CARY: I am delighted to welcome our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. It's good to see you. How are you doing?
PM: Thanks for having me on the program, Greg. It's good to be back in Brissie.
CARY: It's a great pleasure.
PM: It's good to be back in my electorate.
CARY:This is your electorate?
PM:Yeah, yeah.
CARY: And right in the middle of it on a beautiful Friday morning. So much on the agenda at the moment. Burma, obviously occupying your attention and the world's attention. It's not only a tragic situation, Prime Minister, but a bizarre one, isn't it. The world wants to get in, but they won't let us in. What do we do?
PM: The Burmese regime is behaviour appallingly. In fact, just before coming on the program I was speaking to our Ambassador in Rangoon on the phone. And no progress overnight in terms of what the Burmese are prepared to do - and not just frustrating our own aid agencies, but frustrating those of the international community.
In fact, also overnight, I understand, and I haven't had this confirmed, that at finally that there were four UN workers who arrived for needs assessment, and it seems that two of those were asked to leave at more or less the same time. This was an extraordinary reaction.
What can we do about it? I'm hoping over today or over the course of the weekend to speak with the Secretary General of the United Nations to see what we can do globally to leverage the Burmese into a better course of action.
Secondly, through our partners in the region, Singapore, which currently has a particular role in relation to ASEAN to ask our friends in Singapore to apply more leverage.
And thirdly, I know that the Burmese have a close relationship with the Chinese, and so both the Americans and ourselves will be working on the Chinese to put as much pressure on as possible.
CARY: What is their reluctance? Obviously it's a very closed community like North Korea, they've been running their own race. But what is their particular problem with people coming in to help at a time like this?
PM: Well, the military regime is effectively an authoritarian regime which doesn't welcome any substantive or significant recognition of its problems. In the international recognition, I presume it concludes, it de-legitimises the regime internally.
The obscenity of this is that, the people who pay the price are the poor Burmese people.
So you have got the international community lined up ready to help. Australia, at the government level, ready to help. NGO's around the world, including Tim Costello, with whom our Ambassador was speaking in Rangoon just yesterday. All ready to help, all being frustrated by the actual regime itself.
So we don't intend just to regard this as too hard and too difficult to handle. We will deal with all of our global and regional partners to maximise the leverage on the Burmese because the people of Burma don't deserve this.
CARY: (inaudible) then we'll talk about domestic issues, with a very important Budget coming out next Tuesday. Afghanistan, recent tragedy there involving Australians, and it is ongoing, as you said it is likely to get worse. Are you happy and you have had conversations with NATO and you are keen for us to have a stronger say in what is happening there. Do you remain confident that we are on target to achieve what you (inaudible), what NATO would want to achieve there?
PM: Well I wouldn't have Australian forces in Afghanistan deployed if I did not believe that we had a credible strategy for success. Of course, the reason why we had a NATO Summit on this recently in Bucharest, and it's the first one Australia has actually participated in, is to try and bring together a more coordinated military and civilian effort.
Militarily, our men and women in uniform on the ground are performing a first class job. Making sure that the civilian reconstruction effort parallels that, not just in our part of the world, but across the country. That's necessary as well in order to produce the goal, which is a government of Afghanistan capable of standing on its own feet, and brining about a reasonable degree of effective control across the country.
But I said in Bucharest, and I have said since, for Australia and this government, this is not a blank cheque. We will be subjecting the success or otherwise of the strategy which we are all commonly embarked upon now, every 12 months and we will do so again next year.
CARY: Budget big picture, then I will ask you a small, a few items related to it. Tuesday very important for all kinds of reasons. What will be the premise, what will be the philosophical underpinning of this one?
PM: Number one, responsible economic management and fighting the fight against inflation. If we fail to do that, mortgages will go up. If we fail to do that, you will have further pressure in terms of those cost of living price factors which are so much hurting working families right now. So number one is responsible economic management, fighting the fight against inflation and doing that by bringing about effective cuts in government spending.
And that is the contrast part with our political opponents, who remarkably are saying that there is no inflation problem. They are saying that there is no need for budget cuts and they are saying that there is no need to do anything about welfare for Australia's wealthiest. I find this remarkable. In fact it is not responsible economic management.
CARY: What is driving that do you think?
PM: Well I don't know what is going on internally within the Liberal party but as the Prime Minister of a newly elected Labor Government, to now find myself being attacked from the left by the Liberal Party, on saying there is not an inflation problem, you should not cut Government spending but spend more, and you should preserve welfare payments to the wealthiest. I find that remarkable, and I think it is probably, simply populist politics rather than responsible economic management.
CARY: I imagine in part they would be denying that inflation is the problem (inaudible), arguing you are talking it up on the basis that you are saying you inherited that, implicitly from them. How bad an inflation problem have you inherited?
PM: Well it is an objective number, it is not our say so. It is the economic data. It is running at 16 year highs, it is now in excess of four per cent. And there are not just important warnings from the Reserve Bank of Australia, but also important warnings from the International Monetary Fund to act on this. That is at that level. Because if fail to fight, inflation, who pays the price? Working families, by the flow through effect in terms of higher mortgage rates.
And secondly, if we fail the fight on inflation, then we are basically hauling up the white flag when it comes to all those other cost of living pressures which families are struggling with right now.
CARY: (inaudible) Grocery prices up, fuel prices up left right and centre, by what extent can we actually control all of that. Or is some of that outside of your control (inaudible)?
PM: Well what you can do with working families is provide financial assistance as you can through the tax system and through childcare tax rebates. You see, you asked me before, what is the budget on about. Number one, responsible economic management, fight the fight against inflation, because if you don't do that, then it effects everybody, businesses, households and the whole economy. And you do that by cutting government spending. Number two is to make sure that those working families right now under financial pressure get every level of assistance we can provide. It is not a silver bullet, but we are going to be delivering $31 billion worth of tax cuts in the period ahead, starting this financial year, for low to middle income earners.
We are going to deliver changes to the childcare tax rebate, lifting it from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. So if you are at home and you are juggling the real challenge of extra petrol prices, extra food prices, higher rents, higher mortgages and higher childcare costs. On the other side of the ledger, we hope to provide some assistance, is it going to mean enough? Probably not. But is it going to be a helping hand? We believe so.
CARY: How then do you balance that with the cuts that you and Lindsay Tanner and Wayne Swan have been talking about. The (inaudible) concerned about the baby bonus being messed with, are you going to do that?
PM: Well we believe that working families need every bit of support with things like tax cuts, things like the childcare tax rebate and things like the baby bonus. But on welfare payments, the question is, do the wealthiest Australians need them, when people who are struggling to balance the family income. Do millionaires need the baby bonus? Well, you know, I have a different view of that. And so when it comes to focussing the effort of the Budget on tax and childcare assistance, we think the overwhelming emphasis has to be on those who are struggling to balance the family budget now.
They are front and centre our priority for this upcoming Budget. Fighting the fight against inflation so they're not damaged, or their businesses damaged, in the long term. And secondly, practical financial assistance now, through tax and childcare assistance.
CARY: So, the baby bonus will be means tested?
PM: We'll wait for Budget night I think is the best way to respond to that.
CARY: Jason wants to know how bad does Queensland health have to get, it's pretty crook right now, before there is federal intervention?
PM: You know, health and hospitals is a huge area of necessary national reform. We went to the election saying this was an absolute priority for us and we believe this is an absolute priority for the future.
We've done two things up front. One is $150 million payment to that states, as soon as we took over, to do one thing: which is to bring down those elective surgery waiting lists to something more respectable.
And secondly a further payment of a half billion dollars into the hospital system at the most recently concluded Council of Australian Governments. Of course, my predecessor, Mr Howard, was taking money out of the federal payments to the states on hospitals, not putting it in.
Budget Night, you will see a further way forward on this. Very big, very important. I don't know anyone who is not concerned about the future wellbeing of their health and hospitals.
CARY: You need to be in Mansfield in about half an hour which means you need to get out of here in about 2 or 3 minutes.
PM: (inaudible)
CARY: (inaudible) Front page story of The Australian today. A national welfare card that will allow the Government to control all payments to negligent parents across the country will be unveiled in the Budget. True?
PM: Yes, we think this is the right way to go and we're, of course, starting with Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and in the Kimberleys in Western Australia. I think it's the right way to go. The overwhelming focus here is to ensure, through these welfare debit cards, that we quarantine payments within them, that you can make sure that food and basic groceries and necessities are being purchased for the kids in each family. The overwhelming thrust of welfare policy must always be the proper protection and preservation of the wellbeing of the child. That's what these are designed to do.
CARY: I notice Ted Mulligan, who conducted this inquiry in South Australia, said the condition of many Aboriginal communities (inaudible) is a national disgrace. Is it a national disgrace? Or is it a disgrace confined to those communities?
PM: I think what is a national disgrace, and I've said so in the speech I made in Parliament on the apology to the Stolen Generation in February, was that we have allowed this gap to emerge right across health and education and life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.
We're committed to the policy of closing the gap. Is that going to be easy? Nope. Will it require probably 300 to 400 different solutions across the country tailored to each community circumstances in the Cape, in the Territory, in the Central Desert, in the Kimberleys and elsewhere? Yes, they're all different, all these communities are different. But we've got to be held to account and held to a set of standards, which is that when we've got infant mortality rates at three times the rate in those communities compared with non-Indigenous communities, that's just off. We've got to fix that. So I'm for, ‘here are the standards we've got to meet', the fact that there is a 17 year life expectancy gap right now is unacceptable. But the way in which we do it, will have to be tailored very much to each individual community's circumstances.
CARY: So the balance of responsibilities about help from the outside or help from within?
PM: Yep. We've said quite clearly again in the national apology speech that this must be based on a principal of mutual responsibility. Our responsibility, as the National Government in partnership with other governments and the wider community, is to ensure that standards are being met and the resources to get there are being delivered.
Responsibility of local Indigenous leadership is to partner with us effectively on the ground in each community, in practical, effective real measures, not rhetorical measures, real measures, which get us forward. For example, when it comes to increasing literacy performance in Indigenous communities, what are the practical measures to make sure your school attendance from 20 per cent to 60 per cent? That's a practical measure. That's what I am interested in. Doing what's necessary to get that outcome in the Cape will be different to what's necessary in the Pitjantjatjara lands in South Australia and what might work up in the Kimberleys.
CARY: (Inaudible) asking if aged pensioners might be helped more in the Budget? In a word?
PM: Aged pensioners will be helped and we have a range of measures to assist people on retirement incomes into the future. We have already indicated a number of those things so far. But I've got to say, long term, this is also a priority for us.
CARY: I have a question. We've been advocating very strongly for increasing organ donor numbers here in Australia. I know it's an issue you're keen on, you're an organ donor. You were kind enough to invite our program -
PM: I haven't donated any yet
CARY: Well, it may be a little while yet. But, you were kind enough to give us an invitation. We sent down Janelle Colquohoun you were kind enough to take care of. She is awaiting a kidney, pancreas transplant.
We're in favour of the op out system; you said you would look at it. Where are you up to with that?
PM: Well, and thank you very much for sending Janelle down. In fact, I just signed off a note to her yesterday or the day before. She was one of our 1,000 national summiteers at the 2020 Summit.
I pulled together the head of the Health Department and the Chief Medical Officer and myself just the other day. Probably four or five days ago to audit where everything is up to both in terms of the opt-out system and other complementary or alternative proposals.
We've now set ourselves a real timeline for delivering this. We are aiming to come up with a solution which will hopefully be acceptable to all the parties by mid year. Mid year is not far away. But, unless you start setting deadlines for this, guess what, it drifts on forever and people now in the queue for organs which they need to live and live effectively, can't wait. So, I've said to the bureaucracy, let's stop stuffing around let's get on with it.
CARY: Lots more to talk about (inaudible) next time you're here, it's good to see you.
PM: Thanks, Greg.