JOURNALIST:
Good morning, Mr Howard.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning. How are you both?
JOURNALIST:
Good. On both from everyone from Macarthur and C91.3, welcome or thanks for coming out today because you';re going to be presenting some great awards. The order of Macarthur Award?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, it';s an award that Pat Farmer, the Federal Member established to acknowledge the contribution of residents of the Macarthur electorate. The community, charities, schools, sporting development. They got 51 nominations this year and we';ve got four local judges, from Toastmasters, from Lifeline, from Rotary, and from the Campbelltown citizen of the year. And I';ll be delighted as I did last year to present the awards and Pat';s a great and hardworking bloke for the area and this is a way in which he recognises on behalf of the community the contribution of volunteers over the last 12 months.
JOURNALIST:
It is great to see awards being handed to our unsung heroes of Macarthur.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there';s a lot of people who do a lot of good and it often goes unnoticed and unthanked. And this is a small way in which a local community can express their collective gratitude.
JOURNALIST:
Now, we also understand there';s something else happening out there today - you';re launching a new initiative?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, we';re taking the opportunity, that';s Joe Hockey and myself to launch a new tourism policy which is going to invest some hundreds of millions of dollars in promoting both nationally and domestically the Australian tourist potential. This is a very attractive country for tourists. We';re seen as a friendly, and open, and stable, and safe, and there';s a lot more we could do to promote Australia. And not just the well known parts of Australia, such as Sydney Harbour and the Opera House and the Barrier Reef and the beaches, and Ayers Rock and all of those things. But there are also a lot of other regions that don';t get the same exposure overseas that offer a great deal and the purpose of this investment will be largely be to promote Australia and all of its assets to the rest of the world.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, it';s Greg Hendricks here from the newsroom. How are you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Very well, Greg.
JOURNALIST:
I';m just wondering with this, as a tourism, hopefully the campaign will be a success. It might bring more people through Sydney airport, which is a pretty hot topic right now. The Carr Government report yesterday – is that scare mongering or is there some legitimacy to their argument?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I heard the head of the Sydney airport this morning say that there were going to be no additional areas of noise. I think it is a bit of scare mongering, I really do. But Sydney airport is a very a efficient airport. There is always some noise associated with the operation of a large international airport. But the noise has been spread around and therefore there';s not an unreasonable burden being carried by any one section of the community and I';m not aware of anything that is going to increase the noise in the way described in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning.
JOURNALIST:
So, for Macarthur';s point of view. We';ve got Wilton here, a second…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the only people who are rumoured to be thinking of Wilton as a second location is the Labor Party. We';re certainly not building a second airport and we';re not thinking and don';t intend to build a second airport at Wilton.
JOURNALIST:
Now, the Campbelltown campus at the University of Western Sydney is a focal point here for the aspirations of a lot of our young people. The administration is desperately concerned about its long term funding. They seem to be okay now until 2007, but then they could go way backwards. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?
PRIME MINISTER:
With respect, it is not as you describe it. The UWS, that includes obviously the Campbelltown campus, is not going to be worse off under our package. And under our new policy, universities will be paid for the courses they actually teach which is fair enough and UWS has shifted student numbers out of courses such as agriculture, engineering and science which cost more to deliver and into lower cost courses such as accounting and business, but despite that, we not going to reduce the funding, we';re going to provide the university with some additional funding for two years so that it won';t lose a single dollar. And our belief is that the university will be in a stronger position in 2007 because under the new policy it will get more funding than it would have received under the present arrangements. Now that';s my understanding of how it operates and that';s the advice I';ve received from the Education Minister. We don';t want in any way to limit the opportunities of people in the Campbelltown area and the whole of western Sydney from going to university, and we';ve gone to great pains to protect the position of those universities and we';ll continue obviously to talk to the university authorities. I myself have had direct discussions with the Chancellor of the university and I know that my colleague will continue to talk to them, and our aim is to help – it';s not to take away.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, visiting Macarthur on a number of occasions, you would have noticed most of this area has had huge growth and a lot of people around here, including myself, have had our mortgages. Are interest rates on the way up? Are you worried about those in the US? Should we be concerned about being squeezed.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don';t think people should be concerned about being squeezed. Interest rates now of course are at 30 year lows and the fact is that the property market in Australia has boomed largely because interest rates have been so low and people have been able to afford to borrow more, to either add to their existing house or to buy a bigger house, or to start with a bigger house than they might otherwise have been able to afford. There is no doubting the fact that over a period of time you can have fluctuations in interest rates, but I don';t expect there to be any significant upward movement in interest rates over the next little while, simply because the things that drive interest rates up such as high inflation, high wage growth, perhaps a weak dollar – those things aren';t present. In fact, we have the reverse. We have a strong dollar, we have very low inflation and we have wages growing in a very sensible way because we have higher productivity and firms can afford to pay their workers more without that being inflationary. So the conditions are pretty good for interest rates. I don';t control the month to month fluctuation. That';s set by the Reserve Bank. But if you look at the situation a few years ago, the average homebuyer is some hundreds of dollars a month better off than what they were five or six years ago.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, on a totally different level, we understand and know that you';re a huge supporter of the Rugby World Cup. Of course the final this weekend. Are you planning a big celebration? Are you planning on maybe catching up with Prince Harry and putting a punt on?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don';t know about doing that, but I will certainly be there and certainly cheering our fellows. I do follow the team very closely. I think they';ve got a lot of character. They played brilliantly last Saturday night. I think everybody was pretty proud of them. It';s going to be quite a tough game. England is a very good team. They';ve got a very strong and experienced forward pack and they';ve got some real stars – people like Jonny Wilkinson. He';s a fantastic player. But if we play with the character and the flair that we showed last Saturday night, well we can win. But it';s one of those games where you hope the outcome, and I certainly do along with the rest of the country, that the Wallabies will win. And it will be a fantastic back to back victory in the Rugby World Cup if they do so. But we shouldn';t underestimate the task ahead. It';s going to be a very, very tough game and the Englishmen are going to fight very hard. They';ll have a legion of supporters. I just hope that we have plenty of golden tonsils and plenty of noise and plenty of retaliatory barracking.
JOURNALIST:
I';m sure we will.
PRIME MINISTER:
I';m sure we will too.
JOURNALIST:
Is there a message you';d like to send to the team of the Wallabies?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, well just play the way you did last Saturday night and you can';t go wrong.
JOURNALIST:
That';ll do it. Thanks for talking to us this morning Mr John Howard.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Good luck today. Thanks again for talking to us and coming out to present the awards.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, okay then.
JOURNALIST:
See you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Bye.
[ends]