HADLEY:
My next guest is fairly frustrated, he's in the studio in Canberra with no access to Pay TV so he's got to rely upon me. I'm pleased to say the Prime Minister is there to talk to us about a range of issues but most importantly Prime Minister, Adam Scott with his shot to the 18th green to take victory in The Players' Championship. Good morning to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, has he wedged it up to the green?
HADLEY:
He's about to Prime Minister, so we might put the nation on hold for a moment, I know that you are a great sports lover and a golfing nut as well.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we just better let this hole be played out.
HADLEY:
Okay, here he is, he's over it with his wedge, puts it up, it's on target towards the pin, it's going very, very, very close to, Prime Minister about six feet, six feet.
PRIME MINISTER:
Six feet.
HADLEY:
Six feet, uphill putt, we'll wait and see what happens, he's going to take about two or three minutes to get there so let's have a yarn about the other issues and we'll stick with sport if you don't mind, I said this morning that Ian Thorpe has shown more dignity how he handled the circumstances on Saturday morning than many of our other sports people show in good times, he's shown it in adversity and he's a great role model.
PRIME MINISTER:
I thought he was fantastic, I think he really said it all, he accepts that there are rules, it's a terrible disappointment and I thought as a role model he couldn't have been better and he is an example to some others who behave oafishly even in their moments of triumph and he's behaved with great dignity and great courtesy and good old fashioned humility and manliness if I could use such a term these days and has done it very well and I think he deserves a lot of credit.
HADLEY:
The remarkable thing is I'd thought we'd be inundated with callers today, he's taken the heat all off this by saying...
PRIME MINISTER:
I think he really has.
HADLEY:
... hang on, no, those are the rules, I broke the rules, the other bloke deserve a spot and as it turns out if Stevens makes the 1500 he may very well say well I'm in the team anyway and 1500 is the event I can win a medal in, I can't win a medal in the 400, let's give it to Ian Thorpe and maybe that'll make everyone happy.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it could and doesn't it show that if the person in the spotlight gives a lead and shows the way you can often get a sensible result. I can't think of something in recent years where people have been so fixated by a single breach of the rules, unintentionally though it was, and I think he has behaved well and we all hope somehow or other it's resolved in a dignified way and in a way that upholds the rules and also respects the right of sporting bodies to run their sport, I think it is very important. It's not easy running highly competitive sport, as many people have found out over the last few months,and I think the swimming people have applied the rules and its been made easier because they've had the co-operation of the champion. Now isn't that a message for some other sports?
HADLEY:
I think you might be right there, this could only happen in Australia, I'm going to interrupt our Prime Minister for a putt on the 18th green at The Players' Championship, the Prime Minister's in our Canberra studio and Adam Scott has perhaps a putt, and I said six feet, maybe it's seven, maybe it's eight, it's very hard to see from a TV in a one dimensional picture but we're about to see him line up the putt now, the simple equation here is if Adam Scott sinks this he wins The Players' Championship which they describe in America as the 5th major, a most important championship for this young man's career and he's lining up the putt now, looks to be fairly straight, looks to be a little uphill, six or seven feet between him and being The Players' Championships champion for 2004. He hits the ball now, towards the hole and it's in, he wins, he wins Prime Minister, he wins.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's terrific, that's great. That is, congratulations Adam.
HADLEY:
We'll try and talk to him as soon as we've finished talking to you Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
That is terrific. Well give him my congratulations and good wishes.
HADLEY:
Unbelievable, he won in the most dramatic circumstances, fantastic. Now back to domestic issues, welfare benefits we read about this morning, are you looking at a single working aged payment to replace unemployment benefits?
PRIME MINISTER:
We've been looking at that in a general way for several years and I made that known back in 2001 but I've said that it would not involve cutting anybody's benefits. We're still examining it, it's got a lot of technical challenges but in the process of any change that might occur in that area there wouldn't be any cutting of benefits and when we talk about saving money what we really talk about is a greater participation in the workforce and that would be the thing that would produce any savings, not a reduction in benefits.
HADLEY:
Okay, so the Budget, we're ruling out any cuts to pensions?
PRIME MINISTER:
There are no cuts of any kind in pensions or benefits, either in contemplation or to be contained in this Budget. We don't of course rule out as we did a couple of years ago proposing a review of the eligibility for the disability support pension where we think there are some people who have that, perhaps their circumstances suggest they shouldn't, but that doesn't involve any cutting benefits, it's merely the question of eligibility but we don't have anything at all in contemplation, nor will we cut pensions, in fact by indexing pensions to male total average weekly earnings, which is a technical description, gives you a higher rate of increase than the consumer price index which used to be the index when we came into government.
HADLEY:
Okay, now this of course, the job of the Labor Party as Opposition is to embarrass government, another leak from them, are you concerned about the continuing leaks from the government to the Labor Party?
PRIME MINISTER:
You always get leaks from departments, particularly in an election year.
HADLEY:
And are you suggesting...
PRIME MINISTER:
Leaks are annoying to governments, they are manna from heaven for oppositions and universally beloved of journalists. When a journalist comes up to me and says oh isn't that shocking, that leak, I know they're really being very hypocritical. Look, by and large, given that we've been in office for eight years and given the extraordinary sensitivity of issues that we've handled in security right across the spectrum, tax reform, and so forth we've had remarkably few leaks and this is not as big a leak as it's being suggesting because the core issue in it, the main issue in it, namely the idea of this working aged payment is something that I first canvassed in 2001 and something that was contained in a discussion paper put out by Tony Abbott and Amanda Vanstone at the end of 2002.
HADLEY:
One thing the Labor Party won't be leaking is perhaps substantial tax relief in the Budget and we are in election mode, will that be part of the budget?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we'll only be able to give tax relief if we can afford it. We've got to have a balanced Budget, we've got to pay for necessary things in health and education and defence and security and roads and all those other things that are important. We are in fact putting more money into health and education. So all of that's got to be paid for and accommodated, if there's anything left over then that will go back by way of tax cuts. But I can't add to the speculation at the present time. I don't want to unduly raise expectations because I don't at this stage know from the Treasury exactly what the growth forecasts for next year are, therefore the revenue forecasts. So at this stage, it is only speculation. I make no promises. Clearly if there is a capacity to give some tax relief, it will be given. But I don't want to promise something that ultimately we may not be able to deliver.
HADLEY:
Something that is worrying the electorate is terrorism and the terror laws, a white paper this morning is being spoken about. But one of the things that people that I talk to are concerned about, we read in the papers about Willie Brigitte and how there are some sort of cells in western Sydney and people from that particular background organising these type of things and then we hear from them, no it's nothing to do with me. I mean, are we confident that we have the resources to meet these sorts of challenges? And if there are people in parts suburban Australia organising these type of things that we'll continually meet the challenge?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Ray, I've made it clear repeatedly to the heads of ASIO and other agencies that if they want more resources they can have them. The resources available to ASIO have more than doubled since 2001, since September 11, 2001. The resources available to the Australian Federal Police have almost doubled since then and there'll be more announced in the Budget. So we have said to the police, we've said to ASIO, we've said to the other intelligence agencies, whatever resources you want you can have. The advice I have is that there is no known Al Qaeda presence in Australia. Clearly, there are people of interest. I can't describe them in any other way that we continue to keep a very close eye on. And what I announced yesterday was a further strengthening of the anti-terrorism laws to give the police more opportunity to interrogate people to make it a more serious thing if people belong to a terrorist organisation, even if it's not listed and also to punish people on a strict liability basis if they train with a terrorist organisation and also to prohibit people making money out of writing books after they're trained with terrorists. So they are changes to the terrorism laws that we'll be putting forward I hope this week. In a way, changes to the terrorism laws are a work in progress. You can never say they need no further change. You can only say the changes that we proposed are a response to current circumstances and current needs and that's what we're doing at the moment.
HADLEY:
Well, of course, you've already got the Democrats saying it's a complete over-reaction. Will you be able to convince the Labor Party perhaps and others that it's not an over-reaction and it's needed?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I hope I can because it's not an over-reaction. It is needed. We are living in different circumstances and Australia is vulnerable because Australia is a free open liberal democratic society and we are living in an entirely different world. We do need different and stronger laws and I hope the Labor Party will support them. In the past they have been obstructionist. I hope their attitude now will be different but we'll have to wait and see.
HADLEY:
Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, probably wishes he hadn't started making timetables for troops coming back from Iraq. Have you given much thought to exactly what you'll do? Or is open-ended in relation to troops in Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, they will come back when the job is finished and you can't set arbitrary times for withdrawal. They will come back when the job is finished. I don't know when the job will be finished. Obviously, you hope they don't remain there indefinitely and I certainly don't expect that to be the case. But to talk of pulling them out at a specified time and what in effect Mr Latham has said is that they should come out by the 30th of June when the transfer of authority to the Iraqi authority takes place. He's talking of Christmas because that is predicated upon the possibility of a Labor Government... and knowing that the election won't be held before June or unlikely to be held before June, and he's right about that. Then obviously from a practical point of view, it's Christmas for him. But he's really saying that we should be bringing them back by the middle of the year. Now that is absurd. Some of the additional people that Mr Rudd argued should be sent to Iraq when he wrote to me in November of last year basically urging that we do more, not less, some of those people will have only been in place in Iraq for a matter of a few weeks by the middle of this year, the additional trainers. So in those circumstances, to talk about them coming back within a matter of a few weeks of them arriving is patently absurd. But the worst thing of all is that it sends the wrong signal. Right at the moment, everybody should be holding fast, standing firm and not looking as though we're reacting to what happened in Madrid. I think that would send a dreadful message to the terrorists, and think well if we bomb the daylights out of a place and kill people, we can get an appropriate response in all sorts of unexpected quarters.
HADLEY:
Okay. We started talking about sport. Let's finish talking about sport and the unsavoury events of Friday night in Sydney. Now I've said over the weekend during our rugby league programmes, this is not just a problem for the Canterbury Rugby League Club or for the NRL, these young people who behave anti-socially at football matches aren't all of a sudden coming out on a Friday night as respectable citizens and misbehaving. This is a method of behaviour they employ Monday through Sunday. And I know it's a domestic issue, it's for police in New South Wales to determine what to do, but this sort of behaviour is un-Australian, it's certainly not what people require when they go to watch sporting fixtures, and as a Prime Minister who loves his sport, I mean you must have been horrified to see children cowering in the stands.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the worst thing was that photograph in the Telegraph. It was an evocative photograph that said it all. I mean how on earth do you encourage kids, encourage mums and dads to take their kids to watch football, if that sort of behaviour goes on. And I guess, like millions of other Australians, my thoughts immediately flew to soccer hooliganism in England, and we have been mercifully free of all of that in this country and we want to keep it that way. And anything that can be done obviously to catch the perpetrators, and to punish them with the rigour of the law... see if people behave like that, they're breaking the law, they're committing a crime, they should be treated as people who have done that, as anybody else would. And I sympathise with David Gallop and George Peponis and all the other blokes that have now got the responsibility of trying, through all of this, to keep public interest going strongly in the game. And I would encourage rugby league fans to redouble their support for the game. This is a time to stick to the game. It's going through a very difficult period, but that's not going to affect the loyalty of mainstream fans. And 99.9 per cent of them are decent Australians like the rest of us and they'll try and support the game.
HADLEY:
Prime Minister, as always, thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay.
[ends]