JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, good morning to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Matt how are you?
JOURNALIST:
Very well. Do you swear?
PRIME MINISTER:
Do I swear?
JOURNALIST:
Yep.
PRIME MINISTER:
I try and avoid swearing, I do. I can't say, I can't put my hand on my heart and say I've never sworn, and that would be untrue, but I don't do it commonly or regularly. No I don't. I'm not sort of claiming any special virtual. You asked me a question; I'm giving you an honest answer.
JOURNALIST:
No, no, we were wondering if it would be worthwhile sending a swear box to your office. I mean there may be others there who...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, they're all, I mean you know them all. Fellows like Tony O'Leary and all that, they are so decorous, well behaved fellows.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, it's a way of raising money for a children's charity here in South Australia and we're sending out swear boxes to workplaces and homes around the State and if people swear they put the money in the box and it goes off to...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm very happy to make a donation in anticipation of any indiscretions if they want to get in touch with me.
JOURNALIST:
We'll send you a box. Send it to Tony O'Leary...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, no O'Leary, no, the point I'm making is O'Leary's good.
JOURNALIST:
Yes I know he is. Prime Minister, things are heating up it would seem in the industrial relations arena and we have Kim Beazley pledging this morning that no worker would be worse off if he gets rid of AWAs. Can you match that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I know that workers will be worse off if he gets rid of AWAs. There are almost 2000 people employed at the Olympic Dam in South Australia who are on AWAs. Many of them will be worse off if those AWAs are abolished. I mean Mr Beazley, by attacking AWAs, Mr Beazley is threatening the living standards of hundreds of thousands of Australians who are now on AWAs and will go on to AWAs over the next 18 months before the next election. Now obviously the Liberal Party is working hard to make sure that Mr Beazley doesn't win the next election, but let's for the purposes of discussion, see what the situation is if he does win the election. He'll get rid of AWAs; he will reduce the living standards of people who are on those AWAs. But he made another very important commitment in the press this morning when he said that his prime purpose was to promote collective bargaining in the workplace in which unions had bargaining rights. Now what he's saying there is that under his industrial relations policy, even if you have a workplace which has no unionists in it, the union could inject itself into the bargaining process and the employer would be forced to bargain with a union to which none of the employees belong. Now that is taking Australia's industrial relations system back at least 20 years or more.
JOURNALIST:
Stephen Smith says no, workers and employers are free to negotiate a common law agreement. There do not need to be unions involved in the process.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, but a union, did you say need not be but a union which has coverage of a workplace under the award system can inject itself into the process, whether the employer or the employee likes it or not. Because under the system that they contemplate a union can inject itself into the process and nothing the employer can do can stop it. And we've seen that demonstrated in the Boeing dispute in New South Wales where the employer, and this is out of the mouths of not only the Labor Party, but also out of the mouths of the secretary of the AWU, Bill Shorten, where what was being attempted there was to force a company into a collective bargaining process. The law doesn't allow a union to force itself in against the will of the employer and the majority of the workers, but they would change the law if they win and alter the situation. And you'd have this ludicrous position where although only 17 per cent of private sector employees in Australia belong to a union, a union could potentially inject itself into 80 or 90 per cent of the bargaining processes in Australian workplaces. So we are going to see, if there's a Labor Government, a huge throwback to the old days of unions running things and it just proves what I said last weekend that Mr Beazley had been bullied by the unions into changing his position on AWAs.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, isn't it the case though that the thing that would be at the front of most Australian employees' minds would be 'will we be worse off?' And it's quite easy for Kim Beazley to say 'look, you will not be worse off under the scheme that I'm proposing because once these AWAs expire, I'm not going to wipe them out, I'll wait for them to expire, run their natural course, I'll simply pass a law saying whatever agreement follows, you will not be worse off than the one you've just left.'
PRIME MINISTER:
Well no law that anybody can pass can deliver that outcome if the economy can't deliver it. I mean...
JOURNALIST:
We can....
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no hang on. This is a very fundamental point. We can all pass laws and we can make speeches, but if the economy falls over, all employees are worse off. If the economy goes into decline people lose their jobs. You can't legislate to maintain jobs. You can legislate to make it harder for people to create jobs and that was the problem with the unfair dismissal laws. But look, Mr Beazley will, like every other political leader, be judged on his record, as I will. And you say what is uppermost in people's minds? It is their living standards of course. You are right. People worry about the practical circumstances of their lives more than anything else and so they should. And what I would say to Australian families and Australians listening to this interview is look at our record. We've had higher real wages, lower interest rates, lower unemployment, better economic outcomes for Australian families and when we reformed the IR laws 10 years ago the Labor Party said the world was coming to an end and wages would be cut and unemployment would go up and that hasn't been the case. And I think people in Australia will bear that in mind when they listen to Mr Beazley.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister John Howard on 891 Mornings. Are you disappointed that so many employers seem to have leapt in at the sharp end on this, and Spotlight, for instance, it's given the Labor Party an ideal opportunity. Two cents, going around dropping two cents coins as Stephen Smith did this morning, waving it in Parliament. It's symbolic is it not of a company that asks workers, new workers, to trade off their rights for a measly two cents an hour?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't accept the evidence so far available suggests that, as you say, so many companies have jumped in. It's too early to make that judgement. In fact I read a piece of analysis by an academic a couple of days ago that suggested that the early indications were the opposite. The early indications were there were not the mass sackings that the Labor Party predicted. The early indications were quite to the contrary. Now the point I'd make about Spotlight is that they put on 40 more people in their outlet in Mount Druitt in Western Sydney and 38 of those people had been on the dole queue. And so far from being two cents an hour worse off, those people were $355 a week better off.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister 10 years ago in the 1996 election campaign when you were talking about industrial relations policy you pledged that under a Howard Government you can not be worse off, but you can be better off. Kim Beazley's giving exactly the same guarantee isn't he? If it was okay for you to do it 10 years ago, it's okay for him to do it now?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well can I make the observation that I've actually delivered. I mean people are better off now. Real wages have gone up by 16.8 per cent over the last 10 years.
JOURNALIST:
But Prime Minister you're not going to be there to deliver. With due respect, I don't think even you're envisaging going on all that much longer.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well come on, let's not get into that. That is a diversion. Let's stick to industrial relations, not my employment relations. That is, as always, a matter for the Australian people.
JOURNALIST:
But you have delivered, so it's trust John Howard. Can Peter Costello deliver?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think I'm entitled to say to the Australian people that in the 10 years that I have been Prime Minister their wages have gone up, their living standards have vastly strengthened compared with the time when Mr Beazley was variously deputy prime minister and minister for employment in the Keating Government, where their real wages hardly moved at all and their interest rates went through the roof and unemployment reached a million. I mean back in the early 90s they had this wonderful industrial relations system to which Mr Beazley is now being dragged back to by the unions and yet a million Australians lost their jobs and people's wages fell through the floor. Now it just makes my point that the real test of the value of the industrial relations system is the contribution it makes to running a strong economy. And if you don't have a strong economy, you have low wages and high unemployment. If you do have a strong economy, you have high wages and low unemployment. It's as simple as that. So the test therefore of an IR system is not so much the substance of it, but the contribution it makes to the strength of the economy. Because it's the strength of the economy that determines whether your wages go up.
JOURNALIST:
It's also there to protect us always against the worse case scenario. Most people don't go out and commit murders, but we have a law against murder. Most employers will not exploit their workers but we have laws in place to make sure that they will come home with a decent pay packet.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there are laws in WorkChoices. There is a guaranteed hourly minimum rate which is taken off the Award. There are guarantees in relation to holidays; there are guarantees in relation to carer's leave. Superannuation rights are preserved; existing entitlements are preserved in relation to long service leave if somebody is covered by an Award. But look, many of those things that you're talking about, they're there. But there has to be a balance. There has to be a balance between protection and incentive and one of the elements of the Labor Party's attack on us has been over the unfair dismissal laws. Now we don't deny that we have taken away the unfair dismissal laws for firms employing fewer than 100 people. We've done that very deliberately because the old laws frightened small business out of taking on more staff and even Members of the Labor Party would privately admit that the old laws that were forced on them by the unions frightened small employers out of taking on more staff. Now they feel freer to do so I believe that the employment benefits to small business will be quite significant.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister John Howard does it worry you though as a very experienced politician that you are now fighting on the Opposition's ground, you're fighting on industrial relations? You may prefer to be running on your own agenda.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well this has been very much my agenda for a long time, freeing our industrial relations system. I am very comfortable arguing this case. It doesn't worry me in the slightest. I know that the prosperity this country has at the moment is a product of earlier reforms, including earlier industrial relations reforms, and I also know that unless we put down more reforms we won't keep that prosperity and we can't improve it. Now the Labor Party on the other hand opposes every reform that we put up. I can't recall in 10 years of Mr Beazley being mostly in the leadership of the opposition of one new imaginative policy that he's put forward for the future. It's all been about going back to the past or it's all been about opposing everything that we do. Remember the GST? That was going to bring pestilence across the land, there was going to be famine and desolation and poverty and we're all going to be ruined as a result of the GST. And what's been the outcome?
JOURNALIST:
People paying a lot more tax than they.....
PRIME MINISTER:
They're paying less tax, they're paying less tax. Their personal income tax is much lower than the....
JOURNALIST:
It's a tax...
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course it replaced other tax but it's contributed to the export capacity of the country. It's made business better and stronger and therefore business has been able to employ more people. It gets me back to my fundamental point that the worth of any economic policy is determined by the contribution it makes to a stronger economy, not by the detailed substance of it. And just as the GST has helped to strengthen our economy, so these workplace changes will further strengthen our economy and it will mean that more people will be in work and more people will get higher wages because firms doing better will be able to pay them more.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister John Howard is in our Canberra studios. In a moment we're going to pick up this question of Abu Bakar Bashir here on 891 mornings.
[commercial break]
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, John Howard in our Canberra studio speaking with us. And Prime Minister we have a text message here from Pete who says, 'has Mr Howard made any inquiries into becoming a Muslim yet?'
PRIME MINISTER:
I'll just jog along as best I can with Christianity, thank you.
JOURNALIST:
But Abu Bakar Bashir would wish otherwise?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh I don't really take that very seriously, nor does anybody else.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, do we take seriously however the contrast between Indonesia not wanting to do anything about Abu Bakar Bashir, apparently, saying that they're powerless and yet we as a nation bending over backwards for Indonesia on the question of asylum seekers?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's not right to say they haven't done anything, he has been in jail for two and a half years and he was not convicted of direct involvement in the Bali attack. We're unhappy at the sentence and we've said that all along but there are a lot of sentences handed down by Australian courts that Australians aren't happy with, that we don't do anything about them. So it's not.....
JOURNALIST:
...I think you've (inaudible) as a special case?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well yes, but we do not have any control over it. But let me go to the substance of your point, that the new immigration laws are in some way an appeasement of Indonesia, they're not. It is in Australia's national interest to stop the flow of boat people of unauthorised arrivals. And we've been very successful in doing that. And one of the reasons we became very successful in doing that back in 2001, one of the reasons, not the only reason, one of the reasons was Indonesia's cooperation. Because what really turned the boats around and turned back the flood of unauthorised arrivals was the policy we adopted late in 2001 of intercepting boats, and if they were seaworthy, returning them to Indonesia. Now that involved the cooperation of the Indonesian authorities and anybody who argues that you can run an effective border protection policy in this country without the cooperation of neighbouring countries is wrong. And Mr Beazley and Mr Rudd argued ferociously in 2001 that the key to running to a successful border protection policy was to cooperate with the Indonesians. Now it's in our interests that we maintain continued cooperation with Indonesia and there's a further reason why we're changing the laws, and that is to deliver, and this is really the main reason, to deliver uniformity of treatment of unauthorised arrivals, whether they come to offshore islands or come to the mainland, and that principle will be entrenched in this legislation.
JOURNALIST:
So it's in our interests to keep the Indonesian Government happy...
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm sorry, it is in our interest to have a strong border protection policy and one of the elements of that border protection policy - there are many elements - is the cooperation of Indonesia, that's the point I'm making.
JOURNALIST:
And we need them happy in order to get the cooperation?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, it's not a question of whether...I mean they'll always be happy about some things and unhappy about others. It is a very difficult relationship.
JOURNALIST:
But they weren't unhappy with the way we treated the influx, that small group of....
PRIME MINISTER:
They were very unhappy about that. What they want us to do in relation to that is to reverse the decision. Well we're not going to do that. I mean if we were appeasing Indonesia we would have reversed the decision on the 42 people who were given asylum. And President Yudhoyono when he spoke to me about that three months ago said to me that he could assure me that if they went back to Indonesia they would not be persecuted. Now I respect him, I like him, and I find him a very straight forward decent man to deal with, but I did say in reply to that, Mr President those people will be dealt with in accordance with Australian law, and they have been. And I find this business about appeasing Indonesia extraordinary because the real appeasement of Indonesia would have been if we had not given those 42 people the treatment they were entitled to under Australian law, I therefore find this suggestion that we're in someway being over placatory towards the Indonesians as absolutely false. And even today I think you may have heard on AM this morning, some members of the parliamentary delegation from Indonesian hinting at the possibility that we might reverse that decision. Well I want to make it plain to them and to everybody, we will not be reversing that decision.
JOURNALIST:
But you have flagged changing the law to make sure that any more West Papuans who arrive on mainland Australia will not be treated in that way, that they will be sent...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's not just West Papuans.
JOURNALIST:
Yes but it will include West Papuans?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it includes a lot of people. It will deliver a uniformity of policy in relation to both people who come to the mainland and also people who come on to the island.
JOURNALIST:
You're on the record as saying, just a few years ago in Federal Parliament, that it was ludicrous to suggest that the Australian mainland could be excised from the migration laws...
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I remember that...
JOURNALIST:
That's exactly what has happened.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, that's a play on words. What we have done is to ensure that people who arrive on the mainland so far as their processing is concerned are treated in the same fashion as people who come to islands...
JOURNALIST:
And that situation puts us, puts the mainland on the same footing as those islands which were previously excised from the migration laws?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it puts the whole kit and caboodle in the same situation.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) excise.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes so anybody who arrives unauthorised by boat will be processed offshore, and that is the clear, simple, unambiguous, message that we're sending.
JOURNALIST:
Why did we think a few years ago....
PRIME MINISTER:
No I didn't say that was ludicrous, I said excising the whole of the mainland would have been ludicrous. I mean you can go on doing so if you wish, but that's just a play on words.
JOURNALIST:
Alright. Now we're almost up to our six minutes away from news, we have Prime Minister John Howard in our Canberra studios, here in 891 Mornings. Prime Minister the Upper House, the Senate, Gary Humphries, first Liberal Senator to cross the floor on your watch, he wouldn't be looking for the call up to the Ministry?
PRIME MINISTER:
He's a good colleague, but the important thing is that the action taken by the Government was upheld by the Senate - that's the outcome that matters in these things - and it was the right outcome.
JOURNALIST:
Does it go against the grain for you as a Liberal not to defend the rights of the States and the Territories, in fact override democratically-elected Governments and their wills?
PRIME MINISTER:
Not where issues that are more important than State or Territory rights are involved. No, I don't think State rights or Territory rights are ends in themselves.
JOURNALIST:
What is there so fearful about allowing gay people to have civil unions, why does that...
PRIME MINISTER:
It's not a question of it being fearful, I mean that's your word, that's not mine. I believe that there is a special place in our community for marriage as commonly understood and by keeping that as a special institution, and in order to do that you have to say no to arrangements that imitate it, and if you actually had read this legislation, plainly the civil unions in the ACT were designed to be marriage in all but name. The law actually said so and there can be no argument about that. And it's a form of minority fundamentalism to say that because we want to preserve the special status of marriage, as a union for life of a man and a women, that we're discriminating against homosexual people, we're not. I'm in favour of removing discrimination in the law in relation to property rights, where that's appropriate, but I do not believe that any arrangement other than the arrangement of marriage as commonly understood in our community should be sanctioned by law. And that's the basis on which I form my attitude and also can I say the attitude of all of my Cabinet colleagues and the overwhelming feeling of our Party Room. This is not a sort of one-man crusade on my part, there's overwhelming feeling in our Party Room on this subject.
JOURNALIST:
Just quickly and finally Prime Minister John Howard in Canberra, Mike Rann has written to you, caught up in the World Cup soccer fever, suggesting that we make a bid for a future World Cup, to host it in Australia, as we have successfully done with the Olympics of course. Any merit in that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh I think as a matter of principle, yes. When, how, in what method, so forth needs to be talked about. But there is no world event that is beyond the capacity of Australia to organise superbly. We are very good at it, we proved that in Melbourne in 1956, we proved it in Sydney in 2000, Melbourne again with the Commonwealth Games, and the very successful Rugby World Cup and I'm sure anywhere in Australia virtually, where there's a large population and the necessary infrastructure we could do it and I'd be very happy to talk to Mr Rann about that if he wants to raise it in a general way of the next COAG meeting, that's fine by me. Just exactly when and how and so forth we obviously need to talk about. But as a matter of principle I'm certainly in favour of us looking at as a nation, it should be done on a national basis.
JOURNALIST:
I think he'll be very happy to hear that. Prime Minister John Howard, thank you for talking to us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.