LAWS:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning John.
LAWS:
Sorry I';m sounding so rough, but I can';t do a lot about it.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I';m sorry. I hope you mend quickly.
LAWS:
Yes, I think I will. Does it still seem, because it does to me, like almost yesterday that you started to try and come to grips with these attacks?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes it does. It';s the most extraordinary day in my public life I';ve lived through. I won';t ever forget it. I won';t ever forget the sense of disbelief, particularly amongst our American colleagues, but amongst all of us, and the sheer audacity and the sheer brutality and callousness of the attack has never left me and I don';t think it ever will and neither it should, because for all the millions of words that have been written since and all the analysis and all the obscene rationalisations that the apologists for terrorists have engaged in…
LAWS:
And they are obscene.
PRIME MINISTER:
They are obscene. I mean nothing can excuse the wilful, indiscriminate taking of the lives of several thousand people out of blind ideological hatred. Nothing can justify that. No convoluted argument about the alleged dispossession or prolonged disputes in other parts of the world can alter the fact that what they did was to kill people indiscriminately, people who were of all faiths. Muslims died in the World Trade Centre. Muslims have died by their scores, even hundreds, in subsequent terrorist attacks. And nothing can justify it and I find it peculiar that in recent times in particular, there is mounting criticism in some quarters of the United States, even to the point of some people effectively saying well they really brought it on themselves.
LAWS:
I heard it said.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well this country, for all its faults, it';s a big powerful country, it';s a superpower, but it is a force for good. The values and the ideals of the United States are good values and good ideals. Like all nations and all peoples, they sometimes practise their ideals and their values imperfectly, but don';t we all.
LAWS:
Of course we do.
PRIME MINISTER:
And somehow or other because they';re the biggest bloke on the block, people think they can take strips off them and blame them for things for which they';re not responsible. And I tried to say in a piece I wrote for the Australian this morning… I ask a very simple question – if the world is going to have a superpower, which nation other than the United States would you like it to be?
LAWS:
You certainly wouldn';t want Korea, would you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well of course not.
LAWS:
You certainly wouldn';t want Indonesia.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well …I rest my case. That is really the point that I think we';ve got to… we should never lose sight of the debt that we in Australia owe the Americans.
LAWS:
I agree with all of this and I think people should be made to understand it on an ongoing basis.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think deep down most Australians do, but sometimes we become passive. Sometimes we just assume that this is the received attitude, when in reality you';ve got to argue it. I mean, we have fought beside the Americans in the war against terror for the very simple reason that it';s in our long-term interests as Australians that terrorism be fought and defeated.
LAWS:
Do you think we';re closer to winning that war?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we';ve made progress, but it';s a very long war. This could go on for a very long time. It could. Just as the Cold War went on for a long time. I hope it doesn';t go on as long as the Cold War, but it could go on for a long time and it';s just a new reality that the world has to come to grips with. I don';t like it. None of us like it. It';s frightening. It';s dreadful. I don';t like the idea of people not now being able to roam free over the grass atop the Parliament House here in Canberra the way they used to be able to do, and I long for the day that we come back to that, the day that there was no security in the old Parliament House. People could wander in and out at will and nobody thought about it. We';re still a very safe place. We';d all like to go back to that, and in the end maybe we will at some time in the future, long after I guess the current crop have departed the scene, we';ll be able to go back to it. But it';s just going to take a long time and we have to understand that if you roll over and do nothing, they will win and the sort of society that will replace the society we have now, with all its imperfections, is not a society that you and I and our listeners want to live in.
LAWS:
Do you think we';ve made ourselves more vulnerable by our proper joining with the United States?
PRIME MINISTER:
We were a target because of who we were and are, rather than what we have done, probably on the evidence before the 11th of September two years ago. In the end though, you take a stance because of what is right, not in an attempt to calibrate the likely reprisals or responses. And if you look at the evidence, terrorism has been very indiscriminate. Nothing was crueler than the murder of Sergio de Mello.
LAWS:
I know. But that';s the thing about terrorists [inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it rather disproves the theory that there is some gradation of vulnerability. What our critics are saying is well look, if you keep your head down and you say nothing, you do nothing, you don';t take a stand, you';re less likely to be attacked. Now, quite apart from the moral cowardice involved in that attitude, quite apart from that – and I put that aside for one moment – quite apart from that, the evidence is against it, the evidence in recent times is that people who haven';t shared the American view about Afghanistan and about Iraq, have nonetheless paid equally heavily a price because of who they are and because they represent a barrier to the objectives of terrorism. The objectives of terrorism are chaos and a void in political and civil authority, that';s what people in Iraq want to create, they don';t want a free Iraq, they don';t want a democratic Iraq, they want a chaotic Iraq because a chaotic Iraq would make it easier for them to take control… so therefore they strike at anybody who is promoting a free, open, democratic Iraq.
LAWS:
How do you get rid of a thought process that has been instilled in human beings for literally centuries, certainly seven of them? Those people that become totally militant and the fundamentalists Muslims. I mean, you';re never going to change that.
PRIME MINISTER:
John, it certainly isn';t going to change quickly. You have to do two things, I believe, you have to resist with all your might the manifestations of terrorism, the attacks you';ve got to hunt down and where possible prevent before they occur where you can and where it';s legitimate to do so, terrorist attacks. But I think the other thing you';ve got to do is to try and get proper settlements of issues that if allowed to fester forever can be exploited however wrongly by terrorists as a reason and an excuse for what they';ve done. I think in particular of the long running Middle East situation between Israel and the Palestinians. Now that is not in any way justification for what the terrorists have done, but if we could get a peace settlement there we would remove one of the arguments used in the street by the terrorists as they try and recruit. And one of the things that I know the American Administration, despite all of the setbacks and it applies to us and it applies to many other countries remain committed to is to try and get a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Now it seems a vain hope at the present time.
LAWS:
It seemed a vain hope for a long time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, I mean, we had a little, I suppose, surge of hope and optimism after the end of the war in Iraq, that has been dashed in my view because Yasser Arafat has not exerted sufficient authority over the militants amongst the Palestinians. I thought the former Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, was a person of…. Abbas was a person of great dignity and courage and I';m very sorry that he';s gone, I hope the new man is equal to the task…
LAWS:
Well the new man will be able to do the task because he';ll have the cooperation of Yasser Arafat.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean, the key to me it seems, cutting through all the arguments and advocacy on the both sides, is that you can';t even begin to have some kind of proper basis for discussion until the murderous suicide bombing attacks stop.
LAWS:
But you see, I just don';t believe that they can stop.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they can';t stop unless somebody within the Palestinian movement is prepared to exert the authority required and if they can';t control it, well then they have to be replaced by somebody who can. But, I mean, I';m not optimistic John, all I';m saying is you';ve got to keep trying. And also, I also want to make the point that, I mean, Israel has responsibilities in this area as well, I';m an unapologetic friend of the Israelis and I admire the Jewish state immensely, but they have to make concessions, they have to acknowledge that the settlements are provocative and unstainable, many of them in the longer term. So there';s got to be give and take on both sides.
LAWS:
Okay, just back to Indonesia – are you surprised that the President won';t be attending the Bali commemoration?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, I';m not, I';ve known that for some time. She does have another visitor and I think also in terms of perhaps domestic considerations which I respect and understand, it';s very important in dealing with Indonesia to nuance and understand in your language the different pressures that exist within that huge country. By and large the Indonesians have co-operated very effectively with us in tracking down the people responsible for killing 88 of our fellow Australians in Bali almost a year ago and they have increased the tempo of their activity against terrorism. So, I';m not surprised. We will have a very senior member of the Indonesian Government there representing her. But it will be, of course, a service predominantly to remember the 88 Australians who died and it will be a service that I hope will have some meaning for the many hundreds of relatives who are going there, we';re making arrangements and I hope to be able to announce some details of the arrangements very soon, but we';ve been in touch with the families and they are coming in very large numbers and it will be a very solemn, but I hope positive occasion and one that says again to those poor people how much we';ve tried to feel for them and their grief.
LAWS:
Your day today I imagine will be a busy one.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes. I will be having a number of things to say, we';ll have a short moment in Parliament and myself and Mr Crean will say something about the significance of the day and then a number of other things. There';ll also be the usual events in the life of Parliament.
LAWS:
Yeah, okay, Prime Minister, I appreciate your time very much and thank you for it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you and I hope you recover soon.
LAWS:
Thanks.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks.
LAWS:
Bye.
PRIME MINISTER:
Bye.
[ends]