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PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP,
NATIONAL ART GALLERY, MELBOURNE, 11 MARCH 1992
E OE PROOF COPY
PM: It's very obvious that my parliamentary colleague, Dr
Hewson, is exceedingly rattled. Today he has forgotten
where his candidate's factory is, but worse than that,
in his -terms he is now apparently deciding that: all of
the things that we have done, that he has described as
unfunded in the One Nation package of the Government on
the infr-astructure side, may be things he can adopt and
add to. So, the ideological model which he has given
everybody with the Fightback package is now unravelling
with the first sort of pressure in a by-election
campaign. This is faster than even I would have
expected it. That is, that Dr Hewson is now grabbing
for the fiscal lever, whether it be further give-aways
off the Budget or adopting Labor's infrastructure
programs, that is building ring roads around cities
which hEt described a couple of weeks ago as grossly
irresponsible and unfunded. So he doesn't know where
he is standing in Budget terms or in ideological terms
and it just means that the first time someone said to
him look, hang on what's wrong with the ring road
around Melbourne, it means the trucks aren't running
through our suburb, he straight away said maybe I can
give you that, maybe I can do that. It doesn't auger
well for his program, and of course in government what
you see is Just a run-away of our fiscal policy.
J: But he does say that he will be able to fund it fromgrowth
in revenue?
PM: Yes I know, but that's just gibberish because we've got
the growth forecasts there which he says were too
optimistic. And at the same time he adopts our growth
forecasts and then takes the revenue from them. He
doesn't know' what he's doing.
J: But isn't that sort of adoption the great tradition of
Australian politics?
PM: You mean he poses a compliment by adopting our
policies? It's a backhanded compliment. I'd prefer
him now to stick to his last, that is to stick to his
dry, un: imaginative last of Fightback.
J: Prime Minister, will you make a visit to Indonesia a
priority?
PM: Not a priority, but I would like to go there at some
time this year and that's a matter of trying to see
when I can do that.
J: Do you have a date in mind?
PM: Not really, no.
J: Do you also consider going up to Papua New Guinea for
their celebrations on ANZAC Day?
PM: I've been asked and I'm thinking about that now.
J: Prime Minister, the Opposition seems certain you're
going to drop the political ads legislation coming up
to the Wills by-election.
PM: The Government has not made up its mind about this.
What I said was that we needed sometime to see just
what impact this sort of legislation was having on a
number of elections and that's what we're doing.
J: What's your feeling about that ban?
PM: I'll tell you after we've had some time.
J: Mr Keating, is the fact of the matter, according to Mr
Hogg anyway, that just as much money is now being spent
as before?
PM: Mr Hogg is an authority on this matter, I'm not. I'm
not really able to comment about that.
J: Would you be upset if the High Court ruled the
legislation out?
PM: We're always upset if any of our legislation has
unconstitutional features.
J: One of the concerns that emerged in the wake of the
Tasmanian election was that Labor down there lost a
chance to put across a rather complex message through
television advertisements in a way which would have
simplified the issue and made the choice clearer. Is
that sort of concern something that's worrying you know
about the ad legislation?
PM: We're moving into a period where the political contests
maybe fought without the capacity to produce the
arguments, and that needs to be thought about. But by
the same token, the cost of producing the arguments has
become prohibitive for the parties.
J: Would you like to have the opportunity to attack the
GST on radio and television in an election campaign?
PM: I think the'GST is such a stationary target we can
attack it fulsomely, effectively, through the normal
processes of the media.
J: Mr Keating, is there any chance that your consideration
of this topic would create any changes this side of the
by-election?
PM: No, of course not.
J: This side of the next federal election?
PM: That's for us to make a judgement about. We're still
looking at it.
ends