ASHLEIGH GILLON: Let’s go straight to our panel of politicians this afternoon. Joining me here in the studio: the Labor MP Graham Perrett and the Liberal senator Scott Ryan. Hello to both of you, welcome. Are there any hard feelings about the way Bob Carr got the job now that he is here?
GRAHAM PERRETT: Not a jot. It was a fantastic opportunity created by Mark Arbib going and deciding to pursue other interests and see his family, which I should say is supported by all of us who have young children here in Parliament. As we’ve seen already Bob Carr will be a wonderful foreign minister; big shoes to fill after Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith obviously, but I think from what we’ve seen already we can see a man who has a grasp on world history and geo-politics better than almost anyone we’ve encountered for a long time.
GILLON: Scott Ryan, how do you see Bob Carr? Is the Coalition regarding him as a strong opponent? You can’t doubt his knowledge of the foreign affairs portfolio he is about to take on.
SENATOR SCOTT RYAN: Knowledge Ashleigh is not the issue. Bob Carr would want to do a better job as foreign minister than he did as premier of NSW. In 10 years of premier, he had a series of broken promises an arm long. He promised to remove tolls off freeways, to build a spit bridge, he signed a promise in blood to halve waiting lists. Bob Carr represents both the failure of the NSW Labor Party and the failure of the current Labor Party because they don’t have anyone in their own ranks they have faith in for this critical job.
GILLON: Well, Bob Carr didn’t waste any time this morning. He was straight out on the doors of Parliament chatting with journalists, even bringing up the issue of the polls. It is an issue that politicians often like to avoid when they’re speaking to journalists, but Bob Carr today offered his analysis of the poll today, the Newspoll in The Australian newspaper without even being questioned. Have a listen.
<Throws to clip of Bob Carr>
GILLON: On those polls, the Newspoll today, Bob Carr was obviously trying to spin it there saying the two-party preferred vote, well there is a six-point gap. He thinks that is actually quite a good position for you to be in at this stage with 18 months to go. It is the primary vote that is the real worry …
PERRETT: Yeah
GILLON: … You went down to 31 per cent today, you can’t spin and say that’s good news for your party can you?
PERRETT: No. Look, the reality is we have a lot of work in front of us. It is what I’ve been saying for the last 12 months, six months, we know that. We’ve got some tough policies that we have to sell to the people in the face of a relentless fear campaign from Tony Abbott and his colleagues. It is tough to explain that the world won’t change radically on the first of July, whereas they’ve been told that the world is going to end on the first of July when our carbon tax comes into place. We’ve got some tough things to sell. There are some changes out there to private health insurance, there is fear out there about the MRRT, which is unbelievable, unbelievable, although in light of what some of the Opposition members have been communicating with members of Gina Rinehart’s family, a bit understandable perhaps. But when they see what we’re rolling out, I’m sure the Australian people will find the Labor Party is the only party that has a plan for the future. Some of that skin we’ve lost over the last few weeks when we’ve been talking among ourselves will be forgotten.
GILLON: The polls weren’t really anything for Tony Abbott to brag about today either. Julia Gillard now up higher than him in the polls when it comes to who’s best place to be the prime minister. We heard Bob Carr in that attack say he is hypnotising Australians using these one-line attacks, do you think Australians are getting sick of that?
RYAN: I think what Australians are getting sick of is a government that is more focussed on its own issues than issues for the rest of the country. The only people talking about a poll here are the Labor Party. I’ve been here three and a half years, I’ve seen every possible combination of polls and we’ve got Graham this afternoon and Craig Emerson bragging about a poll where less than one in three people have faith in the current government. What this shows is that as Bob Carr just said on television, he is part of this relentlessly negative campaign. He made it clear at that centre unity meeting last week, all Labor wants to talk about are the Opposition. These are the tactics they had at the state level they’re trying to bring to Canberra. They don’t want to defend their policies, they don’t want to outline an agenda for Australia that isn’t about 16 new or increased taxes. All they want to do is go attack, attack. We’re seeing it in Queensland, we’re seeing it in Canberra and that’s what Australians are fed up with.
GILLON: Speaking of taxes, the mining tax. The Government is hoping to get this passed through the Senate by the end of this week, at least by the end of this parliamentary fortnight session. We saw the mining tax has already gone through the lower house. Can Tony Abbott really repeal this tax? It is something that polls in recent months have shown that Australians are actually starting to approve or, not to mention the big mining companies that signed up to it in the first place. Why would Tony Abbott throw that money back at the mining companies?
RYAN: It is a bad tax Ashleigh. Yesterday morning we had some data come out that showed Australia’s share of exploration investment has dropped from 21 per cent to 15 per cent in just three years. It is a bad tax and bad policies should be repealed. The Government talks about having negotiated this tax – only with the big miners. The hundreds of smaller miners didn’t even get a look in the room. It’s like negotiating a GST and only talking to Coles and Woolies, not small businesses right around Australia. This is a bad tax, it is already showing up in exploration investment figures and we think bad policy should be repealed so that is exactly what we are going to do.
GILLON: It looks like the Greens will vote for this, but Bob Brown isn’t really happy with the way you’ve structured this either. He’d like to make it to actually slug the big mining companies and get even more revenue from them.
PERRETT: He has talked about it bringing in uranium and gold I think, which if anyone remembers their grade five geography is a little problematic because copper and gold and zinc all come together and with uranium, we know in Queensland you can’t mine uranium, but you go to Mount Isa and there’s tailings full of uranium obviously. He either needs to revisit his grade five geography or his grade eight periodic table and understand that it is not quite as simple as just roping in these other things. The reality is, we’ve got a deal with the mining companies. We’ve got a deal. We’ve had 18 months of consultation, let’s get on with it like you said. The Australian people are ready to get on board with this, it is going to bring lots of benefits for small business, I’ve got lots of small businesses in my electorate. Lots of benefits for the lower-paid Australians, it is time we got on with this. This is a ridiculous attack from Scott to think that Tony Abbott is going to somehow come in and change it all because we could have done it slightly differently.
RYAN: We’ve committed to repealing a tax that’s having a bad impact on investment in resources, which is underpinning …
PERRETT: (interrupts) $450 billion worth of production coming to Australia so we have …
GILLON: (interrupts) This is a debate we can expect to hear in the Senate over the coming week. I’m just going to now take us live to Adam Bandt, the Greens MP, he is live talking about Afghanistan in the Senate courtyard. Listen in.
<crosses to Adam Bandt press conference>
GILLON: In the meantime, we were talking about the mining tax. One of the key critics of course of the mining tax is Gina Rinehart. She has been in the news over the past week or so for the way she and her family are handling a dispute at the moment, which has been through the courts. We did hear Graham Perrett, who is on my panel this afternoon with Scott Ryan, allude earlier to this story. We have seen that Barnaby Joyce, who is one of the Nationals senators, he has been involved in this dispute, he wrote an email to Gina Rinehart’s family members urging them to keep their dispute out of the courts. This is something the Government has had a lot of fun with in recent days. This is David Bradbury on the doors this morning.
<clip of Bradbury>
GILLON: Scott Ryan, is there anything wrong with Barnaby Joyce – and Alby Schultz as well, we should point out, wrote a similar sort of email – is there anything wrong with them getting involved?
RYAN: I think it is a pretty cheap shot to link a family dispute to politics. Family disputes are often very, very difficult, these are obviously friends or acquaintances of the people involved and I don’t think there is a particular issue other than that.
GILLON: Is there any issue here? Why is the Government making so much of this?
PERRETT: Well look, all of the issues are coming together here. When you’ve got the Government committed to making sure all the Australian people share in the resources that can only be dug up once, then we’ve got the Opposition running a political line, but also enmeshing some private machinations in there. It is getting a little bit grubby. If these were emails from their private email accounts to their friends, that’s fine, or less of a problem I guess and the media will hold them to account in terms of their policies. But if they are on letterhead, or with their signature block saying senators or members of parliament, that is getting into some pretty murky territory I would suggest.
RYAN: I don’t know how you can say that Graham?
PERRETT: I’ve worked in estate law where there is a will, there is normally a dispute.
RYAN: You say this is getting murky, do you want to see what is really getting murky here? Is that we’ve got Fair Work Australia not cooperating with a police investigation, where there are all these former union officials …
PERRETT: Back to the topic we’re talking about …
RYAN: No, that’s a real example of conflict and of where interests are not being fairly represented.
GILLON: Let’s just bring our viewers in on this, you’re obviously talking about the dispute over Craig Thomson and Fair Work Australia and we’re still waiting to see whether or not Fair Work Australia is going to actually cooperate with the investigation. So that’s another issue, I think we’ll leave for the moment. I know you could both keep talking about that all afternoon, I just want to bring our viewers up to date on another story. We’ve just seen another development about that ad that Bob Katter’s Australia Party has been running. We’ve been talking about this over the last couple of days, it’s an ad pointing out that Campbell Newman supports gay marriage and there has been a lot of controversy over whether or not that was a fair thing to do or not. We’ve just learnt that an ABC radio presenter has actually been taken off the air. She voiced this commercial, the ABC said she didn’t have any permission to do that external voiceover work and now she has been stood aside because of her involvement with this ad. Do either of you think this ad is right? That it should be on the airwaves?
PERRETT: I haven’t actually seen it, but I would say this. Any ad that is attacking people because of their sexuality is wrong as far as I’m concerned. Now I’ve got to be a bit careful because I am chairing the committee that is looking into the marriage amendment proposals by Adam Bandt and Stephen Jones. But anything that attacks people because of their sexuality in a political process is wrong.
GILLON: Is it promoting homophobia Scott Ryan?
RYAN: I’ve only seen it once online Ashleigh, and this is irrelevant to what someone’s views are on gay marriage, I don’t support gay marriage. What worried me about this ad is that it stoked homophobia. I don’t believe in necessarily censoring, I am very strongly opposed to what came out with the Government Finkelstein inquiry, but I think there is also a duty on us to say when ads are inappropriate and that ad was inappropriate.
<Ends>