TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH ALAN JONES, RADIO 2UE,
9 JULY 1990
E O E PROOF ONLY
JONES: The Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, has broken many
records during his Prime Ministership and since his
accession to the leadership of the Labor Party. In March
this year he became the only Labor leader in Australian
political history to ever be elected to lead his Party
for a fourth term in office. Today another milestone.
At the end of today he will have served 2,678 days in
office which is a hell of a lot. I think it's seven
years and four months and so many days and that will make
him equal to Malcolm Fraser as the country's longest
serving Prime Minister. When he wakes tomorrow he will
be on to the 2,679th day to make him the second longest
serving Prime Minister to Sir Robert Menzies. He's
denied he's aiming to break Menzies' record he'd have
5,000 days to go, but he reckons he is going to lead the
Party to the fifth Federal poll. Anything is possible.
The Prime Minister is on the line. Prime Minister, good
morning. PM: Morning, Alan.
JONES: Congratulations from all our listeners and from
everybody else. A very important and significant
milestone. PM: Thank you very much indeed, Alan.
JONES: A little bit of history created over the weekend
as well, I guess, with Navratilova and West Germany, so
you're part of all that.
PM: Yes, it's been a big weekend for them hasn't it?
JONES: Did you pick the winners?
PM: No, but a mate of mine was brilliant in regard to
the tennis. He took six to one Navratilova early in the
business and then was able to lay off with Zina
Garrison and so he was, he was looking pretty.
JONES: I notice I just had an interview before you came
on air about a man who's a psychiatrist at the Cumberland
Hospital who tells us that we're outlaying more money
than ever before on gambling. I suppose you'd say I'm
into that they've got a bit of yours haven't they?
PM: Well, I find it very relaxing. It's one thing that
keeps me sane, I think, being able to turn off on the
horses every now and again.
JONES: You're not after Menzies' record surely, that's-
PM: No, no.
JONES: Could I just ask you a couple of questions
because we just wanted to congratulate you, but a couple
of questions I suppose not necessarily involving
themselves in the day to day detail. I was interested
that in the opening of the Premiers Conference two weeks
ago, you described Australia as the most over-governed
country in the world which was a consistent theme that
you used in the Boyer Lectures now many years ago.
PM: Yes.
JONES: Do you find there will be scope within your Prime
Ministership to advocate the abolition of the States or
is that something that you would like to get involved in
once you cease being Prime Minister? Is there a case for
that?
PM: The case I put in the Boyer Lectures in 1979, but I
know that in my political lifetime, Alan, I would think
for some time beyond that it's not realistically on the
agenda. I've simply said, and I think there wouldn't be
a single Australian that would disagree with me, that if
now, at the end of the 20th century, you were starting
from scratch and writing a Constitution which was
appropriate for the Australia that was approaching the
21st century, you wouldn't have exactly the same sort of
arrangements that were regarded as appropriate by the six
colonies reluctantly agreeing to come together at the end
of the 19th century.
JONES: There is massive duplication isn't there?
PM: Well, if you just think about it, look at the number
of Houses of Parliament we've got with the six States
that's 11 Houses of Parliament, because Queensland has
only got one, there's 11 there, then you've got the
Parliament in the Northern Territory and then you've got
the Capital Territory here. So there's
JONES: Thirteen.
PM: Thirteen plus two Federal, there's fifteen. You've
got fifteen Houses of Parliament for 17 million people.
JONES: It's a joke isn't it?
PM: Well, it's on that basis that I say that Australia
is the most over-governed country in the world.
JONES: But is there nothing we can do about it?
PM: Well, ultimately Australians have got it in their
own hands as to what they do, but what, I want to be a
practical deliverer of change if I can and what I've
suggested and I'll be making a major speech next week
about this, Alan is I think the obligation is upon the
leadership of the Federal Government and of the State
Governments to come together and to see how we make this
existing system work better and I think that really
involves two things, as I'll be spelling out in my
speech. Firstly, it involves getting the evidence,
seeing how we look at the way we often duplicate
functions, overlap the things we do and see if we can't
get a better way of dividing up functions between us.
That is simply by agreement between the Commonwealth and
the States and not forgetting local government as well
and, secondly, to see if we can get together, that is the
States and the Commonwealth Government and the major
political parties, a better approach to the question of
Constitutional change and if we do those two things, as
I've said, in the last century, at that last decade, the
1890s, they took all of that ten years then to prepare
the Constitution which came into effect at the
beginning of this century. I think we ought to use this
last decade of the 1990s to see if successively we can't
get Australia into better shape to cope with what's going
to be an extremely competitive, tough, difficult 21st
century. JONES: Well if I could just take that one final thing,
better shape, because you've got to go and so have we,
but monetary policy, without getting ourselves embroiled
in ideological argument or, indeed, political argument.
People like Button and Walsh, on the one hand, or public
servant people like Charles and Phillips on the other,
have been arguing that perhaps we ' ye gone too far on this
high interest rate strategy. Now the job figures are
looking bad, there are more and more people out of work,
perhaps 10,000 small businesses a month going down the
drain. Is there a sensitivity in Canberra to the
dramatic problems that ordinary Australians are facing
and how much longer can they endure this interest rate
strategy without really discernible benefit?
PM: Well, yes, there is sensitivity to it. We may be
physically remote. But I can assure you there is a total
sensitivity to the problems, but there's also the
sensitivity particularly to what the alternative would be
for this country if we did not lower the level of demand.
Because if we didn't lower the level of demand which has
all these implications that you are talking about,
rightly, Alan, but if we didn't do that then, of course,
the economy would collapse. We just can't go on as a
country consuming more than we produce.
JONES: But doesn't the current account figure each month
demonstrate that we're not being successful at reducing
demand? We've still got this export/ import imbalance
PM: Well the implication of that is, as you'll
appreciate, the logical implication of that is that the
tight monetary policy has to go on until we do.
JONES: How much longer do you think people can endure
that? PM: Well, the answer again is
JONES: I mean, what I'm saying, I suppose I'm saying to
you isn't there a more satisfactory mix?
PM: There are only three arms of policy, without
sounding like the jargon-ridden economist, there are only
three arms of policy. That's a fiscal one, that's what
you do with taxes and your budget, that's one. Secondly,
there's wages policy and third, there is wages policy,
fiscal policy and monetary policy.
JONES: But couldn't we encourage people to save? This
is what the big debate is about isn't it? I mean, you
and Paul Keating
PM: We've done more to encourage people to save than had
ever been done before because with the arrangements with
regard, made in regard to people providing for their own
retirement through the superannuation provisions, there
is now undergoing a massive increase in the allocation of
funds by the Australian people to superannuation,
massive. More than anything that's ever happened before.
JONES: But what about something like no tax on the
interest that's accrued from savings? That would be a
tremendous incentive to save, to stop spending.
PM: Yes, but everyone has looked at that, including the
Opposition who ran around with it remember when,
earlier last year, when the then leader, Andrew Peacock,
went on his initial dry run for the election. He said
this is the salvation and, of course, we then exposed all
the weaknesses in that and they've looked at it since and
they know, both sides of politics, we know and the
Opposition know that the, without it's too detailed to
go into it all
JONES: Yes, sure.
PM: The offsetting disadvantages to it are so great that
neither side of politics is putting it forward as a
realistic JONES: Alright, well the only other way you can get out
of difficulty that we're in, really, I suppose, is to
work harder, to produce more. What if Bob Hawke went on
television and said look, I've talked to everybody around
the traps and I've talked to people at the races and I'm
just saying to you tonight in a couple of minutes we've
all got to get off our butts and work harder, everyone of
us and outline how that should happen. I mean, the only
way we can get out of the debt, isn't it, is to sell off
the farm, borrow more or work harder? Now the first two
options are hopeless. The third option seems to be to
produce more. We're not actually doing as much as we
might as a nation, are we?
PM: We can always do more, that's right. But
Australians shouldn't sell themselves short by easy
propaganda. If you look at the statistics that cover the
performance of Australians over this decade, there has
been a significant productivity performance.
Australians, by world standards generally, and in
manufacturing industry now, in particular, are doing
well. They can do better. They always can and I accept
that, you know, people ought to work even harder than
they do, but it's not a question of just working harder.
It's basically a question of working smarter and that's
why we've got to get the right technology in here, we've
got to be prepared to upgrade the equipment and the
capital with which we operate and that's why Australians
let me make this point strongly and I'll do it until
the day I die Australians must not be xenophobic. They
must not say that we're good enough to do everything in
this tough competitive world on our own resources. We
have to be prepared to have the best of foreign capital
and investment into this country, so that we can combine
the talents of Australian workers with the best
technology and equipment in the world. If we want to do
the worst thing we possibly can, for our kids and their
kids, Alan, what we'll do is succumb to the cheap and
easy anti foreign approach that unfortunatly I see
emerging in this country.
JONES: Well, a bit of it from your own mates in
Queensland lending a little bit of that. You might give
Wayne Goss a bit of a kick in the head.
PM: Mate, I have made my position clear to my friends in
Queensland and elsewhere and I will take on anyone,
whether they be in my Party or elsewhere, because I know
that for the kids of today who are going to be the
Australians of the next century, the absolute essential
for them is that we get as much of the best into this
country from overseas that we can, so that we are able to
take on the rest of the world. If we don't we'll go down
and down and down.
JONES: Well just one thing on that. Look 2,678 days PM,
it's a hell of a lot of time to be running the show, how
did we get so crook? I mean that a hell
6
PM: No, no, come on. Don't just be an Australian
knocker JONES: No, I'm not a knocker
PM: No, but you look at the statistics that were there
in the papers the other day. Unfortunately you'd have to
search with a microscope to see them played up, but there
was a set of statistics the other day that showed if you
take the measure of wellbeing, which is not simply, not
simply gross domestic product and population, but taking
into account the whole range of things which determine
the quality of life and the standard of life, Australia
was well up there in the top countries of the world
JONES: But it's a Christopher Skase form of wellbeing
isn't it? It's the big jets and the big expenses on
someone elses dough and eventually you are found out and
you've got absolutely nothing, got the backside out of
your pants
PM: On the contrary, it's not. If you look at the issue
of education. That's not a Christopher Skase sort of
indicia, but Australia now in this decade, has brought
itself up from one where only a fraction, less than a
third of our kids, were going on and staying on in
school, to one now where we're up to about two thirds.
Now that has been a dramatic transformation of this
country. The Australia that goes last decade of the
century is up with the higher level of education before
JONES: Are we living beyond our means?
PM: I said that earlier, I said that earlier, we cannot
go on with a situation where like, in the previous year,
we have an eight per cent increase in consumption, and a
four per cent in production
JONES: If what what you say, if what you just said
before is right, and I'm sure people agree that we have
got to be smarter, then the agency of that smartness, are
our teachers now MP's got an increase from $ 55,000 by
about 20 per cent, there is not a teacher in the country
getting 55 grand. Do you reckon out there a smart
teacher, a good teacher, is better for us in 1990 than a
good MP? If so have you got any dough to help ameliorate
the problem of teachers?
PM: We were the ones, it was the Federal Government who
took the lead with the States recently, in setting that
national standard of 37,000 which was
JONES: But you didn't come good with the money.
PM: As far as we're concerned we will be supplementing
the States as we indicated and promised. We'll be
supplementing them. Education is not primarily a
function under the Constitution of the Commonwealth
JONES: You'll help in teachers' salaries, with money?
PM: We have been and we will continue to. But we took
the view, Alan, that you've got in this area to be taking
a long term view. If you're talking about investment in
this country being important as it is, and we've got
physical investment up to the highest proportion of our
gross domestic product that it's ever been, remember
that, and which will start to pay off more, but if you
are talking about investment, education is the biggest
investment of all. And that's why we have transformed it
from one in three to two in three of our kids staying on,
where we've enormously increased the number of places in
universities and our higher forms of education because
that's what's going to change this country ultimately and
that's what's being done now to bring this country up to
a level which can compare with the best in the world.
JONES: OK. Alright Prime Minister, I only wanted to
talk to you, we've gone on a little bit, but
congratulations in anticipation of tomorrow. I've no
doubt you'll be with us tomorrow as Australia's second
longest serving Prime Minister. History is very hard to
make and very hard to stand on its head. It's not
without significant application of your own, a good deal
of leadership, not a lot of luck and you've done it fine
and done yourself proud and your family and everybody
else. So we congratulate you for that. Look forward to
talking to you again.
PM: Alan, could I thank you for that and say that in all
that time while we've had a few arguments, robust
arguments and differences of opinion, I've always
appreciated and it's made easier in a way, the discharge
of this responsibility that people like yourself,
particularly yourself, are prepared to talk about issues
in a constructive way. I've appreciated it very much.
JONES: You're most welcome Prime Minister. We'll talk
again. PM: Thank you very much.
ends.