PRI E INITE
INTERVIEW WITH KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY, GOOD MORNING
AUSTRALIA, 19 OCTOBER 1990
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
KENNERLEY: I'm joined this morning by the Prime
Minister, Bob Hawke. A very good morning to you Mr Prime
Minister. Thank you for your time.
PM: Pleasure.
KENNERLEY: Why did it take six weeks?
PM: Well I understand that in fact payment has been made
over the last five weeks in regard to the special benefit
and accumulated family allowances. That money has been
paid over the last five weeks but the particular problem
that Mrs Silva had wasn't brought to the attention of the
Department until Wednesday. That problem arose from the
fact that she has a joint account with Westpac, with her
husband and of course because Mr Silva is detained and is
uncontactable in Kuwait, she had not been able to operate
on that account. As soon as our people became aware of
this, Kerni-Anne, on Wednesday, immediately contacted
Westpac at a senior management level and explained the
possibility of the normal operation of that account and
why Mrs Silvia had therefore no access to those funds,
which funds operated as a bar to other Social Security
payments. And as soon as the bank was made aware of this
problem and I pay them full tribute they immediately
indicated that they would make special arrangements
whereby she would have access to those funds. So the
normal payments had been made and all the entitlements
had been fixed up. But this particular problem was
remedied through a combination of the work of our
Department and the appropriate and very welcome
cooperation of Westpac and I thank them for it.
KENNERLEY: Mr Hawke, may I suggest that perhaps the bank
knew about this problem weeks before it was solved and
that the paper-work actually went from one department to
another department and finally ended up in the Prime
Minister's Department and then and only then when, after
she appeared on this program just 24 hours ago, did money
miraculously appear.
PM: Well I can't say what happened within the bank. All
I can say is that as soon as we became aware of it we
acted and it was remedied, thanks to the cooperation of
the bank. As far as other payments were concerned they
had been made over a period of the previous 5 weeks.
KENNERLEY: Also, if I may just hold you for one minute
more because I do know you are In reaction to a
story we've Just ran in the news, the Reserve Bank is
criticising -the Government's very slow economic process.
What's your response?
PM: I've answered that in the Parliament, Kerni. We've
had to make -the decisions which are difficult ones on
balance. If we'd eased monetary policy too quickly we
ran the risk of a much greater catastrophe of surge-back
into a level of imports that were not sustainable and
then the world would've marked us down in a way which
would've been totally catastrophic. These things are not
easy and I believe that we've got the balance right.
We've had to slow down the level of activity, we've done
that and I know there's been some hurt in that process
and I think Australians know me well enough to know that
that gives me no pleasure. It was something that was
necessary to be done.
KENNERLEY: Will that hurt get worse?
PM: I think not. We're coming, I believe, to the bottom
of the lowering of activity and I think as we go into ' 91
the economy -will recover. But it was necessary because
if we hadn't done that and we tried to keep borrowing
from the rest of the world to pay for a level of
consumption that we couldn't sustain by our own
production the world would've marked us down drastically
and I wasn't prepared to run that risk which would've
been far greater for Australia.
KENNERLEY: But will things get worse?
PM: Well I think we're reaching the bottom of that
lowering of activity and the signs, there are signs there
now but I think we will start to recover. I've said that
as we go into ' 91 I think that that will happen.
KENNERLEY: Mr Hawke, we know your time is needed there
but thank you very much for joining us.
PM: It's been my pleasure. Thank you.
ends