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E & OE
(Greetings omitted)
ANDREW GREENE
Firstly to the Afghanistan conflict. We know that it’s a war that is supported by both sides of politics, but there is growing unease with this conflict. First to you, Mark, is there more of a danger that the longer Australia stays there, more lives we’ll see lost in what is a fruitless conflict?
MARK DREYFUS
We’ve had another death today, as you’ve just said. It was Sapper Rowan Robinson, and the nation’s condolences go out to the family, and of us all. As the Prime Minister said earlier today, our resolve is being tested by this event. We had the funeral last week of Sergeant Brett Wood and two bodies brought home yesterday. Our resolve is being tested, but we are equally very clear in what out commitment is, and it is a bipartisan commitment, which is that we must never again see Afghanistan become a safe haven for terrorists and we’ve got a clear timetable as well, which is that by 2014, we will have handed over security arrangements to the Afghan National Army.
ANDREW GREENE
Scott to you now in Melbourne, we are seeing international leaders perhaps being a little bit more weary of the Afghanistan conflict – not as hawkish as they were perhaps ten years ago. Are you detecting a shift in the public mood, certainly in your state, and do you think that we can stick the course in Afghanistan?
SCOTT RYAN
Well I think people always understand the gravity of sending troops into conflict and I’d agree with Mark that across both major parties, we share a commitment to seeing the conflict through. But also, our sorrow and our feelings go out to the family and friends of the trooper that was lost overnight. I think the comments of the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, were very pointed today, which is that we are making ground, we are actually seeing some good successes on the ground in training the troops where we are responsible in Oruzgan province, and we are pushing back the rebels and the people that supported the terrorist regime the Taliban. So, as Mark said, our resolve is being tested, but I don’t detect a change in mood on the ground, I just detect that people are quite appropriately aware of the gravity of the situation.
ANDREW GREENE
Mark, are you detecting any shift in public sentiment, and is there a danger, perhaps, that our political leaders aren’t reflecting the mood of the people on Afghanistan?
MARK DREYFUS
That’s not what I’m hearing. I’m seeing a very clear commitment and a clear statement of our objectives by the Prime Minister, by the Chief of the Defence Force today, and I think that that clarity is getting through.
ANDREW GREENE
We’ll move now to the political sphere, and today the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, addressed the National Press Club. He released some modelling on the carbon tax from the Treasury and he was talking up the benefits in economic terms.
WAYNE SWAN
By 2020, national employment is expected to increase by 1.6 million jobs while at the same time growth in domestically produced carbon pollution slows. Now for a government obsessed with jobs, this conclusion in crucial.
ANDREW GREEN
Now this didn’t appeal at all to the Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, who released a statement late today saying that the government is hiding behind selective modelling of the Treasury figures. He says that the impact of the carbon tax will hurt jobs and will hurt the economy.
JOE HOCKEY
Well if he (Swan) believes that climate change is an illness that has been left untreated, why did he ask Kevin Rudd to dump it last year? Just twelve months ago. He’s a very slippery character, and sadly he has no policy conviction.
ANDREW GREENE
Mark, in your position as Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change, is this a message that the government can sell by, first of all, only releasing selected parts of the Treasury modelling? When will we see the full modelling, and can you convince Australians in light of recent polls that there is a need for a carbon tax?
MARK DREYFUS
I think it’s very clear, Andrew, that we are going to be able to convince Australians because there is already huge support for taking action on climate change. That’s been there for a very long time. We’ve just seen again, Joe Hockey out there playing politics, playing games, which is what his leader’s been doing all year – making dishonest claims about the effect of the carbon price. What’s significant about the Treasurer’s speech today is that he’s released the key bits of this modelling which show that Australia is going to be able to continue to grow at the same time as having a carbon price – that the effect on gross national income year-on-year right through to 2050 is going to be one tenth of one percent less, on average per year. In the grab that you just played of the Treasurer, employment is going to continue to grow through to 2020 with a carbon price – that’s the significance of this – the effects are going to be quite small and of course we know we have to take action. So I think that once the full detail of the carbon price package is released by the government in the middle of the year, as the Prime Minister has now said is going to occur, once we’ve completed the negotiation with the Multi Party Climate Change Committee, it is going to become simpler to get the message across about what the details are.
ANDREW GREENE
Scott Ryan, to you in Melbourne, is there a danger for the Opposition that once the carbon tax comes in and the sky doesn’t fall in, then perhaps Tony Abbott is looking increasingly isolated on this issue?
SCOTT RYAN
Andrew, not at all. What we saw from the Treasurer today was a selective release of some of the modelling based on a price that has not been floated and – he made it very clear in the speech – was not going to be the price. That was all based on $20 per tonne. The Greens, some of them want $40 per tonne, some other in the Greens want $100 per tonne. What we do know is that we haven’t seen all of the modelling. With the CPRS, which Wayne Swan encouraged Kevin Rudd to dump, there was an assumption that there would be no losses in employment and that the rest of the world would act in the same way. We know from this government that it can’t be trusted, and until we’ve seen the complete package, you can’t take this modelling seriously.
MARK DREYFUS
I wouldn’t be getting my information about this from Senator Scott Ryan, I wouldn’t be getting my information from Joe Hockey or from Tony Abbott. We will be seeing…
SCOTT RYAN
Well Tony Abbott and myself are keeping to the promise we made before the election, Mark, which your side is running away from.
MARK DREYFUS
If you’ll just let me finish. We will be seeing on Thursday, the full report of the Productivity Commission which has been commissioned to examine just what the rest of the world is doing, but we don’t, in fact, need to wait for that full report to know that the rest of the world is already acting. What the Productivity Commission report is going to show, and the Treasurer went to this in some detail in his speech today, is that a number of major countries around the world are already acting and the detail’s going to be there in the Productivity Commission report.
SCOTT RYAN
Mark, what you don’t want to tell people, and what you don’t want to admit is that emissions in China are going up, that emissions in India are going up, and that Australia’s capacity to address global emissions is miniscule to the point where it’s almost non-existent.
MARK DREYFUS
This is the recipe for doing nothing, which is not what Australians want…
SCOTT RYAN
That’s not the case at all…
MARK DREYFUS
It is that we want Australia to do its fair share. Australians want Australia to do its fair share in bringing down global emissions and in participating in what has to be a global effort. There will be…
SCOTT RYAN
And we’re both committed to the 5% target, Mark.
MARK DREYFUS
… and that’s the point that Senator Ryan’s just made. Both parties are committed to a 5% target, so it’s a bit silly to be saying, ‘the rest of the world is doing less – the rest of the world is doing more’. We are both committed to reducing Australia’s emissions by 5% on 1990 levels by 2020. What we disagree on is the Liberals’ option, which is this rather ridiculous, so-called direct action plan that hardly anyone thinks is going to work. Economists don’t think it’s going to work. As against the market mechanism which the rest of the world accepts is the cheapest, most effective way…
SCOTT RYAN
The very thing you promised not to do, the very thing you and Julia Gillard promised not to do days before the last election. We are funding direct action the same way we buy our medicines and fund our health and education – through the tax system. What you are proposing is to have an $800 per year hit on the average household in breach of the explicit word you gave the Australian people only days before the last election.
ANDREW GREENE
Scott Ryan, if on Thursday the Productivity Commission does highlight that the rest of the world is acting and Australia is behind, will that at all change your opinion of the carbon tax, or perhaps what more could be done from Australia’s point of view if it’s not a carbon tax?
SCOTT RYAN
What the Coalition’s going to do, Andrew, and what Tony Abbott’s going to do, is stick to the word that he gave the Australian people before the election. If Julia Gillard did the same thing, or took this policy to the people at another election, then she would have some integrity. Until she does that, this policy has no legitimacy.
ANDREW GREENE
We’ll move on, but stay in Victoria where both of you come from. The health ministers today met in Melbourne, but it appears that the $16 billion federal health agreement that was originally signed up to by the Commonwealth and the states is unravelling, particularly from the Victorian side. Scott Ryan, is the Victorian Health Minister in the Baillieu Liberal Government playing games?
SCOTT RYAN
Well I think Ted Baillieu and David Davis the Health Minister, are doing exactly what they should, which is standing up to federal Labor’s bureaucratic approach to alleged reform of the health system.
ANDREW GREENE
But why did they sign up to it in the first place?
SCOTT RYAN
They’re happy with what they signed up to, what the Victorian Government is concerned about is Nicola Roxon changing the terms of the agreement after the fact because the Victorian local health boards do a very important job in actually keeping our health system in touch with the community and they quite rightly do not want to see federal Labor try to force those mergers and an overly bureaucratic approach which has failed in other states.
ANDREW GREENE
Is that a fair assessment, Mark?
MARK DREYFUS
No, I don’t think so. What we’ve got is a health package that’s already delivering benefits to Victorian patients and regrettably, we’ve got the usual argument you expect from states in the run-up to a COAG meeting, but in addition this time around we’ve got a Victorian Health Minister that has not yet realised he is the Health Minister and no longer in Opposition, that the election was some time ago – last November – and still we see game playing from David Davis, we see the taking of political points and surprisingly for a government that got elected claiming to be interested in transparency, there seems to be some resistance now from the Victorian government to that transparency. We’re going to keep pressing on with these reforms and we want the game playing to end.
SCOTT RYAN
Mark, the problem is that Ted Baillieu and David Davis are standing up for Victorian interests. It’s what John Brumby didn’t do. It’s what didn’t happen when bureaucrats in Victoria were found to fiddle with health statistics. So what Ted and David are doing is making sure that your federal government is held to the terms of the agreement that were signed and it can’t change them after the fact.
ANDREW GREENE
Do you think though, Scott Ryan, that perhaps there is a bit of brinkmanship going on before the COAG agreement and they’re just trying to push for a better deal in terms of money?
SCOTT RYAN
This is an important part of our federal system. The Victorian Government is supposed to stand up to the Federal Government in the interests of all Victorians – it’s what didn’t happen before Ted Baillieu was elected Premier when John Brumby acquiesced…
ANDREW GREENE
Is the Baillieu Government trying to avoid transparency?
SCOTT RYAN
Not at all. What they’re doing is standing up for the local health communities and the local health boards that Labor’s trying to force mergers on.
ANDREW GREENE
And what about you, Mark, do you think that this deal will come unstuck?
MARK DREYFUS
No I don’t. I’d prefer to rely on the comments made by the South Australian Health Minister this morning, which was to point to the fact that an agreement had been reached, that there were a few – as he put it ‘minor details’ – and really calling on the Victorian Health Minister to stop playing the political games that he’s playing. We think that this agreement is going to be reached and finalised and I’m looking forward to that, because it is already delivering benefits to patients in Victoria.
ANDREW GREENE
And that’s all we have time for this evening on Capital Hill. Thank you very much to our panel, Liberal Senator Scott Ryan in Melbourne and here in Canberra, Mark Dreyfus.
(ENDS)