HOST: Who would you speak to if you wanted to talk about politics? Might as well go straight to the top; indeed we will. We do have on the line, Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Good morning and welcome to the show.
PM: Good morning and it's great to be here.
HOST: Is this your third trip now? Second trip this year?
PM: I feel like I'm always here. I haven't done the count for this year, but I am a very frequent visitor to Tassie.
HOST: I said to Nick, I was a little bit upset because I didn't get a Facebook message. You sneak in and then someone goes, Julia Gillard's in town, where is she?
PM: I'm sorry about that.
HOST: That's alright, and what's the purpose of the visit this time down in Tassie?
PM: Well we're announcing 750 new jobs. This is the expansion of Vodafone, creating 750 new jobs here.
We've been working with Vodafone to secure these jobs for Tassie, for Hobart. We've made available $4 million to get this done.
And of course the fact the National Broadband Network is here and here first is a big part of attracting jobs like this.
HOST: And speaking of Vodafone, so it's going to be up to 1,500 people or workers there, which is just mammoth for Tasmania. I used to work there!
PM: Oh did you?
HOST: Yeah I used to work in Huntingfield at Vodafone. And I was there as they were doing this process and kind of - it's the main hub for Vodafone call centre.
I was terrible at my job but it was a massive place. To see the 750 jobs increase is amazing.
PM: I am sure you were not terrible at your job! And if you want to go back to Vodafone there will be 750 opportunities to do so.
But you are probably pretty happy with the current job you've got.
HOST: I don't know I'm probably terrible at this one too! No, but it is, it's a great effort and of course you are also going to be at the jobs skills expo at the DEC, yeah?
PM: Yes I am. So we are having a jobs skills expo today. We've done these around the country; we've done them in Tasmania before too.
They are an event that brings together employers who are looking for people, and people who are looking for work.
And we always find that creating the event, bringing people together in the same place at the same time, means people can find the connections and we get jobs out of it.
So for people who are looking for work, that's the place to be today.
HOST: Now, normally the DEC is used for things like gigs quite often. Are you able to pick up any music while you're over there?
PM: I won't be doing any singing or anything like that, no.
HOST: We got the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to sing on our show a couple of weeks ago. That's a shame. But that's alright.
PM: I didn't get to hear that, and I'm kind of glad I didn't!
HOST: You're not going to use Bob Katter-oke or Tony Abbott was sort of thinking of doing it as part of his campaign?
PM: Well should we need to have a sing-off I think we'd probably field Peter Garrett.
HOST: Fair enough, if you do have him in your arsenal then you would be silly not to use him.
PM: That's right, we are the custodian of the only rock star in Parliament, so I reckon we'd get him out.
HOST: Now Prime Minister, summer is over of course. Yesterday was the last day sadly. But our good mates Hamish and Andy were talking to us about summer jobs.
And you know when you were younger and you did whatever you could to get a few extra dollars?
Now, Nick laughed at me because I used to have a homemade lemonade stand. We used to live on a farm, and not many people came past and I sat there all day and I didn't make a cent.
Did you have a summer job Julia Gillard?
PM: I had a variety of summer jobs. Probably the one I remember the most is working in a caravan - one of those vans that you buy your chips and your hotdogs and your sausage rolls at - at the tennis at Memorial Drive in South Australia.
South Australia can be amazingly hot during summer, that dry, burning heat that South Australia has.
So you would be in there, 40 degree days, the fat's frying, the urn going, and so it would be ten degrees hotter.
I distinctly remember going on break one day and sitting in the stands for the 15 minute break and thinking to myself, gee isn't it cool out here. And then the temperature came up on the stand and it was like 41 degrees, and I was thinking it was a hell of a lot cooler!
HOST: I could imagine you Julia Gillard being at school and you would be the kind of person that's, ‘the sausage rolls have changed in length and now they've gone up but the size of them have gone down. I'm protesting or I'm going to make a policy in school to change this'. Were you that person Julia Gillard?
PM: Look I was a prefect and all of that, true. I don't think we ever had a sausage roll protest, but we did used to come up with policies and plans that we thought would mean a lot to the school and its future.
I'm not sure any of them have still endured at Unley High School, but I'll have to go back and check.
HOST: Well thank you so much for your time. I hope you enjoy our wonderful state and thank you for chatting to us.
PM: Thank you, thanks very much.
HOST: And we hope you're not catching a bus to the expo Julia Gillard.
PM: I've fortunately got a car, but I know there's lot of people finding it pretty wearying process to get where they need to go today.
HOST: Well good luck with the traffic.
HOST: Thank you so much Prime Minister.
PM: Thanks, bye.