PM Transcripts

PRIME MINISTER: We’ve been meeting this morning getting ready for the discussions tomorrow with the principal parties from the National Reform Summit which occurred in August. While naturally a lot of parties there from the ACTU to the Business Council of Australia with somewhat different agendas, it’s a great tribute to the organisers of the summit, the Australian Financial Review and the Australian newspaper to bring them together and see so much agreement on the nature of the challenges and opportunities we face. Obviously there are different views as to how we should create them. We think it’s been a very useful exercise and we look forward to the frank discussions with the principal parties tomorrow. The bottom line is really this; this is a very, very exciting time to be an Australian. This is a time of great opportunity for Australia. Yes the mining boom has peaked, yes our terms of trade have come back as they always were going to, but big new markets are opening up to us, great opportunities arise. The future of our country, our prosperity, will depend on the extent to which we can be more innovative, more technologically sophisticated, and creative, more competitive and more productive. And so a more innovative and productive nation is right at the core of the agenda of the National Reform Summit, the agenda of our government. This is a 21st century Government determined to ensure we have and build a prosperous, a creative, an exciting future for all Australians.