TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Back now to our stop story, the recriminations in the wake of the split between the Greens and the Government. To discuss the implications of the end of the alliance we were joined a short time ago from the Gold Coast by the national secretary of the AWU, Paul Howes.

Paul Howes, thanks for joining us.

PAUL HOWES, NATIONAL SECRETARY, AWU: Thank you, Tony.

TONY JONES: Now in July of last year when the Labor/Green alliance was still very much alive you described the Greens as "extremists who threaten Australia's democracy" and that the Labor Party, you said, "should concentrate its efforts on destroying them". Will that now happen?

PAUL HOWES: Absolutely. In the cut and thrust of Australian politics I believe the Australian Labor Party should act to beat their political opponents. Whether it's the Australian Greens on the left or it's the Liberal Party on the right, the reality of modern day politics is it's about getting out there, selling the message, making the case on why the Australian people should back the Labor Party, and that means taking it up to the Greens and also taking it up to the Libs.

TONY JONES: Here's what you wrote last year: "The Greens juggernaut is threatening to cause serious long-term damage to the cause of the Labor movement". What does that say about the decision to sign up to an agreement with them in the first place?

PAUL HOWES: Well, I mean that was written back when Bob Brown was still leading the party...

TONY JONES: They're more moderate now, are they? There's been a change since the leadership

PAUL HOWES: No, no, I'm saying that... no, Tony, they're doing half their job for us. I mean, you don't actually have to go out there and campaign too hard against the Greens anymore because Christine Milne is doing the campaigning for us.

I mean, since she's taken over the leadership of the party federally - like what happened when she took over the leadership of the party in Tasmania - she's eradicated huge amounts of their support. They've stepped backwards numerous times. They've been shown to be a party that's more interested in tricky political games than actual policy outcomes with that bizarre speech that was given yesterday.

Bob Brown's had to be brought back out of retirement again today to try and salvage the mess that Christine Milne has made. But absolutely, I mean I lead a union which represents miners, which represents forestry workers, which represents agricultural workers, which represents steel workers, aluminium workers, manufacturing workers - and the Greens' policies very clearly want to put the members of the AWU out of work, and there should be no surprise that as the leader of the AWU I find a lot of the Greens' economics policies pretty abhorrent.

TONY JONES: You actually compare the Greens to the DLP in that they had the ability to actually split away large section of Labor's voters from the party. If you invoke those memories then, was it a strategic blunder to have an agreement with the Greens, an alliance, in the first place?

PAUL HOWES: Of course not, Tony. I mean, it's a wonderful thing that Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister of the country, so therefore to form a workable majority in the House of Representatives was the right thing to do. To do it with the Greens, to do it with Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.

TONY JONES: The logic of that doesn't really make sense when you know that the Greens were never going to vote a no-confidence motion against the Labor Government. Why did you need to actually get in bed with them the very thing that you were warning your Labor... fellow Labor members about?

PAUL HOWES: I'm not in Government, I don't think you'd ever accuse me of hopping into bed with the Greens. That's not a guarantee. Christine Milne has given support to the Liberal Party in the past. She did it when she was the leader of the Greens in Tasmania. I think Christine Milne has demonstrated through her political career that she will jump into bed with whoever so that she can continue to pursue her particular ideologies.

She did it with the Liberal Party in Tasmania, so I don't think it's right to say in any way, shape or form that there was any guarantee that the Greens would automatically give Labor confidence and supply after the minority parliament was formed.

TONY JONES: I'm sure you've seen what Bob Brown wrote about you today. He's accused you, first of all, of rabble-rousing Liberal voters in Burnie to barrack against the Labor Tasmanian Premier. This is all to do with the Tarkine mining issue, and this is what Bob Brown says, "the increasingly powerful Howesian Labor cause has a simple political recipe to prefer the Liberals over the Greens". What do you say to that?

PAUL HOWES: Howesian! I'd rather be a Howesian than an Earthian. (laughs) Come on, this is ridiculous. We had a rally of 3,500 AWU supporters in Burnie. Yes, some of those workers that were there were not overjoyed with some of the policies that the Tasmanian Labor Government. I got up and gave a speech praising the stance that Lara Giddings and Bryan Green had taken on north-west Tasmania.

Bob Brown wasn't there, Bob Brown didn't know what I said, and if he wants to make up stuff in his columns on the mainland then that's fine. The reality is you go to Burnie - and this is not a Liberal town, Burnie, Burnie is a solid, decent town of hard-working Australians.

You go to towns like Rosebery, you go to mines like Savage River - the miners who live there and work there are very pleased with what the Federal Labor Government has done in terms of north-west Tasmania, and if Bob Brown wants to score a few votes for his mate up here on the mainland then that's fine, but go to north-west Tasmania and ask the people what think about that decision and you will hear the truth about what occurred and what's going to occur in that part of Tasmania into the future.

TONY JONES: Bob Brown used the term "preferred", of course the preferences at the next election are going to be fundamental. Do you think Labor should ever deliberately preference the Greens, and should they do that in the next election?

PAUL HOWES: Well, I've long held the view that the Greens are no different than the Liberals insomuch as they are a political party that stands for values that are fundamentally different to the values of the Labor Party, and then when the Labor Party strategists sit down and do preference deals they should do preference deals based on the best electoral outcome. That's what all political parties do. I have never believed the Greens should get some type of automatic support.

TONY JONES: Let's move on. Christine Milne said Labor betrayed the Greens by being too soft on the mining industry and she particularly wanted the mining tax to be renegotiated. What's the view of the AWU on renegotiating the mining tax, which obviously is not earning very much revenue at the moment?

PAUL HOWES: Has Christine Milne been in Australia over the last five years? Because anyone accusing the Labor Party or the Labor movement of being too close or too friendly with the mining industry clearly has had their head in the sand since 2007.

I mean, for God's sakes, what happened in the lead up to the 2010 election? Has she forgotten that? Has she forgotten the statements of people like Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer over the last couple of years? I mean, this Labor Government and the Labor movement, our union, has been engaged in a pitched battle with the mining bosses for the last five years, and there will be some things where we agree with the resources industry - and yes, we believe, and our union believes there should be a resources industry, clearly the Greens don't... I mean that's a fundamental issue there, and it's a bizarre stance that the Greens take.

TONY JONES: We're going to run out of time if we don't get to the nub of a few of these things. The point was she wants the mining tax, which is not earning any revenue or little revenue, to be renegotiated. What's the union's position on that? Because we now learn it was negotiated behind closed doors and the Treasury experts who originally designed it were kept out of the negotiations?

PAUL HOWES: The reality is the MRRT is a profits-based tax. When mining profits go up, tax revenue will be up. When mining profits are down tax revenue will be down. That's the nature of profit-based taxation.

As we see, at the moment with the losses posted by Rio Tinto with the turmoil inside that company, the turmoil inside BHP Billiton, of course the revenue is going to be down. Look at the global commodity prices at the moment - of course the revenue is down. But when the global commodity prices recover, as they will, the revenue will go up.

Our union has always believed, and supported a profit-based taxation system for the mining industry because we think it's fair and equitable. We've always believed it should extend across the entire mining industry. Now the Government's decided to have an MRRT applying to iron ore and coal - that's their right and it's a great step forward - but, you know, I didn't see the Greens doing the heavy lifting on the MRRT or the RSPT when that was such a huge and divisive debate back in 2010.

I didn't see the Greens campaigning with our union or with the Labor Party then, and it's a bit rich now to, you know, try and criticise us for having the fight that we had when they were sitting on the sidelines.

TONY JONES: OK, now that the bosses of two of the big mining giants who were involved in those negotiations have both stepped down, will there be any sense in going to the new bosses and trying to renegotiate this tax, which is currently earning very little revenue?

PAUL HOWES: Tony, the MRRT is not earning as much revenue as was projected initially because when the projections were done, commodity prices were projected to be higher than they are right now.

TONY JONES: What we know is this tax is shot full of loopholes, including the state governments' role in actually raising their own mining tax and being able to be compensated through this tax. I mean, are you actually happy as a union movement, as a union, with the way this has unfolded?

PAUL HOWES: I'm happy that we have a government that's taken on the big mining bosses and implemented a profit-based taxation system on the mining industry like we've been calling for for 30 years. Going into the future, when commodity prices return and go higher, the revenue will be higher, and this nonsense debate that's been occurring over the last couple of days, where you've got the Liberal Party - who are saying that this tax was going to destroy the mining industry, now complaining about not enough revenue being raised by this tax - and trying to score some cheap political points has got to stop.

We should actually start focussing back on the big issues.

TONY JONES: One of the other big issues that at least the political class are focussing on is the survival of the Prime Minister and you said, "We've got your back". What did you mean by that when you said to Julia Gillard at the end of her speech "We've got your back"?

PAUL HOWES: Come on, Tony... Why is everyone overanalysing every single sentence that I utter? She has got an adversary, the adversary's name is Tony Abbott and what we talked about on Monday night was making sure the full resources of the AWU were deployed in the lead up to September 14 to make sure we had a Prime Minister remaining in Canberra who was going to advocate for the interests of our members and the communities they represent.

I mean, you know, this constant obsessive navel-gazing going on in Australian politics at the moment - where every single sentence is overanalysed, every word that you utter is looked at in, you know, huge detail and put under a microscope to see if there's any slight inkling of movement of support, this situation where, you know, if you happen to accidentally go to dinner at one particular restaurant it's written up as being a massive shift and frankly nothing has happened - it's got to stop. It's not what I'm focused on, it's not what our members are focused on. It's silly to keep carrying on about it.

TONY JONES: The reason people keep carrying on about it is because, for example, you get statements like that of the chief Government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon, who has been absolutely clear on this. He says, "populism matters in politics, and if leaders remain unpopular long enough they will obviously stop leading the party". I mean, it was a pointed statement aimed at Julia Gillard's popularity and the polls have slid since then. They continue to slide week after week. If they don't return, going by Joel Fitzgibbon's logic, she will be in trouble, won't she?

PAUL HOWES: Look, every day you can pick up any particular newspaper in the country and read speculation about the leadership. Now that speculation always comes from unnamed sources. When someone actually goes on the record and says that something is happening, then I will get interested in it. But at the moment you have a huge amount of media speculation, and it's much ado about nothing.

TONY JONES: What do you think is driving it, Paul Howes? I mean, for example, do you regard Kevin Rudd's constant media presence... constant media presence as a distraction, or is he actually doing something to advantage the Government by being out there all the time as a Labor man?

PAUL HOWES: Kevin Rudd's a politician, and of course like all politicians, and most people in public life - even like union leaders - they do media to get their message across. He's campaigning on the issues that matter to him. At the end of the day he's done lots and lots of media appearances where he's ruled out a challenge, but yet everyone keeps on running that he's challenging. It's ridiculous. It's nonsensical, and it's a distraction from the issues that really matter and frankly, I'm just sick of it.

I wish we could actually have this 15 minutes that we've got with you, Tony, talking about what's going on in the manufacturing industry at the moment. We just heard this afternoon from an amazing man who's creating free and independent democratic trade unions in China, I'd love to talk about that and the impact that a democratisation of that country would have on our national economy and on the psyche on the Asian rim.

We've been talking today about workplace bullying, about depression in the workplace, about issues affecting the future of the manufacturing industry - particularly in steel and aluminium. That's what I'm keen to talk about. I wish the nation would start talking about it, because it's actually in the nation's interests to start talking about policy than rather constantly being distracted with personality.

TONY JONES: Would you agree that it is your own caucus, or elements of it, who are to blame for fuelling this in the first place? Everyone thinks the media is making this up, but you're actually right, there's a lot of background briefing going on all the time. I mean, you know it and I know it.

PAUL HOWES: Yes, and Tony, it's not my caucus, I'm not a member of any caucus. I'm a trade union leader. Look, there's always going to be people that will occasionally negative background. That's always been the case. It's always been the case and it always will be the case. But I will take it seriously if people put their names to their statements. They haven't.

What I'm focussing on, what the AWU is focussing on, are the issues that actually matter on September 14, the issues that matter today, the issues that matter for our near 140,000 members as they battle a record high Australian dollar, low commodity prices and unprecedented downturn in major parts of the manufacturing industry.

We've been talking about what the Prime Minister's $1 billion rescue package for manufacturing, which was announced on Sunday, will do for these industries, and how we can work with the Government to make sure that we continue to have people in Canberra who believe in manufacturing and are actually going to act to save those jobs.

TONY JONES: Paul Howes, I'll have to leave you there. We thank you very much for taking the time to come and talk to us.

PAUL HOWES: Thank you, Tony.