Tony Abbott interveiw with Steve Price - Radio MTR, Melbourne

28/07/10

Subjects: Coalition’s paid parental leave scheme; Cabinet leak re Julia Gillard’s views on paid parental leave and the increase in the pension; family on the campaign trail; exercise; Government’s cash for clunkers scheme.

E&OE

STEVE PRICE:

…on paid parental leave?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, it’s a question of two different schemes. I mean, the Labor scheme is not really paid parental leave because it’s essentially a re-badged Baby Bonus. It doesn’t pay mothers at their actual wage. It’s only for 18 weeks, not the 26 weeks that it should be if mothers are to properly bond with their children.

STEVE PRICE:

But yours slugs big business.

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, it has to be paid for and I think that the fairest way to pay for it is this levy on the taxable incomes, over $5 million, of larger businesses.

STEVE PRICE:

I noticed your Shadow Treasurer this morning likening it to the Ansett levy. Is that a fair comparison?

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s going for a specific purpose, that’s why I think it’s legitimately called a levy. The thing about paid parental leave is it will be very, very good for mothers, very, very good for families and I think, in the long run, very good for the economy because, if we can get more women into the workforce, who choose to be in a workforce, we’ll have higher productivity, we’ll have more people and obviously we’ll boost the participation rate.

STEVE PRICE:

It’s a scheme though that you once said you would introduce over your dead body.

TONY ABBOTT:

And you’re right Steve. I have grown up in this respect. I have thought myself into what I think is a much better position and sometimes that happens. Sometimes people change their minds. They’re convinced by their wife, by their kids, by their colleagues that it’s time to move on and on this one I think we’ve got to acknowledge the reality of modern Australian families. Most families need more than one income to survive and they can’t afford to lose that income for a significant period of time when they have kids. And if we want families to have a real choice to have kids, we’ve got to make it affordable.

STEVE PRICE:

We saw on Nine News last night, Laurie Oakes claim that he had been leaked information that the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, had, in either, and this is unclear, a Cabinet meeting or in a meeting of the so-called ‘kitchen Cabinet’, voiced concerns about paid parental leave and indeed, she made the point that the pension rise, they shouldn’t be doing it because older people don’t vote Labor. Can you believe that she would say those things, seriously?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, Steve, I just can’t comment, obviously, on what may or may not have been said inside a private Labor meeting, but the fact that some people are commenting on this suggests that there is a lot of dissension in the ranks of the Labor Party and you’ve got to say that if the Government does get re-elected, it will be a very divided government. They don’t know who the Finance Minister will be; they don’t know who the Defence Minister will be. Had there been a deal to put Kevin Rudd into the Foreign Ministry? We don’t know. So it’s a very, very unhappy Government and voters should not put a dysfunctional government back into power.

STEVE PRICE:

In her initial media statement yesterday in regard to this leak that Laurie Oakes had, the Prime Minister in her statement said Cabinet discussions are confidential, if the Liberal Party have allegations to make, they should put their names to them. She was claiming that somehow the Liberal Party have leaked this information.

TONY ABBOTT:

Yeah, and there were no members of the Liberal Party in the Cabinet. There were no members of Liberal Party in the ‘kitchen Cabinet’ so I think that’s, again, a bit of a smokescreen, a sort of a panicky smokescreen. Plainly, there are some people inside the Labor Party who are very, very unhappy with the Government and very unhappy with the Prime Minister and its dysfunctional government.

STEVE PRICE:

Do you suspect that leaker might be Kevin Rudd?

TONY ABBOTT:

Yeah, Steve, look, I just don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t want to speculate.

STEVE PRICE:

I bet you were doing a bit of speculating last night.

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, look it’s easy to speculate but in the end, I wouldn’t know. All I know is that only members of the Labor Party were in the Cabinet, only members of the Labor Party were in the ‘kitchen Cabinet’ and it must have been a senior member of the Labor Party who is responsible for putting this information into the public arena.

STEVE PRICE:

You were gutting fish yesterday. Standing next to you was your daughter. The day before you were in a child care centre with your wife. Is this a deliberate Liberal tactic to show up Julia Gillard’s lack of family by taking your family on the campaign trail?

TONY ABBOTT:

No, Steve. Look, about the only time I get to see my family these days, is if they come on the campaign trail. So I was really pleased when Louise decided she wanted to come out with me for a day and, obviously, I was…

STEVE PRICE:

Was she pleased?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think she had a good time, I mean…

STEVE PRICE:

What, gutting fish in far north Queensland with you?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, politicians have to do this kind of thing all the time. But I think that for others it’s actually quite interesting and even a little amusing to see the life that politicians go through.

STEVE PRICE:

We’re only 10 or so days into this campaign, but I take you back to Monday last week. I talked to you and you said, look it was too dark, you had a sore calf and you didn’t do any exercise. I wrote a column the next day saying, get on your bike or else you’re going to not be able to perform properly.

TONY ABBOTT:

Yes, I took your advice and I think every day since then I have been getting some serious exercise, mostly on the bike. I didn’t feel 100 per cent that morning and I think the absence of the run or the ride might have contributed to it. So I’m taking your advice Steve.

STEVE PRICE:

Well, you need the endorphin rush, I think. Can I just ask you quickly: your reaction to this idea of the clunkers scheme where you’re going to be able to sell your cheap car, if it’s pre-1994, if you buy a green vehicle. Isn’t that just going to falsely distort the car market?

TONY ABBOTT:

That’s certainly my initial reaction to it. It strikes me as having all the potential to be pink batts for cars, to create a very distorted artificial market and end up being a complete waste of money. The interesting thing is that the cars that you can buy are basically all imported cars, so we’ll quite possibly end up putting a lot of Australian motor mechanics out of business without helping the Australian motor industry, because the cars people will buy will all be imported European models.

STEVE PRICE:

Well, it hasn’t worked anywhere they’ve tried it.

TONY ABBOTT:

No. It seems to be a bit of a steal from President Obama and that scheme in America was an absolute shambles and when this was first mooted publicly in Australia about a year or so back, the Industry Minister, Senator Carr, who I wouldn’t normally regard as a great authority, but not entirely devoid of commonsense, said, look, it was expensive and unnecessary. So obviously in the frenetic, fervoured atmosphere of a campaign they’ve come up with this policy which struck some marketing guru as a good idea. But whether they’ve really thought it through, I doubt very much.

STEVE PRICE:

You’ve got your Women’s Weekly yet?

TONY ABBOTT:

I haven’t but I gather there’s a big spread in there?

STEVE PRICE:

Yeah, it’ll be a bit of reading for you tonight. Thanks for you time, appreciate it. Where are you?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I’m in heavy traffic.

STEVE PRICE:

Do you know what city you’re in?

TONY ABBOTT:

Crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I’d recognise that coat hanger anywhere.

STEVE PRICE:

Good on you. Thanks for your time.

TONY ABBOTT:

Thanks Steve.