FAINE: This morning he is in Adelaide and has sparred some minutes to talk to us. Prime Minister good morning.
PM: G'day John how are you.
FAINE: Barry Cassidy and I just a moment ago talking about the Friday sittings of parliament, are you committed to it? Does it provide value for the time of MP's?
PM: Well we've always been inclined to try and provide more opportunities for backbenchers. Why is that? When I was a backbencher myself it was always hard to find an opportunity, basically a timeslot in the parliamentary schedule to raise the concerns of your local community in the parliament. It's just very difficult when you try and squeeze that around the normal legislative program. So that's what we've been on about and that's what we've been trying to provide. I think it's fair to say that the opposition were more determined to turn it into a three ringed circus when we tried this last Friday but there you go
FAINE: If you sincerely want to review the workings of Parliament and get rid of some of the inefficiency you could streamline the whole operation not just Friday couldn't you?
PM: Well I think (inaudible) what you say frankly I mean I've looked at the parliament over the years that I've been there and I've sort of scratched my head sometimes when it comes to the efficient use of time, some of it's a little on the arcane side and you've got a whole lot of people who are just genuine traditionalists who don't want to change things and you've got to respect the institution. But on your general question I think we can make more efficient use of the institution and still maximise the accountability of the executive - that's the government to the parliament and the legislature while still providing opportunities for backbenchers in a representative sense to raise concerns for their local community. Which is what people want to have.
FAINE: Why not announce a review of Parliament, you've announced reviews on just about everything else?
PM: I think you'll find before we took over that last year 05/06 or 06/07 our predecessor government announced in a year or two period of 450-500 different reviews. What we said prior to the election was that having been out of office for 12 years there were critical areas that we going to have a close look at. We are honouring those commitments by doing precisely that.
For example the national health and hospital reform commission: Does anyone expect us having been elected say ok here you go this is what is going to happen tomorrow without bringing all the stakeholders, all the states, all the territories, the private health industry as well as the aged care sector together round the table for a proper consultative review process. That's the normal dispense of government, nothing wrong with that.
FAINE: If you consult people on health in particular they'll all tell you that you have to spend more money. In fact they'll quote Kevin Rudd from the 5th October taking the then health minister Tony Abbott to task saying that the answer to all the problems of the health system, you said this yourself, the answer was to get the commonwealth to pay more of its share.
PM: I don't walk away from those remarks at all. The two things have to proceed in tandem; first getting the actual divisional responsibilities between the commonwealth and the states absolutely right and eliminating the problem that we've got in terms of cost shift, blame shift between lets call it out of hospital care, primary care through GP's and accident and emergency. And at the other end through acute care and aged care beds. You've got to get all that absolutely right. Once you've got it right, which is why we've got a reform process underway to do that, then by definition high levels of funding must flow.
FAINE: So are you prepared to spend more? Are you prepared to live up to your own promises 5th October 2007 just as the election campaign was getting underway. You took Tony Abbott to task and said that you'll fix it when you're in government. Are you going to spend more money?
PM: John I just said that. I said there are two things to do. One is to get the actual division of responsibility right and that's why we said prior to the election that we would have a national health and hospitals reform commission backed up by a COAG - Council of Australian Governments - working group acting on this. And the first two or three months of government we've initiated both of those courses of action
Secondly, when it comes to providing extra funds what we did within the first couple of weeks of taking government was provide the states and territories a additional plan of $150 million this year to do one thing up front and that is to bring down the number of people currently on clinically unacceptable waiting lists for elective surgery. What we've also said is that once we determined the future shape of the system consultatively with the states and territories then it follows that more funding will flow.
I don't back away from any of our pre election commitments one bit on that. What we need is some root and branch reform and it requires additional funding both those things are underway.
FAINE: Four minutes to 10, Kevin Rudd the Prime Minister with me until the 10 o'clock news. The reaction to the announcement chairs for the 11 sessions of the 2020 talkfest, Prime Minister has been I would have thought embarrassing in particular to people in politics like yourself who have talked about promoting the role of women. Do you apologise now for that?
PM: The key thing with the national summit is make sure that we've got a spread of people from across the country both from within government and outside of government. If your question is about inclusiveness the fact that of our 10 major working groups of the 2020 summit six of those on the governments side will be chaired by women; Julia Gillard; Penny Wong; Nicola Roxon; Tanya Plibersek; Jenny Macklin; Maxine McKew. I think says a lot in itself.
Secondly when it comes to non government committees we have also in consistent with our approach to inclusiveness, we have people who come from obviously Indigenous Australia. We have people who are new faces to the whole field of international relations who are not shall I say from the Anglo Saxon mainstream. We have people from the other side of politics. The whole purpose of this exercise is to be inclusive in the general sense
FAINE: And yet you've got middle aged men in suits, white men in suits chairing the session with all but one exception?
PM: Well you're a middle aged man in a suit and so am I. The bottom line is we have something to contribute as well. The point here is not to get hung up on process. The point is actually to bring together 1000 of our best and brightest from across the country and you will find in the 1000 delegates which come, people who want to contribute to the country's long term future beyond the short term electoral cycle; and that means making sure that we've got a big spread of people. I would assume that we've already had something like two or three thousands nominations received from across the country, 50,000 hits on the website and I'm looking forward to this enormously
FAINE: Alright Prime Minister just one minute before the news. ABC learning looking a bit wobbly...
PM: I'd encourage you John to make your contribution as well
FAINE: Thank you. Is the Commonwealth Government prepared to step in if there a crisis in child care?
PM: When it comes to child care this is a deep concern to every working family who have kids looked after by childcare. The government and relevant authorities are continuing to monitor closely developments regarding ABC learning centres. The companies currently under a trading holt and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on financial aspects and its inappropriate for the government to comment on the financial aspects of the company.
The government remains committed to working with providers to deliver affordable, accessible and high quality child care for Australian families. And what's our concern - to ensure that working families have access to quality childcare services. We looking at this closely and our commitment to child care of course goes to the range of other pre election commitments we made to Australian working families.
FAINE: We'll have to leave it there, Kevin Rudd thank you for your time. Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd joining us from Adelaide