OAKES: Prime Minister, welcome to the program.
PM: Thanks for having me on the program.
OAKES: This is an election year- you've got a new opponent in Tony Abbott. Various pundits are saying that you haven't quite got his measure yet. Is that how you see it?
PM: You know something, Laurie? Mr Abbott's the fourth leader of the Liberal Party I've faced in a couple of years. Each person is different, and each deserves to be treated with respect. And I do the same in the case of Mr Abbott. The Australian people will be the judge of this, and they are hard judges, but they are fair judges, and they'll look at our record and look at our plans for the future.
OAKES: What do you see as his weaknesses, though?
PM: Well, my question is not about Mr Abbott personally. I simply go to the question of policy. And if I were to go to two, just off the top- big one, climate change. You cannot take the risk with Australia's future, to have a leader- Mr Abbott- who goes out there and says, quote "that climate change is absolute crap", unquote. That's his position, that's his stated position. Our view's radically-
OAKES: His position is that climate change science is crap, he said.
PM: Oh well, his statement is that "it is absolute crap", quote, unquote. And he has a whole series of other conflicting statements attached to that. I don't believe we can place Australia at that sort of risk for the future. But you ask what is a second area of big policy difference - health and hospitals. This'll be a big year for health and hospitals reform. Mr Abbott was Health Minister for four years, ripped a billion dollars out of the public hospital system of Australia. We've increased hospitals investment by the Australian Government by fifty percent already, and that's before we get to the next stage of health and hospital investment. And a third area is WorkChoices. He said that WorkChoices may be dead in name, but not in substance under him. So you want to know what the policy battle terrain is already? I think they're three fairly big ones.
OAKES: What about education- you promised an education revolution, and we certainly haven't seen much that's revolutionary.
PM: Well, I beg to differ on that one, Laurie. The Education-
OAKES: We've seen a lot of school halls but-
PM: Oh well, hang on, hang on. Before you go to school halls, which is part of our national economic stimulus strategy, and state-of-the-art 21st century libraries, and modern science centres and language centres across seven to ten thousand schools right across the country - not a small achievement in itself - but underpinning that, what we have had is a one hundred percent increase in investment in education.
And this goes to a whole range of literacy and numeracy programs right across the country. It goes to our investment in our universities. These are big practical investments in what we legitimately call the Education Revolution, because we want to build long-term productivity growth, and you can't do that unless you are increasing the quantity of our investment in early childhood education, in schools, in TAFEs and training, and universities, rocket science, research, the whole spectrum, and boosting the quality as well, which is what we're doing, for example, with Julia's great efforts on the My Schools front.
OAKES: I was going to mention that. That seems to be very popular. But there is criticism that it is also limited; that it only gives you information about academic issues. The criticism is that doesn't give you an overall picture of what a school is like. Can you do something about that?
PM: Well, the Government if it's re-elected, will of course take My School to a further stage. But let me just recap on what we've done so far, and then I'll go to where we'll take it in the future. Firstly, a whole virtue of My Schools is to empower parents with basic information about the performance of their schools in such basic areas like literacy, numeracy, grammar, spelling. These are pretty basic things, and I think mums and dads across the country would like to know that.
Secondly, it's not just a business of saying, "here's a problem," or, "here's a success"- where problems emerge, what we have done, through Julia's leadership, is put forward a $2 billion investment plan for disadvantaged schools, so that we can identify precisely where we need to enhance literacy and numeracy investment in the education basics so we don't leave kids behind. That's what we're doing now. For the future, if the Government's re-elected -
OAKES: You started off by saying if you're re-elected - so is this your first election year election promise?
PM: Well, an election I think, Laurie, is due, so I'm advised, by April of 2011. I think on the balance of probabilities, it's probably due in 2010- and so this is, yes, a commitment that building on-
OAKES: An election promise?
PM: It is a commitment building on what we've done on My Schools, that if the Government's returned, that we would actually seek to expand the information available to parents as well. How would we do that in a practical way? To provide a more rounded view of what a school's performance is in overall terms. And so a practical way which we have decided upon for the future is to conduct a school quality survey among the parents of that school in question - in fact, of all schools.
And we'll put together the survey questions with the Australian Curriculum Reporting Authority and they would go to- let's call it the overall performance of the school in other critical areas- like bullying, how you're handling the whole challenge of schoolyard bullying, how you're dealing with classroom innovation, what's the engagement of your school community in the local community and its community efforts and charitable endeavour, in other words the rounded view of a school's overall culture. This is also important to parents to know. So if we are re-elected, that's where we'd take My School in 2011.
OAKES: We'll you mentioned health as a key issue this year. The first health debate of the election year I guess will come in the next fortnight, when you plan to reintroduce the bill to impose a means test on the health insurance rebate. Now how important is that, that's just about money isn't it?
PM: Well, health and hospitals reform is a fair bit about having money to invest in the needs of a system for the future. Tomorrow, the Treasurer will be realising the Intergenerational report. And it will go to one core challenge that we face for the future among many, and that core challenge is the aging of our population and the two practical things which come from that- and that is that we will have pressures on our future economic growth because the overall number of Australians in the work force relative to those over the age of 65 will decline.
That's one challenge. That's called the productivity challenge. The other half of the challenge coming from the aging of the population is the enormous impact which will flow from that aging on the cost of our health care system and our age care system. So these are the big ones for the years ahead, and the decades ahead.
OAKES: So how does that bear on the means test, on the rebate, which the Coalition knocked back the first time last October I think?
PM: Yes, they did knock it back, and in our view entirely without justification. What the Intergenerational report tomorrow will reveal for the first time is that the cumulative impact of knocking that major reform back is in the order of one hundred billion dollars over the next several decades. This is the time frame in which we are planning major reform for the health and hospital system. So Mr Abbot may have ripped a billion dollars out of the health system and the hospital system when he was Health Minister- that's bad enough- but to rip a further hundred billion dollars out of the future of the health and hospital system by ideologically blocking this major reform makes no sense at all.
OAKES: But this is- it's a thirty percent rebate, Mr Abbot has said they will rejected it in the Senate again. How do you go to an election arguing against a benefit that the people already have?
PM: Well we are talking about the means testing of this, and frankly people on the highest incomes in the country we believe are not as needing of this sort of support for private health insurance, as people at the lower end of the income spectrum. It is a very fair argument on our part. But the other fair argument is that we have to fund the future of a health and hospital system. If we don't have that extra hundred billion dollars for future investment that means less money to invest in the much needed extra hospital beds, much less money to invest, therefore, in improving waiting times and accident emergency less money to invest in elective surgery waiting times, less money to invest in dealing with the basic problems of an under- supplied health work force- doctors and nurses.
You can't just invent these reforms, you've got to fund them. And a hundred billion dollars is not just a piece of loose cash. It's part and parcel of long-term health reform. So my challenge to Mr Abbott is get real with the long term reform of our hospital and health system. Here is a huge available source of revenue to help with that reform rather than engage in just a piece of ideological bloody-mindedness.
OAKES: But if the Coalition knocks this back again, it will become a double dissolution trigger potentially. Will you pull the trigger?
PM: Well Laurie, our stated position for a long time in my view is that Governments should run their full term, that is a conservative view I have had for a long, long time. Mr Abbott seems to be in permanent blocking mode- whether it's action on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and action on climate change despite Mr Howard and others having the same view as us about that being the right way to go. He now is in blocking mode it seems again on this hundred billion dollar potential investment in our health and hospital reform system. If they block these things, then inevitably they will form part of an election campaign later in the year. What form the election campaign, or the election takes, is a separate matter.
OAKES: Now it seems to me that health reform is probably a better bet for you as a double dissolution trigger than climate change, which seems to have turned against you since the fiasco of Copenhagen.
PM: Climate change is absolutely fundamental to Australia's economic and environmental future. Anyone you who pretends it's not is frankly just deluding themselves. We, the Government, accept what the science tells us from the international panel of climate change scientists, from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, from the CSIRO, for the Australian Chief Government Scientist, and that is why we've concluded as a Government- as did Mr Howard, and Mr Costello, and Mr Turnbull before me, that we must act on this, and act on it through an emissions trading scheme.
OAKES: But don't you agree that this is turning against you politically? I mean, Tony Abbott's over turned the Turnbull stand, Mr Turnbull's now being sneered at by Liberals as having being the 21st member of you Cabinet. Tony Abbott's campaign that this will just mean a big new tax on everything does seem to be biting, doesn't it?
PM: There is a fundamental question in politics, and in policy, which is what do you stand for. This is pretty basic. Acting for the future economic and environmental needs of the planet, our country, our kids and our grandkids. That's pretty basic for me. And secondly, what is pretty basic for me is the advice that we have received, as did the previous Howard Government of which Mr Abbott was a member, that the most effective way of dealing with climate change is through an emissions trading scheme.
OAKES: But is it a big new tax on everything?
PM: This is simply a propaganda line, playing politics, by Mr Abbott and Senator Joyce running around the countryside. Let me just go to the absolute core of it. What's an emissions trading scheme? Puts a cap on the amount of carbon pollution, it charges the biggest carbon polluters, and then uses that money to compensate working families for a 1.1% percent increase in the cost of living, and enabling working families, therefore, to employ more energy efficient appliances for the future.
OAKES: So you don't see it as a tax rise?
PM: That's our approach- it's very simple. What's Mr Abbott's alternative? He says no cap on carbon pollution. Secondly, he says we're not going to place a charge on the nation's biggest polluters. Thirdly, we're not even going to compensate families. So where does all this come from? I tell you where it comes from - from the taxpayer. One huge megatax from Mr Abbott to fund his approach to climate change, but leaving working families in the lurch. If you want the clear difference between the two schemes or two approaches, that's it. But our position, Laurie, has been constant.
As Mr Turnbull rightly said about Mr Abbott, it depends on what day of the week it is for Tony. I mean he supported our scheme, he opposed it, he supported it, said we should amend itm and then in his defining position of political principle said to Mr Turnbull, "Oh, look, Malcolm, you know on these questions of climate change and the emissions trading scheme, I'm just a weathervane." Well, we stand for something here. It is a basic question of policy. We will be committed to it. We will pursue it. We will implement it.
OAKES: You say you stand for something. But what you're committed to is a five percent cut in emissions over ten years, which most people regard as pretty pathetic- and Tony Abbott says he can reach that with no emissions trading system.
PM: Well we've done, Laurie, in the other day, in the statement which the climate change minister, Penny Wong, released and my response to it occurred in Copenhagen, was put out a range of targets, 5, 15, 25, and we'll make a judgment in the course of 2011 where we finally land in terms of what the rest of the world does, and in terms of the enforceability of what the rest of the world does as well. So we have open to us the scope for further action. That's what we have done. Secondly, more importantly, through an emissions trading scheme- it's adjustable, depending on what target we do by doing no more and no less than the rest of the world.
OAKES: So you're not going to-
PM: Mr Abbott, Mr Abbott's scheme, frankly- as I've seen it described- will be struggling to get anywhere near five percent, first point. Secondly, getting beyond that- separate question, frankly, very, very, very difficult. But thirdly, the cost to taxpayers. What he's proposing is don't charge the polluters, don't compensate working families. Instead, through the taxpayer, impose what will effectively be a megatax to support this whole scheme. And it's all about the politics of the weathervane, as opposed to being consistent, as we are, Mr Howard was, Mr Turnbull was, Mr Costello was and, guess what? 35 other countries around the world have reached the same conclusion. Except this bloke.
OAKES: Well the United States hasn't reached it and looks as though it won't now- but let's move on to taxation. When are you going to release the Henry committee report on tax reform? And will you be going to the election on a tax reform program based on the Henry recommendations?
PM: On the release date, I haven't discussed that finally with Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, yet but it will be in the couple of months ahead. It's a very comprehensive document, and we've still got to work our way through it. That's the first point. Second is, on the recommendations, given that this is an independent review of taxation, Laurie, I'm sure there's going to be stuff in there which the Government can work with, and there's probably a whole lot of stuff in there which we can't work with. That's just the reality, but we actually said it was time to have an independent review of the total tax system, and we'll treat each of the recommendations on its merits.
OAKES: Isn't it possible this will be more useful to Mr Abbott than you, in that he'll be able to point to the nasties in the Henry report and say, "here's what the Government will do if you re-elect them"?
PM: The key thing - well, first of all, this is an independent review of taxation.
OAKES: Well it's headed by the Treasury Secretary. It's not that independent.
PM: Well, he has a panel of independents from the community. And it is their report. It's not Mr Swan's report. It's not mine. That's the first point. Second is though, we commissioned it without apology, because we want them to have an independent look about where the taxation system- in their view-could go in the years ahead. But I'm just being frank with you. There will be stuff in there that we can live with and other stuff that we will reject.
OAKES: And a scare campaign for the Opposition?
PM: One thing that I'm sure Mr Abbott- backed by his crack economic team comprised of Barnaby Joyce- will be adept at, is running a fear campaign on anything, and that's the problem with Coalition politics at present. It's based on a whole lot of fear and no alternative policy. We take our future challenges seriously. We take the challenges of tomorrow seriously. We take the challenges of dealing with the recession around the world last year seriously. And frankly, I think that's the guts of what people will make a judgment on us on, rather than the song and dance routine of fear and smear.
OAKES: We started off talking about Tony Abbott. Let's finish that way. You're being - the Government's being accused of playing the man, in that you sent out Julia Gillard, Craig Emerson and others to bucket Tony Abbott over his views on virginity. Are you going to keep engaging in that kind of personal politics?
PM: Well, can I just say Laurie, my engagement with the Leader of the Opposition and each of his predecessors, has been to engage them on policy -
OAKES: But you've send out other people to do the dirty work, don't you?
PM: You know- well, can I say in the whole debate about politics, you're going to have people who will be talking about, you know, the issue of the day. Mr Abbott made some recent remarks and there was some response to it. Fine. That's just the way in which it goes.
OAKES: But isn't the Government trying to sort of pin the Captain Catholic label firmly on Tony Abbott for political reasons?
PM: Well, let's go to the core of this, Laurie. On various questions - and I make no comment at all about Mr Abbott's religious views at all- I mean, I'm a person of faith, however flawed. The question is this- Mr Abbott has a whole range of pretty extreme views. Take WorkChoices. It's pretty extreme. Saying that climate change is, quote "absolute crap". That's pretty extreme- it's a very legitimate-
OAKES: That's not to do with religion, though.
PM: It's absolutely nothing to do with that. I mean I would not have any person, ever, attacked on the basis of their religious belief. But can I just say what we have, whether it's on WorkChoices, whether it's on the question of climate change, are some pretty extreme views there and it is entirely legitimate for us to say, this is our view, we believe it's pretty mainstream given the challenges which the nation faces. Mr Abbott, good luck to him. He's been elected by, you know, the Coalition. He's got a bunch of extreme views. WorkChoices. Climate change and a bunch of other things. There's your choice. But the Australian people will make up their minds about these things.
OAKES: Final question. When Mr Abbott was on this program at the end of last year, because of his attitude to climate change science and allegations about his religious views, I asked him if he believed in evolution. He said he did, but he said, "Why don't you put the same question to Kevin Rudd?" Do you believe in evolution?
PM: I'm surprised you put a question like that to me. Laurie, I have always believed in evolution. The reason is it's an empirical science. It's been established. It has been, therefore, fundamental to the great innovations in science and technology for the last two hundred years since Darwin was around. And that's my view- always has been.
OAKES: Prime Minister, we thank you- and Tony Abbott, I've asked your question.