JOURNALIST: Your speech today took some of us of a certain age back to 1983, with talk of productivity pacts and bringing the nation together.
Bob Hawke of course famously talked about reconciliation, recovery and reconstruction, and made the accord the centrepiece of his bid for government and his subsequent governance.
How formal should this relationship be between the government, business and the unions? Do you’ll be in a position to clearly articulate where those agendas are before the election campaign? And does it provide a way of making unions a positive for Labor rather than a negative?
PM: Thanks Laura. The bottom line is, back in the 1980s, of course the then accord between the government and the trade union movement and business was based at a time of central wage fixation. We're not at that time now.
We have a much more diversified labour market and a more complex array of industrial arrangements as we should in a flexible labour market to meet the demands of the 21st century economy.
However, one of the great, shall I say, psychological products of the period of the then accord, was that it caused business and the unions to actually come together to agree what was important to grow the national economic cake.
What I've seen in recent times is too much, shall I say, just blind adversarialism and I don't point a finger in one direction or the other. It's just been too adversarial. Therefore, I'm not foreshadowing a new accord in the 1980s sense.
What I am foreshadowing – is what I said quite specifically – is a new national competitiveness agenda and with areas of work, some of which our friends in the union movement will be happy with and other agendas of work which those in the BCA will be more happy with.
But the bottom line is: we've actually got to get around a table and start talking more effectively.
You asked further what would be the likelihood of specific agenda items of work made explicit between now and whenever we face the people.
I just intend to preside over this gathering of our key ministers, BCA's key representatives and the ACTU's key representatives to work out what is now the next doable list of micro-economic reforms. Against one objective which is to lift productivity growth.
I think it's a better way to go than just, frankly, throwing bricks at each other and I think some of the politics of class warfare, however exaggerated or not exaggerated, have not served us well in the past.
JOURNALIST: Malcolm Farr from News.com.au, Prime Minister. Could I go to the taxpayer-funded trip of Senator Crossin to Europe with her husband and it might seem a minor matter but I believe it joins an accumulation of instances that have damaged public faith in politics and political institutions, including journalism.
Can Senator Crossin's trip be justified as anything more than a farewell tour on the taxpayer tab? And more broadly, what would you do to strengthen faith in politics and political institutions?
PM: The truth is, Malcolm, I'm not familiar with detail of Senator Crossin's visit. In fact, the first time I discovered that Trish was in London was when I was talking to her the other day about developments in the Northern Territory. So I will let Senator Crossin speak for herself on this and I'm not across the detail.
One of the things that we sought to introduce during the Government's first term was a clear public declaration by Members of Parliament and Senators, when they travelled abroad, as to why they were travelling and to make it clear to the public the purposes of their travel and what they achieve as a result of their travel.
If that needs to be sharpened up, I'm all for sharpening it up further. I think the Australian public are just completely intolerant of people having a holiday at the taxpayers' expense. And they should be. This is serious business of the nation.
Our parliamentarians from time to time do need to travel. And let me give you one case in point through a parliamentary committee that I've recently been on. And it's the intelligence committee of the Parliament.
Dealing with complex questions of how you regulate the environment concerning freedom of information on the one hand with the necessary requirements of our intelligence agencies on the other, in the ongoing challenge of terrorism.
In dealing as they have done with both the British and Canadian Select Committees of the Parliaments on those questions, those are the sorts of engagements which are really important and shape legislation for the future. That's entirely justifiable.
But I think we need to move more in that direction than people going off for a jolly wherever that might happen.
JOURNALIST: Chris Uhlmann from the ABC. You've said in the past that you have an overwhelming preference that there be local democratic election for preselection ballots. There are five under way at the moment. It looks like the National Executive might step in.
But would you personally endorse a candidate who has never lived in the community in which they quantity to represent, has never had any connection with it until today has never expressed any interest in it and until last month wasn't a member of Labor Party?
PM: I thought it was a pretty interesting interview. And look, I don't know the person concerned. I've not met her before that I'm aware of.
Look, I think when you are going to vote for a person locally, one of the things they do look for is connection with the community.
They also look for a range of other things, the skills that you bring, and how you can actually take the cause of their community, their city or their State further in the national Parliament, they could be ministers one day or whatever.
I don't rule out people coming to a seat where they've not had a previous connection with. But I thought it was a pretty curious interview and I was a little surprised by it.
On the broader question of how we select candidates, I am out for the best possible people we can get into the Parliament of Australia.
It means therefore - I think I said this just after becoming Prime Minister - that wherever it is possible, local ballots should be held and people subjected to, frankly, the scrutiny of local party members who get to assess their relative merits or not.
If there's a time problem then you go to another mechanism.
More broadly across the Parliament, we really need to lift the standards of the Parliament in terms of the calibre of the people we get in in the future as well.
This is not a problem of any particular political party, it's systemic. I see this in many other democracies around the world. We need to encourage the brightest and best.
And frankly given the brutality of some of the preselection processes, both for the Liberals and ourselves, some of the brightest and the best don't necessarily have the hardened body armour to get through that in order to find themselves into the national Parliament.
So let's see how this lot turn out. My overwhelming preference remains local ballots.
JOURNALIST: Mark Riley from the Seven Network, Mr Rudd. You observed that electricity prices are too high. It's a pretty easy observation to make, but doing something about it has proved very difficult.
Is it your promise to Australian voters that you will reduce electricity prices and how will you go about doing that?
PM: Mark, I don't intend to make any rash promise here that I have no guarantee of delivering. That's quite wrong. Don't intend to do it.
What I have, however, been briefed on, by people who follow the electricity industry and its regulatory system, is that we have a problem with the way in which it's now being regulated.
How big or small any flow-through would be through a change in the regulatory arrangements, I do not know but I am flagging this as a key area of reform.
When I look at the fact that electricity prices in recent years have gone up, if you put the years together, by 80 or 90%.
And I think frankly when I go around, you know, small businesses in my own community, one of the things, all of them - doesn't matter what they're doing - raise with me is the cost of utilities.
And frankly as I said in my formal speech, the carbon price component of that is relatively small.
On this regulatory stuff and what States and Territories are doing for a bit of a gouge on the way through, I think that's where we have to have a very close look.
To be fair to them, if there is a problem in the regulatory system, which is nationally controlled, that's where the changes must occur.
That's why I put this at the top of the seven items of the agenda I ran through before. But I'm not going to make false promises. It's just wrong.
But I think there is a problem at mill on this. And I think we need to get to the bottom of it and bring about some changes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Phillip Hudson from the Herald Sun. In your speech, you talked about the response to the global financial crisis.
And at the time you said that we would be having a temporary deficit which I think it's now looking like 8 or 9 years before, on the current forecasts, the budget gets back to surplus.
Was Labor wrong to put so much focus on returning to surplus and having that as the core economic message at the expense of promoting the other economic positives as you've tried to do today?
And I must ask, yesterday you sent out a picture of yourself with a Norman Gunston-style shaving cut. We're not used to seeing our Prime Ministers do such things and show such intimate pictures of themselves.
PM: Unless you take them yourselves, you mean.
JOURNALIST: It received quite mixed messages on social media. I guess I'm not Robinson Crusoe, to borrow one of your phrases, to ask him why did do you it?
PM: I think we all just need to loosen up a bit and have a joke from time to time. Ever cut yourself when you’ve been shaving? Good, okay. Well I'm a human, I shave, and from time to time it bleeds.
I was also about to walk out the door and do a press conference. So you either have a spontaneous combustion on camera, which is a real possibility, or fess up to what had just happen. I decided to fess up.
But listen, I don't intend to change my ways for any sense of political correctness out there.
That's just me. People will like it, people might loathe it but frankly that's just me. I don't intend to get into the restructuring of personality business. That's not my style.
I've been dealing with people on social media for a long, long time. I get lots of positive response, I get lots of negative response. That's nature of social media.
But I'd much rather be engaging people and not just on the high policy debates that we're having today but the normal stuff which happens in a person's life.
Guess what? Prime Ministers are human and occasionally they cut themselves shaving.
On the question of debt and deficit which you raised also, look, to be absolutely fair to those who have preceded me, I think it was very difficult to foreshadow after the events of 2008-09 that the global economic recovery would be so absolutely patchy, so slow and frankly then have a compounding factor of the Chinese economy coming off as well.
Now, when facts change, it's important that you adjust accordingly. That is the core lesson I think of public policy and certainly economic policy in particular.
Remember the great exchange with Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, I think just after the general period, when people asked ‘Why, Mr Keynes, have you changed your opinion?’ To which his immortal response was ‘My dear chap, when facts change, I change. My dear chap, what do you do when facts change?’ There's something in that. It's a basic wisdom.
And so when you're dealing with such a volatile set of global economic circumstances, as all Treasurers around the world have faced over the last five years or so since the global financial crisis, and new complicating factors in our region, because of what's going on in China, then I have full sympathy for Treasurers and central agencies in governments right around world trying to read the entrails of a very unusual set of economic circumstances.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Shane Wright from the West Australian. Since the Budget, global interest rates have gone up and quite sharply on Australian Treasury yields and it's actually pushed up the interest bill for Australia by about a billion dollars over the forward estimates.
At the moment we're paying about 13 billion a year in interest, which is the equivalent of FBT and superannuation tax collections, to pay off the interest that's been garnered through the reaction to the global financial crisis.
Is it fair to future taxpayers to be saying ‘you're going to be paying another 13 billion next year and the year after and the year after in interest’, which is money that could've been better spent on infrastructure and services?
PM: Well, with respect, you haven't asked yourself the counter-factual and had the Government not intervened, with a temporary, targeted and timely national stimulus strategy as we did, what would've happened?
The economy would've gone into recession as those around the world did.
You would've also seen unemployment go through the roof as it did around the world and what are the consequences of that?
You would've had a decline in Government receipts; you would have a massive growth in Government outlays as we paid for things like the unemployment benefits bill for the nation, particularly if you went into double digit employment, which is entirely conceivable where we've been in previous recessions around the world.
In other words, had you taken the advice given to us by others, which is not to engage in a targeted stimulus strategy, then what no-one has ever answered is what would then have been the aggregate impact on overall government budget and our public debt levels?
No-one has ever actually analysed that. That's the counter-factual.
Then of course there's the second thing, which folk don't answer is, what would be the enduring social tragedy of having double digit unemployment?
I am old enough to remember when we did have double digit unemployment in the past. And we went through the recessions of the past.
This is a very unpleasant experience for families. People have been thrown out of work, often losing their homes. And as a result of that, kids growing up in households which produce the possibility of intergenerational unemployment.
I wasn't about - as Prime Minister at the time - to stand idly by and allow that to happen. I think we took exactly the right call.
And the IMF and other international institutions have concluded this was the most effective fiscal policy intervention in response not global financial crisis anywhere in the world. That's my answer to your question.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, Kieran Gilbert from Sky News. If the Business Council of Australia says to you, we need to change the workplace laws, are you open to that? If you win the election, to change them or is this new cooperation within the framework of the Fair Work Act, is that set in stone?
PM: What I said quite clearly in my remarks before, is the Fair Work Act in the Government's view represents about the right balance given where we'd been before with WorkChoices.
What I went on to say further, and this has come out in some of the pretty interesting discussions with both BCA leaders and union leaders, that within the Fair Work Act, frankly, many of the mechanisms are not being best used to get the best productivity outcomes for a given firm or a given new project. That's what we want to work on.
I think the balance is about right. That's what I said before. So my response to the BCA, and I'm not saying to you anything publicly that I haven't said to them privately, is what can we do further within the Act? And let's look particularly at the future of greenfields projects and greenfields agreements to see if we can do better.
JOURNALIST: Lenore Taylor from Guardian Australia. On the carbon tax you said fairly clearly you're not going to shoot it but are you going to change it in some way, possibly by bringing forward the floating price?
And just in terms of your remarks on the surplus and returning to surplus, will you return to surplus along the, on the same time frame as outlined in the Budget and would it matter if that shifted a little bit to achieve what you're trying to achieve?
PM: On the surplus question, the Treasurer and I have both made statements about that and we're committed to returning the Budget to balance in 2015-16.
And on your first question, can I say, there is a thing called a Cabinet process and Cabinet continues to work through a range of policy matters. I'm sure part of that agenda deals with the future of the carbon price as well.
As you know, these are complex questions and people shouldn't be shooting from the hip. I don't intend to.
JOURNALIST: Mark Kenny, Mr Rudd, from The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. I might get into a bit of programmatic specificity if I can with you. On parental leave, Tony Abbott has a more generous scheme than the government currently has legislated.
I’m wondering, would you consider changes to that scheme, particularly to address the gap in superannuation payments that women would suffer under your scheme as compared to his?
PM: Well of course Mr Abbott's scheme is a huge slug on business. This comes from the so-called pro-business party: the Liberal Party.
And my private conversations with a number of large firms indicate they’re not looking forward to this Bill coming forward.
Second point I’d make is, guess what? My knowledge of Australian business is that they’re not a bunch of philanthropists.
They’ll say ‘oh this is a really good thing to do, we'll absorb all of that and you the consumers won't actually pick up any of the bill on the way through’. Well pigs might fly.
We know what’s going to happen, which is when this impost hits business, it will flow through to consumers. In other words, it's a hidden tax and it will therefore be a hidden increase in consumer prices. That's just the truth of it.
We spent a lot of time working through paid parental leave and as Prime Minister in 2010, we launched this. It was the right thing.
Look, it's not most generous scheme in the world. I know that. But against where we were before, where we had nothing, this represents a serious helping hand to parents when they are confronted with the initial challenges of having a new munchkin running around the living room.
So I think that given our budgetary circumstances, I think it's about right. We'd all wish to be Santa Claus and write out cheques. I'm not in that business because we have to maintain our fiscal discipline as well as attend to the core economic agenda that I outlined before.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I'd like to ask a question about the asylum seeker debate. I've seen some projections where if current rates are continued, we'll have about 100,000 asylum seekers in the next term of the Government.
Do you believe that the boats can be stopped? If so, what is your policy to stop the boats? Also, could you update us on when the conference announced by SBY is actually going to be held?
And could you enlighten us as to what you might say to Iran, Afghanistan or Myanmar, some of the origin countries that might prevent some of these people leaving those jurisdictions?
PM: Thank you, Sid. This is an important question for Australia. And it's an important question which doesn't deserve glib answers from anybody, either our side of politics or Mr Abbott's side of politics.
I think the one step forward that we've got from the Indonesians is the recent statement which you pointed to, Sid. President Yudhoyono off his own bat said he will host a regional conference of ministers.
On the timing of that, I would expect it would happen within months. And possibly even shorter than that. But I leave that to the host country, because it's a matter for them to sort through.
It also depends on the availability of ministers from a range of other countries, source countries and transit countries.
But the importance of SBY's statement the other day was him saying very loudly and very clearly that he accepts that this is a problem for us all, not just a problem for Australia. That's an important step forward.
Second point I'd make is: I think one of the advantages to be achieved through such a conference is where a regional ministerial meeting could go, for example, with regional visa regimes. That is, visas and regimes which allow too easy access to various countries in the region.
I know there's work going on that but it's complex given the relationships which exist between some source countries and transit countries.
Also, of course, we have a review under way, as is publicly known, concerning the assessment procedures for asylum seekers in Australia itself as currently enforced by the Department of Immigration and the individual decision makers for individual cases.
The truth is Australia's acceptance rate for bona fide asylum seekers is very high by global standards. That’s the truth of it.
And the reason why the Government is having a close look at this is: is that because we have a unique set of asylum seekers coming here or is it because our assessment procedures need to be tightened up?
There are three practical areas of work that we're working on but I'm not about to respond to your question, Sid, with my own three-word slogan. I think the Australian people are too intelligent to tolerate that sort of thing from us or anybody else.
It's a real problem. It's a growing problem. I accept that. I recognise it. And we are required therefore to adjust our policy against these new facts. I've been signalling that quite plainly in recent times.
JOURNALIST: Paul Bongiorno, Ten News, Prime Minister. Tony Abbott has described your reforms on the way in which the parliamentary leader of the Labor Party would be elected as sham reforms. And if you do look a little closer at it, while caucus may overwhelmingly endorse your reforms, you do need the Labor Party to implement them, especially if you want the 40,000 members to vote.
We know at the 2010 national conference the unions wouldn't have a bar of it and it didn't get off the ground at all. How confident are you that this reform, dear to your heart, will in fact survive the election?
PM: Well, the first thing I would say to Mr Abbott is he should try it out. Open up the Liberal Party to a bit of democracy. There are not just a few closed darkened rooms in the Labor Party when it comes to preselection decisions or dare I say it so-called factional decisions. You talk to the Liberals at Parliament house, they're always talking about the left, the right, the right and the left, the left right out and the rest.
So I think it is good for all modern political parties to throw the doors open and democratise their procedures. There's nothing to be feared from anyone who aspires to the leadership, of my party or Mr Abbott's party, to put themselves before a much wider audience which comes from the broad community as well.
My second point is that, as I said the other day, Paul, this will matter will go to a certainly meeting of the Parliamentary Labor Party on 22nd of July.
I've put forward my arguments for it. I'm sure there’s going to be a robust discussion, as there was a robust discussion the other day in the meeting of the full ministry, which went on for, from memory, about three hours.
So the Labor Party takes these rule changes seriously but I’ve got to say this is the pathway to the future. This is what we’ve got to do. The pathway for Labor in the future is to represent a much broader based political party than perhaps we have in the past.
As Prime Minister, I see part of my responsibilities as being a Prime Minister for those, for example, who cannot work through disability. A Prime Minister for those who can't get a job and they want to, the unemployed.
I see myself as a Prime Minister for knows who are in employment and standing up for fair pay and conditions. I also see myself as a Prime Minister for those who choose to leave paid employment and invest in their own businesses and grow their own businesses to provide employment for others.
This is therefore a broad church and I'm saying the Australian Labor Party should be as comfortable for people who've decided to go out there and grow their own business as for people who've been traditionally members of the Australian trade union movement. That's the signal I'm sending across the country and to the members of the party in particular.
JOURNALIST: Michelle Grattan from the Conversation. Mr Rudd, just to take a little further your reform package, some have suggested that your 75 per cent trigger point for the leadership to be reviewed is too high for the party in opposition.
Are you willing to be at all flexible on the package you have put forward and do you think there is an argument for a different level, say 50 per cent, in opposition? That is a distinction, on this question, between a Prime Minister and an Opposition Leader.
PM: I think the core reason for this reform, the core reason for this reform, is so that the Australian people, when they vote for a Prime Minister, they get that Prime Minister. And they know that Prime Minister is going to be there for that term of the Parliament.
Secondly, in terms of another reason why this reform is necessary, as I said before, it's time for the Australian Labor Party to throw the windows of the show open and let a bit of fresh air in. I think that is not going to do anyone any harm in terms of new people, new members from a vast array of different backgrounds.
Thirdly, in terms of the dynamics of opposition, Michelle, as I said in my introductory press conference the other night, in opposition that is a separate conversation, I think, for Caucus colleagues. I'm more concerned, frankly, about what happens in Government and I'm pretty relaxed about that but at the same time, we've got to make sure that we have leadership predictability.
The core thing for this reform is to make sure that we have a clear answer to the Australian public when they say ‘if we vote for this person, will they be our Prime Minister after the election if he or she is elected as Prime Minister?’ That's what's necessary. We've had a difficult period in recent years on this. That's the answer which needs to be given.
As I said in the press conference the other day, on the question of if we are in a period of opposition, I'm open to a discussion with the colleagues about that. That is for me is a secondary concern.
JOURNALIST: Paul Osborne from Australian Associated Press. I just have a double-barrelled question. One is: the jobless rate obviously went up today to 5.7 per cent. In Tasmania it's 8.9. Do you have any specific plans to address the very low level of unemployment assistance, which is about $35 a day for a single unemployed person?
And secondly, on a completely separate matter, we hear from our PNG correspondent that you're going to PNG next week. What's your agenda for that trip?
PM: We are putting out a statement later on this afternoon. I’m going to PNG. I will be in Cairns just before then, I'm talking about Sunday. I've been speaking to Prime Minister O'Neill. It is important that I use this period to speak with our regional political leaders.
I've met with the President of East Timor just a few days ago. About a week or so ago, I met with the President of Indonesia. I think it's important I spend some time with Prime Minister O'Neill.
There are two big questions on the agenda with PNG at a bilateral level. Number one is the future of their massive new gas project. As you know, there is significant Australian equity in that project.
Number two, the Prime Minister has also raised with me, on the telephone, concerns that he has about the law and order challenge in a number of PNG's major cities, and so I want to deal with that.
So if we can reach an arrangement whereby we can cooperate better with PNG to lift the levels of security on the streets of the bigger cities, then I think that going to help Australian investors, the Australian business community, as well as the good people of PNG.
The third thing he raised with me, by the way, is about the state of PNG's hospitals. Through the aid program, I remember, in my previous incarnation, working on a plan to get basic pharmaceuticals and medical supplies out to district health clinics right across remote PNG.
That is being rolled out and has been a very effective program. In the so-called referral hospitals within PNG, and there is about six or seven of them, frankly we have a real problem.
Moresby's hospital is on the improve, however if we look at places like, I think, Lae and Madang, there is a lot of work to be done.
So what we’re going to try and look at is how we, through the aid program, work at hospital management teams which can be drawn from Australian experience and expertise, to harness the sort of nursing staff and sort of medical staff and equipment into properly a functioning major referral hospitals.
And your earlier question I have now lost track of.
JOURNALIST: The earlier question was about unemployment support.
PM: On unemployment, and, yes, I'm conscious of the fact that we have a very large level of unemployment in Tasmania and I look forward to spending some time with the Premier soon on what we can do further in that State.
I've mentioned before also the increase in unemployment, I think, worryingly in my own State of Queensland.
I feel that on the ground as I walk around my own community, in my electorate, talking to people who are concerned about their job security, and it is affecting business confidence and frankly it's flowing through in terms of the ability of small businesses to keep their doors open in some sectors.
On the question of unemployment benefits, can I say, that question along with others that have been floated with me, including supporting parents payments will be the subject of further discussion by the Cabinet.
I don't want to make false promises and create expectations which can't be realised, but obviously we as a government are concerned about these genuine social challenges, and we will be doing what we can in these areas. Thank you very much.
[ENDS]