Beijing, People's Repblic of China
HOST: We're the MCs for today and we are very honoured to have you here with us today. Our students are very interested in Australia so they have some questions for you. Who would like to go first?
STUDENT: I'm very honoured to ask you this question. Before entering politics have you ever thought of being an actress or performer or something else? Were you determined to a Prime Minister when you were young?
PM: No I wasn't. So when I was your age in school, I went to school called Unley High School in Adelaide in South Australia.
When I was your age, I would say to people if they asked me what do you want to do you grow up I would say I want to be a teacher.
So that was my first ambition to be a teacher maybe a school principal like your school principal.
But in my very last period in high school I was involved in the debate club, we used to have debates.
And a close friend of mine, her mum suggested to me I might be interested in law so I ultimately became a lawyer.
And whilst I was studying to become a lawyer I got involved in campus politics, student politics, particularly getting involved in making sure there was more money available for students and education.
And It was really that that led me into the political party I am a member of, the Labor Party and then into politics and ultimately all the way to being Prime Minister.
But as Prime Minister I try to spend a lot of time in schools, so I think there is still a secret teacher somewhere inside me.
STUDENT: Thank you very much
PM: Thank you
HOST: We have the next question here.
STUDENT: Hello my excellent Prime Minister, my name is Bruce and my Chinese name is Yu Pao.
I like doing sports so my questions what is the most popular sports in Australia and what is your favourite sport?
PM: Well that is a big question. We like to think we are pretty good at sport.
And we go to the Olympics and all the international sporting competitions with high hopes but we do know that China is getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
So there will be at least one field of endeavour where we will be competing furiously and that is on the sporting field.
For Australia, many Australians play football, we would say, soccer, many girls play netball. Many school students play basketball.
But we also have our own football codes, Australian Rules Football and we also have a lot of interest in rugby as well, through rugby league.
So lots of sports played and for Australians; one of their favourite pastimes would be going to watch sporting events or watching sport on TV - a nation very, very passionate about its sport.
HOST: And where is our third question?
STUDENT: My name is Zhao Fan and my question is, when you were a student what is your favourite subject? Thank you.
PM: I had a quiet a few favourite subjects, but I always very much enjoyed the study of English.
I loved reading, I still love reading.
I don't' get as much time as I used to read books for leisure because I do a lot of work and many hours of reading for work.
But still enjoy reading and always enjoyed the study of it and I am pleased that I will be able to present some books to your school which represent some of our great Australian authors.
The other thing I very much enjoyed the study of was economics; I liked trying to work out how markets work, how the economy works.
I enjoyed that study at school and at university and it has been a very useful course of study becoming Prime Minister because you worry a great deal about economic matters and making sure that people have got jobs.
HOST: It is nice to know that. Welcome the next question.
STUDENT: Your Excellency Prime Minister, my English name is Ellen and my Chinese name is Zhang Qing.
First please allow me express my admiration to you and I'm actually very honoured to have such an opportunity to ask you a few questions.
And first, as we all know, Australia has very reputation for its environment, and there is a steady increase in the economy so can you give us advice or any suggestions for environmental protection.
PM: We do have a very beautiful environment and we've learned some lessons along the way about how to manage economic growth and preserving our environment.
I wouldn't claim that we've got everything right, we've still got things to learn.
But amongst the big things we've done, we've created a very sizeable system of national parks of key areas in our nation where there cannot be development because the environment is so pristine.
And some of the things that you would recognise about the Australian nation like Uluru, Ayers Rock, like Kakadu in the Northern Territory are protected areas.
Second, we've got a system of environmental approvals for big new businesses, big new mining projects.
We've worked through quite carefully to make sure that there are rules and regulations so that there is a minimal impact on the environment.
We've got quite strict rules about air quality and pollution and I know this is a big issue for you, and you would be thinking about this issue as young people growing up in Beijing, and we've just moved to putting a price on carbon in order to reduce the amount of carbon generated by our economic activity, because we want to play our part in tackling climate change, and for your generation there will be no more significant issue than the changes that are being brought to our planet by climate change and what we can do together to try and mitigate it's effects and to try and slow the amount of carbon we are putting into the atmosphere and consequently the pace of climate change.
STUDENT: And also because of Australia's beautiful environment more and more Chinese travellerschoose Australia as their travel destination so I would like to ask will the Australian Government, put forward some policy for Chinese travellers, and maybe after the prorogationof the policy, do you have any expectations to your tourism?
PM: Yes, well we do see a lot of Chinese tourists, more than 600,000 each year and we want to see more, we are aiming to increase that to one million, so we would like to see more tourists,
We also see a lot of Chinese students come and study in Australia; it's the single biggest grouping of students studying in Australia from overseas, is from China and we would like to see that increase as well.
There are a few things we can do to keep strengthening that.
One is coming to China and talking about Australia and during the course of this visit I've announced that we will have an Australia in China week to bring to people's attention all of the things you can come and do if you visit Australia.
Number two, we want to keep strengthening the quality of our education.
We've got good quality universities we want to keep improving them and keep attracting students.
We also want to see young Australians come here and study, and we've announced a special programme to do that during this visit because the exchange should be two ways.
And then there are some things about travelling that were seeking to make easier, including electronic visas in passports, and something that we're trying called Smartgate so that when you arrive at an Australian airport you just need to put your passport on a document reader and that is enough for your access to Australia rather than having to do a lot of form-filling and waiting for your passport to be stamped and those kinds of things, so we want to make it a good experience when people come.
And I certainly hope that at some point during the course of the next few years, after you've left school, each one of you gets the opportunity to come and visit.
STUDENT: I know you are the first female Prime Minister in Australia and that's really a great accomplishment, so what do you think is the key to your success, and are there any people who act as your models and motivate you?
PM: That's a good question, I don't think that there's one key to success.
I think that there are a few things you need to think about.
Whatever path in life you choose, nothing happens without hard work and dedication, and I know that that's one of your mottos of your school: hard work.
And it's true that success in life, whatever field you're in, requires application and diligence and hard work.
For me, in this life, what has been very important was to be very clear about why you do it, what's the purpose of doing it, and the special pleasure in being Prime Minister is that you get to think about your country, of which I'm fiercely proud, you get to think about what would make it an even stronger country for the future and then you get to implement the policies and plans that will get you that stronger future, that's the special pleasure in it.
And once again, whatever walk of life you're in, I think it's really being clear what you want to do and what you want to achieve, being really clear about your goals.
For me as the first female Prime Minister, I'm also a very certain that men and women are equal to each other, and that it's important that in every field of human endeavour, that we see an equal number of women and an equal number of men.
Our society is not there yet, but it's changing, as is Chinese society changing for women.
As for role models, there have been some women in my own life that have been important role models for me,
Certainly my mother, probably my first and most important role model as a woman, and then in my political life some of the women who were succeeding in politics before me including a woman who became the leader of the state, the province in which I lived, Joan Kirner.
She was, and continues to be an important role model for me.
STUDENT: Nice to meet you, I am Khao Liang and my English name is Kevin, so I have a question here.
What are the advantages, do you think, that attract more and more Chinese students to study in Australia?
PM: I think the advantages, I think the things that people see studying in Australia are the quality of our universities - we do have very high quality universities.
I think the nature of the study environment, Australia is a beautiful place, we talked about that, it is a harmonious, multicultural society, Chinese students are made welcome.
I think that that kind of experience, living in Australia is also highly sought after, and I would hope too, that it's a reflection that young people in China see Australia and China having a strong future together, and so it's a good way of making that link early in life.
Getting Australian friends, Australians having Chinese friends, and if you have those relationships when you're young then they can make a difference throughout your life, so I hope that people would see it that way.
I most certainly see it that way, I think there's nothing more important to the long term future of the connections between our two countries than those connections that are forged person to person, student to student when people are young.
HOST: I think that's already persuading someone to go to Australia. Who has the next question?
STUDENT: Dear Prime Minister, as we know Australia has many precious nature resources such as the Great Barrier Reef.
What is the effect of global climate change on Australia's local environment and what are you going to do to deal with that?
PM: We spoke about some of the great icons that we've got on our land.
The Great Barrier Reef is such a precious place, and we are very focused on our marine environment and the future of the Great Barrier Reef.
Just like we've declared parks on the land, national parks, where we seek to keep the environment clean and pristine, we have now announced that there will be huge marine parks too.
I think it's true that we've got the biggest set of marine reserves in the word, and we are putting aside, well, making special rules, about marine environments to keep them healthy for the future, and a big focus of that is on the Great Barrier Reef because of its special significance, not only to us, but to the world, because it is truly one of the natural wonders of the world.
STUDENT: Thank you very much.
HOST: And so who is next?
STUDENT: It is my great honour to ask you a question.
My name is Zhong Su, but you can call me Joe.
The first time you have come to Beijing, of course my home town, and this is of historical and cultural significance, so I want to ask you that, which Chinese element do you like most?
PM: I've had the opportunity to be here before, on this trip I'm not really having the time to get out and about and just wander the streets and talk to people, or even do some of the delightful things like go to the Forbidden City. I've had opportunities to do that in the past.
For me, when I come to China, the thing that always most intrigues me about it is the growth and change.
Every time you come you can see spectacular differences from the last time you came so rapid is the growth and change here, and for us, from a nation of around 23 million people, to come to a nation of 1.3 billion people on such a journey and change, is exciting, intriguing and we're always mesmerised by understanding, how your nation is managing those huge changes.
And we're very admiring of the things that have been done to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and the things that are being done to make sure that young Chinese students like you have the best of opportunities and possibilities for the future; so a very exciting place to be and a very intriguing place to be.
STUDENT: It's a pity that every time you come to here and are hurried and cannot see it, so maybe next time you come to China for personal, I would like to be your guide.
PM: Thank you! We'll have to make sure we can find you and we can stay in touch.
STUDENT: Hi, my name is Cathy and my question is something about politics.
You know as the old saying goes, it's always hard to please all.
And every time you make a decision, there will be supporters and opponents.
How do you take measures to satisfy more people as possible and can you give me some examples?
PM: Inevitably, when you take big decisions about the future there will be many perspectives and it can be controversial and lots of views and lots of debate.
That, in many ways, can be a good thing, because it means that people are looking at all sides of the argument and in government we try and work through issues and look at them from all perspectives so that we make good decisions, and having discussions and debate is part of the process within government, within the highest level of government at Cabinet and then within our Parliament which ultimately passes the laws.
To take one example of something we've had a big debate about, we had a big debate, nationally, about putting a price on carbon.
I know here in China that here in Beijing you are relatively soon are going to move to an emissions trading scheme to try and reduce the amount of carbon.
We've put a price on carbon and we'll have an emissions trading scheme staring on 1 July 2015 and I know a number of your provinces will trial such a system too, covering more than two hundred million people, so a lot of people.
In the debate like that, what I think is important is that you get people the facts and once a system has started, you let them judge for themselves about whether it's working or not.
In our own nation there was a lot of fear and concern in the lead up to that price on carbon starting.
But since, people have been able to experience it working and see that there is really nothing for them to be concerned about.
So getting the facts out there is important, putting the arguments is important, and not being, not being surprised when people have a variety of views and then trying to work them through.
STUDENT: I have one question I want to ask you, As the environment continues to grow, the parents' expectations for their children is increasing.
In China the best way to success is receiving a higher education.
Chinese students are facing increasing pressures, we have little other time. What do you think about study pressures?
PM: I think there are a lot of pressures on young people today, that's also true in Australia where there's a lot of focus on getting a great quality education, and as Prime Minister I focus on making sure that each of our children gets a great quality education.
In the final year of high school when people do their big assessments and big exams, a lot of students in Australia feel that there's a lot of pressure on them at that point.
Now, in some ways, that's got an upside because people strive hard to achieve, and that's a good thing.
But we don't want those pressures getting out of control and weighing people down too much, so the message I always try and give students is, work hard, aim high, but keep a sense of perspective about it too.
It's a long life, and sometimes if you didn't do as well the first time around as you would have liked, then you can go back, you can try again, you can find another pathway.
There are options and choices and so, whilst you should always be striving to do the best you can, if it doesn't work for you, then don't let that defeat you, try and think about what's the alternate way through to realising your dreams and goals
And you've got to make sure, particularly as young people, that you have some fun along the way, I think that's part of being young, so you've got to find some time for yourself and for your friends.