Transcript – Sky News AM Agenda – 29 October 2012

Sky News AM Agenda

With David Lipson and Nick Champion MP

29 October 2012

8:30am

E & OE

DAVID LIPSON:

With me in the studio here in Canberra is the shadow disabilities minister Senator Mitch Fifield and also Labor MP Nick Champion, thank you both for your time this morning. We’ll start with the Newspoll that is where we are at, so Nick Champion how important is this Newspoll? How significant is it for your party?

NICK CHAMPION:

Well I think Martin O’Shaughnessy basically called it when he said that you can’t rely on a strategy of having just opposition, just saying no and no ideas, and what ideas the Liberal Party does have out there are things like pulling back on the school kids bonus, which is essential for families’ budgets, pulling back on pension payments, pulling back on tax cuts that are all part of the carbon tax arrangements, the carbon price arrangements. All of those things are essentially negative, ripping up the National Broadband Network, they’re yet to offer anything positive to the nation, it’s just been this barrage of negativity and I think what is happening is that strategy that Tony Abbott has had is slowly falling apart under public pressure.
 
DAVID LIPSON:

So you think this is driven by your positive policies rather than the negative attack on Tony Abbott’s character.

NICK CHAMPION:

Well I don’t think there has been a negative attack on Tony Abbott’s character, he puts it out there a lot, right, he is very very negative, he is very very aggressive, and when someone stands up to him, he sort of falls over the glass jaw, so we haven’t been targeting his character, we’ve just been standing up to him, and I think that has resonated with the Australian people as well, but I think the fundamentals are that you can’t just oppose oppose oppose, say no no no no no, and have a lot of negative stuff out there, while hiding all your other policies, hiding your industrial relations policy, hiding your policy on the economy.

DAVID LIPSON:

Mitch Fifield a laugh from you there.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Oh, a laugh when Nick said they hadn’t been focusing on Tony Abbott or seeking to make him an issue, I mean I don’t think anyone in Australia would believe that for a second. But we do have a positive agenda. Our positive agenda is repealing the carbon tax because that will help Australians with cost of living pressures. We want to stop the waste which we have seen under this government. We’ve got a comprehensive plan to stop the boats. We have a plan for engagement with Asia which involves a new Colombo plan, which involves lifting to 40 per cent the number of Australians who study a foreign language at school within the next decade. So we have a positive plan and we are going to talk about that.

DAVID LIPSON:

Why is that not getting through?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Well it’s our job to make sure that it does get through. I think people are very well aware that we do want to repeal the carbon tax. That we will repeal the carbon tax. And people know that that will be a positive for their cost of living pressures. Our message is getting through. But we’ve got to keep talking about it and we’ve got to keep focussing on the government and their failures, which are many. The government always complain that we’re being constantly negative but the thing is it’s not being negative to point out when a government is failing. That is the duty of an opposition. And it’s not being negative to say that you’re going to repeal a bad policy like the carbon tax. That’s a positive.

DAVID LIPSON:

Ok, let’s go to some of the policy, particular the Asian century document released yesterday, a very significant document that lays out a whole range of aspirations, one of them that every school in the nation would teach one of four key languages: Indonesian, Japanese, Mandarin or Hindi. Nick Champion, how workable is that plan, particularly for some of the remote schools in the country?

NICK CHAMPION:

Well look it is workable if we have a strong bipartisan consensus about it and we want to improve our schools, it has been a constant part of our policy making since we came to office, it’s certainly been something that is very close to the Prime Minister’s heart and this is just one more part of that overall plan, it’s a very important part of that plan, but I know there are schools in my electorate at the moment that are learning Indonesian, learning Japanese, you see it quite often, I went to a school assembly the other day and they were talking in Japanese, in a working class school in a working class suburb, so it is an achievable plan and particularly as technology comes on board, and one of the other recommendations is to link schools with schools in Asia, it will become increasingly more viable as time goes on.

DAVID LIPSON:

But Mitch Fifield it is similar to the Coalition’s plan to have every child learn an Asian language, but it doesn’t go quite that far.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Well our plan is a good one. To have 40 per cent of school students studying a foreign language within the decade. Now most of those will probably be people studying Asian languages. That’s a good thing. We’ve also got our Colombo plan which I mentioned before. A two-way plan where Australians will go and study in the region and people from the region will come and study in Australia. So these are good things and there are some positive elements in the governments …

DAVID LIPSON:

…Is this suggestion an appropriate one, will it get bipartisan support, will it help your policy or your goal of 40 per cent?

MITCH FIFIELD:

We’re happy to take a look at the details, they haven’t really been fleshed out as yet in the white paper. We cautiously welcome the white paper but our concern is that this government does have a track record of not following through. Gonski, not really any follow through. The defence white paper, not only was it not followed through but there was a 10 per cent in the defence budget. So that is hardly giving effect to that. And then there was a little thing called the Henry tax review which never saw the light of day other than the bastardised version of the mining tax. So our concern is that this government make grand announcements, big documents, but they’re not good on the follow through.

DAVID LIPSON:

Well that is criticism that has been made by others in the past 24 hours, but just the fact you know that, a lot of the stuff in the white paper was fairly obvious, like that we need to engage with Asia or pretty aspirational, there wasn’t a lot in terms of money allocated on how we are going to achieve these goals.

NICK CHAMPION:

White papers aren’t about allocating money, that’s budgets, white papers are about setting long term directions for the country, and if you look back in history, the Campbell enquiry into taxation which was done by John Howard wasn’t fully implemented for about two decades, I mean it takes a long time, these are about long term plans about achieving some form of bipartisan consensus, and the great pity is that we have the Liberal Party determined to sort of bring everything down, oh we will bring it down to these individuals issues rather than concentrating on the big picture and frankly that is part of Barnaby Joyce’s sort of economic plan for the country which is to reject Asia, to you know go out there and complain about foreign investment which is actually going to lift incomes in the long term, playing these very short term, very populist politics and they did this under Keating, Keating had a big picture plan aimed at Asia, would’ve got us started maybe 10 years early then we otherwise have done. They want to bring everything down, nitpick, say no, and it’s not a good response for an opposition to have, and the Australian people are cottoning onto it, and you see that in Newspoll.

DAVID LIPSON:

Mitch Fifield.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Look, if we can just put to one side this idea that the Labor Party discovered Asia, that Paul Keating discovered Asia, that Julia Gillard has rediscovered it. Let’s just put that to one side. Just going back to the issue of languages, this government has reduced funding for the study of foreign languages in Australia, so each of the areas which they’ve pointed to as being a priority, they’ve actually been undermining by their policies to date. So hopefully we will see a Road to Damascus conversion in the form of actual concrete policies. We’ve been focused on Asia. Tony Abbott for a long time has been saying that we should have a Jakarta focus rather than a Geneva focus. This government hasn’t had a good track record in relations with our near neighbours. Just think of the live export issue. That did tremendous damage to our relationship with Indonesia. So look we cautiously welcome the report and hope that the government learns from the lessons of the past and the mistakes they have made.

DAVID LIPSON:

Ok stay with us we’ve got to take a quick break. We will be back right after this.

[commercial break]

DAVID LIPSON:

Welcome back, we are still joined by our political panel today, Mitch Fifield and Nick Champion, we are going to go to an internal brawl in the Labor Party that has cropped up in South Australia after Penny Wong was placed second on the Senate ticket behind powerbroker Don Farrell. Nick Champion, in your home state, is that appropriate for such a senior member of the government to be placed second? You were there.

NICK CHAMPION:

Well I was at conference, indeed I was a voter at conference.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Who did you vote for?

NICK CHAMPION:

I voted for Don of course.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Always back the winner.

NICK CHAMPION:

It wasn’t a brawl for a start; it was a pre-selection convention, the candidates made speeches, the delegates heard them, and then a majority of delegates voted for Don. Now it is hard to argue, hard to argue with democracy, right, and even amongst, even if you just took the union delegates out and you just have the sub-branch delegates, elected by the rank of the file of the Labor Party, Don won a majority of those, 55 to 47.

DAVID LIPSON:

Anthony Albanese is arguing with it though, he’s going to take it to the council on Friday.

NICK CHAMPION:

With due respect what Anthony is suggesting is that we should reject the decision of the ALP rank and file and run off to Canberra to the National Executive of the Labor Party and overturn their decision, and I don’t  that is in the spirit of ALP reform. I’m in favour of ALP reform which is generally about dispersing power in the party, running off to a smaller group of people and in effect Labor’s elite and over-turning a decision of the duly election sub-branches and union delegations is a complete outrage.

DAVID LIPSON:

You voted for Don Farrell.

NICK CHAMPION:

I did, proudly, proudly.

DAVID LIPSON:

Is he really the number 1 senator in South Australia above Penny Wong, a member of cabinet?

NICK CHAMPION:

Well look what happens is obviously people bring different things to public office, and what Don brings is 20 years in South Australian politics, in the industrial wing of politics and I worked with Don in places like John Martin’s when they were closing a very big department store in South Australia, 400 people put out of work, and I saw his dedication to working class people then and workers then, and that sort of thing people take into account, not just whether you’re in cabinet, not just, you know whether you are very articulate, and Penny is an excellent senator, no one is trying to take anything away from her and she has been given a winnable seat. In essence we are arguing about two winnable seats in the Senate here so there is no practical effect of this decision but people take into account obviously your record over a period of time.

DAVID LIPSON:

Mitch Fifield, what do you make of this?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Look, I wanted Nick to just keep talking. Never interrupt an opponent when they’re digging, digging, digging. Don Farrell was one of those faceless gentleman who tore down a duly elected Prime Minister, so he wasn’t going to think twice about bumping down and demoting a mere cabinet minister. And we’ve heard from Nick that Penny Wong is no Don Farrell. No one has ever accused the Labor Party of having open …

NICK CHAMPION:

… Well I think, I think even Penny …

DAVID LIPSON:

… We’ll just let the Senator finish.

MITCH FIFIELD:

No one has ever accused the Labor Party of having open, transparent and democratic processes. So who knows what was at play on the weekend. But it is peculiar that the Prime Minister hasn’t come out to publicly defend a member of her own cabinet, that she hasn’t sought to intervene in this matter. You would’ve thought that the Prime Minister would be standing square with her cabinet colleague. But she is not.

DAVID LIPSON:

Well would that really be appropriate though, I mean some of the criticism on Labor in the last few years has been that there was too much power at the top, would that be appropriate for the Prime Minister to intervene?

MITCH FIFIELD:

I think all the evidence is to the contrary. There is not too much power at the top. It’s people like Don Farrell and David Feeney who decide that they will move a Prime Minister on. These same sort of people decide that they’re better than Penny Wong, I mean Penny Wong is the senior member of the government from South Australia and yet she is not worthy to be number 1 on the senate ticket. And you heard it here first, Nick voted for the winner. In politics, always make sure that you vote for the winner.

DAVID LIPSON:

Nick Champion, I promised you a response.

NICK CHAMPION:

Well, Mitch said that I said that Penny is no Don Farrell, well, Penny wouldn’t want to be Don Farrell, they appeal to different traditions in the Labor movement and we shouldn’t see this as some sort of, you know, contest between the two of them necessarily, it is just a reflection of those two traditions. There is a progressive tradition and there is a more traditional Laborist tradition and Don is clearly a representative of that.

DAVID LIPSON:

Nick Champion, Mitch Fifield, thanks for your time this morning.

NICK CHAMPION:

Thanks.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Thanks.