CURTIS: Prime Minister, welcome to AM.
PM: Thank you.
CURTIS: If we can go to New Zealand first, two Australians are presumed to have died in the mining tragedy there. Is there any help you can offer the families?
PM: Certainly, our condolences go to the families of the two Australians who have died, and this is a dreadful tragedy. Those many hours of waiting must just have really torn at people, so our condolences do go.
On the question of how families will be compensated, this is obviously an industrial accident and there are processes to be worked through.
CURTIS: To the Parliament now, you have the votes you need for the Telstra separation bills, but behind the headlines and since the election you've been finessing the case for the NBN.
Last night you likened the National Broadband Network to the introduction of the copper phone network. Are you worried that, as happened with the emissions trading scheme, you're losing the battle of public perception?
PM: I'm very pleased that what's happened in the Parliament this week is a win for families. It's a win for families who are going to get faster, cheaper broadband; a win for families; a win for hospitals; for schools that will want to use the broadband to deliver new services in different ways, so that's been what's coming out of the Parliament this week.
And it's against a backdrop where we know from Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce and indeed Tony Abbott himself that the Opposition came into the Parliament to destroy the NBN.
CURTIS: But don't you have some hangovers from your previous term in office, that whatever the validity there were questions about your capacity to deliver, especially on things like school building and insulation, and is that perception that you have problems with delivery going to infect the broadband process?
PM: On broadband, I believe Australians want broadband. Many Australians voted for broadband. It was a huge issue at the election and for many Australians it was the biggest thing on their mind when they walked in and cast their vote. It was such a significant issue in this Parliament coming together. The country independents knew that their communities wanted broadband, so we understand that there's a careful job of delivery to be done here and we will, through NBN Co, do a careful job of delivery.
I'm running a very methodical government. We will have appropriate oversight of NBN and of all Government decisions and projects.
CURTIS: You and your ministers have also been dealing with the public perceptions of Labor as well, what you stand for and what you'll do. You outlined in a Rotary speech and to a special Caucus meeting last night your Labor values and goals. They include job opportunity for all, increasing prosperity and sustainability, governing for all Australians.
Aren't they the political equivalent of saying you believe in meat pies and pavlovas, something that no-one could disagree with?
PM: I'm certainly not going to agree with that, Lyndal! I understand that sometimes the members of the Liberal Party would use these words, but let's actually analyse the actions.
I believe in a fair society. You can't believe in a fair society and WorkChoices - Liberal Party believes in WorkChoices.
I believe in strengthening the economy. You can't strengthen the economy without having plans for how we will deal with the challenges of our age: climate change, having infrastructure like the National Broadband Network. We have those plans.
The Liberal Party is basically, as a Party of the past, pretending those future challenges don't exist. They just want to run away from them.
So you can say the words - 'a strong economy' - but you can only deliver them if you've got plans for those future challenges. Bringing the budget back to surplus, an essential part of a strong economy - we've got the plans to do it, the Opposition's got an $11 billion black hole around its neck, and so, of course, the list goes on.
That's why those words have meaning, because they relate to things that I am delivering for working families.
CURTIS: But what does it say about you and about your Government that you have to go through this process now of explaining to people what you stand for?
PM: I think what it says about me and the Government is when we have meetings like we had of our Labor colleagues yesterday that we are taking a purposeful, methodical approach to everything we do.
CURTIS: You also have a problem with the Greens, as well, who took votes off Labor. They offer a different product to both Labor and the Coalition - some would say, the Opposition might say, would cost more. Wayne Swan effectively said last night that they do less. But isn't it that difference that attracts voters and won't those voters be hard to win back?
PM: Labor does stand for something very different to the Greens and very different to the Labor Party. We stand on our political heritage, our reforming heritage of Hawke and Keating, of bringing to this country the innovations and policy changes it needed.
When you look at our economy and the things that built it, Labor delivered the reforms that it stands on.
When you look at our healthcare system, like Medicare, these are Labor innovations. We bring that reforming tradition to Government today.
Of course, the Greens are always going to say things different to us. They come off a different set of beliefs and they haven't got, in my view, the full economic view that we have of this country.
They come at issues from a different perspective, and of course the Liberal Party may chant soothing words from time to time - say for example, they believe in fairness, but they obviously don't. They brought WorkChoices to this country.
CURTIS: You keep saying you'll walk the reform road and last night at a business dinner you were given a pair of shoes to symbolise that, but they were small shoes. Is that emblematic that you're taking baby steps and that a lot of your essential agenda at the moment is still the Rudd agenda: the NBN, carbon price, health, population and asylum seekers?
PM: Well, I don't get to pick the gifts that I get at business dinners, but I did think that it was very cute that the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry gave me some small shoes; some small shoes to represent walking down the reform road. We are walking down that reform road and it requires taking a step every day. You don't deliver huge reforms like the National Broadband Network overnight.
CURTIS: One of the things you've got coming up that you will be looking at at the end of next year is the question of gay marriage, same-sex marriage. You've said marriage is between a man and a woman and that's the tradition and the history, but a lot of the traditions that have had their basis in society or religious reasons have fallen by the wayside: Sundays are no longer shopping free and sacrosanct; family dinners are going by the wayside; women are no longer expected to be at home raising families - they can be prime ministers. All those traditions have gone. Why are you wedded to this one?
PM: I, of course, bring my own views to this, my personal views, and I've made those views well and truly known. Our political party debates these issues at our national conference. I expect this will be a one of a huge range of issues that is debated at our political party conference, our Labor conference, at the end of next year.
I think our society is always an amalgam of holding to the traditions of the past and building for the future. People will make different judgement calls about the best mix. I've made a judgement call about holding to a tradition which is a foundation stone of our heritage as an Australian society.
CURTIS: You're about to head into a Cabinet meeting to talk about anti-siphoning. Can Australian people go to Christmas knowing they'll have the tradition of being able to watch sport they watch for free, that continued?
PM: Lyndal, I'm going to say to you Cabinet's confidential, number one. I'm also going to say to you, as a major football follower and I think I'm well known for that, I obviously want to see Australians being able to enjoy their footy and the sport that they care so much about.
Government will work through on this issue to get the balance right and work in the interests of Australian families who like watching footy and other sports.
CURTIS: Julia Gillard, thank you very much for your time.
PM: Thank you.