E&OE...............................................
JONES:
PM, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
So what's the rationale behind this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Because, I think Australians should be given the opportunity to
directly own as many shares as they want to in Australia's
biggest company. That's the rationale behind it. That's
the personal rationale behind.
The broader economic rationale behind it is that having privatised
one-third of Telstra it is commercially unwise for the Government
to retain the other two-thirds. The company will be run better in
full private ownership. That is the view of those who now run the
company. That is the view of many market analysts. So it is a plus,
plus situation. It's an opportunity for the men and women of
Australia to buy directly into the company. And they demonstrated
in their hundreds of thousands that they wanted to do it in relation
to the first one-third and I am sure they will give an equal thumbs
up to the remaining two-thirds.
JONES:
In relation to privatisation of public utilities which provide
important community services, how do you achieve, in the process,
the proper balance that must exist between the interests of the
shareholder and the interests of the consumer. Now I am thinking
of people in far-flung areas, outback Australia and so on.
PRIME MINISTER:
You do that very easily by passing a law compelling the company,
even though it is in private hands, to provide community service
obligations. We did that in relation to the one-third sale. Already
we have said, quite explicitly, that we will do the same in relation
to the remaining two-thirds. I say to the people of country Australia
you're community services will be protected. The law will compel
a privatised Telstra to provide you with those basic services.
JONES:
And cost of that? A cap on the cost.
PRIME MINISTER:
The cost will have to be born by the company.
JONES:
And a cap on the cost?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes.
JONES:
Local calls, could a private company charge for the time?
PRIME MINISTER:
The prohibition on un-timed local calls will remain.
JONES:
As you are saying this today - and the argument is $45 billion,
and it looks an awful lot of money - there are blokes who had a
job a month ago at the mine at Goulburn, or the mine at Cobar, or
the mine at Lithgow, or the mine at Gunnedah who are saying how
in the hell do I get a slice of all of this? Where does the money
go? How can we actually make sure that those in need do get some
slice of all of this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, the great bulk of the money, that's the overwhelming
bulk of the money, will reduce debt. In this one single act we will
be able to reduce about 40 per cent, wipe out about 40 per cent
of the total Federal Government debt of Australia. Never before
in our history will we, by one deed, have done so much to reduce
such a large debt.
JONES:
Do you think you have won the battle in explaining how important
that is to Australian people?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I suppose I will find that out at the election, Alan. Like
all of these things you meet your makers and you meet your judgment
day, I mean the people are my makers as far as ..(inaudible).. and
it is true. I have never...
JONES:
But the Asian lesson, of course, is obviously to do something about
debt, both private and Government, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
And in the long run you can provide more jobs, you can provide
more security and you can have more wherewithal to help people who
really need help if you have got a strong economy and a strong economy
means as little debt as possible. And we accumulated not only a
budget deficit of $10.5 billion or inheritated not only a budget
deficit of $10.5 billion, but a huge accumulated series of budget
deficits adding up to about $100 billion.
Now in this one single deed we will lay the foundation for moving
about 40 per cent, in one single policy decision, 40 per cent of
Australia's accumulated Government debt. Now that will take
a huge load off the backs of Australians because it will mean that
we won't have to pay interest every year to service that $40
billion. I mean if you can cut your housing loan in half you pay
less interest. If you can cut the national housing loan in half
you pay less interest.
JONES:
Foreign ownership?
PRIME MINISTER:
Foreign ownership. There will be severe limits placed on it as
there were in relation to the one third. There is no way that this
company could ever remotely, possibly fall into the hands of foreign
owners.
JONES:
Just on something you are going to do today there is publicity
today that you are going to announce extra funding for the crackdown
on illegal drugs. Can you give any advance indication of what that
will be?
PRIME MINISTER:
What we are going to do is we are going to supplement further,
in a quite a big way, the detoxification programmes. We are going
to put more money into policing measures. We are going to certainly
put more money in the way of the welfare sector organisations that
provide rehabilitation programmes. We have a three-pronged approach:
you give more resources to law enforcement; you give more resources
to education and you give more resources to rehabilitation. We are
strong enough to believe that trying to encourage the attitude of
zero tolerance of drugs is a viable option in Australia.
We are not prepared to, sort of, surrender to this idea that you
can never persuade people, in an absolute sense of the evil of drugs
and we are going to continue to go down that path and it is really
a very major announcement.
JONES:
Right. When you formulate and fashion these sorts of policies,
this illegal drug attack on illegal drugs, do you talk to, as you
John Howard, talk to say the customs people or the Federal Police.
You see the Australian Federal Police Association says they are
concerned at the lack of port surveillance. Now I am sure that you
are aware that no one, for example, mans the port of Port Kembla
after 5.00 pm on weekdays or at weekends. I mean it is open slather
for people to just bring drugs into the country.
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, the answer to that is it is never possible no matter what
resources you have or what government is in power to cover every
single point of entry and it is well known that drug seizures normally
occur, overwhelmingly occur as a result of tip-offs, as a result
of intelligence and forward information and what we have done, both
in the announcement I made last year - and it will be reinforced
by the announcement today - is to increase the focus on our capacity
to strengthen that forward intelligence and the capacity to get
those tip-offs. In addition to that I will also be making some comments
about physical resources as well.
The other answer to your question is in formulating a policy, I
certainly talk to a lot of people. I will be announcing the membership
of a national drug strategy group which will include a lot of people
who are dealing at the very front line of this problem. And I think
when you see the membership of that and particularly the chairman
and deputy chairman of that body, you will have a very good idea
of how serious we are about listening to the people who are right
at the coal face of this horrendous problem.
JONES:
I know that you do listen and therefore can I just leave you with
one statistic. I mean 300 customs officers were retrenched last
year but the volume of shipping arriving in Australia has risen
by 13 per cent. Now that doesn't add up. Those two statistics
don't add up.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it depends if you directly correlate the volume of shipping
and the number of (inaudible) and assume that there are no productivity
gains at all from technology, that there are no productivity gains
from different methods of forward checking freight and cargo and
of course there clearly are. You can't just make that kind
of swap without making any allowance for that.
JONES:
OK, say something would you again, because you made a comment on
Friday which I thought, a comment that needed to be made more often,
about stay-at-home mothers and you condemned those, especially feminists
who sneer at them. What was the reason for that?
PRIME MINISTER:
The point I was making Alan was simply this, that years ago if
a mother went out to work because she had to, she was sometimes
accused of neglecting her children. When the reality was that she
had no alternative because her husband's income was so small
that they needed the extra money to cover the mortgage. Now I thought
that was grossly unfair. Equally now, when you have more and more
women in the paid workforce it is equally unfair that when a mother,
or father for that matter, elects to stay at home and provide full-time
care for their children and their young, they tend to get sneered
at and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens. And
I think that is wrong, and the stridency of some of the ultra-feminist
groups in the community who sort of really demand that every mother
be back in the workforce as quickly as humanly possible, now that
is ridiculous. I am for choice and if a mother or father chooses
to be full-time at home to look after their children that is a choice
that should both be respected and honoured and facilitated as much
as possible by the taxation system.
And equally, if a family decides that for them the right thing
to do is for both mum and dad to be in the workforce, or for one
of them to be part-time and the other full-time, equally their choice
should be respected and honoured and understood and facilitated,
and let's have none of this sort of sorting out what is the
right role for a woman. The right role for a woman is what the woman
chooses to be her role, and it is for mothers and fathers to decide
the best environment to raise their children, and I think governments
and communities should respect those individual choices and should
not seek to make moral judgments on them.
JONES:
But given that you have said in the past that the family is the
best welfare unit known, and given that sometimes it's very
difficult for mum and dad to provide enough income from one source,
one worker, to be able to cover the obligations to the family, why
wouldn't you actually consider making some of your $45 billion
available to a significant home-makers allowance so that we can
in fact give people a really viable choice about going home to look
after their children?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan I am, in concept, attracted to making the tax system
better for families, let me make that very clear, and we did it
with the family tax initiative and obviously it's something
that will be under very careful focus as we put our tax policy together.
We can't of course use the $45 billion, or whatever the figure
turns out to be for that, because we only get that figure once.
JONES:
That's right. And you've got to make outlays.
PRIME MINISTER:
And I mean it would be plainly ridiculous to spend it on, because
what would you do next year. People would think that was pretty
cynical. You do get some ongoing saving because you no longer have
to pay as much interest, but Alan, on the question of family tax
policy, it is a key element of our approach that we want to make
the tax system more supportive of families. I believe personally
very strongly that people if they want one of the parents to be
at home when children are young, either part-time or full-time,
that to the maximum extent possible everybody who wants to do that
ought to be able to do it and not just the well-off.
JONES:
OK. At the risk of flogging a dead horse Prime Minister, can I
just repeat to you comments you yourself made on the Sunday programme
on the first of March where you said, and I quote exactly: "Given
the Australian experience and the Australian expectation, the best
health system is to have what you might call the safety net of Medicare
with a strong private component as well." However Michael Wooldridge
said on the 12th of March, "..... let me make one point perfectly
clear, we will retain Medicare in its entirety. We will ensure that
patients are given the choice to be treated free as public patients,
would ensure Australians have access to public hospitals on the
basis of clinical need." Now surely on the one hand you can't
have what the Prime Minister calls Medicare being a safety net and
what the Health Minister calls on the other hand free-for-all.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't know that there's such a conflict Alan,
and I don't think talking about health incidentally is flogging
a dead horse, I think it's a very important issue and I want
to see constant improvements and so forth for the health system.
But I don't think you'd say something is completely free
and I don't think Michael said it in this context when everybody's
got to pay the Medicare levy. I mean, Medicare is only free in the
sense that there is no fee charged when you get a treatment.
JONES:
But the perception by the public must be that they have access
to free public hospitals otherwise they wouldn't be falling
out of the private health care system to the extent that they are
and making the uncontrolled demand on the public system such that's
groaning under the weight of it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there are a combination of reasons for people dropping out
of private health insurance. Unfortunately the thing was left neglected
by the former government for too long so that when we got into office
there had been a very, very big slide of people out. And our health,
our tax incentives have stabilised that, but we obviously still
have a lot of pressure on private health funds and ..
JONES:
But shouldn't Medicare just be the genuine safety net for
those who can't contribute to their own health funding needs,
and you and I and the rest of us should be paying for ourselves.
PRIME MINISTER:
But hang on Alan you and I, let's face it mate, earn much
higher incomes ...
JONES:
Yeah, well we pay for ourselves.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, but you and I are still in terms of incomes a relatively small
minority in the community. The great bulk of people's incomes
are in the low to modest level and you have to make.....
JONES:
There's plenty of John Howards and Alan Jones going to the
public hospital.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I know, but they don't compose anywhere near ...
JONES:
They're going to public hospitals.
PRIME MINISTER:
I understand that point. I understand that point but you still
have to have a system that people feel provides them with proper
security. Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that the present
system is perfect, it's not. But I do think the constant, I
don't mean you but I mean more at a political level, the constant
attacks that are made on it, it is still a better system than the
American system or the British system. There's not a system
in the world that can be named that is dramatically better than
ours. I mean it's got a lot of faults but it's also a
great deal better than any of the other systems on display around
the world. It does need constant care and renovation and improvement
I acknowledge that, and the government is constantly endeavouring
to do so.
JONES:
OK. Good to talk to you and thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
OK Alan.
[Ends]