HOST: Great to have the Prime Minister Julia Gillard with us in our studios. Prime Minister, good morning.
PM: Good morning.
HOST: Welcome to Darwin.
PM: Thank you.
HOST: I believe you had a night out last night, the red carpet was rolled out at a certain private apartment block around town. They must have been very excited that you were coming.
PM: Well I don't think that was really all about me, it's all about the Inpex Project and the people from the project got together last night. I had the opportunity to join them briefly-
HOST: The red carpet was for the Japanese executives and not for the Prime Minister? I don't believe that.
PM: You'll need to ask whoever was responsible for rolling the carpet out what was on their mind as they did it, but it was a gathering of the INPEX crowd to celebrate the ground breaking ceremony today, and I'm very much looking forward to that.
I did get the opportunity to go and visit a school and see some very gorgeous kids too, and also to look at the new surface for playing hockey on. You've got a proud track record of training some Olympians in hockey, so a new surface to do it on.
HOST: One of our listeners, who lives in that apartment block, said ‘I don't know what's going on up there but if they drop any more bottles down the garbage chute I'm going up to sort them out.' Was it a big night?
PM: Well I can't tell you about others, I was there about half an hour, 40 minutes in total.
HOST: And you were meeting with those INPEX executives, you're turning the first sod today. What do they want from you, other than to get on the shovel?
PM: Well I've got to get on the shovel, I'm not building the whole project, just a little bit of turning of some of the dirt.
We've worked with the proponents of the INPEX project and so has Paul Henderson and his Government , worked very solidly to realise this project for the Northern Territory. Because it's going to mean a lot of jobs and it's going to mean a lot of prosperity for the Northern Territory.
It's part of the transformation that the resources boom is bringing to our nation, a great set of opportunities in front of our country. This period of change does bring some stresses and strains too, a high Australian dollar and that's got implications for manufacturing and tourism.
But if we make the right decisions now, to build our future economy, then this can be a truly remarkable period in Australia's history.
HOST: INPEX only needs to offset half of their emissions because, you know, it's an LNG gas producer, and less carbon-intensive than coal. If the Australian Government's so confident of that why haven't we seen the numbers? Why haven't INPEX demonstrated in their EIS how their LNG will offset the need for coal-fired power?
PM: Well it's a huge new energy source, so it stands to reason that that new energy source being a cleaner energy source is a good thing. We are looking to be a continuing reliable energy supplier to our region.
That means we will be supplying energy in all sorts of forms, including continuing to export a lot of coal.
For us to reduce our carbon emissions, and we do need to do that, to seize all of the possibilities of a clean energy economy for the future, that's about us finding ways of reducing carbon pollution and working cleaner. And that will be driven by the carbon pricing which starts on 1 July.
HOST: But the carbon emission benefits from this project will be felt by Japan, not by us, won't they?
PM: Look, of course, we are an exporter of energy. And so as we export energy our energy gets used by other nations and INPEX will be exporting to Japan.
But for our own domestic economy, we know that per head of population, we are the biggest generators of carbon pollution in the developed world. Now when you're in that position, and the world is increasingly moving to a clean energy future, then you can't just stay still.
You've got to act, or you're going to get behind the standards of the rest of the world, and that's what carbon pricing is about.
HOST: Interesting to hear Barack Obama come out in support of gay marriage the other day. One of our listeners, Jake, wants to know are you, Julia Gillard, really opposed to gay marriage or will we read about how some anti-gay marriage heavyweight pulled your strings in a memoir ten years from now?
PM: I've got no idea what any of that means, or what it's a reference to. Of course I make my own decisions.
HOST: Have you been influenced, though, by Barack Obama's announcement?
PM: He makes his own decisions too.
HOST: Let's talk about the high cost of living in Darwin. Matt wants to know if you really have a hold on how expensive it is to live up here, where you pay 9 cents a litre or more extra for fuel, $1.10 more for a cup of coffee, and $140 a week more for average rent. Matt suggesting you might like to live up here for a while to see how the carbon tax really hits people in Darwin.
PM: Well let's talk about how it's going to affect people in Darwin.
You actually now have a piece of information today that you didn't have before yesterday, it came out yesterday.
The impact on electricity prices for people in Darwin will be, on average, $2.61 a week. On average the assistance we're providing to households is $10.10 a week.
$2.61; $10.10; I think those figures speak for themselves.
HOST: So what's the point of giving rebates for a carbon tax. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of encouraging carbon reduction if we're actually going to be better off as a result of the-
PM: That's a complete misunderstanding of what carbon pricing is about.
Carbon pricing is about the big businesses in our country which generate the most carbon pollution paying the price. The price signal is to them. They are the ones we want to change their behaviour so that they work their businesses and they generate less carbon pollution.
And there is all sorts of ways, whether it's, you know, mining or manufacturing, that people can reduce their carbon pollution.
So if you just put yourself in the shoes of a big businessperson for a while, at the moment they're putting carbon pollution in the atmosphere for free. After 1 July they'll be paying a price.
They're smart businesspeople, they'll say to themselves ‘I want to reduce that cost on my business, how can I do that? Well I'll find a smart way of reducing the carbon pollution I generate.'
There is a flow-through impact to Australian households, it's less than a cent in a dollar, 0.7 per cent of CPI, and we are providing tax cuts and pension increases and family payment increases to help people through.
And because I understand that cost of living pressures are there generally, carbon pricing doesn't start until 1 July, and your listener is already talking about cost of living pressures.
Because I understand those cost of living pressures, in the recent budget we determined to give families a Schoolkids Bonus and also increased family payments to help them with some of the cost of living pressures that they're feeling.
HOST: Part of the high cost of living here though is freight. The Territory Government wants you to exempt the Territory from any changes to the diesel fuel rebate, to take into account our huge trucking and transport costs. Will you consider an exemption for Territory transport businesses from 2014?
PM: Well we - you're using the right date. Diesel fuel, heavy road vehicles are not in any way affected by carbon pricing over the next two years, so they will come into the system in 2014.
I do understand that Chief Minister Paul Henderson is worried about the Northern Territory and of course he's always a very feisty advocate for everything to do with the Territory, so we'll keep talking to Paul Henderson about that.
But in terms of, you know, I understand, I get it that a lot of fear has been raised about carbon pricing. You know, your listener worried about cost of living, she may well have heard some of the more ridiculous claims about what this is going to mean for people's cost of living, and I just want people to have the facts.
You got a new, important fact yesterday. $2.61 on your power bill, average assistance $10.10 per week.
HOST: What about self-funded retirees? One of our listeners, Jem, is a self-funded retiree under the age of 65. Can he get a rebate for carbon tax?
PM: Look, for individual circumstances I've obviously got to, you know, take them back and analyse them, but the way the system works generally is for people who receive family payments, people raising kids, they'll get up to $110 extra per child if they're on the Family Tax Benefit A system, up to $69 for Family Tax Benefit B. That money's started to flow.
Pensioners will see an increase - a single pensioner of $338 - and there are tax cuts too for people earning less than $80,000. Many self-funded retirees who end up with a Commonwealth Seniors' Card will also get the same kind of benefits as pensioners.
HOST: Twelve minutes to nine, 105.7 ABC Darwin. Julia Gillard, your Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr has called James Ashby, in his civil case against Peter Slipper, ‘more rehearsed than a kabuki actor', I think is what he said. Do you endorse those comments?
PM: The matter involving Mr Ashby is directly before the Federal Court today so I'm not going to be speaking about it at all.
HOST: Mr Ashby, though, has complained to the Human Rights Commission, do you believe he's been demeaned?
PM: This is something that I'm not talking about particularly given there is a Federal Court proceeding on foot today.
HOST: Alright, we'd better let you go and get onto that shovel. Thanks for joining us this morning.
PM: Thank you. Thanks very much.