LYNDAL CURTIS:
Prime Minister, welcome. You announced last night your preferred date for the constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians. It’s still three years away. We’ve been discussing this issue for years now and there’s not even broad agreement on the scope for a question. Why is it taking so long?
PRIME MINISTER:
We all want to do this, Lyndal. It's a very important act of national unity. It would be important to complete our Constitution in this way. But we've got to get it right and the point I made last night was that it's more important to get it right than to rush it. No one wants to help the first Australians to feel like first-class citizens in their own country more than I do. It's a very important issue for our country. It can easily degenerate into rancour. That's the problem.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
What does the nation lose if it doesn't get through?
PRIME MINISTER:
It would set back the cause of national integration, of reconciliation, by years, perhaps decades, if we were to put something up and it were to fail. Now, we shouldn't be unambitious but we shouldn't be overambitious and that's the balance that we've got to get right here. We need to appropriately acknowledge indigenous people because, let's face it, this is a country which has an indigenous heritage, a British foundation and a multicultural character but we've got to do it in ways which don't create first and second-class citizens.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
A couple more immediate things you need to do – your Taxation White Paper, where's that at?
PRIME MINISTER:
It will roll out in the course of the next 12 months or so. Our objective is lower, simpler, fairer taxes. No one would say, who looks fairly at our system, Lyndal, that our taxation system is perfect but what I don't want to do is to just have a huge argument with no outcome at the end of it and that's why the point I make is that substantial tax reform is going to have to have, if not complete agreement, something of a national consensus before it goes forward.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
You also promised a Productivity Commission into workplace relations. When's that going to happen?
PRIME MINISTER:
That will be starting off early in the new year because, again, while I don't want to see dramatic change here I certainly think it's important to be constantly asking ourselves the question ‘can we be more efficient?’, ‘can we be more effective?’, ‘can we come closer to being our best selves in the workplace, as elsewhere?’ Because if our workforce is as productive as possible, well then our country will be prosperous, wages will be high and employment will grow.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
There's also a story running on ABC News this morning that the register of foreign-owned agricultural land has been delayed. It was supposed to be done by Christmas. When will that happen?
PRIME MINISTER:
Again, it's important to get this right. We don't want it to be something which is just an added burden of red tape, but we do want it to be a meaningful register – a meaningful record – of what's happening to our country and we are going to move quickly on this, we really are. It's not going to be put off until the middle of the year or the end of next year but we do have to get it right.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Now, on the topic of barnacle removal, you said "watch this space." Does that mean there are more barnacles to be removed?
PRIME MINISTER:
What it means is a government's job is to be better today than yesterday, to be better tomorrow than today, to be better next week than this week. This is the constant job of government, Lyndal, and you've seen already some indications that the Government is going to change. We made some modifications to the military pay arrangements, we obviously are going to rework paid parental leave into a more holistic families package and there were some very important announcements about Medicare earlier in the week, Lyndal. We've got to make Medicare sustainable. It was costing $8 billion a year a decade ago, it's $20 billion now. It will be $34 billion a decade hence. We do need to do work on it but it's got to be a fair system and that's what these changes are about.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
These barnacles, though, are entirely of your own making, aren't they, because you surprised people with things in the Budget that you didn't promise at the election and because you haven't been able to win public support for them as the polls for most of the year have clearly shown?
PRIME MINISTER:
Lyndal, the essential problem is that Labor created a debt and deficit disaster. There is no easy way to roll back unsustainable public spending.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
But you do have to, in the process of public policy reform, you do have to prosecute your case and bring the public with you. It's the case, isn't it, that you haven't done that?
PRIME MINISTER:
We are always doing our best and we will attempt to do better tomorrow than today, hopefully today is better than yesterday but this is an ongoing task. I mean, the essential point to make, Lyndal, is we inherited a mess; we've made a good start. There's much more to do. The task remains that of Budget repair because it's only with a strong Budget that we will ultimately have a strong economy with more jobs and more prosperity for everyone.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Well, the economy at the moment is not growing all that well. Unemployment is at its highest for more than a decade. Consumer confidence is falling and the mid-year budget update next week is going to show the bottom line going backwards not entirely because of the Senate but because commodity prices are lower than expected. It's not really, is it, what people thought they were getting when they elected you?
PRIME MINISTER:
You can take a glass half empty approach if you like, Lyndal, but I don't think that's the normal Australian way. You could also look at the year that's been – carbon tax repeal delivered, mining tax repeal delivered, boats stopped, roads starting to build, the Free Trade Agreements, one of which comes into force today – the Korean Free Trade Agreement – that we never thought we'd get a couple of years ago, done. So, a lot of good's happening and if we look at the economy we're now growing at an average rate of 2.7 per cent. It was only 1.9 per cent last year. Jobs growth this year has been almost three times jobs growth last year. Yes, unemployment ticked up from 6.2 to 6.3 per cent because of rounding factors but we actually saw more than 40,000 new jobs created in the past month.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
And they were almost entirely part-time jobs.
PRIME MINISTER:
Again, you're taking the glass half empty approach. But jobs growth is three times this year what it was last year – 170,000 jobs so far this year which means that we're on track to create a million jobs over five years.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
If I could perhaps take one more sip from my half-empty glass, you're not yet halfway through your term, we've seen ministers leaking against each other, briefing against each other, internal complaints about your office, specifically your Chief of Staff, and stories about tensions between your Chief of Staff and your Deputy.
PRIME MINISTER:
Can I take that head-on, Lyndal?
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Yeah, I'll just ask one more question. Are those complaints about your Chief of Staff in fact a proxy for complaints about you because presumably the Chief of Staff does what you tell her to do?
PRIME MINISTER:
If people have a problem with my office, obviously they can tell me because what my office does is what I ask my office to do. But the point I want to make, Lyndal, is first of all, this is the same office which ran a very effective opposition, it's the same office which has got an enormous amount done this year, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. The other point I make – do you really think, Lyndal, that my Chief of Staff would be under this kind of criticism if her name was P-e-t-e-r as opposed to P-e-t-a?
LYNDAL CURTIS:
That's a message to your colleagues, isn't it, because that's where the criticism's coming from?
PRIME MINISTER:
Lyndal, as I said, I think people need to take a long, hard look at themselves with some of these criticisms.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
One final question – did you think coming to office, because Labor had been such a shemozzle, that it would be easier than it actually is?
PRIME MINISTER:
No one ever said that running a country was easy. If it was easy we could all go home and let the thing run on autopilot. I watched John Howard at very close quarters for almost 12 years. It's a tough job. It's the greatest job anyone in public life can have. Every day is an honour and an exhilaration but if I'm ever tempted to think that this job is hard, I look at the job that is done by my friend Petro Poroshenko, the President of the Ukraine. What he is trying to do is manage the economic, institutional and social transformation of his country while at the same time having to fend off a much larger and rather implacable foe across the border. So, look, we just get on with it and if you look at what's happened in the Senate over the last six months, for all the soap opera, every fortnight something substantial has been achieved – whether it's the carbon tax repeal, the mining tax repeal, the border protection legislation – every fortnight substantial advances are being made.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Prime Minister, thank you very much for you time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks so much, Lyndal.
[ends]