Subjects: Prime Minister’s plans for the future; private and public education; East Timor, Sex Discrimination Act; foreign aid; Papua New Guinea; veterans affairs
E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………...
CORDEAUX:
It’s with a great deal of pleasure that I welcome the Prime Minister of Australia. Good morning Sir.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Jeremy good to be with you again.
CORDEAUX:
You’re well?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am very well.
CORDEAUX:
When I heard that story that you know you were asked about whether or not you were going to retire I thought it strange that you answered it. Has it been on your mind?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I just always like to be open about these things. I will lead the Government to the next election if that’s what my colleagues want me to do. And that’s certainly the signal I’m getting and I’m very keen to go on serving. I simply made the fairly honest observation that some time up to the next election I would start thinking about my future. I didn’t say that I’d definitely retire or that I’d retire by any particular time. I simply felt in the interests of candour the need to signal to the Australian people that one doesn’t go on forever. And it’s far better to be open about these things. You remember the Kirribilli House pact between Mr Keating and Mr Hawke when they agreed secretly and didn’t tell the Australian public that Mr Hawke was going to lead the Party to the 1990 election and then retire. And then of course later he welshed on the deal. But the significant thing was that they kept everybody in the dark. Now I just want people to understand that I don’t see myself going on forever but I don’t have any particular retirement date in mind.
CORDEAUX:
Yeah but by popular demand, if it meant that you know there was going to be an electoral risk in your retiring you surely wouldn’t telegraph that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I just like to be honest about it that’s all. And it’s much better to be open about these things. I think people understand that you don’t go on forever but I think people also understand that the last thing I really want to do is give up the job. I like it, I find it a great challenge but I try to be realistic about it.
CORDEAUX:
What do you like best about it?
PRIME MINISTER:
The best thing about it is meeting different people in different parts of the country. That’s the nicest thing about being Prime Minister of this country is the infinite variety of people you meet. I mean I’m going to have a very interesting experience this morning. I’m going out as part of Eduction Week here in New South Wales, I’m going out to visit the primary school in the inner south west of Sydney that I attended as a child. And I will meet the children of that school now. It’s now what 50 years, 49 years since I left the school to go to high school and I’ll meet them and their parents. It’s a very different area now. A nice area still from when I grew up. Now that’s an interesting experience and I’m looking forward to it.
CORDEAUX:
Were you good at school?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh I was good enough to get to the local selective high school and so reasonably good. But I did well enough to get through and go on to university. I don’t hold any particular tickets on myself. I think I was a competent student. I don’t want to put it any more strongly than that. I was well taught. The teachers I had at that government school were very good. I think teachers are often not sufficiently praised for the job they do. They work very hard. It’s an even more stressful job now because they are required to perform a lot more pastoral duties now than they used to because of changed family structures and pressures on families and the break down of extended families and the fact that fewer children now have grandparents and other older relatives around to give them advice as well as their parents. And all of those mean that more responsibility is being thrust onto teachers.
CORDEAUX:
Well if I read the ALP Conference going on in Tasmania right they’re going to back right away from this GST objection that they’ve got and concentrate in a good way, positively on eduction. Will you be saying anything today about what you see as being important going forward for eduction?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the most important thing for education without any doubt around the country are basic standards of literacy and numeracy. When I talk to parents, whether they’ve got children at government schools or independent schools what they talk about is making sure that when their children come out of school they’re properly skilled in those basic standards. So that’s a very important element and one of the reasons why we’ve put an enormous amount of emphasis on standards of literacy and numeracy. We’ve seen in some of the states especially in New South Wales we’ve seen a lot of resistance to that from the teachers’ unions. That resistance has been partially overcome but in the end of course that’s a matter for the states. We can only cajole and encourage and provide some incentives for the states but in the end they run the schools. And the parents I talk to are very interested in those sorts of things. They are particularly important to them.
CORDEAUX:
That was an interesting release yesterday by the Centre of Independent Studies which said that independent or private schools are not a drain from government schools and it really comprised the list of incredibly positive and not talked about very much aspects of private education. Did you happen to see that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I heard something of it and that conclusion is correct. What you need in the education system is choice and the growth sector in the independent area are not the so called wealthy schools. I mean there aren’t incidentally too many wealthy schools even the ones with very high fees like St Peters or in Sydney, Kings, or St Ignatius or Shore, even those schools many of the parents there are working very hard and making big additional sacrifices to send their children to them. But leaving that aside the really big growth area are the low fee independent schools where the schools are charging two or three thousand dollars a year. There have been a number of new small Anglican schools established in the western suburbs of Sydney where the parents are paying quite modest fees. Now for anybody to suggest that they are privileged or wealthy is plainly ridiculous. What people want is more choice and I’m in favour of choice. I mean I went through the Government sector myself and it gave me a very good education and I’m very grateful for it. I would not have got a better eduction at that time in the independent sector. I got a good education in the state sector but you’ve got to give people choice and that’s what we’re very much on about. And I think the Centre in pointing out the benefits of independent education was making the point that they’re not a drain on government schools, people should have choice. And if they think an independent school better suits the needs of their child they have a right to send that child to the independent school. And all the better that the fees are modest and therefore within the reach of a greater number of parents.
CORDEAUX:
A couple of quick questions and if you wouldn’t mind taking some calls.
PRIME MINISTER:
Sure.
CORDEAUX:
It seems that things are hotting up in East Timor. Australians have shot dead two pro-Indonesian militia fighters in a gun battle near the East Timorese border with West Timor yesterday. That’s a bit concerning isn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it’s not so much Jeremy that things are hotting up. But what’s happened is a reminder that there’s always been danger just below the surface. There’s been a tendency understandably because of the success of the Interfet operation and the very small amount of resistance the forces initially met, there’s been a tendency to forget about it. But it’s still a very dangerous area. There is still a lot of hostility from the militia and we remain very concerned about that and there is danger to our men and women. Nobody should be in any doubt about that.
CORDEAUX:
And it points to a long-term commitment by Australia in that part of the world.
PRIME MINISTER:
We will be there at least for another couple of years.
CORDEAUX:
The IVF issue that came up. I don’t know if you’ve had any feedback or you’ve done any polling on it…..
PRIME MINISTER:
We’ve certainly done no polling on it and I don’t intend to. This is not something that’s based on polling.
CORDEAUX:
Well I’ll be amazed if the vast majority of people weren’t in total agreement with you. I’ll be amazed.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that may be right. I don’t know. But what we were faced with was a need to respond to a court decision and the concern we had was to establish our commitment to the fundamental right of a child to be born in circumstances where with a reasonable expectation, other things being equal, they might have the care and affection of both a mother and a father. Now it’s not as some people have tried to suggest an attack on a homosexual lifestyle. People’s sexual preference is a matter for them. I don’t sit in moral judgement on that at all. Nor is it an attack in any way on single mothers. The great bulk of single mothers of course aren’t single mothers by choice are they. It’s just happened. Relationships break up and I admire the job that so many of them do often in extremely difficult circumstances.
But it’s just a question of saying do you really believe that the rights of the child are paramount or the rights of somebody who is in a particular relationship or who is completely single and is not desirous of having any relationship, about whether these programs which are very expensive should be available to them and we take the view that it’s reasonable for States to say no the programs should be limited to people who are married or for women who are living in a defacto relationship with a man. Now I don’t think that’s unusual. And you’ve got the Labor Premier of Victoria on record three weeks ago as saying he supported the legislation. There used to be legislation and there may still be although it could be now dormant in South Australia to that effect. There’s legislation to that effect in Western Australia. It’s obvious from the remarks he made yesterday the Queensland Premier Mr Beattie believes that the States should have the right to legislate in this way. And all we are doing in proposing an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act is saying well if States want to legislate to that effect then the Sex Discrimination Act should not be used to stop them. Now that’s all we’re doing. It’s hardly an attack on fundamental rights, in fact it’s a defence of the rights of children.
CORDEAUX:
But if you can’t get it through the Senate and that’s been telegraphed quite clearly, what’s the point?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don’t know in the end what the Labor Party is going to do. What is the point – the point is that you don’t determine what you do as a government by counting in advance how many votes you’re going to get in the Senate. I mean if you really believe something’s right you put it up so that you are telegraphing to the public that that’s what you believe ought to happen. And if it’s voted down well it’s up to those who vote it down to explain to the community why they voted it down.
CORDEAUX:
Prime Minister we were talking the other day about foreign aid and the amount of money that we give to what appears to be fairly well heeled countries and I see that we’ve got a few calls on the board on that very subject. Meg good morning.
CALLER:
Good morning Jeremy, good morning Mr Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Meg.
CALLER:
I was completely horrified last night when we were read out a list of foreign aid to countries. Don’t you think we should put our own house in order first instead of all the problems we particularly the senior citizens are going through? Sure you put pensions up. They have all been wiped out so quickly you wouldn’t believe. We can’t run cars any more because of the petrol mainly. And all other taxes, it’s not just ‘Canberra’ taxes. We are taxed to the hilt in our own States. And I as a senior citizen I’m just so sad to see what is happening, making ourselves a good fellow with foreign aid to people some of them who as Jeremy has just said are well heeled. Why are we doing this? I added up all the foreign aids to all these countries that I had no idea our money was going to and I honestly could not sleep last night and I’m quite sure there are a lot of other people thinking the same thing.
PRIME MINISTER:
What countries Meg do you object to us giving foreign aid to?
CALLER:
All those who are…..
PRIME MINISTER:
Can you name some?
CALLER:
At the moment I haven’t got my….
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m not trying to ask you a trick question or anything. It’s just that my understanding, and I haven’t seen the list recently, and as a result of the issue being raised I’ll go away and have a look at it again. But my understanding is that the overwhelming bulk of our foreign aid goes to countries whose per capita living standards are minuscule compared with Australia’s.
CALLER:
But there are some that’ll never get out of that whether you…..
PRIME MINISTER:
But that doesn’t make them well heeled. This is a difficult issue and I know that a lot of people feel the way you do and I can understand that, and it’s a pretty compelling argument to say that charity begins at home and we should fix all of our problems before we give any aid to anybody else. The problem I guess with that is that when you look at the aggregate wealth of this country and the average living standard, it is so far ahead of many of the very poor countries in the world that we do have some obligation I think as a nation looking at it collectively. And the other point I guess I’d make is that it really is in our self interest. I mean there’s the moral dimension, there’s also a selfish dimension if I can put it that way, it’s not in our interest that a country like Papua New Guinea disintegrates socially, it’s right on our doorstep. We have a particular obligation to Papua New Guinea, we give a lot of aid to Papua New Guinea, probably more than to any other country, I think that is still the case. Now the living standard there is very low. If Papua New Guinea through economic and social stress falls in to disorder, I am not suggesting it’s going to, but there’s always, you have to worry about these things, then that’s right on our doorstep. We would probably be required in response to that to invest a lot more in stabilising the country because it wouldn’t be good for us for a country right on our doorstep to be in some kind of chaos so there’s method in the approach if I can put it that way. There’s wisdom, there’s self interest in maintaining the stability of some of these countries, but I understand how you feel and looked at from a strictly parochial domestic point of view it’s an argument. But I as Prime Minister have the responsibility of taking some of these other things into account as well.
CORDEAUX:
Prime Minister, they sent us a list and it would be interesting if you haven’t seen it to cast an eye over it, Indonesia 120 million.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah well Indonesia is hardly a well heeled country.
CORDEAUX:
No, but it is wealthy.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well no it’s not. I mean there are some individuals in Indonesia who are wealthy but the per capita income there is appalling. There are tens of millions of people in Indonesia in absolute poverty. I’m not, I don’t have any blinkers about Indonesia and I mean it was, others had blinkers about Indonesia. I don’t, but equally Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, it’s right on our doorstep, it is surely in our interest to have a stable Indonesia and if we can make some contribution to that, doesn’t that help Australia? Leaving aside any moral considerations, doesn’t that help Australia?
CORDEAUX:
Yeah, but if you look through the list with India and Pakistan perhaps where they are spending a million dollars a day on developing that nuclear…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have of course gone through a very difficult time and there was an interuption in some of our non humanitariam aid as a result of that.
CORDEAUX:
Les?
CALLER:
Good morning Jeremy, good morning Prime minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Hello Les.
CALLER:
I would like to congratulate you as a leader of what would have to be the best government since federation.
PRIME MINISTER:
You can come again.
CALLER:
I would also like to thank you. I think there should be a national thank you week, not the sorry business. I would like to thank you. My wife and I, I receive a veterans affairs pension for service in the British waters in World War II and grateful to get it and I want to just thank you for the bonus you have delivered. It was a very nice surprise in the budget and…
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s very good.
CALLER:
And it’s a bit different to that L – A - W promise that didn’t eventuate.
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s very kind Les. Where did you serve? What part of the War did you serve in.
CALLER:
The war zones in the north atlantic.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, you were in the north.
CALLER:
…through World War II.
PRIME MINISTER:
When did you come to Australia?
CALLER:
Fifty years ago.
PRIME MINISTER:
Gee, oh well you are well and truly one of us.
CALLER:
I was at sea when I was 16, but anyhow, I would also like you to rethink, you know remaining prime minister, I would like you to remain Prime Minister for as long as you want the job. I think your leadership is crucial.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay, that’s very kind of you.
CORDEAUX:
All right Lorainne, hi.
CALLER:
Hello. I would just like to say that Meg said a lot of what I was going to say, but I am so concerned with the health and dental problems at the moment. I am on a waiting list for both. I also saw my Doctor on the 31st and do you know I have to wait until the 14th of this month before I can, I have got to have blood pressure monitor that I go home with it and go back the next day and have it off, monitor for 24 hours and I can’t even get one of those, there is that many people in front of me that I have to wait. I go to a clinic and until the 14th of the month, it will be too bad if I drop dead tomorrow wouldn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Lorainne, we certainly don’t want anything to happen to you.
CALLER:
No, well I am on a waiting list. I have got 14 year old dentures and some person kindly on talk back radio, I never asked for this and I felt really a bit bad about even accepting, but some person heard me talking on talk back radio and they gave the money that I needed up front for my teeth, but that is still not going to get me to the head of the list? You know? I also need another day surgery test which I am on a waiting list at a hospital, I won’t say which one in the northern suburbs and I saw the doctor on the 19th of April, the specialist that will do the thing but they told me it could be six months before I come to the, I haven’t had notice yet so I can’t even say that it will be six months you know, so I think the health and when you give so much money away Mr Howard, I am a Liberal supporter mate, but I am getting to the stage as I don’t know how long I am going to be and I am 58 years old, so I have been a liberal supporter for a long time haven’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, you have been a liberal supporter for about the same time as I have been. I’m a couple of years older than that. Lorainne, I understand your point of view. I tried in an answer to Meg to put it in context. Looked at in that domestic environment, what you are saying is very understandable, but governments have other responsibilities as well and I just ask that those be born in mind. I mean of course some of the things you’ve referred to, I am not trying to diminish what you’ve said but they are more directly the responsibility of state governments than ours, but I understand your point.
CORDEAUX:
Prime Minister, good to talk to you, thank you for your time once again.
[ends]