Interview with Daryl Manzie on 2013 Federal Election result and senate election.

DARYL MANZIE:
Now we have Senator Nigel Scullion on the line, he’s successfully taking his place in the Senate after the election but gee whiz what a mishmash of people are going to be in there. As I said a bit earlier you’re going to have up to 10 Greens, you’re going to have Clive Palmer’s probably got two family first Liberal democrats, the Australian Motor of Enthusiasts Party, Australian Sports Party you know it’s really going to be looney tune time and it’s going to be almost impossible for the government to get a lot of its legislative program through without having it mucked up by all these independent people. One of them as I said earlier only got 1900 votes and that just shows you what a shemozzle the senate’s becoming. You know the 23 million people a guy with 1900 votes gets the ability to influence government legislation, Nigel Scullion I’m sorry about that intro but mate it’s not going to be easy for you.

NIGEL SCULLION:
Certainly mate, I, I, any job worth doing generally isn’t easy. Look I’m not really sure what’ll happen, how it’ll all pan out in the end, yes it’s looking a bit sticky. I was certainly added on sticky with this before, this is all about relationships, having a good set of negotiating skills, it doesn’t matter what sort of backgrounds each of these mobs come from I mean I can understand whether they’re motor car enthusiasts or sports enthusiasts I understand there was a guy this morning who was shocked at the fact he’d been elected and wasn’t, said he wasn’t a politician and didn’t know what to do but I mean you know…

DARYL MANZIE:
Well even…

NIGEL SCULLION:
Let’s hope that the bigger issues that are not focused on their particular parochial interests as Australians that we’ll hit a nerve and they’ll see the sense of the, of the government agenda, they’ll certainly look to the mandate that the government got in a particular key, in a couple of key areas and let’s just see how it pans out, let’s sort of, I don’t know who the personalities are, I don’t really know much about their backgrounds, I still don’t know exactly what the makeup of the senate will be so it will be interesting that’s for sure. That’s the sort of terminology for a blind date that doesn’t work out very well mate.

DARYL MANZIE:
I mean obviously this, this campaign has been an interesting one. I mean nationally it’s certainly been run with a great deal of discipline and you know very well controlled and, and just managed I guess but it was a bit rough here in the Territory, a little bit different, always is different in the Territory and you know when you sort of look in hind sight maybe we could have done a little bit more with local input rather than sort of you know following the national scheme too closely.

NIGEL SCULLION:
Yes I mean this is a Federal election and unsurprisingly mate we’ve got to focus on the national issues. Yes there’s always a context for every national issue in the Northern Territory and some of them of course we, we did resinate and there wasn’t too many people who come and talk to me and they’re complaints about the, about the previous government in terms of the, particularly the boats you know just the moaning, we don’t seem to have any boarders and the amount of money that goes in to it and the tens of thousands of people who have no arrived and I tell you there’s not many Territorians who don’t, who don’t have a real understanding of the impact of the closure of the live cattle trade and the impact on people, their lives the communities and the impact on businesses around that so there’s, I mean there’s a lot of people I think are pretty well informed and cast their vote in that way.

DARYL MANZIE:
I guess it’s always as I said you don’t know what’s in people’s minds and quite often in the Territory sometimes local issues do effect the vote and there was a couple of strange sort of aberrations popped up around the country but I guess that happens all the time but obviously when do you all get together and start talking about who’s going to be who in the zoo?

NIGEL SCULLION:
Well I understand in very vague terms that later this week sort of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday there’ll be, we’ll be, I’ll be going down to Canberra to sort, sort my head and my future out in terms of you know where am I and what are the, who’s who in the zoo that sort of thing and we’ll be having some discussions with my national colleagues and obviously with the liberal party. I understand that there’s a, there’ll be a, some sort of a joint party meeting either late next week or early the next week but that’s about us, this is basically the first day and you know all those things are being organised at the moment and I imagine it’ll be later this week.

DARYL MANZIE:
Well Nigel look congratulations and we look forward to chatting to you know that you’re, you know I guess my, my belief is that you’ll be a minister and you’ll make a good minister and we look forward to catching up with you and again congratulations on a nice healthy win in the senate.

NIGEL SCULLION:
Well thank you very much for that Daryl and can I just take this opportunity to thank all the Territorians who supported me not only over the last number of years I’ve been in the senate but particularly in an election context. Thanks so much for your support and I, I will work very hard to ensure that that support in me is not misplaced, so thank you very much.

DARYL MANZIE:
Good on you mate, thank you. Talking there with Senator Nigel Scullion of course successful in the Senate here in the Northern Territory.