BONGIORNO: Good afternoon, Prime Minister.
PM: Good to be with you.
BONGIORNO: There's no doubt the participants think it's been a successful summit. Did you get one new idea you were after?
PM: Oh, I think we got more than one - we got a whole bunch of new ideas. We set ourselves a task, which was how do we think long-term, not short-term, shake the tree of the nation to get some new ideas for the future and let's explore a new way of governing with greater exchange between the community and government. I think we have made progress against all three.
BONGIORNO: What was one new idea that caught your fancy?
PM: I think the idea of, for example, this community core - that is, where young people would go out and provide voluntary service in the community in exchange for reducing their HECS debt. I think that's a very practical trade. We need more volunteering in the community and students are emerging from university with a whole lot of debt. That is one we want to consider. Hadn't really thought of that one before.
BONGIORNO: Federation figured fairly prominently. You, of course, put this on the agenda yourself in the run-up to the election campaign. What are we looking at here to fix Federation?
PM: Well, I think the first thing we've got to do is go to the absolute core of what is going wrong here and that's in the health area. Health and hospitals - too much duplication, too much overlap. We've got a COAG working group on this all year - Council of Australian Governments - we will know by year's end whether we have cracked that one or not, but the summit was clearly saying that this is a huge area which needs fixing.
BONGIORNO: What do you say to your critics that the time has come for the Government to be doing something, rather than just listening to people, asking other people for ideas, it's time for the Government to get busy?
PM: We have been in office now for four months plus. If you're going to consult the community through a community summit, I'd have thought it's far better done at the beginning of your electoral term rather than at the end of it. That is my view. Secondly, in terms of what we have done, we've ratified Kyoto, we have cracked the impasse of the last year on the Murray-Darling. We've engineered the withdrawal of our combat forces from Iraq. We haven't actually been sitting around, Paul.
BONGIORNO: Well, your Minister Bob Debus thinks that we should have a Republic by 2010. A realistic goal?
PM: Well, Bob's very keen on this one and I'm sure everyone's got their view. I think there was a clear resolve from the Summit that they support a Republic, I'm a Republican, and they've put forward some fresh approaches as to how a Republic might be brought into being.
The Government will work our way through all that during the rest of the course of this year.
BONGIORNO: Well, you say you'll give a considered response to what's come out of the Summit by years end. But aren't some of the issues in there, health, Aborigines, much more important than that in terms of they can't really wait that long to be addressed?
PM: Well, I did say by years end. If we can crack the whip a bit and come out earlier, I will. But, I believe in not creating false expectations.
Some of these proposals are very complex. So I'd much rather we did it thoroughly and give people the courtesy of giving a full answer as to what we can say yes to, what we can't say yes to and the reasons why. But I think we've had a whole lot of good ideas. A whole lot of energy and enthusiasm from the community at large. And it's all about planning for Australia for long term. Not just short term fixes from one election to the next.
BONGIORNO: Thank you very much.
PM: Thanks, Paul