Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
PM: It is a great delight to be here at Marianville, this school that you can see around me where AusAID is doing so much good work.
When I travel internationally I always love coming to schools. You can feel the future of a country; you can see it being made in classrooms.
I always feel that when I travel to schools in Australia, and I have certainly felt it here at Marianville today, here in Port Moresby.
The girls here are going to be a big part of the future of this country and I want that to be a future where women have fully equal roles with men.
It is my aspiration for our nation, for this nation, indeed for the whole world.
I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to AusAID for the work that they do.
Can I also say thank you to Sister Angela, the principal of this school, she has been here for more than 20 years. She is originally a woman from Mackay doing incredible work here.
So this is part of what has been a great trip to PNG, where I am getting to see the various dimensions of our relationship.
Nothing more important to us than the fostering of people to people links, and being here today with these girls is part of that building the links between our two countries.
I am very happy to take your questions.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, when you first came here you said you were hoping to write a new chapter in the Australia-PNG relationship.
Do you think you've done that?
PM: I think we are moving to a new chapter.
It will not be the work of one day. It will be the work of a longer period.
But it will be a chapter of partnership, recognising the changes that have happened here. The changes of modernising and growth.
There are still some familiar challenges here, particularly meeting the Millennium Development Goals and continuing to lift people out of impoverished circumstances and getting to them the health and education services that they need.
But I think that Papua New Guinea today is moving into a new era, one of greater economic prosperity and one that will give it the opportunity to extend more possibilities in life to its people including its women.
JOURNALIST: Just on Manus Island do you see any obstacles in actually having a structure on Manus Island under construction in July?
No obstacles other than the usual stresses and strains that come with construction project. We will be moving to construct a permanent facility.
There is land available to do that. We will be engaging a construction through a tender process.
Obviously construction anywhere in the world brings its own stresses and strains.
Doing it on Manus Island here in PNG has a few extra stresses and strains than construction say in urban Australia, but we will work our way through those.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, is July optimistic?
PM: I think the process we are in now is we will be going out for tender, getting tenders, we will see construction starting in the second half of this year.
We obviously want to do that as soon as possible, but we do need to engage a construction company and get the materials in to Manus Island to get it done.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Mr O'Neill has said today, yet again, that he was keen to see this facility be available for asylum seekers for other Pacific Island countries, he talked about taking this as an idea to the Pacific Islands Forum.
I wonder what your response is. Is this something Australia could conceive of in the longer term?
PM: There are no current plans to do anything other than the processing of people who have sought to come to Australia by boat at Manus Island.
But we are engaged in discussions in our region about regional collaboration to combat people struggling.
There is a regional recognition that this is not the problem of a nation it is a problem for all nations in the region. The principal process there is the Bali Process in which we engage.
But of course it is possible in other forums such as the Pacific Islands Forum to also pursue this discussion.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, next week at Parliament will start debating the death penalty. Are your comfortable with PNG executing criminals?
PM: We will make clear as I have today in my discussions today that we Prime Minister O'Neill that we are opposed to the death penalty.
Australia is universally opposed to the death penalty.
That is not a question about the death penalty here in PNG. It is about the death penalty anywhere. And we do express that view all around the world.
We would of course continue our aid relationship here in PNG.
What does our aid do? It educates children, it educates girls. It provides vitally needed medicines to people who are unwell.
It assists with lifting the rates of infants who live through birth and then thrive, and lifting the rates of mothers who survive birth.
This vitally needed assistance would continue.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: There are always going to be fluctuations up and fluctuations down. Yes the high dollar is putting a lot of pressure on Australian businesses.
Rather than comment on a short term currency movement, what we look for is the underlying trends.
And even with the currency movement we have seen in the last few days obviously the underlying trend is for our dollar to be far more highly valued than it has been in the past and it is that, the underlying trend, that is putting pressure on manufacturing and other trade-exposed industries.
JOURNALIST: Tony Abbott said under his IR policy individual flexibility arrangements would be no different from the current legislation.
Why do you say that it's a move towards Work Choices?
PM: Well number one as a point of logic if there's no difference why would you change anything, if you're changing something then, guess what, there's a difference.
So I don't know who Mr Abbott thinks he may be fooling with a statement like that, but it's obviously absurd.
Number two, Mr Abbott's just playing word games here, what he's talking about is individual agreements and individual agreements equal rip-offs.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what's your reaction to the ANZ dropping its interest rates below what the RBA specified?
PM: Any interest rate relief is good for families, so I welcome that.
Under our Government, since we were elected in 2007, we've seen payments on the average mortgage go down by $5,500 a year, that's good for families and I always welcome interest rate relief for families.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: Tuesday's budget will continue what we've done in the past, which is make responsible savings.
We're a government that's made more than $150 billion worth of savings. We make responsible savings and we fund wise investments.
I'm here today looking at a wise investment, that's an investment into education; and an investment into the future.
And back home in Australia what we are fighting for is wise investments including better investments into Australian schools and of course the full rollout of DisabilityCare.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister if I could ask you about the case of Mr Wartoto, a PNG national who has been in Australia on a 457 visa.
Could you tell us whether you're aware of any representations the PNG Foreign Minister may have made to the Australian High Commission on behalf of Mr Wartoto?
PM: Look I am not in a position to deal with an individual case and don't intend to do so, and this individual case is also subject to legal proceedings.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, there's a clear disagreement between yourself and the Prime Minister here about visa arrangements.
Is that going to be an impediment to increasing economic ties between the two countries?
PM: Prime Minister O'Neill has welcomed the step forward that we've taken today on visas.
Visas between PNG, Papua New Guineans and Australia have gone up by in the order of more than 20 percent over recent years, so visas are being obtained, they're obviously being obtained in greater and greater numbers.
But there is still concern about the arrangements for visas and we are responding to that by making available an online visa process and by alleviating some of the burden of paperwork that comes with multiple entry visas for people who are pursuing business in Australia.
Now for us there's always a question of getting a balance right here.
We've got to make sure, for example, that when we're extending visas, PNG is a nation, to take one example, with greater rates with TB than us, so it's appropriate to do health checking before visas are extended.
JOURNALIST: Were you surprised that he raised it in such a public forum last night? Were you embarrassed or taken aback a bit?
PM: I happily attended last night's dinner and thought it was a good occasion.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister given that this matter is subject to legal proceedings will Australia now consider revoking Mr Wartoto's visa on character principles?
PM: I'm not going to deal with an individual matter, but from media reports, if I can do it that way, from media reports as I understand it the man in question is now in PNG.
JOURNALIST: You're signing a defence cooperation agreement. Why wasn't the economic treaty signed today?
PM: Well there's more work to do.
There was the initialling of a document between foreign ministers and there's some more work to do to finalise that.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: We are clearly seeing greater trade and investment between our two countries, and so what we want to do is address any barriers to trade and investment, make sure that we're working together.
In many ways we've got complementary angles in our economy, we are a great resources nation; PNG is expanding its resources extraction.
That means that there are all sorts of services and capabilities that Australia can make available to PNG.
So, we'll continue working on that agreement and when it's finalised we will be able to announce it at the appropriate time.
But I was very pleased to sign the Joint Declaration today and the Defence Cooperation Arrangement.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you mentioned the threat of migrants bringing TB into Australia.
That's already happened, and some doctors in Australia criticised your Government for cutting funding to clinics that treat Papua New Guinean nationals.
Was that raised at all today?
PM: No it wasn't, it wasn't raised at all today and I think there have been some issues in Queensland, including about Queensland State Government funding.
As you would be aware, there has never been more health funding available from the Federal Government than there is today.
Thank you.
[ENDS]