JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
I went Saturday morning.
JONES:
Saturday morning?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, it was a long flight. It was about 22 each way. It wasn';t on the ground for very long, but thoroughly worthwhile. I was able most importantly to thank the Australian men and women of the ADF who are in Iraq. Contrary to what was said by somebody last night, every one of them is doing important work. There was a suggestion from some spokesman last night that they weren';t employed, some of them weren';t employed in anything useful. I can tell that person – he couldn';t be more wrong. He couldn';t be more wrong. Whatever people think about the original decision to be involved in Iraq, every last member of the ADF, every man and woman there is doing a very valuable task.
JONES:
I';ll come to that in a moment. Our intelligence services have been under some criticism and the public always have their own worries about security. The fact that you could make the trip and no one know about it surely says something for both our intelligence and our security.
PRIME MINISTER:
It certainly does and may I thank those members of the media who knew about it a little while beforehand, not long and kept a code of silence on it. I do want to thank them for that.
JONES:
What about the level of risk, I mean you have three SAS troopers and your own protective officers and then an hour out of Baghdad, as I understand it, you had to dress in body armour and a helmet? 56 PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, that';s the normal thing for a flight such as that. There is an element of risk of course.
JONES:
I mean, that hercules for the final part of the trip, it was travelling at what level above the ground?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, for the final part of the trip, going in actually was fairly hairy, no well not as hairy, the flight out was more – how shall I put it, more interesting - because the plane flies at a very low level for quite a long time in order to avoid any potential missiles.
JONES:
At the dawn service could you hear the bursts of fire?
PRIME MINISTER:
Only very, very faintly, but I';m a bit deaf. I do have a bit of a hearing impairment. But all of my colleagues said that they could hear it quite clearly.
JONES:
You spoke to the civilian head of the coalitions operations in Iraq, the American, Mr Paul Bremer. What did he tell you about where he thought the coalition were?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, he said that there were very good stories and some worrying stories. The good stories are that there';s a lot more going into health, there';s a lot more going into education. Many of the services are back, at or above pre-war levels. All of that is very good.
JONES:
So are kids back at school and is there a level of?
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course, children are back at school.
JONES:
You don';t hear about that, do you?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, you don';t and you don';t hear about the fact that the Iraqi Government is now spending something like 10 or 15 times more on health services then was spent under Saddam. You don';t hear about the re-opening of the universities. You don';t hear about all of those very positive things. On the other hand there are areas of the country which are extremely dangerous and there are clearly well organised, well armed, well resourced groups of people who are probably a mixture of Saddam loyalists, foreigners and people who are occupationally rebellious and hostile to any kind of authority and they';re making common cause at the present time.
JONES:
And what are we trying to achieve now in the light of all of those circumstances, what are we trying to achieve in Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER:
What we';re trying to achieve is a situation where we can hand over the governing of the country to the Iraqi people and what we are trying to achieve is to give to the Iraqi people something the overwhelming majority of them want and that is freedom. There is no doubt having talked not only to the Americans but also talking to some of the Iraqi people and talking to everybody I met – the great majority of the people of Iraq want their freedom, they want to run their own lives – that is fair enough. We don';t want to run their lives. The Americans don';t want to run their lives. But they are being frustrated in that attempt by a very well organised group of people which clearly has the support of international terrorist organisations. Anybody who says that terrorism is not an issue in Iraq is kidding themselves. Many of the international terrorist organisations are clearly at the very least actively sympathetic to what is occurring in Iraq. Some suspect they';re more directly involved.
JONES:
I';ve spoken often on this programme to Professor Daniel Pipes, but I';m sure you';ve read some of his work. He';s the Director of the Middle East forum in the United States which is a reputable think tank, very supportive of the initiatives that were taken in Iraq. I spoke to him yesterday and raised the point that when I spoke to him last year he was confident that the war there would lead to a reduction in terrorism, it would diminish the appeal of militant Islam and that Muslim anger would diminish after the victory. He doesn';t share those views now, he says that the chants that he has heard is no to America, no to Saddam and yes to Islam and this is what makes it very difficult for the coalition – is that a fair assessment?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the Americans themselves know that the Iraqis want to run their own lives and that';s perfectly natural. I can understand an Iraqi saying that I want to get rid of Saddam, I don';t want the Americans here indefinitely and I';m an active member of the Islamic faith. I can understand that and I respect that. I mean, I have no desire to see Australia involved in some ongoing occupation of Iraq and we won';t be, but you have to stabilise the place. You have to give freedom a fair go. You have to protect those Iraqis who want to live their lives in freedom and then exercise the right to tell the rest of the world to leave them alone so they can run their own lives. I meant that is what democracy is all about.
JONES:
He was just saying, I think, that however constructive the intentions to build a democracy, the coalition will never win the confidence of Muslim Iraq – is that a fair comment?
PRIME MINISTER:
I';m not as pessimistic as that. I am not as pessimistic. I think Muslim Iraq, in fact, all of Iraq wants to run the country and they want the day when they can do it on their own to come as soon as possible. The people who are trying to stop that are the people who are shooting at and trying to kill coalition forces. I mean, let us understand this, the people who want freedom in Iraq are not those who are attacking the Americans. The people who are attacking the Americans and potentially attacking our people are those who don';t want freedom in Iraq…
JONES:
And feel threatened by it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, of course, they feel threatened by it.
JONES:
Will you be going to this defacto world summit on Iraq in Paris on June 5?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I';ve received an invitation for the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion in June of 1944. I';ve received an invitation and I';m looking at my programme. It is possible. I haven';t made a final decision yet.
JONES:
Have you been asked to send Australian Federal Police trainers to Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER:
No. I haven';t heard of that one.
JONES:
I read a report where you';d been asked to and that they would go to Jordan to be part of a multi-national effort headed by Britain?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, somebody somewhere may have said that to somebody. I haven';t to the best of my recollection received such a request and it wasn';t canvassed during my recent visit to Iraq.
JONES:
Will we send additional soldiers if they';re needed?
PRIME MINISTER:
Not in any large numbers. What I';ve made plain is that you could see a small variation in the existing force through the inclusion of an additional niche capability if I can put it that way. But we do not have a capacity to send large numbers and we don';t intend to send large numbers of regular soldiers.
JONES:
Spain has withdrawn though its 1,500 – how do you make those up?
PRIME MINISTER:
There are a combination of strategies the Americans are adopting. I think they have asked a number of other countries to provide more forces and they are themselves holding back the rotation of some of their forces, a group that were meant to go home next month I think will stay longer. The Americans of course have very large numbers of troops stationed in Germany and elsewhere. And perhaps, I wasn';t told this but perhaps they will accelerate the transfer of some of those to Iraq.
JONES:
PM, have you been briefed on this food for oil programme. The United Nations food for oil programme that';s increasingly getting international publicity created as a solution to the Iraqi impasse back in the early 90s mainly allowing Iraq to sell oil and with that money provide humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. But the argument being that there were many recipients, friends of Saddam Hussein who received cheap oil which they then sold to make billions of dollars of profit and many in Russia and France are on the list of those who are beneficiaries which may well explain why France and Russia at the time were rather unwilling to have anything done about Saddam Hussein. Have you had a briefing on any of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I';ve not had a briefing that goes beyond what is in the media. This concern has been around for quite some time. I heard about it first probably 15 months ago. I';m not in a position to say whether the allegations are correct.
JONES:
But if they had any basis to them it would explain the strange attitude of France, Russia and even the United Nations.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I believe that people like Kofi Annan behaved honourably throughout the whole of the Iraqi issue. I think Kofi Annan genuinely had wanted a consensus amongst the permanent members of the Security Council. As for other people, I frankly don';t have a view. It is obviously a story that is going to develop as time goes by if the allegations are true…
JONES:
And the United Nations is resisting calls for an independent investigation into all of this. I mean, they';re big numbers (inaudible) under France.
PRIME MINISTER:
They are very big numbers, they cover a variety of people in a variety of countries. I';m not in a position, Alan, to say whether they';re true or false, they are still at the moment allegations, but they are allegations that would be fully and properly… should be fully and properly investigated.
JONES:
One of your critics this morning describes your trip to Iraq as being bold, dangerous and manipulative, bold because your reason for joining the invasion of Iraq has been exposed as false, dangerous because you hinted that we might send more troops and manipulative because you sought to draw the armed services into domestic electoral politics.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that sounds like Phillip Adams, is it..?
JONES:
One, Mr Geoffrey Barker.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, I';m sorry, I apologise to Phillip Adams, I apologise.
JONES:
You think he might do better on that front, do you?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don';t think that. Well, I don';t think that';s a fair description. What other day is more appropriate to thank men and women who are on the active service of their country than on Anzac Day. And I recognise and I was careful in what I said in Iraq, the fact that there is domestic political debate about our presence there. I understand that and I respect that. At no stage did I during my remarks in Iraq say anything critical of the Labor Party, I didn';t seek in any way. But I assert and will always assert the right to appropriately pay public respect to the men and women of this country who serve in our armed forces. And I don';t for a moment accept the suggestion that it';s anyway manipulative. For heavens sake, that';s an absurd proposition.
JONES:
PM, sugar – there';s a story today that you are going to announce a sugar package later in the week, which will according to reports today include payments for growers to leave the industry. Do you understand that there are many sugar farmers who do not want to leave the industry and…
PRIME MINISTER:
I do, I do Alan and may I say this, and I don';t want to go into a lot of detail about an announcement that';s going to happen very soon and we';ve put a lot of work into this announcement that we recognise that a lot of people don';t want to leave the industry, the great majority, they just want the opportunity to make a fair living and this package will be designed more to help them than anybody else.
JONES:
But what I';m saying to you I suppose is that the problem for them is the banks and what should the Federal Government do to enable the banks to have confidence so they can be viable, the first would be to provide an incentive for them to diversify. Now the Brazilin Consul has been touring Queensland calling for a large Australian ethanol industry because Brazil wants to supply Japan, Japan won';t take it unless Brazil and Australia together do it. Now why won';t the Government mandate ethanol for biofuels which would give a tremendous fillip to the sugar cane industry and assist the banks who then would think, hello these people can make a go of it. And secondly, if I could just ask you, you';re aware that this ministerial, Queensland ministerial directive which has sugar sold domestically at a corrupt world price. Now if you had to do something about those two things, bankers would say to sugar farmers, hang on the environment';s changed, I think you can continue to be viable, we won';t be foreclosing.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Alan the best answer I can give to that is to say that the sugar package I';m going to announce very soon is very comprehensive. I can';t at this stage go into all of the detail of it. It does accommodate a lot of the things that you';ve referred to and I think it will be seen by people as being a very fair and detailed and generous response to a very difficult issue.
JONES:
Yes, I just would say I think that the feeling is that Government is talking to the canegrowers board and the millers and those sorts of people who are not representive of the farmers as opposed to the sugar industry reform committee whom you spoke to when you were up there last time.
PRIME MINISTER:
We have spoken to a lot of people and there are elements in this package that reflect the views of those three groups and not all of them in each case and I made it very plain when I was in Cairns that we would not be able to meet all of the requests that have been made. But I do think we have got a package that';s fair to them and also fair to the Australian taxpayer.
JONES:
Okay, good to talk to you and thank you for your time, welcome home.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks Alan.
[ends]