PM Transcripts

PRESS OFFICE TRANSCRIPT 29 May 1978
INTERVIEW WITH PETER HARVEY ON CENSURE MOTION IN PARLIAMENT
QUESTION: Prime Minister, the sort of censure motion that was
moved on you yesterday by Mr Hayden. How do you reply to that
sort of criticism?
PRIME MINISTER: I think the criticism really answers itself.
It shows the concerns of the Opposition they've asked a very
large number oZE questions over the course of this Parliament
about issues that I believe had been passed and done with,
not in the mainstream of concerns-of the Australian nation
and of the Australian people. I think this is why they have
been put aside by the Austrdlian people, and I think it's
why they have lost enormous support amongst the working men
and women. of Australia. When I first came to this Parliament
and that't beginning to be,. in spite of my age, quite a long
while ago, there were a large number of trade union officials
in the Parliament. People had been through the ranks, through
the trade unions, worked on the shop floor. Many of them had
known what it was like in the 1930' s and the difficulties
of those times, and they were men that I have a very great
respect for. But the Australian Labor. Party today is a different
party, it doesn't really identify with that kind of person,
the person that's come up through the ranks of the trade union.
Clyde Cameron might always be one of the last of the old guard
in that sense, and as we know he's not on the front ranks.
Australia's working men and women certainly need a voice in
this Parliament, and I believe that voice now comes through the
Liberal Party.