Transcript of
Senator Mitch Fifield
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary
for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector
Sky News AM Agenda
Ashleigh Gillon and Senator Mark Arbib
23 March 2009
8:30am
EO & E
Subjects: PM’s trip, IMF reform, Afghanistan, Economy, Queensland election
ASHLEIGH GILLON:
Good morning and welcome to AM Agenda, I’m Ashleigh Gillon. Well Kevin Rudd is about to depart Australia for what could be his most important overseas trip yet. Mr Rudd’s talks with the US President Barack Obama will be dominated by the economic crisis and the way forward in Afghanistan. Joining me here in the studio now is Labor Senator Mark Arbib and Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield. Good morning to you both.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Ashleigh.
MARK ARBIB:
Good morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
Senator Arbib Kevin Rudd is off to the US today. He’s already flagged he will be lobbying for China to play a greater role in the IMF as well as trying to convince other countries to boost the funding it gives to the IMF. It seems like a pretty ambitious a pretty ambitious agenda.
ARBIB:
I think you were right when you said this is probably one of the most important trips an Australian Prime Minister has made overseas. We’ve got a global recession. It requires a global solution, and global leadership. That’s why its important that Kevin Rudd is meeting with President Obama, because we need his leadership. We need President Obama to strike forward, we’ve got a real toxic asset issue, we’ve got banks that are afraid to lend because they’ve got so many debts on their balance sheets, and we need to fix it. Good news this morning was that we heard reports that the United States is planning to release its banking solution it’s going to put out a plan of how its going to deal with the toxic assets, over the next week. That’s very, very good news. Again we’ve got Kevin Rudd and the Government working towards reforming the IMF with a chair of the committee that’s actually looking at those reforms, and really, the IMF needs reform. You’ve got China, one of the biggest economies in the world, which has actually got voting rights equivalent to Belgium it’s just crazy. So we need to beef up the IMF, give it more powers so that it can deal with these problems in the banking sector, and the best way to do that is to ensure that China and Asia plays a bigger role.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield what do you see as the priorities for this overseas visit?
FIFIELD:
Well I think that the subject of IMF reform is important and it is good to see that the Government has picked up where the Coalition left off. Peter Costello as Treasurer was a very keen advocate of reform of the IMF. The IMF essentially reflects the world as it was straight after World War II, the weight of voting which the various nations have reflects that. You see that old architecture played out in the structure of the IMF and the World Bank, where you have the IMF, which by tradition has a managing director who is a European, the World Bank which has a chief executive who is an American. So I think it is time that the architecture was reformed.
GILLON:
Australia is one of the smaller players in these talks, how much attention can we expect the other G20 players to pay the sort of proposals Mr Rudd is putting forward, Mark Arbib?
ARBIB:
Well we are chairing the actual committee that is looking at the reforms so I think they will pay a lot of attention to it. And we shouldn’t forget we are the 15th largest economy in the world. So I think we’ve got an important voice there and Kevin Rudd has been up front and honest about our position, he’s been driving the campaign in terms of reforming the IMF. He’s been talking for a long period of time about the banks balance sheets, because the truth is in the end, you are not going to get a fix to the global recession unless you can fix this banking crisis, and until banks start lending to business again, and start lending between financial organisations, no one can fix it. So in the end everything we are doing here, the stimulus package, the guarantees etc, that’s all about just providing a buffer. We’ve got a global recession which is just wrecking havoc world wide, in the end, no one can stop it, but we’ve got to ensure that we are protected as much as possible.
GILLON:
So Senator Fifield this isn’t an overseas visit that we can expect to hear Kevin 747 jibes about, this is something that is worth doing?
FIFIELD:
No, we wouldn’t quibble with this trip. It’s important for the Australian Prime Minister to establish a good relationship with the American President. I am also pleased again that the Government is embracing the importance of the G20. The G20 is something which Australia, under the Coalition, was very much involved in establishing. Again, Treasurer Costello was very keen for the G20 to be established, and the whole concept behind the G20 is that you get together the 20 nations, the 20 economies, which are systemically important to the global economy. So the G20 is a very important forum and it’s the right place for Australia to put its views forward on how to bring some stability and how to reform some of the global architecture.
GILLON:
We saw the former Prime Minster John Howard had a very close relationship with George Bush, how important is it for Kevin Rudd to try to start a friendship on top of just the normal relationship between the two leaders?
ARBIB:
It’s critical they get on, there’s no doubt about it, it’s critical. The United States is one of our most important if not our most important ally and we need a strong solid relationship with them.
GILLON:
Mr Rudd is probably just one among a number of world leaders though, lining up to get into the oval office?
ARBIB:
Sure but a lot of our policies are actually very, very similar to what they are doing in the United States. President Obama actually mentioned what we are doing in terms of the stimulus package almost a week and a half ago, where he referred to Australia’s stimulus, when he was talking about the world solution. The same time as that we are obviously engaged in Afghanistan with the United States, we’ve got a very, very close bond there in terms of defence and we need to maintain it. So I think it is a hugely important trip and no one should underestimate the importance of our relationship with the United States and I think that the Prime Minister knows how important it is.
GILLON:
I’m glad you raised Afghanistan. Of course last week we saw the Australian death toll rise to 10. It seems when you look at the public opinion polls that support for the war in Afghanistan seems to wane the higher the death toll rises, as you would expect. Most people are expecting that the Prime Minister will be asked to send more Australian troops over to Afghanistan. How difficult is that decision in the context of this war becoming more and more unpopular?
ARBIB:
Well we are not there yet. And the request hasn’t been made, so we can’t speculate on something that hasn’t yet happened. But…
GILLON:
Even the Foreign Minister is saying that this is something that’s more likely, that it will happen, than not.
ARBIB:
Well in the short term there has been a request for more troops around the Afghanistan elections so I mean, that’s obviously, I think Stephen Smith was speaking about that, but in terms of the long term, we’ll have to wait and see and obviously Afghanistan is something that they will be talking about, and obviously getting the strategic objectives right is what is important because in the end, obviously this war is not being won, and something needs to change. The United States right now is looking at their strategic strategy or their strategy in terms of Afghanistan in terms of the way they are conducting the operation and I think that is pretty important. Until we see that it is going to be very difficult to judge whether we need to send more troops or not. Can I say though in the end, the Prime Minister made some very important comments yesterday about why we are in Afghanistan and there has definitely been in the voters minds a cross over between Iraq and Afghanistan and Afghanistan has got nothing to do with Iraq. I mean the reason we are in Afghanistan is because of what happened on September 11th 2001 when Al Qaeda flew jets into the World Trade building. That was a huge terrorist incident. The United States went into Afghanistan because that was the staging post and the training ground for Al Qaeda, now we’ve got to make a decision, and the Prime Minister is saying we must stay the course in Afghanistan, we can’t turn over that area, so once again it becomes a terrorist training centre for Al Qaeda and I think he is right.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield do you think that more Australia troops in Afghanistan would lead to more progress in the country? Is that something the Opposition is happy for the Government to consider?
FIFIELD:
Look we don’t have the benefit of the full advice that the Government receives. We don’t have knowledge as to the ADF’s capability at this point in time, the tempo of operations that they are able to sustain. We’d primarily be guided by the advice of the Defence Chiefs. Our overriding concern is the safety of Australian forces deployed in Afghanistan and if there was to be a decision taken to deploy more ADF personnel we would want to be guaranteed that they would be given the full support and the full resources that they need. But we’d be primarily guided by the advice of the ADF chiefs.
GILLON:
Well Kevin Rudd is leaving this morning, he did an interview yesterday on the 9 network where he said it was likely that Australia will follow the world into recession after all, Mark Arbib was he waiting until after the Queensland election to acknowledge this, I mean Mr Rudd has been questioned about this over and over again but there has been no giving in to this until yesterday morning?
ARBIB:
First of all he was responding to a question, so there was a direct question on it….
GILLON:
He’s been asked the question a number of times.
ARBIB:
…from Laurie Oakes. Second we did have the IMF report come out last week, so we are, I thought he was talking about the IMF report which shows the projection that World Growth will go from positive 0.5% to negative 1% and what effect that will have on the Australian economy what effect that will have on growth and what effect that will have on the budget bottom line. And I don’t think it was a surprise, it hasn’t even made the front pages around Australia so really I think most people are prepared for what is happening overseas having a huge effect here. And there is no doubt about it this is a global recession that cannot be stopped. In the end what we’ve got to do is just buffer the Australian economy, buffer jobs, buffer business from the worst of it and that is what the stimulus package is about, and that is why we are spending something like $31 billion on infrastructure – fixing our roads, fixing our rail lines and the biggest school modernisation in our history. That’s what the stimulus package is about.
GILLON:
Well Mitch do you agree with the Prime Minister that we are likely to see another negative growth quarter, next time round?
FIFIELD:
Well I think yesterday we saw Kevin Rudd acting like some freelance market economist. He really delivered a punch to the solar plexus of confidence, and this is what we’ve seen Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan doing since they were elected. All through 2007, talking down the economy…
GILLON:
Isn’t he just being realistic though Senator?
FIFIELD:
It’s the job of the Australian Prime Minister, it’s the job of the Australian Treasurer to talk up Australia’s economic fundamentals. It’s their job to be positive. It’s not their job to talk down the Australian economy and that’s what we saw. But if Kevin Rudd really does believe that the Australian economy is going into recession, if he believes it’s inevitable that we are going into recession, then you’ve got to ask yourself, what was the point of the $42 billion stimulus package? I thought the whole point of that stimulus package was to save Australia from recession. Now if Kevin Rudd believed Australia was inevitably going to go into recession before he announced the stimulus package, then he was completely irresponsible in announcing a package, delivering a package, which he himself never believed was going to stop Australian going into recession. It’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable, if Australia going into recession was inevitable…
ARBIB:
There’s a really important point here….
GILLON:
Let’s let Mark Arbib respond to some of those claims…
ARBIB:
…and this is very important in terms of the stimulus package because when you look at the global recession, there’s two ways you can deal with it. Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals say sit and wait, sit and wait, lets see what happens, see how bad it gets before we act, what we are saying is, and we are backed in by the IMF and by the World Bank, who say act fast, act early, spend money, invest in infrastructure because this thing is going to get worse and Governments need to step in whilst the private sector withdraws, because they are withdrawing, and inject money into the economy. And if you don’t I mean we could be staring at not just a recession, a global recession a global depression. And that’s why countries around the world are stimulating their economies.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield why is it ok for people on your side of politics, like the Shadow Treasurer for example, Joe Hockey, to say that it is likely that we are in recession but not for the Prime Minister?
FIFIELD:
Kevin Rudd said that this $42 billion stimulus package was designed to stop Australia going into recession. On Sunday he admitted that Australia is going to go into recession, he said it is inevitable, so what was the point of the $42 billion?
ARBIB:
Kevin Rudd has said time and time again…
FIFIELD:
He’s admitted that the package has failed.
ARBIB:
This is not, this is about, buffering our economy, protecting jobs, protecting business from the worst…
FIFIELD:
But it hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked.
ARBIB:
…global recession. Well things could be a lot, lot worse…
FIFIELD:
It’s failed. He admitted it’s failed.
ARBIB:
…a lot, lot worse if it wasn’t for the actual stimulus package. The first stimulus which came out last November, what has that seen? Retail in Australia going up, retail in the rest of the world going down. Housing market going up, first home buyers getting into the market, the rest of the world housing market, housing prices collapsing. I mean it is working but there is only so much that one country can do when you are looking at a global recession this bad. For goodness sake, in the United States…
GILLON:
Final word on this Senator Fifield, we need to go to a break…
ARBIB:
…there are people living in tents, there are hundreds of people living in tents. This is, they are calling it the great recession it is that bad.
FIFIELD:
Ashleigh this is all about Kevin Rudd inoculating himself from any responsibility for anything in the Australian economy. So Kevin Rudd can say, unemployment, well that’s the fault of the global financial crisis. Government debt, that’s the fault of the global financial crisis. Budget deficit, that’s the fault of the global financial crisis. Slowing growth, that’s the fault of the global financial crisis,
ARBIB:
Well it is…
FIFIELD:
This is all about Kevin Rudd absolving himself of any responsibility for anything in the Australian economy. The Australian Government can do things to make the situation better, they can do things to make the situation worse. And to date, they’ve taken action to make the situation worse in Australia.
GILLON:
We could keep debating this all day, but we are going to…
ARBIB:
I’m sure we could…
GILLON:
…a quick break. Coming up we will take a look at how Anna Bligh pulled off victory in Queensland and what it means for the LNP. That’s next, stay with us.
BREAK
GILLON:
Welcome back to AM Agenda, joining me this morning on our panel of politicians is Labor Senator Mark Arbib and Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield. Let’s turn our attention now to Anna Bligh’s victory in Queensland. Now the re-elected Premier faces the tough job of delivering on her campaign promises like creating 100,000 jobs for example. First though, she is going to reshuffle her cabinet, the Premier says, as promised, we can expect to see some new faces in the line up.
QUEENSLAND PREMIER ANNA BLIGH:
Obviously if we are going to put new faces into the Cabinet we need to make sure there are some vacancies and that’s a tough thing, I’ve certainly asked a number of people to consider moving on in their political career. That’s not an easy thing but it’s important for our Government, it’s important for Queensland, I promised renewal and that’s what I will deliver.
GILLON:
Mark Arbib when this new ministry is lined up we’ll really see a new face of Labor, I guess, this is Anna Bligh putting her stamp on the Government, she’s no longer simply Peter Beattie’s successor.
ARBIB:
Yeah, it’s a very good start for Anna Bligh. Elections have messages for everybody, oppositions as well as Government and the important thing when you win is to actually sit back and listen and think about what the message is. And she’s taken it on board. That’s why she is straight out of the blocks, working hard, straight onto the health issue which is important and already she’s announced that Paul Lucas, her deputy, will take over the health portfolio and I think that is a very, very smart decision. Health was one of the big issues in the election, big state issue, there’s no doubt about it. So for her to be getting ahead of that is great, in the end Peter Beattie was able to I guess construct a transition through to Anna Bligh, and it’s been done brilliantly, I was very surprised that the result was so large. I expected them to do better, the LNP to do much better.
GILLON:
Well you were the first on Sky’s election coverage to call Anna Bligh’s victory on Saturday night. Of course the polls had pointed to an LNP victory. What do you think it was in the end that made voters stick with Anna Bligh when it came to crunch time?
ARBIB:
Elections are always about choices, and we had two distinct choices here that voters had to make. Anna Bligh, someone who was working hard, building infrastructure, trying to stimulate the economy and protect jobs, understood the significance of what was going on globally. On the other side you had the LNP and Lawrence Springborg. I mean this is a guy who had said there was no global recession, wanted to cut a billion dollars per year from the budget in the middle of a global recession he was talking about cutting a billion dollars a year which would have lead to 12,000 jobs going down the drain. So you had on one side Anna Bligh saying she was going to protect jobs, on the other side the LNP saying you are going to cut jobs so I think in the end voters made the choice given those two alternatives.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield what do you blame for the LNP’s loss?
FIFIELD:
Well, I think voters in Queensland, on the polls, clearly wanted to change government. Queensland’s hospitals are in disarray, infrastructure is crumbling, the Queensland budget is deeply in debt. Queenslanders wanted to make a change but I think our side of politics let them down. We didn’t give them a viable alternative and so they felt they had no option but to stick with the Government that was there. I think that’s a great shame because Queenslanders did want to change Government but we didn’t give them a viable alternative and I think part of the reason for that is the LNP. We needed to make headway in Brisbane. Going into the election we had 2 seats out of the 38 seats in metropolitan Brisbane. You can’t win Government in Queensland if you can’t win in Brisbane, and unfortunately the LNP was to people in Brisbane seen as the National Party in drag. What they wanted, what they needed was a Liberal alternative and I don’t think the people of Brisbane felt they had that.
GILLON:
So you are suggesting that the LNP merger has been an experiment that has failed. Are you suggesting now that the two parties go their separate ways?
FIFIELD:
I’ve always been of the view that the best way to maximise the non-Labor vote is to have two separate conservative parties working closely together. That was my view. The Queensland party took a different view. The merger happened. I think it is too late to unscramble the LNP. What needs to happen now is that the LNP needs to complete its transition to becoming the Queensland division of the Liberal Party of Australia. That is the legal status, that is the legal name of the LNP. That needs to be reflected in the branding. They need to call themselves the Liberals. We’ve got to have an end to a situation where the
LNP is just seen as the National Party with the word Liberal in front of it.
GILLON:
I think the Nationals would have something to say about that.
FIFIELD:
Well the LNP is the Queensland division of the Liberal Party. The problem is that the electorate saw the LNP as the National Party with a slightly different name. We’ve got to move beyond that situation, the LNP has to become fully, both in function and in name, the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party brand in Queensland. One of the problems with merging two parties is that all major political parties have a base level of credibility and trust and recognition which has been built up over decades. I always thought it was naive to assume that that level of support in the community would automatically transfer to a new entity. Not everyone follows these things as closely as we do in this building and I think the LNP didn’t mean much to a lot of people. To those in Brisbane that it did mean something to, it meant the National Party.
GILLON:
Comments like that though, Senator Fifield, might be seen as pretty unhelpful. The Leader of the Nationals, Warren Truss, Malcolm Turnbull, on the weekend have said that this is the right way to go. Yes there needs to be a bit of a change of strategy. Do you think that the sort of comments you are making could actually hurt the party more than help them in this case?
FIFIELD:
Not at all. You’ve got to be honest after an election defeat and this was a defeat. I do wonder if we might have actually gone better had we had two separate parties but we’ll never know. The merger is a reality, I completely agree with Malcolm and Warren that the LNP shouldn’t split, it should stay together, but we’ve got to make it work. And the way we make it work is by making sure that it becomes fully the Liberal Party in Queensland. That’s the only way we can make inroads into Brisbane, and we’ve got to.
ARBIB:
Can you imagine Barnaby Joyce’s head right now, it would be exploding, it would be so red…
GILLON:
It would be, because obviously a lot of people in Queensland thinks this has been a success despite election loss, there was a swing albeit only 4% or so.
FIFIELD:
For a political party you can’t say it has been a success apart from the fact that we lost the election. The whole purpose of a political party is to win and hold office. We lost.
ARBIB:
It’s a failure.
GILLON:
Mark Arbib though, did you think that the combined forces did make the election harder for Labor? Finally it seemed that the LNP had got its act together, as opposed to the bickering that we’ve seen over recent years.
ARBIB:
Compared to the last election where you had Flegg, and umm, the other…Springborg both competing over was going to be the Premier if …
GILLON:
You’ve forgotten his name already…
ARBIB:
I know, he’s from the past, Lawrence Springborg, got to channel him. We had Flegg and Springborg both competing over who was going to be leader, I think obviously there has been an improvement in terms of the LNP they’ve shown some discipline. But the truth is, as Mitch is saying, and I have to say Mitch is always honest with these things, he was the first Liberal to come out on Workchoices and say Workchoices isn’t dead, and now…
FIFIELD:
Well it is dead, it is dead.
ARBIB:
….on the LNP, the LNP is DOA, dead on arrival.
GILLON:
Mark Arbib I think you’ve got a challenge on your mind every time you come on this show you have to mention Workchoices.
ARBIB:
Yes, yes I do…
FIFIELD:
Let it go. Let it go. We have.
ARBIB:
…it’s still in the Liberal’s DNA…
FIFIFIELD:
We’ve let it go.
ARBIB:
But can I just say, Mitch is right, the LNP should have done a lot better and they should have done better in the Brisbane suburbs and the Gold Coast suburbs, that is where they needed to pick up ground and that is where we were vulnerable and they picked up nothing. I mean the swings and the gains they made in those suburbs are negligible. And this means not just do they have a problem now, they’ve got a problem at the next election. Our margin is still huge, I mean we are still talking about 12 seats. So I think Mitch is right, in the end, Liberal voters in Brisbane suburbs are not going to vote for a National Party leader.
GILLON:
Is that what it comes down to? You need a more urbane face to appeal to those city voters?
FIFIELD:
You need a face that reflects Brisbane, which is where you have 38 seats. We went into the election with two seats; we’ve come out the other side of the election with four, at best maybe five or six. You can’t win elections in Queensland unless you make inroads into Brisbane. You make inroads into Brisbane by giving the people of Brisbane a choice that is attractive to them. The people of Brisbane want to choose between Liberal and Labor, they don’t want to feel they’ve been denied a choice and I think that was the case. But you know there is a bit of good news in this, we’ve got some new talent that’s come into the Parliament. We did have a swing towards us, something in the order of 3.6%, which as my Queensland colleagues have pointed out, if that was reflected at a Federal election we would have picked up maybe five seats. But we lost. Labor won. And we’ve got to take the lesson, and we’ve got to provide the people of Queensland with a viable alternative.
GILLON:
A very small silver lining there Senator Fifield, thanks for your time…
FIFIELD:
You take them where you can find them.
GILLON:
Mark Arbib thanks for your time as well.
ENDS