Subjects: 2016 election results.
E&OE…
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
My first guest tonight is frontbencher Scott Ryan from the Liberal side and he’s a Victorian Senator as well – welcome.
SCOTT RYAN:
Good evening, Patricia.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Will you have to form minority government, or will you lose altogether?
SCOTT RYAN:
We’re ahead in 73 seats at the moment. There are 5 seats where at this stage the Labor party has a notional lead. When you look at the postal vote figures from past elections, it’s not unreasonable for us to expect that we would overcome that Labor lead in some if not all of those five seats, so I’m still optimistic.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Give me the chances, could you really form your own government with 76 seats of your own?
SCOTT RYAN:
I think so. I don’t see any reason why not.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
What’s the likelihood?
SCOTT RYAN:
Well I think more likely than not. I think when I look at the figures, the postal votes which traditionally favour the Coalition, the Labor party mentioned to me last night on a radio program, they didn’t[‘t actually do postal votes anymore. And I look at the nature of the leads and previous postal vote behaviour, then I actually – at the moment it’s possible we could overcome them all five, but in my view definitely overcome them in three.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Before the election, Malcolm Turnbull warned against independents and wreaking havoc, now he’s called them. So he’s moved from a position of saying basically they destroy our Parliament to calling them and wooing them. Is that the beginning of kind of a sort of long wooing process we’re going to see from the Prime Minister?
SCOTT RYAN:
Well it’s a democracy. The people have spoken. I saw on the AEC website earlier today that out of about 10 and a half million votes counted, there was I think less than 11,000 difference in two party preferred count across the country. So, the job of politicians is to deal with the Parliament that the people elect.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Then before the election, why were you as a government saying so strongly to the public that this would be a disaster and that you couldn’t possibly form minority governments?
SCOTT RYAN:
We put a view and the public have spoken otherwise –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) Ok so does that mean you accept – I mean we saw in 2010 a hung parliament, we look like we’re maybe seeing another one. Do you accept now that governments need to think more broadly about the way they form majority government? That you do sometimes have to cobble it together with other Parties?
SCOTT RYAN:
You deal with the Parliament the people elect. I don’t speak of the people as monolithic, there were millions and millions of individual decisions and what they’ve resulted in is a very tight election. I’m still optimistic that we will reach a majority of Coalition members which would allow us to hold majority in the House of Representatives. But I think it’s entirely reasonable for the Prime Minister to have made contact with the crossbenchers, regardless.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
You were instrumental in getting rid of Tony Abbot as Prime Minister. Was that a mistake?
SCOTT RYAN:
Without going over the events again of last September, I think that what we saw yesterday was a close election and with a couple of weeks of counting to go yet. But I do actually think that we are in a better position than we would have otherwise been.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
How can you be sure? I’ll tell you why, I’ve spoken to Labor strategists who tell me that throughout this campaign, there wasn’t a day they didn’t remark that at Labor party headquarters, this would have been a worse day if Tony Abbott was leader because he would have gone so hard on us on this issue, but Malcolm Turnbull just failed to prosecute a case.
SCOTT RYAN:
Labor strategists would say that to you over the last 24 hours wouldn’t they? I think that there will be time – people will obviously have their own views on those events, but last year the Party Room made a collective decision to change the leadership. I look around and when I look at the seats and when I look at the issues, I actually think that we are in a better position than we would have otherwise been.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Your campaign strategy was based on saying nothing other than talking about jobs and growth and this national economic plan. It was almost solely faced on this issue. Was that blunder?
SCOTT RYAN:
What we saw in the last few days in particular, and my knowledge is that in the last few where you obviously have a group of undecided voters making their decision is something we haven’t seen in before in Australian politics. It was a scare campaign based on a pure lie. We had hundreds of thousands of robo calls going in. We had of course the infamous text message that went out that purported to be from Medicare, saying it was threatened –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) And the Liberal party’s made a referral to the AFP?
SCOTT RYAN:
I’ve seen a news story on that. I haven’t actually seen any particular referral myself. Unlike previous political debates where there has been debate over the effect of a policy, whether that be negative gearing or a company tax cut, the Labor party intentionally ran a mistruth, intentionally designed to mislead voters. The Liberal party was doing something that –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) Is it like, for instance, saying Whyalla would be wiped out? There would be $100 dollar legs of lamb? I mean they were quite alarmist things that were said by your side of politics at one point.
SCOTT RYAN:
I think there’s a substantive difference between arguing about the effect of the policy and you know, Labor made some pretty outrageous accusations about us about the effect of a policy, but I won’t complain about those. That’s a matter for robust political debate. But this was different. This was actually robo calls purporting to be from oncology nurses saying the risks of being diagnosed with cancer early enough are somehow linked to this mistruth, this lie that we were going to privatise Medicare.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Do you really think that this Mediscare campaign killed the election for you? This one issue?
SCOTT RYAN:
In close election, there are always more than one issue. But what we saw over the last ten days from the Labor party and particularly reinforced by dirty tricks and the robo calls from unions over the last 48 hours was something we hadn’t seen before, and I think that was a significant issue.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Ok what were the mistakes that you did make that you’re willing to own up to now? Surely you think you made some policy mistakes.
SCOTT RYAN:
Honestly, you never look back in politics and think that everything you did –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) You have to, don’t you? To learn?
SCOTT RYAN:
Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. You never look back and think I did everything perfect. But also, it’s not good form and if I[‘m going to make those comments, I’m probably not going to make them on television.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Really?
SCOTT RYAN:
No, I’m sorry.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
I’m outraged, Scott Ryan. I’m outraged.
SCOTT RYAN:
(laughs) Sorry!
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
You’re never invited again! Ok, but on the policy front I will ask this again. The national economic plan, jobs and growth, do you think you failed to articulate that policy? As a party and Malcolm Turnbull.
SCOTT RYAN:
No I don’t think we failed to articulate it at all. I think we had a very strong message on jobs and growth –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) But no-one bought it.
SCOTT RYAN:
Well it’s a close election. I wouldn’t say no-one did. I think when you’ve got an election when you’ve got effectively half the electorate voting one way and half voting the other, I think we got a very strong response to our message on economic growth and the need to have a plan for it – the plan we outlined in the budget. So I wouldn’t say it would be fair to say no-one responded to it, it’s just a very tight election.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
There was a lot of anxiety around agility and innovation and some of the scarier parts of that agenda. Do you think that hurt you?
SCOTT RYAN:
I think that we had a campaign from the Labor party that was driven purely by fear and purely by the politics of grievance and the Coalition was trying to talk about a positive plan. And in this particular case, I think particularly because of the lie around Medicare, the scare campaign worked with enough people to make this a closer election than I would have liked.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
You were a very small target, other than this national economic plan, we heard very little. No industrial relations policy, a number of big policies, higher education put you know, off to the future. Why did you make those decisions? Why don’t you think the public deserve to hear your platform on those issues?
SCOTT RYAN:
I think to be fair it was a very big policy on the economy. There was a lot of debate about the merits of our enterprise tax plan –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) There’s a lot in our community beyond just that one plan, surely?
SCOTT RYAN:
But we had – I think, to be fair, to say it would be a small target wouldn’t be fair reflection of what we outlined in the budget. You may say there should have been another policy in another place, but we did have a strict but big policy on the Australian Building and Construction Commission that was the centrepiece of the start of the campaign. We did have advertisements on it. Michaelia Cash did have a debate about that at the National Press Club. We were on the front foot on that issue.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Alright, I’ve got a couple of other issues I’d like to ask you about. Is that ABCC legislation now dead, buried and cremated? Is it worth even resurrecting?
SCOTT RYAN:
It looks difficult to get through the Senate or a joint sitting at this stage.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
What would you be advising the Prime Minister? Is it even worth –
SCOTT RYAN:
(interrupts) Well let’s just see what the result in the Senate is for one thing. We’re several weeks away from seeing that. I don’t that you’ll ever see the Liberal party walk away from its commitment to the rule of law and the rule of law on our construction sites –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) But you accept that it’s very unlikely that you’d find –
SCOTT RYAN:
(interrupts) Passage through the Parliament. But again, we’ve got to again go back to this point. The only reasons the double dissolution was necessary was because the Greens and the Labor party had refused mandate after mandate after mandate. At multiple elections where we had the overwhelming support of the institution of this policy.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Your superannuation policy was toxic among your base. In fact John Roskam joins me soon, he campaigned against it during the campaign and I’d like to ask him a few questions about how much success he thinks he had with that. Do you think it needs changing? Eric Abetz thinks it does.
SCOTT RYAN:
When I look around where the small number of people would be impacted by that policy, that’s not where we actually suffered swings. Overwhelmingly I think where we had swings against and where we did lose seats, it was again going back to the Mediscare lie campaign.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
So you don’t think superannuation lost you votes?
SCOTT RYAN:
No, I’m just saying when we look at the seats that we lost, they’re not areas where there were significant numbers of people that would have been affected by the superannuation policy in a negative way, they are in fact, they have a lot of people who would have benefitted from it, particularly those on the lower end of the income scale.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Ok so given that, you don’t think there should be changes to that policy?
SCOTT RYAN:
Well again, I’m not going to pre-empt either a colleague as a fellow member of the ministry, nor the election outcome and that’s a matter for deliberation with the government.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Let me put it another way. It will go to the Party Room, do you accept that the party room will push for some changes?
SCOTT RYAN:
There may be some people in the Party Room that do, and some of them have already made public comment. But that’s the decision for the party room to make.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Would you be supporting them or do you think it should stay as it is?
SCOTT RYAN:
As a member of the ministry, I completely support the budget we announced.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
You’re razor-tight. Another issue I’d like to raise with you is the gift that Malcolm Turnbull has delivered in through his double dissolution to the Senate is One Nation, and Pauline Hanson. What do you make of that?
SCOTT RYAN:
Let’s be honest, the people voted for the results we get, and –
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
(interrupts) They did. But you changed the system, the voting system, with your reforms with the Greens support and your also had a double dissolution, so the quota that Pauline Hanson had to get was halved. So you did assist her, you helped her as much as she could possibly be helped.
SCOTT RYAN:
But when I look at the voter results, there’s a significant chance that she may have been elected in a normal half Senate election as well. I don’t think that the way we were electing Senators before where we could have got someone who we didn’t know might had similar views on that or other issues, because with the role of preference whisperers, you can get elected to the Senate with less than 1 per cent of the vote. So I think this Senate system is more transparent and it’s up to us to deal with the Parliament the people voted for.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
On the same-sex marriage plebiscite, Cory Bernardi says that the Government should hasten slowly on the plebiscite now, and shouldn’t be “side-tracked by trendy issues”. Do you agree?
SCOTT RYAN:
I probably agree with the second part of the sentence, but we may have a different view on what ‘trendy issues” are. We had an explicit promise to take a plebiscite on same-sex marriage to the people, and I don’t imagine that policy will change.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
So you don’t think you should go slowly on it? That is what he is calling for.
SCOTT RYAN:
No, I think the timing that was announced prior to the election –which was to do it in the second half of this year – make sense.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Do you accept that conservatives may use the election result as an opportunity? Because the other comments Cory Bernardi also makes is that you need to rebrand the Coalition, get the conservative base back on track, get conservative policies out there to the electorate and that should be your focus. Will you be doing that?
SCOTT RYAN:
I think it is important to not overstate any particular wing of the Liberal Party, or any particular grouping of thought within it? Cory is quite entitled to his views as a member of the Parliamentary Party, he is quite entitled to express those views. But that will be a collective decision of the Parliamentary Party. Prior to the election we said we would have a plebiscite, ideally in the second half of this year. And I don’t see a reason to change that, it seems like logical timing to me so then in the New Year the Parliament can get on with other business.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Just before I let you go, Bill Shorten says that Malcolm Turnbull has effectively lost his mandate. He has suffered pretty severely with the loss of so many seats. Doesn’t that weaken the Prime Minister?
SCOTT RYAN:
In the same speech Bill Shorten claimed a mandate. You can’t lose an election, as he was sort of implying he probably would, and then say that the Government doesn’t have a mandate. This just goes to show that the Parliament has been made unworkable by the intransigence of the Labor Party refusing basic policies that the Government has taken to multiple elections and even repudiating policies that it took to elections when we tried to legislate them. That was just Bill Shorten speaking to the Labor crowd at Moonee Valley.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Scott Ryan thank you for coming in, go to sleep!
SCOTT RYAN:
Thanks Patricia – you too!
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
We have both been up basically all night, that’s the truth we have got to declare it. That is Scott Ryan being pretty candid.
(ENDS)