Subjects: Indigenous matters; Telstra.
E&OE ..............................
FRAN KELLY:
Prime Minister thanks for joining us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Pleasure Fran.
FRAN KELLY:
John Howard, do you agree with your government's submissions that states that there never was a generation of stolen children? Are you comfortable with that statement.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Fran, I have been asked this question a hundred times over the past few days and you know what my response is and it's not going to be any different. The pity about all of this is that you would imagine from some of the coverage and many of the questions that the only comment the government had ever made on the separated children issue was in fact that Senate Committee response. You know that the original report three years ago contained a lot of recommendations and the government picked up many of those recommendations, and those particularly those that recommended programs to help the people who were separated from their families. Now the government has never denied that many Aboriginal people were separated from their families and in circumstances where that separation would not by any stretch of imagination on any basis be acceptable today. Now we all know that.
FRAN KELLY:
But as you just said though..
PRIME MINISTER:
..And I think the time has come to, for both sides of this debate to accept that and I mean you can ask me questions about whether I agreed with this or that phrase. The document was a submission in response to the Senate Committee Inquiry. I have indicated it was not meant in any way to be inflammatory or insensitive it was just a response and if you look at the full context in which the words you had in your question were used, I don't think you can fairly argue that it was. But I suspect that I won't be able to persuade you of that and I don't know there is much achieved by continuing to ask that question.
FRAN KELLY:
Well I guess the point is then if it wasn't meant to be, I have looked at it in its full context. If it wasn't meant to be inflammatory or hurtful, it clearly has inflamed and clearly has hurt people. Will you, if that's just as you say one statement and belies what else the government has done, will you retract that statement. Will you now say that people from the stolen generations and people affected by these policies that the government actually doesn't think that, doesn't believe there never was a generation of stolen people?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Fran I can only repeat what I have said and that is there is a context in which that was said and you know that as well as I do and I think what you are trying to do is to, your're advocating a point of view on that and I understand that but I just don't think anything is achieved. We acknowledge, I don't know how many times one can say it, we acknowledge that there were many children, Aboriginal children separated in the circumstances that we all know of. Now..
FRAN KELLY:
You also acknowledge as you did in the Parliament the other day that the trauma caused by the separations lives on in the descendants of those people take away, so you acknowledge that the numbers are much greater than your report suggests.
PRIME MINISTER:
It certainly does and that is why one of the responses was that we would particularly support programs designed to assist people affected by those practices and their children and that is one of the areas where there was a great deal of emphasis. Now if, as some of your questioning implies, we were pretending that there were never any children taken...
FRAN KELLY:
Oh no, I never suggested that, your submission comes down on the side of the 10 percent.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Fran, we all know what is in the submission and we all know the context of it but I think what many people don't know is that it's not the only response of the government and I think it is important to look at the aggregate response and to understand that we have been particularly concerned about programs to help the children who were affected.
FRAN KELLY:
Kim Beazley accused you yesterday of wedge politics, of conjuring up dark forces to crowd out other troubles and issues for you, principally the GST, interest rates and Telstra. I mean is this issue a welcome distraction from those topics?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly not. I mean the proposition that I have welcomed the criticism from some quarters over the past few days is absurd. I mean that is about the most ridiculous accusation that's been made against me in months that we actually set out to generate some of the personal criticism and so forth that's been directed against me and the government over the last week. I mean you'd have to be crazy to do that and we certainly haven't set out to do that. And may I also.
FRAN KELLY:
If you haven't set out to do it Prime Minister do you accept though that this redefining of the term stolen generations following your action last week on challenging the UN Human Rights Committee deliberations, your inaction on mandatory sentencing and your comments on the reconciliation deadline adds up to a lot of blows for Aboriginal people in the last couple of months?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well look Fran they're your words; I don't accept that, I certainly don't. I mean the mandatory sentencing issue is not as you allege primarily an Aboriginal issue, it is not, that is a falsehood; it implies that in some way mandatory sentencing is specifically directed against Aboriginal people, it's not.
FRAN KELLY:
Lots of Aboriginal people do feel the issue deeply because it has resulted in a lot of Aboriginal people being gaoled.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes but that is not because of the law, that is because of their social disadvantage which has unfortunately got them into practices that have landed them in gaol and that is why the emphasis of the reconciliation process must be on removing that social disadvantage. But could I go back to your earlier question and that is this suggestion that it was a diversion to hide things like the GST and Telstra. Fran I don't want to hide tax reform, I'm proud of tax reform and I believe that tax reform will be very good for this country and I certainly haven't sought to hide my views on the full sale of Telstra. I make no apology to the fact that subject to the procedures of the inquiry headed by Mr Besley, it's Government policy to complete the privatisation of Telstra. There's a foolish notion around that if you keep it in Government ownership it will have more employees and deliver better services, it won't and it didn't in the past. When Telecom, the predecessor was fully government owned the service level was inferior to what it is now and there were many thousands of people made redundant by the fully government owned Telecom in the early part of the 1990's.
I'm not in any way ashamed of those policies I in fact am very proud of tax reform and when it comes on the first of July the Australian people will have lower income tax cuts, cheaper exports and a whole lot of other benefits, lower fuel prices in the bush than would otherwise be the case and so far from wanting to hide those policies I'm very happy to have them fully on display everyday.
FRAN KELLY:
Well one thing your backbench wanted on display this week was mandatory sentencing. Why did it take you so many weeks to turn the heat up on Denis Burke, why did you have to pushed to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Fran you know as well as I do that this is an issue where in fact the majority opinion in the backbench of the Coalition is against overturning the laws. It's a complex issue and I don't deny that there's a range of views in my party room and no political party worth its salt can pretend to the world that on every issue everyone feels exactly the same and this issue is no exception. There are some people who feel very strongly about it, there are others who feel very strongly in the other direction. And Mr Burke.
FRAN KELLY:
Sure, but you're still not saying you're interested in intervening in these laws or overturning these laws but you have now taken the strong step of organising a meeting with Denis Burke and making it pretty clear to him something has to happen short of that.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Fran I'll be having a meeting with Mr Burke and I've always found that if you want a sensible meeting you wait till you see the person before you start talking about what you're going to discuss and this meeting will be no exception. I will be discussing the matter with the Chief Minister and until that discussion takes place I don't intend to go into the detail of what might be talked about between the two of us.
FRAN KELLY:
Prime Minister just finally, you've spoken recently about practical reconciliation. Shouldn't reconciliation be about something more than the provision of basic services like health services, education services that every other Australian enjoys? Shouldn't it be something more symbolic?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh Fran I've never said that the practical side of it was the beginning and the end in fact the speech in which I first used that expression I did, as I think you probably.
FRAN KELLY:
So your Government's interested in more than just the practical services?
PRIME MINISTER:
Please can I just finish? I acknowledged that there was a spiritual side to it as well and that involves a whole lot of things. Reconciliation is one of those concepts that is not only multi-faceted it means different things to different people and it does involve an understanding of the history of the indigenous people, it does involve an understanding of the sense of deprivation they feel but it also must involve an acknowledgment that whatever has happened in the past while we can understand it and be honest about it we have to share a future together and trying to do that in a cooperative fair way has got to be the main but not the only priority of any government.
FRAN KELLY:
Prime Minister thank you very much for your time.
[ends]