E&OE

Mr Turnbull joins us now.  Good morning to you.  Thanks for your time.

Good morning, Mel, good morning, Kochie.

Now, why wait until Thursday?  You’ve got a shadow cabinet meeting at eight o’clock this morning, why not bring in the whole party room and call a leadership spill then?

Well we had, as you just said, we had about eight hours of meetings yesterday and there were many occasions, in fact I invited those who disagreed with my leadership to move to a spill if they wanted, as indeed did others.  So the reality is there was no move to do so.  There were plenty of opportunities yesterday and it wasn't taken up.

Now the fact of the matter is I am the leader. I have made the call. There is a majority of the Coalition in favour of accepting the deal the Government has offered to us, which is the result of our offer to them, our amendments to them, and they will save tens of thousands of jobs and they will make the emissions trading scheme both more responsible economically and better and more effective environmentally.

Look, Mel, Kochie, I say this to you and all your viewers; we have to be a credible party on climate change. We have to be credible. You know I believe passionately that Australia should take action responsibly on climate change and if the public see us as being credible and responsible on climate change then we can win their confidence. If we don't, we won't.

Absolutely, but they see a party divided at the moment.  You just look at the front pages all around the country this morning.  The West Australian calls it a ‘Liberal revolt’.  The Australian says it’s ‘your last stand’.  Commentator Michelle Grattan writing in the Melbourne Age says it’s time for Joe Hockey to take over.  Now both Joe and Tony Abbott have both ruled out a challenge.  Kevin Andrews is still an unknown.  So you’ve got a party split. You get criticised for being too weak.  Now you are being criticised for being too strong. How can you continue to lead a party that is so divided?

Well you’ve got to really ask yourself, how can a party be credible in the 21^st century if it doesn’t have a policy on climate change? How can we be credible if we are not going to say to the Australian people - we are committed to taking effective action on climate change? We did that when we were in government. Sure, we didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol, that was a mistake, but we had an emissions trading scheme. We started legislating for it. We had a whole range of other measures.

Now the fact is that what we’ve got now is an emissions trading scheme courtesy of Kevin Rudd which John Howard himself said was very similar to the one he proposed when he was in government. We had a number of objections to it in terms of its design. We addressed that with amendments that had been proved by the party room. We had good faith negotiations which went on for five weeks. We got most of what we asked for.  I think everyone acknowledges that.  And closing that deal enables us to resolve that issue. But, you see, if we want to keep on arguing about whether climate change is happening or whether you need to do anything about it, the reality is – and you guys know this better than anyone - the Australian people want action on climate change. I am committed to the Liberal Party being credible and relevant on climate change.

But then you’ve also got a lot of confusion in the community between the public voters who are split.  Many believe you, many are saying they’re quite sceptical. Now we are seeing your party, the same sort of open defiance – they’re either for or completely against and calling you mad, etc, etc.  So how do you convince your party to accept the deal?  How do you convince voters that this is the way to go when we’re seeing so much open defiance, I guess, from you guys?

Well, look, we’ve got to come to a landing now.  There are some people who say we should just defer it again, not deal with it now.  The public will see through that as just a delaying tactic.  The reality is this issue has been actively debated for years, for years and years; from actually 2006 when the Shergold report reported.  So we’ve had plenty of time to debate this.  It’s about time we dealt with it.

Now, as far as the public is concerned, I mean I think you guys have done some polls yourself but there is an overwhelming majority of the public want to see Australia take action on climate change.  There will always be debates about how you do it but at some point you’ve got to make a decision.  You can’t keep on deferring and deferring particularly when what you’re really doing is just avoiding making a decision.

Why do it now when we’ve got…why not delay until February which was an option because Copenhagen is next month?  We’re going to see what the world is going to do about it.  The United States hasn’t made a decision yet, China hasn’t made a decision.  Why do we have to be amongst the leaders?  We might get it wrong.

Well Kochie you’ve got to remember that we crossed that bridge when we were in government.  We decided that we would have an emissions trading scheme to put a price on carbon to enable renewable energy and all those other measures to come into play. You do need a price on carbon.  And we decided we’d do that in advance of and in order to promote a global agreement but we’d keep the price low and slow and then crank it up as other countries came on board.

Now we’re not the first country to move.  The Europeans have been doing this for years.  The Americans are well advanced.  They’ve got a bill that’s through the House of Representatives.  The President is completely committed to it.  The Chinese are actually taking considerable action to reduce their emissions and improve their emissions efficiency.   So the idea that we’re out there miles ahead of the pack is simply not true.

Now the fact is that nothing is going to emerge out of Copenhagen that is going to change anybody’s mind.  There’s not going to be an agreement there. All the countries have basically said what they’re going to do.  I think it will be, Copenhagen will be a modest step forward.  And the debate that we have had in our party room between people who believe in action on climate change and people who don’t will be exactly the same in February as it is today.  This is a good time to move on, get it resolved and then move on to other issues.

This whole thing though, it’s almost as though the leadership and your party has taken over a little bit of the argument about climate change at the moment and as Kochie was saying the headlines and all the papers everywhere.  Andrew Robb, his change in view clearly floored you from looking at your reaction.  I understand that one of the reasons he spoke out against you yesterday was because you showed exclusive Frontier Economics research to the Government before your own party room.  Did you?

Well, again, that’s not right.  I mean Frontier did a report for us which we shared with the whole world.  As an effort to get additional…as an effort to persuade the Government to take this particular approach I commissioned Frontier to do some more modelling really as an effort to persuade the Government.

Now we weren’t successful in that respect but the whole purpose of Frontier was to have a smoother transition of electricity prices so they didn’t jump up in one big hit, and so smooth that trajectory.  And the Government came back and dealt with it in a different way with a subsidy for small and medium businesses that would effectively smooth that transition.

But I just say this apropos Andrew.  Andrew has been very ill so he stepped back, as you know, but he was very closely kept aware of all of the negotiations.  His staff in particular were intimately involved and were at most of the meetings, so he knew exactly where the negotiations were heading and really was, even if at one step removed because we didn’t want to hassle him given his condition, he was fully aware of where we were heading.  So, yes, his remarks yesterday did come as a surprise to Ian Macfarlane and I.

I must admit, I’m a bit bored with all the politics of this emissions trading scheme. 

Well, that’s right, you know something Kochie, I think most Australians are.  The question is, are we going to take climate change seriously or not?

Okay, that’s question number one.  Question number two – you’re agreeing because you got big changes through that gave concessions to the big polluters to the detriment of all of us ordinary individuals.  We have research out today that says everybody sitting at home having breakfast, what this scheme means is that you will pay $1,100 more a year out of your household budget for this.  Now, have you sold the general public out in favour of the big polluters?

Well Kochie, again, there’s a bit of a fallacy there because the big ‘polluters’ are the same power stations that provide the electricity that’s running the television sets that we’re all watching, or if you’re a green activist, the electricity that’s coming into the computer that you type your protest letter on is coming from a big power station.

What we’ve got to do – it’s not a question of looking after big polluters, it’s a question of making sure that we make the transition from a very emissions intensive economy today…

We wanted to change from coal to windmills and solar panels…

Yes but you’ve got to make that transition, Kochie, in a way that doesn’t destroy needlessly, or at all, tens of thousands of jobs.  So it’s also a question of protecting our emissions intensive trade exposed industries. 

Now you talk about the rest of the world.  One of the concessions we won from the Government was that the protection for the emissions intensive trade exposed industries – these are the guys, you know, like aluminium, that are making a product that is sold in the global markets, it’s got a global price, it’s very energy intensive, hence it’s emissions intensive – and they can’t pass on the price increases because they’re selling a global commodity.  So what we’ve secured is a commitment from the Government that their protection, in the case of aluminium, would come down by 2020 I think about 91 per cent, still a very high level but then would not go down any further until 70 per cent of their competitors around the world have a comparable carbon price.

Okay but we’re spending more on protecting big polluters and less on cushioning low income households, pensioners, normal Australian families aren’t we?

Well there is a lot of money and this is one of the criticisms of the Frontier model by the way, that there was not provision for household assistance.  So that is one of the issues that we had with that but as far as the Government’s scheme, there is a, I think, an adequate and fair and sustainable level of assistance for households.  It is somewhat less than had originally been proposed by the Government because the carbon price is assumed to be lower.

But the fact of the matter is Kochie, again, you’ve got to remember we talk about assistance to households.  Many of those households have mums and dads who are working in emissions intensive trade exposed industries.  So if you have a scheme that puts the mums and the dads out of work it’s not much good either.

Yeah, fair point.

Malcolm Turnbull, thank you for your time this morning.  We know you’ve got a big day ahead.

Yeah, great to be with you.

You’ve got a meeting in half an hour, we’ll let you go.

Okay, thanks a lot.

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