PM: Good afternoon. I'm joined by Minister Butler and we are obviously here to release the Productivity Commission Inquiry Report into Caring for Older Australians, but before we speak specifically to you about this report I'd like to make comment on a number of other issues.
Firstly, I'd like to say a few words about Mike Rann. Mike Rann is a great South Australian and a great Labor leader. Obviously today he has made some announcements about his future. He's been a very long term Labor leader and a very long term Premier of South Australia. He can be very, very proud of what he has achieved in that time period, including putting the great State of South Australia on a better economic footing.
But I'd particularly like to offer my congratulations to Mike Rann for putting social inclusion on the national agenda. I served as the first ever Federal Minister for Social Inclusion. I did that because I wanted to inject into our national political debate more of an understanding about Australians who are at risk of being left behind.
Mike Rann had pioneered much of that debate with his social inclusion work in South Australia. In that way he has changed, not only the State of South Australia, but also changed the way we approach national decision making in our nation. I think that that's a very great tribute to his leadership.
Mike is also a great campaigner, a great source of political insight and advice and I'm sure that for whatever the future holds for Mike beyond his days of Premier of South Australia, he will be making a great contribution.
I'd also like to congratulate Jay Weatherill on looking forward to becoming Premier of South Australia. I've had the opportunity to work with Jay, most particularly in his capacity as Minister for Education, where for a period of time we collaborated as education ministers together on a major reform agenda for Australian schools.
I know that he will bring energy and ideas to his role as the Premier of South Australia and I look forward to working with him in that capacity.
Then on an entirely different note, can I pay my tribute and the tribute of a grateful nation to Nancy Wake. Nancy Wake died in London yesterday, she was aged 98 years old. Nancy, of course, is best remembered by Australians for her heroic efforts during World War II. Literally hundreds of allied personnel are alive because of her efforts and because of the world she did in Occupied France. So, I know many Australians have seen her life as an inspiration and will be thinking of her role model today and I did as Prime Minister want to pay a very direct tribute to Nancy.
Now, moving to the Productivity Commission's Report on the Caring of Older Australians. I'm pleased to be here today to launch this report.
It's rightly said that you can tell a great deal about a society by the way in which it treats its older members and against that standard Australia's aged care sector has a lot to be proud of. There are a lot of people working in aged care who have done tremendously good work over many years.
But there are many challenges and many opportunities that lie ahead, as our society ages and as the choices and needs of those Australians who are becoming older involve.
Understanding that ageing was changing, that the number of older Australians were changing as a proportion of our society, that their choices and options would need to be different that those of the past, I asked the Productivity Commission in 2010 to get on with the job of looking at aged care for us and presenting the Government with very detailed options for reform.
I'm very pleased that we're in a position today to launch this report as a result, Caring for Older Australians. Now, we know that in the future Australians are going to live longer, they are going to be healthier as they age, they are going to be more prosperous than previous generations.
Indeed, last week I remarked in a speech that we are really dealing already with two generations of older Australians, with our most elderly Australians and now with the retiring generation of baby boomers. And as I remarked, those generations have got different outlooks and different aspirations and in particular as the baby boomers age, they are likely to reshape what it is to be an older Australian, the way they reshaped what it was to be a younger Australian and the way their generation has reshaped the understanding that we have of adult lives and the choices within adult lives.
So, as a nation we face the challenge of providing care to these older Australians knowing that the number of older Australians will grow.
We'll bring our principles to determining the future as our society ages and in terms of the treatment of older Australians.
Firstly, we will recognise that older Australians are rightly viewed as an asset to our nation. We will also recognise that every older Australian has earned a right to access appropriate care as they age. We won't be leaving anyone behind.
Also, want to see a system that offers more options than the past has. A system that is financially sustainable and is fair for those being cared for, as well as for the rest of society, and a system which meets the highest standards of quality.
Now, I recognise that the question of ageing is not only a question for Australians ageing themselves, but also for their family members. Many Australians of my age concerned about their parents as they age, so I understand the interest in the report that we are releasing today will be wide and deep in Australian society.
And I want to say that what we will do as a government in dealing with this report is we will be ensuring that there is a proper process of review, discussion and analysis of its recommendations. That won't be a process just within government, though of course within government we'll be thinking about it very deeply, it will be a process that engages the community and will be led by Minister Butler.
Minister Butler will be assisted in consultations and conversations about this report by the National Aged Care Alliance and the Ageing Consultative Committee. We will be working through what the recommendations of this report mean in a conversation with Australians.
The Government will do that work before we respond to this report.
Can I say that all of that work means today we are not responding to the recommendations of this report. And we are not going to rule things in or out arising from this report. I know that it would be simplistic to rule things in or out before they've been subjected to appropriate review, analysis and discussion. So, we will not be taking the course of ruling things in or out today.
And I'd say to anyone who wants to take that kind of simplistic approach, that in my view that would be letting the community down at this critical point for our aging population. We need, as a society, to have this conversation. We owe it to our parents and we owe it to the current generation of baby boomers, as well as to Australians who are already retired, to ensure that we treat this report respectfully and that we work through the complex and comprehensive issues that it raises, mindful of all of the difficulties of finding solutions in this area.
I'll turn now to comments from Minister Butler and then we'll take questions.
MINISTER BUTLER: Thank you Prime Minister and as the Prime Minister has outlined, aged care reform is an incredibly important part of the Government's broader approach to ageing. The sustainability of our aged care system will be a very significant challenge as Australia's population ages. I think the statistics are fairly well known.
Over the coming decades the number of Australians over 65 will increase from about three million today to over nine million. The number of Australians over 85 will more than quadruple, from about 400,000 today to almost two million.
As people live longer, we know that their care needs become more complex, so we'll see an increase in prevalence rates of chronic conditions like diabetes and dementia. That growth feeds into the demand for aged care. The Government accepts that the aged care sector will increasingly struggle with that growth in demand, which is why we asked the Productivity Commission to deliver us a range of options for long term reform in this sector.
The final report is indeed comprehensive. I think the Prime Minister is only holding up the initial volume, it's comprehensive nature runs to fully 750 pages, plus appendices with 58 very far reaching recommendations.
But an important theme of the report is that of independence. We know that older Australians overwhelmingly want to live independently in their own home as long as possible and preferably, if possible, for the rest of their lives.
This report emphasises the need to gear our aged care and our health system around that preference, as well as a more general emphasis on greater consumer choice.
The report obviously deals also with financing arrangement for residential aged care - what we used to call nursing homes and hostels. Now, this will inevitably raise a degree of speculation about the role of accommodation bonds in aged care. It's important to be very clear about how the system currently operates and has operated now for many years.
Right now, almost 40 per cent of older Australians in residential care or in nursing homes have had to pay a bond to get their bed. Bonds currently average about quarter of a million dollars, the Productivity Commission Report tells of many bonds in excess of $500,000 and even in excess of $1 million.
They are usually raised through people having to conduct effectively a fire sale of their own home at the point when they realise they need to enter residential aged care.
Now the Productivity Commission was urged by some providers to extend that arrangement of lump sum entry bonds to the rest of the residential aged care sector, particularly to high care beds. It is important to note that the Productivity Commission has not recommended an extension of lump sum accommodation bonds, instead it's proposed other options for older Australians to be able to contribute to the cost of their accommodation and those options will obviously be a very important part of the conversation that we have now with the aged care sector, and more importantly with older Australian and their families themselves.
It's also important, I think, to say that the report recommends much stronger links between the aged care sector and the broader health system. Links which are much easier to comprehend now in light of the Government's reforms in primary care, emphasis on preventative health and development of a 21st Century e-health system.
This report in broad terms is incredibly complex, it has very significant ramifications, not only for government, but more importantly for older Australians themselves, in the way in which they manage their own affairs.
The Government's approach, as the Prime Minister has outlined, has been to release the report quickly, in order to allow a conversation to begin immediately with older Australians and with the aged care sector about its recommendation and I start that conversation tomorrow morning.
Thank you, Prime Minister.
PM: Thank you very much.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I know you're not ruling in or out, but this report does seem to present at least one palatable option to selling the home, that is this government extended credit scheme. Are you, can you at least say you're attracted to that in principle, or something similar to that, does it hold any appeal for you?
PM: Look, we are going to go through the process I've just outlined. The journey to date, obviously we as a government asked for this report, I in the last election campaigned, said to the Australian people, that we did want to make a start on aged care reform in this period of government and now of course after a draft report we're here with the final report.
And we genuinely believe the right thing to do, given the significance of this issue to the Australian community, is to have the review, an analysis and discussion of these recommendations. Some of that work being done within government, but much of it being done by Minister Butler out in the community.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) timetable for actually announcing decisions?
PM: We will start the conversation out in the community. I understand, Michelle, that there would be a number of people in the aged care sector who would say to themselves, ‘Well, there's been reports in the past and many of them are now on people's shelves gathering dust. So, what's going to be different this time?'
That's going to be different this time is we are determined to start this reform agenda in this period of government, but we are also determined to do it the right way and that is in a consultative way, out in the community and with providers. There are many people who want their voices to be heard here, so it will take the time necessary to get that done, but we will be making a start on aged care reform in this period of government.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister.
PM: Yes.
JOURNALIST: Your Minister's just talked about a fire sale, people having to sell their homes. Won't that make it harder for the government to walk away from the recommendation that says people shouldn't have to sell them homes?
PM: There's about a million assumptions in that question and I'm not going to share any of them.
JOURNALIST: Are you expecting to start these changes (inaudible)?
PM: We will work through, I mean this is clearly a big fiscal sustainability challenge and let's remember, we asked the Productivity Commission to give us a report, not just for the next few years, but for the next 20 years. And the Productivity Commission itself says the phasing in period would be around five years and many of the experts and stakeholders have said that they think it would actually take longer than that and some of them are publicly talking about periods like 10 to 15 years.
So, we are talking about a major and profound reform. So, I'm not at this stage going to set time scales for when this will be dealt with in a budget context. We will start aged care reform in this term of government.
But, I do want to say something about the way in which the money works and the financial sustainability works and I'll actually go to Minister Butler on this as well. For me and for the Government this is not a savings exercise, this is not about savings.
Now there are some conclusions in the Productivity Commission Report. Obviously all of its costing would need to be comprehensively worked through as part of this process of review and analysis within government. But I may turn to Minister Butler for some comments, just on these issues in the Productivity Commission Report.
MINISTER BUTLER: It is important to say that one point on which we don't agree with the Productivity Commission is their modelling about the fiscal impact of their proposed recommendations in the first three years. I think in the overview they say that there would be significant sums saved in the Commonwealth budget in those first three years.
Now, the assumptions underlying that modelling firstly are that a new user contribution system would start on 1 July next year, even though the Productivity Commission itself says that at the earliest that should start in the third year. Also, it assumes that there would be no grandparenting arrangements for existing residents or recipients of aged care, even though in its recommendations it says that there should be.
It contains no modelling for workforce initiatives, which are a significant part of the report, no allowance for things like implementation costs and such likes. So, our initial look at that through the Department of Finance indicates that those savings the Productivity Commission says are available in the first few years are not there. As the Prime Minister has said, this is not being approached by the Government as a savings exercise, there are structural increases built in in the aged care budget that simply reflect the ageing of the population.
So, it's important for us to be clear that we don't agree with those savings outlined in the Productivity Commission's overview.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I'm going to ask - maybe I'm old - but I remember the last time the Howard Government did this, Jenny Moylan was the minister, it was very divisive and painful to put in place the current system. You seem to be very seem to be very sensitive today not to give your position, is this out of concern for how older people might think they will be affected? What is your message to older people who are thinking ‘oh, what's the government doing'?
PM: The position we're taking today is borne of a determination to get this right and we understand that this is a big issue for Australians, it's a big issues for older Australians, it's a big issue for people of my generation and dare I say it, this Minister's generation, some younger people, who are concerned about ageing from the perspective of looking at their parents and wondering what the journey will bring. And we do know of course that people are looking for more options now, overwhelmingly, people want to live independently, hopefully to the end of their lives. A lot of society attitude towards residential aged care has changed over my lifetime and I've had a little window of that working as I did way back when in a part time job in residential aged care, so the level of frailty of people going to the system is very different now.
So our approach today of not ruling things in and out is borne of a determination to get this right and to get it right we believe we do need to do the reviewing and analysis of the recommendations in this report but we also need to do the discussions out in the community.
I too, Matthew, am old enough to remember the earlier debate and I would say a number of things have changed since the earlier debate particularly the attitudes of many involved in the sector about the need for reform have changed since the earlier debate. But I'm also well aware that if you wanted to take a simplistic approach to this and pick it up and start challenging the Government to rule things in and rule things out then that could happen. My words would be the best way to have this conversation, in a respectful way, so we do the right thing by today's older Australians and the generations of older Australians to come is to have the open conversation in a mature way about every aspect of this report.
We'll go to Andrew and then come over to Philip then-
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) do you agree with the basic premise that older Australians who are rich or wealthier than others should pay more for their aged care?
PM: I believe the system has to have sustainability in it and before I indicated to you the various principles that we would bring to bear and let me just indicate the relevant one, that the system is financially sustainable in a way which is fair for those being cared for as well as for the rest of society.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) pay more for their aged care.
PM: No that's the aim and obviously in all complex areas of public policy there's not one way of realising an aim and part of the conversation will be about the best way of realising that aim informed by this report.
JOURNALIST: But we shouldn't be ashamed by that, expecting the richer people to have to pay more? Will you express that?
PM: We've got to remember that this is an area where we are talking about older Australians' health care needs and the like and obviously we take a view about a community of interest in having good quality care for everyone, so for example when we are talking about our public hospital system, we take a view point of having good quality care for everyone. So the report is obviously asking us to reflect on all of these issues, the recommendations are there and we're not going rule things in or out of predetermine the conversation now.
Phil.
JOURNALIST: Can I try and pin you down on a principle at least. Do you agree with the broad thrust of the report that emphasis should be put on keeping people out of residential care- allowing them to stay in their own homes for as long as possible but when they have to move into residential care that there should be some sort of user pays system and there should be an alternative to having to sell your house to pay for that care.
PM: Well you keep inviting me to make specific responses to the recommendations and we're not going to do that today. But what I can say to you is it's obvious that people want, in the modern age, to stay in their home, living independently for as long as possible and we are going to be increasingly dealing with a generation of retirees who will be healthier, better educated, more prosperous and demanding of more choices than the older Australians who have gone before them. The Baby Boomers will bring a different view of what it is to be an older Australian to ageing than earlier generations of Australians. So we will need to be answering the questions about how best to look after people and I think people will be very determined to live independently for as long as possible.
I made a reference before to working in aged care myself, I did it as a part time job when I was in high school so it was a long time ago, I'll invite you to reflect on how long ago, but when I worked in residential aged care when I was in high school in a facility for women, there were women who lived in that residential aged care who could still drive. Now the whole world has changed, many of them had gone from their parental home to their martial home and then on the loss of their husband moved straight into residential aged care and spent 20 years of their life in residential aged care. When they first went in they were still physically very hale and hardy and able to do things like driving.
Now no one in today's society would say to themselves that with 20 years of life in front of them and able to do things like drive, that they would move into residential aged care. Thos attitudes have changed across my life time. Attitudes are going to keep changing and keep evolving where people will want to be more independent with more choices.
The Minister might want to just comment on that as well.
MINISTER BUTLER: Well, no I think that's entirely right, with respect Prime Minister. Consumers overwhelmingly-
PM: If you say something about young now you'll be in a lot of trouble.
MINISTER BUTLER: Consumers overwhelmingly are telling us that they want a range of options to choose from but the overwhelming choice that they want to make is to able to live at home independently for as long as possible and if possible for the rest of their lives, so gearing an aged care system and a health system that supports older Australians to do that is going to be something that increasingly older Australians expect of their Government.
JOURNALISTS: (inaudible)
PM: I did promise Mark so we'll go there first.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister what will you do to end the massive waste in Indigenous spending?
PM: Well Mark you're obviously referring to your report on TV last night and I know you had this concern at a press conference last week that perhaps people weren't watching your report so I did watch your report last night.
The report you refer to was one that was received by the Government at the start of 2010. Since it's been received by the Government, as the Minister has made clear, the Government has been embracing it and responding to it. But the report that you refer to is an analysis of a decade of work by Government for and with Indigenous Australians and yes it makes clear the considerable, huge scale of the task and the degree of difficulty. And as Prime Minister, when I've stood in the Parliament and done things like presented the annual Closing the Gap statement and in my life before, particularly as Education Minister, working out the education content around our Closing the Gap strategy, I've always understood the dimensions of this challenge. It is big, it is a huge challenge for our nation, yes when we reflect back as that report did, we can see some things that have gone right and some things that have gone wrong and we learn from that and keep working with Indigenous Australians for change.
JOURNALIST: You're the Prime Minister who's very interested in education. (inaudible) said on the weekend he didn't want Mickey Mouse education in the Indigenous communities, they wanted real teaching, real education. Are you concerned that the levels of education opportunities being provided in Indigenous communities are very much substandard compared to non-Indigenous communities?
PM: I've been concerned by a mindset that suggests we should have lower expectations and I have as Education Minister and I believe I've used these words as Prime Minister as well, I've adopted a George Bush saying about the soft bigotry of low expectations. We should aim high for every child in every school, we should aim high for Indigenous children, we should aim high for every child.
I've been incredibly impressed by the work of Indigenous educators like Chris Sarra who leads The Stronger Smarter Institute and his whole philosophy is high expectations, that it's not right to say Indigenous kids are going to find it hard at school therefore lets some how lower the standard, dumb down the curriculum to give people a false sense of achievement. His whole system as a school principal and now as a leading educator has been to say the bar is right up here and we're going to get every child, every Indigenous child to clear that bar and he's shown how it can be done and he is now leading a lot of work to do it.
Michelle.
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard, Kevin Rudd has recommended that Australia take a neutral position on a UN vote concerning the Palestinian issue. What is your position on that, is Australia going to do that or will we take a position in line with Israel?
PM: I'm not going to refer to anything that may or may not be dealt with in internal correspondence within Government. But what you're referring to is a Palestinian statehood resolution that has been the subject of discussion internationally to come up at the UN. At this moment in time no such resolution has hit the deck, there isn't a resolution available for people to read or respond to. If such a resolution does hit the deck then obviously in deciding how Australia will vote, we will bring our very long standing principles about questions in the Middle East, that is we are long standing supporters of a two state solution, we are long standing supporters of Israel's right to exist behind secure borders and we have also said for a very long time that this question is only ever going to be resolved by people sitting around a table and negotiating it to resolution.
Yes we'll go to the back.
JOURNALIST: Will you be introducing, will your Government be introducing a national disability insurance scheme?
PM: Well there is another Productivity Commission report that they've been working on on national disability insurance and we will at the appropriate time be releasing that one too and we'll make some comments about it at that point.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) a decision as yet?
PM: Well we'll deal with that at that point, we're dealing with this Productivity Commission report today.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister the Forest Industries Association has abandoned support for the Intergovernmental Agreement with Tasmania saying there's no resource security and no future for the industry. Hasn't it now gone pear shaped that there's no industry support and green groups are also critical?
PM: There are industry stakeholders that have been very supportive of the agreement that I signed with the Premier of Tasmania yesterday. I think there's been perhaps some misunderstanding about the agreement yesterday and resource security and I do want to be clear about that.
When I first signed the heads of agreement with the Premier of Tasmania a fortnight ago what we said was that there was 572,00 hectares that had been under discussion and under discussion for a long period of time for further protection and of those there were particularly 430,000 hectares that environmental groups were concerned about and then industry rightly concerned about resource security and supply and the honouring of all contracts. When we signed the heads of agreement what the Premier and I said was in terms of honouring those contracts, they would be honoured and people would look for resource firstly from outside the 572, then if that wasn't possible that all resource could come from outside then within the area but outside the 430 and that people would only use resource in the 430 as a last result.
And then in the fortnight in between signing the heads of agreement and signing the final agreement we received technical advice that contracts that would be able to be acquitted with sufficient resource security without going within the 430,000 area, which is why you saw the conservation agreement around the 430,000 that was in yesterday's agreement because we'd received that advice.
And then to give industry further security there's also a clause in yesterday's agreement that is about supporting them if there's any problem with resource security, so I think across the heads of agreement and then the in detail agreement yesterday, we've worked hard to ensure that there is a long term sustainable future for Tasmanian forestry, that we do better protect some of the iconic forests in Tasmania, or actually the iconic forests overall, that there's better protection for iconic forests in Tasmania, that there's immediate resources available to help workers who are at risk of losing their jobs and contractors who are at risk of losing their businesses because of a change in industry conditions and most particularly the exit of Gunns from native forestry.
JOURNALIST: Are you saying that the Forest Industries Association misunderstands-
PM: No I didn't mean that comment specifically about the Forest Industries Association. I did see some reports this morning about the agreement and why it varied from the heads of agreement which weren't quite correct.
JOURNALIST: Those environmental outcomes that have been put in were put in quite late in the deal, why did you and Lara Giddings give ground at the expense of industry wishes?
PM: Well this is what I'm explaining to you, we had technical advice which we had not received before from Jonathan West who is the person who will get on and do the full verification process and has the confidence and trust of all players in this debate, which is a very big thing to say, but he does have. Jonathan West in the 14 day period in between was in a position to make a recommendation to us about the treatment of the 430.
JOURNALIST: Will you support any Federal Government funds going to pay Gunns' compensation claim?
PM: Well the funds that we're paying are in the agreement that you received yesterday.
JOURNALIST: What happens if the High Court challenge on the Malaysia swap deal is successful?
PM: I'm not going to speculate on outcomes of the High Court, I know that there's some possibility, it's all becoming transparent publicly as we stand here so I'll take the opportunity when the decision's available to study and reflect on it before I give any comments.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you said before that there was a lot more support in the aged care sector for these reforms than there had been-
PM: Not necessarily these reforms but for reform, certainly.
JOURNALIST: Do you think that you have the sector behind you now?
PM: I think there's inevitability more than one view but I think there is a reform mindedness in the sector because they understand that if the status quo continues to wheel itself out year after year after year, that we will see increasing problems in the sector, but I'll go the Minister who's obviously in very close contact with the representative groups.
MINISTER BUTLER: Well I think to hark back to Matthew's point about the attempt in the late ‘90s for reform, back then significant parts of the provider sector particularly non profit groups like the Catholic health groups, most of the consumer groups, the aged care unions were all opposed to a significant reform in aged care which I think was a significant reason why it didn't proceed.
This period, there is an alliance that includes all of these significant providers and consumer and aged care union groups as well as a number of other service providers involved in the sector, who have signed up to a vision, they call it, through the alliance, of reforms. So while there might not be complete stakeholder agreement with the Productivity Commission recommendations, we'll hear from them later today I guess, there is an appetite for reform in the sector that I just don't there was ten or 12 years ago.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you're asking for a respectful debate on this but this issue does lend itself to a vigorous political scare campaign. Do you have the Opposition on side on this issue?
PM: Well you'll have to ask Opposition spokespeople about their view, but I do believe that - I would hope, that looking across not just politics in the sense of people who are in representative politics, that is members of the House of Representatives or the Senate, but more broadly across the political voices that get heard in our debates, stakeholder voices that the Minister's just gone to and more broadly, I would hope that there's a recognition that there is a need for reform, that the status quo simply can't continue year after year after year, with the nation doing the right thing by older Australians, so the status quo locked in forever will not meet the needs of older Australians over time, therefore we do need to have a reform conversation and I would hope that we could have that reform conversation in an open way. What people now have before them is a Productivity Commission report. The Productivity Commission is widely respected, now that doesn't mean that whether it's in this area or any other area that they get everything right, we know we've had Productivity Commission reports before, we've worked through and discussion issues with people and reflected on them, we want to do that again and we want to do that in an environment where people are engaged in the conversation. So I would hope that's the way that this can roll out. For specifics from Opposition spokespeople you'll need to talk to them.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, just on asylum seekers again, just given the political change in PNG and the potential that the High Court could delay things or block the Malaysia deal, what's your back up plan now for asylum seekers beyond the 800 or if you can't get the deal across the line.
PM: I'm not going to make any comments on the High Court decision until we see the decision and have the opportunity to reflect on it.
On PNG, as has been indicated by me and Minister on a number of occasions, we've continued to have the aim of having a centre in PNG. Obviously PNG politics has been in a period of change as a result of Sir Michael's illness and we'll continue to have the conversations with PNG, understanding that of course they've been through a period in their nation's life where they needed to make arrangements and focus on issues associated with replacing Sir Michael.
JOURNALIST: Are you looking at any other options or that and what's the time frame on PNG?
PM: We've always been clear the conversation we're having now is with PNG. I'm not going to put a time frame on it given the sorts of circumstances and change we've seen in PNG politics.
JOURNALIST: Mike Rann clearly wanted to stay until March next year. For such a long serving Premier do you think he's been treated fairly by factions in South Australia?
PM: My view of Mike Rann is as I outlined to you before, I think he's been a great Labor leader. Ultimately these matters are questions for him and questions for the Labor team in South Australia.
Thanks.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
MINISTER BUTLER: I assume that's a facetious question. I think Jay Weatherill will be a wonderful Premier.