PRIME MINISTER:
Well the Minister and I have sort of outlined what today is all about, it is a terrific day for the Australian Defence Force and particularly for the Australian Army and where better to launch the Defence Update than here at Victoria Barracks, but if you have any questions, please ask them.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister could you put a cost on it over time?
PRIME MINISTER:
We're still refining that with the ladies and gentlemen of the Department of Finance but I've heard figures of around $1.5 billion.
JOURNALIST:
Over how many years?
SENATOR HILL:
Well that's ten years with the army.
PRIME MINISTER:
Ten year period, yes, with the army. It's in that order, I don't want to be held to it but that's the order of it.
JOURNALIST:
That's not including the C-17's.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes.
JOURNALIST:
Speaking of joining the armed forces, what needs to be done to encourage young Australians whose careers (inaudible) to come into the armed forces?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think there are a variety of things, we need to communicate even better than we have to date the fact that when you join the Australian Army or the Air Force or the Navy you don't just join a fighting unit but you also join a unit that is about the sort of the complete Australian package, we produce brave soldiers, we also produce compassionate humanitarian peacekeepers, we produce people who do wonderful medical work, I have personally experienced the pride and enthusiasm of the men and women of the medical units of the ADF, both in Aceh and very recently in Kashmir and you wouldn't meet a finer, more dedicated Australian anywhere and there's an aspirational part of joining the Defence Forces as well as the attraction that inevitably must have for people who like military life. I mean we don't want to play that down as a distinct character about military life and there will always be a group in our community who like it, and they should be encouraged and supported. I think we also have to make sure that our pay and conditions are competitive. It is harder now with wives and husbands wanting careers as well, many of them are both in the services but the majority are not and we have to worry about that and the mobility of people and moving families around has always been a challenge and we have to pay regard to all those things but I think as well as obviously keeping it competitive, we have to make better known in the community that it's a total career, not just a military career, although that is part of it.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister what are the amendments to the Defence Act for national security that were mentioned in the media release, but you didn't allude to in the speech?
SENATOR HILL:
Well the bill is now public, it was released in the last week of the parliament and it will be looked at by a parliamentary committee during the break and debated when we go back. It improves the flexibility of calling out the forces, the current rules are very rigid and in the timeframes within which we might have to act, would be difficult to implement. It looks at new areas such as a threat from the sea, or a threat from the air so, which are not covered in the existing legislation. It provides an expanded role for reserves. So really, they are changes to make the system more flexible and adaptable to the circumstance, particularly the one we may not have predicted and the detail as I said will be debated in February.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, you indicated that you were going to spend a lot more on defence, is it because (inaudible)?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I am not going to make a prediction about that, I think we have to spend more on defence. Clearly when you have a very strong economy, it means you can spend more without the share of GDP necessarily changing, I don't want to make a particular commitment in relation to that, I certainly don't rule it out. Our commitment, my commitment is that we will spend the additional resources that are necessary to give the ADF the resources it needs for the tasks it has, remembering at all times that our prime responsibility in a personal sense is to give our men and women the best possible chance if they are involved in combat. It is just not acceptable for a country as wealthy as Australia to send men and women into the field without them having the best possible equipment and we certainly intend to ensure that happens.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister given that you have that aspiration, what's now coming on down the track from the military, do you think that will require you to continue the 3 per cent real increase in defence spending beyond 2010?
PRIME MINISTER:
Without having debated that in detail with my colleagues, if you want my personal view, yes.
JOURNALIST:
What's the future of tax cuts, if you are looking at this kind of increase?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I don't I, in this beautiful environment, we want to get into such things as tax cuts in the present time. Let's you know remember the, if I could almost call it a doctrine or a mantra that the Treasurer and I have both enunciated, we keep the Budget in surplus, we provide for the necessary expenditure on things like defence, and health, and education, and if there is any left over, you return that to the Australian public. Now what I am saying today is what I've said before and that is that Defence will claim an appropriate share of the capacity. Now clearly like any other department it's got to justify its expenditure and we won't be agreeing to every single request, but clearly we need to make a greater investment, we've done that with what's been announced today. We'll spend the money wisely and sensibly but we hope that it's possible to accommodate these things and if there is anything left over, well that should be returned to the people who own the money, and that's the Australian people. But, I am not getting into, I mean please don't write out about that some new combination or permutation of the ongoing debate about taxation in this country.
JOURNALIST:
In recent years you've talked about Australia's niche capabilities with Special Forces and others able to provide a role overseas. Does this mean, is this the sort of generational step forward from that to a more self-contained strategy...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I am always very wary of grand pronouncements of doctrines as I think they can sort of create a false and wasteful argument, but what this statement recognises is what the White Paper recognised and that is yes, we have so-called niche capabilities, but we have in contemporary circumstances, we have very particular responsibilities in the Pacific, we clearly have regional responsibilities with our partners and we also have responsibilities in coalition beyond our own region and Afghanistan and Iraq are two prime examples of that. So you really have to accommodate all of those things. Now whether you call that niche-plus or niche-enhanced or something else, it's what I've described it to be and I am not real keen on getting caught with a particular definition. I am very wary of these labels.
JOURNALIST:
Could I ask Minister Hill and perhaps the Prime Minister whether this announcement today is a valedictory achievement by you?
PRIME MINISTER:
You'll see a lot of us both.
JOURNALIST:
With this trouble in Sydney over the past few days are you concerned it's taking on religious as well as racial overtones in the attack on churches?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well attacks on churches, attacks on any places of worship are to be utterly and unconditionally condemned particularly at this time of the year when people celebrate the birth of Christ, the idea of the torching of churches is particularly repugnant. I think it is very important in the wake of what's happened over the past few days that we deal with the immediate challenge and that is to calm everything down. I support the changes to the law that are proposed by the NSW Government. I think the community believes that the police should have the capacity, to use colloquial language, to move people on who are a potential nuisance. I myself couldn't understand why some changes years ago were made to the Summary Offences Act in this State but also around the country, I think it robbed the police of powers that are needed to maintain order and to protect people from intimidatory behaviour. We ought to calm everybody down, deal with the law-breakers, support the police, they have got a very difficult job. As to some of the longer term reasons and explanations, some of it is just bad, incredibly bad behaviour fuelled by too much drink, we know what a potent combination that can be in any society in any set of circumstances but if there are some longer term lessons to be learnt, then the time to reflect on those is not right now, I think everybody wants to calm everything down, try and find the real trouble-makers and to the extent that role-models in the community can play a role and then to see Jason Stevens and El Masri walking along the beach, I think it's great, but they are role-models, the problem is not them, the problem is people who don't behave as well as they do and I think that what we have to try and do is calm everybody down, change the law where necessary, support the police and then reflect in the weeks ahead as to what some of the fundamental reasons are and maybe there were warning signs around that have been ignored and shouldn't have been ignored, but let's not do that in the heat of current events and have a Christmas and celebrate the fact that this is still the greatest country in the world in which to live and let nobody tell us otherwise and let's not wallow in self-pity and self-flagellation and self criticism.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister there has been a lot of talk of a cultural divide between Middle-Eastern youths and other members of society which is to help fan this problem which a lot of members of the community have tended to put it back on successive governments saying governments have...
PRIME MINISTER:
All the people have what?
JOURNALIST:
Putting back on the governments that, not your government, but successive federal governments over a long period of time, the failure to really address...
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I have a very simple view that this country should welcome people from all around the world, and benefit from that, providing when they come to this country they become Australians, that's my simple philosophy full stop.
JOURNALIST:
What would you say to people who've received a text message urging them to civil disobedience this Sunday?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well don't take any notice of them, be sensible, enjoy the sun, it's Christmas and have a good time and for heaven's sake remember you don't achieve any advances in this world through the use of violence, thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Can I ask Minister Hill one question, there has been some talk that one of the capability gaps that the army has is ground-based air defences, is that addressed in this programme that's an upgrading or updating of the current, quite limited ground-based air defences for the army?
SENATOR HILL:
Well we are upgrading the capability at the moment, but it is below altitude capability and there are number of ways, not sure anyone else is interested in the answer...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes they are.
SENATOR HILL:
There are a number of ways in which you address a threat from the air, one is a ground-based system which we have but ours is not a long-range system and others through the use of aircraft which is the capability which we particularly relied upon in the past, Australia has and which we are further developing. So you can always find another capability to purchase if you want to, but you mix together a range of different responses to achieve your goal and we use the short range ground-based system together with the airborne system to achieve that objective.
[ends]