ABC Melbourne
HOST: Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister of Australia. She is this morning still the Prime Minister of Australia. Prime Minister, good morning to you.
PM: Good morning Jon.
HOST: Politics is always treacherous and yesterday was more poisonous than most. How do you in any way stop Kevin Rudd and his backers from having another go?
PM: Well it's over, clearly over Jon. There was an opportunity for Kevin or indeed anybody else in Labor caucus to nominate for the leadership or deputy leadership. No one chose to do so, so that's it. It's over.
HOST: Because they didn't have the numbers. They will keep trying.
PM: I think if anybody wanders into a journalist's office in the future from the Labor Party claiming to have a numbers sheet they will be met with gales of laughter. This is over Jon.
HOST: How can you be sure, is my point and the point in most of the newspapers and elsewhere this morning. Because it seems whilst your support in the opinion polls is at such a disastrously low level, there are people within your own party who doubt your capacity to win the next election.
PM: Jon, I think I'm very good at reading the mood of my caucus colleagues and I can tell you the mood. The mood is there was an opportunity. The opportunity wasn't used.
People are sick of any conduct that undermines our ability to govern well and to go to the next election and prevail at the next election. So it's over.
For myself, through this period I've been focussed on the business of the nation and that's what I'll do today and every day between now and the election when Australians will make their choice.
We've got some big things to do including the school funding reforms we've been working on for so long now.
HOST: I'll come to those in a moment but do you call Kevin Rudd and say this is appalling and it has to stop? Do you do that?
PM: The message is clear from our own party room meeting yesterday.
HOST: Do you embrace those in the party who have been undermining you or do you punish them?
PM: I'll get on with the job. I do have a ministerial reshuffle to deal with and I'll select the best team for the Government, for the months ahead of governing, and then of course for the campaign to follow.
HOST: Do you punish those who plotted against you? Kim Carr, Martin Ferguson, Chris Bowen are all named in the papers today.
PM: As I think you've seen last night, there are people who are considering their position.
Richard Marles did that as Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and I think did an honourable thing in offering his resignation, which I accepted.
I anticipate there will be a few more people considering their position.
They will do that, I will also consider the view as to what is best for the Government over coming months, for the nation over coming months, the best team to exercise ministerial discretion and authority in the nation's interest and then to go to the election campaign.
HOST: Or is it the best team to be loyal to Julia Gillard?
PM: No, it's the best team.
HOST: Chris Bowen?
PM: Sorry Jon, I'm not dealing with details of the ministerial reshuffle now so you can put any name to me in the current cabinet and I won't be responding to it.
HOST: Well Chris Bowen, Kim Carr, Martin Ferguson. But what about Senator Conroy whose media laws triggered - well I'm not sure - did they trigger what happened this week?
PM: I don't think that it's any piece of legislation. I think political watchers would know that for some period of time there's been an undercurrent in our party and it was dealt with yesterday and brought to an end.
HOST: What role did the media laws have? Was it because Senator Conroy rushed them in because he thought if there was to be a Rudd challenge then he would be - he, Senator Conroy - would be sacked under Kevin Rudd's prime ministership, so he thought he only had this week to try to bring them in?
PM: No Jon, that's completely not true and not the way the story unfolded. We-
HOST: Well how did it unfold? Because the public, the voters, are just left bewildered.
PM: We've been working on media reform proposals over a long period of time. It was as long ago as late 2010 when we announced the Convergence Review.
That was followed by a review led by a very eminent Australian Mr Finkelstein. We received their reports; their reports were the subject of further consultation and discussions.
The nature of the media laws in contemplation had been reported in newspapers on more than one occasion. So this had been a long time coming, worked through, brought to the parliament this week.
As a Government I think we've shown a lot of courage in getting big things done, and a lot of courage in trying to get some more big things done.
As it unfolded during the course of the fortnight, we didn't have parliamentary support for these reform proposals, so they have been withdrawn.
HOST: Old saying, never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel-load.
Do you sit down now, do you invite Kim Williams from the News Limited corporation, do you invite Chris Mitchell, do you invite the editors of the Murdoch tabloids to sit down and in some way come to, I don't know, a peace agreement? Because they've been absolutely campaigning against you.
PM: I've met Mr Williams on more than one occasion and when it's appropriate for me to discuss anything with him then of course I'll meet him again.
So Jon, what you're describing is really routine business from my point of view. I meet with leading business identities almost every day.
HOST: How do you set the reset button then, Prime Minister?
PM: I don't think - I heard your introduction - and I don't that there's a reset button.
I think it's about getting on with the job and governing in the interests of the nation.
I've got a very clear plan, not only for this period of government, but for the nation's future. (Inaudible) economy during this incredible era of change through which we're living, where our region of the world, which for so long we thought of as a place of poverty and we looked over to the markets of Europe or America, will be the biggest consumer market in the world, the biggest middle class in the world.
This is an amazing opportunity for our country and I've got a plan to seize its benefits and make sure that they're fairly distributed. So that's what the days of governing are about and that's the plan I'll put forward for the nation's consideration and decision in September.
HOST: When you come back for the Budget session, Tony Abbott said on AM this morning, on ABC radio, that he will try to move a no-confidence motion and he'll seek support from the crossbench members of the House - Windsor, Oakeshott, Wilkie, Katter and the Greens - for a no-confidence motion.
PM: I've heard Mr Abbott huff and puff about no confidence motions over many occasions and it never comes to anything, so something tells me that he's thinking that he can get some media today saying that, and then by the time we come back in May you won't hear anything more of it.
HOST: But even the Greens - Christine Milne, their leader - said the Government yesterday had lost its way.
PM: Well, other political party leaders can say what they like but Mr Abbott's track record on threatening no confidence motions is that they are threatened when it suits him for a headline and then quickly forgotten about.
HOST: The Financial Review is full of the business community calling for change, saying the Government's dysfunctional.
PM: We work strongly with the business community. We don't always agree with them on everything, I mean our interest always has to be the national interest, the absolute centre of Australian life.
Businesses absolutely legitimately come to Canberra and put a perspective from their industry, from their business. I listen to those, I take on board some of their ideas, we agree sometimes, we disagree other times and that's how it will continue.
HOST: There's very little support though at the moment across the board. Usually the business community have various champions; Heather Ridout particularly has been Labor friendly for a very long time.
The business community is now virtually unanimous in criticising pretty much everything that the Government's doing, whether it's the mining tax, the NBN rollout now being accused of being politicised; left, right and centre.
PM: I don't agree with that analysis. I meet with business people very routinely, even in the course of this week which has had its stresses and strains.
I've met with a number of businesspeople and they don't talk to me about the inside-beltway of politics. They talk to me about the big things that matter from their industry's perspective.
Some of the talk to me about the National Broadband Network because they understand its pivotal role in the nation's future and our productivity. Some of them talk to me about traditional infrastructure projects; what are we going to do to ease congestion in our big cities.
Some of them talk to me about the environmental policies of the Government and how we deal with making sure we protect our environment, and getting on with appropriate development proposals.
Many of them talk to me about skills and training and are very admiring of the work the Government has done to create more university places, more apprenticeships and more traineeships than ever before.
And then they talk to me too about their analysis of the global economy, what's happening in Europe, what's happening in America, what's happening in China, what it means for our exports, what it means for the future of our economy. So those discussions; they're rich, they're deep and they'll continue.
HOST: The budget challenges though now loom large, Prime Minister. Do you rule out tax rises or any change to the GST for this year's Federal Budget?
PM: Yes, we've absolutely ruled out any change to the GST and Jon, what you're clearly thinking about is funding some very big picture new reforms for our nation.
I do want Australian families to have the reassurance that would come with disability care, with the National Disability Insurance Scheme, so that if you have a family member now with a disability, or anybody in your family has a disability across their lives, that they are appropriately supported with options and choices.
That's a big picture piece of work; the Medicare of the modern age. It is expensive and we'll have to make some tough budget decisions to fund it. But as you know, the GST doesn't come to us. It goes to the states, and we've absolutely ruled out any increase in the GST.
HOST: There's just not enough money to go around. It's as simple as that, particularly because of the failure of the mining super profits tax to generate the revenue you were counting on.
PM: Let's be very accurate about what's going on in the Government's budget. Yes you're right, the Minerals Resource Rent Tax as a profits-based tax has not delivered what we originally forecast.
And when I say we, obviously we rely on the advice of the forecasting people at Treasury. So it hasn't delivered what was forecast.
But the significant issue in the Government's budget is the problems with revenue across the board. It's not all about the Minerals Resource Rent Tax - indeed it's not predominantly about the Minerals Resource rent Tax - it's about the fact that per unit of GDP now we are seeing less revenue come into the government's coffers than at any time since the recovery from the recession in the early 1990s.
This has confounded economic professionals who find it hard to explain why revenue has recovered so slowly from the global financial crisis, and in part they're finding that hard to explain because they're finding some current economic conditions hard to explain.
HOST: Yes.
PM: Our dollar's gone up 50 per cent in the last few years. That means we ask people overseas to pay 50 per cent more for our goods and services than we used to.
Normally when the terms of trade come off and interest rates go down, the dollar comes down. That hasn't happened, that's different to economic orthodoxy and it has put some pressure on our economy and some pressure onto government revenues.
HOST: So we're back to the question. There's a huge hole in the budget - how do you fill it? You haven't got the money to spend on the things you've promised to do.
PM: We, number one, do what we've done over the last five budgets, which is we identify savings, many of them very tough savings and they cause moments of concern and moments of opposition.
Many of them very tough savings but we make those savings in order to fund things that we think are a higher priority.
And the two things we've identified as the highest priorities for the forthcoming budget are disability care and school funding reform because we just cannot be as strong a nation as we want to be in the future, or as fair a nation as we want to be, without making sure every child gets a world-class education.
So you will see us in the budget making some big calls. There will be people who are saying “oh no, they've cut this, they've cut that, we don't agree with that” and I will have that argument that we should be putting our children first and offering a new deal for people with disabilities.
HOST: That suggests then the Gonski reforms. Yesterday in the parliament in the morning there you were with Tony Abbott on the stage in the Great Hall providing a most emotional scene of an apology to people who had endured forced adoptions. What was your reaction when Tony Abbott was heckled?
PM: I think it was very unfortunate that Mr Abbott was heckled when he gave his speech.
I had to say Jon, I heard - he used an expression which people object to and was heckled, and then I must admit because I was sitting behind him and the microphone is predominantly pitching his voice forward, then in the moments that followed I actually couldn't hear the things that he said next because there was continuing noise in the hall.
I do understand from reading the media reports that he then offered an apology if he'd said anything that had caused people discomfort, but it was a pity.
HOST: Is that the difference between a woman making an apology over adoptions to a hall mostly filled with women, compared to a man?
PM: I don't think it's that. I really don't. I must admit I hadn't considered that perspective so I'm musing in my mind even as I'm answering you, but I really don't think it was that.
I think this is an area of incredible hurt and consequently incredible sensitivity, and I understand that.
I was conscious of every word that I said, and it was an amazingly emotional, and I hope cathartic, occasion for not only the people in the room but the people who are still so torn apart by what happened to them that it wasn't possible for them to come to that room but who would have listened to it on the radio or watched it on TV.
The stories that I have been told face-to-face are truly horrifying of children taken away, of kids that grew up believing their mother was dead, or their mother didn't want them. Of reconciliations, of people coming back together and finding a way forward in life, but also of times that mothers have found children and that hasn't brought a new relationship that's worked. So it's just heart-tearing stuff.
HOST: Sure, but let's not shy away from - I mean your misogyny speech in the parliament against Tony Abbott has had literally millions of hits on YouTube now. You've since then also revived claims of special treatment being meted out to you because you're a woman.
So is that a recurring theme with what happened yesterday? There are people on the Liberal side who say there was a rent-a-crowd there who were determined to embarrass Tony Abbott. I wanted to know how you see it.
PM: I think if anybody said that I think that is grossly unfair. What happened, I believe, is that Mr Abbott used a term that people object to and that started some heckling and then all credit to him, I think he then apologised for using that term, though as I say Jon, I couldn't actually hear sitting behind him at that point.
Though the incident itself was clear to me that there was upset in the room, so I think it's really very disrespectful of the people there to refer to them as rent-a-crowd.
In terms of gender in politics, what I've said and what I'll continue to say is if I see sexism, if I see misogyny then I will name it and I will call it out.
I don't wander around thinking of myself moment-by-moment as “gee I'm the first woman to do this job”. I don't do that. I get on with the job.
But there are times when I think treatment is different and when I see those times I'll be very express about it.
HOST: I've gone way over time. Thank you for taking our call this morning and I look forward to seeing you in the studio. Maybe you have a chance to take some talkback from the listeners that would be good.
PM: That would be good. Thanks Jon.
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