Transcript of interview with Reuters

Transcript E&OE, proof only.

Subjects: relations with Libya; Australia's UNSC bid; Libya's future

Tripoli, Libya

8 December 2011

Journalist: At your meeting with Prime Minister Al-Keeb you said that you were interested in supporting the political process, then when you went onto describe what exactly it was you were supporting — they were more along sort of humanitarian lines in terms of support demining and the like. I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about how you intend to support the political process.

Minister Rudd: Well for example the UNDP, United Nations Development Program, is here providing technical assistance and advice to the Government on the physical conduct of the election and that's what they've been requested to do by the Libyan Government, it is also consistent with the UN Security Council mandate. So the UNDP doesn't have sufficient funding to do all of its work right now. So you ask what practically we are doing — well we are signing cheques in order to enable them do their work. That goes right across the question of providing advice on electoral systems, on voting systems etc, the nuts and bolts of the electoral system. We in Australia are reasonably good at that. We are one of the oldest continuing democracies in the world. We have an independent electoral commission. We do this work actually around the world ourselves but we often do it in support of what the UNDP does.

Journalist: On a bilateral basis were there any offers of support politically? Is there anything you will be doing that isn't through UN channels to support the democratic process?

Minister Rudd: Well UN channels are best at this stage of the process because the UN mandate is important. So we are doing practical things of that nature.

But you ask what we are doing bilaterally with this government. Yes, one of the challenges they face is how to boost the sustainability of their agriculture and how to boost the productivity of their agriculture. Because we in our part of the world are pretty good at dry land farming, we will continue to work in that area with them. The Australian Council for International Agricultural Research is very good at seed types and soil types and climate types. How do you take the same block of land with a different set of seeds to produce a different crop yield. But we're also doing that not just on a development partnership basis but also through our Australian agriculture businesses who have been working in this part of the world for 30 to 40 years.

Journalist: Going back to the issue of the UN, did you bring up the issue of Australia's decision to push for a UN Security Council Seat with Prime Minister Al-Keeb. Did that come up at all?

Minister Rudd: The Libyan Government has already indicated their position on this matter to us. So we are very appreciative of their position of support. Frankly, we spent practically all of our time on the future challenges facing Libya itself.

Journalist: We'll get to those in a second, but just quickly, how would you describe your campaign for a UN Security Council seat is going on it?

Minister Rudd: All these things are always tough — for us it is that way.

Remember, in our particular campaign when we are facing a couple of European countries, a couple of European countries tend to automatically start with a large block of European support. So we have to go elsewhere in the world to find our support. This will be tough and I think it will be a very brave man indeed who predicted the outcome and I won't be.

Journalist: Ok fair enough.

Going back to the challenges facing Libya, I understand your reticence to sound in any way condescending towards Libyans or be giving advice publicly, but you have nonetheless described the situation in Libya, I believe you called Muammar Qaddafi's downfall before it actually happened. How would you describe the situation in Libya at the moment? What do you feel the core things to get right are in the next few months?

Minister Rudd: We were the first country in the world to call for a UN Security Council no fly zone for this country. We were first country in the world to call for the Qaddafi regime to be referred to the ICC. We are proud as a member of the family of democracies to have taken that stand.

As for the challenges the Government now faces, these are formidable. How do you design an electoral system? How do you design a political system in a country which has not seen free and fair elections? This is formidable. And when you have several generations of Libyans who have no experience of a democratic engagement. This is a formidable challenge.

On top of that, of course, the political contest itself will be controversial. We've seen the beginnings of the electoral outcomes in Egypt, we've already seen the electoral results in Tunisia, we've seen the rise of certain of the Islamist parties. So this will be an interesting challenge here, but this is a matter for our good friends in Libya.

Journalist: You mentioned this rise of Islamism. Do you feel that is going to be an issue here?

Minister Rudd: Well I'm not sufficiently expert in domestic politics in this country to make comment. I think if the good voters of Libya are like the good voters I've met everywhere else in the world, what do they want? They want decent health, they want decent education, they want jobs, they want jobs that pay better. I think they are the aspirations and therefore the political challenge is that which political party or group of individuals can best provide a credible basis for hope around that, not just political rhetoric, but a credible basis for hope.

Libya's great advantage is that it has a strong economic base in terms of its oil and gas reserves and the revenue stream it delivers itself to the Libyan Government. Qaddafi consumed that himself, the challenge of modern Libyan politics, democratic Libyan Politics, is to deliver those revenues to the Libyan people who need them.

Journalist: Did you discuss any bilateral, any contracts with Australian companies in the oil sector?

Minister Rudd: The Australian oil and gas companies are big enough and ugly enough to negotiate contracts for themselves. All I've indicated to our Libyan counterparts is that they will be back and doing what they did before and I'm sure they will do more of it. But I'm also looking at broader forms of economic engagement. How we do it on a commercial basis in the agricultural sector, how we can do it more on a commercial basis also through the higher education section, and how we can for example, on a commercial basis, seek to develop Libya's public heath institutions, its teaching hospitals, its training hospitals in order to build a better health system. These are the sorts of things I discussed in some detail with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and other ministers including the Agriculture Minister.

Journalist: The biggest challenge facing the Government right now is security. I imagine you discussed that.

How do you feel the Libyan Government is going, how do you feel about the Libyan Governments approach to that, there has been quite a bit of confusion in Tripoli about this issue of disarming militias which is a key one here. What's your feeling on how that's going?

Minister Rudd: I'm familiar with the controversial nature of that debate within Tripoli itself and I understand the problem which arises when you have armed militia who performed a political and paramilitary function in the middle of a revolution, a revolution which has concluded very, very recently. So we need to put the challenge into context. Therefore this will require patience and great skill on the part of the Libyan Government. I'm sure they will get the balance right, because unless you've got security and stability it is very difficult to conduct free and fair elections in that context.

You mentioned before about demining, that actually has a very hard dimension to it as well, which is the removal of unexploded ordnances which is also the taking into custody of unused ammunition and so this also is part of the process we are funding though the UN demining operation so it's not just mines in the ground, it's the whole raft of other lethal explosives which frankly are critical to security in the immediate period ahead.

Journalist: Am I to understand from your comment about the Government eventually getting the balance right, that they are not quite there yet?

Minister Rudd: Well it's a nice journalistic angle.

Journalist: I was just trying to understand your full meaning.

Minister Rudd: When I say getting the balance right it's very clear what that means. There has just been a revolution it's recently concluded, you are dealing with armed militia who have supported the revolution and now the challenge is how do you effectively ensure that those folks go home and lay down their arms. That's getting the balance right and I'm confident the Government is moving in that direction.

Journalist: Thank you

Minister Rudd: Thank you for your time

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