PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
DOORSTOP, ORANGE CIVIC THEATRE, ORANGE, 20 SEPTEMBER 1995
E& OE PROOF COPY
J: Mr Keating, there was some expectation that there may be an
announcement pending or today on the freight terminal proposal..
freight terminal in Parkes. You alluded that sort of need, is it likely it
would be there?
PM: What I did say today is that I have now asked my two colleagues
Laurie Brereton and Bob Collins, that is the Minister for Transport and
the Minister for Primary Industries to come back to me with a report
about the needs of air freight capacity and specialised air freight
facilities for this country. I think it is true that much of the air freight
has been prioritised around the passenger needs and obviously the
big terminals at Sydney and Melbourne are in the main, configured as
passenger facilities. We need to do better with freight. Whether it is
done in Sydney or Melbourne or Parkes or wherever, at least we will
get an idea, I should hope, of what we need and then think about what
sort of strategies we need to employ to bring them..
J: It seems that there is very strong support for an airport here in this
region, something they wouldn't enjoy in western Sydney..
PM: No, but by the same token, I think, these things can't be sub economic,
they have to be economic. So, we need to see by some analysis
whether such an investment would actually be a productive thing for
the country. If the country spends its scarce capital into sub economic
resources then we move backwards. We have always got to keep
moving forward, so we can only do that with investments which are, of
their essence, productive and that requires us to do at least the
feasibilities and look at the requirements of the air freight industry as a
whole. I think we can do that.
J: Mr Keating, you spoke very strongly about environment issues today,
the relationship with the land, what is your response to the green
movement threats to withdraw..
PM: I thought you would notice that the Conservation Foundation came out
contradicting that story in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, by a
part of the NSW conservation movement. We are going to do, I think,
as good a job as can be done on putting into place a sustainable basis
of forestry in this country. It is a difficult thing in a federation like this
to sign the States up and to get them all committed at once to a
strategy which defines adequate reserve systems, looks at sustainable
practices et cetera. But, we are now in that process and I have got
now doubt while we are in the process we will get a bit of jockeying
along by various interest groups and prodding along, but we will be
doing our very best for the environment and for having a decent forest
products industry.
J: Which States take the most persuading ( inaudible)..
PM: That is a question for other than a news conference. I'd need to go
back and look and see where we think people are, but again, I am
hopeful that we can conclude some good thing nationally.
J: Mr Keating, the polls today show the environment is one out of 8 out of
13 policy areas people think that the Opposition could do a better job
in and they don't have policies. How hard is that going to make it for
you to as you told your backbench to get out there and sell yourself?
PM: I think the Opposition are into basically environment chainsaw policies
by and large. I think, they are the chainsaw specialists in the
Australian environmental debate and I don't really think that most
people that have the environment at heart think the Coalition would
serve their interests. If you look at the things we have done in
Australia, they have been over a decade quite profound for the
environment, under this Labor Government and we are still doing it in
all those areas which are most difficult to do, like forestry, very difficult.
Landcare, the thing I have just-been speaking about, salinity, soil
degradation. No government but this Labor Government has tackled
those things the Murray-Darling, in a serious way, water these are
the big environmental issues and we are the only ones, I think, either
competently taking them on or successfully taking them on.
J: What does it say to you though that a lot of people obviously believe
the Opposition will do a better job?
PM: The public are quite smart about needling governments along, they are
always making you sit you know, putting the burr under your saddle. A.
J: But how can you do that the polls such as that would rate the
Opposition ahead on virtually all of the major issues?
PM: These are the sorts of questions I used to get asked in 1992. I used to
give the same sorts of answers.
J: Is Carmen Lawrence a factor ( inaudible)..
PM: I'm not here to play press gallery games.
J: Mr Keating, I've got a few staff and I've got to organise Christmas
holidays, can I do it safely knowing the election will be after
Christmas?
PM: I've always said the public expect us to squeeze as much value out of
these parliaments as we can and I'm certainly lining my holiday up.
So, why should I muck yours about.
J: 94 per cent of our food companies are off shore, are you concerned
about that, should we be concerned about that and what can we do?
PM: Well I don't know whether it is as high as that figure. But there is a
substantial number that are owned offshore. But the main thing is that
they develop in a way which works for Australia. That is, that their
product and the growth of their product works in our domestic economy
and in our external accounts and to our greater wealth. I think they
are. But that is not to say that we shouldn't have a good sustainable
agri-business in this country which is Austral ian-owned. Some
substantial chunks of it are Australian-owned and I would like to see
those grow.
J: Where?
PM: Where are they going to come from? I think they are going to come
from the sort of businesses which we have seen in this region,
Manildra, the Dubbo Abattoir these sorts of businesses. I mean
entrepreneurship always proves, I think, where you see good
entrepreneurs that they can grow a sensible business. But also having
those linkages into the multi-national corporations is a good thing for
Australia. It does give us market access around the region that we
mightn't otherwise have.
J: Mr Keating, the Opposition Leader is unveiling a foreign debt billboard
at the front entrance of Parliament House this afternoon. He obviously
believes that is a big vote winner, yet you are playing that down..
PM: He is also telling the MTIA what the Coalition will do for business and
I can tell the business community what the Coalition will do for
business. The first thing they will do is scrap the Accord. The next
thing that will happen is you will get sporadic wage breakouts, any
central bank will then stick up interest rates to try and hold inflation,
growth will then dip, the profit share will get knocked about and the
whole cooperation at the workplace will go and, of course, the thing
that will go with it is job growth. So I mean that is what the Coalition is
going to do for business and that is the other thing they are doing
today.
J: Prime Minister, you have spoken in your speech about the current
account deficit. How more confident are you about reducing that
deficit, given ABARE's forecast yesterday...
PM: Well they were both good numbers as you intimate. ABARE's export
projections were encouraging and I think that 8 per cent drop in
imports yesterday tends to confirm the view that the Statistician put at
the last balance of payments release. That is, that it has peaked and it
is probably on the way down. If that is the case, of course, we get
back to some more sustainable rates on the current account deficit.
But it is a point I was making earlier to the conference. In a continent
this large, we are always going to need capital requirements greater
than our savings railways, ports, wharves, mines, farms, factories.
We will never in a country this big, ever, afford them just from our
domestic savings and that is no bad thing. It is like a person buying
their home. They can't afford it from their own domestic savings. They
use someone else's, but they grow an asset. We are using someone
else's and we are growing an asset too.
J: Mr Keating, you were speaking in regard to the drought and what the
Government has done for it still worried about anomalies for
exceptional circumstances. Is there going to be a review?
PM: Well I don't know that there are anomalies with it. There are, maybe,
Ferceived or argued anomalies. We have this body called RASAC,
which advises us on which particular districts ought to be appropriately
declared as exceptional circumstance areas. And where we think
there have been, let's say, difficult circumstances but not exceptional
under the criteria we have sough~ t to do some special things for those
districts. Some of them, of course, in New South Wales. But we are
about to receive a RASAC report and you know if the tom-toms mean
anything, some of the shires around this district may qualify.
J: Mr Keating, this district covers a broad cross section of the society I
believe you have polling showing that if the Government stops
hereafter is that a reflection on your
PM: I don't know. I mean David Simmons has kept on coming back and
Rob's going to take his place, we think. So I think we are confident
about it. But, again, competence is one thing, work and effort is
another and I think care, commitment, work effort, diligence to a locaL
community is what makes the result in the end and we have been
doing that.
J: Mr Keating, as a folliclely-challenged member of the Press Gallery, is
there any truth to the claim that you are banning photographs from
behind?
PM: Well I saw that story in the Sydney Morning Herald today and let me
assure you the story is completely inaccurate and completely wrong.
I have had no conversation with the Speaker about this, none
whatsoever, nor has a member of my staff. The Speaker did this on
his own initiative with the Sergeant-At-Arms. Mr Seccombe from the
Herald was told that. But Mr Seccombe has no respect for accuracy or
truth and he gets that, of course, from the leadership of the Sydney
Morning Herald, which has a very low premium on accuracy or truth in
reporting.
ends