Bill Shorten cops grilling from Leigh Sales as he makes pitch for PM
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was left flustered on Monday making his pitch for Prime Minister after he copped a grilling from Leigh Sales.
In his first appearance on ABC’s 7.30 for 2018, Mr Shorten stuck to script and attacked the Government instead of focusing on his own policies.
Coming off Malcom Turnbull’s 30th successive loss in the polls, Sales opened the interview by saying: “If the polls keep going the way they are for the Coalition, Bill Shorten will be moving into the Lodge”.
“You have been Labor leader for nearly five years. They still don’t see you as preferred prime minister although they would currently vote out the Coalition. How worried are you that you are acting as a drag on your party?”
Shorten replied he wasn’t worried and in veiled sledge at the Turnbull government, said he is glad his “united” team has “put forward three of the biggest economic reforms to our tax system in living memory.”
But as Shorten repeatedly ignored questions about his own party’s policies, Sales eventually demanded answers.
“As we said at the start of this, you could be the Prime Minister in a few months’ time,” she said, adding, “I am trying to get to what you want to do and not critique what they want to do.”
What does @billshortenmp say to the suggestion he has one message on #Adani for Queenslanders & another for inner-city Greens in Sydney & Melbourne? #abc730 #auspol @leighsales pic.twitter.com/s2BNVUxGpe
— abc730 (@abc730) April 9, 2018
But there was one guarantee Shorten couldn’t give when asked: “Could you promise no pensioner would be worse off under what you call the ‘pensioner guarantee’ on that plan?”
He avoided giving a guarantee, instead saying he could “promise that we will protect pensioners”.
Sales pointed out Shorten had backed down on his original pensioner plan.
“By your own numbers, 92 per cent of Australians are unaffected by this policy, but when you have got a bit of backlash to your original plan you went to water quickly and scaled it down.
“Is that how you will be as Prime Minister — announcing a policy and backing down when the heat gets a bit much?”
He replied: “Let’s be fair here. This is a big change. I think most of the political class were surprised that Labor was willing to tackle one of these Howard government tax-funded largesses.
Grilled again by Sales that he “backed down when you got a bit of heat”, Shorten stuck to his guns.
“I think you will find we are still going with it. There is nothing wrong with big policy-making calibrations and what we have done is make a good policy even better,” he said.
“What we have here is a system, the only place in the world where you can pay no income tax and you can, because of particular circumstances, get an income tax refund. How is that possible that you get a tax refund, an income tax refund when you pay no income tax? It is not sustainable.”