TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW ON 11.00 AM WITH PAUL LYNEHAM
THURSDAY, 2 APRIL, 1987
LYNEHAM: How do you react to John Howard's comments that you
have been quite pathetic, full of humbug and you have chickened
out of an early election?
PM: I am like the great majority of Australians who find it
increasingly difficult to take seriously anything that this
gentleman says.
LYNEHAM: if your pollster Rod Cameron had told you you were
certain of victory you would have gone like a shot though
wouldn't you?
PM: Not like a shot. I think no Prime Minister has ever been
more frank than I was yesterday. I admitted to the fact there
was a very considerable temptation to run. And it is obviously
true that if it had been a yawning chasm between us, that
temptation may have been impossible to resist. But I want to
say, as frankly as I can to your viewers, that I had been calling
the shots honestly when I had said all along that my preference
was for the Parliament to go its full term. I do attach
importance to my integrity and I had said that I wanted the
Parliament to go its full, tbrm. I have been honest in saying
that it was a considerable temptation. And if there had been an
overwhelming view that Labor was in front and should win, then
the argument would have been very strong that here was this
feeling, lets go and get the mandate, and get on with it. But I
had to, in all conscious balance all those sets of considerations
and I must say that I just feel very very much more comfortable
inside myself.
LYNEHAM: A fresh mandate now though would have allowed you to
cut public spending without immediate political worries. Now
you are relying on the Australian people taking this medicine and
still voting for you.
PM: That would have been the easy way. I preface my comment by
saying I'm totally certain that I would have won an early
election. And so in that sense yes it would have been the easy
way. LYNEHAM: Now your pinning a lot on the high-mindedness of the
Australian people. 2c).
PM: As I said in my press conference yesterday Paul, I've been
in public life now for nearly 30 years. And what has informed me
at every stage of my involvement in public life is a basic faith
in the good sense of the Australian people.
LYNEHAM: Even people whose living standards have been falling.
Senator Peter Walsh said its very hard for a government to
survive after presiding over a long period of falling living
standards. PM: That has been said, but as I put it again yesterday. The $ 6
billion loss of our national income, wipe-off through the
reduction in the price of our exports. That means about $ 1,500
per Australian family. We are the poorer as a nation. It is not
something that is a figure of the statistician, that is the fact.
Now a responsible government must so conduct policy as to adjust
to that fact. Now I believe that the Australian electorate, the
great majority of them are sensible and will understand that and
they will be saying, well we trust Hawke and his Government to
undertake that adjustment process in a fairer way. than the other
mob. I I
LYNEHAM: I think your decision too, if I'm right, is that you
believe your policies will see some of the key economic
indicators like inflation, interest rates and unemployment
looking a lot brighter towards the year's end.
PM: Yes. It has been my assessment before I had this reasonably
long session with economists from the Treasury and my own
department, and all my advisers will tell you I'd given virtually
the same analysis myself before then. I do believe that our
policies are working. I believe, on all the evidence, that we're
seeing an increase in the exports of manufactured exports that
our entrepreneurs are starting to take advantage of the
significant improvement in our competitiveness that has come with
the depreciation, that the major impact on the inflation rate of
the increase of import prices associated with the depreciation
and most of that has washed into the CPI. And therefore, I
expect the inflation rate to be coming down through 1987.
LYNEHAM: As low as the OECD suggested, 5 to 5.5 per cent, by mid
next year? That's a big drop isn't it?
PM: Yes. But I ask you to remember that between March of 1983,
when I came into Government, and the beginning of 1985 we'd
brought inflation down from 11.2 per cent of Mr Howard, that we
inherited, to 5 per cent. That was before we got the impact of
these external factors.
LYNEHAM: Well if these indicators are looking better, what will
living standards be like for the average family by the year's
end, do you think? I mean, are we in for a long haul, or is it
just 12 months of belt tightening?
PM: In 1987 there will be still a need for restraint and some
reduction in standards. As we come out of 1987 into 88 the
evidence will be there that we're on the way up. But this is not
just a short sort of thing. If you have $ 6 billion wiped off
your national income, as I say I've tried to say it so your
viewers and Australians enerally can understand, I've tried to
get it out of the aggregates of economic statistics and say, that
has meant that for every family in this country about $ 1500 has
been wiped off our national capacity. And you just don't get
over that in a few months, or just one year. The important thing
is that you'll see the evidence that the responsible policies
that I'm putting in place, the tough things that I have to do in
May are getting the economy coming back, but not just in a
temporary way. We're getting the fundamentals right for the
restructuring of this economy. I am as certain as I am of
anything Paul, that your viewers out there, the men and women
there, are saying if I've got a choice between the voodoo
economics of your Howards and your Peacocks and your
Bjelke-Petersens, they will give you these big handouts, we'll
have a deficit of $ 10 billion. They know that that would be a
temporary, disastrous phenomenon, which would mean that their
kids are going to pay the price in the next generation. I'm not
prepared to do that and I don't think the Australian people want
it to happen.
LYNEHAM: Does a later election, do you think, mean that you'll
be bringing in many of the August budget cuts forward to May, so
that the August budget will be a little softer?
PM: I'd always intended that the May Statement would do most of
the work. The economics of it demand it. The world is looking
at us. Not just as Bob Hawke as Prime Minister. The world is
looking at Australia and saying, have you got the guts, as well
as the economic capacity, the intelligence, but have you got the
guts to face up to the fact that you have had this drop in the
national income. Are you prepared to make the decision?
LYNEHAM: You'll make them even if it costs you government?
PM: I said last year in my Address to the Nation and I repeated
it yesterday in the press conference, there is no way you'll find
this prime minister taking the soft easy options now, in the hope
that taking the soft easy option will guarantee me another ride
into the prime ministership. I would much rather, much rather,
lose office but know that I'd made the right decisions for the
future of this country.
LYNEHAM: Finally, on a personal note, you mentioned your ability
to deal with temptation, yet I saw a photo of Bob Hawke the
Pritikin dieter tucking into a big hamburger at the weekend.
Have you fallen off the low cholesterol diet?
PM: Never believe what you see in the press. It was a dirty big
sausage I was tucking into.
LYNEHAM: ( inaudible)...?
PM: No, just a different form of temptation.
LYNEHAM: What does Mrs Hawke say about this?
PM: She is a marvellous lady. She has learnt to understand over
the years that I don't have an eternal enduring capacity to
resist all forms of temptation and she passed the indiscretion on
the sausage.
LYNEHAM: Thank you for your time.
ends I