Fed: British deputy PM low-key on Aust visit

AAP General News (Australia)
12-06-2001
Fed: British deputy PM low-key on Aust visit

By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA, Dec 6 AAP - His punches draw more headlines than Muhammad Ali's, but Britain's
hard-hitting deputy prime minister was strangely low-key as he wound up a fleeting visit
to Australia today.

John Prescott shot to world-wide fame in May when he dealt a near-perfect left hook
to a protester who targeted him with an egg as the UK election campaign wound through
north Wales.

The former Seamen's Union organiser has been in Australia for three days of talks with
Australian leaders.

The British Labour heavyweight yesterday met with Prime Minister John Howard in Canberra
following talks with new Opposition Leader Simon Crean and his vanquished predecessor
Kim Beazley.

But despite being a self-described loose cannon with a reputation as a straight talker,
Mr Prescott was nothing but the diplomat down under.

With Australian Labor's new leadership team meeting today to start reviewing policies
for the next three years in opposition, Mr Prescott said he believed the ALP here had
done little wrong in the election.

"It was a small percentage that made the difference between winning and losing here,"

he told journalists.

"I think old Labour can always change to these matters.

"I coined a phrase: `the traditional values in a modern setting'.

"That is we can still believe what we believe, but we have to implement it in a different way."

He said British Labour had been forced into radical change with just 27 per cent support
and 18 years in the wilderness.

But he said he would not presume to offer advice to Labor in Australia.

"I'm sure Simon Crean is a man who is going to address the situation as he sees it," he said

Likewise, he was reluctant to comment on the government's hard line against asylum
seekers, saying it was a matter for Australians.

Mr Prescott said he still deeply regretted thumping 29-year-old protester Craig Evans
as he walked into an election meeting in Rhyl on May 16, despite the fact his approval
rating shot up afterwards.

"It's something not (to do) that you go around punching the electorate. It's not seen
to be an election-winning thing," he quipped, saying it had been a spur of the moment
reaction.

"But can I just say while passing that I probably received more e-mails (of support)
from Australia than anywhere else, so thank you Australians.

"At that moment the feeling of solidarity was quite a useful thought when our own British
press were expressing other things."

Mr Prescott has used his visit to encourage Australia to sign up to the Kyoto protocol
on greenhouse warming.

He said Australia had bargained itself a generous deal under the Kyoto pact and Canberra
should not be influenced by US opposition to ratifying the treaty.

AAP rft/daw/mk/de

KEYWORD: PRESCOTT

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