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  Interview: John Howard February 11, 2007 Reporter : Laurie Oakes  Political editor Laurie Oakes speaks with Prime Minsiter John Howard in this election year ...Watch Part 1 of the video Watch Part 2 Transcript LAURIE OAKES: Mr Howard, welcome back to the program. JOHN HOWARD: Good Morning Laurie. LAURIE OAKES: First, tell us about the aged care announcement you're making today, one-and-a-half billion over five years, what for? JOHN HOWARD: A whole range of things. This will complete our response to the Hogan Review. A lot more community care packages so that you'll have 25 per thousand of the relevant age cohort. Now, these aged care packages is where you provide help for people to stay in their own homes much longer and that's what older people want. We'll also be helping the nursing home and aged care sector out with more money and new arrangements so that they can better afford the higher care that is needed and it's a consequence of people staying in their homes longer that when they actually do go into an aged care facility, they’re frailer and they need a lot more intensive care. We'll be increasing by thousands of hours, the number of respite care places, if I can put it that way, available for people who are caring and looking after the elderly in their own homes. We'll also be simplifying the way in which we support the aged care sector so that an increasing amount ends up going to those who are providing the more intensive and higher care. We'll be fixing up an anomaly where we pay a lower level of support to aged care facilities that were once run by state governments and we'll also be providing some extra help for the disadvantaged areas, remote areas, of Australia and services that look after Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders. LAURIE OAKES: And good news for self-funded retirees. JOHN HOWARD: And also good new for self-funded retirees. There's an anomaly in the present system where a pensioner and a self-funded retiree, with the same amount of assets, are treated differently. (A) self-funded retiree is treated less fairly and we're going to remove that anomaly so irrespective of whether you're a self-funded retiree or a pensioner, the assets alone govern the support you get and that's only fair. LAURIE OAKES: And how many new nursing home beds will this create? JOHN HOWARD: This is actually providing, not trying to measure the number of beds, providing more resources and importantly it's going to create 7,200 new community care packages - that's the people being looked after in home and 16-hundred of those will be people who are getting more intensive care and it's a big package. Can I make the very relevant point that without a strong budget and a strong surplus as a result of good experienced, economic management, we wouldn't be able to afford to do it. LAURIE OAKES: I think we might hear a lot of that this year. JOHN HOWARD: I think it's a relevant point because our opponents are running around saying ‘look, we don't have to argue about economic management, we're all agreed on that, let's argue about other things’ …I hear Mr Rudd saying this morning that he supports all of these responsible things, that is not what they did, they tried to stop us at every turn, reforming the Australian economy and getting the budget back into surplus over the last ten years and it's a bit rich to now turn around and say we're in a lovey-dovey bipartisan consensus on economic policy - you could have fooled me, you could have fooled Peter Costello. LAURIE OAKES: OK, can I put some propositions to you? Get your re-action to them? Proposition 1: Voters have become blasé about the economy undermining the advantage you've had over Labor over the economic management issue. JOHN HOWARD: You're inviting me to be a commentator? LAURIE OAKES: Yes. JOHN HOWARD: What I say about economic management is that we've had more experience. We've got the runs on the board. All the big reform measures that we've tried to carry out, Labor has opposed. By contrast when Labor was in government, if they came up with a good idea, such as reducing tariffs, we supported them. As a hugh contrast we have been consistent both in opposition and in government. Oppositions have responsibilities as well as governments and when we (tried) to get the budget into surplus they opposed us. When we tried to fix the waterfront they opposed us. When Mr. Reith tried to reform industrial relations, first time around, they opposed, they opposed tax reform, they opposed the privatisation of Telstra although they supported the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank when they were in government, and of course, they've opposed our latest round of workplace relations reform and then they expect the Australian public to believe that when it comes to economic management issues, there's not a cigarette paper between us. LAURIE OAKES: Well, you keep using the word "they", but Labor now has a new leader... JOHN HOWARD: I include Mr. Rudd... LAURIE OAKES: I don't think people lump you with the responsibility for all of John Hewson's views, though Labor's got a new leader (entitling) them to a fresh start. JOHN HOWARD: But hang on, Mr. Rudd voted against tax reform. Whereas John Hewson, you know, I was part of a team in relation to him but he voted against tax reform; he voted against industrial relations reform. He was part and parcel of the team that voted against it and many of the senior people on his front bench led the charge. LAURIE OAKES: OK. JOHN HOWARD: They can't have it both ways, I mean, he's only been there a few minutes, so we're entitled to have a look at what he's done during that time. LAURIE OAKES: Proposition two for your comment: Australians are increasingly opposed to the Iraq War, and it's starting to bite electorally, undermining the advantage you've had over Labor on national security issues? JOHN HOWARD: Once again commentary but I'll address the substance of the issue. The Australian people have always been, when you ask them in a poll, against our involvement in Iraq. I accept that. As one of the answers I give to those who say I'm a poll-driven politician. It was about the least poll-driven decision I've taken in my entire political life but I believed in it; I believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So, incidentally did Mr Rudd. Mr. Rudd in fact said it was an empirical fact that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. His argument with us was whether we should have tried to get another United Nations resolution but I've got to now look at the current situation, and the impact on the alliance, the impact on the future of Iraq, if we were to get up and go, and Mr Rudd can't slip and slide and have it both ways, as he tried to do this morning. You either go or you stay, you either rat on the ally or stay with the ally, it's as simple as that. And, if it's alright for us to go, it's alright for the Americans and the British to go, and if everybody goes Iraq will descend into total civil chaos ... LAURIE OAKES: On that very subject, JOHN HOWARD: …and there'll be a lot of bloodshed. LAURIE OAKES: On that subject, Senator Barack Obama's announced overnight he's running for the Democrat Presidential nomination, and he says if he gets it he has a plan to bring troops home by March, 2008 and his direct quote is "Letting the Iraqis know we'll not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunies and Shiah to come to the table and find peace". So, basically he's agreeing with the Labor Party. JOHN HOWARD: Yes, I think he's wrong, I mean, he's a long way from being President of the United States. I think he's wrong. I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for Obama victory. If I was running Al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats. LAURIE OAKES: If he wins, and you're still there, bad news for the alliance. JOHN HOWARD: Well I tell you what would be even worse news for the fight against terrorism, if America is defeated in Iraq. I mean, we have to understand what we are dealing with. We're dealing here with a situation where if America pulls out of Iraq in March 2008. It can only be in circumstances of defeat. There's no way by March 2008, which is a little over a year from now, everything will have been stabilised so that America can get out in March 2008. And, if America is defeated in Iraq, the hope of ever getting a Palestinian settlement will be gone. There'll be enormous conflict between the Shi'a and the Sunnis throughout the whole of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Jordan will both be (destabilised), Al-Qaeda will trumpet it as the greatest victory they've ever had and that will have implications in our region because of the link, the ideological link at the very least, between the Al-Qaeda and JI. Proposition Three. LAURIE OAKES: ..the proposition is the incarceration of David Hicks is biting as an electoral issue because it's seen as evidence of an obsequious attitude to George W Bush and the Americans. JOHN HOWARD: Laurie, I'm very frustrated about the length of time it's taken. I have to take up something Ray Martin said in that intro, where he said, there's five years and they've found no charges against him. That's not right. There were charges laid against David Hicks, but because the Supreme Court in the case of Hamden and Rumsfeld said the military commission had not been established in accordance with the constitution, they had to start again, so it's not quite right to say they never, at any stage, reached a view that they had charges against him. We are pressing the Americans, almost on a daily basis, to bring this man before the military commission. I am very unhappy. LAURIE OAKES: What if they don't meet your mid-February deadline, we are just about there. JOHN HOWARD: Well, Laurie, the charging process has begun, but we will be watching, on a daily basis, progress towards the commission hearing starting and in the last few hours, Mr Downer has raised this issue in the meeting he had with Robert Yates, the new American Defence Secretary in Germany. And Mr Downer spoke to me on the phone about an hour ago and reported on the discussion, and he drove home again to the Americans, the concern that I've expressed to President Bush, and will go on expressing it; we are unhappy, frustrated with the amount of time it's taken. I don't think the Americans have handled that part of it well and it has made people legitimately concerned, even those who feel very strongly, as I do, that somebody accused of training with Al-Qaeda and returning to them in the full knowledge of what happened on 11 September, is nonetheless should not be held indefinitely without a trial and that is a view we'll press very, very hard on the Americans. LAURIE OAKES: Prime Minister we'll take a break and be back in a moment. LAURIE OAKES: Welcome back. Mr Howard, I have two more propositions I'd like to put to you and to get your comment on.. JOHN HOWARD: Sure... LAURIE OAKES: The first one, voters are a bit tired of John Howard, they see too much of him and they wouldn't mind a change. JOHN HOWARD: Well that ultimately is in their hands. I'll continue to do my best, I've still got a lot of ideas, a lot of energy, an enormous amount of optimism about the future of this country, a belief that it's got be built on maintaining prosperity, that posterity is not something you can take for granted. It does need good policy, it does need a lot of experience, and it also is built on enduring national security and I will be talking, as I have in the past about those things, but Laurie it's a subjective thing for an individual. I guess there are some Labor people who are tired of me after 10 minutes, let alone 10 years, so, and yet other Liberal supporters who would, you know, like me to go for a very long time into the future. LAURIE OAKES: I remember people saying they were tired of you 20 years ago. JOHN HOWARD: Well exactly, of course. I mean, so in the end people will pay on results. Australians are very practical people. They say "What's this bloke done, what's happened on his watch", they look at the lowest unemployment in 32 years, they see a strong economy, they see somebody who's prepared to weather the storm of unpopularity in relation to something he believes is right, and they will make those judgments and I'm in their hands, and whatever judgment the Australian people make at the end of the year, I'll accept with the greatest of good grace but I want them to know that I am very dedicated to the job, I'm very enthusiastic, and I have a lot of fight left in me. LAURIE OAKES: … Voters think you're not as worried about climate change as they are and your past scepticism on global warming makes them reluctant to believe you're a genuine convert now. JOHN HOWARD: Laurie, I'm a realist. I worry that we will be panicked into knee jerk reactions. I worry that we might sacrifice some industries with a short-term response. I want us to get this right. We have had a policy of encouraging things like clean coal technology for more than three years - I hear the Labor Party talking about it a lot now. I believe that you have to have all of the alternatives on the table, such as uranium, and nuclear power. I cannot understand how the Labor Party can claim the future on climate change when they won't even consider, into the future, nuclear power, which must become more viable as the cost of using fossil fuels as we clean them up becomes more expensive. Nuclear power compared with dirty coal, obviously is dearer. But if we make the coal cleaner, as the Labor Party says we must, we make its use dearer, then, as a result, we make the use of nuclear power more feasible, and the other point I make is that you are starting to see these crazy knee jerk reactions in statements made by Bob Brown about closing down the coal industry. LAURIE OAKES: Repudiated by the Labor Party and the Government. JOHN HOWARD: Yeah, I know, repudiated by the Labor Party, but remember this - the Labor Party has a track record of caving in to the Greens to get their preferences. Mark Latham did it in Tasmania over the forest. LAURIE OAKES: That might have been a bit of a lesson. JOHN HOWARD: But hang on, Kevin Rudd, I read in the newspapers on Friday, has softened his attitude to the construction of dams in Queensland so as not to upset the Greenies because he's worried, according to one of his spokesmen, about the tremendous fuss the Greens in south-east Queensland are kicking up about that issue. Now, he may have repudiated it, but I would say to the coalminers of Australia, just as I said to the forestry workers of Tasmania, you can rely on the Coalition to put jobs ahead of ideology. LAURIE OAKES: On global warming then, the States say they'll go it alone and introduce a national emission trading scheme by 2010 if you won't join in, will you join in? JOHN HOWARD: Laurie, we have begun to study this issue. LAURIE OAKES: But the States are way ahead, they've done the work... JOHN HOWARD: No, no, no.. LAURIE OAKES: …the scheme is in operation in NSW already. JOHN HOWARD: I don't think you can seriously do this work unless you engage the business community, unless you engage the mining companies, you engage the energy companies, the people whose businesses and whose employees, whose workers, are going to be affected, perhaps adversely if we get it wrong and what I'm doing through the joint Government business task group is working on both a feasible global response to emissions trading, and how that would intersect with a domestic one. So .. LAURIE OAKES: But shouldn't you have started this in '99 instead of throwing away those reports and closing down the.. JOHN HOWARD: No, we didn't. We started the clean technology process quite a number of years ago. LAURIE OAKES: But you dumped the recommendation for a carbon trading system. JOHN HOWARD: Yes, but no actually if you look at the Energy White Paper, we had an open mind on an emissions trading system, what we said was that it had to be compatible with what the rest of the world was doing because I'm not going to adopt an emissions trading system in Australia that burdens our industries whilst allowing others that are less efficient and greater pollutants get competitive advantage. LAURIE OAKES: The Murray-Darling basin takeover plan. Kevin Rudd put himself forward as a middle man and he says that he'll work to bring your position and that of the States together. JOHN HOWARD: I don't think after seeing him on television this morning, Mr Rudd has the faintest idea of what is involved in this. He said we wanted more in fact on three issues, governance, I explained in full the governance arrangements. He said he wanted to know whether States other than the Murray-Darling Basin States would benefit from the infrastructure investment. I made that clear when I announced the policy on the 25th. He also said he wanted clarification in relation to ownership of water. I made that clear last Thursday. I think Mr Rudd is just trying to, with the help of the Labor premiers, to sort of buy himself into the action. Laurie, these matters are resolved by elected governments. My responsibility as a Liberal Prime Minister is to work in good faith with the Labor premiers of the various States. Across the political divide and I commit myself to do that. Their responsibility is not to play politics with it and try and lever up their Federal mate. Their responsibility as elected Labor leaders of states is to work with me. The Australian public want this fixed. LAURIE OAKES: It's a Federal takeover of State constitutional powers absolutely necessary though, Steve Bracks from Victoria says there's probably a way forward doing it through a memorandum of understanding. JOHN HOWARD: Yes a memorandum of understanding that could be walked away from. LAURIE OAKES: Do you think they'd walk away from it? JOHN HOWARD: Look, it's a possibility. Look, this thing will only be put on a proper basis if we have a referral of powers. LAURIE OAKES: With a sunset clause, Mike Rann wants a sunset clause? JOHN HOWARD: I'm, I am, very sceptical about sunset clauses because they create uncertainty, they will discourage people from making longer term commitments. This thing has to be solved in an enduring way on a national basis. The river systems of Australia go across State boarders, the Great Artesian Basin lies under state borders. We've put up $10 billion, which includes 3-billion dollars to fix a problem the States created, that's over allocation, we want to put $6 billion into piping and lining the irrigation channels of the nation, now, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The Labor premiers might think they're inflicting political pain on me, well they can do that, I'm used to that. I ask them not to inflict political pain and water torture on the people of Australia. Get on with it, and agree to what is a great opportunity to do something in a lasting way about the Murray-Darling basin. LAURIE OAKES: A final issue. The Government's decision last week to allow the Tax Office to scrap tax breaks for agricultural managed investment schemes has caused extraordinary fear and loathing within the Coalition, are you prepared to review that? JOHN HOWARD: Well I'm prepared to listen to what my colleagues have got to say, but all we did was say that we weren't going to legislate to provide a special tax concession for this, these are always difficult issues because it involves a lot of investment. I think what people are most concerned about is the transitional impact of the Taxation office withdrawing from giving particular product rulings. LAURIE OAKES: And in fact, Stuart Macarthur, one of your MPs, said there should be transitional arrangements. JOHN HOWARD: Well there are, from what the tax office has indicated, there are already transitional arrangements in the sense anything that's got a product ruling now is safe, and anything that's given a product ruling up to 1 July is safe, but I'll talk to my colleagues about it, I'm a reasonable man on these things. LAURIE OAKES: Possible review? JOHN HOWARD: Oh, I'll talk to my colleagues, I am not promising anything, but I always listen to what my colleagues have got say, because they have a lot of wisdom. LAURIE OAKES: Prime Minister, we thank you, Prime Minister. JOHN HOWARD: Thank you. Click here to read Laurie Oakes' exclusive column on ninemsn News. |
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