PRIME MINVISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
INTERVIEW WITH MAXINE MCKEW, ABC RADIO, THE WORLD TODAY
14 DECEMBER 1992
E& OE PROOF COPY
MM: Prime Minister, Dr Hewson has this morning rejected your claim that he would
change the GST and include food after the election. Don't you have to face the
fact that the electorate could vell be in a mribod to believe Dr Hewson?
PM: Why would they? He has said now for a year that if he changes his policy he will
resign, he'd resign first. All of that humbug has been made obvious by his vaultface
on the matter. He said yesterday in the newspapers, " in my own analysis it
was fair to do what I planned", that was tax food. So he has got the hide to say
yesterday: I still think taxing food is right but won't because of public opinion.
In other words, he has changed his policy but he hasn't changed his mind.
MM: But, Prime Minister, you have made some quite dramatic policy U-turns
throughout your career, why shouldn't Dr Hewson be able to plausibly do exactly
the same thing?
PM: Yes, but anything that I have done has been within the framework that the
Government was working in all the years.
MM: 1985?
PM: No, but we abandoned it. I didn't introduce it and then sneak in a food tax. Look,
Dr Hewson believes let me say this, why doesn't he exempt things If he
thinks the GST is unfair, where does he draw the line? Why doesn't he exempt
other household necessities like water, gas, electricity and the telephone? Or, what
about children's clothing, or clothing in general? Or takeaway food, what's he
going to do with takeaway food? Are all the takeaway outfits going to be taxed
with a 15 per cent GST?
MM: Well, presumably we'll get all those details on Friday.
PM: Can I just say this. The Cole Committee, which was doing all these details about
the building industry, tourism, all of these questions about food, fast food, all the
distinctions which will really matter, it's now going to cynically report after the
election, after having been promised by Dr Hewson in the middle of the year,
September, October, then before Christmas, now after the election. In other words,
all the details will be buried, and yet we're asked to believe that when he runs into
the complexities of exempting food and the administrative mess of things like fast
food and restaurants, and all the other things, that he won't when he has a political
opportunity introduce a tax on food. Well of course he'll do it. Of course he'll do
it.
MM: Well, Prime Minister, can you spend the entire campaign wandering around saying
that John Hewson is not to be believed? If you do that people might think you
have nothing else to offer.
PM: Hang on, let's be clear about this, this is the man..
MM: You're making a big point about his believability factor.
PM: He's now walking around talking about compassion. This is the fellow who said
this..
MM: Why do you reject that as so implausible, though? Isn't it perfectly conceivable
that John Hewson could have had a conversion on the road to Damascus?
PM: Come on, look, he discovered his heart when he discovered fear in it. Th1at's when
he discovered his heart.
MM: Others would say flexibility, that he's listening to people, the fact that he is now
starting to do all the things that you'd been suggesting he should.
PM: I'd say not flexibility. Fright. Look, he said this in a debate recently, " I remember
you" ( that's me) " I remember you saying not long ago that when they fall off the
pace" ( that's the poor and the underprivileged) " you'll reach back and pull them up.
What you mean is you'll pull everyone else down to the lowest common
denominator". Now how could you hold those sort of cold-hearted views and
then be running around after your Federal Director has been on your back and
saying that you're a born-again compassionate person? Then he said this, in a
written speech recently to the Family Summit, he said " giving people choice is the
compassion that liberates, just giving is the compassion that suffocates". This is a
person who has, in terms of those not well-off, lacked any soul whatsoever. Now
we're supposed to believe that because he is faced with a 47 per cent poll support
for Labor and 40 for the Coalition last week, and the panic-stricken directives of
his Federal Director, Mr Robb, that we're supposed to say this is a new-found
compassion and a new-found sense of decency in policy.
MM: Prime Minister..
PM: The thing is, Maxine, if you believe that you'd believe anything.
MM: Prime Minister, one could say he has in fact listened to the force of your message,
he is after all doing all the things that you've suggested he do he's listening, he's
talking about equity and fairness and he says he is going to stimulate recovery.
PM: No, this is the same fellow who said this on stimulation, he said on 24 November
in the House ' surely stimulatory economic policies do not work'.
MM: Well, now he's seen the light.
PM: Come on, seen the light, come on. I mean is there any scepticism left amongst
some of you people in the Gallery? Come on, please. This is a fellow who for a
year has told Australians Fightback is the answer, if there's any variation in this I'll
resign. Stimulatory policies don't work, if you reach down to help the poor they'll
drag us all down and now we are supposed to believe with one beach walk and a
couple of press statements that he's a compassionate, thinking, caring, listening
person. You know what he's listening to? His Federal Director. You know what
he's listening to? The polls, nothing else.
MM: Prime Minister, if as you say John Hewson will bring the GST back on food after
the election, what will you then do after the following election, will you remove
the GST if elected, the election after next?
PM: I made it clear where we stood, if he campaigns saying that food should be
excluded and then he puts food in, subscquently we would vote against that in the
Senate. But he would have certainly no..
MM: You'd vote against the food being included on it?
PM: Yes.
MM: But you would pass the rest of the GST.
PM: Well, if he won an election on the basis of the GST.
MM: Right, let's fast forward to the following election, what would you do then?
Would you campaign on the basis?
PM: If you are still here Maxine I'll tell you then.
MM: Prime Minister, you didn't answer that question in Perth last week. If you are
leaping ahead and assuming what John Hewson will do..
PM: You are talking about two elections away.
MM: I know, but that's what you're doing.
PM: Six years away.
MM: You're making judgements about what John Hewson will do after the election.
Shouldn't you answer the same question about the election after next?
PM: No, Maxine after the election can be within six to twelve months from now, that is,
in the immediate future. The fact of the matter is that even with food out of the
GST, it still collects $ 22 billion it's nearly half the Commonwealth's total
income tax. T'his is a massive disruption to macro-economy and to the way all
Australians will live. What he said is nothing that I've said in the past about being
the politician that Australia needs, about having the policies which we require
about not shifting, not bending what the Liberal Party have ended up with now is
another Andrew Peacock, but without the good nature or the good humour.
They've got someone who is a flim-flam man, someone who really basically
doesn't stand for any policy other than that which will get him a vote at the polls.
So all this hyperbole we've heard from him I'm the man, I'm the person, I'd rather
resign than change is basically just pap. What we've got is what the Liberals
always give us a collection of Andrew Peacocks only this time without a soul,
without the good humour and without the good nature.
MM: Prime Minister, regardless of what you see as the motives, isn't the fact that the
policy shift by Dr Hewson back to the centre ground, if you like, doesn't that put
pressure on you to move further to the left in your own policy?
PM: His model is Fightback, which is a tax switch, which he says now he will make
less objectionable, and he is talking vaguely about some stimulatory add on.
MM: What if he comes out with a big on Friday?
PM: Hang on. Just listen. It would do some of you people in the gallery good to listen,
because none of you picked the pick up in Labor's fortunes, none of you. Basically
you are writing the columns..
MM: Yes, but you don't believe it either otherwise you would be having an election
before Christmas.
PM: Yes we do believe it, yes, there are too many polls not to believe it. None of you
picked it, just listen to what I say. John Hewson's framework is the Fightback
framework. It is a tax switch which he says he will make less objectionable with
maybe some things added on to it. The Government's framework is entirely
different, it is a decade long development of a safety net, access and equity in
education, in health, in aged care, in child care, it is a systemic approach of a
Government with real compassion, a party with real compassion, well placed and
as well as that a commitment by the Government to go back to doing what it has
always done well and that is growing the economy. His framework is nothing like
that, his framework is basically to have a tax switch which will increase prices, he
wants to cut wages through his industrial relations policy and then we are
supposed to say, well in all that cold hearted, hard hearted framework he might
make the tax change less objectionable and he might add something on to it which
I am supposed to say, oh well in that case, this is really something. I mean this is
the same old tired framework, ideological framework which is reminiscent of
Thatcher in ' 78-' 79, Reagan in 1980, which is now out of sync with the times all
around the world, which Dr Hcwson now realises he has got difficulty with, he is
not changing it because he thinks it is right to change it, in fact he thinks it is
wrong to change it, he is changing it just for votes.
MM: Don't you have to develop your own positive message and not just reiterate a
negative message against Dr Hewson?
PM: Maxine, I have just come from the Science Council where we were just talking
about today, extending Australian science and technology into Asia. Where
people at the meeting are saying that this Government's shift into Asia, in foreign
policy terms, has made all the difference. Later today I am seeing people
associated with the Qantas sale, we have got a brand new airline system just about
to come off the stocks. We were talking this morning about the development of a
national vocational education system which has happened this year with the
national training authority. The Government is the Government of Australia, it is
doing the big bold things like vocational education, like the shift into Asia, like
telecommunications. That's where we stand, we don't have to run around and
say...
MM: But you did.
PM: And say well now this finky dink proposal of the leader of the Opposition is too
objectionable and has to be varied, where are going to say, oh well in that case our
framework somehow has to be adjusted. Our framework is the framework of a
sure-footed, confident Government that has remodelled the Australian economy
from an industrial museum to a modemn industrial state.
MM: But just finally you did articulate in Perth last week that you wanted to work on a
second term agenda, as you put it.
6
PM: Oh yes, but it will be again consistent with the big things we have done in the
macro-economy, the micro-economy and in social policy. But Maxine let us not
hear for a Government that has strung together one of the best social safety nets in
the world, where you have had somebody as heartless as Hewson saying to us if
you lean out to help people you will pull people down. If you give them things it
is compassion which suffocates them. Let's not hear the hypocrisy and humbug of
him saying, within weeks of saying those things, that he now believes that he is
listening to people with compassion. You know what he is listening to, the polls?
And do you know what he has found in his heart, he has found his heart? Because
for the first time he has found fear in his heart, that is where he discovered it.
ENDS