9 September 1990
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, we'll come back to football, but just on privatisation. You appear to have Cabinet on side but how great is the risk that the Party might roll you on the issue and what would be your position then?
PM: That is the best hypothetical question I've heard this week. I'm quite confident of an outcome which will be both appropriate and well received, not only within the Party but within the community.
JOURNALIST: You've taken a very low profile on the telecommunications issue. PM; Well you see that I read that those people who know nothing about things say where's Bob Hawke been. Well that suits me fine. They might have been asking that for the last seven years. Well I've been leading the Labor Party to victory on occasion after occasion. I don't get up there and go and see the writer for the Financial Review and say look I did this today, I did this today, I did this today, I spoke to this bloke today, I spoke to that organisation. If they want to make fools of themselves, that's alright with me.
JOURNALIST: So it hasn't been a deliberate low profile approach?
PM: I really know how to run this and lead this Labor Party. I don't need the Kitney's of the Financial Review who know nothing about politics to tell me how to run the Party. I think I've got a reasonable record of success.
JOURNALIST: Does it mean the Beazley plan has got some chance of getting up?
PM: We'll just see what happens. I mean you may have noticed I haven't been up-front in the Press which has led people to make these absurd observations. I just operate quietly behind the scenes and I'm not going to change that now by running a campaign in the Press.
JOURNALIST: In the match today-
PM: Match today? Now you're talking. The Hawks.
JOURNALIST: All the way?
PM: All the way.
JOURNALIST: Sir, is it possible that Cabinet might end up deciding to sell off all of Australian Airlines?
PM: You never know what might happen in this complicated exercise in which we're involved.
JOURNALIST: Is it the most testing issue the Party has had to grapple with since you've been in Office?
PM: I don't know about the most testing but it does go to issues which have been profoundly important in the thinking of the Party over the years. What we all have to understand, not only in the Party but in the nation, that positions that were appropriate decades ago are not necesarily exactly appropriate as we operate in the last decade of the 20th century. I mean just for instance, without going to great detail, when Australian Airlines was eatablished as TAA in the first place there was obviously a role for a nationally owned airline there to ensure that routes were that may not have been, to set standards and so on. But that was the 1940's and 1950's. It's a different world today.
JOURNALIST: Just one last question. Bob Hogg has been quoted today as saying the Government's uranium policy is both contradictory and needs review. Do you feel it needs review?
PM: We've got a committee looking at precisely that.
ends