BYNER: Let's welcome the Prime Minister. Kevin, a belated happy Australia Day to you.
PM: A belated happy Australia Day to you and all of you listeners. It was good to be in Adelaide recently for Australia Day (inaudible).
BYNER: Yeah, now a couple of things that are pretty important. First of all there is an initiative by shopping centres and their managements to ban political campaigns during and before elections. What do you think about that? Is that going to cramp your style?
PM: Oh look Leon I actually think it's a question for individual shopping centre managers and if they decide they want different political parties through, that's fine. If they decide they don't, well, that's fine. My understanding of the past is that you don't front at any of these venues unless you've got prior approval and I think, though I stand to be corrected, that's always been our practice in times past. So, really a matter for the folk who own the centres.
BYNER: What of - yeah.
PM: The key thing though I reckon, is just to make sure those of us in Canberra get outside the Canberra bubble. That's one of the reasons I was around Australia to every State capital in the lead up to Australia Day. It was to talk to heads of community organisations right around the country. That's why we do community cabinets. We did one very recently in Adelaide. Where you've literally got, 400, 500, 600 people who come from the general community, talk to the Cabinet for hours on end. Otherwise you do end up in a bubble, (inaudible) sealed, otherwise called the Australian Capital Territory.
BYNER: Ok, so if you're people, let's say organise something for you in a shopping centre for you in Adelaide and they pre-warned them and they were told, look sorry we don't want this. You wouldn't at all be fussed by any of that?
PM: Not at all, matter for them.
BYNER: Ok.
PM: I've been to, I think, a few centres down there. I remember being at the Marion centre at some stage and a few others likes that. Look, free country they've got their own responsibilities to their shop owners. But our job as elected members of the parliament, Labor and Liberal is to communicate with the voting public, make sure they know what our plans are, make sure they know what our achievements are and make sure that we're engaging on the practical stuff that they're concerned about in their communities like jobs and the rest. And how that's done, where you meet people, in the streets in coffee shops, in shopping centres or in Community Cabinets, like the 21 we've held now right across the country, really, it's horse for courses mate.
BYNER: Prime Minister it looks as if interest rates could go up by another half a per cent, certainly in the very near future. Recently Wayne Sawn was very critical of financial institutions, banks particularly, of not only passing on interest rates increases but in fact adding to them, arguing that their borrowings were more expensive. And yet we are told, there have been news off the wire that we are considering giving banks tax breaks. Why would we do that?
PM: Well, firstly the news off the wire that you speak of, I am unaware of. Secondly the Treasurer has been absolutely right in putting a shot right across the bowers of the banks in terms of taking these unnecessary gouges in terms of putting up interest rates in excess of any official change. I think the other thing to say about rates though is just this: rates, interest rates were brought to record lows in the global economic crisis of last year and as a result of that, together with the national economic stimulus strategy that we put together as a Government, we were able to keep our economy going.
Remember, Australia was the only advanced economy in 2009, major advanced economy in 2009, not to go into recession. We were the only advanced economy to have grown in 2008/09, the second lowest unemployment. And that is off the back of strong action by ourselves through our national economic stimulus strategy, the school modernisation plan, and through the bank, for bringing down interest rates as radically and as quickly as they did. But obviously, there is going to be upward adjustments in -
BYNER: So are you ruling out any more tax incentives for banks?
PM: What we have done recently is have an independent review of taxation done over the last 12 months or so. That was handed to the Treasurer I think at the end of last year or very early this year. I haven't been through it yet, but let me tell you something, I am sure that there's a whole bunch of stuff in there which the Government might embrace and there is a whole bunch of stuff in there which the Government wouldn't touch with a barge pole.
We haven't been through it yet but I am unaware of any particular plans of the type that you have just described.
BYNER: Inflation figures, half a per cent to the three months to December, annual inflation rate at 2.1, still high?
PM: Well we've always got to keep a weather eye on these challenges, always got to keep a weather eye on the challenges of unemployment as well. As you know, national economic leadership is often getting the balance right. What we managed to do in the course of the last year through the combined actions of the Government and the Reserve Bank, through a policy of stimulus was to prevent hundreds of thousands of Australians from losing their jobs.
We supported the creation of 12,000 jobs in the Australian economy at a time when jobs were literally being culled by the million in so many economies around the world. That is one half of the equation, the other half of course is keeping a very careful weather eye on inflation and making sure that our economic policy is balanced.
BYNER: Can I just ask you one more question, mad cow disease, I am very concerned as are many Australians across this nation, that we as a nation are considering allowing meat in from countries that have had mad cow disease. What is your stand on this?
PM: Our stance is very clear, and that is that we will take the advice of the Australian quarantine authorities and those experts who examine this worldwide. We understand the seriousness of this disease, we understand it needs to be taken and dealt with effectively, at our borders with effective quarantine controls. Obviously, we however will not be simply making things up as you go along, you take the best and most considered advice as to how to deal with mad cow disease, as do other countries around the world.
BYNER: Well we have a clean green image, you wouldn't want to do anything to compromise that would you Prime Minister, surely?
PM: Absolutely not, absolutely not, which is why you look long and hard at the scientific advice which comes in to you, to make sure that it is absolutely right and it has been properly considered and you act on it. And we take a very conservative approach to these things.
BYNER: Alright Kevin, thank you for joining us.