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CHANNEL 9 SUNDAY 0900 13.3.94
Subject: R\ V Paul Keating
Prime Minister
Compere' ( Jim Waley): For Paul Keating there's double cause for celebration on this
first anniversary of his re-elected government. Yesterday Labor
won the by-election in the Western Australian seat of former
Treasurer, John Dawkins, a victory which brings to Canberra
the Fremantle doctor, Carmen Lawrence, -who's expected to
breeze straight into Cabinet.
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: The Prime Minister is in our Canberra studio this morning. To
talk with him, Sunday's political editor, Laurie Oakes. Laurie
Thanks, Jim. Prime Minister, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Laurie.
Carmen Lawrence handed you a pretty good anniversary
present. I think she did and congratulations to her. She won well and I
think for the government to see a pick up, a swing to the
government in a by-election, is unprecedented. I can't
remember any time in the 25 years I've been in public life
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: when at any by-election there was a swing to the government.
Even you wouldn't have predicted that, would you?
I thought we would Someone asked me the other day and
my staff were talking about it coming back from Perth last
week, how we'd go, and I said I thought we would pull out the
1993 result. As it turns out, we've picked up another one per
cent.
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: Carmen spoke to me last night and she said, ' Look, whatever
this result means for me, there's no doubt that it would not
have happened unless the government was doing reasonably
well. And the notion that we're doing poorly in Western
Australia I didn't find anywhere in the course of the
campaign'. I think what it is also, Laurie, it's a repudiation of
garbage bin politics. I mean she's suffered so much vilification.
The attacks on her in the House of Representatives and the
Senate under privilege about blood on her hands I mean all of
that muck raking the Liberals literally ripped up the rule book
for this by-election.
But Carmen Lawrence herself in the campaign said everywhere
she went she was getting feedback from people that they're
sick and tired of the behaviour in the federal parliament too
and she's going to bring that message to you and others in
Canberra. Yes but I think it's one thing to talk about behaviour and it's
another thing to talk about what is done and said. I mean for
instance all of this attack on Ros Kelly over now a month in
the end what does it bring the Liberals in a by-election?
Answer: a swing against them. Look, Laurie, it's always.
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: That's really a long bow, isn't it? I wouldn't have thought the
swing against them was down to the Ros Kelly affair. Surely
that's got a fair bit to do with Liberal leadership woes?
They were saying that the concentration on this issue and Mrs
Kelly's resignation was a big plus for the Liberal Party. Well,
where's the plus? I mean it's a legitimate question for me to
ask. Where is the plus? The answer is there is no plus because
the public wisely are looking for value always and they're
looking for fundamentals.
But your own polling, though, showed that at the time of the
sports rorts affair hitting the front pages in the West there was
a swing against you and it came back to you last week when
the Liberals were brawling.
I think the swing against I've said to you, I think Laurie,
and I've said to others, all of this sort of static what is for the
public, static and the public debate which doesn't go to their
lives, their values, which doesn't go to the long run
fundamentals of the country, just a big discount factor. If the
Liberals want to keep at this, let them go their hardest but
where does it leave them when there's a swing to the
government in a by-election such as this? It leaves them with
those tactics basically
Just to make that grin a bit wider, the next McNair poll in the
Bulletin Magazine shows that you've now got a 17-point lead
over Dr Hewson as preferred Prime Minister. Have you seen
him off, do you think? Who do you think you'll be fighting at
the next election?
Laurie, a year after the election a year ago, in the year since
we've seen the economy heading towards 4 per cent
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: economic growth, 200,000 jobs, a legislative solution to the
vexing problem of Mabo, Australia getting itself set up
properly in the Asia-Pacific with APEC. They're the things of
value and I think it is those things which carry the weight of
public opinion.
Do you think you'll be fighting the election against Dr
Hewson, or has this result finished him?
I don't know but you see he told us, and we should remember
what he said a year ago that Australia would be into a double
dip recession. You remember the gun sight ads in the election
campaign bang, taking out your jobs. There's 200,000 been
put there in their place. I think Malcolm Fraser's comment of
two weeks ago in the Australian he said, ' A year after
Fightback was repudiated by Dr Hewson no-one in the Liberal
Party knows what the Liberal Party's philosophy or policies
are'. And I think that's true.
This result will worry some people. Obviously this is a signal
to you to maintain the arrogance and you might get away with
it because of the weakness of the Opposition.
I just reject that maintaining the arrogance line, Laurie. Look,
I started consulting about Mabo in April of 1993 and I kept it
up til December. I mean arrogant people don't run those sorts
of consultative processes. I did the same throughout the year
on APEC trying to build a constituency for that leaders'
meeting in November the following year. I think in the caucus
and in the cabinet I'm the first amongst equals in there. It is a
cooperative process. We've had a generational change inside
the government. There's tremendous enthusiasm on the part of
the newer Ministers. In that I think this sort of old claim, that
' Adffihk_ -OW ~ 1
I r
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: to have pride in one's work and determination to see things
done, is arrogance it's untrue. But whether it's untrue or not,
I don' t in a sense care provided that we keep making the
changes and we keep getting the fundamentals better.
Carmen Lawrence presumably will go into the Ministry at the
next caucus meeting on Tuesday week. Is that right?
I would like to see her in the Ministry. It is a matter for the
caucus. I mean everyone knows my views about this. I would
very much like to see her in the government.
And that would be the time table Tuesday week?
In the event that the caucus agreed, yes.
And what sort of portfolio do you have in mind? You must
have thought about this.
Not very much. No, I haven't because I would like to consult
her. Laurie, there's a thing called commonsense and
presumption. It's not sensible and it's presumptuous to have
discussions myself and Carmen about what she might do
and portfolio. The first thing is see what the public think. Let's
get the by-election out of the road, see what the caucus thinks
and in the course of those consultations I'll see what I think. I
mean after talking to my colleagues, to Brian Howe, my
deputy, and to the other leaders and opinion leaders inside the
caucus, I'll talk about the spread of jobs.
But presumably if she's to be the kind of use that you want,
you'll have to give her some sort of important portfolio in the
social policy area, won't you?
Not necessarily. It should be
You wouldn't get rid of her on admin services?
No. I think, given her record as a Premier and as a major
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes: contributor to the Labor Party and to Australian public opinion,
she should have a policy job.
Now, are you just filling one vacancy the Ros Kelly vacancy?
Or are you now going to close up the hole left by Alan
Griffiths? It's clear from the sequence of events that it's not going to be
opportune to resolve the question with Alan Griffiths now.
There's some flexibility there for us. I'll soon be establishing
the inquiry which Alan asked me to establish. That'll take
some time, though. So I mean it still leaves the government
happily, I might say in a position where it can make
judgments about all these things. But it will mean, I think, the
fact that Dr Lawrence will be joining the caucus and will
contest a place in the ministry, that it will be the occasion of a
set of decisions about ministerial responsibility.
This will be your fourth reshuffle in three months. That's
starting to look a bit untidy. People are talking about
instability. You won't want another one a month or two down
the track, will you?
Laurie, let me say this to you: I don't think in terms of Alan
Griffiths or Ros Kelly any of us would want these things. But
let me also say that what we are seeing, and have seen, with
the resignations of people like Neil Blewett and John Kerin and
John Dawkins is the opportunity for a major generational shift
in the government. The vigour, the youthfulness, the vivacity
for the job all those sorts of things are on display I think with
the newer members of the ministry and the cabinet and, might
I say, those who've been there across the last 10 years.
But surely you want it to settle down? Can I ask you I
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: specifically, do you still hold to that promise to keep Alan
Griffiths' job open until this situation is resolved or, for the
sake of stability in the government, do you think it's gone on
too long?
I think that's a matter to be amicably settled. I think this is a
very fair caucus. No-one is going to say of Alan, well, because
of this matter where you've resigned but have since been
cleared by the police, and he has and where there's an
inquiry in prospect, which he has every confidence of being
cleared in terms of his ministerial conduct. This is a very fair
caucus and I think that caucus will consider Alan's position
very favourably.
On the night before the election a year ago at a party with your
staff, you said that if you won the election Labor would do
more things here than any other Western government will do in
the next three years. Now there's been criticism in the last few
days that at apart from the employment White Paper and a
Mabo social justice package, the agenda for the next couple of
years looks pretty empty.
I don't think that. Let's go back to that statement. What have
we got since? We've got the economy growing faster than any
other Western economy between 31/ 2 and 4 per cent now.
We've had the creation of 200,000 jobs across the year. We've
had the legislative settlement of Mabo, which in most
comparable countries could have taken five to 10 years and put
the whole development of a continent under question, with
continual claims being lodged in the High Court. We have the
continual improvement in Australia's position in Asia, in the
world. We're not only building structures in Australia but
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: we're building structures for Australia outside of Australia, and
we're now going to try and do something in Western world
terms novel about long-term unemployment.
I was going to ask you about that.
Either we have developed in the public commentators a bunch
of sort of insatiable change junkies. I've been here for
years, Laurie. No coalition Prime Minister could have made
that claim after a year in office at any one time.
Let's talk about unemployment. Obviously the economy is
recovering. The former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank
said on Business Sunday this morning that even though when
this recovery reaches a peak he expects unemployment to still
be at 8 or 9 per cent. Is he right?
Time will tell but one thing is for sure: long term
unemployment will be far higher than at any other time and I
think we do have to get these people job ready and stream
them back into the labour force. In other words, of those
laminations, that laminar flow from various parts of the
community into employment, one of those laminations has to
be from the long-term unemployed. In other words, what we
are trying to do is to get those people out, up, get their esteem
up, get their work experience up and get them back into work.
But the possibility of unemployment still at 9 per cent when the
recovery hits its peek: that's pretty grim, isn't it?
I don't know whether I'd be as pessimistic as that. But, again,
one thing's for sure: there is no substitute for economic growth
for employment and the government does want to see the
economy grow. I noticed some terribly dismal and I thought
pretty pathetic headlines in one of our major newspapers a day
1;
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes: or so ago saying, ' Let's put our foot on the brake'. We've got
a sort of a pile of unused resources out there in the capital
stock. We've got a pool of people unemployed. Now is the
time to take those resources up and not to in some way put a
suture on it just as we're starting to get the thing flowing.
There seems to be a mindset at the moment that good news
equals bad news, that the growth figures mean that inflation is
inevitable, higher interest are inevitable.
I think we just can't cop this kind of analysis, Laurie. The
country cannot cop this sort of gloomy analysis. When we're in
a recession, it's terrible. We grow for six months, it's
shocking. From the dismal sort of fiscal and monetary watches
I mean people who in the big public debate wouldn't blow a
candle out. I mean in terms of if you said to them, ' Look, you
run an agenda and get the place back on its feet', they wouldn't
know where to start. Now, this place of sort of studied caution
at this point, at this point, we don't need it. That's not to say
we don't need always to be vigilant about inflation and we
will be or that we don't need a sensible role for monetary
policy. Of course we do. But we have been in a recession,
after all. You've just made the point about the store of
unemployed people, including the long-term unemployed.
Now's the time to get on with the growth and to get the place
really moving so we take some of those resources up.
Another anniversary question: again in that speech in the night
before the election you told your staff that voters were
contemplating taking Labor back but not with any relish. And
you said, ' We love their votes but we don't particularly need
their love'. Is that the way you still feel? You don't care how
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating: Australians think about you?
We want their respect and their regard. Look, they must
understand now that Labor is setting Australia up in the
for a period of low inflat ion regrowth. We've got proximity to
markets that are growing faster than any in the world for the
first time in our history. This government has made the
structures and the access and the cultural change to exports to
let us be part of that. Now, it is in those matters of substance,
of fundamental importance to Australia, that mattered yesterday
in that by-election. They will matter in the next federal
election. In other words, the public elects the government to
deal with Australia's problems and its fundamentals and the
government responds. Whether on the way through they like
the way I part my hair, or the look of the faces of the ministry,
in a sense is secondary to whether they approve of the policy
fundamental job and the fundamental things that the
government's doing.
If yesterday's result was not about Carmen Lawrence's
personal popularity, does that mean you expect a swing to the
government in next week's Bonython by-election?
I think each by-election is different but I think that the
government is travelling reasonably well because I think the
public do look for value. I've always thought this always
right throughout my political life. Laurie, you've reported me
saying nearly a decade ago that good policies are good politics
that don't sell the public the dump, don't believe cynically you
can feed them pap or dross and that they'll take it. They won't.
They'll look through it and see what you're actually doing.
What we're doing is re-modelling Australia and giving it a
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Paul Keating:
Laurie Oakes:
Compere: future and giving it a sense of optimism, particularly I think
with our young people, giving it a setting in the part of the
world we live.
You're getting some help from the Opposition, though, aren't
you? We've got an Opposition that doesn't know where it is. I mean
I noticed John Howard saying this morning, ' I'm not
yesterday's man'. He's right about that. He's a man of
years ago.
We're out of time but thank you very much, Mr Keating.
Good, Laurie.
Back to you, Jim.
The Prime Minister there with Laurie Oakes.
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