7 October 2001
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) Peter Costello has said… if you win the election will you….?
PRIME MINISTER:
Nigel, I’ve been asked this countless times. The last thing I am interested in at the moment is leaving politics and I’ve given my answer and I really don’t have anything to add.
JOURNALIST:
Does that mean leadership is a non-issue…?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly leadership is an issue in this election. The leadership qualities of myself and Mr Beazley is a big issue.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, can you explain what you think is the value of a leader’s debate if it is held before the charter of budget honesty?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh an enormous value. I don’t think the charter of budget honesty is the defining issue of this campaign. I think the qualities of the two leaders and what the two parties have done over the last five and a half years. Look the charter of budget honesty is important but the reality is this Geof, I’m going to the APEC meeting on behalf of Australia on the weekend after next. The weekend after that is my campaign launch, so no circumstances if the debate is to be held on a Sunday, which is the preferred time, it has to take place next weekend. It’s as simple as that.
JOURNALIST:
It does leave a big hole doesn’t it in that you are not able to cost policies and accurately argue costed policies when you don’t know the true state of the books or certainly not oppositions.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I’d have to check but my recollection is that the debate last time was held before all of the policies had been released. I don’t think it’s been an immutable law. There wasn’t a debate in 1987 when I was Opposition Leader and Mr Hawke was Prime Minister. He just refused to debate and I don’t think he was pursued by anybody as a result of that. We are having a debate. There’s plenty of opportunity in an hour for all the main issues of the campaign to be ventilated but for the reasons I’ve outlined, if it to be on a weekend, it has to be next weekend because the following weekend I’m going to be in Shanghai and the weekend after that is the campaign launch.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, in the past you’ve committed your Government to returning any surplus as a tax cut. This document today says you might also return it as a family benefit.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that’s another way of describing a tax cut because the family benefits can be taken either as a benefit from Centrelink or as a tax rebate at the end of the year. There’s nothing in that.
JOURNALIST:
But that won’t apply to everyone, that will only apply to families with children, that tax cut.
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
JOURNALIST:
A family benefit increase would only go to people who’ve got children.
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s right. We may well have, the initiatives we have may well be of greater benefit to people with children. They have been in the past and they could well be in the future. I certainly don’t rule out the possibility that we have something to offer in the tax area that it will be related to people with children. We haven’t finally resolved what we’re going to do in that area but we have always had a bias towards families with children. What we’re going to say on tax will be made known but the use of the expression family benefits was put in there quite deliberately was to cover the fact that some people choose to take their tax rebate as payment rather than getting it at the end of the year so in substance it’s precisely the same. If you’re family A and you take it as a tax rebate, if you’re family B you take it as a payment from Centrelink it’s the same benefit so those words were designed to cover all possibilities.
JOURNALIST:
Is your top priority on tax lowering the top marginal tax rate or is it for people on lower income levels?
PRIME MINISTER:
We’ll have something to say about it a little later in the campaign, Ian. I’m not going to go into any further detail. The other point to make, that I’ve made and Peter Costello’s made, is that the capacity because of the changed economic circumstances is less. There will be something on income tax but everybody has to understand that the surpluses will be lower because there’ll be a slowing of economic growth.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) reports of boat people jumping overboard… personnel from HMAS … are on board, what would you direct them to do?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly, they have already been directed to, and they don’t need a direction to do it, is to behave in a humane fashion as Australian service people always do. It doesn’t speak volumes for some of the people on the vessel - suggestions that children were thrown overboard. That is a sorry reflection on their attitude of mind. And we will handle the situation calmly. The people involved will be treated humanely and I’ll be talking later in the day to both Mr Ruddock and Mr Reith about the options. But our policy remains quite resolute, we are not going to be intimidated out of our policy by this kind of behaviour. I want to make that very clear, we are a humane nation but we’re not a nation that’s going to be intimidated by this kind of behaviour.
JOURNALIST:
Is there any other course of action that can be taken to help the two Australians who are being held by the Taliban?
PRIME MINISTER:
That is a very difficult situation, we can’t accept the linkage which is being apparently made by the Taliban. We’ll continue all of our diplomatic efforts. My thoughts are very much with these two Australians. It seems a grievous crime to me that somebody could be jailed for preaching Christian gospel, preaching the Koran or teaching the Torah. It’s an equally grievous thing but we cannot allow that situation to be used by the Taliban in a way that it is sought to be used and I support the response that is being made by the Americans and the Germans.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister on the issue of rollback – are you disappointed to see on the second day of the campaign you are being misquoted in this morning’s newspaper?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I’ve got to say that’s about as big as it can get by way of a misquotation. I mean you ought to hear the tape, I made it perfectly clear. I think it’s a pretty sloppy piece of journalism but I don’t want to labour the point, no pun intended, any further but it was a sloppy piece of journalism. The Melbourne branch of the family got it right.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) have you put thinking this policy document, the option of family benefits because of the tighter budgetry situation?
PRIME MINISTER:
No it’s just that, can I just say again as I did in answer to Sue’s question. I’m speaking hypothetically, if part of the tax relief were something that went - a particular component of it went to people with families with children, then they would have the option of either taking it as a tax rebate or as a family benefit. I wouldn’t want somebody then coming along and saying oh you’re paying it as a family benefit, you said it was all going to be a tax relief. It’s just to cover that with these family tax A and B which is in the existing tax package. You can take that either as a rebate on your tax or you can choose to have it paid periodically through, not through Centrelink, through the family tax office. Now, it’s just that language was used entirely to cover that contingency.
JOURNALIST:
So if you don’t have any kids you won’t be getting…
PRIME MINISTER:
No I didn’t say that. You could well have a situation where you could get tax relief, there could be tax relief covering a number of, I’m speaking hypothetically at this stage, cover a number of areas and one of the areas could be an additional benefit or a separate benefit that went to people with children as well as a benefit going generically to taxpayers. And in order to cover that possibility I made reference to family benefits.
JOURNALIST:
So you could get both of them?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you could, I’m just talking hypothetically at this stage… there’s nothing, please, I know, you’ve got to look through the fine print and you’ve got to find something, but can I tell you there’s nothing in that, it’s just purely designed to cover both contingencies. That if the tax benefit is children specific, and it can be both children specific and generic then people have the option of taking either one of them.
JOURNALIST:
On the boatpeople, will you insist that they go to another country or is it possible under the new migration laws that you might allow them to….?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I’m getting advice, I’m not, I’ve only just been briefed on it and I’m not going to say anything other than that we will adhere absolutely to the approach we’ve taken in the past.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, how would the Government view Singapore Airlines buying into Ansett Mark II?
PRIME MINISTER:
We would not be opposed in principle to that at all. In fact, it was something that we thought was a good idea earlier and we were criticised for expressing that view. Of course I would welcome Singapore being interested in Ansett Mark II, or III - I think it will become, if Singapore is interested - but I don’t know other than that there’s talk of Singapore being interested and if that come to fruition then that’s good.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Beazley has promised there won’t be a by-election in his seat if he wins. Is that an important comment when the campaign is about stability and certainty?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well he promising there’ll be no by-election in Brand. Well I’m focussed on winning and if I win there’ll be no by-election in Bennelong, I can assure you of that.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) called you a quitter for not guaranteeing that you won’t retire?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think Mr Beazley’s getting very desperate on this if that’s all he can say. I thought Peter Costello’s point this morning was pretty good when he said that instead of talking about his superior leadership qualities he’s running this line….
JOURNALIST:
Who deserves tax relief most? Families with children or people on high….?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think it’s too early for me to be saying who deserves it the most. I think you can rest assured that what we do produce in that area will be both fair and affordable, fair and affordable.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) rollback. Isn’t that what the government did do on petrol…? Wasn’t that rollback?
PRIME MINISTER:
No. Rolling back the GST is when you take the GST off something, and we didn’t do that in relation to petrol, we reduced the rate of excise and we abolished automatic indexation off petrol excise. There was no rollback of the GST involved in either of those things, none what so ever.
JOURNALIST:
If one of the options was tax relief which is just confined to families with children…
PRIME MINISTER:
There are an infinite variety of options. It’s like, there are not quite 8 million options but - to use an old television refrain - but there are an infinite variety of options and that’s one of them, but only one of them.
[Ends]