TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
Radio Interview with Mark Thompson and Caren Shaw, MIX 104.9, Darwin

20 February 2001

THOMPSON: It’s a very good morning to Prime Minister John Howard, good morning Prime Minister.

PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, very nice to be with both you and Karen.

THOMPSON: Thank you for coming in, and you’d be better say Caren Prime Minister, we get in trouble if we call her Karen.

PRIME MINISTER: I’m sorry, I apologise for my city pronunciation.

THOMPSON: I’m just helping, you know how women are with these name things. This morning, actually, Prime Minister, just quickly, we’ve been asking, because there’s so many of us that are blow-ins here in the territory, what’ll make you a Territorian if you weren’t born here. One of the popular answers was you have to wrestle a croc, shoot a buffalo, and you’ve got to catch a barramundi. But I suppose with your very busy itinerary, you wouldn’t get much of a chance to do that sort of thing.

PRIME MINISTER: Well not literally, but metaphorically in my political existence, let me see, I mean wrestling a crocodile, I mean, sort of, petrol prices, I feel as though I’m wrestling a crocodile with that because there’s a momentum in that that’s beyond my control, overseas oil prices.

THOMPSON: Sharp teeth in that one…

PRIME MINISTER: Yeah that’s right. Shooting a buffalo, well I think we’ve been very successful, the buffalo that we got in our sights was that $80 billion of national debt we inherited when we came into Government, and we’ve been pretty successful in bringing that down by about 50. Catching the barramundi, that sounds the pleasant part of it, I guess in the end I’ll find that out at the next election.

THOMPSON: Oh it’s nearly as pleasant as eating them, I’m with you though, I haven’t caught one either.

PRIME MINISTER: I eat them very regularly and they’re very nice.

SHAW: Prime Minister you’re off to St John's College later on this morning to officially announce the $1 million Government initiative for the petrol sniffing campaign.

PRIME MINISTER: Yes, well that is an initiative that has been paid out of the Federal Government’s Tough on Drugs strategy, and we’ve allocated about $27 million for the Northern Territory for that whole program, which is education, law enforcement and rehabilitation. And I have been quite distressed, and many Australians have about the impact of petrol sniffing young people, particularly in the Aboriginal community. And we’re going to run a series of pilot programs over the next year, and if they work then we’ll implement them in full, and I hope it will make a difference. The emphasis is on early intervention, trying to identify people who might be at risk and find ways of getting them to change their behaviour, divert them into more positive activities and recognise, as this initiative does, that it’s a huge social problem. And try, over time, to do something about it.

THOMPSON: Prime Minister we’ve had a bit of a problem with the project we all want to see get off the ground here in the Territory, the railway. You’re going come and come to our assistance?

PRIME MINISTER: Well we strongly support it, and I announced last night that we would join the Northern Territory and South Australian Governments, subject to getting appropriate formal assurances from the consortium that our extra help will make the project go, we’ll play our part to do so. And I hope this will encourage final closure, and that we can get work beginning as soon as possible. This is a huge project, not only for the Northern Territory, but for the entire northern part of Australia. I see great potential in the port of Darwin, I see great long term potential. There is a degree of, what you might call, development faith involved in a project like this. If the Government of the day, in the past, in relation to great things like the Snowy Mountains scheme, and others, had said well look it doesn’t stack up in an accounting sense, therefore we don’t do it, if Government’s always adopted that approach to every single piece of public infrastructure there would be a lot less. Now the amount of money we’re making available is affordable, it’s in the order now of $170-$175 million, or a bit more depending on how the project pans out. We’re prepared to make that commitment, we believe in this project and we believe in its merit and its value for the people of the top end, and I know that Territorians will support it very strongly. We’re the only Federal Government to be serious about this project, the Opposition is still waffling around about this, I don’t know what their policy is. Our policy is very clear, we support the railway, and we’ll do our bit to make it go.

THOMPSON: Prime Minister the figures we’ve heard this morning $26 million…

PRIME MINISTER: Extra, yes it’s over a period of four years and that is the maximum additional the Federal Government could be up for.

SHAW: And Prime Minister if the railway had of been on track you would have been down in Alice as we speak, basically, putting your spike into the ground. Instead you’re off to the Tiwi Islands, do you think you’ll be able to catch a fish over there?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I don’t think I’ll have time to go fishing, enticing though that may be, but I do look forward to meeting the Tiwi people over there, they’ve got a very important part in the history of the Territory and I’m looking forward, I’ve not been there before, and I really am looking forward to the visit.

THOMPSON: Prime Minister have they warned you about the price of petrol?

PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I know the price of petrol. The price of petrol there has been higher than the rest of Australia for years. I noticed that the local Labor member said I should do something about it, well he didn’t do anything about it, his leader has no policy to change it, there are transport and other reasons why the price of petrol in those remote parts of Australia are much higher than they are in other parts of Australia. I don’t like that, but this is not the first Government, and I’m not the first Prime Minister to have confronted that problem. We have at least put in place a program which spends hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of years trying to reduce the differential between city prices and non-city prices, and whilst it hasn’t brought it down to a level that people would like, it is cheaper now then it would otherwise have been had it not been for that program.

THOMPSON: I guess you must be totally sick and tired of questions about petrol, but is it going to become the central election issue?

PRIME MINISTER: I think it’s far too early to start talking about what some of the individual issues are in the election. I think the overwhelming issue, when the election comes, will be whether people want the economic strength and stability that we’ve had in the last four years, or they want to go back to the 17% interest rates, the very high levels of national debt, the $80-$90 billion I mentioned in relation to the buffalo.

THOMPSON: You know it’s going to be a…

PRIME MINISTER: And also of course the very high levels of unemployment. There’ll be a lot of issues, but in the end people have to make a choice, and when Mr Beazley was last in charge of things you got 17% interest rates, you got high unemployment, you got very high national debt, and they are matters that people have to take into account when they decide how they vote. But the election’s a long way off.

SHAW: Prime Minister can I have for you can one person make a difference? Like someone that was in your constituency, they may or they not feel that their one vote does change things, what would you say to them?

PRIME MINISTER: Well everybody has as much capacity as the next person to make a difference, that’s the point I would make. When it comes to an election I’ve only got one vote, you’ve only got one vote, and people can make a difference. I take a great deal of notice of what individual constituents say to me. A great deal of notice. And I, even though I have a lot of things to do all around the country as the prime minister I have a regular day in my electorate office. I am going to my electorate office on Friday. I am spending a day in my electorate in Sydney going to different things, I am going to a local school, to open a little, to launch a commemorative plaque – I am doing a number of local things in my electorate and I do that on a regular basis and it’s a way in which I hear what people have got to say.

THOMPSON: Here’s something a lot of people would like to see a difference made on and that’s the BAS statement.

PRIME MINISTER: Well good news on the BAS statement. We’ll be announcing later this week major changes to the BAS statement and these changes have come about because of discussions we had last Friday in Sydney which I chaired with all of the leaders of the business groups, the Commissioner of Taxation, the Treasurer and the Minister for Small Business. And we sat down for three hours and we talked about it. Now we’re going to make changes and I’m not the least bit apologetic about, you know I mean, about the need to make changes. When you bring in a big new tax system you’re going to have some transitional difficulties, you’re going to have some teething problems. I always said that and I always said that we’d be willing to fine tune it and that’s what we’re going to do. And we’ve listened to the concerns that people have expressed and that’s why we’re going to make big changes. And I believe that small businessmen and women all around Australia who have had some difficulty with the forms, not everybody incidentally has had difficulty a lot of people said to me as recently as last night, oh we’ve got used to it, it was a bit hard at first but we now find it ok. Others have said no it’s too complicated and it takes too much time. Well what we’re going to do is to respond to the concerns and reduce the work that’s needed but we’re not going to reduce it in such a way that the integrity of the new system is undermined.

THOMPSON: Prime Minister can I just strip back one or two of the political layers of John Howard for a moment?

PRIME MINISTER: Sure. Just before you do that I made a verbal slip, I said $27 million for the Northern Territory, it’s actually $2.7, I transposed the dot, I apologise.

SHAW: That dot has a lot of responsibility actually.

PRIME MINISTER: Yes I don’t want to you know, mislead the listeners.

THOMPSON: Does John Howard the politician make life difficult for John Howard the husband and father?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I am happy to say, touch wood, after almost thirty years of marriage and now having three adult children that somehow or other we’ve been able to juggle it all and have a reasonable outcome and I’ve got to thank my wife for that enormously.

THOMPSON: You must talk things through with your wife?

PRIME MINISTER: Of course I do. I talk things through with my wife though there are certain things that are really in the category of state secrets that I don’t talk through with anybody who’s not entitled to know.

SHAW: Well what we want to know is how often are you in the doghouse with your wife?

THOMPSON: What do you fight about?

PRIME MINISTER: Oh we don’t fight about an enormous number of things, we’re actually fairly compatible. You’ve got to be to stay together for thirty years. We’re actually quite compatible. We’re both fairly, how shall I put it – self reliant. We enjoy each others company, we’re dependant on each other as any couple who have been married for that long are, but by the same token we have our own interests and our own pursuits which means that you can live, how I shall I call it – complementary self-reliance. I know it’s a bit of an oxymoron but it is, it is a good way of making a marriage work. But look we work very hard at spending time with our children, our children have always been the number one priority in our lives, they still are, they’re adults now, young adults, they’ve got their own lives but we enjoy each other’s company and we have a pretty stable and happy relationship. And I scratch myself and wonder, you know how it was that I was so lucky.

THOMPSON: Politicians are often a favourite target of cartoonists and Wicking right here in Darwin is one of our favourite cartoonists he does a great job in the NT News each day. As prime minister you’re probably one of the most popular targets of the cartoonists, do they ever upset you?

PRIME MINISTER: Oh look I learnt a long time ago that even if they did you don’t say anything.

THOMPSON: Keeping mum about that one.

SHAW: Silent see.

THOMPSON: Well you must become thick-skinned to criticism I would assume.

PRIME MINISTER: Well of course you do. If you can’t be thick-skinned in politics you should get out.

THOMPSON: I’ve got a question I’ve been dying to ask this of you actually for a couple of years now, if I ever got the opportunity. What could you teach journalists about talking to politicians?

PRIME MINISTER: To listen.

SHAW: Number one rule?

PRIME MINISTER: Yes, listen. A lot of journalists don’t. I mean we are accused as a breed of not listening and often we don’t but journalists often don’t listen either. They, I think one of the problems with journalism in Australia is that we, we’ve too extensively confused reporting with comment. I had the opportunity because I have cable tv, of watching Fox News out of the United States, very interesting news, it makes an absolute fetish of separating comment from reporting. And they actually have this slogan we report, you decide. And they’ll report something and then they’ll have two people identifiably on one side and the other arguing the toss. And over a period of time and I watched it quite a lot during the aftermath of the inconclusive presidential election and you develop an impression the station’s really trying very hard to report facts and then to have different points of view, but not to mix them up. And often I find when I read an article now that the very first paragraph is judgmental rather than narrative Instead of saying ‘the Prime Minister today announced that $x million will be spent on’ they say, ‘the Prime Minister in a desperate bid to shore up his sagging political fortunes’ or alternatively, ‘the Leader of the Opposition in a blatant bid for votes said that a future Labor Government would’. Now …

SHAW: Isn’t it true?

PRIME MINISTER: It is true. But now what you need is, you need – and some papers aren’t as bad as others – but you need the bit at the top that says you know ‘the Leader of the Opposition Mr Beazley today announced that …’ and then down the bottom with a photograph of the journalist in comment or analysis you then have the bit about it being a blatant bid for votes. And of course from the Opposition it is always a blatant bid for votes.

THOMPSON: Just quickly finally Prime Minister, a quick answer on this one, what is the most important quality for a politician?

PRIME MINISTER: To understand the feelings of the people he or she represents.

THOMPSON: Well you’ve got a trip to the Tiwi Islands today, I am sure they are going to make their feelings made known about petrol at the very least. Prime Minister thank you for coming in and having a chat with us this morning. And you’re off to St John’s College next from here?

PRIME MINISTER: Yes to announce a diversion project on petrol sniffing and then off to the islands.

THOMPSON: Terrific.

SHAW: We hope you enjoy your time here and that you can survive the heat.

PRIME MINISTER: Thanks. Bye.

END