HOST: Prime Minister good morning to you. PM: Good morning Geoff. HOST: Prime Minister just before we got to 10 o'clock I asked our listeners if they would come up with the first question for you today and Steve's question was ‘Prime Minister, when will you stop speculation about tax cuts connected to the carbon tax?' He, like many others, would like some certainty.
PM: I can understand that. We will be announcing in the middle of the year all of the design elements of carbon pricing in order to bring legislation to the Parliament in the second half of this year. We have announced, as everybody knows, the mechanism for pricing carbon that will be making big polluters pay, and we will be using that money to assist households, to help businesses transition, and to fund programs to tackle climate change. We're consulting now with Australian businesses, with non-government organisations, with unions, with environmental organisations. We'll take all of that feedback into account and then make the announcements about all of the further design features. HOST: Prime Minister Colin Barnett only has to play the state vs Canberra card and rightly or wrongly he wins very strong support - our GST revenues are down, you're planning a resource rent tax and WA becomes the nation's cash cow. What counter argument can you put forward? PM: Well, on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax I understand this has been very controversial in Western Australia, but what I will be saying to the people of Western Australia while I'm here - I came yesterday so I've already had the opportunity to have this conversation and I'll continue to have it at the Community Cabinet meeting in South Fremantle later today - what I'm saying to the people of Western Australia about the Minerals Resource Rent Tax is ultimately this means more for Western Australia: more investment in infrastructure; more people being able to benefit from increased superannuation in their retirement; in fact, more than 800,000 people in Western Australia with increased superannuation; and more support for businesses, particularly small businesses. here will be more than 200,000 small businesses that benefit from what we will be able to do to assist them through the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. So, we believe that it's right to have a fair share of the mineral wealth in our grounds for the people of our country, and it specifically enables us to provide benefits around the country and here in Western Australia. HOST: But on notions of a fair share, what WA wants is the Grants Commission to return a bigger share of GST revenues to WA. Anything other than that is just tinkering and talk. PM: Well, you've asked me about the Minerals Resource Rent Tax and that's one thing that I will keep talking about with the people of Western Australia. On the GST, I understand that this, too, has been a very controversial topic and I'm intending to have something further to say about that later today. HOST: Will there be good news later today, Prime Minister? Because the reason is I know you will always argue of the broad benefit, but Colin Barnett will always argue cash cow, 40% of the nation's exports, what do we get for it? Answer: nowhere near enough. And that was very punishing for you at the last Federal election, very effective argument. PM: On the GST, I think we do need to recognise that there's been a formula here, there's an independent body, the Commonwealth Grants Commission, that strikes the formula. The formula is so stronger states are called on to assist weaker states. Now, for a long period of time Western Australia benefitted from that system. If we look over the last 50 years, for well more than 30 of them that caused money to flow to Western Australia. Now, of course, with Western Australia so strong, there has been concern about the Western Australian share of GST. When the Commonwealth Grants Commission struck the last share, the amount that Western Australia keeps of its GST went up from 68 cents to 72 cents, but understandably this is still controversial and I will have something more to say on the question of GST just a little bit later today. HOST: I think it would be much nicer for you to tell me now, but clearly you're not going to. PM: Sorry about that, Geoff. HOST: Asylum policy, Prime Minister - it's a sore and it's not healing and the public perception is that you're running out of band-aids. PM: This is a difficult issue right around the world. We have people on the move around the world, people who are fleeing conflicts and war. If we look at the situation now in Libya, what do we see? We see people getting on the move, going to border regions. Inevitably some of those people will keep moving and are likely to end up in nearby European nations. So in a world where unfortunately we do see war and conflict and persecution and famine, people do get on the move. Now this is a complicated issue. It's not going to be solved by endless repetition of three word slogans. We do need to confront this issue as a region, and as we speak the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Immigration are at a very important meeting in Bali working with a large number of other countries on this issue, which is an issue for our whole region. HOST: I know you're putting a positive spin on that meeting, but I just want to put a couple of things to you. Do you concede that what we seem to have at the moment is this patchwork of ideas - some asylum seekers offshore, some on the mainland, some killing themselves because they can wait no longer for their visas to be assessed and no sign from that meeting of which you speak that East Timor will host that offshore processing facility which you said would happen. Their Foreign Minister isn't even at that Bali meeting, Prime Minister. PM: Well, I think we've got to be a bit clear about what the Bali meeting is about. We are engaged in bilateral discussions with East Timor. What the Bali meeting is about is the whole region coming together to talk about regional solutions. So, the purpose of the Foreign Minister being there and the Minister for Immigration being there is to participate in those multilateral discussions on regional solutions. The question of talking to East Timor is not a question for a multilateral forum. It's a question for direct discussion between Australia and East Timor. HOST: The Government looks politically trapped and the next boat arrival just adds to that impression. Do you concede, and I know this is always difficult for your Government, that it looks neither tough nor does it look very humane? PM: Look, I'm not someone who is focussed on the look of things. I'm focussed on the substance of things, and focussing on the substance of things means you've got to recognise that this cannot be solved by some simplistic slogan. When we look at things that have happened in the past, for example, from time to time the Opposition says ‘well we should have a detention facility in Nauru', well the reality is overwhelmingly - overwhelmingly - the asylum seekers who went to Nauru to have their claims processed ended up being refugees who came to Australia, so it was a detour, not a solution. What I've been working on and what the Government is committed to is trying to drive to a solution that breaks the business model of people smugglers. What they are saying to people is ‘give us a lot of money, get on a dangerous boat, risk your life at sea in order to get to Australia.' What we need to work on - and this can only be done by regional cooperation - is to have a circumstance where if you get on a boat, you end up back in the same place having your claim processed in the same way. Now that's not easy to achieve. When I first announced these plans last year I said no quick fix, this will take time, it will take work, it will take effort and that effort is being engaged in today at the Bali meeting. HOST: Sure, but you did say- PM: -But I do want to be very clear, the Bali- HOST: -But you did say there was- PM: -The Bali meeting was never about the direct discussions between Australia and East Timor. The Bali meeting has always been about the region coming together to talk about a regional solution. HOST: But do you acknowledge that in the months since you became, or were returned, as Prime Minister, there has not been one bit of good news out of East Timor about their interest in hosting this offshore facility; not one scrap to support this idea of yours that this was going to be a bit of a game changer? PM: Look, we've had a continuing conversation with East Timor and we've had Ramos-Horta, for example, say that a proposal had been received from Australia that answered the questions that he had asked, so we've had that kind of feedback. We've had officials engaged. I am not going to say on your show that a problem as complex as global people movement and how that then plays out in our region is something that is going to be easily solved. I've never said that to the Australian people. HOST: You, Mr Abbott and Mr Brown are doing a, I was thinking about it this morning, it's like a little progressive barn dance at the moment. You dance with Bob, who agrees with the resource rent tax; then the dance ends when he disagrees with you on the decision to cut company tax; then you and Tony sweep round the floor agreeing that a drop in company tax is a good thing; and then that dance finishes because of course he hates the resources rent tax, and I just wonder when we look back at the photos of this night whether we'll remember it as a great night out or an unmitigated disaster. PM: Well, a very flamboyant description but what actually happens is the Government determines the best policies and plans for the nation's future. My eyes aren't on a dance floor - it's on where our nation will be this month, this year, next year, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, and as I work through those issues what I say to myself is we are in an extraordinary time in our economic history, an extraordinary time with the resources boom. What we've got to make sure is we use the opportunities from this extraordinary time to make a long-term difference to the Australian nation, and that's about making sure we're investing in the skills of our people; we're getting more Australians into work; it's about embracing and dealing with the challenges of the future - rolling out the National Broadband Network, tackling climate change; and of course it's about improving the services that families rely on and I'm very proud that at the start of this year, working with Premier Barnett, I was able to strike a national health reform agreement which will give people in this State more doctors, more money in health, less waiting time in emergency departments, more local control of their local hospitals and less bureaucracy. They're the things that I get on with. Now, you are right - in this Parliament, the Parliament the Australian people voted for, in order to get legislative propositions through, we do have to discuss those legislative propositions with others and work with others, and we've been getting through the Government's agenda. National Broadband Network, a very good example - got through the most recent important piece of legislation on Monday. HOST: Prime Minister I can't wait to find out what the news is on the GST, but we'll have to wait. Thank you for talking to us. PM: Thanks, Geoff.