EWART: Prime Minister, welcome to the program.
PM: Thank you very much Heather.
EWART: Are you completely satisfied that the authorities on Christmas Island did all that they could to avert the scale of this tragedy?
PM: On the advice available to me, people deployed quickly, that is our Navy personnel and our Customs and Border Protection personnel and of course Christmas Islanders themselves came out to try and help people who were in the sea.
Inevitably we will get finer detail and more information over time, but I do think we should be congratulating the Navy personnel and the Customs and Border Protection personnel who put themselves in harm's way to rescue people who were in the water.
The advice to me too is, and Minister O'Connor who is on Christmas Island has made this very publicly clear, the advice to me is the weather was extreme, we are talking about very rough seas and that's why the Navy vessel and the Customs vessel were actually sheltering on the other side of the Island.
EWART: Now at your news conference this afternoon you did give a timeline, but even given that the dreadful weather conditions there does seem to be gap between the time of notification and actually getting to these people and trying to save them, can you explain that?
PM: As I am advised that the alarm was raised at around 5:48am Christmas Island time, the Pirie, the Navy vessel, was basically put into action, told to respond at 6am, so 12 minutes later and then there were people on the inflatable boats that had been launched at the scene by 7:01.
That's the advice to me and that's been made public through Customs making available the timeline. So as I am advised, people responded as rapidly as they could, given the circumstances, given the geography and the weather.
EWART: And you called a series of inquiries into this whole tragedy, including a working group of politicians made up of Labor, Liberals, the Greens and the Independents. You phoned Tony Abbott about this, the Liberals are now saying they're not playing ball. What was your strategy in calling for this?
PM: Well, I want to be very clear about the offer that I've put to the Opposition and of course to other Parliamentarians. The offer I've put is for the Opposition to have its shadow spokespeople, particularly Mr Morrison and Mr Keenan, join government Ministers Chris Bowen and Minister O'Connor and a representative of the Greens and the Independent Parliamentarians, to receive continuing reports from the agencies that are responding to the incident, the AFP, our Customs and Border Protection people, Defence and so on.
Now the purpose of that is I don't want us debating the facts and Heather you would recall in times past, things like children overboard, where for months and months and months the most basic facts were not clear to Australians. Had an asylum seeker thrown a child in the water, not clear for months and months and months. I want to take a different approach; I want all Parliamentarians to have the benefit of the facts on the table.
Now I anticipate that given a look at the facts people may well take different views and advocate for different policy solutions, it's a democracy, healthy vibrant national conversations are a good thing, but let's get the facts on the table and the best way to do that is for a continuing stream of reports to go to representatives for all Parliamentarians.
EWART: But do you think that the Opposition smelled a rat and viewed this as clever tricky politics and perhaps a way to silence criticism of the government?
PM: Well there's no, any of that from my point of view, quite the reverse. I said in my press conference today, and this is my view, that we will have a debate, a national conversation about asylum seeker and refugee policy.
We've had one already and I suspect we will have one with a renewed intensity following this tragic incident, very very tragic incident, but let's get the facts on the table. The facts are the facts and then people will debate the policy. This is a mechanism to make sure everyone's got the same information.
EWART: Do you have blood on your hands, as one commentator calling for your resignation has suggested?
PM: I've obviously seen that in today's newspapers and what I would say to that Heather is no one, no one, should let the people smugglers off the hook here. The people smugglers who ply this evil trade, who seek to profit on human misery with callous disregard to human life and let's just reflect for a moment on the tragic loss of life in this incident.
People smugglers who ply this evil trade are responsible and no one should be saying that they should somehow be let off the hook.
The government, of course, is responding to this evil trade by working with our region to create a Regional Processing Centre and a Regional Protection Framework to take out of the hands of people smugglers the very product that they sell.
EWART: But is that really working? Does this show, when you say you expect a debate, that aspects of the policy should now be up for grabs, that you should have a rethink?
PM: I'm very happy to go through our policy; our policy is to have more assets patrolling our border than have ever been available to patrol our borders before. We did make some changes to the Migration Act as a government, that's absolutely true and not one Member of Parliament objected to or opposed those changes. The Opposition did not oppose those changes.
We have as a government invested resources in working in our region to disrupt people smuggling and we've enjoyed some success at that with around 240 disruptions, stopping thousands of people who would have sought to put themselves in the hands of people smugglers with the potential tragic consequences that we've seen here. We've increased penalties for people smuggling and we maintain a rigorous mandatory detention policy.
EWART: Would you at the very least consider shutting down the Christmas Island facility in the light of what's happened?
PM: Christmas Island has been a destination that people smugglers have sought to go to because of its proximity to Indonesia. So it's the geography that puts Christmas Island in that position, it is far closer to Indonesia than it is to the Australian mainland.
EWART: Do you feel that the Labor Party over the years has allowed itself to be boxed into a corner on this issue by the conservative parties? Why not just state in clear simple terms that the number of asylum seekers coming here is relatively small?
PM: I've done that Heather and I'm happy to again. My approach -
EWART: Do you need to show even stronger leadership on it then?
PM: My approach as Prime Minister to this issue has been to tell the truth, to explain to people the problem to put it in its proper context and I deliberately.
When I first spoke as Prime Minister on this issue, adopted Julian Burnside's words about how many years, 20 years, to fill the MCG at current rates of arrival, to give people a mental picture about what we're talking about here.
And so I wanted to get the facts out there and of course the facts include what I've put to you about border protection, about our work in the region, about how we've assisted law enforcement throughout our region.
EWART: But that hasn't stopped a tragedy like this though, has it?
PM: We've seen in Australia's history tragedies like this in the past and we're seeing a dreadful tragedy over these days and of course search and rescue is continuing even as you and I speak.
EWART: Do you accept that something here is just not working?
PM: I accept that this is a difficult problem, a global problem. We're seeing large numbers of people moving around the world, fleeing war, fleeing persecution, fleeing famine.
Australia is one nation that sees people arrive on its doorstep, but look at the countries in Europe and the numbers that they face, America and the numbers that they face, the Canadians of course have started to deal with this problem too, in terms of boat arrivals.
What we can do as a country is have strong border protection, strong laws on people smuggling, work with our regional neighbours on law enforcement, have mandatory detention.
But I do want to do more than that, we want to achieve a Regional Protection Framework and a Regional Processing Centre, which would take out of the hands of people smugglers the very product they sell. Why would people move if from a Regional Processing Centre, if they got on a boat and were just returned to the Centre, that's what we are trying to achieve.
EWART: Julia Gillard, thank you for joining us.
PM: Thank you.