FAINE: Kevin Rudd good morning to you.
PM: Good Morning and thanks for having me on your program.
FAINE: What do these talkfests achieve?
PM: Well there are two things I'd say. The first is that since becoming Prime Minister of the country I've formed a conclusion that neither the Government nor the Public Service has any monopoly on wisdom and you need a way therefore of harnessing the ideas out there in the community.
Many people roll up to me either from businesses or non government organisations or from academia or from people I run into in the street saying what the country needs to do is X and I'd say well that's a good proposal have you thought it through. What's the underpinning research. And that led to an idea on my part to actually put together some forums like the one which were having in Canberra this coming weekend. The one which we just had with the youth summit the weekend just passed.
And the second thing is this. If we're going to move forward as a country. We need to fashion a long term vision for which the nation has a genuine buy in. That is the direction which we as a nation want to go and I think a summit like this helps to achieve that end point as well. Because unless you have a strategic vision for the nation and unless the community understands that vision and is behind it. Then frankly you can just tread water.
FAINE: Conservatives are complaining that you've shut them out of the dialogue and you stacked the participants in order to in a way affect the outcome? To influence the outcome, have they got a point?
PM: I think that's a nonsense proposition, one of the first things that we did was establish a non government committee chaired by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne Glyn Davis. But that committee includes the likes of Tim Fischer former National Party Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Warwick Smith former Liberal party cabinet Minister. Participants include Greg Lindsay who is the head of the Centre for Independent Studies which is generally regarded as a centre right think-tank in Australia, Gerard Henderson from the Sydney Institute and others including George Brandis. The leader of the opposition is invited as are the leaders of the State oppositions.
So I think frankly that doesn't add up to anything. I think its important to approach this not from a party political view and I wish people would just sort of put those clubs down for a minute and say this is to be a national gathering of the best ideas that we can put forward for the country's future.
Let's just look beyond the trenches of current political warfare, let's put our minds eye right on the year 2020. Where do we wish to be as a nation on the economy, fairness in the community, our security, the environment and climate change. Where do we want to be in terms of a nation and then how do we get there. That's why this has been convened.
FAINE: Did any of the national leaders you met with during your tour that finished yesterday around the world, did they say anything to you that changed your mind about your vision for the future of our country?
PM: Quite a lot of things actually. One of the things that I discussed with various world leaders was something touched on by in fact today at the meeting of the World Bank in Washington. In the last 24 hours in the meeting of the World Bank in Washington. Which is, we have an unfolding food crisis across the world. Which is a combination of climate change factors at work together with various people moving off the land in various parts of the country, urban encroachment and then there's a real problem in terms of adequate food supplies. We had 10 major sets of food riots around the world.
So if you want something which should be close to our global agenda therefore our national agenda how do we contribute to better food security around the world.
FAINE: Kevin Rudd looking at the appointment of Quentin Bryce as our next Governor General is this about the politics of gesture?
PM: Absolutely not, if you look at Quentin Bryce's CV and what she has done with her life, not only is she a person who has grown up in a tiny town of Rural Australia, But she's a person who succeeded in the law, a person who's lectured in law as one of the first female lecturers in law at a university level in Australia. A person who then became Federal sex discrimination commissioner. A person who headed the University College at the University of Sydney. A person who has achieved pre eminence in her field.
Obviously she will bring her whole perspectives to bear in her occupancy of this new office but I think it's a great reflection on the fact that modern Australia is about the proper role of women in our society unconstrained as well as, and if you look at Ms Bryce career her continuing advocacy of interests of Indigenous Australia and her deep passion for rural and regional Australia.
FAINE: And we can't help but notice, she's a Queenslander?
PM: Well she spent a fair bit of her career in Sydney but then again in Melbourne that's another crime against humanity is it? [Laughter] She's a person who's achieved a national career and you know something Jon we've all got to come from somewhere. So there you go.
FAINE: Yes and we are Australians first and foremost, I think an end to parochialism would be a very great advance.
PM: Tends to be my view and I did marry someone from outside our fair state so there you go. And you actually live for a while in Victoria in Melbourne, Beaumaris is that a crime against humanity?
FAINE: Quite to the contrary. With China do we get punished by the Chinese for your insistence on raising and then re-raising human rights in Tibet? It's a delicate balance that your trying to strike isn't it?
PM: I can't speak for the Chinese Government, nor about what they will do or not do in the future but I think what we all need is a material relationship with China where we can embrace all the things we've got in common with the Chinese and be very frank about the things that we disagree on. That's what I was trying to do in China and I think the best way forward for our relationship for the economy which will become the largest economy in the world in the 21st century . And if we're looking forward to 2020, how do we engage China, how do we engage the rise of India, how do we do that with our eyes firmly fixed on the future? And at the same time upholding all those things which we regard to be fundamental to our sense of Australian identity including our passionate belief in the rights of the individual.
FAINE: 14 minutes to 9, Jon Faine with you on 774 ABC Melbourne. Kevin Rudd just finally implementing any recommendations or consensus that comes up at your 2020 summit. Is there are task force or is there going to be some process of procedure for gathering, collecting and then watching the implementation of the ideas that emerge?
PM: Absolutely Jon, I don't regard this as simply a jolly nice weekend where we get together and have a jolly nice chat and talk these things through and that's the end of that. What I'm proposing is that whatever consensus emerges from the 2020 Summit has in fact as just occurred with the Youth Summit held in Canberra this weekend. That those ideas then come through Government, we will then sift them through the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
And my commitment already is that by years end each of those proposals to emerge from the summit will receive a formal response from the Government and either reasons why we will accept those proposals and then how we will go about implementing them, or why we cannot accept them and the reasons why.
As I said from the very beginning of this exercise, there aren't any right or wrong answers here. If you start saying that from the very beginning you discourage people from participating. I don't care frankly if people put up there hands and say things which are in complete disagreement with aspect of Government policy. They can do so, what I want is to make sure that everyone feels free to contribute as much as they can in as free an environment as possible so we get the best ideas possible.
Then it's the job of the elected Government to decide what we can advance with and what we can't.
FAINE: And are we going to have a republic?
PM: Well I'm a committed republican, our party's platform is clear on the Republic. We have said prior to the election it's not a top order priority for the Government but
FAINE: Is that what you told the Queen when you saw her recently?
PM: Now Jon, you know as well as I do that any Prime Minister of Australia least of all on your program, doesn't go to the detail of their conversations with Her Majesty the Queen and I don't intend to start now? But on the republic our position in support of a republic is clear and I would fully look forward to there being a spirited animated debate during the course of this year and beyond on our future Constitutional arrangements and that includes the republic. And I'm not only more than relaxed about this, that is the sort of debate that should happen from the community up.
FAINE: Well we will see whether or not it's raised as a priority at your summit coming up. I'm grateful to you for your time this morning.
PM: Thanks very much and all the best to your summit participants there in Melbourne
FAINE: Thank you, Kevin Rudd Australia's Prime Minister joining us from Canberra.