TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE, PARLIAMENT HOUSE, 1 APRIL 1987
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
PM: I have stated consistently that I prefer the Parliament to
run its full term.
The leadership vacuum and chaos within and between the
Opposition Parties, together with their imminent rejection
of the Australia Card legislation for a second time, have
presented the option and may I say frankly, the temptation,
of an early election.
I am confident that Labor would win an early election. I
have decided, however, that the election will be held
towards the end of this year or early next year.
The Australian people want continued strong leadership and a
Government that will continue to guide them through
difficult economic times into renewed prosperity. To have
an early election. may have brought into question the
Government's resolve to make the tough decisions needed to
meet the economic challenge facing this country.
Let me repeat the dimension of this challenge. Through
paying drastically lower prices for many of our exports the
world has cut more than $ 6 billion off the nation's income;
that is, we are poorer to the tune of $ 1500 per Australian
family. As a nation we have no responsible alternative to
adjusting to that reality.
I want to tell the Australian people that we will not shirk
our responsibilities in making the unpalatable, though
necessary economic decisions: the May Statement will be
tough but fair.
The Australian people overwhelmingly reject the deceptive
voodoo economics being espoused by the opposition Partiesbigger
handouts, bigger deficits; that is, a certain recipe
for higher interest rates, higher inflation, massive
increases in unemployment total economic disaster.
When the Opposition Parties reject the Australia Card
legislation in the Senate later this week, they will stand
condemned by the Australian people for denying to the nation
this fundamental instrument for dealing decisively with tax
cheats and welfare frauds. This denial of more than $ 800m a
year to the public purse from those who should be paying is
simply a continuation of the traditional
Howard/ Sinclair/ Bjelke Petersen philosophy protect the
privileged and increase the burden on the great honest
majority of the Australian people.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, the Labor Party's private sampling from
the weekend tells you that the vast majority of Australians don't
want an early election and that might be bound on you?
PM: I don't know because my meeting with our pollster is later
today. All I can say is that the very brief preliminary
discussion that I've had, is consistent with my assessment of all
the other polls, that Labor would win an early election.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke why did you announce that there would be no
early election before I. D. card legislation had been through the
Senate? PM: Once I had made up my mind that there should not be an early
election and that the Government should go the full term, I saw
no reason to hang around and wait on what might happen in that
place. I assume that they are going to defeat the legislation.
That is what they say they are going to do.
JOURNALIST: Are there any circumstances which would make you
change your mind?
PM: We have been through all this now don't start it again no.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Mr Howard will say you're a whimp
PM: Will he, I see. It is very difficult to chart Mr Howard
isn't it. It's impossible, he is not consistent from one day to
another. But he said, as I recall, that Mr Hawke would be guilty
of the most massive act of hypocrisy in living memory if I were
to have an early election. One deduces from that, that his
judgment is that I should not call an early election. Now if he
says what you say he'll say the implication is that I didn't have
the courage to earlier and I should have gone earlier. So if he
comes out and says that, I'll welcome him saying it because it
will be totally consistent with the pathetic apology for
leadership which he is offering this country.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke do you believe your decision will provoke a
split in the National Party now and are you are you concerned
that John Stone has joined Joh's team?
PM: Thank you for the question, it is not a Dorothy. The
question assumes that there is not a split in the National Party
and there is. A massive split in the National Party, so I don't
know that my decision adds to that, whether it narrows or widens
the split. Now as for this person that you talk about, John
Stone, well look we could go for hours about him couldn't we.
But we won't. I understand, I have not read the report, but I
understand that he is to become the professional consultant on
tax to Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It will be interesting if we could
have the record of the things that the same John Stone has said
about the same Joh Bjelke-Petersen. And who knows perhaps they
may emerge. I think the fairest thing that we can say is that
they deserve one another.
JOURNALIST: At what stage over the few weeks were you most
tempted to call an early election?
PM: I'm a person who has lived with temptation all his life.
And have a very great record of resisting it, generally speaking.
I don't think there was any point at which the devil prodded me
more strongly than another. But I just want to be honest with
you all and with the Australian people. It was a very real
temptation, because I firmly believe that we would win. But the
temptation never assumed the dimensions that it could overcome my
concern for what I think is right.
JOURNALIST: John Howard this morning painted a picture of you as
a man going through public agony unable to make up his mind. Why
has it taken this long for you to decide that you should not have
an early election?
PM: I would have thought that you have seen me, not just
yesterday, but recently. I am told that the image I'm projecting
is one of not merely a healthy, fit Prime Minister, which is
true, but a very relaxed one. That is true, I have never felt
more relaxed than I have in the last few months. I have not felt
under, or believed I have been under any tension. I can assure
you I don't feel under any tension.
JOURNALIST: You are confident in your policies and confident
that you would win. Why not now go to the electorate for a
renewed mandate of three years?
PM: There are number of points that I think are relevant to that
very pertinent question. First of all, if I were to decide on an
early election and base it in part, a substantial part, on the
rejection of the I. D. card, you would have to wait until the
Senate finished its consideration, made its decision. Now who
knows when that is going to be. At best it may be the end of
this week. Then once that i's made you go to the Governor-General
and you get the decision of the Governor-General. And then there
is quite a long period. Now it seems to me that in that period,
given the sort of volatility of which you are aware, of the
markets and so on, that period of instability could be adverse to
the country. That was very much a consideration in my mind.
Also I think people were entitled to say if I had gone earlier,
they would have available to them an argument saying, Mr Hawke
you have got a mandate, you were elected, the normal period is
three years, use that mandate. So I think those considerations
are the ones relevant to answering that question.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, you said on Friday that the Australia Card
legislation was fundamental . have you backed away from that?
PM: Of course I haven't. I can assure you that from the point
at which this infamous combination of Liberals and National Party
and Democrats reject that legislation, they will wear that
rejection from that day until the election day. I can't get it
through apparently. That is not the end of it. Their rejection
of the legislation, whenever the election is held, at the end of
this year, or early next year, that will be a central part of
this campaign, because it is clear that the legislation is right
and beneficially it is also clear that the overwhelming majority
of the Australian people understand that it is right and want
that legislation.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke it is one thing to rule out an early
election which is what you have done. It is another thing to cut
off your other options and say that you will go the full term,
which also rules out the prospect of a double dissolution and the
chance of getting the Australia Card through the joint
sittings. Can you tell us why you have taken the second step as
well? PM: I believe that all the arguments I have put for going the
course that I am talking about, are valid. And I am making the
judgment that when we do have the election we will be returned
with a very clear majority and that in those circumstances, in
which the election will in part have been fought on the issue on
the Australia Card, that we will then in those circumstances
after we have won, and in which the Australia Card has been part
of the election, we will be able to get through the next
Parliament that legislation.
JOUJRNALIST: Mr Hawke, you ate thFe one w. ho floated the option
olt an early election and kept t~ hat fioating and maintained
the importanice of the ID card legislation and gettincl
it through the Senate. in view ot the decision that. you have
reached now, what was the point ot all that?
PM: No, you are wrong, Feather, to say iLhat I was the one
who floated
JOURNALIST: You kept the option alive'?
PM: I answering the question as you put it. I didn't float
it, it was there in the public arena. And I said you can't
get ]. 10t honesty, you have got 100-t honesty from me. Ihave
said it has been a temptation. The ID card has been there in
context of this historical level of chaos within the Liberal
Party, within the National Party and between the National
Party and the Liberal Party. And quite honestl. y it has been
a temptation to take adv~ antagje of that. And so my talk about
the possibility of an early election has been related,
obviously as it must be, to the Australia Card because that
would have been the trigger. But, as I[ say, I have resisted
the temptation.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you will still have that trigger
at the time you call an election, will it be a double
dissolution that you have then?
PM: Read your Constitution. The capacity for a double
dissolution runs out, I think, in August sometime. Because
you can't have a double dissolution within the 6 month period
of when you are required to call an election to the House of
Representatives. JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you referred to the voodoo
economics of the Opposition. Do you think John Stone is a
voodoo economist?
PM: It is very hard to understand what sort of an economist
Mr Stone is. It is the same Mr Stone who was the economic
adviser to Mr Howard and we know what the economic policies
of that period inflicted upon Australia the worst recession
years. And we have an idea of what the views of Mr
Stone were at that time in the taxation area. Presumably,
from all we can gather, he Is now a flat-taxer. That is
certainly voodoo economics. But I think it is probably
wisest that I don't go into details about my opinion of Mr
Stone. JOURNALIST: On a similar subject, Prime Minister, have you
sent Neil Brown his retraction andi apology?
PM: No.
JOURNALIST: Are you going to?
PM: The matter is in the hands of my lawyers.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, part ( if the temptation for an election
presumably was the possibility of having an election and then
making the tough economic decisions. it is now the other way
round you are 9q'ing to make the tough economic decisions
and then have an election
PM: That is right.
JOURNALIST: Dloes that make it harder to make it harder to
make those tough decisions?
PM: I guess, yes, it would have been easier if you had an
election and explIained again the facts as I have been doing
it consistently for some time. But the point of my statement
the relevant paragraph, CGeoff,-is that I am assuring the
Australian people now that the necessary tough decisions will
be taken. I said in my Address to the Nation and I have said
it since, and it is relevant to say it again, I would rather
lose that next election, when it. is held, 1 would rather lose
than go soft in economic decision-making because let it be
understood when you have a problem of that dimension, if you
go soft now, a la the voodoo economics of Howard and
Sinclair and Bjelke-Petersen, what you would be doing would
be condemning, not just this generation, but the next
generation and the generation beyond that. I have been too
long in public life and I have too much of a commitment to
this country to do that. So I will be making the tough
decisions. In the end, I repeat, I have got sufficient faith
in the good sense of the Australian electorate to believe
that they will both understand and accept those decisions.
It is that belief in the Australian people that has informed
my thinking in just about 30 years in public life. I am not
going to change it now.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, will. those tough decisions include
keeping spending to no real growth in the Budget?
PM: You will see the form, the substance and the totality
of those decisions when the Treasurer delivers the May
Statement on the 14th of May.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, when you had your cappuccino this
morning with Mr Hunt and Mr Sinclair, did you happen to tell
them of your decision not to hold an early election or did
you give them any other advice?
PM: I didn't tell them of my decision not to hold an early
election. And for me to give themi advice you know I
wouldn't be that presumptitolis, Niki.
JOURNALIST: What did they tell you about the future?
PM: I think our conversation should remain confidential.
JOURNALIST: How important was it in your final decision you
could not get broad support within your party to go to an early
election? PM: It was not very significant. Let me say this, I hadn't
really been sounding out all the Party as is the case that some
reports came back to me. But I was totally confident if I made
the decision to call an early election the whole of the Party
would have fallen in behind me. Let me answer it in another way.
If all the elements of the Party had been saying to me, we want
to go now, I wouldn't have made that decision. I would have made
the decision I made now.
JOURNALIST: In what way did you fear the prospect of an early
election may bring into question the Government's resolve to
bring down these tough decisions?
PM: It goes back to the answer I gave to Greg earlier. We are
living in very volatile times and damage can be done to the
exchange rate, therefore to interest rates, quite quickly. If
you had a situation where the country were in an election mode
for something like two months, broadly speaking, quite an amount
of damage could be done in those terms. I didn't think it was
right to run that risk.
JOURNALIST: If you had been given different economic forecasts
for this year, might your decision have been different about an
early election?
PM: What should be understood is that the analysis and the
judgments that were conveyed to me on Sunday night were
precisely, they were identical with the judgments that I had been
making myself. Those judgments are a matter of record, actually,
but it's precisely in lihe with what I'd been saying to my own
advisers. I put a fair bit of faith in my own capacity as an
economist. JOURNALIST: Would you have been a hypocrite to go ahead with an
early election given your repeated commitment not to call one?
PM: I think there would have been an attempt to say there's an
hypocrisy. This was some concern on my part. I attach
considerable importance to my own integrity. I do think that
there are valid arguments for going early and they've been
involved in some of the questions. It could be said that if you
went early, got a new mandate, then you had no inhibitions, no
need to take account of political concerns about a decision here
or a decision there. I think it is possible to mount a valid
argument for an early election. On balance, for the reasons I've
given, I thought the balance of argument comes down on the side
of the decision that I've taken.
JOURNALIST: Did you take into consideration the possibility that
Andrew Peacock could do a Hawke 83 and get up just before the
election? And would you prefer to go to an election against John
Howard rather than Andrew Peacock?
PM: Let me modestly say in response to the first part of your
question, Andrew Peacock is no Bob Hawke. I will, with all the
modesty I can gather, just point out that Andrew Peacock doesn't
come within a bulls roar of my understanding of this country, its
economic structure, of economic policy, what's required to deal
with these sorts of things. He's light years away. Andrew
Peacock is not Bob Hawke. The second part of your question,
would I prefer to go against John Howard or Andrew Peacock? I
can beat either of them and it's not certain, obviously, who it
will be that I will be facing when the election comes. You know
I'm a bit of a punter. I'd hate to be framing the chart at the
moment, I really would hate to be framing the chart. one thing
you could say is that John Howard is no odds-on-favourite to be
the person that I'll be up against, but you wouldn't be putting
the odds very short about Andrew getting the leadership. And of
course we've got the fascinating scenario emerging, perhaps it
will be someone else. Now I can't say anything about the third
man in terms I said yesterday because this is now a matter of the
law. But there's no end to the speculation. If you look at the
seat of Higgins, there is a suggestion that it could be Mr
Elliot. Well that would be fascinating too. The point you've
got to understand is this. An election is not just about
leaders, although obviously leaders are very important. The
fundamental problem in conservative politics today, in this
country, is that they are rent asunder because they have no
philosophy, they have no policies, they have no constancy of
positions in regard to policy matters. The only constant in
conservative politics is their commitment to restore privileges
to the few. Their only argument is about how they restore the
privileges to the few and impose the greater burden upon the
majority. And that fact is not an argument, it is a fact and
that is being exposed more and more. So whether it is John
Howard, or Andrew PeacocK, or John Elliot, or McLachlan, or
whoever it is, Bjelke-Petersen, the divisions, the fundamental
divisions will be there as they try to cobble together an apology
for this only constant they have. That is, let's restore
privileges. Let's make sure the burden of economic adjustment
falls on the honest majority. Now that is the problem for the
conservatives and until they face up to the fact that they are
now living in an economic and political environment within which
they must have relevant policies, until they wake up to that it
doesn't matter if it's Howard, or Peacock, or Elliot, or whoever
it is, because what they're operating on is the assumption that
the Australian people are fools. That they'll buy this $ 16
billion credibility gap. That in a situation that we are the
poorer for the amount of $ 1500 per Australian family, that those
families are going to buy the nonsense they're being told
here's another handout, here's another handout, here's a deficit
of 12 billion odd dollars, which is what's involved in the $ 16
billion credibility gap. That they'll buy the nonsense of those
things which mean, as I say in my statement, inevitably higher
interest rates, higher inflation, massive increases in
unemployment, total economic disaster. Until they understand
that the people of Australia won't buy that nonsense it doesn't
matter who they have leading them.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, are you telling us that when the election
is held the economy will be in better shape than it is now? And
if you are telling us that, can you give the Australian people a
guarantee that come election time the home loan rates and the
inflation rate and the unemployment rate will all be lower than
what they are now?
PM: The first part of the question, will the economy be
improving, my strong judgment is that it will be. I've been
through that yesterday, I don't think you want me to go through
the details of my analysis. I have had the caveat which any
rational economic thinker must put on, that while I make that
analysis, in terms of my judgment, that the impact of Australia's
internal economic policies producing that result, you must have
the caveat about what may happen overseas. But I repeat, I am
basically optimistic that the external situation will not produce
a contrary outcome to the one I'm talking about. If I'm right in
that assessment then I have no reason to believe that, in regard
to the particular matter that you raise about mortgage rates, it
will be a deteriorated situation. To say that would not be
consistent with the general analysis that I've put.
JOURNALIST: And inflation and unemployment?
PM: Inflation I've said, I repeat again, I have no doubt that
the inflation rate will trend down in 1987. So if you're talking
about an election in March of 1988, the last CPI figures you'd
have, therefore, would be for the December quarter 87. My
judgment, and not just my judgment, it's certainly the judgment
of others who are talking to me and I would observe also the
judgment of the OECD report, that we should be looking at an
inflation rate at the end of 1987 of about six per cent. In
regard to unemployment, it would be my assessment that we can
hold the unemployment situation at the rate of growth that has
been talked about, would involve a level of employment increase
that would enable us to hold the unemployment situation.
JOURNALIST: What else did Mr Cameron tell you in the brief
discussion that you had with him today, other than the fact that
you'd win the election?
PM: I haven't had, as I recall, a brief discussion with him
today. It was a very brief telephone conversation last night.
JOURNALIST: Could you elaborate on the conversation?
PM: Well I suppose I could, but I could also say no one would be
more surprised than you if I did. Let me say this, however, it
was a fairly brief conversation. That conversation did nothing
to change my judgment that we could win an early election.
ends