Julie Bishop - Member for Curtin

Channel 10, The Circle

Friday, 23 July 2010

Subjects: Climate change; same-sex marriage; workplace relations

E&OE…

JOURNALIST    Well it has been a busy week in the Federal Election campaign. So far we’ve seen handshakes, hugs, baby kissing and slogans galore. Here for a chat we welcome back two MPs from opposing parties. In Julia Gillard’s corner we have the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin and in Tony Abbott’s corner we have his deputy Julie Bishop. Please welcome them both to The Circle.

Maybe if I could start with you Minister Macklin about…

JENNY MACKLIN    Jenny.

JOURNALIST    Jenny, you’re happy for me to call you that? Jenny this morning Julia Gillard announced a climate change policy that is going to involve 150 volunteers. Do you think there will be some concerns with people who are voting for the party that don’t really know what they are getting in terms of climate change if it is going to be left up to these volunteers?

JENNY MACKLIN    I think the main thing that Julia Gillard is saying is that we really do need a consensus about climate change in this country. We thought we had one but, as I think as Julie would acknowledge, Mr Abbott really said well that was broken in December last year. So we want to go out and discuss this issue with the Australian people over the next 12 months. We do think that it is important to act on climate change. We do recognise that it is real but that getting the actions right really requires us to talk with the Australian people.

JOURNALIST    Jenny I’ve got to say that it seems like a stalling tactic to me. If it is so important for us to act why do we need another whole year to gas-bag about it?

JENNY MACKLIN    Well we put the legislation to the Parliament three times and three times it was rejected. We thought we had an agreement with Mr Turnbull and almost got it through last year then of course Mr Abbott took over and said, well that’s not the way it is going to be any more. He famously was heard to say, if you will excuse the French, that “climate change is crap”. We don’t believe that we think it’s serious but we also know that we’ve really got to get an agreement across the political spectrum about what needs to be done.

JOURNALIST    Before we go to Julie, how do we know who these 150 people are? I’d have reservations though.

JENNY MACKLIN    That’s a fair question and Julia Gillard anticipated your question I think when she said that she really wants them to be drawn from a wide cross section of the Australian community so that we make sure that we get lots of different points of view and we’ll listen to what people have to say.

JOURNALIST    But Julie what guarantee would we have if we voted for your party that something going to be done on climate change?

JULIE BISHOP    We put out our policy on climate change in January. It is a direct action plan. It doesn’t involve a tax, it doesn’t involve an emissions trading scheme but it will reduce emissions by a whole raft of initiatives including cleaning up power stations, planting trees, soil sequestration.

But what I am concerned about, and I think the Australian people are concerned about, is they don’t know what the Labor Party policy on climate change is. They’ve now got a citizen’s assembly to come up with a proposal. And Jenny if this assembly of 150 people say yes there should be an emissions trading scheme, there should be a carbon tax, does that mean that the Labor Party will introduce it? And that means the Australian people won’t have had a chance to vote on it. So if you introduce it in the next term they haven’t voted on it in this election, they won’t have voted on it in the next election.

My other point is. A citizen’s assembly of 150 representative people? I thought we had one. It is called the House of Representatives.

JENNY MACKLIN    And as you know we tried to get the legislation through the Senate, we had the agreement of the Liberal Party…

JULIE BISHOP    But you’ve got a deal with the Greens.

JENNY MACKLIN    They welshed on the deal.

JULIE BISHOP    But you’ve done a deal with the Greens for preferences.

JENNY MACKLIN    The Greens voted against it as well.

JULIE BISHOP    The preference deal is a real issue.

JOURNALIST    And people have obviously heard your points of view there and they are going to be making up their minds very soon. We had Senator Bob Brown early in the show, in the week sorry, and Yumi asked him about same sex marriage. Let’s have a listen to what he said about that.

BOB BROWN    I’m totally in favour of it and so are most of Australians. And I’ve got a terrific partner Paul – it’s a bit far down the line for us to be worried about it – but I see young people who want to express their love for each other through a marriage ceremony.

If South Africa can make it okay and Canada and the Netherlands and Catholic Spain why not Australia? And I think Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott should come into this century and catch up.

JOURNALIST    Now we got immediate applause from our audience there. Comments on that. Do you think your parties should catch up with what is going on?

JENNY MACKLIN    Well we do think that marriage is between a man and a woman and that’s the situation now with the Marriage Act. But what we have done in Government is make sure that we get rid of a whole lot of discrimination that did exist. And it was agreed with across the political spectrum that we get rid of discrimination in social security, for example, superannuation, those sorts of issues.

JOURNALIST    So it will still be a no to same-sex marriage?

JENNY MACKLIN    That’s right.

JOURNALIST    That is still discrimination though. How does your party stand on that?

JULIE BISHOP    The Marriage Act defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman and it is a matter that people feel very sensitive about, Christians particularly. They see marriage as a union blessed by God and they feel very sensitive about it. As long as there is no discrimination against same-sex couples, and both parties have ensured that there is no discrimination, then I think that…

JOURNALIST    Well the fact that they can’t get married is discrimination right there.

JULIE BISHOP    But marriage is very sacred for a number of people in the Christian community particularly and I think that as long as people are not discriminated against, their relationships are respected then it shouldn’t be an issue.

JOURNALIST    We’ve got a no still on either side. So what we’re seeing here, and after week one what I am seeing as a viewer, is two parties with not that much that separates them. What do you think are the key things that separate your parties?

JENNY MACKLIN    I think there are a number of issues that are really different between us. One of the issues that has really dominated the agenda this week has been the Opposition’s view about WorkChoices. We of course take a very strong view that WorkChoices should not come back and we’ve had all sorts of views come out of Mr Abbott’s mouth, Julie herself, other people. So we want a fair system at work. The Opposition don’t.

Another example would be in trade training. The Opposition want to talk about $1 billion out of our trade training centres, we want more people to learn a trade.

JOURNALIST    Quick yes or no. Will WorkChoices come back?

JULIE BISHOP    No. We want to stop the waste, stop the wasteful spending, stop these additional taxes, pay off Labor’s debt, put the budget back into surplus and stop the people smuggling trade.

JOURNALIST    And before we go, it is going to hard I know you are politicians, you love a bit of pollie-waffle. One word, I will give you a couple of seconds to think, why we should vote for your leader. One word. Who wants to go first?

JENNY MACKLIN    We want a fair Australia…

JULIE BISHOP    That’s not one word!

JOURNALIST    One word!

JENNY MACKLIN    Fair.

JOURNALIST    Fairness. Okay.

JULIE BISHOP    Competent.

JOURNALIST    Please thank our guests this morning. Federal Minister for Families and Housing Jenny Macklin, and Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop thank you for joining us ladies.