JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, Simon Crean has been tapped on the shoulder apparently and asked to resign. Do you think it is time for…
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I have no comment to make on the Labor Party leadership. I have always taken the view that it';s self-serving for leaders of opposition political parties to be commenting upon others, and I don';t have any comment.
JOURNALIST:
Do you expect the Higher Education Bills to get through the Senate in this sitting?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I certainly hope that we can get both the Higher Education and the Medicare legislation through. Both of these pieces of legislation confer benefits on the Australian people, expand opportunities, expand choice. And it really is negative, dog in the manger politics of the highest order for the Labor Party to keep blocking them. We';ll have an election in roughly a year';s time and if the Labor Party wins, it can then bring in the changes it wants and I would hope the Opposition would then support those changes. But we';ve had months and months of debate, we';ve had months and months of examination by Senate committees and it is time, in the interests of the Australian people, that these changes and benefits were allowed to go through, because if they';re blocked again it will just demonstrate that the Labor Party is interested in destructive, negative, dog in the manger politics and not the future of this country.
[ends]