Transcript – ABC24 Capital Hill – 30 April 2012

Capital Hill – ABC24

Lyndal Curtis and Stephen Jones MP

30 April 2012

5:30pm

E & OE

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Today we are joined by Labor MP Stephen Jones, and Coalition Shadow Minister Mitch Fifield. Welcome.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

We’ll go first to the side-lining of both Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper.

JULIA GILLARD (file footage):

Look something changed obviously with both matters being on foot.

JOURNALIST (file footage):

So what changed?

JULIA GILLARD (file footage):

I just described to you, something changed with both matters being on foot, that’s the combination that I’m referring to.

JOURNALIST (file footage):

So why can’t you tell us more about that?

JULIA GILLARD (file footage):

I’ve just described it to you.

JOURNALIST (file footage):

“As a cloud”, that’s hardly specific Prime Minister.

JULIA GILLARD (file footage):

Well I’ve talked about respect for the Parliament, and that’s what reference I made yesterday, to a cloud being over the parliament. And as I said very clearly yesterday, this isn’t a mathematic or chemical formula. It’s a judgement call, and I made it.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Stephen Jones, do you understand the formula that was used to make the decision to suspend Mr Thomson from the Labor Party and keep the Speaker, keep Mr Slipper, out of the Speaker’s chair for longer?

STEPHEN JONES:

Look, I’m not too interested in talking in formulas or algebras, or anything like that. What I do know is that I got around my electorate, people were dissatisfied with the fact that this was a distraction. They wanted the distraction to go away because they expect their parliamentary representatives to be talking about the real issues that are affecting them in their households. The things they want us to be talking about are jobs, the economy, how we’re looking after their futures, what we’re doing for education and the health care system, and very excited about the rollout of the NBN in their suburbs as well. So to the extent that discussion about Mr Slipper and others was overclouding our capacity to talk about all those things and focus on those things, I think they welcome the decision.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

So in the end it was a political calculation, nothing really had changed with Mr Thomson in the last few weeks and your side of politics was defending Mr Slipper’s right to come back to the Speaker’s chair after the criminal allegations against him had been resolved. So in the end was it a political calculation the Prime Minister made?

STEPHEN JONES:

I can’t talk about the calculations, I wasn’t in the rooms where the decisions were made Lyndal, all I can tell you is that as a government MP, when I get about my electorate, people are very pleased that this issue is not going to be a distraction because we’re able to talk about the issues that actually matter. So I welcome the decision.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Mitch, your side of politics have been calling for Peter Slipper to remain out of the Speaker’s chair until the civil allegations against him have been resolved. The Prime Minister says Mr Slipper will be out of the Speaker’s chair for some time to come. Has she made the right decision?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Well the call that she has made is the one that we were seeking and have been seeking for several weeks. What’s perplexing to us is why it took her so long to act. For many weeks the Prime Minister was saying that Mr Slipper didn’t need to stand aside indefinitely, that not all of the allegations needed to be addressed and answered. As recently as a couple of days ago, we had Anthony Albanese and Mr Emerson saying that the production of the Cabcharge vouchers by Mr Slipper essentially cleared that matter up and that there was no impediment to him returning to the chair. What has caused the change of heart on the part of the government and the Prime Minister isn’t any concerns about the integrity or standing of the Parliament. It’s just pure politics. The Government realised that this whole scenario was deeply concerning to the electorate and so the Prime Minister came up with a new formulation which was ‘a line has been crossed’. We don’t know what that line is. We don’t know where it is. We don’t know how it happened but apparently it’s been crossed.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

But isn’t that then the Prime Minister responding to the concerns of the public, listening to their concerns as the days rolled on, and in the end responding to them.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Well the Prime Minister is seeking to protect the Australian Labor Party. Her motivation is not to protect the integrity or the reputation of the Parliament. If it was, she would have acted on day one. She didn’t. Instead she has sought to run the issue of Mr Slipper and the issue of Mr Thomson together, to say that in both situations a line has been crossed. We don’t know what new information there is in relation to Mr Thomson that has seen the Prime Minister take this action, but we know in the case of Mr Thomson, that effectively nothing has changed. The Prime Minister will still be accepting his vote. If it’s bad enough, whatever his transgression is, to suspend him form the Labor Party, then surely it’s of significance that she act and not accept his vote.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Stephen is the Prime Minister’s decision yesterday going to make things, make life a bit easier for the government?

STEPHEN JONES:

Like I said, the things that we should be talking about are the core economic issues affecting everyday Australians in their work places and their households. That’s what we need to be talking about, that’s what we should be talking about on this program dare I say, and not allegations that are properly dealt with in a court of law by the proper prosecuting and investigative authorities. The sorts of things that we need to be talking about in parliament next week is the budget, the way we’re bringing it back into surplus, how we are going to continue to roll out our important infrastructure projects like the NBN, our railway projects, our ports and roads projects, and how we’re reforming the education system. That matters far more to the Australian people and that’s the sort of things they’ll be looking to in the long term, not allegations that are best dealt with in a court of law.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

We might go to one other political issue before we get to some policy today. If politics wasn’t unusual enough, the Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer announced this morning that along with wanting to build a new version of the Titanic, he wants to seek preselection for the Liberal National Party for Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley.

CLIVE PALMER (file footage):

I just want to make an announcement that I’ve put an expression of interest in to stand at the next Federal election for the seat of Lilley. I’ve done this because the treasurer and myself both have clear different visions of where this country should go and what we should do. I believe that we should be getting bigger and stronger, creating more wealth for our people so that we’ve got more money to distribute to things that need to be done in this country. He believes in a redistribution of wealth and making the economy smaller.

TONY ABBOTT (file footage):

I was as surprised as everyone else at the announcement today. Clive Palmer, like millions and millions of other Australians, is desperate to see a bad government gone. But like everyone else who wants to run for the LNP, I’m afraid he’s got to run the gauntlet of a very testing preselection process. I will be urging the LNP to pick the right candidate for every seat in Queensland. And certainly the right candidate for seats in Queensland that have traditionally been Labor seats is someone who is going to do the hard yards, knocking on doors, being in shopping centres, talking to local newspapers. We need a grassroots candidate, and I’m confident that that’s what will be delivered.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Mitch, Clive Palmer is a long-time supporter of the Liberal National Party, he’s a man with a wealth of business experience, isn’t he the sort of candidate you want in the seat of Lilley?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Clive Palmer is a significant business figure in Australia and he’s someone who deeply cares for his country. Lyndal, I’ve always had the policy as a Senator that I don’t seek to involve myself in the House of Representatives preselection processes in my own state of Victoria, and that’s even more the case when it comes to divisions of the Party interstate. We have open and transparent preselection processes in the Liberal Party. They always give candidates a fair hearing. And that’s their job. They’ll pick the right person for the seat of Lilley to try and take Wayne Swan out.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Do you think there would be anything wrong with having Clive Palmer as a candidate?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Well I very much respect the prerogative of party members to choose the candidate that they see as the right person. Party members jealously guard that prerogative and I won’t be seeking to involve myself, even as a commentator, in that process.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Stephen, Wayne Swan holds what is a marginal seat. He’s lost the seat before. Do you think this is a reminder to him of the perhaps precarious nature of his own position in the seat?

STEPHEN JONES:

None of us need to be reminded of the precarious nature of our holding on to our seats. That’s why we’re out there working hard every day. But on the issue of Clive Palmer, I’ll say this. You can buy a coalmine, you can buy a soccer team, and you can even buy a newspaper. What you can’t do is buy a seat in parliament. That’s got to be won on merit and some of his public interventions, if I can put it that way, over the last month, I’ve got to say, even Tony Abbott’s standards have been pretty wacky. You know, I’ve got to say, that it would be an interesting candidate in any election battle, let me put it that way.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

We might move on to some policy. The Prime Minister today announced that the budget will fund the start of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in four locations in the middle of the year, helping she says, ten thousand people, in its first year. Mitch, you’ve done a lot of work on disability, is this the right way to start the scheme?

MITCH FIFIELD:

The first point I think I should make Lyndal, is that today was a great day. The ‘Let’s Make It Real’ rallies in every capital city in Australia seeking to turn an NDIS from an idea into a reality. I spoke in Melbourne and Tony Abbott spoke in Perth. Thousands of Australians came out and said we want an NDIS and we want it as soon as possible. And there were people from all political parties represented at the rallies. I think it’s very important that we try and elevate the NDIS above partisan politics as much as possible, because people with disability, they just want things fixed. They don’t want petty point-scoring. The Prime Minister’s announcement today, look, I don’t want to be critical, but it really was an announcement that there will be an announcement on budget night. The Prime Minister provided a little bit of information but she didn’t provide a funding envelope, and she didn’t provide a timeline for the NDIS as a whole. I know people when they heard the Prime Minister was going to address the rally in Sydney today, were hoping for that detail. I hope that we have that on budget night. The states are looking to be consulted, they need to be, their role is very important in making an NDIS a reality.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Stephen, this is an issue that is of deep concern to those people who are disabled and families and carers, do you think it has broad community support as well?

STEPHEN JONES:

Look, absolutely. I’ve got to say, I’d hate to be around Mitch’s Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. He’d be booing the arrival of Santa Claus. What we saw today was an announcement by the Prime Minister welcomed by all sides of politics, a historic announcement to launch a National Disability Insurance Scheme. Ten thousand people will be covered by it by July 2013, twenty thousand by July 2014, and what it means is this Lyndal. It means it won’t matter whether you got your disability because you were born with it, a result of a horrific car accident or an accident that was your own fault. We will look beyond that and say that if you have a disability, then we owe to you the ability to look after your health care and your personal care, and that we not only owe it to you, we owe it to your family that we are assisting you. And some of the most moving speeches I’ve got to say, at the rally I was pleased to attend with people from my electorate in the Illawara and Southern Highlands today, was the talks from the carers who were saying that this was going to make the world of difference.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

And that’s where we’ll have to leave it. Stephen Jones and Mitch Fifield thank you very much for your time.