PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH HOWARD SATTLER, RADIO 6PR 29
JUNE 1992
E AND OE PROOF ONLY
SATTLER: PX1 Can we start at the top, in the toilet?
where?
SATTLERs In the toilet. I have learned today that the
federal government has put a 20% sales tax on rclepaper
products. Now it says to me that the earth sumi was a waste
of time, why have you done that?
I don't know, I would have to just check about
that. SATTLER: PM: SATTLER: Can you got it off?
We encourage recycling of paper and
That's not much of an encouragement is it.
PM: IIt's happening though. We have got now quite a
lot of investment going into recycling of newspaper and
newsprint and I think, I am not sure about it in Perth but
certainly in the eastern states most of the newspapers are now
being picked up and recycled which is a good thing.
BATTLERs Will you have a look at that? That seems to
run contrary to what the earth summit was all about.
PM; sky that one. I will see. That is one f rom out of the blue
SATTLER: Right out of lef t f ield. Lot's talk about a
couple of other issues. I want to get the republican one out
of the way first because people may why do you preoccupy
yourselft talking to people like Paul Keating about the
republic. I say because Paul Keating keeps bringing it up all
the time. You talked I think on Friday night it was at a
literary dinner about the oath of allegiance and you sort
SAT ' LZRs ( cont'd) of alluded to the f act that we should not
be swearing allegiance to the Que we should be swearing
allegiance primarily to our own country. But if I am not
wrong you swore allegiance to the Queen when you became Prime
Minister, didn't you?
PX: Yea, but I served an a minister
SATTLERt A touch hypocritical.
PM: No not at all, Australians don't serve her as a
minister. I am appointed by her representative, the Governor
General. SATTLER: How does that sit with you?
PM: There are lots of other people who would like
to be appointed Prime Minister, so it sits reasonably well
with me.
SATTLERs Wouldn't you just rather be appointed by us.
PM: I think that's the point, that in that the
average person who takes citizenship swears an oth, should
swear it to Australia. They are not dragooned into
ministerial service and don't need to swear it to the head of
state.
BATTLERi So you mean if you had your way you would
eliminate swearing alleoiance to the Queen and just leave it
swearing allegiance to Australia?
PM: That's as I think it should bev desirably for
Australians taking citizenship. That is that we have a s~ t of
values which Australia represents o2and we have that
encapsulated in a statement and people swear allegiance to
Australia and those values.
SATTLERt When are you going to do something about it, a
lot of talk, a lot of rhetoric, when are you going to do
something about it?
PM: Again these things take a bit of thinking about
and I think it helps to have in the public debate an
understanding of the issues. You said Howard that you keep
coming back to these things and I think that's good. I think
people do got
SATTLERt But people think you are beating around the
bush, you are not quite game to go the full step and take the
Queen out everywhere.
PM: I am not being about taking the Queen out as
you put it.
SATTLERtSATToLfE Ro: uOru to ath, right.
PK: Out of the oath but no, I think again these are
matters which are of community interest and they take people
awhile to understand.
BATTLERs You are going to wait until the polls show that
view as the majority, aren't you?
PM: No not nocessaril y~ but I think the debate
matters and it valuable. A Ptralians ought to be clear
about themselves and about some of these issues.
BATTLER: What about this amazing statement that if the
Liberals got into power we could have Los Angeles style riots.
I mean that is surely stretching the bounds of creduld)#
beyond belief.
PM: No I don't think so, i don't think so at all.
You see we had the f ederal director of the Liberal Party on
yesterday confirming yet again that under a Liberal government
people on unemployment benefits will be on the streets after 9
months, no support from the government.
BATTLER: How did he confirm that?
PM: He was on TV yesterday, on the Sunday program.
SATTLERs Me actually said those words?
PM: And he confirmed that after 9 months, well it's
in theEi~ ghtbck document, it's in Dr Howson's document and Dr
Hewson has said it over and over again
SATTLER: that they will put people on the streets
after 9 months.
PM: After 9 months unemployment benefits finishes
and then they go to the voluntary agencies. Now the voluntary
agencies are St Vincent de Paul, the Smith Family and what
have you so you can imagine a person with a wife and say a
couple of kids who is unemployed, no fault of their own, after
9 months they rely on their family, their extended family for
support or they go down looking f or food and in some case
shelter from the voluntary agencies. In other words we
dismantle the social security system we have which picks up
responsibility and pay. unemployment benefits to people
unemployed. if that went on for 5 or 6 years f or instance
under a government, the sort of civil unrest that would
produce would be profound.
SATTLER: But isn't that inciting people?
PM. No it's telling them, Just may read the
document and you will find in there that in what must be one
of the most spiteful policies ever to say to people. See this
is the Liberal Party's view, stigmatise them, say they are
PM: ( cont'd) bludgers, they don't want to work. What the
federal director of the Liberal Party said yesterday was a lot
of theme people are out there, some of them are actually
enjoying it on the public purse not making the effort to find
a job and the taxpayers shouldn't have to fund them, it's
unfair to taxpayers he said.
BATTLER: So is there no strong safety net for the
genuinely disadvantaged as Mr Robb would have us say?
PM: I None, none. There is effectively none, no, so
what happens to them is they go out there and you Just imagine
if you are 45 years of age and you have got a wife and a
couple of kids or you are 40 years of age and you are
unemployed and you have boon unemployed 9 months, that's it.
No money, no money into the household, down you go, down to
the Salvation Army or St Vincent de Paul or the Smith Family,
that's the Liberal Party's policies and if that sort of thing
over a period of time wouldn't produce a different sort of
Australia than we have today, one where there is a lot of
unrest and the same unrest which produced those problems in
the USA.
BATTLERs Why are we having a youth unemployment summit,-
when you reckon the level is only i' 10.6% right
across the board, that would indicate to me and there is an
article in the Financial Review today that Indicates that the
group in the worst trouble are sort of middle aged or adult
blue collar workers. Why don't you have a summit for them, or
are there no votes in them?
PM: What we are doing with the older if you like
unemployed is to try and get the economy growing as quickly as
possible. But the problem about the 15 to 19 year olds is
that the jobs have shrunk, the economy has changed and a lot
of the jobs which were done by young people in the past which
were clerical jobs, or jobs in retailing are now being done by
computers and basically the jobs have disappeared and we, when
I say we, this government has changed the whole retention
rates in schools and the training that follows it but there is
still about 122,000 people out of the 1.3 million.
SATTLER: But haven't you just put them into all these
training schemes to mask the real level of youth unemployment,
they are training for jobs that don't exist, surely.
PM: No that is not true no, no. When we became
the government three children in ten finished secondary school
and when our Liberal friends left the place they were quite
happy for seven children in ten to finish their education
before they completed secondary school.
SATTLER: SATTLEaRr: eW htahte se people training for?
PM: Let me just make this point to you now. Now
nearly eight in ten complete secondary school, 35-40% of those
get university place. and what I am working on now is for the
rest of them to find support in technical and further
education. in other words we are now keeping kids you know
eight out of ten children through secondary school into
universities and to TAPE so that the training they get
qualifies them for the sort of job which the economy has to
offer. it doesn't offer any more the unskilled so called dead
end job and that is what we are basically trying to f ocus on
for the untrained people trying to basically come to terms
with what wage or training wage can be paid to them so that we
get a break through on this and that would encourage employers
to take young people up without skills.
SATTLERo In the Sydney Morning Herald there is a story
this morning that says " stop going it alone', and this is a
message to you from Senator John Faulkner who is on the
national campaign commuittee, he is on the national executive
no well and he is a Left Wing member I think of the NSW Labor
Party. His message to you is stop going it alone and start
consulting a few people, and he cites the summit, the youth
summit if you like and apparent lack of communication between
you and Kim Beazley.
PM: That's not true o there is no lack of
communication between Kim and me.
SATTLERs Kim would never know when you are going to
announce it.
PM: Well he shouldn't have been asked, I should
have been asked.
SATTLERs But he is the employment minister.
PM1 He has the policy but not the arrangements for
the meeting. The meeting is to be conducted by me and we made
the arrangements on it.
SATTLER; He didn't want young people, you did.
PM: and I did and I met a group of young people
last night in Adelaide, young unemployed people and I am
meeting a group today in Perth just to try and get an
understanding of their problems and get the issues ready for
this meeting when we have it. But in terms of consultation I
ma n this government has turned consultation into an art form,
Wekeep consulting.
SATTLERs What is your message to Senator Faulkner?
PM1 If you look at the One Nation statement I set
up a round of consultations for that which went for about
weeks in every capital city, including Perth and that has been
PM: ( cont'd) the same f or all of our policy changes and I
think within the party I try and do the same as veil.
SATTLERt Is it because Senator Faulkner is a Left Winger
and7h is just trying to fire a few sort of guarded shots at
you. You don't always get on with the Left Wing, do you?
PM: These days they have become quite supportive of
me. SATTLER: When did this start?
PM: Years back, they realised a lot of the things
we did in the 70s, social policy and that was very good
policy. SATTLER: I don't know whether you have been keeping a
handle on this major strike we have got in our north west at
the moment. Around about $ 50 million has been lost already
all because the unions up there reckon we should have
compulsory unionism. One man has used his legal right and he
decided he doesn't want to be a member of the union and that
has caused an almighty strike which is now in its third week.
Do you believe in compulsory unionism?
PM1 I believe in the arbitration system and I think
that the parties should accept the decision of the WA
industrial commission
SATTLER: That was go back to work.
PM: Return to work that's what should happen.
SATTLER: What about this man's decision he doesn't want
to be a member of the union. Should he be allowed to
PM: I don't know the issues well Howard but I know
that there was a return to work ordered by the commission and
that's what I think should happen.
SATTLER: They are probably Labor Party supporters up
there and they are listening right now no your message is got
back to work.
PM: Absolutely.
SATTLER: And sort it out somewhere else. You threw
another $ 250 million at the Aboriginal problems the other day
and a large slab was targetted at jobs, that's fine, but how
do you reckon other Australians, unemployed Australians are
going to feel about all that money going to one@ group for
jobs?
PM: I don't think that anybody should feel any envy
towards Aboriginal Australianu, they were in the first place
dispossessed and-th-en as time has gone on they have not had
the opportunities which most other Australians have, and we
have tried to remedy that by their response to theAboginal
Qqt-inQtqy---RQyAl.-Coiuuission, by improving the law and
justice access for them and at the same time trying to improve
the underlying basis of Aboriginal social problems and that
gets down to you know things like education, housing, work
etc. BSATTLER: Prime Minister how do you know it's going work.
You know Malcolm Fraser used to throw money at the problem and
it never seemed to work.
PM: I think it's a matter of trying to get a better
handle on the administration, the policy, design thorn better.
We have tried our best in this statement to do that and I
think, I hope with some success. But we are trying to provide
a more of a sort of a commercial focus to some of the things
which Aboriginals are involved in.
SATTLER: Will someone from the government who has
control of our money be watching over the shoulders of the
people who actually are allocating the money in variou, areas?
It's our money.
PM: Commonwealth funding is administered by ATBIC
which is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
which is made up of representatives of the community all over
Australia and it dispenses and manages the funding which is
provided by the Commonwealth under the tutelage of the
Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.
SATTLERi So you just give them money and they do with it
as they please?
PM: What they have done I think is develop a very
good system of administration and recently ATSIC was put under
some scrutiny in the Senate and passed with I think f lying
colours. BATTLER: Your predecessor Bob Hawke has been on radio in
our sister station 2UE today in Sydney saying that Nick
Greiner has been hard done by, he is not a corrupt bloke, he
made a stupid decision maybe. He says that if the sort of
rules which have been applied to Nick Greiner forced him out
of office, we won't get good peo-ple -goingi-nto politics. Do
you agree with that him?
Px: Nick Greiner set up these rules for the
Independent Commission Against Corruption. He set the
criteria and the criteria in the end tripped him up. The
Liberal Party in NSW used the corruption issue for all it was
worth, alleging at the time that the Wran government was
PM: ( cont'd) corrupt and of course the ICAC never found one
thing against the Wran government and all it's done ever since
is find things against the Greiner government.
SATTLERs Ioist on its own petard?
PM: Absolutely.
SATTLER: Do you fael sorry for Nick Greiner? You rang
him didn't you?
PM: I rang him, yes.
SATTLERt What did you say?
PM: I just said, just to wish him well and to say
that SATTLER: hang on this is a Liberal man, you are
ringing him up
PM8 Well he is going back into sort ofas a private
member, I had worked with him as Premier/ We got quite a lot
of things done together over the years and I try and work
with, as Treasurer or as Prime Minister, with the Premiers and
get the best thing we can for the place from themznbetween us,
and it was in that context I called him. But I agree with Bob
about this point, it's not making politics any easier for
people and it means that anyone who is public spirited is
interested in public service but who has got ability and real
job opportunities, these things they will find very
discouraging and it can't make the political system better and
stronger. SATTLER: So what is he? Is Nick Greiner naive or
stupid, is he not corrupt?
PM: These are all judgements which are made by the
Commission and I don't want to be drawn into that argument but
the fact of the matter is that the Liberal Party in NSW tried
to set a standard it couldn't live with and I don't think it
has got anyone else to blame for this but itself.
SATTLER: So the rules are too tight, is that what you
are saying?
PM: Well they are their rules, and they were
basically designed to catch a past government, they were
designed as a piece of sticky fly paper for the Wran
government and what happened was of course the Wran
government. I mean the Sydney Morning Herald ran this campaign
for years saying ihe NSW Labor government was corrupt and in
the end the ICAC found nothing against it. All it found
against was the current Greiner government.
SATTLER: Poor bloke. What are you doing in Perth today
apart f rom trying to get a f ow people to vote f or you at the
next election because the Morgan polls and other polls would
indicate you need a bit more support to get up there next
year. PM: Yes but they go up and down Howard, you can't
let the two week polls throw you
SATTLER: But you need to get ahead, you have sort of
been behind for
PM: It's a problem. Unemployment, the recession,
coming out of it and unemployment is a problem but I am happy
to say the trend. in Western Australia are quite good. That
is western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales are doing
more strongly than say South Australia and Victoria and they
don't have the heavy manufacturing base which Melbourne has.
Western Australia is an agricultural and mining state and
services tourism and the rest and it seems to be coming out of
the recession into recovery stronger and faster than some
other places.
SATTLER: You have got to write of f Victoria at the next
federal election surely. It must be a Labor disaster. area at
the moment.
PM: We are not travelling well over there and
obviously the reason for that, there is a couple of reasons
for that but one of them of course is unemployment and the
recession and the fact that Victoria is I think going through
a structural change. That is the nature of its manufacturing
activity is changing and it is producing problems in that
change. BATTLER: I have heard from your strategist that you have
written of f Victoria at the next federal election.
PM: You can never write anywhere of f, only a fool
would write a place of f and we haven't done that but
SATTLER: And you would have loved Nick Greiner to have
stayed in office right up to the next election.
PM: yattd sItk hma hycm. i
they -Myattd isItk thma thycm. f
BATTLER: but wouldn't it have been great if he had
stayed there and tried to fight this corruption thing, you
would have had a field day.
PMT The Liberal Party wouldn't have let him I don't
think. SATTLERtSATTLEHeRw: aJoonh nw ouldn't have let him you mean.
PM: Yea, by and large. Well him and the State
Liberals. Whether the Labor Party there moved no confidence
in the istate government or not, I don't think he would have
stayed because for the reason you say I don't think the
Liberals would have let him stay. So you can't write anywhere
off and the important thing is that Australia is coming into a
recovery, growth is coming back
SATTLER: Hang on, how can you say that. Our deficit, if
I have got it right at the end of May had gone f rom a budget
forecast of $ 4.7 billion last August to now $ 11.2 billion, and
you reckon we are getting better.
FM8 I don't mean the deficit, I am talking about
growth, the deficit is a lag response to growth in the
economy. In other words if activity is down and employment is
down, receipts are down, the deficit gets bigger.
SATTLER: But you reckon our growth will be around about
4.75 and then 4.5 in the next couple of years and the OECD
says no, 2.6 to 3.7. Who has got it right?
PM: The OECD are trying to do a forecast in
Australia from a long distance and I don't think, it's never
been eavy for them to forecast Australia well, but we still
think Australia can grow quite fast through 92/ 3. The problem
in that what happens in all recoveries is that in the first
instance employers work people overtime before they put extra
people on. So there is a lag response for employment and one
of the interesting things that is happening at the moment in
that overtime being worked is getting back to the levels of
the boom year of 1989. That is we are now starting to see
those sort of classic signs of recovery where employers are
working people overtime, the next step being to put an extra
person on. So growth picks up as it will pick up but there is
this lag in between, this lag response to employment as the
overtime phase gets worked first and then after that an
employer starts saying, look I can't work someone more
overtime than I am working so I will add another person,, and
it's that adding of another person which starts to see the
employment start to grow. But there is always a lag.
BATTLERs Would your recent investments indicate we are
going to have a pork led recovery?
PM: I don't think no, no.
SATTLER: Why did you put the money in for?
PM: In the 6 months that I was out of the
government I thought that I should do, I mean I have always
preached don't put you money into property, don't speculate,
don't rely upon inflation. If you want to invest in something
don't buy an apartment or a flat or a house, or
SATTLER: SATTaL EcRl: oOcrk ?
11.
PM: or a c1ocki do something which employs people,
acids value, plays to Australia's comparative advantage and I
thought why don't It I have been preaching this for years, why
don't I put my money where my mouth is.
SATTLERi I have got the slogan f or the Labor Party f or
the next election, home on a pig's back.
PM: I hope that in true, I hope it comes true.
SATTLER: Thanks for joining us on the program today
Prime Minieter.
ENDS