Transcript

of

The Hon Peter Costello MP

Federal Member for Higgins

Interview with Alan Jones, 2GB

7.30am

Thursday, 8 October 2009

 

E&OE

SUBJECTS: Parliamentary record, economic stimulus

JONES:

The man who broke a million Liberal hearts yesterday whom I acknowledged earlier this morning as bringing to an end an outstanding political career though I said it brings with it a sense that a remarkable promise may have been unfulfilled, but his achievements by any measure have been extraordinary has rung through on the open line.  Mr Costello good morning. 

MR COSTELLO:

Good morning Alan.

JONES:

What are you doing to all those Liberal voters out there?

MR COSTELLO:

Well I try not to ring through on the open line but I only got your message very late.  It’s great to be with you.

JONES:

Not all lovely to have you on the program.

MR COSTELLO:

Yes.

JONES:

Do you understand the sense of heartache that many people feel at your departure?

MR COSTELLO:

Oh yes well I feel the same myself.  As I say in something I have written for the papers today it’s never a good time to leave in politics.  There is always the opportunity of one more Budget, one more election, one more law, one more change to try and make the country a better place.  But at some point you have to call the innings to an end.  I have done 20 years Alan.  I think it is now time to make way for somebody else and that’s what I will be doing.  We have now got our candidate to replace me.  I thought it was fair to give her a go.

JONES:

Quite.  Do you think though that your departure suggests that when someone gets to 50 years of age or whatever that it’s time to hand over to someone at 30?  I mean in this game, your game, is no different from the work of neurosurgeon.  You really need experience to be able to do it well.

MR COSTELLO:

I think that’s right Alan.  I don’t agree with those people who say oh well so and so is 50 or 60 they should retire from politics.  Not in the slightest.  In politics you need people who have experience, you need people who have youth and vigour.  What I say is if you can work seven days a week, 12 hours a day stay.  It is those that aren’t working or can’t find the fire in the belly to actually give it that level of commitment that should retire.  And it doesn’t go by age it goes by commitment and it goes by policy and it goes by your understanding of what your constituents and electors want.

JONES:

But I have known Costello for years.  Costello has always got fire in the belly.

MR COSTELLO:

Always and I still have.  It is a very fireful belly this one.  A lot goes on it this one.

JONES:

A fire for other things are you saying?

MR COSTELLO:

Well I have done 20 years.  I think if I were to keep on going that would be for the rest of my career and it would see me out to retirement.  But I am still young enough to do some other things, I want to do some other things.  I don’t want to give up engaging in public service.  I have devoted all of the best years of my life to that – all of my 30s, all of my 40s.  I will continue to do some public service but I will do it from the private sector.

JONES:

I know you have written today to say that it is dreary, you don’t want to enter speculation about leadership and it is dreary you write to hear these trick questions bowled up so that any loose answer can be seized upon.  But just on this question of experience is it possible to argue though that one of Malcolm Turnbull’s problems may well be this issue of experience.  That these days it is hard to be in the Parliament for five minutes, Nathan Rees as well, and be across issues.  It is not the kind of profession you can walk into and run just overnight.

MR COSTELLO:

I think that the more experience you have the better you get at it.  People say to me oh well if you are good at business you must be good at politics.  It is not necessarily so.  Politics is part public speaking, it is part media, it is part fundraising, it is part being a counsellor when your constituents come into your office…

JONES:

(inaudible)

MR COSTELLO:

You have got to be able to listen to them, you have got to give them a sympathetic ear, it is part policy, it is a part of a whole lot of things and there is no one occupation that actually prepares you for it.  Some occupations give you some skills, others give you other skills but there is none that gives you the complete skills for politics.  And there is no doubt in my mind that the longer you are at it the better you go.  I look back at some of my early performances and I was a tearaway Alan you know that.  In the Parliament there was one day when I threw a whole lot of papers in Paul Keating’s face and we nearly had a brawl down in the House of Representatives.  I look back on those early days and I think gee I was raw.  And I like to think I got better.  The great thing Alan was in the early days when I was in Parliament there was no YouTube so most of my misperformances have not been recorded.

JONES:

Just on the performances not the misperformance how tough was it taking aboard because I can remember when I was down there in Canberra working for a Prime Minister the expenditure tax the GST was on the Cabinet agenda that was 1970 something and 1980, no one was ever game to have a go at it.  You had a go at it.  How tough was it at a personal level?  I mean how totally consuming was it?

MR COSTELLO:

Oh look it was just all embracing.  I started working on that GST policy in 1997.  The GST we had to write the policy, we had to go through an election, we had to write the legislation, we had to implement it, it came in three years later in July 2000.  And it was very funny when I was writing my book I went back through my diaries I don’t think I did anything else for three years.

JONES:

You had to change the price of every good and service?

MR COSTELLO:

By changing the taxation of every good and every service we changed the price of every good and every service three billion prices in the Australian economy.  And it just wasn’t by introducing GST you then had to take off wholesale sales tax, in relation to beer you had excises, in relation to wine you had the wine equalisation tax, you had in relation to petrol you had petrol excise.  All of these other things varied.  And Alan as you know, and people were very, very interested in how this was going to affect the hip pocket.  And I would go on radio interviews and people would say to me well what is the price of a can of coke going to be.  And I think you did ask this question how will the price of a beer in a pub…

JONES:

Change.

MR COSTELLO:

…compared to the price of a packaged beer in a can.

JONES:

As something you would take home yes.  And you were meant to know and if you didn’t know you were a dunce.

MR COSTELLO:

You did ask that question too and it was very tricky.

JONES:

It was one of those trick questions, you know, now then the other thing you know in the wake of everything that has been happening in the last month, people do forget that you were the person who pulled this G-20 concept together of Finance Ministers in the wake of the Asian Economic Crisis.  I had a mention of this earlier today.

MR COSTELLO:

Yes well when the Asian economies started collapsing and the IMF and the world bodies didn’t really have an answer to it, it was plain that we needed a new organisation.  And together with some of the other Finance Ministers and I must say with a lot of support from Bill Clinton we got together this new body.  Alan there had previously been a Group of 7, the big 7 industrialised economies and they didn’t want anybody else to come to the table but we argued you had to let in countries like Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, you had to let in China.

JONES:

And Brazil and Japan, China and India yes.

MR COSTELLO:

The superpowers.  And then of course people saw the wisdom of that but there was a lot of resistance to letting Australia into this group we are not India we are not China we don’t have 200 million people like Indonesia but it was because we were involved, I was involved, in putting the Group together and it was also because we actually provided a lot of the funds to rescue some of these Asian economies.  I might say Alan we never lost a dollar, we got our loans back, that Australia became a respected member of the G-20.  And of course I became the Chairman of the G-20…

JONES:

Here in Melbourne.

MR COSTELLO:

…in Australia as a consequence of that.  Now the difference this time is that G-20 was always a meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bankers.  George Bush rightly in my view said well why don’t we actually bring the Leaders into this G-20.

JONES:

And that’s where we are today.

MR COSTELLO:

And that’s how we got there.

JONES:

You’re responsible also as I said earlier this morning with maybe the comment of the year but it is an appropriate metaphor the cock crows because the sun rises the sun doesn’t rise because the cock crows.  This is in relation to an emissions trading scheme where you say the shape of our scheme will not affect what happens in Copenhagen, Copenhagen will determine the shape of our scheme.  So how stupid is it to be seeking to have legislation in place before Copenhagen?

MR COSTELLO:

Well this is the point you see some people are saying oh people who pass this legislation will go off to Copenhagen will affect what comes out of it.  And I say that is like the rooster saying if I get up and crow every morning the sun will come up.  The sun is not coming up because the rooster crowed.  Copenhagen will not take the final shape that it does because Australia passed its legislation.  It is what is decided at Copenhagen that will govern our legislation.  Let’s just get a little bit of perspective here.  The sun will rise the cock will crow.  Copenhagen will determine whether China comes into an ETS and whether India comes into an ETS and that will determine the shape of our emissions trading scheme.

JONES:

And we shouldn’t be doing anything that puts our economy at risk just to have a hairy-chested notion of leading the world.

MR COSTELLO:

Just to crow like a rooster.

JONES:

And the other thing that you have raised today, you say “some will say that Government spending got Australia through this downturn.  Really if all you have to do to stop a recession is to spend money why didn’t George Bush and Barack Obama keep the US out of recession and why didn’t Gordon Brown keep Britain out of recession.  Do you think they were slouches in the spending department?”

MR COSTELLO:

Well exactly right.  By the way the Americans and the British spent more than us.  It was unrestrained spending and big Government deficits that got them into this trouble.  Some people I have heard say oh well you know because we went on all this unfunded spending and borrowed all this debt we saved ourselves from recession.  Why didn’t Obama save America from recession or Brown save Britain?  Do you think they didn’t go on a spending spree?

JONES:

So it was the architecture that was in place when the storm hit.  The reasons that buildings in Sydney don’t blow over but buildings in Thailand and Indonesia do and you’re saying we were running Budgets in surplus, they were running deficits, we were paying off debt, they were running up debt.

MR COSTELLO:

Absolutely.

JONES:

So what is the risk to Australia of spending and throw all this money that has been spent is borrowed money, who is going to pay it off?

MR COSTELLO:

Well our children and taxpayers.  You will be paying for this for decades.

JONES:

Why don’t Australians understand that this emissions trading scheme is a tax and not a scheme?

MR COSTELLO:

Because I don’t think they have been told this.  You have got to get this point in your mind: that the point of an emissions trading scheme is actually to push up the price of electricity either so you use less of it or more expensive forms of generation compete.  The idea of this is to push up your electricity bills.  Well that is one thing in the home of course.  But you have got to bear this in mind as the price of electricity rises it affects all of industry.  Nearly all of industry, every office building works off electricity, every manufacturer uses electricity, you do have to realise yes we want to do the right thing by the environment but the idea is to put up prices.  This is the whole idea.  I don’t think people have ever really been told that quite openly and so if we get into a situation where we do something that doesn’t affect global emissions because China keeps spewing them out and India keeps spewing them out our emissions trading scheme won’t make one wit of difference…

JONES:

One wit of difference?

MR COSTELLO:

…but it will still have the effect of pushing up the prices.

JONES:

And damaging the economy along the way.  Just finally you say today the focus of education for the Liberal Party in any debate should be on standards.  “It is not an arm of stimulus policy I would rather my children had a good teacher than a new Assembly Hall.”

MR COSTELLO:

Well wouldn’t you?  Look I am not against Assembly Halls Alan.  Of course Assembly Halls are good things but I will tell you what an Assembly Hall never changed a student’s life.  Good teachers do. 

JONES:

Absolutely.

MR COSTELLO:

I would rather train and pay good teachers and invest my money in the people who will change children’s lives…

JONES:

A good teacher can teach you on a hot tin roof it doesn’t need an Assembly Hall.

MR COSTELLO:

…than stick money into Assembly Halls.  And you know the thing that worries me in all this.  They run round and they are saying oh we are saving the economy by building Assembly Halls.  Why don’t we save the future of Australia by getting good teachers?  There’s an idea.

JONES:

Good call.  Well before you go.  Your departure now October 19 has precipitated massive headlines today with the Liberal Party the focus of those headlines almost everywhere.  If you were giving advice from the outside now that you are an outsider what would your advice to the Liberal Party be?

MR COSTELLO:

Well I think that the Liberal Party has got to remember that it has a record of economic management, that it is there to look after the people who want to work hard and want jobs and the businesses that supply those jobs.  It has got to remember that it is there to look after the security of our borders, the security of people against crime and its got to remember that it is there to look after the nurture of the young and the protection of the old.  And I would focus on issues.  Don’t get caught up talking about internal matters.  Just talk about the things that are important to people and will make their lives better.

JONES:

All right well you have made the lives of many Australians better over 20 years.  I think you ended your piece today by saying I will miss public life more than people can imagine but I have had a great privilege I got the chance to make my country a better place.  I would say to you on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people listening here now and many who haven’t heard it that you certainly did that and I think that Australians are grateful but I will say this to you.  They are more grateful as time passes.  And on their behalf I wish you all the best in whatever comes your way in the career that lies ahead Peter.

MR COSTELLO:

Thank you very much Alan and thank you to your listeners who have put up with me over many, many years.

JONES:

You are most welcome.  There he is Peter Costello, six to eight.