Transcript of Senator Mitch Fifield
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary
for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector
Sky News AM Agenda
Ashleigh Gillon and Mark Dreyfus QC MP
27 July 2009
8:30am
EO & E
Subjects: Health reform, ETS, Rudd essay
ASHLEIGH GILLON:
Joining me this morning on our panel of politicians, from Sydney, the Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield, good morning.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
And here in Canberra the Labor MP Mark Dreyfus, good morning to you.
MARK DREYFUS:
Morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
Mark Dreyfus is today’s bleak health report a reflection of the lack of progress the Government has made since it came to power?
DREYFUS:
The report is going to be released later this morning Ashleigh and I can’t comment until it is released on exactly what it says, but it is going to be something that the Government can build on. And I heard Peter Dutton just a moment ago, ducking entirely the question of what the Opposition would do and that’s the significant thing. You shouldn’t listen to the opposition jumping up and down at all about health, they had eleven and a half years while they were in government. During that time things got worse, they kept playing the blame game and they ripped a billion dollars out of the health system in 2003.
GILLON:
Can you point, though, to any significant improvements that your Government has made over the past 18 months?
DREYFUS:
We certainly can Ashleigh. The Government has committed $64 billion over the next five years to the health system. The Government has committed significant resources to building hospital infrastructure…
GILLON:
What has that achieved so far?
DREYFUS:
It is going to lead over time to improvements to the health system. You cannot expect after the eleven and a half years of neglect that there is going to be overnight improvements. We have invested in the hospital system, we have invested in training for health professionals, we’ve invested in infrastructure in the health system and most significantly, and I’d expect we’d hear more about this from the Prime Minister today, we have committed to doing great things in the prevention area of the health system, because that’s where some real cost savings can be achieved.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield we keep hearing from the Government that the Howard Government took money out of the public hospital system and the Rudd Government has injected billions of dollars. Is that correct? Do you think that the Rudd Government has given more funding to this area than you ever did?
FIFIELD:
It’s rubbish that the Howard Government pulled money out of the public hospital system, we invested a great deal of money. But we’ve got to go back to what Kevin Rudd said before the last election. Kevin Rudd said that he was going to end the blame game. Kevin Rudd said that the buck was going to stop with him. He promised that if he had not fixed Australia’s public hospitals by the middle of 2009, that he was going to take over Australia’s public hospitals. That was his commitment. Now we hear Mark Dreyfus continually talk about inputs. The money this Government is putting in to public health. What Kevin Rudd was talking about before the last election were outputs, outcomes. He committed to fix the public hospital system by the middle of this year. That hasn’t happened. Things have only got worse. The median waiting time for elective surgery increased in 2008. In hospital emergency departments, things are worse in 2009 than they were in the previous year. Only last week the President of the Australian Medical Association said things are getting worse. So Kevin Rudd has failed his commitment to fix the public hospital system by 2009. And it now looks like he is going to fail to honour his other election commitment which was to take over the public hospital system if it hadn’t been fixed.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield in that piece we played before with Peter Dutton he was quite vague about the Coalition’s alternative plan for healthcare in this country. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to call on the Government to take over the public hospital system when from the different accounts that I’ve heard that frontbenchers in the Liberal Party, this is an idea that most in the Liberal Party don’t think would actually work?
FIFIELD:
Well I can’t see how it is hypocritical to seek to hold a government to honour their own election commitment. That’s what we are talking about here the Government’s own commitment before the last election. It’s not hypocritical to expect a Government to honour its election commitment.
GILLON:
Do you think that a takeover of the public hospital system is the right way to go? Is that something you would like the Coalition to pursue if you were in government?
FIFIELD:
Look it is an option, and as Peter Dutton has said, we are open to looking at a range of options to improve the public health system. We will present our health policy before the next election. But the issue today is what this Government is going to do. Is this Government going to honour its pre-election commitment to fix up the public hospital system by mid 2009? Well we know the answer to that. They won’t. They haven’t. The system is getting worse. What remains to be answered today, and we’ll hear from the Prime Minister, is if he is going to honour the other election commitment, which was to take over the public health system if the system wasn’t fixed. So we’ll wait and see what the Prime Minister has to say, but I’ve got no doubt that he won’t honour that commitment. If he did intend to honour that commitment, what he would be talking about today is that he’d be introducing, very shortly, into the parliament legislation to give effect to a referendum to put to the Australian people the option of the Commonwealth taking over the public hospital system. I don’t expect we’ll hear that from the Prime Minister today. Mark Dreyfus is chair of the constitutional committee, so he might be able to shed some light as to whether there is legislation being drafted to that end.
GILLON:
Mark Dreyfus?
DREYFUS:
Senator Fifield clearly wasn’t listening to what the Prime Minister said yesterday which was that our commitment before the election was to work cooperatively with the states, and if it proved that the states weren’t able to work cooperatively, then we would go to a referendum, because there is of course a need for a referendum to change the distribution of power between the Commonwealth and the States on health. At the moment, thanks to a 1946 referendum, it’s shared between the Commonwealth and the States, and that’s something that everybody accepts would need to be changed
GILLON:
But do you think we can expect big announcements from the Prime Minister today about plans for an overhaul, or is this just an initial response and something that the Government will take away and use to put together its health policy to take to the next election?
DREYFUS:
As I understand it, this is a comprehensive report, it is being released, which is something the Government committed to doing before Parliament returned, and I am looking forward to hearing the Government’s response. I’d expect today from the Prime Minister, some kind of initial response.
GILLON:
Kevin Rudd famously said before the last election that he was going to end the blame game, but we have heard a lot of blame being put towards the previous Howard Government from Nicola Roxon, the Health Minister, and Kevin Rudd. Every time they are asked a question about this they seem to refer back to what the Howard Government didn’t do.
DREYFUS:
It’s appropriate that one refers back to what the Howard Government didn’t do because the Howard Government was in power for eleven and a half years. It is the government that destroyed the Commonwealth Dental Scheme in 1996 when it came to office, it is the government which ripped a billion dollars out of the health system in 2003, it’s the government that failed to act in any comprehensive way in preventative healthcare, it’s the government that opened a tax loophole on alcopops. There is a long list of failures by the Howard Government in this area, and that’s why it’s appropriate to blame the Howard Government for the state the health system is now in. We are trying to fix it.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield I can hear you itching to jump in there.
FIFIELD:
Ashleigh this is a joke. Kevin Rudd said before the last election that he would fix Australia’s public hospitals by the 30th of June this year. Now what he and Mark Dreyfus are saying is that it is somehow the fault of the previous Government that they have been unable to honour their own commitment to fix the public hospital system by the 30th of June this year. That is just a complete abrogation of responsibility. It either means that the Government had no intention of honouring that commitment made before the last election. Or, it means they completely lack the capacity to honour that commitment. And I think what we are seeing is this Government lacks the capacity to fix Australia’s public health system. They made the commitment that they’d fix it, and they haven’t.
GILLON:
Well the Prime Minister will be formerly responding to that report at the ANU here in Canberra a bit later this morning, so we will certainly bring that to you here on Sky News as soon as we can. For now though, Mitch Fifield, Mark Dreyfus, stay with us, we’ll be back just after a break.
BREAK
GILLON:
Welcome back to AM Agenda, joining me this morning the Labor MP Mark Dreyfus and the Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield. Let’s turn to the Coalition’s developments on the Emissions Trading Scheme that we have seen over the last few days. Senator Fifield, we’ve gone through the green paper process, the whitepaper, the final legislation, why did it take the Coalition so long to wait till just a couple of weeks before the Senate vote before it put forward its ideas for how to go about amending this legislation.
FIFIELD:
Well, it is important to bear in mind that the Coalition offered at the outset to sit down and discuss with the Government an Emissions Trading Scheme. The Coalition has been committed to an Emissions Trading Scheme since Malcolm Turnbull was Environment Minister. The difference between ourselves and the Government is that we don’t see an Emissions Trading Scheme as an end in itself, we see it as part of a range of measures to reduce global emissions. The important thing is to get the ETS right. And what Malcolm Turnbull did last week was he presented nine negotiating points, a log of claims if you like, as to those things we think would substantially improve the Government’s ETS legislation, primarily to make sure Australian businesses and Australian jobs aren’t worse off compared to an American ETS. Now we hope that the Government sits down, we hope that the Government will negotiate with us so that we can improve what is at the moment very flawed legislation.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield do you expect the Nationals and other Liberals like Wilson Tuckey to accept this new position? We’ve seen some of your colleagues over the last few weeks say they won’t support any sort of ETS.
FIFIELD:
Well Ashleigh when you say it is a new position, it’s not new that the Coalition supports an ETS. We have done for some time. It’s not new that the Coalition has major misgivings with the Government’s current ETS model. And it is not new that the Coalition thinks that there is wisdom in waiting to see what happens in the US and what happens in Copenhagen before committing to a particular design of an Emissions Trading Scheme.
GILLON:
Isn’t it true though Senator that the Coalition is now saying that it is open to negotiating on those nine points before the Copenhagen meeting?
FIFIELD:
Sure, those nine points are a clarification of those issues which we would like to discuss with the Government. We’ve put the ball back in the Government’s court. We’re willing to sit down, we’re willing to talk. We think that the August 13 date for a vote on the ETS is quite arbitrary. That doesn’t have to be the date for a vote. If the Government is prepared to sit down and talk with the Coalition then we can see if it is possible to reach an agreement, if it is possible to improve this legislation. But I repeat, this legislation is seriously flawed, and if this legislation is bowled up on August 13 unamended then the Coalition won’t be supporting it.
GILLON:
Back to my original question though, do you really expect your Nationals colleagues and some Liberals who have been climate sceptics for a long time now, to actually support Malcolm Turnbull and vote with the Coalition Party Room on this?
FIFIELD:
Well we will have to wait and see if the Government sits down and talks to the Opposition. We don’t know if the Government will do that. We hope they will. And if they do, there will be something to take back to the Party Room and see if we can get the Party Room’s agreement. The National Party may well vote independently on this particular legislation, they have in the past, they are a separate political party. But as I say, we’ll have to wait and see if the Government does the responsible thing, sits down and talks to the Opposition.
GILLON:
Mark Dreyfus over the weekend the Prime Minister, the Climate Change Minister seemed very dismissive of the Coalition’s nine-point plan as it is, I think Penny Wong even said it looked like this document had come from the Young Liberals. If the Government is so keen to get this ETS up and running, wouldn’t it be open and encouraged to see that the Liberals were willing to sit down and negotiate?
DREYFUS:
Of course we are encouraged to see that some Liberals are now supporting an Emissions Trading Scheme. But what’s clear and what Senator Fifield has made completely clear is that the Opposition has at least three positions on climate change, denying, delaying and now dodging.
GILLON:
But Malcolm Turnbull is the leader and he’s saying, I want to sit down with you, here are my ideas.
DREYFUS:
And that’s the dodging position because he hasn’t put forward what is the considered position of the Liberal Party, far from it. He’s said here’s some ideas that I think might run, I want to know what you say about them, and then I’m going to take those back to my Party Room.
GILLON:
Ideas supported by the Shadow Cabinet.
DREYFUS:
Well that’s not good enough, we want to know what is the position of the Liberal Party, and we want to stop what we have been hearing over the last few days, which, as I say, is at least three positions, we’ve got the denying position represented by Wilson Tuckey, we’ve got the delay position which interestingly was represented by Senator Fifield when he was on this program on the 7th of June, when he said that the Government should delay all legislation until after Copenhagen and after the US had a position and we’ve got the dodging position which is putting forward some ideas but pretending they are a debating society but not actually saying what it is that they want to do. That’s no way to negotiate, we need to proceed with legislation, we need a clear position from the Liberal Party, not positions which are all over the place, where they’re, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, split down the middle. We need to know what they are going to do.
GILLON:
What did you make though, of some of the points Malcolm Turnbull raised, are these points that you think the Government would be open to considering?
DREYFUS:
Well the problem with it is that most of them aren’t clear, most of them are far too late, what has taken all this time for him or anyone in the Liberal Party to come up with these positions. You said, in introducing this topic, the Liberal Party has had the whitepaper since December, it’s had the legislation since March, it’s had several years before that in which it could have evolved a clear position in relation to an Emissions Trading Scheme, it hasn’t taken it, and it is simply not to be believed when members of the Liberal Party, or indeed anyone on the Coalition side say it’s too soon to be voting on this legislation on the 13th of August. It’s really five minutes to midnight on climate change, we need to act now, we need to have the Government able to take a position to Copenhagen to show that Australia is serious about acting on climate change.
GILLON:
Senator Fifield is the opposition going to put forward actual amendments as opposed to these idea statements we saw from Malcolm Turnbull over the last few days? You don’t expect the Government to actually pen those amendments for you, do you?
FIFIELD:
Well it depends. Is the Government serious about getting this legislation through? I just note Mark referring to our nine points as being somehow an unusual way of dealing with the Government. Let’s recall the Australian Democrats when they were looking at the GST legislation. They put down a series of principles which they wanted the then government to address when they were opening negotiations. That’s not an unreasonable thing to do. We expect the Government to be reasonable, to sit down and to talk about these points. If the Government is serious about getting this legislation through, they’ll do just that. I just want to pick up on something else that Mark said, that on this program previously I said that it was a good idea to delay a vote on this legislation until after Copenhagen and after the US finally passes their legislation. I still think and the Coalition still think that there is wisdom in waiting until we know what happens in Copenhagen, and we know what the US is going to do. There is wisdom in that. But by the same token if the Government is determined to rush this legislation through according to its political timetable, we are seeking to be a responsible Opposition and to discuss, with the Government, ways that we think this legislation can be improved. And if the Government is serious about getting this through, they’ll do just that. Also to pick up another point of Mark’s, saying that we have had time to consider this, we shouldn’t be arguing for further delay. Well the Government has delayed its own legislation, the Government has delayed the start date for its ETS. So why is it reasonable for the Government to agree to a delay, but not the Opposition? The important thing is to get this right and we hope the Government sits down with us to work towards that end.
GILLON:
It is going to be a fascinating few months to watch as that happens. Just finally Mark Dreyfus Kevin Rudd wrote another essay, it was published over the weekend. It was very long, some say very dull, did you find it illuminating reading?
DREYFUS:
The piece that Kevin Rudd wrote that was published in the paper over the weekend showed that we’ve got a Prime Minister with a vision for the future of Australia, and he has been very honest and very open with the Australian people about the difficulties that we face in the road ahead, even though there is some good signs that there is a recovery happening in the Australian economy and indeed good signs that there is a recovery happening in other countries in the world, that there is going to be another difficult time ahead. I thought that the essay that appeared in the weekend papers laid out that future for Australia and showed that we have a plan, and I’d be forced to say to Senator Fifield, when are we going to see some plan from the Opposition for the future of the economy?
GILLON:
Well Senator Fifield Malcolm Turnbull said that he will be writing a reply essay, I wonder if readers will get beyond a few paragraphs?
FIFIELD:
Well I’ll certainly read Malcolm Turnbull’s contribution. But I’ve got to be honest and confess Ashleigh and Mark, I didn’t read Kevin Rudd’s essay at the weekend. I did think about it, but I thought, life’s too short, my daughter was beckoning, and I’m not sure that I could stomach 6,000 words of Kevin Rudd’s lecturing and sermonising.
GILLON:
Ok, Senator Mitch Fifield and Mark Dreyfus thanks for joining us this morning.
DREYFUS:
Thank you.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Ashleigh.
ENDS