HADLEY:
A major announcement about to happen on the programme. The Prime Minister is about to join us from our Canberra studio and here in our Pyrmont studio Dr Brendan Nelson, the Federal Education Minister, and one of my colleagues Mr Doug Thompson, the chairman of the Slim Dusty Foundation. And on the phone is Joy McKean. Hello Joy.
MCKEAN:
Hello Ray.
HADLEY:
How are you going?
MCKEAN:
Oh really good thank you. You know what, it's just a marvellous coincidence. Do you know where I am?
HADLEY:
I've got no idea.
MCKEAN:
I'm sitting on the veranda of the farm house up in Nulla Creek.
HADLEY:
You're not.
MCKEAN:
I am.
HADLEY:
Did you get all that rain recently.
MCKEAN:
No, we got a bit of showers and so forth yesterday, a bit before that, and I only got up here yesterday and so we've had a little bit of rain and that's freshened things up nicely. The creek is still running really well.
HADLEY:
Beautiful. Well I'd better say g'day to the Prime Minister who is sitting in our Canberra studio. Mr Howard, good morning to you sir.
PRIME MINISTER:
Hello Ray, hello Joy, hello Brendan, Doug, everybody else.
HADLEY:
Let's bring everyone into it right now. Dr Brendan Nelson, Mr Doug Thompson, gentlemen.
NELSON:
Good morning Ray, good morning Joy. It's good to hear the rain is still coming down in July, Joy.
MCKEAN:
So it is too Brendan.
HADLEY:
Now for the benefit of everyone listening, I'm on the Board of the Slim Dusty Foundation with Joy McKean and Anne and Dr David Kirkpatrick, Slim and Joy's children, and Doug Thompson who is in the studio with me is our chairman, and we are trying to establish the Slim Dusty Centre in Kempsey. And I think the Prime Minister is about to hopefully bring us some good news. Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Ray, I am. I'm very pleased indeed to announce this morning that the Commonwealth Government will contribute $1.5 million towards the establishment of the Slim Dusty Centre in Kempsey. This will give it an enormous boost. It's a mark of the Government's recognition of the national esteem in which Slim was held, of his iconic status, the extraordinary contribution he made to country music, and the way in which over decades for successive generations of Australians he became an important part of our being and a wonderful expression of values that are common to all Australians. And I believe that the Centre will be a great memorial to him. As well as being a museum of Slim's life, it will incorporate a gallery and concert facility, an entertainment venue for country music, and a recording studio, and importantly it will create a lot of employment opportunities for a regional area of Australia in Kempsey. So I'm delighted to make that announcement and I just pay tribute again to his contribution to the Australian identity and also to his thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands of fans and well wishers around the country who sustained him during his long career, and most importantly of course Joy and his two children.
HADLEY:
Alright. I think on behalf of the Board and the family, Joy we need some sort of response from you.
MCKEAN:
I just want to say that I'm absolutely thrilled because this is a tremendous boost for us to really get going and it's a vote of confidence too in all the people who have been trying to help us get going. People from all over, Mr Prime Minister, have been contributing to a [inaudible] programme, all the country music artists - there was a waiting list of people wanting to appear in a tribute concert and on the DVD from that concert, you know Dick Smith has been such an enthusiastic supporter all the time. Lee, another of our patrons, who is recording a song that Colin Buchanan wrote called Missing Slim, it's a beautiful song, and proceeds from that will go directly to the Foundation. Everybody... there's so much warmth and goodwill out there, that I and my whole family have been absolutely overwhelmed by it. I always knew that Slim was and still is very much loved by the people of Australia. It used to amaze us at times, but since we've lost him they have expressed that so forcefully to me and the family in so many ways. And this contribution just means so much. I mean I am, I'm sitting here in Nulla Creek and this is where over 60 years ago, a career that has.... his career has documented so much social history and culture of Australia, looking around here in the Nulla this morning it just seems just amazing to hear this announcement this morning. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
HADLEY:
Thanks Joy. We might let you get back to the beautiful surrounds of Nulla Nulla Creek in the Macleay Valley and I'll catch you again soon.
MCKEAN:
Thank you Ray. Thanks everyone.
HADLEY:
Thanks Joy McKean.
PRIME MINISTER:
Bye Joy.
HADLEY:
All the best to you. Prime Minister, I'm joined by your colleague Dr Brendan Nelson and I want to thank him personally for his support, not just as a Slim Dusty fan but as a prominent member of the Government, in lending his support to it. Thank you Doctor, we appreciate it.
NELSON:
Well thank you Ray. You should know that the Prime Minister has been extremely enthusiastic about this project and Doug Thompson, of course the chairman of the Foundation, has put an enormous amount of work into it, and we've now got to make sure that all of us as Australians get behind this. As Joy said, I mean for 60 years Slim has told the story of Australia. It's about our past as much as it is about our future.
HADLEY:
And Doug Thompson, our chairman. What we need now Doug is someone like Qantas, Telstra, and one of those big car companies like Toyota or Nissan or someone to kick the can too, don't we?
THOMPSON:
Ray, it's essential that we receive support from corporate Australia. But first of all, on behalf of Slim's millions of fans, I would like to thank the Prime Minister for the most generous donation. This will kick off the campaign and give our other sponsors a lot of confidence. I would also like to say Slim in his lifetime was very instrumental in the internal design of the museum, so it's not something we've dreamt up recently. We've been working on this for five years and the great disappointment is Slim won't see it opened, but certainly his millions of fans will. And a big thank you to the Prime Minister.
HADLEY:
Yeah, well it was one of my great pleasures to have dinner with him and his wife and my wife when we first spoke about this and he was getting a gold record for Looking Forward Looking Back, and that was when he indicated that this was what he wanted to do, and he knew at that time he was quite ill, and so it is about Slim, not just in death, but also more particularly in life. Fantastic. Thank you very much Dr Nelson for coming in. Thank you Doug. We might even go out in a little while with the music, and you hit the nail on the head - the rain tumbling down in July. Let's hope it continues.
NELSON:
Thanks very much Ray.
THOMPSON:
Thanks Ray.
HADLEY:
Thanks Doug. Thank you very much as well Dr Brendan Nelson. Prime Minister, we want to thank you personally for that on behalf of all the fans and thank you very much for doing it as well, but I can't let you escape, if you know what I mean.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, certainly not.
HADLEY:
Without a comment about Kim Beazley. Now as I understand it, you're if not a fan, certainly a man that admires Kim Beazley, and it looks like Mark Latham may have pulled some sort of rabbit out of a hat by getting him back on the frontbench. How do you see it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the commentators can talk about it. I've said some things about Mr Beazley in the past and I don't intend to retract them. You can have some respect for people across the political divide, and I don't think we have such dog-eat dog politics in this country that that's not possible. However, having said that, the reality is that Mr Latham makes the national security and foreign policy of Australia for the Labor Party, not Mr Beazley. Mr Beazley is not the leader, Mr Latham is, and last night we saw the emergence of a very confused and contradictory policy on Iraq. Mr Latham has to admit, if he's fair dinkum, that his original commitment to bring the troops home by Christmas was a terrible mistake. He is now trying to patch things up for the election, but he really hasn't recanted that policy. He still hasn't had a change of heart or a change of principle, and he's now trying in a sense to have two bob each way - something that Australians understand very well. On the one hand he's saying I'm still committed to bringing them home by Christmas, but on the other hand I'm going to leave some of the elements there. Now the reality is that they should all stay until their job has been finished and just trying to patch things up for the election is not going to alter that reality and he's introduced some very strange elements, he's saying he's going to send some Customs people and 20 or 30 non-combatants, well can I ask who's going to protect them? Is he going to rely on other people or is going to rely on the Americans or the British or other people to protect them? Shouldn't we protect our own? I mean this idea that you would send 20 or 30 non-combatants and not make any arrangements for their protection just underlines the fact that this is a very expedient policy and Mr Beazley is not the issue, the issue is Mr Latham because Mr Latham is the foreign policy determinant of the Labor Party and the national security because he's the leader, I mean leaders mould and cast the direction of political parties, colleagues are very important, teams are very important but in the end it's his confused and contradictory approach to this issue which has caused the difficulty and nothing that he announced last night has changed that.
HADLEY:
Isn't it likely that we'll be part of a United Nations force there anywhere some time there through 2005 because that's what they're going to put in place?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there is a United Nations resolution and our forces will be affected by that in the same way as the forces of America and the forces of Britain. But Mr Latham is pretending, and he said it again last night, that Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism. Well tell that to the million of people who see those appalling, gruesome pictures every night on television of a blindfolded hostage and terrorists with guns and knives cocked behind them reading out statements. You tell me that's not terrorism? Of course it's terrorism. I mean the Labor Party is trying to maintain this fiction that Iraq has nothing to do with the fight against terrorism, it's got everything to do with the fight against terrorism. You may have disagreed with our original decision, although the Labor Party believes as we did that there were weapons of mass destruction, they were almost as adamant as we were on that. But you may have disagreed with that original decision, but it defies logic and reason to now pretend that Iraq does not involve a fight against terrorism, you have leading members of Al Qaeda involved, you have linked, you have the admission by leading terrorist activists that they are targeting westerners and targeting people in Iraq and to pretend as Mr Latham did last night that Iraq really now has nothing to do with terrorism is just defying logic.
HADLEY:
I won't bore you by asking you about an election date, because we've gone down that path before. But are there times that perhaps, and you'll make the decision, when you think jeez I should have gone then? Because August the 7th was talked about and then you would have been, call the election before Mr Beazley was actually...
PRIME MINISTER:
I think you go through all of these things, I don't mean particularly that. Look you go up and down and you think gee maybe I should do that. But that's a perfectly normal reaction. I haven't made up my mind and there'll be an election at some stage. But of course you go through those things and I'll probably go through it another half a dozen times, that's just human nature. But there are still a lot of issues to be talked about and we had yesterday the extraordinary admission from Price Waterhouse that it's meant to be verifying the Labor Party's economic policy that all they're really going to do is add up columns of figures, they're not going to say whether the policy is authentically based, they're not going to say whether the propositions on which it based are sound. So this really is a sham costing. The only way the Labor Party can seriously have its economic policy costed and the assumptions tested is to take advantage of the facilities to the Department of Finance and Treasury which of course are there.
HADLEY:
Would it be fair to say that given the fact that we haven't had an announcement yet that the longer you leave to go Mark Latham as Leader of the Opposition that because of his inexperience in that particular position there'll be more and more pressure mounting on him in relation to policy and other matters and so you leave it longer and just keep feeding the rope out a bit more?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Ray, I think you sort of keep your approach to these things under constant review. But if I can go back to the example of Iraq, I mean that is a clear example of inexperience and there was absolutely no need to make that commitment about bringing the troops home by Christmas, it was never the original intention of the Labor Party to do that, I know that from the nature of the correspondence I had with Mr Rudd, Mr Rudd wrote to me last November effectively asking me to commit more resources to Iraq, he wanted more trainers. Now he certainly didn't have that in mind, but out of the blue on another programme Mr Latham says I'm going to bring them home by Christmas and ever since they've been scrambling to try and justify and rationalise that and last night's speech as the latest offering but it hasn't persuaded anybody because we still have the commitment to bring the troops home and one of the groups that he's proposing to bring home are the people who are training the Iraqi Army, now if Iraq needs anything for the future it needs a properly trained army and if we want to leave behind a secure Iraq we've got to help train its army and that is what our people are doing and yet my opponent wants to bring them home but in the same breath he wants to send 20 or 30 non-combatants but he doesn't tell us how he's going to protect those non-combatants, he wants to send Customs people to the border with Syria, can I tell you the border with Syria is a potentially very dangerous place, who is going to protect them?
HADLEY:
Just on the other issue, front page of the Herald today, it says that backbenchers, and at least one frontbencher who's named as Kevin Andrews, campaigned for a more compassionate approach by the Coalition to refugees on temporary protection visas. Are you softening your stance there?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Ray, Amanda Vanstone will be making a statement about this issue later today, we did have a long discussion and there are going to be some sensible adjustments made. That report in the Herald was not entirely accurate, but I think the overwhelming majority of the Australian people warmly appreciate the tough line we took on border protection and to stop the boats coming and the only policy that stopped the boats coming was the policy we adopted. There are some issues in relation to people whose temporary protection visas are running out and Amanda will be announcing a very detailed policy response that I think will get very wide support in the community, it will reaffirm the effectiveness of our border protection policy and it will deal sensibly with people who are coming off temporary protection visas in the near future and also with some people who've been working in the community, especially in regional areas.
HADLEY:
Prime Minister thank you very much for your time on that, but firstly and secondly thank you as well for the commitment of $1.5 million to establish the Slim Dusty Centre in Kempsey.
PRIME MINISTER:
Nice to talk to you Ray.
HADLEY:
All the best to you Prime Minister, thank you very much.
[ends]