TRANSCRIPT OF NEWS CONFERENCE, COMON WEALTHFFCE, WHYALLA,
SEPTEMER 1989
E 0E-PROOFONLY
JOURNALIST: The latest Bulletin poll shows the ALP'S drop of
to 43. If a poll was in early September you would be
out of Government.
PM: No that's not right. If a poll now was, in my
judgement, we would win and I tell you what if Mr Peacock
could do a swap with me on the polls he would grab it like a
brown hungry dog. But I'm not going to swap with him though.
JOURNALIST: His rating might be down but their Party's up to
PM: Well I say with an election, no, you've got preferences
to be distributed. We're very, very confident given the
present circumstances it's quite clear that when the election
is held, we'll win. But elections, that's some time of f.
Let's talk about some beautiful things here in Whyalla.
JOURNALIST: The Bulletin magazine, sorry to keep the same
point, has said that because of the pilots dispute that
you've dropped. Do you think that's the reason?
PM: No. All I can say is we're doing polling privately on
the dispute and the overwhelming majority of Australians are
in favour of the Government's position and against the
pilots, which is not surprising because the pilots are trying
to smash the economy and bring a great deal of hardship upon
people. So it's not surprising that people are supporting
the Government's position.
JOURNALIST: The pilots' union have asked you to back of f so
they can negotiate. r~ n i bZ
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PM: That was yesterday's. I don't know what their next
piece of hypocrisy will be but the situation is quite clear
and that is clear from Mr McCarthy. He said they'll have
nothing to do with the Industrial Relations Commission, which
at least is consistent. They have from February of this year
made it clear that they were going to be prepared to
absolutely close down their industry, smash the Australian
economy becuase they a group of 1600 people were
different from all other workers and that they should have
special treatment. I said from day one that is not on. I've
remained immoveable in my commitment to protecting the
Australian economy. What's going on is very simple, it's not
complex, it is that they have resigned, the Federation has no
members in the airline industry and the airlines are going
steadfastly about their business of restoring the Australian
airline operation. That they will do.
JOURNALIST: On the question of the pilots dispute, the
forecast current account figures tomorrow don't look too
good. Do you think that the problem with the pilots dispute
is causing a major problem for the Government, given the loss
of revenue through loss of tourism and foreign dollars coming
into the country?
PM: What you've got to understand is this; of course the
pilots dispute is causing some immediate economic problems,
there's no doubt about that, for the tourist industry, we're
going to help the tourist industry. I've written to the
leaders of the banks, of the finance industry, asking to
accommodate operators during this period because the
fundamentals of Australian tourism remain strong and I'm
going to give them financial assistance when the dispute's
over to help them re-attract visitors.-But as I say, while
there are problems now what we are fighting to protect is a
situation which would be one of chaos, ' I mean absolute
economic disaster. The simple facts are that if the pilots
Swere allowed to get away with saying, ' we're different, we're
going to just thumb our noses at everyone else, get 30% and
tell the rest of the workforce to go hang themselves', then
we would have disaster, mounting unemployment and inflation,
the economy would collapse. That would be bad for the
tourism industry as well as everyone else. So the issues
have been clear to me from the beginning. I think they are
increasingly clear to the people and hopefully I think
they're becoming clearer to pilots. We will have, as I've
said, we'll have at least 50% of capacity by the end of this
month, I think that's a conservative estimate, and the
airline industry is being restored. My only hope is that
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( PM cont) individual pilots against whom I have no vendetta,
no vindictiveness, I would hope that as many of them as
possible will sign up with the airlines. It's quite clear
there's not going to be jobs for all of them because with the
productivity changes that are involved in the new contracts,
the airlines will need very, very significantly less pilots
than they had before. But I hope as many of them will join
up now so that they can be part of a restored and
reinvigorated and more efficient and productive airline
industry in this country.
JOURNALIST: You said earlier 50% by the end of the month but
yesterday it was said 50% by the end of the week back in the
air. PM: No-one has said 50% by the end of the week. It's
consistently been said 50% by the end of the month. I think
no-one now questions that that will be achieved.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you satisified that safety
and training standards are not being eroded in the methods
you are adopting?
PM: Yes, sure. We have, as you know, an independent arms
length authority, the Civil Aviation Authority, which has
statutory responsibility in these matters and they will not
undertake measures or processes which will in any sense
involve a dereliction of their statutory duty.
JOURNALIST: The Department of Statistics figures seem to
point to the fact that retail finance and housing industry
finance is down. Isn't it time to really loosen the brakes
on the economy with interest rates
PM: No, not yet. But I'm very glad you mentioned those.
The two sets of statistics to which you refer the retail
sales down and housing down the sort of things that we want
to see, that's why we've had' tight policy and I can assure
you, and I thank you for raising it, I can assure you that
consistent with what we've said, we will act in this way;
that interest rates won't be kept higher for one day longer
than is necessary but they won't be brought of f one day
sooner than is responsible. We've got to have a situation
where we have a level of activity which is consistent with
growth and employment growth but not at a level which will
suck in too high a level of imports. These two sets of
statistics which you mention today are welcome.
JOURNALIST: But they do point to a slow down in the economy.
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PM: Yes, but you've got to say that the indicators are still
somewhat mixed. For instance, the most recent employment
figures that we had was an increase of some 50,000 in
employment would point to a still continuing high level of
activity. As I've been saying for some weeks now, the
indicators are mixed but that these two which you rightly
refer to are of themselves an indication of the slowing down,
and that's welcome.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the founder of the West German
Greens Party this morning has painted you and your Government
as imposters on the environment question. Would you like to
respond to that?
PM: Well I want to be gentle and charitable as is my normal
nature
JOURNALIST: The pilots would be glad to hear that.
PM: Well if they read my letter they would see that that's
exactly what I am. Well Petra, she was over there when we
were there, she was at the dinner that we gave and she was
very fulsome in her praise at that meeting of the things that
we were doing. I just get a little bit amused about the
monopoly of moral righteousness that people like Petra have.
Now I don't want to get stuck into her. The simple facts are
that I can point to the World Heritage Foundation. For
instance, they've got no reason for running a line for Bob
Hawke and his Government but they have said that no goverment
in the world has done more in this area of protection of the
environment than this Australian Government. They are right.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Neal Blewett today was quoted as
discussing the possibility of legalisihg heroine in
Australia, in today's SMH. What's your feeling on that?
PM: I haven't seen the report. There is a fair bit of
discussion going on over the years, not only in this country
but around the world on this issue but that is not on the
Government's agenda. It's appropriate in this whole area of
drug discussion for people to be talking about it but it's
not on the Government's agenda.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, one last question. on the
question of the pilots strike and the ACTU Congress coming
up, figures this morning pointing to the Congress suggest
that there's been a dramatic fall away and possibly a trend
in that direction in union membership in Australia. The
methods you have endorsed in solving this pilots dispute
can't be filling the ACTU with any sort of optimism about the
turnaround
PM: We've got a secretary of the ACTU and the incoming
president of the ACTU. The secretary of the ACTU
consistently from day one has been fully supportive of what
we're doing. Mr Martin Ferguson today I don't know whether
you've seen the report yet I recommend you read it and
you'll see that he is fully supportive of the Government and
so he should be because the situation would be if we allowed
a position where those with industrial muscle were able to
hold the community to ransom, there wouldn't only be the
trade union movement who would suffer, everyone would. What
you refer to, and it's a proper thing to refer to about the
pressures upon unionism it's not a unique characteristic of
this country. You have a world in which the processes of
production are dramatically changing, more rapidly you know
they have before in the history of mankind and as the
processes of production change, as you move more to white
collar areas of employment which have not been traditionally
unionised, and the experience of every country in the world
is that there has been some decline in unionism. The thing
that is going for Australian unionism is that you have a
leadership there which is imaginative, which is looking at
what's happening in the rest of the world, which understands
changes that are taking place, and they are saying these do
involve new challenges, it's not good enough just to rely on
the methods and the attitudes and the assumptions and the
presumptions of the past. You have to be prepared to change
your structures, your objectives, your processes of
operation. I think Australian workers generally, and the
trade unions in particular, are fortunate in having a
leadership which understands these things and is acting
accordingly. ends