Queenstown, New Zealand
PM: First can I say, this has been a very successful visit to New Zealand. I want to thank Prime Minister Key for the warmth of his welcome and also for the very constructive discussions we've had whilst I've been here.
This is an incredibly close relationship, a family relationship, and I'm pleased that we've been able to build on that relationship in a very practical way over the last few days.
I'm returning today to Australia and in the week to come the Government will be making a number of announcements about workplace relations.
As a Government we got rid of the hated Work Choices, the Liberal Party scheme for Australian work places that did so much damage and saw so many workers ripped off.
We said when we replaced Work Choices with the Fair Work Act that we would have a review and see what else we needed to do for the future. We've already in part responded to that review.
This week we will make some further announcements and then a bit later on there will be more announcements to come. What has been described as the second tranche of announcements following the review will be partly dealt with this week and partly dealt with later.
The focus this week will be on that part of the workplace relations agenda which is really about work and family life.
Modern families can find it very difficult to balance the demands of work and the demands of caring for kids and sometimes the demands of caring for older relatives too.
We want to make sure that our workplace relations system is helping take some of the burden off modern families.
One of the ways we will do that is by extending the right to request flexible and part time work to mums who are returning from maternity leave, and indeed for dads who are returning from caring for children too.
What that means is when people are trying to make the transition back to work, they will be able to request flexible and part time work and their employer will have to respond to that request.
We already have as part of our ten national employment standards a right to request, this is an extension to that right that Labor introduced.
During the course of the week we will also be talking about ways in which we can help working people if they're faced with a roster change.
People make all sorts of arrangements for work, knowing what their roster is, building their child care around it, and when rosters change that can be very difficult.
So during the course of the week we'll be talking about some protections from roster changes, some abilities to be consulted when rosters change.
So, it will be a big week back in Australia and very shortly I'll be making the journey there but I'll take a couple of questions.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the changes to industrial relations you're talking about, when will they take affect?
PM: I will be seeking to legislate them as soon as possible.
JOURNALIST: Is this just political, is this just about driving a wedge with Tony Abbott on women's issues?
PM: This is about Labor's profound belief in fairness for working people, something that we've believed in for more than 100 years and everyday of the Labor Party's existence you've seen on display.
JOURNALIST: Julie Bishop has suggested today that women can't have it all. Do you feel women can have it all?
PM: I haven't seen any of that so I'm not in a position to comment on it.
JOURNALIST: She's talking about work life balance - and if you choose a busy life in politics you can't always have children, would you accept that?
PM: I don't want to comment on an article that I haven't seen.
JOURNALIST: While you have been in New Zealand Kevin Rudd's been quite active at home on Twitter and in newspaper articles.
He's also released some documents into the investigation into that leaked video a few years ago.
Do you think that the police have done a thorough job or does Kevin Rudd have a right to request that the police get to the bottom of this?
PM: Look, I'm not going to run commentary on the actions of the police.
JOURNALIST: I understand that a number of individual sporting clubs now know about the ACC enquiry into doping and they can out themselves.
What message do you have for them?
PM: Well, I would have a very clear message, I think fans are anxious to get to the bottom of this and fans are very anxious to know what the circumstances of their own club are.
So I would say to clubs, please come clean; make sure that you tell your fans what is going on.
For clubs that have got absolutely nothing to hide, then it will come as a great relief to fans to know that.
For clubs that have had problems, then it's better off to step forward and be very clear about them.
So from the perspective of fans of sport, and I'm certainly one, I think people do want to know what's happening with their own club, so my message to clubs would be, get out there and explain what is going on with your club.
JOURNALIST: Will your IR changes force employers to be able to offer part time work and if it's not compulsory how is it actually different from the current system?
PM: Well it's an extension of the rights in that it extends to a new category of workers in a different circumstance.
What we found with the current right to request is around 80 per cent of requests are satisfactorily resolved.
What we wanted to do with the right to request was to change behaviour.
When I was Workplace Relations Minister I looked at other workplace relations systems around the world that do have rights to request and the fact that you formalise the right gives employees comfort that if they step forward, then that's okay, that they can ask, and if you formalise the right, it also means that employers actually start thinking through, is this possible, can we make it work?
So you get better outcomes, and already with the current right to request, we're seeing better outcomes in around 80 per cent of cases.
JOURNALIST: But an employer can still knock it back?
PM: But the experience is 80 per cent of times in the current system, it works to the advantage of the employee and employer. That's a good result.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what do you say to the Coalition concerns that the announcement on refugees yesterday with New Zealand is actually going to encourage people smugglers to send more people on boats?
PM: Well I expect the Coalition to be negative.
JOURNALIST: But do you understand that they do have those concerns?
PM: I expect them to be negative and whatever we say they will say something negative so I don't bother with it.
Okay, thank you very much.