TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
INTERVIEW WITH ALAN JONES, RADIO 2UE
3 September 2001
JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
JONES:
Where are we as we stand today?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, as we stand we are ready and able to start transferring the people from the Tampa to the Manoora and take them to Papua New Guinea, through Port Moresby, where they will be put on aircraft and taken to New Zealand and Nauru. That can’t happen while the Federal Court injunction remains in place. The Federal Court will commence, or return to its hearing, I understand, this morning. So it is all waiting on that.
JONES:
Many people would, of course, say that the Prime Minister of Australia, whomever he or she is, should be the person determining our destiny and our foreign policy position not the Federal Court.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I understand that feeling but we live under the rule of law and that applies to prime ministers as well as everybody else. I really don’t want to say any more about that. The matter is before the court. What I will say, however, is that the solution we have worked out is fair and humane. I spoke last night to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He expressed his support for what we had arranged with Papua New Guinea. I pointed out to him that the conditions on the Manoora are as comfortable as they can be, given that it is a large troop ship that Australian troops often spend weeks on that vessel. It has two or three operating threatres. It has plenty of medical facilities. And the facilities, of course, on the Manoora are far better and far more comfortable than they are on the Tampa.
So the position is, we have an arrangement worked out thanks to the cooperation of our Pacific friends of New Zealand, Nauru and Papua New Guinea and we await the determination of this matter in the Federal Court.
JONES:
All right, just on the Federal Court, and I know you can’t say too much, but Julian Burnside QC for the Council of Civil Liberties told the Court yesterday that the SAS troops on board the Tampa were acting as migration agents and were bound by law to bring the boat people ashore.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that is not our advice and our position was put very strongly by David Bennett QC, the Commonwealth Solicitor General. We, of course, through David expressed our total opposition to the court action, that the argument has no standing and we, of course, are seeking the complete dismissal of that application. But Mr Bennett has put the Government’s case in the Court. I don’t want to repeat what he said to the Court, suffice to say to your listeners that we don’t believe that application has any legal basis at all but while ever there is a court injunction I and everybody else in this country is bound by it because, in the end, what defines us as a democratic, open society is that we believe in the rule of law. That rule of law must apply to all of us including the Prime Minister.
JONES:
It was the same, Mr Justice North, though, who as a barrister acted on for the waterfront workers in 1986. He advised a seamen union in relation to massive strike action inRobe River. He represented the unions in the Mudginberri dispute. He represented the pilots when they were fighting the Hawke Government.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don’t know…I understand some of those things are true, the others I just don’t know, I haven’t followed it. But, Alan, it’s before a court. I don’t want to get started into some slanging match with the Court. It is a matter for them to resolve because an action has been brought. But we have the strongest possible view that that application does not have a sound legal basis.
JONES:
Had your legislation been supported in the Parliament last week by the Labor Party this action couldn’t have been brought.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no, that legislation sought to take right outside the scope of the court anything that we did in relation to this matter. The answer to that is undeniably it could not have been brought because the legislation would have said that once an instruction had been given by an authorised officer that instruction was not reviewable before the courts.
JONES:
These are two major foreign policy issues where you’ve virtually had to go it alone. East Timor was one – for a while there the rest of the world left you to your own devices and you managed to prevail and this one. There is now the third big one and that is that no matter what happens here there is a problem, isn’t there, about people who are running from regimes where brutality is rampant. What should the international community be doing about these millions of people?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, if it had to spend less time on, how shall I put it, you have to spend less time on illegal immigration and it could put more resources into the resettlement of refugees. But from our point of view the most important medium term objective we have is to get an understanding with Indonesia to stop people going through that country. We have been trying to get that understanding now for a long time. We put a proposition some months ago to the Indonesians whereby we would pay for the cost of erecting, constructing a holding centre in Indonesia. We’d pay the entire cost of that if we could have an understanding with Indonesia that instead of being allowed to get on boats in that country and come to Australia people would be held there. Once that was communicated they would stop coming.
JONES:
These people are not refugees, they’re queue jumpers, aren’t they? I mean, I’ve had many, many letters for people…
PRIME MINISTER:
You can’t call them refugees. Some of them may be able…
JONES:
May qualify, yeah.
PRIME MINISTER:
May qualify, I don’t know. And…
JONES:
And in which case you’d be happy…
PRIME MINISTER:
…why you cannot allow a situation where people without any kind of establishing of a claim can simply come here, claim a refugee status – I mean, the reason why we do not want these people to come on to Australian land territory is that once they are here, under the present domestic law, they can make a claim for refugee status and they could be here for a long time before that claim is resolved and if it is resolved against them you then have the problem of how do you return them if they’ve got nowhere to go back to. So, I mean, there’s a very clear reason, which I think the Australian public understands, why we have taken the stance we have.
JONES:
And there are many Australians here who pursue, through family reunion migration policy, the joining of other members of their family from other parts of the world and they’re still waiting for that to happen and they’re pretty indignant.
PRIME MINISTER:
Every week I write to people who’ve asked if their relatives can come to say no they can’t because they don’t qualify under the rules. There’s certainly a very strong feeling amongst people who go through the system, so to speak, that this kind of thing can’t be tolerated.
JONES:
And you’re going to beef up navy patrols, can you just give us a brief insight into that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we’re going to have five naval vessels and four aircraft that will conduct increased surveillance patrols in international waters between the Indonesian archipelago and Australia. We told the Indonesians in advance of this. They said they would provide refuelling and home port facilities so, to that extent, there will be cooperation between the defence forces of the two countries. We hope that this will act as a further deterrent. I can’t guarantee that and people have to understand that nothing we have done to date can guarantee there won’t be more boats that come to Australia in circumstances where we may not, from a humane point of view, be able to stop them landing. But we will try and create a greater deterrent and we hope the combination of that plus what has been done by the Tampa will be sending a message, will deter some of the people smugglers and will slow down the number of people coming pending an agreement, if we can reach it, with Indonesia to stop people coming.
JONES:
Just that Australians this morning find it quite extraordinary that the Prime Minister could be trumped on this by the Federal Court.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I understand that feeling but the matter is back in the Court this morning and I don’t, at this stage, want to say any more than that.
JONES:
Okay, I understand that. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay, Thank you.
END
