costello's performance., page-18

"Monday 23 August 2004
Presented by Michael Duffy
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The Treasurer, Peter Costello, talks about politics and his philosophies

Transcript
Michael Duffy: Peter Costello is a lawyer who entered parliament in 1990. He represents the Melbourne seat of Higgins. He became Deputy of the parliamentary Liberal Party in 1994 and Treasurer in 1996.

Peter Costello, welcome to Counterpoint.

Peter Costello: Good afternoon Michael, good to be with you.

Michael Duffy: Let's start at Monash University back in the 1970s. Where were you on the political spectrum then, when you were a student politician?

Peter Costello: I would have been considered a shocking right-winger. Not because I was 'right' by today's standards, but because the university at that stage was run essentially by communist students. It was the end of the Vietnam era, the various factions of the Communist Party were in full control of the student movement and anyone who was an anti-communist, as I was, was a shocking right-winger.

Michael Duffy: Were there many of you around then?

Peter Costello: Very few. I was at Monash University; Monash had been the centre of the Vietnam era protest. Albert Langer... the most celebrated event was that they had been collecting money for the Vietcong, you might recall that, at a time when Australian troops were actually fighting in Vietnam and that was considered scandalous behaviour and I think it was. They were in full control – the student union was a completely left-wing dominated student union, and being a non-communist as I was... I think I was the first non-communist to ever be elected the president of the student union.

Michael Duffy: Congratulations. Were you a member of any political party?

Peter Costello: No. In fact, the campus was so left-wing that in those days anyone who wasn’t 'left' – when I say left I mean communist – was considered beyond the pale, and so it was really Liberal, Labor, everybody else against the communists, and so I was part of a student group which was anti-communist and it had some DLP types, some Liberals, some right-wing Labor types. A lot of Jewish students were involved, because the AUS at that stage was very pro-PLO, and so it was the left versus the anti-left."

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