E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Tony and Keith. And I’m getting a lot of feedback as well.
JOURNALIST:
Oh right.
PRIME MINISTER:
So if I could just talk to you two instead of myself as well. That’s okay. It’s gone now.
JOURNALIST:
Okay, just doing a bit of an adjustment for you, Prime Minister. Good morning again.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay.
JOURNALIST:
Is your avoidance of another debate after last night, is that a sign that you think Kim Beazley can win those and stamp his claim to leadership?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, nothing of the kind. That was my position before last night’s debate. I think the election campaign is composed of a lot of things and part of that is to have a debate. We had one debate last time. In 1987 when I ran against Mr Hawke as Opposition Leader, he was Prime Minister and he wouldn’t even debate me once. So there’s no fixed pattern in these things, sometimes there’s been one, sometimes there’s been two. I thought last night’s debate was a good opportunity to ventilate a lot of issues but we’ve got four weeks and I’m travelling around the country. I’ve been fully accountable as Prime Minister, in Parliament. I’ve answered more questions, I think, than any Prime Minister in the last 20 years. Mr Beazley gets to face me every day in Parliament and he’s got plenty of opportunities to ask me questions and to engage me. So I think it’s entirely reasonable we have a debate and then we find other ways of communicating our message to the people of Australia. And I’ve got a lot of things to do as I move around the country.
JOURNALIST:
All right, so Prime Minister even if there were to be increasing pressure from within your own Party…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there’s been no pressure at all.
JOURNALIST:
… discount a second debate.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes.
JOURNALIST:
Is there a danger, as the campaign goes on and the pressure maybe from outside the Party goes, that you will end up being the one labelled as maybe the one with no ticker?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I’ve been labelled far worse things than that in my political career and it hasn’t bothered me.
JOURNALIST:
Okay. Well, Prime Minister, the other thing is the issue of a full term. I mean, last night people saying at the end of the thing, did you allude to the fact that you’ll stay if you win the election, you’ll stay for a couple of years and then you’ll hand it over to Peter Costello?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I didn’t say that. What I said was that two years through my three-year term I will give some thought to my future and decide whether I’m going to stand for another term. That’s just being up front with people. I didn’t say I was going to retire. I simply said that if I get re-elected two years through my three years I’ll give consideration to my future. Now, I can’t be more honest than that.
JOURNALIST:
You’d accept, Prime Minister, that that signals to many people that there is a good chance that you’ll hand over the reigns.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, what it signals to people is that I’m being honest and that I’m going to think about my future two years through my term if I win. Now, I think that’s being honest with people. I haven’t done any secret deals with anybody. I think people are entitled to know what I think. Leaders should be candid with the people that they are accountable to and I’m being candid with people.
JOURNALIST:
But it seems so in this case, Mr Howard, that you’ve done a public deal in a sense in that Mr Costello is the nominated successor.
PRIME MINISTER:
I haven’t done any deal, it’s just simply stating the truth. I’m telling the truth and the truth is that I will think about my future two years into my term. I can’t be more open than that.
JOURNALIST:
And that Peter Costello is the nominated successor.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don’t nominate the Party’s successor. If I were to retire at some time in the future the Liberal Party’s Party Room would decide who my successor might be.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, the question of education came up last night. In that area do you see the grievance that people in public schools have in that they feel that while you express, as you did last night, the need for choice in the Australian system, they express the need for the basic right of all children in Australia to have a complete education which is free?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that’s absolutely right. That is absolutely right. And people don’t have to go to independent schools. When parents send their children to independent schools they are relieving the rest of the taxpayers of an enormous burden because if all of the children in independent schools were to leave them and to present themselves at State schools or government schools then we would have to spend an enormous amount of additional money on education. I find this a very strange argument. The people who attack, like Mr Beazley, who attack independent schools – I mean, he’s doing it with so-called elite schools now but that is the thin end of the wedge, the education unions who support the Labor Party don’t believe in any government assistance to independent schools. And if the independent schools were to close down tomorrow – I mean, I know they’re not but we’re talking here conceptually – if they were to close down tomorrow you would have an enormous additional financial burden thrown on the back of the government schools, not only in South Australia but all around the country. That would result in us having to put even more money towards public education.
JOURNALIST:
But, of course, that’s not going to happen, Prime Minister, and this is…
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, but you can’t ignore the…you say it’s not going to happen, you can’t ignore the fact though that people who send their children to independent schools are taking a financial burden off the rest of the community. I mean, see, what people have got to remember is that with all of the independent schools, I mean, even, you know, these so-called elite schools Mr Beazley talks about, 79% to 80% of the cost of educating a child at one of those schools is borne by the parents or by the school community. There’s only quite a small amount that comes from the Government. Now that changes as you move through schools of different socio-economic categories and you get to the Catholic Parish schools where something like 60% to 70% of the cost of educating the child is subsidised, as it should be in my opinion, but even with those schools which are the poorest of the independent schools somewhere in the order of 20% to 30% of the cost of running the school is borne by the parents and the school community. So even in those very poor schools, which are very numerous throughout our community, there is a load taken off the taxpayer. So the parent….this is the case for independent schools, they actually help make more resources available. I just can’t accept this argument that in some way an independent school system is damaging. It’s good, it provides people with choice and I speak, incidentally, as somebody who went to a government school. I wasn’t educated at an independent school, I went to a government school and I got a very good education there.
JOURNALIST:
[Inaudible] Prime Minister, just going back to last night’s debate for a moment or so. The worm, and even though we didn’t see it, thank God, on the television screen, but there’s suggestions and the articles in the paper this morning saying there was quite a reaction when the issue of the GST was raised last night. In other words, people don’t like the idea still of the GST.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don’t know that I want to get into being a commentator on the commentary but as far as the GST is concerned the point I make, and I’ll make it again, is that one of the features of the GST is that all of the revenue from it goes to the States. Now, we are an ageing population. We will need more, not less services as the years go by. And the advantage of the GST – and I know people may not like it being talked about in isolation but I put the GST in because I thought it was good for the country long term, I really did and I still believe that and I’m not going to walk away from that commitment just on the basis of one reference to it in the worm. The reality is that the GST is a broad-based, indirect tax. The tax receipts will grow as the economy grows. All of the revenue goes to the States and because of that the States, which run government schools and public hospitals will have more money to run the government schools and public hospitals as a result of the GST.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, we have to move on shortly, can I just ask you about something that will come up today. We understand defence might be an issue today, that you might be speaking on, can you give us an indication?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I’m hoping to say something today about the arrangements for the submarine contract in South Australia and I think that will be of enormous importance to the South Australian economy.
JOURNALIST:
Positive news?
PRIME MINISTER:
It will be very positive news if the arrangements can be made for the announcement, yes. There has been lots of positive news from this Government for the people of South Australia and, of course, the long-term value to the South Australian economy of those arrangements would be very good.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, John Howard, thanks very much for joining us and have a good day. We’ll turn on a good one in Adelaide.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[Ends]