LEIGH SALES: Penny Wong, Christopher Pyne, thank you very much for being with us.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It's a pleasure.
SENATOR PENNY WONG, CAMPAIGN SPOKESPERSON: Good to be with you.
SALES: You're two of South Australia's highest profile MPs so I'd like to start there. Today's Newspoll has the Xenophon party securing a 29 per cent primary vote in your state. What is going on with South Australians that around a third of them are considering voting for somebody other than a major party, Christopher Pyne?
PYNE: Well, Nick Xenophon, Leigh, is a populist, so he's able to agree with everybody that he speaks to because he never actually has to deliver on any policy whereas of course the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, being the two parties of government, clearly have a more responsible position that they have to adopt.
SALES: Senator Wong, even if what Mr Pyne says is right that Nick Xenophon is a populist, surely for that level of voter attraction, that has to be a bit of a wake-up call for you guys in the major parties?
WONG: Look, Nick's a very effective, clever politician. He's very good at getting attention. He's also has been around a very long time. But I think the issue here is that Nick Xenophon will be elected, he will be elected. The question is who comes in on his coat tails and what are their views? And we've heard precious little from them.
SALES: Let's switch to the bigger picture, national campaign. Penny Wong, if Labor has a legitimate case for the election, why are you building your campaign on fear-mongering around things like the privatisation of Medicare and the introduction of a 15 per cent GST when the Government has explicitly ruled those things out.
WONG: Well, let's look at the facts. Firstly, in terms of explicitly ruling things out, everyone remembers Tony Abbott saying no cuts to health, no cuts to education and we all know how that went. And let's look at the facts on Medicare. This Government, through its term, has done nothing other than attack and undermine Medicare. Whether it's the GP tax that was proposed in the 2014 Budget, the cuts to the bulk billing rebate, the cuts which are manifesting as a GP tax by stealth through the freezing of the Medicare rebate, these are attacks on Medicare.
SALES: Christopher Pyne.
WONG: And I just would make this point too, on privatisation we know that the Government had plans to privatise the Medicare payment system. I would note that what has broken today is that a News Limited journalist was refused access to some of those documents on the basis of cabinet confidentiality. Did these go to cabinet?
SALES: Christopher Pyne, right of reply.
PYNE: Well Leigh, Labor has run out of campaign ideas. They've jettisoned all of their policies, all of their spendometer policies and they've decided in their political desperation to spend the last two weeks building a straw man and campaigning against them. Everyone knows that the Government has no policy to privatise Medicare, in fact quite the opposite. All we were proposing was a taskforce to look at the feasibility of collaborating with the private sector to deliver the Medicare payment system, something Chris Bowen said in 2009 the Government was considering.
Let me quote Chris Bowen: "I see those two processes coming together in terms of joining up of our IT and delivering a better IT collaboration with the private sector in relation to Medicare." So Chris Bowen said exactly the same thing that the Government was contemplating. But we've ruled that out. We've said there'll be no part of Medicare that will change whatsoever.
SALES: Let me go back to Penny Wong. Penny Wong, is that something that Labor would consider? I mean, the system's been in place for 30 years. Christopher Pyne points out that Chris Bowen's raised the need to find efficiencies within it. WONG: Well, Chris Bowen was talking about collaboration, not privatisation. I want to respond to Christopher. He talks about this being a big lie. Well, we all remember the lie that was told at the last election which was that the Liberals would match Labor's school funding dollar for dollar. Well, that evaporated pretty quickly, didn't it?
SALES: Let me, sorry, can I just bring Christopher Pyne in there because you did raise that before, which is the credibility problem that your side has, Christopher Pyne, because you did say certain things before the last election that you then changed when you were in government. So is there a credibility issue here for you?
PYNE: Well the credibility issue, Leigh, let me just give you another example.
SALES: No, no, can we stick with your side, please?
PYNE: Well I think everybody believes Malcolm Turnbull because he is a very credible politician. He's only been in the job for nine months- WONG: -He's changed his position of climate change and marriage equality.
PYNE: I think people want to give him the chance to show what he can do in government for the next three years. But in terms of credibility, we are proposing a company tax cut which will drive jobs and growth. In 2011 Bill Shorten said that was exactly what the economy needed. Now in 2016, Bill Shorten's saying the sky will fall in if that occurs. Now, Bill Shorten can't keep a position from Lateline to lunchtime.
SALES: Before we run out of time, I want to go to a couple of other quick issues.
WONG: Can I respond to one thing there?
SALES: Just briefly, please.
WONG: Briefly. Australians, I think, have lost a lot of faith in Malcolm Turnbull's credibility given that Malcolm Turnbull, despite what he previously said, has now adopted Tony Abbott's position on climate change and marriage equality.
PYNE: Well that's not true, of course. He hasn't done anything of the sort.
SALES: I want to actually go to the issue of same-sex marriage and I want to ask you both just a simple question on different topic each to get your responses. On same-sex marriage and the idea of having a national vote around that, Senator Wong, will Labor back that in the Parliament, yes or no?
WONG: I'm not going to countenance that because the national vote I want to deliver marriage equality is the election on 2 July. That's the people's vote and they can have a choice: they can elect a government that will deliver marriage equality or they can reelect a government who's got a Prime Minister who has, I think, in the most abject way simply bowed down to what the conservatives in his party wanted, which was a plebiscite. That's the choice.
SALES: Christopher Pyne, if you are reelected and there is a plebiscite, if you look at the public opinion polls, would it not overwhelmingly come back in favour of same-sex marriage and the Coalition would then have to implement that policy?
PYNE: Well of course. I mean, there's absolutely no possibility that if a plebiscite was carried for marriage equality that any government would not implement that. And can I say, harnessing the word homophobia, as Bill Shorten did yesterday in relation to the plebiscite, is a disgracefully low point for the Labor Party.
WONG: Oh, come on. Seriously.
PYNE: I mean, giving everybody the same vote as politicians on marriage equality is hardly homophobic. It's called democracy.
SALES: Christopher Pyne, I want to ask you a simple, straightforward question as well. You ran into a lot of trouble trying to get your higher education reforms through the Senate. Are they still Coalition policy, yes or no?
PYNE: Well, Simon Birmingham has released a Coalition policy around higher education. Some parts of the old policy remain extant, some parts have been changed. But you'd need to ask him the specifics of that particular area of Government policy at this stage.
SALES: Senator Wong, right of reply on that.
WONG: Yes. First on the homophobia issue, Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull and the other moderates are not even able to contain the homophobia in their own side in the debate. They have not been able the stop people or to counter Cory Bernardi, George Christensen and many others saying things which are most hurtful to the LGBTIQ community. That is the reality. I'd also make the point on Medicare that Christopher hasn't responded to, which is: what are the cabinet documents which were refused? I mean, if this is such a scare campaign, Christopher, you tell us, what went to cabinet-
PYNE: -Well that's just made-up rubbish. That is just made-up nonsense-
WONG: -It's not-
PYNE: - which is part of your scare campaign.
WONG: That's not, well-
PYNE: -You know as well as I do there is no policy to privatise Medicare, not now, not ever and Labor has abandoned any pretext of having a positive election-
WONG: -Just answer the question. Why don't you just answer the question?
PYNE: Because you're just making up things as you go along, Penny.
WONG: Well it's not true. I'm not. I'm actually-
PYNE: -And it's beneath you. It is beneath you.
WONG: There is an FOI - there is an FOI.
PYNE: -You are better than that.
WONG: There is a Freedom of Information rejection based on cabinet confidentiality in relation to Medicare payments. I'm simply asking: what went to cabinet?
PYNE: Well I'm in cabinet; I can tell you there's never been a proposal come to cabinet to change the IT arrangements around Medicare ever.
WONG: Well then-
SALES: -We are unfortunately out of time, so we're going to have to leave it on that note of disagreement. Christopher Pyne, Penny Wong, thank you very much for joining us.
PYNE: Pleasure. Thank you.
WONG: Good to be with you.
ENDS