PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF JOINT NEWS CONFERENCE WITH PREMIER WAYNE
GOSS, BA1RON FALLSF CAIRNS, 10 MARCH 1990
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: Prime minister, two weeks today the Liberals
are apparently gearing up for a fairly major offensive.
O The coalition has a series of plans underway for a
attack advertising. Are you worried that they're going
to start zeroing in on capital gains tax?
PM~: NO, I'm not worried. As always the conservatives
campaign is based upon an insult to the intelligence of
the Australian electorate. We've had a dry run of It in
the last week with Mr Peacock conjuring up this $ 14
billion hole from the forward estimates. It's been
dismissed as ludicrous by every commentator because he
said inflation and growth applies to one side of the
national account but not to the other. I mean, it's been
dismissed as a pathetic and dishonest attempt by a
rattled leader of the conservatives to divert attention
from his own incapacity to answer the real issues. And
the major issue is where the money is coming from. Now I
understand that they're going to run up a scare campaign
on superannuation. The facts there are quite simple. He
started of f by misrepresenting the position of the
O Australian electorate as to the number of people covered
by capital gains. The facts are very simple something
like 64,000 people paying capital gains, significantly
lose than one percent of Australian taxpayers and the
-simple and indisputable truth that he's trying to hide
from the Australian people with this scare campaign that
is allegedly coming up, is this that billions of
dollars that would otherwise go into the public revenue
for spending on education, health, roads, defence and all
the needs of the Australian people, those billions of
dollars would be deliberately taken out of the public
revenue by the conservatives and shovelled into the
pockets of less than one percent of the wealthiest
taxpayers in Australia. Now in their desperate attempt
to disguise that fact they will go on this scare
campaign. It will do them no good it's about time the
conservatives understood that the Australian electorate
is intelligent and they won't buy this deception.
JOURNALIST: a number of people still haven't decided
which way they're going to vote.
PM: Well, I don't either worry about that, nor am I
surprised by it. I think that for people to wait and
until election day and sum up all the considerations that
will be put forward is, is quite an acceptable approach
and I may say that I'm very content to allow those who
are thinking about the electorate to wait up until
election day and ask themselves some questions. Ask
themselves the questions about interest rates, because
now it's accepted that under the policies of my
Government, interest rates are coming down. The banks
have said so and it's equally clear that interest rates
must rise under the conservatives because if you have a
wages explosion and you bust the budget surplus, with a
blowout of at least $ 6 billion, it's inevitable that
interest rates must rise. So let them ask themselves
that question. In this sort of environment where I'm so
pleased to be with my friend and colleague, Wayne Goes,
Sin this beautiful natural environment of Australia, let
them ask themselves the question what is it that Wayne
GOES and I are going to be doing today? Answer we are
going to be signing an agreement between two Labor
Governments, both committed to the preservation of the
natural heritage of Australia. What was the alternative?
The alternative was at the Federal level, the
conservative parties who opposed my decision and the
decision of Labor to save the wet tropics of Queensland,
the rainforests of this area. They opposed it, they
wanted the logging to go ahead. They were hand in glove
with Wayne Gos', opponents here in Queensland and before
Wayne came in I had to not only defeat the conservatives
at the national level which we did, but then we had to
fight with the conservatives here who wanted to challenge
us in the High Court and when Wayne won on the 2nd of
December he was in tune with the national feeling and the
feeling of the people of Queensland they've withdrawn
that challenge and today we are going to be signing this
historic arrangements for the joint management of this
and priceless heritage of Australia. So let the
people ask themselves these questions.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister why is it that your letter to
Mr Goss about this is dated today and Mr Goss' reply is
dated yesterday?
PM: Well that's a good question we'd better get a
synchronisation of the dates I guess. The important
thing is that the past of confrontation between the
conservative government of Queensland and the
environmentally conscious government of Australia is
brought to an end and the interchange of letters
constitutes an agreement between us, between two
governments committed to what the overwhelming majority
of Australians want and that is the protection of our
priceless national heritage.
JOURNALIST: Are these agreements aimed at helping people
decide how to vote?
PM: No these agreements will perhaps have a bonus result
of indicating to people where the commitment to
protecting the heritage is but what we are doing is
giving effect to what we said we would do, that is to
replace the antagonism of the conservative government in
Queensland in the past to protecting the environment to
an agreement which sets out the management plan for the
future in which we will co-operate jointly to ensure the
management and protection of this area.
GOSS: I just want to say something in response to this
point over here and that's that the Prime Minister and I
.0Just settle it, that we would get it out of the
courts and that there would be a good compensation
package for Queensland negotiating that. There was a
breakdown in those negotiations. Now for the last two
weeks we've been trying to put this agreement together
O and I asked, I asked earlier this week, for a draft of
the letter, the proposals forthcoming from the
Commonwealth. That draft of the letter that we could
expect to be forthcoming was faxed to my office at
Parliament House yesterday afternoon. When I got that I
drafted our response. Now my response was drafted
yesterday on the basis of the, the draft fax I got from
the Prime Minister's office about what I could expect
today. Nothing in the dates at all. It's taken two
weeks to knock that out.
JOURNALIST: What caused the breakdown?
GOSS: No breakdown at all. We'd agreed, the Prime
Minister and I had agreed on the broad compensation
arrangement in terms of capital works and ongoing
funding arrangements. I think there might have been some
tight bugger in the bowels down there in Canberra
somewhere but, as a result of that, their $ 7 million
became $ 10 million, our $ 12 million came down to
million. We have dollar for dollar on the ongoing
funding arrangements. Bob said before people should be
asking themselves what the question is, the supplementary
question is are the people of Queensland getting a good
deal for the wet tropics? The supplementary answer is
yes. JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, Mr Peacock says your Government's
attitude to the ethnic vote is sickening and
sanctimonious. What's your view about that?
PM: Well, what we're hearing now increasingly are the
utterances of a very desperate leader of the Liberal
Party. I notice him parading around there saying he's
won the first three weeks of the campaign. Just as after
the Great Debate he trotted out and said he'd won the
debate. I mean, for someone to have to be getting up and
saying these things he won the debate, held won the
first three weeks and now to attack us on the question
about the ethnic vote. I mean, it's a very sad
reflection on the state of a very, very rattled Leader of
the Opposition. The facts are very, very simple. it is
this Prime minister who from day one of his Prime
Ministership, has recognised the multicultural nature of
Australia, has recognised the enormous contribution that
is being made from people who have come from 130
different homelands to make Australia their own. I've
said, and I emphasised it particularly in the
Bicentennial year, that there was only one thing which
determined whether you're an Australian and that is do
you have a commitment to Australia? And I have, in all
my public life before I went into the Parliament, I've
had an identification with the people who've come to this
Country because I know that this is the biggest decision
that any person from another country can make. They
can't make a bigger decision than to leave their own
country of origin and come here and make this their own.
And these people who've given so much to enlarging and
O enriching Australia deserve, not the cynicism of a
rattled Leader of the Opposition, they deserve what they
have consistently received from me before I went into
Public life and since i've been in the Parliament and
since I've been Prime Minister that is encouragement
and support, so that they can at one and the same time
remember with pride the best of the traditions and
cultures of the countries from which they come and to
make a contribution to the growing and broadening and
deepening and enriching of the Australia of which they
are part.
JOURNALIST: Do you think this is an echo of the debate
involving Mr Howard over multiculturalism?
PM: I don't want to go to that because you will notice
that I have eschewed very deliberately since that time
trying to do or say anything which would arouse those
fires again. I believe that that was an aberration on
the pert of the then Leader of the Opposition and I don't
want to go to those elements of the Opposition who may
still embrace that sort of position. I rather take the
view that this country overwhelming understands its
multicultural nature. The fact that some 40 percent of
Australians this very day were either themselves born in
another country or have a parent who was born in another
country. Those are the realities and intelligent and
responsible leadership demands that we recognise those
facts and draw on the strengths of those facts.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister will you be raising with
the Thai Government the proposals to turn the Burma death
railway into a tourist ride? Apparently they are going
to have actors playing Australian POWs the story is
on the front page of the Courier Mail, you may not have
seen it.
PM: I haven't seen it, Peter. When I get myself
acquainted with it, we'll see what the appropriate
response should be.-
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, given your comments about
the intelligence of the Australian electorate and the
fact that parti~ cularly in western Australia and Victoria
voters will distinguish between State and Federal issues,
do you believe voters and Queensland should make the same
distinction? PM; Well, in Queensland you've got this position that
there were many reasons why I'm standing next to Wayne
Goss, the* Labor Premier now of Queensland, many reasons.
The most important ones are the intrinsic and
qualities of Wayne Goss and of Labor, but also part of
the reason why he's Premier is that you had corruption,
corruption in Queensland. No suggestion that you had
corruption when you talk about the other States, no
su. ggestion of venality or corruption in Victoria no
suggestion, there has been no suggestion on the part of
S politicians of venality or corruption. None. None at
all. Incompetence perhaps, yes, bad decisions but no
suggestion of corruption. Here in this State and one of
the reasons why Goss is Premier is not only his own
intrinsic merits, but because the people were nick of the
corruption of conservatism and the National Party which
is seeking the support of people here in Queensland is
the same National Party which inflicted corruption as
well as incompetence on this State for some 30 years.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, the metal workers, do you..
managed to intervene in that yet at all or
PM: No, no, I may over the weekend make a phone call, I
00yet.
JOURNALIST: ( inaudible)
PM: Beg your pardon?
S JOURNALIST: What do you think of Mr Campbell's actions?
PM: I've got no commnent to make upon them. I've made
the general point about the fact that the Accord has
delivered to this country, despite the predictions of its
imminent demise which have been going on for seven years,
the Accord has delivered 1.6 million new jobs, five times
faster than the conservatives could ever or did deliver,
twice as fast as the rest of the world, a 60 percent
reduction in industrial disputes, a record level
( train whistle sounds, toot toot)
PM ( cont): That's a supporting hoot a record level of
profits which has gone into a record level of investment.,
That is the achievement of the Accord and it is a, a
silliness in the extreme to say, look there might be a
stoppage for a day in one industry. What does that mean
about the respective industrial relations policies of the