JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Chris Uhlmann from the ABC. Can you tell us the difference between an arbitrary league table and an individual school performance report? And, no matter what you call it, if parents find out that their school is not performing well; won't they do the rational thing: vote with their feet and leave?
PM: Well, on the last point, we would make no apology for that. The whole idea is to make sure that schools are accountable for their performance. And part of accountability means that the parents and the students know how that school is performing against agreed standards.
On your first part of your question which goes to the question of a national league table it's this: when we talk about an arbitrary national league it's basically one which would try and line up a comprehensive government school in the outer suburbs of, you know, Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne with the likes of Geelong Grammar and the rest.
Far better it is that instead you have a system whereby schools which broadly have common characteristics, common socio-economic profile across the country within government and non-government systems for that data to be readily comparable. That's what we're talking about.
And the second thing as well, put yourself in the position of parents, and a highly labour-mobile country which Australia is today. When people move interstate, one of the things they want best and quickest is readily available comparative information on the schools within that geographical area. And so the other element of comparison that we would look to through the agreements that we seek to make with the states is to make that available as well.
So if you move to a new town, whether it's Canberra, or whether it's the southern suburbs of Brissie where I come from, you can quickly access comparative data. That's what we're talking about, and we think that's a practical way forward.
The argy-bargy on this is going to be significant with the states. We accept that but we intend to prosecute this and we have some way to go yet in the months ahead. But that's where the Commonwealth wants to land.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Andrew Probyn from The West Australian.
Let me take you off the topic of education for a tick. What justification...
PM: That's very amicable of you Andrew.
JOURNALIST: What justification would Woodside and other North West Shelf partners have in passing on the $2.5 billion in condensate tax to WA consumers.
And, secondly, Martin Ferguson says that if they did it there might be - it could precipitate action from the competition watchdog. How so?
PM: Well, I think on the first point which is the impact on Dom. Gas in WA, I'd draw people's attention, I think, to a statement made on 20th August by Dr Nelson on behalf of the Liberal Party, saying that based on his advice there would be no inflationary effect. So I'd simply leave that stand in its own terms, in terms of the Liberal Party's position.
As you know, within the debate on condensate, Woodside are not happy; let's just be blunt about it. No-one likes getting a tax when they haven't had one before. That's just the reality.
But we don't intend to shirk from this. Remember the reason why that particular arrangement for condensate was put in the first place was to encourage the development of the industry some decades ago. Now, some decades have now past and I think it's time the broader Australian taxpayer got a return on all of that because that money to be obtained through that tax, which is a unique concession, is to be dedicated to the sorts of reforms for schools that I've just been describing in these remarks.
And on the question of the competition policy watchdog, I'm sure that the ACCC and others will be watching keenly the actions of individual companies in responses to any individual tax measures which have been announced.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, you ran through a list of the promises that your Government's delivered on since winning government, can you explain in practical terms how day-to-day people are better now than they were nine months ago?
PM: Well, let me go to one which is immediate, which is the fact that you have of that $55 billion working family support package through the Budget, tax cuts flowing through to low and middle income earners right across the country and they began to flow from 1 July.
And on top of that the particular changes, some $7.5 billion worth of changes, for pensioners, for carers and those on the disability support pension. And furthermore, as of 1 July, the fact that the childcare tax rebate has gone up from 30 per cent to 50 per cent.
So, in terms of bread and butter concerns, these are very bread and butter responses delivered within our first six months in office. And the reason we've done that is that we haven't accepted the argument by someone else last year that working families have never been better off. We've actually taken a different view, and that is that working families, pensioners and carers are facing real cost of living challenges.
And that's why we, through the first Budget, have sought to do three things. One, adhere to the discipline of responsible economic management, given the uncertainties in the global economy, hence the surplus. Two, deliver on our pre-election commitments to assist working families, pensioners and carers under financial pressure. And three, to lay out the policy and financial architecture for our long-term reform agenda through the three great reforming investment funds that we've established: $20 billion for the Building Australia Fund for infrastructure; $11 billion for the Education Investment Fund to invest in both vocational education and training, and in higher education; and, thirdly, the $10 billion Health and Hospitals Fund.
We think these are practical responses now to the challenges that communities are facing and families are facing, as well as opening up our pathways to the future through investments in the country's long-term needs.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Malcolm Farr from The Daily Telegraph.
You used the euphemism significant negotiation to describe the talks with the states but...
PM: And argy-bargy.
JOURNALIST: Yes...
PM: Which is also a technical term.
JOURNALIST: Well, on the argy-bargy index isn't your toughest opponent going to be the teaching unions? And would you say that the teaching unions have so far had a positive role in giving parents more transparency as to the operation of schools?
PM: I think some of the - it's a very mixed bag, to be honest. Some of the unions have been complete to the - resistant, I think it's fair to say, and we therefore expect a fair bit of argy-bargy on that front as well, but we don't intend to shirk from it. We think this is the right way to go.
I think, at the end of the day, what's going to prevail in this debate is the interests of parents and of students, and that is they deserve to have the information available to them of how schools are performing.
We recognise fully all the challenges which local school communities and teachers face if you're dealing with really entrenched social and economic disadvantage. But at the end of the day parents and students should be able to have the information in front of them.
Also, as I sought to answer the question from Chris Uhlmann before, if some walk with their feet that's exactly what the system is designed to do; that is to make sure that school communities are being responsive to the legitimate high expectations of parents and kids that they get first-class education opportunities at the school level.
Because you know something? Having been on a P and C myself, once you - once kids start going through the primary school and they start lagging behind literacy and numeracy measures, and you don't tackle them at least by the early high school you really start getting to the point where it's too late. So, frankly, having this information up there and putting the pressure back onto school systems, which are run at the end of the day by state governments and by others, to ensure that these schools are performing at their best levels, is what this set of reforms is all about.
JOURNALIST: Mark Riley from the Seven Network, Mr Rudd. You said in your speech that all these changes are likely to cost money, which appears to be an observation of breathtaking understatement. When you're talking about increasing...
PM: I didn't say they'd be for free.
PM: You're talking about increasing teachers' salaries and additional funding of half a million dollars to the average school per year. How...
PM: Half a million.
JOURNALIST: Sorry?
PM: Half a million.
JOURNALIST: Half a million, yeah. Half a million.
PM: I thought you said a B word there for a minute.
JOURNALIST: Half a million. That's an awful lot of money. How much money is it and how much is the Commonwealth prepared to provide?
PM: Well, I noticed today the - talking about unions before, the Australian Education Union is out there giving us a whack about our provision for funding for school education over the forward estimates.
And of course it's an inherently dishonest document, and the reason it's dishonest is this. The union known full well that we are currently in direct negotiation with the states and territories for the funding which flows from 1 January next year. In other words, what we've put in since we've come into government is for this year alone. And everyone knows that. And we're in the middle of a negotiation.
Part of my - purpose of my remarks today is saying, this is where the Commonwealth Government wants to land in terms of quality education, that is that's where we want to have the outcome being on performance reporting for schools, on additional payments for the best performing teachers within the schools, appropriate supports for the best principals in schools, and of course the other part of the package being how do we support those schools who are suffering from most entrenched disadvantage.
So, yes, it does all cost money. But the purpose of a negotiation is that we don't hand over a blank cheque. I presume that's the intention of the AEU in putting out that document that it's done today. It's just nonsense.
We're up for negotiation which will be conditional on these quality education benchmarks being met. That's what we're on about. And so that's why we haven't put forward concrete figures in the speech I've given today.
This is the hard part of the negotiation which Julia and Wayne, the Treasurer, will be into big time, literally in the months ahead. But we need to get to a conclusion because the next school year starts in January, and we intend to drive a hard bargain.
JOURNALIST: David Crowe from the Australian Financial Review. Prime Minister, in an hour or so hostilities will resume in Question Time. The debate will turn again to the Coalition's position on various bills out of the Budget.
Just looking at one, for instance, FuelWatch seems doomed given the way the Coalition and some of the independents might vote. Is that change and other Budget measures you've got worth going to an early election for? Are they that important to the ordinary voter that you would go early given the experience of John Howard in '98 and Bob Hawke in '84?
PM: When have I said before I'm going to an early election? There seems to be an assumption in your question that I am, or have said something to that effect. So let's take away the presupposition underpinning your question because I've never said that, unless some of you can correct me to the contrary.
What I have said, these are all important parts of the Government's policy agenda. We intend to fight hard in the Senate. Our principal concern in the Senate is to prevent the Liberals from delivering a major assault on the Budget disciplines which the Government sweated over in preparing the Budget of May this year.
I mean, if you look at some of those basic disciplines we brought about through the Budget, on spending, when we took over office the spending growth was running at four to five per cent under the previous government.
We brought that down to one per cent in the current Budget. On savings, as you know, our new initiatives were funded by the savings that we had made, some $33 billion worth of savings. And we landed at a point in the Budget whereby we've reduced the tax to GDP ratio to a lower level than the previous year and a lower level in frankly almost a decade, particularly against what was a high taxing government, the one which preceded us.
To get to all those points on reducing spending, on bringing about a very hard set of savings $33 billion worth and to produce an outcome on tax of the type that I've just described, by tax as a proportion of GDP is down in the first year of this Government. It's taken a lot of work but secondly it's been a necessary fiscal discipline given Australia's globally uncertain economic conditions. And the ones that we face.
The - in a time of global economic uncertainty the worst thing the Liberal Party can do is to hold to ransom the fiscal discipline of the Government by some, $3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion, $6 billion dollars depending on how they feel on a particular day.
This is not the time to do that. As I said before, one of the reasons we have worked hard to produce a budget surplus of this type is not just to put downward pressure on inflation, downward pressure on interest rates, but to provide us with a fiscal buffer to deal with the challenges we may face in this uncertain environment.
And in a time of global economic uncertainty, the worst thing you can have is uncertainty on the home front delivered by an irresponsible party acting for populace reasons in the senate. That's why we're going to prosecute a very hard line, economic debate with the Liberals in the Senate with one objective in mind, to get this budget and its integrity upheld in the Senate because it's necessary in terms of the overall economic wellbeing of the country.
JOURNALIST: Hi, Prime Minister, Matthew Franklin from The Australian.
PM: Hi, Matthew.
JOURNALIST: I am interested in argy-bargy as well. The...
PM: I notice that from what you write, yeah.
JOURNALIST: Thanks. Look, I've seen State Governments, including, I think, the one that you used to work for openly, aggressively act - work against media attempts to provide any kind of scrutiny to the way - to relative performances of schools as Malcolm said we - the education unions hate this stuff. You've said today, you've laid out a series of principles and you've made clear that you have to now negotiate on them.
Can you tell us that the basic principles, putting aside the funding, of what you've outlined today are non-negotiable and that you will not be backing down either by - to demands from the states or the Labor movement?
PM: These are hard principles, Matthew, and Julia and I have spent a lot of time on this and her work in this area in recent weeks and months has been particularly intense. So we haven't pulled this out of thin air, we have thought about it, we have worked on it, we believe this is the correct way ahead for the nation, for the economy, given the productivity arguments that I ran through before.
But also in terms of life opportunities of the tens of thousands of kids affected by this.
So therefore, the principles we put forward are robust, strong, and we intend to adhere to them.
Whether states and territories agree with those, remains to be seen in the final analysis. But what we can do at the end of the day is fashion national policy partnerships, with governments, and if various governments choose not to receive these additional payments, I think the country will say, ‘be it on their heads'. But the reason we have designed this structure of national policy partnerships is precisely with this in mind.
The states, to be fair to them, and the territories, are doing a lot of good work in various of these areas, but they've encountered a lot of resistance as well. And that's why with those states which have a strong reformist inclination we intend to partner with them.
Through these partnerships, partner with them in a real financial way as well, make it more possible for them, but we can't shirk this agenda anymore. We can't just say it's all to hard and put our heads in the sand.
When I said at the beginning of last year that one of the most important things for me if I made it to becoming Prime Minister of this country was engineering an education revolution, we meant it. Not just in terms of the amount of money we invest in this system but the quality of the system as well. Every kid in the country deserves a decent start; it doesn't matter where they come from. Every kid in the country. And to the extent that it is possible with in our powers of the Commonwealth Government to deliver that, we intend to do it. It is a very high priority.
JOURNALIST: Michelle Grattan, from The Age. Mr Rudd, in the current economic downturn how high do you expect that unemployment might go? Do you think we could get to a situation where it has a six in front of it? And after your talks with the car industry this week, and given the job problems in that industry, do you think there is a case still for making the fall in tariffs that's been recommended by the Bracks Report?
PM: On the - we've been upfront as is the Treasurer and others about what we see to be a slowing in growth and employment across the economy. And that of course is consistent with what you see in many other developed economies around the world. On the question of the car industry, our approach, and I said this, I think as of the day I became leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party - I am a free trader, always have been, always will be.
And the reason I am is because protection like that ultimately doesn't help consumers particularly working families who are struggling to get the best deal possible with a very large purchase. We all know the history of that, shirts, shoes, over time the ability of families to be able to stretch their budgets further have all been enormously assisted by the deep reforms to tariffs which are engineered during the period of the Hawke and Keating Government.
So our attitude to the future of the car industry is very much one which depends on industry policy which I've never equated with tariff policy. And industry policy for us means investing in innovation. And I've said that from the beginning and I'll continue to say that as well. And that's why we've established a half billion green car innovation fund.
And it's funds like that in the future which will enable us to help industries innovate, secondly, to also innovate in directions which are consistent with the nation's other priorities, other environmental priorities. In the case of fuel efficient cars, reducing not just the carbon footprint but also helping to drive the family budget further as well.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Karen Middleton from SBS Television. I just wanted to take you to a part of your speech where you talked about non-performing schools and needing to lift their performance and you suggested that in some cases they may need to be reorganised or even merged. It strikes me that that might be unpopular with some parents.
Here in the ACT, the ACT Government announced some year or so ago that it was closing and merging schools and there was uproar. And in the end it had to back down on some of those schools. So I am wondering, what do you say to parents who might be alarmed at the prospect that schools might be closed or be merged, especially in a time where they've got rising household costs primarily transport costs?
PM: First of all the proposed national partnership payments and agreements I referred to before, both on quality teaching and on funding arrangements with the most disadvantaged schools, these would be agreements with State Governments with education systems. And therefore definitions ultimately will lie with them about how they then implement these agreements on the ground.
The Commonwealth doesn't directly run the systems, we don't. They're run either through the independent school system with the Catholic Education System or though the state and territory systems. And that is the simple administer of reality.
So those decisions ultimately would be made local - locally. What we can do however, in partnership agreements, with states and territories and with the systems, is to outline clearly the criteria which may lead in that direction. No-one wants to merge a school with another school if you can possibly avoid it.
But you know if you're a bunch of mums and dads and you see through the transparency measures I referred to before the fact that against comparable schools elsewhere that your local school is performing really badly and has done so for many years and there hasn't been any real turnaround, we've got to look at some practical hard disciplines at the end of the day about what you're going to do about it.
You can either say, ‘well, let's hope like [inaudible] that something ultimately turns up or furthermore that you get new management into the school, or if that doesn't work then you've got to actually, for the sake of the kids, look at a different arrangement. But those decisions ultimately will lie with the systems themselves. What we'd be doing is designing the funding agreements to make that possible.
JOURNALIST: Hi, Mr Rudd, Phil Coorey from The Sydney Morning Herald. You may have just answered this question but similar to Karen's a lot of state or all states have a local system where you can only go to a school in your area.
So if - how - if you were to, quote, vote with your feet and you weren't allowed to, is that the State's responsibility or - and/or the Commonwealth's? And in that - in that theme, who would take accountability if a school needs to merge but the State won't do it for political reasons, is it the Commonwealth's fault or the State's fault?
PM: Well, we at the Commonwealth level have a responsibility to design clear cut policy and funding agreements with the states and territories. So the contents of those agreements, obviously, are the joint responsibility of both levels of government. The execution of the agreement on the ground, obviously, lies with the system which manages the schools. So they will make the decisions on the ground locally.
But if you see evidence, plainly, of a state and territory system which has signed up to a national performance partnership on quality - quality teaching, for example, where all the - and through the transparency reporting arrangements that we spoke about before, and you saw clear evidence that nothing was happening on the ground, despite the evidence being presented, then that provides you with an opportunity at the federal level to act as well in terms of non-compliance with the basis of the agreement.
Now, a lot of this in the argy-bargy of the next few months will be nutted out with the states and territories. And I'm not pretending for one moment this will be easy. It'll be a complex negotiation. But we, the Commonwealth, have determined this is the right way to go and we are not going to take a backward step.
JOURNALIST: Paul Bongiorno, Ten News, Prime Minister. I'm just wondering what benchmarks we're going to use here. I noticed that some of your goals are out to 2020. By the time of the next election, what should have happened? For example, the brightest of the maths and science teachers, and this is a problem that all the school systems have, can leave the system, get three to four times the salary working in the private sector, away from education.
You say there's going to be a lot of argy-bargy and it'll be tough but the Commonwealth is determined. Are you as determined in this area as you are in health, where you've said if the states don't come to the party you'll take them over?
PM: One step at a time, Paul. I always believe in consultation - consultation - just cause you're an old lefty, consultation - talk about revolutions. The consultation first, a hardened negotiation and ultimately, of course, there are other devices available. But we're not canvassing those when it comes to education. I think we can still get there through the negotiating process that we've outlined. It will be tough and we're going to have to put money on the table. But as I've said from the very outset of our debate on the Education Revolution, from day one, January University of Melbourne 2007, I said we're on about lifting the quantitative investment across the range of education. From early childhood education through schools, through vocational education and training, through universities, through innovation, through R and D up to the highest ends of rocket science, we're into upping the quantitative investment.
But parallel to that, are qualitative disciplines, which is to measure the quality of that which is produced. And that applies here to the school system most critically. Because going back to, you know, the core of this debate, if we are serious about this nation having a robust economic future in the economies of the twenty-first century, and you look at what our competitor economies are doing around this region and the world and the radical investment programs they have in human capital, and in within the school systems, there is a grave danger of us being left behind.
I use this point again to go back to the cardinal principle. And that is, for us this is serious business. We intend to prosecute this with full vigour, knowing full well that there's going to be blowback on the way through.
JOURNALIST: James Grubel from Reuters, Prime Minister. You mentioned in your speech the Government's plans for emissions reduction, and we noticed in the past week or so business, particularly big business have come out and said they have great concerns about the Green Paper and the plans for the emissions trading scheme.
Is there a growing - is there a sense that the Government - that there is some sympathy for some of those complaints? Or do you think that big business isn't really doing enough at this stage to prepare for emissions trading from mid-2010.
PM: Well to use the term of the day, argy bargy is not restricted between the Government and the state and territory school systems. We also, we're having a fair bit of that with the business community as well. And that's natural and normal.
Just, you know, I just regard that as part of business. We've put out a Green Paper when it comes to the future of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The reason it's called a Green Paper is that it's there to form a basis for negotiation, and that's why we're engaged, through various ministers of the Government, led by Penny Wong, but also Martin Ferguson, also Kim Carr and Simon Crean and others, in direct negotiations with individual businesses.
And we intend for this to be a real negotiating process. The reason for having a detailed framework out there through the Green Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, is to focus the debate down to the points of real disagreement, and to work out what is the productive way forward.
And I think reasonable people will be able to achieve that.
What I detect, overall, from the business community is actually something quite good. None of them have said to me, so far, ‘oh, by the way, we don't want to act on climate change.' None of them have said, ‘oh, by the way, all the science is wrong.' None of them have said that. You roll the clock back a few years, that's probably what might have been the starting point.
So I think there is a sense of genuine corporate or collective responsibility here. But we are into a detailed negotiation, and it will be tough and it will be hard. But as I said at the very beginning of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme debate, if you are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which we must, and if we are to be credible negotiators in the essential negotiations coming up over the next 12 months or so, to get a global deal, then this is the necessary course of action. It will never happen cost free.
This is not a cost-free business. Anyone who says that is misleading you. And I don't intend to say that. The question is, how do we do it. What is our pathway to the future on this. And what adjustments do we provide for households and for businesses on the way through. And this, again, is a high priority, a high policy reform priority for the Government in the period ahead.
JOURNALIST: Emma Macdonald from The Canberra Times. Mr Rudd, how is it an education revolution when you're following Coalition policies to threaten the states' and territories' education funding unless they introduce performance pay, principal autonomy, school comparisons, not to mention the fact that you're following the Coalition policy to dock welfare payments to truanting families?
I mean, it's hardly original, let alone revolutionary. And if they were such great ideas at the time, why did Labor at every level oppose it?
PM: Well what would be revolutionary for someone to actually do this, as opposed to just talk about it. You know, I've mentioned before in passing, how many reports did the previous Government deliver on all this sort of stuff over the last decade plus. I mean, there's enough to weigh down the lower archives of the National Library. But in fact doing something is quite a different challenge, and I just think we as a National Government have got a responsibility to act. I can't guarantee 100 per cent success on this score, but we intend to have a damned good go at it, let me tell you.
And the other question that you implied, or part of the question which you put forward, was how is it an education revolution to impose hard line disciplines on school systems. Well, if the alternative is elevated hand holding with state and territories and systems and to say that's kind of the way through, as opposed to being tough and hard headed about benchmarks for performance in the future, let me tell you the road that we'll take is the second one.
And why do we take it? Because kids out there going to average schools deserve every opportunity that kids at flash schools have. And this is the way through.