobs, infrastructure in place ... so there are wider issues about it. I think that -

Pyne: But they tended not to go back to Sydney or Melbourne ...

Schacht: Well once they got a job......

Pyne: They'd buy a house, and family and friends here, the kids would be going to school ...

Abraham: Well that's a fair way down the track though generally.

Pyne: But the vast majority of them did not actually go back to Sydney or Melbourne.

Abraham: Okay, the Two Chris's, C1 and C2, we'll talk to you tomorrow. One will be at the can and recycling depot, and you'll be with us in spirit. I know that, Chris Schacht. Thank you for coming in.

Pyne: Pleasure.

Schacht: Pleasure.

Ends.