16-July-2010
Portfolio Media Releases, The Economy
Subjects: Labor pretending to be fiscal conservatives before elections, Kevin Rudd’s political execution, election timing.
E&OE
MARIUS BENSON:
Andrew Robb, to begin with the financial aspect of Julia Gillard’s press club address yesterday, she has basically been trying to out conservative the conservatives, she said there will be no campaign hand-outs, all the spending by the Government will be off-set by savings, there will be unpopular cutbacks and the Government’s financial approach she describes as clean, green and above all, lean, you would back that?
ANDREW ROBB:
The issues are, who can trust them, really. It seems like, not only at a Federal level but a state level Labor always pretend to be Liberals before an election and they revert to big spending Labor after an election and I think we are seeing the same thing again.
MARIUS BENSON:
Ok, Julia Gillard’s speech yesterday was on the economy but the coverage of the speech has been dominated by the revelations or reports of a deal or negotiation she conducted with Kevin Rudd on the Wednesday night which saw him deposed and she installed as the Prime Minister. The reports suggest at once stage Kevin Rudd said ‘give me a little while and see if I get better’ and she went off to consider that with her camp and came back and said no deal. That doesn’t seem terribly treacherous by the treacherous levels of leadership deals we have seen in Australia does it?
ANDREW ROBB:
We’re not sure, I am not sure, in any way what happened that night. I suppose it’s been our sense that Kevin Rudd was elected by the Australian people and he did deserve the opportunity to be judged by the Australian people and not be brutally executed by a number of faceless men. It does sound like the faceless men intervened again that night.
MARIUS BENSON:
So, just on that point that has been made by several Coalition people about the Prime Minister as elected by the people and should face the people; the Liberal Party, if you know a bit of Liberal Party history, John Gorton got knifed while he was Prime Minister and was not allowed to return to face the people.
ANDREW ROBB:
Well the difference with contests on the Liberal side over the years and previously within Labor in many cases and in decades gone past, the caucus doesn’t really make the decision, the members of parliament who have been elected have not made the decision and if they had made the decision it would be a different matter. It was the faceless men who made the decision and I think it would be none of those people who made the decision that anyone in the country could name.
MARIUS BENSON:
Of course Julia Gillard got the Leadership without a vote because the numbers were so overwhelmingly in her favour. Caucus didn’t even need to vote.
ANDREW ROBB:
Well if they had needed to vote, caucus would have been instructed on what they had to do. The instructions had already gone out from the factional heavies and from the union chiefs.
MARIUS BENSON:
There’s divided opinion in the papers today about whether this revelation yesterday about the leadership machinations makes an early election more or less likely. What do you think on that and when do you think the election will be?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well I don’t know how this will play out.
I think Julia Gillard was absolutely determined along with those who instruct her, the factional heavies, absolutely determined to go to an early election. Everything they have done in the last two or three weeks has indicated that.
The trouble is that everything they have done has been so poorly executed that it has left very huge question marks over Julia Gillard’s ability and the fact that Labor hasn’t changed its spots in any sense. So I think it will raise question marks for them but if they do go early it’s just another example of the Labor movement and Labor Government treating the electorate with disregard, because Julia Gillard needs to spend some time to show what her ability is and not look to surf in on the honeymoon that she otherwise expected.