HOST: Good morning, Prime Minister.
PM: Good morning, Deborah.
HOST: I'd like to, I suppose, hone in a little bit on the Indonesia part of this picture. East Timor, the East Timor strategy also involves very much trading on the co-operation and agreement of Indonesia. Australia has already asked much of Indonesia, which has already done a lot to remedy the terrorism risk in the region, for example. It also arrests and deals with many Australians, recreational drug users among them, who turn up in their bars and now in their jails more often than not. As Prime Minister, though, you've never met the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and now you want more. Now, Paul Keating said that Australia had no more important relationship than Indonesia. Do you share his view?
PM: I certainly believe our relationship with Indonesia is a vitally important one and yesterday when I spoke on border protection and asylum seeker issues I took the opportunity to thank Indonesia publically for their great co-operation with us to date on dealing with people smuggling and disrupting people-smuggling activity. So, they've been a good partner with Australia in these efforts.
Now, of course, I will be relentlessly pursuing discussions in the region about the regional processing centre and the idea here is a simple one, but, obviously, it's going to take time to work through. But the idea is that for the whole region, not just for Australia - for the whole region - it would be a better solution and a more durable solution to have a regional processing centre where asylum seeker claims are processed and a fair share in them of the refugees who are found to be genuine through that process, and this is because there is nothing humane about standing back and having people jump on boats with their families and risk their lives at sea.
HOST: Now, in foreign policy terms though, neither you nor Mr Abbott is particularly well credentialed. His 'cast them off' solution also has great potential to cause grief in the region. Voters might be forgiven for thinking that two highly accomplished domestic performers such as yourselves are amateurs at managing strategic regional alliances.
PM: Well, I suppose, you know, you come to the position of Prime Minister with the experiences that you've had. Obviously, I have had some foreign policy experiences, including representing this nation in the United States and in other countries, but I believe I do bring to the job a perspective about co-operation, about getting things done, about the remarkable things that can flow when you get people around a table working together. I'm going to take that same perspective to talking about the regional processing centre and working with our region, and if I can just say too, I mean, Mr Abbott doesn't have a solution here. He has a slogan, and he knows that. He knows, of course, that the slogan of 'turn the boats back' can't equal a reality. The reality is that boats are sabotaged and scuttled at sea and you are then faced with the stark choice - do you turn your back and let people drown, including children, or do you rescue them with all the risks that that entails for our Border Protection Command personnel and for the asylum seekers themselves.
So, let's not pretend that Mr Abbott's got anything other than a slogan. The solution here is going to take talk, it's going to take work, it's going to take time. I made that clear yesterday but I will be relentlessly pursuing it.
HOST: Prime Minister, can I just hone in a little bit on your regional literacy, as it were? Have you been to Jakarta?
PM: Yes, I've been to Jakarta. I was an election monitor, in fact, for the first free elections in Indonesia. We went to Jakarta first. This was a group of Australians from all political perspectives and all political parties, assisted by people from our Defence Forces and agencies like AusAID. I was then dispatched to West Timor to monitor voting in villages there, so I've had that experience.
But Deborah, I'm not going to pretend that I'm, you know, someone who spent their life in foreign affairs. I have not. That's obvious, you know, obvious from anybody who knows the simplest thing about my past and my track record. What I think I bring to the job is a preparedness to listen, a preparedness to learn, a preparedness to work with people and to take a methodical and analytical approach.
HOST: Prime Minister, yesterday in the Lowy Institute speech you very much appealed to Australia's better angels. You said we are better than this, we are so much better than this. Now, you also said in that same speech that newcomers needed to learn English, and quote, 'send their kids to school like everyone else', unquote. Now, as a former education minister, is there evidence that refugees have not been sending their kids to school?
PM: Well, as a former education minister I would say my perspective is that kids have to be in school and I've taken that perspective into policy by associating the payment of welfare with having kids in school. There is no excuse for not getting kids to school-
HOST: But did you have evidence that refugees are not sending their kids to school?
PM: Well, the perspective there wasn't a perspective about 'I've had so many reports about this or that or the other thing happening', my perspective there is it's important to say that the obligations we all shoulder as Australians apply to everyone and obviously I think that there is concern and perhaps some misunderstanding in the community about what happens when people are found to be genuine refugees and permitted to settle in Australia, and I want to make it very clear to the community that what happens, what should happen, what I will make sure happens is that refugees shoulder the same obligations that Australians carry generally. That is, the obligation to get a job, to earn your keep, to make your way, to abide by the rules and to do things like make sure your kids are in school.
HOST: But the implication that they weren't is sort of implying that there's a knowing neglect among these parents. Now, it is not the same as saying they throw their kids overboard, but there is an implication that there's some kind of deliberate neglect when I would have thought that one of the first things any asylum seeker is thinking when they decide to escape is that what they want is someone where their children might actually be safer and be educated. Surely they would be at the front of the queue to enter a school, not avoiding it.
PM: Well, Deborah actually in interpreting the speech I think in the very section that you referred to I said that, you know, many refugees who come here seize with both hands the opportunities that a new life in this nation provides, including the opportunities that it provides to get their children a great education. So, I did not, in the speech, it's not a fair construction of it to say that somehow I indicated there was a problem here with school attendance. I put both sides, and both sides are that many refugees have come to this country and made a life for themselves and been spectacularly successful.
I was speaking at the Lowy Institute, named in honour of Frank Lowy, a great Australian, now at the head of the biggest shopping centre property group in the world, a remarkable rags to riches story and he came here as a refugee and made a great life for himself and his family. I deliberately made that point, but I also deliberately made the point that, you know, fair's fair, and what is part of being fair is that everyone in this country, whether they were born here or arrived yesterday, has a set of obligations to themselves and to the nation.
HOST: Now, a careful response to the issue of border protection is obviously incredibly important, and part of Australia's duty, therefore, involves the protection of the rights of applicant refugees. Now, getting to the East Timor question, it's a very poorly resourced country. It's Portuguese speaking, remote, dangerous, allegedly corrupt in some examples. Australian soldiers remain there and they are battle ready. The courts, though, are very poorly set up, and Australian aid money, volunteer lawyers and others, go there to try to find and train judges, defence lawyers and prosecutors. So, exactly how might refugee applicants get legal assistance there?
PM: Well, the idea here for a regional processing centre, the policy proposal I outlined yesterday and said would take time to pursue, would be having a regional processing centre oversighted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and of course the essential job off UNHCR is to protect the rights of refugees and to deal with assessments of who is a genuine refugee and as we have this conversation right now, UNHCR is doing that in many parts of the world.
HOST: Now, you also remarked in your speech that the refusal rate for Afghan refugee applications had now exceeded about 70 per cent and that this increased rate would mean that many more would be returned to Afghanistan. Now, of course, you've been to a couple of very tragic funerals of Australian soldiers killed there. The country is embroiled in war that may yet be unwinnable, the Government is said to be corrupt, the enemy is tyrannical. Is there an ethical dilemma that you face sending defenceless people back there?
PM: Well, I think the ethics, the morality here is that we do need to extend our protection and our generosity to people who are found to be genuine refugees. We are signatory to the Refugee Convention and that tells us how to assess, if you like, who has the status of a genuine refugee. For people who aren't genuine refugees, then the right thing is to return them to their country of origin.
I'm not going to try and put a simple construction on what's happening in Afghanistan. You're right, our soldiers are facing true and remarkable dangers. I've been to two funerals as Prime Minister already, which is reminding me and the nation of the bravery and the dangers that our soldiers face in Afghanistan, but parts of the country are stabilising and of course, as you assess an individual claim it's all about the individual and where they come from.
HOST: Now, the last thing, you're in Darwin, and the seat of Solomon is a very marginal seat there. It has also the highest proportion of military voters of any seat in Australia. Are you there to try and win them and how are you doing that?
PM: Well, I'm actually here today to look at our patrol boats. We have our patrol boats for Border Protection Command. We have 18 patrol boats already. We have 18 aircraft. We actually have more assets patrolling our waters than we've ever had before, but we are intending to add to that with 8 new patrol boats. So, I'll be out viewing one of the current patrol boats today and we will be adding 8 more.
HOST: Now, if they asked you when might they take their shore leave so that they can vote, what would you tell them?
PM: I would tell them, Deborah, that Defence makes arrangements for people to vote in all sorts of circumstances and I would also say to them, perhaps a little bit more seriously, that the election's due, you know, the second half of this year. That's the ordinary time for having the election. Obviously I am governing as Prime Minister, making decisions day by day, but taking the country forward, so I'll be doing that. Australians will get the opportunity to exercise their natural rights to pick their Prime Minister and pick their Government during the election due in the second half of the year.
HOST: Now, I have to ask you - did you ever think of yourself as an action hero? You might have seen the GetUp video of yourself.
PM: No, I haven't seen the GetUp video of myself and anybody who's met me and knows how unbelievably clumsy I am - I am a very clumsy person, I easily drop things and knock things over, I've done that spectacularly in front of a few TV cameras in my time - wouldn't see me as much of an action hero, so I'm sorry to disappoint.
HOST: Prime Minister, thank you very much for your time this morning.
PM: Thanks, Deborah.