HOST: And I welcome the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to the program. Good morning to you.
PM: Good morning.
HOST: Prime Minister, what is your message to all those West Australians who thought a super profits tax was going to have a terrible impact on the mining sector, on jobs and investment in Western Australia. How does this new rent tax change that?
PM: Well, I think I can reassure those concerned Western Australians that we've made a breakthrough and we've struck an agreement with the biggest mining companies in this country that I think takes us all forward.
It means that Australians will get a fairer share of the mineral wealth in our grounds. It also means for the mining industry that they are prepared to agree to this new arrangement, and of course the money will be used to fund things like infrastructure in mining communities, to back in our superannuation changes, taking people from 9 per cent of super to 12 per cent and reduced company tax and some special benefits for small businesses.
So, we did have to get some goodwill back into this discussion. Things had got pretty heated. I think one of the first things I did as Prime Minister was get a bit of goodwill back into the discussion by taking the Government ads off our TV screens and we've been able, through some hard work led by Treasurer Wayne Swan and Minister Martin Ferguson over the last few days, to reach agreement.
HOST: Can I ask you what does that mean though for the $2 billion that Mr Rudd promised to WA as an infrastructure handout to compensate for that original super profits tax. Does that now disappear?
PM: No, we will still to be able to deliver infrastructure monies. Just to explain the way this is working, this is a different tax, a mineral resource rent tax and a petroleum resource rent tax. It's differently structured. There are a lot of technical aspects of that, but the resources super profits tax was going to generate $12 billion of revenue over the Government's budgeting period. This is generating $10.5 billion. We did, therefore, have to make $1.5 billion of cuts. We have not cut infrastructure. What we've cut is a resource exploration rebate that the industry told us they really didn't want, and we've also not fully proceeding with what was announced about company tax-
HOST: Yeah, it's a 29 per cent rather than 28.
PM: That's right, so it's not infrastructure that has borne the cutback.
HOST: Prime Minister what about, obviously in Western Australia there are a lot of mid-range miners, it could be BCI and it could be Atlas Mining, David Flanagan, who had a lot to say about this - those miners endeavouring to get bigger, who say that they weren't invited to the table, is there still talks to be had and will you be coming to WA to have those talks with the players that aren't BHP, that aren't Rio, that aren't Xstrata?
PM: Look, I'll certainly be coming to WA at some point and I'll very much be looking forward to it. I always enjoy it when I visit Western Australia. Obviously we talk to our big mining companies because inevitably they pay the biggest share of this tax and so it was very important we worked with them and that they were reassured the new tax arrangements would be internationally competitive.
The principles of the tax of are now clear and they're the subject of a Heads of Agreement, but I have also invited Don Argus, who's a fairly famous Australian and famous for his lifetime of work in the resources industry, to lead an implementation committee that will work alongside Martin Ferguson, our Minister, to get all of the details in the legislation right.
HOST: Prime Minister, do you accept that it appeared, at least, that Kevin Rudd may have been prepared to lose WA electorally to push a super profits tax, and I wonder do you accept that you have to do a lot of reassuring here in Western Australia that you're not just on the take, that you do more than acknowledge that this is where much of Australia's wealth is derived but that you will repay that with genuine Federal Government commitments to this State?
PM: I view myself as Prime Minister for all of this country. Obviously I haven't lived in every part of the country. I grew up in South Australia. I live in Melbourne now. I travel the country extensively but I'm not a West Australian and I'm not going to pretend to be, but in terms of meeting the needs of Western Australia I view myself as Prime Minister for every part of the country including every part of the West and I get the advice of a great team of representatives there, people like Chris Evans and Stephen Smith, Sharryn Jackson, people who are there on the ground working to make sure I understand what's going on. Gary Gray of course, a very local advocate of the West-
HOST: Of course, if Gary Gray hadn't push this hard Kevin Rudd might still be Prime Minister, but your Government needed to learn some lessons from this experience and what do you think you did need to learn, because the profits tax was announced; it was then imposed and then torn to shreds and when your predecessor spoke of consultation, well, no-one believed him. What are the lessons that need to learnt from this experience from your Government?
PM: I'd say the lesson from this experience is that you always do better if you get people around a table and have a respectful, frank conversation. Look, sometimes you're going to walk away from that table not having agreed and I'm not suggesting that everybody is going to be, you know, completely happy with the new Mineral Resource Rent Tax, but I think we have benefitted from sitting around a table and having a decent, frank conversation trying to sort things out. Now, as Deputy Prime Minister that's the approach I've taken for work I've done. I've sat round tables and had breakthroughs on issues that people thought were in the too-hard basket-
HOST: Do you accept that it really wasn't genuinely consultative enough and can you say that now, knowing that there is a new deal in place, can you acknowledge that the Government said it was listening, said it was talking, but really was doing quite a poor job?
PM: Look, I don't want to reflect on the past but I do want to be frank with you and say I think I very much put my own personal stamp on the process here and my personal stamp is to say if you're talking you have to also be genuinely listening and you can't negotiate unless you've got some goodwill and you're prepared to really listen and take on board people's concerns and that's what we've done in the last week.
HOST: Was it the last hurdle before announcing an election date?
PM: Well, I think there's more things that I want to focus on. I've said that we've got some more governing to do and of course we do have some issues that I want to address and work my way through-
HOST: So is an election a while off yet, because it's true that we'll just obsess in the media about, you know, days, dates and bookies will take money on when it's going to be, but is it a while off yet?
PM: Well, look, we are in the second half of the year. The election is due in the second half of the year. That's the normal cycle.
I've got some things that I still want to get done before we are in the election, some issues that are there concerning the Australian people. I want to have an opportunity, obviously, to come to great States like Western Australia, so you should expect to see me doing that.
HOST: We look forward to, unlike your predecessor, seeing you in the studio taking some talkback. Will you do that when you come?
PM: I'm always happy to take talkback and I generally learn a bit, get the benefit of some free advice over the airwaves and through the phones. That's all good.
HOST: Well, I appreciate you doing that. Thank you very much, Prime Minister.
PM: Thank you.