Interview with Grandstand ABC 702
Subjects: Security arrangements for upcoming sporting events in India.
Transcript, proof copy E&OE
7 March 2010
KAREN TIGHE: Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has just returned from India, a trip which took in some of the hockey and Commonwealth Games venues, and he joins us in the studio now.
Minister, welcome to Grandstand. Thanks for coming in.
STEPHEN SMITH: No, thank you, Karen, great pleasure.
KAREN TIGHE: Now, it's still morning time here in Perth, and you've been a sports dad this morning.
STEPHEN SMITH: Yeah, the under 18 State women's team were training out at the Perth Hockey Stadium and our daughter's in that team, so we're very proud about that.
So, they're out there in the early hours of a Sunday morning training up for a national championship in April.
KAREN TIGHE: Now, how often would you get that opportunity? To be a dad watching one of your children playing sport in the job you have?
STEPHEN SMITH: On a good week, I'm back in Perth on a Friday evening and leave on a Sunday, so I tend to be able to pick up sport on a Saturday and Sunday. So, yesterday, yes I was seen at Breckler Park watching the Mount Lawley Fourth grade with the young bloke rolling his arm over.
So, occasionally I lose a weekend because I'm overseas, but it has to be a bad week when I miss out on a Saturday or a Sunday. And this is a good weekend. I got back Friday and because it's Canberra Day tomorrow, the Parliament doesn't start until Tuesday, so I'm here tomorrow morning as well. So, I'd regard that as a good weekend.
[Laughter]
KAREN TIGHE: You mustn't sleep much.
STEPHEN SMITH: I tend to get about five or six hours sleep when I'm on the road or in Canberra. Perth I tend to sleep better, so I'll get seven or eight hours sleep when I'm in Perth.
KAREN TIGHE: Well, as you said, you've just returned from India on Friday night. Part of the trip took in the men's Hockey World Cup. We were able to catch up with one of the Kookaburras last hour.
Just in terms of the security surrounding that, what can you tell us?
STEPHEN SMITH: I saw two of our games. I saw the Australia/India game, and I saw the Australia/South Africa game and a couple of halves of some of the others.
We are very pleased with the security arrangements. We've been working very hard with the Indian authorities. So, Ric Charlesworth, or Grumpy, as he's known to his mates [laughter] and David Hatt [team manager], they're both — and the rest of the touring team — both pleased with the arrangements.
I spoke to the mums and dads as well. There's a small, sort of, touring party of partners and parents and they're happy with the arrangements as well.
So we're pleased about that, but of course in very many respects the World Cup's a dry run for the Commonwealth Games, which will be a much bigger exercise. And, of course, I was very pleased to see us beat India and South Africa. It all should unfold to be Australia and England in our group, and the Netherlands and Germany in group A.
So, at this stage it looks like we might be playing the Netherlands in the semi final. That'll be tough, but Ric has got the boys going really well, and with a bit of luck he'll become the first Australian player to win a World Cup as a player and to also win it as a coach.
KAREN TIGHE: I think — Glenn, I think if the Minister didn't have such an important job other than following sport, you could have stayed in India to be our World Cup correspondent. [laughter]
GLENN MITCHELL: He loves hockey.
STEPHEN SMITH: I have said tongue-in-cheek to some of the parents of the under 18's that when I retire I'm looking for a job as an assistant manager. Some of them who've known Ric for a long time, because it's a very close knit Western Australian hockey community, have told me that I've got to make the point — not only the positive one about Ric getting a record as a World Cup player and a coach if we win this one, — but of course he played in '75 when India last won the World Cup at Kuala Lumpur which I happened to be at and see, but that was the last time we lost to England, other than the other night.
So, Ric now has a record of being a player who lost in the World Cup game against England 35 years ago and then lost it as a coach. So, he has set something of a record.
GLENN MITCHELL: Actually, it's quite an interesting combination. We were talking coming up in the lift that you played hockey. That was your preferred sport as a young man, and you succeeded Ric Charlesworth in the seat of Perth for the Labor Party.
STEPHEN SMITH: I'd known Ric in hockey circles, he was my predecessor and I played state school boys myself and a bit of A grade, but my daughter's already done much better than I did.
You know, my hockey career was a hockey career, I think, a potentially good hockey career ruined by the University of Western Australia, Swan Lager and an interest in politics. [Laughter]
GLENN MITCHELL: You told me something else coming up in the lift, but we'll leave that out of it.
Stephen, when you go to India, there's no doubting that, like China, they have a massive military and that can obviously throw a lot of people at events. How overt is the security around this World Cup?
STEPHEN SMITH: It's very overt, and that's done deliberately. I've of course raised the security issues about major sporting events, because it's not just the hockey, it's the IPL, it's the Commonwealth Games and recently we had the Commonwealth Federation Shooting Competition. And again, we were very pleased with arrangements for that.
So, I've had serious conversations with my counterpart, External Affairs Minister Krishna, but also the Home Affairs Minister Chidambaram, and the National Security Adviser Menon.
They're the two — the Home Affairs Minister and the National Security Adviser — who have the main responsibility for the security arrangements. We're getting very good cooperation from them as are other Commonwealth countries in the run up to the Commonwealth Games.
It's just a very regrettable feature of modern life than in any of these sporting events we have to be absolutely conscious of security.
It's not just India. Whether it's the Sydney Olympics here, or a Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, or Commonwealth Games in Delhi, or indeed and Olympics in London, we have to be absolutely conscious. And in India there's always a risk of an attack, as we know.
KAREN TIGHE: Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is our guest in our Grandstand studio this afternoon.
What is the current security advice, and I'm looking ahead now to the Commonwealth Games, and obviously so many things can change in the time to lead up to that, but just — Liesel Jones, it was interesting comments made during the week: I don't want my mum to travel, because we will have as much security as can be generated for us as an Australia team, but she won't — or other family members won't be able to have such security.
Do you give different advice to sporting bodies and individuals?
STEPHEN SMITH: No, no, we give exactly the same advice to our sporting bodies and our athletes as we publish on our travel advice on our website. And for India, it's exercise a high degree of caution and makes a point that there have been terrorist attacks and there is a risk of terrorist attack.
But with the high profile sporting events, what we do now is — and we've done it recently for example with members of the touring team in New Zealand, the cricket team who are going to the IPL. We give them an up-to-date briefing of our most recent travel advice, an up-to-date briefing of any recent threat assessments, but also, we work in conjunction with the relevant sporting association and the host nation about arrangements on the ground.
And that's been a good feature, for example, of the Commonwealth Federation Shooting and the Hockey World Cup. That the cooperation on the ground has been very good, and where requests or suggestions have been made, either by the team or by our officials, they've been responded to positively.
The advantage, in a sense, that a sporting team has — for example, the hockey team has some AFP liaison officers with them, and the hotel they're staying in is the subject of very high security. And I was frisked when I walked in like everyone else, as it should be.
So, there is, if you like, a very conscious effort on the part of the Indian authorities to make sure that the sporting teams have got very high security from the hotel, travelling to the ground and at the ground itself.
In the end, it's got to be a matter for judgement of the families and of the athletes, whether they participate. We give them all of the information, make sure they've got access to all of the advice and they make their own judgements. It's not a decision we seek to make for them, or impose on them.
In historical terms, when governments have tried to impose, it's always ended up in very difficult situations.
GLENN MITCHELL: If there wasn't to be a change in the landscape between now and October, from your discussions with your counterparts in other countries, would you see any nations not going to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games?
STEPHEN SMITH: Again, that's a matter for them. And say with the hockey, for example, we've seen a couple of individual players pull out. One was a young fellow from New Zealand.
So, in the end, it's a matter for them and not a matter for me or Australia to give them advice — gratuitous or otherwise.
But the good thing about the conversations I had with Home Affairs Minister Chidambaram and the National Security Adviser was that we agreed that we will continue to cooperate all the way through. And that's as we need to be. We need to be vigilant right to the last day of the Games.
Of course, people who are thinking about going should, in the first instance, check the travel advice on the website. But we're now in March and the Commonwealth Games is on October. There is a fair amount of water that'll go under the bridge between now and then, and we will keep in close contact with the Commonwealth Games Association as we have been.
GLENN MITCHELL: Is this just going to be part of the landscape, do you think, for the foreseeable future, in regard to major sporting events?
STEPHEN SMITH: Regrettably, I think it is. I know there's a lot of focus on the subcontinent — we haven't played a test in Pakistan for a long time and now we're very conscious about India. But as I say, one of the things that we have been able to assist the Indian authorities with, is that we've given them our learned experience from Sydney and from Melbourne.
This will be, regrettably, a feature for the whole world. We recently published a Counter Terrorism White Paper and regrettably that makes the point that the threat will be enduring and ongoing and it's adapting. It's now emerging in different parts of the world as a threat to us. So, we have to be ever-vigilant as a people and as a nation.
KAREN TIGHE: I thought it interesting, the use of Shane Warne in terms of overall Australia/India relations at the moment by the Victorian Government. I suppose in a role almost as a good will ambassador with just the popularity of cricket on the subcontinent.
What do you feel about that?
STEPHEN SMITH: Well, it was a good thing. I was there for three things, really. I was there to advance the strategic partnership that we signed up with India last year. We want to grow the relationship with them, and we're making progress on that front. Then to talk about Commonwealth Games securities and venues and then to speak to them directly about the Indian students issue.
We turned the hockey game — Australia v India — into a friendship game and awarded the Ajit Pal Charlesworth Cup. Ajit Pal, of course, captained India in '75 to their World Cup victory.
And our team was received very well by the Indians. So, that was also, in a small way, another effort on public diplomacy.
But we do have a job to repair some damage to our reputation as a result of the way in which the students issue has been perceived.
We've made small progress but we need to keep at that and the depth of our like-mindedness with India in terms of democracy and shared values; the depth of things that we have in common — cricket and hockey, but also cultural experiences — will be part of the things that we use to advance our relationship with them.
KAREN TIGHE: Minister, thank you for coming in.
Glenn, I just wonder in closing, we've got a former Prime Minister, John Howard who's been nominated for vice-presidency of the ICC. Maybe a few years down the track we may have a former Foreign Minister nominated for presidency of the International Hockey Federation.
STEPHEN SMITH: Well, I did have a chat to the President — the current president who's from Spain. I'm very happy to keep my aspirations as assistant manager of any team…
GLENN MITCHELL: Under David Hatt?
STEPHEN SMITH: … well, I know David very well, and I think your earlier guest Fergus Cavanagh is sporting five stitches under his chin as a result of last night's effort, but I'm told he's doing very well. And it won't affect his pin-up status.
He's very popular amongst the Under 18's is our Fergus.
[Laughter]
KAREN TIGHE: We appreciate your knowledge on the hockey front and of course, the bigger job at hand for you as Foreign Affairs Minister.
Stephen Smith thank you very much for coming into the Grandstand studio.
STEPHEN SMITH: Thank you. Thanks very much, Karen.
[END]