TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT SMITH, RADIO
9 JULY 1990
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
VSt Good morning PM.
PM: Good day Vincent.
VS: How are you.
PMs I'm well mate. Most importantly how are you feeling
yourself? VS: I'm feeling terrific thank you.
PM: I'm glad to hear that and all our thoughts are with you
here. And when I say that I mean not only Mine but the people in
my press office and anyone who knows you, all our thoughts are
with you mate.
VS: It's great tolAl'ack and thank you very much for that letter
you wrote, you were one of the first letters that arrived at the
hospital when I first fell ill.
PM: Always had a soft spot for you mate.
VS: It was very kind of you. Hey, how are things going, you're
stirring things up a bit aren't you?
PM: Oh, well I was born with not a spoon in my mouth but a spade
in my hand, you know, for stirring.
VS: Yeah, well you've certainly done it. I mean coming up
tomorrow will be today equals, tomorrow you will have broken
Malcolm Fraser's record as the second longest serving PM in Aust.
PM: Yes I'm and may I take this opportunity of thanking that
part of the Aust population that listens to you, and it's fairly
substantial, for the support I've had over the years; if not
always their vote, I've always felt that I've got a fair go from
the Australian people which has made this period very challenging
and enjoyable.
VS: You've sort of marked it by putting privatisation back on
the agenda though.
PM4 I haven't used that ugly word. But I've simply said to the
party that they have to face up to a simple question. There are
not unlimited resources available to govt and there are certain
things that only govt can and will do; that's in the area of
education, health, welfare for the needy. The private sector
never will and never can be expected to do those things, govt has
got to do those, and yet we have this tendency to believe that we
can waste our resources by doing things that can be just as well
done by the private sect r, like running airlines. So as I say,
I'm not trying to dry ulIc h the party, I operate within the
processes of the party, but I'm really saying that we've got to
face up to these thinfs I mean it's a little bit strangeI
think that Aust is just about the last place where a political
party believes that there is some particular virtue in the govt
owning and running particular enterprises. There is a case,
Vincent, for the govt running things where it can't be done in
S the interests of the people by the private sector but airlines I
think is not one of them.
VS: Although there is an argument from your opponents on this
view that it would be actually cheaper for the govt to run the
airlines in net terms.
PM: That's a nonsense in my opinion. But I don't want to run
the argument publicly. I mean I'm simply saying to my friends
and colleagues in the party that the thing, that within the
party, we've got to sit down and talk through with one another.
I don't want to really conduct the debate in any detail in the
public arena, I am simply putting on notice that we've got to
talk it through pretty astringently.
VS: I noticed in the last 2,000 odd days you thought that
perhaps the lowest point was your statement on no child living in
poverty, what do you think was the highest point.
S PM: On that what I was saying there, why it was a low point
for me was that one of the great achievements of the period has
been the delivery of the govt's promise on what we were
specifically saying, and that is that we would make the finance
available to low income families so that there would be no
financial need within families for kids to live in poverty and of
course all the welfare organisations have said that we've
delivered on that promise of which means in this last year
we've paid out over two billion dollars in assistance, more than
ever been done before and welfare organisations are saying not
matched anywhere else. What upset me is that the magnitude of
that achievement has tended to be clouded and lost by the fact
that in the shorthand version of the speech that that wasn't
spelt out in the detail it was in the accompanying document.
VS: Do you think Brian Burdekin was being unf air at the end of
last week when he said that the States really haven't done enough
towards looking after homeless children after his RC's report.
PM Well there's always more that can be done, there's no doubt
about that. We made a very large sum of money available after
the Burdekin report to the States to assist in the provision of
more facilities for homeless children. But what we've got to do
now is, having made the financial steps that we ' ye taken and
which the welfare community recognises as having met the
financial targets that I Bet, what we've got to do now in
combination with the state govts and the welfare organisations is
to ensure that services are actually delivered in the most
efficient way and that's where part of the problem is.
VS: Okay, can I come back to that last question very quickly
S because I know you've got to go, the high point of the last 2,000
odd days?
PM: Well it is very hard to pick one high point, some of them
are public, some of them are private. If I can take the private
one, a very touching letter I got the other day in regard to this
child poverty thing, when a lady wrote to me and said that she
was annoyed by all this nonsense that was being talked about not
having met the promise. She said that in her case what we'd done
had just transformed their lives, they were a very low income
family and with a number of kids, and that what we had done in
delivering on what I'd said, had changed their life completely
and changed the life of their children. Those sorts of things
are high points for you, they come in private correspondence from
people who have been helped by your decisions. Publicly, I don't
know, I guess in a way, I've got to go back almost to the
beginning and say something that happened there has been a
continuing part of the great satisfaction of this period in govt,
and that was summit in April of 1983 when I just can't describe
S to you the pleasure in seeing captains of industry and trade
union leaders talking with one another and coming up to me and
saying, from both sides you know, we never really talked before,
we never really understood one another's point of view, but we've
now got a better idea of what the other's about. That was a high
point then but it really has continued to be in the sense that I
think now at the end of this period I can look back and say that
we've got a-more co-operative Australia than the one I inherited
in 1983 and that in a sense makes me feel happier than anything
else; that while we still have arguments, of course there will
always be in a democracy some differences, we've enormously cut
down on the number of industrial disputes, a sixty per cent
reduction in industrial disputes, and we're changing now in
industry, work practices and management practices, so that
there's a greater degree of co-operation. That sort of thing
coming from the summit of ' 83 and continuing right through till
now is probably what gives me the greatest satisfaction. I think
Australians, if r can put it simply, Vincent, I think Australians
like one another more now than they did when I became PM.
4 VSs Well that was a keynote of your campaign in ' 83 and even
before you entered Parliament in fact. And Malcolm Fraser
recognised that yesterday too.
PM: Yes, he and others were very generous in their comments, I
thank them for it.
VS: PM wonderful to talk to you, thank you very much for your
kind thoughts
PM: Vincent, can I just say to you, fight the good fight and
know that you've got all the best wishes of people all around
Australia with you mate.
VS: Thank you very much PM, good to talk with you.