JON FAINE:
The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is in Melbourne this morning. There are official functions coming up. The President of Ukraine has arrived and the Prime Minister shortly will be officiating at that official welcome, but first he’s managed to squeeze a few minutes out of his busy schedule to have a chat to us on the radio this morning.
Tony Abbott, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Jon, it’s lovely to talk to you.
JON FAINE:
Welcome back to Melbourne. Have you already had meetings with the newly elected Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, and what was agreed?
PRIME MINISTER:
I have had some discussions with the Premier. They were constructive, they were cordial and we would like to work together to ensure that Melbourne gets the infrastructure of the 21st Century that it needs.
JON FAINE:
What does that actually mean?
PRIME MINISTER:
They’ve got a list of infrastructure projects that they would like to see some federal support for and I’ve taken the list away and I’ll be carefully studying that over the break. I’ve said to him that the Commonwealth continues to support East West Link and I’ve said to him that whatever he thinks of the current cost-benefit analysis, the cost-benefit analysis is going to constantly shift in favour of building it, given the ever increasing traffic on Flemington Road, Hoddle Street and Alexandra Parade. So, I hope he might continue to keep that situation under review.
JON FAINE:
Well, as I said to him when he was in fact turning the tables and saying the exact opposite thing, of course, about you, hope doesn’t achieve anything for us. What was actually agreed?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think you’ll find that in the new year the Commonwealth continues to support Victorian infrastructure projects…
JON FAINE:
Which ones?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we both agree that the Tullamarine widening should go ahead, there are other projects like the Great Ocean Road which obviously will go ahead and he, I think, is going to look very much at the Asset Recycling Fund…
JON FAINE:
That’s the sale of the Port of Melbourne and the use of those proceeds. For which project, though?
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s a matter for the Victorian Government to decide what it wants to sell and what it wants to invest the proceeds in, but…
JON FAINE:
So you’re putting money into low hanging fruit, if I can call those projects those things, Tony Abbott. Why won’t you fund Metro Rail or public transport?
PRIME MINISTER:
And he accepts that it is the position of this Commonwealth Government that we will invest in freight rail, we will invest in roads of national significance, but because the state governments wholly own and wholly operate the urban rail systems, that’s a matter for them. But, absolutely, if they want to privatise assets to invest in Metro Rail, well the Asset Recycling Fund will be available to help them.
JON FAINE:
So, you start off by saying you that you agreed you want to provide Melbourne and Victoria with the infrastructure it needs. You’ve then gone ahead to make it virtually impossible for any state government to build the infrastructure we need, because you and I and everybody listening knows that the state government couldn’t sell anywhere near enough assets to generate the billions it needs for Metro Rail; it needs Commonwealth assistance to do so.
PRIME MINISTER:
If I may say so, Jon, you’re a lot more sour about these things than Daniel Andrews was.
JON FAINE:
Well, I’m happy to be whatever I am and he can be whatever he is, but we both know the state government cannot build Metro Rail without Commonwealth funds, Tony Abbott.
PRIME MINISTER:
He’s a man who wants to get things done and it was a very constructive and cordial conversation, as you’d expect, and I am confident that we can work together to get things done because I want to be the infrastructure Prime Minister, he wants to be a Premier who gets Melbourne moving and I think we can work together in a whole range of areas. I would be disappointed if ultimately the East West Link doesn’t go ahead, but I know there are other projects that he is very committed to and we’re happy to work together on all of this.
JON FAINE:
Prime Minister, it’s a riddle to which there has been no clear answer from you or any of your senior colleagues: why won’t your Government fund public transport? Full stop, plain and simple, just answer the question.
PRIME MINISTER:
There’s always been a clear division of responsibilities between the Commonwealth and the states and I want to make those divisions of responsibilities clearer, not fuzzier. When it comes to urban public transport systems, which are wholly owned and operated by the state governments, I want to keep it that way. If, on the other hand, they want to…
JON FAINE:
But no state government can afford to entirely on its own fund the sorts of sophisticated, modern public transport systems that all of our cities need. The Commonwealth simply has to be a partner.
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m not sure that that’s the case. Our existing public transport systems were wholly funded, just as they’re wholly owned and operated by the state governments, and what they did in times past I think they can do again in times future. But, we are prepared to assist through the Asset Recycling Fund and that has the double benefit of not only helping particular projects, but of adding to economic activity and economic efficiency through the privatisation process.
JON FAINE:
How many seats do you want to lose in Victoria before the Liberal Party gets the message?
PRIME MINISTER:
It’s your message, but the message that I’ve got from the Victorian people is that they actually want East West Link built and that this is a vital piece of the Melbourne and Victorian and national transport infrastructure. Now, you disagree with me Jon – fair enough, you’re entitled to disagree…
JON FAINE:
Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER:
… and what I’m going to do is work as constructively as I can with the new state government to support those projects that we both agree are important for Melbourne and Victoria.
JON FAINE:
You’ve hinted in the last couple of days, Tony Abbott, that you’re going to commit to a fairly extensive advertising campaign to try to turn around public opinion on things like the Medicare $5 GP payments and the university fees deregulation. To use a great Aussie colloquial expression – and excuse the bad language, Prime Minister – but you can’t polish a turd.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I suppose I have to excuse the aromatic language, Jon, but all of the universities want this deregulation. They all want it. Now, if you take Michael Spence, the Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University, he says that under this proposal, they can offer 7,000 or 8,000 scholarships to needy students over and above the few hundred that they currently offer. So, this proposal will be good for universities, it’s going to be good for equity because of the Commonwealth scholarships proposal that’s built into it, it’s going to be good for higher education more generally because for the first time the Commonwealth is proposing to extend support to non-degree qualifications. So, this is a very good proposal and I hope that in the new year when the Senate has another look at it, they support it, and I’m reasonably optimistic that that will be the case.
Now, on Medicare, why should the Labor Party and perhaps you yourself, Jon, be opposed to millionaires having to pay $5 when they go to the doctor?
JON FAINE:
It’s not the millionaires people are concerned about, as we all know. It’s people at the other end of the social scale.
PRIME MINISTER:
And Jon, we have looked after children, pensioners, veterans, nursing home residents. We’ve looked after them…
JON FAINE:
But not the people who we call the working poor, Tony Abbott.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the bulk billing arrangements absolutely stay for those people. Doctors will have the option of charging a $5 co-payment to others and I keep saying to Bill Shorten and I say it to you: why should you demand the right to go to the doctor absolutely free of charge? I think it’s perfectly reasonable for millionaires to pay a $5 co-payment.
JON FAINE:
Why not just put up the Medicare levy?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that’s a tax increase…
JON FAINE:
A tiny one and it would cover the problem and that would resolve all your problems in one simple unambiguous change.
PRIME MINISTER:
… and if I may say so, Jon, too many people think that tax increases and more regulation is the solution to Australia’s problems. Well, fair enough, you work for a tax funded broadcaster; put up tax and all the problems are over. I don’t believe that. I think that we need to find solutions that are more innovative than that and what we are proposing is to ask, or give doctors the right if they wish to exercise it, to have a modest co-payment on their adults who aren’t on concession cards and as part of this, we’re going to massively ramp up Australia’s health and medical research effort. This is a world leading effort. It’s producing the treatments and cures of the future. So, not only are we living within our means and making Medicare more sustainable, but we’re also playing to our strengths because this is something Australia is very, very good at.
JON FAINE:
So the answer to the question ‘why not put up the Medicare levy’ is not an economic one, not to do with health science, not to do with the economics of the health system, it’s just a straight ideological objection on your part?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think there are better ways of doing it…
JON FAINE:
Better ways ideologically, clearly not financially. You’re not going to raise as much money and you’re not going to have it delivered as equitably, so it’s an ideological solution rather than a financial or economic one?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Jon, this is not an interview, this is a debate. Do you have a problem with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payment?
JON FAINE:
My personal views – and it is an interview, it’s not a debate – my personal views are completely irrelevant. What I’m doing and my job and the role that surely you recognise is to test what you’ve got to say, put propositions to you and the audience decide whether they accept your answers or not.
PRIME MINISTER:
Exactly right, that’s exactly right. Now, I put it to you and, indeed, to your listeners, that if it’s ok to have a modest co-payment for the PBS, why is it somehow wrong and immoral to have a modest co-payment for Medicare?
JON FAINE:
Are you proud that shirtfront has become the word of the year because of your application, or misapplication, of it?
PRIME MINISTER:
You’re changing the subject, Jon!
JON FAINE:
I’m moving onto my next topic.
PRIME MINISTER:
I think I put a very fair proposition to you. I said if it’s fair enough to have a modest co-payment for the PBS, why isn’t it fair enough to have a modest co-payment for Medicare, particularly now that we have absolutely protected children, pensioners, veterans, nursing home residents and we have excluded diagnostics from this?
JON FAINE:
If you’re asking me to answer you then it would become a debate. Instead, in fact, Tony Abbott it’s an interview. I’ve got another two and a half minutes. Are you pleased and proud that shirtfront has become the word of the year because of your application, or is it misapplication, of it?
PRIME MINISTER:
I gave it the Sydney application, I accept that there’s an AFL application, but look, it was colourful language and it seems to have resonated around the world. I guess that’s a good thing because it let people know that Australia regards the downing of MH17 as an atrocity and we want Russia to assist – we really do want Russia to assist – and we do think that at least at the lower levels, there has been Russian complicity in this.
JON FAINE:
President Poroshenko who you’re about to meet, what material support or assistance can Australia provide in this distant struggle where we are really so far away?
PRIME MINISTER:
We are interested in the fate of free peoples. And, you’re right, it’s a long way away and there’s not a lot we can or should do to get involved in a European war, but, nevertheless, our moral sympathies have got to be with a small country trying to be free in the face of aggression from a larger bully. I think that’s the moral principle…
JON FAINE:
Vladimir Putin is the bully?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there’s no doubt that Russia is actively encouraging the rebellion in the Eastern Ukraine. There’s no doubt about that. What we’ve done, we’ve pledged just a little under $100 million to the IMF for the loans package that the IMF has given to the Ukraine, we’ve pledged about $2 million in non-lethal military assistance to the Ukraine, we are providing modest assistance to the Ukrainian civil authorities in terms of their disaster relief and we will be proposing modest additional programmes of assistance between Australia and the Ukraine basically to try to improve their governance and improve their ways of doing things because it’s a country which is still emerging from many years of Soviet style governance and that hasn’t been very effective.
JON FAINE:
And just finally, Tony Abbott, do you take a break or don’t you? Various commentators and I think it was a visiting American political scientist saying you should use the summer to go on a communications tour to explain your policies and the reset that you’re saying you want to achieve and others are saying no, you need a break.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Jon, the joy of being in public life is that you get a lot of advice and a lot of it is contradictory. Sometimes the same people can give you contradictory advice!
JON FAINE:
Even from minute to minute!
PRIME MINISTER:
But look, I’ll be doing exactly the same this year as I do nearly every year. I’ll be taking a week down the South Coast with my family and with a group of families that we’ve been holidaying with for 20 years now.
JON FAINE:
The South Coast of New South Wales?
PRIME MINISTER:
The South Coast of New South Wales. It’s a caravan park – it’s a moderately upmarket caravan park – but it’s a caravan park just south of Sussex Inlet that we’ve been going to for a decade or so and before that, a decade or so a little bit further south. I probably won’t be scheduling as much between Boxing Day and Australia Day as I usually would because the public deserve a little bit of relief from politicians, but I’m going to be on deck most of the time.
JON FAINE:
An exhausted Tony Abbott for the start of 2015 would not be ideal, would it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, this is a difficult job, Jon. I mean, you have a difficult job. Mine is a difficult job. It’s physically and mentally demanding, but that’s as it should be because these are difficult problems that we wrestle with every day.
JON FAINE:
Yes, they are indeed, but it could be a trap from those who want to see you start the year exhausted that they’re telling you you need to go on some sort of a tour over the summer. Whatever you choose to do, I hope you enjoy it and I hope your discussions with President Petro Poroshenko bear fruit as well. Thank you for your time this morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you, Jon, and Season’s Greetings to all your listeners and I look forward to talking to you in the new year.
JON FAINE:
Thank you, indeed, and likewise.
[ends]