CURTIS: Kevin Rudd, welcome to AM.
PM: Thanks for having me on the program.
CURTIS: You have announced that President Obama will visit here in March. Does that rule out a March election?
PM: (Laughs) Well, the White House and my own office have been working on this visit for a while.
President Obama, Michelle, the kids, assuming they come with him, are welcome guests in Australia as is any president of the United States.
CURTIS: Do you have a firm date for it?
PM: It will be late March. We are sorting out the precise details at the moment in terms of the whens and wheres but it will be good for this visit to happen. This is the 70th anniversary of the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Australia and the United States, framed first of all back in 1940, and it is nearly 60 years since we framed our military alliance with the United States under ANZUS, so there is lots to talk about on the defence and security front, on the terrorism front, but also in terms of the global economic challenges and the global economic recovery.
CURTIS: While we are talking about people coming to Australia - 181 asylum seekers arrived off Christmas Island last night. Does their arrival mean the detention centre in Christmas Island is full?
PM: My advice from officials is that there is still capacity there.
CURTIS: But there wouldn't be much, would there?
PM: Well, my advice from officials is there is still capacity there. As the Immigration Minister has said on many previous occasions, there are always contingency plans in terms of the use of the purpose-built facility in Darwin but at present capacity still remains on Christmas.
CURTIS: Do you have any advice on when Darwin might have to be used?
PM: No, I don't and at present our advice is that Christmas remains the best place to accommodate people and there is still capacity there. Remember boats have been coming to this country for 25 out of the last 33 years. Let's just be frank about that and each of these challenges you just meet in a very practical way.
CURTIS: So you are not considering, reconsidering your policy at this stage?
PM: We believe that we have got the balance of the policy right and therefore we simply need to deal with practical challenges as they arise, as do all governments around the world.
CURTIS: One of the challenges will be an election later this year. Both your ratings and the Government's have fallen in the latest opinion poll. You did warn Caucus yesterday that the next election will be tough and reminded them that electorate, that voters have tended to take a bit of skin off governments seeking a second term but only one first term government has ever lost in Australia.
While the polls are not great for you, is losing the next election even an outside possibility for you?
PM: Well, just being very honest about political history, There is no guarantee for any first term government to be re-elected. Look what happened to the Hawke government back in 1984 - very close run thing. The Howard government in 1998 - very close run thing for my predecessor.
CURTIS: But both of them won.
PM: Can I say those were highly contested elections, but there is no guarantees in this business, absolutely none, and remember this will be a hard fought election but our job is to govern in the national interest but the political realities are these - If two or three people in a hundred change their vote then Mr Abbott is prime minister. That is just a fact and it is very important we recognise this, so it will be a contested election. I think the Australian people want it to be a contested election and we are certainly prepared for that.
CURTIS: The poll is the first time the Coalition has been ahead on primary vote. They have a new leader, a new policy on climate change. Are both of those things a problem for you?
PM: Look, our job as the Government, my job as Prime Minister, is to take some tough decisions in the national interest. They may relate to the economy, what we had to do in the national economic stimulus strategy last year when every man and his dog was opposing our actions to seek to support the Australian economy when economies around the world were falling over like nine pins.
Secondly some tough decisions on climate change, many of which are unpopular, and tough decisions which lie ahead on health and hospital reform but the key thing is this - to take these decisions in the national interest.
The easiest thing in the world to do is to complain about everything and to offer practical solutions on nothing and so far, so far in Mr Abbott's tenure as leader of the Opposition that is what I see a lot of.
CURTIS: He will be offering a solution from the Coalition today on climate change. Has the climate for you, for the Government, soured on climate change since the failure of Copenhagen and the failure to get your emissions trading scheme through Parliament?
PM: Climate change involves hard decisions, tough decisions, complex decisions. Let's not pretend that this is easy stuff and it is not easy for any government around the world.
CURTIS: But you also have to take the public with you, don't you?
PM: That's true and I don't walk away from that one bit but it is not a popularity stakes, it is doing the right thing for the long term, and we are determined to act on climate change.
The key for Mr Abbott is a credible alternative policy in terms of what it does on reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the one hand but also how it is costed and, most critically, how it is funded. Money doesn't grow on trees. The money has to come from somewhere.
CURTIS: Many oppositions in the past, though, have left final costings of policies 'til closer to an election. When you were running for government it wasn't until fairly late in the piece that you put out where you would cut spending to save some money. Isn't Mr Abbott entitled to do the same thing?
PM: When you are looking at something as fundamental, with economy-wide reach as climate change, and the criticism against us is about the economic and financial impacts of what we are doing, frankly I think to be upfront about this you have got to say not just what it costs but how you are going to fund it.
This goes economy-wide, it goes society-wide. That's why we have been upfront with what we are doing. We have copped criticism for it. I accept that. These are tough decisions and hard decisions, but I go back to what I said before: it's very easy, it's very, very easy to complain about everything but to offer practical solutions on nothing and we are seeing a fair bit of that - and I say practical solutions.
CURTIS: The Treasury yesterday released the Intergenerational Report. You said on Sunday the report would reveal that the impact of knocking back the means testing of the private health insurance rate is in the order of $100 billion. That figure is not in the report. Did you get it wrong?
PM: All the underpinning data provided by the Treasury for the preparation of that report contains that number. It's very clear, and if you look at the actual report itself it's clear from the projection of the report that that's the case.
CURTIS: But the figure itself isn't in the report as you said it would be.
PM: The bottom line is that this is the cost to Australia of the Liberals continuing to block much-needed reform for private health insurance for the wealthiest Australians and secondly, this $100 billion, if it was available and it should be, is there to underpin the long-term investment in our hospital and health system reform.
Again, I go back to what I said before: money doesn't grow on trees. We are going to invest in the hospital system, increase hospital beds, more doctors, more nurses, improve emergency departments, improve elective surgery, you've got to invest and that is $100 billion which we want to put to that. Mr Abbott, it seems, for ideological reasons like his predecessor, is simply into blocking mode.
CURTIS: Joe Hockey said yesterday that you sounded like Dr Evil plucking out the biggest number that you could think of. Do people have a right to question it when you said it would be in the report and it wasn't?
PM: It is absolutely clear that the number that we are speaking off comes directly from the analysis underpinning the Intergenerational Report. It is as clear as night follows day. That is a basic statistical fact. What they are seeking to run away from are the financial consequences of it - $100 billion which they believe should be spent on providing rebates for private health insurance for some of the wealthiest Australians on the one hand, as opposed to taking that $100 billion and investing it in our health and hospital system.
That is why they don't want to debate the substance of it. We intend to debate the substance of it. It's real, it's fundamental.
CURTIS: Finally, there may be pressure also on household budgets, too, after today. The Reserve Bank is considering its latest decision on interest rates. Why aren't the better economic times being reflected in household budgets?
PM: Well, when you look at the challenge of interest rates, which is your specific question, let's bear this in mind - that interest rates were brought down to record lows by the Reserve Bank because of the challenges of the global economic recession, and as of today you have got interest payments on an average mortgage about $600 or so less a month than they were, say, in the middle of 2008.
Let's bear that in mind - and the Reserve Bank has been very blunt about this for a long time - as the global economy recovers, so will there be changes in monetary policy, but sure, households, working families, are doing it tough in many parts of the country. We accept that, we acknowledge that, and the practical means of assistance lie in what we have done, for example, in increasing the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent; the education tax refund to help people with school expenses; and other practical measures like that and getting rid of WorkChoices.
CURTIS: Kevin Rudd, thank you very much for your time.
PM: Thanks for having me on the program.