PRIME MINISTER:
Have you got any questions?
JOURNALIST:
Margaret Whitlam has made some pretty unfavourable comments about your wife, describing her in one sense, as useless. What do you say to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
In the time that I've been Prime Minister, Janette and I have always given full respect to Gough and Margaret Whitlam as a former Prime Minister and his wife and I don't have any further comment to make.
JOURNALIST:
Must be pretty hurtful though?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't have anything to add to what I've said.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister the intelligence report from the US has now been declassified, it's been released, have you had a chance to see it?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I haven't. I will have a very careful look at it. I think it's very good that these reports are being extensively declassified because I'm always a little suspicious when there's a newspaper report of one aspect of an intelligence assessment because quite often when you read the entire document you get a slightly different perspective. I will be able to read the entire document. I will look forward to doing that but at the moment I have not been able to do so. But I very much welcome President Bush's decision to declassify large parts of it.
JOURNALIST:
Can I quote from the intelligence report to you, it says, Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives, what do you say to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I will have a read of the report now that it's available.
JOURNALIST:
Will you continue to hold hands with your wife in public?
PRIME MINISTER:
That was one of the observations that was alluded to in the...look, of course, yes.
JOURNALIST:
It's not weird as has been described by Mrs Whitlam?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I don't want to comment on the comments made by the other lady but obviously, yes.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard there's a shortage of GPs in Cardinia, does the Government have a bit of a plan to...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we do. We have in fact made up the shortfall of medical places in Victoria. We made a number of announcements and those announcements will deal with the problem in the longer term and the fact that the shortfall's been met has been acknowledged even by the Victorian Government.
JOURNALIST:
What about specialists, perhaps dieticians or mental health services?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that of course is a combination both of additional medical places and also training places, and the State Government and the professional bodies have a role in that.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister your visit here to McMillan is that a sign of solidarity with Russell Broadbent, of course, he crossed the floor on that immigration bill?
PRIME MINISTER:
I have enormous respect for Russell, he's a great local member and he has my total support.
JOURNALIST:
Will you visit the Bald Hills area while you're down here?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm here as part of a consistent pattern over the years of visiting electorates when Parliament's not sitting. But Russell is a great local member and he has my total support.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister now that 16 US intelligence agencies suggest that jihad has become a cause celebre in Iraq, are you able to make comment that the Iraq war has contributed to global terrorism?
PRIME MINISTER:
I've made some comments about that already. The only additional comment I make today is that now that the report is available I look forward to reading it.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, Mr McGauchie is on his way back to Australia, does he still have your full confidence?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, we support the Board, of course we do. We are not being critical of the Board and he's coming back to Australia, that's nice.
JOURNALIST:
Will you be meeting with him when he does?
PRIME MINISTER:
Not particularly, I don't have anything in particular to talk about. The Government normally communicates with the Board of Telstra through the shareholder Minister, Senator Minchin, and there were discussions and I spoke about them this morning, and we will go ahead and vote in favour of Mr Cousins at the Annual General Meeting because he's got a lot of ability and I think the more people see him talk and hear his explanations they will understand why he will make an excellent, very independent, member of the Board.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard it's great that the Pakenham funds have been allocated to the bypass, but are you concerned reports up to a million litres of drinking water are being wasted a day just to surface the water, surface the road?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven't specifically seen those reports but clearly when you build roads you need to use water and it just highlights the fact that we need, as a country, to do more to preserve our water. But you can't stop building roads in order to preserve water, you have to find more intelligent ways of capturing stormwater and not only capturing stormwater, but also recycling water.
JOURNALIST:
What are the powers of your new office of water?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they don't have any powers, it's a unit in my Department, it will bring together in a coordinated way experts on water policy. And it doesn't have any new powers, the powers are exercised by me and by my Parliamentary Secretary Mr Turnbull. But it's a group of people who've got expertise in this area because we have to do more at a national level to foster collaboration between governments to tackle water problems.
JOURNALIST:
Does that then go far enough?
PRIME MINISTER:
Absolutely.
JOURNALIST:
The State Government, the Victorian Government, is against using treated sewerage or treated waste, turning it into recycled water to make it drinkable, it's been used in Singapore, it's been a great success there. Would the Federal Government push for that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, hang on, I will collaborate and work with state governments but we have to as a country look afresh at all of the options. I mean I cannot believe that you can't at least use recycled water for a whole lot of purposes other than drinking, and there are plenty countries in the world that have used recycled water for drinking. But as a very minimum we have to have a more open mind. And it's no good, you know, state governments declaring this that or the other, I mean we have to as a country look at all of the options because it is a serious issue. We can't have Premiers jumping up and down and saying it's an issue and then whenever an option is considered, they say oh no you can't look at that. I mean that is being unrealistic and it's not providing the sort of leadership that the public wants.
JOURNALIST:
So you urge them to consider that?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I'm urging everybody to have an open mind about all of the options, I'm not specifically urging that. I'm urging people to have an open mind about all of the options.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, have you completely shut off the idea of the Iraq war making the global terrorism threat worse?
PRIME MINISTER:
I have already answered that question.
JOURNALIST:
There's a plane in quarantine in Sydney with a suspected case of bird flu, are we doing enough to tackle that threat?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I haven't been briefed on that so I'm not going to answer it. Thank you, see you later.
[ends]