PM: It's a great pleasure to be here in Washington today. I'm joined by the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Warren Snowdon. We're here this morning to make an important announcement honouring an election commitment that we made last year, and that is to invest $3.3 million in an interpretation centre here in Washington as part of the Vietnam Memorial.
Of course Australian troops played a major role in Vietnam and we want their stories told, the whole story of Australia's engagement in Vietnam. It was a controversial war and that story should be told too, but so should the story of the bravery of our troops, their sacrifices and what they went through over in Vietnam.
As a nation we've come to recognise that we didn't honour the service of those veterans when they returned the way that we should have. In this interpretation centre we will be able to tell that story too. I'm very pleased to have been joined here today by a number of Vietnam veterans, including Graham Edwards, a former Federal parliamentarian, who served during the Vietnam War.
So, this has been a special opportunity to mark a new stage in honouring the sacrifice and service of our Vietnam veterans.
I'm very happy to take any short questions.
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard can I ask your response to the Newspoll back in Australia today? It's a reaction to your carbon tax, it seems.
PM: It won't surprise you when I say I don't comment on polls. What I would say, broadly, is this: I've always understood that arguing for a tough economic reform like pricing carbon was going to be a big debate, it's going to be a hard debate, but it's one that I am determined to win, so that we price carbon from the 1st July 2012 and transform our economy into a clean energy economy.
I always expected Tony Abbott to run a ferocious scare campaign. The one thing Mr Abbott is good at is running fear campaigns and that is what Australians will see him do, but I believe Australians are a confident, creative people. We understand that we need to change, that we need to conquer this challenge of the future, climate change, and we need to transform our economy into a clean energy economy.
So, I will continue to press to price carbon and we will get that done from 1st July 2012.
JOURNALIST: But why is he being successful in that scare campaign?
PM: It's fairly easy to stoke fears and Tony Abbott is a master of it and he will continue to stoke fears. But Australians, I believe, will come to see that pricing carbon is the right way of dealing with climate change and the challenge of it transforming our economy.
I understand that stoking fear can be relatively easy, but every day that Mr Abbott is out there stoking fear, we'll meet it with reason, with facts and I know that the Australian people will ultimately be confident enough to take this step of pricing carbon.
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard, is your message to the Labor caucus exactly the same as it is to the Australian people on the carbon tax?
PM: The Labor caucus believes in pricing carbon and when we embarked on this debate we knew it was going to be hard, it was going to be tough, there were going to be difficult days, but we also knew it was right for the country, which is why we will persist and we will price carbon from 1st July 2012.
JOURNALIST: What's on your agenda with the meeting with the President this morning?
PM: I'm looking forward to seeing President Obama. I'm sure we will have a wide range of topics to talk about, but amongst them will be the 60th anniversary of our alliance and its future, particularly as America works through its Global Force Posture Review. We will also be talking about the issues in our region, including the new regional architecture - the East Asia Summit and the US role there.
I'm looking forward to discussions on trade. Trade equals jobs, free trade is good for Australian jobs and we've got important trade rounds underway - the Trans-Pacific Partnership which President Obama is so committed to, and of course the Doha Round.
I'm also looking forward to talking to President Obama about our shared mission in Afghanistan; we are determined to see that mission through. I expect we will touch on events in the Middle East, as well as on climate change and important issues confronting our world.
I'll also be looking forward to talking to President Obama about the G20 meeting later this year and its focus on economic progress, particularly its focus on jobs.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minster, you mentioned when you were talking about the Vietnam War that the democracy that these guys were defending might not have produced strong support for them. Are you suggesting that when you were a young person like I was, watching on TV as you were a kid, were you actually a supporter of the Vietnam War?
PM: The truth is I was too young to have a view about the Vietnam War. I was only in primary school at the time of the Vietnam War, so I only have the vaguest of recollections of the moratorium demonstrations being on TV and those sorts of thing, just that little bit too young to have an active, sort of, adult-style memory about it.
But certainly what I know from my lived experience in the years after the Vietnam War rather than the war itself is that there was not appropriate embrace of the troops when they came home. Because the war was controversial I think people did take that out on our serving men and women and I think one of the lessons that we've learnt from that war and that we've digested as a nation since is whatever view you take about engaging in the combat, you should always extend a nation's embrace and a nation's sense of honour to the people who served.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the Admiral just now mentioned that Oruzgan province might be able to be handed over to the Afghan local forces soon, he mentioned the word ‘soon'. Do you have a particular timetable yet on that?
PM: On the Afghanistan strategy transition will happen in some places from the beginning of this year, but Oruzgan province will not be amongst the first places to transition. So, we have to see the mission through in Oruzgan. We certainly hope that we will be able to transition, but it won't be during the course of this year. So we are preparing for transition, continuing the training, continuing the efforts there, but what I said to the Australian people in the parliament is we will not be amongst the first areas to transition.
JOURNALIST: On the carbon issue again, should Australia be out in front in the way it is considering that things have stalled in the United States in dealing with this?
PM: My view remains that we shouldn't try to lead the world, but neither can we afford to limp behind. We have a high-emissions economy. We've got a lot of work to do transition that economy and that's why we have to start soon and the 1st July 2012 is the right date to price carbon.