Radio Interview
Transcript - Radio 2GB, Sydney - 30th May 2005
E & O E — PROOF ONLY
CLARKE: I haven't spoken to him for a while but the Opposition Leader, Mr Kim Beazley, joins me on the line from Canberra. Mr Beazley, good afternoon to you.
BEAZLEY: Very good to be with you, Phillip
CLARKE: Yes, you too. The revelation today that the Government's been sitting on this report which could have helped Schapelle Corby is pretty appalling, isn't it?
BEAZLEY: It's not very good and they weren't very convincing in Parliament today. The Government essentially talked past it, said they hadn't seen it, accepted no responsibility for it. But it's a pretty nasty operational document this, and if the Government is not being kept up to speed with things like this it's not doing its job.
CLARKE: At least one of my listeners this afternoon has emailed me to suggest that, look, the report was available in September last year and they've pointed to electoral reasons was why it wasn't made available. You can develop all sorts of conspiracy theories but the Government's been clearly aware for a long time that there's been a problem here.
BEAZLEY: I think one of the problems you've got here is a compounding issue and they're asleep at the wheel. One of the fellows who would be in a very good position to actually look at these sorts of documents as their circulating around and check to see whether or not the intelligence that has been received is being acted on by the relevant authorities and advising the Government on measures, is of course the Inspector of Transport Security. It's absolutely what they're supposed to do. Well frankly, in the middle of all of this, they took home off the job. They didn't replace him. They took a number of the people who worked with him and sent him over to do the Rau investigation to handle another mess in the Department of Immigration.
The more you look back over this, look at the situation of Schapelle Corby, as you look at stories of blokes riding around with camel heads on and the Federal Police's recent initiatives in this area, which are obviously just a continuation of the story in the operational document that The Australian has managed to get hold of, what you see here is a pattern of activity that absolutely requires a fellow like Mick Palmer to be kept on the job.
CLARKE: Yes exactly.
BEAZLEY: To cover their backsides, they took him off to do this other inquiry, they didn't give him enough power and he said that now he can't cover all the things that they've got to look at anyway. So this is, all round, a mess.
CLARKE: It is. I've remarked many times that there are a lot of twists and turns left in this story and every day seems to confirm that view, I must say. I know another day another poll is probably a part of life as an Opposition Leader but the poll today showing your primary vote down, is now 47 per cent, sorry the Coalition's primary vote's now 47 per cent, up three points, Labor's down 3 to 37 per cent. It's discouraging isn't it?
BEAZLEY: Not really, Phillip. There are going to be hundreds of these polls between now and polling day and some polls are better than others. If you take a look at what happens usually two polls after a government does a budget, they get a bit of a bounce. Well, they got a couple of percentage points. The thing that I'm happy about coming out of this Budget, is that we have actually identified ourselves with a cause which really in fact impacts on seven million Australians. They were dudded in the tax cut that was handed to them. You've got a Government giving away $24 billion and generally speaking when the Government gives away $24 billion they get a really terrific response. They've had a pretty average one on this one —
CLARKE: It's been pretty good. It's been pretty good. The reaction to the Budget has been pretty good.
BEAZLEY: Well, they had a good reaction to the Budget, that is absolutely true and therefore you'd expect a bit better of it to show up in these polls. But as I say, not interested in the polls, there's going to be hundreds of them. What I am interested in is who gets what and frankly, for the average Australian, they got very little.
CLARKE: Why did you block the tax cuts? I mean, you could've said, 'well look, they're the Government's tax cuts, you voted for the Government, I'm washing my hands of it, I've got my own ideas but I'm not going to block things'. I mean, by blocking the tax cuts - which will have no effect anyway because they won't be blocked, I mean, they'll become law as night follows day - I mean, you've simply just given the Government something to hit you with, haven't you?
BEAZLEY: No, we haven't. We've taken a stand and we're hitting the Government with that stand. You ought to ring Costello and say, 'if the Senate passes the Labor Party's variant of your tax cuts — which is no more of an impact on the Budget than yours but is actually fair — it does the right thing by the punters who are earning $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 a year, don't want to be in the upper income brackets, no, they're not in that, taken out of it in the Labor Party's scheme, but more particularly, actually hands a tax cut that means something. I mean, for the average seven million who get the $6.00 a week, if they've got a mortgage of $200,000, the last interest rate rise which the Government promised would never happen, has taken the whole lot out, the lot, the whole kit and caboodle. We say you can do a decent cut for folks on up to $100,000 and have their aspirations met and still do the right thing by the hardworking nurses, the truckies, the panel beaters, the men and women who are around about the $50,000 to $60,000 level who are treated so contemptuously. So we say to Costello, 'those are the amendments we'll move in the Senate. Why are you going to block those amendments?'
CLARKE: It's going to be a tough run though, isn't it? I mean, you're sitting here with a Government which has given big tax cuts in its very first Budget after an election and mathematically, as you know, it's going to be difficult down the track. You're not despairing?
BEAZLEY: People know what we stand for. People know that we stand for them.
CLARKE: So is it about making a new Kim Beazley?
BEAZLEY: It's not about making a new Kim Beazley. It's about making a stand for the average Australian, identifying with what the battling Australian thinks and needs. We've done that on tax, we're doing that now on industrial relations, did it on the Medicare Safety Net. You know, you look at those Liberals who were elected in the Western Suburbs of Sydney at the election last year and what have they actually delivered to the people? Well, they've delivered a broken promise on the Safety Net, a broken promise on interest rates, a contemptible $6.00, when they awarded themselves $65.00 on tax, and now an industrial relations system that knocks out penalty rates for those who are aspirational and want to earn a bit on overtime. I mean, this is pretty good. This is a pretty good handful to fling in the faces of those who did you such favours in voting for you.
CLARKE: What did you make of former Prime Minister Keating's remarks at the weekend, that the current Labor Party had lost its way in relation to the big economic reforms - of which you were part back under the Hawke-Keating governments - that the Labor Party had lost its ideas on how to create wealth and we're more concentrated on ideas about redistributing it?
BEAZLEY: I think actually Paul was not talking about the current Labor Party. He said he felt that he could speak out because he thought that people like myself and Wayne Swan and Stephen Smith had actually committed ourselves to the reforms and he suggested that we'd neglected that in the previous years that we were in Opposition. We can have an argument about that but —
CLARKE: It is a fair criticism?
BEAZLEY: But what he was basically saying now is that we signed up to the idea of reform and so we are. I don't think there's any doubt at all that the policies that were put in place by the Hawke and Keating Government in relation to industrial relations, in relation to opening the economy, in relation to getting a more productive performance out of the workforce, is what has driven Australian growth and wealth. But the problem is it's petering out so the issue is what needs to be done now. I think we do need the sort of spirit that was there behind the Hawke and Keating Governments to reform, to take the bull by the horns, but the bull by the horns now is a skills bull. It's a national infrastructure bull and the Government's just not doing anything about it. We are saying they should, that's where you'll get productivity from and they've said no, we want to go the low pay road. Now Australia can take a choice. There are two roads here for us, Phillip, two roads. One is the low pay road and the other is the high skills road. John Howard, on the industrial relations changes, has selected the low pay road and we in the Labor Party, we're selecting the high skills road. That'll be the argument between now and the next election.
CLARKE: On a personal note. Have you settled into your new place in Sydney?
BEAZLEY: I like it. It's —
CLARKE: There was a picture in the paper —
BEAZLEY: I'm renting —
CLARKE: I know you're just renting it. There was a picture in the paper saying it had a big plasma TV and a couch and I thought it —
BEAZLEY: Well, it has got a big TV. I don't think it's a plasma one though.
CLARKE: And a couch and I thought it was a perfect single mans quarters, really.
BEAZLEY: Well, it is but my wife enjoys it too. She was over for the weekend and it was very enjoyable. I like Pyrmont down there near the Maritime Museum. It couldn't be better.
CLARKE: Well, you can say hello next time you're down here because it's right near our studios as well.
BEAZLEY: That's true. So it is. That's a good place to be then, isn't it.
CLARKE: All right, Mr Beazley. Good to talk with you.
BEAZLEY: Thanks, Phillip.
Ends