PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF NEWS CONFERENCE, CHANNEL NINE STUDIOS,
MELBOURNE 20 AUGUST 19S9
a oz PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: Can the RAAF be brought in to solve the pilots,
dispute? PM: Well you know when of conflict that you shouldn't
signal your shots. I'm wanting to make it clear. I don't
want war. I want peace. I want the pilots to understand
they're no different to you people, ordinary workers, that
they should be within the system. That's what I want them
to do. I hope that that's what they'll do. But what I'm
saying is if they want war then there will be war. We're
not going to lose this one. I'm not going to be disclosing
what we're going to be doing other than to say these things.
Firstly that we will be fully behind the airline operators
in any action they take to institute legal processes,
punitive legal processes against individual pi lots and their
organisation. Secondly we'll do everything we possibly can
to provide skeletal services. We can't substitute for
existing services. We'll do everything we can to provide
some sort of emergency service situation and something
beyond that. I'm not going into any details.
JOURNALIST: The reports are out that the RAAF is being
prepared. What do you say to those
PM: I've seen lots of reports about lots of things in my
life. Some are true, some are not.
JOURNALIST: Are you looking at this as the sort of thing to
lead up to an election, a power struggle?
PM: Don't be silly, of course not. Don't, don't that
really is a very, with respect, I don't want to be rude to
you but that is a very sillytquestion. This is something
that the pilots have apparently been leading up to and my
~ osition is simply that if they're going to do it, whenever
t is# whether it's at the start ofa term of government or
at the end of it or in the middle of it, they ' re not going
to win it. it's got nothing to do with an election at all.
JOURNALIST: So what is your warning to the pilots?
I 9V. -2-
PM: I've given it. That is that they operate within, they
have operated within a conciliation and arbitration system.
That is a system which confers rights and imposes
obligations. We want them to stay within it because they
are essentially no different from other wage and salary
earners in this country. For God's sake let them demystify
themselves. The fact that they fly an aeroplane doesn't
make them different from other wage and salary earners. if
they think they're going to be different and get outside the
system, my message to them is that they will cop every
instrument of punishment and retribution and reaction that
the operators bring against them.
JOURNALIST: Can you give us any insight as to what you mean
by war?
PM: Well, it's conflict. That is, they have said alright
here is an orderly system within which relations between
employees and employers operates. There are rules and
regulations and constitutions and institutions, including
the Commission, which handle the relationships between
people. They say we don't want anything of that. They
don't want to be part of it, we're different to everyone
else, we ' re going to go outside. if they go outside this
means that all the processes of the law, which can include
common law action and other things which will involve action
by the airlines against individual pilots for penalties and
damages, very signficant financial impositions upon them.
That's what's on.
JOURNALIST: Four o'clock is the deadline. It's getting
pretty serious.
PM: My number one message to each and every one of those
pilots and to the Federation is this. Please don't..
provoke conflict. Don't delude yourselves that because
you've learnt to fly an aeroplane, which is not the most
difficult thing to dofn the world -the Prime Minister
learnt to do it when he was a. young fellow it's not the
most difficult thing in the world to do. It doesn't make
you someone different. You're already on average on $ 80,000
a year. You're in a situation where the previous president
of your organisation has said, and let me quote what he
said, Captain Tony Fitzsimmons, ' there is no other pilots'
group in the world that enjoys your overall pay structure'.
You're already in a privileged posi tion. You are not going
to break the wages system in this country and get another
That's the message.
JOURNALIST: Can you say whether the RAAF has been
consulted? PM: I have nothing to say in that area.
ends