PM Transcripts

FAINE: Kevin Rudd, good morning.PM: Good morning Jon.FAINE: What was on at the MCG?PM: We were launching with the AFL Players' Association a campaign called 'Just Think'. Essentially, it's about how we deal with the problem of alcohol-fuelled violence. Not just on the streets of Melbourne but more broadly across the country as well. This'll be a television advertising campaign and featuring some of the most famous AFL team Captains, and it's all about causing young people in particular, not to say to them 'don't drink', but to cause them to 'just think', about where do you draw the line?No one is out there being, you know, the complete wowser from central casting saying you shouldn't have a drink with your friends, go out and have a party, but causing people to conclude when you draw the line because the data on violence on the streets is alarming, and this has to be part, just part, of the response.FAINE: Do you think we've got a morals crisis, or some sort of values crisis in Australia?PM: Look, I think that if you sit back from it all, what's actually happening underneath these problems that we've just been talking about, I don't think anyone's got the definitive answer here, but look, you've got huge changes in family structures, you're seeing relationship breakdowns within families over a long period of time, you're seeing the fact that young people are now spending, according to the data, more time with their friends than their families.They're spending more time online with their friends, and often then with their families. What's happening out there? Big question mark. I don't think it's a sort of neat, yes or no in terms of old values, new values, but I think we are in a period of social transition, and the young people of Australia, the under 25s, are very much in the vanguard of this, and I think, as a nation, we've got to do better to support them. Which is why Kate Ellis and I, the Youth Minister, and the Health Minister Nicola Roxon, are working our way through a new youth strategy for Australia as part of our response to the National Health Reform agenda as well.FAINE: But is there some spiritual vacuum? We've got everything, we've got all the gadgets. But people seem to be yearning for something that those gadgets don't provide them.PM: I think every person is a better person if they are engaged in a belief and a set of actions which is bigger than themselves. Whether you choose to put a religious definition around that or not is a separate matter. Therefore I think one of the constructive things, positive things, happening in many schools here in Melbourne and in Sydney as well, is where you've got community organisations encouraging our young people to get right in behind big, long-term projects.There is for example an NGO program called, I think, High Resolutions, run by a bunch of Sydney and Melbourne philanthropists, now involving thousands of school kids, whereby- I don't know quite how you measure the High School System here- but year eight, in a kids' education, through to year 12, they'll actually take on as a group of students a big project, whether it's something international, something domestic, an indigenous community, and they'll work with it over a period of time. What's that about? Not just encouraging teamwork and those sorts of things, but also to believe that causing the construction of a value which says 'I am a better and more fulfilled human being, if I'm engaged in an external project which is about the betterment of other people's lives'.FAINE: Can we talk about the economy? The warnings this morning are that the stimulus package that you've initiated, that has left Australia unlike any other country in the world, avoiding a recession, could in fact be triggering a rise of a round of inflation and a rise in interest rates? In fact there are rumours circulating that interest rate rises could be coming sooner, rather than later. Have you gone too far?PM: This global economic recession has been described around the world, legitimately, as the most serious economic crisis in the last three quarters of a century. Remember that in 2009 still, we're projected to have for the first time since the War the global economy contracting, not growing. And that's part of the challenge we've had here. What have we done about it? Our Government stimulus strategy, through Nation Building for Recovery, is to cushion the blow. You're right to say that as a result of that, through our cash payments to families, the 70 per cent of our stimulus which now goes into medium and long-term infrastructure, it's having an effect.FAINE: Did you overshoot? Have you over-reached?PM: No, I was about to go on to that very point, is that we are by no means out of the woods yet. There's so much that can still go wrong in the global economy that can actually reverberate back. Our Treasury advisors, the international advisors through the IMF and elsewhere, are saying that Governments should continue to implement the stimulus strategies to which they have committed. It's not just us, by the way. What we did at that London meeting of the G20 in March/April was as a group of the 20 largest economies in the world, commit to some $5 trillion worth of global stimulus, in a $63 trillion global economy. Everything's related to everything else.But the other thing I'd say about our stimulus is this - it's been targeted to be temporary, and so that, what you do have is our stimulus peaking in the current financial year and then coming off and coming off again. It's entirely designed to step up to the plate while the private sector has been in retreat, and to pull it back. That's the way it's been designed.FAINE: Does it need to be more nimble, though, in its operations? For instance, your industrial relations changes, the Industrial Relations Commission is saying, some people will be worse off. Employers will be worse off, or employees may be worse off, but either way you can't possibly have a system where everybody is better off.PM: Well, just on the question of being nimble, on the impact of the global economy, I sometimes think people don't know how close we all got to the abyss last September and October. This was dire straits time. You had financial institutions falling over like nine pins around the world, the rest of the global economy plummeting into recession, huge unemployment. Our job was to step in, nimbly, effectively, to say we need to cushion the impact here, because we didn't want to throw, unnecessarily, hundreds of thousands of other Australians out of work.When it goes through to your question for example, about the ability of people to fund mortgages, if you lose your job, let me tell you, that is a really fundamental impact.On the question of IR, industrial relations-FAINE: Award modernisation, how can you say no one will be worse off?PM: Well what we've said all along is that our objective is to ensure that with award modernisation, which is a necessary part of the reform of a pretty antiquated industrial relations system, that we would have as our objective, that for employers and for employees, a system whereby we could ensure that the additional costs, the additional burdens, could be handled over time. I mean, we were very clear about, very clear about the objectives.The objectives have been reflected also in what was said in the Industrial Relations Commission determination most recently. It is said that on the implementation of the proposed changes to the Awards, where we bring something like 4,000 Awards to a much smaller number, that that is done over a five year period, a staged implementation. If there are transition interventions which are necessary, if for example there are extra burdens placed on particular categories of workers, that those transition arrangements can kick in, and furthermore -FAINE: So no one will go backwards?PM: Our stated objective. Clearly stated, our stated objective is that we would work to ensure that employers and employees are not disadvantaged under the system.FAINE: How do you then implement that stated objective to make sure no one's worse off?PM: Well that's where I was going in my answer to you before, three ways. One is, to stage the implementation of the change and that's what the AIRC has taken up yesterday. It's a five year transition period. The second is, if you do have a problem with individual categories of workers, that transitional payments can also, or transitional adjustments can also be made to offset those difficulties in adjustment. And thirdly, Fair Work Australia has a further capacity, flexibly to review even those transition arrangements if we run into a problem.Three ways of implementing, all outlined there in the underpinning Government legislation, reflected in what the AIRC ran on with, was articulating most recently, and consistent with the Government's stated objective.FAINE: So if anyone says, under your proposals I would be worse off, you are saying, you can fix that, and here's how we'll fix it. Do you guarantee to fix it?PM: Jon, that's about the third or fourth time you've asked this question. I'm saying our objective, as we have always stated, is for employers and employees, is for there to be no disadvantage. The implementation of that lies through the three measures I've just outlined. We are talking about 20 per cent, probably of the Australian workforce, involving some of the lowest paid categories of employment in Australia, and it's going to be a long and complicated process. But there are the three arms of policy to make sure that people are properly supported through this, and similarly with businesses as well, because they are recovering from some of the impacts we just talked about before, through the global economic recession.FAINE: How do you stop the scandals enveloping the New South Wales ALP?PM: Well, there have been some problems of late. I think that's fair to say.FAINE: That is an understatement, Prime Minister.PM: There have been some problems of late. I think that's fair to say and people will make their judgements about my Government and other governments come election time.FAINE: Are you going to have their problems visited upon you at the next election?PM: You know something Jon, I'm pretty relaxed about people making a judgement about whether the Government which I lead has done a good job or a half-reasonable job or where we might have succeeded or failed. I think the Australian public make their judgements on the merits.The thing I'd say in that context though, is I notice with the upcoming Bradfield by-election that Mr Turnbull's saying today that we've got this upcoming federal by-election, it's a seat which the Liberal Party has held for 60 years, and his great statement of confidence in the Federal Liberal's prospects at present is to say 'register a protest vote against state Labor'.Well, if you don't have any national polices on the economy, on employment, on climate change, on health, on education, I suppose that's all Mr Turnbull is left with.FAINE: Does the John Della Bosca marital infidelity scandal cost you support with women voters in New South Wales at the next federal election? Is that what your strategists are concerned about?PM: You know something Jon, I don't get into the business of political analysis and commentary. My job is to go out there and take the best decisions I can for the country, for the economy, for the health system, for the education system. People will make their own judgements about us, about whether they think we're doing a good job, a bad job or an indifferent job.All these other factors will come through in the wash in one form or another. But my job is to be accountable for those undertakings I've made to the Australian people.FAINE: I'd like to get a couple of callers to air before we get to the news. Seven minutes to eleven, Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, taking your calls: 1300-222-774.Just before we take one more caller, you've made promises about homelessness, standards of living in remote Indigenous communities, school rebuilds, emissions trading, climate change -PM: ABC funding.FAINE: ABC funding. It's harder to do in office than it always seems and the risk is that you in fact over promise you head towards another election.PM: Look, can I just answer that in two respects - our commitments to the Australian people prior to the last election, and you've run through a few, we believe have to be implemented. We issued, a month or two ago a mid-term report on what progress we have made and the areas that we've still got to act, whether it's on climate change, whether it's in education, whether it's in health and we take each of those commitments seriously.Secondly, we've also had to deal with this (inaudible) called the global economic crisis, which, frankly, has been huge for us all.Thirdly, you point to the future. Our responsibility is also to ensure the continuation of conservative financial management into the future which means implementing the budget strategy outlined in the budget to return the budget to surplus. That means that we'll be taking a very, very keen eye to anything on the expenditure side in the future.FAINE: Graham from Frankston has a question for Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister. Good morning to you, Graham.CALLER: Good morning, Jon. Good morning, Prime Minister.PM: Good morning, Graham from Frankston.CALLER: Do you think we've brought a lot of this violence on ourselves with you know, the licensing laws now encouraging people to go and drink until four o'clock in the morning. I know it's not directly your responsibility, but when you get all the premiers in Canberra, could you encourage them to say well, let's cut it back till a reasonable midnight hour and probably cut out Sundays.PM: You know Jon I think there's a whole lot of factors at work here. Licensing laws is one of them. And I think what we need is a better national approach. I'm certainly up for the possibility of discussing with the premiers and the chief ministers how this can be done better. It is complex, it differs from state to state, and often the implementation's a little different from city to city as well. But here in Melbourne I know there are real challenges. We need to work through those, but there are other parts to the violence equation as well which we've been referring to earlier in our conversation today as well.FAINE: Do you see any reason why there should be liquor for sale 'til all hours of the morning? Five, six, seven in the morning?PM: You know something, you want my personal view on that Jon, is I think we need to be drawing a harder line with that. Look, I'm no wowser. I think people should be able to go out and have a party and have a drink and have some good times with their friends. We've got to draw a line somewhere. When you're dealing with, you know, youth organisations like I've just been talking with again this morning like Step Back, Think. And dealing with young people who are knocked over, knocked out and reduced to a wheelchair on their 20th birthday, as a society we've actually got to take a death breath and say 'what's going wrong here? What can we do to fix it?', and I think licensing laws is one part of it. I don't have a prescription in terms of when and where, but I believe it's a national discussion we need to have across all the premiers.FAINE: It brings out your inner wowser, in fact, when you talk to people like that, I've found. It something that makes you think maybe wowserism was a better alternative.PM: Well, you know, wowserism - and probably people under 25 don't even what the word means, you and I, being slightly over 25, perhaps do - would say, you know, 'don't drink at all', but, for example, what we've just been doing with the AFL Players Association today very explicitly saying 'we're not saying don't drink. What we're saying is, just think', and that actually is quite important in people setting up mental, shall I say, limit in your mind when you're going out for some drinks with friends about when you stop.FAINE: Ron in Box Hill - morning, Ron.CALLER: Hi, how are you? I think the violence in the city is caused by the schools being incompetent and training our youth in civil behaviour. They should be going to school to be educated in civil behaviour, but they're not. But the issue I'm ringing up about is 200,000 homeless. We've got 200,000 homeless in Australia, and Kevin Rudd is wasting $30 billion on a broadband thing we don't need, on pink bats and building halls we don't need. We should be balancing the budget, cancelling the pink bats, computers in schools, broadband and the schools program and build 500,000 houses to accommodate the homeless and we immediately stop immigration.FAINE: And stop immigration as well, while we're at it. All right, Ron, thank you, there's a lot there for the Prime Minister.PM: Firstly, the Government makes no apology whatsoever having acted strongly, early and decisively to combat the global economic recession.FAINE: Broadband - waste of money?PM: We have a conspicuous market failure with high-speed broadband in this country for 12 years, where the previous government sat on its hands and did nothing on infrastructure. This rollout will be necessary to turbo-charge the next level of productivity growth in the Australian economy. We're proud of it, and we're going to get on with it.FAINE: Stop immigration?PM: You know something, I thought we had a bit of bipartisan consensus on this going back to, let me say World War Two, that this country, a nation of immigrants, will continue to be a nation of immigrants into the future.FAINE: Prime Minister, if some of the major banks put up interest rates in the next week, are they jumping the gun?PM: Well, we've said to the banks repeatedly that they need to be very, very, very mindful of not stepping outside the framework of official interest rates.FAINE: The Reserve Bank doesn't meet for another month.PM: That's true.FAINE: So if rates go up before then?PM: I've also been very mindful of the banks' recent profitability levels, very, very mindful of how that's been registered. I'm very mindful of the fact that the banks have been aided by the guarantees that the Government has provided in terms of their wholesale funding deposits, as well as to their depositors.I would be very, very cautious about this if I were the banks. Ultimately, it's a market system. But you know something? Key to making sure that we're doing the right thing by people who are using banks is to do whatever we can to support employment, hence the Nation Building for Recovery Plan.FAINE: Thank you for your time today.