Subjects: Australia Day; national symbols; Australian of the Year; GST; BAS; fuel prices; foreign ownership; election date; free-to-air television; honouring women
E&OE................................
MITCHELL:
In our Canberra studio the Prime Minister, Mr Howard good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Neil. Happy Australia Day to all of your listeners.
MITCHELL:
Thank you. I noticed you and I missed out on gongs again Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh well. We'll have to try harder. When you said you were going to interview one of those pilots I thought there's something in store for me in the rest of the day I didn't know.
MITCHELL:
I notice, what about this argument about invasion day. That January 26 is the wrong day to celebrate. What do you think?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I agree with you. I am against changing it. You can never get everybody to agree with everything and once you've got a day and what's happened with Australia Day over the last 25 years is that public interest in it has grown each year. It's bigger and better now than it was last year and the same the year before. The first of January to most people still remains New Year's day and the idea of having Australia Day on that day I don't think is appropriate. Why should we shift. I understand the argument about the attitude of indigenous people but I also understand, I think people should understand the fact that we have celebrated Australia Day on 26 January now for many years. There is no doubt that the coming of European settlement, British settlement and European civilisation to the land mass of Australia was an extraordinarily significant event in the history however you look at our history. And I just think that it is impossible to satisfy everybody on everything and there would be just as much resentment if you tried to change the day. So I am for keeping it. And I am pleased to see it grow in respect and affection and participation.
MITCHELL:
Do you think there is, do you come across bitterness from indigenous leaders?
PRIME MINISTER:
I have to say nobody has raised it with me in the last 12 months. I mean I keep reading in certain journals and now that I've said nobody has raised it with me, I am sure somebody will raise it with me just to prove me wrong but up until now, it's not been something in the numerous meetings I've had with indigenous leaders that is raised and they tend to talk about things of more immediate concern such as improving their health and education prospects and giving them better opportunities of getting jobs. And they are after all the things that Australians generally want addressed in relation to our indigenous population.
MITCHELL:
I notice from your speech yesterday you support keeping the National Athem as it is, you don't want to change any of the wording in it. Getting rid of the girt.
PRIME MINISTER:
The problem with changing the words is that you change one lot of words to placate one group of people and then you'll having people running the idea that we should have a completely new set of words. I myself back in 1977 when there was a vote I voted for Waltzing Mathilda. I didn't vote for Advance Australia Fair. But we have Advance Australia Fair now. It was made the full official anthem with a couple of word changes incidentally because it was originally Australian sons, by Bob Hawke in 1984. Now I accept that decision. And in the end you can't run perpetual referenda on these national symbols. And I mean if people at some stage in the future somebody wants to argue for changing, anybody can argue for change. But for my money I would leave it as it is. I see it sung with great fervour and gusto increasingly by Australians, no more so than at the Sydney Olympics where people literally yelled there lungs out.
MITCHELL:
Tell me how do you go on the second verse.
PRIME MINISTER:
Pretty good.
MITCHELL:
Do you I don't. You know it?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm reasonably good at the second verse.
MITCHELL:
You want to have a go at it?
PRIME MINISTER:
No? Well my melodious what . beneath the radiant southern.. Look I'm not going to sing it.
MITCHELL:
Oh no. Elizabeth you're speaking to the Prime Minister. Go ahead please.
CALLER:
My husband and I became Australian citizens on 13 December last year.
PRIME MINISTER:
Congratulations and welcome.
CALLER:
Thank you. We came here in 1969. We emmigrated from Scotland. This week also, I've actually rung in time to get on because I was really proud of Patrick Rafter the other night and last night.
PRIME MINISTER:
Aren't we all.
CALLER:
Yes. It's sort of special. Well we're Australians now.
MITCHELL:
Good on you Elizabeth.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean Pat's got some of those things we all hope are at the centre of the attitude of all Australians. He is a great competitor, he's an extraordinarly friendly, likeable person and he has also got a very generous streak to him. He has worked with under privileged children and his generosity and his willingness to share his great good fortune with others is a role model to everybody, particularly to young people.
MITCHELL:
Did you see it, the game last night Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
I did. I was involved in the Australian of the Year ceremony and we had a small dinner afterwards and popular demand required me to find a television set and we all traipsed off to a room just off the parliamentary dining room to have a look at the last set. I mean poor bloke, the problem he had with cramps was obvious at the end of the fourth set but .
MITCHELL:
Don't think you could make it your job this year to talk him out of retiring do you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well if it helps now I can say Pat you looked in pretty good shape last night despite the cramps and stay with it. You've got a lot of followers. You have got a lot of followers.
MITCHELL:
96961278 if you'd like to speak to the Prime Minister and I'll get on to some more serious issues in a moment. Sandra go ahead.
CALLER:
Good morning Neil. I have a question for the Prime Minister if I may. Good morning Mr Howard.
PRIME MINISTER:
Hello Sandra.
CALLER:
Look I have a question. I overhead on the radio saying you knew part of the verse of the second stanze beneath our radiant southern skys. My question is this. There is actually three verses of Advance Australia Fair and I'd like to know why isn't our National Anthem taught to our children every day in school and why aren't they taught to salute the flag like they do in America. I thought it would be very patriotic.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm puzzled that you say that our children aren't taught the anthem. I think they are. They really are. I'm sixty-one. I went to a New South Wales government school. I started in the late 40's and early 50's. I was taught Advance Australia Fair although then God Save the King was sung and played a great deal. I was also taught the words, the first two verses of Advance Australia Fair. I'm puzzled to hear you say it's not taught. I don't think that's right. I'm sorry to disagree with you but my experience going around Australia is that Australians under the age of twenty-five know the words of Advance Australia Fair far better than any other age cohort. Many people over fifty-five know it reasonably well but it depends a bit on where you come from. It's better known I think in that age cohort in New South Wales and Victoria than say it would be, might be in South Australia. But I am puzzled to hear you say it's not taught. I thought, I think it is.
MITCHELL:
That's interesting. We'll pursue that with the audience a little later.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean it may vary a little bit from school to school. And I know my own children who have been to school in the last ten, fifteen years, you know they all were taught it and know it very well.
MITCHELL:
We'll test that with the audience a little later. Hello Jeff go ahead please.
CALLER:
Good morning. How are you this morning.
MITCHELL:
We're terrific thank you.
CALLER:
I just, you mentioned Prime Minister Pat Rafter just before and I think he's a great Australian. I just wanted your view on what you think of him for tax purposes residing overseas. I don't know where it is Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. What's your feeling on that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't know the full reasons for his residing overseas and I don't automatically accept that it's entirely for tax purposes. I don't know frankly the details of that and unless I know the details of it I don't normally indulge myself in sort of giving a public commentary on whether people should or should not be living in one or other part of the world. I don't know the reasons why Pat spends a lot of time in another part of the world I really don't. My impression was that he spends a great deal of time travelling around the world playing tennis.
MITCHELL:
We'll take a quick break, come back and speaking of tax, with some other issues for the Prime Minister including, Prime Minister, the GST.
[commercial break]
MITCHELL:
Fourteen to nine in our Canberra studio the Prime Minister. Mr Howard more serious business the GST. Now a number of organisations in Melbourne like the Zoo, the Museum, have collected around $1m in GST which it seems they probably didn't have to. They've already paid it of course. Does that money stay with the Government or go back to them.
PRIME MINISTER:
No if it's been wrongly collected it will go back to them.
MITCHELL:
What will they do with it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they should find ways of either returning it to their customers who wrongly paid it or if that proves inpractical then they will be encouraged to find innovative ways of returning it to the public such as open days and I understand that this is in fact occurring.
MITCHELL:
That would seem to be an error of the Tax Department. It's a pretty significant error?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm not sure in fairness to the Tax Department that that's right Neil. There's a fairly clear law on this. That if you are a not-for-profit organisation which many of these are, then providing you satisfy certain rules about the cost of the service offered, then you're not obliged to collect the GST and the Tax Office I'm told did issue some pretty clear guidelines, they issued a ruling in October of last year which provided a methodology to determine what they described as the cost of supply. And I mean I'm not criticising the museums, but I don't think it's fair to automatically criticise the Tax Office in relation to this.
MITCHELL:
Okay now the BAS, you've indicated that it might need to be simplified. We're certainly getting a lot of complaints from small business who are finding it just as tough the second time round, particularly at a time when they're trying to I suppose do productive things. Will you simplify the BAS?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I said yesterday that the Treasurer and I were monitoring this very closely. We do get very mixed reports. You run into as many people who say, " I don't know what all the fuss is about", and I am talking here about very small businesses and I found we had an example of this a couple of weeks ago of a small contractor who said, "look I just don't know what all the fuss is about" and very quickly explained to a family member of mine just how easy it was in his view. Now there are others who say different things, I accept that. I was talking to somebody last night who said the exact opposite, and she needed more help from her accountant. So . . .
MITCHELL:
So how do you ascertain whether you change it or not?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we're trying to make a proper assessment and the bottom line is that if there are lingering concerns we'll want to change it to remove those concerns. But we're talking here about refining and simplifying reporting requirements and we make no bones about it with a massive change such as this it was near inevitable there'd be some need to make some refinements and fine tuning and we don't apologise, I mean we don't see that as any kind of major disaster, as rather a sensible necessity.
MITCHELL:
Do you believe, and still on the GST, I mean we're into the new year, some people have been carrying through, or carrying the burden of the GST. Do you think we're going to see a little burst of price rises now as a result of it?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't know Neil, I can't be certain because we are in some uncharted and new waters. I would have thought that if there had have been a delay in price increases when it came in that you might have seen that show up in the inflation figure that came out a few days ago. That 0.3 surprised me, I didn't think it would be as low as that.
MITCHELL:
Well that doesn't take, one of the arguments being put is that the economy's a bit flat. Now I know you've said we're not going into recession and we've talked about that before. But it is flat, the Victorian Premier's today has been fairly gloomy about the economic outlook. Do you accept that the GST is the reason for that?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I don't. I mean and there's no incompatibility between strong economic growth and low inflation. That is really what this country has had now for the last five years. Now it doesn't automatically follow that . . .
MITCHELL:
Do you accept that growth isn't . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
No I accept that there are . . .
MITCHELL:
The outlook is . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
No I accept that there are a combination of reasons for that. But the advice that we continue to get from the Treasury and the Reserve Bank is that we'll still have quite strong growth through 2001. Now they're only projections and forecasts and they're subject to human error like all other forecasts but the Bank and the Treasury have been more accurate than anybody else over the last five years. We are slowing down somewhat.
MITCHELL:
Well is part of that because of the GST?
PRIME MINISTER:
I've always said in relation to the GST that it would have the effect of pulling forward some economic activities such as in the housing industry before the 1st of July last year and deferring other activities such as in motor vehicles. Now that's exactly what happened. We had flat housing statistics for the last six months, but we've had boom motor vehicle statistics, the latest yesterday. So I think you really have to see another six months go by before these, you know these bunching impacts, or bunching effects of the GST are ironed out of the economy.
MITCHELL:
Okay, can I ask you about petrol strategy. You had hoped that world prices would go down, now with the OPEC decision they're clearly not going to go down in fact they'll probably go up. Is there any chance that the petrol excise will be reviewed because of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well what I think I've said probably on a number of occasions on your programme that I expected petrol prices to go down through this year. They are in fact now lower than what they were at the end of last year and they're even lower now I'm told for example that the average price in Melbourne over the last few days has been 85.4 cents/litre.
MITCHELL:
But that OPEC decision's going to force them up, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, well it could and I'm not saying it won't but I'm just finishing the point that that figure in fact is lower than what the price of petrol was when the GST was introduced, it was 88 cents/litre. Now it will bounce around but there has been a fall over the past month or so on average around Australia I think of about 6 cents/litre or 7 cents/litre. Now the purpose of the OPEC decision was to maintain an international benchmark price for crude of in the order I think of $US25 - $US28 a barrel which is significantly lower than what it was for a large part at the end of last year, it was closer to $US34/$US35. Now it's not only the production levels that matter but it's also the demand, it's also the impact of the end of the northern winter which might pull down prices particularly for the heavy, heavier varieties of crude. But I can't control the international price of crude oil and all that's happened in the past few weeks has just underlined the fact that that's the main driver of the price of petrol in this country.
MITCHELL:
Okay. Now we'll take a quick call. Tim go ahead please Tim.
CALLER:
Yes good morning Neil and John.
PRIME MINISTER:
Hello.
CALLER:
I'm a true Australian right to the bone but I really think we're all hypocrites. I mean well you've only got to have a look. I mean all these multi-national companies are they Australian owned? We're getting taken over by all these overseas companies day by day and the true Aussie battler is a true Aussie battler, he's a battler to the end and I just think how about if we're going to celebrate Australia that we really start thinking of ourselves and not all these celebrations, start putting something back in.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I understand the emotion and the feeling behind that and I share it to a significant extent but we've got to be realistic and remember that there have been many stages in our history when if it hadn't been for foreign investment we wouldn't have got an industry started in this country. We would never have had a motor manufacturing industry in Australia if it hadn't been for, I know you won't like my saying it, an American multi-national. It was the invitation of the then Labor prime minister Ben Chiefly in the 1940s . . .
MITCHELL:
But we have lost a lot haven't we. This argument . . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
I know, but look I appreciate that but a lot of the people who are in favour of the loss of Australian ownership of companies are indeed Australian shareholders who want to enjoy the benefit of the attractive takeover offer. I mean what people have got to remember is that when a takeover offer is made by a foreign company there are a whole lot of red-blooded Australian shareholders who are very happy to get the nice price and if somebody turns around and says 'no you can't have it', you know they're, they don't necessarily think that their interests are being looked after. You can't win on this issue from a government point of view. I understand where the emotion is, I also understand that you have to understand and respect the rights that people have as Australians predominantly as shareholders to sell their asset if they get a very attractive offer.
MITCHELL:
Okay, Prime Minister, obviously it's an election year. It looks and there you are playing cricket with Kerri-Anne Kennerley and the people are saying the campaign has started. Have you given any thought to an election date?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, we have an election due, you know in the second half of this year. I notice everybody saying that the election campaign has started. I mean can I say that I mean, okay the press can describe what I do and what my opponent does over the next few months in any way they choose but there's an enormous amount of what I'll be doing will just be part of the ordinary process of governing. Obviously anybody in my position has to have an eye to the political impacts of what I do but I don't want the public to imagine for a moment that we are in some kind of permanent election mode.
MITCHELL:
So when does the election have to be held by?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the election would have to be held by about October or November.
MITCHELL:
This year?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes the three years is up on the 2nd of October so around about that time. I mean constitutionally we could hold it several months later if we wanted to, but normally governments don't go beyond the three years. The history in Australia has been that they've gone several months shorter than the three years on most occasions.
MITCHELL:
I'm sure you'll be getting all sorts of advice from all sorts of people to go early.
PRIME MINISTER:
No not really.
MITCHELL:
No?
PRIME MINISTER:
Mr Beazley was predicting for most of last year that I was going to go either at the end of last year or early this year. I haven't given a great deal of thought Neil. Obviously in a general way I think about those things, naturally I do, I'd be dishonest to you and the listeners if I said otherwise. But . . .
MITCHELL:
I agree with you, pity if we spent the year in [inaudible] about the election.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I mean I can't control that.
MITCHELL:
I know.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean that is really up to you fellows. I mean if every single thing that I do and Mr Beazley does is looked at through the prism, well I mean you're entitled to do that I mean I'm not going to try and stop you, it's a free country and you are after all one of the sort of three institutional pillars of Australian democracy as I described it yesterday at the Press Club. So that's your right in our kind of society but I think probably the election campaign label has been stuck on a little too prematurely by too many people already.
MITCHELL:
The football, the change to Australian football on television with Nine getting into, the Nine Consortium with News Limited, will the Government keep an eye on that to ensure that the free-to-air obligations are met?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes. I mean I want people to understand that there are certain sporting events in this country of which of course AFL is clearly one, right at the very top that are sacred as far as free-to-air entitlements are concerned.
MITCHELL:
The women and the honours, you feel there's an imbalance in the number of women who are . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Not an imbalance in the women who are recognised but rather an imbalance in the number of recommendations covering women.
MITCHELL:
Why would that be?
PRIME MINISTER:
There are fewer recommendations put forward for women. There's probably a combination of reasons, I don't know. Maybe it's historical because years ago there were fewer women in the workforce and in senior reaches of academia and business and the professions and therefore in the natural order of things there weren't as many women put forward. It's changing and I think the figure for the awards today are 36% for women. Now we don't, we're not sort of obsessed about having it exactly 50%, I think that's stupid and patronising to both women and men but obviously there's a case for having more women recommended for consideration and we're going to have these ambassadors and two of them, one is Joan Kirner, both are Victorians leading it actually, Margaret Guilfoyle and Joan Kirner.
MITCHELL:
Just had a quick thought, given it is an election year, what about the first request from us for a debate between the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader on radio?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we'll, I'll consider those requests when the election's been called.
MITCHELL:
Are we first in?
PRIME MINISTER:
You are the first person so far who's raised that with me this year, but somebody actually from recollection raised it with me just after the last election.
MITCHELL:
I see.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think it was a television channel.
MITCHELL:
Welcome back. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[Ends]