E&OE................................
MCGRATH:
Prime Minister thanks for joining us this morning. If I could start with the Newspoll in today's Australian, good news for the Government, at 43% with the ALP at 40, how do you read it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I never get excited by one poll. Now the polls are very volatile. I've been saying the next election will be very tough for the Coalition, I've been saying that now for almost a year and that remains my view. The last Newspoll we were 7% behind or 6% behind or something, I don't attach too much significance to one poll. I do think that the Government's budget was well received and I think that the economy bouncing back in the March quarter disproving all that doomsday talk from Mr Beazley is seen by the electorate as significant. And I also think as we get closer to the election the memories of the 17% interest rates and the $96 billion of Government debt and the 11% unemployment which were hallmarks of Mr Beazley's last time in Government will bulk larger in peoples minds. But I would counsel Coalition supporters not to get too excited about one poll, you'll probably find it goes the other way next time so don't get too excited about it.
MCGRATH:
Well if we look at detention centres, do you agree with Phillip Ruddock that these people lack life experience?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think it is naive to recommend an automatic release after 14 weeks. My understanding is that there was a similar provision in the law in the early 90's and it was taken out by the former Labor Government because it was proved to be open to exploitation and unworkable. The worst thing Australia can do is to send a signal to would-be illegal immigrants coming to this country, wanting to come to this country, that we are an easy touch. The old adage of prevention being better than cure, it's far better to dissuade people from coming here in the first place than having to deal with the problem after they arrive, because it is a problem. You've got to balance security and the integrity of the immigration system with humanity. And it's a very hard mix but saying you can sit on your hands and after 14 weeks be sure of freedom is not the way to go and the Government will definitely not go down that path.
MCGRATH:
Well I'm wondering if someone like Bruce Baird you can't really describe as a naive person. He's been a Minister in the New South Wales Liberal Government, now what he said was that in 13 years in politics he's found very little as confronting as the visit to these centres. He said the psychological impact was what worried him the most. Now, I'm wondering can his criticisms be easily .
PRIME MINISTER:
Any detention facility is confronting. A jail is confronting. A lot of people who have never been inside jails in any kind of capacity when they first go there, even as a visitor they find it very confronting and it is. And I wish that we didn't have to detain people but you cannot run an immigration policy that people can drive a horse and cart through and again I say the best signal that we can send to would-be illegal immigrants is don't come in the first place. We are not a soft touch and if we could have had. if we'd had Labor Party support a few years ago we could have strengthened the law to have made it harder for people to sort of get though the net once they got here. It is a very difficult problem and I admire enormously the work that Phillip Ruddock is doing trying to balance compassion.. I mean we're not sort of sending people back to their death, that's the reason why we detain them. And equally you cannot say to the rest of the world, as soon as you get to Australia's shores you're right, if you sit on your hands you don't answer questions, as Phillip said, and after 14 weeks you're out. Now you can't run an immigration system like that, it is just unrealistic.
MCGRATH:
However these are Liberal's talking, it's not as though Labor's running its agenda. There's a Liberal member (inaudible) this criticism though doesn't this suggest it's not working.
PRIME MINISTER:
We are a party that allows people to express their view and I'm expressing my view and I'm strongly supporting the Minister and I'm saying, on behalf of the Government, that there is no way we are going to adopt a policy of automatic release after 14 weeks detention. That is patently unrealistic. A former Labor government, according to my understanding, abandoned that policy in the past. And you only have to think for a moment, from a common sense point of view, if you tell would-be illegal immigrants who are thinking of coming to this country that providing you can put up with 14 weeks detention, after that you're automatically out - really! I mean, that's an invitation for more people to come and that is the last thing that Australia should be doing.
MCGRATH:
If we could move, Prime Minister, onto the HIH Royal Commissioner, Justice Neville Owen. Do you know him, why did you choose him?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I don't know him. He's highly recommended, particularly by the Attorney General and by others I spoke to from Western Australia. He's been on the Western Australian Supreme Court bench for eleven years. Everybody speaks highly of him. The fact that he comes from a jurisdiction that is fairly distant from where the main centre of activity of HIH has been is probably a good thing. I think he'll do an excellent job. I mean, he's certainly got the credentials. And I thank the Chief Justice of the Western Australian Supreme Court, David Malcolm and also the Western Australian Government for cooperating to make him available.
MCGRATH:
Now, he won't start until September. The New South Wales' Labor Government says that's just too late.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I mean, that is just being completely, you know, can I say, opportunistic. When I was at the Premiers' Conference, and I explained to the New South Wales' Premier and other Premiers why we hadn't, by then, named the Royal Commissioner and the terms of reference, Bob Carr said to me, I understand how difficult it is to get the right people, it is always difficult to get people released from their court duties. I mean, they were the very words he used and I think it is utterly opportunistic, therefore, of Michael Egan to carry on with that nonsense. You can't expect a man carrying that sort of caseload in a court to just abandon his other responsibilities overnight. But before he starts officially he'll be in consultation with ASIC and he'll conduct a very thorough inquiry and we want to get to the bottom of what happened.
MCGRATH:
Now, on the issue of government advertising. The ALP has been criticising the Government, quite successfully, in Question Time yesterday, going again and again at you with allegations of a cost of $20 million a month being spent and it's estimated that $120 million will be spent over the next six months. Now, how do you defend that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, all governments spend on advertising and some of that $20 million a month includes things like defence force recruiting. Now, that's not political advertising. Some of it includes Tough on Drugs. That's not political advertising. I regard political advertising as advertising that says vote Liberal, or the Labor Party's hopeless or vote Labor, the Liberal Party's hopeless. There's nothing in this material which you could remotely describe as political in that sense. Sure we have had, over the last several years because of a major change to the tax system, the privatisation of part of Telstra and a number of other major changes, we've had what you might call an abnormal amount of expenditure on advertising. But if you go back before 1998 you will find that the first two or three years we were in government we were averaging almost identical amounts to that of the last years of the Keating Government.
MCGRATH:
Can I ask you, though, $120 million in six months, half a million it's estimated on Sunday night alone. Now, to the punters that's a lot of money.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, but look at what you're doing. I mean, you are making people aware of their entitlements. I was astounded before the budget.
MCGRATH:
But you're making.[inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER:
Let me give you, you know, a hard example of people not being aware. I was astounded before the budget to be told that there were over 200,000 self-funded retirees in Australia whose income as couples was below 67,000, or as singles, below 41,000, who are therefore entitled to the Commonwealth Seniors' health card and hadn't applied for it. And the reason for that is many of them are simply unaware of the fact that they are entitled to have it. Isn't it our responsibility, therefore, to go out and make those people aware of their benefits. Now, this is a change that was brought in two years ago and there are still almost a quarter of a million people, according to my advice, entitled to that benefit but not getting it.
MCGRATH:
But before you were elected you accused the then Labor Government of pork barrelling over its advertising campaign, of blatantly using that money to gain votes. Now, aren't both political parties doing it and isn't this the very sort of thing that the electorate out there gets angry about and wanted to know why you're not spending the money on [inaudible] policy.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, you get mixed signals. I mean, I go around and some people say that, yes they do. Other people say to me, you don't explain your policies, you don't explain what our benefits are, the changes you've made are very complicated. I mean, one of the things that Meg Lees, when she was Leader of the Democrats, at the time we negotiated our agreement, she said what you've got to do, Prime Minister, she said you have got to spend money explaining this new tax system, you can't expect people just to pick it up from the newspapers or television, you have got to not only put pamphlets in letter boxes but you have got to run a very effective advertising campaign to explain the benefits. And I might remind your listeners that the campaign we ran in 1998 to explain the new taxation system was, in fact, cleared by the Auditor-General after a specific inquiry as being within the guidelines.
MCGRATH:
Just briefly, Prime Minister, you're going overseas in September to meet George W Bush. Australia has made the most supportive comments of him and his policies, in terms of him backing away from the Kyoto Protocol and the missile shield. Do you still stand by those and how do you view the way he was received in Europe, that is still negative?
PRIME MINISTER:
Let me talk about our attitude to those two issues. We understand why the Americans want to investigate the missile shield but we also think that it's important that they talk to people like Russia and China and Australia about it. As far as Kyoto is concerned, we support the goals of Kyoto, that's always been our position and it remains our position, but you won't have a fully effective implementation of the Kyoto goals unless you get the developing countries involved. The simple reality is that if you've got a dirty industry which is not allowed in a country like Australia but is allowed in another country, it will shift to the other country and there will be no net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
MCGRATH:
Prime Minister, thanks for speaking to AM this morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Pleasure.
[Ends]