JONES:
PM, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
JONES:
PM, thank you for agreeing to announce the election date on my programme, so away you go. Don't be modest.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I think I have to tell everybody at the same time. I don't know when it's going to be, Alan, except that it will be sometime in the second half of this year. I haven't not made up my mind. I know people are writing that I'm considering this and considering that. Of course, you have to give consideration to these things, but the parliament will have been sitting for three years, actually in February next year. But the last election was on the 10th of November 2001. So the three years is not up for another four months or so.
JONES:
If I go back on the tape there, I'll find you saying - I haven't ....not made up my mind. That means you have.
PRIME MINISTER:
I can't win.
JONES:
No. Okay. Well, now if you're not going to tell us that. Just tell us quickly about schools providing functioning flagpoles and flying the Australian flag. We had overwhelming support for that idea from callers to this programme yesterday.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that doesn't surprise me. It's not the main element of the conditions we're laying down. But we're providing Government and Catholic, and independent schools with $31 billion over the next five years. Now that is incidentally on top of the 44 cents in every dollar that the States get from the GST and Commonwealth payments which they spend on state schools. So when you add those two together we in a sense spend more money on state government schools than do State Governments and we have a right to say that in return for this money you've got to meet certain conditions and the most important of them are in relation to literacy and numeracy. We're also requiring that there be a couple of hours of sport each week. We're requiring that parents be given plan language reports. We're requiring that principals have greater autonomy and we are requiring incidentally that they have a functioning flagpole. Now what's wrong with that?
JONES:
Yes. I mean as you rightly say, you wouldn't have wandered the shores of Gallipoli with an Australian flag draped around your shoulders, you know, 25 years ago when you were going to school but young people are doing it now.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well exactly and this idea that it's old fashioned to want to have the flag being flown is itself old fashioned. It is completely out of date.
JONES:
No, no good stuff. Look obesity. You are going to be announcing are you not a package in relation to this - when are you going to do that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I hope to do that next week, Alan. The package will involve a number of initiatives. It's been worked out after some discussion with the Sports Commission. We've talked to some of the peak sporting bodies who have indicated a willingness to support, which I think is fantastic. It's going to be about physical exercise. It's also going to be about diet, it's going to be about obviously involving parents and also involving some community groups.
JONES:
Right. I'm going to talk to you about water in a moment but before I do, Mark Latham's now decided not to oppose your legislation in relation to increased costs of PBS medicines. Now, of course, the increase in the cost to designed to stop the massive escalation in the cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Does this signal a difficulty do you think in the Opposition in adding up and funding election promises?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don't think there's any doubt about this. He has not made this decision on an issue of principle. If there'd been a principle behind all of this, he would have changed his position. Well the Labor Party would have changed their position 25 months ago. We've been trying to get this through for 25 months, but all of a sudden it's a good idea to support it and the reason they're doing it is that they need the money. So that does indicate to me that they are a long way from getting their tax policy together. It does indicate to me they haven't really done a lot of homework. It does indicate to me that they don't yet demonstrate a capacity to put forward a alternative coherent policy. I mean, Mr Latham has now been leader for six months, he is no longer a new leader and there is a limit to how long you can go around the country just chasing the 6pm commercial news grabs, you have actually got to put down a coherent alternative. Now, we've done that and we're asking him to do the same so that the public of Australia when the election is held whenever that might be can make a judgement between what we have done and what we offer for the future and what he might offer.
JONES:
You said to the Shadow Treasurer Simon Crean recently, obviously in jest but it's anything but a joke that he had uncovered a wonderful economic policy, low tax, spend more and big surpluses and you said, why didn't I discover that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I said to Peter Costello, you've been slipping, why haven't you discovered that over the last eight and a half years. I mean, the fact is that you can't simultaneously have a bigger surplus, spend more, tax less and also have an intergenerational fund for the future. I mean, something has got to give and I think what we saw a couple of days ago was something beginning to give and the dawning realisation that you can't live in that fantasy. Well, you can't govern Australian on the basis of economic fantasy. The last eight and a half years have not been the product of economic fantasy, they've been the product of very difficult decisions consistently taken over a long period of time.
JONES:
Now water, PM, an enormous issue.
PRIME MINISTER:
Huge issue.
JONES:
Are we entitled to be concerned though that this COAG meeting tomorrow, establishing a so-called national framework for water rights. There is genuine concern from the bush, particularly who write to me that the Howard Government is going to become a prisoner of the conservation forces, so to out Garrett Garrett so to speak, and make decisions that don't have a scientific base?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, there's no ground for people believing that. We will not turn our backs on the legitimate interests of Australian farmers. I have said consistently that if people's properly based water entitlements are taken away by Governments then they are entitled to a measure of compensation. I've said that repeatedly. We're not going to try to out Green or out Garrett anybody. We're trying to get a sensible outcome bearing in mind that the States have the primary property power over these things and not the Commonwealth. We're trying to get an outcome in cooperation with the States that both returns water to the Murray Darling Basin and therefore increases the environmental flows but does it in a way that doesn't disrupt the interests of farmers and doesn't do it in a way that robs farmers of a property right they've had and enjoyed and which is the basis of their business operation.
JONES:
See, that is the issue though isn't it, every time - I was just waiting to see how long it took you to say, Murray Darling. Every time we talk about water, everyone talks about the Murray Darling. Now the Murray Darling is not Australia. There's an enormous drought that you know about, you've had to try and fund and help - worst in a hundred years. And there's a problem of water, water is more than the Murray Darling.
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm not disagreeing with that at all. I'm just making the observation that the particular issue that's been hotly discussed at the moment is the return of water to the Murray Darling.
JONES:
That's right, but there are academics who say that the Murray Darling issues is not as some Greens and groups are presenting. Now, one very outstanding academic has written a piece called 'The Myth and the Murray' - arguing that much of what the Government is being fed on the Murray Darling doesn't have an accurate scientific base.
PRIME MINISTER:
I have to say that I have read some of that material, maybe not the piece you're referring too. That is a minority scientific view. It is not the view of many of the more prominent scientists. I'm not saying there isn't debate on this issue and can I emphasise that I don't regard fixing the Murray Darling Basin as being the be all and end all of water reform, for example, the difficulties that many people in urban areas have with water availability are not due to the Murray Darling Basin. The difficulties that people might have in Perth is manifestly not due to the Murray Darling Basin.
JONES:
... or the Darling Downs or Moree.
PRIME MINISTER:
Or the Darling Downs, but what the meeting faces tomorrow is a real challenge to cooperative federalism. Now you have a situation here where the States have got the legal power, but we need a national solution and if the States working together with the Commonwealth can't come up with a national solution, one that's fair and one that's not just a question of the States saying, we'll do everything you want providing you pay for the lot. I mean, this is primarily an argument about money, it is a primarily about an opportunity for the Governments of Australia - State and Federal to get together and solve a problem which has a national dimension. Rivers flow across state borders. The Great Artesian Basin lies under the large part of the land mass of Australia and therefore state borders.
JONES:
I just want to say to you one thing because, to get away from the River Murray in a moment, but I read a work by an ecologist Lee Benson whose reviewed all the River Murray scientific and expert panel environmental reports to date and he says in the light of the media attention on environmental flows only two of twenty two major environmental problem areas along the river are due to insufficient flow and I think this what Kay Elson was saying in the report that was handed down, your report handed down in the Federal Parliament on Monday that perhaps we need more data collection on the River Murray before we actually spend some of that $500 million.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that's one of the reasons why at this stage the Federal Government has committed that $500 million as far as we're concerned it should be committed to individual projects rather than some particular target of returning an amount of water. Some other people, including the Labor Party are saying, well you've got to commit yourself now to 1,500 gigalitres being returned. What I'm saying and the Government is saying at the moment - we should fix up individual problems. That's not to say you may not need 1,500 gigalitres, I'm not arguing that but it's far better to look at it from a practical point of view and to keep a sense of perspective.
JONES:
Okay, well let's move away from there and just supposing it rains 15 inches tomorrow - how do we harvest it, how do we save it and how do we as a nation stop flushing our toilets with the water we make our tea with?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the answer is we haven't got sufficient capacity to do that. That is self evident.
JONES:
So do we need a major infrastructure initiative?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think certainly we need to and this is levelled I have to say particularly at State Governments because they have the responsibility of doing it. We've got to change our attitude towards dams.
JONES:
Who funds that?
PRIME MINISTER:
States.
JONES:
Do we need a national development bank because dams are not the only form of...?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, they are not the only problem and I understand that. In the past you've had the Snowy Mountains scheme was a project that was jointly funded, it was funded, by recollection by contributions from all different levels of Government but you need a willingness on the part of those who've got the legal power to take decisions to alter their thinking and to recognise...
JONES:
And we're running out of time, aren't we?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we are running out of time and I think this is a serious issue but you've got to take it in stages and if we can reach agreement, I'm sorry to go back to the Murray Darling but I have to because we're at least someway along the path to reaching agreement on that. If we can reach agreement tomorrow on the national water initiative, we'll be sending a very encouraging signal to people all over Australia that despite political differences the Governments of this country can work together to solve a problem which is a national challenge.
JONES:
I mean, the biggest problem is that water has major and is having major economic, social and environment ramifications right across this country, the absence of water.
PRIME MINISTER:
That is self evident. I don't think there's any debate about that. It's a question of whether the Governments of this country can respond to that challenge and think as Australians and not think as Queenslanders or people from New South Wales.
JONES: Well done. Good luck tomorrow. Thank you for your time.
[ends]