PRICE:
Thanks for your time Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
How are you Steve?
PRICE:
Good thanks. Can we deal first with your announcements today on child abuse, on child obesity and intervention? You, like me I think have the view that parenting at home is the key to this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is and in most cases, parents do the right thing. Most Australian parents are first class; they look after their children well. Their children are the central part of their lives and their children get a good start. There is a small but nonetheless significant percentage of children who really don't have a go from the beginning because they're not born into a very stable and caring environment. And the thrust of the initiatives I announced today were to identify and help those children and their families. The way to solve the problem or to reduce it, you never totally solve it is early intervention. All the experts now tell us that if you can get in very early, in the first year or two of a child's life and improve the environment then the prospects of that child growing up in a stable way are greatly improved and the benefits and dividends are enormous, less abuse, less crime, less cost, more motivated young people. Greater success, all of the things that we associate with well adjusted properly raised children.
PRICE:
Well all know the difficulty of getting childcare places - were there extra places announced today?
PRIME MINISTER:
Extra places in what I might call, a special category where for example in rural and remote areas of Australia you have to provide childcare in the home because there's not a big enough population concentration to have childcare centres. But the issue of childcare places more generally is something that will be dealt with in the budget.
PRICE:
That's not announced today?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no - what was announced today was a $365 million renewal and extension of our Stronger Families and Community Strategies that dealt with early intervention for troubled families and troubled children, that's the best way of describing it.
PRICE:
So, why do you have to wait to the budget to announce those extra other places? Are you flagging that there will be some, are you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it's the place where you would normally talk about something like that. I mean we provided some additional after hours child care places and of course we provide a childcare subsidy which is demand in that sense, there's no limit on the number of places.
PRICE:
The other big debate in this area of course is salaries of childcare workers. I mean, we've had examples of where these people are being paid not much more than people who work on a checkout on a supermarket - have you addressed that today?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that's something they have an award and that is dealt through the industrial tribunals, that is not something, we don't employ any childcare workers.
PRICE:
Do you believe they should be paid for?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think they should be paid what they're worth yes, and they're obviously worth quite a lot.
PRICE:
Given the amount of good that they do. They certainly are...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think they deserve to be remunerated according to their skill and their responsibility.
PRICE:
You've also, I think got grants in here of $31 million to some operators in New South Wales and Victoria to run those in home care services?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, that's where for a whole combination of reasons people need childcare in the home rather than taking children to one around the corner. That is normally the case in relation to people in rural and remote areas of Australia where as you can imagine there's hundreds of people living miles and miles apart. The reality of trying to send somebody to a childcare centre is not there and what you've endeavoured to do is to send the childcare worker to the home and you'd bring children to one particular location which might be one of the homes and there are a whole range of options like that we developed a few years ago and its been very successful, so successful there's much greater demand and we've added about $65 million to the total cost of the programme in order to cater for that additional demand.
PRICE:
Mark Latham today, I'm not sure, were you on the line when I played that small part of his...
PRIME MINISTER:
... read the speech, I got a copy of the speech off the internet...
PRICE:
I've got it here.
PRIME MINISTER:
And I have read it and gee, there's nothing new in this, the phrase that came to my mind was sort of back in Keating and the speech is based upon a couple of completely false propositions. The first is that in some way my Government has walked from Asia, I thought we won the biggest export deal Australia's ever had with China, I thought that we had the Chinese President addressing the Parliament the day after the American President, I thought that we had a Free Trade Agreement with Singapore and a Free Trade Agreement with Thailand, I thought that we'd kept all our markets and expanded them with Japan and Korea. This idea that my government has walked away from Asia is ridiculous. What we have unapologetically done is expanded and strengthened our relations with America and Europe as well as with Asia and that's the sensible thing to do, you don't put all your eggs in the one basket when you're a country like Australia, you build relations with everybody and none more importantly than with the countries with which we share common values and I'm amazed his speech made no reference to the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
PRICE:
(inaudible) today says about the United States that we have a strong relationship with them, but on the other hand he says that we shouldn't be off on adventures overseas, his direct quote is "that every dollar Australia spends on adventurism overseas such as Iraq, is a dollar that can't be committed to the Australian home front."
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I just totally disagree with him on that but he also says in the speech that this means directing our military capabilities primarily to the defence of Australia. Well nobody argues for a moment that we shouldn't have a defence capacity that defends Australia. He then says later on that we are unlikely in the foreseeable future to confront a direct military challenge to Australia. Now it seems to me that on the one hand he's saying that everything should be geared to the defence of Australia, everything, and in the next breath he says that there's no threat to Australia. Well you can't really have it both ways. The sensible thing to do is what we have at the moment and that is you have a defence policy that effectively defends Australia but also gives you a capacity to provide some forces of a specialist character in partnership with our allies overseas and that's what we've done in Afghanistan, it's what we did in Iraq. It is incidentally what a former Labor Government under Bob Hawke did in the first Iraq war in 1991, it seems to be forgotten that a former Labor Government believed that it was in Australia's interests to send military forces to Iraq in 1991, but it's apparently not in our interests to send military forces to Iraq in 2003.
PRICE:
On Iraq, the situation there seems to be going from bad to worse, have you considered providing some more help?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we haven't been asked for any more...
PRICE:
Have you thought about it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we thought about it some time ago and we think what we have there is right, we made it very clear to our American friends when the war was over that we were not in a position to provide peacekeeping forces. We have commitments in the Solomon Islands, we still have commitments in Timor, and we have 850 military personnel in the Iraqi theatre. I don't see any need at the present time, and I can't see this changing, for us to provide additional forces. The point to remember is that yes, there are a lot of exchanges at the present time. It is obviously more difficult than it has been for some months. But on the other hand, there is progress still being made and large parts of the country are unaffected by this violence, but it's obviously disturbing. But we've not been asked for more help, and it's not certain that increasing the number of soldiers there, be they Americans or British or anybody else, is necessarily the answer to the problem. It's really the relations between the coalition and the people and the various elements in the Iraqi community, and you don't need many to be discontented and for that discontent to turn to violence, for us to have the sort of situation we have at the present time. All the surveys that have been carried out indicate that overwhelmingly the people of Iraq are glad that Saddam Hussein has gone. They are pleased that the allies came. They obviously want to run their own show as soon as possible. That's understandable. And they certainly don't want to go back to the past.
PRICE:
I know you've got to go. Just one last question. You're in your home state, and who knows - eventually you might have to buy some more property here in the future.
PRIME MINISTER:
(inaudible) I think that's about all I'll be ever doing.
PRICE:
Under the changes, that's all you'll be able to afford to do.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't think any... I mean quite apart from yesterday or, yes yesterday, yes. Well you're asking me...
PRICE:
It's all your fault according to Bob Carr. That's why he's made all the changes.
PRIME MINISTER:
This man struts the stage like President Carr, but when it actually comes to accepting responsibility for his own government, he tries to blame somebody else. And he's been the Premier now for nine years. He really has to accept responsibility for what has happened. It's not our fault. It's his fault. And it's a pretty odd sort of situation where you... on the one hand you reduce tax and on the other hand you put it up. New South Wales should have been able to have afforded cuts in stamp duty without slugging small investors on the investment properties they buy.
PRICE:
Well he was quick today to get out there and say look if you pay this 2.25 per cent when you buy an investment property, don't worry - you can claim it back from John Howard when you sell it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you've got to have something driven by more than that kind of petty point scoring. I mean where is the logic in that? I welcome the fact that stamp duty has been taken off properties for first homebuyers worth less than $500,000. I think that's a long overdue move. How is it that Queensland can give this kind of relief without slugging small investors, yet New South Wales can't? I mean sure I come from Sydney but I'm the Prime Minister of Australia and I don't play favourites between the states. And I simply make the observation that Queensland can give stamp duty relief without the need to impose new land taxes. Why can't New South Wales? It can only mean one thing - that this state is not being run as efficiently as it should be.
PRICE:
Nice to talk to you. Sad to lose News Ltd out of Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think everybody feels it's a pity, and I'm sure the Murdoch family does. I know in fact they do, because that has been indicated publicly. However, for practical purposes, I don't think it's going to make any difference. I don't. The company, as I understand the operation of the law, is regarded now as a foreign company. But the question of any regulatory rules applying is something that obviously the Foreign Investment Review Board will have to have a look at, and like any other movement of this kind, it will be subject to our laws. But I think a decision has been made on commercial grounds, which is understandable. It doesn't alter the fact I'm sorry it has happened, but I guess it's one of those inevitable situations where the great bulk of the company's business is being done in the United States and as I understand it, the New York Stock Exchange listing, primary listing, is being sought because it will give the corporation greater access to the American capital market. Now that's... it's a pity, as I say, that that has become necessary, but from a commercial point of view, one has to understand that.
PRICE:
Nice to talk to you. Thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]