PM: When it comes to responsible economic management, you have got to make sure you have got a properly managed surplus into the future. You have got to make sure that you are providing support for working Australians under financial pressure and that you are also investing in the future.
Investing in the future means investing in the future of our infrastructure, investing in the future of our hospitals and investing in the future of our skills. And that is what we are here today to talk about, investing in the future of our skills.
We have come to this childcare centre today here in Campbell because if you look across Australia right now, there is a national shortage of childcare workers. And it doesn't matter where you go, we seem to encounter this story all over the place. And therefore, at the very beginning of a child's educational opportunities, with early childhood education with childcare, this is where the actions of Government must deal with the problem.
Across Australia at the moment, we are advised that by 2013 we are predicting 7000 workers, as an estimated shortfall in the early childhood education and care sector.
We have 700,000 parents in Australia who rely on childcare each year, and we have got this impending significant shortage of childcare workers apart from the shortage we have got right now.
So the question is: what do we do about it? And we are going to go from this childcare centre back to Parliament House for the first meeting of Skills Australia and I thank those who are with us today who are now part of Skills Australia and will assist the Government in providing advice on the allocation of the training places and vocational education training places which we have allocated - some 630,000 such places. It is important that we get all of this right.
The allocation of these places is already begun with 20,000 places which were released in April. And in the childcare sector alone, Julia has advised me that we have already got 764 job seekers enrolled in Certificate III childcare, children's services.
Now that is a very important start, but it is part of a long term plan to deal with the skills crisis, not just in this critical sector which is childcare, which effects hundreds of thousands of parents right across Australia in childcare centres just like this one. But more broadly across the total economy, how do you use properly informed advice to plan for Australia's long term skills needs.
Returning to the overall challenges of the economy. If we are going to have responsible economic management, which this Government is committed to, that lies in making sure that you are producing not just a significant and substantial government surplus, but also as you are dealing with other downward pressures on inflation - that means investing in skills and investing in infrastructure.
And investing in skills is so much part and parcel of what this government has undertaken in terms of what we believe to be the needs for Australia to have an education revolution.
I turn to Julia to comment more on the policy and then we will take your questions.
GILLARD: Thank you very much. This centre that we are visiting today really is an example of the skills crisis right around the country. They are looking for and would employ three new childcare workers if they could get them.
That is an example in childcare of what is happening right across our economy. A lack of skills, a skills crisis, is a capacity constraint on growth. Our economy could grow more, we could put downward pressure on inflation if we could solve the skills crisis.
It has been 11 long years in the making with underinvestment by the Liberal party. We have started to fix that underinvestment with the first 20,000 training places. And as the Prime Minister has said, many of them have been taken up by people who want to work in childcare.
The meeting today with Skills Australia will be part of setting up the long term future for delivery of our 630,000 training places in total, and a reform agenda for vocational education and training.
I am looking forward to the meeting and I thank the members of Skills Australia for sharing their early learning abilities with the children here in the centre today.
Apart from skills and the skills crisis, we know another problem for our economy is people not being able to get into the workforce when they want to because they cant access childcare. Either there isn't enough, and that goes to the skills crisis, or they have found it to be unaffordable.
An important part of the Government's Budget is lifting the Childcare Tax Rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. Now this is real dollars in the hands of working families. To take one example, for a working family where the mum works three days a week, it is $47 in reduction of out of pocket costs - $47 extra above what childcare provision is already giving that working family.
For a working mum who works full time, it is $95 in the pocket. This is a very significant difference for working families, a very significant difference to the affordability of childcare.
We want to deliver on affordability, we want to deliver on quantity of childcare, our skills package is part of that. Of course our 260 new childcare centres are part of that. We will move from talking about the skills crisis here in childcare to the skills crisis right across the economy with the members of Skills Australia today.
PM:Good. Thanks very much, over to you folks.
JOURNALIST: PM, the Australian dollar is approaching parity with it's US counterpart do you have any memory of when it was last (inaudible) how significant will it be for Australia?
PM: Well there has been a significant move in the value of the Australia dollar on currency markets and driven in part by of course, the resources boom, and demand for Australian commodities.
On the first part of your question, I seem to remember as a kid growing up, when the Australian dollar was worth more than the US dollar. But it has been a long, long time. Critical challenge for us when you look at the factors fuelling the crisis valuation of the dollar, is that with the resources boom and the inflow of revenue coming from the resources boom, it is one of those other elements in the overall inflation equation, is what people need to bear in mind.
You have got Government spending over here, you have got incoming revenue from the resources boom, and then on the supply side of the economy, you also have the constraints we have just been talking about when it come skills and infrastructure.
This Government, as a Government of responsible economic management, believes that we have to fight the fight against inflation.
If inflation is allowed to get out of control then what happens is that it pushes further upward pressure on interest rates and that is bad news for everyone in this country. Working Australians, working families, those doing it tough, people in business. That's why it's such a core part of the Government's approach to responsible economic management.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister can guarantee that Fuel Watch will lower petrol prices?
PM: The last Prime Minister made irresponsible promises about prices, for example. With Mr Howard, when he said, that interest rates would be kept at record lows. That was an undeliverable promise and I don't believe that the Australian people want politicians running out there and making irresponsible promises.
What we have said consistently about FuelWatch, and about our overall approach to competitive policy pressures in petrol and elsewhere, is to enhance competition powers within the economy in order to do what we can to assist with the overall continued pressure on prices. But making any promise on individual prices? We never said that prior to the election and we're not saying it since the election.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) over the last three months petrol has been higher in Perth where FuelWatch operates. What's your response to that?
PM: Well, there are two responses to that. I think one is on a given day things are obviously going to vary across the country, and the key thing is to look at these trends in the long term. But if you look at the ACCC report, which was commissioned by the previous Government, it measured overall price over a period from 2001-2007. That's a long series of data from which to make evaluation. And from that particular enquiry in ‘04, ‘05, '06, and looking to have a similar result in '07, the WA Government's submission to the petrol price inquiry said that petrol was cheaper in Perth than the eastern capitals. So, there is a long series there as well.
I think it's very important, therefore, to look at price development in the long term. As we've always said about FuelWatch, we've never seen this as a silver bullet. We've said it will help with competition at the margins giving information to motorists so they know where the cheapest petrol lies in their city on a given day. And, looking at the data over time, in the West Australian experience, it's delivering something like two cents, on average, less a litre. Two cents per litre less over time.
The other thing is that it's really important to put in context in this debate on FuelWatch what's happened today with the three ringed circus that is the Opposition. Because in this period this morning we've had another several new positions put forward by the Liberal Party on FuelWatch.
Mr Nelson this morning on radio refused to take a position, it seems, on whether of not the Liberal Party would be supporting or opposing this legislation in the Senate.
Mr Turnbull said that the Liberal Party was both for and against this particular measure, for parts of it but against other elements of it.
But then we have Senator McGauran in the Senate who says that the Liberal Party will oppose the legislation in toto - ‘it's a dead duck' I think was the language that he's used.
Then we have a WA Liberal Senator this morning who said that FuelWatch is working just fine in Western Australia.
So, we have the Liberal Party saying FuelWatch is working fine in Western Australia. Liberal Party in the Senate saying they are going to block in toto. Mr Turnbull, the alternative Treasurer, saying they are going to accept part of it and reject the rest of it. And Mr Nelson not taking a position. Where does the Liberal Party stand on FuelWatch?
JOURNALIST:Can you clear something up about FuelWatch, will retailers be fined if they drop the price of petrol?
PM:The legislation will be introduced into the house in the next couple of weeks and all those elements will be fully developed in it -
JOURNALIST:You must know -
PM:In the WA experience, (inaudible) those sanctions have been applied. And, if you're going to have a system which say that petrol companies are required to nominate their prices at 2pm on the day previous, and adhere to those prices on the day following, then you have to have an enforcement mechanism. And the details of the enforcement mechanism will be unfolded in the legislation in the week ahead.
JOURNALIST:Can't you enforce it if it only goes up, if they put the price up (inaudible)
PM:The WA experience is that the sanctions have to work across the board, and that's been the approach that we've considered and debated at length internally within Government. But the full details of the regime you'll see contained and made explicit in the legislation.
JOURNALIST: Would you like petrol to be included in an emissions trading scheme? And do you think your Government could weather the ensuring backlash when petrol hits or increases by 10 to 17 cents a litre?
PM:The first thing to say is that the Liberal Party last year in Government, through Malcolm Turnbull, said that petrol should be included, lets just be very clear about that.
Secondly, what we've said about an emissions trading scheme is that it should be as broad in its compass as possible, but the final architecture of the scheme is still being developed.
And the third thing is this, that through this emissions trading scheme, when it's fully developed, our core responsibility is to ensure that working Australians on low to middle incomes who face price disadvantages flowing from that receive proper support from Government. And we're working on the detail of that as well. That's the responsible course of action.
JOURNALIST:There seems to be a view, Prime Minister, in the international investment community (inaudible). Do you think we've seen the end of reasonably prices petrol? (Inaudible)
PM:I think, the truth of it is, you've got so many factors, globally, impacting on the price of petrol here in Australia. If you look right around the world today, every Government today, around the world, is in the middle of a debate on petrol prices. In fact, I saw this morning there were riots in Indonesia over increased petrol prices, there are debates raging in the United Kingdom about how petrol prices and fuel prices more generally should be handled.
Most countries right around the world are dealing with this phenomenal spike, phenomenal spike, in global oil prices. Of the type that we've not seen since the oil price shocks of the 1970's.
So, on the demand side, what has really changed here? The massive emergence of China and India, as huge new consumers of global oil, and when you've got 1.3 million new cars emerging on the roads of India each year pushing things up and up.
On the supply side, we still have problems in getting Iraq to full production capacity and problems also in Nigeria.
Then, there is a third problem. And the third problem globally is all around the whole question of fuel efficiency and fuel efficient cars. And that's one of the reasons why we in this country are doing whatever we can with this half billion dollar green car initiative to assist with the manufacture of Australian hybrid and fuel efficient cars.
You see, if you're dealing with the challenges of the cost of fuel, it's a global reality we're dealing with. Here in Australia we can deal with part of the problem, and we also need to be very mindful of helping families on the way through with other supports to family budget - whether it is in child care, whether it's in early education tax refunds or through the tax measures we bring in as of 1 July.
JOURNALIST:PM, Cate Blanchett says you should retract your criticism of Bill Henson's artwork. Will you be reassessing that harsh initial reaction that you had to it?
PM:When I was asked the other day for my reaction, my personal reaction as a parent, to the photographs which were shown on television that morning, I gave my reaction. I don't apologise for that reaction. I stand by that view. And I will not be changed on it.
In terms of the other matters concerning the legal processes, that's always been properly the independent province of the law. Quite apart from any personal view of any politician - me or anyone else.
JOURNALIST:Do you agree with the Prime Minister on Bill Henson's exhibition and do you think it's a good look to have the vice squad raiding art galleries in Australia?
GILLARD:I'm now concerned that you don't read my radio transcripts, because if you did, you'd be aware that I was asked this question earlier in the week and certainly endorsed the Prime Minister's view.
JOURNALIST:(Inaudible)
PM:Well, Mark, there are two questions here. One is our personal view. And I was asked the other day for my personal view as a parent about the photographs which were whacked up on the television screen. And I gave my reaction. I stand by that reaction. And don't apologise for it, and won't be changing it.
There's a second point here, which is the process, the independent processes of the law. As I said on the day, that's a matter for the legal processes to unfold. It's not a question of a politician having a particular view at a personal level which dictates the course of action of the law. The law is an independent beast and the laws governing these matters have pre-existed us by a long, long time. And that will sort itself through.
JOURNALIST:Malcolm Turnbull said this morning, he's got a couple on his walls at home. Should he take them down?
PM:I'm unaware of those remarks. My remarks were entirely based on the couple of photographs which I was shown on television. And as I said, were remarks based on my personal view as a parent. That is the question I was asked, I think, by Karl Stefanovic.
JOURNALIST: What about as Prime Minister?
PM:Well, I'm a parent, I'm a person and my views on the photographs I was shown haven't changed. I am passionate about children having innocence in their childhood. And therefore, when I'm presented with those sorts of photographs, and asked for my personal view as a parent, I gave them.
Now, on the question of the law and how that applies, that's properly in the hands of independent processes completely removed from any politicians personal view. I stand by my personal view, stated before, and I don't intend to change from it.
JOURNALIST:Ms Gillard, will the Federal Government support the creation of Islamic schools in Australia?
GILLARD:Well, we currently have such schools in Australia. We support parental choice, we support parents being able to choose the kind of school that they want their children to go to. That's the policy of the Government and obviously it is reflected in the way in which we fund and interact with schools. The Government works with schools from all sectors from the Government sector, from the independent sector and from the Catholic sector.
JOURNALIST:Do you have any concerns with the Camden Council rejecting the proposed Islamic school in Western Sydney?
GILLARD:This was obviously dealt with as a planning matter by the local council. It's the subject of New South Wales planning laws and should be dealt with in that way through the planning process.
JOURNALIST:Prime Minister, apparently found what could be the remains of an Australian digger at Fromelles. Do you have any comment on that?
PM:Look, let's wait to see how all this is dealt with. However long ago an Australian veteran has passed away, or been killed in action, and the remains are found, it's very important to handle this very sensitively.
Everyone has family. So let's get it all right first, in terms of the science. But, look at the history for Fromelles and the Western Front, it's just carnage cubed. Just carnage, carnage, carnage.
And every time any of us read anything to do with the history of battles on the Western Front and look at those hundreds and thousands of Australians who lost their lives, it just gives us all pause for thought.
These are Australian heroes. Every one of them is an Australian hero. We were a country of five million people at the time that dispatched something like half a million of our own to fight in these wars, primarily in Europe. And 50,000 of them lie dead. So, we honour our veterans, however long ago they may have died. Thanks very much.