SUBJECTS: Health reform, Tony Abbott, Newspoll, Barnaby Joyce, population growth, Opposition's economic credibility.
FRAN KELLY:
And joining me are the Financial Services Minister, Chris Bowen, and the Shadow Education Minister, Christopher Pyne. Good morning.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Good morning, Fran. Good morning, Chris.
CHRIS BOWEN:
Good morning, Christopher.
KELLY:
Now, before we get to the population policy let's talk health reforms. Christopher Pyne, is Tony Abbott's indicative support for Kevin Rudd's hospital reform a great big new backdown?
PYNE:
No, no. Tony Abbott has always said that we will examine the Government's proposals. We think the Government's proposals have enormous flaws and are a huge new bureaucracy, and they won't actually achieve the outcome that he claims that they will. They are more of an election fix in an election year than a fix for hospitals.
KELLY:
Hang on. He also said they share many of the elements of the Opposition's health and hospital policy.
PYNE:
Well, it's a very, very big area of reform. So therefore there are aspects of it which we think are heading in the right direction, but there's a lot of work to do on Mr Rudd's health plan. John Brumby has, I think yesterday, said that there are more than 40 questions they'd asked the Government which they haven't had satisfactory responses to so there's a lot of work to do.
But what Mr Abbott's saying yesterday is that we will have an open mind to what the Government is planning because we all want to see the health system improved. We all want to see that public hospitals are actually caring for patients rather than being bureaucratic factories, and that's all he said yesterday. It was no different to anything he said before.
KELLY:
Okay. Chris Bowen, is that how you heard it, and you'd welcome this, wouldn't you, an open mind?
BOWEN:
Well, it's a welcome move in the weathervane, Fran, from Tony Abbott, and just a couple of weeks ago Tony Abbott said in the Parliament that he questioned all of the plan and opposed most of it. A very different tune yesterday; it's a very welcome one because we've said previously that we would welcome the Opposition's support for genuine reform.
But it follows, of course, the man who said, 'paid parental leave over his dead body' then embracing parental leave; 'no new taxes' then a massive new tax on business. So I think it shows that the weathervane was moving in the Government's direction on health reform and Tony Abbott's jumped on the bandwagon. He now appears to have a health policy; it happens to be ours.
PYNE:
That's just nonsense. Our health policy is not the Government's health policy and never has been. What we are proposing is that real power be given to local boards in major hospitals in Queensland and New South Wales. We aren't proposing a new bureaucracy layered over the public hospital system between the states and the hospitals as the Commonwealth is proposing.
KELLY:
Let's not get distracted into analysis of the two health and hospital policies now. I think it's more interesting that there definitely has been, I think, a change of tone at least from Tony Abbott. Is that a response to the Newspoll, that voters are clearly indicating they don't like Dr No?
PYNE:
Well, polls come and go, Fran. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not so good. Oppositions usually aren't doing very well in the polls because most of the advantages are on the Government's side. They get to spend large amounts of money, as we've certainly seen with the Rudd Government, and that is often quite popular, although the school halls rip off is turning rather toxic for the Government, and the polls just reflect the mood changes in the electorate.
KELLY:
Okay. Well, it's about that mood change that I'm interested. Chris Bowen, what do you think the mood change is about?
BOWEN:
Well, I agree with Chris: the polls go up and down. I think we are seeing some reaction from the public to a lack of policy development from the Opposition, from changes in position from day to day and no real substance there, no real meat. Tony Abbott seemed to think that he could become Prime Minister by a series of photo opportunities with no policy development and the more Speedos the better. And really, there's no replacement for good, solid, hardworking policy development.
KELLY:
I wonder what you think about Barnaby Joyce's comments on AM this morning where he suggested that, you know, he's anything but a white bread politician and maybe, you know, if we all want politicians to be nice and sedate, well, that's what we'll give you. Is there anything wrong with a colourful politician?
BOWEN:
No, there's nothing wrong with a colourful politician. I think everybody expects their politicians to be normal people and the vast majority of us are. But what you do need is good, solid policy development.
The problem with Barnaby Joyce is not that he's colourful. The problem with Barnaby Joyce and the rest of the Opposition's economic team is that he lacks a fundamental understanding of economics, makes it up as he goes and gets the basic facts wrong.
KELLY:
Let's just hear a bit of the colour from Barnaby Joyce yesterday.
BARNABY JOYCE:
[grab] People actually do read the Productivity Commission reports. I don't. I use them when I run out of toilet paper, but you know, they actually, they actually use them.
KELLY:
Christopher Pyne, are you happy with that?
PYNE:
Well, look Fran, Barnaby says things in order to attract attention to a particular issue. He doesn't necessarily mean them literally. He says them, like a good politician from outback Queensland, to make sure the audience is actually attuned to what he's saying.
KELLY:
Joh Bjelke-Petersen junior, as Paul Keating dubbed him.
PYNE:
He is not a dull, boring, robotic, Sussex Street [inaudible], like so many Labor Party MPs. You know, if the public does like that, well, that's one thing. It's a question of whether Barnaby should change and I don't think that he should. He has a particular style which appeals to a particular kind of person.
KELLY:
It doesn't worry you? You don't see it as a lack of judgement?
PYNE:
It doesn't worry me in the least bit, and Chris Bowen tries to make these claims that the Opposition is without policy. We have a policy to actually have a referendum on the Murray to return water to the Commonwealth Government. We have a paid parental leave policy which is more generous and funded than the Government. We have a direct action policy on climate change. And the idea that we don't have a policy on major issues is actually just a bald-faced lie.
KELLY:
Okay. Let's talk about an area where neither side has a policy and that's population. Neither side has a population policy and yet Australia's population grew by 451,000 people last year, a growth rate above two per cent, twice the world average.
Chris Bowen, should this be a priority for the Government, the Government that supports a big Australia?
BOWEN:
Well, Fran, I think what's important is what you do. What's important is you prepare for an increase in the population and you prepare for an ageing of the population, and that's exactly what we're doing, whether it's infrastructure investment in big cities …
KELLY:
Yeah, but it's piecemeal without an overall plan, isn't it?
BOWEN:
Well, no, when you look at what the Government's actually doing it's all about preparing for the future. It's all about preparing for the increases in population and the ageing of the population. As I say, it's about how our cities work. It's about making our health system sustainable. It's about increasing productivity. It's about workforce participation, which all comes into dealing with increases in the population and the ageing of the population. And you can put it all together and call it population policy. Where the rubber hits the ground is what you're actually doing to prepare for the future and prepare for the increase in population, and just as importantly, the ageing of the population.
KELLY:
Christopher Pyne, this is quite a ferocious debate at the moment. Is a bigger population good or bad for Australia?
PYNE:
Well, Fran, Chris Bowen has just engaged in a whole bunch of weasel words about something that's going to happen decades into the future.
KELLY:
What, population growth?
PYNE:
Well, no, he's talking about preparing for it into the future. What people want to know about is what's been going on in the last couple of years about the massive increase in immigration and population in Australia, not how we're going to prepare for this into the future. Your question is germane because it's happening right now and what the Government needs to do is understand that the public are starting to get very concerned that there's a massive increase in population without any planning going into it, without any land being released by State Governments for housing and so forth.
KELLY:
It didn't just happen over the last two years, though. It happened while you were in Government too; there was no population plan. This is a problem, isn't it?
PYNE:
The Government has done a number of things in the last two-and-a-half years that have affected immigration. They've reoriented immigration again towards family reunion and away from skills, whereas under the Howard Government it was reoriented towards skills rather than towards family reunion. That meant that when we came into power, seven out of eight new migrants were family reunion. By the time we'd finished, that was reversed so that the people coming to Australia were generally younger, generally with skills, and who could immediately contribute to the economy. Labor has again reoriented that towards support for special interest groups and playing to the voter base in basically places like western Sydney and northern Melbourne.
KELLY:
Okay.
PYNE:
Another thing, of course, they've done is weakened our border protection so we are getting a massive influx, 4,500 new people ...
KELLY:
I don't think 6,000 people in two years is really adding to population growth, is it?
BOWEN:
Christopher, you're better than that. I mean, really.
KELLY:
Chris Bowen, I'm just going to jump in there because you've got the last word and we're at that point now, so have your say.
BOWEN:
Well, Fran, it's about preparing now for increases in the population in the future. It's about productivity, it's about health, it's about infrastructure. It's also about the fundamental economic settings.
We saw yesterday the long anticipated economic headland speech from Tony Abbott which again showed the problems with the economic credibility of the Opposition: getting basic things wrong, claiming that the stimulus wasn't necessary in the middle of the worst global financial crisis since the Depression, claiming that the Asian financial crisis had a bigger impact than the global financial crisis. This is a pattern of getting the fundamentals wrong. This is a man who thought that New Zealand was doing better economically than Australia and who showed the fundamental misjudgement of appointing the weakest Opposition frontbench economic team in living memory. So if the Opposition thinks they can improve their economic credibility simply by sidelining Barnaby Joyce, I think the reality is different to that.
KELLY:
Okay, Polls Apart. Chris Bowen and Christopher Pyne, thank you very much for joining us again.
PYNE:
Pleasure. Thank you very much.
BOWEN:
Pleasure, Fran.