JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
Are you looking forward to a break?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes. I will be having a couple of weeks off like so many others
and spending it with my family and I certainly hope that Australians
have a very restful and happy Christmas. I hope those of us who
are able to spend it in happy circumstances and comfortable circumstances
will remember that there are many Australians who don't have
that kind of Christmas.
Perhaps all of us can help those magnificent organisations, like
the Salvation Army and the Smith Family, who do so much to help
the less fortunate in our community at Christmas time. It is a time
of celebration and thanksgiving but it should also be a time of
remembering those in our community who are not as well off as the
rest of us.
JONES:
At the end of the year do you write your own report card?
PRIME MINISTER:
Do I write it, yes I do, in a very private sense. It has been a
tough year and I have had some ups and downs, but the important
thing is that the fabric of the Australian nation finishes the year
in very good shape. Economically, we are probably the fastest growing
economy in the industrialised world - Can I say that again - Australia
is probably the fastest growing economy in the industrialised world.
In a short period of time we have turned a $10.5 billion deficit
into a prospective surplus of probably a couple of billion dollars
in next financial year. We have lowered interest rates to levels
they were at in the late 1960s. We have got one of the world's
lowest inflation rates. We have seen a turn around in the last few
months in employment growth - 145,000 jobs created in the last three
months. We have seen record levels of business investment. We have
seen the Australian economy weather the financial turbulence which
has swept through the Asia-Pacific region so much so that we are
able to help the weaker economies of that region from the position
of pride and strength. And you add all of that together, I am entitled
to say that, the Australian economy and therefore the economic fabric
of the nation finishes the year in very good shape. That is not
said complacently but it is said proudly against the background
of the year in which the Government has had many critics, but in
which it has attended to the things that are really important to
this nation's future, and that is, building a sound economic
framework on which we can be base further economic expansion.
It has also been a year in which we have seen a record level of
average Australians buy a share - that is in Telstra - of one of
the largest corporate floats this country has ever seen. 600,000
Australians for the first time in their lives bought shares this
year and 92 per cent of the employees of Telstra bought shares in
that company under the special offer that the Government made available.
And they are the battlers and the workers the people - that you
say - many of whom come from struggle street. They were able to
participate, 92 per cent of them, that is a thumping endorsement
from the employees of that company in the wisdom of the Government's
policy.
JONES:
Do you think there is a weakness within the Government in its capacity
to sell that story?
PRIME MINISTER:
I guess you could always say that. A Government never sells its
story well enough and if you are saying to me we have got to sell
even harder, yes, of course, that is the answer.
JONES:
What about the negatives? Has the rorts affair, the travel rorts
affair - not that you were pioneers of that, as you know, it has
been going on for years but you seem to pay the price of it - has
that been damaging?
PRIME MINISTER:
That was damaging, of course, it is always damaging when you lose
ministers of great quality like John Sharp, of course it is.
JONES:
And is there a way back though for John Sharp?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there is always a way back for people of ability and fundamental
decency, of course there is.
JONES:
In the short term or long term?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I can't talk about that, we haven't had the Auditor
Generals' Report yet. The important thing about that is that
I enforce very high standards at a considerable personal cost. But
I told the Australian people that we wouldn't have the temporising
on these issues of the Hawke and Keating Governments. We did enforce
tougher standards. I paid a price in the short term but in the long
term I think the Australian people will respect that.
We didn't handle the nursing home situation well but that
problem is now behind us. The family home is rock-solid safe and
guaranteed and I think the other thing that people can look forward
to in the New Year is that we will be offering the Australian public
a dramatically improved taxation system where rates of personal
income tax will be lower and the competitive position of Australian
business under its taxation system will be vastly improved and that
means jobs and more exports.
JONES:
I am just suprised that, on the tax front, that you haven't
seemingly embraced a wider debate. There is a lot of scholarship
happening internationally about alternatives to the GST. It seems
that we are equating the GST with tax reform.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I am not doing that. I am not talking about a GST. There is
no way that we are going to have a GST, alone, that's crazy.
This is a total tax reform. You have got to fix up the business
side, you have got to fix up the personal income tax side, you have
got to rationalise the indirect tax system. Anybody who seeks to
describe what we are doing, as just about the introduction of a
broad-based indirect tax, is wrong.
JONES:
I know you know how bad it is, but I had a letter from Joe, who
works at Safeway and he was pretty excited because he got a promotion
- he is only on $23,500 - but he got an extra $3,000. His wife is
a full-time carer and she is at home looking after the two kids,
but because of $3,000 he went in at 35.5 per cent in tax, he lost
$1,065 and he lost 50 cents for every dollar. He finished up with
$435 out of the $3,000. Now that is no encouragement for work is
it?
PRIME MINISTER:
The only way you will fix that and help Joe and give him the incentive
to get another $3,000 raise is to reform the personal income tax
system. At the moment what happens is you get onto an ordinary wage
and you are paying the top marginal rate of tax. When I left school
you had to be earning 19 times average weekly earnings - not that
I was on that when I left school - to pay the top marginal rate
of tax. You now have to only earn 1.4. Now that is disgraceful and
that will stifle incentive, not only of the Joes' but of every
other person who is trying hard to get ahead and look after their
families. What we want is a tax system that gives those people the
incentive to work harder, to know that if they get a rise then they
will keep the great bulk of it themselves. You can only do that
if you reform the whole system.
JONES:
Well no one has read the Act. The Act is a shambles for a start.
We better pay our way. So we will take a break and come back talking
to the Prime Minister.
[TAPE BREAK]
ALAN JONES:
Prime Minister it seems that in spite of all those things you say,
the country has been very disillusioned about this whole Wik, Mabo,
nasty language, and I see that Noel Pearson has said that if
you don't change your tune, there will be war between indigenous
and non-indigenous Australians. What does the leader of the nation
say to the rest of the nation about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that kind of language is inflammatory, it's unhelpful
to the cause that he's meant to espouse, and that is the cause
of reconciliation. There won't be war between indigenous and
other Australians.
ALAN JONES:
And will you be backing down?
PRIME MINISTER:
I won't be backing down because our legislation is already
a fair compromise. I mean if I'd been like a trade union leader,
I'd have produced a piece of legislation as a ridiculous ambit
claim and then bit-by-bit made concessions and then reached a mid
point. But I didn't do that. I spent four or five months travelling
around Australia talking to people, including probably four or five
meetings with Aboriginal leaders, including Mr Pearson, and including
an initial meeting of just Mr Pearson and myself. Now I started
off in good faith wanting to reach a result, a middle point that
was fair to both sides, and I've done that. I mean what I've
produced was not universally satisfactory to the farming community
of Australia. You remember when I went to Longreach the people holding
placards at Longreach weren't leaders of the Aboriginal community,
they were people who thought I was being too accommodating to the
Aboriginals.
Now I've produced a fair, decent, balanced outcome. It preserves
the right of indigenous people to make native title claims over
pastoral leases. It guarantees the principles of the Mabo decision.
It guarantees...
ALAN JONES:
Let's come back to that point about the native title over
pastoral leases. Are you conceding that there will be circumstances
in which they can co-exist?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm conceding that the principles of the Wik decision and
the Mabo decision will be maintained in my legislation, yes. I am.
I mean this is the extraordinary thing that I'm the bloke that's
actually produced legislation that upholds the principles of Mabo
and Wik and for my pains I'm being called racist. Now that
is wrong and the more people do it, can I say, the more determined
one becomes to maintain the fairness and the integrity of my position.
ALAN JONES:
Racist scum, not just racist. Is there a place in this kind of
so-called pursuit of reconciliation for that sort of language?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that sort of language is completely negative to the cause
of reconciliation. But you have to understand that Noel has a long
history of espousing the Labor side of the argument. I mean it's
not a surprise. What I find a bit interesting is that the Labor
Party has apparently not embraced him with the alacrity with which
they embraced Mrs Kernot.
ALAN JONES:
You'll be putting this legislation back to the Senate without
change?
PRIME MINISTER:
I will.
ALAN JONES:
Right. What do you say to pastoralists, I've just had one
on here this morning and Noel Pearson has made public statements
to say that they will not in any way seek to claim pastoral leases
in the area covered by the Land Council of which he's Chairman,
yet they are doing just that. Massive ambit claims for exclusivity
in possession and use. Now these people are out there trying to
make a quid, they face a Christmas of massive uncertainty, they
don't really know where they stand. What do you say to them?
PRIME MINISTER:
What I'm saying to them is that if we hadn't had to deal
with the Labor Party and the Independents in the Senate we'd
have fixed this thing up months ago. The people who are delaying
the resolution of this issue are the Labor Party, the Democrats,
Senator Harradine and people like Mr Pearson who want the debate
and the rancour to go on. And they keep arguing that they seek reconciliation,
and we all do. We all want to live in peace and harmony with each
other, irrespective of the colour of our skin and irrespective of
where we came from. And everybody has a compassion for the original
Australians, I certainly do and all of my Party members do.
But we've got to get this thing fixed. It's in everybody's
interest to bring certainty and predictability and unless our legislation
goes through we're going to have years of rancour and argument
and endless litigation and that is why, I just say again to those
who oppose it, let the legislation go through, let us put this issue
behind us, and let us focus on the future instead of endlessly debating
the past.
ALAN JONES:
You started here this morning by saying that you hope people have
a wonderful Christmas and there would be people in different circumstances
to you and others. Could I just put a couple of plugs in here. One,
in the first instance, for carers who work 365 days a year, 24 hours
a day. They get no holiday pay, no sick pay, no superannuation,
no car allowance, no transport, no nothing.
PRIME MINISTER:
None whatever.
ALAN JONES:
What kind of benefit can you find out of billions of dollars that
exist from Telstra sales, there's money to be spent on Aborigines
and land funds and God knows what, and the carers just seem to be
left behind.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have made a number or changes, we have provided increased
support for respite care, and the thing that many carers want is
to have a few weeks off. They're very happy to do it, they
do it out of love and concern for the people they're looking
for, but they do want to rest every so often and we are providing
more resources for that. And we're also significantly increasing
the Domiciliary Care Allowance, I know that's a jaw-breaking
description but it's really the allowance that assists people
who are looking after loved ones who have a profound incapacity
or a profound disability. Now those two items were announced I think
in the last budget.
It's an area that remains under constant review and I do agree
with you that some of the most heart-rending stories that I've
had from people who've sat in my office and talked about the
personal trauma and difficulty of caring for, particularly an intellectually
retarded family member. You're trying to hold a family together
in a small residence. One woman spoke of her difficulty, she had
a 25 year old profoundly handicapped adult son, and another 17 year
old son who was trying to sit for his HSC, and she said in a very
small dwelling the strain and attention, and yet she wanted to go
on, what she wanted above all was some kind of relief, some kind
of respite from it.
ALAN JONES:
You also said at the beginning that it's a time for families,
you've been a strong advocate of the family. And yet we live
in a world where it seems that young people face increasing alienation,
drug addiction and suicide and so on. Are there any circumstances
in which you would introduce a home-maker's allowance, where
one of the spouses would be given a choice to stay at home for a
figure of approximately say $350 a week, acknowledging that that
may well be in contemporary society the most important job the country
can do.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we've already gone down that path with our family tax
initiative, it's not as much as that.
ALAN JONES:
No it's not.
PRIME MINISTER:
But it is a start, and one of the things for which I've been
criticised by some sections of the media, but for which I defend
very strongly is that we've tried to give men and women, parents,
a greater choice as to the kind of childcare that they provide.
Now that's not to say that John Howard seeks to dictate a lifestyle,
but what it does say is that John Howard is in favour of giving
men and women, mothers and fathers, greater choice. And those who
seek an arrangement whereby one parent cares full time, they ought
to be given more help.
ALAN JONES:
We've got to go to the news. One final thing, I spoke to the
chief executive of a disability home for disabled children and the
Commonwealth State Disability Agreement is up for grabs, you may
not have been across this yet. But there's talk about many
of the services having to be cut back because the money isn't
available. Surely it's this time of year too when you'd
look at those, there's not a lot of them, but by gee they have
a tremendous (inaudible).
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I've had a look at that and I can guarantee that the
Commonwealth will provide generously for a renewal of the Commonwealth/State
Disability Agreement. The Ministers met at the end of November,
they made good progress, and they hope that an agreement will be
signed in February. It's too important to be damaged by any
Commonwealth/State wrangling.
ALAN JONES:
We've got to go to the news. Thanks for your time, and have
a good Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in 1998.
PRIME MINISTER:
Can I wish all of your listeners a very happy and peaceful, and
of your listeners a very happy and peaceful, and
above all safe Christmas and New Year.
[Ends]