LAWS:
Prime Minister good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Morning John.
LAWS:
It's been a funny sort of week hasn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, I've had a few funny weeks in politics.
LAWS:
None this funny I'll bet?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, I don't know whether funny is quite the word. In its literal meaning it's not been funny. Funny as in unusual, yes, funny amusing, rip-roaring laughter, no.
LAWS:
No. Did you expect this to happen?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh no, but I have learnt to expect the unexpected in politics. I often say that to my colleagues. I don't know that I had any idea that this was going to happen, because I, well particularly the specifics of it, but look I haven't sort of spent any time over the last few days wondering whether I expected it to happen or not happen. What I tend to do in life with these things is you deal with them when they come along, rather than pondering as to why they might happen or not happen.
Look I understand fully that in any competitive environment, whether it's politics or sport, or business, or the media, entertainment; there are a lot of ambitions, a lot of ambitious people. I'd be the last person to decry ambition in my deputy or indeed any of my other colleagues because I was ambitious myself and I think it's important that people retain ambition. But in the end these things are resolved by the will of ones' peers and my peers are the men and women of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party.
LAWS:
Are you still ambitious?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes. There are still a lot of things I want to do. I find that I'm still very committed to this job and I still get stimulated by it. I still enjoy meeting people. I went out to Blacktown in western Sydney yesterday and met hundreds of people, dropped into Macca's at Blacktown on the way.
And actually dropping in unheralded to a McDonald's in a suburb of one of our big cities and talking to people in a completely surprised environment for them is actually a better way of finding out how people are thinking than some events that are more pre-arranged. Nobody in that McDonald's expected me to turn up. I was a bit early so I went and had a cappuccino with a couple of my staff, my security detail and chatted to probably 30-odd people who were coming and going, and they were a great cross-section of my fellow Australians and very interesting.
LAWS:
I'm sure, I'm sure it was. The people that have been talking to me over the last few days, some have suggested, and I did tell my listeners I'd put this to you, and I know what the answer is going to be, but some have suggested that this whole thing is some sort of cynical ploy to get the IR problem off the front page.
PRIME MINISTER:
You've got to be joking.
LAWS:
That's what I said.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh dear me, really? Really?
LAWS:
Oh yeah, a lot.
PRIME MINISTER:
Really?
LAWS:
Oh yeah.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that's interesting. Well I can assure them through your very wide-reaching programme that that is not the case. I think it's a very important issue, industrial relations, and we're very happy to, I'm very happy to talk about it. I think its benefits on employment in Australia as the years go by will be very significant. I think we will have more people employed in small business as a result of these IR changes and that is one of the principal reasons why I wanted to bring them in.
LAWS:
Okay. But hasn't the time come for you to end the uncertainty? I mean the front page of The Australian this morning screams at us, PM to declare future in weeks. Have they got it right?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm talking to my colleagues about these issues. I've said repeatedly and I said at the time of the last election, and I know you've heard this expression before, so don't groan, that I will remain Leader of the Party as long as the Party wants me to and it's in its best interests that I do so.
Now that was what I told the public at the last election and I do place some store on keeping faith with what I told the public and they elected me on that basis. They didn't say to me every day of the campaign we want you to nominate the precise date when you will leave politics, apart from the fact that it was in their capacity to send me packing at the time of the last election if they'd wanted to.
But I understand what you're saying and I understand what others are saying, but I listen to people, I talk to my colleagues about this. And if in fact I'm serious about saying I'll continue for so long as my Party wants me to and it's in the Party's best interests, isn't keeping faith with that process, to actually talk rather widely within the Parliamentary Party? And that is what I have done and what I continue to do, perhaps a little more intensely now than before because the issue is on people's minds, people are thinking about it.
LAWS:
But your Party, you know that your Party wants you to stay, because if they didn't want you to stay Peter Costello would have the numbers to challenge you and he's not about to do that because he hasn't got the numbers, so obviously the Party wants you to stay?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the sense I have is that the overwhelming bulk of my colleagues want two things. They want me to stay in my current position and they want Peter to stay in his current position and that obviously is what I have said over the past few days. That is my current assessment but it's important with something like this that you don't allow a deliberation process to be accelerated or concertinaed by suddenly occurring events.
And I have had an ongoing dialogue with my colleagues in different ways about this and I'll continue to do so.
LAWS:
Okay.
PRIME MINISTER:
And I'm not obviously going to be pressured or stampeded into taking some decision or making some immediate announcement just because of the events of the past few days.
LAWS:
Okay, but given that you know the Party wants you to stay, that you certainly would have a vast majority in the Party, and you're aware of that, can't I consider that a declaration that you are going to stay?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think you can only consider my position to be what I have stated it to be. And I haven't made declarations on this, or indeed any other programme. I am flattered by some of the things that have been said by people over the past few days and I appreciate those things very much. I'll continue the dialogue but I don't want anybody to think that that's some kind of half-hearted rote response. I have to say I still am greatly stimulated by this job.
For example, we have got a hugely important COAG meeting tomorrow where I hope that we can achieve some really important breakthroughs in a number of areas and that a Federal Liberal Government can cooperate in a very constructive, reformist way, with eight state and territory Labor governments. We've had good COAG meetings in the past and I believe we can have a very good COAG meeting tomorrow. I'll be having a dinner with the Premiers tonight as is customary and we'll talk about the agenda, we'll do a bit of business over dinner and tomorrow I hope we emerge with a lot of agreement. I have written to the Premiers this morning outlining my hopes in areas like better services for young children and improved pre-school education, improved childcare services, preventive health initiatives, raising literacy and numeracy, establishing a national electricity transmission grid, the roll out of smart electricity meters, harmonised road and rail regulation.
LAWS:
Are you going to do this all in one day?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I hope to do a lot of it in one day, yes.
LAWS:
That's a lot.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean we have done a lot of preparatory work and there's been quite serious work undertaken. And there are some areas where we're not going cooperate. Obviously the Labor Party has a very different view on industrial relations from mine and we have to agree to disagree on that issue.
LAWS:
What are your intentions regarding the James Hardie compensation fund?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm going to listen to what they have got to say. But I really think James Hardie is trying to offload part of its responsibility to the Australian taxpayer.
LAWS:
They are.
PRIME MINISTER:
And I don't think I should, on behalf of the Australian taxpayer, go along with that. Now I'll listen to what Morris Iemma has got to say, and I'll politely listen to what all the Premiers have got to say, but essentially what the Premiers and the ACTU and James Hardie are saying is that although this compensation fund is manifestly not a charity, they nonetheless want it treated as a charity for tax purposes.
And the argument is advanced that the previous medical research fund that James Hardie had had tax exemption, and therefore this should. But that was a medical research fund. This is a compensation fund.
LAWS:
And there is a difference.
PRIME MINISTER:
There's a huge difference, a huge difference. And I don't always agree with the tax office rulings and I know the tax office is usually unpopular with everybody because it's their job to bell the cat and say you've got to pay some tax.
But what is lost in this whole debate is that the old James Hardie fund was a fund for medical research into the diseases flowing from asbestos. And that was plainly, according to all our traditional tax principles, plainly a fund that was entitled to tax exemption. But this new fund is the compensation fund, which is a vehicle to meet James Hardies' legal obligations and I, for the life of me, can't accept that the rest of us should pick up the tab for part of James Hardies' legal responsibilities.
LAWS:
Okay, we've only got a couple of minutes left. Can I quickly ask you a couple of other things? What can be done about petrol prices? They're only going to get worse.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well nothing dramatic in the short term. We are beginning to see a very significant increase in the usages of ethanol, targets are going to be reached. I am re-examining the economics of the relationship between petrol and LPG. There are some very interesting developments occurring with LPG. I understand, for example, that one of the major car manufacturers now fits more than 20 per cent of its newly manufactured vehicles with LPG, rather than petrol. But in the short term, like all other countries, we are burdened with very high petrol prices.
LAWS:
And we've got to live with it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I am searching for ways, and I do want to say to your listeners that I do understand how painful this is and I am searching in different ways all the time to see if there can be some additional relief at the margin. But cutting the excise is not a solution.
LAWS:
What about cutting the GST on the excise?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the GST, I'm sorry, the excise was reduced when the GST was brought in so that there would be no net additional tax collection. Now you could cut the GST, but of course the GST goes to the states and I don't know that they would be arguing for it to be cut. And to be fair, and I've sometimes been accused of not being fair to the states, could I say that there is what the economists call a substitution effect, that if you've got to pay $100 more for petrol over a given period of time, and you pay some GST on that, that's $100 less you have available to spend on new clothes on which you might pay GST. So the net GST collections may not be any higher.
LAWS:
Okay, just finally, and we've only got about 60 seconds, but I'm very interested to know what other frontbenchers do you consider to be Prime Ministerial material?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh look my position has always been that if I went under a bus Peter would be the logical replacement and my view has not changed. Now I don't say that in denigration of others, and in the end I don't choose the successor if I am out of the way, the successor is chosen by the men and women of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, and it would be their decision. Now I remain of the view that if I go under that bus, Peter is the man.
LAWS:
Okay, Prime Minister we are out of time. I've enjoyed very much talking to you and thank you for, I understood why you couldn't talk to us earlier in the week, but thank you for getting back to us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
LAWS:
Nice to talk to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Bye bye.
[ends]