Subjects: Parliamentary career, illegal immigrants, economy, gambling, children's
charities, high definition TV, ANZ Bank.
CORDEAUX:
It is with a great deal of pleasure that I welcome the Prime Minister of
Australia John Howard. Sir how are you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Very well Jeremy. Good to be with you again.
CORDEAUX:
Nice to hear you. Congratulations by the way. Happy anniversary. I believe
this is the day isn't it, the 25th anniversary of your election
to Parliament.
PRIME MINISTER:
No this is the year, I was actually earlier this year..earlier in the year
in 1974. But the party's been kind enough to have a number of events and
there was a very important one in Sydney last night.
CORDEAUX:
But that was a dinner.
PRIME MINISTER:
A dinner which was also associated with the launch of the Millennium Forum
of the New South Wales Division which is of course designed to clear the
party's debt which arose after the last State election. It was a very enjoyable
and a very successful night, and I thank the party for associating that
occasion with my 25 years in Parliament, which has been an enormous privilege
to represent my constituents for a quarter of a century.
CORDEAUX:
Indeed, indeed. I mean it's been an occasion I suppose to reflect on on
maybe the most memorable moment in that 25 years. I guess there were many.
But is there one that comes to mind?
PRIME MINISTER:
Undoubtedly being elected Prime Minister in '96 was the highlight of the
career. Getting chosen for the first time in a seat that I believed I was
likely to win, that was also an exhilarating experience and I owe a lot
to the Liberal Party for the privilege it gave me to be one of its candidates
in a fairly safe seat. And I'll never forget the night that I was chosen.
There have been many highlights, and however, the 2nd of March
1996 was the highlight of the time that I've been in Parliament. But the
last four years almost as Prime Minister have been of course years where
a lot has been achieved for the benefit of the country, and one does go
into public life to do good things for the community and I believe the Government
that I've led over the last almost four years now has certainly strengthened
Australia's economy, given it a new credibility in foreign affairs through
in particular what we did in East Timor, and brought about a safer community
through our national gun laws. They are some of the highlights of what's
been achieved and it has been something initially made possible for me by
the courtesy of the Liberal Party, but it's also been a team effort. This
is a Government of a number of very talented individuals, and all of them
have played a major role in bringing to Australia a measure of economic
strength, international respectability and credit that I don't think we've
had for something like 30 years.
CORDEAUX:
There would be a never ending stream of challenges and I guess the one challenge
that, if I can judge by the number of people who rang this program yesterday
wanting to talk about the boat people and about the refugees and that whole
issue, this is a considerable challenge. I mean the calls we got yesterday,
people were genuinely outraged at the thought that these people were going
to be transported to Woomera, and then the taxpayer was going to have to
fund air-conditioning for these renovated units. I can't..
PRIME MINISTER:
That won't happen. That won't happen. Now I have every sympathy for people
who feel so desperate, so afraid, and so out of alternatives they risk their
lives, to travel often in almost un-seaworthy vessels, to another country.
And I do try and understand the trauma. But they must understand that as
far as the Government is concerned, there won't be any change on this, that
we will provide basic and necessary and appropriate living circumstances
while their situation is being assessed and negotiations are underway about
their return. But any suggestion that they be provided with air-conditioning
is quite unreasonable, and well I don't want to dwell on it, and as I understand
it it's not really being seriously contemplated by anybody. It was a suggestion
made and it produced a public reaction.
Now as I say, I have a lot of sympathy for people who feel as desperate
as these poor men and women and children must feel, but equally Australia
is a very compassionate country. We take more than our fair share of refugees
and we're happy to do so because we're a lucky country. And we've been very
generous to a lot of people from different parts of the world this year
- Kosovo, East Timor. Back in the '70s we took more Indo-Chinese per head
than any country on Earth. We have a very good record when it comes to receiving
refugees, and it will continue to be the case.
CORDEAUX:
You don't think that generosity Prime Minister might be misconstrued and
perhaps manipulated?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is in some cases and that is why we've tightened the law. I mean
one of the reasons we're getting a lot of boat people is that we've had
some obstruction in the Senate over the last couple of years from the Labor
Party in particular in trying to strengthen the law, and because the law
hasn't been strengthened the word around the world is that Australia is
an easy touch. Now we want to be seen as a fair go, fair touch country,
not an easy touch country as far as refugees are concerned. We have a reputation
to uphold, but we're not going to be taken for granted and we don't want
the world to be around the international circles that well all you've got
to do is get to Australia and then you're right, they'll never get you out.
Of course the laws are such now. I'm not prepared to have that, the Government
is not prepared to have that and I applaud the way in which Philip Ruddock
has handled this. It's a difficult issue. He has a lot of people saying
to him think only of the compassionate side of it. We've put a lot of weight
on that. But there's also a national interest.
There's also a question of fairness. There are tens of thousands of people
who want to come to Australia who queue up, who wait, who fill out the form,
abide by the rules, wait their turn. And if you have people queue jumping
and then being allowed to stay, you're basically thumbing your nose at those
people who played by the game. Now we're not going to allow that to happen
and we want balance restored to this. We're not going to be an easy touch.
We're going to be a fair touch. We're going to be fair where there are genuine
refugees. But people who aren't genuine refugees that are simply queue jumping
then they're not going to be allowed to stay.
CORDEAUX:
Prime Minister if it gets worse, have you got anything up your sleeve? I
mean can you for example force sanctions against the country that is the
staging point for a lot of these boat people? Is there anything like that
you can do?
PRIME MINISTER:
International sanctions Jeremy are very hard things to make stick, particularly
a country of Australia's size. I mean the only way you could ever hope to
make sanctions stick would be to get collective international action by
a large number of countries, and that particularly on this issue is not
going to happen. Now I don't think that is an alternative. There are different
ways we can strengthen the law, we can intensify our diplomatic activity.
And we do have good arrangements with a lot of countries. For example the
repatriation arrangement we have with China worked very well. The Chinese
cooperate very effectively.
One of the difficulties has been that because of strains and so forth I
guess, the Indonesian authorities have not been over keen to join in stopping
the flow to Australia. I'm not saying that they're encouraging it. I'm not
blaming them for a moment but that is an element in it and I hope that our
continued representations over time to the Indonesian Government will have
an impact. But it's a difficult issue that needs to be handled in a balanced
way, and we're going to do that but it's imperative that the law be strengthened.
And those who've criticised the Government for strengthening the law I think
are misunderstanding just how attractive to would be boat people, the perception
is that Australia is an easy touch and we really do have to remove that.
I want Australia to be seen as I said as a fair touch, not an easy touch.
CORDEAUX:
Prime Minister, the current account deficit, in years gone by if there were
similar figures to yesterday, the share market would have been in a spin
and the dollar would have been, there'd have been some sort of financial
panic associated with it. It's been interesting, it seemed to see that yesterday
there was barely a blip. Stock market and dollar reaction virtually none,
which is a significant vote of confidence in the economy isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is. It's because all the other fundamentals are so good that people
say well we'd like the current account deficit to be a bit smaller but we
can handle this because inflation is low, interest rates are low, the budget
is in surplus, the economy is growing strongly, and it's a broadly based
growth. So we take a large current account deficit in our stride and that
current account deficit yesterday is in part a product of a very strong
domestic economy because when the economy is strong at home large volumes
of imports are sucked in from overseas.
CORDEAUX:
And we look at the personal shopping that we did in I think October, and
not even taking into account Christmas shopping, and most of that it appears
was on the credit card. Does that worry you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Not overly Jeremy because people have more money in their pockets now through
a combination of two things. Interest rates, housing interest rates are
much lower than they were. The average homebuyer in Australia is about $300
a month better off than he or she was three-and-a-half years ago. Now that
is a large injection of available cash into the average pocket each week.
And then on top of that the real value of wages has gone up because we've
had very low inflation, and nominal wage increases have run ahead of inflation
rates, therefore the additional cash in the pocket is all the greater on
that count. So when you add those two things together, most people have
more money to spend. Not every body, and I recognise that there are people
who are missing out on this and I know there are some parts of Australia
that continue to suffer, and I'm very aware of that. And when the rest of
the country is doing well, those who aren't making it feel it all the more
acutely and I want them to understand that the Government is very sympathetic
for that reality. But the generality of people, the majority of people do
have more money to spend and that is reflected in the shops, and it will
presumably be reflected this Christmas. I don't know what the sales are
likely to be but I'd be surprised if we didn't have a very strong Christmas
and I hope for the sake of particularly many of those businesses that rely
very heavily, small ones, on Christmas sales I hope it is a bumper Christmas
because it means a lot to them. If they miss out on Christmas then many
of them have got to wait six or twelve months for another opportunity to
come around and it's not easy running a small business even when the economy's
doing well.
CORDEAUX:
There's only so much money in circulation and a story, something that I
know that you feel fairly strongly about, is this gambling problem we have.
Yesterday the Advertiser published a report by Relationships South
Australia and the Women's and Children's Hospital, and it's devastating
the effect of gambling not just, I imagine, on retailers because that money's
not being spent the way it was before, but devastating on children. It says
here that 15,000 children in South Australia have parents who have a problem
with gambling.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, I can believe that. I think one of the more depressing social developments
in this country over the last 30 years has been the easy spread of gambling
encouraged in the main by governments looking for extra money. And it's
happened on both sides of politics, I am not blaming Labor governments.
Both sides of politics have encouraged the spread of gambling in this country
and it may be seen as an old fashioned view but I think it has gone to excess
and I wouldn't like to see it expand any further. And one of the things
I think the Federal Government did do by having that Productivity Commission
inquiry last year - the results came out this year - we were able to focus
at a national level on the size of gambling and the impact it was having.
And since then and, oh before that because of activities of many other people
and their statements there is a greater community awareness, a greater community
concern. And for the first time I can see social and political pressure
being applied to governments of all persuasions at all levels to put what
curbs they can on the expansion of gambling and in some cases scale it back.
And that is a good thing because it is recognising that it is a social problem
of a major dimension and the victims of it are, as you say, the children
of addicted parents and they have nowhere to go in many cases. And it is
a social problem and we ought to recognise it.
CORDEAUX:
Yeah. The problem is the genie is out of the bottle and there's not much
you can do.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it is to a very large extent but.well, you can always do something.
You can always stop it getting worse and you can take opportunities through
talking about it and educating people of the dangers of it, of applying
pressure to casino operators and others to ensure that the problem gamblers
are protected as best they can against themselves. It's never really the
case that you can't do anything, it's much harder when the genie is out
of the bottle.
CORDEAUX:
I don't know if you saw A Current Affair last night, that story on
that children's charity in Victoria.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I didn't, unfortunately, I.
CORDEAUX:
You were otherwise engaged.
PRIME MINISTER:
I was indeed.
CORDEAUX:
There's a voluntary code among charities but there isn't a mandatory code.
In other words, somebody can say, you know, if you shop at this store, you
buy this product, or you give this donation it goes to charity, or a percentage
of it goes to charity. There's nothing that says you have got to be up-front
and tell people how much of that dollar they are giving actually goes to
the cause for which it was collected. Would that not be a good idea, a transparent.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it certainly sounds.I didn't see the programme so I don't know the
details.
CORDEAUX:
Well, $600,000 was collected for children and $600 went to the children.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that sounds, that's quite unsatisfactory.
CORDEAUX:
It's appalling. But apparently they are not breaking any law.
PRIME MINISTER:
My quick reaction, Jeremy, would be that that is a State law but I will
have it investigated and if it is something that needs to be tightened at
the State level well I'll encourage State governments to do so.
CORDEAUX:
Thank you sir. And I say that for being involved with the Variety Club for
years and years.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, exactly and it's tremendously important. We are all the time encouraging
the community to be generous and when you have examples of where generosity
is, in effect, taken advantage of it makes one very angry and it does a
lot of damage to the 99.9 out of 100 charities that do the right thing and
do a tremendous service to the community.
CORDEAUX:
And, if the Variety Club can give 95 cents in every dollar to the children
other charities can meet such a benchmark.
PRIME MINISTER:
And my understanding, Jeremy, is that the great overwhelming, almost without
exception, bulk of them do.
CORDEAUX:
I see the media moguls, the newspaper people are putting a bit of pressure
on you and your Government with this high definition television debate.
Fairly strange for them to be lobbying in this way which, sort of, is such
a self-interested argument that they have. Which way do you personally feel
we should go with high definition television?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I would like Australians to have the latest technology at an affordable
price in everything - everything. Whether it's high definition television
or better quality television, better quality mobile phones. My aim is that
we should be an information rich society where the information is available
to the whole community at an affordable price. Now, how that principle translates
into given situations then becomes a matter of debate. But we'll make a
decision on the merits on this issue, we won't make a decision according
to the volume of noise generated by any side. People are entitled to put
their point of view but we as a Government have a responsibility the public
to call it in the public interest. And my principle is that I want the average
Australian to have access to the best most enjoyable technology in this
area at an affordable price.
CORDEAUX:
I take it that the Fairfax's and the Murdoch's want to go one particular
way which would allow them to have a, sort of, defacto television network?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I am quite sure that the different media players according to what
interest they now have would like to have interest in other forms of media.
But at the moment we have a cross media prohibition in this country which
I personally don't agree with, but there is no prospect of it being changed
because there's opposition to change from the Labor Party and the Australian
Democrats and from within the Government party. So I am not going to even
raise the thing again. But people have different commercial interests. We
took a decision in principle last year to require high definition television
to be introduced along with a guarantee about no further licences for a
period of time and the use of the spectrum for that television. But we also
said that we would allow other participants, and that includes potentially
companies like News and Fairfax and many others to bid for and acquire a
spectrum for data casting.
Now, there's a debate about what data casting means, whether it includes
some things that look and sound and are really a bit like what's on free-to-air
television and that really is part of the debate. Nobody denies that there
are a whole lot of services that can be carried under the name of data casting
which are not in any way resembling services on free-to-air television and
there's no reason at all why companies like News and Fairfax if they bid
for and obtain the spectrum can't use that spectrum for that data casting.
And that will greatly enhance the services that are available to the Australian
public and good on them for wanting to do that. That's not really an issue.
I think the issue is about how far, what data casting really means, what
it includes and doesn't include and naturally the free-to-air televisions
would be concerned if it were allowed to include something that they normally
carry on free-to-air television or something very much like it. And equally,
the data casters would like to push the definition as far as possible so
they can offer the maximum range of products.
Now, we have to make a decision on that and I want to do it obviously consistently
with the spirit of the decision that was taken last year because that was
the decision and we've taken that and it's in legislation. I don't want
to be, play favourites to anybody but we have got to make the decision and
people naturally push their own interests and I just simply say to all of
them we'll determine it on the merits and volumes of noise and lobbying
won't influence our ultimate decision.
CORDEAUX:
Thank you for your valuable time, sir. Just one last question. A rumour
going around this morning that the ANZ bank might be able to take over St
George, are you comfortable with that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I have read the papers. The law does not per se prohibit that kind
of thing. The one thing the law at the moment does prevent is the acquisition
or the it's called the four pillars policy, in other words, the law doesn't
allow or the Government policy doesn't allow the reduction from four to
a lesser number in the number of major banks. Now, that kind of combination
would not of itself be in breach of that policy. It might require other
hoops to be gone through but that's ultimately a matter for the boards of
those organisations and for the market place.
CORDEAUX:
Thank you sir and let me take the opportunity to wish you and your family
a very, very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year and thank you for
all the time you have given us through the year, we are very grateful.
r, we are very grateful.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you Jeremy and I hope you and Caroline also have a wonderful Christmas
and a very happy New Year.
CORDEAUX:
Thank you sir.
[ends]