SUBJECTS: Newspoll, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, Tony Abbott, My School website.
FRAN KELLY:
The two Chrises.
CHRIS BOWEN:
Morning Fran.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Morning Fran.
KELLY:
The first polls, in particular the Newspoll yesterday, show that the gap is closing pretty quickly. Why don't we get this off our chests right upfront - can I ask both of you, who's the underdog here? Chris Bowen?
BOWEN:
Well, every election is tough. We don't take it for granted and the Prime Minister made that clear to the Caucus earlier in the week and he's made it clear to the Cabinet on an ongoing basis that we fight every election as if it's going to come down to the wire and this election was always going to be tough. You've got the Opposition out there saying, 'We can fix all the problems with no costs'. That's always going to have some short term political bounce.
KELLY:
Do you believe that, though? I mean, how fragile do you think your lead is?
BOWEN:
Well, without going into the 'fragility' of our lead, having been through a few elections at various levels I know that things can turn around very quickly and that people are very punishing of a Government that thinks it's got everything home and hosed, and we certainly don't take that view. I know, paying due respect, John Howard never had that view when they were in office and it's not a view that we take.
KELLY:
Speaking of Howard, he famously declared once after the Aston by-election the Government was back in the game. Christopher Pyne, what do you reckon? Is the Coalition back in the game?
PYNE:
Well, I hate to describe it in this way, Fran, but I think Chris Bowen's being too cute by half about the fragility of the Government's lead. The Coalition needed 11 seats to win this coming election before the redistributions across Australia. We now need 17 seats to win the election. That is a very tall mountain to climb. The odds would have to be on the Government. There's been one one-term Government since the 20s; that was the Scullin Government, which was defeated at the beginning of the Depression. Other than that, Governments always get a second term, and sometimes even a third or fourth term. So the prospects of the Opposition winning are limited. I think it can be done, but there's no doubt at all that we are the underdogs and I think if you visit the Sportsbet or Centrebet sites on the web, you'll see where the odds lie. They don't lie with the Opposition.
That said, we will put in a tremendous effort because we believe that this Government needs to be turned out. We think that it is damaging Australia and with its great big new tax and rising interest rates and rising costs of living expenses, the pressure on families and people on fixed incomes, in particular, are too great. We'll try not to have too much political rhetoric and try and be more factual for your show. Mr Bowen started with a bit of rhetoric.
BOWEN:
That would be most unlike you, Chris.
KELLY:
It's going to be tough, no doubt about it, but has the Coalition got its mojo back? Is the mood completely different now than it was under Malcolm Turnbull?
PYNE: Well Fran, this is an election year and in the first two years after our defeat in 2007, it's fair to say that the Opposition has been licking its wounds - not a very attractive word picture - but licking its wounds and trying to recover from its defeat after 11.5 years in Government. But this is an election year. The Coalition is now entirely united. We have a policy on climate change action, which is direct action, which will cost about $10 billion over 10 years. I'm quite happy to pit that against the Government's $114 billion new tax over 10 years and I think the Australian public have a clear choice.
In two of the leaders, we have Kevin Rudd, who made a lot of commitments before 2007. Most of those commitments have not been kept, most spectacularly on hospitals. He promised a referendum if hospitals weren't fixed and now I notice he's promising a referendum again after the 2010 election if hospitals aren't fixed, and I think the Australian public are wising up to a Government that's made a lot of promises, is involved in a lot of talk but not a lot of action.
On our side we have Tony Abbott, who I think is seen as a man of action. He certainly is a person who says what he means and means what he says. Sometimes with the Prime Minister, it's quite hard to work out exactly what he has just said, and I think that will be a great contrast for the Australian public to make their choice this year.
KELLY:
Okay, just on that - we will come back to the climate change policy, it's important that we do - but speaking of language, Chris Bowen, we have a pledge now by the Prime Minister for some clear speaking. Let's hear from your boss, yesterday.
KEVIN RUDD:
[Grab] Our challenge is to communicate more effectively, which we have done, to communicate our rhetoric more effectively than we have done. Now we all share some responsibility for that, including myself.
KELLY:
Chris Bowen, did you heave a sigh of relief when the PM uttered those words yesterday?
BOWEN:
Well, Fran, I think it's a challenge for politicians, not only in Australia but around the world, particularly in this climate change debate, which I know you said we'd come back to. But this is, frankly, a contest between complex truths and simple lies. And the easiest political job will be those who are peddling simple lies. The more difficult job will be those of us who have to communicate the complex truths, and that does have its challenges.
But you know, when you said on the sound grab, 'a great big tax', which Chris now likes - it's not a sound grab I think he used when he was arguing to support the ETS in the party room two months ago - but now that he's running that sound grab and he's taken the lead from his leader, that is a very simple line and I accept that. It's a line that's very easy to get cut through. Making the case for climate change action, making the case for an ETS is a difficult task. Of course it is, but it is a task that we are raring to go and we are looking forward to the election campaign, bearing in mind that we have the job of communicating those complex issues.
KELLY:
Tony Abbott is a pretty powerful and direct communicator, and it might be tough for Kevin Rudd to match.
BOWEN:
So is Mark Latham, Fran. And it comes down to matters of substance, it comes down to a complex policy debate, and a simple and easy grab - which you're quite right, Mr Abbott does reasonably well - can get you through for a little while. But when push comes to shove, the Australian people are much more nuanced, have a much more sophisticated view of their voting patterns and their decisions, and they will not be persuaded by a simple sound grab.
KELLY:
Christopher?
PYNE:
Well, before the last election, Fran, a simple line was that Kevin Rudd would fix everything. Kevin Rudd said he'd fix hospitals. Kevin Rudd said he'd fix Indigenous disadvantage. Kevin Rudd said he'd fix the Japanese whaling in our oceans. Kevin Rudd said he'd be a fiscal conservative. Kevin Rudd said whatever was needed to win the last election. And he won the election, and of course now Chris Bowen is trying to make it out that the Government realises that some of these issues are more complex. But before the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd said, 'We'll just fix it. Elect us and we'll fix it. The buck stops with me'.
Now of course, in Government, he's backpedalling away from that. Iran hasn't been taken to the International Court of Justice. The Japanese haven't been prosecuted in an international court as he promised. Indigenous disadvantage is getting worse. Money is being wasted in remote communities that hasn't been spent on housing. He's hardly been a fiscal conservative. We have enormous debt, we have enormous deficit, which we didn't have under the Howard Government. The list is endless. He was going to protect our borders, In fact, I think he even said he was going to turn the boats back. But instead we've had over 3,000 arrivals since he watered down the border protection laws in August 2008. And of course, Chris Bowen refers to -
BOWEN:
I'm glad you've dropped the rhetoric, Chris.
PYNE:
And you weren't engaging in any rhetoric at all, were you? Even to the point of attacking former Labor leaders, I noticed. Labor will do anything, Fran, to try and win an election, and now they're prepared to turn on their former leaders in order to try and look like they've changed.
But sadly, leopards don't change their spots. Labor is a big taxing and big spending Government. And of course, their great big new tax on everything is the penultimate example of how Labor wants to introduce a new tax to solve the problem rather than doing what the Coalition wants to do, which of course is introduce incentives, a mechanism we use all the time in Government - incentives for superannuation, or incentives for solar panels. We've got to use incentives to reduce pollution.
KELLY:
It's 8.15 on breakfast. Our guests in our first Polls Apart panel this morning: Chris Bowen and Christopher Pyne, our two political regulars who will be with you through this election year.
Talking about turning on leaders and this whole notion of climate change credibility, Christopher Pyne, I mean, just last year, you backed - strongly backed - your leader Malcolm Turnbull in supporting the ETS. Now you have a leader who you're backing, in Tony Abbott, who said last year that climate change science was crap. Where's the Coalition's credibility on this issue? Has it been damaged by this?
PYNE:
Everything has changed about the Emissions Trading Scheme because of the fiasco that was Copenhagen.
KELLY:
Well, you switched leaders before Copenhagen.
PYNE:
No, no, we switched - yes, right at the beginning of Copenhagen. But I think by that stage we had a fair idea that China, Brazil, South Africa, India, the former Soviet Union, Russia were not going to sign up to action on climate change the way that our Prime Minister was trying to get Australia to do so. Copenhagen has changed not only the Coalition's view about this but also the public's view about this.
Before Copenhagen, Kevin Rudd was trying to get the country to sign up to an Emissions Trading Scheme that would damage our exports, damage our industries and be a huge $120 billion money-go-round. Copenhagen proved that the rest of the world wasn't going in the same direction. Now, Australians are good world citizens. We're very happy to do our bit about climate change action. But we'd rather do it in a way that benefited Australia, and that means keeping our emissions reductions, the benefits of those reductions, here. It means direct action.
Now, since Copenhagen, of course, the Australian public have realised that Kevin Rudd is again trying to foist an Emissions Trading Scheme on them, a great big new tax on them. And the Opposition's saying, 'We can achieve exactly the same target as Labor: a five per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. We can do it in the same timeframe but we can do it with direct action and incentives rather than the money churn which is the Government's policy'. If they want to keep going down that track, good luck to them, but I think they'll find that a very hard sell.
KELLY:
It's a tiny studio. We'll run out of oxygen soon if we don't let Chris Bowen have a go.
Chris Bowen, is there any oxygen left in this debate? Would Labor still be happy to go to another election on the issue of climate change if, as Christopher Pyne noted, the Australian people have changed their view?
BOWEN:
Well, Christopher's got more front than Anthony Hordern's, and due respect -
PYNE:
You have to have [inaudible] in Adelaide.
KELLY:
John Button, it used to be.
BOWEN:
You have to admire his ability to run two conflicting arguments with a straight face, and that's something that Christopher's well known for and we pay him due respect for that.
But look, this is a placebo from the Opposition. This is a placebo from an Opposition that is now dominated by climate sceptics and climate deniers. This will have very little, if any, impact on climate change or the environment.
Now, Christopher says everything's changed since Copenhagen. Well, if everything's changed since Copenhagen, has President Obama gone back to the United States and said, 'Now we no longer need an Emissions Trading Scheme, we no longer need a cap and trade'? Have Japan said, 'We're now no longer going down the road of a cap and trade emissions scheme'? Have New Zealand said that? Has Europe said, 'Well, actually we're going to tear up our Emissions Trading Scheme', which has been in operation for some time? Of course they haven't.
Now, if Christopher and Tony Abbott's plan was so good, if it was really going to have an impact on climate change, don't you think Peter Shergold might have recommended it to the previous Government? In fact, he did the opposite. He recommended an Emissions Trading Scheme. In his report, too, he said that the sorts of things that are in this new policy would not work.
Now, if things had changed since Copenhagen, then you would see this being reflected in policy changes around the world. Now, the political dynamic might have changed since Copenhagen, and Tony Abbott says - it's not a term that I would use - but he says, 'Climate change is crap but most people believe in it so we've got to have a policy'. And what they've come up with is a climate sceptic's placebo, something which they think might work politically but which they know will have no impact. And that is the argument which we'll be prosecuting and yes, we're more than happy to have that debate and we're more than happy to argue that through an election campaign.
KELLY:
Okay. Well look, we've got to wind this up. In the weeks ahead, we won't zero in on one policy quite so much as we have but it's a policy that was just released yesterday, I think it was important to zero in on it.
Just before we do go, just looking ahead, Christopher Pyne, you're the Shadow Education Minister and a big policy release in the last week or two was the Government's My School website. Just briefly, did the Government kick a goal with that? Are you happy to admit that?
PYNE:
The Coalition initiated the NAPLAN testing and the Government is publishing it. And we believe that publishing information to parents is good, of course it's good, but it needs to be coupled with giving power parents something to do about the information that they now have. That's why we need to give principals autonomy. We need to give governing councils independence in public schools in the same way as non-government schools have autonomy for principals and independence for governing councils. It's not good enough just to publish these facts and figures and create a culture of complaint and create an opportunity for people to sit at their own problems without actually providing the solutions.
And the solution is to give more autonomy and power to parents and schools. Now, I don't think the Government will come at that. I think they're only going to publish the results without actually doing anything about the results, and I think that therefore is a failing. But on its own, the My Schools website is a good idea, but it needs more.
KELLY:
Did you look up your old school?
PYNE:
Indeed. My school did very well under the My Schools measure and all my children are at my old school - three out of four, one's not there yet - and so I'm very glad that that did well.
KELLY:
Chris Bowen, did you have a look?
BOWEN:
I have had a look and like Chris, my daughter goes to my old school and it's done quite well, a wonderful public school in western Sydney.
Look, the Opposition, when they were in Government, talked about more transparency and more information. We're actually doing it.
PYNE:
Oh, cut the rhetoric.
KELLY:
Chris Bowen and Christopher Pyne, thanks very much for joining us and thanks for being with us throughout the year, we really appreciate it.