Everything’s fine with Christopher Pyne as federal minister plays down leaked tape on Q & A

“IT’S no secret your party’s divided.” Christopher Pyne hit back: “It doesn’t mean the government is in crisis if we have different views.”

IT WAS rather fortuitous timing that Christopher Pyne appeared on Q & A on the day a secretly recorded tape of a private speech to Liberal Party members was leaked to the media.

But stand-in host Virginia Trioli wasted little time pressing him about factional turf wars within the party, after the tape apparently caught him gloating that the party’s moderates were “in the winner’s circle” following the ascension of Malcolm Turnbull to the prime ministership.

“It’s no secret, also, that your party’s divided, you’re losing votes to Pauline Hanson, you’ve got a conservative group and a moderate group which you referenced on Friday night,” Ms Trioli said.

Christopher Pyne insisted everything was fine after the “secret leaked tape”.

“Haven’t you risked blowing up a very fractured party by being so boastful about your moderates being in the ascendancy?”

In the style of a true politician, however, as the fire continued to rage around him, Mr Pyne insisted everything was just fine.

“We’re not a Stalinist party, people are allowed to have different views,” he said.

“Everybody in the party room has an outcome on the policy. They feel very much a part of the team.

“Obviously there are issues about which we don’t agree and there are conscience issues where we’re not required to have to agree, why would we have to agree?

“That doesn’t mean the government is in crisis if we have different views.”

The Defence Industry minister, a key Turnbull supporter, insisted none of the comments he made in the tape were anything new.

The White House lit in rainbow colours on June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court ruled to legalise same-sex marriage. The fact the marriage equality debate is still raging in Australia perplexed Q & A’s two international guests. Picture: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

“I support the party’s policy on marriage equality, and I’m in favour of marriage equality if I had a vote at the plebiscite,” he said.

In playing the leak down, he referred to it as a “secret leaked tape, which has excited the press” adding dramatic quotation mark hand gestures around the sentence for dramatic effect.

He maintained he had long publicly supported same-sex marriage, which on the tape leaked to conservative commentator Andrew Bolt he told Liberal Party members at a private function in Sydney on Friday night would happen, “sooner than you think”.

And Mr Pyne insisted his relationship with former Prime Minister Tony Abbot was also just fine.

In short, everything’s fine with Mr Pyne.

Mr Abbott, who appointed him to the key role of leader of the house during his prime ministership, accused Mr Pyne of disloyalty on Sydney radio on Monday morning.

“My vote for Malcolm Turnbull, over my whole career, is not a secret,” he said, even though, it was apparently news to a bitter Mr Abbott on Monday morning.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the Ray Hadley’s 2GB show this morning. Mr Pyne said his votes for Mr Turnbull as party leader were no secret, though, they apparently came as news to the dumped PM. Picture: Channel 7

“But obviously when Tony Abbott was the leader, I got up every morning at 6am to do telephone conference calls every day, to work out how we could get rid of the Rudd/Gillard Government and we did.

“And that was for Tony Abbott. But more than Tony Abbott, it was for the Australian people, because I believe we were getting rid of a bad government and putting in a better one with Tony Abbott as prime minister.”

Mr Turnbull spent much of his day on Monday extinguishing the fire started by Mr Pyne’s comments on the tape, particularly those relating to same-sex marriage.

The party’s position had not changed, Mr Turnbull said, one that perplexed the country’s two international guests.

Anna Greenberg with host Virginia Trioli said of Australia’s same-sex marriage debate: “It’s very strange from a US perspective”.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s press secretary during his time at 10 Downing Street, Alistair Campbell, and US political commentator Anna Greenberg both seem gobsmacked that the debate was continuing to rage in this country, when both of theirs had legalised same-sex marriage long ago.

“It’s very strange from a US perspective, to be honest with you. We had the same arguments 10 to 15 years ago about what churches would do and wedding cakes,” Ms Greenberg said.

“The Supreme Court, exactly two years ago today, made marriage equality the law of the land. Guess what, the sky has not fallen, it has not created the sorts of problems I think our colleague here has talked about. I find it completely bizarre.”

The colleague she was referring to was former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s one-time chief-of-staff, Grahame Morris, who said had a plebiscite on the issue been held earlier this year, as the Liberal Party had planned, he was not sure it would have gotten over the line.

“The idea that this is a (fait accompli) and everyone is in favour of it, I still think that, if this goes to a plebiscite, Western Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, they’re not going to say yes en masse,” he said.

Won’t someone please think of the wedding cake makers? Grahame Morris said same-sex marriage remains, “very, very divisive”.

“At the moment, it’s going to be very, very divisive, and even a close vote is not going to be good enough, because still half the community will not wear it.”

Mr Morris, who is now federal director of government relations firm Barton Deakin, was adamant, like Mr Turnbull, the Liberal Party had no plans to expedite marriage equality laws.

“Where we got into trouble today was the suggestion that the vote would be brought forward,” he said.

“It’s not going to be brought forward. We are long way away from having this vote, despite what Clare (O’Neil) just said. Long way.

“You cannot have this vote until you sort out who is exempt.

“Are we going to force the churches to have these marriages? Are we going to force the people who make the wedding cakes, can they opt out?

“What about somebody who runs a church hall in a country area? Can they opt out? There are a lot of questions to go.”

Adviser to former British PM Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell, prompted laughter from the audience when, during a discussion about a possible same-sex marriage referendum, he said, "my advice, don't have a referendum about anything because you risk making catastrophic decisions".

Mr Campbell seemed equally as perplexed about that argument as Ms Greenberg.

“I find this whole argument a bit weird. I’ve got to say, my advice, don’t have a referendum about anything because you risk making catastrophic decisions,” he said referencing last year’s Brexit vote, much to the audience’s amusement.

“But I can’t for the life of me, on this issue, understand why, if the prime minister believes that it’s the right thing, and if he thinks — which I would suggest all the evidence suggests, whatever the vote might be in this state or that state — there’s a big majority for it, I think you just go ahead and do it.”

Labor’s Clare O’Neil, the shadow justice minister, said Mr Pyne’s comments were a game changer.

She said she believed many Australians viewed the complete inability of the government to take action on the issue as reflective of the inability of all politicians to deal with important political issues.

Christopher Pyne played down his comments as nothing new but Shadow Justice Minister Clare O'Neil took quite the opposite view.

“This is a pretty enormous thing that’s happened. We’ve got a Cabinet minister here on the panel tonight who’s telling us that he wants to see action on this,” she said.

“This is a pretty enormous thing that’s happened. We’ve got a Cabinet minister here on the panel tonight who’s telling us that he wants to see action on this in this parliament.

“I think that’s actually exciting and it’s something that we should be happy about.

“I think marriage equality, for a lot of Australians, has become emblematic of the inability of people in Canberra to deal with national issues.

“I want to see a situation where we can bring this to a head and resolve it.”

But the man who started it all, Christopher Pyne, was simply keen to reaffirm is commitment to the Liberal Party.

“This guy should be in the Labor Party,” Mr Campbell quipped at one point, as Mr Pyne outlined his support for an Australia republic and marriage equality.

“That’s something of a ‘clanger’,” Mr Pyne laughed.

“It’s not true. I’ve been with the Liberal Party since I was 17, just for the record.”