Subjects: National Security Public Education Campaign; terrorist threat; North Korea, detention centres; Cricket;
E&OE...........
GRIMSHAW:
We welcome Prime Minister, John Howard, to the studio. Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning.
GRIMSHAW:
54 per cent of respondents told a newspaper poll at the weekend that they believe Australia will be a less safe place in 2003, are they right?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, sadly they are right. The whole world is a bit less safe now and we're not immune, Bali told us that, 11th of September should have told us in a general way - Bali more chillingly and more specifically. That doesn't mean to say that we should stop living and the difficult task we have is balancing proper warning with a reassurance that life must go on, should go and will go on. And trying to get that balance is one of the aims of this community awareness campaign, but it's also the aim of a lot of other things the Government is doing.
GRIMSHAW:
You've said be alert, but don't be alarmed. How do you make people alert without alarming them?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, Australians are quite capable of striking the commonsense balance. I have enormous faith in the capacity of Australians to respond to this in a balanced, sensible way. They're not going to start taking it out on people in a scapegoating fashion, but equally, they are going to be more alert. And the capacity of Australians to respond in a commonsense fashion is quite legendary. We are most adaptable people in the world, it's one of our great characteristics, it's a product of the fact that we are essentially a classless society. We therefore work together more readily, more easily and more spontaneously than many other societies.
GRIMSHAW:
They don't yet know what to be alert for, it seems. When are you going to tell them in more detail?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there's… I can't tell them because that will, in any exhaustive sense, because it depends entirely on the circumstances. You can have a parcel left on a bar in suspicious circumstances, you can have it left on the counter of a shop in completely non-suspicious circumstances. It depends entirely on the circumstances and what we are doing with a graduated campaign is to try and set the theme and to try and strike that balance of being alert but not being alarmed, of encouraging people - already some 500 people have used the hotline to ring up and report things. Now, many of those will be completely unacceptable events, some of the people who've rung up and apologised for wasting the time of the call centre, can I say to those people - you're not wasting our time if you have genuine concerns, obviously hoaxes are a different matter.
GRIMSHAW:
I want to talk to you about hoaxes in a moment. But you say that there have been 500 calls. How many of them will be time-wasting, will be some non-descript parcel left quite innocently…?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, quite a lot of them will be, but that is the case with all work of an activity of this kind. There's an enormous amount of police work, for example, that is done which is time-wasting. But it really is a question of, you know, a million calls over a period time producing one or two nuggets of gold that actually end up preventing something terrible happening and that is the whole idea of a call centre.
GRIMSHAW:
The Muslim community believes that the hotline will be used to make false claims and to victimise members of their community. Can you guarantee that won't happen?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I can't guarantee that some individuals won't behave in an outrageous, perverse fashion - I hope they don't - but I can't guarantee that you won't get some stupid, bigoted people behaving like that. But can I say to Australians of Arabic and Islamic background - there is nothing in this campaign that targets them and I ask them to look at them fair-mindedly. If you look at the visual, the imagery, the TV ad, nobody can say that is anti-Muslim. In fact, every attempt is clearly made in that ad to send the message that Muslims are as much part of the Australian community as the rest of us. Now there's nothing in that ad which is anti-Muslim, unless you argue that you don't have a campaign like this because some people might possibly exploit it, then I don't think anybody can fairly say that this campaign is directed against Muslims or Australians of Arabic decent. I want to make it clear, I don't want any scapegoating, decent people of all backgrounds are in this thing together and I don';t want any people being pushed around in this country because they happen to be of Arabic or Muslim decent - that is not the Australian way and it won't be tolerated.
GRIMSHAW:
All right. Can we move off the campaign for a moment, Britain's Sunday Express newspaper is reporting that President Bush told Israel's Prime Minister Sharon that the war in Iraq would start at midnight on February the 21st. Would you be surprised if such a conversation had taken place?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'd be very surprised, yes.
GRIMSHAW:
You have had no such…?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no. I don't… I think that's just speculation.
GRIMSHAW:
Okay. Can we talk about North Korea?
PRIME MINISTER:
Sure.
PRIME MINISTER:
Iraq is currently hosting United Nations weapons inspectors. North Korea on the other hand is expelling weapons inspectors and reactivating nuclear reactors. Why is Iraq considered a greater global threat, currently, than say North Korea?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it's not a question of one being considered a greater threat than the other. I mean, you can deal with a number of problems at the same time, particularly the United States and others can do that. But we're, as a community, responding to Iraq at a different point as far as the crisis there is concerned. There is a new United Nations resolution, those weapons inspectors are acting under that; we all hope that that will resolve the matter; that is in Iraq's hands and we all hope that military conflict can be avoided. There is a lot of diplomatic effort at this stage being put into North Korea. And this proposition that in some way, we're saying Iraq's more important than North Korea, it's a question of dealing with each situation according to the merits and according to the circumstances. And, I mean, in my view, I think there's at least a possibility that North Korea is behaving in the way she is at the present time in the belief that the world community will be, not only be preoccupied in relation to Iraq but perhaps sensing that the world community may not be totally united in relation to Iraq and I think there's a message in that to those people who are critical of American and United Nations activity in relation to Iraq.
GRIMSHAW:
Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, says we're playing an intense diplomatic role. What's the nature of that role and are we considering sending our Ambassador from Beijing to North Korea?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, there are… the Foreign Minister had a lengthy discussion with the Secretary of State on Saturday night and there a number of other diplomatic things under way. These things always sound mysterious and oh so terribly official when you talk about intense diplomatic activity. But it does have an impact and particularly in relation to other countries such as Russia and China that can potentially exert very great influence on North Korea, both of those countries have very close links with North Korea and both of those countries obviously have a very valuable and a very positive role to play in relation to bringing influence to bear on North Korea.
GRIMSHAW:
Prime Minister, a couple of other quick but not unimportant issues. There was obviously a huge fire at the Baxter Detention Centre at the weekend, another over at the Port Hedland Detention Centre. Are you concerned that our detention centres are at crash point and this may become a trend?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, this sort of thing's happened before, it's a little worse in relation to Baxter than any other fires. But we're not going to change our policy because people set fire to detention centres.
GRIMSHAW:
That's it?
PRIME MINISTER:
That's it.
GRIMSHAW:
Okay. The Cricket World Cup, of course, is the subject of some controversy at the moment. England's Captain, Nasser Hussain, says the British Government should decide whether England should go to Zimbabwe to compete. Is that a fair point and is that something that perhaps the Australian Government should decide for our cricket?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think this should be a case of all in or all out. If you get a situation where some teams play in Zimbabwe and some teams don't, the teams that don't play in Zimbabwe might be disadvantaged in the competition. I would hope that the ICC would revisit this issue. I'm disappointed they took the decision they did. I know it's hard and I know they tend to look only at the question of player safety. But in the end, there are some broader issues involved here. You have a completely, illegitimate, undemocratic, stolen Government in Zimbabwe. That was the most rigged election in years and that's been attested to by all manner of international opinion. And, of course, you have appalling human rights abuses occurring in that country. Now, I hope that that is taken into account. In the end, it is for the international cricket community to make a decision…
GRIMSHAW:
It's not the Government?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, this is an international competition, this is not just Australia visiting Zimbabwe or Australia visiting Pakistan because if we take a decision in isolation from decisions of other Governments, then that can create a situation where you have one team playing and another team not. I think what I'm saying to the International Cricket Council is please look at this again and I hope other governments, including the British Government, say exactly the same thing.
GRIMSHAW:
Thank you for being with us, I hope you had a good Christmas.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]