GRANT GOLDMAN:
The Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, joins us. Good morning, Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Grant, it’s lovely to be with you.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
You too. Let’s hope our football team starts getting a bit better. They’re outside the eight at the moment. We have got to take on the Broncos on Saturday. How are we going to go with that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, look, let’s hope the mighty Sea Eagles have a better weekend this weekend. But look, I was listening to your earlier comments about Adam Goodes and I know this is a pretty hot issue and I know that it has been very controversial for lots of people. I am looking at the back page of the Herald Sun and there is quite a tribute to Adam Goodes. All the AFL Captains are speaking as one on their brother – “stand with us”. Look, I can understand why he is upset because no one should be subject to taunts. They particularly shouldn’t be subject to racial taunts and yes we’re a robust people and I guess politicians typically get booed at the footy but Adam Goodes is a good bloke and he is a great player and I hope he will be treated with civility and dignity.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Me too. Well, a week off and maybe he can get on with it after that. Look, he is a star, Adam Goodes, and the booing in all honesty did get out of control. Let’s hope he has the weekend off and gets back to doing what he does back and that is playing Australian Rules with the Sydney Swans.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that is exactly right. You don’t have to agree with everything that Adam says. You don’t have to, I suppose, like his footy team but nevertheless I think there should be a basic respect given to all sports people and certainly the last thing we want in Australia is anything, anything at all that smacks of racism.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Well said, well said. Prime Minister, the debris found on the ironically named Reunion Island near Madagascar is believed to be part of this MH370 that we have been looking for for 18 months now. Has anything been confirmed as yet?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, nothing has been confirmed but obviously this is by far the most encouraging sign so far. Let’s hope this does turn out to be the first bit of specific evidence for the whereabouts of the plane. This has been an absolutely baffling mystery up til now. We have long thought it went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean and, at last, it seems that we may be on the verge of some confirmation. As far as I am concerned, Grant, we owe it to the families of the six Australians on board. We owe it to the families of all on board, we owe it to the travelling public because there is hardly a one of us who doesn’t travel by air at some stage to do everything we humanly can to get to the bottom of this.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Look, have we been looking in the right place? That question has been asked and they say about the Indian Ocean very strong current movements moving in a clockwise direction and pushing everything westerly. A lot of the experts are saying that is exactly where any wreckage would end up.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we do have a high degree of confidence that we know the arc in which the plane disappeared. Now, I presume that if this wreckage does turn out to be from a Boeing 777 that the analysts will do their best with regression work to try to work out exactly where it came from. Now, I don’t know how accurate that will be but I dare say it will give us some more evidence and it might enable us to further refine the search area, it might.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Well, we will cross our fingers on that one. Just quickly, Madam Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop, is under a fair bit of fire at the moment due to entitlements and perhaps not passing the pub test and that goes on on all sides of Parliament. Is this something that needs to be looked at, perhaps in the future, we have got Parliamentarians doing the right thing here as opposed to the pub test if you like?
PRIME MINISTER:
Grant, everyone should do the right thing, absolutely everyone should do the right thing. Everyone should operate within the rules and I think if there is one lesson that every single politician must have had reinforced by all of this, it is that you cannot get away with exploiting the rules. Now, as for Bronny, she has repaid the money – with penalties – she is obviously deeply remorseful. Anyone who saw her on television yesterday would know that this is a very, very chastened person indeed. The Department of Finance is reviewing all of her expenditures going back 10 years and obviously if there is anything which is outside the rules it will be repaid instantly with penalties. So, I am utterly determined, Grant, that the rules will be enforced and I should also indicate that already the Government has significantly tightened up the rules.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
The Speaker of the House doesn’t come under your control does it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, her overseas travel doesn’t have to be approved by me. She has got a budget which she can work within but the point I am trying to make, Grant, is that we have already significantly tightened up the rules. We banned politicians travelling overseas first class, we have heavily limited family travel inside Australia and overseas, and we have banned immediate family employment and as you know there were quite a few members of Parliament who were employing spouses, children, et cetera in their offices and that is all now being stopped. So, a lot has happened and let’s see what else might emerge out of the review that is going on now.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
True. I look forward to seeing the Prime Minister sitting next to me on an overseas trip in economy class – it could be very interesting.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, look, I took the family overseas at Christmas 2013 and we certainly made the very long trip to Europe in economy class. That’s what the people do and that’s what we certainly did when we were travelling privately.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Look, just what the people do and what the people are saying at the moment is that Tony Abbott is doing a fair job. Would you say that given the fact that it looked a bit shaky for you about 12 months ago things are on the up and up for the Coalition?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Grant the last thing I am going to do is blow my own trumpet or mark my own report card because that is what the public will do…
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Every three years.
PRIME MINISTER:
…every three years. I think a lot of good things are happening. I think that the Budget was very well received, I think that the small business Budget boost, the instant asset write-off has been very good for confidence. Obviously, we have had almost 300,000 more jobs in the economy since the election. Our economy is growing, almost, well, it’s just about the fastest growth in the developed world right now and the three free trade agreements are tremendously important for our long term future. So, look, I think a lot that’s good has happened but the public, rightly, expect a lot of their leaders and every day we have got to be focusing not on what happened yesterday but on what is going to happen today and tomorrow.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
That’s right. In the Australian vernacular, under the pump non-stop. Look, there has been a tidal wave of suggestions that perhaps there was an early election. Can you knock that on the head?
PRIME MINISTER:
My absolute determination is to do what we were elected to do and that was to govern as well as we possibly could for three years and to scrap the carbon tax, to scrap the mining tax, to stop the boats, to get the Budget back under control, to build the roads of the 21st Century and we are making very good progress on all of those things. One of those things that I am very pleased with which we didn’t talk about at the election but which I know a lot of people have been talking about for years is country of origin labelling. We made some announcements last week on that which are very good. I think that certainly by the end of this year, by the beginning of next year, we will start to see on our supermarket shelves much more instructive and informative labelling so that if people are determined to buy Australian they can.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Well, you have got to stop the lawyers writing the things on the cans because you don’t understand them – that’s the problem. It is unclear.
PRIME MINISTER:
And you can’t see it. The point of this new system is that if it has got the kangaroo symbol it will be effectively manufactured in Australia. If the gold bar underneath is there it will mean manufactured in Australian from Australian products. So, it is going to be vastly more informative. I mean there is no perfect system but what we are hoping is that most manufacturers, at least, will supplement what is actually on the package with some further material which is available online. So, if you have got the right app on your smart phone you can go and have a look at that material as well and get the full detail.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
That’s good news. Good news, we look forward to that coming to fruition. One last question about the MH17 that was shot down over the Ukraine – what is the latest from Putin on that situation now?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, as you know Grant I have had some conversations with President Putin on this and I have made it very clear to him that while I don’t hold him personally responsible it is pretty obvious that this was a battery launcher – a missile battery which came out of Russia, went into the Ukraine, fired and then once the truth of what they had done was apparent they scuttled back into Russia. Now, plainly this has all happened in the context of an aggressive Russian war against Ukraine. Russia is stirring up trouble here and tragically 298 innocent people – 40 Australians – were killed in an atrocity, a crime, that stemmed from the trouble which is being stirred up by Russia in Eastern Ukraine. Now, as I said, I don’t hold President Putin personally responsible for this but I believe that he is responsible for doing whatever he and his country can to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice. That is why it is an absolute outrage, an absolute outrage, that Russia vetoed this resolution in the Security Council to establish an international tribunal. If Russia’s hands are clean, what has Russia to hide? That is the point.
GRANT GOLDMAN:
Well, the world knows that Russia has something to answer for. Prime Minister, thank you for your time this morning – always appreciated here at the Super Network.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you, Grant.
[ends]