E&OE....................................................................................................
CAMERON:
Good afternoon and welcome to the ABC.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it's very nice to be here and it's nice to be interviewed
by you.
CAMERON:
Well, the first question would have to be, how on earth are you running
the joint without me?
PRIME MINISTER:
With difficulty. With several degrees....
CAMERON:
I thought you'd be struggling a bit.
PRIME MINISTER:
We have been and with great difficulty and we miss you.
CAMERON:
Oh well, I am pleased to hear that.
PRIME MINISTER:
We do miss you. We are sorry that you are not with us but we are very
pleased that you have re-engaged in your original profession of choice
which you do very well.
CAMERON:
Would you be pleased to know there is life after politics?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am reassured about that, yes.
CAMERON:
I have discovered weekends, I have discovered night-time, I have discovered
family and grandchildren. It's all terrific.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's good, I am pleased to hear it.
CAMERON:
How was Kalgoorlie?
PRIME MINISTER:
Kalgoorlie was great. First visit there by a Prime Minister since
Malcolm Fraser went in 1981. Great town. I hadn't been there
for more than 10 years. I didn't know it all that well. The people
are pretty optimistic despite the understandable....
CAMERON:
They've been [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER:
They have been. Commodity prices are down, the world outlook for gold
is not all that strong. They are hung up and [inaudible] and held
back because the native title thing in Western Australia has still
not been resolved. They thought that once we resolved it federally
then a resolution of it at State level would happen automatically.
It has happened in New South Wales and Queensland but it hasn't
happened here. And because of that there's a lot of hesitancy
about investment.
CAMERON:
Do you think you are able to allay some of their fears whilst you
were out there yesterday?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think they would have come away with a very strong impression
that I was sympathetic to the mining industry. On native title the
outstanding issues can only be resolved at a State level. We have
done our bit, I mean, we fixed the federal legislation but Richard
court can't get the complementary State legislation through because
the Labor Opposition is opposing it. Now, they reached settlement
on one relatively minor element of it yesterday but the major issue
which is the replacement of the right to negotiate with a State based
regime hasn't yet been passed and that is holding up a lot of
exploration and a lot of investment.
CAMERON:
Well, I often quote that there are problems and inconveniences if
I could suggest that Kalgoorlie is an inconvenience compared to the
problems faced by the people of East Timor. You are obviously keeping
a very close eye on this, you are going up, I believe, to Bali next
Tuesday?
PRIME MINISTER:
Next Tuesday, yes, to have a talk with the Indonesian President.
CAMERON:
You obviously managed to organise that fairly quickly. I was impressed
by the fact that you are able to be on the phone one week and say
I am going to be speaking to the President, the Defence Minister and
the Foreign Minister the next week.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, I decided on Sunday that I would ring him and express my concern
about what had happened in Dili over the weekend. Because of the conversation,
the way the conversation was going I thought it was appropriate to
[tape break]...responded very positively and immediately and said,
yes, that's a good idea, let our foreign minister organise the
details of the meeting. And it's taking place next Tuesday and
I'll be taking Alexander Downer and John Moore with me and he'll
bring his Defence Minister and his Foreign Minister, Ali Alitas.
CAMERON:
It often makes me wonder when you say you've called President
Habibie - and you can say, well, I'm not going to answer that
question if you don't want to - does he speak good English?
PRIME MINISTER:
He does, he has very good English. We conducted the conversation in
English.
CAMERON:
Oh right.
PRIME MINISTER:
And his English is very good. [tape break] understood English but
in any formal situation we would talk through interpreters.
CAMERON:
Right. So if you'd phoned the previous President....
PRIME MINISTER:
That would have been done...it would have been what I call a three-wayer.
He would have heard me in English and then he would have answered
back through his interpreter.
CAMERON:
Do you find it when dealing with your counterparts in other countries,
it is a lot easier to be able to speak in one language?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, of course it is. I feel inadequate that I cannot speak all of
these languages but so many people, of course, leaders around the
world are fluent in English. Dr Habibie is one, the Prime Minister
of China, Zhu Rongji, I've had a half hour conversation with
him in English. He's quite fluent. It's very impressive
when people have your language and very diminishing in a sense when
you don't have their language.
CAMERON:
Especially when it's a language so different.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that's right and...but....
CAMERON:
What about Pope John Paul II, he's got eight languages or something....
PRIME MINISTER:
He has. I've had a few brief exchanges with him but not as Prime
Minister. I met him briefly when he was out here in 1986. He's
quite fluent in a number of languages, he's quite a linguist.
CAMERON:
Well, I heard recently the album that is being put out with featuring
the Pope on it, you may have seen the CD being advertised with some
very lovely music with various things the Pope has said over the last
25 years recorded. And one of my grandchildren said to me listening
to this, this is the Count isn't it? And this is the Count Dracula
from Sesame Street because he has got that middle European accent.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, he has.
CAMERON:
Moving on to another trouble spot in the world, to Kosovo, and the
fact that we were going to take in some refugees from there physically
into Australia it now appears that the powers that be in that part
of the world would prefer them to remain close to home which seems
to me an imminently sensible thing. Australia, I presume, will be
providing some kind of financial support to help those people out
as it would have cost us a fortune to bring them here anyway?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Eoin, our offer to take them still stands and whilst it is less
likely now that they will come it is still possible that we will be
asked after all to take some and we are still willing to do so. We
have already offered $6 million, we will obviously consider offering
more if, particularly if it has become absolutely certain that we
won't be required to take the 4,000 or any part of the 4,000.
It would have cost us quite a lot of money and plainly it would be
reasonable for us if they are definitely not coming to consider contributing
something out of the money it would have cost to take them here for
their upkeep in Europe.
CAMERON:
To help them at home.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's a huge humanitarian challenge. I understand the reason why
the authorities in Europe decided as they did but I want people to
understand that our willingness to take them still stands.
CAMERON:
Okay. Alan Jones, a well known Sydney commentator who you'd be
aware of, made a comment on television whilst I was crook a couple
of weeks ago, I remember seeing him on television. He came up with,
what I thought was a relatively simple and sensible idea, that very
often Australia is called upon to provide humanitarian aid to people
in trouble spots around the world, why can't we provide that
aid in food that our farmers need to flog somewhere, in other words,
the Government buys it from the farmers and then passes it on as aid.
Woollen goods that have been manufactured in Australia from wool grown
in Australia, and I can imagine that in places like Kosovo there'd
be a demand for woollen goods, jumpers, blankets, that sort of thing.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, on the face of it that sounds a very sensible suggestion. I
guess it's all a question of whether what you need at a particular
time is available in the quantities that you want at that particular
time. And oddly enough there may not be surplus supplies of the woollen
goods that you might need tomorrow in Kosovo available today in some
store somewhere in Australia. I guess the answer is that if you could
do that and it be made to work properly we'd do it. I think it's
a very sensible thing....
CAMERON:
They could be stockpiled surely because I am sure that people aren't
going to worry about last year's fashions or the year before.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, you could certainly stockpile clothing, food is more difficult.
CAMERON:
Senator Harradine, I know that we are jumping everywhere here but
I have a lot to get through in a very short period of time. Do you
ever get frustrated, I know that you have to be fairly sensitive with
him because you are relying on this man to get some legislation through
the Senate along with Senator Mal Colston, do you sometimes think
you could grab him by his relatively scrawny neck and strangle him
a bit?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I don't. I don't feel that way towards Senator Harradine,
I feel that way towards the Democrats and the Labor Party but not
Senator Harradine. Because Senator Harradine has been pretty constructive.
Remember that Senator Harradine did end up sitting down with me and
negotiating a sensible outcome on native title, which is more than
the Democrats and the Labor Party did. He sat down and negotiated
a sensible outcome on other things. I have found him over the last
three years to be a reasonable man. He has strong views on certain
issues, he's never made any secret of that never made
any secret.
CAMERON:
So you know where he's coming from?
PRIME MINISTER:
I know exactly, well not exactly, but I understand his value system.
I respect it, I may not always agree with it although I'd have
to say a lot of the things he says on a lot issues are not terribly
different from some views I hold too. And I don't mind saying
that but there are some things where he obviously goes [tape break]
issues he is still very much a Labor man and therefore he's not
very helpful to us on things like youth wages and unfair dismissal
laws but he's never dissembled about that. But I don't get
frustrated with Brian Harradine at all.
CAMERON:
Well, we have a lot of talkback callers on this programme who do get
frustrated with the minor parties, a lot of them support the minor
parties too and say, we didn't elect this mob, they only got
x' number of votes and yet they are holding the country
to ransom and saying you can do this, you can't do that. That
must be a frustration?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, look, let me put it this way we went to the last election
and as you know we suffered some casualties....
CAMERON:
You did, you are looking at one.
PRIME MINISTER:
Indeed. And we took a huge risk in running on what was a potentially
unpopular tax reform proposal. We won that election and we put out
all of the detail and we really think we have a right to have that
implemented, we think we do have a mandate. If we don't have
a mandate to do this tax thing then no government in the history of
Australia has ever had a mandate to do anything. So I can understand
the anger of people and they should really direct some of that anger
at the Democrats and the Labor Party and not just at Senator Harradine.
See he seems to cop a disproportion share of the blame of things being
altered in the Senate yet his attitude towards Government legislation
in the Senate has been a lot more accommodating and reasonable than
the attitude of say the Democrats or the Greens.
CAMERON:
I noted that Meg Lees, leader of the Democrats, today was talking
about what food they reckon should be exempted and what.....
PRIME MINISTER:
Hmmm, the Irish model.
CAMERON:
The Irish model? Well, it's almost like, and I hesitate to say
an Irish joke, when she's talking about this because she was
talking about, okay, plain bread would be GST free under her model
and it would be free if it had fruit in it but you can't put
vegetables in it.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, that's right. And a hamburger wouldn't be under her
model.
CAMERON:
That's right.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean, that is a joke, Irish or otherwise...
CAMERON:
It's a joke, an Australian joke.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I said yesterday, forget about the Irish model much and all
as I love the Irish but let's focus on the Australian model which
is the one the people voted for last October. And this idea that we've
got to borrow from experience overseas, let's construct a tax
system that suits our circumstances. That's what we did last
year and that's what, can I say again, what the people voted
for. It would be a different matter if I hadn't said anything
about this or if I had just said, I am in favour of tax reform people
and I will tell you the details after the election. They'd have
had every right then to pick and choose and put and take but I laid
it all out as you know. We produced tables and this and that and we
argued every last dollar and we won and we have a right to see the
plan implemented.
CAMERON:
One of the very popular breads, at least in Western Australia at the
moment and I presume all over Australia, at the moment is plain bread
with sundried tomatoes through it. Now, under the Senator's model,
you might like to put this to her, that would have to be GST free
because a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable.....
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I won't presume to answer for her but it sounds as though
are right.
CAMERON:
Well, thank you very much for that. Bob Hawke, this is once again
leaping in a different direction, Bob Hawke has made a statement and
a speech he has just made about the stolen generation, he called Australia's
attitude as a stain on Australia's collective history. How's
your reaction to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I understand why, and I am one of those myself, why Australians
now feel that those things shouldn't have been done, and they
wouldn't have been done today and they regret them and they're
personally sorry for what happened. I have no argument with that and
I've said that myself and I guess in a sense his view and my
view's not all that different. I think where we may depart is
whether we have some kind of collective formal apology for what happened
then by today's generation even though today's generation
were not involved. Now I don't think that's appropriate.
It's not because I'm insensitive to what happened, (inaudible)
indifferent to it. But you've got to remember that a lot of the
people who were involved in looking after these children in missions
and homes and so forth, thought they were doing the right thing. No
I know it's possible now to brand all of them as transgressors,
and molesters and all this sort of thing. And in many cases that is
monstrously unfair to people who are now dead, or too old to sort
of defend themselves. Now that wasn't always the case. In some
cases it was. But abuse occurs in all sorts of circumstances. It goes
on today. It goes on as we speak. My only quarrel with the people
who've been critical of me on this issue is not that I would
want to see that happen today. It's clearly not right. But it
was something that people thought was beneficial at the time, sanctioned
by the law of the time, and I just don't think it's appropriate
for today's generation to sort of collectively apologise. I mean
I will say sorry and I'll apologise for something that I've
done wrong, or something for which I'm directly responsible,
but a forced apology just for the sake of settling a political problem
is no apology at all. If people who say to me, why don't you
just give the apology and move on that is utterly insincere.
It would mean nothing to the people who want it and I'm just
not in the business of doing that.
CAMERON:
Well you're the big kahuna in Australia. I mean you are the person,
obviously if there was going to be a formal apology would say: as
the Prime Minister of Australia I'm terribly terribly sorry for
what has happened in the past, any mistreatment ta da ta da ta da.
The fear of yours that then the legal fraternity will be saying ripper.
PRIME MINISTER: