LIEBMANN:
Prime Minister, good morning to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Steve.
LIEBMANN:
I want to get onto the Solomons in a moment but of course overnight news that Saddam Hussein';s two sons have been killed. Washington and London are welcoming that news, and I presume you will as well, do you think it will convince Iraqis that the old regime has gone for good?
PRIME MINISTER:
I certainly welcome the news, it';s most of all very good news for the people of Iraq, impossible though it is for a lot of us to understand many Iraqi people have still lived in fear of the restoration of the old regime, and the apparent deaths of Saddam';s two sons is a huge step towards removing that fear and it should make a solid contribution to the security situation. I don';t want to overstate that but psychologically it';s a huge step forward and it does take out of the picture two totally ruthless, cruel, despotic individuals who were very much part of the apparatus of fear and torture and murder that was responsible over a period of time for an estimated 300,000 deaths. I mean we';ve got to remember that a scale of the human rights abuses that have occurred in Iraq under Saddam.
LIEBMANN:
Alright, Prime Minister, closer to home, we are now launching our largest military operation in the Pacific since World War II, and that';s on top of almost 2000 troops who are still in Iraq and in East Timor, how thinly stretched are our defence forces at the moment?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they';ve got a lot of their plate, but it is within their capacity. We have got a force going into the Solomon Islands which is large enough to provide maximum support to the police, because essentially this is a policing operation, it';s not a military operation, but we';re sending soldiers to make sure that the police are fully protected. We hope the military personnel won';t have to be there for too long but I';m not going to try and chance my arm on a number of weeks or months.
LIEBMANN:
Okay, just on that…
PRIME MINISTER:
We have a lot on our plate, on your question we do have a lot on our plate and this of course is one of the reasons why I made it very clear to the American and the British very early in the piece that if Australia were to have participated in Iraq it would be at the sharp end and that whilst we still have several hundred people left in Iraq and one shouldn';t assume that they';re not exposed to some danger, but we don';t have a significant peacekeeping force there because I always had in mind the possibility that we might have to deploy people to operations much closer to home.
LIEBMANN:
Okay. How will you know it';s time to bring the troops home from the Solomons?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we';ll get on the ground security assessments. The head of the mission, Nick Warner, is very experienced as a diplomat in the Pacific and I';ll be having a long discussion with him on, amongst other occasions, going up to Townsville today on the plane and I';ll have further discussions with him, it';ll be him and there';ll be the Federal Police Ben McDevitt, the Assistant Commissioner who';ll be in charge in the police, and Colonel Frewen in charge of the Army contingent, plus our High Commissioner. We';ll get a very regular read out on what is happening and when we get advice that the security situation has stabilised, and we';ll rely on the advice on the experts, that';s the police and the army and the men and women on the ground, and when we get that we';ll then be a position to make assessments as to when people should be brought home.
LIEBMANN:
If this coalition doesn';t get on top of the anarchy and the violence in this part of Melanesia is there a risk it could spread to somewhere like say Papua New Guinea?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Papua New Guinea has problems of its own. Clearly a failure to do something about a deteriorating situation in the Solomon Islands would send the wrong signal to those people who are endeavouring to maintain a stable situation in other parts of the Pacific including PNG. But I believe we will get on top of the situation, the good thing is that we';ve been asked, it';s not just Australia although Australia is providing the lion';s share of the people. We are going in there Pacific friends, it';s a good neighbour operation, it';s called in pidgin Operation Helpem Fren, helping a friend, and that is what this is all about and I think the Australian people support it.
LIEBMANN:
What do you say to the former Foreign Affairs Peter Urban who';s arguing it';s not in our security interests to send an intervention force to the Solomons and in fact it signals that we';re siding with a bad government, we should just give them humanitarian aid.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I disagree with him on every score. The resolution supporting the Australian intervention was carried on the voices in the Solomon Islands Parliament, so it wasn';t just the support of the current government that was crucial. If we do nothing and the country slides into further anarchy and it then becomes a haven for evil doers, whether they';re involved in terrorism or drugs or money laundering or anything else, we';ll rightly be condemned, not only by the Australian people but also by countries around the world. This is our patch and we do have a special responsibility here and we';re doing it in a very careful, deliberate, co-operative fashion. We';re not throwing our weight around but we';re willing to do our fair share of the heavy lifting in an area that the rest of the world sees as very much Australia';s responsibility.
LIEBMANN:
Prime Minister, and I want to get onto this meeting you';re going to hold today with indigenous leaders in a moment, but just finally you warned that many Pacific nations are too small to be viable and you';re talking about pooled regional governance. What does that mean?
PRIME MINISTER:
What it means is that if there certain things you can';t afford because you are too small to support or do as a country maybe you can have access to some of those services or facilities if you pool your resources with a neighbouring Pacific Island state and between the two or three or four of you, you';ve got enough capacity to provide the service. That';s what I mean. It';s an exercise to me in commonsense and logic. Some of these countries have only a few hundred thousand people, even less in some cases and it';s ludicrous to think they can operate the way a big country does.
LIEBMANN:
Alright, now as I said you';re meeting indigenous leaders today to discuss domestic violence in black communities. Some people would welcome the meeting but would argue it';s come too late. Why now?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the main reason why I';ve decided to call this meeting is that on top of the very strong realisation that this is a huge problem there has come from indigenous leaders themselves what I can only describe as a cry from the heart for help and involvement in the broader community. This is not primarily an issue of more money, this is primarily an issue of supporting leadership in indigenous communities by people who are trying within those communities because they are part of those communities to do something about the problem.
LIEBMANN:
But Prime Minister there';ve been cries for help for years now. What…
PRIME MINISTER:
I don';t agree that the tone of them has been the same, I think you have seen a shift in the debate in indigenous affairs, I think what you are now seeing is a greater acceptance that whatever the views of people may be about what you might call the rights agenda, and I accept that many indigenous leaders don';t agree with my approach on that and I respect their views, but both they and I believing that those things should be put aside, not forgotten, they';re still important, but they should be put aside and there should be a combined focus on trying to find new solutions and a willingness to look at any approach that might bring about change and I think in the past there';s been a resistance amongst some indigenous leaders themselves to recognising the problem, I remember having a long discussion with Evelyn Scott, the former chairman of the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation, when she said that there was a reluctance by some indigenous leaders to even talk about this issue, and that';s only a few years ago. So it';s not right to say that you';ve had this sort of constancy in response and attitude for a long period of time, I think there has been a new willingness for people to talk about it, to recognise that it';s a problem, and I want to listen today. I don';t come with preconceived notion, I want to hear what they believe should be done by all of us together to tackle the problem.
LIEBMANN:
Prime Minister, thanks for your time, good to talk with you again.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]