Nation - Pauline
Hanson's One Nation Speeches.
Extract from the CURRENT HOUSE HANSARD Database Date: 29 June 1998 (14:52) Page: 5396
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Indigenous Assistance Program
Ms HANSON--My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, are you aware that the indigenous business incentive program, with a budget of $40,407,000, approved 66 applications for funding in 1996-97 and in 1997-98 has an allocation of $44,454,000 with interest rates starting at 1 1/2 per cent? Considering your attacks on One Nation's policies to help the rural sector, small business, industry and manufacturing by re-prioritising existing funds with interest rates of two per cent, how can you justify criticism of initiatives to create employment through such assistance while at the same time you advocate race based low interest loans? Why does your government make low interest loans available only to indigenous Australians, when you called for equality in Longreach?
Mr HOWARD--I am aware of that particular program. The precise details as alleged by the honourable member I will examine. But can I take the opportunity, as she has asked me a question, of referring again to the policy that was put forward by the honourable member's party during the Queensland election that proposed that there be generally available bank loans of two per cent. The question was asked about how that was going be financed and where you would find the investors that would put money in it at 1 1/2 per cent to enable it to be lent out at two per cent, to which the response was, `Oh, well, it is not going to operate like an ordinary bank. How it is going to operate is that we are going to print the money.' Nothing that the honourable member says can alter the fact that one of the three shareholders in her party--
Ms Hanson interjecting--
Mr HOWARD--Now do not start interrupting; that is very bad. It is very bad to start interrupting.
Ms Hanson interjecting--
Mr HOWARD--You must never get personal, Pauline. Do not get personal. What I think was the point being made by the Treasurer and by myself was that, if you are not going to finance it by getting depositors to put money in at 1 1/2 per cent so the bank can make a profit, what is the alternative method? The alternative method that was put forward by David Ettridge, who is one of the three sponsors of your party, was that what you had to do was print money. Nothing can erase that remark from the record, and one of the rules of Australian politics is that if you say something, as I have learnt, people will in the future remind you of what you have said. That, I must say, has happened to me and it has happened to him. And I tell you what, it is happening to you as well. Now that your party is on the playing field you have to be made accountable like the rest of us and the reality is that the proposition that you can generally make money available at two per cent is, of course, absurd, for the reasons that the Treasurer and I have pointed out.
So far as indigenous people are concerned, one of the reasons for that particular proposal, as I understand it, was to encourage indigenous Australians to become economically self-sufficient. The criticism that is frequently made of indigenous Australians by other Australians in rural areas is that they are forever depending upon welfare handouts and that they get an undue proportion of welfare handouts. I would have thought, as a matter of elementary logic, that one of the ways to change that is to bring in policies that give them personal economic empowerment. That, in fact, has been the policy that Senator John Herron, my Aboriginal affairs minister, has followed from the day that I appointed him to that ministry. In the face of the most ridiculous criticism from the Australian Labor Party and from others who purport to represent the Aboriginal cause, Senator Herron has been criticised. But I am very proud of the attempts that we have made to give people economic empowerment and I can understand impoverished people in rural areas of Australia resenting anything that resembles economic handouts.
Can I say to the honourable member that the criticisms I have made in relation to that bank are absolutely right. You will never be allowed to forget that your offsider said that you could print money to finance a bank any more than I will ever be allowed to forget things that I have said that my opponents think they can criticise, because they are the rules of politics under which you play. I remind the honourable member that, if you seek to influence the affairs of this country, you, like anybody else, are a politician like the rest of us. There is no such thing as a non-political politician any more than there is any such thing as a non-sporting sportsman. You are on the field. Your policies are there for the public to see and like everybody else's they are subject to legitimate analysis and legitimate criticism.
Nation - Pauline
Hanson's One Nation Speeches.