Politics with Michelle Grattan

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm has accused Malcolm Turnbull of failing to live up to his promise to liaise closely with the Senate crossbenchers.

As the "micro" players react furiously to the government's proposed Senate voting changes, Leyonhjelm tells Michelle Grattan he has not heard from Turnbull since his call in his first week as prime minister. Despite the "reservoir of goodwill" he enjoyed on taking over, Turnbull did not follow through.

The Coalition government has been appallingly bad at negotiating with the crossbenchers, Leyonhjelm says. Unlike the Gillard government, which negotiated successfully with lower house crossbenchers, the Abbott and Turnbull governments never learnt how to do it.

Leyonhjelm and the other "micro" Senate players have been invited to dinner at The Lodge this week. They are ready to vent their sense of grievance to Turnbull face-to-face.

Soaring community outrage over the issue of child sexual abuse was this week fanned by a Tim Minchin song calling for Cardinal George Pell to return home to Australia to give evidence to the Royal Commission.

Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council tells Michelle Grattan that his organisation supports the crowd-funded push to fly victims to Rome and describes Cardinal Pell as a lightning rod for discontent.

“It’s a buildup of the angst, the anger, the hurt surrounding the whole issue of child sex abuse and the history of the Catholic Church, which has been a history of cover-up and a history of distrust,” he says.

“In such a short time it’s raised so much money and it shows you the intense concentration in the community not only about this specific issue, but about the broader issue of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.”

Sullivan also criticises the Turnbull government for appearing to wash its hands of a national redress scheme for victims, instead placing it in the hands of the states, territories and major institutions.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill’s willingness to countenance an increase to the GST angered federal Labor colleagues. But Weatherill tells Michelle Grattan he has no regrets about his “circuit-breaker” intervention – although he also concedes an increase to the GST is not really a solution to the states' revenue problems.

“It raises too much money in the early years and too little in the later years because GST is not growing at the rate of the growth of our health care expenditure,” he says.

“Even if we were to get a 15% GST it would just kick the can down the road for another 10 or 15 years to be back talking about this problem,” he says.

Weatherill explains why he has called for the states to receive a share of income tax revenue, the problems associated with raising land-based taxes and his disappointment in Malcolm Turnbull.

“This sort of approach that we’re now getting from Malcolm Turnbull is the sort of thing that reminds us of Tony Abbott. The glib one-liners, what I have described as an infantile debate where you can just focus on one thing without looking at the whole picture.”

As the government considers a tax reform agenda without changing the GST, Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer discusses tax and superannuation with Michelle Grattan - and strongly defends the Business Council of Australia’s Jennifer Westacott against an attack by Victorian Liberal President Michael Kroger. Kelly also suggests the Liberal party tap talented women on the shoulder to get more female representation in Parliament. 

At the start of a frenetic year for independent Nick Xenophon, the South Australian senator tells Michelle Grattan his new national political party, the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT), will fill a vacuum.

“People want a genuine choice from the political centre. I think they’re sick of the left and right skirmishes we see in politics - the red team, blue team approach where even if one side acknowledges that the other side has a good idea, it needs to tear it down,” he says.

Xenophon talks about the preselection process for his candidates, the difficulty of operating on a “dental floss budget”, and his views on how to create a fairer senate voting system.

As the government turns up the heat over its Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation, Employment Michaelia Cash reveals to Michelle Grattan she is willing to agree to senator David Leyonhjelm’s call for a sunset clause.

“David has raised that with me and … yes, I would accept an eight-year sunset clause,” she says. She says in that time the ABCC would demonstrably prove its worth in curbing lawlessness in the construction industry and improving productivity.

In the aftermath of the trade union royal commission, Cash talks about a restored ABCC’s powers, proposed revamped registered organisations legislation and double dissolution triggers.

Cash, also Minister for Women, outlines plans for promoting gender equality in the public service and calls on the Liberal Party across Australia to undertake “audits” on female participation.

In the first Politics Podcast for 2016, Michelle Grattan and shadow finance minister Tony Burke discuss the challenging gap between government revenue and spending, and what Labor would do to address the problem.

Burke pitches Labor’s recent education announcements as being central to its economic vision, describing them as a “strategic economic investment” in what Australia will need post the mining boom.

He also responds to the divisions in Labor over GST changes, and the need to ensure Australia maintains its triple A credit rating. Asked about Treasury Secretary John Fraser’s high profile speech last week, Burke is complimentary.