Charles, if you read this carefully you may see why there is a...

Charles, if you read this carefully you may see why there is a need to have a house of review. also ......... Let's see if Howard has the ticker to debate Beazley on industrial relations. LOL


Kim Beazley
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.