( 0
PRESS OFFICE TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH BERT NEWTION. OF 3UZ
FRIDAY 29 FEBRUARY 1980
Newton Mr. Fraser you just made a very successful debut on The Don Lane
Show. Have you considered at all perhaps changing roles and
going into variety?
Prime Minister
Well if Don will take my job and if he left me with his for a
month, we could swap and see what happened.
Newton Did you enjoy it?
Prime Minister
I enjoyed it very much yes.
Newton It must be rather nice to be confronted with somebody who wants
to get you to public media but not necessarily talk about politics,
not necessarily talk about the government of the day.
Prime Minister
Well it is a change and I think it is a happy one because generally
you are talking about, being asked about very serious subjects and
to talk about some other happier things is a very pleasant change.
Newton Just looking around the studios this evening particularly prior to
your arrival, it doesn't happen very often in a television station
that we have so many security people, and so many people who are
here because the Prime minister of our land is about to join us.
Have you ever thought what it's going to be like when you retire
from politics, retire as Prime Minister or otherwise these people
aren't going to be around you. Do you think it's going to be a
very relaxing feeling for you or do you think you'll miss public
life?
Prime minister
I think it will be very relaxing and it will be fun.
How soon do you think you'll be able to relax and enjoy some fun?
Prime Minister
Oh I am not contemplating it just at the moment. At the end of last
year when I had a couple of weeks enforced down on the farm I
hadn't been there so long in one stretch for years and I found that
I really enjoyed it. I really got tempted to send a telegram and
say I'm going to stay here mate. .2
Newton Tell us about the hose episode whilst you were ill there at the
Lodge and is the person still living?
Prime Minister
Iramie was going to have a lunch or something and wanted the Lodge
to look nice. So she wanted the windows cleaned. And somebody
went around and shut all the windows and I opened my window and
I was meant to be in bed, so I got back in bed and the water just
came straight through the window. It was a second storey window.
So I don't know if they knew whose bed it was reaching. But when
I got up and yelled out the window.
Newton What did you yell out as a matter of interest?
Prime Minister
Well do you want to have your licence taken away?
Newton You have the power to prevent that Mr. Fraser.
Prime Minister
No I don't think so. We've given it to an independent bodyhaven't
we?
Newton Oh that's right. I thought you may forgotten that just for a moment.
Prime Minister
You know they -would be much tougher than we would.
Newiton You were saying on television tonight with Don that you do enjoy
humour. And we've just talked about the fact that it is rather
nice to see the Prime Minister of the country in a non confrontation
setting. In the last couple of days both yourself and Mr. Hayden
have been cast members of most dramatic interviews in Mr.
Hayden's case with John Laws in Sydney with yourself Richard
Carleton on the ABC. Do you believe that public figures and/ or
interviewers now depend primarily on confrontation?
Prime Minister
Well they shouldn't no. I think the degree and I said it in the
Parliament yesterday I think that what has happened in the
Parliament and the confrontation in the Parliament were vastly
serious issues, has not done the Parliament any good. I believe
overwhelmingly, Australians would have been ashamed listening in
to the debated when they found their legislators arguing about the
sort of trivia that was taking the time of the Parliament when
there were enormous issues at stake which ultimately and without
dramatising it, the independence, the survival, the integrity of
nations and people depends. And it ought to be possible as it is
Prime Minister ( continued)
inf Britain, as it is in the United States and other places to debate
this sensibly without personalities just looking at the issues.
And I think it ought to be possible to do it on television or on
radio also without debating personalities and motives just talking
about the issues. And for some reason it seems very difficult to
do that in Australia.
' Newton
Tuesday aside, in most cases both sides of the House are at fault
with cat calling and name calling. What do you say to your blokes
after an incident such as Tuesday?
Prime Minister
We try and keep them quiet. I think by and large they are not too
bad. I do not want to try to lay blame for the sort of things that
have gone on. But I would invite anyone who wants to try and made
a judgment about what has gone on what I am going to suggest is
very dull, but I would just get them to read Hansard and some of
those debates.' Then I think they will learn a great deal
about some of the speakers who have participated.
Newton It just seems that listening to Parliament now that very seldom do
you really have a full House unless it's opening day, fewer
members seem to be in the House, at any one time unless there's
something of great significance. Does this mean we're moving
toward an executive controlling our country and running our country
eventually. Prime Minister
No I don't think so. It has always been like that. Members of
Parliament hc--ve work to do, correspondence to answer, people to
se, departments to approach on behalf of constituents or something
they are interested in and all this goes on while the Parliament
is actually sitting. So if a member is not interested in a
particular debate, he probably will not be in the House in the
Parliament itself for that debate. He will be in his office or
somewhere else talking with people. And it has always gone on like
that. When you are a stranger to the place you go in and you see
somebody speaking on a subject which is important to the speaker
and to other people out in the community a mere handful in the
Parliament you wonder what it is all about. But there is no
change in that and I think it will always be so.
Newton As a matter of interest who tells you to get in there, if you should
be in the Parliament I mean it's quite easy to understand that
ministers can be suggested by more senior people like yourself.
But who suggests to you, you should be in the House if something
rises? Prime Minister
Oh I do. 4
-I
Newton You have your ear tuned all the time to what's happening in the
House or you have
Prime Minister
Somebody either the Leader of the House for the Government or
somebody in my office will say look something is happening in
the House, you ought to be in there, or if I am scheduled to
participate in something, they will say you are on in three
minutes or you are on in five minutes or you better start moving.
I'm nudged. I am put in the right place.
Newton You're nudged but not pushed?
Prime Minister
Oh it depends how quickly I move.
Newton And who is nudging.
Prime Minister
That is right yes.
Newton OK, given that maybe Tuesday is an exception and given that perhaps
the Parliament has not always been filled over the years, I think
you'd agree that in latter years particularly since you and Gough
Whitlam came head on, firstly as Prime Minister in his case and
Leader of the Opposition in your case, the roles were reversed
perhaps because you're both very big men you're both quite unique
men. I would suggest there's not another Gough Whitlam. in Australia
and there's not another Malcolm Fraser in Australia, either in
appearance or in attitudes and delivery it seemed then that
Parliament started to take a different turning and I'm not blaming
you and Mr. Whitlam. for the violence. I don't know who started it
but there was a personal honing in on the other wasn't there?
Prime Minister
I think there might have been a bit. But that also isn't new. I
first listened in to the Parliament in the middle 1950s when the
Labor Party split and you had first the Labor Party anti communists,
with about nine members in the Parliament. And every day, day after
day that group of mine would get up and attack them the rest of
the Labor Party. And the rest of the Labor Party would return the
fire. And if people really want to know what a bitter debate is
all about, go and read some of those debates and it would make what's
happened in recent times look like kindergarten. It really would.
All I'm saying is that it is not an excuse for it, it's not a new
phenomenon. At different stages in the Australian Parliament there
has been a great deal of bitterness and even venom. I think it is
a tragedy. I think the people in Australia deserve much better than
that.
Newton Is it native to Australia that we seem, unlike America, once an
Election has been run and won, we don't close ranks neither the
Liberal voter nor the Labor voter closes ranks. They don't get
behind their Prime Minister. Is this a good or a bad thing?
Prime Minister
.1 would hope that it depends on the issue. If there is a major
issue and an important issue, I would hope that the nation would
. be behind the Prime Minister, whoever it might be. I am not just
there to govern for liberal supporters or National Party supporters.
My job is to govern with all my own team as well as possible as well
as I can, for all Australians Liberal, Labor or whatever. I
think a recognition ought to flow through from the policies and
attitudes that a Government expresses. It shows quite clearly that
it is a Government of all the people, not just of one section or
of one group.
Newton Just one question on Moscow. It would appear that the country is
divided who is to say whether it's 50/ 50 or 60/ 40 in either favour,
but would you consider a referendum?
Prime Minister
I don't think you can make important decisions by referendum. I
really don't. Ultimately it is going to have to be the Australian
Olympic Committee that will have to make up their mind. We are
not going to use the methods of the Soviets and withhold passports
and this sort of thing and that would be using their methods.
It is not something that we in our society ought to contemplate.
So it is a question of persuasion and therefore trying to have as
many people as possible understand the consequences and the triumph
that they could well give the Soviet Union if Australian and
A~ merican and British and French and German athletes go to Moscow.
They are not going as individuals. They are not going as Bert
Newton or John Smith or whatever. They go as representatives of
their country. And with the sort of attitude that the Soviets have
taken to it, saying as they have that the awarding of the Games is
a political success. It is a social event and it is one which
shows that all those participating approve our policies and our
foreign policies. Against that background it is very hard to
we can't say that politics and sport are separate they are not.
They are so mixed up together. I think this is one of the things
that athletes find hard to understand. They would like to keep it
separate. But people in other places have already mixed them very
much. Newton You keep talking about the eventual decision to be made by the
Olympic Federation. The Government has the power to prevent the
team from going.
Prime Minister
By withholding passports yes.
Newton Would you go that far?. 6
Prime Minister
No we have said we would not. We do not believe we should use the
methods the Soviets would use. That is a sort of arbitrary thing.
I don't think short of war time, short of sometimes people don't
get a passport to go out of the country if you think they are
going to bomb somebody or something in some other country. In that
category passports can be and have been sometimes withheld. But
for a citizen wanting to go about his business it would be unthinkable
to withhold an Australian passport. And we are not going to do it.
Newton This week, just harking back to the interview that Mr. Hayden had
with John Laws about which, of course, I wouldn't ask you to comment,
but also the interview that you had with Richard Carleton it would
be fair to say that in both cases you would seem to have lost your
cool, both gentlemen. Do you think that how hard is it for you
now under the pressure you must be feeling because of the Moscow
situation... Prime Minister
You didn't see that thing with Richard Carleton?
Newton No I didn't -no.
Prime Minister
I thought it was very quiet and very cool. I really did. I think
anyone who saw it did too.
Newton But there's cool and cool isn't there? Were you as cool as you
were with Mike Willesee?
Prime Minister
It depends which interview.
Newton Yes I saw you interviewed by Mike one evening and he said ' good
evening' and you said ' what do you mean by that'.
Prime Minister
Did I?
Newton Yes you did.
Prime Minister
Well it must have been one of my more acidy moments. No I thought
I really was. I didn't get annoyed at Richard Carleton. I didn't
feel annoyed because I have been interviewed by him so often. I
do a little work before I didn't do any work because this was
almost by surprise and anyway I thought you might have been safe.
But with Richard Carleton, if he has spoken on a subject, I read
Prime Minister ( continued)
what he has said the night before and the night before that and I
had. So I knew exactly the line he was going to take. I had
worked out in my own mind that he would not ask me the questions
that would enable me to say what I wanted to say. So I was going
to say what I wanted to say in any case, in spite of the questions.
Newton I think I'm with you. What's the standard of political journalism
like in Australia today judging on world standards?
Prime Minister
Well I don't see all that much. What I do see of the British and
American journalism is probably the best of it the articles that
come out here it's not the froth and the bubble. In Australia
of course we see it all. There are some journalists who can get
beneath it and understand the substance of events that are occurring.
There are others that seem more concerned with the froth and the
bubble. They won't go to the seriousness of the issue to show the
debate the presence to them is everything, not so much the
substance of the issue that is being discussed. I think the way
they report it politicians are principally responsible but the
way they report it helps I think to personalise politics in the
Parliament. Because this is the sort of thing that journalists
like reporting.
Newton Do you have your favourites among the journalists?
Prime Minister
Well obviously but I wouldn't want to name them because that would
destroy them.
Newton You just guessed my next question. Mr. Fraser, I thank you very
much indeed for your time. I realise that you spent a lot of
time with Don on camera. I thank you for coming round and spending
this time with me. Just to end up a question out of the blue.
Have you ever voted Labor? Thank you Mr. Fraser.
Prime Minister
You would have been very surprised at the answer.
Newton OK, I'll turn this tape off now. It's off.
Prime Minister
It's still going.
Newton On Arthur Caldwell's memory I promise it's on. Thank you very
much indeed Mr. Fraser. Yes it is on. 9