18-April-2011
Portfolio Media Releases
Topics: Revolt against Labor’s carbon tax, Nielsen Poll, budget
E&OE
KIERAN GILBERT:
Mr Robb thanks for your time, the Coalition’s primary vote 47 per cent to Labor’s 31, do you agree with John Sturton that there would be some drag that remains here from the NSW election result?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well, the NSW election result focussed critically I think on the incompetence and the lack of leadership and the lack of any direction by the Labor government there, and I do think that is starting to be mirrored in a way.
The carbon tax in some respects is a lightning rod as I see it for the incompetence and for the lack of direction, the lack of authority of the prime minister and the way in which the Greens have now got a strangle-hold over the Labor government.
So all of those factors were symbolised by Labor in NSW, but they are a reality in the federal scene.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Malcolm Turnbull is well in front as the preferred opposition leader from this poll. Will he be considered down the track if Tony Abbott struggles to win that middle ground, the soft Labor vote?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well look, this is not a popularity contest. The fact of the matter is the Coalition is now on what 49 per cent primary vote, 47 or 49 primary vote with the Labor Party on historically low levels at 31.
A lot of that is off the back of the exposure of the problems with the carbon tax and the exposure of so many other problems with this government, the incompetence over the mining tax, the huge debt and deficit and who’s driven all of that? Tony Abbott has.
So Tony is in a very strong position and I’ve got no doubt will continue to be.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Let’s look at the carbon tax that you mentioned. The campaign against it continues. Today we have seen the food and grocery producers join mining and energy companies. That letter to the prime minister that was sent apparently last Friday, we’ve heard about it today, urging that industry not be harmed under the carbon tax, but Andrew Robb isn’t this just part and parcel of any difficult reform. That industries will lobby to get the best result that they can?
ANDREW ROBB:
Kieran, what you are seeing now is almost unprecedented. You have got a coalition of, or a consensus, across all the key unions, you’ve got construction, transport, energy and resource unions, you’ve now got the food sector, you’ve got agriculture generally, you’ve got manufacturing, represented by the Australian Industry Group and also by the chamber of commerce, you’ve got households generally up in arms.
It is a revolt if you like against the carbon tax. People have come to realise that a carbon tax is a job-destroying tax, the carbon tax ahead of the rest of the world is going to do nothing for the environment.
This is a political move by the government, not an economic move and industry, unions, households, everyone has come to realise that and we are seeing a widespread consensus and revolt against this tax.
KIERAN GILBERT:
We are seeing ACOSS again, the welfare sector are out today, food producers as we mentioned, the unions as well. The government argues that any reform is difficult and as we heard there from the pollster in this period of electoral cycles that governments are doing things. In all of the terms of the Howard government at this time John Howard trailed. Isn’t it just a reflection, that everyone wants a piece, the best result for them and that reform introducing these sorts of reforms is difficult, always difficult for government?
ANDREW ROBB:
John Howard’s initiatives, one it was off the back of the tech wreck you might recall, but secondly the reforms he introduced, the GST actually led to significant improvement in the economy.
The trouble with the government’s actions or inactions is that on every front that it has moved on, the mining tax, the flood tax, attempts to deal with the budget, the waste and mismanagement of this government which is almost unprecedented and then you’ve got the carbon tax on top of it.
On every one of these fronts, what you are seeing is the Greens leading the Labor Party. The Labor Party is now hostage to the Greens and the Independents.
The prime minister has got no authority. They are making a mess of just about everything they touch and on the carbon tax they haven’t really sold it. All they keep talking about is reform is tough, all these sort of euphemisms, but they have not got out there and explained to people how it is in the economy’s interests, how it is going to help the environment. They haven’t really sat down and sought to explain …
KIERAN GILBERT:
But they are providing more detail gradually Andrew Robb aren’t they? We saw that last week with Greg Combet’s speech and today a contribution to that argument for the carbon tax from the Australia Institute and they’ve released research which claims that industries are crying wolf. In fact industries like the steel industry, there’s a much bigger impact from recent movements in the dollar and that the carbon tax would be quote: “trivially small” after compensation.
ANDREW ROBB:
Well Kieran, the industry groups are widely and well represented on the government’s committee that has been meeting now for most of this year and yet on Friday they delivered a note to the prime minister with 39 signatures across many industry groups, all of them saying that they’ve been treated like mushrooms basically. That the process is a joke, the government hasn’t any clear idea of how this tax will work.
It’s a half-baked tax, a half-baked policy proposal. It’s been conceived out of political necessity, not out of economic necessity. This is a political measure, make no bones about it. The prime minister said she wouldn’t have a tax before the election and within three weeks had broken that promise because Bob Brown twisted her arm and said “you must”.
This is a political initiative it’s been perceived and understood as such now by industry and the unions and households, they are now seeing that hundreds-of-thousands of jobs are going to be lost as a consequence and the opinion is now, you are seeing it in the polls today, there is a revolt against this tax and there should be.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Let’s look at the budget preparations, the suggestion, reports that medical research are going to be cut and so on, you’ve been campaigning vigorously against those cuts, but Penny Wong yesterday, your opposite number, made the point that the Coalition’s numbers, the government says the Coalition’s numbers don’t stack. And that according to the Treasury analysis of your costings, the Coalition would be in deficit each year of the forward estimates.
How can you have credibility in attacking the government on its budget cuts and so on when the Treasury numbers themselves say that you would be in deficit on each of the four years of the estimates?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well firstly, what the Treasury numbers showed, what their determination showed was that even after allowing for the areas that we were in dispute with Treasury, that we would still deliver a larger surplus than the government. So that’s a nonsense that is a misrepresentation by Penny Wong.
KIERAN GILBERT:
But you are blocking $5 billion now in savings in the Senate. The Coalition is blocking $5 billion worth of savings.
ANDREW ROBB:
No, but if we’d been in government, if we’d been in government it would have been fundamentally different. We would have delivered $50 billion worth of cuts and the other factor is, I sat there with Ken Henry who said these measures are not acceptable and yet two months later in MYEFO, the half-yearly economic statement, the government actually picked up the conservative bias worth $2.5 billion that had been rejected by Treasury.
So I think you can treat a lot of the analysis and the goings on after the election as very much politics, because the government itself adopted some of the measures that the Treasury said were not genuine savings.
So it’s a situation now where Penny Wong instead of spending time trying to pan us to undermine out economic credibility she ought to get on a do a budget, it’s her first budget.
They’ve got perhaps close to the biggest deficit and a further blow-out than what they expected, they’ve got debt at nearly $100 billion and she’s spending her time trying to play political nonsense with us.
She should get on and make sure she focuses on the economy, one people’s jobs and the cost of living blow-out that’s occurring across this country.