6 October 1998
E&OE………………………………………………………………………………….
JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
Congratulations.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much.
JONES:
You are not having a rest?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, not immediately. I guess in a few weeks time I might have a holiday for a short time but there is still plenty of work to do. I have got to await the counting the number of the marginal seats. I have started to give consideration to the shape of the new Cabinet. I’ll have a party meeting as soon as we have a clear idea of the seats that have….
JONES:
What are your numbers people telling you about the seats?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, it’s anything between six and 16 as a majority. I don’t really know and some of them are too close to call. Far too close to call.
JONES:
You spoke at the weekend about the imminent retirement resignation departure of Gareth Evans as giving a bad name to politics. Does the publicity today then about his benefit further concern you, you were talking about a $1.6 million payout. Bill O’Chee, $1.4 million. These are phenomenal amounts of money that these people can get now when people out there in struggle street can’t get access to their superannuation at 65.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I understand, particularly in the case of Gareth Evans that the problem is aggravated by the fact that he was so cynical. And running for election and then within a few hours of being elected announcing that he was retiring….
JONES:
He’d only play on a winning team?
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s right and I think that’s very poor. I think people might accept somebody who has been a Prime Minister going if he is defeated but even then they wonder why you don’t stay for a while to front up to Parliament and be there during the time that your successor is installed. I would like to think that that ought to be the norm rather than the exception. I know there’s a lot of controversy about the size of Members of Parliament’s superannuation and you can argue it from different points of view. And I want the public to know that I am very sensitive to that and I think many of us on both sides, I think Mr Beazley would be very sensitive to it as well and people don’t help when they appear to behave as Mr Evans did by saying he is only going to play if he’s in the winning team.
Now, Bill O’Chee, of course, has been defeated, or it looks as though he has been defeated. And can I say that I am very sorry if Bill ends up being defeated. He was very courageous, he stood up to the bully boy tactics of sections of his own Queensland National Party organisation in relation to One Nation. He is the only Member of Parliament at present of Chinese decent and I’ll be very – in the Federal Parliament – at present and I’ll be very sorry if he does depart and I hope that he is not lost to the broad Coalition side of politics because he has displayed an enormous amount of guts in months passed over the stand-off between the One Nation party and the National Party in Queensland.
JONES:
Clyde Holding was a long time member of the Victorian ALP and, indeed, the ALP opposition and was a leader. He left and took superannuation, he then became a Federal Member and started in the trough again. Bruce Baird now left your own party took the superannuation and as a caller rang earlier this morning said he now joins the queue again. There’s something dramatically wrong about that when the average bloke has to wait till 65 to get his super and these people are able to have two bites at the cherry.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, you do make a much larger contribution than the average person. For 18 years I made a contribution of 11 per cent. I don’t know that there are many people in private industry who would make an 11 per cent contribution themselves, in fact, I don’t know of any. And that is a very significant difference. This idea that we don’t make any contribution at all is not correct.
JONES:
No-one’s challenging your capacity to take your own but when you take all the taxpayers as well and do you take it when you get booted out….
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that is the criticism although there is now a, you know, there is a lot of pressure to alter the preservation age. There is a lot of criticism of it being taken when somebody goes as distinct from age 55 or 60 which applies to the rest of the community. On the other hand, the contributions that are made, I repeat, are 11 per cent for most of the time that you are there if you are there for any lengthy period of time and I mean, in my case, I have been here for 24 years.
JONES:
Yes, just on that, the average bloke out there would have to pay 15 per cent for most probably 40 years of his life so the the actuary figures say, to retire on 60% of what he’s earning today…..
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, that’d be right.
JONES:
….we are….that’s a lot and we’re paying no where near that.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no.
JONES:
What then do we say about this Government policy where by you tax superannuation at every level. We tax the contribution, we tax the earnings and we tax the benefits. Should if we’ve got this terrible, this problem of savings, should that be a policy? We’re not the only country in the world that does that by the way.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there is an argument for doing that but there’s also an argument for….
JONES:
Encouraging savings.
PRIME MINISTER:
…..encouraging savings in a private sense by not having such a high level of personal income tax and that of course brings us back to the argument for a GST.
JONES:
Okay well away you go. Now what are you going to do about the GST? They’re all saying that you can’t tax food. What is food?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well food is something that everybody eats including the wealthiest people in the community and if you let food out of the GST you’re in effect giving a bonanza to the well-off. It’s far better to properly target the low-income people so that they are adequately, they’re able to buy the food that they need.
JONES:
That wasn’t commonly understood. What offsets were you giving to low-income people in return for the increase in costs that the GST would [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the most important offset was the 4% increase in the pension which was at least 1.5% beyond the price impact. We’re also giving personal tax cuts by cutting the lowest income tax rate from 20% to 17% and we’re increasing the tax free threshold from $5400 to $6000. Alan, what I’m going to do is exactly what I said in the election I’d do and I just can’t understand why people think I’ve in any way changed my position. I read these amusing about how I’m going….Howard’s going to trade off this and that. What Howard’s is going to do is exactly what he said. He’s going to call the Parliament together and he’s going to present the legislation. I would like the GST, the taxation legislation passed through the House of Representatives and to be into the Senate before Christmas. That is my aim. There is no reason why I shouldn’t do that.
JONES:
Does the Senate then have the numbers to stall? I mean are likely….
PRIME MINISTER:
[inaudible] on the attitude of Senator Colston and Senator Harradine.
JONES:
Have you had any discussions with them at all?
PRIME MINISTER:
I haven’t had any discussions with them at all. I’ve naturally wanted to let a few days go by until the doubtful seats are sorted out in the House of Representatives. But I’ll be back in business this week talking to people and naturally putting together the personnel in the new Government. I don’t think I can have a party meeting until later this week or early next week because there is still a number of seats outstanding. Then we go through the formality of re-electing party leaders and deputy leaders and then I form a Government. And I see the Governor General and I get a commission to form a second Government. And then we set about working. Parliament will sit in November. It will sit as soon as the Constitutional numbers of days that are meant to expire after an election have expired. I’m not going to waste any time on that. And Parliament will be down to work in November and I would expect it to sit for seven weeks up to Christmas. And then by that time I hope to have passed the tax legislation through the House of Representatives and have it into the Senate. That’s my plan.
JONES:
And in this GST, the big ‘S’ is the issue in it. 70% of the services, 70% of the economy on services they’re not taxed.
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s right.
JONES:
Is there any circumstances under which you would not tax raw food? I mean we’re not talking about restaurant meals or hamburgers. Raw food. Are there any circumstances….
PRIME MINISTER:
No I don’t believe food should be left out, I really don’t. I go back to what I said earlier. We all eat food and we all benefit therefore if you leave it out and the rich will benefit too. I don’t think that’s sensible.
JONES:
I’m talking raw food. I’m not talking about restaurants…
PRIME MINISTER:
No no, I understand. Fresh food.
JONES:
Yeah. Well raw food rather than fresh food I suppose. Fresh food might be a roast beef or something like that. We’re talking about raw food.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there’s raw food. Yeah, whatever you by the steak you buy in the butcher shop…
JONES:
The key is Harradine and Colston before June 30 isn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
It is, it is again. Well I mean I’ve given up on the Labor Party. They assume they don’t ever sort of accept the verdict of any elections. I mean they’re running around talking about mandates. As a number of people have pointed out if a mandate calibrates to the number of votes you polled than the One Nation Party has a larger mandate than the Australian Democrats because they polled more votes. Now I don’t think anybody’s arguing that, least of all the Australian Democrats. I don’t think so. I mean, look, in our system you either win or you lose and you win according to whether you formed a majority government in the Lower House. And when you’ve won you have a right to do the things you said you’d do if you won.
JONES:
Should there be any consideration of changes to the Trade Practices Act to bring the whole business of political advertising within the framework of it, if someone….a director of BHP issued a prospectus in which he told lies to a potential investor then he would be prosecuted. Now this campaign if you listen to it, read the correspondence I get, listen to the calls I get, people are outraged by the lies that have been told especially in relation to the GST. Do we have to cop this election after election or is something going to be done about bringing political advertising in within the framework of a Trades Practices Act?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I would like to see that happen but I don’t think you will ever get agreement across the party divide for it to occur because people would feel that in some way they were trading away an advantage. But it if you ask me as an individual should there be some mechanism to stop the complete telling of an untruth in a campaign as distinct from an exaggeration, I mean somebody can say: Jones is the greatest. Now that’s a matter of assertion. Somebody can say…..
JONES:
CDs will go up by 10%.
PRIME MINISTER:
CDs will go up by 10%. Now you know that’s wrong. That’s factually wrong. You can prove that it’s incorrect. Now if you could do that, but I don’t hold my breath that you’d ever get agreement across the Party [inaudible].
JONES:
What about the notion of someone who leaves as Gareth Evans has left. Should those people contribute to the cost of a by-election? Why should tax payers….
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there are a lot of people who feel that and I guess it’s something that we could examine as to how you would do it but you would always get a grey area. I mean somebody who gets ill….
JONES:
Absolutely, they shouldn’t have to …
PRIME MINISTER:
….and somebody who has a genuine and profound change in circumstances. I think it is particularly galling when it happens on the night or happens within a few days or a few weeks of being re-elected. It may be different if half way through a term somebody says: I want to go. I mean let me contrast Evans’s behaviour with that of Ian McLachlan. Now Ian McLachlan was the Defence Minister in the old Government. He did a terrific job. He came to me a few months ago and he said: look I’m considering getting out. And I said: well you don’t want to go straight away. He said: look, I don’t feel I can get re-elected and then go half way through my term…
JONES:
Typically McLachlan.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah and….
JONES:
Typically.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah typically he said: I should announce before the election. He said: although I wouldn’t mind doing another year or 18 months I’d rather wait.
JONES:
Just before we go, public funding. Do you think the people out there know that for all these awful advertisements that they’ve heard and they’re sick to death of them and they’ve been thrown at them from every direction, they’re actually paying for them? That [inaudible]….
PRIME MINISTER:
No I don’t.
JONES:
The Labor Party’s going to get $12 million and you’re going to get about 12 million.
PRIME MINISTER:
I don’t think they do know that. We used to have a situation where there was no public funding and then people said that advantaged the Liberal Party because they got a lot of money from big companies. I don’t think that’s true. A lot of big companies give to both parties and the trade unions don’t give any to us and they give a lot of money to the Labor Party. You could get rid of public funding but then people would think that would advantage the established parties. It’s a dilemma because it is expensive to run modern election campaigns. Murderously expensive.
JONES:
And it’s awful to be assaulted with untruths knowing that you’re actually paying for it.
PRIME MINISTER:
On the other hand we do believe in freedom of speech and if a political party has got the money it has a right to advertise just as a soap company or a petrol company has got the right to advertise. So there is a balance in our kind of community.
JONES:
Okay, good to talk to you. Thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks Alan.
JONES:
Congratulations again.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]