E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
Prime Minister, in your political career you’ve been to hell and back many people would think. Have ever had a more draining week?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I haven’t. But the people who’ve lost so much are the people who should be in the public’s thoughts and it has been a very challenging week for all of us. It’s been a tragic heartbreaking week for many and of course the heartbreak doesn’t end with the end of a week. It will go on for some for a lifetime and its rests with their friends and we collectively as a people to give them the comfort that I hope yesterday did and I hope in the days and weeks ahead we can do it in different ways.
JONES:
Indeed. I don’t want to be indifferent this morning to that continuing tragedy but I just thought we might focus on the future of keeping an eye on the past and in recent times because things have changed haven’t they, your government has spent significant amounts of money on the defence budget and you’ve explained why you’ve done that. But now we’re in a different world aren’t we at finding out what is happening and what is likely to happen to us. Is there an argument for saying that perhaps our intelligence organisations now, because of the changed circumstances, need more money?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan I have in the wake of this asked for a whole lot of things to be looked at. It’s very important you do that but it’s also very important you don’t do it in too much of a hurry just for the sake of saying well we’ll put another $100 million into this or change the name of something else. I have obviously asked for an assessment of our counter-terrorism capacity. I have requested not only a review of the intelligence material that was in front of the agencies before the attack but in the process of that I will be looking at the existing structure of the intelligence community and whether the relationship between the various agencies is right. I’m not suggesting it’s wrong. But all of those things do need to be very carefully looked at and that naturally but not only involves an assessment of whether there’s enough money.
JONES:
Just for the benefit of our listeners, have I got this right, that we have intelligence collection agencies, that is ASIS - the Australian Secret Intelligencer Service - and the Defence Signals Directorate? Now they collect the stuff don’t they?
PRIME MINISTER:
We have broad….look you’ll forgive me for not going into all…
JONES:
No no no. But I mean….
PRIME MINISTER:
[inaudible] of it but essentially we have a situation where we have various agencies that collect it and then you have the Office of National Assessment.
JONES:
And ASIO analyse it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well no no, ONA analyse it, and ASIO is the internal security organisation.
JONES:
Right. Now when you’ve got an analysis, I’m sorry to just pursue this, but I mean when you’ve got ONA which analyses it and you say it’s budget is $7.6 million. In the light of what we’ve been through and the concern that if we get enough advise and so on, that’s simply not enough is it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well nothing is ever enough when something like this has happened. But bear in mind that ONA’s budget is all about employing experts to analyse. It’s not the labour intensive process of collecting the raw intelligence data. That belongs to the other bodies that have much….
JONES:
Sure, but it may need more analysts?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it could. I mean, let me make it very clear - you’ll get no argument from me and the public would expect no less, that all of these things will be now on the table. I don’t want to sort of immediately send a message that we think nothing is working properly.
JONES:
But it’s just that the listeners are concerned about security and we want to establish what….
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course they are and they have every reason to be concerned.
JONES:
Now $80 million is the ASIO budget. I think the Australian newspaper was saying at the weekend that that means that outlying states have offices of just a couple of handfuls of people who’ve got to cover all these threats or that ethnic leaders approach ASIO with information and are told not to bother. They are apparently short of Arabic speakers, Indonesian speakers, human resources. Given that circumstances have changed the need for these things is far greater than it was yesterday isn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there is a need to look at all of these things to see if they are adequate. I don’t automatically accept that when people approach ASIO with information they’re told not to bother. I don’t believe that is the case. I can’t believe that’s the case. But there’s always a need when something as mammoth and as devastating as this happens to go through everything you have and say is this enough. But it’s got to be done carefully. It’s not something you do in the first couple of weeks. You need to assess where gaps might exist and more importantly where the need might be in future and then you make judgements.
JONES:
There are reports today that ASIO knows of insignificant Al Qaeda connections in Australia, both Australian citizens who’ve trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and others with affiliations with Jemaah Islamiah. Now none have committed an offence but at the some time we need the resources to be able to keep a watch on these people don’t we?
PRIME MINISTER:
You certainly need resources to keep a watch on people but bear everything in mind also that we do have quite good cooperative arrangements with state police and in a federation such as Australia the system works properly which in times….when you have a national need it does so you get a lot of cooperation between the state and federal authorities. But again this is something that needs to be, you need to run the ruler over it.
JONES:
You do. You see a woman wrote to me and she said my husband’s an owner driver for a local company at Padstow frequently delivering items of stationery to Lucas Heights reactor site. His words to me were that Lucas Heights security is a joke. Only the person at the front gate asks if he’s a delivery person. If he goes to the administration block his three tonne truck has never once been stopped or inspected nor is he questioned at any other point. Now that might have been all right three months ago but I suppose in light of recent developments we’re going to have to face greater scrutiny.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we are, we are. But we have to understand that it is a process without end. You can always do more, you can always have more precautions, you can have more checks, and any government in a free and open society must strike a balance between all necessary prudence but not interfering with people’s normal enjoyment of life. It’s a very hard balance to strike and we’ll try and do it but in the process we may antagonise some people. Other people may think we should go further. We’ll do our best to strike that balance.
JONES:
Good on you. And just finally on foreign policy with Indonesia given that it’s clear now it seems that we’re going to have to try and win over the moderate Muslims who are as opposed to the militant Islamic push as everybody else. There’s a battle isn’t there with Indonesia? 13,000 islands making the Archipelago, Sukarnoputri under siege from the militant element. The moderates of course currently in charge. How does Australia improve the circumstances with Indonesia, how do we get closer to an understanding that for them that we’re on their side in trying to withstand this minority militant Islamic push?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there’s no one single answer to that. I think we have to deal openly and directly with then. We shouldn’t pretend that there are links that don’t exist but equally we should seek out those things that we share in common and one of the things that we can do is to help them in that very area you spoke of. This attack has not only hurt us very deeply but this attack was designed to shake the foundations of the Indonesian government. This is designed to hurt democracy in Indonesia. One way in which we can help them is to try and help them preserve their still quite fragile democracy.
JONES:
Yes 240 Indonesians died indeed. Abu Bakar Bashir, the extremist cleric who’s being questioned by Indonesian authority, had a message for the families of those murdered a week ago. He said convert to Islam as soon as possible. Now it is a matter of concern isn’t it that the Vice President of Indonesian, this Hamzah Haz, as late as last Monday at an Indonesian Cabinet meeting was still arguing that the CIA is responsible for all of this.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes it is a matter of concern of course. But he does not represent the views of the Indonesian government in the main, that is not the view of course of the President and I had a very good discussion in Bali with Amien Rais who’s the head of the National Assembly and he, really in a sense the alternative political figure at the moment to Megawati and he is very strong in his belief that Indonesia must do more to fight terrorism.
JONES:
So that’s where foreign policy initiatives will have to be headed in the next six weeks and months won’t they?
PRIME MINISTER:
They will indeed.
JONES:
Good to talk to you.
JONES:
Thanks Alan.
[Ends]