Subject:
Equine flu, apprenticeships announcement, proposed pulp mill in Tasmania, drugs in sport
E&OE...
WOOLEY:
Good morning Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Charles.
WOOLEY:
PM, do you like a punt occasionally?
PRIME MINISTER:
Not very often but if you're asking me about the plight of the racing industry, I am very concerned about the impact of this equine flu.
WOOLEY:
Well I'm a bit like you, I mean I rarely punt but what's been amazing to me is the amount of money Australians spend on gambling. I know that you've been worried about poker machines for a long time but in New South Wales alone the betting industry during this crisis will lose more than $220 million and that's $220 million that the punters would have otherwise lost. It's a lot of dough.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's an enormous turnover. It is more than just the gambling side of it, the whole industry employs an enormous number of people and it is a very big industry. It's a very important industry and this is the worst challenge it's had in decades. I am not somebody who claims to be a racing man but I follow it enough and know enough of it to realise just how devastating it is, particularly at the moment to the industry in New South Wales.
WOOLEY:
But are you worried that, because my figure here is for betting, the betting industry losses will be more than $220 million over these weeks in New South Wales alone. One thinks that people might have found better things to do with their money?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think some people do gamble too much and one of the great dilemmas that governments have in relation to things like gambling is that we know that some people do it too often but we also know that governments don't have a right, excuse me, to perpetually intervene in people's lives and tell them how they should run them.
WOOLEY:
No, no you don't like to notion of the nanny society do you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well do you? I don't...
WOOLEY:
No, no I don't. I would complain if you intervened too often and I complain when you don't intervene enough.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well of course you do, you have two-bob each way.
WOOLEY:
I do indeed.
PRIME MINISTER:
In the true Australian gambling spirit.
WOOLEY:
Yeah, without being a punter. Prime Minister, there are of course calls for government support and that means me, that means taxpayer support. What does seem to appear as one of the back stories to this is that a lot of people in that industry aren't very well looked after, down at the bottom of the feeding chain as it were.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think there are a lot of very poorly paid people in the industry, well modestly paid. Obviously they'd have to be paid the minimum required by law but there must be a lot of people in the industry who have very modest incomes. Look, we've established as a start a $4 million fund which is to provide emergency relief. On top of that of course people who aren't getting any income and who qualify can immediately get unemployment benefits and they should go off to Centrelink and that applies to anybody who loses their job or who's suddenly left without any source of income and all of the provisions that apply in other cases will apply in this industry.
WOOLEY:
Ok, I don't need to dip into my pocket to help out Gai Waterhouse or Gerry Harvey do I?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I don't think Gai Waterhouse and Gerry Harvey are wanting the largesse of Charles Wooley, I think they'll be able to survive and knowing both of them well they'd be the last people who would expect the Government to help them but they would be concerned as I am and the Government is about other people. The $4 million is not the beginning and the end of Federal Government assistance. We will obviously need to provide more resources and I do regard this as a very serious threat to the industry. It's a great Australian industry the racing industry and even those of us who don't go to the races regularly, and I certainly don't, I do understand the place it occupies in the history and the psyche of this country and it's a tremendously important industry. We have to get to the bottom of how this happened. I've been in regular contact with Peter McGauran who incidentally is a minister who understands the racing industry very well indeed. His family knows the racing industry in Victoria extremely well and he's one of my colleagues who knows all of this stuff inside out and we are conducting an internal investigation into how it happened and if it's necessary to have a public inquiry, we will.
WOOLEY:
We can learn a lot of a disease control for two-legged Australians as well can't we Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
That's true and I think it's important when something like this happens that people try and work together to solve the problem and I understand the interests of everybody. I understand the interest of state racing authorities and state governments, of course they regulate the industry and they impose many of the taxes that affect the industry, particularly in the area of gambling, they're all imposed by state governments so they of course have direct financial interests and involvement, in a sense far more direct and comprehensive than that of the Federal Government. But look, if there are quarantine issues involved obviously the Federal Government has a responsibly and I just want people to know that there's no way... that if a public inquiry is needed to get to the bottom of how this happened, a public inquiry will be conducted. It's just that the way you do these things in the first instance is to do your own investigation to see if you can quickly get to the bottom of it and if you can't or if you think for other reasons a public inquiry is necessary, you have one. Now that's our attitude, I've discussed that with Mr McGauran. We've agreed that that should be our approach and he and I will be in very regular touch. I saw him yesterday and had a lengthy discussion with him about it. He's run the, you know, he's handled it extremely well. He speaks with knowledge and authority on the subject and I've been very impressed with how he's handled a very difficult situation.
WOOLEY:
I'm reluctant to give politicians a pat on the back, but I was most impressed with him when I spoke to him earlier in the week.
PRIME MINISTER:
He understands...
WOOLEY:
Very much across it, yeah. PM, can I move on to something else just as important in regional Australia. When we were in Warragul we spoke with you and we'd had a call about a bloke who reckoned a bloke Tony I think his name was...
PRIME MINISTER:
Tony, I remember that call.
WOOLEY:
And you and I were both surprised what he was saying about apprenticeships in rural industries and how disadvantaged they were vis-a-vis their city cousins. You've got something to say about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I have. I'm going to announce with Andrew Robb, the Minister, later today that we're going to include agricultural and horticultural apprentices in the benefits that are made available to other apprentices, namely the tool kit that's worth up to $800 to get them, a year to get them started in their new career. It's $800 rather, not a year, for one kit. And in addition they're going to be eligible for the $1000 apprenticeships training voucher which reimburses apprentices or their employers the cost of their course fees up to $500 a year for the first two years of training. Now, for some reason and I was puzzled at the time...
WOOLEY:
That was going to be my question but you're going to put it and answer it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I was puzzled that they missed out, and anyway they're not going to miss out any longer because as from today they'll be eligible and the areas that will be eligible are farm management, beef and pig production, horse breeding, grain productions, wool handling and classing, irrigation, landscaping or plant and tree cultivation and this policy announcement will provide assistance of $47.4 million over this and the next three years. We think it's timely and as I say it was a surprise to me at the time and I'm glad Tony raised it and if Tony is listening I say good on you Tony for having raised it with me and I'm pleased that we've been able to respond and I certainly do remember very, very much and we'll be putting out a statement and there'll be all sorts of information available and people can look at websites and ring apprenticeship referral...
WOOLEY:
That's good PM because I tell you an awful lot of people, an awful lot of prospective employers have called me over the last couple of years and said that one of things that puts them off taking an apprentice is they have to dip into their own pockets to pay...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think what this does is to recognise a gap that shouldn't have been there perhaps in the first place. Anyway, it was and I suppose when we brought in these concessions, these incentives in the first place we thought in terms of assisting some of the very high profile apprenticeship areas where assistance was needed and for some reason it didn't extend. But anyway, that's the past, it's the future that matters and that's the announcement so all those benefits will be available as from now for apprentices in agriculture and horticultural and I've named some of the areas that will benefit.
WOOLEY:
Prime Minister, let's take a brief break and when we come back I'd like to talk to you about the pulp mill.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah sure.
WOOLEY:
Ok.
[commercial break]
WOOLEY:
Prime Minister welcome back. The Premier of Tasmania is saying that if you delay the decision on the pulp mill until after the election it might put the kybosh on the project entirely.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I want the pulp mill to go ahead, provided...
WOOLEY:
Provided.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's up to scratch environmentally. I want to make it very clear that I am in favour of the pulp mill. The Federal Government in fact has provided a lot of, we put five million dollars in right at the beginning for the feasibility study and we've indicated a willingness to provide other assistance, so I don't know where Mr Lennon's getting this idea that we're in some way against the pulp mill. All we are wanting to do is to make sure that it stacks up environmentally, and...
WOOLEY:
Are you, like Malcolm Turnbull, somewhat disquieted by the manner in which the Tasmanian Government has driven this project?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly the speed with which the Tasmanian Government dealt with it, whilst very pleasing to the industry and I understand that and I'm sympathetic to a degree obviously to their position because we're supporting it, on the other hand if you don't look as though you've got a completely transparent process, it does leave you open to criticism from people who are trying to stop the pulp mill, and the argument that's being used by people like Mr Cousins and others is that the process has not been transparent and what Turnbull is doing, correctly in my opinion, is making sure that the procedure to check it out environmentally is followed carefully, now he did say that he was going to give it to the Chief Scientist.
WOOLEY:
Yes, Jim Peacock.
PRIME MINISTER:
And said that some weeks ago, it's ridiculous if you say you're going to give it to the Chief Scientist to make a decision before the Chief Scientist has reported to you.
WOOLEY:
And, and in the case of Jim Peacock, he's not the kind of bloke that could be leaned on to speed things up a bit.
PRIME MINISTER:
I know Jim Peacock well and he's got great scientific and professional independence and if somebody tried to lean on him and say look Jim, you know, hurry this up and give us the answer we want, I mean, he would tell you to get lost.
WOOLEY:
Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER:
And that is precisely what the situation is, so I, I think that everybody should take a deep breath, they should understand that our, my and our essential position is that we support the pulp mill and I want people to know that, but we've got to be satisfied that is stacks up environmentally. We have our own process to follow, we're not going to automatically follow the process mandated by the Tasmanian Government yet.
WOOLEY:
No but PM, I, I mean, been through this a few times and covered them in other countries too, I mean, I suspect what's going to happen is Jim Peacock is going to come back and say well this isn't acceptable and that isn't, you're going to have to spend more money and you can't put that much of these dioxins or [inaudible] or whatever the chemicals are into Bass Strait, in which case the company may well say well we're going to take our bat and ball and go home.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't know what Jim's going to report and I'm certainly not going to speculate, but I do want...
WOOLEY:
But if he doesn't just rule off on everything Gunns wants, would that worry you then, that the whole project might be lost?
PRIME MINISTER:
What would worry me would be if we didn't have a proper process and that the noisy opposition to any pulp mill anywhere succeeds. I hear that some people are saying