Subjects: Export Awards; Olympic hospitality; fuel prices; interest rates; sport.
E&OE................................
[tape starts]
PRIME MINISTER:
.the performance of the area when I presented the export awards and Ballarat has lifted. In 1993 Ballarat had an unemployment rate of 20%, it's now 5.7%, which is actually below the national average. It's quite remarkable and it's a tremendous tribute to the way in which the community has worked together. There was some great export performances last night, service industries, manufacturing. We had a talk from one of the members of the Brown family, the famous wine growing family. The place was absolutely, the New York Caf‚, was absolutely packed and it was a terrific night. And I got a great charge out of it. I go to a lot of these things all over the country and it was just absolutely terrific.
COOPER:
Australia exporting to the rest of the world must be an important economic issue on the Government's agenda because I mean given that you agreed to present the awards last night.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well exporting is all about Australia's future and what we have to understand is that the future of so many Australian industries depends on export performance. We don't have a big enough domestic market, we are only 19 million people and we have to constantly find new markets overseas. The wine industry's a great example of that. Do you know that Australia is now the second largest exporter of wine to the United Kingdom after France?
COOPER:
I didn't know that, but I could believe it . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we export more wine to the United Kingdom than Germany or Italy or Spain. Now twenty, thirty even ten years ago you go, you go to a restaurant in Britain and try and get Australian wine is pretty hard, but we now export more than a billion dollars worth of wine and it's not just to Britain, it's also to North America and increasingly to Asia. And the opportunities in Asia are incredible because when the taste for wine grows as it inevitably will in the Asian middle class, the opportunity for Australia will just be unlimited. And we have such a good product and it's such a united industry, they all got together some years ago and worked out a vision for the whole industry in Australia. And this is what in many of these industries has got to occur and people have got to work together. Not always the case in others, a bit of competition gets the best price for the Australian product, but it's very important in industryies like wine that people work together.
COOPER:
Do you think Ballarat's exporting to the world initiative is a model for other Australian regional centres like Ballarat?
PRIME MINISTER:
It's a model to the extent that Ballarat's done it very well in getting everybody to work together, that's how it's a model. No one way of doing it is a complete model for the rest of the country. But last night you had, you had Austrade, you had the local business leaders, you had the Federal Member in Michael Ronaldson who gives a great national focus to this part of Australia, you had the welfare organisations, you had the local newspaper, you had the media, everybody's in it, now you don't get that often in parts of the cities of Australia and I was imbued with a great sense of something happening that was very important for regional Australia.
COOPER:
I wish you had have been here a couple of weeks ago when the torch came through, you would have felt that . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Well . . .
COOPER:
Well, it's been across Australia.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it's been across Australia. I was in Launceston a couple of weeks ago and the Mayor had told me that the new football field, York Park which the Federal Government had given some financial help for and which I opened, they'd had 15,000 people there that evening, the evening the torch came and this has happened all over the country and it's been a wonderful way of bringing communities together. And what's been good about it is the way in which the community has participated, the president of the local football club, and the local swimming club and the organiser of this or that local activity, they're the people who ought to compete, who ought to carry the torch. I mean I think they're the people, the unsung heroes, the unrewarded volunteers are the people who should have the opportunity of carrying the torch.
COOPER:
I know you like, you like your sports, you like, are you looking forward to the Olympics?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I am looking forward to the Olympics, I think most Australians are. It will be a great opportunity to showcase Australia.
COOPER:
Are you going?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, I am going. I don't know I'll go every day, but I will particularly . . .
COOPER:
You haven't been asked to a Telstra package or anything like that?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I haven't. No I haven't been asked to a Telstra package, but I think you've got to keep a sense of proportion about that. I mean we've got some football grand finals coming up and members of parliament on both sides will accept invitations from corporate people to watch the football and be entertained. Now that happens all the time, I don't think that means that they are being corrupted or bribed. I think you've got to keep . . .
COOPER:
Would you have a problem with your ministers getting Telstra packages?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have laid down some guidelines and the most important thing is that if you accept any hospitality you've got to declare it so the world knows what you've done. That's very important and it means . . .
COOPER:
Well that's fair enough.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well so you should. And people have got to be careful about conflicts of interest. We've laid down some rules. But Mr Beazley and I seem to have a similar view on this, that you've got to leave it to a certain amount of individual discretion. And you've got to be sensible, you can't on the one hand have as we have converging on Sydney the largest gathering in one spot in Australia ever of world business leaders and pass up the opportunity of meeting them. I mean that's silly. Absolutely silly. We're going to have hundreds of managing directors of major world companies and am I to say to senior ministers in my Government, well the most important thing is to sort of stay out of their way. I mean that's just silly.
COOPER:
Well, I mean it's a public relations exercise isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's a question of just being sensible with all of these things and using individual judgement. You can't lay down a rule. I mean I heard Mr Bracks say yesterday he's barred his ministers from certain things, well that's fine. That's his business. But I'll bet many of them are going to accept invitations to go into corporate boxes at the AFL grand final. I am not suggesting they shouldn't, but I am just making the point, that where do you end with this? For a long time people have accepted invitations to go and watch sporting fixtures and to many Australians watching the AFL grand final is just as important as the Olympic Games. Watching a cricket test between the West Indies and Australia is even more important than the Olympic Games, I mean. So, you know you've got to keep a sense of proportion in this.
COOPER:
Now can I get onto the topic of petrol prices?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes.
COOPER:
And you've probably been inundated with these in the last . . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Sure, well I understand that because I am like everybody else I don't like to see the price going up.
COOPER:
Well it's a major problem here in Ballarat. I mean it's a major issue facing regions like Ballarat, the petrol. I don't know whether you're aware of a fellow called Trevor Oliver who was a Buranga service station owner, Buranga's a little bit out of town, who wasn't, just before Easter wasn't going to lift his prices up even though the supplier says you were going to and got the petrol cut off, the petrol was cut off. So, he's now, he's now received a state grant of $25,000 for a feasibility study into a co-op. Do you think that's a . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Look that's fine. I mean look I've got an open mind, I'm very sympathetic to any new ways of finding a method of sort of helping at the margin. But none of these things alter the basic reality.
COOPER:
I mean we're going to be paying a dollar a litre for petrol.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we'll only be paying a dollar if the world price goes up to the extent that we have to pay a dollar. The driver of this is the world price. It's not the GST, that's a complete furphy. It's the world price plus to some extent the weakness of the Australian dollar and the strength of the American dollar against the Australian dollar because the world price is set in US dollars and if that exchange rate varies, then that will increase the cost of buying a barrel of crude oil which is needed for petrol. If you look at the refinery price of petrol, that is the price before tax is imposed, between April and August of this year, the refinery price went up by 12.2 cents a litre on average in capital cities and the retail price by 11.9 cents a litre. Now on the basis of those figures it's all due to movements in world factors, that's the price of crude oil and the exchange rate, the relationship between the United States dollar and the Australian dollar. And I mean the Americans have got this problem, I was given a copy of a Los Angeles paper this morning where there was a news report of people paying in America the highest prices since the Gulf War because of the price of crude oil. Now this is, this is a world wide problem and I don't like it and that doesn't make it any easier for your listeners and I'm very sorry that it is like this and those things within our power we can influence. We could reduce the price of petrol by cutting the excise, we could do that.
COOPER:
Well Mr Bracks suggested yesterday that you do that. I mean . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Well is he going to nominate his contribution towards the cost of cutting it? You see it's easy . . .
COOPER:
Where does it go?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no hang on. Well it goes on hospitals and roads and soldiers and health care and unemployment benefits, all the things the Federal Government does. It's easy to say to the Federal Government, you cut the excise, okay let me just follow that down the road. To make a decent impact you would have to cut it by what, five cents a litre? I think anything less than five cents a litre the average Australian would say, you know give us a break, you're kidding me, it's gone from early 80's to late 90's and you want to cut it by one cent a litre, it's not worth it, give us at least five cents. Five cents a litre would be $1.7 billion. Now if you say we're going to take $1.7 billion and cut the excise by that amount, you run the surplus down by $1.7 billion now you're going to put up the pressure on interest rates. That's not very smart. It's in fact the last thing people want at the present time. So if you don't take it out of the surplus you've got to take it away from the money you spend on other things. So I would say to Mr Bracks where do you want the money to come from Steve? Where do you want the money to come from?
COOPER:
[Inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER:
Did Steve nominate that? No I bet he doesn't. But that's my problem. He's got the easy part. He makes the nice speech, gets the clap, and then I'm meant to work out where the money comes from.
COOPER:
Well even in the paper yesterday it was suggested that Liberal MPs like Mr Bob Charles have asked the Treasurer to freeze the next excise increase on petrol.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well even if you did that that would make no impact at all. Do you know how much the last indexation added to the price of petrol? 0.6 cents a litre. Do you think your listeners are going to cheer the government for influencing 0.6 cents a litre. I mean to make an impact, this is my point about the five cents, to make an impact you've got to have a big cut in excise. A big cut in excise costs a lot of money. The money has got to come from somewhere and people who call for big cuts in excise like Mr Bracks and Mr Beattie and Mr Bacon and Mr Beazley and everybody else, they have got to be willing to say where the money should come from. Do they want me to cut pensions, do they want me to cut Medicare, do they want me to cut federal funding for roads? I mean this is the real world. You can't have it both ways. You can't be a popular bloke and say I want cheaper petrol but it's John Howard's responsibility to find the money. I would like cheaper petrol, I don't like the high price. But I'm afraid the buck stops with me and I've got to decide where the money would come from to fund a cut in excise and I find the alternatives at the moment not acceptable. I will not cut spending on roads and hospitals and education and defence. I will not do that in order to provide cheaper petrol and I do not think that it is economically responsible to run the surplus down and thereby put upward pressure on interest rates.
COOPER:
Will you be interested in seeing what Alan Fels comes up with because he's now looking...?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes of course, he's done a good job. And if there has been any wrongful behaviour by the companies in relation to that rebate than that should be exposed and the guilty brought to brook. But I'm not alleging that that's the case. They are entitled to a presumption of innocence, they're entitled to be treated fairly. I'm not charging the oil companies with any misbehaviour at this stage. There have been complaints made and Alan Fels is investigating them.
COOPER:
I don't want to hold you up too much longer Mr Howard but economic analysts are speculating yet another interest rate rise by the Reserve Bank in September.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't speculate about the future movement of interest rates but what I do have the capacity to control are those things that exert upward pressure on interest rates and running down the budget surplus by taking $1.7 billion out of it to fund a cut in excise on petrol would put upward pressure on interest rates.
COOPER:
The Olympic Flame, we were talking about before, came to Ballarat. Are you trying to...as I said before you're a sporting man. There's a possibility that you might be going to the Olympics. Do you follow Aussie Rules by the way?
PRIME MINISTER:
I follow it. Having grown up in Sydney I played rugby league and rugby union at school and I played soccer after I left school and I guess I follow rugby union and league more closely than I do Australian Rules. I do follow it but not as closely as I do rugby because I come originally from Sydney. But I know all about North Ballarat being in the VFL Final. I've been greeted by the Rooster, I wished them luck. I calculated that I wouldn't be visiting, what is it, Sandringham, between now and the weekend.
COOPER:
[inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER:
So therefore I can safely cheer the Roosters on. And I also told my breakfast audience that just to be even handed we should also wish the rugby Wallabies who are playing South Africa in Durban on Saturday for the Tri-Nations trophy, we should wish them well.
COOPER:
It's been a pleasure to talk to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]