GRIMSHAW:
Good morning thanks for being with us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Morning Tracy.
GRIMSHAW:
I want to talk to you about the race riots in a moment. But first can I ask you this, did Peter Costello mislead the Parliament when he denied the existence of the Treasury advice on the IR changes?
PRIME MINISTER:
No he didn't because what he denied was the existence of specially commissioned research or analysis, and there wasn't. And Mr Beazley who's accusing him of misleading Parliament - as a former Minister - knows the difference between a routine minute from your department and some specially commissioned research. I've read through the documentation that Peter was given and the interesting thing is when you read it all, it very strongly supports the economic arguments for workplace relations reform that the Government has put forward. I mean, for example, something that has not been mentioned is a statement in the Treasury minute that our argument that getting rid of the unfair dismissal laws will provide an incentive for employers to take on more staff is supported - now that hasn't had any coverage at all. So when you look at the totality of those documents they support the case, but Peter was asked a question about specially commissioned research and in denying it he was relying not on his own statement but on a statement that the Treasury itself had put out. Now I understand oppositions have got to pursue ministers and call for them to resign and everything, but I mean it gets a bit weak when you're calling for the resignation of the most successful Treasurer this country's had - I mean it's ridiculous.
GRIMSHAW:
But in denying it he also knew of the existence of Treasury advice that suggested there would be short-term disadvantages?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, well look he was asked a question and he answered the question based on an independent separate statement that had been made by the Treasury. Now Mr Beazley is a former minister, he knows the difference, as I do, between specially commissioned research and a minute. I mean ministers get hundreds of minutes, we get them all the time. I get minutes everyday from my Department and they are of a different kind from...if you ask your department to do a whole lot of special research, it's normally done in collaboration with other departments and so forth. Peter has been falsely accused and I support him to the full.
GRIMSHAW:
You and he have consistently told us that the changes are going to be good for the economy and good for workers, and now we learn that Treasury was saying that wages for low income earners will be adversely impacted...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, it expressed a view that because of the criteria - particularly the criteria relating to employment - wages could rise at a slower rate than under the existing system. Now that is a view, whether that view is right or wrong will be determined when the new system comes into operation. But in the end, Tracy, what determines whether wages go up or stay the same, or go down is the strength of the economy. If the economy is strong wages will go up, as they have over the last nine years. If the economy is weak, wages will stagnate and unemployment will rise, and the greatest virtue of this change is that it will add to the strength of the Australian economy and that's the basis of my belief that wages will rise and unemployment will go lower. Now we'll wait and see, but that is my belief and overwhelmingly the Treasury material supports that.
GRIMSHAW:
Before we move onto the race debate, you finished the year up slightly in the polls, does that suggest to you that the heat's gone out of the IR campaign? I mean you had conceded that the IR campaign had hurt you in the polls.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, I conceded that as the case; it took some bark off us. I believe now people will wait and see what happens. I do not believe the predictions of doom and destruction and pestilence that the Labor Party and the unions have suggested - I don't think that's going to be borne out. But in the end opinion polling at this time of the year, this time of the electoral cycle means nothing except for the trend that it indicates and no government worth its salt is going to alter its stance according to weekly or fortnightly opinion polls. We have a course, we set ourselves on it, we believe that our policies are good for Australia and in the end we have to face the judgement of the people.
GRIMSHAW:
I referred to the, in the introduction, to this poll conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald that suggests that 75 per cent of Australians disagree with you when you say that there's no underlying racism in this country.
PRIME MINISTER:
I thought it was a very interesting poll and I don't think it quite means what it appears on the surface. At the same time as that poll there was a poll that said 81 per cent of people supported multiculturalism and a majority of people - or more people than not - thought that our present migrant intake was about right. Now if there is underlying racism in Australia, if there is, I find it had to believe that 81 per cent of the population would support multiculturalism - the two things don't sit together. Multiculturalism means a lot of things, different things to different people, but in its lowest common denominator it means that people believe in diversity and are therefore tolerant of racial and ethnic difference. So if 81 per cent of the population is tolerant and supportive of ethnic and racial difference, then you can't simultaneously have underlying racism. I think what has happened, Tracy, is that all these riots have been given the tag line of racially motivated - I mean every news report I see on your channel, any channel says, you know, the race based riots...
GRIMSHAW:
Do you disagree, do you not think they are?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, I fundamentally do not believe Australians are racist, I don't. Hang on, some are, some are, obviously these - I've got to be careful what I say because people are before the courts - there are some people in the Australian community who are racist, but I do not believe the average Australian is a racist, I do not believe that the majority of Australians are racist. I mean why would we have accepted people so well? Why do we practice every day our tolerance and our respect for people?
GRIMSHAW:
Okay. But in terms of the motivation for these riots, there has been a demonstrated anti-Anglo element or argument mounted. There has been equally a demonstrated, it would appear and the police have said they have detected a white supremacist involvement, a driving force behind these riots. You would have to suggest that there is a race motivation that keeps driving these riots?
PRIME MINISTER:
You're talking about these riots..
GRIMSHAW:
Yes.
PRIME MINISTER:
But I mean the statement I made was about the general attitude of Australians. Now clearly there are some tensions which can be defined by race, clearly there are some tensions of that type in these particular clashes, but it is very important as we go through the difficulty of reacting to these events that we don't overreact. It's very important we don't become too self-critical. It's very important we don't lose any of the confidence that we've had as an outward looking nation because we are the most successful role model around the world of absorbing people from different parts of the world.
GRIMSHAW:
Britain, Canada and Indonesia have all warned their citizens to stay away from Sydney's southern beaches, that's a sad state of affairs.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, that was inevitable though, but that will be ridden out. The rest of the world forms a judgement on a country over a period of time. Australians are not going to stop visiting Britain because of the July attack on the London underground. Australians are not going to stop visiting New York or Washington because of the attacks of the 11th of September. These things come and go and it's very important that we don't lapse into too much self-criticism and self-flagellation. I think the thing has to be dealt with strongly from a law and order point of view. I support the police 100 per cent in what they're doing, but we shouldn't start being too critical of ourselves. We should find out in time the real causes of these clashes and if things weren't done to head off difficulties when they should have been done, then those responsible should be criticised.
GRIMSHAW:
Are you talking about behaviour of thugs on the beach at Cronulla in the lead up to....
PRIME MINISTER:
Well just generally. Look, I don't... I mean violence is never acceptable, never, and that is the absolute, you know, unalterable attitude that we must always bring to these things. And there was violence, there was violence last Sunday week, it was sickening and disgusting, and there was violence on earlier occasions - it wasn't captured on camera but I'm sure it was pretty disgusting as well.
GRIMSHAW:
Prime Minister just a last issue. We had Family First Senator Steve Fielding on the programme this morning talking about he thinks that there should be a 10 cent a litre cut in petrol excise rather than necessarily tax cuts. Where do you stand with his idea?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that would cost about $3 billion. It's around about $300 million to cut a cent off the excise. I'm not sure that that's a sensible way of using such a large part of the surplus because what happens if the price of petrol were to go down, do you increase the excise? Nobody's going to support that. So I believe that if you have the capacity to help lower income people through the tax system, it's better to do it through general tax relief rather than through petrol excise. We have already cut the excise one and half cents a litre a few years ago and we abolished the automatic indexation of petrol excise. So that means that we're paying about $5 to $6 billion a year less in petrol excise than would have been the case if we hadn't done those things. So I, for those reasons, don't believe that Senator Fielding's proposal is one that the Government will pick up.
GRIMSHAW:
Prime Minister we'll leave it there. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]