BENSON:
Mr Howard thanks very much for coming in and welcome to News Radio at this auspicious, for us, occasion of 10 years of service.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you. I'm sorry I'm a bit late but it's for the best of all reasons, it's been pouring rain.
BENSON:
And there's a traffic jam on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's a terrific experience.
BENSON:
They're very democratic traffic jams aren't they, they don't really care who's jammed there.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, that's right. Everybody has got to cool their heels. But I hope the rain is falling in the right places, but it's very good to be here because News Radio has been a great service.
BENSON:
Well indeed. Can I ask you a tough, tough question to begin with Mr Howard because I understand from conversations with your personal staff that you routinely and regularly listen to News Radio.
PRIME MINISTER:
I do, I would listen to News Radio and Radio National more than any other part of the ABC. I do listen to News Radio and Radio National when I walk in the morning, as you know I'm a regular walker, I take the earpiece and listening. And I've found News Radio a particularly good service for catching up with what has happened overnight, I do listen to it very religiously and it's a reliable service because it just provides a whole collection of news reports and if you really want to catch up with something News Radio is the spot to go and that's extremely handy.
BENSON:
That's excellent, I think the promotions department is completely satisfied now, we can go onto other topics. Although you probably have been the biggest generator of news in the decade that we've been on air, although today I think you're running a very distant second to Ian Thorpe.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm very happy to go a long way behind Ian Thorpe and to congratulate him to become the greatest winner in Olympic participation by any Australian, it's an extraordinary performance. The equilibrium of the bloke always impresses me, nothing seems to ruffle him, he seems to be on that same positive level the whole time, it's quite remarkable, he has a great psychology maturity for a person who's still very young.
BENSON:
And calmer and calmer as he goes along.
PRIME MINISTER:
Much the case, yes, quite extraordinary really and very impressive performance, I mean if he's like this, what in his early 20s, heavens above what's he going to be like in 10 years time? I don't necessarily mean still in Olympic competition, but as an achiever. He's the kind of person who will do very well in life, no matter what he does.
BENSON:
That's the top half of the frontpage of this morning, can we go to the bottom half of the frontpage which is the main political issue of the past week really has been your relationship with the truth, that's been under attack. Now that's been under attack on two issues, the war in Iraq and now children overboard, the claims made before the last election. Can I just deal quickly with Iraq first, the principle reason for going to war in Iraq was put by you as the threat posed by Iraq and specifically its weapons of mass destruction. A year and a half down the track no weapons have been found, something like 1400 inspectors have been engaged in that search. Do you still believe weapons will be found in Iraq? Weapons of mass destruction.
PRIME MINISTER:
Marius, they could be but I agree that the evidence to date does not suggest that. We believe that there were weapons, otherwise I wouldn't have said so, and even my harshest critics would now have to acknowledge that we did have reasons to believe that there were weapons. Now they would argue that we should have been more querulous, they will argue that we should have been more critical, we should have been more circumspect, but they can't really assert that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons had weapons of mass destruction. So I am comfortable with the stance I took in relation to that, it was the stance taken by the British and American Governments as well. Certainly we have found evidence of WMD programmes, and we've found evidence of a desire to resume the development of weapons of mass destruction after the United Nations pressure had, or international pressure had ended. But...
BENSON:
Programmes intentions, are you saying now that you do not finally, you finally do accept that there won't be weapons of mass destruction found?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm not willing to say that now because you never know in an uncertain world. I acknowledge...
BENSON:
You're a hard man to convince.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no I just know from past experience that unexpected things occur. It's not a question of being a hard man to convince. I acknowledge that the evidence does not point to the discovery of actual weapons, I acknowledge that, all I'm saying is that circumstances can change and what I do assert is that at the time we took the decision, which is relevant to our credibility, we were advised that weapons did exist and we had good grounds for accepting that advice and we did accept it and according to the Flood inquiry the evidence available at the time was more consistent with weapons existing than weapons not existing. And everybody believed at the beginning of last year that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Labor Opposition believed it, Kevin Rudd, the Opposition foreign affairs spokesman said it was an empirical fact...
BENSON:
Hans Blix believed, all sorts of people believed it but they didn't believe the evidence was there that the evidence was strong enough to go to war; they thought the evidence that was there to be concerned, to monitor, to inspect. But not to go to war.
PRIME MINISTER:
Marius, the argument then was whether we continued with the Security Council process, which in our view was getting nowhere or we took action. Now we decided to take action and people will debate that for all time. And I accept that a lot of people disagreed with that, and still disagree with it. I accept that, that there was a good third of the Australian population very strongly opposed to our decision. Now I knew that then, I know that now and I accept it and I don't pretend otherwise. But that was the decision that we took. And we took it in good faith, people will remain critical of it but it's not a position that I will retreat from.
BENSON:
Let's go back to children overboard now. November 7 2001, three days before the federal election, Mike Scrafton, an adviser to then the Defence Minister Peter Reith, you called him two or three times on that evening...
PRIME MINISTER:
Twice.
BENSON:
Twice? That's in dispute. Would you be prepared to release phone records to indicate whether two or three is the correct number of phone calls?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'll check that...
BENSON:
With phone records? It's not the central point but...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no it's not really the central, it isn't really the central point whether there's two or three. I'm saying two. He said two in his report to Jenny Bryant, but does it matter whether there's two or three? No it really doesn't. Okay, if we're going to get into pedantry he said I rang him from Kirribilli House, I didn't, I rang him from the Lodge. So I mean, and I mean that is not really material whether it was two or three, it was what was discussed that is material.
BENSON:
Yeah. What is material is in Mike Scrafton's word, I'm quoting him now, I left him, you, the Prime Minister, I left him after those conversations in no doubt there was no evidence that children were thrown overboard. No evidence. Now you continued to say...
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, I dispute that very strongly. What we talked about was the video and one of the things that I find interesting is that I go back over all the comments I made a couple of years ago and bear in mind that it's an invariable law of evidence or principle of the law of evidence that recollections contemporaneous to the facts are always more reliable than those some times later. And all of the remarks I made closer to the event refer to the discussion with Scrafton as being about the video. Now there was an attempt this morning on AM, another programme I listen to, by Mr Latham to suggest wrongly that I had admitted on a Four Corners programme, another ABC programme that I had in fact discussed the photographs with Scrafton, I did not admit that on AM, I've got the transcript with me and...
BENSON:
Right, can I just clarify that point, the point before you extend your explanation. The point being made was that Four Corners in February last year you said that the conversations with Mr Scrafton had referred to the debate about the discussion about the...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no I deny that, I deny that.
BENSON:
This is an inaccurate quote?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, it's not an inaccurate quote but it's being taken out of context. What I was referring to there was the discussion I'd had with Peter Reith.
BENSON:
Right.
PRIME MINISTER:
Have we got the same, are we talking about an interview on the 28th of February 2002?
BENSON:
That's right, I've got February, but I've just got a short quote here saying...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, well I've got the whole lot...
BENSON:
... the debate about the discussion...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no I'm sorry I have got the whole lot.
BENSON:
Right okay...
PRIME MINISTER:
And what I did...
BENSON:
The point of this...
PRIME MINISTER:
It's very important because this is Mr Latham going overboard with the truth, not me. What happened on this occasion was that I was questioned very closely about my discussions with Reith on that day because that was the day, so it subsequently transpired, that Air Marshal Houston, the Defence Force, had telephoned Mr Reith and told him that in his view and on the basis of the evidence available, children had not been thrown overboard. A conversation that Mr Reith did not retail to me and a matter that he felt he had to discuss with the head of the Defence Force, Admiral Barrie, when Admiral Barrie returned from overseas. And I was closely examined by Liz Jackson about my conversation with Reith and I said that in my discussion with Reith I'd talked about photographs and I then recapitulated everything I'd said about Reith, my discussion with Reith, and in the course of that I said I'd had some discussion with a member of his staff who had viewed the video. I then went on to say there was in the terms that I've already explained a reference to the debate about the photographs, that was a reference to my discussion with Reith and if you look at the context...
BENSON:
So you didn't discuss photographs with Mr Scrafton?
PRIME MINISTER:
I did not discuss photographs with Scrafton and I was not admitting in the Four Corners programme that I had discussed photographs with Scrafton. Mr Latham and Senator Faulkner both know that and they are deliberately misrepresenting for their own political purposes that conversation, that...
BENSON:
Okay...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, here we are, we have Mr Latham, every time he goes on a programme now he calls me a liar, I mean this is going to the Labor campaign, no policies, all you do is...
BENSON:
It is going to be the Labor campaign...
PRIME MINISTER:
It is going to the Labor campaign, they're going to run, this is all they're going run, they don't have any policies, they don't have a tax policy, all they now have a policy of denigrating me. Now on this occasion Mr Latham has been loose with the truth, if he reads the transcript he'll know he's wrong and I invite anybody to go back and have a look at that interview. I was talking about my discussion with Reith and along the way I referred to my discussion with Scrafton and the reference I made to the photographs is clearly referable to the discussion I had with Reith, not the discussion I had with Scrafton.
BENSON:
This is becoming very lawyerly and complex, is the danger that a reasonable listener would be listening to you and Mark Latham, saying there's two politicians lying, saying that the other one is lying, on this occasion I think they're both telling the truth, that this politics, that this is, the truth is a complex thing and politics is a world of action and the truth comes at a discount in politics?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well no I don't, I think that is too cynical of you. The other point Marius is that if we're talking about balance and accuracy and truth, one of the great lies about this whole debate is that children overboard won the election for the Government, that is not right, there was a period, and I checked this some time ago, there was a period of about 12 or 14 days in which the children overboard issue was not mentioned in the campaign. To the extent that these matters were important in the campaign, it was the strong stand the Government took on border protection that was important and if children overboard had never been an issue I don't believe the result of the campaign would have been any different. But in the nature in politics when you lose you've got to invent a reason why you were robbed, you've got to invent a reason why you were defeated. And we have people, particularly Mr Beazley who was my opponent, now running around talking, you know indignantly about this whole issue. We did not win the election on children overboard; we won the election on a whole range of issues, including the strong leadership I displayed on border protection.
BENSON:
Can I just try and resolve without spending too much more time on it, this issue of the differences between you and Mike Scrafton, who's a public servant, with apparently no particular political barrow to push...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm not attacking him, I'm dealing with...
BENSON:
... unambiguously told you there was no evidence that children were thrown overboard.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm disputing that.
BENSON:
He says he's so confident that he'll take a lie detector test, which essentially is a challenge to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Look he can say whatever he likes, I'm just telling you what was discussed. What was discussed was the video and the interesting thing I say again, I invite all of my critics to trawl back through everything I said two and a half years ago, not now, and your recollections closer to the event are always better and all of the recollection I had then and all of the references I made to Scrafton were about discussing the video. Now two and a half years later he gives another version, now I don't accept that it wasn't possible for him to express a different view to the Bryant inquiry, he left the federal public service eight months. Now if he felt he was under a constraint until then eight months have now gone by. Now I simply put that on the record, as I say I'm not denigrating him, I'm not personally attacking him, I'm disagreeing very strongly with what he said.
BENSON:
The two accounts aren't mutually incompatible between you and Mike Scrafton...
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I'm not getting into gimmicks like that. If people don't believe what I say on the basis of looking at me and listening to my words, going through a mechanical process like that is not going to alter their opinions. Some people will believe me, some people will disbelieve me. The people who disbelieve me in many cases are people who are bitter that we won the last election, they're looking around for a reason and an explanation. I mean Mr Latham keeps saying the next election is about the future, he seems to be wanting to make the next election all about the past.
BENSON:
Do you now believe children were thrown overboard?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm satisfied on the advice that came out later, particularly the view that was expressed by Air Marshall Houston, who's a person of enormous credibility and respect in the military. I'm satisfied that that was wrong. But I do know that the belief at the time was that it had happened. We were told that and that is why I made the claim and if you go back over the record you'll find that for a whole period of up to two weeks, the issue was not mentioned, it was not the big issue in people's minds that subsequently people have tried to make it...
BENSON:
Should anyone face consequences for giving you that bad advice?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I'm not interested in pursuing scapegoats and people can make mistakes, I'm not blaming anybody, I'm not blaming anybody for it. I'm simply pointing out that something that was of far less a significance at the time has become of greater significance because those who lost the election are trying to generate an explanation for why they lost. The 'we was robbed' mentality still runs very deep and strong in the Labor Party and through sections of the community that support the Labor Party. Now they were beaten fair and square because they were seen as weak on border protection and they were seen as less capable of running the economy than the Government - that is why we won the last election, we didn't win it because of children overboard. If children overboard had never been raised we still would have won the election, that was not decisive in my view and if you go back at the record you'll find that's the case.
BENSON:
Can I move on quickly to a couple of other issues?
PRIME MINISTER:
Sure.
BENSON:
We are the parliamentary network as well as being a news network, parliament is broadcast on our airwaves. A couple of parliamentary issues, have you made a decision about when the election will be?
PRIME MINISTER:
No.
BENSON:
Could it be after the US election?
PRIME MINISTER:
It could be, it could be as late as March or April of next year.
BENSON:
But that would be...
PRIME MINISTER:
... I'm not saying... that would be very unusual but...
BENSON:
It wouldn't look good.
PRIME MINISTER:
It would be very unusual and a lot of people...
BENSON:
But that's not, in practical terms, that's not...
PRIME MINISTER:
But there's... you should remember the third anniversary is the 10th of November.
BENSON:
Is that significant?
PRIME MINISTER:
What, the 10th of November?
BENSON:
The third anniversary.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I suppose... what happened three years earlier (inaudible).
BENSON:
Also, what, eight days after the (inaudible)
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, I'm just pointing out Marius that we are still three months, a little under three months short of the third anniversary and I have not encouraged speculation on any particular date, I have not finally settled on a date. Obviously, a lot of dates run through my mind but, and I point out to you and to your listeners that we have the third anniversary on the 10th of November.
BENSON:
Right. We should attach significance to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
No more than other particular things.
BENSON:
Right...
PRIME MINISTER:
Just bear it in mind in the interest... and the speculative balance, just bear it in mind.
BENSON:
These conversations are quite silly...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah... they are silly...
BENSON:
..., but they take up the election schedule for six months every election round, why not have fixed terms?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, you...
BENSON:
Are you in favour of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don't know I am but it's an academic issue at the moment because we don't have them!
BENSON:
So you're not in favour?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am still marginally against having fixed terms, yep.
BENSON:
Can I ask you about another parliamentary issue...
PRIME MINISTER:
Sure.
BENSON:
For people who listen to Parliament, as they do on our network, in fact in the spirit of Parliament perhaps I can invite you to ask yourself the next question...
PRIME MINISTER:
Me ask you the next question?
BENSON:
That's a way of getting into...
PRIME MINISTER:
... what sort of reactions do you get from your listeners?
BENSON:
Excellent question. That was actually an odd way of getting into Dorothy Dixers...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes.
BENSON:
Of all the time wasting parts of the Westminster tradition, the Government asking itself questions and reading its own press releases. Are you in favour of Dorothy Dixers?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think it's legitimate to use Question Time to announce or to amplify government policy. I think sometimes both sides of politics, whether they're in Government, can use it too often, I agree with that. I do think that the televising of Parliament has made it more of a theatre and therefore encouraged more set piece.... but that's not necessarily a bad thing because that is the world in which we live and people get so much of their news from television, not all of it, and I encourage them to go to radio to get a lot of their news as well. But that is the world in which we live and we have to cater for all tastes and all markets.
BENSON:
Can I just quickly touch on another topic, the republic, your views on the republic are well known and haven't changed. Something's happened, though, in the vice regal world that seems to me that between Governor Bligh and Peter Hollingworth, we had a couple of hundred years...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes...
BENSON:
Yeah, we had a long stretch where no vice regal representative was forced from office, we've had two forced from office in the last year.
PRIME MINISTER:
There was one in Victoria.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, Guy Murray quite recently, he was pushed out.
BENSON:
Okay. But can we look at...
PRIME MINISTER:
... by the Premier Cain, I don't think... I'm not going to get into the details of it, but I think he was.
BENSON:
Well, the suggestion I was going to put to you was that something's happened where the vice regal office is now held in different terms...
PRIME MINISTER:
Guy was removed somewhat differently.
BENSON:
The (inaudible) was instrumental...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah...
BENSON:
But something's happened to our vice regal positions that they can be removed seemingly by a de facto popular will that Peter Hollingworth involved very substantial issues, Richard Butler seemed to involve a general public sense rather than anyone scandal. Has the vice regal position de facto changed without formally changing? Do the people have more say?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think they do and I don't think that's a bad thing and that would apply whether you were a republic or we remain a monarchy. If we have a figure head president or a figure head governor general, and I don't use that expression derogatively but I use it for the purposes of clarification, identification. I think people do feel that they can bring about an influence, yes.
BENSON:
You said you were sorry to see Richard Butler put in the position...
PRIME MINISTER:
I think it was a mistake...
BENSON:
Are you sorry to see him go in those terms?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, I'm not. I mean, I'm not going to sort of dance on his governatorial grave so to speak, but I thought it was a mistake that he was appointed because he was manifestly unable to assume the virtual Trappist mantle that's needed in such a position.
BENSON:
There's a lot else to talk about Prime Minister, but I think there's a traffic jam waiting for you out there in the Sydney rain.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, thank you very much for this opportunity. I congratulate news radio on a very special service that it provides, I don't just mean that, obviously the parliamentary service, but the excellent news service that you do provide and it's a good service, good sports coverage. I follow David Lord and the boys very closely and I'll continue listening, not only on my early morning walks.
BENSON:
Thanks for providing all the news.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I hope I've sort of given you an edge on your other ABC networks today.
BENSON:
John Howard, thank you very much for coming in.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]