JONES:
The Prime Minister's on the line. Good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
You're going to be condemned for misleading the Australian people over the reasons for invading Iraq.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, I've read this letter, there's nothing new in it, I knew when we made that decision that a lot of people in the country didn't agree with it and obviously the 43 people who signed this statement are amongst them. But I reject the claim that we deceived the public, we believed on the basis of the intelligence advice we had at the time that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I might point out to my critics that at the time of the military operation there was near unanimous agreement around the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The Shadow Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who's quickly jumped on this letter, himself said it was an empirical fact, you can't be anymore definite than that, an empirical fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now since the...
JONES:
And there were any number of Security Council resolutions to the affect.
PRIME MINISTER:
The legal case for going to war was very strong and that legal case was non-compliance with successive resolutions of the Security Council. Now we have to understand that the people who penned this letter have been long, many of them, not all of them, I say that very carefully, not all of them, many of them have been long standing critics of the Government's foreign policy or in particular long standing critics of our decision to go into Iraq without yet another United Nations resolution. So we have to keep it in perspective.
JONES:
But they could have said all of this three months ago, they virtually on the eve of an election issued an election manifesto for one side.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I will leave that for other people to say, I try and deal with these things on the merits and on the merits I reject it. I point out that the Flood inquiry found that there was no evidence that the Government had interfered with the intelligence agencies and got them to massage the intelligence, and the Flood inquiry also found that on the intelligence material available the conclusion that Iraq had WMD was more probable than any other conclusion. Now that completely debunks this idea that Australia was taken to war based on a lie. Such a claim itself is a misrepresentation. There's one other thing in this statement that I'd like to take issue with, and that is that this suggestion that in some way we've forgotten about the region and are too heavily focused on America, now we do have a strong alliance with America, stronger than ever, and I defend that. But nobody could suggest that I have ignored China, I have ignored Japan, we probably have a greater influence now in the Pacific area than we've had at any time in the last 30 or 40 years...
JONES:
East Timor and Indonesia.
PRIME MINISTER:
East Timor, Indonesia, the list goes on. So this idea that we've skewed our foreign policy to an exclusive association with America is just not justified by the facts, after all it's been during my prime ministership that we secured that landmark natural gas deal with China and we have seen our exports to China probably treble in the time that this Government has been in office.
JONES:
Yeah, it's pretty vicious stuff though, I mean it says if what the Australian Government says can't be trusted by its own citizens Australia cannot expect its work to be trusted internationally.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I could say to them that Australia's word is trusted internationally. There will always be disagreement on contentious issues and I knew that when we took the decision we did that a lot of people would oppose it. But could I, with the greatest of respect, make the point that every single person who signed that statement had retired from service well before the 11th of September 2001 and I do think the Government's critics must understand that as a result of the terrorist attacks and the threats that we face in our own region as terribly evident by Bali that we are living in a new world, we're living in a different and more dangerous world and some of the older approaches are no longer quite as relevant.
JONES:
On the Free Trade Agreement, are you concerned that you allowed yourself to be portrayed not as a defender of the US alliance but of multinational drug companies while Mr Latham, pardon me, I'm sorry, while Mr Latham sought to portray himself as pro-Australian not anti-American the savour of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme? How did you get yourself into that corner?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan the reason why we didn't automatically accept the amendment described by Mr Latham was that he was talking about an amendment which if adopted on what he'd said would do great damage to our intellectual property system. Now I know that's a very esoteric thing but it is quite important, we do want a legal system in this country that encourages people who've got bright ideas to patent them and protect them and to try and develop new bright ideas, we're always talking about the knowledge economy and that the hope of the future is that we become a more innovative nation. Now I understand that point that's been made and commentators will make it but in the medium to longer term I don't want to agree to an amendment that does damage. But I think there has been a change by Mr Latham. But can I say to him, could we have the amendment?
JONES:
So you haven't seen the amendment?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no. It's now Monday, they announced their position last Tuesday, their general position, their generic position if I can say so with no pun intended, and we have yet to see the amendment. Now obviously we take the position that no further protection is needed.
JONES:
The Generic Medicines Industry Association chairman, John Montgomery, has said the amendment will have no real effect, that we don't quite what the amendment is.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we don't, but Alan the point I'm making is that there was nothing in the Free Trade Agreement that weakened the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. This has been a phoney charge from the very beginning. I would never have signed the Free Trade Agreement if it had undermined the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, why would I want to do that? I know how popular that scheme is, why would I want to do that? I mean it defies commonsense and we had quite a big argument with the Americans during the negotiating phase and they did try hard to get conditions that would have undermined the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and we said no, we're not going to agree to that.
JONES:
Is there a practice at work where large pharmaceutical companies do undertake frivolous or vexatious ligation designed to delay the marketing of a much cheaper generic drug?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven't seen the evidence of that, I don't claim to be an expert in this area, but I haven't seen the evidence of that and I do think it is interesting that the very people who are meant to the victims of this campaign, mainly the generic manufacturers, are themselves not claiming that the Free Trade Agreement has undermined the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Could I just say again, we wouldn't have agreed to the Agreement in the first place if that had been the outcome. But Mr Latham obviously needed some kind of smokescreen, if I can put it like that, to justify his support for the Free Trade Agreement and in the end Alan I want the Free Trade Agreement because it's in Australia's interests, I really want that Free Trade Agreement, I believe in it, I worked for it, I don't believe the other side of politics in Australia could ever have negotiated it and I really am very strongly committed. But along the way I have to look at what impact an amendment will have. Now I'm just saying to the Opposition, can we have a look at the amendment, governments often accept amendments they don't believe are necessary provided those amendments don't do damage and that is the kind of approach that I will bring to this.
JONES:
He does, they do seem to have shifted ground have they not from the patent application process...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they were talking about bodgy patent applications...
JONES:
Now that's not the issue.
PRIME MINISTER:
... about ligation...
JONES:
Now it's about penalty.
PRIME MINISTER:
They're talking about penalties if companies take frivolous legal action. Now you can't take legal action as I understand it unless you actually hold a patent in the first place. Now obviously if you apply for a patent, you don't hold it, you're trying to get it and there is a very big difference, I know it's a technical...
JONES:
So may they be scrambling to get an amendment consistent with what they promised last week?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan I don't know, but I do know this, that the time for them to provide the amendment has arrived and can I just say again to your listeners the Free Trade Agreement does not undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, if it had of, I would never have agreed to it.
JONES:
Just, in the last couple of days you've been making comments about, you gave an interview at the end of last week where you said you wanted an enterprise, an entrepreneurial society and you said Australians were coming more self-reliant and more independent. I don't know whether they're attention has been drawn to some welfare figures that have achieved a fair bit of publicly in the last couple weeks and that the share of Commonwealth outlays going on welfare has risen from 40.5 per cent to 44 per cent. Now it does appear that in a period of unbelievable prosperity in this country there are more and more people on welfare. Where are we going...
PRIME MINISTER:
Can I just, I have not seen those figures but one possible explanation for that is that many payments which are really taxation concessions such as family tax benefits, because they are paid on a fortnightly basis are counted on the spending side of the Budget and therefore in these overall figures they say that's welfare, I don't regard it as welfare.
JONES:
But in the 1960's one in 20 Australians were on welfare, we now have one in six and three in 10 receiving...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, but the point I'm making Alan is that some of the payments that are regarded by the statistician, by the Treasury, as welfare payments such as family tax benefits. You could take private health insurance rebates, many of your listeners would get a 30 per cent private health insurance rebate, because a lot of people choose to take that as a payment to the private health insurance company it's regarded not as a tax concession, it's regarded by the statistician as a payment and therefore treated as a welfare payment.
JONES:
Is welfare still too easy to come by, are there too few conditions and how do you get people into that self-reliance and independence and entrepreneurial thinking while ever they have access to fairly generous welfare?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think in some areas it's a little too easy, that's why we've tried to reform the disability support pension scheme, not because we want to take people who have genuine impairments off welfare, they're entitled to every dollar they get, but we've been blocked in the Senate by that. I think in some areas it could be, I think in other areas because of things like work for the dole which has proved to be very popular, it is less easy to get than used to be the case.
JONES:
A lot of talk about a September 18 election, without asking you anything about that can I just ask you would you run an election campaign while the Olympic Games on?
PRIME MINISTER:
I thought you said you weren't going to ask me.
JONES:
Well I mean that rules out September 18 doesn't it? Would you consider having an election campaign...
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm not ruling anything in or out.
JONES:
Welcome home, I don't know how you keep going but you keep going.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, and wasn't it a great match on Saturday night.
JONES:
A wonderful game and a word about Jana Pittman?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is just so exciting, it's one of those miracle developments which is just terrific, I reckon she's got about 20 million people hoping that keyhole surgery went well.
JONES:
I think it's helping her too. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]