JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, welcome to 666.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you very much. Nice to be with you.
JOURNALIST:
Just before we move on to those very serious matters though, we heard on the end of AM this morning, everyone has got Danish fever at the moment. You of course were invited to the Royal Wedding. Are you disappointed you're not going to be there tonight?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm sure it's going to be a great occasion, but the Governor General is representing Australia and that's appropriate. He held a reception last week for the families - for the bride and groom, so to speak, and all of their families, and that was a very nice gesture. And we have sent a wedding gift. We've sent some trees, something a little different, and I think something that... Australian trees, I think something that Mary and Frederik will welcome very much. And I wish them well on behalf of all of the Australian people. It's obviously an occasion that does bring our two nations closer together. Many Australians of various generations in the course of their year or two away in doing Europe have visited Denmark and therefore as tourists at the very least have quite an understanding of and an affection for the country. It's a beautiful country and I'm sure it will be a great occasion.
JOURNALIST:
You often contact our sporting leaders, our sporting captains, before big events. You haven't put a call into Mary, have you today? You're not planning to?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I wasn't planning to. I think it's appropriate that the Governor General, who is representing Australia, do what I know he will do with great style and very effectively. But I do publicly wish both of them every happiness in life together. It's always a great occasion for anybody, a wedding, and I hope it's a very happy day and they have a long and happy life together.
JOURNALIST:
You're listening to 666 ABC Canberra of course, going around the region, and we are just about to be joined in fact in around about 10 seconds time by ABC South East. Five degrees outside and we are expecting a top today of 18. And it's a welcome now to those listeners who are joining us on ABC South East, which stretches all the way from Ulladulla to the Victorian border, and so you're on 666 ABC Canberra and ABC South East this morning.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, of course last night Mark Latham gave his Budget in Reply speech. Was there anything in there when you were listening that you thought gee that's a good idea, I wish we had have thought of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there were a couple of good things in it. I welcome very much his apparent embracing of the philosophy of Work for the Dole. I was very pleased to hear him say you either learn or earn. That is the philosophy behind Work for the Dole. And if he is in favour of that, well that's good.
JOURNALIST:
So mutual responsibility is now bipartisan?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I hope so. I do. Mutual obligation, mutual responsibility, whatever you want to call it. But when we first introduced Work for the Dole, the Labor Party attacked it and the unions attacked it. Now if there has been a conversion, that is very good and I welcome it wholeheartedly because we all believe that people should be required, in return for benefits, to do something, and that's the philosophy of Work for the Dole, and it's been hugely successful and I welcome it.
JOURNALIST:
You are obviously also impressed with the announcement of pneumococcal vaccinations, so much so that your Health Minister in almost indecent haste yesterday rushed out to a news conference to announce your Government was looking into acquiring more vaccinations. Why wasn't this announced in the Budget?
PRIME MINISTER:
Ross, Ross... indecent haste? Come on, none of that. The issue continues under discussion between the company and the Government. That is why it wasn't announced in the Budget, because no final decision had been taken. We're still negotiating with the company in relation to supply and price issues.
JOURNALIST:
It's a good idea though, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
It's a good idea to have high immunisation rates for everybody. They were very low when we came to Government. They went as low as 53 per cent in 1989 and they reached 90 per cent a short while ago for children under 12 months. Michael Wooldridge, the former Health Minister, did a great job in lifting child immunisation rates. You may remember at one point, because they were so low, we even made the payment of family benefits conditional on parents having their children immunised.
JOURNALIST:
I mentioned that though because obviously you were tipped off that Mr Latham was going to make this announcement and I think it was one hour beforehand, wasn't it, that Tony Abbott rushed out?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you'll have to go and talk to Mr Abbott about his... the machinations of when he makes announcements and so forth. But as I indicated in the parliament yesterday, I had been in correspondence with the company and in fact wrote back to the company on the 6th of May, and the question... the suggestion that Mr Abbott only displayed interest in this issue yesterday, an hour before Mr Latham was about to announce it, that's ridiculous.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, looking at the Budget this week, one of the criticisms of it has been that it's aimed, it appears, directly at marginal seats, this being an election year. Is that unfair? Are you looking at...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is unfair because families live in all seats. There aren't too many marginal seats in the ACT, yet the families of the ACT will benefit from the Budget, in the same way as the families who live in Eden Monaro and the families who live in the electorate of Gilmore. So this idea that we have just chosen marginal... there's nothing in the Budget that limits the family benefits to particular seats. I mean families of different formations live in all parts of Australia. They live in safe Labor seats, safe Liberal seats, marginal seats and not so marginal seats. So it doesn't really matter...
JOURNALIST:
But there is a fair bit of spending in this Budget. Surely the election was in mind when you framed it.
PRIME MINISTER:
I've said in answer to that question before - nobody sets out to be unpopular, nobody seeks to set out... seeks to be unpopular. But we've been able to do good things in this Budget because the economy is in good shape, and the economy is in good shape because we have run it well. And there is a dividend in all of that. But there is also a message - if it's not run well, if it falls into the wrong hands, it won't remain strong and we won't be able in the future to provide benefits of the type that were provided on Tuesday night.
JOURNALIST:
Here on 666 ABC Canberra with Ross Solly and Chris Uhlmann. It is 22 to 9, and you're also listening to us on ABC South East. Five degrees, expecting a top today of 18.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, obviously a lot of research companies, a lot of businesses have spent the last couple of days analysing your Budget. You would have seen this morning the Melbourne Institute suggesting that under Peter Costello's Budget, 24,000 people, mostly lower income women, will be encouraged to give up their jobs because they will be better off out of work. Now that surely isn't what the intention of the Budget was.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven't... I've seen the report. I haven't had a chance, because of the hour, to have it analysed. I'd be surprised if that were the consequence. What we have tried to do in this Budget... and it's interesting, his suggestion that we're being too generous to low income earners. That's not been the criticism. I mean this is the - you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't apparently. I don't know whether that proposition is correct. I'd be surprised. But it's interesting that in one breath it's a point of criticism that we don't do enough for low income earners. Now it is true that the family tax benefit system is particularly helpful to sole parents because there is not the same income limit in relation to sole parents in terms of the eligibility. And the reason for that is by definition there are not two breadwinners in a sole income family. And it's one of the features of our family tax system that we in fact have really been quite fair to sole parents, some people say even too generous. I don't think so, because they have quite a struggle and it's not easy if you're on your own, in raising children, and I don't begrudge them the assistance they get. But I'd be surprised if that were the consequence, but I'll be interested to have a look at the basis of it.
JOURNALIST:
Well it certainly wouldn't have been the intention, would it? You'd be pretty alarmed if all of a sudden people are crunching the numbers in your Budget and thinking gee it's better off if I stay out of work than actually getting into it.
PRIME MINISTER:
I have no doubt that the overall effect of the Budget will be to encourage people to work.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think the response has been pretty good in the electorate?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's early days yet. It should be positive because it's a very fair and a very good Budget.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think people will see it as a Budget looking to the long term?
PRIME MINISTER:
They will. They will see that we have recognised the needs of a whole variety of families. Our philosophy in relation to family assistance is that you should give people choice. We don't say that both parents should be in the full-time workforce. We don't say that one parent should always be at home. We say that people should choose to arrange their families in the way that best suits them, and provide the benefits that support those choices, not skew them in one direction or the other.
JOURNALIST:
But in doing that, it's a difficult thing to achieve. With the policy you have an intention you set out to try and do and you do it a number of different ways and a variety of different ways through the tax system, through the welfare system, but as we see with this Melbourne Institute...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well let's not assume that that analysis is correct.
JOURNALIST:
That's correct. I'm saying that they can sometimes be the outcomes, can't they? It's not always an easy thing to achieve.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well nothing in economic management is easy. That's absolutely right. And therefore you have to make sure that the people in charge of economic management have a good track record and they don't have a track record of high interest rates and high unemployment and high debt and big budget deficits.
JOURNALIST:
But also we saw a lot of microeconomic reform under the Labor Party which you supported. I remember...
PRIME MINISTER:
We were far more generous in supporting Labor reforms than they have been in supporting ours. They haven't supported any of our reforms. The floating of the dollar by the Hawke Government and tariff reform were the two things that I thought they did that were good, and I supported them and supported them very strongly. By contrast, all of the things that we have tried to do - they've opposed tax reform, they oppose industrial relations reform, they oppose getting the budget back into surplus, they have of course opposed privatisation of Telstra, even though we supported their privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank, and in fact in supporting it we allowed them to in a rather nominal way at least, have a better budget bottom line on one occasion.
JOURNALIST:
I'm just wondering with some of that policy though, competition policy, which everyone was in favour of back in 1994, there seems to be a move away from that now, with what we see happening with pharmacies. I mean why...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, there has always been a capacity within competition policy to have a proper place for small business. I mean I am a strong supporter of small business. Small business is the backbone of... and I know I'm speaking to a lot of people in the Eden Monaro electorate, a lot of people on the coast. Outer metropolitan Australia relies on small business. Without them, many country towns and small regional communities would disappear. And I always think you've got to have a place in the sun for the not so big, as well as the big, and that's all we're seeking to do.
JOURNALIST:
It's 17 to 9. You're on 666 ABC Canberra. Five degrees outside, expecting a top today of 18. Our guest, the Prime Minister John Howard.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, we want to move on to some other issues shortly. But just the final question from me on Mark Latham's speech last night. He promised $700 million to try and tap into this problem of people who are leaving school and basically have got nowhere to go, leaving school early. Is he tapping into an area that your Government has overlooked?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well certainly not. We have more than doubled the number of apprentices and traineeships since we've been in office. We've cut the youth unemployment rate. I noticed he talked a lot about youth unemployment. Well in April 2004, it was 15.1 per cent. In March '96 it was 19.6 per cent, and in August '92 it had climbed to 25 per cent. We've got the lowest overall unemployment rate in a generation. I mean the figure yesterday was 5.6. I'm having further work done on the figure he used last night.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think it might be rubbery?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well one respected commentator suggested on Radio National this morning that the real figure was only about 250 million. But look I don't... I'm not opposed to investing in traineeships and programmes for the young unemployed. We do it, and we've been successful. So to the extent that he is talking about, that's fine. That's not an area of... it oughtn't to be an area of political contention. But can I just, you know, gently make the point again - when we brought in Work for the Dole, which was designed to do something about youth unemployment, we were attacked by the Labor Party and people said it was inhumane and unfair, perhaps not inhumane, but unfair and wrong and a breach of some international convention. Well it was nothing of the kind. It was a very sensible policy.
JOURNALIST:
One last question from me on this before we move a little bit more broadly, and it's a quarter to nine on 666 ABC Canberra. Usually when we look at a Coalition Government, we expect them to be aimed at small government. Now you did have the cut back in 1996, but since then the Government has grown. We hear Mark Latham last night talking about cutting seven agencies and 13 programmes. He seems to be taking some of the ground from the conservative parties.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well don't listen to what they say, have a look at what they did. When they were in government they ran big deficits, they racked up $96 billion of debt, the budget got out of control, taxes soared, you can't say that of us, I mean we have got the budget back into shape and the foundation of the budget last Tuesday night has been the successful way that we've managed the economy over the last little while and I mean even an area like health where the Labor Party talks a lot, we have worked very hard with our MedicarePlus package to address a lot of the shortcomings and I understand for example that there'll be some figures coming out later today in relation to bulk billing levels and I think everybody will be very interested to have a look...
JOURNALIST:
Are they turning around are they?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm not making any comment about the content of them, of course I'm not, but I'm just noting the fact that they are coming out later today and everybody will be interested.
JOURNALIST:
Assuming you wouldn't be alerting everyone to the fact they're coming out if they weren't going to be too positive Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they're coming out and I think people should have a look at them.
JOURNALIST:
On 666 ABC Canberra and ABC South Coast it's 14 minutes to nine.
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JOURNALIST:
And you are listening to 666 ABC Canberra and ABC South East was just pointed out to be, not South Coast, my apologises to listeners down there this morning. Our special guest this morning is the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, just on Iraq and overnight two members of the US Congress were shown new photographs and new videotapes which from all reports are much more shocking than anything we've previous seen. Do you think they should be released publicly?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that's something that they have to decide on in relation to the legal implications. My view is that those responsible for any abuse should be court marshalled and punished.
JOURNALIST:
Is there any benefit, if these are shocking images, is there any benefit in them being made public?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven't seen them and they don't relate to the alleged deeds of Australians. So it's not really something that I in a way should be adjudicating on, it's a matter for President Bush, it's a matter for the American administration. There is no suggestion that Australians are involved, but I can say this, that we are highly critical and it is, as Donald Rumsfeld said in Baghdad overnight, it is a body blow to the American military but they will recover because the overwhelming majority of people in the American military would be as appalled by these misdeeds as I am and you are and most Australians are.
JOURNALIST:
Australians may not be involved in this aspect but some of those prisoners in there may well have been arrested by Australians troops mightn't they?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we had I think four groups of prisoners of war and on each occasion, and I have checked on this, they were treated humanely by us when we had physical contact with them. We didn't in a legal sense receive them or have custody of them because on each occasion there were American personnel with our units who took responsibility in a legal sense for prisoners of war and the reason for that is that size of our force in Iraq was not big enough for us to have any capacity to detain people, therefore from the very beginning the arrangement was that if we received, if we took any prisoners in a physical sense they would be legally received and detained by the Americans.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think the Iraqis though would draw the distinction you do between who the Americans are and who the Australians are?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm sure they would.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, I don't doubt that would you say legally is correct, I'm just wondering whether you...
PRIME MINISTER:
Can I just finish that, you look surprised at my answer, I think the Iraqis would understand that these physical abuses occurred inside a jail administered by the Americans and not by the Australians. Now that's not to say that all Iraqis would agree with what we did, but it still remains the case that the majority of Iraqis wants a democratic future and the people who are trying to stop that happening are the sort of people who were responsible for that appalling atrocity involving that poor man Michael Berg. So we have to keep, in all these difficult situations, a sense of longer term perspective and longer term balance.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, one of the arguments we made when we were attacking Iraq and we looked at the leadership when you were talking yourself of the abuses of that leadership, it was abuses that were happening in that prison but you didn't hold necessarily the prison guards responsible, you looked to the leadership. Now shouldn't we do the same thing here, isn't Donald Rumsfeld directly responsible for what's happening in those prisons?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't know that I said at any time that the guards and the people responsible were completely absolved of any, I don't think I ever said. I of course was critical because ritual torture and rape and murder was clearly and undeniably a systemic part of the Saddam Hussein regime and I was quite rightly attacking that and once again let us keep this in perspective, Saddam Hussein's deeds resulted in mass graves with bodies of 2-300,000 people discovered after the military operations last year, it's been carefully documented that he was probably responsible for deaths of another 1 million people in different ways. Now we are talking here of some deplorable acts but to suggest that there's some moral equivalence in scale and dimension and system between what has occurred here by people who were being punished. I mean I repeat, when you did these things under Saddam you got a pat on the back and you were probably promoted, when you did much worse under Saddam you were promoted, but here we are, you say the leadership, well General Tabuga, the American man who carried out the investigation, is of the view that responsibility for it did not go above brigade level, he has not found evidence that it was approved all the way up. Now obviously this is a matter once again for the Americans and I'm not asserting that, I'm simply reporting what has been in the media because I don't know. It didn't involve Australia and we weren't involved in any sanctioning of it and we certainly wouldn't have and we operate, and even things like when the war was on we had our own target rules in relation to the activities of Australian fighter bombers so we operate according to our own laws and our own rules in these things.
JOURNALIST:
Certainly the point I would make on this though is we can't on the one hand weld ourselves to the United States in this coalition very tightly at the outset and then distance ourselves from the things which we do not like even if we don't have personal responsibility for them. There is above the legal argument, which you make I'm sure is quite accurate, a moral responsibility at least to speak out.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm doing that, I mean as soon as I heard about this I condemned it ...
JOURNALIST:
... are you briefed?
PRIME MINISTER:
...and our views, have I been briefed?
JOURNALIST:
Have you been briefed by the United States on what is happening and what is...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven't been given details of the latest videos, I haven't, but I don't think I need, I don't think anybody needs to be briefed beyond, you know, obviously there is a problem and obviously some completely unacceptable behaviour occurred and people are being brought to trial, I mean I think one of the court marshals is starting next week and quite a number of people have been charged. Now this is the system working, no democracy is perfect and not every person living in a democracy plays by the rules.
JOURNALIST:
Do you agree with your Defence Minister Robert Hill that this has been a major set back in the fight against terrorism?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think it weakens, particularly until it's effectively dealt with, of course it's, or Rumsfeld's expression about it being a body blow, I agree with that, I mean it's a set back, I wish it hadn't of happened but it doesn't alter and it shouldn't alter our overall assessment, it shouldn't be a reason for us, and it won't be a reason for us to pull out of Iraq, but if you ask me do I like it? No, I hate it. Do I think it is a set back? Yes, it is. Do I think it alters the overall moral case? No, but I certainly thinks it makes it a lot harder to argue, but it think it's certainly reduced a lot of the good will that did exist in Iraq.
JOURNALIST:
It's five to nine, you're on 666 ABC Canberra and ABC South East, six degrees here, in Canberra that is, and expecting a top today of 18. Prime Minister, we were talking yesterday of how we might go through the ritual of asking you about an early election.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, please do.
JOURNALIST:
But one of the points that we thought about that wouldn't it be better than if we just had fixed term elections so we didn't have to go through this charade of asking you and you not answering.
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't think fixed term elections sit all that well with a parliamentary system. We've never had fixed term elections at a federal level, they exist at some state levels but not at a federal level and I don't know that it would make all that much difference.
JOURNALIST:
It works pretty well though in the United States.
PRIME MINISTER:
The Americans have a completely different system, they don't have a parliamentary system.
JOURNALIST:
Well what's the benefit for us though having this guessing game every few years and wasting everyone's time, wasting your good time Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you don't have to, I mean you can be asking me very constructive questions.
JOURNALIST:
But wouldn't it be better to focus on events of the world and...
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we have for the last 20 minutes, we've done a pretty good job.
JOURNALIST:
I'm pleased to here that you think so Prime Minister. It's four to nine, you're on 666 ABC Canberra with Ross Solly and the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, and Chris Uhlmann. Look, one of the other things Prime Minister just looking at the parliamentary system and the way that it works now, we have the tightest caucus system in the world, wouldn't it be a better thing if people knew that their local member was voting for their local area first and for their party second. Can't we loosen up the caucus system that we have at the moment?
PRIME MINISTER:
If you didn't have a fairly well disciplined party system you have far more gridlock, to use an American expression, much more paralysis. It's hard enough now sometimes to get what the government might regard as a sensible measure through because we don't control the upper house. I think it would be even more difficult if you had no formal party system. The party system allows for a lot more individual pressure for individual electorates than people may think because, I'm very mindful of the needs of individual constituencies and local members all the time are coming to me with their particular concerns and their particular case for a measure that helps their constituents and if you had a completely ill-disciplined system, if you had no party, you'd never get any decision taken and the assumption that if you allowed people to vote according to the needs of their individual constituents that would deliver all of those needs is wrong because you'd have 148 different directions and you'd never get a result.
JOURNALIST:
Just a quickie from me because we go back to Ross, the ACT has had self-government for 15 years, has it been a worthwhile experiment? Good or bad in your view?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I can't be a hypocrite, I was not in favour originally of self-government for the ACT, I had a different view, I was in favour of the model of a capital city council, that was my view. That was my original position, it's really a matter for the people of the ACT, if they think it's worked well, well it's okay by me.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, we only have a couple of minutes left, a couple of quick ones, the IOC and the Greek Government says that Australia has massively overreacted to the situation in Athens. Have you?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, we haven't, our responsibility is the safety of the Australian travelling public and we will issue travel bulletins and warnings based on the security assessments and they won't be influenced by anybody, including the International Olympic Committee.
JOURNALIST:
And just finally, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission says that we should immediately release children from detention centres and residential housing projects around Australia. They say it is inhumane, cruel and degrading treatment for children.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we don't agree with that finding, but we are working assiduously to reduce the number of children and there are only a few children now left in detention on the Australian mainland, there are more in Nauru. And where we can, and we'll seek to take other opportunities in the future to do it. We don't like detaining children, we really don't, but the problem is that if you reverse the policy of mandatory detention you will be sending a beckoning, a signal to people smugglers and you could have a resumption of the problems we had a few years ago.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister Mr Howard, thank you for taking the journey down the hill this morning to be with us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]