PRIME MINISTER:
It’s terrific to be here at this very, very large and impressive and enthusiastic breakfast to help celebrate International Women’s Day. Obviously I lead a Government which is determined to do the right thing by all Australian people, but particularly by the women of Australia and that’s why our paid parental leave scheme is so important and something which the Government is so committed to.
QUESTION:
Will it stay in its existing form – the one that you’ve already proposed which will cost around $5.5 billion a year?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it’s fully funded because it’s paid for by a modest levy on the taxable incomes of the 3,000 largest companies in the country. So it’s fully funded. The other point I should make is that this is a proposal which I first put forward quite some time ago; well before I became opposition leader. It’s a proposal that the Coalition took to the 2010 election, we took to the 2013 election and we well and truly have a mandate to introduce it in the form that we took it to the election.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, can I get your thoughts on Ukraine. We see the US is going to put sanctions on some Russian people and travel restrictions. Is this something that Australia would consider as well?
PRIME MINISTER:
We’re talking to our friends and allies about what should be done to check this blatant aggression by Russia against a neighbour that had done it no harm. So we’re talking to our friends and allies and we’ll have more to say in the days ahead.
QUESTION:
And can I get your thoughts on reports that Labor is appearing to compromise on the Qantas Sale Act?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the problem is that the Labor Party just doesn’t know what it stands for. Bill Shorten has been incredibly weak and indecisive about this. Yesterday he went into the Parliament and in an extraordinarily reckless statement seemed to suggest that the only reason why Qantas is a safe airline is because of the Qantas Sale Act restrictions. This was an implicit criticism of the safety record and the safety of just about every other airline. It’s a very, very reckless thing for an Opposition to do.
If the Labor Party are serious about helping Qantas and about maximising employment at Qantas and about ensuring that the workers at Qantas have secure long term jobs they will back our changes which just want to put Qantas on exactly the same footing as Virgin. That’s what we want to do; we want to put it on exactly the same footing as Virgin and what could be fairer than that?
Thank you.
[ends]