PRIME MINISTER:
Well first of all I would like to congratulate Mr Beattie on his victory in the Queensland election. It's the fourth time he's won and he got a very strong mandate from the people of Queensland.
I think it's important in relation to the Liberal and National Parties that they retain the State Coalition and that they begin work immediately on developing an alternative policy blueprint for Queensland. You cannot win an election from Opposition without a clearly articulated alternative policy. You must tell your story over a number of years as to why you think you deserve to be the government of either a country, or in the case of Queensland, a state.
This election was fought overwhelmingly on state issues. Mr Beattie himself said that the two important issues, indeed the dominant issues were health and water and I am sure that that was the case. And this attempt by Mr Beazley to suggest that there were some federal issues involved is wishful thinking on his part.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, is that a criticism of the Queensland Coalition, that they didn't have a clear blueprint for how to govern Queensland?
PRIME MINISTER:
I thought Lawrence Springborg fought a very courageous campaign and I have a great deal of regard for him. And it's a matter of course for the two parliamentary parties to decide who leads them, but I would hope that both the Coalition Leaders remain in place and I wish them well. But when you have lost four elections in a row, you have to be realistic in your soul searching and I do think one of the problems with state oppositions is they don't invest enough time and energy into working out an alternative policy blueprint over a longer period of time. You can't just produce something in the last three or four weeks of a campaign. You've got to develop over a longer period of time an alternative policy, an alternative story as to how you want the state governed, and I don't think enough has been done in that regard.
JOURNALIST:
And was that specific to health and water? Did they not do enough up front?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well obviously the people of Queensland decided they weren't an acceptable alternative. That's self evident, but I'm making the suggestion that now that they're back in opposition they should start work on the alternative policy blueprint rather earlier than turned out to be the case on this occasion.
JOURNALIST:
Was their tilt at government affected by Dr Flegg's late change of leadership?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh look, it's always very, very difficult to expect a last minute leadership change to work, unless you're changing to somebody with an exceptionally high profile and great communication skills as was clearly the case with Bob Hawke in 1983.
Its asking too much of somebody to be pitched into a leadership role like that right on the eve of an election. I'm not offering criticism of anybody and I would hope, although it's a matter for the Parliamentary Liberal Party, I would hope that they would persevere with Dr Flegg. There aren't other people in the Parliamentary Party who have lashings of additional experience so they have to just calmly work out where they go from now.
But it's always difficult to change leaders on the eve of a contest unless you've got somebody waiting in the wings who's extra remarkable and extra special and that doesn't happen very often.
JOURNALIST:
Could there have been any merit in the merger suggestions?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think a coalition was still their best way. The great problem with the merger was that you could have had a breakaway country party and that could have further complicated the situation. So the merger failure was not the reason for the defeat, that's self evident. There was a coalition, there were no three cornered contests, so the mechanical side of the presentation was not at fault. It was really to be found in other areas.
JOURNALIST:
Do you refute any claims that the IR reforms played a part in the campaign?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah I do. The best evidence of that is the gagging of Mr Beazley at the Labor Party's policy launch in Brisbane. If IR was such a big part of the campaign, why didn't they ask him to say something about it at the policy launch? He was gagged, almost unprecedented. I have never known a situation where a federal leader would go to a state launch, a federal leader of a major party goes to a state launch and he's gagged. So I don't think they were very confident about running Mr Beazley or any of his policies.
JOURNALIST:
Is Mr Beattie a leader after your own heart? Has he learnt anything from you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh look, I am not a commentator. Mr Beattie has won four elections, he's the elected Premier of Queensland and as I am required to do by the democratic process, I will work with him in a constructive fashion for the benefit of Australians who live in Queensland. And I will always take the interests of Australians, wherever they live, very much to heart and they're my principle concern and principle responsibility. But I'm naturally, as a Liberal, keen to see my party do better at a state level all around the country.
JOURNALIST:
Interest rates in New South Wales, has that had an effect on the number of repossessions?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh you cannot construe that for a moment from those figures. I mean interest rates now are more than half below what they were when Mr Keating was Prime Minister; I mean they reached 17 per cent. Through the Labor years they were double what they are now, so I don't think you can construe that at all.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, on another issue, the former US President (sic) Al Gore is in Australia to promote his documentary about climate change (inaudible), and in that whole documentary Australia's mentioned just the one time and that's because we, along with America are the only countries that haven't signed the Kyoto Protocol. And its quite, its not a flattering way that Australians are portrayed in the film. What's your message...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't take policy advice from films.
JOURNALIST:
It's a documentary and its based on fact.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well our policies are based on fact too and the fact is that if we signed the Kyoto Protocol we would destroy a lot of Australian industry and we would send Australian jobs to countries like China and Indonesia and India. And I have no intention, as Prime Minister of this country, I have no intention of exporting the jobs of Australian workers to other countries.
JOURNALIST:
But Mr Howard, do you agree that global warming is a major issue?
PRIME MINISTER:
I do.
JOURNALIST:
And if we don't do something now that our future is at stake?
PRIME MINISTER:
I agree that global warming is occurring. I do not believe though the answer is for Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol. The answer is for us to invest a lot more resources and a lot more effort into technology, to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the use of fossil fuels, investigating nuclear energy, which is a very clean fuel source. I believe in all of those things, I just don't believe in the Kyoto route, because the Kyoto route would hurt Australia. And my first responsibility is to protect Australia, not to hurt Australia.
JOURNALIST:
But global warming's hurting the entire planet. I mean there's going to be no jobs, no industry, no economy.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, that is an alarmist view which doesn't help rational debate.
JOURNALIST:
Is it your objective though to lower gas emissions in the long term?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, and the way you do that is to find, amongst other things, a technology that not only slows them, in fact can remove them in certain cases.
JOURNALIST:
Do you have plans to see this film at some point?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh I might. But I don't really take my guidance from documentaries, I really don't. I rather tend to rely on more objective scientific data than what's contains in a documentary.
JOURNALIST:
Will you be meeting with Al Gore?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no I wont be.
JOURNALIST:
On the issue of the Bali Nine, when will you be (inaudible) plea for clemency?
PRIME MINISTER:
The time for me to plead for clemency is after all of the legal avenues of appeal and review have been exhausted. If I were to plead for clemency before then, it could well hamper the appeal process.
And I say to those people who are calling on me to pick up the phone now that they're just wrong, and they don't understand the process and they're trying to score a political point rather than make an intelligent effort to help the clemency process.
You've got to let the Indonesian judicial system work its way through to its end and when there is no alternative other than the Presidential pardon, then that is the time for me to ring the Indonesian President and ask him to exercise clemency.
JOURNALIST:
Five years on from September 11, what has Australia learnt about terrorism?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think Australia has learnt that it will be a long struggle. Australia has learnt that we are dealing with a movement which is based on a perverted, fanatical interpretation of a noble religion and that we have to accept we have a new and different threat and we need new and different responses.
Thank you.
[ends]