Press Conference
Perth - 25th October 2005
E & O E - PROOF ONLY
BEAZLEY: The Prime Minister is hiding behind his
taxpayer funded propaganda. It's time he came out and debated me
on industrial relations. He is failing the ticker test on the
industrial relations debate. We didn't have it in the last
election campaign and we should have. He found himself in a
position of dominance in the Senate to his surprise and then we saw the
real John Howard. Extreme, prepared to do anything to get his
way; spend any amount of taxpayers' dollars.
Well the taxpayers' dollars he is spending now, on effectively Liberal
Party advertising, would fix a lot of problems around this country.
In my own electorate it would probably allow for a Peel
Deviation. And any Member of Parliament can work out exactly what
that could be usefully spent on in their own constituencies.
Instead the Prime Minister spends it on Liberal Party propaganda.
We don't need that propaganda. What we need is an honest debate
in this country in which the truth is told about what is intended with
these industrial relations changes. The Prime Minster talks a lot
about ticker and he hides behind his desk. The time for the Prime
Minister to come out and debate me is long since past. Time he
did it. Time he stopped wasting taxpayers' funds.
The second thing I want to talk about is the Integrated Cargo
System. Chris Ellison, the Minister, is going to go down as the
grinch who dropped Christmas. Unless he is immediately removed
from his job and the Prime Minister steps in and follows the advice of
business on getting this problem fixed. Right across Australia
now our waterfront is jammed with cargos piling up because the prideful
Minister will not admit he's been wrong and cak-handed in the
administration of his changed system. And the begging and
pleading of business to him, to go back to his old system and not try
and implement this until firstly he's competent to do and his officials
are competent to do it. And secondly they're out of a busy
season.
What is happening at the moment now is a major national scandal which
will produce major amounts of taxpayer funded compensation. That
is completely unnecessary. Yet again another Howard Government
incompetent bungle. It's time the Prime Minister stepped in and
dealt with it.
And the third thing is a problem that is well recognised in this State
and beginning to be recognised around the country. When are we
going to get a Coastguard? When are we going to get serious about
really protecting our borders? When are we going to put the
resources into ensuring that ships, and that those doing illegal
activities in our waters, are not merely seen but intercepted
8,000 sightings last year - 400 interceptions. Now, the truth of
the matter is, these vessels represents the gravest danger on the
possibility of the spread of bird flu. You've got livestock on
board, potentially infected livestock and they're making constant
landfall.
If at any point of time, terrorists or others got smart, they'd work
out it's a pretty easy way into Australia as well. Now, this will
be stopped when there's the near certainty of interception. And
we are so far short of the near certainty of interception when they're
building boats in the region around us faster than we're intercepting
them. Okay, off you go.
JOURNALIST: The latest opinion polls show that the
Opposition (inaudible) gained ground but still you're trailing behind
John Howard as preferred Prime Minister. Are you disheartened by
this?
BEAZLEY: Firstly polls go up and down and I don't
comment on opinion polls either about the Party, about myself, about
John Howard or anything else. But on the first of your questions
I'd say this: we don't need opinion polls to tell us that middle
Australia understands exactly what John Howard has in mind for
them. They understand absolutely that if you take away their
rights to penalty rates when they work overtime which is in fact how
most people in middle income Australia pay off their mortgages it's not
going to be good for the economy. Not good for them and not good
for the economy. They understand that and they're not going to be
confused by a slick multi-million dollar campaign which is merely
building up their resentment.
As to myself and my own role in Australian politics as far as I'm
concerned I'm determined to make the Labor Party fit to govern.
Now what does that mean? It means getting the right personnel and
I believe we have the right personnel for the job. It means
getting the right policies out there. Now, we are releasing
Blueprint after Blueprint about the things most relevant to a good and
prosperous future for this country. And the third thing is
holding the Government to account. And we are locked in fierce
battle with John Howard on the subject of his industrial relations
changes and frankly, he's running away. He's scuttling off into
the distance and won't confront us. He is failing the ticker test
big time when it comes to dealing with industrial relations and the
Australian people expect better of him.
JOURNALIST: How concerned are you though that you
don't seem to be getting the traction in the electorate, his approval
rating is sagging but your's isn't going up either?
BEAZLEY: Well, you know, I'm not a commentator on
polls. You've got plenty of people to do that and you make a
pretty fair fist of it yourself and you're actually paid to do
it. I'll tell you what I'm paid to do - I'm paid to provide an
alternative to John Howard and that's what we're doing. We're
getting good policy out there. We're obviously getting the public
paying some attention to what we're saying. We have an
alternative, for example, to John Howard's view on industrial
relations. We want to protect our prosperity and what we want to
do is to address labour market issues, labour market problems, by
massively expanding training and the skilling of the Australian
population.
You know as a West Australian, because we know it better than most
people I've got to say right around the country, that business has been
throttled for the last 18 months by an inability to access skilled
workers. You can't get them from overseas. They haven't
been coming through the training system here. There's goldmine
after goldmine not opening or delaying going into production because
they cannot get a skilled workforce. Even if they're prepared to
pay their electricians a couple of hundred thousand a year, they still
can't get electricians. So, this is a major scandal and it's
holding the country's growth back. It's the real labour market
issue and it's the one we're talking about.
JOURNALIST: But the presidential-type campaigns, how
are you going to get the electorate, you know, Beazley versus Howard,
but it's got to be Beazley?
BEAZLEY: I'll tell you how we're going to do it - by
having the right policies at the right time. And by allowing
people a chance to see what we're thinking about by putting out the
Blueprints, as we are. I would deny there's ever a small target
strategy but other people said there was. There ain't no small
target strategy now. We're putting out Blueprint after Blueprint
which gives you the very clearest understanding of the direction in
which we're going and what we thing about Australia and what we think
Australia needs.
That will be in place by the time of the next election. And if
the public judges us fit to govern we will win. One other thing
and this is the only comment I'll make on the polls. One of the
things that the polls do show us over the last 12 months is that
basically we've been contestable. We've been in the game. Now if
we're in the game by the time the next election comes around and we've
demonstrated in our personnel and policies we're fit to govern -
we will beat them.
JOURNALIST: Do you concede, though, that Mr Howard's
determined to push through the industrial relations changes and he's
likely to get through earlier rather than later?
BEAZLEY: Well, where are
they? He made his announcements in May of this year and we still
haven't seen a bill. We have seen one bill - that's been a $20
million bill imposed upon the Australian taxpayer. What we
haven't seen is a bill in Parliament and apparently we're not going to
see it next week either. He in the end because he's got the
Senate majority, he'll get through what he wants and what he's going to
produce is chaos. What he's also going to produce is hardship for
middle Australia.
Frequently, arguments in politics are about the margins - you know,
what's going to happen to so and so; who's in a very big minority in
the community. This is about the 70 per cent of Australians that
sit in the middle, keep this country going, and are the family people
who need to support kids in education and the rest of it. John
Howard has said he's straight after their wage packet. Now, they
know this. And when it goes through there are many things that
are going to happen, but none of them are going to be good as far as
ordinary middle Australians are concerned.
JOURNALIST: Do you think the package is inevitably going to be good for Labor at the next election?
BEAZLEY: All I can say is this: it
engages our heart and soul. It engages what Howard intends to do
here, engages the reasons for which the Labor Party was created.
We were basically created for ordinary Australians to give themselves a
chance in the workplace so they could give their families a decent
income. Now, that's actually why the Labor Party was created more
than 100 years ago. We've done lots of other things in that
period of time and most times politics is about other issues because
most governments have the basic decency not to run extreme policies on
industrial relations. Well, John Howard has decided, as far as
middle Australia is concerned, no more Mr Nice Guy. As far as
we're concerned, we're going to confront him.
JOURNALIST: Anti-terrorism laws, Mr Beazley.
You'd be aware that one of the States has got an opinion from their
Solicitor-General regarding that the proposed laws might be
unconstitutional. Can you say, have you got anymore developments
regarding the issue of judicial protection required (inaudible)?
BEAZLEY: I see from what's
recorded in the papers that Peter Beattie's Solicitor-General has made
suggestions that have been circulated to colleagues. If Peter
Beattie's Solicitor-General thinks there's a problem with this
constitutionally, it makes it absolutely clear that what we've been
saying for the last few weeks is correct - it's got to go to a proper
parliamentary committee deliberation. Good law has come from
previous efforts by the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee.
That's what should happen now. That's the first thing that should
happen in relation to these laws.
I think the second thing that should happen in relation to these laws
is Mr Howard must be cautious. There would be nothing more
designed to infuriate the Australian taxpayer than to see the Howard
Government getting something wrong - a person who, their reasonable
suspicions are held as to their bad intentions to the Australian
community, getting let off in a court case and coming and obtaining
from the Australian taxpayer thousands of dollars in
compensation. Nothing would infuriate Australians more.
That's why John Howard needs to be cautious on this.
JOURNALIST: Do you have any proposals that might make these things more acceptable?
BEAZLEY: I was on the Intelligence
Committee of the previous Parliament when we had a look at some laws
like this and went through them with very great deliberation. You
have to, when you're introducing laws like this; make absolutely
certain there are checks and balances in it. You have to do that
for democratic liberty reasons, you've also got to do it because, quite
frankly, courts these days, if you fail to do that, will act
appropriately and the taxpayers will be out of pocket. So, you
need that caution.
John Howard would be very sensible to put this into that sort of
process. It will produce the checks and balances they need.
You do need judicial supervision, or independent supervision, of this
process. You cannot allow people to disappear into a black hole
and there be no due process anywhere in the system. I'm worried
about the laws from that point of view and we will be seeking to do
things about them.
I'm also worried about another aspect of this. We're chatting
about these laws as though this was the be all and end all of the
struggle with the terrorists. Actually, in many ways, they're a
side issue. We have yawning gaps, yawning holes in the protection
of the Australian people. We can see one off the coast of Western
Australia now. You can see it in our ports. Even now as we
deal with the integrated cargo system shemozzle, what guarantees are we
going to have, as they try to fix this problem, that those cargoes are
properly surveilled? What guarantees will we have? You've
got the airports, the rural airports, no proper checking of baggage and
the rest of it. These are the real problems and the Government
won't address them. It's quite serious. The Government
loves to talk about laws because it gives you an opportunity to tee off
on the odd surviving civil libertarian but they don't want to talk
about things that might cost them a bit of money. But it's the
things that cost them money which, in the end, protect us.
JOURNALIST: I just wanted to ask you; 8000 sightings
is more than 20 a day. Are we at crisis point? (inaudible)
BEAZLEY: We are at crisis point;
there is no question about that. I've seen maps from fisheries
which show you that the position before 2001 and the enormous array of
vessels outside the Australian zone and then they show you the vessels
of the last year in which they've had the survey. All that
enormous array of vessels is now inside the Australian zone and there's
nobody outside the Australian zone. It's as though this whole
range of fishing activity has suddenly descended on us. You have
to have a coastguard to be able to deal with it. You need an
integrated response. You also need additional facilities.
The Government goes around there talking about the numbers of extra
boats that they're going to put out there. We're going to put a
lot more out with a coastguard. You don't need super-capable
boats, you just need boats fast enough to do the job. Once they
get out there the job's done.
So, we need that. We also need boats with helicopters operating
off the back of them. That was also part of our coastguard.
Of course it would take you a year or two to get that into place.
It wouldn't happen overnight. Somebody's got to make a start
sometime.
JOURNALIST: A local issue, another local issue.
You'd be aware that there's a State Labor Conference next month.
Would you like to see more rank and file involvement in the selection
of delegates, for instance, rather than have it all sorted out by
factions as it occurs now?
BEAZLEY: Rank and file involvement
and the selection of delegates is absolute. Delegates for a State
Labor Conference are drawn from the branches and each branch sends a
representative to the Conference and there's elections in each of the
branches for whoever the representative is. Trade unions; it
tends to be the council of the trade unions, in each trade union's
case, who determine the delegates. Ever since I've been a member
of the Labor Party it's been that way, mate, so I can't see it changing
any time soon.
JOURNALIST: I'll put it to you; do you see there's
room for improvement in the way that the rank and file delegates are
elected rather than just sort of being in factional groupings?
BEAZLEY: In politics major
political parties attempt to incorporate a huge area of public opinion
within them - that's the case of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party
in Australia - are going to have people of diverse views and they're
going to organise around their views. It's never been any
different. It's no different to that and the Australian Labor
Party I joined. One thing is different, no, several things are
different. The Labor Party I joined had its Stalinist internal
practices. You know, if anybody got up and gave any form of
dissent they were expelled. I can remember when the, well, I've
been told, I wasn't actually a member of the executive then, when Peter
Dowding's father was expelled for being a member of a group that
opposed the White Australia policy. We had really hard-lined
positions.
The second thing was there were no women - except making tea.
That was the Labor Party I joined. The Labor Party now is an open
Party. Sure, it has its disagreements and its different
groupings. It always had then. You didn't see them before
because it was behind closed doors. But you see them now, it's an
open process. That the first thing.
The second thing is, if I get the chance to form a government in two
years from now the first thing people are going notice - and it's going
to come as something of a surprise to them and it's going to be a
pleasant surprise - it's this, they are going to see a very large
number of women in powerful positions. There'll be nothing token
about them, nothing one-off. You'll have a Deputy Prime Minister
who's a woman. You'll have many of the senior portfolios occupied
by women - and these are not apparatchiks. Two of the women now
who are my senior frontbenchers are nursing mothers. They are
combining the most difficult things that women can do, in family terms,
with serious responsibilities in the nation.
This is going to be the first government of Australia, not just the
first Labor Government, the first government of Australia that more
openly reflects the real gender roles and activities in Australia as of
now. The Labor Party I joined and the only one (inaudible) as I
say, the only women you could find on the conference floor were making
cups of tea. We were always getting up and moving resolutions
about how nice it was that the Fremantle Labor women have done the
right thing by us all this time and that we looked forward to the Perth
Labor women doing it next time.