PRIME MINISTER:
Well ladies and gentlemen I've called this news conference to announce that in addition to the offer of emergency assistance that Australia has already made to the Federal Emergency Management Authority in the United States, the Government proposes to donate $10 million to the American Red Cross appeal. This money will go directly to the American Red Cross and will be used for emergency relief by the American Red Cross for the tens of thousands, many of them quite poor people who have been left destitute by this terrible natural disaster.
Given the extraordinary generosity of the United States when other countries are in need and given the very close relations between Australia and the United States, and given also the scale of this disaster, we believe it is a very valuable gesture and a marker of our concern for the scale of the human misery that has come from this disaster.
I indicated this morning that we had offered to send an emergency team of up to 20 people to the United States. We've made that offer to the relevant authority and we're waiting to hear back as to when that offer might be taken up. I can only repeat that the thoughts of many Australians are with their friends in the United States. I've received a briefing in relation to consular cases involving Australians and every effort is being made by the Australian Embassy and Consular staff in Washington. They've sent people to the South to the States affected to make contact as they can with Australians.
As of now I've not heard of any Australian casualties or any Australians are missing. Obviously they're in some discomfort and inconvenience, as indeed are thousands of Americans and in the difficult situation of evacuating people from New Orleans and the scale of the disaster being greater than originally thought, it could be a little time before all of them are fully cared for. But we're confident that will happen.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, have you spoken to George Bush?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I haven't. I've sent him a personal note. I frankly don't want to bother him. He knows from the note and from our friendship that we would be concerned. He's got plenty on his plate and frankly I'll probably talk to him at a later time, but right now he would want to have as much time as possible to focus on the job at hand. It's a huge task; this is a much greater natural disaster than what was first thought. We don't know what the final loss of life will be.
It certainly will have a significant impact on the price of oil in the short term, we must be prepared for that, the price of oil is already high. It is quite conceivable that it could go higher as a result of this, perhaps not for a long period but the domestic oil supply in the United States, and gas, has been interrupted because of the severity of the weather in the affected area and therefore it will compound the difficulty that people are having with the price of fuel at the present time.
JOURNALIST: The $10m, what sort of, you know, what do you think that will be used for?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it will be used for emergency relief. The Red Cross operates to provide emergency relief, they provide blankets, they provide food parcels, all the sorts of things that are provided to people all around the world when they're suddenly rendered destitute and out of their homes. And as you can see from the television coverage the overwhelming majority of the people worst affected do appear to be poor, or relatively poor, and the Red Cross is the best body for the money to be sent to - it has a fine international reputation and I'm sure it will be properly and well spent.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard there's reports of shoot to kill when it comes to the looters. Does that disturb you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think the whole thing disturbs me. It's just an indication of when you have a really huge natural disaster that there can be a breakdown in law and order, a breakdown in civil behaviour. That behaviour is a mixture of people who are disposed to do that if they get the opportunity but also people who do it out of desperation because their homes have been swept away and they don't have any food, they don't have clothing and they behave in a desperate fashion. It just underlines the tragedy and the scale of the challenge that President Bush and all the state municipal authorities face in America.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, the State Liberal Leader Rene Hidding is uncertain on whether he'll support your industrial relations reforms, specifically moving employees from State Awards to a Federal Award. Will you speak to him about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, I'll only speak to him if he wants to discuss the matter. I haven't got the impression that he's particularly concerned about our policy.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, will the Government take any steps to provide some kind of means for the oil price to stay at the cost it is now?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we can't unless we abandon world parity pricing, which would be a foolish thing to do. That's not going to solve the problem. It's a commodity that has to be allowed to find its market level. If we try and control it we'll pretty quickly run out of it. If you try and control the price of a commodity like oil you run out of it.
JOURNALIST:
No tax cuts though?
PRIME MINISTER:
I beg your pardon?
JOURNALIST:
No cuts on the excise?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we are not reaping additional revenue as a result of the increase in the price. The money the Federal Government gets is the excise and the excise is a volumetric tax and as the price of crude oil rises, the price of petrol rises, the revenue you take from excise does not rise. It's fixed - it's 38 cents a litre. It doesn't matter what the price at the pump is, we still get 38 cents a litre. The GST goes up, but that all goes to the States and it's fair to say that the extra money people have to spend to buy petrol is money they don't spend on other items that probably attract the GST. So it's unlikely that there is a huge overall increase in the GST take. You've got to allow for the fact that if somebody's got say $500 a week to spend on petrol and eating out, or whatever, or buying something new, they have to spend more on petrol, they spend less on eating out and buying something new.
JOURNALIST:
There are some taxi drivers and the like that don't like being forced out of business much.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, I know, I realise that but we don't control the price of petrol. We can't control it, it's influenced by world circumstances, you see that every night on your television set. We have already abolished the automatic indexation of fuel excise and we cut the excise four years ago by one and a half per cent and in those circumstances it's just counter-productive to imagine that you could affect it at the margin. To take one cent off would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and it's just not the way to handle it.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard a new poll shows the Tasmanian Labor Government would win a State Election while support for the Liberals has gone backwards. What chance do you give the Hidding Liberals of winning the State poll?
PRIME MINISTER:
It's going to be quite a challenge but I see signs that Rene Hidding is assembling a good team of candidates and one shouldn't get too carried away with opinion polls. I've seen some bad opinion polls in the lead up to elections I've been involved in but I've managed to win those elections. But it's going to be quite a challenge, but in that challenge Rene and his team will have my full support.
Thank you.
[ends]