Sky News AM Agenda with Kieran Gilbert

E & OE

GILBERT:

Welcome to AM Agenda, joining me this morning is Assistant Social Services Minister Mitch Fifield and the Assistant Shadow Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Gentlemen good morning Andrew to you first of all on this climate roundtable, involving key business groups, unions, welfare groups, investors, environmental groups all agreeing to parameters. So far the Federal Parliament and the nation’s politicians haven’t been able to agree to. Should this provide some impetus do you think. To some sort of bipartisanship here?

Hon ANDREW LEIGH MP:

Kieran it’s a great initiative I really hope that we’re able to kick Australia forward along the path that so many other countries are travelling down. You know, China’s emissions fell last year, possibly just a temporary drop, people now think they’re going to peak around 2025, which is much earlier than usual. But what we’ve got in Australia is we’ve got the Government setting up a wind farm commissioner. We’ve got them passing motions at the Liberal party conference denying the climate science. We’ve got the Government really backing away from where the rest of the world is going, Britain, New Zealand, the UK, United States are taking serious action on climate change and meanwhile Australia is being described by Kofi Anan as a climate villain. We need to step up the plate in accepting the science is real and doing something about it.

GILBERT:

Andrew back to you in a moment. Mitch Fifield your thoughts on this group which involved the Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia and others all able to agree on broad parameters and with environmental groups, not their normal constituents you wouldn’t have thought?.

FIFIELD:

I think it’s a good and a positive thing when organisations who represent different parts of the community come together, try and find common ground and, in this case, climate action to try and reach some agreed principles. I think that’s a positive thing. We saw something similar in the lead up to the debate about the Goods and Services Tax and the New Tax System. That group didn’t stay together until the end of that particular project. But look I think it’s a positive thing. We are working hard on what we’ll be taking to Paris over the next few months. But I do have to say I think statements such as that of Kofi Anan that Australia is a villain on this particular subject are really, quite frankly, just laughable. We’ve taken serious action. We’re going to meet and exceed our Kyoto targets. And look, the Coalition has always said it’s important to take action, but we want to take it in concert with the rest of the world. And we don’t want to unnecessarily punish our economy and jobs in the absence of global agreement. But we’re doing our bit and we’ll continue to do our bit.

GILBERT:

Andrew Leigh the Labor party has been critical of direct action but the fact is, it is going to meet those targets and if you talk to those senior levels of government they’re confident this can be ramped up as well.

LEIGH:

Kieran we’ll see whether or not direct action actually meets the targets, certainly paying polluters is far more expensive than a market-based mechanism which used to be supported by the Liberal party. But it’s not just the Labor party that’s critical of this approach, when these preliminary international talks, you’ve had Brazil, the United States, the UK, China questioning why Australia’s commitment to climate change is so weak. The Chinese are saying we’re a country much poorer than you and you appear to be asking us to do more than your way…

GILBERT:

How is it weak if we are going to meet those targets by 2020 then make commensurate targets with the United States or Canada or whoever else in terms of comparable developed countries. How is in weak?

LEIGH:

The early evidence out of direct action has carbon abatement occurring in $66 a tonne. That’s simply not scalable. If you’re going to get to cost the Australian economy so much to break the link between economic growth and carbon emissions, you’re not going to be able to keep up with the rest of the world. That’s why more than 30 countries around the world, a whole host of US States have adopted emissions trading schemes. China while have emissions trading pilots running across provinces, covering hundreds of millions of people, it’s a sensible approach, backed by the vast majority of the world’s economists because it gets the greatest amount of emissions at the lowest cost.

GILBERT:

Mitch Fifield?

FIFIELD:

Look I’ve got a two word response to Andrew Leigh and that is Carbon Tax. Labor still want to introduce a Carbon Tax. They might call it a different name, they might dress it up, but that’s still their policy…

LEIGH:

We’ve very clearly said we won’t do that.

FIFIELD:

I’ve heard that before. I’ve heard before a Labor Prime Minister say “there will be no Carbon Tax under a Government I lead.” So Andrew, I don’t think anyone believes a Labor leader who says I will not introduce a Carbon Tax.

LEIGH:

Mitch you know full well that we will take an emissions trading scheme, but not a fixed price, not a Carbon Tax.

FIFIELD:

Julia Gillard said she wouldn’t and she did. It doesn’t matter what you call it, doesn’t matter how you dress it up, you’re going to introduce something that’s a Carbon Tax or very similar to it. The Labor view is, that you’ve got to punish Australia into submission. That’s not the approach that we take.

LEIGH:

It’s hardly punishing, what this approach does is least cost abatement, it means that we get our maximum contribution for the minimum cost. Standing in direct contrast to direct action, which is an expensive slush fund for polluters.

GILBERT:

But you see that in isolation don’t you? In terms of direct action you’re seeing that in isolation not the other components of environmental policy, which includes the Renewable Energy Target which has bipartisan support and 33,000 Gigawatt hours. Isn’t it wrong to be seeing this one element in isolation without seeing these other components?

LEIGH:

Kieran you’re quite right that the Renewable Energy Target does work, it would’ve done more work had the Government kept its pledge to keep it as 41,000 Gigawatt hours. But it will have some impact at 33,000 Gigawatt hours. But the wind farm commissioner is clearly an anti climate change measure. Put in place by a Government that has climate sceptics at its heart, and where the Prime Ministers leadership as the Cory Bernadi profile revealed over the weekend, does hinge crucially on the support of climate sceptics within the Liberal party.

GILBERT:

Mitch Fifield finally to you on this issue before we go to other matters, in terms of Greg Hunts challenge here to bring the whole party with him. It does include the likes of Bernadi and others who don’t want anything which would be seen as credible in international terms on the climate change response.

FIFIELD:

I think that the Party Room is united on the need to take action. But we want to take action that is rational, that is proportional, that is sensible, and that is justifiable. That’s what we have done as a Government, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

GILBERT:

Let’s move onto some other issues, the report today that the mafia has infiltrated Federal and State politics at certain levels. Mitch Fifield a number of Liberal Ministers referred to here including access to the former Prime Minister John Howard. What do you make of the story this morning?

FIFIELD:

We’ll Kieran the Australian Federal Police have previously investigated the matters that were canvassed in the papers today. They didn’t take any action. I think we can be very confident that we have a very clean Parliament. That Federal politics is played pretty straight. And that we don’t have infiltration of senior figures in the Parliament. So, as I say, the Federal Police looked at these matters and no further action was taken.

GILBERT:

Is this a case, Senator Fifield, where in some instances senior figures will attend fundraisers and so on and not be fully across every individual that’s there I guess that further to that question is the issue of Amanda Vanstone granting a visa to the brother of one of these particular alleged mafia godfathers. That looks like the only substantial accusations in terms of the outcome of this consultation or infiltration as its put by Fairfax.

FIFIELD:

I don’t know the particulars of that matter. All I know is that the Federal Police haven’t taken any action in relation to the matters canvassed in the papers. But you’re right Kieran. Members of Parliament attend functions every day, every week, every month. Meet hundreds of people in the course of a week, thousands of people in the course of a year at a range of functions. And obviously Members of Parliament don’t necessarily know every individual or their background at the functions that they attend.

GILBERT:

Andrew Leigh are you worried about this report this morning and what it contains?

LEIGH:

Yeah Kieran I’m not as sanguine as Mitch is about the news that the mafia engaged in a fairly sophisticated operation as people try and infiltrate themselves with various Liberal party members. I think that’s of deep concern. Mitch is absolutely right when he says that our politics is fundamentally clean in Australia, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to be vigilant for these kinds of operations.

GILBERT:

So you’re confident it’s only the Liberal party concerned here in terms of the access?

LEIGH:

Well I’m just, that’s certainly what’s been reported today. But one of the ways in which you make sure that you’ve got a clean politics Kieran is through disclosure laws. Labor’s consistently argued that the current disclosure threshold, which is about to go to $13,000 is too high. We ought to bring it down to $1,500, around a tenth of the level, which would bring transparency to the system. We’ve also been concerned about the use of vehicles such as the millennium foundation in order to channel donations through in a way that the public can’t see. The great thing about transparency, as Justice Louis Brandis once said, it’s the best disinfectant. The best way of getting these ugly elements out of the system, because people have to report even a $2,000 donation under the system that Labor favours.

GILBERT:

Senator Fifield, your reaction to that this morning?

FIFIELD:

Well it’s an ongoing project to continually look at electoral law and to look at electoral funding. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has that as a standing brief. So if there are ways that electoral laws can be improved then we should always be prepared to look at that.

LEIGH:

Well there are ways, it’s to bring down the disclosure threshold and your party has always fought against it. In Queensland they’ve just brought the disclosure threshold down to I think it’s $1,000. Nationally the Labor party reports donations over $1,000, but the Liberal party only reports donations over $13,000. It’s a big difference, you can do something about it today if you want to.

FIFIELD:

Well I think the most corrupting influence that there is in Australian politics is the donations from the trade union movement to the Australian Labor Party. Which is a massive..

LEIGH:

Are you calling unions corrupt?

FIFIELD:

I’m saying that there can be a corrupting influence in a policy sense in that the Australian Labor Party is beholden to the trade union movement and seeks not to, when they’re in office, govern on behalf of the national interest, but on behalf of a very specific sectoral interest.

GILBERT:

Okay, we’re out of time gents, Andrew Leigh, Senator Fifield, appreciate it have a good day. Quick break, back in just a moment.