HOST: We're joined now by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. Good morning to you.
Look your Minister is absolutely right, we have had a gutful full of this. We're sick of the politics.
Why won't you budge on Malaysia?
PM: The Bill that's before the Senate today, Kochie, is a genuine compromise and it's the only Bill that can pass the Parliament today.
It's taken the central element of the Government's plan, the arrangement with Malaysia and combined it with the central element of the Opposition's plan.
It passed the House of Representatives. So where we are today is a very, very clear choice facing the Senate.
Either people go home from Parliament tonight with laws in place that enable us to process people offshore or we leave the Parliament with nothing done.
I think the Australian people are looking to this Parliament to act. They want to see compromise. We've certainly been prepared to compromise. The House of Representatives yesterday endorsed that compromise.
HOST: Malaysia isn't a signatory to the UN charter, ok? One hundred and forty other countries are. Why not swap Malaysia with one of those? That seems pretty easy to me.
PM: Kochie, we have negotiated with Malaysia so that it would honour-
HOST: Negotiate with someone else.
PM: David, it's not that easy to actually find countries to enter into arrangements to take asylum seekers. It's not that easy.
The arrangement we've negotiated with Malaysia is one in which Malaysia has said it will honour the central tenants of the Refugee Convention.
The central tenant of the Refugee Convention is you don't return a person to a place where they could be persecuted, caught, killed, tortured. Malaysia has given that undertaking.
And we have expert advice from the people who advised the Howard Government too, this is the most effective way of sending a message to people smugglers that Australia is no longer an open place where they can pretend to people that they can sell them passage to get to Australia.
But David at the end of the day I can sit here, I can sit here for hours and argue why Malaysia's the right solution and Tony Abbott could sit here for several other hours and argue why Nauru's the right solution.
At the end of the day we've got to work together and find a way of getting laws in place that will enable us to process people offshore.
What we've done is combined both perspectives, Malaysia and Nauru, and the only way that this Parliament will pass laws today is if what went through the House of Representatives yesterday is endorsed by the Senate.
So it's a very grave question of conscience now for Senators. The House of Representatives has spoken, the Rob Oakeshott Bill in the House of Representatives, not a Government Bill, but the Rob Oakeshott Bill, a genuine compromise, was supported by the Government, by all the Independents in the House of Representatives and people of very good conscience like Mal Washer from the Liberal party were prepared to view it favourably.
It's the only law now before the Senate and I am clearly calling on Senators. Today is the day we are on the verge of a solution, let's get this done.
HOST: But there are such, they are two such big sticking points and it looks like it won't go through the Senate despite your appeal this morning.
Where does this leave us? Will you cancel the winter break and keep going?
We need to find a solution and it appears the Senate is not going to be the way to go.
PM: Look the only way of finding a solution is for a compromise to be endorsed. We've been prepared to compromise.
It was not the Government's preferred plan to have a detention centre in Nauru and there are many members of the Labor party who've shed some quiet tears over endorsing that. It's something that they've found very, very hard.
But people have been prepared to work for a compromise so we are only going to see laws pass this Parliament if people say, let's put the politics to one side. Let's acknowledge I'm not going to get everything I want. Let's make sure that everybody can come together and vote for something.
That's what the House did yesterday.
HOST: See I know you're a big supporter of UN, the work at the UN and all the different agencies, I just can't understand why you're so stuck on a country that doesn't sign to that charter.
Despite the fact, if they'd said, oh we're going to agree to the central tenants, then why don't they just sign it? Why don't they just become a signatory to it and show us they'll stick with it.
And the other thing is the Greens. No one is mentioning these, these are a law unto themselves.
Do you feel like giving them a shake and a good slap and saying, guys get a life?
PM: Let me go through each of those questions, Kochie, because they're really important.
On Malaysia, you and I can't sit here and make other countries sign conventions but we have been able to work with Malaysia and the United Nations High Commission for refugees, the peak UN agency that deals with refugee issues has been involved in discussions as we have worked with Malaysia.
So, Kochie, if your central concern as an individual is what about the UN, well we've been talking to the relevant UN peak body all of the way through they have been involved with the Minister for Immigration Chris Bowen as he has talked to Malaysia.
HOST: Okay, what about the Greens?
PM: Then on the question of the Greens, Kochie. I don't care whether someone sitting in the Senate today is a Liberal person, a National party person, a Green person, I don't care if they're brown, red, pink, yellow, that doesn't worry me, I don't care less.
I care whether people are attacking in accordance with their conscience. I care whether people are acting today to stop more drowning at sea.
I don't want to see us leave this Parliament without laws and the only way now of a law going through this Parliament today is for the Senate to endorse what the House of Representatives voted for yesterday.
HOST: And if they don't will you cancel the winter break and keep going?
PM: Well if we can't get this through today then it leaves us in a very dreadful position.
The proposition that Mr Abbott put to Parliament yesterday-
HOST: Will you look at cancelling the winter break though?
PM: Well I'm answering your question because something would have to move to make that worthwhile.
The proposition Mr Abbott put to the Parliament yesterday was defeated so Mr Abbott's proposition did not get the support of the House of Representatives.
The proposition, the compromise, the genuine compromise did get the support of the House of Representatives.
If we're in a situation where Leader of the Opposition and his team isn't prepared to move a millimetre then we're not going to see change.
But we're not there yet, there's still the opportunity for Senators this morning to act in good conscience.
HOST: If it doesn't get through the Senate, yes or no, will you cancel the winter break?
PM: I would be prepared to sit here if there was going to be a probability-
HOST: So yes? You will?
PM: Well Kochie, let me finish my sentence. I would be prepared to be here, of course I would if there was the prospect of getting something done but David, I want you to understand this, I don't want to you walk away with a misimpression.
If this Bill doesn't go through the Senate today then I do not see, even if this Parliament sat all through the winter break how a law would get through it.
HOST: Maybe we've got to keep you all in detention and just stay there and say, come up with a way of stopping this.
PM: Well David I agree, we have to come up with a way of stopping this. That's why, and there's a compromise on the table that's gone through one House of Parliament, it really is not the right thing for the other House of Parliament to stand in the way of that becoming law.