Subject: Indigenous issues; Kosovars; Hansie Cronje.
E&OE .............................
FLYNN:
Good morning PM.
PRIME MINISTER
Good morning Julie.
FLYNN:
You've had a meeting with ATSIC this week and you've also, dinner in fact. And you've also had a meeting with the National Reconciliation Council. Is it fair to say at this stage that the reconciliation process is dead in the water?
PRIME MINISTER
No, it's not. And it never has been. As a Government we'll continue to try. There's obviously differences of opinion about what is needed for reconciliation and there'll be views about the pace. But the Government's commitment to do its best to achieve over time reconciliation, that is not dead in the water, it remains well and truly alive and I don't want to exaggerate the - you know in any way the prospects of achieving it. Equally it would be foolish to give up and say that because of differences on certain things, the process is not going to go on. I think there's a lot of goodwill on both sides, I certainly found goodwill at the dinner the other night. And I had a meeting yesterday with representatives of the Reconciliation Council and that goodwill is reciprocated by the Government.
FLYNN:
Well is there a way forward do you think? To move away from the whole block if you like about the apology. That seems to be the message that came out from some of the people who attended the dinner earlier in the week, that perhaps an apology really is now just become a stumbling block to moving the whole issue forward.
PRIME MINISTER
Well I can't speak for others, and I respect their views on this and it's for them to express their views on that issue. The Government's position is that we don't support a formal national apology. All of us as individuals feel sorry and regret, we feel sorry about and regret injustices that indigenous people suffered in the past. I mean I have said that on numerous occasions. But for all of us to feel sorrow and regret, deep though it may be is perhaps one thing, a formal apology by this generation in relation to past practices is seen by the Government as something different. And I think that is a position that is understood, it is not put provocatively, it's just put honestly. That is our view and . . .
FLYNN:
But do you think perhaps the wording of the report that went into the Senate Inquiry has basically taken us backwards rather than moving this thing forward? That would seem to have reopened an old sore with all of this.
PRIME MINISTER
Well there was certainly a lot of angry words and a lot of difficult exchanges last week and I said that I regretted any hurt that people may have suffered. But there were none the less reasons for providing that analysis and I don't know that I can add very much to the thousands of words I have already spoken on that. We are engaged again in a very positive discussion. The dinner on Tuesday night was positive. We didn't agree on everything. It was the first time I think that a Prime Minister of any political colour has entertained the entire ATSIC Board and talked for three hours about a whole range of issues. I thought all of us benefited greatly. There's things I learnt I didn't know before, and I hope there were things about the Government's attitude and my motives and our motives that the members of the ATSIC Board learnt and perhaps didn't know before.
FLYNN:
So, what do you think you learnt from that dinner?
PRIME MINISTER
Well I learnt that there's a fair amount of common ground on quite a number of issues. Now, I always thought there was, but perhaps it became even more apparent to me that common ground existed. But look I don't want to underestimate the difficulties, that's silly to do that. What you've always got to do on this issue is try and be politely candid the whole time. It's no good sort of pretending it isn't a very difficult sort of incremental, inch by inch issue. But there is a lot of goodwill; we're all Australians. I recognise that as a group within our community, aborigines are still the most disadvantaged, I recognise that and I believe that we have to try and address that through measures of what I call practical reconciliation. I also recognise that there is you know a spiritual dimension to the concept of reconciliation as well and we have to find, each of us, a way of dealing with it. Now I'm trying to do that but there are certain things that I'm not going to falsely accept if I don't believe them. That is insulting the intelligence of Aboriginal Australia and it's also not something that the community wants me to do.
FLYNN:
Well if we can move on from that to the Kosovars and the remaining refugees in Australia, it's been quite apparent that some of the local communities in Wodonga and Hobart for instance have really accepted these refugees into their community and want to support them and indeed in Hobart sponsor them. Is there room for them to remain or must they all go back?
PRIME MINISTER
Well it really is a question of whether you want to maintain the overall integrity and consistency of our immigration program. The easiest thing to do in circumstances like this is to bend the rules and say yes stay. The problem is it creates an enormous headache for the future in relation to people who make equivalent claims.
Now we were very generous in the number of refugees we took. Given that we're a long way away from Europe and that we were not directly involved in any way we took proportionally more refugees than many countries that had a greater international responsibility to do so and that's part of our long tradition of being open and decent and friendly to refugees. But they came here on a certain understanding, there was no ambiguity about that. They signed things. They clearly understood the circumstances in which they came. You always get difficulty in asking people whose time to return has come to go back and it's always easy to mount a vigorous media campaign. And look these things are difficult. I sympathise with the Minister Philip Ruddock he always handles these things with I think a combination of great tact and sensitivity but an eye to the future and a certain firmness that's needed if we're to keep the integrity of the immigration program.
FLYNN:
But the United Nations today, the Head of the UN administration in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner is concerned about the damage a large number of refugees returning to the war scarred province will cause and they have apparently criticised the forced return of the refugees to Kosovo.
PRIME MINISTER
Well I heard that on the radio a few moments ago. I would understand why he would say that. He should of course understand that we as a country responded very generously and beyond perhaps our direct and immediate responsibility but on a humanitarian basis and we have to maintain the consistency and the integrity of our own program because if you change those rules you then get thousands of people in other circumstances saying what about us? I mean I remember when there was an ad hoc change to the policy some years ago it created. by a former government. it created pressures from others who were in effect saying well if it can be done for them what about my relative what about us?
FLYNN:
But is there perhaps a reason to just defer it for another couple of months to make sure the situation is safe for them to return?
PRIME MINISTER
But then you face it in a couple of months don't you? That's the difficulty with these things and see the only thing you can really do is to lay down a. have an understanding at the beginning and when that understanding is challenged you have to maintain it. And Philip has gone through the individual cases very carefully. The High Court has satisfied itself that he's acted entirely properly.
FLYNN:
Is there perhaps an opportunity Prime Minister for them to be considered to come back to Australia, to give them some sort of priority?
PRIME MINISTER
They can apply and their applications will be processed without any delay but they have to go through that process. I mean you can't have a situation because otherwise everybody in the future who wanted to short circuit the procedure would invoke the example of the Kosovars to do so and that would create an unmanageable problem for our migration program.
FLYNN:
Now I can't let you go without asking you about the whole saga of the Hansie Cronje cricket scandal given that we all know that you're one of the biggest cricket fans in Australia. What do you make of all of this?
PRIME MINISTER
Well I'm very sad that it's happened. I've met Hansie Cronje on a number of occasions. He came here to the Lodge with South African cricketers a couple of years ago for the Prime Minister's eleven. He struck me as a very committed, intelligent man. I'm just tremendously sorry on a personal basis that this has happened. The South African cricket authorities had no alternative. I share all of the outrage about these sorts of practices that have been expressed by cricket authorities both here in Australia and around the world.
I mean I love the game and millions of Australians, millions of people all around the world love the game and they just don't want it corrupted by this sort of behaviour and I'm just tremendously sorry that a man I like and admire and I feel for him and his family but it was certainly something that let the side down to use the sporting expression and something that has struck a blow.
But I don't share the view implicit in some of the headlines that it's you know something that's going to destroy. I mean one incident or even a series of tragic instances like this don't destroy a marvellous game but there is an obligation on cricket administrators and cricket players, they have a responsibility to really band together internationally. I'd support an ICC inquiry, I know the Australian Cricket Board does too, to try and find if they can any international network that produces this kind of behaviour and really root it out because if we really care about this wonderful game all of us will bend our efforts to achieve that.
FLYNN:
Prime Minister thanks very much for taking time out on what I know is a pretty busy parliamentary sitting day today.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks Julie.
[ends]