Transcript – Sky News AM Agenda – 11 March 2013

Sky AM Agenda

With Kieran Gilbert and Andrew Leigh MP

11 March 2013

8:45am

E & OE

KIERAN GILBERT:

This is AM Agenda, thanks for your company this morning. With me now, Liberal frontbencher, Senator Mitch Fifield, Labor MP, Andrew Leigh. Gentleman, good morning. Andrew, a tough time for Labor. It just seems to go from one thing to the next. The WA election, obviously a state election, but it is going to do nothing for mood among your colleagues is it?
 
ANDREW LEIGH:

Well Kieran, Premier Colin Barnett himself said that the interpretation that this was run on federal issues was insulting. Certainly when I looked at coverage of that election there was a lot of talk about urban transport in Perth, there was talk about making sure the state had a diversified economy. There were conversations about how the WA economy was tracking. I saw precious little in terms of federal issues playing out in that poll.

KIERAN GILBERT:

One former Labor minister in WA says that the Prime Minister should resign off the back of this result. Just saying how toxic the Labor brand is. Alannah MacTiernan of course is the person I am referring to.

ANDREW LEIGH:

Well Kieran, I don’t think that makes very much sense. I think we are doing well under Prime Minister Gillard in terms of the large number of reforms that have been put through this parliament. I would stack up the reforms of this parliament against any other Labor government except maybe the first term of the Hawke Government. The price on carbon pollution, the mining tax, first steps of the NDIS and schools reform, not to mention the global financial crisis, which was the biggest downturn since the Great Depression. Coming thorough that with unemployment now with a 5 in front of it, that is a pretty astonishing set of reforms over the past 5 or 6 years.

KIERAN GILBERT:

Senator Fifield, you’ve heard what Andrew Leigh said when it comes to the state issues, Colin Barnett’s own words on that matter, your response?

MITCH FIFIELD:

This is Colin Barnett’s victory. It is a victory of Ben Morton, the State Director of Western Australia. Nothing can take away from that. And of course the election campaign was fought on state issues, but you cannot deny that there were federal policies that had a specific state impact which featured prominently in the Western Australian campaign. The carbon tax, the mining tax. These are federal policy issues, yes, but they play out in Western Australia, and so they were Western Australian state campaign issues. And for Federal Labor to not heed the message from Western Australia is to be wilfully ignorant of the message that the voters are sending them. No one is saying that this was a federal referendum, what we are saying is that there were significant federal policy issues at play in the state campaign.

KIERAN GILBERT:

Wilfully ignorant is the way Senator Fifield describes it, if Labor doesn’t heed these messages.

ANDREW LEIGH:

Kieran, we should always be out there, listening to what people have to say.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

But have you heard the message on the carbon tax, on the mining tax?

ANDREW LEIGH:

We understand we have a lot of work to do. We understand that there has been a desperately dishonest campaign on carbon pricing. But I think that campaign is now evaporating in the face of a record hot summer. In the face of China, a communist country, now looking to put in place a price on carbon pollution. While a Liberal National party is standing against it. The United States putting a price on carbon pollution. I mean we are seeing carbon prices being adopted around the world for the simple reason, it is the most efficient way of dealing with dangerous climate change, which is happening.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Ok. I want to move onto other issues, but quickly your response, particularly on the China component, which is accurate, they are moving towards putting a price on carbon.

MITCH FIFIELD:

They are not moving to an economy-wide carbon tax. That is just plain wrong. Labor can point to California, and China, and efforts they’re making, but they are not economy-wide carbon taxes of the type that we have in Australia. We do have a direct action policy. We are against a tax that is going to penalise people. That is going to penalise businesses for no decent economic or environmental benefit.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Let’s move on. I want to ask you about Tony Abbott. He’s out there on 60 Minutes last night, the softer Tony, while Labor is going through all these issues, he’s out there, defining himself, providing his personal narrative to the Australian people. It seems that he is where he needs to be right now. The Labor Party, can you see a window for turning this all around?

ANDREW LEIGH:

I can Kieran, and it focuses around us focusing on policy challenges, and I agree, there have been times that Labor has been speaking too much about internal issues, and not enough about the policy challenges. But I think increasingly as we go to the election, I have a role as Labor spokesperson on Coalition costings, and part of that is just highlighting the huge costings gap that the Coalition have got themselves into. And the $70 billion worth of cuts they will have to make. I think the more people see of Tony Abbott with his family that might make them comfortable. The more they see what Tony Abbott’s policies will do to their family, the more uncomfortable they will be.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

He is very much trying to play down expectations. We’ve got a little bit of Tony Abbott talking about the challenge ahead for him and the Coalition. Let’s play it for you.

TONY ABBOTT (from file):                                  

I don’t want to jinx myself by getting too cocky, too soon. This is the supreme challenge of my life.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Senator Fifield, Tony Abbott says he doesn’t want to jinx himself, that everyone is focused on the job at hand. But it must be hard not to get ahead of yourselves given where things are at. Is this softer Tony approach trying to provide softer edges to the Opposition leader. Did you think that was ever going to be possible given his form in the past?

MITCH FIFIELD:

Look, Tony is a multifaceted person. He’s a Rhodes Scholar. He’s a very intelligent person. He’s a very thoughtful person. He’s widely read.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

He has also said a lot of controversial things on abortion, on homosexuality in the past.

MITCH FIFIELD:

He’s been a robust contributor to public debate, but I think it is wrong to say that Tony is showing a new side of himself, a softer side. I think people are just seeing another side of Tony. As I say, he is a thoughtful individual. He’s got a plan for the nation, and he is presenting himself as an alternative Prime Minister. In an election year, people do stop and take a fresh look at political leaders, as they should.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

He certainly is not taking things for granted as we heard in his comment there, and not leaving it up to the Labor Party’s woes to get him across the line.

ANDREW LEIGH:

Kieran, I hope that this election is going to be fought on policy issues. Policy issues like raising teacher quality, an issue you’re going to hear Minister Garrett speak about today, following on the decline in the academic aptitude of new teachers from the 80s to the early 2000s.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

But the bottom line is that, to talk about policy, you’ve got to get beyond of that threshold of trying trust or believability, and that is the problem for Labor at the moment, isn’t it? That you just can’t get past that threshold, people won’t listen, because they don’t believe that you will deliver it.

ANDREW LEIGH:

I don’t agree with that Kieran. I think it might well be the case that in this building people are obsessed with personalities. But when I do my mobile offices, standing outside Dickson Wollies, people don’t come up to me and talk about the machinations of political parties. They ask me about things like the assistance for families, and which party is going to keep the Schoolkids Bonus, which party is going to get rid of it. They want to talk to me about the National Disability Insurance Scheme and how that will affect their family. They want to talk about the strength of the Australian economy, and which party has a plan to make sure that Australians share in this historic upsurge in mineral prices. They are the sought of issues that Australians are talking with me, as a federal parliamentarian about, all the time. They are the sorts of issues that the election will be fought over.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

The National Disability Insurance Scheme that you referred to there, that is going to be in the parliament this week, but it’s got bipartisan support. That will go through the parliament, won’t it?

MITCH FIFIELD:

It will go through the parliament, as it should. It has cross party support. We’ve supported each significant milestone along the road to the NDIS, but one thing that we will be doing in the parliament with the NDIS is moving an amendment, to establish a joint parliamentary committee chaired by both sides of politics to oversee the implementation of the NDIS, to ensure that it remains beyond partisanship.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

And will you pursue that even beyond the election? If it is your government, if it is you in government that is delivering this.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Absolutely. We’ve put a motion previously in the parliament to establish this oversight mechanism. The Government with the Greens voted against it. But despite that, if we are not successful with our amendment, we will put that committee in place if we form government.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

And on the mining tax element, which again you talk about as being, sharing the wealth, Andrew Leigh, how do you see that playing out over the next few months. Because that could be decisive in a sense when it comes to the budget bottom line, if it still delivers $100 million, as it did in the first 6 months, as opposed to the billions of dollars forecast.

ANDREW LEIGH:

Well Kieran, these profit based taxes are just inherently volatile. You see this with the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, whose revenues halved to the global financial crisis, and which didn’t return large sums of revenue to the budget in its early years. And you will see that with the mining tax, it is going to be one of the most volatile revenue bases we have.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

So you’re comfortable with its design?

ANDREW LEIGH:

Absolutely. I think a profits based tax is far more sensible than a royalties regime.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Even with all the deductions that can be made, by the miners, because they helped design it, didn’t they?

ANDREW LEIGH:

Well, that is what a profit is. So you’ve got to take into account someone’s costs as well as their revenue. What a royalties tax says is that when the world price goes up tenfold, Australian tax payers get none of that price rise. Now that price rise isn’t due to the ingenuity of the miners, that is due to world demand. And the Australian taxpayers deserve a little bit of that price rise.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

And finally, I want to touch on something, a lighter note to finish, the 100^th anniversary of Canberra. Andrew Leigh, you’re one of the local members in this town. The 100^th anniversary tomorrow, the birthday isn’t it?

ANDREW LEIGH:

Absolutely.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Lots of celebrations around the place. How significant do you see this?

ANDREW LEIGH:

I think this is great, not just for Canberrans, but for Australians, Kieran. The decision to site the national capital here, rather than Tumut or Dalgety, which both came close, was an important one. This is a great place to live, work, and raise a family. But it is also a great place for all Australians to visit, and I’d encourage people to come to Canberra during the centenary year, to see the many things that are on offer, for families, for kids, I’m hoping Mitch will bring his family to town during this year, because I think there is a lot for all families.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

But it does get the odd bad review, doesn’t it? I mean a lot of people bag it.

ANDREW LEIGH:

Oh look, it’s got its share of knockers, as any great city does Kieran, but we’ve got big enough shoulders to deal with that, particularly in our centenary year.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Senator Fifield, your thoughts as we close the program?

MITCH FIFIELD:

I would have preferred that the national parliament never left Melbourne. But Canberra won. We lost. It’s here. Happy birthday Canberra.

KIERAN GILBERT:                                                

Senator Fifield, and Andrew Leigh, appreciate your time this morning gentleman, it’s going to be a busy fortnight ahead.

ANDREW LEIGH:

Absolutely.

MITCH FIFIELD:

Indeed.