PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to formally announce that the Government has decided to establish a new joint offshore protection command which is designed to better define and reinforce the measures that are needed to protect Australian ports and the Australian coastline from possible infiltration or attack. I've written to the Premiers and Chief Ministers explaining the new arrangements, they follow a very careful investigation by the Australian Defence Force, my Department and all the other Commonwealth Departments. Effectively the Australian Defence Force will clearly assume responsibility for offshore protection, the responsibility for initial counter-terrorism responses within ports will remain of course the responsibility of State Governments. The major instrument to implement the new policy will be the establishment of a new offshore maritime identification zone which will be some thousand nautical miles from the Australian coastline and under the new arrangements any vessel passing into that area will be required to provide details of cargo, destination, crew, port of call, likely arrival at port and so forth and the purpose of that will be to more carefully monitor the activities of vessels that are seeking to come to Australia. We'll also be, from existing resources, increasing the patrols of the Timor Sea and North West Shelf installations and that particular decision I know will be of great interest to people in Western Australia. The additional resources of some $10 million that are going to be added to the effort already in this area comes on top of the additional resources I announced in the election campaign to build two new patrol boats which are going to based in Port Headland to protect the installations on the North West Shelf and also the other I think $150 million that's being committed over the past couple of years to strengthening the protection of our coastline.
The head of the new command will be Rear Admiral Crane, who is currently the commanding officer of Coastwatch, and what this new command effectively does is for the purposes of protecting our offshore installations and coastlines brings together the activities of the Australian Defence Force and Coastwatch. It will be a better, more effective, more efficient way of providing surveillance and protection which is so very important, not only for people here in Western Australia but all around the country. JOURNALIST: Will Defence officers actually be able to do searches on...
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm sorry, could you say that again?
JOURNALIST:
Will Defence officers actually be able to do searches on the boats?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, whatever's necessary.
JOURNALIST:
And what if a foreign ship doesn't identify itself, what happens then?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it won't be able to get in.
JOURNALIST:
What do you do, shoot it out of the water or does it just stay there?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well let's deal with that when it arises.
JOURNALIST:
What extra resources will be allocated to the North West Shelf and how...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we've already allocated additional resources to the North West Shelf through committing the new two patrol boats that are going to be based in Port Headland and from March of next year there'll be additional patrols. I can't give you the details of those, that will be determined on an operational basis.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, is this your answer to Labor's Coastguard policy?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no this has got nothing to do with Coastguard, this is a building on the existing resources of Coastwatch and the ADF. The Coastguard proposal of the Labor Party involves essentially a very dangerous gutting of the capacity of the ADF, destroying a lot of the training element of the Royal Australian Navy.
JOURNALIST:
How serious do you consider the risk to be, to warrant you taking this action?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, everything's more serious now than it used to be Peter but we haven't received some undisclosed additional warning that's caused us to do this.This is something we did in the normal course of reviewing arrangements and it's come out of that review. Thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, can I just ask, what role will you take in the state election campaign?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'll do whatever I'm asked and I'm happy to help. But ultimately elections are determined federally by federal issues and at a state level by state issues. But I'm happy to help any of my state colleagues and I'm here today obviously to help them, I've spoken here and I'll speak at a lunch today. But I wish Colin well, I think he'd make an excellent Premier of Western Australia and he'll have my full support in the campaign.
JOURNALIST:
... in January?
PRIME MINISTER:
I beg your pardon?
JOURNALIST:
You'll return in January?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, I'll do what I'm asked to do, I'm obviously welcome because I'm here now.
JOURNALIST:
The swing to the Coalition during the federal election was quite remarkable, would you expect something to the same extent...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'd like it and I hope it occurs and I think the people of Western Australia deserve a new state government.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think it does flow on though?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think it's a mistake to think that people vote in a robotic fashion, they don't, people make intelligent judgements, they look at the state government, they look at the federal government and they make their own individual judgements. What I would be putting to the people of Western Australia is there was a good federal reason to vote for us and there's a good state reason to vote for Colin.
JOURNALIST:
You spoke about the difficulty of unseating a government that's been there for one term.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's always hard, yes, I don't think any, I don't think Mr Barnett would underestimate the nature of the challenge but it's a government that has got it badly wrong when it comes to things like industrial relations and that's very important for this state. This state is built on free enterprise and development and the mining industry and the building industry and they're the heart and soul of this state and if you get the industrial laws for those industries wrong then you're not doing the right thing by the state.
JOURNALIST:
Can I ask you about the anthem, I don't know if you've heard...
PRIME MINISTER: I have.
JOURNALIST: ... the disco version, what do you think of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't like it one bit, I think it's terrible if you want my blunt opinion, I'm not trying to pick an unnecessary fight with the Lord Mayor of Sydney but I think this is just playing around with an important national expression of ours. I'm a great believer that the national anthem should be played and sung in circumstances that facilitates the maximum audience participation and the best way to do that is to have an unadorned, unaltered, straight forward, uncomplicated version of it so everybody feels free to join in singing. I mean most of us are pretty terrible singers and if you make it too hard we're embarrassed to join in. Now the whole idea is to get people to join in, I mean the best examples I had of that were the Sydney Olympic Games and the anthem was played in an orthodox way and everybody got up and sang time and time again and mostly at football games it's done well, although I've been to a few football matches recently where it hasn't been done very well at all. You have some complicated special version of singing it and that just puts people off.
JOURNALIST:
So it should be left alone?
PRIME MINISTER:
I just think it should be played in a proper, uncomplicated way. These fancy ways of playing it are I think disrespectful to what it is and also discourage audience participation. Thank you.
[ends]