PRIME MRAINISTE
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH SIMON CLARKE, TODAY SHOW,
19 SEPTEMBER 1990
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
CLARKE: Well Prime Minister, I guess the thing that
people will be asking, the mood was so positive before
and after that presentation. What went wrong?
PM: We didn't get the votes. But you put your finger on,
it, Simon. What in a sense really sticks in the craw is,
you know, the general rush we had to us of people after
our presentation congratulating Australia on its
presentation and it occurred again tonight when I went in
to the Great Assembly before it was announced. One and
I mean very, very prominent in the Olympic movement
went out of his way to come up to me and he's a tough
sort of fellow he said I want to tell you that in my
whole history of association with the international
Olympic movement there have been two great presentations,
and he said Chirac and the French and Hawke with
Australia and that was unsolicited and that was, as you
know, I mean it was all around the place. I think
Australians, you know, have cause to be a little bit
worried when you know that your bid was so good, the
presentation was well done and it's not reflected in the
votes. I think that's a bit worrying.
CLARKE: Are you suggesting there may have been some
other motives-
PM: I'm not questioning anyone's integrity. Let me make
that quite clear. But one has to wonder whether
financial considerations do come into it in terms of TV
rights and what people are able to offer in those
circumstances. It's very difficult, I think, to
understand and I do want your viewers to know that this
is not sour grapes, I mean I really hope we're all able
to lose graciously and I hope we are. But I'm seriously
concerned about the future position where North America
has it in 1984 and then again in ' 96, Toronto polling
very well ahead of us, North America. Are decisions, to
some extent, being affected by what sort of distribution
there may be able to be from television rights in a
particular region rather than another? I mean if that is
part of what these people because they think there's
going to be more to be distributed I say it not in a
venal sense but it ought to be distributed. Well what
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does that do for the concept of the universality of
Olympism? CLARKE: So are you saying there's some kind of barrier
in the minds of IOC members to allowing the Games to come
to the Southern Hemisphere?
PM: Well all one can say is that we were all staggered
by the way in which, after our presentation, quite
gratuitously delegates and officials went out of their
way to praise the bid and the presentation. I mean one
senior official saying the best presentation in memory.
Now we're not saying those things. We think we did
pretty well in the presentation but others are saying it.
Now if you've got the facts, you've got the facilities,
you've got the environment, you've got the sports fanatic
population and you've done an historically good
presentation then what are people going to say?
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