Senator Scott Ryan debating Laura Smyth MP on ABC News 24, 29 September 2010.
For the video, click here.
E & OE
CHRIS UHLMANN
That is an historic moment, that’s the first time since 1949 that an Opposition has defeated the Government on the floor of the House, since 1941 I should say, that the Opposition has defeated the Government on the floor of the House so it just does demonstrate, Laura, that this is going to be an interesting time for the Government.
LAURA SMYTH
Chris, there’ll be a range of interesting occurrences I suspect over the next months and throughout the term in its entirety. I suspect that there will be other instances where procedural and similar matters perhaps don’t or are treated in the same sort of way, but what’s important to remember is that the key independents and the Greens have indicated that they are prepared to support our government and for that reason I believe that we can continue to provide a stable and consistent government throughout the term so there will be instances when those sorts of things occur but I don’t think that we should get too het up about them.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Scott Ryan, there are some in the Coalition though getting a bit het up about what happened last night when Peter Slipper’s name was put forward by the Labor Party, it wasn’t your nominee, that was a bit more of an upset wasn’t it?
SCOTT RYAN
Well Chris, we’ve got a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker. The procedural establishment of the Parliament is out of the way, it’s time to get on to discussing the real issues that are confronting this Parliament. I don’t think people have been interested by the discussion of parliamentary procedure over the last three weeks, in fact I can’t think of anything that interests people less in the community.
CHRIS UHLMANN
But it is a big upset for your party, though. Some say people are expressing disappointment but deep down there is a sense that Peter Slipper has ratted on his party.
SCOTT RYAN
I wouldn’t go that far, Chris. Peter Slipper has announced that he wouldn’t be supporting the Government on confidence and supply. We have a Speaker and we have a Deputy Speaker, it’s time to get on with the business facing the 43rd Parliament.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Laura Smyth, this looks a lot like old politics. People are talking about new politics, but the Labor Party went hunting for this person in the Liberal Party’s ranks, and you’ve been a member of the Labor Party for some time, how would the Labor Party respond to this kind of thing?
LAURA SMYTH
Well I think we’d probably say that for old politics we’ve ended up with an interesting result, which has shown a Labor, Liberal and National member in the chairing responsibilities in the House, so that’s a fairly welcome result in the context of the Agreement for a Better Parliament and I think it probably reflects the sentiments of all those who have made up the minority government, which is to really create new opportunities for representation of all within Parliament so I think Peter Slipper is certainly, as many remarked yesterday, a person with considerable experience in terms of his role in the Speaker’s Panel, and obviously showed some fortitude in the last Parliament in standing up against dissent in his own rulings from his own side so there’s clearly a depth of ability in those who’ve made up the Chairing Panel, if you like.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Scott Ryan, does politics look very different to you at the moment, or is it just the same old politics, just the numbers are finer?
SCOTT RYAN
What I’m seeing is the same old politics. We’ve got a Labor Government that’s spent three weeks either breaking its promises on issues like a carbon tax or trying to talk about the Opposition. The Labor playbook is to always try and talk about the Opposition. It’s always about ways to try and talk about process and procedure, and they’re not the issues that the people are interested in for the 43rd Parliament. So I see the same old politics, I see a Labor Party that’s said no carbon tax days before the election moving to a carbon tax.
LAURA SMYTH
Scott, it’s interesting that you should raise the Labor Party’s, in your words, fixation with procedure because it seemed to me sitting in my first Question Time today that that was certainly what the Opposition was focused on rather than Labor, and it seems that throughout the last days and weeks it has been focused on a range of side issues relating to procedural matters, and it’s strange that you take a different view.
SCOTT RYAN
I was obviously in the Senate for our Question Time. I caught the end of the House of Representatives’ Question Time, but when Ministers don’t answer questions or Ministers aren’t particularly keen to outline why they said no carbon tax the day before the election and break the promise only days after the election, when the Prime Minister says no expansion of the Curtin detention centre, then we find out it’s going to double in size, the attempt to hide behind procedure is what Labor have been doing for three years.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Can you really, with that particular thing too and the point the Opposition was trying to hammer today, is it really good enough just to say that there’s a different dispensation now because we’ve got a different House now? People do I think expect that governments will live up to the things that they say during an election campaign.
LAURA SMYTH
Oh certainly I think they do, but there are a range of realities that we have to face, particularly around things like the climate change issue, and the Prime Minister touched on that in Question Time today and indicated that there’s obviously a desire to achieve community consensus and certainly consensus within the Parliament, and certainly that was the tenor of her discussion throughout the campaign, that community consensus and broad consensus was really required, so on a material issue like that I think it’s appropriate that a range of voices be included in this new government, and I think in relation to the other issues which Scott has mentioned around the asylum seeker question I think there are certainly situations where circumstances and practical realities change, and I don’t think those are instances where it’s a case of reneging on a commitment or reneging on any arrangement.
SCOTT RYAN
Laura, the commitment about a carbon tax, there was no grey about this. The Prime Minister said ‘I rule out a carbon tax’ in the days leading up to an election. Since then, the fact that the Labor Party did not win a majority does not justify it walking away from an explicit black and white commitment. There’s no grey around this – ‘I rule out a carbon tax’. You’re now using the excuse of false and contrived consensus to come up with a justification to completely renege and backflip on an explicit black and white commitment the Prime Minister made.
LAURA SMYTH
Scott I think you’re jumping ahead a little, we are in the process of actually establishing a committee to consider…
SCOTT RYAN
But you have to believe in a carbon tax to get on that committee.
LAURA SMYTH
No, you have to believe in a pricing mechanism, and there are people from your side who I suspect and know would be keen to be involved in that. It’s unfortunate that your side of the House hasn’t embraced the opportunity to be part of the community consensus which is being sought.
SCOTT RYAN
We took a policy to the people which was no carbon tax. We’re quite happy to stand by that. Any doubt or uncertainty about that has been created by the Prime Minister since, and ‘price on carbon’ is merely the latest euphemism for a carbon tax.
LAURA SMYTH
I disagree.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Senator Ryan, just on another issue, is the Coalition being too bloody-minded when it comes to pairing? The Prime Minister clearly will have matters of state to deal with while Parliament is sitting, is this just going to be as a little bit of overreach on procedural matters?
SCOTT RYAN
Well, firstly I think that Tony Abbott’s made clear that on issues that are affecting the national interest that pairing will be made available, but the first duty of every person elected to this Parliament is to actually serve in the Parliament, so heading off to drinks at an embassy cocktail function on a Parliamentary sitting night does not constitute something in the national interest.
LAURA SMYTH
There’s a degree of difference between that for instance and the scenario that Brendan O’Connor mentioned today being able to attend an important event which in fact the Shadow to Brendan was hoping to attend, and the other instance where Simon Crean for example was originally going to be prevented from making an address in relation to policy issues at the National Press Club. I mean, where do you draw the line? That’s extremely unclear.
SCOTT RYAN
As Warren Entsch made clear, there was no formal request, and as soon as Simon Crean made the formal request the pair was granted. But yet again, this is an example of Labor trying to find something to talk about other than their broken promises and their lack of a legislative agenda.
CHRIS UHLMANN
And Laura, I think that pointing back to the last time we had a Parliament like this in 1941, there was a war on, Robert Menzies begged the Labor Party to make a government of national unity, and they refused to do that, so the Liberal Party could say well, if you look at national importance, there was a much more burning national issue then.
LAURA SMYTH
If we have a look at the Agreement for a Better Parliament, and in fact the third paragraph of that, we talk about a cultural shift and a cultural willingness of all parties who signed that agreement, including your own, to move ahead in the spirit of cooperation. I mean, I would have thought, I’m not proposing to refer back to war time, I’m not proposing to refer back to a different era, if we look at the context of the negotiations that have led to this minority government, and have led to this Parliament in fact, we were all seemingly setting out with a view to changing the culture of Parliament, and certainly Harry Jenkins mentioned in his introductory remarks that the Westminister system is founded very much on convention, on points of principle, on trust and honour, and really that’s what we’re talking about here.
SCOTT RYAN
Well if we go to that, let’s maybe refer to 1941, if we go to 1961, a one-seat Parliament where the Government had a majority of one seat, Labor didn’t grant pairs there, and today Labor doesn’t grant pairs in State Parliaments. So this contrived excuse of there should be pairs now and this sort of cooperation only seem to occur when Labor’s in office.
LAURA SMYTH
But who’s the arbiter of national interest?
SCOTT RYAN
Well, the point that has been made is that when there is something in the national interest, when an application is made as it was in the case of Simon Crean, the Opposition will consider granting a pair.
CHRIS UHLMANN
I guess the question for you though Scott is that over time, do you think that being hardline on these sorts of things and perhaps being hardline on procedural matters in the House, even though you quite rightly point out that most people aren’t concerned about it, you run the risk that over time that this idea that the Coalition is wrecking the process will begin to stick?
SCOTT RYAN
I’m not concerned at all about that, because I don’t think there’s any justification for that. Labor have merely tried to repeat their latest mantra and their latest slogan over the last three weeks to talk about this at the expense of all else. The House of Representatives, as one of a number of Senators have observed, is going to have to get used to ballots a bit more like the Senate, where results are not always known before divisions take place.
CHRIS UHLMANN
And the other thing too is that the Government has been trying to point out, continually referring to the Coalition as being ‘wreckers’, but the Government’s behaving in a very political way too, and has since day one. This Government clearly wants to be re-elected with a larger majority, why should the Coalition go along with your plan?
LAURA SMYTH
Well, I refer back again to the agreement that all parties signed in good faith, and you would expect that all parties who’d signed that relatively recently would adhere to their word, and if that wasn’t the case then perhaps the Liberal National Coalition should have made it clear that this was going to be the tack that they took from the get-go.
CHRIS UHLMANN
Alright, you both pointed out things that people aren’t interested in. You’re both Victorians, I simply have to ask you this question – do you believe in replays in Grand Finals?
SCOTT RYAN
I’m a strong supporter of tradition and a replay – for the Grand Final only.
LAURA SMYTH
I’m a Pies supporter, I just want to see another match.
CHRIS UHLMANN
If we’re going to refer to history now too by the way, the last time there was a draw in a Grand Final was 1977, it happened in both codes, I think on the same weekend, and what happened next was that the Coalition… (To Laura) I think you might need to be back in the Chamber. Here’s a sign of politics in action, so Laura Smyth from Labor, thank you, and Scott Ryan, thank you.
SCOTT RYAN
Thank you Chris.