29 September 2000- RADIO 2GB
Subjects: Olympics, elite sport funding, election, ALP policy, Cathy Freemen, reconciliation, petrol, GST, regional radio
FITZSIMONS: The Prime Minister has come into criticism from some quarters for spending too much time at the Olympics while on the other hand, Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, has only been to the Opening and otherwise has pretty much stayed away. That’s only a small portion of what we’d like to discuss with Mr Beazley, can I begin by saying welcome.
BEAZLEY: Good to be with you.
FITZSIMONS: I tried to get you seated next to me so you’d look slim by comparison. But, no. They put you there.
BEAZLEY: You’ve lost tonnes of weight. This man has been on an exercise regime you would not believe. This fellow is fit to strip down for the Wallabies yet again.
HOLMES: Well, he was until he started this show four weeks ago.
BEAZLEY: Cream the five nations – on his own!
FITZSIMONS: What do you make of all the…..you have taken….it’s quite interesting, the Prime Minister has taken a lot of flack for being omnipresent at the Games while you’ve taken some flack, at least, for not being there barely at all.
BEAZLEY: Well, I must say, wandering around down at Circular Quay and Martin Place and around the Rocks yesterday, there didn’t seem to be too much criticism – just a whole lot of people having a ball, including me.
FITZSIMONS: Where have you been?
BEAZLEY: The point that I made months and months ago was this, that in circumstances where people couldn’t get access to tickets it was not right that those of us in political life got the freebies. And you had to stretch a point on that because, basically, the Opening and Closing ceremonies are important and therefore that the tickets I picked up I’d pay for, which I have and I’m going along to the Olympics today.
HOLMES: Talking about sport long-term, there has been some concerns, I suppose, the Australian Olympics Committee, a number of the national federations, just how much money is going to continue to be put into elite sport in this country, now that the Games at home will be well and truly over. What’s your position on that?
BEAZLEY: Well, if we don’t, and there’s nothing much there in the forward estimates, as they say, for the elite sports, if they don’t then the performance of the Australians will begin to decline, probably quite dramatically. This program, the elite program began when John Brown was the Labor Party’s Minister for Sport. And it was then continued under his successors. And I remember Ros Kelly coming before one of our ERC’s years ago and saying, ‘you know, if you persist in this program’, this was before the Atlanta Games, ‘we’ll get 40 medals at Atlanta and 60 in the year 2000 Games. And, I must say, the calculations seemed to be pretty much on track in both of those instances. But I actually think, though people say, ‘well, what is happening to the other areas of sport when the elite sports take so much?’ In terms of encouraging people to participate, the sorts of performances that we’ve seen at these Games, and that we saw previously in Atlanta, changed people’s view about the healthy lifestyle. There’s no question about that.
HOLMES: Is there an argument, though, that the fact that health and education and transport and all these other areas are missing out on vital funds because of the fact that elite sport gets so much money?
BEAZLEY: Health, education, the other issues that you raised, are not missing out on funds as a result of that. They’re missing out on funds because the Government slashed them, basically, to provide themselves with a poultice of dough to lubricate the GST. And there’s no doubt at all that in aged care, health and education we now confront a crisis in this country – a crisis which is terminating good chances for Australia this century, particularly in the education and research and development area. That’s not the fault of the elite athletes program. The elite athletes program is, what $20 or $30 million maybe a year, maybe a bit more. The slashing of spending by the Government to lubricate the GST was $8 billion a year. So, you can’t blame the elite athletes’ program for the wreckage in our public hospital system and in our high schools and in our universities. That is a decision by the Howard Government in which the amount committed to the elite athletes’ program is a drop in the bucket.
FITZSIMONS: I don’t remember you being a betting man, but were you a betting man, when do you think the Federal election will be?
BEAZLEY: I know when I think it should be – it should be at the end of next year, which is the Constitutional time limit associated with the calling of elections. But the Prime Minister can call it any time. And, as a result of that, as Opposition Leader, I’m obliged to be policy ready, if you like, and I’ve spent a fair amount of the last couple of weeks getting there.
FITZSIMONS: There’s criticism that you have not released policies, that you should have released, that, you know, that you haven’t put out there exactly what a Labor Government will stand for.
BEAZLEY: Well, you know, we have more policy out there for the next term of Parliament than the Liberals have. I tell you what’s out there, there is out there our Education Priority Zones to deal with the problem that people feel is occurring in our high schools. We’ve got out there various teacher scholarship programs to deal with the problems that we’ve got with qualifications of teachers and particularly the shortage of science and math teachers. We’ve got out there programs associated with supporting research in the universities and retaining in Australia the large numbers of great scholars which are leaving this country. We’ve got out there the Medicare Alliance which is to renovate Medicare and ensure the public hospital system survives. We’ve got out there Medicare After Hours, which is the big problem that most people feel with the medical system that they have to go in to hospital emergency services at night because their GPs aren’t available, they don’t fund it. That’s out there. We’ve got out there our industrial relations policies to restore fairness in the workplace and balance between the interests of employers and employees. We’ve got out there our drugs policy, dealing with creating, among other things, a Coastguard, it’s about darn time we bit the bullet on that.
Now, what is Mr Howard’s plan for the next term? That’s our plan. What’s Mr Howard’s?
FITZSIMONS: You might remember in the course of when I was writing your biography, at one point I had a go at you and said, ‘Pauline Hanson has been out there and she’s been saying this and saying that. And I go back through the research what’s your take on why you haven’t spoken out, too’. And you turned quite angry quite quickly and said, ‘anybody that says that – I put a telephone book worth of transcripts on their desk because I’ve been saying it and saying and saying it and it hasn’t been reported’. Do you think you get a fair go from the media in terms of reporting what your policies are?
BEAZLEY: Look, I don’t blame the media for not covering Opposition policy. We’re not the Government. The media responds to the day to day. So, I have no quarrel with that. The quarrel I have is when I get editorialised on the subject of where is the Labor Party’s stand on these issues when they have the transcripts before them. So, I’m prepared to do a deal. You report the Opposition in the way in which you normally report the Opposition, but don’t lie about its position. I mean, that’s the….I’m not saying that about you. I mean, ‘you’ the media generally.
FITZSIMONS: No, no, that’s right.
BEAZLEY: That’s fine with me. You accept the breaks in Opposition. And you have to persist. But when you actually have policy out there, criticise the policies, by all means, but don’t lie about the fact that the….or suggest the Labor Party has no policy.
HOLMES: One area of big interest is GST, even down to the very simple fact that Peter FitzSimons has to go home each night and fill out endless amounts of forms because of the GST. Now, this is also an area causing a great deal of stress in the general population. What will happen with GST?
BEAZLEY: The general population wants the GST fairer and simpler. You know….
HOLMES: Can that happen?
BEAZLEY: Yes. Of course it can be made fairer and simpler. And when we talk about rollback, that’s what we mean. There is a concern based on the experience now of literally thousands of small business people as they get to grips with the complexity of it, that if you make further changes, it will make it more complex. And that’s why we have to be careful as we go through an examination of their experience in the practical world that we make sure that whatever we do, makes it actually simpler for them. And what we’ve got now is the biggest test case for policy formulation you could conceivably want with a GST – that is, practical experience. And we’re going to know an awful lot more about the difficulties associated with the GST as all the small business people put in their returns a month from now.
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FITZSIMONS: Mark Latham…..John Howard, for someone who tries to project himself as a plain man, Howard has become an expert in milking the perks of office. He says he’s turning up at the Olympics as a blatant attempt to extract political gain from the success of our sportsmen and women. More than any Prime Minister in memory, Howard has exploited his public entitlements. Do you have a reaction to that?
BEAZLEY: I must say, I saw a ripper the other day, which I thought was pretty funny and that was the $8000 for the wine consultant. I wish he’d rung me up about that because I’ve got a great mate who runs a liquor store just down the road from me, he knows everything about wine, particularly West Australian wines. And I reckon I could have got him that advice for free.
FITZSIMONS: Is that on the public record? What he was hiring a wine consultant for, what for Kirribilli House?
BEAZLEY: Yes, basically….for the wine collection overall, I presume it was for the Lodge as well. But eight grand. You and I have both got our favourite liquor store and they know a lot about wine. You go down there, provide….they, of course, then expect you to buy it from them. But eight grand. I thought that was a bit much.
HOLMES: You spoke after Cathy Freeman’s great win about 400 metres of reconciliation. What happens now with the marathon? Cathy winning the 400 metres, lighting the cauldron, was a great display of symbolism. But actually getting down to seeing things happen, seeing things change, seeing things move ahead, action now has to take place.
BEAZLEY: You know what I think was really terrific about that is that there are two levels at which reconciliation occurs. One is that the admission by Government that there is a problem and that there needs to be some formal recognition in terms of atonement, which is a parliamentary apology, to my mind. But then there’s the other element of reconciliation which is for the long haul and that is how you and I as Australians feel about the relationships that we have with our fellow Australians who are Aboriginal. And in that area, that win by Cathy and the role she played in the opening of the Olympics, I mean, that’s just pure gold because it’s activity at a level that most Australians can relate to. And you can’t have 8 million people watching it on TV, like I did, and the stadium packed like it never has been before with anxiousness….don’t kid ourselves. Everybody in the sports bar in Ballarat that I was in was frightened when that began. And the focus on her, and I bet that was the case with the 110,000 going berserk in the stadium as well, with that anticipation, or the emotion, that has been invested in her victory by every single Australian – black and white – is of itself an act of reconciliation.
HOLMES: But we need to take that further, don’t we. I mean, there needs to be a genuine understanding of the plight of some of these people.
BEAZLEY: Of course. There’s so much more to do on that, that is true. But things that tug at the old heartstrings are always…if you’re going to engage your policy head, first you’ve got to engage your emotional heart. And that engaged the emotional heart.
FITZSIMONS: There’s also news today of a proposed major shake-up of the Telstra Board. Telstra’s credit rating has also been assessed downwards by Standard and Poors. If you take Government, what will be your first move vis a vis Telstra?
BEAZLEY: As far as we’re concerned, what Telstra is involved in is nation building. If it’s majority public owned, like most Telstras in Europe, equivalent of Telstras in Europe, that hybrid type structure is the norm in most…sophisticated advanced parts of the world. So, there is nothing particularly wrong with Telstra’s structure. It has to make its own commercial decisions. Those commercial decisions will affect the share price one way or another. But from our point of view, Telstra has a task to do and that task is to ensure that all Australians have access to the changing opportunities that high quality communications provide and, affordably. And in the bush, for example, that means connectivity, it means bandwidth, it means ensuring that bush businesses, when they use their telephone system, particularly for data transmission, get the same sort of access, the same sorts of prices as people in the city.
FITZSIMONS: You mentioned the bush. In the last Federal election One Nation was doing very strongly out there. Both Labor and Liberal were hurt. As you sniff the electoral winds, what is your feeling for how it’s going in the bush. Are they reacting to the fuel prices as well?
BEAZLEY: Well, everything related to the GST is much worse in the bush than it is in the city, or regional Australia. ‘Bush’ is a West Australian expression and I’ve tried it once or twice in the NSW and Victoria and people get a bit insulted by what I have to say. But anyway, regional and rural Australia. They are paying more tax with the GST than their city brethren and sisters. So, that is a big issue out there. And, of course, petrol is important to all Australians. Australians in suburbs and Australians in regional Australia. And we are very heavy users of car transport and people in the bush and people in the city are suffering.
CALLER: With the GST coming in, we seem not to be part of the Asian market any more. We seem to be part of the European market and how that goes. Is Australia going to get better under the GST like we’ve been….well, not brainwashed, just basically told over and over it’s going to get better?
BEAZLEY: The GST is just a tax raising money for the Commonwealth’s or the State’s coffers. It has nothing of itself that adds to the economy. So, in so far as the GST impacts on the economy, its effect is at best neutral and at worst deleterious. I mean, our complaint about the GST, and now that business have all set up their systems, but one of our complaints about the GST is that you’re taking the employment generating area of business activity, that is the activities of small and medium sized enterprises, because that’s where all the jobs are now, and compelling them to waste hours a week on being tax collectors. And compelling them to spend thousands of dollars putting in place information systems associated with it. So, that was our concern.
FITZSIMONS: Would it be fair to say, though, that you were expecting, when it was launched in 1 July, you were expecting a far greater outcry than actually occurred? I mean, it was compared to the Y2K bug. A big hullabaloo and not a lot of hullabaloo when it actually occurred.
BEAZLEY: No, that is how our opponents characterised what we had to say. What we said was slow burn, that once the GST was in, people would begin to feel it most when the areas that were not taxed started to be taxed, like their telephone bills, their electricity bills, their power bills, these things come through over time. They don’t come through on day one. The easiest place for the GST was going to be in the supermarket because they’ve got the systems to handle it. And the second element of the slow burn would be the whole bunch of small businesses who basically work hand to mouth day by day being forced to become tax collectors with an enormous amount of time obliged on their part to be devoted to being those collectors. And that, of course, is what is going to be experienced in the next couple of months.
CALLER: There is an inquiry into regional radio stations. What is the Labor Party policy? Because rural radio stations have been bought by one person or two people and now they transmit out of Sydney so there is no regional voice in the bush of their individual radio stations…..
BEAZLEY: That’s a very interesting point. Basically, we’ve been trying to liberalise the ownership structure of radio stations to have the opposite effect of that. But I think that is true. That concentration has occurred and the broadcasters have retreated to the metropolitan areas. If we’ve lost that localism, that’s a bad thing. I must say, it’s not a problem at the forefront of thinking, perhaps it should be.
FITZSIMONS: How’s your training going? Have you been doing a lot of running, walking?
BEAZLEY: You’ve beaten me, mate. You’ve got about 30 kilos off and I’ve got about 10.
ends
