Tony Windsor discusses the major issues from Parliament
Independent MP Tony Windsor talks about the the so-called 'slush fund affair', the Gonski report on education, poker machine legislation, the NBN and energy.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Our top story is the AWU affair and today's stormy exchange between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott that capped off a toxic week, indeed, a toxic year in parliamentary politics.Important new legislation was introduced into the Parliament, but real policy debate was drowned out by the uproar.
Well for his take on events, I was joined just a short time ago by the independent MP Tony Windsor.
He was in our Canberra studio.
Tony Windsor, thanks for being there.
TONY WINDSOR, INDEPENDENT MP: Pleasure, Tony. Good to talk to you.
TONY JONES: Was today Tony Abbott's Godwin Grech moment?
TONY WINDSOR: Well, I think we'll find out next week, but probably was and I haven't been a student of the detail of this. There's been a lot of other more important things happening in my mind. I know that two major groups have got to try and denigrate each other to such an extent that they achieve some victory over each other.
But I think Tony had the opportunity today to sort of put the Prime Minister away if in fact there was a gun with anything in it and I don't think he did so. I thought he appeared a little bit apprehensive, actually, and almost as if he was more interested - and the strategy would've been - almost as if he was more interested in keeping the thing going rather than stopping it and putting the Prime Minister out of her misery.
TONY JONES: Julia Gillard says this was - calls Tony Abbott's judgment into question in the same way that Malcolm Turnbull's judgment was called into question and his leadership in the end called into question over the Godwin Grech affair. The argument, the allegation that the Prime Minister has done something criminal not backed up, how serious is that?
TONY WINDSOR: Well I don't see it as being terribly serious. Others'll have different views. I've only been half tuned into this. You know, I'm not a criminal lawyer, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an industrial lawyer and I've been working on the basis that if something real comes out of this, that someone'll probably mention it to me in some way and I'll be asked to adjudicate.
If it's something to do with the hung Parliament, well, well and good; if it's a thing that's in the courts, well, well and good. But the little bit I know about it, I think it's dying very quickly.
TONY JONES: Were you surprised then to wake up Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition, on breakfast television accusing the Prime Minister of Australia of criminal activities?
TONY WINDSOR: Well, there again, I've had meetings since early this morning and I didn't see Tony Abbott do that. The first I heard of that was actually in Question Time when it came out of the mouth of the Prime Minister. So I wasn't aware of all that fine print and detail that the students of Sherlock Holmes have obviously been up to date with all day.
There's been an enormous amount happening in the building and I wasn't up to speed on that. I listened with some degree of interest and then got bored again.
TONY JONES: Well you have been in Parliament all week though and in fact Tony Abbott all this week has said very little about this. He's sat back behind the scenes. Julie Bishop's been doing all the questioning on this. What do you think drew him out into the open today and were you surprised to see this sudden change of tactics?
TONY WINDSOR: Well I think the Prime Minister did that by moving the motion early on to suspend standing orders. Let's forget about Question Time early on. I think Tony - and I'm not privy to any of this, but I think he probably - because he had all his notes there, I think he was probably going to let six or seven questions go, establish the ground work and then move a suspension of his own.
So I think the Prime Minister getting in first, putting it on - full on him at the start of Question Time probably strategically threw the Coalition a bit off the mark. What that means long term, I don't think it means much as all, but I think it means probably the end of the issue, unless there's some real legal documents that mean something out there, I think it's probably over.
TONY JONES: So you haven't felt it necessary to follow the toing and froing on this issue in Parliament and in the newspapers, the slow drip of documents, the attempt to undermine Julia Gillard's credibility and trust in her as a prime minister?
TONY WINDSOR: No, I haven't because I don't have to go there. I can appreciate that the strategy people of the major parties, there's an elections coming up next year, they can all play their games to try and create the ascendancy.
Abbott and Gillard, the sort of 50/50 and we have got to work at the margins to eradicate the belief and integrity in each other. They can do that, but one of the good things of being an independent, you don't have to involve yourself in that.
After the next election, there'll be another government. It might be a hung parliament, it might be Liberal, might be Labor. I've lived in that world where you don't determine who the - the Parliament is or the Government is unless there's a hung parliament and that's the environment I work in.
The environment they work in is two management teams trying to take over the management of the nation. But I don't have to go there. I don't have to read the paper. I don't read The Australian anyway. Our family still uses Sorbent.
So I don't have to go to that area every day and plug myself in. I don't think I've read any of the papers today. I don't think I read any yesterday.
TONY JONES: Does it disturb you then - you've talked about this as a kind of tactical operation, like a warfare between two competing sides. As we said earlier, we had Julie Bishop out there apparently running the show. Christopher Pyne said she was running the show all week. But then you've got Tony Abbott's chief-of-staff wandering around with a great bundle of documents under her arm on the floor of Parliament House so it suddenly seemed that the office of the leader was actually running the show.
What do you think's actually going on?
TONY WINDSOR: Well, there again I didn't notice those sort of sideshows. I've been a bit more interested in the Murray-Darling, the poker machines issue - there's a whole range of issues. Been an extraordinary number of meetings this week and I apologise to some of the media that I haven't been able to ring back. It hasn't been deliberate. It's just we've been buried in a whole range of actual decision-making and executing the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition or his chief-of-staff, that's - I'm not all that interested in it.
I wasn't sent down here to do that. I think we're all here to address issues and I'd rather be doing that than fiddling around with the sort of politics on the sidelines. But the media put it right in the centre. It should be off to the side.
TONY JONES: Well, I mean, the problem is the great showcase for what the media looks at is in Question Time and this is the drama, it's where the drama of Parliament is played out and the drama has entirely been on the Opposition side devoted to pursuing this scandal all week.
What do you think the public is making of this? Do you think they are following it as closely as the aficionados are or is it - are they just getting a growing sense that mud is sticking to both sides here?
TONY WINDSOR: Well I think those who don't like Julia Gillard have their view reinforced. Those who think Tony Abbott's strategy isn't a very good one have their view reinforced. Those who don't particularly care about either of them probably look at the place in frustration. That would in my view in terms of the dynamics of the political situation probably play to the favour of the Opposition because they're trying to paint the place as being - and have been right from the start - as being dysfunctional.
So if you can keep that focus on Question Time that they did for a long time, that the place is in chaos - which it wasn't - but they created that mood during Question Tim. Now they've got not only the chaos but criminal activity and "Can this person lead the country?", and of course the Prime Minister's turning that back on Abbott and, "You make false accusations like this, accuse me of being a criminal and you can't prove anything," well, "Are you fit to lead the country?," well, I think the country wants all of those who were elected, including those two, to actually get on and do something.
Regrettably, the play in the media is more about this business about whether there's a smoking gun or a hidden document or the integrity of the Prime Minister or Tony Abbott remaining mute for two or three days - they become the issues and here we are talking about them.
I don't think they are the issues. I think there's some incredible issues in this Parliament. I'm very proud to have been in this Parliament actually. I think it's done a lot of hard work, long term work, things for the future and I would have thought that that's why we were here.
But a lot of this stuff is short term, negative, step-by-step. Even this week - and I know there's some aspirational arguments in terms of this and the Government's got to lift its game in relation to it, but the Gonski review, the Gonski report, the Gonski legislation. If they start to back up this with some cash, then forget about this crazy stuff that Wayne Swan's on about, you know, surplus at all costs; start to nail some of these things. There's some long term real benefits built into this.
We've seen the Murray-Darling, the broadband stuff - incredible for this century in country Australia and Australians generally. The climate change things are starting to come through the process. All the rubbish about carbon tax killing the world - that sort of stuff is dissipating and we're starting to see some of the credit side of that. I'm seeing it in my electorate.
Only just last week an abattoir announced a biogas plant. Got a little bit of help out of the clean energy fund. And when you look at the savings they get - and they do make some marginal reductions in emissions and reductions in natural gas consumption, etc. - but when you look at the savings they get, the savings in the electricity, they pay for the project in two years.
That's incredible stuff. And if you're a country member looking for value add and cost savings and productivity, they're the sorts of things that I'm excited about. And I think we should be right on those things. The long term things rather than this short term nonsense that we seem to be concentrating on now.
TONY JONES: OK. Well, I mean, the Government has been saying let's stick to these subjects, let's talk about them, let's debate them. They've been putting the legislation into Parliament.
The Gonski legislation you just mentioned - let's quickly go over that because I think perhaps one of the reasons the media aren't taking it as seriously as perhaps you are is because the money is not there. It's absolutely not clear that it will be funded to the degree that Gonski has asked. So, I mean, how can you actually shift that? That's a pretty fundamental thing. In your position you may be in a better position to do that than most.
TONY WINDSOR: Maybe I am and what I will be doing is demanding that they actually do something about this. And maybe the media - because this is - I've never seen something like the Gonski thing in terms of education in my political career. It demolishes the divisions, the old political divisions between the three sectors. It actually follows the student with needs-based funding. Incredible for a lot of country schools and city schools as well if we're able to break that down and fund it.
And that's where I'm going to - the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, the Treasurer, say, "Oh, we've got more coming later on. Maybe earlier in the year." They've got to nail this otherwise they'll be seen as just being purely aspirational and it's all out there and we can develop the words. The Treasurer's got to really concentrate on this I think because people won't forgive them. This is potentially the best policy of this Parliament.
TONY JONES: So what are they saying behind the scenes when you have your meetings and you say, "Where's the money? Give us some figures. Where's it's going to come from? How's it going to be funded?" When you say things like that to the Government, what are they saying back?
TONY WINDSOR: Well there'll be more announced in February-March - I can't remember the exact - but earlier in the year. And I know Rob Oakeshott and myself and others and people in the community are saying, "This is good policy." Either forget about this surplus nonsense or rearrange the deck chairs in terms of the middle-class welfare.
If you're serious about families, serious about kids, serious about long-term education, serious about the Asian continent - the Asian Century, serious about broadband, serious about linking all these things together, get serious about putting some money into it. And I bet you if you actually asked the community and said, "Do you want the baby bonus or do you want your kid to be educated properly irrespective of where he is and breakdown all this nonsense, the political nonsense we've had for 40 years," they'd all say, "Yes, yes, yes and do it."
And that's the challenge the Prime Minister's got. I think she's up to it because her good suit is education and learning and the future. But I think the Treasurer's got to - or the Government have got to start recognise they've got a winner here, but you've got to back it and you can't back it with $10. You've got to back it with real money that starts to happen soon rather than later.
TONY JONES: So you obviously think and you're making the argument that people are prepared for some pain and middle class areas in other areas, perhaps even tax rises in order to fund this?
TONY WINDSOR: Potentially. There's plenty of savings in the system anyway. But what is the most important thing? If you're in government, if you're in the Parliament, the most important thing has to be education and health. Now we'd all like to see the Pacific Highway finished early and something else happen and money out here for all these projects.
But if priority - and if money's tight - if the priorities are education and health and there hasn't been something like Gonski around before, so it should accelerate itself in terms of the priorities of the nation.
So personally I think the nation is prepared to say, "We'll give way on some of this John Howard middle-class welfare gifts that we got out of the last boom. We'll give way there if you can show us that you're serious about a long term educational thrust that takes the old political divisions out of the education argument and actually follows the students' needs with dollars."
That's probably the greatest thing that this parliament could do, probably outside the climate change stuff. But that's the challenge for this government this year: are you prepared to do it or do you just want to have a Mickey Mouse budget surplus that makes the Treasurer look good for five minutes and the population says, "Well what have we done?"
TONY JONES: Tony Windsor, remarkable in fact that we've managed to end the year actually speaking about policy after this week in politics. We thank you very much for being there.
TONY WINDSOR: Forgive me, forgive me.
TONY JONES: No need to forgive you. Have a good Christmas.
TONY WINDSOR: Thanks, Tony, and to you too.
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