MARIUS BENSON:                 Andrew Robb good morning.  I suppose I should begin by saying welcome back this is the first time you have spoken since taking up your finance responsibility and after stepping down last year to deal with depression.

 

ANDREW ROBB:                    Yes, thanks very much Marius.  It’s good to be back and back in good form.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                  How you feeling?

 

ANDREW ROBB:                    I am feeling very well actually, it’s a great feeling to wake up in a positive frame of mind, ready to tackle whatever the day throws at you such as a Marius Benson interview.  It’s the best I have felt I think in the mornings in my life so the several months of experimentation with different medications has borne through in the last two or three months.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                 That is good news because when you stepped down with depression there were genuine expressions of sympathy.  There were genuine but now that you’re back in the fray you are going to face the same people genuinely trying to demolish your arguments and yourself. 

 

ANDREW ROBB:                     Well that’s the nature of the business I think. We’ll trying to keep one another accountable is the bottom line and that’s a good thing for public life and public policy.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                 Ok, let’s get to business and at the moment you take over the finance portfolio.  It’s a bit of signal moment for the Coalition because Newspoll has for the past five years been asking voters who they think are the better economic managers in federal politics.  The Coalition has always held that title until just this latest poll in the last fortnight you’ve lost the title.  Now the public prefers Labor.

 

ANDREW ROBB:                    Well you know, these things I think when you’ve got a health debate that’s dominated for two weeks I think it influences strongly all the indicators that we saw yesterday and it’s just our job to demonstrate once again that we are the party that delivers prosperity for this country.  If you go back over history that’s been the record, the periods of great prosperity in Australia have been associated with periods of Coalition government and we know I think far better how to run the shop, if you like than Labor.  Labor are clearly, as evident by the last couple of years are very good at having ideas on how to spend other’s people’s money but hopeless in implementation.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                 Now Tony Abbott was speaking about economic issues yesterday and he put the view, a consistent view put by the Coalition that the tax should always be lower and the size of government should always lower under a Coalition government.  That is the central tenet for the Coalition, the difficulty is it’s not true. In twelve years of the Howard government the overall level of tax didn’t go down, the size of government didn’t go down, it stayed at 25 per cent of the GDP.

 

ANDREW ROBB:                    Well if you look at the last couple of years under Labor and what they have got in prospect.  We are now in record levels of spending, I think around the 28 per cent mark of GDP there is no prospect or no prediction of getting down to the 25 per cent for some time and that’s only forecasts under Labor and the amount of spending they’ve still got in the pipeline is just heroic and very, very damaging I think to the economy, putting enormous pressure on interest rates.  I think there is a strong record of fiscal policy conducted in a very proper fashion and prudent fashion under the Howard administration and also ten years of significant growth.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                  Now a couple of senior economic figures have been in the news with Ken Henry’s position being criticized by the opposition’s spokesman on finance in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce.  Do you agree with him that Ken Henry has politicised his position is now more engaged on pushing the government line and less in providing frank and fearless advice?

 

ANDREW ROBB:                     I think the issue with Ken Henry is that many in business now see him as in many respects the Treasurer, dictating most for the decisions with Wayne Swan, Lindsay Tanner and Kevin Rudd just doing what they’re told.  I think that what’s left the impression of Ken Henry adopting a different role then the Treasury Secretary has in the past and it certainly is in many respects I think the capacity or lack of capacity of the existing Treasurer and the Prime Minister when it comes to effectively running an economic program they’ve had to rely in the most unusual way on the Secretary of the Treasury and other officials.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                 So is Ken Henry now a more political figure?

 

ANDREW ROBB:                    Well that’s the impression because I think people see and the business community does, as in many respects adopting the role of Treasurer and certainly dictating the decisions and I think it leaves that impression.

 

MARIUS BENSON:                 Andrew Robb I’ll leave it there, thank you very much

 

ANDREW ROBB:                    Thank you Marius.