Jamie Briggs MP

Joining me now on the program, from Melbourne Labor frontbencher Richard Marles and from Adelaide, Liberal MP Jamie Briggs. Gentlemen, good morning. Jamie first to you. A carbon tax compensation package gradually coming out with the detail. This will make the whole plan more palatable, wont it? 

 

Well there is no detail. We don’t know the price so you can’t have a genuine discussion about this until you know the price. Yesterday we saw the Assistant Prime Minister, Bob Brown on the Insiders program say that he wants to see the end of the coal industry. Now that is a price of over $100 a tonne. If that’s the case that’s going to have enormous impacts, but whatever the price is, we know the cost of living for forgotten families throughout Australia will be massively increased. We’ve just heard Wayne Swan confirm that then. He just said, in your interview with him Kieran, that with the introduction of a carbon tax there will be increases to the cost of living. They’ve just admitted the exact point that Tony Abbott has been making for some time. On the other hand, we say you can address the challenge of climate change with the direct action policy and at the same time we can offer at the next election a genuine tax cut policy, because that is what the Liberal Party has always believed in. 

 

Richard, I want to ask you about the point Jamie made there, and it is something that a number of people have been referring to today, the comments of Bob Brown yesterday. Doesn’t that distract from your effort to try and get the focus on compensation on assisting households when you’ve got the Greens making those sorts of statements about not wanting compensation for the coal industry and so on. 

 

 

Well Bob Brown’s comments are a matter for him. What we’ve made clear is that this package will have industry assistance in it. But it will also have assistance to ordinary households and what we’ve heard the Prime Minister and now the Treasurer say in the last 24 hours is that for the 3 million lowest income households in Australia, which is actually a fair proportion of the country, they will be fully compensated for any increase in the cost of living, and more with a 20% buffer. So they will actually be better off under this plan and you know where the money is coming from…

 

 

But there’s still no detail. As Jamie said there is still no detail. 

 

 

But we know what this is about. This is about putting a price on carbon to be paid by thousand largest emitters of CO2 in the country. That stands in pretty stark contrast to what we just heard Jamie say about tax cuts that the Liberal Party will put in, the basis of those tax cuts as far as I could tell from what Jamie said is that simply the Liberals believe in it, but we haven’t seen any proof of where you are going to find the savings, I mean these people couldn’t find savings if their lives depended on it. We saw that last week when there was a budget measure put through the Parliament which was going to save a couple of billion dollars in the budget that we found, the Liberals objected to that. That’s fair enough. But when they went off to then try and find where they could find alternative savings, they couldn’t, so they ended up voting for it. These people could not find savings if their lives depended on it, and in fact they didn’t find savings when their lives depended on it during the last election, when we found there was an $11 billion black hole in their budget costings. 

 

 

Ok, well let’s get Jamie’s thoughts on the point that you are making, particularly in light of what Wayne Swan told me in that interview, and that is he is going to write to Joe Hockey today and Tony Abbott offering the resources of Treasury to cost the Coalition commitments, Jamie. 

 

 

Well if Wayne Swan was serious he would release all the modelling on the carbon tax, which of course he won’t. So this is a stunt. We’ve said for some time now and in fact it was when Malcolm Turnbull was opposition leader; there was an announcement from our side that we support the introduction of a parliamentary budget office which looks at genuine, gives a genuinely independent, such as the Congressional budget office in the United States. At the end of the day the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are trying to the use the Treasury as a political tool, which is actually a disgrace. Ultimately, the Treasury is a high quality department and does a high quality job for our country, and it shouldn’t be used in this low rent political way. But you understand, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are under the pump. The Prime Minister is out there trying to reassure her backbench with these announcements that it is all going to be ok; we’ll have lots of compensation; we’ll redistribute wealth; that’s what the Labor Party has always believed in; don’t worry about your marginal seats when you’ve got a primary vote of 27%; we’ll get you back there. She’s worried.  Bill Shorten is looking hungry. Greg Combet is performing in Parliament quite often. Even Simon Crean these days is out there. So what we’ve seen over the weekend is more about the Prime Minister trying to ensure the backbench doesn’t walk away from her before the next election. 

 

 

The leadership line there had a bit of credibility, Jamie. You mentioned Simon Crean, that comeback would be bigger than Lazarus it think. Richard, lets go to the issue Jamie pointed there on the use of Treasury; is that not a stunt? Is it inappropriate to use Treasury for that purpose? 

 

Well you can just see a little bit of cockiness there coming through in Jamie’s comments when you starts referring to the polls, I mean normally we have a bipartisan agreement not to refer to the polls, but there is some cockiness there on the Liberal Party side. We’re focused on the ballot that counts, which is in a couple of years time. Between now and then we are just interested in putting in place good public policy, which is far removed from what we see on the Liberal side here. Look if the Liberals were serious about these miraculous hocus-pocus tax cuts that they’re talking about, they would actually submit a proposition, not that we’ve seen one, but they would submit a proposition to the first class outfit that Jamie has just described the Treasury as being. There is no stunt in that. What we’re saying is you just can’t walk around saying tax cuts here tax cuts there and you can trust us because we believe in them as if you can just conjure these things out of thin air. You’ve actually got to put forward where the savings are going to come from, and we all know there are no savings being put forward here by the Liberal Party. 

 

 

Richard, sorry to interrupt there mate, we’ve got to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Stay with us on AM Agenda. 

 

 

 

 

Richard Marles and Jamie Briggs are with me on the program. Richard, it looks like this could be quite a lengthy and potentially costly process this to fight off the big tobacco on plain packaging. 

 

 

Well we’re not going to be intimidated by what big tobacco does. As the Heath Minister just said we knew that they would be vigorously opposed to this and they will fight this with every fibre of their bean, but that’s fine. We’re ready for that fight. Unlike the Liberal Party we’re not influenced by big tobacco and we will see through what, as again as the Health Minister said, it is a world first because what we want to see is cancer rates drop in this country. We want to see a healthier Australia and the foundation of our action is based on the public health of this country, and we feel very solid in that foundation indeed. 

 

 

Jamie, ill let you respond to that, because I think I’m correct in saying the Liberal Party is going to back this plain packaging initiative. 

 

 

Well I just wonder whether Nicola Roxon had intention of telling Philip Morris that they planned this course of action when she invited them to her fundraisers a couple of years ago. Or when she went to the tennis with them not long before that. So for Richard to sit there and suggest that somehow we’ve been bought off by tobacco donations is a bit of a joke. At the end of the day, I suspect what Philip Morris is doing, and what they do is a matter for them, and I suspect what they are doing is taking the chance that this government will implement this policy as incompetently as it implements pretty much every other policy. You can’t implement a policy to put roof batts in peoples’ houses, to build school halls. Philip Morris is throwing the dice that they won’t be able to do this properly either and there will be some problem with it. It’s probably not an unreasonable assumption. 

 

 

Jamie there was some…

 

 

You’re meant to be supporting it Jamie. That was an emphatic statement of support. I thought the Liberal Party was actually supporting what we are doing now. 

 

 

What we would say though Richard is that we don’t think you can competently implement anything. You had Nicola Roxon trying to prosecute a case that the Liberal Party is guilty by association from taking donations, only for it to turn out that what’s Nicola Roxon being seeking to do, but take donations from cigarette companies. 

 

But you’re taking donations now and that’s why you can’t emphatically support what we’re doing. 

 

 

The ‘Dear Philip” letter that we saw Nicola write, you know ‘Dear Philip’ please come to my fundraiser. 

 

 

If you weren’t getting support from them now you would be supporting us in a much bigger way than you did with that answer. 

 

 

That is absolutely offensive Richard. I mean to suggest that somehow donations are corruptible, then we’ll just start walking through who else donates to the Labor Party donations, shall we?

 

 

I’ve got to ask you one last issue, gents, we’ve got a couple of minutes left and I want to get to it. Jamie the Liberal Presidency – quite a stoush at the weekend. Interesting from your leader, he backed publicly Peter Reith but then voted for Alan Stockdale and showed him the ballot that yes he had backed the incumbent. What was going on there? 

 

 

I think he backed the contest, I’m not sure he ever backed a particular candidate. I can be corrected if I’m wrong there, but I never saw an endorsement of either candidate. But look, Kieran we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, lets just explain to Richard what a ballot is. Richard that’s where you have two people, you have a whole series of people actually vote, you count the ballots and one is the winner and one is not. I know it’s a very different concept to what the Labor Party do. We think competition is worthwhile, and I think already you’ve seen the benefits of competition because you are seeing some discussion about reform and so forth from either of the candidates and I am sure from my perspective, I’m sure Peter Reith who is a great of our party will remain involved and will remain offering his substantial views into the future. 

 

 

I’m sure Peter Reith will be pleased to see his former colleague gutting him like that on our cameras. 

 

 

Kieran, Peter Reith certainly knows now that Tony Abbott is a weathervane and he knows that from first hand experience. But in terms of competition, what we’ve seen here is a contest between Nick Minchin and Peter Reith. This is climate change sceptic versus dogs of the waterfront. I mean this is a horror movie of the worst proportions, and Australia should be, if there was any question about the lurch of the Liberal Party to the right, it was certainly after this weekend. 

 

 

You would be hoping Peter Reith will continue the case on workplace reform, wouldn’t you Jamie? You’ve been an advocate of that and Peter Reith has suggested that he will be pushing ahead, arguing the case for the Liberal Party, the Coalition to grab that issue again. 

 

 

Peter Reith has been a substantial figure in our party. He was responsible for development of very good policy, policy that saw the creation of jobs, the freeing up of our economy, flexibility introduced into our economy and when Peter Reith speaks people should listen. He’s got a lot of wise words to say and I certainly take what Peter Reith says very seriously and it’s always interesting, you always know when someone is a substantial figure on our side because those on the other side like Richard that are so desperate to try and attack them, that they will go to any gutter to do that attacking from. 

 

 

That sounded like a return to Workchoices from my point of view. 

 

 

Break glass in case of emergency, Richard. 

 

 

You’re breaking us for it. You keep raising it. 

 

 

Alright, gents just quickly, we’ve only got a minute left on the program. I want to get your thoughts on Malaysian issue. Scott Morrison there at the moment prosecuting, on a fact finding mission. Richard, some refugee advocates on the ground critical of both sides of politics on this, and certainly very critical of the government’s policy, we’ve got less than a minute left on the program. If you can just give me your quick thoughts on that. 

 

 

No facts being found by Scott Morrison. He hasn’t met with a single official of the Malaysian government. Not that they would influence his view anyway, he said that he wasn’t going to change his mind before he went there. He’s broken a bipartisan commitment to become part of team Australia when you leave our shores and that is a disgrace. 

 

 

Ok. Jamie just quickly. 

 

 

Scott’s doing what Chris Bowen should have done and gone and had a look for himself. Chris Bowen sitting back in his ivory tower and making policy which won’t work. Policy which will diminish our international reputation. Where is Kevin Rudd in all this? Richard’s boss. Where is Kevin Rudd? I think he is over in another country seeking a UN vote, rather than in Indonesia or in Malaysia seeking to resolve what are quite substantial foreign affairs issues. 

 

 

He’s being Minister for Foreign Affairs. 

 

 

Gentlemen, thank you.