A
PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
INTERVIEW WITH PETER CAVE MONDAY 27 APRIL 1992
E& OE PROOF COPY
PC: Prime Minister, you described the trip to Kokoda and
Lae as one of the most moving experiences in your
public life. Why was that?
PM: Because it was the place where the sovereignty of
Australia was fought and decided by young conscripts in
the main, the AIF was there too, but in the main young
conscripts, boys 18, 19, 20 years of age who just died
there in one of the most vicious campaigns of the war,
and on the 50th anniversary we were there to remember
it and to say thank you.
PC Why did it move you so much personally?
PM: I think it was probably the location, the ground where
the commemoration was, was actually fought over, people
had actually died there and that and the village, the
village hadn't changed very much in the years and the
mountains in the back, it was as though you could have
been there. I'm sure if I'd have had a son there you
would not be composed and stand there, you could not be
composed and stand there. I felt as the Prime Minister
an obligation to express appreciation on behalf of the
nation to those families who left their sons there.
PC: Is it fair to say that this whole trip has really been
about nationalism away, for maybe finding our place in
history in Papua New Guinea, finding our place in the
world in Jakarta?
PM: No, it's about two things. It was about the
neighbourhood, making our place more certain in the
immediate region, trying to put the Indonesia
relationship into its proper context and at the same
time accepting the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea's
offer to be there for the 50th anniversary of the Papua
New Guinea campaigns on Anzac Day. We lost 2000 boys
in that campaign and this was the appropriate time, for
me anyway, to remember them and say something about it.
PC: In Indonesia did you feel you had to make a point that
there were more important things in the relationship
than human rights?
PM: Well I thought I got the balance right. That was being
able to say and having said that we thought the events
in Timor were a tragedy, that the military was too
tough, that there had to be a better basis of dealing
with the problem. Essentially one of a process of
reconciliation, while at the same time saying that the
whole relationship is important to Australia. And not
only important, that the whole relationship the
Government of Indonesia had brought to Australia and
brought to the region 25 years of stability. If the
Indonesian archipelago were fracturing or breaking up,
Australian strategic policy would be completely
different and the Timor debate would be set in an
entirely different context.
ends