MARK PARTON: Always a bit of excitement in this town at the start of a Parliamentary year, I don't know if Lindsay Tanner, the Finance Minister's excited, I'm sure he is, he joins us on the line right now. Good morning.
LINDSAY TANNER: Good morning, Mark.
MARK PARTON: Are you excited in the lead-up to a new year? This is going to be a big year?
LINDSAY TANNER: I've been in the game a long time, Mark, so excitement's not normally associated with me [laughs] returning to Parliament. But oh yeah, look, I'm looking forward to it, and obviously as that poll indicates, it's a serious contest, and the change in the Liberal Party last year, yet again, has changed the circumstances, we don't know how that'll unfold, but yeah, it's going to be interesting.
MARK PARTON: I'm sure Tony Abbott would be pleased to hear your constructive criticism on the ABC last night, you talked about Tony Abbott's feel-good statements that will eventually catch up with him, and with respect, I couldn't help but think that this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Isn't the movement in the Newspoll as much about your leaders feel-good statements, but lack of action, catching up with him?
LINDSAY TANNER: Look, I don't think that's fair, Mark, I think when you're in Government, basically you've got nowhere to hide on these things, people tend to treat Oppositions less seriously, so when Tony Abbott makes a thought bubble about the Murray-Darling Basin, and says he's going to spend up to $750 million a year, getting volunteers and young people to go and fix things up, God only knows doing what, nobody treats that all that seriously, they think, oh yes, that's nice, but they don't look into it in any detail. In Government, you've actually got to set out the numbers, you've got to set out the detail, and you've got to actually specify how it's going to be spent, and in many areas, what we've been doing of course, takes time, when you're building giant, new infrastructure projects, you don't do those in six months.
MARK PARTON: You're launching into a very important Parliamentary year, with Barnaby Joyce as your opposite Parliamentary number. Fascinating job bowling to Barnaby, because he plays extravagant, unorthodox shots, he's a very unpredictable opponent.
LINDSAY TANNER: Well, Barnaby's basically ignoring the Finance portfolio, in fact if you look at his track record over the past couple of months, you'll see he's made grand pronouncements on a whole range of things that are mostly in the Treasury portfolio, and the Health portfolio, and the Agriculture portfolio, and of course he then gets slapped down by either Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey. So he's great media copy, he's like a bit of a clown at the sideshow. But I'm waiting for him to get serious, and the sign that he'll be serious, is when he actually comes up with some savings. Tony Abbott's now saying, oh, we've got this great new climate change policy, we'll pay for it with savings from the budget. Where? What money? Where's it coming from? We haven't heard anything of that kind, and that's Barnaby's job.
MARK PARTON: It frustrates you then, that Barnaby Joyce has got such cut-through, I mean obviously mainly with voters on the right, but he really does connect?
LINDSAY TANNER: Look, I'm not sure that's true, I'm not in a position to know, he connects with the media, because he says wild and whacky things, and that makes good copy, but ultimately, there's plenty of examples on both sides of politics, of people like that in the past, who've ended up being electoral failures, we've had one or two in recent times on the Labor side, that yeah, they got plenty of media, generated a lot of excitement, people didn't vote for them.
MARK PARTON: Lindsay, I'm going to have to wrap that up, because I know you've got another commitment, but thanks for squeezing us in this morning, I really appreciate it.
LINDSAY TANNER: Very good to talk to you, thanks, Mark.
MARK PARTON: Lindsay Tanner, the Finance Minister.
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