PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF DOORSTOP, ZIONIST FEDERATION OF AUSTRALIA
ACT HEADQUARTERS, FORREST, 21 NOVEMBER 1989
E & 0E PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Mr Kroger seems to be
backing off a bit today. Are you aware of any senior
Labor figures perhaps suggesting Mr Elliott would do
better off staying in business rather than politics?
PM: If I knew of it I'd move for their expulsion from
the Party. I mean there's no-one who would've been
looking forward more eagerly to Mr Elliott coming into
the Parliament than myself and my colleagues because he
would've added to an already disputatious, hatred ridden,
gaggle of people who make up the Opposition. It would've
been another delightful dimension to it. So far from not
wanting him to come in, I would really like to see him
there and if any by-election could be arranged in the
near future, you know I would urgently suggest that some
of these rather ineffective Liberals should stand aside
and let him come in. We'd love to see him there. But it
is rather pathetic really, these attempts to divert
attention from the issue and that issue is the policies
of the Liberal Party with which Mr Elliott is associated
and of which he would be a very significant beneficiary.
All I can say is that it does raise some interesting
questions for Mr Elliott when he comes back because
obviously he will now be required to substantiate the
allegations that Mr Kroger has made. I mean someone's
not telling the truth there, either Mr Elliott or Mr
Kroger or a combination of both of them.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, does it also suggest that perhaps
the attack against Elliott's hitting its mark?
PM: Well it's not so much of an attack against Elliott.
As I made it quite clear in my observation in Tasmania on
the weekend, I didn't choose Mr Elliott as leader of the
Liberal Party. I didn't choose to have him as the person
who himself has said publicly that he has been involved
in the formulation of Liberal Party economic policy.
What I do say and what I am responsible for is to point
out that that policy with which he has been associated is
one which is a remedy for social and economic disaster
for this country.
( PM cont) That attack on that issue will continue
unabated and remorselessly because it is a policy which
seeks to take from 1% of the population take from 99%
of the population and transfer to It involves the
most massive redistribution of wealth from the poor, the
low and the middle income to the very wealthy, nothing
like it's ever been seen before in this country. Mr
Elliott is associated with that. The attack will be not
upon Mr Elliott as such, but upon those policies.
Unfortunately for him and for the Liberal Party, he in a
sense typifies the gross social inequity and the economic
lunacy of those policies.
ends