Topics: pre-polling; Western Australia; healthcare; Nick Xenophon; South Australia.

E&OE…

KIERAN GILBERT:

This is AM Agenda. With me now, the Minister for Vocational Education and Skills, Senator Scott Ryan, and Labor Senator Jenny McAllister. Thank you both for your time. Senator Ryan, well we talk about a marathon campaign, it’s now less than three weeks to go. We know the details of the two party launches this Sunday and the following Sunday, and pre-polling opens today. How are you feeling as a Liberal frontbencher, comfortable in terms of where you stand with your electoral prospects?

SCOTT RYAN:

Kieran, I’ll avoid commentating on my own prospects. What I’ve found over the weekend, over the past five weeks, and I hope I’ll found out over the next three weeks at pre-polling booths is that the electorate, the community, is responding well to the message from the Government that we need stability. We need a stable majority Government that has a plan to ensure the continued growth of jobs and the economy. That’s what I’ve been experiencing, and that’s what we’ll be doing over the next 19 days.

KIERAN GILBERT:

We’ve seen, Jenny McAllister, the Opposition Leader and Prime Minister both in WA today. You’re a former National President of the Labor Party as well, so you have a pretty good handle of how things are in a national sense and WA, traditionally in recent times, has been a stronghold for the Liberal Party, but do you think with the pre-polling starting today that Labor might be able to make some gains there?

JENNY MCALLISTER:

We’re very optimistic of making gains in Western Australia. As you know this is a state that is doing tough as we come out the other side of the mining boom. And what’s very clear to voters in WA and I should say, right across Australia, is that this government has no credible plan to transition into the next phase of our economy. Labor’s going in to the electorate talking about a plan that involves investment in people and investment in infrastructure. The contrast is pretty stark with the Liberal party. They are offering simply a tax cut for big business, unproven, no clear pathway to deliver actually on the jobs that people in Western Australia and indeed people right across Australia are looking for. So, we’re seeing a pretty clear campaign choice for voters in WA but actually voters everywhere.

KIERAN GILBERT:

But Senator McAllister in terms of, you say, investing in people in the education sure, you’ve committed to putting in place all of that money that Labor says the Abbott government pulled in its 2014 budget. Not so on health though, only $2 billion across the forward estimates. No mention of the long term. So this black hole in terms of health funding for the states, that’ll be there regardless of who wins of July the second.

JENNY MCALLISTER:

Let me be very clear about our health policy. Our approach is to fund 50 per cent of the growth in hospital funding based on an efficient price. That’s a framework that was set up under Labor, torn up by Tony Abbott and then reinstated by the Liberals at the last COAG. Unfortunately they haven’t reinstated the commitment to properly share the cost of growth in our hospital expenditure with the states. And they are only committing to $2 billion over the forward estimates. Labor’s commitment is in fact for $4.9 billion over the forward estimates and it’s a serious commitment to making sure our hospitals, our doctors and our nurses can do the jobs that they need to do.

KIERAN GILBERT:

Senator Ryan, your thoughts on that? Because it’s right, it’s still $2 billion – it doesn’t sound like much given the money that we’re talking about across this campaign, but it’s still $2 billion across the four years.

SCOTT RYAN:

Kieran what this shows is that you can’t trust anything Labor say. They have been running up hill and down dale screaming about changes to hospital funding but when push comes to shove, they don’t have a plan and the particularly don’t have a plan to restrain growth in hospital spending. Such as the Coalition’s had through investing in primary healthcare, investing in ensuring that avoidable re-admissions don’t occur, because what Labor did when they were in office was make promises with money they didn’t have. They were unbelievable promises and now what they have shown is exactly what we have always said, that there wasn’t the capacity in the budget to actually fund the measures that Labor claimed. We’ve got a responsible plan that does two things. It funds hospitals, funds growth in hospitals, but it also ties it to ensure that growth in hospital costs are manageable and we can invest in primary case and health prevention that can actually void admissions to hospitals. The Coalition’s got a responsible plan, Labor’s just in chaos on health funding just as they are on the budget, just as they are on payments like the schoolkids bonus.

 

KIERAN GILBERT:

I want to, I need to move on to some broader political questions which go to your prospect, both of them in South Australia. From what I’m told from both parties, that the Xenophon factor is very hard to predict. What does that mean in terms of preferences, Senator McAllister, because at the moment it looks like Nick Xenophon, Labor won’t be preferencing Xenophon over the likes of Christopher Pyne and Jamie Briggs in those seats in South Australia. He – is there any chance of revenge from him? That he would preference you below the Liberals in some of your contestable seats there?

JENNY MCALLISTER:

Nick Xenophon will make his own decisions about preferences. You’re correct that we’re not allocating preferences, we haven’t arrived at an arrangement to allocate preferences to either the Xenophon team or to the Liberals in South Australia. What I’d say to voters in South Australia is that they’ve had it pretty tough under the Abbott government and now again under the Turnbull Government. The Abbott government basically dared the vehicle manufacturing industry to close their doors and indeed they did and South Australians are suffering as a consequence of that. IT’s a pretty clear choice for South Australians I would have thought. They need to get rid of this government and put the Labor government in place that will invest in people, in jobs, in apprenticeships, in education, in the infrastructure like the NBN and actually create a pathway to a future economy for that state.

KIERAN GILBERT:

If Labor eventually does not preference Xenophon over the Liberals that would great relief to your colleagues, Senator Ryan, your colleagues Jamie Briggs and Christopher Pyne for example, even Rowan Ramsey and the formally safe seat of Grey.

SCOTT RYAN:

I’ll let Nick Xenophon speak for himself. I take issue with what Jenny said there in one thing, in the end, voters allocate their own preferences. We’ve changed the rules in the Senate over Labor opposition to reflect those of the House of Representatives, which is everyone’s own pencil marking that ballot paper is where their preferences go. But in South Australia, if you want to see the cost of a Labor government, then look at more than a decade of what state Labor has done. The challenges in the South Australian economy, a great number of them are due to state Labor policies that if implemented federally would make the challenge even worse.  Now Nick Xenophon can speak for himself, but we are campaigning in South Australia with support for our manufacturing plan, with our defence industries plan, which we believe promote the long term interests of all South Australians.

KIERAN GILBERT:

We are out of time. Senator Ryan and Senator McAllister, thank you, we’ll talk to you both soon.

(ENDS)