Transcript of doorstop interview

Tweed Heads

Subjects: Detention of Australian teenager in Bali; domestic politics

Transcript E&OE

7 October 2011

KEVIN RUDD: I think everyone in Australia is concerned about this young lad who's found himself in real difficulties in Bali.

As I've said already I think every parent in the country instinctively feels real empathy for this young boy's parents. It's something which they would be deeply, deeply worried about.

The challenge that we've got as a government is to try and get this young fella home as quickly as we can. This may take quite a considerable period of time and we're not guaranteed of success. I just want to be very frank about that.

We are of course working through our Embassy in Jakarta and our Consulate-General in Bali with local Indonesian Government officials. I spoke at length with our Ambassador Moriarty last night about the case. I spoke at length this morning with our Consul-General in Denpasar very early his time.

Consular contact has been maintained with the young lad and his family. Based on my most recent advice they are at the police headquarters in Denpasar and the consular officials will be engaging with all their Indonesian counterparts during the course of today.

I think it's very important we allow these processes to continue between the officials in Bali and between our Embassy and the Foreign Ministry in Jakarta.

As I said this is a difficult complex case. We are working on it in fine detail and our objective is to do everything we can to get this young lad back home as soon as we can.

QUESTION: Does that suggest you have some doubts about his guilt?

KEVIN RUDD: I'm not entering into any discussion about guilt or innocence or charging or non-charging.<

Let's be very frank about this. We've got to accept the fact that this is another country's legal system and the Australian Government finds itself in these situations almost every week somewhere around the world where we're dealing with the foreign legal system which doesn't have the same assumptions or practices necessarily as the Australian legal system.

So our job is to work with that system, in defence of Australian interests and with about a million Australians out of the country each year for some reason or another we're doing this in multiple places.

This young lad's parents are worried. I really understand that. I think Justine Elliot and I have kids and I think we both have teenage kids as well and as a result I think every parent of teenage children feels for what these parents are going through.

QUESTION: Why shouldn't he, I guess, face the full force of the Indonesian justice system?

KEVIN RUDD: Well I'm not going to go into the business of commenting on what would be normal procedures with Indonesia on this matter.

I don't want to go into a particular advocacy of aspects of the case.

The facts of the matter will still be being established of course in Bali itself.

This is a time for cool heads and calm conversation to be occurring as we work our way carefully through this case with one objective in mind which is to try and get this young fella and his parents home as quickly as we can.

QUESTION: What would you say to people who are making comments on Twitter and Facebook; 'do the crime, do the time', that sort of thing?

KEVIN RUDD: Oh look, it's a free country, Australia. People will express their point of view and that's fine. We're a country which doesn't shut down freedom of speech. People are entitled to their points of view.

My job as the Foreign Minister for Australia is to look after the wellbeing of Australians who are out of the country and on any given day there's about a million of them and today it's a young fella, 14 years old with a couple of very worried parents sitting at a police house in Bali.

My job is to do everything possible through my officials to get this young fella home as soon as we can. I think our officials in Jakarta and in Bali are doing everything they can. I've directed them to have this as their number one priority for the period ahead.

QUESTION: So those sort of comments are purely a [indistinct] issue?

KEVIN RUDD: People will… my experience of any controversial event anywhere is that Australians will express a multitude of views and that's what our country's designed around. People have freedom of speech.

My job is a bit different. My job is to try and do everything possible to look after the well being of Australians abroad and that is a daily task where I'm assisted by the enormous professionalism of the Australian foreign service who are doing this as we speak in many capitals in the world in cases you will never hear about. We'll be throwing everything at this one as we exert our efforts on behalf of Australians everywhere.

QUESTION: So will this case — will this boy, given his age, be given any extra protection or added protection from the Australian Government in terms of helping him get home?

KEVIN RUDD: We — if we were confronted with the challenges concerning a young lad anywhere in the world then we would act appropriately because we have a sense as a human beings of what — what's involved here, and therefore we will exert every effort for this young fella as we would for others in similar circumstances around the world. Each case is different, you know, it's just life. Each case is different.

But our job is to do everything we physically can to support the wellbeing of Australians who end up in strife with legal systems around the world for good reason or for bad and that's what we're doing in this case as well. I think it's important though we show some solidarity with this young boy's parents who must be going through absolute hell at the moment.

QUESTION: Will you be making contact with his family?

KEVIN RUDD: I'll be taking advice from our Consul-General in Bali on that as to what is most appropriate.

From time to time with consular cases around the world I do make contact with families when we've got very tricky and delicate questions to sort through and so I'll see what's possible later in the day but I always take my advice from the local officials in terms of what is useful and what is appropriate in the circumstances.

Certainly when I've been in various parts of the world and in Canberra where we've had challenging consular cases I've often dealt with families myself but it's horses for courses. Let's see what's most appropriate here but of course if the family need to speak I would happy to talk to them as well.

QUESTION: What's your advice on how the boy's holding up?

KEVIN RUDD: I'd rather not go into that just as a matter of privacy for the lad I think — and privacy for the family. And we have an obligation of privacy towards Australians who receive consular support around the world so we try not to go into those details. Obviously there's a lot out there in the public domain at the moment. I respect that. We have a free media in this country.

But my job is to work with the challenges I've got and with our officials who have a lot of experience in dealing with difficult cases in Indonesia will be doing everything they can as well.

QUESTION: Can I just ask you, are Alan Griffin and Mark Bishop working on your behalf on a leadership campaign?

KEVIN RUDD: Well let me say something about Griffo; I think it's an interesting question. Griffo and I have been friends for probably about 10 years. You probably don't need the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation to tell you that — we've been mates for a long, long time.

I think in the last couple of months I've probably seen Griffo twice, I think probably about a month ago I saw him. I saw him earlier this week in Melbourne and I see a lot of people and Mark Bishop — I don't know how long it's been since I've seen Mark, but a long time ago.

QUESTION: You're attending a lot of public functions around Australia at the moment, is that any part of the campaign?

KEVIN RUDD: I think Justine has been suggesting I come here for a long time and as someone who comes from a state whose first letter begins with Q next door, it's not all that far to come and Justine is a good friend and a good local member and has been a great ministerial colleague in the past and is now parliamentary secretary of the trade within my own portfolio.

But like all ministers in a government, the whole challenge is to get out there and to work with our local members on local challenges.

What I've been doing in the last week with many of our local members across the country is explaining what we're doing in the aid portfolio and why given that many, many Australians are deeply concerned about what's happen in the Horn of Africa, it's the right to do, it's a normal thing to do.

But the other reason for being out and about is also to get a clear message out about what happens if Mr Abbott was to become prime minister and if Mr Abbott was to become prime minister one of the things which I've said today is that by taking $1 billion out of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme he would boost the prices for essential drugs for pensioners by $28, $30 a year. So let's just be very frank.

We've got to get this message out and clear so that we know how Australia would change if Mr Abbott was prime minister. I'm a minister in the Government, it's my job to get this out as well.

QUESTION: What's your response to Graham Richardson's article today in The Australian?

KEVIN RUDD: Oh well, I think Graham Richardson is Graham Richardson. The — I've never really made it my business to respond to what Graham Richardson has to say about anything. Um… yeah.

QUESTION: Would you say…

QUESTION: Do you still…

QUESTION: Sorry, would you say that you are actively trying to undermine Julia Gillard to get back into the top job?

KEVIN RUDD: What I'm actively seeking to do is to do everything possible to prevent Mr Abbott from becoming prime minister of Australia and I'm working hard with the Prime Minister and working hard with my ministerial colleagues to do that, because Australia would change radically. The — and that's what I'm about.

You mention Mr Richardson, without going into anything he said because I really haven't read it, but there's just an observation or two that you might make which is you know, there's a thing in politics called relevance deprivation syndrome. Is Mr Richardson suffering from that? Probably.

Is Mr Richardson taking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year at the moment in salaries to go out there and bag the Labor Party and Labor Government every day? Probably. In fact definitely.

Is Mr Richardson doing as he's always done in the past, go and act as some sort of unofficial spokesman for the factional bullies in our party who try to control it from time to time? Undoubtedly.

But that's a matter for Mr Richardson. As to his particular observations about me: water off a duck's back.

QUESTION: You received a bit of a rock star's welcome here and a lot of people have said that they would like to see you prime minister of the country again. Is that the kind of response that you're seeing from a lot of people from around the country? Obviously you are doing a bit of touring at the moment.

KEVIN RUDD: Well as I said before my job as a minister is to come out and support our members of Parliament in their electorates and ministers of the Government are doing that all the time and I'm doing no different to what my colleagues would be doing.

Secondly people here are very kind and welcoming. I've been out with Justine this morning at a local shopping centre and talking to folks, talking to kids and you know, and I really appreciate people's words of advice, words of encouragement and words of criticism. They all come and the great thing about Australia is people tend not to hold back. [Laughs]

QUESTION: What's been the main thing that local people here in the Tweed wanted to know about?

KEVIN RUDD: I think one of the big issues here that people have been raising with me and with Justine is they really — because of the nature of this community — they want as much early access to high speed broadband as possible and that's why we're committed to the National Broadband Network.

And to go back to my comment before; how would Australia change if Mr Abbott was prime minister? No National Broadband Network. No high speed broadband unless you happened to live in the middle of a capital city somewhere or a large city.

So how would that affect people in this community and northern New South Wales? Just kiss goodbye the high speed broadband.

It's a big difference.

So if you want to know what I've had raised with me this morning by various folk it's, you know, when's our broadband coming? When's the NBN going to become fully connected here and there? I think these are pretty basic concerns.

Thanks folks, better run.

ENDS

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