Today
HOST: PM, good morning to you.
PM: Good morning Karl.
HOST: [inaudible]
PM: Lovely to see you. I just wish we were in a warmer environment. You need that nice studio in Sydney.
HOST: I know it's freezing out here. I know, or that nice studio back there.
Chilly morning, it has been in many sectors this morning a chilly response to the budget as you would know. Your response to that?
PM: Well this is a budget that is right for these economic times.
We have focussed on jobs and growth. We focus too on making the big investments we need for the nation's future.
The one closest to my heart of course, get a great education for every Australian child but also making a profound difference for people with disabilities.
HOST: I guess though that the criticism is why make those big investments now when we can least afford them?
PM: I have never had a parent of a child with a disability come up to me and say can you leave this for a few years.
They tell me about how they've struggled for decades and decades.
For many of them the single biggest thing in their life is what will happen with my child when I'm too old to care for them or when I'm gone.
Now for those people it can't happen quickly enough.
In this time, yes to make those wise investments we've got to make responsible savings.
But I am not going to let those people down and for our kids we've got to make sure that every child is reaching their full potential and our economy can't afford to have our schooling system fall behind the standards of the world.
HOST: The economy itself though and let's talk about that in terms of those Treasury estimates.
I mean you are predicting now a surplus for 2016/17.
How does that prediction have any credibility?
PM: Well we get it by the same people who advised governments in the past, the experts in Treasury.
Yes there has been a big change in the forecast of the amount of tax money coming into government.
That's because in our economy at the moment the terms of trade have come off what the world gives us for what we sell, but the dollar has stayed so high.
That has meant that companies are making less profit, that is less tax money.
HOST: Treasury predicted that though.
PM: They predicted those two factors. What they did not predict was the impact that that would have on what is called nominal GDP.
HOST: How could they not see that?
PM: Well it has never happened before.
We are actually going through a set of circumstances that have never happened before in our economic history.
So people can chide about the forecasts but getting told off for failing to predict something that has never ever happened before, I think from a common sense perspective people would say ‘gee, we understand it is hard to foresee something that you have had no past experience of.'
HOST: If they were in the private sector there would be heads rolling at Treasury though wouldn't there?
PM: Let us look at the private sector. How many of them actually forecast everything to do with the Global Financial Crisis?
We have lived through an extraordinary economic period.
HOST: In those situations those heads did roll.
PM: I think people might debate some of that about how many did roll.
Look we have lived through the biggest economic event since the Great Depression.
You and I will probably not live through another economic event of this magnitude.
I think that means people understand it is not easy to foresee everything that is going to happen.
HOST: A Labor Treasurer has not delivered a surplus since - and you can correct me if I am wrong - but 89/90 and it was Paul Keating.
That is a long time between drinks, a long time.
PM: I am not going to go back into history.
I am going to talk about the government in lead.
We have in the Global Financial Crisis unashamedly focussed on jobs and growth.
I need people who are still in work today because of what we did to stimulate the economy and I am happy that they are still in jobs and that they are still bringing a pay packet home for their families and that we didn't have a recession and we've come out stronger than the rest of the world.
HOST: The issue is again, coming back to credibility, how do you convince Australians that you are the right people for the job when we've been told certain things in the last couple of years and it has not happened, and you have gone well hang on, that cannot happen because of global circumstances.
How can you then look ahead to 2016/17 and say this will happen and convince people that is going to happen?
PM: Looking backwards, Global Financial Crisis, who stepped up to the plate and saved jobs in this country and kept us out of recession? The Labor Government did.
Going forward, what's our focus? Jobs and growth.
What do Labor Government's do? We build the big things we need for the future.
We built Medicare, now we're going to build DisabilityCare.
We care about every child's education and I am going to get them a better one.
I am content to be judged by that.
HOST: We are also not sure how those revenues will be affected in the future.
We do not know how significant the hits on the mining sector are going to be, the finance sector, those company revenues may stay down, may get worse.
PM: Well I do not think there is any reason to assume that.
We have just seen the dollar come off a little bit.
But we have made some very prudent projections working with Treasury about the estimates for the future.
HOST: Do you trust the Treasury?
PM: They give the best possible advice [inaudible]
HOST: Do you trust them?
PM: I am very trusting of them and very happy to work with them.
The reality is any Prime Minister sitting in this chair, if his name was Tom, if his name was Fred, if his name was Karl, if her name was Susie.
Any Prime Minister sitting in this chair would be confronted with the same information.
The real thing is what do we choose to do with it. Well what I choose to do is chart a pathway back to surplus, focus on jobs and growth, make the big investments for the future.
If Mr Abbott was sitting here, he would say cut to the bone. Well, we will be judged by that.
HOST: Your last budget?
PM: People will decide that on September 14.
HOST: Just before we go, we know that there is something entirely different, Angelina Jolie has gone through a double mastectomy, just a message to the women of Australia and what she has done and the message there?
PM: I was pretty shocked to hear that yesterday.
I mean such a huge decision and obviously she is in the world's eye, she is so famous.
But lots of women make that decision in Australia too. I cannot imagine being confronted with that decision.
But I guess it reminds us all that we have got to get all of the checking and health stuff done.
If one woman is out there today reading about Angeline Jolie and then saying it has been awhile since I've gone to get a breast screen, I hope she goes.
HOST: Alright, good advice, PM thanks for your time today.
PM: Thank you.