PM Transcripts

PRESS OFFICE TRANSCRIPT
Channel 7 6.30 p. m. news broadcast.
PRIME MINISTER AND MR HAWKE ON INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES.
Roger Climpson:
Prime Minister Fraser indicated today that the Government will
take a much tougher line in future in industrial disputes.
Addressing the Wool and Meat Producers Federation in Canberra,
he referred to the recent move to de-register the T. W. U. during
the threatened nation-wide petrol strike.
Prime Minister:
There are always discussions, and if you wait for one lot of
discussions to end they will say you mustn't do it now because
there are more discussions scheduled for three days time. In
any case, those provisions of the law take some time to
implement. In the case of de-registration maybe two or three
weeks, it could be even longer. And we determined-in that
circumstance that we weren't going to wait for the results of
any discussions, but we were going to act under the provisions
of the law and of the powers available under the Commonwealth
and that didn't pre-empt the results of any discussions. They
can go on and hopefully achieve the result, but at the same
time we believe the Australian community and many working men
and women in Australia have paid too high a price for the
disputes that have occurred and in this particular instance
would certainly have paid a very high price indeed if the
dispute had continued.
Bob Hawke:
Well one can obviously understand this beleaguered Prime Minister
who on every available electoral test that arises now has been
rejected by the Australian electorate, and rightly is being
rejected. You can understand that he is pursuing the only path
that he has ever indicated that he knows, and that is ' let's
have a union bash'. I think that the Australian people, as
proven in the electoral results, are heartily sick and tired
of this confrontationist approach of the Prime Minister.
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