HOST: Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who we welcome to the studio.
PM: Thank you very much.
HOST: Did you find yourself a warm shower this morning, how were the conditions?
PM: No I didn't find myself a warm shower but a cold shower was fine, particularly when it's so hot and humid, nothing wrong with a bit of cold water.
HOST: So what have you seen since you've been here?
PM: My main purpose in being here is to talk to people on the ground about what they've experienced. When I came in last night I was immediately briefed by your local police commander, by Michael Keating, and also by Brigadier Smith, because he and his team of soldiers, we've got 4000 soldiers in the region, they've been doing such remarkably good work.
Today I'm going to go to the Blue Care residential aged-care facility, I want to say thank you to the carers and the police and the soldiers who helped evacuate those very frail aged people and are now helping them get back home, and then I will be travelling to Innisfail and hopefully through to Tully, to see the damage and to talk to people about what they've been through but also what needs to be done to get those communities back on their feet.
HOST: You mentioned Brigadier Smith and the Army, 4000 soldiers, is that the largest peacetime deployment of soldiers we've seen?
PM: It's certainly going to be right up there, we had about 1500 soldiers doing clean-up in Brisbane, and that was the biggest deployment for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy. Here in Townsville, you're home to Lavarack Barracks with soldiers there so they can be on the ground immediately, they helped in the preparation and they've done things since like water supplies, medical evacuations, they're helping with clean-up, helping move people around who need assistance, and all of their very specialist skills are going to come to the fore as we move into the recovery and rebuilding phase.
HOST: Prime Minister you've mentioned you're trying to get into Tully yourself today, when are you going to able to get the Army in there, they're a lot of people without roofs in Tully?
PM: They're endeavouring-
HOST: Houses without roofs.
PM: Yes, they're endeavouring to move through, we've got those big trucks that the Army has that have got high clearances and can get through in circumstances that ordinary vehicles struggle with, so speaking to Brigadier Smith last night their focused on trying to push through into Tully today. Clearly it's a function of flooding because we've still got flooding occurring and damage across roads and all the rest of it, but they are very much focussed on getting more assistance into Tully.
Clearly things can be got in by air, but in terms of moving mass amounts of equipment and supplies, we need the Army to push through and get the vehicles in.
HOST: It's a continual problem with the Bruce Highway, every time it floods, it's been cut several times already since Christmas, we've seen what happened during the floods with trying to supplies in and you've used our Army planes to get supplies into the people of north Queensland. When will the focus be on upgrading this piece of infrastructure so it doesn't cost any more money in flying food in, when will the focus for the funding be put straight into flood proofing the Bruce Highway?
PM: As a Government we did act on this issue of flood proofing the Bruce Highway. It's been an issue a long, long time in the making, we're talking about decades of people talking about flood proofing the Bruce Highway with not much getting done. As a Government we commissioned a feasibility study to see how you would do it; it's one to say the words ‘flood proofing', it's another thing to think about all of the engineering and design that would need to go into that. That flood proofing study will be with us in the middle of the year, so we'll be able to digest that, and we have made some money available to fix some of the more difficult sections going into Rockhampton to try and give additional resilience against flooding.
You referred to the big movement of supplies we had a little bit earlier on, that was C-17s and C-130s that were being used to shift stuff so that it could get into Rockhampton.
HOST: It does happen every year, millions and millions spent in similar situations when the Bruce Highway is cut. Now we've seen that as part of your package to, for the Queensland floods, to compensate that road projects are being put on hold, 6 Queensland road projects including one that involves the Bruce Highway. Is it really sensible to be delaying this anymore? I mean if it goes back four years, five years, ten years, that's still more funds that are being put in every year during the wet season?
PM: We agreed the projects with the Queensland Government that would be deferred and what's driving us here is just the very practical conclusion: we can't do everything at once, it's a question of money yes, but much more than money it's a question of the concrete, the labour, the skilled labour that you need to do this work. We've got a construction workforce, we can add to that construction workforce by getting some people from other parts of the country to come here, getting some unemployed people in helping with the manual labour, and using skilled labour from overseas if we need to. But our construction workforce can't suddenly extend to do everything at once, all of the flood reconstruction, all of the cyclone reconstruction and everything that was already programmed in from a big infrastructure program from the Government.
So yes we've had to sequence some things and it's because of that constraint on capacity.
HOST: We're with the Prime Minister Julia Gillard who's in Townsville this morning and heading north to Tully, hopefully, and to Innisfail to have a look at the flood damage. Prime Minister you've announced that immediate funding is available now for people who've been affected by Tropical Cyclone Yasi, exactly what's available?
PM: This is what we call the Australian Government Disaster Relief Payment, it's an emergency $1000 for adult, $400 per child for people who have been badly affected, in evacuation centres, out of their home, without power for a considerable period of time and consequently chucking out everything that was in the freezer and the fridge.
People can ring 180 22 66, 180 22 66, to talk to our Centrelink staff about this payment and Centrelink here in Townsville should be up and running again on the weekend, like everywhere else in Townsville Centrelink's had power problems, water problems and all the rest of it, we're flying in some people to reinforce local staff and they're hoping to get Centrelink up and running during the course of tomorrow and they'll be working the weekend to assist people, and for people in other parts, Cairns Centrelink has maintained its functionality, they weren't as badly affected and will be looking to get mobile services into hard hit communities like Tully and Cardwell as soon as it's possible.
HOST: Where's the money coming from that payment, is that separate to the flood levy?
PM: It's separate to the flood levy, separate to the $5.6 billion I've already announced to rebuild Queensland from the floods, so we are going to be spending more money on cyclone recovery, we've got to find that money, and we will do that by making some cutbacks in other areas of the budget-
HOST: Could the levy be expanded?
PM: Well we'll stick with the levy as we've designed it, I believe it's the right scale and right shape. It certainly means the vast majority of people are very low amounts, $1 a week to help out, many people of lower incomes aren't paying anything at all.
So I think it's the right size, the right shape, the rest of it we're going to have to do by rearranging the Federal Budget; now that's not always going to be popular and people are going to see some cuts they problem don't like the look of, but we've got to rebuild the nation, rebuild after the floods, rebuild after the cyclone, Queensland's copped it really, really hard, other parts of the nation need a bit of assistance as well so there's a lot to do.
HOST: Where's left to make the cuts?
PM: Well I'm not in a position to redo the Federal budget here talking on the radio, but we'll be focussed on doing it and it's going to be full of hard choices, none of it's going to be easy.
HOST: Ok, alright, so where to from here?
PM: From here I will go to the Blue Care centre, say hello there and then off to Innisfail first.
HOST: Prime Minister Julia Gillard thank you for coming in.
PM: Thank you