Transcript - Sky News - AM Agenda - 17 June 2010

Ashleigh Gillion: Welcome back to "AM Agenda". Joining me today on our panel of politicians, we have the Leader of the House Anthony Albanese and manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne. Hello to you both.

Anthony Albanese: Good morning.

Christopher Pyne: Good morning Ashleigh.

Gillion: Albo, I saw you at the ball last night, the big winter ball of course which was on here in Parliament last night. How did you pull up this morning? Any scandals that you know of this year?

Albanese: No there was - I don't think Malcolm Turnbull was there. I think he was put off from last year's performance, which will go down in history I guess. I didn't see any staffers of Sophie Panopoulos either, or Sophie Mirabella as she is now. So no incidents that I know of, but we'll wait and see during the day.

Gillion: Well, Chris you didn't turn up either. You were a no show, but Tony Abbott was there and we saw the charity auction and GetUp, the political lobby group paid over 16 thousand dollars for a refugee to take surfing lessons with Tony Abbott. How is he feeling about that today? Looking forward to it?

Pyne: Well, I think he'd be very happy about it. I mean, it's a great opportunity for him to teach people about surfing and he loves it, he's very enthusiastic about it. He's a fit 50 plus year old and whoever bought the auction item was going to get the benefit of his skills, and if it's a former refugee, now Australian permanent resident, all for the better. He'll be very pleased.

Gillion: And is the teaching all going to be one way, or perhaps could Tony Abbott be open to learning a bit from the refugee as well.

Pyne: I'm sure Tony will be more than happy to hear about this person's particular experiences and have them inform his views. The Coalition is not in the least bit upset about genuine refugees who come under our program, our 12 thousand person program coming to Australia. We are the most generous country apart from Canada for taking genuine refugees. That was the case under the Keating, Hawke, Howard and now Rudd Governments in terms of our offshore program and we wouldn't be the least bit embarrassed about that. We will continue that if we win the election in a few months time.

Gillion: Well, I'm sure that GetUp and that refugee would have something to say to the Government as well on the Government's stance on putting off processing for people from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

Albanese: Well, I would have thought whoever it is has suffered enough without putting up with Tony Abbott's budgie smugglers.

Gillion: Ok.

Albanese: (inaudible) I don't want to be there, I know that.

Pyne: It's a bit cold.

Gillion: We had Scott Morrison on this show yesterday talking about underpants and lovely things like that so I don't want to repeat that today.

Albanese: Thank goodness.

Gillion: Let's go onto a much more serious topic. And you would have heard before the break I interviewed Peter Leahy, former Chief of the Australia Army and he's calling for this idea that parliament should approve any decision to go to war. Now, Albo if you look at Iraq as an example, if parliamentary approval is required for that and if it was voted on every year to continue Australia's presence there then maybe we wouldn't have been there so long which of course something Labor was pushing for is. Do you think this idea of Peter Leahy's does have some pros and credits and is worth looking at?

Albanese: Well, we have in this country a tradition based on Section 61 of the Constitution that it is the executive government that make these decisions, and that is the way that it's always been. Of course there is accountability there; it's called a federal election. And indeed, Labor's opposition to the war and engagement in Iraq means that after the 2007 election our troops were brought home. And so there is an accountability there.

I think that given the failure of the Senate to deal with business; they're now down to 38 per cent of the time they're dealing with legislation - so 62 per cent I'm not quite sure what they do over there in that place. But the real concern is that when decisions have to be made could they be made in an appropriate timely fashion? I understand about accountability and certainly there are different ways in which those debates can be held, but I think that principal of the executive government actually making the determination is one that has served us. We respected the right of the former government to make the decision about the war in Iraq, however we pointed out of course that we disagreed with that decision.

Gillion: Of course, our presence in Afghanistan is one that does have bi-partisan support, but Chris Pyne, isn't there an argument that decision to go to war is a very different one from health policy or education; that it should be one that all federal politicians are involved in?

Pyne: Look, I can answer the question much more quickly than Mr Albanese just did. I think Lieutenant General Leahy's view is ill-conceived and wrong. We elect a parliament at each election. We elect an executive as part of that parliament. Their job is to make decisions. That's what the Cabinet and the Prime Minister are there for. Now in this Government, the Cabinet process has been truncated by "The Gang of Four" and we're seeing the results of that. We're seeing the results of that in a whole range of policies, but this is a serious question. I don't support it, the Coalition doesn't support it. The parliament has a very important role to elect the executive and the Prime Minister, but they then have to make decisions on behalf of Australia and be accountable for them and I think Lieutenant Leahy's view is quite wrong headed.

Gillion: Is that just a bit too dismissive though considering someone like the former Chief of the Army is having these opinions? He has the experience in this arena. Shouldn't we be listening carefully to what someone like him has to say?

Pyne: Well, Lieutenant General Leahy has never been elected to parliament; he's never served on the executive. His role was to be in the Army and I'm sure he had a very distinguished career. I certainly hope he did and I wish him well, but he's wrong. The Westminster System in this country has been in place since 1901. It's served the country extremely well and I think his view is quite wrong headed and in fact quite dangerous.

Gillion: We'll be looking at this issue again on "Lunchtime Agenda" at 12:30 today. Looking of course to what is happening in the Parliament today of course; we're expected that Labor's paid parental scheme will pass through the Senate, finally. Yesterday we saw....

Albanese: We'll see. There are amendments; it is unlikely it will be concluded today.

Gillion: Oh right.

Albanese: Is my advice. This is a parliament where legislation, even where we have some level of agreement, there's blockages that will appear.

Gillion: Chris Pyne, the Opposition isn't looking at blocking this?

Pyne: Not at all. The Government's had three years to introduce its paid parental leave policy. They've had three years to do it. Now....

Albanese: Good try, Chris. You had 12 and did nothing and you opposed it.

Pyne: The Government's had a paid parental leave policy since the 2007 election. They've had three years of Parliament in which to introduce it. They've introduced it at the last minute because they don't know how to manage a legislative agenda because this is an amateur hour operation. In terms of the Coalition; we have some minor amendments and want them to be discussed. We will discuss them for a day. The bill will be passed; we will be supporting the bills. There's no reason at all why the Coalition shouldn't spend two days discussing minor amendments after the Government's had three years to introduce a policy it took to the 2007 election.

Gillion: So you won't block it, but it's going to be delayed?

Pyne: We have no intention of blocking it, but we are quite prepared to debate it and so should the leader of the house be. The problem is that this Government is an amateur hour operation. And they've had three years to introduce something which they promised at the last election. Now they're introducing it in a rush at the end of the Parliament and complaining they can't get it through. Now you'd expect Red to come and gong them at any minute this group.

Albanese: That's an extraordinary position from Christopher. What he knows, and what the Australian people know is that Tony Abbott said we'd have paid parental leave over his dead body.

Pyne: But we have a better scheme and a more generous scheme.

Gillion: (inaudible)

Albanese: That's his position. He has never supported paid parental leave. He's now come up with this bizarre scheme about increasing company tax across the board. We have a scheme that is thought through, that's ready to rock 'n' roll; they need to just get on board with it.

Gillion: Well, it sounds like anyone interested in following that debate can do so in the Senate today.

Albanese: And through to Monday and then they'll have another reason why they have to delay it.

Pyne: I think people might want to rearrange their sock draw in preference to watching that debate. We'll leave that up to them.

Gillion: Well, yesterday was actually quite interesting and we saw some fiery scenes when the Family First Senator Steve Fielding suggested that some women could opt for a late term abortion if they qualified for the paid parental leave payments. Now, he was called sad and pathetic among other things, but the Senator said he just wanted to clear up a loophole. Is that fair enough?

Albanese: No. These comments were not legitimate. They were offensive. They were offensive to women in particular, but I think they reflected a very warped view of the way that the world works.

Gillion: Christopher, do you agree with that?

Pyne: Look, I have a very high regard for Steve Fielding and I've worked with him in a number of education matters in terms of the Opposition and the minor parties. His position defies logic, because of course he's referring to so called welfare cheats and others. If you are on welfare you're not going to be having access to the paid parental leave scheme because you're obviously not in the paid workforce so I think that points to perhaps an attempt to try and gain some attention for his political campaign for re-election to the Senate from Victoria. And I think that's extremely disappointing and I think it would be much better if this debate was conducted in a sober and sensible way rather than trying to garner cheap attention from the press.

Gillion: So is it safe to assume that neither of the major parties are going to be directing preferences in Senator Fielding's direction?

Pyne: That's a matter for the organisation in Victoria. It's not a matter for me to announce or not announce on Sky Television.

Gillion: What about you, Anthony Albanese? Would you ....

Albanese: Well, that's a matter for the organisation.

Gillion: But how do you think Senator Fielding has gone in the Senate?

Albanese: Well, Senator Fielding, I think when you look at someone who has the balance of power in the Senate; remember the reason we couldn't get through, even if we negotiated and had agreement with the Greens and Senator Xenophon, you then need Senator Fielding as well. Either that to get Government legislation through or the support of the Coalition. That's the position that the Government's in.

Perhaps people might have a look at these comments, which were distressing to say the least. I mean the sort of allegation that people are out there getting pregnant who are drug addicts in order to get paid parental leave not only defies logic, I think it is worse than that actually. I think it really was an attempt to get publicity, which he's got; we're talking about him now, but at the expense of just putting forward stereotypes which really, it isn't appropriate for a member of the Senate to do that.

Pyne: The Coalition's argument of course, Ashleigh is not with Family First or with Senator Xenophon or with the Greens. Our argument is with the Labor Party, so we'll be focusing on the Labor Party's failings and it's bad tax, it's bad mining tax.....

Albanese: Do you agree with (inaudible), do you?

Gillion:  We'll look forward to more debate about that tax in parliament today. We've run out of time to discuss that this morning. Thank you both for joining us as always, we could have kept going for a lot longer. Thanks for you time.

Pyne: It's a pleasure.

Albanese: Good to be with you.

Ends.