PM Transcripts

PRESS OFFICE TRANSCRIPT THURSDAY, 28 FEBRUARY, 1980
PRIME MINISTER INTERVIEWED FOLLOWING SPEECH TO MELBOURNE
STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENT SEMINAR
ME LBOURNE
Ques tion.
Mr. Fraser, what initiatives are you prepared to take to
reach a bi-partisan approach over the Afghanistan situation.
Prime Minister
Well, it ought to be very easy, because the Labor Party has
condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as we have,
and at the same time Mr. Hayden has said on many occasions
that an effective boycott of the Olympic Games would be the best
means, the best means by far, of getting the message through to
the Russian Government and the Russian people. But then he has
gone on and yesterday rather he said that if the Games are
held in Moscow Australians would be there, but if there was
an effective boycott he would support it. Now, there would be
a bi-partisan approach to Afghanistan if he would back his
statements, which I believe, that an effective boycott of the
Games would get the message through to the Soviet Government
and people better than any other mechanism that we have.
If he will work for that, then we will have bi-partisan foreign
policy. There is nothing else that I wanted to say on that.
There has been too much debate about it already in the Parliament
and you will know what I said today. But I do want to make a
comment about another major development project that has been
announced during the course of today.
I think you know that the Rundle partners are now negotiating
with Exon to firm up developments and programmes for the
development of the Rundle shale oil deposits. It is a very major
advance and of course it would be tle first of a series of shale
oil developments in Australia. Rundle is just one of a large
number of deposits. As oil from Rundle ultimately comes on stream
sometime in the future I would believe around about the time
Bass Strait starts to run down we will maintain a degree ofself-
sufficiency which will be of vast importance to Australia
as we aqpproach the year 2000. In addition to that of course,
it needs to be noted that Rundle would not have occurred if
we had just had cheap petrol in Australia. It is the market
price for petrol at world parity that makes this kind of giant
enterprise viable, profitable and possible. It is a very
practical and positive result, therefore, from the Government's
energy policies. 0 00---