Transcript - Skynews PM Agenda - 26 Feb 2009
04 Mar 2009
Transcipt Kieran Gilbert:
Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne thanks for coming in.
Christopher Pyne MP:
Pleasure Kieran
Gilbert:
We've heard the Government saying that the Global Recession is going to have a negative impact here; Industry Minister Kim Carr said that jobs aren't safe in this climate. Now he's just stating the obvious and yet your side of politics today launched their attack largely based on those comments.
Pyne:
Well Kim Carr said that nobody's job was safe and what the Opposition wants to know is why the Government keep talking down the economy. They started doing it right back at the beginning of 2008 when they were talking up inflation and putting the breaks on the economy. They've been talking doom and gloom all through last year, all through the beginning of this year and a comment from Kim Carr the Industry Minister today saying nobody's jobs were safe.
Gilbert:
But as the Prime Minister said even your Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has said we're heading for a recession, so if you're talking about talking down the economy your side is doing it as well.
Pyne:
But the Government put in a package at the beginning of December, a 10 billion dollar spending spree and we haven't seen any benefit of that yet. There are thousands of jobs being lost across the country, 1700 at Lend Lease today, 1850 yesterday at Pacific Brands, 400 hundred in Albury earlier this week which Sussan Ley asked about on Monday. So where are the 75,000 jobs that Labor said would be created from that package, let alone the tens of thousands more jobs they said would be created from the new package that was passed in February?
Gilbert:
As you said 1700 hundred jobs lost today at Lend Lease. The Treasurer said there's something inherently un-Australian about the Opposition's response to this, that you're jumping all over this for political gain. Given your questioning today and the suggestion the Government has bungled its economic response, does the Opposition not give any weight to the Global Catastrophe, this contagion that we've seen out of the financial crisis?
Pyne:
What the Government has also said is that they are going to spend 52 billion dollars, 10 billion dollars last year, 42 billion dollars in February to address the problems. They want to be able to spend the money, put us into debt and deficit and then take no responsibility for the fact those packages aren't going to work. We've seen across the world that those kinds of stimulus packages don't work. The Opposition suggested alternatives. The Prime Minister dismissed out of hand Malcolm Turnbull's offer to sit down and work in a bi-partisan way. I'd expect them to criticise the Opposition for highlighting the problems the Government is having a hand in creating and making matters worse, I'd expect them to do that. But it's our job to hold them to account and that's what we're going to do.
Gilbert:
You say that they're making things worse; we saw business investment in capital expenditure up by 6% in December. Now you're talking about how the Government's package is not working. How can you suggest that when the numbers and the retail numbers are also up?
Pyne:
Because the facts are there. The talking up of inflation at the beginning of last year led to the putting the brakes on the economy. The Reserve Bank was also responsible for that. They put the brakes on the economy at exactly the wrong time.
Gilbert:
But you're saying stimulus packages aren't working even though we've seen that data up?
Pyne:
I'll get to that. They also had the deposits guarantee at the end of the year which they said would help fix the problems. There was actually a flight from one kind of financial institution to another and now we've seen the 10 billion dollar stimulus in December add maybe 700 million dollars to retail sales, but where is the other 9 billion dollars the Government threw out into the economy in December? And they followed that by throwing good money after bad with 42 billion dollars in February. The Opposition and the public are entitled to ask the question: does the Government know what its doing?
Gilbert:
I suppose the question returned to you is, how can you prove that things would not be worse if the Government had not made that injection of funds in October and this year?
Pyne:
It's up to the Government to prove, to convince the Opposition and public and the media that they in fact know what they're doing, and so far the evidence is against them. We've got iconic brands like Pacific Brands putting off 1850 workers, Lend Lease a major property developer that would have factored into their equation the $42 billion the Government is throwing into the economy, yet they still decided to contract rather than hanging onto their employees, they obviously have no confidence that the Government's programs will do what the Government claims they will.
Gilbert:
You moved a censure motion today, the Opposition Leader did, at the end of Question Time over the pay bungle over the pay bungle for SAS troops. Given that the Chief of Army has said that this is resolved, that people will be paid back any amount they have incurred in debt, these are the SAS, the elite soldiers, given the Chief of Army has said he is doing that are you really pursing the right political course here?
Pyne:
Definitely. The Minister for Defence said yesterday, as did the Chief of Army, these matters would be fixed and that there would be no disciplinary action taken against anybody in the SAS, at the same time yesterday, when the Defence Minister was giving that assurance the soldiers of the SAS were being asked one by one to report to the commanding officers office to sign statutory declarations to say that they weren't emailing members of the Opposition. So we've got one assurance on one hand of no disciplinary action and at the same time, that wasn't being followed in practise. Today the Minister for Defence said that he could only recall one instance of representation to him from a woman who rang his office anonymously and yet today we were able to show that we have an email from a partner of an SAS soldier sent on the 11th of February which he responded to himself, personally, on the 13th of February by email, now this has been under scrutiny since Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we've been asking questions about this, why hasn't this Minister gone back through his records and worked out exactly what he did? He's flying by the seat of his pants on far too important an issue, and that's why he's incompetent and that's why the Government should act.
Gilbert:
Brendan Nelson the former Defence Minister, former Liberal Leader, he was quoted in today's Herald in a way that is being interpreted as a defence of Joel Fitzgibbon...
Pyne:
It's a very old interview actually.
Gilbert:
But the interview did say that people in uniform in the Army and the Defence Force find it difficult to accept directives of civilians including Ministers, now that might have been an old interview but it is relevant to this, that there is a cultural issue in Defence that Dr Nelson has also referred isn't Joel Fitzgibbon vindicated in that he says he is frustrated by how long it has taken and that the Defence Department is largely to blame?
Pyne:
Regardless of that it's an old interview and I'm sure Brendan's remarks would be different informed as they are now by the last four days of extraordinary poor performance by the Minister for Defence. It doesn't actually excuse the Minister's incapacity to answer questions in Parliament and to get them right. Yesterday he said he only had one representation from anybody in the SAS, it turns out he was responding himself to emails on the 13th of February. Now he couldn't remember that, given all the light that has been shone on this problem? That screams incompetence to me, and the Prime Minister cannot keep him in that role.
Gilbert:
The Chief of the Army in Senate Estimates this week gave somewhat of a defence of Joel Fitzgibbon, he said he has been on his case, essentially, from day one, when this was first arose last October, that he has had three or four meeting with him, the Chief of Army.
Pyne:
He is still a public servant; I wouldn't expect the public servants to attack their Ministers in public and say that they weren't doing a good job.
Gilbert:
He says he has been phoning him regularly and they've had a number of conversations.
Pyne:
Joel Fitzgibbon also admitted that he didn't even know about this problem until the Shadow Minister raised it with him last October last year, I mean this guy is asleep at the wheel in Defence, and people's lives are being effected, peoples mortgage repayments are being missed because they don't have the money, now that's a very serious issue.
Gilbert:
Well we're at the end of the first Parliamentary sitting week in which you have been Manager of Opposition Business. It's been a fairly torrid week. It began with Julia Gillard referring to you as mincing. Now do you think she has overstepped the mark on that? Or is that just part of colour and movement as Tony Abbott described it?
Pyne:
Julia likes to try and outshine Kevin. Every day in Question Time, it's part of the byplay of the Labor Party. She wants to be seen to be the Labor Party's best Parliamentary performer. That's not difficult, given how dull Kevin Rudd is as a performer, but I'm more interested in the substance of politics rather than the flim flam of politics, and if Julia wants to focus on the irrelevancies of whether she managed to get her dial on the television that night she can do that. I'd rather focus on the outcomes and the Opposition has had a good week.
Gilbert:
You're taking the moral high ground here, but I do recall you having some fairly decent goes at Julia Gillard including referring to the program Kath and Kim at one point, or least impersonating one of the characters...
Pyne:
I said she was the Kath Day-Knight of Australian politics, but that's part of the argy bargy of politics...
Gilbert:
It is when you do it, but not when she does it?
Pyne:
But I didn't complain Kieran. I really don't care less. I know it is really not a good personality trait, but I'm almost 'unembarrassable'. My wife would probably prefer I was more 'embarrassable' but I really don't mind one way or the other. It really doesn't faze me in the least bit.
ENDS