Transcript

of

THE HON PETER COSTELLO MP

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR HIGGINS

Interview with Lyndal Curtis

AM, ABC Radio

8.10am

E & OE

SUBJECTS:      New paperback edition of Costello Memoirs, economy, Party organisation.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Peter Costello, welcome to AM.

PETER COSTELLO:

Thanks very much Lyndal.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

There has been some commentary in the papers over the weekend calling on you to stay. Can we get it clear – will you be changing your mind or is your decision to go a core promise?

PETER COSTELLO:

Well, if you buy the paperback edition of the book Lyndal you will see that in the final postscript which was written after I made my announcement to the House of Representatives that I give my reasons for deciding not to contest the next election and I think it is important that the Party rebuild – that it look to new talent and a new generation and that is what I am determined to help them do.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

But as you say in your updated book, you were giving warnings about the impending crisis in late 2007. Given the economy is so important, that you helped put in place the financial reforms which helped saved the banks, you helped build the G-20. Weren’t you the perfect person, aren’t you the perfect person to take on the Government on these issues?

PETER COSTELLO:

Well, I am very happy to argue the issues and that is what I do in the book and I am very happy to give advice to my colleagues. I think that the Government has made a series of errors since the election.  I think it marched off to war on the wrong battlefield – choosing to fight inflation which now, as we look back on it, was completely misguided.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Didn’t you march off the battlefield completely?

PETER COSTELLO:

Oh well I was warning at the time that the big problem was not going to be inflation at the end of 2007 into 2008, that we were walking into a time of financial instability and it took the Government until October to appreciate that and do the full U-turn.   I think when they did the full U-turn again they misjudged the situation. Many of the stimulatory measures as we know now will go into wasted projects and the consequence of that will be a third error as we start emerging from this economic downturn, we are going to have a legacy of debt which is going to be hanging over the heads of Australians for a generation.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

But couldn’t you have been making those points as Leader much earlier and you have given away the chance for the Party to build a narrative – a narrative you say that the Party desperately needs now?

PETER COSTELLO:

Well, the Party does need a narrative and the Party in my view has got to develop that narrative. I was part of the Party’s narrative as its Deputy Leader for 13½ years. I thought we needed change before the 2007 Election. I write about that very openly and very honestly. I recommended to John Howard that we have that change. The Party didn’t agree. We lost the election. John Howard lost his seat.  My view is that now the Party has to rebuild, that it does have to develop a narrative and I have given my thoughts on what it should be. We have a very strong legacy here. It was the Coalition that put in place the financial regulation that has got Australia’s financial institutions through this time of instability better than any comparable country in the world.  This is not a hard record to defend by the way. All you have to do is you have to state it. Once you state it, it defends itself.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

What would your advice be to Malcolm Turnbull to help him pick up from the opinion poll doldrums the Party and he are now in?

PETER COSTELLO:

Well, I put forward two things in these chapters. First, the Party has to be able to tell the story and the story is that we put in place the measures that protected Australia against this time of financial instability both in the regulatory sense and in the financial sense and that will mean that Australia will come out of this much stronger but I think what Australia is not doing now it is not putting in place the measures now that will help us as we emerge and I think Malcolm has got to talk about those things.  There has got to be more flexibility in the labour market. There has to be a focus on education – not on the resources going into the schools important as they are but on the standards of the students coming out of the schools.  These are the things I think that the Party has got to develop.  The second thing I say in this chapter is that organisationally, the Party has done nothing since the 2007 defeat.  Apparently there was a report done on the reasons for the defeat with recommendations in relation to campaigning, finance and all the rest. If that report has been concluded, nobody knows about it. It has never been released.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

What then are the weaknesses of the Party and how should they be addressed?

PETER COSTELLO:

Well, this report presumably tells us what is in them. First thing I would say as a member of the Liberal Party its members should know what it found.  No point doing a report if nobody knows what’s in it. The Party will have to attend to matters like candidate selection. It will have to attend to matters like campaign organisation and more importantly, well as importantly – but very importantly – campaign finance.  It is pretty obvious that the Labor Party will outspend the Liberals by multiples at the next election and so campaign finance is going to be absolutely crucial for the election which, by the way, is due next year.  It is not as if there is plenty of time to sit around now and actually deal with these things. We are more than half way through this term of government and are still waiting to hear the results from the Liberal Party organisation as to why the Party was defeated and the reforms to be put in place before we go back to the polls at the latest, next year.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Should the Leader by driving that party reform?

PETER COSTELLO:

Well a leader is a very big part of it but it is not just the leader.  It is the President, the Federal Director, it is the people that sit on the Federal Executive.  You see if a football team loses, they sit down, they analyse the reasons for their mistakes. They decide where they need to recruit new talent, they maybe change their game plan.  They don’t just sit around and say we’ll front up again next year with the same line up and the same tactics and everything unchanged.  And the point I am making here is that as time is winging away, it is very, very important that some of these questions be asked.  It is not just the Parliamentary Members of the Party incidentally, it is the organisational members. They all have a right to know where the weaknesses were and they have a right to know that they have been attended to before the election next year.  You see, we go into an election in 2010 where nearly every economic indicator will be worse than it was in 2007. More people will be out of work. People’s assets will have declined in value. People’s superannuation will be worth less.  The Budget will be in deficit. The country will be in debt.  On nearly every economic indicator, the country will be worse than it was when Mr Rudd was elected with all of the promises that he made in 2007.  Now this is an enormous opportunity for an opposition. You changed the government. You elected a new government and nearly every economic indicator has worsened.  I would have thought this was a very powerful thing in the hands of well organised opposition and I, in my chapter, try and give some economic analysis to back that up.

LYNDAL CURTIS:

Peter Costello, thank you very much for your time.

PETER COSTELLO:

Thanks very much, Lyndal.