Subject:
Climate change; National Plan for Water Security; workplace reform.
E&OE...
LAWS:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning John.
LAWS:
Can I use that expression, life in the old dog?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well people have used a lot worse over the years.
LAWS:
Listen, Peter Garrett is Labor's environment spokesperson as you know, and your weekend message was basically not a bad one, do the voters of Australia want a rock star to manage climate change in the country.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Peter Garrett can't escape what he said. I gather on radio this morning he's denying having said it, but back as a backbencher he said he wanted a 20 per cent reduction by 2020 and he repeated that on the Laurie Oakes' program in April of this year as a frontbench spokesman on the environment. And as my report, that's the report of the experts, not my report, but the report to me on Friday said that to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 you'd have to replace every coal fired power station with a nuclear power station by 2020 and you'd have to take all vehicles off the roads. Well that's pretty drastic and that would send the country into recession. Now Mr Garrett may now say we'll he didn't mean it, it was just an aspiration. The truth is, that is what is in his mind, and he would be in charge of all of this if Labor were to win. So we would have a recession and it wouldn't be a recession we had to have.
LAWS:
And of course if we did all those drastic things, it wouldn't make the slightest difference to climate change in any other part of the world?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh no, no, see the thing you've got to remember is that we're only one and a half per cent of total emissions. Now true it is that per capita our emissions are high, that is because we have a lot of fossil fuel and we have a small population, it's not because we pollute the atmosphere any more than any other country, indeed, in many areas we're ahead of other countries with clean air legislation. You just have that accident of small population, lots of coal, therefore on a per capita basis our emissions are high, but the total is about one and a half per cent and by 2050 it will be down to close to one per cent. So the message out of all of that is that if we take steps that hurt us and those steps are not matched around the world, then not only will we have hurt ourselves but we will have hurt ourselves to no avail. Now I think we should take steps. I think we should have an emissions trading system. We should work out a long term aspirational target. We will do a lot of modelling, led by the Federal Treasury over the next year and by 2008 we will be able to nominate what that long term aspirational target is. I think that is the sensible, measured, responsible way of dealing with this issue.
LAWS:
Peter Garrett says you're scaremongering on the climate change. Are you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I am not scaremongering when I quote what he said, and the consequences of that expression of his own views, the 20 per cent reduction by 2020, the consequences that I mentioned at the weekend were not consequences I plucked out of thin air. They are contained in the taskforce report. So that is an analysis conducted amongst other people by the Secretary of the Federal Treasury.
LAWS:
Yeah but he does say that these claims that he made are out of date?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well April of this year?
LAWS:
Not far out of date.
PRIME MINISTER:
Not very far out of date. In fact he was even ruminating on that program, that interview with Laurie Oakes, that maybe you could do better than 20 per cent, you might do 30 per cent; 25 or 30 per cent. So as recently as April of this year, which is, what, six weeks ago, Mr Garrett, who'd be in charge of all of this under a Labor Government, was saying that he thought it was a good idea, he himself thought it was a good idea to cut emissions by at least 20 per cent by the year 2020. That's in 13 years time and according to the experts that would involve taking all vehicles off the roads and converting every coal fired power station into a nuclear one, which he, of course, is totally opposed to. We, incidentally, are not opposed to nuclear power. We think there is a place for nuclear and we think you can't have a sensible debate about this whole issue unless you bring nuclear into the equation. It's part of the solution and it is just so short sighted to say no nuclear power should be considered because it has fewer greenhouse gas emissions than any other form of power generation. It's even lower, in many calculations, than solar and wind.
LAWS:
Nuclear has got to be inevitable hasn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course, and 80 per cent of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power. Twenty-eight per cent, 27 per cent of California's electricity is generated by nuclear power. The Generation IV nuclear power stations are safer than coal fired power stations. It has to come; and talk about fear campaign, the greatest fear campaign of all in this whole debate is the fear campaign the Labor Party is seeking to run about nuclear power.
LAWS:
Why didn't the Howard Government move a long time ago on climate change? It was pretty inevitable it was going to be a problem.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think there was a very strong view in the Australian business community a few years ago that an emissions trading system; this was particularly the view of the resource sector, that an emissions trading system was not a good idea. I think there has been a shift in the business community and there has been a broader shift in the community. Now you can say, and a lot of people do, well you should have done this, you should have done that. Well that is a criticism that can always be made, but bear this in mind; we do at the moment have a target for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and that target is the one set by the Kyoto Protocol of 108 over our 1990 levels and that's got to be achieved between 2008 and 2012 and we are on track to meet that. This is something that's forgotten in this whole debate, that right at the moment we do have a target and that target was set by Kyoto.
LAWS:
But why didn't you sign the agreement?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well because we would have assumed obligations under Kyoto that wouldn't have been imposed on competitor countries like China and it could have resulted in industrial investment leaving Australia and going to China; that's why we didn't sign it.
LAWS:
Okay, well that seems a reasonable reason.
PRIME MINISTER:
And we nonetheless committed ourselves to meet the target we were given, although we are not bound by the Kyoto protocol and we unlike most other countries are on track to meet that target. Now there is a lot of talk about having targets immediately, we've really got one at the present time and we are going to meet it or go very close to meeting it on all of the available indications, and what we have to confront is the world after 2012, which is beyond Kyoto, and we will have an emissions trading system up and running by then and it will be a system that will cover about 70 per cent of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions which is more comprehensive than the state-based systems which cover about 45 per cent and more comprehensive than any of the systems operating in Europe. So it will be, in that definition, a world-class system and more comprehensive and ahead of other systems and that's another reason why getting it together in time for it to start in 2012 makes a lot of sense.
LAWS:
Okay. Just on these polls, on the Herald poll which says voters are terrified of a Costello led government...
PRIME MINISTER:
But that's not Herald poll, that's some mischief from the Labor Party. If you read the article, it's Labor Party private polling, well don't take any notice of that. The Labor Party's tried this line before that people don't like Peter Costello, it's a furphy, people do like Peter Costello, they respect very much the job he's done as the Treasurer and I find when I go around the community including in Sydney, including in western Sydney, people like him a lot, they respect him, he's got a good sense of humour, he's done a very good job with the economy and John, you and I both know that when parties start talking about their private polling publicly they are spinning like fury.
LAWS:
Yeah, I agree with that.
PRIME MINISTER:
The whole idea of private polling is that as the adjective suggests it's private. There's only one poll around this morning and that's the Galaxy poll, the other stuff is a piece of Labor Party spin designed to try and in some way damage Peter. But they tried that last time...
LAWS:
They did.
PRIME MINISTER:
...and it didn't work. They especially tried it in Victoria, and my recollection is that we increased our vote in every Victorian seat, so I just put that down to a bit of hypersensitivity on the part of the Labor Party about Peter rather than being a genuine reflection of what the public thinks.
LAWS:
Can you rule out handing over to your Treasurer if you win?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I've said all along and I will repeat again that I will remain the leader of my party as long as it wants me to and it's in the best interests that I do.
LAWS:
Yeah that's...
PRIME MINISTER:
I haven't changed, that remains my position. It's my position now, it will be my position on polling day, it will be my position after polling day. It's been my position and that's the sensible thing to do. I've said also that if I went under a bus Peter would do a terrific job in place of me and he would be the logical person to follow me if I did fall victim to that, I hope forever, proverbial bus.
LAWS:
What do you make of the Galaxy poll it points to a much tighter contest than every other recent poll?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think it certainly is that and I have read it, I have read it with interest. We have a big fight ahead of us even if you took that poll as a proper measurement of public opinion and the poll does have a good track record, but so do most of the other polls, I am not playing favourites amongst polls, but we still have a long way to go, we are still clearly behind. All the other polls have been very negative. I think what the public is doing as I said on Saturday, it is thinking, and some people in the public are thinking about a change just on the basis it might be time. I understand that, but I ask the question well it's never time for a change unless it's a change for the better and I don't think anybody could argue that the economy could be run better by Labor. We would argue it would be run a lot worse, we would argue that just as state Labor governments are now going into deficit and putting upward pressure on interest rates, a federal Labor Government would do the same, it did before. Labor governments at every level would be a frightening idea. The union influence on Labor governments without any checks and balances, that would be of concern to people so we will obviously be arguing very strongly and with a lot of evidence on our side that a change for the sake of a change would not be a good idea because it would not be a change for the better. Now that's an argument that I must carry between now and election day and I will be doing it with great commitment recognising at present that we are still a long way behind and we have a big fight ahead of us.
LAWS:
That Galaxy poll also says that two out of three voters are concerned about Labor running the economy. That's got to be a very big plus for you hasn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there's not doubt the public thinks that we are better at running the economy than Labor and that is an important consideration. Climate change is essentially an economic challenge and if we get it wrong, if we adopt targets or adopt measures that impose to great a cost on everybody that will do a lot of damage. We can't do anything about climate unless we accept over time that certain things are going to become more expensive. We don't want to make them more expensive than they might otherwise be and that could happen if the wrong measures were adopted.
LAWS:
I know that you're going to be in talks with Victorian Premier Steve Bracks; he's still refusing to sign up to your national scheme is he?
PRIME MINISTER:
So far, I hope that we might make some progress today. I've been very patient about this. We are prepared to put $10 billion into the Murray-Darling Basin. We're not asking the states to contribute a dollar. We're going to spend $6 billion of it to pipe and line the irrigation channels all over Australia, not only in the basin but most of them are in the basin and we're going to spend about $3 billion on buying back over allocations of water. Now, we'll do all of that and we're, particularly in relation to the latter, we're taking on a responsibility that is not ours. We didn't over allocate water, state governments did and all I'm asking is that in return for this the states refer constitutional power to allow us to set a basin wide cap and allow us to give effect to basin wide decisions. We're quite happy to consult the states at every point, but in the end final decisions must be made by the Commonwealth because we're assuming the totality of the financial responsibility, that's only fair. Now New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT have agreed, Mr Bracks so far has not agreed and I hope later on this morning we can make progress because the people want this. Victorians want it and the nation needs a national system to deal with the Murray-Darling Basin.
LAWS:
If Victoria doesn't agree, does your whole arrangement then collapse?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it can't work without Victoria. I hope that Victoria does agree but Victoria's an important part of it just as New South Wales and South Australia are. It's a river system that crosses state borders. I mean this is the most obvious case where the Federal Government should run it because the rivers and systems and the Great Artesian Basin, they are no respecters or state borders. They run between states and it's essential that we deal with it at a national level.
LAWS:
Why won't he sign? I mean, the other Labor governments have, why won't he?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't know. There may be some political consideration involved in an election year, I really don't know. You'd have to ask him that.
LAWS:
Ok, just one final question Prime Minister. The ACTU this morning says, they've taken very careful aim at your workplace fairness test, saying the only avenue for appeal under your fairness test is to appeal to the High Court. Is that right?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's no different from any other system that's involved some adjudication being made about what's fair in a workplace agreement. Under the old system when things were decided by the Industrial Relations Commission, I don't know whether you could even end up going to the High Court then
LAWS:
But surely...
PRIME MINISTER:
The old no disadvantage test, there was no appeal against the decision. I mean, the idea that in relation to every single agreement you have some other mechanism that's different, I don't quite understand what they're getting at and incidentally the Labor Party voted in favour of this fairness test.
LAWS:
But just back to the High Court, wouldn't it have much more important work to do than adjudicate on a lunchroom row over the heat of the water in the tea or something?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I'm not advocating that it should happen. I mean, look, commonsense tells you that where penalty rates are traded off and something is given in return, commonsense tells you that if you have an independent authority assessing whether that trade off is fair enough, that should be the end of the matter and the idea that somebody would appeal to the High Court against that is a bit silly.
LAWS:
That's what I meant. Ok, just summing up. You're not out of the woods yet but the latest poll will give you and your people a bit of heart huh?
PRIME MINISTER:
John, it's always good to have a good poll but we are a long way behind, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but the most important thing for people to know is that we have tremendous reserves of energy and commitment. We do believe that a change of government now would not be a change for the better, that we have some crucial economic decisions to be taken in the area of climate change and they should be taken by people who have a track record of managing the economy well.
LAWS:
What will be the defining issues of the election? The economy, climate change, industrial relations, economic management?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think all of those things are part of it. People take a broad view, they look at the performance of the Government, they project that forward, they look at the quality of the team. They'll have to ask themselves whether they think Wayne Swan would make a better Treasurer than Peter Costello, whether Peter Garrett would be safer pair of hands with the environment than Malcolm Turnbull. These are considerations as well as the comparison between Mr Rudd and myself.
LAWS:
Ok, thank you again, as usual Prime Minister, you're always very generous with your time and we appreciate it very much.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you John.
LAWS:
Bye.
[ends]