Interview on ABC AM with Sabra Lane

EO&E…………………………………………………………

SABRA LANE:

On our lead story about Cambodia, Australia spent $55 million settling three asylum seekers in Cambodia, one of them says they were tricked by the Government. Does it make the whole policy look wasteful?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Sabra my understanding is this was a voluntary resettlement arrangement, now ultimately our policies have saved taxpayers, because what they’ve done is they’ve stopped the flow of arrivals to Australia, they’ve stopped the boats as we promised would occur back in 2013, we’ve stopped that flow…

SABRA LANE:

Boats stopped well before this Cambodia deal?

SIMON BIMRINGHAM:

And Sabra the important thing here is that all elements of our policy are critical and the Labor Party will unpick different elements if they are elected, we’ve seen that already in terms of what they did in relation to the so-called Medivac Bill in the Parliament but we also know that Labor’s support for all elements about border protection policy is not there at this election. 

SABRA LANE:

They say that they stand by offshore processing and turning back the boats. 

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

However when it comes to certain arrangements around visa structures and so forth, the Labor Party appear to have different policy settings, now ultimately Australians can see our track record has been one that has stopped arrivals and that means we no longer have any children in detention and that is an accomplishment because there have been no arrivals and we’ve successfully resettled and the way to ensure that you don’t have children in detention in the future is to maintain all of our policy settings to make sure we don’t get those arrivals again.

SABRA LANE:  

On carbon modelling you’ve just heard Dr Brian Fisher say that the country’s GDP will still grow and the Labor plan just not as fast. He says it’s not disastrous. What’s your response?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well Dr Fisher has done the work that Bill Shorten refuses to do, Bill Shorten goes through this election campaign refusing to say…

SABRA LANE:

To the point of the question there, you just heard Dr Brian Fisher say that the GDP will still grow but it’s just in his words not disastrous?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Let’s look at the potential impacts that Dr Fisher has assessed as to how they relate to everyday Australians, his modelling shows that there could under Labor’s policy setting be 200,000 fewer jobs in the future for Australians than under the Coalition’s policy settings, that real wages could be around 80% lower under Labor’s policy settings relative to the Liberal National Party’s policy settings, now they are real impacts for Australians, lower wages, fewer jobs and this is the work that Bill Shorten himself should be doing, the only reason we’re talking about Dr Fisher’s modelling is because Bill Shorten refuses to identify what the cost of his policy is or who will pay for his policy.

SABRA LANE:

What about the department secretary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Martin Parkinson recent warning that modelling like this was quite risky.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well what we need is answers from Mr Shorten as well, of course modelling is based upon assumptions and policy assumptions and what Dr. Fisher has done, is he’s looked at what if Labor were to rely upon 25 per cent of international permits

SABRA LANE:  

The point I just made to you then, Martin Parkinson said it can be misleading…

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well that’s because we don’t get a straight answer from Mr Shorten about actually what he expects the international permit [indistinct] to be…

SABRA LANE:  

Actually I don’t think that’s what Dr Parkinson meant, he meant that this kind of modelling is misleading full stop.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well this type of modelling relies upon the assumptions you put into it Sabra, now Dr. Fisher has done a range of different scenarios all of which show that the Labor Party’s policy would have higher cost to our economy, mean fewer jobs and mean lower real wage increases for Australians in the future and those different scenarios of course are structured because Mr Shorten won’t actually outline the detail of his own policy, if he put detail on his policy then you could more accurately model exactly what his policy is, we can simply work off the different scenarios of what his policy could be because he won’t actually say how it will be applied.

SABRA LANE:  

To the candidates now two liberal candidates were dumped or jumped yesterday, do they underline the criticism attributed to Kelly O’Dwyer that the Liberal Party in Victoria is perceived as homophobic, anti-women and climate change deniers.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

I think there’s a lesson for both the Labor and the Coalition parties out of yesterday, we saw and have seen candidates disendorsed from both Labor and Liberal ranks, the Labor Party has lost a couple of candidates in the course of this election for anti-Semitic issues, and there’s another candidate under some pressure in relation to making light of rape, now in the end this is a reminder to all parties to make sure that the vetting of candidates even those running in unwinnable position is thorough.

SABRA LANE: 

How worried are you that in Victoria in particular where your own colleagues admit it’s more progressive and not tolerant that these kind of views that it further damages the Liberal brand

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Sabra I just think there are lessons here that the Labor Party the Liberal National parties all of us need to heed in terms of making sure that our vetting process are thorough, we are the parties of government and people expect us to have thorough vetting process, we do that for of course with all candidates, especially in all of the winnable seats, clearly some have slipped through the net on both sides of politics in relation to those unwinnable seats.

SABRA LANE:

Alright, the National Party leader admits this week that he’s taking whatever it takes attitude to trying to win government again in defending a preference deal with One Nation, do you agree?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well look I think all parties are obviously engaged in preference arrangements.

SABRA LANE:

But ‘the whatever it takes’ attitude?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

Well Sabra, parties of course are working to win this election, you expect us all to work to win this election, I urge people to vote Liberal Party first and foremost National Party where there’s a National Party candidate running and urge them to do so not because of preferences or debates but to do so because the policy differences between the parties, there are stark policy differences at this election, they were on show last night as Mr Shorten in his interview with Leigh Sales underplayed or downplayed the impact on pensioners and retirees of his tax on franking credits, he’s changed his position in relation to his housing tax where he had previously indicated that it would drive down price of the houses.

SABRA LANE:  

Senator, we’re out of time, I’m sorry we’re got to move on, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM:

My pleasure.