JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Steve nice to be with you and your listeners.
JOURNALIST:
Could I ask you, ABC radio news reported last night that a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta had received an envelope containing a white powder. Now we understand that that turned out to be a hoax but are you happy with the safety of Australian staff at embassies overseas in the current climate?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am concerned for them all. We have taken additional measures. There is no reason to believe at this stage that there is any imminent danger for them but it is a more uncertain period, we do have to be more careful. It';s a reminder that diplomats who go abroad to represent the interests of this country can be exposed on occasions to risks that don';t come the way of the rest of us and the public should appreciate that. But, in respect of this incident in Jakarta, the evidence, the material I have at the moment is that so far it';s proved to be harmless, although obviously very unsettling and distressing.
JOURNALIST:
Now I note that John Hewson, former leader of the Liberal Party, now adviser to ABN Amro Morgans has said in the print media that Kim Beazley is right that we need to reach a solution with the Indonesian Government that will stop the passage of asylum seekers or give us back the capacity to send them back. Have you had a chat with Mr Hewson about his remarks and do you agree or disagree?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I haven';t had a chat with Mr Hewson and I don';t intend to. What of course, in that respect he is stating is something that everybody agrees with, that';s self-evident. The question is getting such an agreement. I certainly agree that if you can stop people coming here in the first place, stop people setting out, that would be the best solution but that will require a different attitude on the part of the Indonesian Government. And there is no evidence that the Labor Party will have any greater success in negotiating that agreement than the current Government and that';s been made plain by the Indonesians. I mean their former Foreign Minister said in effect there is no difference between the two sides of politics in Australia as far as the Indonesian Government is concerned. Obviously there are differences in domestic policy particularly on the issue of illegal immigration where there is a very big difference between the two of us. But the point is that unless and until you get such an agreement what we must do is to send the strongest possible signal to people that they can no longer expect to come to the Australian mainland and be processed here and have access to the laws of this country in the process of being processed here as was formerly the case. So increasingly we are sending by the action we are taking a message that if you set out to Australia you won';t get here and that';s why we are determined to have people processed in third countries, we are determined to.
Laurie Brereton, the Labor Foreign Minister has a different view, he thinks that';s a failed policy and he said last Friday on the PM programme that if he were foreign minister a Labor Government would seek to inquire into it. If you don';t have processing in third countries there is only one place they can be processed and that is in Australia which is what would amount to a total reversal of the current policy we are following.
JOURNALIST:
John Howard I want to ask you one more question about our foreign policy and then go to domestic issues and take some calls. You have yourself commented that Australia';s role in East Timor has contributed to our current difficulties with Indonesia, specifically, what are you going to do to solve that problem specifically?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have already begun the process of solving that problem. We had a difficulty with Indonesia because we stood up for the rights of the people of East Timor. We did the right thing. Many of my critics are people who deep down didn';t want us to stand up for the people of East Timor, they really would have liked us to have turned a blind eye and just ignored them and in the process preserved a more amicable relationship with Indonesia. Now that would have been the easy option. It wouldn';t have been the right thing to do and it wouldn';t have been the best thing to do in the long term interests of the relationship between Australia and Indonesia. To have a good relationship with a country you have to have respect on both sides. Now, I had a very good visit to Jakarta after President Megawati came to office and established a very good personal relationship with her and senior members of her Government. And if I am re-elected as Prime Minister I would expect to have an early opportunity of seeing her again and at such a meeting we would discuss a whole range of issues.
But people in Australia have to understand that Indonesia';s got a lot of internal difficulties and the people smuggling issue is incredibly important to us but it is not quite as high on the priorities of the Indonesian Government as it is here. Indonesia has a lot of refugees, Indonesia has a lot of internal difficulties and people should feel understanding and sympathy for them on account of that but should understand that her priorities on the illegal immigration issue are somewhat different from ours.
JOURNALIST:
If I can turn to more domestic matters and we';ll take some calls in just a moment John Howard, but can I ask you we';ve seen today that unemployment job ads have fallen, these are generally regarded as a leading indicator as to what the unemployment rate will be. I think new figures are released on Thursday, do you believe that the unemployment rate is going to increase?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don';t know. I do know this though that unemployment has fallen since we came to office. Employment has gone up by over 830,000 and the labour market has held up very well despite some slowing in the economy. So, overall the employment market has remained very strong, but we are headed into a period of greater international economic difficulty. America has gone into, went in the September quarter, went into negative growth. Singapore has been in recession for a while. Many countries in Europe are not doing well. The world scene is not great at the moment. I think everybody understands that. And against that backdrop, the Australian economy is doing remarkably well and relatively speaking will do better over the next year than most other countries. But because of the world economy going in a particular direction, we can';t expect to be completely untouched by it.
But the Australian people will know that domestically we have, by lowering interest rates, getting rid of the huge budget deficits, by reforming our tax and workplace relations system and having a super competitive exchange rate, that we are better able to face that difficult future than most other countries and it is not the time to throw out the Government that has created that domestic economic strength and replace it with a Beazley Labor Government that has a proven track record of high interest rates, high debt and high unemployment.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister we might take some calls if that';s alright with a time of 16 minutes to nine on 612 ABC Brisbane. Bill you are talking to the Prime Minister go ahead.
CALLER:
Good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning.
CALLER:
Yes, good morning Prime Minister. Prime Minister one of the things that concerns me is that health and education are primarily administrative financial responsibilities of the States and I note your GST funding will in fact give them discretionary expenditure. What I find difficult to understand is why Labor is putting so much stress on health and education without establishing standards of any sort whatsoever and in fact knowing very well that those decisions are going to be made at the state level. It almost seems to me as though they are trying to buy the votes of their trade unionists that are so dominant in those sectors.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Bill you have got a very good point. Public hospitals are run by state governments, public schools, government schools are run by state governments, most of the funding of them is the responsibility of state governments, the Federal Government does provide additional funding. For example in the five and a half years that I have been Prime Minister, Commonwealth Government spending on government schools has risen by 43 per cent, although in that period the enrolment of students in government schools throughout Australia has risen by only 1.8 per cent. That is hardly evidence of a Government that has neglected the Government school sector.
In relation to public hospitals under the current health care agreement our payments to the States to supplement their funding will rise by 28 per cent in real terms to the end of the agreement compared with the last year of the last agreement of the Keating Government, once again hardly evidence that we have neglected our responsibilities to provide additional funding. Can I say Queensland, the year after next, I believe, will be better off under the GST arrangements than it would have been through a continuation of the financial arrangements that the Keating Government put in place. And Queensland';s additional revenue from the GST will grow and grow years into the future and the Queensland Government, whoever it is, will have more resources available because all of the GST, all of it, every last dollar of it, will go to the States and the States will have more resources in order to fund the operations of things like government schools and government hospitals for which they have the operational and constitutional responsibilities.
JOURNALIST:
John Howard, it would need to go up though in terms of the GST take wouldn';t it? Because Queensland argued when the GST negotiations were initially underway that we were disadvantaged because we were a low tax state initially and you based your calculations…
PRIME MINISTER:
We made some other arrangements to accommodate that. Queensland does very well. I am not saying they shouldn';t, I am not saying that Queensland shouldn';t do well, but the point I am making is that Queensland is the first cab off the rank in being better off under the GST. The Queensland Premier is the last Premier in Australia who if he';s interested in the interests of his State, who should be complaining about the GST. The only thing he should complain about is Mr Beazley';s proposal to roll it back. When you roll back the GST, you are rolling it back from the states aren';t you? I wonder if he has got a guarantee that that hole is going to be filled by a Beazley Labor Government. But the point Bill made is bang on the money.
JOURNALIST:
Margaret, sorry John Howard, I';ll take another call from Margaret. Your are talking with the Prime Minister. Good morning.
CALLER:
Bill';s question reminds me of when Sir James Killen was on the ABC a couple of years ago and he said that question time was nothing but fawning, obsequious questions that have been planted there, thanks Bill. Anyway, my question Mr Howard is about the $1,000 that you are means testing for low income workers like my sister who is part time casual, supporting a husband who can';t get work, and if she can find $1,000 to lock up until she is 65 you';ll give her another $1,000. It sits very uneasily, with getting up to $14,000 non-means tested at a time of the lowest interest rates ever for someone to build palatial mansions in Sydney and Melbourne. How do you justify this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you are asking for a means test on the first home owners scheme. Given that there are differential values of property throughout Australia, such a proposal would be quite unworkable, quite unworkable
CALLER:
…for my sister…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I';m sorry, I can only, Margaret, answer, when you have put a question which is based on, you are raising the spectre of the alleged generosity of an unmeans tested first home owners grant
CALLER:
Elite.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is not, most of the people who get that Margaret, with respect are not elite.
CALLER:
It is being rorted and you aren';t checking on it.
PRIME MINISTER:
It is not elite. Now look I have met hundreds of people who have got the benefit of that and if you try and have a figure which might be regarded as cutting people out who are buying very expensive properties in one part of the country that won';t be regarded as very expensive in another part of the country you';ll have all sorts of arguments at the margin. Now, the proposal that I announced yesterday will provide people who have got the opportunity, not everybody who is earning less than $20,000 has got the capacity to put $1,000 away, but they don';t have to put $1,000 away, it is up to $1,000, it can be a lesser amount. And whatever it is we will match it dollar for dollar up to $1,000. So it can be a lesser amount. But a lot of people in that situation are able to do that because they may be people who are part time workers, they may be people who, younger people who are living at home and whose living expenses are not very high. It can be a whole variety of situations. And what we are endeavouring to do with this is to give people at the low income end of the range an opportunity to contribute to superannuation. And I would have thought that would be applauded. We are replacing a rebate of about $100, which has been there, I think, since the Labor party was in office….well it is an important question that I was trying to answer.
JOURNALIST:
We have had a few calls by the way Prime Minister asking about core and non-core promises. Can you understand that voters are a bit sceptical about promises that are made in the weeks just before an election?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it depends who makes them. If we make them they shouldn';t be sceptical…Let me say this, the fewer you make the more credible you are and the Labor party in the promise department I think has out spent us by more than two to one. So if people are worried about the disposability of promises they ought to look at the party that has promised far more. Can I just say something about promises, they are meant to be costed by the Treasury. As of now, as we speak, the Labor party has only put in eighteen of its fifty six policies and it is unlikely in relation to those eighteen that we will get all of the costings before polling day. We put ours in last week. For example, where is their costing of their bail out of Ansett? Mr Beazley has been going around the country addressing meetings of Ansett workers saying that Ansett will fly again under a Beazley Labor government, that Labor will support Ansett by putting money in. Well how much, over what number of years, where is the policy with the costing, how much are you going to guarantee. I mean this is an example of a man who is running around bagging me, criticising me for not doing enough in relation to Ansett, but everything we have guaranteed in respect of Ansett we have been open about. But he hasn';t said how much he will put into Ansett, he hasn';t put any document in containing that costing and he hasn';t been pursued on the matter and he ought to be.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, there is something that I do need to raise with you, I am trying to be as polite as I can and not interrupt you and your statements. But I do note that the Government';s barrister, Robyn Brett told the Federal Court that the Government levy, the $10 levy that is on airline tickets which is raising about $10 million a month won';t necessarily be passed on.
PRIME MINISTER:
That particular submission was subsequently clarified and what he was alluding to was the situation where if resources to fund the entitlements, if resources to fund entitlements came from elsewhere than the Government then the ticket levy would not be needed. Can I just make it very clear, we have given a guarantee of Ansett workers entitlements. That guarantee will be delivered in full. We brought in the ticket levy to fund the budget cost of the guarantee. The ticket levy was money to be collected by the Government to defray the cost of the Government meeting the guarantee. And what he was getting at and he probably didn';t phrase it very well, what he was getting at was that if in the end you got the resources to fund the guarantee, fund the entitlement from somewhere else and the Government';s guarantee was not triggered, then obviously the levy wouldn';t be used. What would have to happen then is the levy would be cancelled and in addition any money that the Government collects under the levy, would have collected under the levy, up until the time of cancellation would be refunded to the public and in particular via support for the tourist industry.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister we';ll take another call. Bob is an employer who is making a call about the Work for the Dole Scheme. Bob go ahead.
CALLER:
Morning Mr Prime Minister. I';m a small furniture manufacturer. I do new furniture and I repair furniture and for about 6 years now I';ve been struggling like a lot of other people. The GST hasn';t made a great deal of difference to me. What';s made a big difference to me is the fact that I';m competing against non-profit organisations that are funded mainly by the State Government. But lately I';ve been finding it harder because new non-profit organisations have started up literally using what I now term as slave labour because they';re using workers on the Work for the Dole Scheme. Not only have they got that free labour, but they';re working in areas where I would be prosecuted if I was working. They';re not working in light industrial areas, they';re also not environmentally licensed and they';re using teachers in my opinion that are not qualified to teach. It seems to me like there';s no controls on these Work for the dole Schemes. All it looks at is the figures and it doesn';t, they';re not looking at how many small businesses they';re going to destroy with these schemes.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I';d like to get some details of the particular schemes of which you speak.
CALLER:
Yeah. I';ve already spoke to the Work for the Dole people.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, why don';t you …
JOURNALIST:
We might pass that person';s phone number on Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
I would like you to speak to, who';s your local member?
CALLER:
Teresa Gambaro. I';ve already spoken and left a message which has not been returned.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah. Did you give her all the details? Why don';t you leave your telephone number with the ABC – you pass it on to us and I'll get somebody to ring you and get the details. OK?
CALLER:
OK. Thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Let';s say hello to Ian. You';re talking with the Prime Minister, Ian good morning.
CALLER:
Good morning and thank you for the opportunity of putting a question to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, just recently you have committed the Australian people to an international war, which may be long lasting and recently have committed Australian troops, our young men and women to fight overseas in this war. Now our constitution tells us that the Commander in Chief of our armed forces is the Queen via our Governor General. My question to you is, why haven't the Federal Police arrested you for subverting the constitution?
JOURNALIST:
I don't think the Prime Minister…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I… our Constitution effectively vests the executive authority in … the Governor General is the Commander in Chief, incidentally, not the Queen. The Governor General is in fact specifically designated as Governor General of the Commonwealth of Australia and Commander in Chief of the armed forces.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister we';ll take another caller Prime Minister who wants to talk about retiring Ministers. Daphne go ahead.
CALLER:
Yes, just quickly if I may before the … I don';t think the people listening would be reassured with the fact that the GST will be putting more money into the states, especially Queensland.
JOURNALIST:
What';s your question Daphne?
CALLER:
Who is going to replace Peter Reith, Dr Wooldridge, and John Fahey please Mr Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Daphne, is it, I have a rule which I follow, maybe it';s a bad rule but it';s a rule I';m going to follow, I don';t think its proper to speculate about who';s going to be in the ministry until you';ve actually won the election. And I haven';t won this election, it';s going to be very close and I think it sounds presumptuous to start talking about the formulation of your cabinet. I think the Australian people want to hear from me between now and Friday as to why they think I should be reelected.
CALLER:
I thought they might find it interesting to know you were going to put in those ..
PRIME MINISTER:
Some would find it interesting, some would find it presumptuous that I should start talking about what I';m going to do after I';m elected. They would say well hang on you wait and find out whether we elect you in the first place.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister can I ask you as we head in towards the news at 9 o';clock, its 3 minutes to nine on 612 ABC Brisbane. There';s widespread discussion about the economic health of the country at the moment and overall I think the analysis seems to be that the country is in reasonable economic health, but what';s your vision for Australia? We';ve been looking at leadership, something that you';ve raised as an issue saying that leadership is what this election';s about. But it';s not clear to me what your vision for Australia is. I think Australians want more than just a good accountant running the country they want …
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah they want something….
JOURNALIST:
Some kind of plan for where we';re going as a nation.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think a vision is, to say a vision is the same as a plan, a plan after all sounds a little accountantish too. A vision is really an ideal about the type of country and the type of country that I want is one that is both compassionate and aspirational. A country where people are encouraged to work hard. We do have incentives for achievers. We do want to become fully part of the world community but we';re also a nation that is prepared to protect the vulnerable within our community. I think importantly I don';t see Australia as a nation which ties itself to any one region in the world or any one identity. Uniquely almost, Australia is an amalgam of European, North American and Asian influences and connections and rather than try and choose between one or other of these connections we should just be Australian and be very much part of the world community not tying ourselves to any one region or stereotype.
JOURNALIST:
Is this election a referendum on your Prime Ministership?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don';t know any more so than others. Clearly part of the judgement people make on Srly part of the judgement people make on Saturday is whether I';m stronger and better in these difficult times than Mr Beazley and I';ll leave that to the Australian people to judge.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister John Howard, thanks for your time today.
[ends]