| Subjects: Preferences; Climate policy
EO&E…………………………………………………………
CHRIS KENNY:
Senator Simon Birmingham he joins me now. Thanks for joining us Simon. Pretty messy day when you have to scratch a candidate this fellow by the name of Jeremy Hearn posting intolerant and horrible things against Muslim Australians.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Well Chris there’s no doubt that those comments were completely unacceptable, vile comments, and that’s why the party’s moved swiftly to dis-endorse him, now we’d rather that that hadn’t had to be the case but we’ve taken swift action there, but I’ve got to say Chris I do find the holier than thou attitude that comes from Bill Shorten Mark Dreyfus and the Labor Party to be entirely hypocritical when they are facing similar in fact probably even worse circumstances with an anti-Semite running on their Northern Territory Senate ticket, but that was still handing out how to vote cards late yesterday afternoon backing this guy. A guy who Bill Shorten claims never to have met and yet you’re running a picture of Bill Shorten with his arm around this bloke. I mean Bill Shorten just can’t lie straight in bed when it comes to his claims he makes on some of these issues and now we’ve got the case of a candidate for the Labor Party in Melbourne who thinks that rape is funny and wants to make jokes about rape. I mean you know when you see Mark Dreyfus there lecturing from on high, posturing with this holier than thou attitude he should really look in his own backyard, Bill Shorten should look in his own backyard and they should be cleaning up the mess within their candidate ranks and before they go out there criticising others to such an extent.
CHRIS KENNY:
I thought Mark Dreyfus’s comments were over the top there given what’s happening on the Labor side as well but obviously both sides are looking very messy here and we talk about pictures and controversy as to whether or not you know someone or met someone. There’s an argument on that related to that when it comes to the Liberals too with Andrew Hastie saying that he’s never met a far right activists who claims that he’s met with Andrew Hastie and in fact another Liberal MP says they have met. So you’ve got to tidy that one up as well.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Chris there’s a bit of a difference between whether or not you meet somebody at a rally of thousands of people who you’ve never clapped eyes on before, versus whether or not you can recall if you’ve met a candidate who’s an endorsed candidate for your political party. Now in the end it’s for Mr Shorten to answer questions about why it is he said he’d never met the Labor candidate who’s got anti-Semitic comments on the record, they’ve had to dis-endorse in relation to the Labor Senate ticket in the Northern Territory. In relation to this rally or community event that happened as it was in in Perth, look I understand that there are slightly conflicting accounts as to whether or not people recall whether somebody came up and introduced themselves at that event, but politicians meet thousands of people in our daily lives, it’s not unreasonable that sometimes you don’t recall every person who walks up and shakes your hand, but it’s unusual if you don’t recall somebody who’s actually an endorsed candidate for your political party.
CHRIS KENNY:
Now we’ve had Bill Shorten playing down the Northern Territory candidate Wayne Kurnorth’s comments as if to say Islamophobia is worse than anti-Semitic comments. But both parties are going to have to deal with how these sorts of candidates can become endorsed. But what goes on here Simon Birmingham.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
I hope Bill Shorten wasn’t really implying that Chris, I hope that he condemns racism in all its forms whether it’s against Muslim Australians, Jewish Australians, Asian Australians, and I know Bill Shorten was a bit late to the party when it came to Michael Daley, the New South Wales Labor leader and his attack on Asian Australians and their contribution to Australia in fact Bill Shorten waited until after Michael Daley had lost the New South Wales state election to come clean on that front to criticize that.
CHRIS KENNY:
Indeed, its ugly stuff that’s my point. Its ugly stuff no matter who the intolerance is directed at. My point is about the vetting process as surely you have you’ve been involved in this most of your adult life, the Liberal party processes and preselection and the rest of it surely you will Google these people have a good look at what they’ve got out there on the public record. It seems to be a real incompetence at the very least to allow these people to get endorsed when they’ve made such horrendous comments.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Look there’s certainly been a thorough review after the election of what went wrong in terms of the vetting process in the Victorian division. I trust the Labor Party will be equally thorough across their Victorian branch and the Northern Territory branch where they’ve got these problems. I know that a lot of work is done in the vast majority of cases to check on candidates who nominate for preselection their backgrounds, but clearly something slipped through the net in this case but once identified and we’ve acted in less than 24 hours to make sure that the endorsement of this bloke is withdrawn and his comments get the condemnation they deserve.
CHRIS KENNY:
I reckon what both political parties are doing is spending too much time looking at all the skeletons in the closet of their opponents. What they should do is do the same job on their own people first. Tell me Simon Birmingham about election costings and climate policy costings, we’ve got this, what I think is a central debate in this campaign about the costs of the respective policies. Obviously your policies on the Coalition do hurt the economy what you’re doing to try and reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to the target. The Paris targets does cost us. We’ve seen that. Brian Fisher says it’s going to cost us $70 billion, he says Labor’s plans to more than double a lot of those efforts will cost $400 billion more. Yet it seems that Mark Butler and Bill Shorten are going to try and get to Election Day without putting any numbers at all around their climate and energy policies, they are actually saying in straightforward language that it’s impossible to cost their policies. When will the Government or the Coalition in this case given its caretaker mode, will you give us some numbers that compare both sets of policies? Because at the moment most voters are flying blind.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Well Chris it’s impossible so Bill Shorten claims to cost his policies but that’s only because he won’t provide detail attached to those policies. Now if he actually would come clean and say how much he expects of the near doubling in the emissions reduction target the Labor Party would force upon Australia that he expects will have to be made by purchasing international permits there, then you might be able to cost it. If he’d actually come clean and say how much he’s going to impose upon farmers versus manufacturing businesses versus cars and the transport sector, then he’d be able to cost it, the fact is it’s because Bill Shorten is hiding the details of his policies and they have to make assumptions then about exactly what his policy looks like.
CHRIS KENNY:
Well there’s some detail out there for instance he says he’s going to get half of the Government’s car fleet to make them electric. Now surely you can get some numbers around that. I what I am saying here, but if we’re not going to get numbers from Labor, then surely the Coalition is going to do some math and come up with some numbers.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Well we’ve pointed to Brian Fisher’s independent modelling that’s out there and I think that has really strong credibility on the basis that it was done in an independent way separate from the Liberal or National parties running our own sums, regularly highlighted the fact that the motor vehicle industry has indicated average cost of about $5,000 per car extra as a result of Labor’s vehicles policy the electric vehicle policy. Where Bill Shorten again didn’t know how long it would take to charge a car, claims he doesn’t know what the cost differential in electric vehicles are, how many times in this election campaign is Bill Shorten going to dodge giving an answer on the basis that he doesn’t know or that he claims it can’t be done. Again people expect when they’re going to have to vote whether or not to change the government that the alternative government if their proposing a radical policy agenda, and certainly this Labor-Greens alliance is a radical policy agenda as they get into bed with each other than that it can be costed it can be detailed. Bill Shorten has got all of these extra taxes on retirees, on housing, on wages, on electricity and yet he won’t actually answer any questions about what the cost of each of them will be. We have done the best we can with the information that’s out there to highlight independent modelling such as Brian Fisher’s for the cost of the emissions reduction policy, to highlight the Treasury analysis of what some of those Labor tax measures would mean. The $387 billion in extra taxes, but why is it that Bill Shorten refuses to answer any of the questions about the extra costs that his radical agenda would impose.
CHRIS KENNY:
Just briefly Simon Birmingham, any word on a third debate? We know that we’ve got both leaders at the Sky News People’s Forum 6:30pm here on Sky News in Brisbane on Friday night, but any agreement on that third debate?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Look Chris, Scott Morrison stands ready willing to debate on the ABC, to debate on Channel Nine, as well as what he’s doing with Sky on Friday night and did with Channel Seven earlier this week and it’s sort of why Bill Shorten won’t come to the party, but I think you’ll know the answer to that, he doesn’t want to answer any questions about any policies that he doesn’t want to provide detail.
CHRIS KENNY:
Alright, thanks very much for joining us Simon Birmingham appreciate it.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Thank you Chris. |
