Jamie Briggs MP

 

 

Thanks for being with us on AM Agenda. Joining me now, from Melbourne, Labor frontbencher Richard Marles and from Adelaide, Liberal MP Jamie Briggs.  Gentlemen, great to see you both. Richard, this has got to be terrible for morale doesn’t it?

 

 

Well, we are going through what is a difficult debate and we are not worried about polls in the sense that they go up and they go down.  What we do know is that this is a nettle that needs to be grasped, in terms of dealing with putting a price on carbon in our economy. We know the Opposition has looked for the nearest sandpit and plunged their head straight into it. They have been wilfully blind about the need to deal with putting a price on carbon in our economy. Look, we are working through this process; it is not a debate which is going to be judged on the course of a week or even a month.  This has got a long time to play out.

 

 

Is this poll result solely due to carbon or are we seeing the drag of New South Wales here as well?

 

 

Look, I think there are many factors which go into polls, which is exactly why there is a real danger if you are a government trying govern in accordance with the polls and that is why we are not doing that. We know the poll is going to rise and they’re going to fall and we are focused on the job at hand and the job at hand is leading this country through a very difficult debate and leading it through it when the other side of politics has gone on leave, basically running a big scare campaign and not bringing any genuine contribution to the table at all.

 

 

Well, the campaign appears to be working at the moment, Jamie Briggs, but Tony Abbott is still not that popular.  Is Malcolm Turnbull an option down the track, again because he is in front as the preferred opposition leader in this poll?

 

 

Well look, I agree with Richard to the extent that we shouldn’t get too hung up on weekly or monthly polling. What we should get hung up on is what the evidence is in the field. And what people are saying to me out and about, is that we have lost trust in this Prime Minister, they have lost in the person who looked down the TV camera just four days before the election and promised there would be no carbon tax under a government that she led.  And of course the promise at the election was to have, which Richard has forgotten I think, to have 150 citizens come and tell them what their climate change policy was. But of course, after the election when the Greens got into power with the government, they decided to break that core promise that the Prime Minister made just four days out, and that is why we are seeing this great loss of trust.  But it is not just a carbon tax issue which we are seeing; this is a government which is fighting with every sector.  We have seen today of reports of her fighting with industry, food producers, miners, unions, welfare recipients, gamblers, the defence forces, medical researchers, doctors and worst of all of course, itself. It is at war in its own cabinet.  It has a civil war going on between the Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister and those who want to be Prime Minister.

 

 

Richard, the Government has struggled to convince anyone really or very few on this carbon price issue.  Today there is ACOSS out there pushing its barrow, you’ve got food and grocery producers, the unions last week, your former colleague within the union movement, Paul Howes from the AWU.  It looks very very difficult at the moment and in fact that you are not winning anyone over?

 

 

Well this is a difficult debate and it is a robust debate and I don’t think anybody would expect anything less, certainly we didn’t expect anything else. In the middle of the debate you would be expecting every party out there to be putting their case as robustly as they possibly can.

 

 

Do you expect a bit more support from the unions though?

 

 

Look, when you look at what Paul Howes has said, Paul Howes is standing up for jobs within his industry and that is what you would expect a union leader to say.  But he has, in saying that, made it clear that he does support putting a properly constructed price on carbon, which is what we’ve been talking about from day one, and we have also been making clear that all the revenue that will be raised by putting a price on carbon will be spent on both a generous household assistance package but also on assisting industries transitioning to putting a price on carbon, so that the jobs now are protected. But can I say this, this is all about jobs. If we do not put a price on carbon in our economy now, then we are going to be left behind with the most carbon intensive economy in the world and that represents a very grim future for industry, a very grim future for jobs in this country.  There will be must greater pain in the future, which is why it is so important that we must grasp this nettle now, which is something that we are doing and the Opposition are being wilfully blind about.  John Howard knows about it, Malcolm Turnbull knew this.

 

 

Let’s go to Jamie now and I want to ask you about the lobbying that we are seeing from all sides in this debate on carbon tax. Isn’t this just the normal path of the course, we see this all the time when reforms are introduced, that every sectional interest is going to be pushing its barrow?

 

Well look of course, people will stand up for their position absolutely and they should, that is what a democracy is all about. It is unheard of to see one of the major funders of the Labor Party publicly try and distance itself from the Labor Party. Paul Howes and the AWU, I mean famously, Paul Howes last year was one of the not so faceless men, who went on television the night of the great leadership coup and bragged about that he had spoken to the incoming Prime Minister, you have got work out which Prime Minister you are talking about here, but so you know you have got an enormous power broker within the Labor Party, publicly distancing himself from the leadership and the policy direction.  It is unheard of and unprecedented, but it just shows the dire straits, a government which is not trusted by anybody in the community is now in.

 

 

Jamie Briggs and Richard Marles, unfortunately we are out of time, bit tight for time this morning, but great to see you both as always. Jamie and Richard, appreciate it.