Radio interview with David Penberthy and Will Goodings – FIVEaa
Subjects: Mobile phones at concerts; Florence and the Machine; Mal Brough; Monkey Pod faction; Bill Shorten
PRESENTER: Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese, good morning to you.
PYNE: Good morning Will, good morning David and good morning Anthony.
ALBANESE: Good morning gentlemen.
PRESENTER: You guys got any ideas for maybe a dob-in app, anything that immediately comes to mind?
PYNE: I think we should dob in hysterical claims. That would keep us very busy, dobbing in members of the Labor Party.
ALBANESE: I’ve got a couple. One is dob in someone videoing on their smartphone when you’re at a concert. I was at Morrissey last year and there was a woman in front of me and she didn’t see the stage.
She just looked at her phone all night videoing with this shaking up and down. It would have been completely crap, the quality of it. No one will ever see it ever again and I don’t know why people don’t just enjoy the moment.
PRESENTER: Morrissey. Former lead singer of The Smiths.
ALBANESE: Indeed. Actually, Florence and the Machine at the Opera House a couple of weeks ago, she had a thing where she told the audience, righto, all take a photo, now put ‘em away. And the audience cheered. It was fantastic.
But the other one of course is, the problem with this one is that it might break the internet every time Mal Brough gets to his feet, but a dob in a mislead of Parliament app. Every time he gets to his feet it would just break the internet.
PYNE: I’m dobbing in faux outrage. It means you’re going to be in all sorts of trouble.
PRESENTER: Christopher, I wanted to ask you about Mal Brough. Do you think, we were talking before about how Labor has –
ALBANESE: This will be the most he’s ever said on it, in the last couple of weeks, whatever he says, so good on you David.
PRESENTER: We’ll give Chris Pyne a chance to answer.
PYNE: If only we can get a word in. Anthony’s doing a lot of talking this morning.
PRESENTER: Do you think, Christopher Pyne –
PYNE: He’s quite cheerful in the morning.
PRESENTER: Do you think he will stay on as Special Minister of State and more importantly, do you think that he deserves to remain?
PYNE: Well, I do think he should stay as the Special Minister of State. I mean, if there is an investigation being conducted by the AFP then due process demands that the investigation continue. If he’s charged with an offence, that’s a whole different matter. But Bill Shorten was being investigated by the Victorian Police for 12 months.
The Government didn’t at any point say that he should stand down as Leader of the Opposition because that would be completely unfair, and when Bill Shorten was cleared of those charges, I think I was the first person to come out and say that I was pleased for Bill, because it must have been a very traumatic time for him and his family.
So, the investigation should proceed. If there’s an end point when there’s a charge laid, that’s a whole different matter. But if, as I suspect, that doesn’t happen, then Labor will have been proven again to have overreached.
PRESENTER: So you think that they’re being pre-emptive and that they’re denying him natural justice by doing this while the investigation is still continuing?
PYNE: Well, that’s definitely right, and they’re also trying to get themselves back into the political game. It’s quite obvious what’s going on. They’re mocking their outrage. They’re doing their best to try and get themselves back on the front page of the newspaper because Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership has blotted out the sun for the Labor Party.
PRESENTER: What do you think, Anthony Albanese? What do you think that Mal Brough has actually done wrong?
ALBANESE: Exactly what he said. In response to a question, “Did you ask James Ashby to procure copies of Peter Slipper’s diary for you?”, he answered three words; “Yes, I did”. He then went on to say why he did it in his own views.
That’s the problem here. There’s a slight problem because he’s fessed up on national TV and then every day since when we’ve been asking questions, he’s misled the Parliament. Yesterday he had to come in and after trying to verbal 60 Minutes the day before and suggest that somehow they had edited the question so that his answer was misleading, he had to come in and give a sort of half-apology, if someone has misunderstood.
Well, it’s very clear what he tried to do to 60 Minutes. That’s not what’s important. Well, that’s a bit important, misleading the media, but what you can’t do, you can’t mislead the Parliament and if Malcolm Turnbull’s ministerial standards mean anything at all, he has to go.
PRESENTER: Yesterday in the party room meeting, Chris Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull gave some friendly advice to you and your colleagues, which namely was stop talking about yourselves.
Now obviously, in the last week there’s been a lot of discussion about Julie Bishop, about Scott Morrison, supporters of Tony Abbott have been quite vocal on issues such as national security, sometimes to the detriment of Malcolm Turnbull. Is there a danger for the Coalition that if this continues you’ll end up suffering the same fate as the ALP?
PYNE: Well, nobody could be as bad as the ALP when they were in Government so I’m not worried about that fate. The Fairfax press have been running a series this week about the leadership change and that has therefore meant a raking over of old coals, but people like me and many others are simply getting on with the job.
Next week I’ll hand down the National Innovation and Science Agenda with Malcolm Turnbull. It will be a transformative new set of policies and measure, because we’re about jobs, we’re about growth. Now, some people want to keep talking about the past but I think that’s a mistake.
The public are much more interested in what we’re doing around policy, the climate change conference in Paris, Malcolm Turnbull’s trip to the G20 and APEC and the East Asia Summit and CHOGM, and of course what we’re doing around jobs.
The national accounts came out yesterday showing that exports are moving again, optimism is back, confidence is back, all of this is bad news for the Labor Party, that’s why they’re trying to distract people from it. But the government is getting on with the job and I think the public are very pleased about it.
PRESENTER: Do you think Tony Abbott could ever return to the top job, or more importantly, do you think that he thinks that he can?
PYNE: Look, I don’t think it’s even worth speculating about. I think Malcolm Turnbull will be Prime Minister for hopefully, for a very long time.
PRESENTER: From the Labor perspective, Anthony Albanese, Labor’s got a bit of a hide. When you see people such as Sam Dastyari out there condemning factionalism and condemning leadership wrangling, you guys have got so much form on this that you can’t really credibly enter the debate and take pot-shots at the Libs, can you?
ALBANESE: Well, this segment of course is called Two Tribes. Two tribes have gone to war and they’re called Tony Abbott’s tribe and Malcolm Turnbull’s tribe. And it’s on. It’s on. They’re leaking against each other, there were leaks against Julie Bishop in the paper, there’s constant sniping at each other.
PYNE: Old politics.
ALBANESE: Old politics? This is old politics between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. When they can’t stand each other, there’s all the sniping about the way that it happened and yes, the Labor Party from time to time has hurt us.
My position on the events of June 2010 when we replaced an elected first term Prime Minister, I said then it was a mistake and I tell you what, one of the reasons is because there was ongoing tension, and what we’re seeing in the Liberal Party is ongoing tension writ large on steroids.
They are after each other – some of it’s taking place in the office just next to Christopher’s, the old Monkey Pod room. I mean, the Labor Party has got factions. At least we haven’t got one called the Monkey Pod faction.
PRESENTER: Hey, just to wrap up Anthony Albanese, your boss, Mr 15%, he can’t last too long with figures like that. You were the people’s choice to lead the Labor Party. Why don’t you have a crack?
ALBANESE: Because precisely our previous discussion.
PYNE: He wants to.
ALBANESE: What the Labor Party needs to do and all political parties need to do is to act as a team rather than as a divided group. I’m part of a team, I’m holding the government to account on infrastructure and cities, I think I’ve done a pretty good job at holding the government to account on infrastructure. The only hole this government has dug is the one they wanted to bury Tony Abbott in.
PRESENTER: We have to leave it there guys. Enjoy the final sitting week of the year and we’ll check in with you again next week. Christopher Pyne, the Leader of Government Business in the House and the Shadow Minister for Infrastructure Anthony Albanese, thank you very much.