PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P 3 KEATING, MP
INTERVIEW WITH FRANCINE CHINN, 333, 6 JULY 1992
E OE PROOF COPY
C: Over the last couple of weeks we ' ye asked listeners
to fax the PM and tell him what they think of our
current massive unemplovment levels. He's agreed to
reply and is now speaking with JJJ national affairs
reporter Francine Chinn.
FC: Mr Keating first of all of course, welcome to JJJ.
PM: Thank you.
FC: We have been asking our listeners to either fax,
write or phone in their concerns about youth
unemployment so what we might do first of all is
play you a very short montage to give you an idea of
some of the main questions that have been asked.
Fl: I think the thing is that people can see that we are
under a recession at the moment and that there's
growing numbers of unemployeqdyeople in this
country. They feel lost and their life is
meaningless, there's nothing to look forward to.
R: Do you think training is an answer to some of the
problems?
F2: I don't know because then we're going to have really
well trained unemployed people. Maybe the gap
between the unemployment benefit and the lowest pay
is a little bit too large. Because if you see a job
that is only marginally more than the unemployment
rate, you don't go for it anyway.
R: So do you think it's necessary once you leave school
to go on and do more training?
Ml Yes certainly, you won't get a job otherwise.
M2: I'd just like to ask Mr Keating why the Austudy
independent age cannot be lowered to 22. How can
2
you say that there's incentive there for anyone to
retrain to make themselves more employable. I just
don't understand
FC: Prime Minister, you've just heard some of the
concerns our listeners have raised on youthisu
unemployment. First of all though the iq~ su
today is the Opposition's proposed youth wage. * Dr
Hewson has announced a scheme to r-duce award wages
which would mean an income of $ 114 per w-jeek for
under 18s and $ 133 a week for those 18 to 20 year
olds. Can we just get maybe you comments on that
proposed youth wage.
PM: Well I think the main thing to understand about that
is Dr Hewson said to them, well I know what's good
for you, that is basically to slash your wages.
That is for those who actually have a job would have
their wages cut and for the low wage you would then
propose rather than regard years 15 to 19 as a
period of preparation for life or as a period for
vocational preparation, that is providing the
opportunity of vocational training for work in the
rest of their lives. Dr Hewson is simply proposing
to go back to the dead end job, he provides no
training, but proposes to cut their wages. So in
other words, anyone who has a job ought to be very
nervous about his proposal. For instance, somebody
an apprentice, 19 years of age would be on at the
moment about $ 312 a week, they'd go back to $ 133,
less than half their current pay and it won't create
any new jobs. He talks about training by talking
about seventy million for technical and further
education, it's just a drop in the ocean. In other
words, he's not going to train anybody, he said
you're in the dead end job and you're staying there,
we'll just simply cut your wages. So all those of
you who have got a job will have your wages cut and
those of you who might get a job will have it cut to
$ 117 or $ 130 and no training and that's it. That's
all the government is going to do for under me, says
Dr Hewson you're on your own.
FC: But surely this kind of idea of a youth wage is
something that you yourself are tossing around.
Isn't that the type of incentive that small business
has been looking for? Surely it's enough incentive
to create more jobs?
PM: But we are not tossing that around. Understand
that, the Government is not tossing that around.
It's talking about entry level training wages, in
other words provid-ing tfhe -place66 in-te -hical -and
further education as we provided the places in
university and have a wage where people have jo2b
experience, where they are productive on the job,
but where they are also trained. In other words,
they are prepared vocationally for life. Dr Hewson
has no such proposal in mind, it has nothing to do
with training, this is simply a way of slashing
wages for young people. As the Coalition has tried
to slash wages for everybody for all of its
history.
FC: On this issue of training Prime Minister, you heard
in one of the concerns earlier, in the montage we
played you, Kicki from Melbourne who wants to know
what's the use of training when the jobs still
aren't out there when you finish your course?
PM: The jobs were out there in the 1980s, when the
economy was growing quite strongly the jobs have
been taken up for trained people. The kind of
untrained job, the unskilled job, the so called dead
end job that might have been around in the 1960s and
early 1970s is largely now done by computers in
clerical work, in retailing, they are just not
there, those jobs simply do not exist any more at
any price. This is the problem with Dr Hewson's
proposal at $ 117 or $ 130 the job is not there at
any price, so what do they think they are doing for
people? Whereas what we're saying is the Government
has lifted the retention rates in schools, lifted
enormously the through put through universities, and
is now proposing that in technical and further
education so that people come into the new economy
which has got skilled jobs and where they can take
their place in society over the long run.
FC: Prime Minister, Craig Mackee from Hawthorn in
Victoria was a listener who says, it's now time for
a bipartisan approach to be taken on the issue of
youth unemployment. Isn't it a serious enough issue
for you and the Opposition to stop playing politics
and get together on this?
PM: No you can't cheapen this issue by the easy resort
to the call for bipartisanship. This has been a
problem issue, entry level training wages and
training for the last couple of decades. The
Liberal Party ignored it. They had every change of
bipartisanship when they were in government, didn't
do anything about it. We're as always the only
party that will get these breakthroughs. They were
happy to leave 3 kids in 10 complete secondary
school, that's what there was in 1983, 7 in 10 they
were happy not to be trained. That is now 7 in
completing secondary school, 35-40 per cent of them
going through to universities in places we created.
We're the ones, the Government, the Labor Party are
the ones interested in taking the whole employment
and training prospects, education, vocational
education for young people into life and at the
meeting I intend to hold on this subject will try
and get breakthroughs in these areas. But it is Dr
Hewson who has chosen rather than wait and see what
the government was able to produce at the meeting,
to jump in and have a meeting where we heard a lot
about the problems and nothing about the solution.
And the solution is a slashing of wages with no
training.
FC: Well what's your solution Mr Keating? Real jobs for
young people, what's your solution?
PM: The solution is to regard 15-19 as largely a period
of vocational education, both in school, university
an~ d technical and f urther education. The problem
I'm working on is the group who are, if you like, in
the middle of that transition, the ones who are now
looking for full time work, who will not be part of
that long term transition envisaged by the
Carmichael recommendations. How do we help them
n-owi-That's -what I'm trying to do. How do we help
those people, to get them training so that they are
not caught in the dead end job in the dead end
street of life and work. That's what I'm focussing
on. Dr Hewson is not focussing on that at all.
He's just simply saying, look, cut their wages and
maybe someone will pick them up. Maybe someone will
pick them up cheap, but don't invest any national
effort in their lives, don't invest any national
effort in their vocational education, or their
academic education, just see whether there is a job
for them, when he knows as I know the dead end job
have just about disappeared.
FC: Mr Keating, again we received a lot of questions
about the proposed job summit. I'll give you just
one as an example. Damon from Perth asked why
should a group of politicians who have no real idea
or concept of unemployment, let alone youth
unemployment, be discussing it? Where are the young
people and the young unemployed people at your Job
Summit?
PM: The young unemployed people will be well represented
at this Summit.
FC: How?
PM: The Youth Action Coalition is going to be there, and
they re-present young people, and they represent a
coalition of young people. And as well as that, I
myself have taken opportunities in Adelaide and
Perth to meet substantial and representative groups
of young people in these positions. And what
they've said to me has been quite interesting. But
again, it's going to require Government action.
FC: Do you agree with Kim Beazley that you know what
young people want, and that's jobs and don't
necessarily need to talk to them?
PM: The first thing they need is vocational preparation,
first and foremost, and job experience, that we
know. I think what we're finding out in our
consultations is the difficulty they have in getting
it, or even in the preparation period to get it, the
costs and problems in getting it. That is why the
government and the political system must function
and get changes in society, in business, to let the
unskilled person get out of the rut. But the
difference between us and Dr Hewson is he wants to
leave them in the rut, cut their wages and leave
them untrained.
FC: Prime Minister, what's your jobs growth prediction
now for the next Budget year in the light of some of
the grim news and the bad economic figures we've
been hearing?
PM: We're now redoing them for the Budget, and the
Budget is a month away.
FC: OK. Just on the_ Budet, since 1987 we've been
hearing lots of promises, especially as far a jobs
for young people are concerned. What are you going
to offer Australia's youth in your Budget coming out
in August.
PM: I was Treasurer for eight and a half years. When I
became Treasurer we had a work force of 6 million.
Even today, with the unemployment we have, we have a
work force of 7 1/ 2 million. It's a quarter larger.
New Zealand across the way, which Dr Hewson points
to, has fewer people in work than they had in 1983.
So we had a lot of growth, it stopped in the
recession, we want to restart it, we believe that
will happen, and the growth prospects for young
people in that kind of an economy as we had it in
the late 1980s, was very good. It will be very good
again, particularly for people who are trained.
Because of the nature of the economy has changed
the old industrial archaeology, bequeathed to
Australia by the Liberal Party, was put asunder in
the ' 80s for a newer, more technically innovative,
product-innovative economy. And it is in that
economy that people will have to find their place,
and they'll find it basically by being prepared for
it and not forgotten by governments.
FC: So you're still optimistic that by the time that we
try to get the huge amount, that you admit, of
unemployed that are there through training courses,
which we hope to hear more about from the result of
your Jobs Summit, the economy up will be
sufficiently enough to provide the jobs for them?
PM: We're not saying we can eradicate unemployment in
this area overnight. I'm not saying that. But
understand that we are dealing with two streams of
problems here. We're looking at the long run, which
is about high retention rates in schools, capacity
for people to go through university and technical
and further education, to prepare themselves for an
ongoing job, and for life. That's the ongoing
agenda that the Carmichael Report, amongst other
things, addresses. The short run agenda is the
people who are not streamed into that, because we
haven't got that all up and running now, as yet.
We've got part of it up and running we've got
higher retention rates in schools and universities,
we're about to try to lift TAFE more. The secondrun
problem is to try to get the people who are, in
a sense, in the middle, the ones who are not
trained, haven't stayed in school, and don't have
Job prospects. That's what the meeting is focussing
on, both the long and the short run. What our
opponents in the Opposition say is forget the long
and the short run, let's just slash their wages and
leave them, see what happens to them.
FC: The other issue is, of course, Mr Keating, there are
a lot of young people out there who are hurting, who
are trying to survive on what amounts to very
little, on the dole. Will you be addressing those
questions of what AYPAC has also called a living
income? Will you be addressing that kind of issue
at your job summit?
PM: We have, over the ' 80s, dramatically lifted the
dole, as you put it, and AUSTUDY, and we've
dramatically lifted the number of people in work,
notwithstanding what's happened with unemployment.
And the main thing I think now, and we have aligned,
we ' ye produced a sort of common level of payment for
youth, which now does not discriminate in favour of
one kind of payment or another, encouraging people
onto the dole, or encouraging them into something
else. And I think what we'd like to do now is to
see if we can overcome this problem I speak to you
about, about the people caught in the middle between
the higher participation and training opportunities
of the new order economy, and the people in the dead
end areas of no training in the old order, the
remnants of the old order economy.
Q Mr Keating just to move along a little bit more, we
as a signatory to Agenda 21, the environmental
agreement that Ros Kelly signed at Rio, your
Government has agreed to incorporate consultations
with young people in decisions made on the
environment. How are you going to institute that
process, and would you be prepared to to the
similar process when it comes to dealing with youth
unemployment?
PM: Well I think Mrs Kelly will come back to the Cabinet
as required on that subject in fulfilment of that
commitment. We accept and welcome the fact that
young Australians have a very keen view about the
environment, which is wise of them, and it is a good
thing for the political system that they do. I only
hope that those of us in the higher echelons of the
system can live up to their expectations about the
environment and keep the environmental changes
coming through. But consultation has been part and
parcel of the way this Government has functioned, we
believe you can't change Australia without getting a
consensus on subjects, whether it be on wages, on
inflation, on fiscal policy, on trade, on anything
and the environment is part of that. And the ESD
discussions we have been having are basically about
that ecologically sustainable development, it is
basically a process, a consultancy process, a
cooperative process to look at environmental issues.
Q: So Mr Keating you are a strong believer in consensus
way of running your Government?
PM: Well we have done it now for a decade just on, and I
think if one wants to hand down the tablets from on
high, govern by press release and administrative
fiat you won't get the changes that we were able to
get through the accord with the trade unions, I mean
the great changes of the ' 80s in policy support for
women, for the aged, childcare, aged care,
occupational superannuation, medicare, all these
things form a cooperative program, and I don't
believe that you can break structural impediments,
road-blocks in an economy like this without
harnessing community support. When a Government
wins an election it gets the keys to the kingdom,
but it doesn't get the kingdom, it has got to draw
the power down from the community and you can only
draw that down by some sort of cooperative,
discursive framework.
Q: Well Mr Keating just on an election, will we have an
election Budget first of all? A-n-dsecondly any tips
on when we can expect an election, and why should
young people vote for you in the first place?
PM: Well the reason young people, I think, should vote
for the Government, whenever an election is held is
that we have been the ones to tackle the fact that
Australia did become an industrial museum that gave
them no hope and no participation, that has made it
into a more interesting country, a more interesting
economy, now with low inflation and long term low
inflationary growth prospects and with a better
chance of being able to pay for our imports, and
hence pay for ourselves. In doing that we set up a
new economy with a decent social wage, where we are
not hopping into the unemployed, kicking them out
after nine months as Dr Hewson would, where we are
not going to make those who are sick pay through the
nose particularly if they are low paid. We have
tried to change the economy to a modern order
economy but do it with a Labor heart. I think that
is why they should vote for us and on issues like
the environment we have been the only party to break
the big barriers on the environment with those big
brush strokes, big milestone changes of the
the last, including one that I was involved with,
that is the preservation of the Antarctica as a
wilderness park was a great achievement.
0: Well Mr Keating it sounds like the main reason that
young people should perhaps vote for you is because
rather then all the positive things that you are
achieving it's perhaps all the negatives of what
could happen under Dr Hewson?
PM: No, no. We have given young Australians a future.
We have given them a place in the fastest growing
area in the world, the Asia-Pacific, in an economy
which is now externally oriented and has a potential
for a lot, over the longer haul, vitality at lower
rates of inflation and where we can see lots of
interesting jobs created in the manufacturing and
services sector of the economy which is providing
employment in cities and regional cities of
Australia where most people live. That's why they
should support the Government and in doing it in a
way which is socially accommodating. Our opponents
are basically in a survival of the fittest
mentality. If you are not a millionaire you are a
lay about, if you want to work we will slash your
wages and then you might get yourself a job, we
might be able to find you a job, you won't be able
to live on it but it doesn't matter we might be able
to find you one if someone is good enough to give
you one. If you want to put yourself through
university you have got to have parents who can
provide $ 12,000 to $ 13,000 a year for a university
place. This sort of hardhearted approach won't do
anything for Australia, and Australian young people.
Q: Do you understand why so many of Australia's young
people are disillusioned with policy, with what they
see in Question Time do you understand why so many
of them think well neither of these people really
understand what's going on outside, they don't
understand me and how I live on the dole?
PM: Well we try and understand them and we try and
remedy their position, I say we the Government. But
what we have certainly done we have done as no other
Australian political party has done and taken on the
big problem of Australian politics, that is a change
of the Australia economy from a dead-end economy to
a live-end economy in the Asia-Pacific, which in the
long-run gives them a life long chance, now everyone
else laid down on the job in the ' 60s and ' 70s and
early ' 80s and this huge structural transition to a
better place with more interesting jobs and higher
incomes is the thing we have done. And we have also
said three kids in ten completing secondary school
not good enough for us, can't have a smart country,
a clever country with only three people completing
secondary studies, that's now as I say seven going
eight nearly in ten and we have added 50 per cent of
places to universities we have created the
equivalent of twelve new universities since 1985,
120,000 places, we have got about 35 or 40 per cent
of students coming out of secondary school now going
through universities and we are now trying to pull
up TAFE. No-one else did this the Liberals were
happy to leave it and say seven in ten of you, we
are quite happy for to drift out of school and not
even complete secondary school and untrained,
unskilled left in the furrows of the old Australian
economy, I mean we didn't do that, and that's why I
think that if young Australians want to look at the
process they are entitled to be questioning about it
but they are not entitled to be cynical about it,
because if ever there is a group of people have
taken on the structural change that no-one else
would tamper with because it was just to hard, we
have, but we have included them in it by saying it
was totally unacceptable to just leave them, seven
in ten of them leave school unprepared.
Q: Mr Keating it sounds as though an election might be
in a lot closer then some people are thinking?
PM: Well you keep talking about an election, there is no
election imminent anywhere.
Q: Well do you think, I mean a lot of people are
saying......
PM: This has got nothing to do with elections
whatsoever.
Q: But still a lot of people are saying that it seems
that the young jobless are becoming the latest
political football with an election in mind?
PM: No, no. I took this issue up, youth and entry level
training wages with my colleague Kim Beazely, the
Government has been looking at this question now for
a few years, we are the ones that took up high
participation rates in school and in post compulsory
education. I am the one holding the discussion to
try and get some of these areas broken through. The
football comes from Dr Hewson jumping on the band
wagon, not with a solution to the problem but just
trying to slash their wages and leave them, so don't
mix him up with us. I mean we are about a long run
change here of quality and we are the only people
who have initiated it and as usual will be the only
people to complete it.
0: Prime Minister we have a whole stack of letters and
things we will pass on to you that outlines the
questions that have been asked, just to try and wrap
this up though the environment has been a big one,
it is something which we get quite a lot about, can
you just tell us can the Government in some way
match up caring for the environment with jobs for
young people?
PM: Well I think so, one of the things we are looking at
is a proposition in employing young people in land
-care type jobs and training situations whereth
environment, where they can do something that is
related directly to the environment. It is one of
the options that we will consider for this meeting,
but it has its complexities in establishing it, in
managing it, but it would directly be of value.
0: Well just finally, of course music was another thing
that is very strong as far as Triple JJJ is
concerned we would like to ask you if you have, are
you aware of much contemporary music?
PM: Well not as I used to be, I am an old rocker not a
young rocker.
0: Well we were wondering if you have a particular
track that you might like to suggest that we can
play for you?
PM: Well anything from INXS, I have had a bit to do with
them over the period, I like them.
0: And they are probably quite an appropriate one as
well, Mr keating also we have a gift set for you
celebrating the ABCs 60th anniversary we have a CD
set from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and for your
son
PM: What's in it?
Q: That's something you would have a much better idea
than I.
PM: Let's have a look.
Q: Any good stuff in it?
PM: I can't see the title, but there is a lot I
recognise here. Dance Russian Spectacular, Romance
overtures, but I am afraid the titles are buried in
the box.
Q: Well that's something which can be a surprise later
on, we also have for Patrick your son who we hope is
a bit of a Triple JJJ listener we have a couple of
things for him including a T-shirt, cap etc we just
interviewed John Hewson, I believe he has sworn that
he is going to wear his Triple JJJ T-shirt whilst
jogging, so maybe we can see you wearing Patricks a
bit later on. And also or course the letters that
we have received from our listeners and we hope that
you will actually read these in the lead-up to your
PM: I do, I read a tremendous amount of correspondence
that comes through and particularly things which are
topical as the jobs meeting is, and where young
peoples views are to be considered and considered
carefully. So we will do our best with it, but the
main thing I would say to you in conclusion, and
thanks for having me on, is to say that we are here
for a long run change and a short run change, two
streams here for people, but basically to repair
themselves, a vocational education for later on in
their life, to give them a real life with an
interesting job and good pay.
Q: Well Mr Keating there is a lot of young people out
there hurting so we just hope that you are right.
And again just thank you, at the risk of sounding
like John Clarke, Prime Minister thank you for
talking to me and Triple JJJ will always welcome you
back if you would like to talk to us in the lead-up
to the next election at whatever stage that may be.
PM: Thank you Francine.
ENDS