PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
DOORSTOP AT THE BALLARAT COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTRE,
BALLARAT, 25 OCTOBER 1995
E& OE PROOF COPY
J: Mr Keating, inflation at 5.1 per cent, what sort of impact will that have
on employment rates?
PM: Well, I think, that the headline rate is not the thing that matters here it
is the underlying rate, which is just over 3 per cent 3.1 per cent.
It has jumped quite a bit in the quarter and part of it is a couple of
one-off factors. For instance, the NRMA in New South Wales is no
longer discounting its premiums on third party insurance. It is also
coming from changes to cigarettes and tobacco, in terms of
Government changes there. Motor vehicles Commonwealth sales
tax, which is a one-off thing, it is not going to continue happening.
I think those things alone have added about 0.4 per cent to the rate for
the quarter. So the rate for the quarter was 1.2 per cent.
About 0.4 per cent of the 1.2 per cent came from these one-off factors,
which means that if we look through it and have a look at the true
underlying rate, it is probably around 0.8 per cent for the quarter which
should see us over the year well within the 3 per cent.
J: So you are confident the Government can keep the lid on wages?
PM: Oh yes I think so. And the other thing is, of course, some of this bloom
comes off the very high rates of growth of last year where the economy
was running at 6 per cent and then, of course, at 5 per cent and then 4
per cent. It is now slowing to around 3 1/ 2 per cent to 4 per cent. But
while, of course, all of these CPI's record a bit of past history and they
are picking up the bloom on that demand in the economy and that has
now passed through as policy slowed things down a bit to a
sustainable level. And that is why the Government did the things it did
this year to slow the economy up to make it sustainable, to make sure
the inflation rate over time is low and sustainable.
J: Will it damage the economy?
PM: Oh no, No, I think Australia has broken the back, in a serious way, of
inflation. What we have got to do now is be vigilant about it, but that is
what the Government is. That is why we have taken the Budget into
surplus. That is why we had those monetary adjustments in November
and December last year and that is the reason why the economy has
now successfully slowed.
J: Will there be any interest rate cuts before the end of the year?
PM: It has got very little implications for interest rates none I think.
J: Ballarat has a history of high unemployment. What can the people of
Ballarat expect between now and the end of the year?
PM: Well it can e xpect growth, it can expect the sort of Government
commitments that I have made today. You know, $ 6 million we are
spending on the School of Mines Technical College. General support
through Commonwealth programs through Working Nation. Support
for the long term unemployed and the young unemployed. But, more
generally, of course higher levels of growth. And one of the things
I keep saying is, you know you don't have to be an economic genius to
know that with productivity these days, we are getting more output
from fewer people. So to keep providing the jobs for the many, you
have got to have even more output, which means even more growth
and what party is set up in Australia to give Australia growth?
The Labor Party. Because we are the only people who can basically
keep the wage genie from pushing wage inflation and therefore that is
why we have always run a more high growth economy than the
Coalition. And these days, let me make the point again, if you are
getting more output from fewer people, more output from a given level
of growth, less employment from a given level of growth, what do you
need to take up the people? You need even more growth. So you
have got to be able to run a pro-growth economy, which we can do.
J: Mr Chirac has called your Government excessive and you a follower
and not a leader.
PM: Yes, well he is a bit stunned, Mr Chirac. But the most important thing
is we are going to pull him into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
and as I announced yesterday, we are now making it the target and
the central element of the Government's policy on disarmament, the
eradication of nuclear of weapons world-wide and this means a
number of approaches. First of all, getting a comprehensive ban on
the testing of weapons, stopping the production of fissile material and
then starting to chew away at the weapons inventory those
50,000 warheads which are sitting out there. Now Australia has had a
lot of success in this in the past. We were one of the principal
countries, the principal country in fact, behind the eradication of a
whole class of weapons with chemical weapons by the establishment
of the Chemical Weapons Convention. And we have done it once, and
I would like to see us provide the lead again. So we are the ones
leading. All he is doing, I think, is sort of living in the sort of after-glow
the twilight of the Cold War still testing weapons when what he
ought to be is removing them.
J: Australian Governments since the 1970s have been committed to the
elimination of nuclear weapons. How are you different.
PM: Yes, they are committed, but they haven't been actively running a
policy on it and pulling together world bodies and articulating these
things in bodies such as the United Nations. And they might have
articulated in the 1970s, but in the 1990s it was a Labor Government
that got, in Australia, the world to sign up to the Chemical Weapons
Convention. Just as it was a Labor Government that got the world to
change its view about Antarctica, or about Cambodia. We're quite
effective. We're a relatively small country but we are effective. And
I think our foreign policy processes are trusted by many countries
around the world and I think you will see Australia, in the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, carrying a very large part of the
international load.
J: Are you grateful for Mr Chirac for getting Australia's line on nuclear
testing stand up in the context of the UN celebrations instead of
Bill Hayden?
PM: Oh it doesn't matter.
J: Was Gary Gray right when he said the only problem with the
[ inaudible] Cabinet
PM: Oh, God knows. I didn't go. I mean what rock did you crawl out from
under with all these questions?
J: [ inaudible] ASIA Report influence of right-wing groups harming ties
with Asia?
PM: Well we have security organisations to keep an eye on these sort of
developments and the place to put those sort of observations is in their
reports and that is what they are doing and they will do a professional
task in keeping surveillance on these sort of groups and individuals.
J: Do you share the concerns?
PM: Well that is a matter for them, they are making the observation.
J: How serious are you about changing the taxation powers in the
Constitution?
PM: Well the Liberal Party I mean here we are nearly a century after
Federation, here we are with the development now of a national
economy. Here we are, 18 million of us, in this large continent making
our way in Asia and they want to fracture it, fracture the nation by
going back to six individual States with six State income taxes. What
Peter Costello is about and made clear in the Business Review
Weekly this week, is having six State income taxes. Now, I ask you,
where would the nation be if we had six little economies in this country
not one national economy, not one national Government truly able to
operate the Australian economy and where would we be in Asia and
the world with that sort of approach. I mean the Liberals are not a
national party, they are a complexion of six States, they are a
State-based organisation and what they want to do is take Australia
back basically to pre-Federation. Well the country has moved on, it
has moved past them.
ends