PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP,
INTERVIEW WITH KEITH CONLON, RADIO 5AN, ADELAIDE
THURSDAY 23 JUNE, 1994
KC: Prime Minister, good morning.
PM: How are you, good, Keith?
KC: Pretty good. Why are you available to the media at such short notice
today, Prime Minister, is it as some critics are already saying, that
you're a bit rattled by Downer's popularity?
PM: No, it's just that you characters put in requests and occasionally we
take them up. And, we take them up when it suits us. And, I did a
major television interview last night on Late/ mne and there's a bit of
press around, today, about that, so I thought this wouldn't be a bad
opportunity. But, of course, if you don't want me on, just let us know.
KC: No, we're delighted that you are. We're hoping that as we're talking to
Alexander Downer fairly regularly we were hoping we might talk to you
more regularly.
PM: Well, now is your chance.
KC: Yes, indeed. One of the big issues that came up last night was
Telecom and we've actually been sent a letter from the Oppositionthey
naturally keep track of what you do during election campaigns-
* and -init you-told Telecom workers, ' Telecom won't be sold under my
government," and later you said, " We are committed to continued
public ownership of Telecom and Australia Post. tHow does that sit
with your comments last night that public or private ownership, it
doesn't matter, it's not of its essence, public ownership is not
especially important?
PM; Before that I said that we are keeping Telecom in public ownership.
That is, because of the pivotal role telecommunications plays in the
economy and society and the need to ensure that services are
available to all of the community on a fair basis. Because, as you
know there are enormous cross subsidies in Telecom. A lot of rural
and provincial country users, and certain other services within cities,
are effectively a set of cross subsidies. I think, keeping those services
there and the sheer size of Telecom and the local loop, as it's called
that is the telephone connections to the homes of this country it's
very important, I think, to make sure that those services are not
impeded. So, that's why the Government has always said that
Telecom will remain in public ownership. But, the question then was
put to me, " Well, in terms of tariff rates and competition and
efficiencies, is, therefore, the public ownership thing critical?" I said
no, providing there's a competitive model there and we have a
competitive model now, with Optus, with Vodaphone and, of course, a
lot of private resellers of Telecom services.
KC: You did say last night, or you actually wanted Kerry O'Brien to qualify
the question last night, Prime Minister, you were saying, " Are we
talking every little bit of it?" Has that left room for the Left
PM: You were viewing, were you Keith, you were viewing?
KC: I was certainly watching. Does that leave room for the Left of your
party to be continually concerned about what they would call
privatisation by stealth?
PM: No, because what we're saying is that the government's got no plans
for the sale of any part of Telecom. None of that is on the government
agenda. But, its precise structure will always be evolutionary, it's
continuing to adapt and change. So, not every last morsel of it will
always be critical to Telecom, the entity.
KC: So are there some non core assets that could be sold sometime soon?
PM: There are none that we are planning to sell but Telecom is making
commercial arrangements every day of the week and in a year from
now or two or three years from now you wouldn't know what there will
be there.
KG: In a wide ranging interview last night, Prime Minister, this alleged
comment that is coming up in Bob Hawke's book came out this idea
that you had referred in a private conversation with him, to Australia,
as the ' arse end of the earth'. Did you say that?
PM: I can't ever remember saying that to Mr Hawke but if it's a reference to
a short hand way of saying that Australia is way out of the Northern
Hemisphere markets and is a long way from everywhere, that we have
to be better than most, that we have to be competitive, that we have to
actually go out and get business, that we have to actually be better at
trade and promotion these are all points that I have made to the
Labor cabinet over a decade.
KG: Is it likely, though, to become one of those statements like the ' silly old
bugger' phrase that Mr Hawke had to carry with him, an aside
perhaps?
PM: Mr Hawke said that in public, to an aging person in a shopping centre.
I don't remember making this comment to Mr Hawke, at all.
KC: Did it did it in any way, if you said something similar to this, did it in
any way reflect upon your attitude towards Australia as it is today?
PM: I notice Alexander Downe r running on about this today saying that, you
know, he wouldn't talk about his country in this way. He wants his
country to have the Head of State an English Monarch, not an
Australian. I mean, here's the Leader of the National Party the other
night singing the national anthem of another country, " God Save The
Queen". I mean, you know, let.. I mean, I think this debate about our
commitment to Australia is a pretty silly debate frankly. I mean, I've
been a member of Parliament for 25 years, I've been a Minister for 11,
I've been Prime Minister for 2 and a half years, to be having a debate
about whether one's committed to Australia or not is pretty, pretty
puerile, I think. I mean, I accept the fact that Mr Downer's committed to
Australia, as I am, but he's not committed to the sort of policies I
believe are in Australia's best interest.
KG: But this business about who's Australian and who's not and what the
attitude is seems to be a matter of continuing comment. I understand
in the Senate this morning,_ Galreth Evans told the Senate at least your
Government has a leader with an Australian family, so he's making it
an issue.
PM: Well, I didn't know he'd said that. That matter is simply a matter for
Mrs Downer herself.
KG: Is it though that kind of continuing personal sniping that you claim that
you don't want to be part of now?
PM: But I'm not part of it. I mean I've just given you my reply. I mean,
that's a matter for Mrs Downer.
KG: And Senator Evans, perhaps?
PM: Well, Senator Evans can speak for himself.
KC: Prime Minister, the market is obviously an area of enormous
importance. It was the substance of the talk last night with Kerry
O'Brien. What about the allegation today that it is not a question of
whether the settings are right within Australia, but perceptions in the
overseas markets that there is loose fiscal policy here?
PM: Well that, that Keith, that's a bit of nonsense. Here we are look I was,
as you know, recently at the D-Day commemoration with most of the
leaders of Western Europe. Not a person there, not a Prime Minister,
not a President, had 5 per cent economic growth and 1 per cent
inflation. Not one. Not one had anything like 3 and a 1/ 4 per cent
employment growth. Now they're the settings that Australia has got
and in our national accounts, that came out just 2 or 3 weeks ago, for
the year to March we found that average weekly earnings growth was
half a percentage point. I mean, the thing that normally drives inflation
along in this country, I mean you've got to go back, I don't know,
you've got to go back well before I was in public life to find wages so
subdued and as you know, the Government has just made another
arrangement to pay $ 8 a week this year coming, and the following
year, which will hold that's for the bottom 25 30 per cent of the
workforce which will hold inflation, again consistent with that low
inflation outcome. So...
KC: And those, those things are within the country Prime Minister, but this
is the perception of a world market, a market which you wanted us to
enter Alexander Downer's made the point this morning.
PM: It's not the world markets doing this, it's the Australian bond market
doing this. This is not, the international bond markets have not shifted
to the degree to which the Australian Bond Market has shifted.
KC: This morning one of the Australian dealers has fought back, Prime
Minister, and said " Look, it is not the Australian dealers, it is not their
fault, we are part of a global market".
PM: Oh, they're part of a global market but in the end who holds the great
stock of Australian Bonds? It's held in the domestic portfolios, of, you
know, the AMP Society's number one fund, National Mutuals' funds. I
mean, they're held by the big Super funds and private instituions and
companies, that's who holds the bonds principally and the bond
markets may here.
KC: Prime Minister, we started out with the Leader of the Opposition this
morning here on 5AN asking him to do a bit of self-assessment on his
first month in, would you mind doing a quick swat analysis? What do
you think Alexander Downer's strengths have been in the first month?
PM: Well, I think he's made the mistake of thinking he can go back to
Malcolm Fraser's policies, and Malcolm Fraser's approach to life. That
is, back to that blancmange policies of the Fraser years, where we
missed a decade of opportunitiy to restructure ourself and then had to
do it with a great urgency from the early 1980' s onwards. We should
have actually been changing this country, making the linkages into
Asia, opening up the tariff barriers, getting our business competitive,
lifting product innovation, lifting exports of things other than primary
products. We should have been doing that from the early 1970' s and
we lost that time and it's one of the reasons why the liberal Party is as
ideological as it has been in the last, say, half dozen, ten years is
because what they perceive is the perceived failures of Malcolm
Fraser's administration, yet Alexander Downer wants to emulate it with
soft fluffy talk anywhere and certainly, no, no hardness for policy What
he's saying is..
KC: Is he a tougher political opponent, though Prime Minister?
PM: Well, I don't, I haven't had time to work that out, I mean John, John
Hewson never made anyhting very easy for me, but if you look at what
I've seen so far from Alexander Downer was, is basically spoiling
negativity. On the Land Fund, where he had an opportunity with
Aboriginal Reconciliation in this country, to put the MABO mess of the
Liberal Party behind him, he corrected Chris Gallus the first time she
opened her mouth in respect of saying maybe we should consider our
support for the land fund, when the Church..
KC: Prime Minister,
PK: when the Church..
KC: Prime Minister, unfortunately the news is coming up and we, and the
news waits for no one. I much appreciate your time being with us
today.
PK: OK, Thank you then.
ends