TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
QUESTION AND ANSWER, NATIONAL PRESS CLUB ADDRESS

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, CANBERRA
25 January 2001

QUESTION: Alison Carabine, 2UE. Thank you Prime Minister. The other significant event of national importance this year will no doubt be the election, your Government will campaign on the issue on its record on economic management. But it does seem to be the case that a significant number of Australians don’t feel that they’ve reaped the benefits of economic prosperity, indeed the Opposition Leader has even revived that old chestnut, ‘the rich have gotten richer, the poor poorer’ under your Government. If you haven’t delivered economic sunshine to all Australians why should voters give you another term?

PRIME MINISTER: Well that’s a change of pace. Alison in the end I accept the verdict of the Australian people. I have no false illusions about the difficultly about the task that is performing. I can’t make a confident prediction that in 12 months time I will still be Prime Minister, that will be a matter for judgement by my fellow Australians. I can however say that when the opportunity presents itself I’ll point to the strength of our economy, I’ll point to the fact that if giving people a job is a way of improving their living standard then there are almost 800,000 Australians and their families who have improvements in that area. I’ll draw attention to the Government’s record of economic management compared with that of our opponents. Nobody pretends that no matter how well you may believe you’ve done in governing a country that there aren’t areas of need, there aren’t people who aren’t getting a proper share and there aren’t continuing equalities, in inequalities. Any Prime Minister who asserts that those things have been banished under his or her authority is deluding himself.
I’ll be content, when the time comes, to be judged on our record. I’ll also ask the Australian people to remember that this has not been a Government which has been policy lazy, in fact one of the criticisms that has been made of this Government is that we’ve tried to do too much. That is not, I might say, criticism that could be made of our opponents in the area of policy development. And I think that as the months go by those comparisons will become starker. I think it will be a tough fight. I have no false illusions about it, it is an important event, but other people will have their views about what is the most important event in the next 12 months. But as a believer in democracy I will accept whatever verdict is given, and I think it will be one hell of a fight.

QUESTION: Malcolm Farr, Daily Telegraph. Prime Minister, when will you announce the successor to Sir William Deane as Governor-General? What considerations did you have when you made your choice? Did the fact that this is the Centenary of Federation, and essentially the Centenary of our independence, have an influence on your choice?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, let me answer that question this way Malcolm. I will announce that position and the person who will fill it after the retirement of Sir William Deane, after the appropriate processes have been followed, and advice tendered and that advice accepted as is the constitutional custom in our system. I don’t want to get into whether invitations have been issued or a contact has been made or suggestions have been put. I’ll simply say that I will be recommending, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that the recommendation will be accepted. I will be recommending the appointment of a very distinguished Australian who I’m sure will do a very fine job, as to when any announcement will be I don’t care to say at this stage but it will of course be at the right time.

QUESTION: Laurie Oakes, Nine Network. Prime Minister in the light of Lisa’s comments on our rendition of Advance Australia Fair, I’m tempted to ask whether you agree with one of your Parliamentary colleagues that it’s time to re-write the words of Advance Australia Fair to eliminate all references to that mystery women! ‘girt’ who apparently lives on the coast somewhere. If you’d like to answer that that would be good. My real question is…

PRIME MINISTER: I’ll see what you’re real question is Laurie then I’ll decide.

QUESTION: Now that Colin Powell has officially presented Australia with a deputy sheriff’s badge, what type of advice will you be giving the Bush administration about this part of the world. When will you visit Washington to report into George W in person, and do you agree with Malcolm Fraser, your distinguished predecessor that Secretary Powell did us no favours with his comments?

PRIME MINISTER: Well let me say that I don’t agree with Malcolm, but I won’t dwell on that, I don’t. Not on that issue, I agree with him on a lot of things, and we work together in very close partnership in Government and I retain a considerable respect for him. But on that issue I don’t believe that the new Secretary of State, for whom I have, as you may be aware of, very considerable personal regard. He’s a person I had the opportunity of meeting several years ago when he visited Australia, and he belongs to that group of people whose, who on personal acquittance the impression created is even greater than the reputation that precedes the meeting. And that is so often not the case with people of note. I expect to go to the United States this year, it is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty, it was signed in 1951 in San Francisco and that would certainly be a more than appropriate trigger for a visit.
As to exactly when that might be I can’t say because it’s early days for the administration. Our view is, of course, that this part of the world is not only important to Australia’s security and stability, but of course it’s very important because it contains within it nations that have enormous potential, but are also going through immense economic and political change. I would be putting privately to the new President the view that I’ve put publicly here, that I regard Australia’s relationship with Indonesia as being a very important one, it inevitably went through stress and strain because of what we rightly did in East Timor. It was always unrealistic to imagine that Australia could have done what it did in East Timor without that placing a significant strain on the relationship between Australia and Indonesia.
I feel for the difficulties facing President Wahid, it’s a very large country, he’s a person of great and decent instincts who’s trying very difficult to manage the transition that’s now being undertaken in Indonesia. I think the United States administration sees us as a country that has an understanding of this region, but not a monopoly of wisdom. They are prepared to listen to their friends, they may not necessarily accept our advice, I believe that my Government and the new administration will have a close association. Of course American and Australian Government’s always have close associations, the relationship is bigger than politics. But when you have some philosophical identity with a new administration it does add a little bit of, I think heft to the association and I also think on balance that the Bush administration will be better on trade matters than its predecessor, but I will pay on results. American governments look after their own in trade matters, as indeed I’m pledged to do in relation to our trade negotiations. But I do have some hope that we can make a little more ground.
National anthem. Well Laurie, I voted in 1977 for Waltzing Matilda, but can I say now that we have voted for and increasingly embraced the singing of Advance Australia Fair. I am personally against any mucking around and changing. I mean you can’t keep changing national symbols like this. I mean you know my views on the Australian flag, and even though I am, you know, when the opportunity was there I had a different view, I think that Advance Australia Fair has grown in affection, in the hearts of Australians. The experience of it at the Olympic Games was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. And I just, I mean you might, everybody has a, can argue about a word here and there but you can do that with, you can deconstruct any national anthem. You can deconstruct the Star Spangled Banner and find some words in that that might perhaps seem a little archaic now. You can do the same with God Save the Queen, you can do the same with the Marseilles, you so it goes on. But I think people have got used to it, they sing it with less embarrassment and a lot less self consciously now. Well the young do. I’ve got to say, you get a crowd of under 35’s at sporting event, you get them at a rugby un! ion test, if I may quote an example that’s close to my heart, you get a rugby union match between Australia and New Zealand or Australia and South Africa or better still Australia and England and you will get a very gusty rendition of the National Anthem. I mean, you just can’t keep changing it. I know ‘girt’ might seem out of place but I think we’re stuck with it for a while yet.

QUESTION: Andrea Hopkins, Reuters. Prime Minister you boasted of your economic record as an able fiscal manager, I’m wondering, given the impending slowdown which you’ve also acknowledged, how is fiscal policy changing as we speak? And how would you expect Government spending and taxation policies to change in the year ahead?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, you’ll hear about that a bit more of course when we bring the budget down. And that’s the time for the Treasurer on behalf of the Government to lay out where we think spending and taxation is going to go. Of course we have a very detailed position on taxation. We’ve just passed through the biggest ever change to our taxation system with the largest ever cut in personal income tax and a cut of almost one half in capital gains tax. So we’ve done a lot in that area.
There will be slower growth this year, I’ve forecast that. I would, based on their track record to date, I would except pretty positively the views of the Treasury and the Reserve Bank in the area of economic growth. I think the track record of those two bodies has been quite remarkable over the last few years. They’ve been a lot more accurate than some of the private sector forecasts. But that aside, most of the private sector forecasts are for continued strong growth. Albeit at a slower clip than the last couple of years. I think all of us are sort of hostage to the fact that you can’t exactly pin point what’s going to occur but there is some unevenness developing in the United States that will have an impact. Our statistics give a mixed picture, we have some remarkable motor vehicle registration figures today, very strong. So you are starting to see some signs of a return in housing, following the inevitable cooling off after the pre-GST pull forward that occurred before the first of July. Whatever people think about the new system the fact is that when it was introduced it was bound to postpone spending in some areas and pull it forward in others. And you need a period of a few months to go by before that is all evened out and you get a really clear steer on where your going.

QUESTION: Russel Barton, ABC TV. Prime Minister I thought the rugby union crowd agreed with you and sang an even gutsier version of Waltzing Matilda, in my experience. But that’s not my question. In deference to the small business people who might be spending some part of their Australia Day preparing their Business Activity Statement, deadline February four, I was wondering you’ve spoken in the past, sympathetically, about their task in preparing these statements and difficulties some of them might face. Have you firmed up any plans to review the structure of that statement and simplify it and perhaps make it annual instead of quarterly as it seems the Opposition are going to do?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I don’t know what the Opposition’s going to do but that’s a matter for Mr Beazley to announce. We are very closely monitoring this, very closely. I’m getting a lot of institutional advice and I’m also picking up a lot of anecdotal advice. The anecdotal advice is very mixed. You think you’ve got a reasonable line and then you run across a string of people who say completely the opposite thing. We are, the Treasurer and I are talking about the issue very intently. I can simply say this Russell, that if I’m satisfied and the Treasurer is satisfied that there remain any lingering problems with this that are imposing an unfair burden on small business we’re going to change it.

QUESTION: Karen Middleton, The West Australian. Mr Howard, Karen Middleton from the West Australian. You mentioned in your speech about a bill of rights and your continued opposition to that because of the possibility of misinterpretation or mistaken omission and yet it would seem that any legislated document runs that risk. And you also talked about the Australian Constitution and the fact that that was imperfect at it’s creation and had to be amended in relation to the rights of indigenous peoples. So why is a bill of rights any different?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I think what I’m saying Karen is that the greater guarantor of freedom and liberty is the institutions. I know it might sound an unfair example to use given the history and character of this country but I think in the broader context it’s legitimate to draw attention to it. The constitution of the Weimar Republic and the constitution of the Soviet Union contained eloquent statements about the rights of man and the protection of minorities but in reality because the institutions of those societies where inadequate to the task the written word meant nothing. I think the point I’m making is you need dynamic institutions comprised of individuals who are committed to freedom and democracies to preserve rights and I remain very strongly of the view and I’ve held this view for a very long time that in the end you get as much, if not a better protection of individual rights under that system as you would if you super imposed a bill of rights. Now the Australian Constitution as many people have pointed out was not a document that spent a great deal of time listing individual rights. It was more a document of delivering a structure of Government and providing a framework for our national political life. And of course that was done in that way because that was the prevailing Anglo-Australian constitutional view of the time. Now the question down through the years through the centuries where our experience suggests that we should alter that. I mean my view is we shouldn’t. I don’t always agree with the Premier of New South Wales but on this particular issue he is in agreement with my long held view that you won’t necessarily add to rights, you will create new avenues of litigation with the endless potential for the creation of artificial rights and entitlements. I think there’s evidence already emerging with the experience of the European Human Rights legislation and in both the United Kingdom and some other European countries. So I just remain utterly unconvinced that the present system can be altered for the better through the embrace of a bill of rights. I think put your faith in the three pillars I spoke of. I will have my arguments, bitter arguments on occasions with the fourth estate but it’s a very important element and it is one of the three real title deeds of democracy in this country.

QUESTION: Alexandra Kirk, ABC Radio, Current Affairs. Prime Minister, you said yesterday that the reason you could keep your policies and their costings in the bottom draw until the eve of the election in 1996, whereas Kim Beazley has to reveal all now was because people knew what you stood for back then on such issues as tax but people don’t know what Mr Beazley stands for. But did they really know what you thought about tax considering your comments about never ever GST.

PRIME MINISTER: Oh yes because when we decided to change the taxation system we didn’t change our position and implement the change without going back to the people. We went back to the people in 1998 and said contrary to what we said previously we do intend to reform the tax system and this is how we intend to do it. And if people thought that I was going back on some commitment they should have voted us out. I think a Government or a political leader who has a change of position and then goes to the people and asks for a decision on that change before he seeks to implement it, I mean that’s just about as open and transparent as you can be. It’s unlike 1993, you’ve provoked me now, but we have an election fought in Opposition to the introduction to a broad based indirect tax, we win the election as Mr Keating did and then he jacks up every indirect tax under the sun without warning and without having another election. Now, I think that’s real duplicity. Look on this question of knowing what somebody stands for; the point I made yesterday is that when I return to the leadership of the Liberal Party in January of 1995 people knew that I favoured industrial relations reform through a reduction in the power of the industrial relation commission and the elevation to centre stage of workplace understandings between employers and employees. I had in fact led and influenced the debate on that issue from Opposition. People knew that I favoured privatisation, people knew that I favoured support for private health insurance. People knew that I favoured changing the taxation system to help families with children and to give greater choice for parents in relation to the caring arrangements for their children. In fact if I may say so, one of the major reasons I returned to the leadership of the Opposition was that I was seen by my colleagues as a policy-driven person and as somebody who was prepared to argue the case for policy change both in government and in opposition.
Now, you invite me to compare that with my opponent. The reality is that despite all the years that he’s been in government and he from time to time reminds people that he was in fact statistically been a minister longer than I was – well, that’s the case by one year - well okay, but that really in a sense proves my point. Despite all of those years of ministerial experience they still and I think I share this view with a lot of Australians, they have no clear idea of what he and his party stand for. I think we do have a policy lazy opposition.

QUESTION: Sid Marris, the Australian. Prime Minister are you still confident that the ‘Steel Snowy’ your description of the Alice Springs to Darwin railway will go ahead this year given its financial difficulties?

PRIME MINISTER: Well there has been some speculation about that and because it does involve commercial issues and matters of you know market confidence and so forth I don’t want to say anymore other than that there will be some propositions put to the Commonwealth Government, the South Australian Government and the Northern Territory Government. I would like to see the project go ahead but I never said that the Commonwealth would write an open cheque, any more than I would expect either the Territory or South Australian Governments to do either. I’ve had some discussions with the Northern Territory Chief Minister and some of the people involved and I’ll be having further talks with Mr Burke and Mr Olsen in the next few days.

QUESTION: Louise Yaxley, ABC. Mr Howard in your speech you touched on the public and the private in society. One of your goals has been to get business to give more, to be more philanthropic. Have you failed in that or have you achieved it? Are you disappointed in how you’ve gone if you haven’t got them to contribute as much as you’d like? And is there anything you might be able to do to encourage them to keep it up or to do a bit more?

PRIME MINISTER: Well Louise I am really quite optimistic about how attitudes are changing. There is a different mood within the business community. More and more businesses are looking for forming partnerships with welfare and community organisations. There is a greater culture of, how shall I put it, giving and participation by many Australian companies. I think it is changing. I certainly don’t think that I’ve failed. I think our financial incentives, the tax changes we made, they’ve had an impact. I’ve always said that I’m not asking business to give more but rather I’m asking more business to give. And it should be said always in answering a question like this that through the years we’ve had some remarkable examples of generous businessmen and women in this country who have really been quite open and warm-hearted in their support. But I think there is a different culture and I went to the annual dinner of a business organisation some months ago and the entire speech of the president was about the importance of this relationship between the business community and the rest of our community. So I think we’re making progress. It’s slow, we have a different tradition here but I think it’s changing for the better.

QUESTION: Paul Bongiorno, Network Ten. Mr Howard given that Kim Beazley has put the republic back on the political agenda with a timetable and that you’ve indicated you may or may not or concede complete the next term of office as prime minister that your most likely successor is Peter Costello, a Republican, what will you allow as your party’s policy on the republic at the coming election?

PRIME MINISTER: Well our policy on the republic at the coming election is that as it was at the last election at the referendum and that is it is a matter of open, personal decision. But I, can I, Paul it will not be a big issue at the election. It really won’t. I mean, mate it will not.

MC: Is that it?

PRIME MINISTER: That’s the end.

MC: That’s it, okay.

PRIME MINISTER: Sorry.

QUESTION: Philip Coorey, the Advertsier. Mr Howard it’s been a big year for Sydney with the Olympics and its low unemployment rate, it’s arguably our most vibrant city. Do you feel and I mean in the wake of your nationalist comments during your speech that Australia in image at least is becoming too Sydneycentric, or not?

PRIME MINISTER: No I don’t. Look Sydney has certain characteristics because of its size, because it has increasingly become the centre of a lot of the new economy particularly the financial sector and there is a cosmopolitan character about Sydney which is very, very international. But I don’t think Australia is seen in you know, overwhelmingly by the rest of the world in, you know through the prism of their perception of Sydney. I mean a lot of people around the world still predominantly see Australia through the prism of the bush and of rural Australia and that is one of the reasons why it’s very important that we hang onto that part of our society. Not only for its immense economic value but because of the contribution it makes to our sense of identity as Australians because I just can’t conceive of the image of this country not including a very warm affection and regard for the bush. Now that’s not Sydney or Melbourne, it’s quite separate and apart. Inevitably you have when you have a focus of economic activity that raises questions but I think one of the important things that a national leader must d! o is to ensure that those tendencies are not only kept in check, but kept in proper perspective.

QUESTION: Denis Grant, SBS. Thanks Lisa. Might just change the pace slightly Prime Minister. I’ve got a bit of a confession to make. I’m not an Australian.

PRIME MINISTER: You’re not what?

QUESTION: I’m not an Australian.

PRIME MINISTER: No, no that’s all right.

QUESTION: It’s something I’m going to remedy tomorrow morning as a matter of fact down on the banks of the Lake Burley Griffin. I’m going to get my bit of paper and my gum tree and I’m very much looking forward to it. Some twenty odd years ago when I left New Zealand the then prime minister Robert Muldoon said it was a, he said it was a good thing because it would lift the IQ levels on both sides of the Tasman. I’m not sure what he meant by that. But look, one of the reasons that I’ve made this decision and it is a big decision, one of the reasons is that one of the very admirable things about Australians is the tolerant nature of the society. Now I just wonder if it’s not a bit too tolerant, that Kiwis and Poms we can live here, encouraged by Australians to become Australians but not actually nudged in that direction. And I just wonder if that not ought change. That those of us who have been here for a long time without taking up citizenship ought not really be encouraged to do the right thing perhaps in a slightly tougher way.

PRIME MINISTER: Well you think you’ve got a bit of moral leverage in that question, don’t you? Well I think you will understand the historic reason. I mean the historic reason for the situation that you speak of is that until what was it, 1948, there was no separate Australian nationality. You had, you were an Australian, you weren’t an Australian, everybody was who was in the then British Commonwealth - Australia and New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom - you were British subjects. And of course as a consequence, there were certain legal consequences of that, the entitlement to vote, and so forth. And of course there was never the incentive until starting in 1984 when the voting eligibility was altered so that newly arrived people from New Zealand and the United Kingdom could not without becoming Australian citizens win the right to vote. So there’s a lot of history in it. Now I am not saying whether, that you know what we had in the past was right or wrong, that’s sort of in a sense irrelevant to the sensible answering of your question. I mean I would, I would always err in favour of encouragement rather than making something mandatory. There are a large number of people in the older age brackets of our community who were born in the United Kingdom, or should I say significant number, born in the United Kingdom who because they arrived here before 1984 are on the electoral roll and the change that occurred then was not made, was not retrospective and they are completely unaffected and they feel no particular need in terms of the advantages of residency or citizenship to become Australian citizens and the same applies to quite a number of people from New Zealand. I would believe that it’s something that over a period of time is best left to persuasion and encouragement, and you are a wonderful example of it and I welcome you very warmly and I’ll look even more kindly on your requests for interviews too. Denis, I think, you know, I don’t think there’s anything better than anybody can do but become an Australian. I think it’s the best thing anybody can ever do. I do think though consistent with the things that sort of make us attractive we should continue persuasion and encouragement rather than on this issue wielding the big stick particularly in relation to people in an aged cohort who came to this country when the rules were different and when the attitudes were different.

QUESTION: Michelle Grattan, Sydney Morning Herald. Mr Howard, two questions. Yesterday here Mr Beazley said he wanted to make education the top issue for this year. What are your three top issues for the year and how would you rank them? And secondly the government recently received a very critical report of its performance on implementing outsourcing. Who do you blame for the problems there – Mr Fahey the minister, yourself and the cabinet for not watching the process more closely, or the bureaucracy for as Mr Fahey says being resistant?

PRIME MINISTER: Well can I take the IT question first Michelle? Yes the Humphrey report did say that there were flaws in the way in which the process was managed. It did not however criticise the policy and did deny that significant savings had been achieved, and did not suggest that the process should not continue. The major recommendation of the Humphrey inquiry was that agency heads, re departmental secretaries, should in future decide what’s going to happen in relation to outsourcing in their respective departments, although there would be an obligation in relation to the annual reporting and assessment of departmental secretaries, there would be an obligation to report progress on outsourcing. It’s worth telling you that Mr Humphrey was the person who was openly chosen by myself and Mr Fahey as somebody with a high reputation in this area. We made a decision immediately we got the report to make it public. I think Mr Fahey’s behaved in a very up front transparent fashion in relation to this. As to who I blame, well I don’t know that I want to get into a blame situation. Look there was a concern expressed by the Auditor General. When I saw the Auditor General’s report I said to Mr Fahey we had to look further at this issue and as a result of that we had the Humphrey Inquiry. We get the Humprhey Inquiry, we’ve adopted it, and we’ve made it public. We’re continuing with the policy but the way in which it’s going to managed will in accordance with Mr Humphrey’s recommendations be different.
Issues for the election, well I don’t care to sort of put them in sort of a strict one, two, three order apart from saying that I think economic management will remain the dominant issue and I think that’s because that’s what in the end the Australian public regards as very important. That’s not to say that issues like education and health aren’t very important. Of course they are. We regard them as very important. I’ll be making a very major statement next week which will contain detailed costings of exactly what we’re going to do. We won’t be talking vaguely about something that might happen if something else occurs in ten years time. We’ll be talking about our detailed plans for encouraging greater investment in science and innovation, and giving greater resources to research in the Australian community.
I’m also very very proud of the way in which this government has given greater choice in the area of education. The biggest single change that’s occurred in this country in primary and secondary education in the last few years has been the greater choice now available to low income people to send their children to low fee paying independent schools. You’ve always had schools like Kings and Scots and so forth. You’ve always had them. But the big change is that it’s now possible for people who live in some of the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, incidentally Labor voting suburbs, if they want to to send their kids to low fee paying independent schools. Now that was made possible by the new schools policy which we introduced which was voted against by the Labor Party and the Australian Democrats and only passed into law with the support of Senator Harradine.
Now if you’re talking about choice for middle Australia and for low income Australia that is a far more significant change and that’s the really good news in that area.

QUESTION: Tim Colebatch from the Age. Prime Minister, if I had the nerve of Laurie Oakes I would probably start with sneaking in a non-question such as would you agree that one of the great national symbols around the world is the Canadian flag which was precisely a symbol created by an act of parliament and is sort of recognised all around the world as a symbol of Canada? Whereas 99% of the world’s population could not tell which is Australia’s flag and which is New Zealand’s nor could they tell which Dennis Grant is of course.

PRIME MINISTER: I will answer that question.

QUESTION: That’s not my question.

PRIME MINISTER: No but I will answer it.

QUESTION: My actual question goes back to your speech and what you referred to as the three institutional pillars of Australian democracy – the press, or the media, the judiciary and the vigorous parliament. The public opinion polls suggests that only one of those is held in any real esteem by Australian people and that is the judiciary. For some reason I can’t fathom they’ve got a very low opinion of us and they’ve got next to no opinion of the politicians and it seems that the more people star in question time in the eyes of the Gallery and their colleagues the less the public thinks of them on both sides out there. Is there any possibility you can see of actually making a change to the way our political system operates, making that sort of political, vibrant debate that you described somewhat less abrasive, less offensive to a lot people’s values of what Australia should be?

PRIME MINISTER: Tim, the first question. Yes the Canadian flag is very attractive, it’s a very very attractive flag. But I’ve always had the view that what really matters about a symbol like a flag is how its people feel of it, not what others feel about it. And I want an Australian flag that I have an emotion towards and I think is part of my country’s history. And I think the present Australian flag beautifully reflects those things and that’s why I’ve always been a strong supporter of it. And I don’t really mind if some people on some occasions when it doesn’t really matter might confuse it with another flag. I mean anybody who went to the Olympic Games and saw that vast array of flags from different countries, I mean how many of you really were ahead of more than about eight or ten of them. I mean you know, Lisa said you had the learn the 2nd verse of the anthem. I mean the reality is that there are a lot of flags there that looked so much the same. I don’t mean that disrespectfully. But what matters is how the people of those countries felt about that flag. And so what always matters to me when I hear these questions about the Australian flag is not whether somebody on some occasions confuses it with New Zealand. It is what the Australian people think about it. It’s nobody else’s business in the end except ours. And if we like it well we should keep it. But it’s like all of these things, in the end they depend on popular support.
The asked the vexed question of the attitude of Australians towards their institutions particularly parliament and the media. There will always be within the Australian character, there’ll always be a certain scepticism towards people wielding political authority. It’s part of the great Celtic deposit of this country that you are a little bit agin and you’re a little bit sceptical. We are, I was once asked by an American President what I thought was one of the big differences between Australians and Americans. And I said that I thought Australians were a more sceptical people than Americans. I didn’t mean that disrespectfully to America for whom I have a great affection. But we are a more sceptical people and you will never have the sort the hand on the heart reaction to particularly our political institutions in this country as you have in the United States.
But then on the other hand I can argue as an Australian, and not so much as the serving Prime Minister, I can argue that’s probably a good thing. I mean it’s one of the reasons why we’ve never had any demagogues running this country. I mean I can say a few other things about some of my predecessors but I don’t think I can ever quite say that we’ve been carried away. Now I think there’ll always be a certain amount of scepticism.
Now I think Question Time sometimes suffers from the disconnect between what I call the atmospheric of the House, the response of those in the Canberra beltway, and the rest of the Australian community. People don’t like too much aggression yet they want strength. They don’t like people being frivolous yet they don’t want their politics to be always completely dull. I think Australians by and large are probably, they’d be no more hypocritical about these issues than Americans, or British people or others. But if you say to me could we on occasions have less noise in Question Time the answer would be yes. I think everybody’s got to play a role in that. I think the government has, I think the opposition has, I think the media has. And I think it’s always important, always important to remind ourselves, and I speak of the political class, remind ourselves that how we think about something in the House and the atmospheric of it is often so very different from how it is portrayed on the television screen.
But I think it’s also important not to be too misty eyed about the past. I’ve read a lot of old Hansards and I’ve read some of the exchanges between Robert Gordon Menzies and Edward John Ward and others. That was pretty colourful and anybody who thinks that they sort of exhibited the verbal equivalent of the Marquis of Queensberry Rules is mistaken. I mean, in the end it’s better to assault people with words than assault people with anything else. And our Parliament is an expression of our character. Some times it does get raucous and some times we can improve it and I’m sure we can. And I think it was a very thoughtful question.

END