Transcript – Sky News AM Agenda – 6 February 2012

Sky Television News AM Agenda

Kieran Gilbert and Nick Champion MP

6 February 2012

8:45am

E & OE

Subjects: Nielsen poll, Labor Party leadership, carbon tax, interest rates 

KIERAN GILBERT:

I’m joined now by Labor MP Nick Champion and Liberal frontbencher Senator Mitch Fifield. Good to see you both. Nick, let me start with you. Do you think that this opinion poll today gives the Prime Minister a bit of breathing space?

NICK CHAMPION:

I support the Prime Minister 100 per cent. She’s a tough, gutsy woman. She defends and protects working families. We’ve seen that in the way that she abolished work choices. I see that every day in my electorate – she defends car workers and I’ve got Holden in my electorate – a very important factory to South Australia, very important to component and engineering firms, very important to the state GDP and very important to the country.

GILBERT:

You’re listed in the Daily Telegraph though as being in the Rudd camp – backing Rudd. Is that right?

CHAMPION:

The Daily Telegraph didn’t talk to me. They come out with this fantasy football list, and it’s just that, it’s a fantasy. If you don’t talk to people and then you label them, it’s a pretty unfair thing to do I think. I support the Prime Minister 100 per cent. She’s a tough, gutsy woman, she supports working families, she abolished WorkChoices, she supports car workers in my electorate. I back her in 100 per cent.

GILBERT:

The poll shows that the Labor Party has narrowed the gap, and this is despite what’s been a fairly difficult period through the Australia Day protests and a few other issues. Is that a concern to the Coalition?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Kieran, I’m loathe to comment on polls, but anyone in professional politics will tell you that the trend is what is important. And the trend isn’t Labor’s friend. But we don’t need the polls to know what the Australian people are thinking. We rely on the field evidence – being out and about. And what we hear from the public is that this is a Government that is completely obsessed with itself. We saw that yesterday – three and a half hours in the caucus room, Labor Members and Senators talking about themselves.

GILBERT:

They were talking about their strategy for the year ahead, that’s fair enough. The Coalition does that as well.

FIFIELD:

Come on. They were focussed on themselves, and then that wasn’t enough so they went down to the Lodge. And to help reinforce that focus they got along that old stager Bob Hawke – the Kerri-Anne Kennerley of Australian politics – to talk even more about the Labor Party. They’re completely focussed on themselves, they’re not looking at the people’s business.

GILBERT:

Is this a worry for you, that that is a perception out there? Kevin Rudd’s going to be relentless on this.

CHAMPION:

This is just Coalition spin. We spent three hours yesterday talking about the economy, talking about working families, talking about defending the car industry. Things like that. Talking about rural and regional workers. That’s what we spent three hours talking about yesterday.

GILBERT:

But this distraction will continue, won’t it?

CHAMPION:

This sort of sly line on Bob Hawke is most unfair.  Bob Hawke was a great Prime Minister, and we saw him at the cricket skulling a beer. Australians love Bob Hawke. As much as we like Kerri-Anne Kennerley I don’t think you should have a crack at Bob.

FIFIELD:

I wasn’t having a flick at Bob or Kerri-Anne – I love them both.

GILBERT:

Bob Brown says that the Labor Party needs to resolve this issue.

CHAMPION:

Bob Brown can go and jump of a jetty. It’s not his job to talk about the Labor Party.

FIFIELD:

Don’t talk about your alliance partner like that! You’re in government with him.

CHAMPION:

It’s not his job to talk about the Labor Party. He can go jump off a jetty with his opinions, really. That’s it, full stop.

GILBERT:

Surely you need to deal with it, don’t you? Draw a line under it?

CHAMPION:

The Greens are a Senate party. That’s their job. They’re a Senate party, they’re a balance of power party, and what Bob’s doing is just doing what he always does which is grandstand on issues, which is what they do.

FIFIELD:

Then why don’t you rip up your governing alliance agreement?

Why did you preference them in Melbourne? Your state branch preferenced them in Melbourne which put them into the House of Representatives. You talk big on this but you don’t deliver.

FIFIELD:

Nick, get a reality check. We did not sign a governing agreement with the Australian Greens. What planet is the Australian Labor Party on? ‘We hate Bob Brown, Bob Brown shouldn’t tell us what to do, the Liberals are outrageous with the Greens, but we’re in a formal governing alliance with them.’

All I said was that the other parties, the Liberal Party, the Greens, everybody else should stop commentating on the leadership of the Australian Labor Party. Stay out of it. It’s not their right.

But that is the issue, because it becomes a distraction, it’s a free kick.

I’ll tell you what the issues are in my electorate. Hospitals, schools, jobs. They’re the issues in my electorate and they’re sick of politicians like this talking about it.

GILBERT:

Alright, we’ve had enough of that this morning so let’s move on. The carbon tax – the Opposition Leader’s going to target what he says is going to be a large and continually growing fall-off in gross domestic product. We heard what Greg Combet had to say, that this is just scare-mongering and doesn’t factor in what the Treasury forecast does say about the growth in this economy which will continue regardless.

What Greg Combet did not say is that those figures are wrong. He did not deny that there will be a cumulative reduction in economic output of $32 billion by 2020. He did not deny that. He did not deny that there would be a cumulative reduction in economic output in Australia of a trillion dollars by 2050. He did not deny that. And the reason he can’t is because that’s true. They are Treasury’s own numbers. He did say, ‘look the economy will still grow,’ but the fact is that the economy won’t grow by as much as it would have if there was not a carbon tax. That’s the whole point. The whole purpose of this tax is to hit the economy and to reduce growth.

The problem with Mitch’s suppositions is that he doesn’t count in the cost of climate change. Climate change costs your economy too, and that’s the problem. If you don’t do anything about it, that will cost you as well. And we know this from the Stern Report, from Garnaut, from every bit of international research done on it knows that the longer you delay action on climate change, the greater the cost to your economy. So Greg was making the quite reasonable point that incomes grow, the economy grows, the economy is growing even in this time of global turmoil. This is a good economy, it’s a rolled gold economy, and the Coalition should stop talking it down.

I want to get to one other issue, we’ve only got two minutes left. On the banks – tomorrow we’re expecting rates to be cut. Possibly not, but that’s the assessment of most in the markets. Michael Chaney, the National Australia Bank chairman, has warned that what Wayne Swan is proposing is dangerous – a reduction in profitability would threaten their credit ratings, he says. And it’s not as simple as reducing their profitability, because it does have flow-on effects. What do you say to these concerns from the banks?

I think this is banks trying to protect their profits, and that’s what they’ve got an obligation to do. But people can shop around now, and if banks don’t pass on rates, there’ll be a competitive pressure for them to do so. So there’s a competitive market out there, it will get more and more competitive as time goes on, and I think people will remember the actions of particular banks in regards to passing on rates.

It’s easy for politicians to just put in the boot, isn’t it, with the banks. Bank-bashing one of our great pastimes. It does have implications, doesn’t it?

It’s important to keep pressure on the banks to make sure that they provide the maximum pass through that they responsibly can. But the problem is that the banks don’t respect Wayne Swan. They never have, they’re not going to listen to anything that he says. But there is something that Wayne Swan can do to help with interest rates, and that is to repay debt, borrow less – that takes upward pressure off interest rates. And even if interest rates are coming down, if the Government is borrowing a lot, interest rates will be higher than they otherwise would be.

Senator Fifield and Nick Champion, gentlemen good to see you.

ENDS