E&OE……………………………
Ladies and Gentlemen, the first thing I want to say to you this morning is that Mr Beazley has still not come clean with the Australian public about the cost of his promises. According to our calculation the gross cost of his promises is $10.4 billion which is more than double the gross cost of ours which is $4.2 billion. He is deliberately concealing from the Department of the Treasury some of the policies that he has publicly announced so that they can’t be properly costed. For example, he is yet to submit to Finance and Treasury his policies on Telstra, Aged Care and Australia Post. And they are three not only very sensitive policy areas, but they are three areas where Econtech, Mr Murphy’s organisation, have identified flaws and holes in the Labor Party costing.
I can give you a progress report on the submission of our policies. I am informed that the Department of Finance has completed its examination of our policies in a number of areas and thus far they have confirmed the costings of $2.8 billion over five years, and some $59.6 million lower than the Coalition’s estimates. That includes the first child tax refund (the baby bonus), which according to Treasury our costing is absolutely spot on, our border protection policy, our law and order policy, our small business policy, our health policy, our tough on drugs, and our transport policy.
Now we’re playing the game, we’re submitting our policies, Mr Beazley is not. Now this is reminiscent of 1996 when he ran around for five weeks during the election campaign telling the Australian public the budget was in surplus when in reality it was approaching a $10 billion deficit. Now he’s got to come clean, he’s got to make all of his policies available, he’s got to be totally transparent, so the Australian people can make a fair judgement. But once again he’s playing tricks, he’s being deceitful with the Australian people regarding costings, and once again the Australian people are having put on display the inadequate economic credentials of Labor to govern. This demonstrates again that it is difficult economic times for Australia, you can’t trust Labor with managing the economy. I mean, if they can’t come clean with the public about the full costing of their proposals, how can they possibly be trusted with managing the Australian economy.
Are there any questions?
JOURNALIST:
In the light of your call for accountability…inaudible.. ADI site in Lindsay?
PRIME MINISTER::
Of the what?
JOURNALIST:
Inaudible… ADI site?
PRIME MINISTER::
We’ll be revealing the costs of all of the policies to which we are committed.
JOURNALIST:
How important is Victoria in this election campaign and will the infighting in the Victorian Liberal Party affect the vote in Victoria?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I didn’t sort of notice too much in-fighting. I don’t think people get the two things blended in. Victoria’s very important. Victoria’s the hardest state for us. Of course it is. Because we have more marginal seats here, and Melbourne is a different city politically from Sydney, you don’t have the same sort of concentrations of seats on both sides of the political centre line. But we’re campaigning very hard here, but it is tough. I mean this campaign is tough. I really do think it is going to be a very close result. And that makes the preference behaviour of the Labor Party even more important, and of course the behaviour of the Labor Party in selling out to the greens absolutely reprehensible.
JOURNALIST:
This morning on the AM programme Simon Crean accused the Government of actually not putting all its policies to be costed?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well what policies does he reckon we haven’t put. Look, the superannuation… we couldn’t put the superannuation policy in before it was released. It has now been released. It is going in I’m told today, and the costings will be available, I’m sure. I mean we have been a model of openness. We have just been openness personified in relation to this and the Labor Party has just played these dishonest games.
JOURNALIST:
More doubts are being cast over whether or not asylum seekers jumped off the boat off Christmas Island. Will you release that defence video?
PRIME MINISTER::
Well I’ll talk to Mr Reith about that, and that will be a matter for Defence. But, look, the information we were given at the time was from Naval sources. I have absolutely no reason to doubt it. The report in The Australian was based upon unnamed comments of third parties who claim they had been told. That is completely contrary to the advice we have received from the Navy and that advice has been repeated by Mr Reith.
JOURNALIST:
But surely releasing that video would erase any doubt on the whole…
PRIME MINISTER::
Well I will talk to Mr Reith about that.
JOURNALIST:
Clearing up some of the misunderstandings and some of the doubts that some people have wouldn’t it just be easy enough to release the report or potentially release the video?
PRIME MINISTER::
Well I will talk to the Navy about that, but the Navy has always, for very good and proper reasons, including the protection of the identity of their personnel, the Navy are always very very sensitive about those things, and they have very good reason to be.
JOURNALIST:
Are you suggesting Prime Minister that in an election campaign that we should only look at gross total promises and not take any account of savings that are announced by either party?
PRIME MINISTER::
No, I think you should. But we think their savings are very suss, particularly in the areas of Telstra, Aged Care and Australia Post. And that is the reason why they won’t put those policies in.
JOURNALIST:
But they are about $800 million of the savings so the total surely, even leaving those aside…
PRIME MINISTER:
But look, we don’t have an argument Alan. If everybody puts everything in, we can find out the full story. But who’s not putting everything in – Labor.
JOURNALIST:
Inaudible.. but if you take account of their savings …
PRIME MINISTER::
Well yes, but I mean, the assumption for that question Alan, is that you accept their savings, and we don’t. And the way you resolve that is to let the Treasury and the Department of Finance be the arbiter, and the way you do that is to make it all available.
JOURNALIST:
Is is appropriate for you to announce such a large amount of funding in the election in the 2005-2006 year which is after the next election and there isn’t a forward estimate for that so we don’t know whether your promises …
PRIME MINISTER::
Well, I mean, I thought that the back end loader of the campaign was Mr Beazley.
JOURNALIST:
… budget in 2005…
PRIME MINISTER::
He has talked about funding years into the future, years into the future, years. I mean the centrepiece of his campaign which is knowledge nation, very little of that is going to be spent during the forward estimates period.
JOURNALIST:
You are reported in the Courier Mail this morning as saying that illegal entrants on boats may or may not be linked with terrorist organisations. Is that a link that you intended to make?
PRIME MINISTER::
Look, what I said in the interview, and I don’t retract anything I said in the interview. What I said in the interview was that you couldn’t guarantee that there wasn’t a link. I did, however, before I said that, make the point that I didn’t want to force or over force the link, and I also said during the course of that interview that I wasn’t making the allegation, that in the case of individual boats there were any terrorists. I wasn’t doing that. I was merely making the point that you could not, with a relatively unregulated, open policy in relation to asylum seekers, you could give no guarantees that there weren’t. And that was the thrust of what I said, and anybody who’s interested in the transcript of that can have a look at it. But I don’t retreat from that, my only quarrel with the Courier Mail article was the headline. Because I think the headline went beyond and imputed to me, well that’s the headline in the first edition, I don’t know whether it was different in subsequent editions. But the headline in the first edition clearly went beyond what I said and completely ignored the disclaimer that I made that was not trying to force or over force the link between the two.
But look, the American - Jim Kelly the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States has made precisely the same point and he made it while he was in Indonesia. I mean you have to be able to say that there is a possibility that some people having links with organisations that we don’t want in this country might use the path of an asylum seeker in order to get here without being accused of alleging the precise link because it’s a statement of the truth, the reality, I don’t know. I can’t guarantee it, but what it means is that all of us have an obligation to have more effective border protection.
When Tony Blair spoke to me after September 11 and we talked about the impact of this on both of our societies, one of the things he said to me during that conversation was that Great Britain would have to look at tightening of laws in relation to asylum seekers. Now clearly that is a responsibility, I’m not alleging that there have been terrorists on boats but what I am saying I can’t guarantee that there aren’t people on those boats, that who could if they got into this country without being properly screened could be inimical to our interests and we have a perfect right to pursue that and I don’t retract any of that at all.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Crean has released legal advice from the NSW (inaudible)
PRIME MINISTER::
The New South Wales right?
JOURNALIST:
Saying that too many, this is the advice, is that all that’s needed to increase the rate of the GST is for a legislation to be passed through Parliament to override the intergovernmental agreement between the states. Giving (inaudible)
PRIME MINISTER::
Look, all that’s needed to increase the rate of the GST is the political desire to do it. Plus the cooperation of the Senate and the cooperation of the States. We have no intention of increasing the rate of the GST. Of all the sort of poll-eve desperate throws of the dice, this is the worst of all. There’s no foundation, no foundation at all that anything said by Mr Costello or by me in this campaign could possibly support the proposition that we want to increase the rate of the GST. There was one quite inaccurate Sydney Morning Herald headline in relation to the Treasurer, and I think the inaccuracy of that was subsequently acknowledged by the newspaper. But at no stage Peter Costello said that the wanted to extend it. We have no intention of extending the base. We will not increase the rate of the GST and I can make the fair point that those who seek to contract the base of the GST are more likely to come under pressure to increase the rate and I made the point yesterday the smaller the base the greater the rate, the broader the base the lower the rate. We will not increase the rate of the GST if we are re-elected.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister a Commander in the Navy Reserve, Duncan Wallace, has described the government’s approach to blockading asylum seekers as morally wrong and despicable and also ineffective in deterring boat people. Are you convinced that is the right approach?
PRIME MINISTER::
I am convinced. I don’t agree with the conclusions that have been made by that Reserve Officer. I recognise that this is not easy work, it’s not pleasant work. The alternative of course is that we send a signal to the world that it’s open season for illegal immigrants who come to this county.
JOURNALIST:
Is it taking a toll on some personnel within the ADF?
PRIME MINISTER:
That is not the advice that I have. It is definitely not the advice that I have. I don’t claim to have spoken to everybody that’s been involved, but I did speak to a number of people over the past few weeks who’ve been involved in the operations and they spoke openly of what had been involved for them when I visited vessels and visited defence establishments. I want to record my thanks and mark my admiration for the work that they’re doing. I don’t pretend it’s easy. I wish we didn’t have to do it, but I say to the critics of our policy and this includes all of them, are they seriously imagining that if we abandon the policy we’re now following, the result would be other than a signal around the world that this country once again, after having attempted to put its hand up and say we’re going to control who’s coming here, this country once again was going to become open and easy to access by illegal immigrants.
The advice and I spoke again to the Immigration Minister this morning, the advice that we have is that the action we have taken has had an effect, a significant effect, on the number of people coming into the pipeline. In addition, Malaysia has begun stopping people coming through Malaysia. I think it would be totally against the national interest for Australia to abandon or weaken the approach it is not taking and I am sure that if Mr Beazley were to win on Saturday that is what would happen because he’s gone from one side to the other on this issue. Now having said all of that I appreciate it is difficult work. I thank the men and women of the Royal Australian Navy for the job that they are doing. But those who criticise it I say to them again, think of the consequences of abandoning what we are now doing. Think of the consequences of adopting the Laurie Brereton approach of not continuing with the arrangements we have set in place. The consequence would be immediate to send a signal around the world that once again it will become easier to get into Australia.
Now that is, that is the situation that we sought to change several months ago, we adhere to that policy. I do not intend to change it and if this government is re-elected it will not change that policy.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister do you accept that the vast bulk of the boat people are fleeing oppressive regime, many of whom harbour or support terrorism, such as Afghanistan and Iran?
PRIME MINISTER:
Tom, I can’t make a considered judgement about the circumstances of the people who come on boats. Some of them would undoubtedly fall into that category. Others may not and that is our very point, that is our point, our whole point is that they have to be processed and dealt with as part of the proper refugee flow into this country. Now, nobody can make a concluded judgement. Over the years, or…over the last couple of years, I mean I’ve been given information that some people, some of the boats have included scores of people who applied for refugee status and were rejected, as not being genuine refugees. I’m not, I’m not as I said in my interview, let me finish because it’s very important that we all choose our language carefully, I choose my language carefully, you choose your language carefully. As I said in my interview with Dennis Atkins, I am not saying that in particular cases people on these boats are terrorists or have terrorist links. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that I have no way and unless you have a proper processing system nobody has any way of determining whether or not they are and in the heightened difficulties we now face and the rapid movements of people and the circumstances in which we now find ourself, we have a manifoldly greater responsibility as a government to screen people who are coming into this country. Now, we have a, we have a manifoldly greater responsibility to screen people who are coming into this country and that is what we are arguing for and we want everybody processed through the United Nations High Commission system and we have said all along that people should be processed in the same way as everybody else and in those circumstances the policy that we are pursuing at the present time of saying that we are simply not going to have situation where people can present themselves at the borders of this country and demand entry. That is not acceptable to this government.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) screened them, it’s now the only change in policy is that you now screen them from other countries. I mean isn’t it a bit mis…?
PRIME MINISTER::
No, no it is not because, it is not because you know, that is with respect Tom an incomplete question because you know as well as I do that if people come on to the mainland of this country they acquire a certain status, irrespective of their right and entitlement to come here in the first place, so it is different.
JOURNALIST:
Three days out from an election, Mr Howard, are you surprised that Mr McPhee to come out and have a go at you over this?
PRIME MINISTER::
Completely unsurprising.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, given what you’ve said this morning are you offended by Mr Oakes’ analysis that a key feature of your campaign on this issue, is dog whistle politics?
PRIME MINISTER:
Whose analysis?
JOURNALIST:
Mr Oakes in the Bulletin.
PRIME MINISTER:
I haven’t read the Bulletin.
JOURNALIST:
Would you be offended?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well look I don’t comment on people’s interpretation of what has been written.
JOURNALIST:
… this issue is running away from you a little with so much criticism coming…
PRIME MINISTER:
No I do not. I look at the people who have criticised me, many of them have been critics of mine for a long time. Many of them, on a lot of issues. There is nothing surprising, I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if they all got together and made some kind of statement before the end of the campaign. But that’s not going to alter my view, it’s not going to alter my view at all because I think what I have done is in the country’s interest, I mean I just ask people who are critical of me to contemplate the alternative. I mean if you abandon this policy now, you’re just going to send a signal, it will be a magnet for more people to come and that will create an extraordinarily difficult situation, you’re not dealing with a few hundred then, you could be dealing with several thousand, many thousands because the picture will emerge around the world well they had a go at trying to get a handle on this and they’ve now given that away, Australia is a relatively easy country to get to. Well while I’m Prime Minister I’m not going to support that and irrespective of the critics I have on this issue or from where they come I have no intention of altering my position on this but I have every belief that if Mr Beazley replaces me he will.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister are you saying you’d ask your defence Minister Mr Reith to consider releasing that video of asylum seekers…
PRIME MINISTER:
What I am saying is I will talk to Mr Reith about the issue but I’m not going to instruct him because often Defence has reasons related to the identity of its personal and I’m not going to compromise their position, even in the heat of an election campaign.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard (inaudible) contemplate more urgent action for a better relationship with Indonesia in light of respected former diplomats and academics now saying that our relationship…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well can I just make the point that many of the people who have criticised me in relation to the Indonesian relationship belong to that school of thought in Australian foreign affairs that the only relationship in the end that matters is our relationship with Indonesia. I mean one of the people’s who’s criticised me recently, Mr Woolcock, a former ambassador to Indonesia, I mean he was essentially critical of what we did over Timor. Now I mean if anybody holding that view is inevitably going to be critical of what I’ve done and I find criticism from those quarters, I find them quite unsurprising but their criticism is also wrong. It’s based on the belief that somehow or other with a change of Government you can conjure up a new relationship with Indonesia. Well under the former Labor Government there was no change brought about for what 13 years of Labor Government. They never induced any change in the attitude of Jakarta towards East Timor, the change in the attitude of Jakarta towards East Timor, the decision of the Indonesian Government to allow a plebiscite over the future of East Timor occurred while we were on the watch and partly, I don’t say wholly, but partly as a result of representations that I made and a view I put to the then President of Indonesia. I mean this was the defining issue in the relationship between Australia and Indonesia for a generation and it was under a Coalition Government that a change began to occur and it was under a Coalition Government that they were prepared to defend the interests of the people of East Timor, I have no doubt that if Mr Keating had remained Prime Minister the interests of the people of East Timor would have been totally compromised in the interests of what he saw as the dominate consideration of the relationship with Jakarta. Now I regard that relationship as very important but it is not the only relationship that this country has around the world and most of the critics of me in relation to this issue are people who see Australia’s foreign policy beginning and ending in the relationship with Indonesia and I believe that that has been an historic error that has been made over the years and I couldn’t be more certain that it is not in Australia’s interests to see our relationship only defined in foreign affairs terms in the context of our relationship with Indonesia. That is important, but so are our relations with Korea and India and Japan and China. I mean our relations with the countries of North Asia could not be better and that was very evident at the APEC meeting and so is our relationship with the United States and the nations of Europe. So I find my critics of coming very much from that school of thought, they’re entitled to their views, I believe it was in error, their views have been in error and over the last five and a half years that we have not followed that path of action and we certainly didn’t follow it in relation to East Timor.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard is the Federal Government standing in the way of a deal being done Ansett…
PRIME MINISTER:
No. In the end the question of what is the better deal for the creditors and so forth of Ansett lies in the hands of the administrator. And if the administrator puts a final proposition to us in relation to that well obviously we’ll consider it but my understanding at the present time is that the administrator is still in the process of making up his mind and he hasn’t reached a concluded view. There’s an enormous amount of propaganda emanating from Sharan Burrow and Bill Shorten and the other boys and girls from ACTU house because we’re three days out from an election. I mean they’re running around saying that we’ve welched on workers’ guarantee, we haven’t. They’re running around saying that we’re trying to sink it, we haven’t. Incidentally I wonder if Mr Beazley has submitted to the Department of Finance and Treasury the costing of his Ansett bailout.
JOURNALIST:
… by the end of the week Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
I would be surprised but obviously we will behave properly if something is put to us but I think it is very unlikely because I don’t think the administrator has concluded his own exanimation, I’m sure he hasn’t. But others who have a political axe to grind are trying to create a sense of crisis and a sense of there being an immediate decision having to be taken when in reality that proposition, that final proposition has not been put on our table. Two more questions.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, we’ve got the latest jobs statement due out tomorrow, how do you think it will reflect on the current state of the Australian economy?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think irrespective of what the job figures are tomorrow and you never take too much notice of one set of figures, you don’t, irrespective of that the Australian economy, given the world circumstances is very strong. It’s obviously going to be affected by what’s happening in the rest of the world. But it is, relatively speaking, extremely strong.
JOURNALIST:
You’ve said Prime Minister that the election of a Labor Government would be a threat to low interest rates in this country.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes it would be. No doubt at all.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think the same applies to the share market, should owners of shares be worried by…
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I’m not going to start…. I mean is in the realm of irresponsible comment. I mean I’ve got the evidence, they’ve got form on interest rates, big time form and you know they’re streets ahead of the pack on interest rates and I can very confidently assert Dennis that I’m not going to start three days out from election making comments that are then picked up and somebody says oh Howard this or that, I don’t want somebody to take an eggbeater. What I’m saying is that they are a huge threat to interest rates, a tremendous threat, if Labor wins on Saturday you will begin to see the creation of pressures for interests to go up because they did before. I mean you know, don’t listen to what they say, remember what they did.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard has Kerry Packer wrote to you the need to upgrade Bucketts Way given it leads to his polo estate.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh mate, somebody told me this morning it was 100 miles away. No.
JOURNALIST:
It’s on the way.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah well, heavens above, everywhere on the way to somewhere.
JOURNALIST:
You need to take that road to get there.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah well the answer is no, until somebody mentioned it to me this morning the connection had not occurred, he had nothing to do with it, absolutely nothing and I understand there’s a long distance between the two. I think it’s a beautifully named road. Thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard three days out, how do you think voters are connecting with the campaign?
PRIME MINISTER:
Do I think the voters are connecting, yes I think voters are shrewd people. And I believe that the Australian electorate always makes good judgements in election campaigns and I’m cautiously hopeful, I’m not overconfident, I’m cautiously hopeful. I believe that we’ve run a good campaign, I believe in the end the Australian people will say we would rather trust Howard in these difficult times than Beazley.
[ends]