Radio Interview 3AW Melbourne
6th August 2007
MITCHELL: Kevin Rudd, good morning.
RUDD: Good morning, Neil. You’re clear as a bell from up there.
MITCHELL: Well it’s miles, isn’t it? You would have been here, wouldn’t you?
RUDD: Been there a few times, yes. By the way, a word of advice on the Chairman Mao watch, which is once you buy it then take a bet on whether it will last the first sixty minutes or whether you get the model which lasts until midnight. Every one I’ve bought up there doesn’t survive.
MITCHELL: Oh, you’ve got a collection of Mao watches.
RUDD: Yes mate, and none of them work.
MITCHELL: Do you haven’t got a (inaudible) boy, have you? They’re selling at the top of …
RUDD: No, I drew the line at that actually. The Chairman Mao watches, big collection, none of them going.
MITCHELL: Do you know how the weather goes up here because it’s pouring with rain. How long will that last?
RUDD: Well, you’re right about, normally it rains heavily in July, so we’re into August, I suppose that’s still possible. But Beijing’s two extremes. In the middle of Winter I’ve been up there in the middle of a snow storm and just freezing as the winds come in from the Mongolian Plain and then in the middle of Summer, as you said you can be in the, sort of the subtropical downpour.
MITCHELL: I’d like to ask you more about China in a moment. But just on the Australian issues, is John Howard too old?
RUDD: No, not at all. I’ve never had that view. Mr Howard, in my experience of him, is very active and I don’t think his age is at all an issue. I think the question for us is if the Government has been there for 11 years, we argue that they’ve run out of ideas in terms of the big challenges facing Australia for the future. Now, I think Mr Howard has lost touch with concerns of working families on cost of living and housing affordability.
MITCHELL: Is he dishonest?
RUDD: Well, you know, in the political debate, he and I have often had exchanges about that. I don’t make a general character assessment on specific debates which have arisen, like Iraq in the past. I have made very direct accusations against the Prime Minister in terms of the information he’s given to Australia and to the Australian people. And on that I’ve said that on those matters, he’s been less than straight forward with the people. But I think general character assessments don’t get us very far.
MITCHELL: So, you don’t consider him a dishonest man?
RUDD: Oh look, I’m not into that, really, and those sort of sweeping character assessments. On Iraq, I don’t think he was dealing with the Australian people in a straight up and down, fair dinkum way and I can say that in a number of other areas as well. But I don’t pretend to be a person who sits there and stares into a person’s soul and make a general sweeping character generalisation.
MITCHELL: Do you think the release of this information, now it’s public, could lead to a leadership change?
RUDD: Matter for the Liberal Party. Mr Costello’s obviously been pretty unhappy. That book that came out recently, containing within it Mr Costello’s observations about Mr Howard, including Mr Howard’s management of interest rates in the past, that, is I think, a problem internally for them but that’s for them to sort out. I think the big problem with this leaked material today, Neil, is it does underline the fact that when Mr Howard is out there attacking the States and blaming them for everything, whether it’s interest rates or whether it’s hospitals or whatever, it’s driven by a political strategy, a poll driven strategy provided by Crosby Textor, and it’s there in black and white and what’s all over the front page of the Herald Sun and the other News Limited papers today.
MITCHELL: Of course, the other thing that seems to come through in this report, though, is that you are seen as acceptable because you’re Howard-like, you’re a version of John Howard.
RUDD: Yeah, I’ve been asked about that in various media interviews this morning and I’m not quite sure either how, (a) Mr Howard or (b) I would respond to that.
MITCHELL: How do you respond? Is that a strategy? Look, don’t scare the horses. Don’t do too much, Howard-like.
RUDD: No, Neil, look the bottom line is I just go out there and be me, to be quite honest.
MITCHELL: Well, are you like John Howard?
RUDD: Look, other people can do the character analysis. On the economy, can I just say this? I’ve said ever since I became Leader and well before that, I’m an economic conservative. I believe in keeping the budget in balance over the course of the economic cycle. I believe in keeping the budget in surplus over the course of the economic cycle. In other words, I believe in the basic doctrines of sober, macroeconomic management, independence of the Reserve Bank, inflation targeting, to ensure that we’ve got interest rates as low as possible. Do people regard that as Howard-like? I just regard it as mainstream economic management.
MITCHELL: You mentioned interest rates. What do you think will happen this week, given the, well, I suppose we’ve got see what the stock market does today, but given what has been happening on the stock market?
RUDD: What happens this Wednesday by the Reserve Bank, is one of the great things about our system is that that’s a matter for the Bank itself. The commentators have been out there having a field day on this. For homeowners around the country, I’ve got to say, they’re already doing it tough. I would not want to see them suffer any further burden at present because with four interest rate rises since the last election, it is very difficult out there for many people.
MITCHELL: But what is your promise on interest rates? As you say, the Reserve Bank runs it, you can’t blame John Howard entirely. So, what is your promise on interest rates if you’re elected?
RUDD: To do everything within the power of the Federal Government to enable the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates as low as possible. That means running a budget surplus on average over the economic cycle, to ensure that the Bank can get ahead and do it’s job and to maintain the Reserve Bank’s policy focus, which is to ensure that we have a doctrine of inflation targeting in that range of 2-3 per cent, so that we keep interest rates as low as possible.
Where Mr Howard got it wrong at the last election, Neil, was when he went on television and said that the Government, if it was re-elected, would keep interest rates at record lows. That is, that they wouldn’t go up …
MITCHELL: I disagree with that. I think he said something very similar to what you’re saying. Certainly in the interviews with me, he said just what you’re saying - we will set the policies and we’ll do better than Labor. We can’t promise it but we’ll do better than Labor.
RUDD: But in the ads that they ran throughout the election campaign, Neil, and I’m quoting here directly, they said, “we will keep interest rates at record lows”. Since then, they’ve gone up four times. That’s all I’m saying. It was wrong. And the former Governor of the Reserve Bank himself has said himself that it was wrong for Mr Howard to promise that he could keep interest rates at a particular rate. The truth is neither he and I can make any promises when it comes to a particular rate. What we can say, and what I say as the alternative Prime Minister, is make sure that through your budget policy, you keep the budget in surplus over the economic cycle on average and that you ensure the independence of the Reserve Bank, thereby making sure that interest rates can be kept as absolutely low as possible.
MITCHELL: Both of which have been done by the Howard Government, so how can you blame them for the increase in interest rates?
RUDD: The point about the increases which have occurred on four occasions is that Mr Howard gave people a misleading undertaking in the advertising.
MITCHELL: But he’s doing exactly what you say you’re going to do - in surplus, leave the Reserve Bank independent.
RUDD: What I didn’t do, Neil, and neither did the Labor Party before, is go out with wall to wall advertising at the last election campaign and say we’re going to keep them where they were.
MITCHELL: But what could he have done differently?
RUDD: What he could have said much more honestly with the Australian people is say, ‘we will seek to keep interest rates as low as possible’. But by making a claim which went much further than that and said that he would keep them at their current levels, he went one wave far too far. And as you know, interest rates was a huge debate in the last election campaign and it was a false undertaking by Mr Howard then.
MITCHELL: I’m sorry, so you’re not criticising his policies, you’re criticising his promises.
RUDD: Yeah, exactly, what he said in the last campaign.
MITCHELL: So, his policies are OK?
RUDD: No, on the policy question, what do we say on what more can be done in terms of keeping interest rates low. If you read the material that’s been put out by the Reserve Bank and others over the last several years they say what are the big additional things that government can do to ensure that we don’t have any breakaway inflation. One is, to do something concretely about the skills shortage. And two, about infrastructure bottlenecks. That’s where we do have a disagreement with Mr Howard’s Government. If you’re acting in those areas to undo those infrastructure bottlenecks and to do more by way of investment and education, skills and training, then you can take some of the pressure off inflation as well. So, they are the two areas where the Government has not acted enough. We have concrete plans in both those areas.
MITCHELL: OK. Can I just ask you a couple of other quick things? Mick Keelty, do you support him?
RUDD: Yes, I do.
MITCHELL: He’s mucked this one up, though, hasn’t he?
RUDD: Well, what we’ve said on the Haneef matter is that we do want an independent judicial inquiry. The reason is I don’t believe that with all the information that is available, has been made publicly available. So, I simply reserve judgement in terms of the decisions by Mr Andrews, the Immigration Minister, at the end of this Haneef matter. I reserve judgement as to what information was provided to him at that stage and whether the decisions taken at that stage were properly informed. I don’t accuse Mr Andrews of anything at this stage. I just know too much was appearing in the newspapers each day, new information popping out all the time. That’s why I think let’s get it all on the table through a proper judicial independent inquiry.
MITCHELL: The video of the soldiers behaving like idiots, your reaction to that?
RUDD: Oh, look, I heard the Army General from the Northern Territory, from Robertson Barracks, express his views on that, that it’s no proper place for the Australian Army. I support what the General had to say.
MITCHELL: The premiers, this advertisement of getting the premiers to do your dirty work, if you were in the opposite position, you wouldn’t want the whole country controlled by one Party, would you?
RUDD: Well, that’s the thing, Neil. I reckon working families spot it in terms of what federal governments and what State governments are responsible for. They hold us separately accountable.
MITCHELL: But isn’t it inherently unhealthy, whether it’s all Liberal or all Labor, doesn’t matter, but to have one Party controlling every government in the country, isn’t that unhealthy?
RUDD: I think the reason we’ve got this thing called the House of Representatives and the Senate is that people can make their own decisions in the Senate. What went wrong after the last election is that Mr Howard got untrammelled power. And that’s why he introduced his Work Choices legislation and that set of industrial relations laws are now what the Government, in part, are trying to run away from in terms of its most recent attempted changes just before the election campaign. The Senate is the way in which the House of Representatives is kept in check. The Senate was handed over to Mr Howard and they have a majority in the Senate for the first time in quarter of a century. The last time the Labor Party had a majority in the Senate was decades ago.
MITCHELL: OK. China, if we may? That’s what I wanted to ask you. Where’s Julia Gillard? I haven’t seen her for ages. Where’s Simon Crean?
RUDD: Julia Gillard has been working frenetically right around the country, as I have been, for the last six weeks up hill and down dale.
MITCHELL: Simon?
RUDD: Simon, on the trade front, he’s been doing a lot of work in terms of the upcoming APEC meeting to be held in Sydney, which will deal in part with the future of the world trade round and the impasse it’s reached. And on regional development, Simon is out there visiting as many seats as I am visiting in terms of what is needed out there to make sure that people beyond the metropolitan cities are given a fair crack of the whip.
MITCHELL: So, there’s not a bit of ‘do no harm’ mode? You’re not being very cautious?
RUDD: No, no, no. Everyone is out there, I’ve got to say, working their guts out at the moment. I mean, right across the board. Who actually gets covered in the six o’clock news, you know as well as I do, Neil, that’s part of the daily lottery in terms of who gets up and who doesn’t.
MITCHELL: You could well be Prime Minister by the time the Beijing Olympics happen. Would you come?
RUDD: If I was invited by the Chinese Government, I would see no reason why not to.
MITCHELL: How would you, if you were elected, given your background and your understanding with China and your knowledge of the language, how would that affect Australia’s relationship with China?
RUDD: I think the overall relationship with China, at present, is in a reasonable state of repair. What I would try and do is how do you broaden the economic relationship. I keep saying around Australia, we’ve got the mining boom at present. One day it will come to an end. We’ve got to prepare for the future. I want a vision for the long term economy in Australia which is bigger than Australia just being China’s quarry and Japan’s beach. How do we broaden out the economic engagement? For example, the financial services sector, how do we boost our sale of financial services into China, particularly in the funds management industry. They’ve got an emerging retirement incomes business there and we are very good at that within this country. On top of that, how do we broaden it out in terms of agriculture? Agricultural trade liberalisation is a key part of the free trade negotiations with the Chinese and I want to make sure that we get big changes there so that our farmers get access to this market much more than is the case at the moment.
MITCHELL: Do you think China will stay open after the Olympics?
RUDD: You know, I’ve been studying China, Neil, for 25 years and I’ve ceased making really robust predictions about where it all goes. China is still, as we know, a one-party State and at the same time, it’s liberalised its economy. How it conducts its politics post the Olympics, hard to tell. What I do know, though, in China is that if I compare it today with the China I first went to work in back in 1984, this is like two different planets. The degree of personal freedom in people’s lives now is much greater than it was back then. The degree of personal wealth, not for all but for some, is greater than it was back then. And even in the media, there are reasonable debates in China now about lifestyle questions and about non-political questions which wouldn’t have been possible 25 years ago. But still there are constraints on freedom.
MITCHELL: Will Australian athletes have to be careful what they’re saying on the news?
RUDD: Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, I think Australians should just behave as they would normally.
MITCHELL: I don’t know about that.
RUDD: Do you think I should rephrase that?
MITCHELL: Well, thank you very much for your time …
RUDD: I think our athletes will be great ambassadors for the country. I think it’s a really good thing that you’re up there, by the way, Neil. Part of Australia’s future is getting the China relationship right and having, you know, mainstream journalists like yourself there on the spot broadcasting, I think, is really good because this is going to be one of the huge shapers of Australia’s future – China, climate change, those questions, we’ve got to get the equation right.
MITCHELL: When you were here did you ever eat any of the (inaudible)?
RUDD: I ate so many different things in China. You know what I discovered the best part of wisdom was, Neil? Never to ask what you’ve just eaten.
MITCHELL: (inaudible) you don’t like speaking Mandarin but could you at least say, ‘you beauty, I can’t lose’?
RUDD: I’m not going to say that either in English or Chinese. But what I will say to you is … (Rudd speaking Mandarin) … which is, on your return journey, may you arrive home safely.
MITCHELL: Thank you very much for your time.
RUDD: See you. Bye.