PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
INTERVIEW WITH GERALDINE DOOGUE, ABC RADIO, 16 JUNE 1992
E OE PROOF COPY
GD: Goad morning and welcome to ' Life Matters'. This
morning my special guest is ith-ePii-ea-RKister, Mr
Keating, a man about whom many people apparently
have fixed opinions. He's hardly cut a bland image
over the years he's been having a relationship with
the Australian public. And if opinion polls are any
guide Mr Keating does still have an image Problem in
that he continues to record high disapproval ratings
and his transition from Treasurer to Prime Minister
doesn't appear to have significantly altered
people's perceptions. Mind you, 30 per cent of
people polled in The Australian newspaper's Newspoll
that was just published this morning said they were
undecided between Mr Keating and Dr John Hewson, and
that was the highest ever recording. Though the
state of the parties put Labor a full ten points
behind, just pretty well stable. Now these polls
are an effort, of course, and effort only to guess
the public mood at any one time so they are not
definitive, but several of them do show he has a
particular problem with female voters. Last month
he brought out veteran feminist and bureaucrat Anne
Sumr from the United States to help him turn that
around. There would be a very definite view of
course, for any man who presides over an
unemployment rate of 10.6 has a real problem with
voters not one of perception. But Mr Keating must
persuade people that whatever they think of him, the
alternative is worse. And the dilemma for him is
how to go on the attack to present that-issue as
well as present a subtly different image to the
sorts of voters, many of them women but not all of
them, or are a little less fascinated by the game of
politics and moved more by impressions of people's
biases and predilections.
So with all that in mind, I spoke to Mr Keating
yesterday afternoon when he was visiting Melbourne
to speak to the Institute of Directors. So Mr
Keating, welcome to ' Life Matters'.
PM: Thank you Gerry, it is lovely to be here.
GD: What do you think of the way President Bush and Dan
Quale used the word family in their campaigning
strategies? They talk about a return to family
values and they talk about the break down, the moral
order, do you think that appeals to the Australian
voter?
PM: No, because I think the notion of famil is
different now to what it was. There are all sorts
of families and public policy has got to comprehend
that. We sought to do that in the 1980s, to support
all kinds of families. A couple of years ago John
Howard had a set of ads where he had the cottage and
the white picket fence and that'Is the sort of 1950s
view of the Australian family. Well, John is a
person, he would want to take us back there, but
life has moved on. I don't like double speak in
politics. I think if any government wants to claim
an interest in families the policies have got to fit
the bill. That is, don't tell us what you think,
tell us what you're going to do.
GD: But you say John Howard is a man of the past, but in
many ways you and he share the fact that your
families are part of the 23 per cent who live in
that traditional style ' Chat used to operate when the
white picket fence was more the norm, in that you've
got the man going out to work, the woman staying at
home and the kids at home. So you are not that
different in that sense at all.
PM: Except that I don't want to squeeze every other
family into the model. That is I except the view
that we're looking at a family structure which is
greatly different to that.
GD: Do you regret that?
PM: Not at all. That's why I think that government
policy should be basically supporting families
regardless of their character.
GD: I mean I notice that you often describe us as a
nation in transition, but usually you refer to the
public face of Australia and its financial
community, its trade and so on, there is very little
reference to its private face. What do you think
about the changes that hove occurred between women
and men in households, and between parents and their
children? Do you like the general thrust or do you
have real reservations?
PM: I like the thrust. Can I say from the 1980s, the
vast employment growth we had in the 1980s most of
it went to women. I regard that as an unambiguously
good thing that women were given a choice could do
things, had more fulfilling lives I don't lament
that at all. I think that's part of the social
change which we are seeing and should see. That is,
that women are not squeezed into a particular mould.
GD: But a lot of people say that, it rolls of the
tongue, it's the thing to say these days, but you
haven't had as a man to go through the transition in
your own household of having two people working.
PM: No, but the difference is though that I went through
the policy consequences of it, I didn't resist it
like John Howard did. For instance, I was the
Treasurer that provided for a five-fold growth in
child care places, I was the Treasurer that had to
fund and help design the Family Allowance
Supplement. Whatever my own experience wias I took
the view that there are other sorts of families and
that the women in those families want to do other
things and I've sought to have public policy
accommodate that change.
GD: Why then are you perceived as having a problem with
women?
PM: I don't think I do. Can I just say, in the
portfolio I had as Treasurer in the 1980s, I had
many things to do with women's policy, but it was
invariably under another portfolio heading and so
these things were always announced by their
Ministers. But some of the things I was involved
with were, for instance, the child support agency.
Now we could never have established one of those
without using the Australian Taxation Office. There
was no agency of the Commonwealth that could
actually go and set that system up and make it
operate. I made that thing operate. Superannuation
before we moved into superannuation policy women
just couldn't get preservation of superannuation.
They'd hop into the workforce at 17, maybe disappear
in their middle twenties to have a family, come back
in, and have no preserved benefits for them. I
introduced all those in legislation the
supplementary payments for low paid workers, mostly
women, shop assistants, process workers, again
women. Bill Kelty and I worked that into Accords Mark V and
VI. These are things which haven't sort of hit the
light of day. I notice Carmel Niland said the other
day in a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald that I'm
just discovering social equity for women. Well the
truth is Carmel hasn't yet discovered me. I've been
through these issues before properly Carmen was
beating a drum about them. That is, the Child
Support Agency, supplementary payments,
superannuation, massive increase in funding for
childcare, the Family Allowance Supplement and all
the other things like how I supported Susan Ryan in
discrimination policies, positive discrimination in
favour of women. Yet these were all sort of Cabinet
room things I did. The things which are exclusively
mine were superannuation, supplementary payments,
the Child Support Agency, although I did that with
Brian Howe, but without the Tax Office it wouldn't
have happened.
GD: Yes, but I suppose you could say you've also
presided over a recession in which now 680,000
children have neither parent working at home. And
you yourself say that the most important policies
you can do for women is to get the economy going
properly, you've said that all through the 1980s so
that they can be the beneficiaries of it. So that
has also occurred and maybe it is a stylistic thing,
maybe your style is more playing the game of
politics with a perception of the predator and the
ruthlessness which women just distrust
fundamentally.
PM: I think they ought to look at what we do as well as
what we say. You mentioned about the jobs in the
1980s we went from a work force of six million to
seven and a half million, a 25 per cent increase.
That slowed down of course in the recession, it
stopped in the recession. But about 65 per cent of
those jobs went to women.
GD: But was that the plan?
PM: The plan was a positive discrimination in favour of
employment. Employment wasn't residual, it dropped
down in numbers and we went after employment. The
whole Accord process of agreed income determination
was to devote the proceeds of that restraint to
growth and we had very low participation rates
amongst women and that rose quite sharply. Can I
say also on education, we've taken participation
rates in schools from 3 in 10 in 1983 to now nearly
8 in 10 and lifted university places by 50 per cent.
The great part of that has gone to women, to girls,
and I don't know of any better way of giving women
in the economy a change to participate than through
education.
GD: But then there's a collolary to that which is child
care, which is the other major thing that does
preoccupy women. If you're going to have more and
more women not taking full responsibility in those
early years someone's going to have to do that.
Will it be the State in your view?
PM: We have taken, I think I said to you earlier, child
care places from 50,000 to 250,000 by 1995 and no
doubt when we get there we will continue on. That
has made a major contribution to participation for
women by women, to have that facility, to have the
support. And now there is work la ce child care,
which again we pioneered, and now naving companies
involved. The tax office, can I say as a
Commonwealth agency under me, the first place where
the Commonwealth agreed to have child support at
work was the Tax Office. Trevor Boucher and I
agreed we'd do it. That is, the first Commonwealth
agency that had child care support at work. This is
also now true of the private economy and private
business.
GD: I suppose it is a question of degree. At the inner
city child care centre in the building in which I
work in Sydney, there is an 18 month waiting list
for children under the age of two and they told me
that that's true basically of all inner city child
care centres. That's a lot of people whose lives
are being affected because they can't get child care
places. Maybe we've just got to think on an
altogether difference scale about childcare. Do you
think that?
PM: I think the cost of running a full day care centre
is such that you can't build it at a speed beyond
which we've gone. But in shared costs, in work
place accommodation and in other child care services
particularly at home, that is beyond the long day
care centre, that gives us a chance of opening the
system up at a more marginal cost. I think it will
be a combination of the two.
GD: And are you talking about a blend of private and
public?
PM: Largely I think yes.
GD: Right.
PM: But that's not to say that the core program which is
being for the long day care centres, we don't regard
as anything other than the core.
GD: This is the fee reliefsyste..
PM: The fee relief system for the low paid. Can I just
say these are all the things John Hewson would put
the cleaners through, he makes that abundantly
clear. And so again, just going back to your point,
don't judge him by the mild-mannered doorstop, judge
him by what he says he'll do and what we've done. I
think that's the point.
GD: I wonder, I'll come back to that in a moment, I
wonder whether just as all Australian parents expect
the government, as a basic provision, to provide
primary school education, can you see a time when
the government also expects to provide pre-school
child care, just an item of consolidated revenue?
PM:. I think universally no, because of its size and
vast cost, but in principle, yes because we've
already crossed that rubicon. We crossed that
rubicon by providing the various categories of child
care and by carrying the cost of private provision
for child care. So it will happen, but again like
all other social change and reform it will take
time.
GD: How long do you imagine? I mean what sort of
process do you think we're presiding over as a
country, this transition to a quite new way in which
we take responsibility for children, the way in
which we order our households, the way in which we
all work?
PM: I think that's going to change. I think we're going
to see people trained and re-trained and shifting
the style of their work, the retiring age in reality
has probably come down as people have in fact, not
retired, but taken on other forms of work. The
workforce is changing and patterns of work are
changing and this is also true with women. I think
that child care has become part of the expectation
of mobility for Australia women and this government
has done its best to make as many places available
in the various forms.
GD: A lot of the market research that's done by good
market researchers say that underneath it all, men
in particular, are very concerned about this. Again
they know that the trends are there, but underneath
it all are anxious and they are resentful about
these changes. They sort of say I don't know
whether I ever joined the debate, it's happening
despite me. Can you honestly say you're not like
that?
PM: Resentful about what?
GD: Resentful of the fact that the households they
thought they'd inherit are not there to inherit.
That their children are looked after by others other
than their immediate family, that their wives are
going out, they maybe have to cook the meal at night
and do the ironing.
PM: I'm certainly not resentful about it.
GD: Do you ever do the ironing?
PM: No, I don't do the ironing very often.
GD: Do you do the cooking?
PM: No,* I don't do that much ' either. I'll be honest
with you I haven't, but I've done my bit when I
think it has mattered. But again, I wouldn't take
the view that one should be resentful. The barriers
to women's participation in the workforce have been
quite profound and where-ever I can give the system
a nudge to help open it up I have. Whether it's in
the Commonwealth area or in the Treasury itself or
where-ever its been I've tried to give them a break
that the system is sort of not prone to give, that
it needs again that positive push. And I don't
think you can take that view and at the same time be
resentful, it's a dichotomy view. I regarded the
right to an interesting life, job, as a primary
right of Australian women.
GD: But there is a cost to that, isn't there, in terms
of who looks after the children? In the next
generation who is actually going to come through and
be responsible, absolutely? And, there is
increasing evidence that because we can't rethink
work we've got rigid work structures contributing to
family dysfunction. What role do you see government
playing in trying to, both by carrot and stick
methods, get companies to change the way they allow
people to work?
PM: I think it is changing, I think households are quite
efficient at working these things out. I wouldn't
be as gloomy as I think you think some are about
working these things out and we all know, I'm sure
you do Geraldine, I do, of families that are in
exactly this situation and they work it out very
well.
GD: Dare I say that I have actually been through this
and you have not. I think a lot of women look on
and say look there he is with his neat home and
everything is very orderly for him and basically
because by either by choice or by need I'm there
living in this sort of turmoil and there is a lot of
evidence about that. Why would you understand what
thousands of people are going through?
PM: Whatever understanding I have of it, I have used to
shift public policy in favour of that variation in
the style of the Australian family. It's not
necessarily a matter for me to say well I have to
function that way too, otherwise good policy can't
be made.
GD: You've sat in the Cabinet room and I suppose you've
had an incredible vantage point there, you have seen
the toll that politics and ambition have taken on
families of your colleagues. Do you often reflect
on that, I wonder?
PM: Public life is very hard, because it is so intrusive
it wears away at any family situation. But all the
same, there's no point particularly in looking at
ourselves, it all gets back to we've got the policy
levers so what are we going to do with them? Do we
do progressive things with them or do we take
reactionary positions? For my part, I hope I've
always taken progressive positions.
GD: Maybe it's no longer enough to assume that people
understand where you're coming from with the way the
world is changing nowadays. it's almost like people
have to make a statement about their attitudes to
the changing roles between men and women, there's
almost an acceptance that things are not as they
once were. And maybe that's an area where you
haven't bought into this very much at all in the
past. I wonder why you're doing it now?
PM: Because now I am Prime Minister, then I was
Treasurer and social policy would have been
announced by Brian Howe who was then Minister for
Social Security, or in the case of women's policy,
by Susan Ryan and her successors. The things which
you have primary carriage, the announcement impacts,
the announcement affects were basically not in the
Treasury portfolio. But in the Treasury portfolio
certainly all of the capacity and grease on the
tracks which put these things into place, obtained.
That is I was able to use that job to do many of
these things which wouldn't have otherwise been
done. But I wasn't the one announcing them and I
think what happens in this country is synonomous
with your own announcements. People sort of type
cast you. It's the same with women in the
government, can I say this, that after the 1987
election the factions of the Caucus decided that
they would have no women. And I said to Bob Hawke
at the time this was an outrage that we've just been
returned to office and the notion was that Susan
Ryan was in risk of being defeated in the Centre
Left and she was the only woman member of the
ministry, and I suggested that Bob should say that
we insist upon at least each grouping providing a
woman. And that's where the three places camne from
in 1987.
GD: So it was you and not him? We heard it was him.
PM: No, it was me. I put the view to him, and can I say
it was a view that Bob was sympathetic with. I
wanted to see at the time that Susan was maintained
there, I was trying to get Ros Kelly up from the
Right of the Party and it was also. I felt it
important that one of the women on the Left got a
place as well. So I argued this and I didn't have
to argue it hard to him because Bob always had, I
think, a similar view to me about this, but at least
he then put to the factions that this is as it
should be.
GD: And why the opposition to them? How do you
determine..
PM: Jobs, simply jobs about who was able to win them and
who was vulnerable. Nothing more than that, you
know what sort of scramble takes place after a
general election. Amid the scramble a lot of these
things get trampled upon. So I went out there
barracking for that and I was quite happy and of
course, I've always had a lot of loyalty from the
people who I've helped, Susan and Ros et cetera.
GD: I think we need a little music break before we
actually come back and discussed the vexed issue of
unemployMent. We happen to have a Mahler here,
knowing that you're a fan. Just last Friday the ABC
brought out a CD of Stewart Challender's conducting
the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's
Resurrection Symphony. Which is the part which you
like most of that?
PM: If you're listeners can stand it the last five or
six minutes.
GD: As good as you hoped?
PM: The orchestra was a bit thin. That's a very hard
thing to do well, but it was good enough.
GD: Maybe you need Mahler to listen to when you consider
unemployment.
PM: With the conversation we're having it would have
been better with the slow movement from the third
because to belt your listeners with that is..
GD: The triumphant Mahler, not quite the tone with which
to..
PM: No.
GD: There does appear to be finally, I suggest to you,
rising indignation about youth unemployment in
particular and the way it's setting us up to reap a
sort of whirl wind of misery in the next ten years,
just leaving aside this recession altogether. Even
the AMA is urging you now I notice to spend money
and set up a national task-force. Can people look
forward to anything practical on this issue in the
next twelve months?
PM: It's a problem, a real problem, but I don't think we
should be unduly gloomy about it. Great strides
have been made to take our 15 to 19 year olds and
educate them and provide interesting job
opportunities for them in the new order economy we
developed from the 1980s. Now certainly we've been
through the period of the recession which is both
unfortunate and disappointing for many people, but
we've also changed from the sorts of jobs we had in
the 1950s, ' 60s and 170s the so called dead-end
jobs. There are fewer of them out there for 15 to
19 year olds because, as a cohort they've moved on
to the more interesting trained jobs, and I think
the statistics are not that well understood. Only
about 2 or 3 kids in 10 in that group, 15 to 19 year
olds, are in the work force and only about 1 in
of them are unemployed.
GD: Yes I understand.
PM: Now that's a problem.
GD: Indeed.
PM: But it's not 46 per cent of them. This notion that
half of them are unemployed, that's not right.
GD: True, but even so there's a tragedy in those 2 in
anyway and there's a great deal of debate about how
many more we should be adding. But even if we look
a few years down the track as people have pointed
out, we've got so many kids staying on now, what
about the log jam when they actually come out into
the workforce with high hopes and expectation that
education is going to deliver them jobs, and the
jobs aren't there and in the next few years there's
not a lot of evidence that there's going to be jobs
there.
PM: The 1980s proved the jobs were there, that was the
point.
GD: Then they vanished and the restructuring is underway
and it suggests they've gone.
PM: No, they haven't vanished. We started off with a
workforce of 6 million in 1983 and we've today,
notwithstanding the unemployment got a workforce of
seven and a half million, so it's 25 per cent larger
than it was. Those jobs have been held. In the
sort of economy we are now developing, a much more
sophisticated one where we are adding value to both
manufacturing and to services, young people trained
for that kind of economy will find jobs. The key
for us is to lift product, to lift GDP because
whenever one looks at a graphic illustration of
unemployment and GDP you find whenever growth rises
so too does employment. The key for us is to get
growth up.
GD: Yes, but haven't we also known that out of every
recession since the 1961 credit squeeze more people
have emerged unemployed at the end of that recession
and that is a very unpleasant cyclical trend we
haven't escaped?
PM: Because of structural change. The kind of economy
that we were in coming into each recession was
different from the one we have coming out and it
leaves people untrained for the change and we have
what's called structural unemployment. Now the aim
for us is to get that structural unemployment down
and to deal with the long-term unemployed, the
people who end up being unemployed for 12 months or
more and to get them into labour market programs and
get them trained, get them out, get them moving, get
them job experience and get them going. But what
we're seeking to do now is to look at those 1 in
to 19 year olds who are unemployed and try and
find through a change in entry level training wages,
that is a training wage, a wage we pay to those kids
in skilled or semi-skilled jobs, let them in and
then train them. That's currently what we're
looking at, that is trying to take them and say look
alright the deadend job has disappeared, the ones
which were there in the thousands when I was a kid
are now not there. There are jobs but they're
trained jobs, you're not trained, what can we do to
help you. First of all we'll give you a job, we'll
give you job experience..
GD: Who is going to pay for that?
PM: I think that is going to be done by a combination of
the government and employers and this meeting I'm
having in a few weeks is about that very thing, that
is, what will employers contribute, what will the
Commonwealth contribute to taking kids up, giving
them work experience, and training them while they
are getting it.
GD: Are you talking about a grant scale thing? How much
money are we talking about?
PM: We're not down to dollars and cents, but something
which is going to make a significant difference to
the problem.
GD: In the next six to twelve months?
PM: Geraldine, people should understand that there is
something good happening here. what's happened in
the 1980s is that we've lost a lot of those jobs
which had no future, which were deadend jobs, were
not interesting and were low paid
GD: No, but they got people into the community, they got
them out of their homes.
PM: Yes, and they never got them anywhere else. That
was as far as they'd ever got them. The jobs you
are sort of seeing, we've seen in the last half a
dozen years, people can start of f quite young in the
job and find themselves in London for six months or
find themselves in Tokyo back into Australia. It's
now a more interesting economy than it was in the
1960s or 1970s, and even though its stopped growing
for the moment, it's now growing again. The fact is
that they are more interesting jobs and they're
taken by trained people and that's why we have
lifted the number of university places sharply in
the 1980s, we've added 50 per cent of places to
universities and I'm now trying to get technical and
further education going so that the 60 per cent of
kids who cascade out of school come into a
vocational education system if they can't get into
university. And again they get trained to be taken
up in those jobs. So it's not as if the jobs are
not there for them, it's just they are different
sorts of jobs. They are trained jobs not untrained
jobs.
GD: Yes.
PM: Skilled jobs.
GD: Yes, but you say yourself you have got to create
jobs, you've got to make jobs. Those jobs on the
sort of scale we are talking about are not there yet
in Australia are they?
PM: In the 1980s they were there. They came through
very, very fast. That's why what the Government's
got to do is get all the structural impediments
down, get inflation down, get the competitive
influences running through the place.
GD: Are the unions an impediment in this case? Are they
going to accept a wage that maybe undermines their
entire award structure?
PM: We will get agreement with the trade unions about
this particular problem because I think they feel
that there is not enough accommodation for kids of
this age group in the labour market.
GD: Julian Disney addressed the press club earlier this
year and he said that our current level of spending
on work creation programs which is quick-fix
PM: Labour market programs.
GD: Is one third lower per unemployed person than during
the 1982-83 recession, and much lower than in most
other developed countries.
PM: I don ' t know whether that'Is true, but the f act is
there are 40,000 fewer 15 to 19 year olds unemployed
now than there were in 1982-83 40,000 fewer.
GD: And there is a real assertion particularly down in
Victoria that the sense of demoralisation is more
acute now despite those numbers, than it was in
1982-83. If you're a kid in Broadineadows you
perceive that there is no hope in the future.
PM: I think that the mood in Victoria is different to
the rest of the nation. Unemployment is falling now
in NSW, it's falling in WA and it's falling in QLD,
but its rising still in VIC and it's rising in SA
and there's no doubt that people will be gloomy
about it and perhaps it is an entirely reasonable
reaction. My job in that respect is to try and get
the economy in general growing and that's the best
way of taking employment up. But at the same time,
make the training places available for these people
so that the job they had searched for at age 19 or
is not the job they might have searched for at
age 16.
GD: Say if this gets of f the ground, say if this summit
produces the best possible result you can imagine,
what firms might collaborate with you? And are we
going to see people actually to be able to be
employed in say September?
PM: I think so yes, I think those firms which tend to
employ quite large numbers of people and don't
necessarily require them all to be skilled could
take people up. And that would be the aim of this,
to take them up.
GD: You know BHP say, the railways like state government
instrumentalities, things like that?
PM: The big retailers. The ones you mentioned and the
large retailing firms, any of the f irms which employ
large numbers of people have the capacity of taking
up, providing that the price and conditions are
right.
GD: And they will bill the government?
PM: In part yes, for the training component of it. So
in other words it's a way of getting that part of
the cohort of 15 to 19 year olds, those who are in
the workforce, as I say that 2 or 3 in 10 who are in
the workforce because the other 7 or 8 are in
training in education, that 2 or 3 in 10 and that 1
in 10 who can't find a job. It's that 1 in the 2 or
3 who can't find a job, they're the people we've got
to pick up and this is what I hope we can do.
GD: Dr Hewson is saying today that he will provide $ 2
billion if he comes into government to create a
youth wage and he claims this will create 500,000
jobs.
PM: The fact is he claimed his Fightback proposal will
create two million jobs. When we pressed him about
it he said his proposals were never econometrically
modelled, that two million was a guess and he since
said on radio two million is not a real world
estimate, don't pin me to that. The truth is that
what he will do is tear most of these social
programs down, he's going to cut about S7 billion
out of outlays and the things that will cop it will
be the labour market programs and the training.
We're going to put $ 700 million in three years into
TAFE, he proposed I think to put S50 million into
it. Well it wouldn't touch the sides. The fact is
he believes in the survival of the fittest policies,
if you're not a millionaire you're a bludger, if you
haven't got a decent house and trail of expensive
cars to show for it then what have you been doing
out there? Telling people after nine months of
unemployment benefit you're down to the St Vincent
de Paul Society or the Brotherhood of St Lawrence is
not the kind of policies, I think, Australians
should have or will accept. So when Dr Hewson
starts talking about opportunities, training you can
take it with a grain of salt because just turn up
the Fightback policy and you'll see where he's put
his money and his money is not in those areas.
GD: I'd like to close by bringing it back to the
personal and I'm wondering in terms of thinking
about the way family life unfolds and looking at the
future, most of us who are parents reflect on the
way we have parented and probably believe we'd dosome
things differently if we had our time over
again. This is something that you never really talk
about a great deal, your concept of yourself I
suppose as a parent, as a father, would you do
things differently if you had your time again? Have
you learned over these years and have you changed?
PM: You must learn. Life experience, I think, teaches
you things and I do wonder what my children will do,
How they'll grow up, what jobs they'll have, how
their lives will be. I have three girls and a son
and I do think more about the girls than I do my
son.
GD: Why?
PM: Because I think the job opportunities for women have
been constrained for a very long time in Australia,
it's only more recently they have opened up and
getting the training one needs and finding the
opportunities is I think, quite a challenge for
them.
GD: I wonder whether with him, he is the man, ironically
he is the young man who will be inheriting this
totally different world from what we hear where
there's actually going to be much more of a demand
upon him, ironically the onus will be on him to be a
different sort of man to you in the way he sets up a
family life. So it's possible that he is the one
who's more deserving of your sympathy.
PM: That will happen I think rather naturally, because
the person he's likely to share his life with will
have different attitudes than our generation and
therefore he's likely to grow up comprehending that
attitudinal change rather than being confronted by
it, that is providing for it rather than being
confronted by it. I think there's a sort of
naturalness about all that, but women still have a
tough go of it in employment. It's not easy, I can
see this in the bureaucracy, you can see it in the
companies, it's not easy to crack through. Many do
of course and do well, but there still needs to be I
think, on the part of all of us to open those
opportunities up.
GD: And if you had to describe one of the main issues
that makes it difficult for them, how would you
characterise it?
PM: Just the sort of I think the sort chauvinist view of
the world that men are just, employers are not
making the adequate adjustment and yet the education
system is now churning out thousands of trained
women so it is going to change, it's changing and
fortunately it's changing fast and it's going to
keep on changing. But it's got to change a great
deal.
GD: I wonder in terms of the people you employ do you
see yourself developing a different relationship
with professional women because it is hitting a lot
of people at work now in ways it hasn't done in
their home.
PM: I have a large complement of professional women on
my staff, but this is less true of commerce in
general. But again, like everything else it's
changing, keep knocking on the door, leaning on the
door it will change. But you've got to do it,
governments have got to do it, governments have got
to be aware of it and try and facilitate it and in
the things I spoke to you about before whether it be
preservation of superannuation benefits, whether it
be a child care provision or whatever these are all
things which are going to make it easier. That is
higher retention rates in schools, places in
universities, they're all going to make that
transition easier and quicker, faster.
GD: . Is there any country you'd like us to be modelled
on, that offer us some possibilities?
PM: I think we are way ahead of most OECD countries. In
terms of, if you like, positive support for women's
participation in the workforce and policies which
support that notion, I think there are very few OECD
countries we can learn that much from. But again,
whereever you see a good idea, take it up and do
something with it. But like a lot of things
Australians are not that aware that so much has been
done like the things I mentioned earlier and are
still being don.
GD: So if we have a feeling, if women have a feeling or
an inkling that you're not a feminist because you're
rightly regarded as you said recently as that most
conservative of creatures a family man, is that a
wrong assessment is it?
PM: I'm a family man and very much in the traditional
sense, but in terms of the policies which I have
either pushed through myself or I've done in the
company of others they are entirely progressive in
that sense and whenever I've seen an opportunity to
advance the cause of women I have effectively, if
often quietly, pushed the policy through and if you
don't believe me ask some of the ones I've been
associated with. Ask Ros, ask Susan Ryan because
they were all around when that all happened.
GD: Alright, thank you very much indeed. It's been good
to speak to you. We've been asking you for quite
some time so thanks for joining us.
PM: Thank you Geraldine, good.
ENDS