JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
JONES:
Prime Minister, you've got a birthday on Monday. So may we wish you a happy birthday. But may I also wonder why with more and more of the statutes proclaiming the illegality of age, religion and those sorts of factors being factors in employment - why is there focus on people's age?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I agree with you. I agree with you. It's what you contribute and what you mean to the people around you and that applies to all of us. The strengths and the importance of our relationships and our contribution to the community that matters, but I guess it's part of life. I see birthdays not as a time for looking back, but rather a time for looking forward and I will be reflecting on the some of the things I want to do. Most particularly, if the Australian people are kind enough to re-elect me when election is held. The implementation of course of the American Free Trade Agreement which is going to be of great benefit to our economy.
JONES:
Just explain that to our listeners briefly, the Free Trade Agreement, I read that tariffs will be eliminated on more than 99% of United States products and United States exports to Australia boosted by nearly $3 billion - what does that mean, does that threaten though some Australian businesses and some Australian jobs?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't believe for a moment it's going to threaten overall employment levels because we'll be able to sell a lot more into America. We'll not only enjoy tariff free entry into the United States but our firms will have access to the giant US Government procurement market which is worth just under 400 billion United States dollars every year. In other words, for the first time many Australian firms will be able to compete for American Government contracts, something that we've not been able to do before. The employment opportunities that that will open up are enormous.
JONES:
So a combined consumer market you're saying of over $300 million has got to be good for innovation and enterprise?
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean, the bigger the market, the greater the sales opportunities - that's commonsense and a country the size of Australia must export to survive. It must export to survive and that's why I cannot understand why the Labor Party is dithering and messing around on the Free Trade Agreement. I think it's so much to the benefit of this country that I can't understand why they didn't signal their support for it when it was announced.
JONES:
Thank you for that. Just coming to the Flood Report - is it rocket science that intelligence agencies across the world may not have been what we expected them to be. I mean, I made the point earlier this morning that when in America, terrorists were training to fly aircraft, not training to take them off or land with them and no one got suspicious. I mean, it's a given is it not that agencies most probably weren't up to scratch but do we need this endless debate which tends to bore people witless?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think there has to be an end to it and I believe that the Flood Report does bring an end to it in Australia. I guess whenever something terrible happens by definition there's been an intelligence failure, but it's terribly easy to be wise after the event and what people do after the event is looked back and require a standard of absolute proof to judge whether the advice given by intelligence agencies was correct. You never get absolute proof from intelligence agencies, you never get proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You only get something that's on the balance of probabilities and interestingly what Flood said in relation to Iraq was that on the balance of probabilities the judgement that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction at the time was right. I said actually that trying to prove the opposite that he didn't have weapons on the available evidence was a much harder task than proving the reverse.
JONES:
He also said that Australian intelligence agencies were performing, his words "well over all and represent a potent capability for Government". Lord Butler said in relation to the British involvement in all of this, no one lied, no one made up the intelligence, no one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services. Yet we're still persisting with this argument that you, President Bush and Tony Blair lied.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, what Flood has done and what Butler did in the UK and the Senate Committee did in America was to demonstrate that at no stage and I speak very strongly for myself and the Australian Government, at no stage did we heavy the intelligence agencies. This argument that we took Australia to war based on a lie is itself a lie. We didn't massage the intelligence. We didn't tell the agencies what to tell us. We asked them for their assessments, we took their assessments into account in making our decision and their assessment was very much on the balance of probabilities that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and as Flood points out at the time the war started the only country, the only Government in the world that was asserting Iraq did not have WMD was Saddam Hussein's Government itself. The argument in March of last year was not whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that was not the argument. The argument was how you dealt with Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Whether you left it to the United Nations and effectively left it to the whims of the French and German and Russian Governments and in which event Saddam would still be running Iraq. Nothing would have happened or you took the action that we joined the Americans and the British in taking. Now that is the issue. At no stage did we mislead the Australian public. At no stage did we manufacture intelligence, at no stage did we heavy intelligence agencies.
JONES:
Flood says Australian assessments on Iraq's capabilities were on the whole more cautious and seem even closer to the facts as we know them so far. There was not as some have charged a blind adherence to US and UK assessments. Now in the light of that nonetheless, federal Labor want a Royal Commission into Australia's intelligence services. What do you say about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think a Royal Commission is unnecessary, a complete waste of time. It will only prolong the navel gazing. We have to get on with implementing Flood's recommendations. We have to look the future. I think the public is tired of it. We've had endless inquiries and debates, not only here but in Britain and the United States. I noticed Mr Rudd last night on television was saying that they were going to look at whether they'd have a Royal Commission. Maybe even they are now getting the message because this Flood inquiry was a very good examination. He is nobody's man, he's his own person and he was critical, I thought he was very objective but he was absolutely unconditional on his finding that the intelligence agencies had not been heavied. I mean, it's a terrible insult to people who spend their lives in an intelligence agency and devote their professional careers to it, to say they could be manipulated by the Government of the day. I mean, they gave their assessments and we took those assessments into account. But it was our decision. The decision to join the military operation was taken by my Government - it wasn't taken by the intelligence agency and I accept responsibility for that. Total responsibility and if the Australian people in the fullness of time form an adverse judgement of that decision well I will pay the political consequences of it and that is how things work in a democracy.
JONES:
When I spoke to Mark Latham a couple of days ago I asked him a couple of very specific questions about industrial relations, in particular whether or not good faith bargaining is spelt out in their policy meant that they would be scrapping the Work Place Relations Act of 1996 and thereby scrapping the cap on conditions that can be included in federal awards and he told me that they wouldn't be doing that.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, they are going to do it.
JONES:
Well, I'm just about to say that because today now Emerson, Craig Emerson, the Shadow Minister says that they will be scrapping conditions. Now, apart from the conflict within the party on that - what's that mean for business?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, what it means is that you can have, if you get rid of the ceiling, at the moment there are certain things called allowable matters that can be included in an award and if the ceiling of (inaudible) specified matters. Now what could happen if that ceiling is scrapped, you could have unions going along to the industrial relations commission and asking for insertion in the award of provisions relating to rights of union entry, of preferences for unionists, of a last on first off attitude in relation to all sorts of things, in other words, there will be no limit on the number...
JONES:
And you'd be back to the awards of the 500 pages?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, of course you would and you would be back to a system where the prescriptive detailed awards dominated the industrial relations system and there would be no room for workplace bargaining. The whole idea of workplace bargaining under the present system is that you have some basic conditions that everybody's got to respect and that's fair enough, but beyond that it should be left to the individual employer and his or her employee...
JONES:
And the bulk of the employees are not union members.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, well you're bound to in the private sector, Alan, 18 per cent of Australian workers, 18 per cent of Australian workers now belong to trade unions in the private sector, it's a bit higher in the public sector. It was 35 per cent back in the mid 1980s. What has happened is that over the last 18 or 20 years there has been a continual decline in the number of people who want to belong to trade unions and to now contemplate reimposing on the Australian industrial relations system and Australian workplaces, a system that might have been more relevant when more people belong to unions is ludicrous and the worst thing of all is that it's going to weaken and reduce the productivity gains of the last few years and the productivity gains of the last few years have made workers better off. I mean, what is good about the current industrial relations system is that workers are getting higher wages now than they used to. Real wages under my government have gone up by something like 14 per cent in eight and a half years against 2.9 per cent in 13 years under the previous system. It's not as if our approach is hurting workers, it's in fact helping them.
JONES:
Yes, well now they also talk about industry wide enterprise agreement. Now doesn't that mean that unions would then target the largest and most profitable employers with excessive claims that only those employers can afford and then those claims flow on to other less profitable employers in the name of good faith bargaining who have no choice but to be roped in to pay what they can't afford?
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course, now a consequence of that will inevitably be higher unemployment in those firms that can't afford it because they'll have to pay it for the people they employ but they'll just employ fewer people. Now that has always been our argument and the facts are there. I mean, our unemployment rate now is the lowest it's been for decades. We have unemployment around 5.5 per cent, it's been like that for more than nine months and it could go even lower if the Labor Party would get out of the way and pass the unfair dismissal laws in the Senate. Now if you've got higher wages, higher employment and strong economic growth, what is the argument for removing and changing one of the policies which has produced that outcome.
JONES:
PM, there's a lot of talk about the election and when it'll be called. Can you just explain to our listeners what in fact does happen? I mean, you go to the Governor General, you announce your intention to hold an election. Now explain to my listeners is it, it's normal practice for the Governor General to dissolve therefore the Parliament on that day and do what is called issuing writs. That's correct, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
What in practice happens is that the Prime Minister of the day, and this has been the case ever since federation, goes to the Governor General and says that I advise you to dissolve the Parliament and he issues a proclamation and the Parliament is...
JONES:
And that happens in the same day?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, often the dissolution occurs a day or two after...
JONES:
A day or two after and then
PRIME MINISTER:
Effectively, you have to allow a campaign period of 33 days.
JONES:
The point I'm trying to make is so that our listeners know...
PRIME MINISTER:
There's no way that, you know, you can't sort of sneak out there and say I'm going to have an election next weekend.
JONES:
So if the writs were issued say today, then there is a minimum period of 33 days before an election could be called, you could in fact...
PRIME MINISTER:
Could take place...
JONES:
Could take place, but you could in fact have the election six weeks later, have a long...
PRIME MINISTER:
You could do that if you wanted to.
JONES:
So when will you be having the election?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't know, I honestly have not made up mind. I mean, I read all this stuff, but I haven't. I mean, please believe me, I haven't decided. Now, look, we're now more than two years and, what, eight months since the last election...
JONES:
Yep.
PRIME MINISTER:
The last election was held on the 10th of November. So it clearly is due sometime in the next few months. But I guess it's in the nature of political commentary that...
JONES:
...to ask...
PRIME MINISTER:
...but I don't...
JONES:
Just before you go, I see the Treasurer of the Association of Independent Retirees up in Queensland this week offered you a business card and you said no not yet.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's dead right.
JONES:
Okay, good to talk to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]