Peter Costello, Iraq

TV Interview with Tracey Spicer

Transcript - Channel Ten Morning News - 14 August 2002

PRESENTER: Simon Crean, Good morning

CREAN: Good morning Tracey, how are you.

PRESENTER: Very well thanks. Now, Peter Costello appears to be trying to soften his image. Do you believe this is the man who will be your opponent at the next election?

CREAN: I wish him Happy Birthday but I don't know who my opponent will be. I think John Howard has great designs in staying in there, which must be upsetting Mr Costello to no end. I think that his task in the bush is to explain why they need to sell Telstra when services in the bush are so bad and it would also explain another policy he had that the solution to unemployment in Regional Australia was to take a pay cut. I don't think that is the sort of message that people in Regional Australia want to hear.

PRESENTER: I would like to move on to Iraq now. The latest Newspoll shows 50% of Australians are against our involvement in action against Iraq and just 39% support it. Does this vindicate your belief that Alexander Downer is a fool for talking up the prospect of war.

CREAN: Well look, he said that war with Iraq was probable and that anyone who talked diplomatic solutions were appeasers. Well now we have got the Prime Minister saying diplomatic solutions, the US saying diplomatic solutions, the Germans, the Europeans, the British all saying get behind the diplomatic solutions which I have been saying now for some months. In particular since I visited the US about the same time as Alexander Downer. Alexander Downer got ahead of the game. He ramped up the rhetoric for no other reasons than to promote his leadership ambitions within the Liberal Party. He didn't have Australia's interests at heart and that is why wheat growers are suffering as a consequence.

PRESENTER: Sorry Mr Crean, can you see any circumstances though under which you would back Australian troops going into Iraq.

CREAN: Of course I could but they would have to be the circumstances in which we had been consulted, in which we were given the facts and those facts justified the cause. After all we did it back in 1991 Tracey. We supported the UN Coalition against Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait and under Bob Hawke that support was given but we didn't lose wheat sales.

The issue here is that Australia has got to stop trying to be ahead of the game. Alexander Downer is not good at it and the truth is there is an UN framework now for dealing with this issue. It's that process that we need to go through. If as a consequence of it, there is need to support action – then of course we would support it. But we want to be consulted, we want to know what the facts are and there is an appropriate opportunity next week with Parliament going back for the Government to set down what it knows about the circumstances vis a vis Iraq and having a public debate about it. Let's get facts on the table and keep the hotheads out of it.

PRESENTER: Thanks for your time Mr Crean.

CREAN: My pleasure Tracey.

ENDS