CORDEAUX:
It's with a great deal of pleasure that I welcome the Prime Minister to the programme. How are you, sir?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm very well, Jeremy. Good to be talking to all of you.
CORDEAUX:
It's great to be talking with you.
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm still getting a bit of that echo.
CORDEAUX:
Let me see if we can get a technician to fix that echo.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay.
CORDEAUX:
If you could just bear with it for a second, we'll be on the case. That was a wonderful day yesterday. I saw the footage on television last night of the parade and the welcome home. That was just the most fantastic scene.
PRIME MINISTER:
It was and what was so gratifying was the obvious enthusiasm of the crowds and also the sheer delight at the men and women of our Defence Forces experience as a result of the reception they got. It was a stunning sunny day in the middle of winter, or the early part of winter, and it went off extremely well. There were tens of thousands of people and overall it was a great opportunity. And one of the things that struck me was the attitude of many Vietnam War veterans who were in the crowd, they had been denied, or many of them had been denied, that kind of welcome home 30 or more years ago and they were grateful that the insensitivity and indifference that had been displayed to them was not displayed towards the men and women who served in Afghanistan and in the Gulf and that was one of the things that we had wanted to avoid and I'm very pleased that the public has been, properly, so welcoming.
CORDEAUX:
I think that the overwhelming feeling among Australians is that we did the right thing and the wonderful part about it has been that we didn't lose anybody.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it is a miracle that we didn't lose anybody and you can only thank providence that we didn't. I believe the overwhelming majority of the Australian public did end up supporting what we did, there was debate and that's fair enough in a democracy. But in the end, we have removed a brutal dictatorship and every day more bodies are discovered, more atrocities are unravelled. On the question of weapons of mass destruction, I repeat that the judgement made my our intelligence services was that there was a weapons of mass destruction capacity; that Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction; there was no evidence that the Security Council resolutions had been complied with; the legal basis of going to war was non-compliance with those Security Council resolutions. I believe that people should be more patient about discovery of further evidence. But it nonetheless remains the case that it was the judgement of many countries and many intelligence services and even the judgement of people who are now being critical that Iraq did possess chemical and biological weapons. The case on nuclear weapons was obviously at the time a lesser case and if you trawl back through what I've said, some people do that, you will find that I placed a greater emphasis on chemical and biological weapons, though I did… well I did mention Saddam Hussein's continuing desire to have a nuclear capacity. Now, that was the judgement that was made. Intelligence is a challenging pursuit, you can never prove something in a court of law based on intelligence, you can't, and if you wait until you get evidence enough to satisfy an Old Bailey jury, it's too late. I used the Pearl Harbour analogy in the lead up to the war to make that point, you have to make a judgement based on intelligence assessments. The only other point I make is that any suggestion that we, at an Australian Government level, we asked the intelligence services to massage or overstate the material is wrong and it's also very insulting to them, they're very professional people. They make assessments, they're fallible like all of us, but they made honest assessments. And we reflected those assessments in the public statements that we made.
CORDEAUX:
Perhaps they shouldn't have made so much of the weapons of mass destruction and just concentrated on the brutal, violent, criminal dictatorship that had to be removed.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that is a hindsight judgement and I don't know that I totally agree with that. In the end, the legal justification, the legal basis of Australia committing was in reliance on the failure of Iraq to comply with the various Security Council resolutions and at the time we entered the war, I tabled a legal opinion saying that action taken in concert with other countries was legal. The nature of the regime was a factor and, of course, since the war has finished the evidence of how brutal, how terrible, what levels of torture were used as a daily instrument, of children being buried, being murdered, of whole families being subject to atrocities, of bodies being dug up every day. I heard Jay Garner on radio this morning - he was the interim US commander - saying three weeks ago he witnessed the uncovering of 4000 bodies. I mean, anybody who imagines that Saddam Hussein wasn't anything other than a very brutal dictator and certainly more brutal than most of the dictators the world has had to cope with over the last 30 or 40 years, obviously people such as Pol Pot and Idi Amin aren't in the same category, but you are dealing with a particularly depraved level of human conduct. Now they're all part of it and I'm not running away from the fact, and I won't, that we had a legal basis quite apart from moral consideration and that legal basis I stand by.
CORDEAUX:
Yeah, well, just the same as he hasn't been found yet, Saddam Hussein hasn't been found, I think it's reasonable to imagine that he's somewhere just like those weapons are somewhere. He had a long time to hide them if he wanted to.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, certainly there's some evidence that they went to great lengths to hide the material. But I would urge people to be more patient, but some won't. The people who opposed us going into Iraq will do everything they can to discredit what we did, I accept that, but I'm not going to, as it were believed, uncorrected in actual claims that were made. We have always asserted that there was a proper legal basis and that was the non-compliance with the United Nations resolutions. And those United Nations resolutions would never have been passed in the first place if people didn't believe that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The whole basis of those resolutions over a period of years was that there were weapons of mass destruction and the argument was whether or not they had been destroyed and the failure of Saddam Hussein to allow weapons inspectors in indicated clearly to the world that he had something to hide. But I think people should be more patient and they should allow the process of investigation. It's now particularly come under the control of a new group from the United States. I think we should allow the process of examination to go on for a period of time before we start jumping to conclusions.
CORDEAUX:
Now all we have to do is deal with North Korea and Zimbabwe.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, they are two big threats, different in kind. Clearly Zimbabwe, although the internal politics of Zimbabwe are appalling…
CORDEAUX:
Are you going to kick them out of the Commonwealth?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that is a matter for the collective Commonwealth body meeting in Nigeria in December. I don't think Zimbabwe is fit to be in the Commonwealth under the Mugabe regime, that's speaking for Australia. But Australia can't act on this issue alone, we have to talk to our Commonwealth colleagues. The Mugabe regime was corruptly elected, that was the finding of a Commonwealth observer group and the country's in appalling condition - it's economically bankrupt, it has an appalling high level of HIV AIDS, it is running out of food, food is been used as an instrument of political discrimination, it is just a truly appalling regime. Now bad though it is internally, it doesn't pose the threat to the world that is posed by a country like North Korea because of North Korea's nuclear capacity and that remains a very big challenge in our region. We have a lot of discussions with our friends - the Americans, the Japanese and the Chinese. China bulks very large, in my view, in bringing influence to bear on North Korea. Their language is very belligerent, whether in reality that language is going to be matched by action is something that we have to, of course, focus our attention on.
CORDEAUX:
Prime Minister, I got a little note this morning when I came to work from the, let me see, the Parenting Council… the Shared Parenting Council of Australia and it says, "the Shared Parenting Council of Australia congratulates the Prime Minister John Howard for taking a decisive step to reform Australia's failed family law policies for the benefit of all children of divorced people." You've taken a stand on that, haven't you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, what we are willing to do is to have a look, and I don't want to put it more strongly than that because this is a very sensitive area and I don't want to unnecessarily raise expectations, but we have indicated a willingness to take a look - perhaps I should more accurately say another look - at an idea of what's called a rebuttable presumption of shared custody. In other words, if there's a marriage breakdown the idea is that you don't give custody of a child to one parent against another. Rather, the presumption is that they both have custody and if conditions on access and residence and so forth can be worked out between them consistent with that principle of shared custody you may over the years develop a better relationship between the child and both of that child';s parents. Now I';m not saying we';re going to adopt this. It may on further examination turn out to be prejudicial to the child, unworkable. But we should be willing to have another look at it and I welcome the generation of community debate. These are the sorts of issues where separately from party politics there should be some discussion between governments, between prime ministers and attorney general and parents and groups in the community who are interested in the issue. And there is more marriage breakdown unfortunately and there is therefore a greater number of children who have this tug between their parents. The aim of course is to eliminate the tug and create a situation where even though parents may have gone their separate ways their children still share their lives with both of them as much as possible. And I';m particularly worried that a lot of boys now grow up without any identifiable male role model. If a boy lives with his mother, sees little of his father, has no older brothers or close uncles or close family male adult friends, typically might go to a primary school where there are very few male teachers, it';s often not until the boy is 15 or 16 that he comes across a male role model which he can identify. Now I think that';s bad, it happens too often, and if you can in different ways ameliorate that somewhat. One of the things Brendan Nelson has been looking at is the idea of promoting the recruitment of more teachers in primary schools. I support that. It';s got nothing do with gender equality. It';s got to do with the commonsense of giving boys as they grow up a male role model to relate to. It';s very important to the balanced development of people as they grow into a full and complete personality as an adult.
CORDEAUX:
It';s good that you';re on the case. Prime Minister, would you take a couple of calls?
PRIME MINISTER:
Sure.
CORDEAUX:
Linda.
CALLER:
Hello Jeremy.
CORDEAUX:
Hi.
CALLER:
Hello Mr Howard.
PRIME MINISTER:
Hello Linda.
CALLER:
Good morning. Mr Howard, I want to ask you a question. Are you aware that at the moment family day care workers in Australia can not get insurance?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I';m aware that in some parts of Australia that is a difficulty. It is of course due to the sharp increase in insurance premiums and the whole crisis in public risk insurance and that in turn is due to the fact that court verdicts have gone up sharply and until the various negligence laws of the states are changed, we don';t have any power to change them, that situation is going to continue. It does vary a bit from state to state because the laws are different.
CALLER:
Yes Mr Howard. But in South Australia we just got a policy worth $52.50 which is offshore and do you think….
PRIME MINISTER:
$52.50 is it?
CALLER:
Yes $52.50 ??? insurance for $10 million…..
PRIME MINISTER:
$52.50, what, premium?
CALLER:
Yes Mr Howard, and it';s registered in the Cayman Islands.
PRIME MINISTER:
Sounds a very cheap premium to me.
CALLER:
Yes that';s right. I pay more for my car every month and I run around in South Australia insurance polices people and no one will insure us.
PRIME MINISTER:
No I understand that and without in any way shifting the responsibility I have to say to you that we do not control the negligence laws of South Australia, we do not control the laws which influence the courts of South Australia to award very big verdicts where there is negligence under the doctrine of public risk. And until the laws of South Australia are altered to limit the circumstances in which exposure to the sort of organisations you are talking about, exposure of those organisations is reduced you';re going to continue to have the problem. I';m sorry but it is something that we have been pleading with the states to change and many of the states have changed it and I';m not saying that South Australia';s not trying to as well. But is not something that I can legislate for because we do not have the constitutional power to alter the law of negligence.
CORDEAUX:
Thanks Linda. Mary-Anne. Yes Mary-Anne.
CALLER:
Good morning.
CORDEAUX:
Morning.
CALLER:
??? at the National Health and Medical Research Council is currently investigating whether or not the xenotransplantation should be allowed to proceed in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
The which transplantation I';m sorry?
CALLER:
The transplantation of cells, the tissues…..
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I';m sorry.
CALLER:
I';d like to comment on that.
PRIME MINISTER:
Please.
CALLER:
First of all apart from the cruelty aspects of it which is horrendous starting with the way the animals would be kept which will inflict the same sort of cruelties on them as are inflicted on battery hens, there are things such as over-stimulation of the ovaries causing painful cysts and enlarged ovaries, the micro-infection process of genes in an embryo can cause painful abnormalities.
CORDEAUX:
Mary-Anne, why don';t you just sort of ask the Prime Minister a question
CALLER:
Well I';m going to ask him because obviously he';s going to have considerable sway in this area not to allow it. And the other issue involved is not an animal one, it';s a human one. It will definitely put the whole world';s population at risk of what';s called xenoses. That is human to animal diseases and these are always unpredictable and largely incurable and what it will mean is that the whole process even if it does benefit a few people the costs will outweigh the benefits because by helping a very minute number of people will be putting at risk hundreds of millions of health people…..
CORDEAUX:
Okay, let';s…..
PRIME MINISTER:
I gather from what you said that the NHMRC is going to commence an investigation into this. That';s my understanding as well. I don';t know the fine detail of that investigation. Perhaps the best way I can respond is to say that when we have the results of that investigation we will be better informed. I don';t know that I can accept off hand your expressions of concern about the disease. That does sound a little exaggerated but I';m perfectly happy to wait until that investigation';s been completed.
CORDEAUX:
Alright Mary-Anne, thank you. Beryl.
CALLER:
Yes, good morning Mr Howard. It was wonderful to see the troops being welcomed home by the people yesterday and I';m wondering when will the men and women from East Timor be allowed home please?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well many of them of course have come home and then gone back. You';re wanting to know when the peacekeeping operation in East Timor will finish?
CALLER:
Yes.
PRIME MINISTER:
I can';t give you a precise time on that. We do expect to see a gradual reduction in the number of Australians in what is now a United Nations peacekeeping operation but I would expect that we will have peacekeepers in East Timor for a while longer yet. I don';t want to try and put months or years on it. I don';t think incidentally it will be a lot of years if it were years. But I just don';t know. Having invested so much into helping the people of East Timor we don';t want to pull out prematurely so that the country then comes under unacceptable strain and perhaps collapses. That would be the worst possible outcome. What I can say to you is they will come home as soon as it is consistent with the stability of East Timor that the UN peacekeeping operation finishes.
CORDEAUX:
Alright. Fred, how are you? CALLER:
Fine thanks Jeremy and Mr Prime Minister. Mr Howard all I wanted to say was thank you for having been there and thank you for saying you';re going to stay there a little bit longer.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that';s very nice of you Fred, thanks a lot.
CALLER:
Okay.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
CALLER:
Thank you, bye.
CORDEAUX:
Brian, are you there Brian? Brian must have gone. 8305 1323 if you want to have a word with the Prime Minister. In this morning there';s this report that says Queensland';s soon to depart Governor, Major General Peter Arnison is the latest name being touted as Australia';s next Governor General. Do you have a comment?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I don';t have a comment, there have been a lot of names put around, all I can say is the issue is being dealt with by me appropriately.
CORDEAUX:
So you have made up your mind?
PRIME MINISTER:
I';m not making any comment about where the process is at the moment, all I can confirm is that a process has began and that process is an appropriate process. But I';m not giving any clues as to where I am at. Sorry, I don';t even want to speculate on it, when an announcement is ready to be made it will be made, beyond that I';m not going to speculate whether I';ve decided or not decided. The process is underway and all I can is that it';s being handled appropriately.
CORDEAUX:
The front page story on the Australian this morning ATSIC leadership is disreputable and incompetent and the Commission would be regarded as a corruption riddled shambles if it were a white organisation, this is a pretty scathing story isn';t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well this of course is a report not by the Government, this report was complied by three people, one of them is John Hannaford who is a former Liberal Attorney General from New South Wales. The other is Bob Collins, a former Minister in the Hawke and Keating Governments, a former Labor Senator from the Northern Territory and a person who has a very deep understanding of and many links with the Aboriginal community. And the other is Jacqui Huggins, one of the most respectable leaders of the Aboriginal community. So we';re not dealing here with a report from the Government, we';re dealing with a report of three independent people who are very scathing. There are many indigenous people in Australia who feel they';re let down by ATSIC at the present time and I don';t blame them.
CORDEAUX:
What can you do?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we';re going to consider the report, we';ve only just got it and the reaction is being sought to those recommendations and clearly Mr Ruddock is also giving consideration is also giving consideration to the position of the Chairman of ATSIC and beyond saying that I don';t think at the moment I should say anymore. But there is a problem there, there';s no doubt about that and the people who are missing out most are the Aboriginal people.
CORDEAUX:
Yes. Well the huge bureaucracy which seems to…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we';ve tried to a number of things there and successfully shift a lot of the responsibility away from the board. But there';s a lot of very deep problems that need to be addressed and there is a growing recognition in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community that there is a problem and I think that is very significant.
CORDEAUX:
Finally passing the Senate today this new law giving tougher anti-terrorist powers to ASIO, I';m surprised there was anyone who was against that.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the Labor Party was against it for some time, we';ve now made some changes that meet some of concerns in the greater interest of getting it through.
CORDEAUX:
Well you';ve had to change some things…
PRIME MINISTER:
It';s fundamentally still a very sound improvement on the present situation.
CORDEAUX:
And will do the job.
PRIME MINISTER:
We believe so. But these are areas where you always have to keep updating and changing and adjusting. We do live in a different world now and it';s not a world of absolutes, it';s a world of always trying to make it better and make it safer.
CORDEAUX:
This court ruling we were talking about it yesterday on the programme that will leave Australian taxpayers footing the bill for thousands of British pensioners. I believe your government feels that that is pretty disgraceful.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well our view is that the British Government should have fully indexed British pensioner recipients, and this is very important in particularly South Australia and Western Australia where there is an above average number of people who were born in the United Kingdom and therefore pension recipients and we argued that as the pension goes up in the UK it should be indexed for people who receive it elsewhere. We have been lobbying the British Government for years to change it, we lobbied the conservative government when it was in power under Mr Major and we';ve lobbied the British Labour Government under Mr Blair, so far they';ve been completely unwilling to change. We';ll keep on lobbying but in the end we can';t compel them to make a change because it';s an independent government.
CORDEAUX:
Quick call from Joan. Hi Joan.
CALLER:
Hello, I would just like to agree with the gentlemen who rang a while ago and say how very proud we are to have Mr Howard there and he';s doing a wonderful job and so many people who may not have always thought so really realise it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that';s very kind of you Joan, I appreciate that very much.
CALLER:
And you';re a pin up boy as far as we';re all concerned. Thank you very much.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you, I try and do my best.
CORDEAUX:
When I had Peter Costello on the programme the morning of the Budget I couldn';t understand why you would, anybody would try or want to interfere with a winning team such as the winning team that you';ve got at the moment. Was it hard? Was it a decision to stay on? Was it an agonising decision for you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Agonising would be the wrong word, I thought about it quite a lot and I came to the conclusion that while ever it was in the party';s best interest and my colleagues wanted me to I';d be happy to continue, indeed honoured to continue. I am in good health, I';m still finding the job challenging, I';ve still got a lot of ideas, I';ve still got a lot of things I want to do, I think it';s a job where while ever you retain great enthusiasm and you want to get up in the morning and do it and you want to talk to people about your future ideas for Australia, as I like doing on programmes like this, then you should stay.
CORDEAUX:
Well I would like to add my voice to all of the people who say that that is just the right decision and thank you again for talking with us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you. Bye bye, Jeremy.
[ends]