PM Transcripts

TRANSCRIPT OF COMMENTS, PARLIAMENT HOUSE
FRIDAY 27 MARCH 1987
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: John Howard says you'd be the biggest phoney
ever if you call an early election.
PM: John Howard talking about people being phonies. Honest
John! Really, what we're seeing is the disintegration not
only of the Liberal Party, but the disintegration of the
person of John Howard. He is totally lacking in any
principle. This exercise on the legislation, the equal
opportunity legislation, would have to go down as the
greatest piece of hypocrisy and deception. Everyone knows,
every single person in this Parliament House knows that the
reason John Howard changed the position of the Opposition
from support for the legislation to opposition was to kowtow
to the National Party. This is the man who just days before
was saying what is fundamentally important to me is the
integrity, the principle of the Liberal Party, that we are
not dictated to by anyone else. And what has he done? He's
allowed his position of principle on the legislation to be
changed, to be dictated to by his concerns about the
reaction of the National Party. Any comments by Mr Howard
about me are simply an attempt to divert attention from the
fact that we've witnessed in this last day possibly the
greatest act of political hypocrisy and dishonesty by any
political leader in the history of this country.
ends do