HADLEY:
Mr John Howard good morning to you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Ray.
HADLEY:
You've no doubt seen the footage this morning of these video's and still pictures of Australian soldiers misbehaving in Iraq, the Defence Department's saying it's a very small minority, but it is of course alarming that we've got people in another place doing a very dangerous job and behaving the way these blokes are being depicted and behaving?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, I understand that. I think we should avoid overreaction and we should leave it to the military to deal with this and the military is quite capable of dealing with this without a whole lot of gratuitous advice from me or other people in the political arena. We have to remember that these men and women operate in a very stressful environment and a very dangerous environment, and through the ages soldiers have let off a bit of steam, haven't they, in private and the difference is that we now have videos and Internets, we didn't 50 or 100 years ago. All I'm saying is, I'm not condoning it, but I'm just saying we shouldn't overreact and we ought to leave it to the military to sort it out and to stop calling on the military to do this, that or the other. They have their established procedures for dealing with these matters and I'm quite certain they'll deal with it very competently. But I don't really think we should get ourselves into a lather and start calling for special inquiries and whatever.
HADLEY:
I guess you raise the spectre of the Internet, and I raised the spectre of that before you came on line, talking about kids spending a whole heap of time on things called ninemsn and myspace.com, things that you don't worry about at the moment because your children are grown up. And we've got the Sydney Anglican Archbishop, Peter Jensen, saying we need, not the government to get involved, but mums and dads to get involved in spending more time with their children. Are you concerned about the amount of time children spend in front of video machines and computers as opposed to the way you grew up and the way I grew up?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I certainly am. I don't envy modern parents because those things didn't exist when I was a child and they were of course beginning when you were a child, Ray, being a much younger fella, but they didn't exist and the challenges weren't as great. But I do think what the Anglican Archbishop had to say contained a lot of commonsense. There is a tendency whenever anything is amiss, anything goes wrong, people say well the government should do it. The Government can't and it's not the role of the Government to stand in the place of parents anymore than it's the role of the teacher to stand in the place of parents. And we do need to recognise that more time spent with your children and giving them the security of that additional time is just so important to their growing up. And we do need to make sure they exercise more. Now governments can't mandate a certain number of hours of exercise, for heaven sake, the only way that we can make sure that children get exercise is to encourage their parents to ensure that they get exercise. And in the end what children see, what children eat, what children do with their spare time is determined by their parents and by nobody else. And if we try and structure a society where that is altered, we are kidding ourselves.
HADLEY:
To another issue, your Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration, Andrew Robb, who I've spoken to quite a number of times has released this discussion paper on Australian citizenship and I've had the fortune to read it this morning. It seems to just make commonsense but what I did note is we seem to be out of step or behind other countries across the globe in relation to doing something about this and why has it taken so long for us to actually raise the issue?
PRIME MINISTER:
I guess one of the reasons is we took a lot of these things for granted and it's only in the last few years that people have realised that you can't take them for granted. We've been, overall, very successful in integrating people and this will consolidate that achievement. I think it is another example of how we've tended to take certain things for granted and I agree with you. When you read through the document it's all commonsense. Of course people should be encouraged/required to learn English for their own good and not for some kind of self satisfaction of the Prime Minister or the majority of people who were born in this country, it's in everybody's interests. It doesn't mean to say that you have to know English when you come here, what it means is that you have to acquire a working knowledge of English after you've arrived, well that's fair enough. And that would still allow the future Victor Chang's and Arvi Parvo's to come to Australia without knowing a word of English, but quickly acquiring the skill as those two outstanding Australians did and rose to the top of their respective pursuits. There's no intention by this document to deter people who can't speak English when they come here from coming here, it's just a requirement that they learn the language after they've come and I think most people will give that a head nod and I think having a knowledge of the country, its customs, its values, its history, not at a PhD level, nothing like that, but all of that is basic commonsense.
HADLEY:
What concerns me having read the article is there's no mention of where you come from, it's about coming here, not where you came from. But we've got the handwringers today saying this is a slight against Muslim religion...
PRIME MINISTER:
It's got nothing to do with the Muslim religion.
HADLEY:
Why is this chip on the shoulder from some sections of the people that you deal with on a regular basis from the Muslim faith, why the chip on the shoulder? Every time there's something spoken about, about improving the way we live and improving the way people who come here live, is it always aimed at people that it never mentions?
PRIME MINISTER:
Ray, I think one of the good things that I heard this morning was Dr Ali who is the, I guess, most generically recognised spokesmen for the Islamic community saying that Muslims should stop assuming the position of being victims, and he was also saying the idea of having sermons in mosques, preached in English, was a good thing. Not all spokesmen for the Muslim community react in the way you have described, some of them do and they're not doing their community any good because all they're doing is encouraging others to continue to believe that they do want to remain separate and apart.
And we have no argument with faithful Muslims who practice their religion as part of our way of life, that people should have the right of their own religion or no religion at all, and should be allowed, in an unmolested fashion, to practice it. But we require everybody to be part of the mainstream of the community. And all of these things that we've been talking about in the last couple of weeks have all been designed to recognise the simple principle, and that is when you come to this country your first loyalty is to Australia, you should become part of the mainstream of the country, but we all understand that you'll always retain a special place in your heart for your home culture.
Now the two can be happily blended and integrated, there's no problem, and we've had outstanding examples of that over the years. I mentioned the example of the Greek community on Friday, I could say the same of the people who came from the Baltic countries after World War II, the Italians, the way the Chinese have integrated into the Australian community. We want them to do that but we're not saying forget forever that you ever had any connection with another culture, nobody's asking you to do that and commonsense tells you that you can achieve both goals and those who resist that and who continue to push against the mainstream view on that are not doing their communities any service. And I very much welcome the fact that Dr Ali said what he did this morning. It sounded to me the voice of sensible commonsense leadership in the Islamic community.
HADLEY:
They're also talking about Imams being required to be certified under a new national board for this radical preaching, brings me to the next point, Ronan Gunaratna, and I note on Sky News they're now saying two terrorism experts, I think the other one maybe Clive Williams, believe that at this time clerics in both Sydney and Melbourne are preaching martyrdom and jihad to young followers, do you think that is most likely right, do you have information that it maybe right?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I never talk about any information I have but suffice it to say that we continue to worry that there is a section of the Islamic community, a very small section, that is not serving the interests of anybody with some of things that they've had to say and I don't think I'll say anymore than that.
HADLEY:
So that would be important for them to do it in English so that we can't fall back on the old one, oh it's been lost in the translation, we didn't actually say that, routine.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we have to be realistic enough to recognise that if people are going to incite others to do evil things they will find a way of doing it to try and escape attention. But the more open you make the links between all sections of the community and the mainstream of the community, the better able we are to ensure that as far as possible, acts of violence and anti-social behaviour don't occur.
HADLEY:
Just going back to where we started on citizenship, is it currently too easy to become an Australian citizen? Is that why...
PRIME MINISTER:
I think what we are trying to do here is to make people aware of the, not only the seriousness, but also the importance and privilege of becoming an Australian citizen and if you make something too easy to get, people tend to devalue it. I mean, we all know in our life's experiences, the things we work hardest for, are the things we prize most and you've got to strike a balance between, on the one hand making Australian citizenship something worth working for and a prized achievement, but on the other hand not creating a situation where it's seen as an obstacle course. Now this paper strikes a happy medium, we've perhaps made it a little too easy in the past, and we are now doing something about that and people will I am sure overwhelmingly support this, it's a commonsense approach, we value being Australian as the greatest privilege in the world, to be a citizen of this country.
HADLEY:
How far are we away from implementing the discussion paper, not in its current form, but after it's been discussed and aired?
PRIME MINISTER:
Quite soon, I would hope to see this in operation well before the next election.
HADLEY:
And you've got support in the upper house, I think, from Family First, Senator Fielding?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, I don't think any sensible person, when we finally resolve it is going to oppose this, I hope not, but that's their democratic right. But there will be some changes to the law needed, and I am very hopeful that we'll get the support.
HADLEY:
You've just seen the conservative parties in Queensland almost again decimated by Premier Beattie and we've got an election here in New South Wales coming up in March, and there's all this debate about whether Mr Smith or Pru Goward should have been there for Epping. I simply said this morning that if we've got two candidates and we can accommodate Pru Goward as a Liberal Party participant in Goulburn, a new seat, and Smith, who is a local resident up there would be the best chance of winning it, why are we having the argument. But some people are gravely concerned and some of them mentioned to Alan this morning and they've emailed me as well about branch stacking. One says to me, can you ask the Prime Minister what he thinks about the branch stacking that's going on to try and topple another sitting member in Steven Pringle who is out there at Hawkesbury, and can you ask him how he would feel if someone was trying to stack his branch with people as recently as 24 hour, I think he says two weeks before the election, for the pre-selection battle. Do you have a view on it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I do have a view. Epping happens to partly come within my electorate, both Mr Smith (inaudible) Goward were good candidates. I am not surprised Smith was chosen because he is a local and that was always an advantage, he is a very highly qualified person and he's a real addition to the Liberal Party in NSW and can I say this idea that he's been voted in by extremists is nonsense. He has socially conservative views on a lot of issues, so what, that's perfectly permissible, there's nothing extreme about being a social conservative, I have often been accused of that myself and I don't regard myself as extremist. So he is a good choice for Epping because he is a local, he is very well qualified, I think he would be a very good representative. Having said that, I hope Pru Goward gets a seat, I'd like to see both of them in the parliament.
HADLEY:
Well nice bit for her in Goulburn, not too far from Yass as opposed to Epping.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that, of course, that's true certainly, it's less geographically challenging let's put it that way and I think she would be a person who would bring extra oomph and talent to the parliamentary party. As for so-called branch stacking, no sitting member should ever regard himself or herself as immune from a pre-selection challenge, nobody.
HADLEY:
Yes but up there in Cherrybrook which is part of it, we had, and Alan discussed this morning, the Maronite Christians finding their way into the branch of the Liberal Party and there is a submission at the moment before your party, receiving submissions urging limits of the number of people who can join the New South Wales Liberal Party over a one or two month period which...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have limits, we have rules at the moment...
HADLEY:
Yeah, well they're been broken up at Epping.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well some people are arguing that. Can I tell you that, I mean, I wasn't intimately involved in the checking, it's not really my responsibility, but I have been told that the party organisation carefully checked all of these things and was satisfied that everything was in order and I think we have to keep our heads about this. I mean branch stacking is often in the eye of the beholder or in the eye of the challenged, if I can put it that way. What is, I mean, one man's branch stacking is another man's branch development and...
HADLEY:
It depends if you are the sitting member or the one (inaudible) development, I suspect.
PRIME MINISTER:
Exactly, now don't we want better candidates, don't we want competition, do we want a situation where you always have the same people all the time?
HADLEY:
Oh no, I think at the end of the day this is a sensible, a sensible way to deal with it, you've got someone who lives in the area now gaining pre-selection and you've got someone very capable who isn't too far removed from Goulburn.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, well I mean that'd be a matter...
HADLEY:
(inaudible) through there.
PRIME MINISTER:
That will be a matter for the Liberal Party members in Goulburn and I am not going to tell them, I wouldn't dare tell them...
HADLEY:
I think Mr Debnam wants to tell them.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, well, look I support all of Peter Debnam's efforts to strengthen the New South Wales Liberal Party team. It's in Opposition, it's been in Opposition for a long time, and with no disrespect to any of them who are there now, it could do with some new highly-talented people.
HADLEY:
Oh, I think there is an acceptance from the state of New South Wales that we need some new blood in Opposition.
PRIME MINISTER:
Whatever your political views are, and you know what mine are, and I am not a reliable witness on the subject, but I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the average undecided New South Wales voter after, what, 11, close to 12 years of Labor Government with failing public transport and lack of proper administration of public hospitals in this state, and all their multitude of worries, people want a decent, strong alternative to at least consider. Now whether they end up voting for it is a matter for them, I hope they do, and I think everything that Peter is doing at the moment is designed to create a situation, come next March, where the people of New South Wales have a decent choice, and more strength to his arm. It's not an easy job being an Opposition leader and he's going about it in a very systematic way and some people may live to see the day when they realise they have underestimated him.
HADLEY:
Are you going to stay up for the football on Saturday night?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, you bet.
HADLEY:
I was just thinking you know, we've got the Storm and the Dragons Saturday night and you were there in 1999.
PRIME MINISTER:
I was indeed, I met...
HADLEY:
When a penalty try was awarded in the most dramatic circumstances.
PRIME MINISTER:
I have never visited a more devastated dressing room in my whole political career, it's even more devastated than a Queensland dressing room after they've lost to New South Wales.
HADLEY:
Anyway so you'll be there Saturday night to cheer on your team and seek revenge against the minor premiers?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they played very well on Friday night and I thought Newcastle never really recovered from that try before the interval did they?
HADLEY:
Just on one other matter, you've started these weekly radio addresses.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah.
HADLEY:
See one of things I talk to you about all the time is people that come from other parts of the world are surprised that we can have access to our Prime Minister as any radio programme can or our Premier or our Opposition Leader and that's why the weekly radio addresses are done in other parts of the world. Why have you done that, because you are already very accessible to most people of the media anyway?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh I just think it's a good idea, at the end of each week to, in effect, deal in a crisp, coordinated way with one of the dominant issues that's come up during the week. It won't in any way limit my appearances or my availability for interviews like this. I want to make that very plain.
HADLEY:
Okay, alright, and I appreciate that time again this morning Prime Minister, thanks very much for talking to us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]