HOST: Prime Minister, you made this announcement without consulting the premiers.
If you can't get them to agree when you see them at COAG on Friday do you think this really has a chance of happening at all?
PM: Carrie, there have been months and months and months of discussions about these reforms, ever since we asked David Gonski and a panel of eminent Australians to provide us with a report about the best way forward for school funding.
What was new yesterday was that I said we as a Federal Government would step up and put in two dollars for every one dollar the state governments put in.
I understand that budgets are tight, the federal budget is tight, but ultimately you have got to make the best choices for our nation's future and there is no more important choice than making sure every child goes to a school that can help that child realise their full potential, and that we as a nation have got a school system that is world-class so we are not falling behind the standards of our region and the standards of the world.
HOST: Some of this funding is going to come from cutting funding to universities. Gonski has criticised this today, he is the one who wrote the report that led to this reform. Is it a good start if he is criticising that plan?
PM: To be clear about what we are proposing in the federal budget you do have to make decisions.
We are getting less money in than we are used to, less money per unit of GDP, economic activity in our nation. What that means is we have to make some tough choices.
As a Government, since we came to office we have increased university funding by more than 50 per cent, by more than half. University funding will continue to increase.
They have been on a rate of growth like that, we are going to moderate that growth rate and use those savings to help back in some of the costs of this plan to give our kids a better education.
And so I understand universities would like to stay on this really steep growth rate rather than have it moderated a bit, but as Prime Minister I have to make the best decisions for the nation.
And the best decision I can make is to invest in properly resourcing children's education, our classrooms, our teachers, not just now but for generations to come.
And that is why we are asking universities to forego a little bit.
HOST: These discussions of education always descent into a barney between the state; New South Wales and Queensland getting the lion's share of the money this time around.
WA have already said they object to not getting enough, they are only getting $300 million.
Do you think maybe if WA had a few more marginal seats you might have kicked a bit more money their way?
PM: Absolutely not. This is about a formula for school funding which is to get every school up to a school resourcing standard; an amount of money that we know will get kids a great education with extra money when kids are disadvantaged and you need to put more into their schooling to get them to have good results.
Now, around our country today there are some schools that have that amount of money available for educating their kids, but there are schools around our nation that do not have that amount of money.
In fact, overwhelmingly our schools do not have that amount of money. We want to make sure that every school has that right amount of money.
In some states it is a bigger gap between today's funding and the right standard. We want to close that gap.
In other states like Western Australia it is less of a gap and that is a tribute to the Western Australian state government.
But I want to live in a nation, I want all of us to live in a nation, where we can say to ourselves, wherever a child goes to school - whether it is a Catholic school in WA, a state school in Brisbane, an independent school in country Victoria - wherever a child goes to school they are in a school that has enough money to give them a decent education.
That is what is driving these reforms. It is certainly in the interests of our kids.
I mean, why would anybody want to send a kid to a school that doesn't have enough resourcing?
And it is in the interests of our nation because I can tell you from having travelled in the region in which we live, I was just in China last week, the nations in our region are investing in their schools and we can't afford to have our schools fall behind the standards of the world.
HOST: Prime Minister, another disastrous poll for Labor today that would translate to a loss of 30 seats. Is that why you don't want to talk about polls?
PM: I want to talk about the big things that matter for our country's future.
We get polls at least once a week, sometimes we get them several times a week.
What is going to matter-
HOST: But they do have an influence, don't they Prime Minister, on whether you can do anything?
PM: Well, what is going to matter for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years for the generations to come is the big picture reform, the biggest reform in 40 years that I am determined to secure for Australian schools.
That is what I have been putting my time into and they are the numbers that worry me.
Whether or not I can get $14.5 billion of extra resourcing into our schools, whether I can make sure our schools are in the top five in the world.
HOST: Good luck Prime Minister. On a happier note are you going to go to the Enmore tonight to watch your mate Peter Garrett rock out with Midnight Oil?
PM: No, I'm not, I am not able to do that!
HOST: Are you an Aussie or not?!
PM: Minister Garrett has got an important day job and the sometimes he obviously sneaks off in the evenings for a night-time job too.
He better not turn up tired at work together. He will be in a lot of trouble!
HOST: I'm sure he will. I'm sure that would be a firmly worded email. Prime Minister, thank you for your time.
PM: Thank you very much. We will take a break back in a tick.