Subjects: Fuel prices, interest rates, Minister Reith, Governor-General appointment, cricket allegations, Australian dollar
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
WILLIAMS:
Good morning Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning.
WILLIAMS:
You’ve got some of your own backbench, Fran Bailey, Alby Schultz amongst them, calling for an excise freeze. Even a Liberal Premier Richard Court has less than complimentary things to say about your petrol stance. If you can’t convince your own camp, how can you convince the rest of Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well petrol is very expensive at the moment, I understand that and I know that a lot of people around Australia don’t like it and I am very aware of that and I understand the difficulty that it’s causing for a lot of people. But the high price of petrol is due overwhelmingly to the doubling of the world price of crude oil. That’s the reason why it’s high. If the price of crude oil had not doubled over the last eighteen months, gone up dramatically, this would not be an issue. So that is the cause. Now we can’t influence the price and the reason why the price of crude oil and the reason why I haven’t put this issue on the agenda at COAG tomorrow is that there is nothing that meeting can do. We can’t tell the OPEC countries, we can’t put out a press statement saying cut the world price of crude oil, I mean that’s quite unrealistic. I would rather COAG spend its time tomorrow addressing things we can do something about for the longterm benefit of Australia. For example, we’re going to the meeting with a major plan to tackle salinity and water quality. Now we can actually tomorrow do something historic for Australia’s future about that issue. And if these meetings, which are pretty rare, are to mean anything, surely they should devote their time to talking about things we can actually improve rather than become the forum for what are essentially political exchanges about an issue that collectively we can’t address.
WILLIAMS:
Yet despite that the Premiers will put it on the agenda, they’ll attempt to put it on the agenda. Every talkback programme that you engage in a major topic is petrol – it could lose you the next election couldn’t, no matter who is right?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Phil you have to take decisions in the best longterm interests of the country. One thing I’ve made very clear through all of this discussion is I am not going to do anything that runs down the Budget surplus because to do that at the present time would exert upward pressure on interest rates. And I know from going around Australia that people don’t want higher interest rates, they really don’t. They’re lower now than they were when Labor lost office, much lower. But we don’t want them going up from where we are. We can’t control every factor feeding into interest rates, but we can by running a fairly tight fiscal policy not add pressure. And it’s very easy for Premiers to say, well you spend Federal Government money to reduce the price of petrol. I can equally say to them, you spend State revenues to reduce the price of petrol. Queensland does, the price of petrol in Queensland is significantly lower than it is in the other states. Now I would say to many of those Premiers who want to talk about it tomorrow, why don’t you do what Queensland has done?
WILLIAMS:
Okay, one of the reasons you’ve put forward as to why there’s not flexibility on this issue is the health rebate is going to cost an extra half a billion, perhaps $600 million. Now you’d argue that was very good news, but where’s the corresponding drop in the load on public hospitals, that doesn’t seem to be happening. Isn’t that the other part of the equation?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that’s a matter you’ve got to talk to the states about.
WILLIAMS:
Well I have talked to states, one of the states about that. South Australian Human Services Minister, Dean Brown says the public hospital demand and cost have continued to go up.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, but with great respect, the State Health Ministers frequently say, I mean this is all part of the silly political game which tomorrow’s meeting ought to try and break free from. I mean this new system of COAG meetings which was meant to follow the new taxation arrangement, we’re meant to spend our time talking about something where we can actually achieve agreement in the longterm interests of Australia. I mean, if we spend tomorrow having a slanging match, a political slanging match about petrol prices and hospital funding as distinct from trying to do something you know in a co-operative way across the political divide for Australia’s longterm future I think we’re letting the public down very badly. Because in the end we meeting tomorrow can’t bring the prices, the world price of crude oil down, we don’t have that capacity and I think every Australian knows that.
WILLIAMS:
But just on that health rebate isn’t the deal, isn’t the fundamental flaw behind underpinning the whole system is that the load decreases on the public system?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes.
WILLIAMS:
But that isn’t happening.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes but hang on Philip people have only just re-joined private health funds. You can’t make a judgement as to whether there’s going to be a reduction in the load on public hospitals.
WILLIAMS:
When’s a good time to judge that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it would be quite a deal of time from now. I mean they’ve only re-joined in the last few months. To expect there to be an overnight drop in the demand on public hospitals is quite unreasonable and if that is the view being taken by State Health Ministers, well, they are just engaging in political point scoring and they’re being quite unreasonable.
WILLIAMS:
Okay, just moving onto the Peter Reith affair, do you concede that the Department of Finance breached its own guidelines by not referring the matter to the department’s head Dr Boxall?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, my advice is that they followed the guidelines and when the matter came to me and I decided to send the matter off to the Federal Police quite plainly there was not much point in the Department of Finance also sending it off to the Federal Police because it was already there.
WILLIAMS:
Guidelines . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh so what the big breach is that instead of my sending it to the Federal Police, I should have sent it to the Secretary of the Department and told him to send it to the Federal Police? Well really that is just bureaucratic nonsense.
WILLIAMS:
Isn’t that part of the procedure laid down?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Phil it was sent to the police on the advice of the Attorney-General within two days of my knowing about it. Now if anybody is suggesting that, I mean am I being criticised now for being too zealous?
WILLIAMS:
I am not making this accusation.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well no but you’re reporting it. But that is the basis of that claim that I was too zealous. That I should have deferred to the Secretary of the Department of Finance and sent it back to him for further consideration. I tell you what if I had have done that I would have been criticised for trying to cover it up.
WILLIAMS:
Okay, well where does that leave now Peter Reith? He’s politically dead isn’t he? He couldn’t possibly be the prime minister after being labelled as foolish by you and that just leaves Peter Costello as your successor doesn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there’s only two people running for prime minister at the present time and that’s myself and Kim Beazley and the Australian people will make a judgement about which of us is better for the job.
WILLIAMS:
But let’s cast forward and clearly you’ll retire at some stage.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well casting forward, casting to the next election is casting forward . . . Phil, what’s the next question?
WILLIAMS:
Well the next question is simply that isn’t Peter Costello the natural successor now that Peter Reith . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the question of what happens when there’s a vacancy in the leadership of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party will be a matter for the party room. It’s never been a matter for me to ordain, I don’t presume to make those sort of predictions or to bless or confirm my approval on anybody, that’s a matter for my colleagues.
WILLIAMS:
Okay, if we can just turn a little in-house to the ABC it’s been some issue at the last couple of days. Would you agree with Senator Alston that it was immature of our Managing Director Jonathon Shier to be looking for more money?
PRIME MINISTER:
Everybody has a different way of describing reality. We provide, the taxpayer provides $650 million a year for the ABC. There were reductions in 1996, there haven’t on my understanding been any further reduction since then, I keep reading about cuts. We haven’t made any additional cuts. We made some in 1996, I admit that. We made a lot of cuts to get rid of Mr Beazley’s $10.5 billion deficit. But we won’t be reviewing the funding before the next Budget round which is in March of next year. What is now going on is really the ABC internal process, it’s a matter for the management of the ABC.
WILLIAMS:
But the management has made it very clear that these problems wouldn’t exist if everybody . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
But with great respect Philip, everybody is in that situation, I mean life would be very simple if there were an inexhaustible supply of money for everybody without any adverse economic consequences but it is not as simple as that. We think $650 million a year is a big budget for a very important institution. We have a board, we have a managing director. The Government doesn’t run the ABC, the ABC runs itself. And it’s for the ABC management to order its priorities and I accept those decisions.
WILLIAMS:
In eight months times we’ll have a new Governor-General, is it time that Governor-General was a woman?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am not going to speculate about who the Governor-General might be.
WILLIAMS:
But would a woman, is it time that . . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
You are inviting me to speculate about it and I don’t intend to do that.
WILLIAMS:
Would Jocelyn Newman have the sort of qualities that would make her a good Governor-General do you think?
PRIME MINISTER:
She’s an excellent minister for Family and Community Services.
WILLIAMS:
Do you think she’d make a good Governor-General?
PRIME MINISTER:
Phil, forget it.
WILLIAMS:
Okay, all right. Cricket. Now there’s some very upsetting headlines in the paper today. If you are a cricket tragic as you’ve self-described yourself, if these revelations prove correct, even if some of them are right, how does that affect your view of the sport?
PRIME MINISTER:
Nothing will shake my love of cricket, nothing and I am sure I speak for millions of people around the world in saying that. They’re very bad headlines, just how accurate they are we don’t know until the report is published. I notice that the Executive of the ACB, Malcolm Speed said he wanted to look at the report and he said the ACB had a procedure in place for dealing with any allegations affecting Australian players. They are in relation to one person just an allegation and I am not going to dignify an allegation with any kind of further comment, it’s not fair to the person concerned. Clearly cricket lovers will follow and what comes out of this with very great interest and concern but we have to wait until it’s out in the public and we have to give the people who’ve been criticised an opportunity of speaking up for themselves. There may be, as there often is in these things, two sides to the story. I don’t know, but obviously it is something that will exercise the minds of cricket lovers all around the world.
WILLIAMS:
Quick one on the dollar. How low does it get before you start to get really nervous? I mean can we afford it? 45 cents?
PRIME MINISTER:
Phil I am not going to talk about it, the level of the dollar. I would emphasise generally it is important we continue to run a strong fiscal policy and that is why I am not going to embrace any policy that runs down the surplus. I think the Budget’s in a strong position. I notice one of the papers this morning said there was a $1 billion hole in the Budget, that was a reference to the health rebate and the aged persons’ savings bonus. I didn’t say that represented a hole, I simply said that in all of the things that had to be taken into account you had to allow for the fact that even if you did collect some extra revenue, which I’ve never denied we might from the fuel arrangements, there were some increases on the other side. And until we get the mid-year economic review in a couple of weeks’ time we won’t know the exact position. So it’s quite wrong of people to be talking about a hole. That indicates that the Budget is clearly worse off, that position will be known in a couple of weeks time but there’s no suggestion that there’s any problem with the Budget, it’s just that in some areas there are extra expenses for good reason and things that we welcome. And you can’t just focus alone on the revenue impact of a higher price than expected of petrol
WILLIAMS:
Prime Minister, thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]