BJ: You're welcome, Laurie.

LO: I assume you agree with John Howard. So should the Government revert to the Howard policies on asylum seekers?

BJ: Well, it has to revert to the policies that actually stopped the boats turning up, Laurie. Um, Mr Rudd is in a dilemma. He both wants to be kind and compassionate, but of course you're going to have the problem of people turning up. Now, he's split in his own ranks. He's got the left going in one direction and the right going in another. The Australian people strongly resonate with the idea that you keep, um, illegal entries out of our waters and out of our nation. And this is a hard pill for him to swallow but he must deal with it and if he doesn't deal with it, he's going to be dealing with the polls as reflected last time.

LO: So, should he go back to, say, the Pacific Solution and making asylum seekers pay for their own detention?

BJ: Well, he has to go back to a form of policy that's stronger than what he's got. Like the idea that you stay in Christmas Island for 90 days and then basically you'll make your way to Australia, the idea that the expectation generally is that once you arrive here by boat it is highly unlikely you will be sent back. The most likely thing that will happen is you will end up in Australia as a refugee. This is creating a pull factor and he talks about push factors but the pull factor is people want to increase their economic condition in life. That is only natural. But we do not have the capacity to have a, you know, a flow of people into our nation that come by their own means and their own desires and not through a controlled process. Now, there are a whole range of things that Mr Rudd can do. I would suggest that the first thing he should do is go over and speak to the president and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and work out, with them, exactly what is the push factors there and whether there's the capacity for us to be a monitoring force there and if we're going to have people in detention from Sri Lanka, then how about we have them in detention in Sri Lanka?

LO: The immediate problem, of course, is the 78 Sri Lankans on the Customs ship 'Oceanic Viking' off the coast of Indonesia. What should the Government do about that? Is it time to bring them back to Australia and admit defeat? Or should Kevin Rudd be using force to unload them in Indonesia?

LO: And send the 'Oceanic Viking' to Colombo?

BJ; Well, where else is it going to go, Laurie? I mean, if it ends up landing at Christmas Island, then that is, in essence, defeat. It means that people have worked you out. They just hang about on the boat and in the end, you will capitulate and you will land at, you know, Christmas Island. If you land at Christmas Island within due course you'll land in Australia and people just read that as you being weak. If you want to show strength, if you want to be decisive - and he loves that description of himself, as decisive - then send the 'Oceanic Viking' to Colombo and you really will have made a strong statement.

LO: Well, Kevin Rudd's running around like a headless chook. He's had his first really bad opinion poll and looks to be a bit panicked by it. What should the Coalition be doing to capitalise on the situation? Well, the Australian people are obviously seeing through two major policies which Mr Rudd and the Labor Government are at sixes and sevens on. The first one is border protection, which he has, obviously, run into a brick wall on and now the sort of metaphor of compassion but strong - it's just complete confusion. The Opposition, us, should be capitalising on that and we are. The other one is the ETS. The Australian people have switched off the ETS. It is a massive new tax. They do not want it. They do not want to be stitched up to an international agreement where our sovereignty is handed over, in part, to the United Nations. We should be capitalising on that as well. On those two issues, if we stand behind those and pursue those issues, then the polls will turn around in our favour and we'll go from line ball to being in front. We cannot be just a mere shadow of what is already there otherwise, people are conservative in nature. You have you to give them a reason to change or they'll stay with what they've got.

LO: Well, you agree with John Howard on asylum seekers. You also supported the Emissions Trading System policy that John Howard took to the last election, didn't you? Why didn't you bag that?

BJ: Well, at that point in time, to be honest, it was little more than a thought bubble but now we're seeing the treaty in Copenhagen and, you know, the sort of - was it annex 3E, clause 17 and all these clauses coming in which are basically saying that you are going to be subsidising the developed world to point.7 of your GDP. It also talks about how that we have to basically, you know, compensate the Third World for their loss of standard of living. There is also the issue of sovereignty being handed over. I don't think Mr Howard went to an election telling us about that. I thought it was more of a broader idea. What we have now is something that's far more insidious than that and to be honest, Laurie, unless the world comes on board, Australia is not going to do anything that changes the course or nature of the temperature of the globe. This is merely a gesture but it's a gesture that will be reflected in a massive tax delivered to you from every corner of your house, from every power point, by the price of food, it will be in your fridge as it's going through the middle of the night, it will be in your alarm clock, it will be with you on holidays, it will be in your shopping trolley. Why should you pay a massive tax when it doesn't provide an outcome for which has been put forward as the reasoning behind it, which is apparently we're going to single-handedly cool the temperature of the globe.

LO: Well, you're running a pretty good scare campaign now, but as I said, you didn't when John Howard proposed this. John Howard in his interview today, says, and I'll quote, "with the Emissions Trading System, what Mr Rudd is proposing is not all that different from what I took to the last election.." so, will you say now John Howard was wrong?

BJ: Well, on that issue, I believe that we were wrong. I believe in the light of further information, you know, things have progressed. The nature of where the rest of the world is and remember, Laurie, we lost the last election and at that point in time, you know, if our policy was deemed to be so appropriate, we wouldn't be in the Opposition benches, we'd be in the Treasury benches, so let us not hold so dearly to every policy that we took to the election. If that was the case, then we'd still have the single desk which I do support that, and we also took that to the last election - that we would maintain the single desk in wheat, which obviously we've lost.

LO: Is Malcolm Turnbull wasting his time trying to negotiate a deal with the Government? I mean, if he succeeds, you won't go along with it, will you?

BJ: No, the National Party has been clear and concise that we will not be supporting an ETS. The ETS is merely a massive tax. It is not going to change the temperature of the globe. I for the life of me can't see Penny Wong having an epiphany, falling off a donkey and deciding that she's going to accept all the amendments which she gave such a splendid diatribe about with the nine propositions that were put up by Malcolm Turnbull previously. She said emphatically how wrong they were. I believe that she will stick to her guns and that she will not agree to the amendments and therefore we have something that we can clearly take to the Australian people. Kevin Rudd equals a massive new tax. We are going to protect you from that tax. The decision is yours and your wallet's.

LO: Is Malcolm Turnbull too green for his own good, do you think?

BJ: Look, Malcolm Turnbull is a very articulate - he is a very charismatic, he is extremely good on his sort of economic policy in the minutiae of details that is required to tackle the Labor Government on debt and deficits. I think he has a genuine belief that he wants to do something positive about the environment, no doubt about that. You know, I have a different belief, especially in the process of how - whether we should involve ourselves with an Emissions Trading Scheme to which the greatest benefactors will be the Treasury, which will collect tens of billions of dollars, and the commissions that will be collected by the bankers and brokers as they buy themselves a new 7-series BMW out of your working family's budget. LO: This has all been discussed by the finance ministers at the G20 in Scotland. They fail to agree on how developed and developing nations will pay for potential measures to counter climate change. What's your response to that meeting?

BJ: Well, it appears that the meeting has fallen flat on its face and this is what happens when people have to put their hands in their wallet. Now, I think it would be absurd - in fact, it would be almost immoral for Australia to go forward with a tax prior to Copenhagen, when we know from all the tea leaves that we are reading at this present time that Copenhagen is going to fall flat on its face. Now, if Mr Rudd does pursue this tax, then you have to question his motives. Are his motives about the environment? Or are his motives, in the long term, about lumbering Australia with a massive new tax so he can prop up the parlous state of the nation's finances and I refer to the, you know, $110 - $115 billion worth of federal debt we now have and $170 billion-plus worth of State debt all owed to shining people overseas who want their money back and somehow we're going to have to find the dough, Laurie, to pay them back.

LO: Well, Treasurer Wayne Swan has said, at the G20 in Scotland, that a successful climate change summit at Copenhagen, "Goes to the core of our economic prosperity." Is he right?

BJ: Well, I tell you what, it'll go to the core of our economic prosperity if it gets lumbered on us. A massive - a new tax is not going to make our economy shine. It's going to make our economy blister, Laurie. This is so absurd, that we would come up with a new tax to inspire development of an economy. You did not put a tax on people walking to develop the wheel. You did not tax on horses to develop the motor car. How we've now got to the point where we put a tax on innovation in the economy to develop a more efficient economy - I don't know how that comes about, but nothing surprises me about a Labor party who's willing to spend 3.9 billion dollars on ceiling insulation and other rubbish to put in the roof for the rats and mice to urinate on, whilst you and all your listeners have to go to work to pay the taxes to pay the debt off. Nothing this government does is surprising any more. It is just gone sort of more and more and more peculiar, perverse and absurd and the Australian people are calling them for it. You know, the day of reckoning is coming for Mr Rudd.

LO: Final issue - how would you describe the state of the Coalition, given that Liberal frontbencher Ian Macfarlane said the other day, "I'm a team person. It's hard to understand how Barnaby is part of our team."

BJ: Well, you know, I just look on what Mr Rudd says about me and he says, you know, I'm the commander-in-chief of fear-mongering or some other rubbish. You know, I haven't heard Mr Rudd sing my praises. Maybe I'm missing something there. I do believe that the Senate is there to review and amend legislation. I've tried to do that to the best of my ability. I'm a very proud member of the National Party and I think we're very constructive in delivering good outcomes, you know. Mr Macfarlane is welcome to his opinions and I respect him. I'm currently in Toowoomba at the moment so maybe I'll bump into him as I walk down the street. Good luck to Ian and I'll keep doing my job.

LO: Some Liberals have called for Malcolm Turnbull to discipline you. Are you subject to discipline by the Liberal leader?

BJ: Well, I don't know. I'm curious about it. I'll have to see what he's got in mind. Must say I've never really put my mind around that corner. But, you know, I suppose if, um, Mr Turnbull wants to discipline me, he'll have to catch me first.

LO: Thank you very much. We're out of time. We thank you, Senator.

BJ: See you.

LO: Back to you, Cam and Leila.