FED:Pyne says stop coveting each other's jobs

AAP General News (Australia)
02-13-2011
FED:Pyne says stop coveting each other's jobs

CANBERRA, Feb 13 AAP - Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne says his colleagues should
stop coveting each other's jobs and focus on their opposite numbers in government.

Mr Pyne, the manager of opposition business, denied he was out to get the deputy job
from Julie Bishop.

He said anyone else who wanted the deputy job would have to go through him first.

"The advice to all of my colleagues would be that the job that they should all want
is the job of their opposite number in government," he told the Ten Network.

Mr Pyne said he wanted Anthony Albanese's job as leader of the house as well as to
be education minister.

"Tony Abbott wants Julia Gillard's job and we all have to work to make sure that happens,"

he said.

"All colleagues should have ambition. It would be a strange kind of political world
if we didn't all have ambition. But what's important is focusing on our opposite numbers
and working to remove the Labor Party, because it's a very poor government."

Leadership tensions in the Liberal Party surfaced last week with Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott forced to publicly express support for his team.

The unrest stemmed from foreign policy differences with his deputy Julie Bishop over
a proposal to cut funding for Indonesian schools as part of the coalition's alternative
plan to find budget savings to replace the government's flood levy.

Now Liberal finance spokesman Andrew Robb has revealed he wants the job of opposition
treasury spokesman Joe Hockey.

Mr Pyne said he didn't know the circumstances in which Mr Robb revealed his ambition
for Mr Hockey's position.

He rejected the suggestion that he wanted Julie Bishop's deputy job.

"I not only do not want Julie Bishop's job but if anybody might think that they want
it, they will have to come through me first," he said.

"The leadership team is 100 per cent behind Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott and Eric Abetz
and George Brandis, Joe Hockey and me as manager of opposition business.

"There isn't a piece of cigarette paper between any of us and that's the way it's going to stay."

AAP mb/pjo/nb

KEYWORD: PYNE ROBB UPDATE

� 2011 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.