Subjects: new tax system; work for the dole; army reserve; consultancy use; nursing homes; Olympic security; Fiji; Bob Carr; cricket match fixing.
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
MILLER:
Let’s hop right into it. Apart from the problems yesterday revealed with Franklins, it would appear to have all gone very smoothly.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well so far it’s gone well. I don’t want to exaggerate or gloat in any way. I always thought it would go better than the Labor Party hoped it would. They hoped it would have been a disaster. It wasn’t. People have seen the fairness of it. The most regular comment I get is that people are surprised and pleased at the size of the personal tax cuts, and they’re surprised and pleased that their weekend shopping bill for the necessities of life has not gone up by more than a few dollars. That’s the most frequent comment I get. But we still have a distance to go but I can honestly say that it has gone well and I think the Australian public as always has displayed a great commonsense capacity, and they’ve ignored the doom and gloom that was spouted by the Labor Party who hoped it would be a failure. And it hasn’t been a failure. It really has so far been very successful and Australia will be the winner because we have needed a strong and better and fairer taxation system for many years.
It was very hard getting it accepted, it was very hard getting it through the Parliament. We ran the gauntlet of constant sabotage and attack in the weeks leading up to its introduction. It was easy to scare people with horror stories of dramatic price increases. Now that people have had an opportunity of almost a month to experience it they are separating the wheat from the chaff. They know that it’s fairer than they were told by our opponents, and I’m glad that people have at long last had the opportunity of experiencing it. But there’s still time to go and there will continue to be some challenges and the odd glitch. You mentioned the issue regarding one of the supermarket companies yesterday. I think that’s an example of how the system works. Rather than it being a problem I think it demonstrates the vigilance of the public and also the readiness of the ACCC.
Now I don’t want to comment on the merits because obviously the company has a point of view to put in relation to the inadvertent character of the charging of the GST, and it’s got a right to put those views, and I don’t want to say any more that might prejudice the proper consideration of the company’s point of view.
MILLER:
All right. Well, a day-long Cabinet meeting I understand in Sydney today. Given that this introduction of the new taxation system has thus far gone smoothly any way, although I understand that another bit of a crunch will come when business has to actually start complying and doing the paperwork, where do we go from here? What’s now on your Government’s agenda?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, as always you must look forward. We, on a regular basis have Cabinet meetings where we talk not so much about particular agenda items but about the general direction of the Government. And it’s appropriate half way through the Government’s second term, with tax reform now a fact of life and going reasonably well, indeed some would say very well, it is proper that we turn our eyes to the future. What other things does the Government hope to achieve, and there are a lot of things we do hope to achieve. We have in front of us a major report on the direction of welfare chaired by the boss of Mission Australia, one of the big welfare organisations, Patrick McClure.
This report will be officially in the hands of the Government any day now. It provides a whole series of recommendations about the future direction of welfare in Australia. I want to make it clear that in no way will this report recommend, nor would the Government countenance in any way, affecting the social security safety net. There’s no longer an argument in Australia about the need to provide support for the needy and the underprivileged in our society. That is a given, that’s a given on our side of politics and I’m sure it’s a given in every section of the Australian community. But there are ways in which you can improve the delivery of welfare, there are ways in which you can ensure that people who are not entitled to benefits don’t get them, and there are ways of ensuring that people who are on welfare are encouraged to the maximum extent possible to participate in work of different varieties in different kinds of community service including as announced on Sunday service in the defence reserve.
All of these things are really ways of getting people back into the workforce. We’ve been very successful in cutting unemployment. We’ve now got the lowest unemployment rate for 10 years, we’ve generated 743,000 new jobs in four-and-a-half years. But you can still do a lot more. And there are ways and means in which we can improve the delivery of services to those who need them, and there are ways in which we can improve the reintroduction of people who’ve been out of contact with the labour market for a long time, smooth their reintroduction into jobs.
MILLER:
Let me take out the issue of the defence reserve. I had a call from a father, a concerned father earlier this morning who said that having heard the news report by the weekend his son was lickety split up to the CES on Monday morning. His son’s been unemployed for two years, he’s very keen to find some work. And his son, he said was very disappointed with the outcome when he asked about the defence reserve situation. Can we clarify that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I’m surprised that he was disappointed. I mean, if perhaps he could off air give you his name and telephone number, I will get someone in my office to make contact with him and find out the source of his disappointment. But the idea is that if you have a work for the dole obligation, in other words if you’re in that category of people who’s got to give something back in return for the unemployment benefit, and it generally applies to people in their 20s, then one of the things you can do in return for the dole is to serve in the Army Reserve. Now you have to meet all of the obligations of reserve service – the entry requirements, the fitness requirements. There’s been no lowering of standards. And any reserve pay you get won’t be counted against your unemployment benefit. But if you do that than that is regarded as a sufficient acquittal of your obligation to work for your dole. So it’s part of the mutual obligation pattern. And I’m just not quite sure how he’s disappointed.
MILLER:
Well I think he got the impression gathering from what his father was saying, that there had been some relaxation in the recruiting standards. But that’s very definitely not the case?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, there’s no relaxation in recruiting standards. There was never intended to be. I mean you still have to meet the physical and all the other requirements. You can’t, that wouldn’t be fair to the other people in the reserve, would it.
MILLER:
Ok, let’s move on now – genetically modified food, a big issue with many Australians. A survey showing 93% of Australians want to know what’s in their food. 60% say they wouldn’t buy genetically modified meats until, God knows they probably already are in some sense. But why then do you still hold that some foods etc could be exempt from labelling requirements?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it’s just a question of what’s practicable, particularly for small business. And what we’ve said, that is in relation to certain fast foods and where the amount of modification is less than 1%, it’s imposing too great a burden on business to require them to label it. That’s all. I am not against labelling of genetically modified products. I am part of the 93%. I think people should be given information. But where the amount of modification is so slight, below 1%, it is imposing an unreasonable burden, particularly on small business, to require them to do it. But these things are not costless. Some consumer advocates imagine that you can impose all of these regulations on business and then not have to pay any more for the product. You have to have a sense of balance. And all I am arguing for, and it is a matter for governments around the states and in New Zealand whether they accept it, all I am arguing for is that when the amount of modification is so slight as to be insignificant then it is not reasonable to require labelling. I don’t think that’s unreasonable at all. I think it’s just a sensible, pragmatic, commonsense approach to something where most people agree labelling, generally speaking should be required.
MILLER:
Okay, moving onto again. Yesterday on this programme, Senator John Faulkner was making some fairly scathing comments about the level of consultancy usage by your Government, quoting figures of hundreds of millions of dollars and citing instances where senior public servants have accepted redundancy packages, or taken retirement packages virtually on a Friday, walked out the door with a huge cheque in their pocket and then come back as well paid consultants on the Monday morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Senator Faulkner would know a lot about redundancies, a lot about consultancies because they started and they were well entrenched during the years of the Hawke and Keating Governments. Now there has been an increase in the number of consultants and that’s because of two reasons. Firstly that the pattern of work in the 90’s now is of somewhat less permanent, full time work and a greater amount of consulting and casual and part-time work. And that trend has spread to the public service, as it has to other parts of the community and of itself is no reason why you should be concerned about the growth of consultancies. It is a question of whether you get value for money.
I make the important point that when a government department employs a consultant, the government department has to find the money to pay for the consultant from within the department’s budget. And it’s wrong as Senator Faulkner implies, and others imply, including some press reports in the Courier Mail recently, that every time a consultant is employed that is additional government money being spent. It is not. You’ve got to pay for the consultancies within your budget allocation so that if you employ a consultant in one area and you pay for that as you have to, then you have less money in another area to pay for another activity. And if you look at the Federal Budget you will find that the allocation for just about every department in real terms has either been contained or reduced since we came to office, with the exception of course of the payments for essential welfare recipients and so forth such as pensions.
But, any suggestion that because we have more consultants we are naturally and automatically spending more money is wrong. You still have to pay for those consultants from within your budget allocation. If the Treasury gives a department a hundred million dollars a year and it decides to have more consultants than it did the previous year, it’s still got to pay for those consultants from within the one hundred million dollars.
MILLER:
So, it’s not an exercise in creative accounting?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, it is not an exercise. It is an exercise in responding to the flexibility of modern employment practices. Clearly we, you engage a lot of consultants for one-off projects. For example the privatisation of part of Telstra involved employing consultants for a period of time to manage that. You have a lot of one-off tasks, a lot of ministerial offices… Mr Keating had consultants. I’ve had consultants. It doesn’t mean that you add the money to your budget allocation, it means that you have to pay for those people from within your budget allocation.
MILLER:
You can understand the concern though when people see huge sums of money, even if as you say it all comes in and the bottom line is . . . .
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I understand that and that’s why I am glad you raised the question and I have an opportunity of explaining it.
MILLER:
Okay. Let’s move on then again and the performance of Bronwyn Bishop. Again in the Courier Mail this morning, it has been criticised for her poorly-designed and run scheme for handling nursing home complaints. Are you satisfied with her performance?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes. As for that Ombudsman’s report, I will be getting an assessment of that report in the next couple of days. I have not read it yet. And until I have had an opportunity of analysing the report and having a look at the assessment I don’t automatically accept what is contained in the report. But of course I support the minister, and of course I support the job that the minister and her department is doing. It’s a difficult, emotional area and it’s easy for people to run scare stories. It’s also the case that this Government and under, largely under this minister, have introduced a new accreditation scheme for nursing homes throughout Australia. And it’s inevitable in the introduction of that accreditation scheme that there has been a greater spotlight on the performance of nursing homes than ever before, and there are some bad nursing homes in Australia. There always has been under any government. But what this Government has done is to establish an accreditation scheme which actually forces all nursing homes in Australia to look to their standards, look to their performance and measure them against the criteria contained in the accreditation scheme. And that’s something that no former government ever did.
MILLER:
It is fairly damning though when the Commonwealth Ombudsman finds that federal public servants running the complaints scheme were confused and didn’t know how to deal with complaints.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well John, as I say I’ve, I’m getting an assessment of that Ombudsman’s report and until I have that, which I expect to be in the next day or two, I am not going to make further comment. But I will be reading it very carefully and obviously taking heed of any reasonable points the Ombudsman’s report makes.
MILLER:
Okay. Olympic security – have we convinced other nations that they don’t have to bring their own guns?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we’ve certainly told them that. And that will be the rule that’s applied. There’s a suggestion in some of the press reports that they didn’t know this. That’s not right. We took this decision more than a year ago. It’s always been our position that we look after security matters. And we have a capacity to do it. We do not want people, as it were, bringing in their own private security armies. We want to run this thing according to the Australian way, in our way. We have very efficient arrangements. We have very able state police, augmented by federal police. So I am not concerned about our capacity to manage the security aspects of the Games and we have made it very clear to foreign governments that they do not have the right to arm their security people. Now I understand they concern of some teams, given past history, but this is Australia and we will make adequate security arrangements for people who are guests in our country during the Games.
MILLER:
What do we do if some of them turn up armed?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we’ll deal with that problem if and when it, if or when it arises. They’ve been told in no uncertain terms that they are not to bring arms into the country.
MILLER:
Okay. On matters of regional security. Are we confident that we have done enough to ensure the return of stability and democracy to Fiji?
PRIME MINISTER:
We have done so far all that we can reasonably do. There are other things you could do but they would be unreasonable. For example trying in effect overnight to destroy the Fijian economy by the imposition of indiscriminate economic sanctions might satisfy some people but it wouldn’t be of any assistance to the people in Fiji that we really want to help. We are unhappy with, we disapprove strongly of what has occurred in Fiji. We want a return of democracy. We believe that Mr Chaudhry’s government should be reinstated. From a practical point of view that doesn’t look as though it’s going to occur. We have imposed a range of measures and all of them send a very clear signal of disapproval to Fiji and I think represent the measure of world displeasure and world unhappiness with what has happened in Fiji. But in the end it’s a domestic argument and in the end countries have to solve their own problems.
It’s always difficult having to find a resolution of a difference of opinion between a community that sees itself as indigenous to a country, as the Fijians do, but also a group of Fijians of Indian heritage who’ve been in that country for several generations and who are just as entitled to call Fiji their home as any other person living in that country.
MILLER:
Yeah, the volatility of the region to our north I suppose you’ve got to say has been amply demonstrated again by the tragic death of a New Zealand soldier in Timor.
PRIME MINISTER:
It has and it’s a reminder to all of us that we are still in a theatre of danger and instability. There’s been an understandable assumption that all was quiet on the East Timor front. This is a very sad reminder that that is not the case. There is still an element of danger for the one and a half thousand, fifteen hundred Australian troops who are still serving under the United Nations flag in East Timor. And there is obviously an obligation on the Indonesian government to do all it can to curb the activities of militias on the border between Indonesia and East Timor. Now I think the Indonesian government has done great things since President Wahid took over. I believe that he’s brought a breath of fresh air and democracy and transparency to that country, the like of which it’s probably never seen. But it’s also important that the border between East Timor and Indonesia be as tight as possible and there’s a responsibility clearly on the Indonesian government to play its part in regard to that.
MILLER:
Okay let’s talk a little bit of politics now. There’s speculation in the Australian newspaper this morning that NSW Premier Bob Carr is under fairly intense pressure from within the Labor Party to revive his interest in a move to federal parliament. Your view on that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I read the story and I also heard Mr Carr’s denial on radio.
MILLER:
Denials are almost confirmation.
PRIME MINISTER:
There almost de rigeur, aren’t they? They are almost confirmation. Look, I guess there must be something in it otherwise a newspaper like The Australian wouldn’t have given it such prominence. In the end that’s a matter for the Labor Party and I’m not going to make some kind of clever, smart alec remark about it but to observe that the greatest problem the Labor Party has is that it doesn’t stand for anything. You know what the Labor Party is against. The Labor Party is against us. The Labor Party is against the Coalition. The Labor Party wants everything the Coalition does to blow up in its face irrespective of the damage done to Australia. Now I think that’s the Labor Party’s greatest problem. You saw that with the GST.
Della Bosca was right. The negative campaign waged by Mr Beazley against the GST is fraudulent. The Labor Party should have thought of Australia rather than it’s own political interests and until the Labor Party gets some policies and starts telling Australia what it stands for… It's easy to tell people what you’re against. If you’re in opposition you’re obviously against the government and you want to get into government. But the Australian people want more from oppositions than that. I know that. I’ve been in opposition and you always do best in opposition when you stand for something and you stop being so negative. But Mr Beazley acknowledges that he carps so I guess all of this is an illustration that people are looking for the Labor Party to stand for something and not be so totally negative.
MILLER:
Prime Minister, we’re almost out of time but I can’t let the morning pass knowing that you are such a passionate cricket fan without raising and asking for your view on the very serious allegations raised last night on Four Corners.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I watched the programme. Like any other cricket lover it was distressing. I guess the best thing I can say is that there is a tremendously heavy obligation on cricket authorities to get to the bottom of this. They carry with them the hopes of millions of cricket lovers throughout the world who want any rottenness in our wonderful game found out, rooted out and thrown out.
MILLER:
All right. Prime Minister John Howard, thank you very much for your time this morning. We’ll have to leave it there. We’ll do it again soon.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]