EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

 

 

Look it’s terrific to be here at Ainslie. Beautiful, bright Canberra day. I want to thank Manuel Xyrakis and his team for making me welcome at the Ainslie IGA. This is typical of the tens of thousands of businesses which is going to be damaged by Labor’s carbon tax, a bad tax based on a lie. The supermarkets of Australia will basically face a triple whammy at the hands of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax. They’ll have a carbon tax on their power, they’ll have carbon tax on their refrigerant and after 2014, if this Government is reelected, they’ll have carbon tax on their transport and what that means is that every time you go to the shop, you pay because of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax. It makes every family’s cost of living tougher and it makes every Australians’ job less secure.

 

Now, a couple of other subjects before I take questions. This week in the Parliament we saw Wayne Swan, the Treasurer with absolutely no answers when it comes to the $120 billion budget black hole which Labor faces. Labor is racking up promise after promise after promise, writing cheques on the future that Julia Gillard knows she is never going to have cash and this is fiscal vandalism. Frankly at the moment you’ve got the Government acting like a tenant which is trashing the house before it gets evicted when it comes to fiscal policy.

 

Finally, we’ve got, at last, illegal boat arrivals being transferred to Nauru. This has really been a very slow business, compared to John Howard, who managed to get Nauru operating within 19 days of first announcement. It’s taken well over four weeks with this Government and while I welcome this belated transfer of illegal boat arrivals to Nauru, if we want to stop the boats you've got to have a comprehensive range of policies in place. You've got to have temporary protection visas to deny the people smugglers a product to sell and you've got to have the willingness to turn boats around where it's safe to do so and my fear is that this Government's heart just isn't in it and the point I keep making is that if you want to get John Howard's results you've got to have John Howard's resolve and that's one thing we have never seen from the current Government.

 

 

Mr Abbott, what proof do you have that a Labor dirt unit is behind the allegations that’s raised by Barbara Ramjan and David Patch that's been suggested this morning?

 

 

Well, there is a Labor dirt unit. Labor insiders went public back in June of this year that there is a dirt unit. It's running out of the Prime Minister's office and it's being encouraged to dig up embarrassing facts or factoids or stories on the Coalition and the fact is, as I've said to Margie and the kids, we're going to see a lot more dirt from the Labor Party in the lead up to the election because that's what Labor does. We saw it in Queensland, constant personal attacks on Campbell Newman and his family.

 

 

Can you just explain though your change in your on the record responses, Mr Abbott, from you don't recall but it would have been out of character to it didn't happen?

 

 

I didn't recall because it never happened. How can you recall something that never happened?

 

 

What did happen?

 

 

Well nothing, to my knowledge, nothing to my recollection.

 

 

Presumably you interacted with Ms Ramjan in some way during the course of the evening and it was obviously a fairly combative relationship because you used to refer to her as "chair thing”. Why did you refer to her as "chair thing" and what do you remember of any interactions you may have had with her on that night of the elections?

 

 

As I said today on the Channel Nine programme there were lots of silly, embarrassing, childish things done in student politics and I wasn't immune to that.

 

 

But she was the first female president of that SRC and so presumably she was uncomfortable with being called chairman so you thought you'd call her chair thing?

 

 

As I said, it was silly, childish, embarrassing, it shouldn't have happened but this is 35 years ago, a lot of silly things happen in student politics.

 

 

Mr Abbott, the Labor Party's now starting to echo what you said about the Prime Minister in the Slater and want Gordon allegations that if you want to make a statement to the Parliament about this they will facilitate it. Will you?

 

 

How can you make a statement about something that never happened? But I'm happy to say, and I say it here and now and as often as you'd like to ask me the question, I'm happy to say that it never happened.

 

 

How do you explain then the increasingly detailed stories about that night? The people are saying that a bunch of goons came in, that there was another man saying today that he saw you throw a punch. Are these people making it up or are you wrong?

 

 

These stories all seem to be substantially at variance with each other and every single one of them is obviously from someone who plainly is on the other side of the political fence. Now, people who aren’t prepared to put their names on the record shouldn’t be taken seriously. People who say they were witnesses but then say they didn’t actually see the event can’t be taken seriously. The fact is if there was anything to this claim it would have been raised long before now. It is 35 years ago. Thirty five long years ago. Barbara Ramjan, at different times, has been on the record about me, critically on the record about me, and she’s never chosen to raise this allegation until just a few days ago.

 

 

How do you know that she hasn’t raised the allegations?

 

 

Well there’s nothing on the record. Now, Honi Soit, if you want to go back and read the student newspaper from those days, was regularly writing up stories about misbehaviour by one person or another and if there was anything at all in this it would have been on the record in Honi Soit at the time. It would have been on the record from Barbara Ramjan and all the other people who you now seem to say saw it or have something to say about it long before now.

 

 

Mr Abbott, do you think there was a culture at the university of women making allegations against you because of the politics at the time? Because this wasn’t the only allegation. I mean, Helen Wilson went to the police and you were charged with indecent assault following an incident on campus and when that went to court you had seven witnesses that said you tapped this woman on the back, you didn’t assault her in the way that she suggested. But when the judge dismissed the case, he said that he did not believe that she had brought the case with improper motives. He simply couldn’t reconcile it with the evidence of your seven witnesses. So was there a culture of women making false allegations against you?

 

 

It was a very robust period in student politics, simple as that and there’s all sorts of stuff that’s on the record and there’s all sorts of stuff which the Labor Party has been pedalling around. The Labor Party dirt unit has been working overtime and I dare say there are many of you hear today who have had all sorts of things pedalled to you by the Labor Party in the last few days. Now, the fact is, the incident that David Marr refers to in his essay simply didn’t happen. I have no recollection of it because it didn’t happen. If it had happened, I would have a recollection.

 

 

And Helen Wilson was lying as well?

 

 

Well it went to court and the court dealt with it.

 

 

Mr Abbott, are you suggesting that the Labor dirt unit is feeding this information to David Marr, this specific allegation? Is that what you’re saying today?

 

 

There is a Labor dirt unit and it’s feeding information to people left, right and centre.

 

 

Mr Abbott, is there a Coalition dirt unit? You’ve made reference to Campbell Newman. Well, the Queensland Government - the Opposition Leader was found to have a dirt unit within his own party. Are you saying that the federal Coalition has no dirt unit at all?

 

 

Well it’s very interesting. When allegations were recently brought about the Prime Minister’s work for a law firm 17 years ago when she was a partner, the matter was raised and pushed by disgruntled members of the Labor Party.

 

 

Mr Abbott, you said that people who don’t go on the record who speak anonymously shouldn’t be taken seriously. If you follow that through to its logical conclusion, for example, the Watergate tapes would never have been revealed. I mean, are you sure about that statement? Isn’t the journalist’s job to actually mediate what the public knows and put it out there?

 

 

Look, I’m not going to get into a discourse on the philosophy of journalism but what we have here was a claim by someone who was a political opponent of mine then, is still a political opponent of mine now, who has been on the record on numerous occasions since 1977, 35 years ago, has at different times in the past made claims against me and it’s only now, 35 years later, that she’s raised this particular claim and there has been no specific corroboration. None whatsoever.

 

 

Mr Abbott, how confident are you that no member of your staff has ever trawled around for personal details of members of other parties?

 

 

Well I’m confident that the claims that the Labor Party is doing its best to beat up this week are completely, absolutely, utterly false and the point I make is that I think the Australian public want our politicians to be on about building a better country and that’s what I am on about. Every day, I want to make the life of the Australian people easier and that’s why I’m here today at the IGA in Ainslie, because I want to get taxes down so that there’s less pressure on people’s cost of living, so that there’s less pressure on people’s jobs and the fact is, that is what the Australian public want.

 

 

Yes or no Mr Abbott, are you confident that no member of your own staff has ever trawled around for personal details of members of other parties?

 

 

The point I’m trying to make is that the Australian people want us to be bigger than this. They don’t want a whole lot of obsessing about fiction from 35 years ago. They want their politicians to be on about building a better life for them and that’s my job.

 

[ends]