PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH PETER KENNEDY, ABC RAD~ IO 29
JUNE 1992
E AND OE PROOF ONLY
KENNEDY: Are you trying to frighten people into
supporting the governmnent?
PM: We had the federal director of the Liberal
Party yesterday saying that people on unemployment benefits,
after 9 months under a Liberal government they will be kicked
of f un~ lye benefits, so somebody may 40 years of age
with a wife and a couple of children will be stigmatised by
them as being unemployed,, unworthy of government assistance
after 9 months you are down to the voluntary agencies, and I
made the point that if we run a country like that for a
considerable period of time the social unrest it will produce
will make it an outcome which this country has never seen
before. That is you can't say to people sorry there is no
sustenance and support for you, you are on your own, you are
down to St Vincent de Paul or the Smith Family or the
Salvation Army and that is the end of you. I mean that sort
of spiteful policy is what I think will bring Australians
socially unstuck.
KENNEDY: But do you really think we have that record of
social volatility, that emerged in Los Angeles for instance?
PM: We have never had that sort of spitefulness in
policy but can I just say, today Gerard Mtenzies, the director
of the Anglican Community Services said on radio and he was
asked by the questioner. Can I just pick up your word, he
said you are using the word I think that the Liberal Party is
abusing the agencies, that's the voluntary agencies and Mr
Menzies said, well I think they are abusing the agencies. To
think that we can come in and pick up their responsibility, I
mean we do it of our own accord but to have to actually be
demanded of us as in this policy I think is really quite
unacceptable# and he goes on in a similar vein to may that
PM: ( cont'd) elsewhere in the interview. These are the
policies that Dr Hewson is pushing and if anyone says look if
you do that you will end up creating not only social misery
but social strife his response then is that the Prime Minister
is trying to scare you. What the Prime Minister is trying to
do is just tell people what sort of spiteful policies Dr
Hevson is actually presenting.
KENNEDY: The key to all this is obviously employment
isn't it, is jobs. If there are jobs for ordinary Australians
then this problem won't occur.
PM: Exactly, but to say that in both the cyclical
impact of a recession and the unemployment which comes from it
and the structural change going on in the economy and the
unemployment that comes from that, to try and brand people as
Mr Robb, the federal director of the Liberal Party did
yesterday,, has some sort of people sponging on society not
giving taxpayers a go as he put it and therefore just being
wiped off all government support and sent to a voluntary
agency, as Mr Menzies says quite clearly we couldn't possibly.
See the Liberals have, they have got $ 50 million in there for
the voluntary agencies and Mr Menzies said when you consider
that the Anglican Church alone spends $ 100 million nationally
and you mulitply that with all the other churches, you see
million is really a drop in the ocean. This is the
million that comes from the great soft heart of the Liberal
Party, peanuts when they drive people into misery and poverty.
KENNEDY: Let's look at the government's position and the
government policy and this morning we read that the chief
executive of BHPI John Prescott said One Nation was a failure,
that the money had which had been designated for
infrastructure projects for instance had not started flowing.
PMI Well some of the railway work hasn't. I had
lunch with the board of BHP last week and I made the remark
myself that we had not succeeded yet in getting a green fields
industrial relations agreement with the rail unions so as to
facilitate the building of the standard gauge between
Melbourne and Adelaide etc and we were trying to speed that up
and I think what's happened is that, I think Mr Prescott
repeated my own remark back to me. But the twist I think the
media put on some of it, this is just a part of the One Nation
package, what is also in One Nation is the tax changes for
business and depreciation, the change to the airline system,
the change in technical and further education, the adoption of
a national electricity grid, all those things are proceeding,
the national highways, the arterial ring roads, the one bit
where we are now trying to break through is on this now
industrial agreement for the -National Rail corporation which
will mean that we can start pouring money into the system and
developing these standard gauge rails and improving the Sydney
Melbourne railway line etc.
KENNEDYs That's crucial isn't it f rom the point of view
of employment and that really is the achilles heel so when do
you think we will see a real improvement in employment and
getting that jobless rate down?
PM1 A large part of the One Nation spending has not
been spent yet but it wasn't meant to be spent until the
financial year 1992/ 93 which begins on 1 July, that soon. So
the fact of the matter is that then we will start to see the
One Nation spending coming through and that will help. But
unemployment is a problem, it won't be dealt with easily or
quickly, we never proposed that it would be but we want to
have it trending in the right direction and we have got now
interest rates have come off substantially, down to quite low
levels, we have got the budget deficit playing its own role in
supporting the economy, that is acting as a shock absorber,
that is promoting spending and activity through the deficit
and we have got these programs like one Nation coming on
stream. KENNEDYi When we spoke 5 months ago here you had boen
Prime Minister for I think six weeks and you were lagging the
Opposition, the government was lagging the Opposition in the
polls and your approval ratings were down. During that
months both the government's position and your own position
shot up, topped the Opposition and now it's moving down again
according to the latest polls. That's a fair degree of
volatility there how do you arrest that decline?
PM3 I think it's the trend that matters Peter,
these polls are taken every two weeks and the levels one can't
rely upon the levels, it depends how they are taken, the
quality of the material that is taken from them rather than
just a production of raw numbers. So the trend is what i
think we are interested in rather than the level and the trend
has been okay for us, we have been picking up slowly across
the course of the year. These are difficult times I don't for
a second make light of that, it's not easy to at the one time
be continuing micro economic change, changing the airline
syst~ em, as I say trying to rebuil te national rail highway,-
trying to change all these things, while at the same time
dealing with the end of the recession and trying to deal with
employment. KENNEDY& You haven't got much time to do it in have you?
PM: I have got the better part of 12 months and we
believe the economy will be growing quite strongly through
92/ 93. It's just a question about productivity, if
productivity is higher rather than lower for a given level of
production, it produces less growth in employment. if
productivity is not so high therefore if more people are
employed in the process that growth will produce higher levels
of employment. So the quandry will be what, if we look at
this in a year from now, what will have been the level of
PM: ( cont'd) productiivty on the way through. we will get
the growth but exactly what level of employment we will get
from the growth is the moot point.
KENNEDY$ So it's a catch 22, we really need that
efficiency to be able to compete internationally but in
getting that efficiency it might not be reflected in
significant reduction in unemployment.
PM; That's right. We have got businesses now which
are quite productive, they are going to produce more output
but for a lower level of employment. So therefore to take
employment up and unemployment down we have got to produce
more growth, more output. Now I think the economy will
produce quite a lot of output in this coming year but the
little productivity equation in the middle will determine how
many more people are in involved in that process and how much
a given level of employment will produce in output by way of
higher productivity.
KENNEDY: So on that basis though it's going to be a hard
slog to get that unemployment rate down, isn't it?
PM: We do want a more efficient country, we want
slimmed down efficient companies, we want them to be
competitive but at the same time we don't want to see the
product of that being higher levels of unemployment. We went
to see that taken up in more employment which means you must
have more output, therefore the economy must grow, and that's
the point we keep making to the Liberal Party and Dr Hewson.
You can't have an economy grow without inflation juping out
of the box, without an incomes policy, without an Accord,
without some basis of letting that growth be devoted to
employment and not spilling over into wages and prices and so
that's why we think with the Accord mechanism and the
commitment from the unions that inflation will be held near
our trading partners, we can let the economy grow and
hopefully pull employment up.
KENNEDY: on the point of employment you would be aware
that one of your former ministers, Stewart West, said today
that the government could not afford to be sanguine about
employment and talked about Thatcherite policies and
Thatcherite advice that you were getting on economic matters.
PM: I am not sanguine about it and I don't think we
are getting Thatcherite advice. The One Nation document was
the essence of a Labor Party document, it was a building
document, building on the traditional infrastructure of the
public sector as I said in rail and road in other areas and
while we are doing that we are trying to make the country more
efficient. Now look what we are doing in training and youth
policies they are the antithesis of Thatcherism. That is we
are trying to train people back into the work force, we have
now got these very high retention rates in schools, we have
PM: Ccont'd) now got this big throughput into universities,
we are now trying to fix up technical and further education to
take kids into a trained position in the workforce, those
things are not Thatcherite they are the antithesis of
Thatcherite. KENNEDY: with regard to youth, you met uepoe
Iguth today and one of those young people told an ABC reporter
t the talks had been in fact a failure. Is that your view
of them?
PMt I thought they were quite successful and I saw
a report, I am not sure if it was the West Australian or the
Advertiser of similar discussions I had yesterday with a group
in Adelaide where the group were very praiseworthy of the
nature of the discussion and my willingness to listen to their
problems and take on board things and today we had a f irst
class conversation. Mr Beazley was there, the Premier was
there as were members of the business community and one
listens to the problems and also the views that some young
people are putting, how they practically find themselves, the
circumstances they find themselves. Although today's group
were not all unemployed some were at work, some were at
university, some were at TAPE and some where unemployed and
the people having most of their say today were actually at
university. But last night the people I met were all
unemployed and I came away with some very useful impressions.
KENNEDY: The report that our reporter picked up was that
while one of the people who attended, a girl, said that she
was flattered that the Prime Minister wanted to talk to them
that another opinion was that they didn't achieve very much.
PM: I don't know what they call achieving very
much. I said we are trying to get a breakthrough with entry
level training wages for young people at this national meeting
we are holding next month, because the problem is that I think
we could have arrived at the position where we have priced a
lot of young people out of the labour market and we are now
trying to break through on that to get to a situation where
young people can afford to be taken up by companies where the
companies don't have to carry the cost of the training. The
Commonwealth will carry the cost by extra places in technical
and further education and other institutions but the employer
carries the cost only of the non training component. Now such
a breakthrough would be important but if anyone of the group
there today were at university and feeling comfortable about
their circumstances, maybe the unemployed ones are more
interested in that than they were.
KENNEDY: on another matter, you returned to the question
of the Australian identity the other day. Why does the
Australian identity need redefining in your view?
PM: Because if we go to the world uncertain about
ourselves and ambiguous in our signals we won't have the
response we ought to have to make a success of ourselves
particularly in the Asia Pacific area and I think countries
around us have taken the view does Australia want to deal with
us, does it regard itself as a country of the Asia Pacific,
doss it regard itself as a European country, does it see its
ties with North America. These are the questions which I
think are of ten put and part of the reticence of many of our
close neighbours in dealing with this is they are not sure we
want to deal with them. Now if we say we are a unique nation,
we have got a continent to ourselves the oldest land mass on
earth, it's made us different the kind of society we now have
is different, it's unique, it's not European, it's not North
American, it's Australian and we are happy to declare it and
be unique and be part of this part of the world. That is an
important I think economic change as well as an important
social change.
KENNEDY You started the debate on the flaa here on
January 31, you were also talking about the oath of
allegiance the other day and how that needed to be reworded in
your view. What other things do you have in mind?
PM1 I think the oahof aLlegallme is important
that people actually, there-is a sort of a civic oath that
people take, swear allegiance to Australia and it's values and
I think that is important rather than to the head of state and
that is psychologically important for themselves and the
country. But I think that Australians are proud of
themselves, they want to see themselves independently of
independent spirit and attitude and I find it most
particularly amongst young people. This morning at Perry
Lakes stadium I met the country senior high schools, there
were 3,000 kids there for a week of sport but the enthusiasm
of them was to be seen to be believed and again in some of the
young people I met at the youth fat project later, that's
where our f uture is, it's with the kids who are now going
through school into university who will take up the cudgels,
take up the responsibility for this place and are proud of it.
KENNEDY I wonder if the Australian identity is being
diluted bymulticulturalism?
PM: No, but I think we have to be careful that
multiculturalism doesn't replace the old sort of imperial ties
we had in the past, but rather be a binding thing in the new
Australia. KENNEDY& So no winding back on multiculturalism?
PM: No but all of it's subordinate to a commitment
to Australia and it shouldn't be a commuitments to other
places, commitment to Australia and I think if that comes
through clearly and it's come through most clearly with young
PM ( cont'd) people all this stuf f about paying sort of lip
service to our sort of history and as important as that is but
letting it have too much of an impact on the shape of it now,
they are quite smart about this I think and they are quite
determined to declare for Australia, to declare the place to
be a unique place to be out there doing it around this part of
the world and wanting to do it.
KENNEDY: You started the f lag debate here at the end of
January. PM$ We did indeed Peter.
KENNEDY; What stage has it reached?
PM: It's become an important debate, people are now
focussing on it as they have never focussed before but I have
said and I am quite happy to repeat that before we would
contemplate any change to it we would have a plebiscite of
some kind so people will have their say, the government won't
be changing the thing without there being some very clear
support for such a change and that manifesting itself by way
of a vote of some kind. But there is no doubt we can't go on
with a representational image of ourself with a flag of
another country in our flag.
KENNEDY: No early decision?
PM: There will be a process and we have got to
agree, we have got to talk about that but certainly we won't
be seeking to do anything other than by giving the public a
say. ENDS