29 November, 2012
2GB Radio
The Alan Jones Breakfast Show
With Alan Jones, Christopher Pyne MP and Senator Mitch Fifield
29 November 2012
7.15am
E & OE
Subjects: NDIS, Gonski, AWU slush fund
ALAN JONES:
I should by preamble say this. I’ve been around in this scene a long time. As most of you know I worked for a prime minister. I’ve never seen a worse performance by a prime minister in the history of the Australian Parliament than I saw yesterday. Not only was the parliament ought to have been embarrassed but the nation watching must have felt a sense of shame and goodness only knows what the Labor Party felt. The Prime Minister was shrill demeaning the office of Speaker, ignoring the Speaker’s rulings, demeaning the Parliament, demeaning the office of Prime Minister and contemptuously dismissed everything asked of her. Even at one stage temperamentally and in a tone and visage filled with hate virtually told the Opposition to answer their own questions. It was as ugly as it could possibly be and no prime minister has ever stooped to this level of contempt for the institution of parliament.
Then outside Question Time the contempt continued, not for the Parliament but for the taxpayer and voters of Australia and in many instances, the most vulnerable Australians. Because there was the government parading its education credentials. The launching of what it regarded as a reform educational program where we were told, the Parliament was told every child would have a good education through the throwing of more money at the educational crisis and crises. Our educational standards don’t bear international comparison for one simple reason money alone won’t solve your education problems. Building the Education Revolution was a waste of money. Education is about content. Education is about what you’re taught in the classroom and what the outcomes are from that teaching. And if you don’t have good teachers, compassionate teachers, dedicated teachers and knowledgeable teachers then you can throw as much money as you like at the problem but you won’t get a decent outcome. It is a betrayal of the ambition of parents for the Prime Minister to proclaim that she can guarantee an outstanding education for every Australian child. Bob Hawke once said no child would live in poverty. Julia Gillard is saying no child will be badly educated. She’s kidding. There are thousands and thousands of children in the education system who don’t know the difference between G-I-R-L apostrophe ‘s’ and G-I-R-L-S. Who don’t know what cursive writing is. Who know little about punctuation. Who know longer read the great works of literature because it’s too hard. Education has become the vehicle of the soft touch.
Yet there we were yesterday proclaiming a brand new educational world that we’re about to enter when in fact there’s no money to fund any of this. This is all a derivative of the Gonski review, not of education but of school funding. Don’t worry about a transformation of teacher training. Don’t worry about an analysis of content and what’s happening in the classroom. Just recycle teaching practices from one generation to the next and recycle the results. But throw money at it and call it reform but you don’t have the money. Now not only is this happening with education but we had on Monday a shrill Jenny Macklin virtually screaming across the chamber at the Opposition proclaiming that the Gillard Government owns a National Disability Insurance Scheme. As Mitch Fifield, the shadow minister said, legislation without funding is an empty gesture. There is no money in the forward estimates for a National Disability Insurance Scheme. What contempt for the most vulnerable to proclaim to the nation that the government owns a National Disability Insurance Scheme and yet not tell the people who rely on the truth of our political leaders, not tell them that there is no money.
Christopher Pyne made the same comments about the government’s education bill. He said there is no sign of the $6.5 billion per year the Gonski report recommended in new funding for schools in this bill. Both these men are with me. They’re both young people, shadow ministers. Christopher Pyne from South Australia in education and the Leader of the House, and Mitch Fifield, shadow disabilities minister. Good morning to you both. If I could come to you first Christopher Pyne, good morning.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Good morning Alan.
ALAN JONES:
You are the Leader of the Opposition in the House which means you have to be on top of procedures and standards, what parliamentarians call Standing Orders, basically the rules of the House. From the revelations today, which I must say are not new but have been known for some time that Julia Gillard did write to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission when they initially refused to register the workplace reform association because of its trade union status. It’s clear that she wrote seeking to have that decision reversed, vouching for the fact that it was a work safety entity when in fact it was a slush fund. Her words ‘slush fund’ subsequently used to the senior partner of Slater & Gordon. She’s also said that she only provided legal advice to these people. That advice didn’t extend to telling them what they were forming was illegal but it’s also clear now that she wrote the rules of the association. My question to you therefore, from everything that she has said and not said in the House, has the Prime Minister misled the Parliament?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Alan there’s every reason to believe she has misled the Parliament on two very important features. The first goes to the fact that the Opposition asked her last week why she didn’t inform the Australian Workers Union national executive that this workplace reform association was being established. And she said that she was dealing with the union, she was dealing with the officials Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt and therefore she felt that she was dealing on their behalf i.e. on behalf of the trade union. And yet the letter she wrote to the Western Australia Corporate Affairs Commission is a letter about how it is not part of the trade union. So those two statements can’t be consistent. She needs to explain how she could be writing to the Western Australia Corporate Affairs Commission to say this is not part of the trade union but her defence this week was she didn’t have to inform the head office if you like because she was dealing with the union.
ALAN JONES:
Julie Bishop asked several times whether she in fact wrote this letter to the Western Australia Corporate Affairs Commission when they initially refused to register the workplace reform association. She’s persistent in saying I only provided legal advice which I might add, that legal advice obviously didn’t extend to telling Wilson and Blewitt that what they were forming was illegal. But this is clearly more than legal advice. This is writing, documented writing to the Commission trying to remove the ineligibility status that the Commission had given to this association.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
That’s right and that’s the very important second aspect to why the Prime Minister is in such very deep trouble today. Because we’ve asked her five times this week whether she wrote to the Western Australia Corporate Affairs Commission to attest to the bona fides of this organisation. She has been very careful not to say that she didn’t but of course she has led everyone to believe in two press conferences and all her answers to thirty or more questions that she only had a very passing involvement, a light touch involvement in the establishment of this association when in fact it would not have been established without her letter to the Western Australia Corporate Affairs Commission that attested to its bona fides.
ALAN JONES:
After they initially rejected it.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
After it had been rejected. So if it wasn’t for Julia Gillard’s involvement in attesting to its bona fides, the association would not have been established and hundreds of thousands of dollars would not have been able to be defrauded.
ALAN JONES:
Ok you young blokes here, your job is to get around the parliament in the corridors, get the sniff, know what’s going on and what’s being said, how shocked do you think the rank and file members of the Labor Party and of the caucus will be today to know of this latest revelation?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I think the Labor Party have been shell shocked all week that their leadership is being so brazen. Clearly the Prime Minister is not intending to resign in spite of the fact that any Prime Minister worth their salt would realise the gig is up and it’s time to go. She will try and tough this out and she will drag the whole Labor Party caucus down with her because she always puts herself first and never the country’s interests. And I think Labor members are so beaten about all year by this prime ministership that they’re almost in shock most of the time.
ALAN JONES:
My understanding is that Shorten has been speaking to the independents and has already done that. Do you think from your corridor talk that there’s any likelihood that a caucus meeting or a meeting of the parliamentary party could be called for next Tuesday?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
I think if there is to be a leadership change in the Labor Party I think it most likely would be to Bill Shorten. The hatred of Kevin Rudd is quite palpable in the Labor Party caucus and of course they carpet bombed Kevin Rudd in February. But on the other hand I think Julia Gillard is the kind of person who is so brazen that she’ll just think it’s me first and the Labor Party second and the country a very distant third.
ALAN JONES:
Just on the country and the education bill, the big announcement yesterday, where’s the money?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well of course there isn’t any money. This so called education bill is nine pages. It’s 1400 words
ALAN JONES:
No detail.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
It’s a collection of motherhood statements. It’s basically a press release masquerading as a bill. It doesn’t have any money attached to it. It doesn’t have any school funding model detail attached. It is a hoax on the Australian people and obviously the sector is so weary of it that nobody is the least bit fooled by it. It’s just another opportunity for the Prime Minister to spin. The Opposition will consider this bill of course over the coming summer.
ALAN JONES:
But this is a betrayal of parents because parents only hear the headline and think oh well, there’ll be more money. We’re being told there will be more money for everybody and that every aspect of education is going to be guaranteed. They made much about all of this yesterday yet here is a government $147 billion in debt, the four biggest deficits in Australian history, $44 billion last year they spent more than they got in, now pretending that this is a giant education reform which Garrett and others said yesterday, and there is no money and no detail.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Absolutely no money at all. And everywhere I go across the country, parents, teachers, principals, education lobby groups, they’re all absolutely aware of that Alan. They know that they’re being sold a pup. They feel that they’re being told that there would be billions of dollars of rivers of gold. The only person who is believing it anymore is the Australian Education Union and that’s because they’ve put all their eggs in this basket. If the Government ever comes up with any detail and any money, I’ll be deeply surprised.
ALAN JONES:
The proposal does say it’s a 30-70 split anyway. Canberra 30, 70 per cent the states have got to find the dough. The states haven’t been consulted, the states haven’t agreed and they don’t have the money.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
And they haven’t been shown any detail.
ALAN JONES:
And they haven’t been shown any detail. Just hang on there, let’s go to Mitch Fifield. Mitch Fifield good morning.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Alan.
ALAN JONES:
You’re the Shadow national disability minister and we’ve got a national disability insurance scheme. I watched Jenny Macklin on Monday screeching across the Parliament that they owned this scheme and the other mob that’s you are not interested and that this will be the defining issue of 2013. The legislation provides no detail on funding.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right Alan. I thought Jenny Macklin’s performance in the parliament was appalling. It’s one area where both sides of politics should be able to work together to achieve a better deal and as you know Alan, people with disability and their carers have had a raw deal for far too long. If we can’t work together in this area, we won’t be able to work together anywhere. And the legislation that they’ve introduced, fine it’s good, it sets up the National Disability Insurance Agency but it doesn’t have a single dollar attached.
ALAN JONES:
That’s true. It’s a betrayal of the most vulnerable.
MITCH FIFIELD:
It is a betrayal.
ALAN JONES:
Can I say to both of you, Christopher Pyne is still on the phone listening, you as the Shadow Minister Mitch Fifield, and I want to make this mathematical point for the benefit of the thousands and thousands of people across Australia listening to this. There are on last figures about 1.1 million Australians with profound or serious disability, I’ve been on about this for years. Under this government scheme if they had the money and if it came to pass, I mean they only put $300 million for each of four years into it and the Productivity Commission says it will cost $15 million minimum a year, even if the scheme came to pass, it will only support 441,000. They’re only talking about people of working age and under being covered by this scheme. There will be 600,000 for whom there is no provision.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right. And the Government is trying to give the impression that this scheme, which hasn’t been funded, will be the solution for every Australian with disability. It won’t. It will help, if they fund it, the 400,000 Australians with the most significant disabilities but the government have been completely silent
ALAN JONES:
On the 600,000 who miss out.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right.
ALAN JONES:
600,000 people aged 65 and older with a severe or profound disability are not provided for in this proposal. Christopher Pyne I’ll just come back to you on the money thing. I mean here is a government swimming in debt, a nation swimming in debt, parading the education reform with no money. How do you hold such a government to account.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well Alan they are absolutely brazen. I mean the tragedy is that the austrlaian public will be told another round of lies by this government before the next election. Before the last election the public were assured there would be no carbon tax under a Gillard Government. They got a carbon tax. They’re now being assured that the NDIS will solve every problem. Even parents with autistic children believe that the NDIS will apply to them.
ALAN JONES:
That’s right. These are your most vulnerable people. Mitch Fifield, I mean you’ve got a massive job to persuade the public that this is another hoax.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right Alan. Because the government have been very misleading. Now I hope that my concern is proved completely unfounded. I hope that when the legislation hits the parliament today the government surprises us and provides funding certainty for the NDIS. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
ALAN JONES:
They don’t have $15 billion.
MITCH FIFIELD:
No. They’ve got $120 billion worth of unfunded commitments and they’ve given no indication as to how they’re going to fund the NDIS. Now this is something that should happen. Government need to reprioritise.
ALAN JONES:
Reprioritise spending. Good to talk to you both.