8 October 2001
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
JONES:
Prime Minister good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
What does that mean for Australia and Australians Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
It means that although no Australian forces or weapons are involved in the initial attack we have committed the forces that I mentioned last week to subsequent operations. I was notified before this attack commenced early this morning. Vice President Cheney rang me to inform me that it would be launched shortly and he indicated then in our discussion that the United States may well wish to take up our offer in relation to subsequent action. It had been my belief for some time that the first strike would probably be of the nature that’s taken place.
We all hope in circumstances like this that it can be quick and over and effective in a short period of time. But we should show restraint and caution about hoping that will turn out to be the case. This could be a drawn out operation. We have offered special forces, we’ve offered refuellers and we’ve offered a reconnaissance capacity, and indeed if other requests beyond that are made and we’re capable of responding, we will.
JONES:
Prime Minister some people have rung this morning to the program here, and I guess it’s the price you pay for freedom, but very upset about the fact that major news outlets and including CNN and our own television stations here, have given very significant profile to bin Laden rallying Muslims to oppose America and the potential that has for creating significant divisions in society. I guess there’s nothing in a free society you do about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan you said it. The last thing we should ever let go of is freedom of the press. You know I have my disagreements with the press. I have reason on occasions to be angry with them. But it’s one of the pillars of our society and we can only hope that there is enough competition within the media to ensure that there’s appropriate balance. But you really can’t do anything about that and I wouldn’t argue that you should even though I will condemn on occasions. I mean I read recently there was some internal directive sent around the ABC putting some restriction on remarks that could be made about the Taliban. Now if that’s true I’m amazed but it doesn’t alter the fact that the ABC remains an independent news outlet.
JONES:
Prime Minister one of the problems here, this is not an orthodox war and neither of us need to be telling anyone that, everyone understands it, but the strike has been in Afghanistan which is against bin Laden, which is against Al Qaeda. One of I suppose the concerns that Australians would have without dramatising this is that a strike against one terrorist group may mobilise collective strikes by others because the genesis of them all is anti US, United States. Now I spoke at the end of last week to Dr Rowan Gunaratne who’s an expert on international terrorism and he made the point that Hama, Hezbollah, the PKK, the Chechyan Mujahadeen, the Tamil Tigers, two separate Punjabi groups, an international Sikh youth federation, all have cells here in Australia. That has to be a concern doesn’t it that there could be a reaction to this attack on one terrorist group with the mobilisation of others?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that is a danger. I neither want to dismiss it nor magnify it. But you have a choice when something as horrific as the 11th of September occurs. You either seek to roll yourself into a small ball and disappear and hope that nobody will notice you, all the time of course wanting the Americans to withstand terror and attack it on behalf of the free world. Or alternatively you do as Australia has done, align yourselves with the United States and offer within the limit of our capability, to help. We cannot pick and choose our friendship with the United States. We cannot get the benefits of it without carrying some of the burdens of it and that is why we’ve done what we have done and I’m sure the great majority of Australians support me irrespective of their political beliefs or irrespective of their beliefs on other things. This is an issue about common values with the most powerful nation on Earth. It’s the nation that came to Australia’s aid in the darkest days of World War II. The present generation of young Australians should never forget that when this country faced invasion by the Japanese in World War II it was the Americans that stood between the invasion and the Australian mainland.
JONES:
On the flip side of that what do we do parallel to this necessary attack against terrorism to neutralise in the eyes of certain militant groups around the world the anti US sentiment?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well what we made clear is that as far as Australia is concerned this is not an attack on Islam and I’ve been at very great pains to say that. We must do as the Americans have done, enlist the assistance and the help of moderate Arab opinion. We must give a lot of assistance to Pakistan, a country that is very poor that will face a horrendous refugee problem. The solution or the best answer, there is no total solution, the best answer to that problem is to help the countries that are suddenly faced with handling the refugees but to help them to cope with the refugee problem within their own country. That’s why we’ve given more money, it’s why the Americans have given more money, it’s why the British Prime Minister pledged that his country would give more money and I hope others do the same to help Pakistan cope with this enormous potential refugee problem.
JONES:
So you’re saying that refugee problems are best handled in environments where there is a cultural symmetry?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly it makes more sense to handle the problem where it first occurs. That’s not to say that countries like Australia shouldn’t continue to have a generous refugee policy. But we could have the most generous refugee policy in the world and it is second only to Canada’s on a per capita basis. But that is only a drop in the ocean as far as the aggregate refugee problem is concerned. And really creating the conditions for refugees to either be settled and sustained in the countries to which they have fled or better still creating the conditions so that they can return to their homeland, their home country is a far better approach than imagining that we can successfully resettle, what, 23 million refugees around the world. It’s a task that has so far eluded the world and whilst countries should continue to be very generous I think they have to increase the assistance they give to the first host country of refugees and in the case of Afghani refugees we’re looking here at Pakistan.
JONES:
One of the comments that Dr Gunaratne did make last week which developed significant concern amongst our listeners, he said that Australia doesn’t have laws which prevent the propaganda of terrorist groups or the fundraising of those groups. Have you addressed that issue?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly in relation to financial assets we’ve taken a number of steps. I don’t know that the situation is quite as he depicts it. I mean we have laws against incitement to violence. We’ve got laws in relation to that. It’s very difficult to even contemplate a law against political propaganda without quite properly being accused of wanting to take away the freedom of people. I mean it’s the old Voltarian injunction isn’t it – I don’t agree with what he says but I’ll defend to the death his right to say it. Now that remains the cornerstone of liberal democracy, even in times like this. Now that freedom is abused and exceeded when people incite violence. The different between inciting violence and inciting hatred is very blurred. You’ve got to worry about putting undue restrictions even on the propagation of something that we as a community and we as individuals find distasteful. It’s a very fine line and it’s a constant struggle and we’ve got to be very careful, even at a time of extraordinary stress as this, we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t trample on things that are so fundamental to the kind of people are we.
JONES:
Back to that refugee issue, 120 kilometres off Christmas Island, we’ve all seen the stories and the headlines, children being thrown overboard. What do you say about how this matter ought to be addressed.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it’s our firm resolve that these people will not come to the Australian mainland. We believe that they should go back to Indonesia. We’re in communication with the Indonesian Government. Quite frankly Alan I don’t want in this country people who are prepared, if those reports are true, to throw their own children overboard. And that kind of emotional blackmail is very distressing, it must be very distressing for the sailors on the vessel, I feel for them, many of them young men and women confronting this kind of situation is very difficult and I thank them very warmly for the job that they’re doing on behalf of Australia. But we cannot allow ourselves to be intimated by this. It’s a difficult issue. As of now the boat is being denied entry into Australian territorial waters and it’s at the border of what’s called the contiguous zone and I think I shall have to content myself at this stage in saying that various options are being explored.
JONES:
Should I ask you this, I mean there is something savage about a people smuggler of any kind who will use their passengers to make money and then virtually cast them overboard when they’ve got the money. Are there sufficient international provisions or should there be tougher provisions to allow for the capture and confiscation of these boat smugglers and the destruction of their boats.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the answer to all of those things is no there are never enough international strictures but trying to get an international agreement on all these things is a 100 year battle. I mean we have much tougher laws ourselves but the great difficulty is that these people know that they are dealing with a humane people. They know that we are not going to allow people, if we can prevent it happening, to drown or to be exposed to unacceptable risk. And they are quite literally playing on that. Now it’s important that we preserve our standards, it’s important that we continue to behave in a humane fashion but we’ve got to do it in a way that sends as strong as possible message and I mean we’ve certainly sent a message, it’s not a message that everybody has been willing to receive and hear and act upon. I think what’s happening at the moment is that our resolve is being tested. It is a very difficult issue because you are dealing with highly emotional behaviour, you’re dealing with people, I don’t know their backgrounds but I do know this, it’s a matter of common humanity. Genuine refugees don’t throw their children overboard into the sea.
JONES:
The SAS are the vanguard of our defence force, the Special Air Service, you I think received communication from some of them last week. Blackhawk survivors are saying that because they didn’t see acts of service they’re not entitled to the same amount of compensation as a soldier who’s done a tour of duty. Now given that we’re going to be asking so much of these people and this is a potentially demoralising thing, shouldn’t someone who is training for service in the SAS, whether or not they’re injured on duty or injured at home be treated equally?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven’t seen those representations, I’m not saying they haven’t been made but I haven’t. I think there are arguments both for and against that. The view of people in the military, the great majority view of people in the military is that those who have received, who have actually seen active service and have been as a process involved, exposed to far greater danger should always receive some kind of margin.
JONES:
But you see you’ve got a fellow like Gerry Bampton who’s a former SAS corporal, he’s a paraplegic after that Blackhawk helicopter crash.
PRIME MINISTER:
I do understand that and that is a somewhat separate issue and I thought you were raising the general principle of people who…
JONES:
No I’m talking about specifically the SAS, so that if they’re injured here…
PRIME MINISTER:
… people who’ve been injured…
JONES:
Yes I’m talking about the SAS officers injured in their training or service in here.
PRIME MINISTER:
There could well be a case for that being looked that…
JONES:
I think it would be important given…
PRIME MINISTER:
I will have a look at those representations.
JONES:
Thanks. And just Prime Minister, could you explain to our listeners what status you have after noon today, you are, after noon today, a caretaker Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes the caretaker period commences, what that means in reality is that you don’t make major commitments that would bind an incoming Government. You don’t initiate major new policies without consulting the opposition and securing their agreement. It doesn’t mean as some have suggested that we have some kind of joint decision making process. I remain the Prime Minister and my colleagues remain ministers and we continue to act in accordance with established policy. The main thing is you don’t make commitments that would bind an incoming Government and life will just go on as normally as it can against the backdrop of what’s happening and also the backdrop of the domestic election.
JONES:
Just on that then you would know that the Regent hotel in Sydney has now closed off six floors since the Ansett collapse. 120 rooms have been shut down, forced redundancies, that’s just one of many right across the nation. Are you likely to be looking before noon today, before you become a caretaker Prime Minister at some kind of package to support the tourism industry in the difficulties it faces?
PRIME MINISTER:
We have had some views put to us and without suggesting that all the views that have been put to us can be responded to, we are looking at a number of things. But it is not easy, not easy at all because the collapse in the tourist industry has been certainly partly due to Ansett but it’s also been significantly due to people being frightened to travel as much as was the case earlier. But there are a number of things that are being put to us, that’s all I’m willing to say.
JONES:
And you might be making a statement…
PRIME MINISTER:
All I’m saying at this stage Alan is that a number of things have been put to us, I’m not going to raise expectations but there is a lot…
JONES:
But you might do something before 12 o’clock.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan you go on governing in the normal fashion and I can’t imagine that if anything were done in that area it would be regarded as particularly controversial.
JONES:
Okay we’ll go to the news and thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]