PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
INTERVIEW WITH DOUG AITON, RADIO 31-0, 1 JUNE 1995
E& OE PROOF ONLY
DA: Mr Keating good afternoon.
PM: How are you Doug?
DA: Very well indeed, thank you. I can smell an election in the air.
PM: Well you have got too good a nose, Doug.
DA: Have I?
PM: You have indeed.
DA: Do you think that I am wrong in thinking that we are now into mild
election mode?
PM: Oh, y ou are indeed. I mean the Government brought down a serious
Budget, I would say a sober Budget, to deal with the economic
circumstances we faced. To get the Budget back into surplus to make
this adjustment and it was greeted as, you know, an election Budget
and the rest. That was the media's way of saying look this has really
been a pretty good Budget. So good that they thought the
Government could go to a poll on it. That doesn't mean that the
Government thinks about it as being anything other than simply a
serious policy change from which we can now carry on and see the
economy go on to the sustainable level, which we saw in yesterday's
National Accounts, 3.7 per cent for the year.
DA: Well we do know, though, that the election at its latest, I think, will be
in the early months of next year, won't it?
PM: The full Parliament runs to about March next year, it is something of
that order.
DA: Are you yet prepared to give us any indication as to when you are
thinking of for an election?
PM: Well, I must say, one of the happy elements of incumbency in this
arrangement, Doug, is that in the Australian political system, there is a
discretion in the Prime Minister as to when the elections can be held
and none of them have been silly enough to give that away and I don't
think I will be the first.
DA: No, I don't expect you to be. But you can't blame me for trying.
PM: Oh, no, no, go for your life.
DA: I think also that one of the things that is taking our attention at the
moment, the voters of Australia, is what are we going to be voting
about. People are thinking in election mode, whether or not you can
tell us when. I would suggest that what I hear most of all is that the
gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. Now I am not all that
sure that that's the case. I'd prefer to say that the number of rich is
increasing and the number of poor is increasing and unemployment
doesn't change much and it seems to me that you being the
Prime Minister, that is the mood that you're going to face in an election
campaign.
PM: Well that may be right, but it is the wrong mood. You know we have
now had 1.9 million jobs since the Government was elected in 1983
and we have had, since the election, 630,000 jobs. Now if you go
back to that election, Doug, the principal commitment that the
Government made in that election was to restore growth to the
economy and employment ard we have had now a 6 per cent and a
per cent growth economy and now it is slowing to a rate sustainable
at about 4 per cent, roughly, and we have had 630,000 jobs since the
election, or 400,000 in the last year. So it is a much more fully
employed country. I think only the United States is up with us in terms
of employment growth.
DA: Where does that put us in percentage terms as to the number of
unemployed, the slice of the cake who are unemployed?
PM: Well that is down to about, I think, 8.4 per cent. But can I say to you
that is off a massive participation rate. I mean we have now got many
more people looking for work. You see the unemployment rate is a
proportion of those looking for work, the participation in the labour
market. If we had the participation rate that John Howard left me in
1983, we'd have unemployment I think around 5 to 6 per cent. If we
we're comparing apples with apples.
DA: Yes I do. But is this the sort of figure that you would have hoped to
have for unemployment? At the time of the last election, is this the sort
of figure you would have hoped to have in June 1995?
PM: I couldn't have hoped for anything like this because this is the largest
fall in unemployment since we have been keeping the records. The
last twelve months is the largest fall in unemployment since we were
keeping the records. So we have gone from 10.7 per cent
unemployment at the time of the election to now 8.4 per cent. That is
a massive fall and picking up, of course, all those school leavers. See
to get unemployment down, Doug, you have got to pick up all the
people joining the labour market, as well as those in unemployment.
And one of the happy things about this is we now have got a quarter of
those jobs have gone to the long term unemployed, which shows that
that policy statement Working, Nation is out there working to get the
most disadvantaged people back-to work, whereas in the 80s we
wouldn't have got anything like that number.
DA: Well what do you see as the battles that you are going to fight the
election on?
PM: Well let me just say a couple of things about this question about,
you know, how people are going because I know that Peter Costello is
running around in the last day or so talking about battlers. I mean
someone in the Liberal Party's advertising agency has given them a
line about battlers. They said, " yes just keeping this line". So they are
cynical. He said, " Australians are as poor as they have ever been", he
said today on radio. Now let me just give the lie to that little claim and
just tell you this. That the best measure of average living standards in
Australia is real household disposable income because it includes
wages and salaries, and supplements such as overtime, pensions,
social security benefits and it is per person and it is after tax. So, I
mean, it is the best measure. We have had a 40 per cent increase in
household disposable income since 1983. In other words, a huge
increase in disposable . incomfe since 1983 and if we take that per
person, it was 19.8 per cent per person since 1983 and if we take the
per person rate during the seven years of Coalition Government it was
2.1 per cent. So we have had nearly as much growth in household
disposable income per year as the Coalition had in seven years. So
can I just make that point, therefore, that if you take that measure of
wages, salaries, supplements, pensions, benefits, after tax and per
person, household disposable income has risen by 40 per cent.
DA: And you are making the point that Peter Costello and John Howard are
saying that the battlers are turning to the Liberal Party.
PM: Well I mean this is the stuff they get from the advertising. This is the
Dollar Sweets man. This is from Peter Costello who went into the
industrial arbitration system and argued in 1986 at the National Wage
Case for a reduction in all award wages to $ 25 below the lowest award
rate then applying. This is the same crowd who say they wanted $ 3 an
hour for teenage battlers. No award protection for adult battlers. For
unemployed battlers they were going to kick them off the dole after
nine months and for retiring battlers they want to knock off the
Government's superannuation scheme. I mean they are unbelievably
hypocritical.
DA: How are you finding facing up to John Howard? It seems to me that
they have put up against you, at last, someone who can match you in
debating style.
PM: Well they put him up against me and Hawke in 1985 to 1989 and it
didn't do him much good then.
DA: But you weren't both leaders then.
PM: No, I know. But, I mean, in the end I had the job of blowing the
Box Hill tax package apart in 1987 for John Howard. Look the thing
about John Howard is he has only ever had three views in twenty
years of public life. One is what he calls proper deregulation of the
labour market, that is taking away the award underpinnings. Letting
the whole lot fall out, particularly against the lowest paid. Kicking
family benefits to the highest income earners and putting in a GST.
They're the three general lines he has pushed in twenty years. So
what I say about John is this. I have just come back from Japan. We
have probably got now the best set of bilateral relationships with Asia
we have ever had. We have got the most advantageous multilateral
arrangements in things like ApEC. We are making the linkage to Asia
as never before. We have got an open deregulated economy.
We have got very low inflation in yesterday's National Accounts.
When you compare where the Government is and where Australia is
going, compared to somebody who has 1970s views coming from what
he thinks are the rosy years in the 1950s, for Australia to step back
down in that time tunnel and accept those views when we now have a
much more dynamic buoyant economy, is I just don't think a
proposition for people.
DA: There was a time about ten years or so ago when you were Treasurer
and he had been Treasurer where you and he seemed to have a
certain personal regard for each other. That seems to have
completely and totally evaporated.
PM: No. I'd just make this point. There can be no honesty or credibility in
politics without policies. And when John Howard runs around saying " I
won't show that Prime Minister my policies". What he is really saying
is " I won't show Doug Aiton, his listeners, or the Australian public my
policies". I mean what he is really saying is " I am so monkey cunning
and so tricky, they won't see the colour of my policies until it is too late
for them". Now I think this is the sort of Liberal Party 50s, you know,
" they are coming down to get us in their sampans, there are reds
under beds, the Indonesians are about to overtake us". That sort of
cynicism is no longer a stock in trade of Australia in the 1990s.
DA: Talking about your accusation of John Howard coming from the 1970s
and inspired by the 1950s. Do you think that the Republic is going to
be an issue in this election campaign, whenever it might be?
PM: Yes, because there can be no complete expression of Australian
independence and sovereignty while ever we are borrowing the
monarchy of another country. So I go to Japan and say " here I am
representing a country which is completely independent, proud of its
culture, proud of its traditions, proud of its new role in the world.
But, by the way, our head of state is the Queen of Great Britain."
DA: I think that the pro-Republic argument seems to have stalked a little
and I emphasise thie word stalled for one reason: the pro-republic
people, even many of them are saying " but what sort of a republic
do we want", and no-one has yet come up with the complete definite
answer to that, and the Monarchists are making merry with that.
PM: Let me tell you Doug, I'll make an announcement on your program,
at 7.3Opm on next Wednesday night, I am responding in detail to the
Republican Advisory Committee report, and giving the Government's
policy on the republic, and it will probably be telecast on the ABC.
DA: And in that you will be saying exactly what style of republic you will
be pushing for?
PM: What style of republic, the shape and nature of it, and why we
believe it should be that shape. But let me just say, the republic
debate was a mints and coffee debate after dinner until the
Government took this up in the 1993 election. You know, people
talked about the republican movement, and I am glad to have them
there, but they weren't cutting any weight before a major political
party picked this issue up. But again, because it is an issue that is
going to matter to Australia now, in the future forever, it's incumbent
upon us to think it through and get it right. So, I would rather
respond after due consideration, than rush into it to keep
enthusiastic supporters no matter how enthusiastic or helpful they
may otherwise be to get this right.
DA: Is it a driving motivation of yours that you would like to be
remembered as the Prime minister who took us into being a
republic?
PM: I would like to be remembered Doug, as a person who had complete
faith in the nation we have become. Australians who have made
their own way in the world, who have changed in this generation
probably as no other generation has changed before it, who have
accepted the economic changes as never before, who have made
the connection and the leap into Asia as never before, who have
found themselves at home in this part of the world, and who are now
living in an interesting, dynamic, multicultural society. That's what I
am interested in, and I don't think that can be reflected while ever we
have the Sovereign of Great Britain as our Head of State.
DA: Would you consider yourself to be a failure if you don't get us to be a
republic before your Prime Ministership ends?
PM: No. If you take a measure of my political life, it has been trying to
international ise the Australian economy, and to not only to change
structures here at home, but build structures abroad for Australia,
and I was doing that just last week in Japan.
DA: One other matter that is going to be brought up by the Opposition,
and they also find the Australian people often seem to talk about
against you, is what we might call Paul Keating's forceful, personal
insults towards the Opposition, made usually in the Parliament.
Are you going to continue that style, or do you think it might be
losing you votes?
PM: You see, it's all in a sense over-estimated. I don't believe in
personal attacks I don't ever talk about people's personal lives,
their family lives, their finances. When I say the Coalition may be
hillbillies, or something like this as I have said at some stage in the
past I'm talking about them in the sense of a corporate political
put-down of them. But what I regard as personal attacks are people
who go to personal lives, and the Liberal Party do that against me
perpetually they're doing it again today, yesterday it goes on here
all the time. So, when I refer to them in a corporate sense, I'm not
dealing and never have: nobody can say over the 25 years I have
been in public life, that anywhere have I referred to them in those
sort of, if you like, hurtful, personal terms. But I have had a lot of it
directed at me, and it has highlighted of course now that is, the
Parliamentary debate is highlighted by television. But you
notice... . you wouldn't have seen, perhaps, Mike Seccombe from the
Sydney Morning Herald said is a column a week ago that
Mr Howard's tactic is to disrupt the House of Representatives by
interjections under his breath, by interjections which are out of the
earshot of the microphone. He said that Mr Howard is a
parliamentary sneak, and he better own up to having either some
interest in the nature of his rhetoric about the Parliament, or simply,
to be described as somebody who is prepared to disrupt the
Parliamentary proceedings. So, this is the environment we live in
here, and I think it has changed since the Parliament was televised.
DA: A few years down the track, can you say that you still enjoy being
Prime Minister as when you took over from Bob Hawke?
PM: I enjoy the policy changes. I was thrilled to be able to see the
Treasurer say on Budget night that we will now have 15% of
everyone's income going away in superannuation that no other
generation of Australians will need to worry about their retirement
income from now on. You know, that someone on average weekly
earnings will end up with a nest egg of $ 500,000. They are the big
changes that matter. Up in Japan last week, I walked away with a
declaration from the Japanese a joint declaration of partnership
between us, which said amongst other things that " Japan reaffirms
that Australia is an indispensable partner in regional affairs".
Now, when have you ever seen that sort of text, ever, in any
relationship we have ever had with the largest power in Asia the
largest economy in Asia or, let me read a couple of other points
from it: " Japan and Australia have a relationship of unprecedented
quality, they pledged to build on that foundation an enduring and
steadfast partnership." You see, this is the country that matters
most to us it is the largest in terms of trade, it's our largest trading
partner, and to walk away with that sort of declaration and
relationship, is the stuff of this job. And that's what gives you the
kicks, as they say.
DA: If you lose the election, are you going to stick around as Leader?
PM: I'm not in the business of losing, and we have won 5 elections in a
row, and I think we can make it 6.
DA: But nevertheless, just if the unexpected happens, will you stay on?
PM: Well, I would see at the time you see, I don't think the public are
going to take somebody recycled from the 70s and 80s. They are
too smart Doug, they have had too much quality in policy changes
put to them to say " oh well, we will stop all that we will go back to
sort of sitting back".. You know John Howard said a couple of weeks
ago that he thought Australians had policy fatigue. You know, the
only person who has got policy fatigue is him.
DA: What about if you win are you going to stay on for a long time?
PM: Long enough to do all the things that I think are consistent with this
international isation of Australia, and also giving us that cultural and
social identity which I think we now have. You know, 10 years ago,
only 3 kids in 10 completed secondary school. Now, we have got 8
in 10 completing secondary school, we have added 65% of places to
tertiary education higher education, universities. In One Nation, we
built up the TAFE system. In Melbourne this weekend, I am
launching the One Nation train we will have the standard gauge for
the first time from Brisbane through Sydney, via Melbourne to Perth,
which will make Melbourne the transport hub of Australia. I mean,
these sorts of changes of the nation coming together as we said at
the time: One Nation is the thing which I have most dedicated
myself to. Because when I came here Doug, in the late 60s, the time
I became a person of some significance in the front bench of the
Labor Party in the late 70s, people had thrown in this Parliament
had thrown the economic and social fight for just on then 40 years
years. And all the policies to open the country up, to
produce a naturally low inflation rate, to produce productivity,
dynamism, import competitiveness, real product innovation, powered
along by our education system all of those issues, people had
thrown the fight on. And, for my part, I was not going to ever let
anyone say of me that I did it too. So, that's what I am about I'm
about, basically, kicking goals in policy. The other thing, let me say I
want to see this terrific front bench we now have here, bring these
people along. I mean, the number of people that can succeed me as
leader are now manifest in the front bench of the Government.
DA: Who are they?
PM: There is, I suppose, all the obvious ones.
DA: Gareth Evans?
PM: Kim Beazley, Gareth Evans, Simon Crean, some of the younger
members coming through as well, Carmen Lawrence from Western
Australia, Ralph Willis the Treasurer. I mean, the front bench is so
strong, the equivalent front bench is, of course, Tim Fischer,
Costello and Downer. From our group there is a number of people
who could be leader and Prime Minister and, I think, one of the great
changes of the last 12 years is to have modernised the Australian
Labor Party. The Labor Party will never regress to what it was in the
1950s and I 960is 7It -is -now a modern party, a modern social
democratic party, a modern party of government producing the sort
of people I just mentioned.
DA: How do you feel about Bob Hawke now?
PM: I don't see Bob much these days. He is out leading his own life and
good on him.
DA: What do you think his place in Australian political history is?
PM: I think, it will be one of somebody who was around presiding over a
government which was dedicated to making these changes and the
continuity of the policy changes I was just talking about a few
minutes ago.
DA: Mr Keating, thank you very much for your time today.
PM: Good Doug, it is a great pleasure to speak to you.
ends