HOST: Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister, good morning to you, sir.
PM: Good morning. Thanks for having me on the program.
HOST: Thank you for coming on the program. Prime Minister, you are going to Flinders Medical Centre today?
PM: That's right, and just to add to what you said in your introduction, what we sought to do yesterday at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney was actually to listen, and we sat there and listened to the observations of 100 or so medical practitioners about the implications of the report, that is, on the future reform of the health and hospital system and how it would impact the delivery of services of that major hospital in Sydney.
We're doing the same here in Adelaide today because there's no point proceeding with long-term, fundamental reform to the system unless you hear directly from those who are at the coal face.
HOST: You promised during the election campaign that if the states hadn't signed up to a reform plan by the middle of this year, and that's now, you would have either a referendum or a plebiscite to seek the approval of the people to take over the nation's 750 hospitals. Your time is up. What are you going to do about that?
PM: Well, prior to the election we said that we'd set up this National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. It's now worked for 16 months, and this is the biggest set of proposed reforms to the health and hospital system, which is under stress throughout the country, since Medicare, the introduction of Medicare.
We think the right way to go is now to put this out there to the Australian community for a national debate. It's very important for the long term. Millions of Australians depend on this system each year. We're determined to get the decisions right.
Also, reform is very expensive, and that's one of the reasons why the Health Minister and I are working our way around the country, speaking to those at the front line of about 24 or 25 major public teaching hospitals right across the country, together with others. Then, then-
HOST: But you set the deadline, didn't you, during the election campaign? This was a popular message to send out there, of '09, the middle of '09. Is that now abandoned, along with the GroceryWatch deadline and action on petrol prices?
PM: What we said was we would then put a proposal to the states and territories with a view to have them cooperatively to come on board with a national reform program for the health and hospital system. My preference has always been to do that cooperatively. We also said that if the states, however, rejected that, that we would reserve the option of taking that to the Australian people by way of plebiscite or referendum. We said that, and that is precisely what we intend to do.
When we convene the Council of Australian Governments in December this year, we will convene it explicitly to discuss health and hospital reform, then at the COAG meeting of early next year we will then obtain the response from the states and territories about whether they would support or reject the proposals we put forward.
If they reject, then consistent with what we said prior to the election, we then take it to the people.
HOST: Do you concede there's been some slippage in the timetable that you announced before the election?
PM: Well, it's a very complex and difficult area of reform. It's really hard. We've received this report from the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission three weeks ago. We've now put it out three weeks later for the public to comment on, and for your listeners who are interested in providing their responses to it, it can be had on www.yourhealth.gov.au.
We want to make sure that we do this calmly, methodically, comprehensively, because this is a very large set of reforms, and, taken in part or in whole, with significant implications for the future and for the cost to the system.
It will take time. I concede that, I understand that, but we're determined to get this right for the future.
HOST: Prime Minister, in your 6,000 word essay published in The Age - give or take a few words - I think the message is we've had a soft recession or no recession at all.
PM: Gee I hope you read it all.
HOST: I have. I thought you'd be proud of it.
PM: I asked that to a journalist the other day and they said after my third inquiry that they'd read a précis, so I thought that was good.
HOST: No, no, I downloaded the full thing, courtesy of the internet.
PM: You need to get a life a little.
HOST: You're not the first person to say that. But Prime Minister, I think, in a nutshell, we've had a soft recession, we're going to have a hard recovery. Why will the recovery be hard if we've almost avoided a technical recession?
PM: It's going to be tough, and I also note carefully the statements made by the Governor of the Reserve Bank yesterday because we're going to still face increasing unemployment because employment is what the economists describe as a lagging indicator. That is, even when sentiment ticks up in the economy, you still have the flow-through consequences of employment, or unemployment, some time later.
Secondly, also as I've indicated in the essay that you referred to, there will obviously be changes in interest rates policy in the future as well, so therefore there will be real challenges and stresses for the future.
And the last thing is this - is that the challenge of responsible, conservative economic management is this: to expand the role of government when the private economy is in retreat, which is what happened with the global financial crisis of the last quarter of last year, but equally, to return the Budget to surplus as the private economy recovers.
What does that mean? It means that in the future we'll be looking at pretty hard-line budget disciplines, which means some unpopular budget cuts, so therefore you ask the question 'why is going to be a tough recovery?' It's putting those things together for the future.
HOST: Having encouraged more young people into the housing market with generous first home owners grants, are you now worried those people are going to be hit with higher interest rates?
PM: Everyone, obviously, has to make their own decisions about whether they buy a house and for how much and where, and we deliberately, in consultation with the housing industry, trebled the first home owner's boost to enable more young people to get access, in particular, to their first home.
Secondly, you're right to point out that there will be pressures in the future because, inevitably in the future there will be changes in interest rates policy. We accept that fact.
But you know, the challenge is a difficult balancing act - how do you provide support and stimulus to the economy when right around the world we have faced worldwide the biggest single assault on global economic growth in three-quarters of a century, and a near implosion of the global financial system, so how do you stimulate the economy to avoid that complete implosion here, and then how do you begin to adjust policies into the future as the private economy recovers. It's a very difficult balancing act, I accept that, but that's what we are seeking to do, and as you referred earlier to that essay I wrote over the weekend, at some considerable length, I tried to explain how.
HOST: And this is going to happen just as unemployment start to rise and, as you say, you'll be looking to cut money from your budget. You haven't got any more money to send out by way of cheques. That's why the recovery could end up being tougher than the recession.
PM: Well, it will be a tough recovery for a number of reasons, as I said, unemployment continuing to rise for some time, that's just what the lessons of economic history tells us, and that's why we still have stimulus projects out there, for example, being unfolded in every primary school in South Australia at present, and language and science centres in a large number of secondary schools - projects like that across the country to make a difference now, also that we can look back on in a year or two's time as then adding to the overall educational opportunities that our kids have for the future.
But let's put it all into some context as well - across the major advanced economies of the world, where have we landed as a result of Australian economic policy? Our government economic policy, along with the support of the private sector, we have currently the fastest economic growth of the major advanced economies, the second lowest unemployment, the lowest debt, the lowest deficit, and we're the only ones at this stage not to have gone into technical recession.
So it's a very hard balancing act but we are doing better than most economies.
HOST: I know you must go shortly, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Labor Party State Conference and the question of gay marriage - Ian Hunter, former State Secretary of the Labor Party, very respected MP in our Parliament, is gay, and he has publicly asked the Labor Party and you as Prime Minister to allow him, and other gay people to marry their partners, to have their partners fully recognised as a man and a woman would be. Yet you have ruled that out, is that right, and if so, why so?
PM: Well, Ian Hunter is a fantastic bloke, I actually know him, and I fully respect his relationships, as I'm sure would everyone in this community. We went to the last election being very clear-cut about our position on marriage, under the Marriage Act, being between a man and a woman. We've also said that in terms of all legal discriminations against same-sex partners, that we would act to remove them, and the Attorney-General has been hard at work, and from recollection, repealing some 90 or 100 pieces of federal legislation, I should say amending 90 or 100 pieces of federal legislation, to make sure that those discriminations are removed.
HOST: Prime Minister, that's restating the policy. The question is, why?
PM: Well, as I said, we are consistent with the policy we took to the last election.
HOST: Yes, but why have that policy? Why say to two men in a committed, long-term relationship, 'you cannot be married'.
PM: Well, we have said from the beginning, that our attitude to marriage as prescribed under the Marriage Act, between a man and a woman. I fully respect the integrity of other same-sex relationships, and I have complete respect for Ian Hunter, to whom you've just referred, but in terms of the policy, it's a matter to which we have been committed for some time. I fully accept it's a matter of controversy, and there'll be debate, and there should be. This is an open society where we can debate and discuss these matters. We've simply reflected our view, and my view, as to what the proper arrangements are under the Marriage Act, but in terms of other discriminations, we have acted rapidly to remove those under various items of federal legislation, and I think the Attorney-General has done a great job of doing so.
HOST: Prime Minister thanks for talking to us here on 891 Mornings.
PM: Thanks for having me on the program.
(ends)