SATTLER:
Good morning Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Howard, how are you?
SATTLER:
Good. As I have been saying to a few people this morning, including
the Opposition Leader, it would appear that the jigsaw is falling
into place for a Federal election, would you agree?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the Constitution says we have got to have an election now
every three years and we are into our last year of a three year
term so there is obviously going to be an election sometime in the
next ten to twelve months. When, I don't know.
SATTLER:
You're the only one who will know.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's right. It will depend a bit on how the Senate behaves.
If the Senate is prepared to pass our legislation then the election
might be a bit a later. But, look I am not going to spend the whole
year speculating about when the election is going to be.
SATTLER:
Telstra won't be a double-dissolution issue because you won't
be putting that before the parliament before an election, will you?
PRIME MINISTER:
We'll be putting the legislation in, yes, but the operation
date of the legislation won't be until after the election so
that in accordance with a promise I made before the last election,
if people don't like us they will throw us out at the next
election and then the new government won't allow the legislation
to come into force. So what it really does is to achieve a double
effect of allowing people to pass judgement on the proposal to allow
people to buy the rest. But at the same time, if they do approve,
letting us go ahead as quickly as possible, without delay, if we
are re-elected.
SATTLER:
OK. We talked to Kim Beazley just before you. Your direct opponent
on this and it seems to him that it comes down to a numbers game.
How many people can benefit from the sale of the other two-thirds
of Telstra versus those who won't benefit and he seems to think
that would be the majority because they won't be able to own
shares.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that is an incredibly childish, that's an incredibly
childish view.
SATTLER:
What he thinks is that those people who can financially benefit
would naturally support the sale and those who have would be in
that sort of category, but those who can't afford them, they'd
vote against it.
PRIME MINISTER:
So, in other words he is saying you can't ever support a privatisation
unless more than 9.5 million Australians can buy shares in the company
that has been privatised. I don't remember him saying that
when he privatised
SATTLER:
He reckons that the Comonwealth Bank and Telstra are chalk and
cheese.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes. The only difference is that we're in government now
and he was in government then. That's the only difference.
We have had a consistent line on privatisation and what we are doing
is allowing the Australian public, the men and women of Australia,
to directly own the biggest company in Australia and that's
what we're going to do by making this decision.
There was tremendous support from the Australian community for
floating one-third of Telstra. More than 600,000 Australians bought
shares in that float for the first time in their lives. 92 per cent
of the employees of the company bought shares and once again we
will offer a special incentive, a special inducement for the workers
at Telstra to buy shares in the new float.
SATTLER:
I guess the irony there, and I have spoken to the union today too,
they say they will be out there campaigning at the next election
against the sale of the other two-thirds but their union representative
admitted that a lot had bought shares.
PRIME MINISTER:
Doesn't that just indicate how ideologically marooned both
the Labor Party and the trade union movement is on this issue. They
are just pathetically old fashioned and out of date. This is a proposal
that contains all of the protection for people in the bush and there
will be...
SATTLER:
Can I just pick you up on that too because you are, in fact, broadcasting,
we are, to the bush at the moment in Western Australia. How can
you guarantee that a private company would keep the standards up
to the most remote areas?
PRIME MINISTER:
Because the law will compel them to do so.
SATTLER:
How will you judge that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Because we will pass a law and there is a regulatory authority
to make certain they will do it.
SATTLER:
In default?
PRIME MINISTER:
They will be in big trouble. They won't default, the law will
compel them to do it.
SATTLER:
And how will the sale effect and improve the general living standards
of all Australians, not just those who buy shares?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we will be able to reduce our Federal Government debt. I mean,
the $100 billion of Federal Government debt that Mr Keating and
Mr Beazley left us. We will be able to reduce that by this one single
decision by about 40 per cent. 40 per cent.
SATTLER:
How many billions is that?
PRIME MINISTER:
And what that will do is reduce interest rates because the Government
won't have to service as much debt and that will reduce the
pressure on the money markets and that will inturn flow through
to either lower interest rates or a maintenance of the existing
level of interest rates. So it all ends up, everybody in the community
benefits.
that will reduce the pressure on the money markets and that in
turn will flow through to either lower interest rates or a maintenance
of the existing level of interest rates, so it all ends up everybody
in the community benefits ...
SATTLER:
Well I would like to think they'd actually come down.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't know what's going to happen in the future
with interest rates, nobody can ever be certain. But I do know this,
that if the government is borrowing less money, if the government
has a lower debt, then there's less pressure on the markets
because there are fewer people competing for the available money,
and that means that there's less pressure on interest rates.
Now I'm not promising they're going to come down, but
what I am promising you is that if you reduce debt you reduce interest
rate pressures and they either come down or they stay where they
are for longer.
SATTLER:
Would you agree now that with this sort of card falling into place
there's going to be very clear definition between what your
side puts up to us at the election, and what Labor puts up. You've
got this, you've got the native title legislation, you've
got tax reform, and I imagine that includes a GST, and you've
got industrial relations reforms. Are they going to be the four
big issues?
PRIME MINISTER:
They are four huge issues. And the other issue of course is that
if Labor were re-elected it would go back to the policies it had
in government. It would go back to the high interest rate, high
debt policies it followed when it was in government, because every
time we try and do something to reduce debt and to reduce interest
rates, they oppose it.
Those four issues that you named will all be major issues in the
election campaign and there are clear differences between us and
Labor on each of them. We will reform the tax system, Labor won't.
We'll let Australians buy into the rest of Telstra, Labor won't.
We'll reform native title, Labor won't, and of course
the daddy of them all in a sense is we'll fix the waterfront,
Labor can't, because of its association with the trade union
movement. Interestingly enough in relation to both the waterfront
and Telstra, the Labor party can't move because it is shackled
to the trade union movement.
SATTLER:
Now while you're there Prime Minister, you've just announced
a new Australian National Council on Drugs. What is that going to
do to try and beat back the amount of drug trafficking, and we have
got major problems in Western Australia, about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I've done much more than that. I've also announced
the commitment of an additional $100 million over and above the
amount of $87 million that I committed last year and this money
will go towards tackling both the law enforcement side of the drug
menace as well as the rehabilitation side, and the very important
good news for Perth and for Western Australia is that we'll
be establishing three more mobile strike force teams of Australian
Federal Police officers and one of those three new teams will now
be based in Perth.
SATTLER:
So the lobbying on that one worked, because it looked as though
we were going to miss out for a while?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we listened to what was put to us and we found the additional
resources and I indicated to the Premier of Western Australia last
night when I saw him in Brisbane, that I thought we would have some
good news, and it's all fallen into place and I'm very
happy to tell you for the first time in speaking to the Western
Australian media, that one of the decisions will be the provision
of $11.8 million to establish three task force teams, one in Brisbane,
one in Melbourne, and importantly for Western Australia one of them
will be in Perth.
Now these will be in addition to the three task force teams that
I established in the first instalment of the Tough on Drugs programme
but it's a very comprehensive commitment and what it means
is that the amount of money being spent on the drug menace has doubled
in the last year to eighteen months, and an independent expert in
this area said at the launch this morning that this represents the
greatest commitment to fighting the drug menace of any Federal government
in Australia for more than a decade, and it has been very widely
supported. It's $50 million to tackle the rehabilitation side
of it, which promotes our zero tolerance philosophy and $50 million
to tackle the law enforcement side of it, including the money I've
talked about a moment ago for the task force but also $21 million
for the National Crime Authority's Blade Taskforce that will
specifically target organised crime coming out of South-East Asia.
SATTLER:
I'm glad you're going to go the source up there too.
And the new National Council on Drugs, have we got any representatives
on that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes you have got representatives on that and the Chairman of that
is David Watters of the Salvation Army, who's had 23 years
experience in fighting the drug problem.
SATTLER:
Of picking up the pieces.
PRIME MINISTER:
Picking up the pieces, and you've got the Deputy Chairman,
Mick Palmer, who is the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.
It's a Council that brings together the government, the volunteer
organisations, the law enforcement organisations, a group of people
all of whom are knowledgeable in the area and all of whom are very
committed. This is a major further commitment by my government and
it fulfils the promise I made last year that what I announced last
year was only the first instalment and we have more than doubled
in today's announcement the additional resources that we've
committed to fighting this absolute menace.
SATTLER:
Well as I say, I feel all the pieces falling into place Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well this is a good policy and ...
SATTLER:
No I'm not knocking the policy. I'm just saying I feel
an election in the wind. Now let's be honest about it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there will be an election at some stage.
SATTLER:
Won't be next year.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Howard I don't have to go to the polls until March of
next year.
SATTLER:
Yeah, well I reckon December. A nice summer, the holidays coming
up and all that sort of thing. A perfect time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Howard, I note what you say but in the meantime I'm getting
on with good government and good government is about doing good
things for the community and today is good for the community.
SATTLER:
Yeah, all right. Well we'll see you across here shortly I'm
sure.
PRIME MINISTER:
You will, but I always visit Western Australia on a regular basis,
elections or no elections, you know that.
SATTLER:
Appreciate your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[Ends]