Subjects: Illegal immigrants; US-Australian relations; Free trade; China; Taiwan
E&OE................................
LEHRER:
Mr Prime Minister welcome.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good evening Jim.
LEHRER:
On this Afghan refugee situation why did you not allow those people into Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well because they were illegal immigrants. We're very happy to take refugees and on a per capita basis we take more refugees than any country accept Canada. But if you allow illegal immigration of that type to interrupt the refugee flow you really are allowing those people to go ahead of others who may be assessed by the UNHCR as being more in need of refugee acceptance into Australia.
LEHRER:
Even 430 would have made that big a difference in a country the size of yours?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's not that..I mean that wouldn't have been the end of it. There are estimates of thousands of people wanting to come to Australia. And we have a very large coastline. It is an island continent and if you continually have the situation where we're seen by people smugglers as being an easy touch the number of people wanting to come will grow rather than diminish.
LEHRER:
What do you say to those who way there were domestic political ramifications in this, that if you had not been approaching a probable election you might have taken a different turn?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I would say that we can hardly be accused of having arranged for a vessel out of Indonesia to founder and be picked up by a Norwegian freighter. I mean those circumstances were impossible to organise. That's what I'd say to them.
LEHRER:
But there is no question there then that your decision was politically popular in Australia. The majority of the Australians did not want those people to come in.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well whether it ultimately turns out to be politically popular or not is beside the point. We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do and we did it against the background of having taken refugees on a very generous basis, indeed a more generous basis than many of the countries around the world that have presumed to criticise us for what we've done.
LEHRER:
On your trip to Washington, the unwillingness of President Bush to start free trade negotiations immediately, that must be a great disappointment to you?
PRIME MINISTER:
No. I understand there are domestic political reasons here in Washington for that. I mean I'm a realist. I appreciate the domestic political challenges of fellow leaders.
LEHRER:
Everybody has them, in other words?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well of course they do. I have them, George Bush has got them. You've got to be realistic in this business and he's got to negotiate a mandate, a trade mandate from Congress, trade promotion. And right at the moment those negotiations might be compromised by any commitment in-principle. But once that issue's resolved I would hope that we'll return to the question of looking at the possibility of a free trade agreement between our two countries. I think there could be a lot in it and I hope when the other issues are resolved we can go back to it.
LEHRER:
Why is this important to you in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well because there's a great complementarity between Australia and the United States. We're both modern, sophisticated, highly educated, very progressive economies. Obviously there's a huge difference in size. But things like internet usage and those types of things are almost as high in Australia as they are in the United States and on a per capita basis we're very similar and I think there is great potential. There'll be a lot of hurdles particularly in the area of agriculture. We may not in the end find it worth the candle but we've got to at least have a go and see if we can find the basis of a mutual agreement.
LEHRER:
What would be in it for Australia? What would be the advantage of having a free trade agreement with the United States?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well access to an enormous economy.
LEHRER:
What is it you have that you can't sell here now in an open way?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well obviously we would like some progress on agriculture.
LEHRER:
Like what, what products?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well a whole range, right across the board. When you have a level of sophistication and technological skill which is very similar I think the potential is enormous. We get a lot of investment from the United States, the US is our largest foreign investor. We invest quite a bit back so I think it is a natural fit for the future. And when you have a close relationship as we do with the Americans it is always a mistake to sort of just sit on it and assume that it will look after itself. Like friendships, you've got to keep good relationships in good repair.
LEHRER:
What is the economic relationship between Australia and the United States, beyond trade? How do you.?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there's a lot of linkages in the financial sector. I mean many of the banking houses of America operate in Australia and of course it comes back the other way. You take an organisation like News Corporation. It started in Australia..
LEHRER:
That's Rupert Murdoch's organisation.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah of course. So it goes both ways.
LEHRER:
Now our economy, the US economy right now is having its problems. What's the state of the Australian economy?
PRIME MINISTER:
Very strong at the moment. We're actually growing at a very strong clip and I think if things go as predicted the next calendar year we could grow faster than any economy in the industrialised world. We've had solid growth of around, average around 4% for the last few years. We have a big budget surplus. We've seen employment growth - although our unemployment rate is still higher than yours. So right at the moment the outlook in Australia economically is very strong indeed.
LEHRER:
How have you escaped the problems of the United...even Japan which is even closer to you and other problems in Asia? How have you escaped the economic roll of the dice there?
PRIME MINISTER:
A number of reasons. One of them is we've run a very flexible exchange rate and we were able to shift a lot of our exports out of Asia to North America and Europe when the Asian downturn hit a few years ago.
LEHRER:
You were selling things to Asia, things went bad ..[inaudible].
PRIME MINISTER:
We shifted quite a bit. Not all of it. But we were able to avoid the hit from Asia. And on top of that we've reformed our tax system and taken about A$3.5 billion a year out of the cost of our exports because we have an across the board value added tax now - the Goods and Services Tax - and that doesn't apply to exports and that's given our exporters an enormous boost. We've reformed our waterfront which has made our export sector a lot more efficient. So a lot of those things have come together to enable us to absorb the shock of what happened in Asia. Now obviously we're watching what is happening here in America because America's the dominant economic power in the world.
LEHRER:
Well it could hurt you in the long...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well everybody can be effected but we've done everything we can domestically to insulate ourselves against it and the omens at the moment are very positive for Australia economically.
LEHRER:
All right. To the security issue. You and President Bush have observed the 50th anniversary of the military alliance today. How do you read security threats in your part of the world? What is it that ..
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we don't think anybody's waiting to attack us but we do live in a region which is very unstable and there will I think in the future be the potential for outbreaks of political and domestic instability in our immediate region. We've seen a lot. We've seen East Timor, we've seen Bougainville, we've seen difficulties in Fiji. So we do live in a more unsettled region. Paradoxically it's more unsettled since the old divide between what used to be the Soviet and Union and the United States have disappeared. So you do need to have a defence position which protects your continental position but also gives you a capacity to help when help is needed in the region.
LEHRER:
What is your view of China as a threat in your part of the world?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I tend to take a positive view about the relationship with China and the relationship between China and the United States is obviously critical to stability in the whole region. Our urgings are always for very constructive dialogue and I think that's the President's view too.
LEHRER:
Well Richard Armitage, Deputy US Secretary of State, made a speech in Australia last month and caused a stir when he said Australians must understand that being in this military alliance with the United States means being willing to fight and to die. And a lot of people jumped on him. What was your reaction?
PRIME MINISTER:
I didn't jump on him, and I know Rick Armitage very well. He's a passionate devotee of the Australia-United States relationship and he was expressing the passion of his feelings. I don't think any of us envisage a situation in the near term where fighting side by side in those terms is going to occur. But remember in the past Australians and Americans have fought side by side. We, by the strength of our alliance, hope to avoid the necessity of it happening again.
LEHRER:
Some people interpret that as his saying hey we may have to come to the aid of Taiwan against China. We want Australians there by our side and we're going to ask for it. Did you interpret it that way at all?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I didn't interpret it that way. I just interpreted him as it was a dramatic and rhetorical way of emphasising what a close alliance means. And we do have a close alliance. I mean there's no country that we're closer to in a strategic and ideological sense.
LEHRER:
So from your point of view he was telling you what you already knew. Is that right?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, he was expressing the reality that it's a very close alliance and a very close friendship. Neither he nor I nor indeed anybody wants to do anything to provoke a conflict between China and Taiwan. I mean it's in everybody's interests to engage China in dialogue. It's in everybody's interests to reach out consistent with defending our own values and our own system and our own position. I mean we have a pragmatic approach to the Chinese. We're very different. We tend to focus on the things that we have in common rather than the things that divide us.
LEHRER:
But you don't have any problems with the Chinese now, any outstanding controversy?
PRIME MINISTER:
No we don't. In fact there are hundreds of thousands of Australians of Chinese descent particularly living in Sydney and other major cities. We have a very different philosophy. I mean we're an open democracy, China's not. But what you do in a situation like that is focus on where you can move forward together.
LEHRER:
But you don't see them, when you sit down at your desk every day, as a potential enemy of Australia's?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I don't. I don't think anybody wants to attack Australia. But we do live in a region that has the potential for local instability in a number of spots and that's a very different world in a way from what it was a few years ago.
LEHRER:
Well Mr Prime Minister thank you very much.
[ends]