Brisbane
HOST: Prime Minister good morning.
PM: Good morning-
HOST: My turn to ask.
PM: The tables have turned, I'm a little bit worried now.
HOST: Don't be too worried, I'm sure if, you know what I mean, to become Prime Minister you've got to know how to handle all these questions, but a lot of people listening to this program frankly don't like you, and don't like your Government, so what are you going to do about it?
PM: Well keep working and keep working hard and providing good government. I think people will ultimately judge the Government on what they see in their own lives, what is changing in health services, what's changing in their local schools, how we're managing the economy and giving people the benefits and dignity of work.
I'm pretty proud that we've created 650,000 jobs since 2007, hasn't been easy during the global financial crisis, now we've got to manage the challenges of growth and we are poised to do that, making sure we balance up growth around the nation, cutting company tax, increasing super for working people - good for national savings as well - as of course providing the infrastructure we need, including the National Broadband Network, which will be so important to our future prosperity.
HOST: The day you became Prime Minister, you're first press conference, I sang your praises immediately afterwards, I was doing this program, because I thought your first speech was really good, but what's changed since? You had a lot of ambitions and passion on that day, it's just not coming across right now.
PM: I have every ambition and passion that I had on that day today still, and I'm pursuing them. You' have the ambition, you have the vision, you know what you want to change about the country, then you've got to set about doing it piece by piece, day by day, methodically. You don't make big changes overnight, you've got to work for them, I think people know that in their ordinary lives, the same is true for this country.
So I've got a vision for the future of the country, I want to see us having a strong economy - that's the foundation stone - I want to see us offering opportunities to Australians right around this nation, that means we've got to be getting education right, every child, every school, it means we've got to be getting our health services right, and it also means we've got to tackle the challenges of the future: climate change, delivering the NBN, and we're getting about all of those things.
HOST: Well I've got to ask about a couple of those things, but I guess, do you think it's harder to be Prime Minister than to actually get the job?
PM: It's a hard job and it should be a hard job, you're leading a nation and that takes work, it obviously means there's pressure on your shoulders, there's weight on your shoulders, I accept that, and I stepped up to this position because I believed I could make a difference for the nation. What brought me into politics was a passion for change, particularly a passion for change in education, making sure even the most disadvantaged kid got a great education, now I'm working on that front and a lot wider than that making sure that there's fairness and opportunity in our great country.
HOST: Well you're setting a big agenda and I guess you've got to deliver on it otherwise people will judge you badly. George Megalogenis, who I think is one of the better writers in Australia media, is his Quarterly Essay he's lamented the lack of passion, the philosophical underpinning on both sides of the Parliament, you know, who's the real Julia and what's, this is the big question?
PM: Well the woman sitting in front of you and talking to your listeners now, I'm also a big fan of 'Mega' as we call him, you've got to shorten everybody's name don't you, so Megalogenis becomes 'Mega'. I'm a big fan of Mega but I think that there is passion and difference in Australian politics. I believe very different things from Tony Abbott, now if here were sitting here with me we'd get on and have a perfectly amicable conversation-
HOST: As we should-
PM: As we should, but we believe in different things.
HOST: But there's the personalities that aren't, there's not enough colour and movement and sort of out there moments in politics.
PM: I think in Parliament over the last two weeks there's been some colour and there's been some movement, definitely some colour and movement, but question time colour and movement is one thing, you know, 24 hours later everybody's forgotten about it, but what happened in Parliament over the last fortnight will change the nation for the next 20-30 years, because we delivered the legislation to change the way we do telecommunications.
It's technical, it's called the structural separation of Telstra, but it basically means we're laying the way for the National Broadband Network, we're laying the way for more competition, lower prices, better services, more innovation in our telecommunications.
HOST: Now I don't want to lower the tone completely but this bloke Mark Latham won't go away, he says you're a dud and you can't win, you must love him really?
PM: Well Mark Latham writes for one of our newspapers, I must admit I don't normally get round to reading the column and I didn't get round to reading it this morning.
HOST: Ok so Mark Latham no answer, that's the simplest way from your point of view?
PM: Well, you know, Mark Latham has been involved as a personality I suppose is the best word one could use for it, he was involved as a personality during the election campaign, and he continues to be a commentator. I'll let him do that, I'll just get on with the job of making a difference for Australians.
HOST: Alright that's all you really can do from your position I'm sure. Now the GFC, normally when there's a crash, the crash kind of sorts out the debris at the bottom end of the economy, the things that, people that aren't working the business that are on the edge and are going to fail generally get sorted out. But when you put a lot of Government intervention into the market place, they've been propped up, jobs have been saved sure, but a lot of businesses that maybe should have been sorted out by the GFC haven't been, some are saying today there's going to be a correction to that maybe next year. Do you see that on the horizon and what are you going to do about it?
PM: The nature of our market economy, competition, competition does sort people out, so if you're in any business whether it's having a corner store or a dress shop or a restaurant or any business, competition will sort you out if you're not offering good service to your customers, then the doors close.
HOST: And the savage corrections normally throw people on the edge out of the market, it's tough, it's cruel, it's horrible, it's a momentary hurt, and then you rebuild. The great schism hasn't really occurred in Australia.
PM: But we've got to remember the genesis of the global financial crisis wasn't a lack of competition or good businesses in this country, it was a contagion that came into worldwide global markets, not because of anything we'd done wrong or Australians had done wrong, but because of problems starting with the sub-prime mortgage issue in the United States and so on. Now that did put pressure on Australian businesses, it was the right thing to do to invest in Australian jobs and we did, we came through, we came through strong, now we've got to harness the opportunity that coming through strong gives us to grow for the future.
HOST: And if you've just tuned in you are listening to the Prime Minister. Everyone knows your voice I think now, how tough do you think it is for people right now in Australia, cost of living going up, prices of fuel, prices of electricity, all these things that we've heard promises about in the past. Right now the delivery is hurting a lot of people.
PM: There's pressure on, there's no doubt about that, there is cost of living pressure on Australian families so we're in an economy that is moving into growth, we came through the global financial crisis well, that's good, there are jobs, people have got jobs, at the end of the day cost of living, you've got to have that job, you've got to have that pay packet. But even with that pay packet, people are really feeling the pressure. Utility prices going up-
HOST: Pensioners have got some problems theres-
PM: Yeah pensioners problems, but we did deliver a record increase in the pension and we have sought to partner with Australian families to held them with cost of living pressures, cutting tax three years in a row, creating our education tax rebate, help with the cost of getting kids to school and that'll be important as the kids go back to school next year.
Increasing our childcare tax rebate, so we're 50/50 sharing the out of pocket costs of childcare. We've got more to do, we do have the paid parental leave scheme coming on stream from the 1st of January next year, that's really groundbreaking for this country-
HOST: Bit undersubscribed so far, Jenny Macklin put out a call for more Queensland families to subscribe to it.
PM: Well we want people to register early, she's saying well you can wait-
HOST: Hold off having a baby til the 1st of January is the first thing I think.
PM: No, no, have the baby when the baby should come, but if you want to do the paperwork in advance rather than at the same time the baby's coming, then you can register early and that's why she's put the call out. And we will have some other measures for cost of living, particularly helping families with teenagers. We've got this odd thing in the family tax benefit system at the moment where it kind of assumes that 16 year old kids are going off into the workforce, that doesn't happen today, they stay at school, they rely on mum and dad, we want them to do that, so we're going to change the family tax benefit to give a bit of an extra helping hand for families with teenagers.
HOST: Alright now carbon price, you said before the election it's not going to happen now it is, what's going to be the costs on our electricity bills?
PM: We're going to work through the question of carbon pricing and I know power prices, electricity bills, are putting pressure on people, but the issue is this and it takes a little bit of explanation. But we are seeing underinvestment in electricity generation because there's uncertainty in the market about what's happening with carbon pricing, and if we under invest in making electricity, prices go up and you risk blackouts at peak periods, and there are times of the year we use a lot of power. So we can have all of that continue to happen, uncertainty, underinvestment, rising prices, risks of blackouts, or we can get on with the job we need to do which is pricing carbon. I'm for getting on with the job.
HOST: Well I guess yeah, the current problem we've got with electricity generation is because for 20 years there's been an underinvestment and the current crop of electricity purchasers are paying for the catch-up -
PM: That's true.
HOST: There is this big debate that's been signalled the last couple of days, and bright blokes like Mark Bishop, one of your Senators from Western Australia making the point about nuclear power, you would have to at least welcome the discussion, it's an important one and I noticed Mark Bishop sort of said who didn't enjoy an anti-nuke rally in past years, but now we've got to seriously talk about this and at the same time you've got this discussion about gay marriage, so what's the most important thing for Labor, nuclear power or gay marriage?
PM: The most important thing is governing and governing well-
HOST: So you avoid the question?
PM: No I'm going to answer the question, but the most important thing's governing and governing well, but as a political party we're going to be doing two things at the same time. We're a party of government, and we'll be providing good and stable government in the interests of Australian families - jobs, health, education - the things that matter to Australians. At the same time, we're a party of ideas, people come and join the Labor Party because they're passionate about something, they want to have their say.
HOST: You don't mind the stoush?
PM: Look we've got a mechanism for those passionate people to come and have their say, it's our national conference, and I expect at our national conference people'll come and have their say about a huge range of issues. There'll be people who will say I come from this part of the country and it's the most important thing for us is a particular issue, so look there'll be a huge range of issues discussed. That's democracy, that's health, that's ideas, that'll be happening but I will be leading the Government getting on with governing.
HOST: Is it down to just simply what the Greens think on what the outcome will become?
PM: We are a political party, the Labor Party, with more than a hundred years of history. We have our own values, our own ethos, our own ways of working, we had them 50 years ago, we will have them 50 years into the future. We've got our own beliefs, the Greens are their own political party, they have different beliefs from us.
Now that doesn't mean that there aren't some things you can come together and agree on, indeed there are things we come together and agree on with the Liberal Party, they've got an entirely different belief system from us.
But we are Labor, we've got our own beliefs.
HOST: You probably find more common ground with the Liberal Party on some things for a lot of the Labor Party, than you do with the Greens though?
PM: I think there's a lot of, you would remember from your days in the Federal Parliament, if you actually step back, there's a lot of things that everybody in the Parliament agrees on, they tend to be the things that don't get the headlines because everybody's agreed and then there's a lot of things that the Government and the Opposition agree on, and work together on. We'll see that in this Parliament, I hope, if Tony Abbott doesn't stay on his current course of trying to wreck everything. There will be some things that we're able to work productively with the Greens on, and I believe carbon pricing is one of those things.
HOST: So you're in control, not the Greens?
PM: Definitely, I'm in control, of course, I'm the Prime Minister.
HOST: You're Prime Minister, you're running the place, Bob Brown's not in the study at the Lodge all the time, telling you what's going on?
PM: No Bob Brown is not in the study at the Lodge all the time, I meet regularly with Senator Brown, I meet with the Independents in the House of Representatives, I meet with my Ministers, I meet with my backbench and importantly I meet with Australians out and about, pursuing their own lives with their own interests and I'll be meeting with a large number of them here in Queensland today and Clontarf State High School for a community cabinet meeting in the federal electorate of Petrie.
HOST: Good well that will be good for them and I think it'll be good for you as well. Wikileaks, what should we be worried about, you'd have had the briefing by now, what are they telling you we should be waiting for?
PM: Look I have been receiving briefings and we have a whole process to go through all of this information, I mean, millions of pieces of information and asses the implications for us. So we'll work through that and I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the Wikileaks website, it's a grossly irresponsible thing to do, and an illegal thing to do.
HOST: It's going to be interesting to see where that ultimately goes and Queensland's claiming Mr Assange and his mother's a little bit terrified and disappointed and worried about him, Australia I guess will have some say when people catch up to him as to what happens to him I would hope we'd have some say.
PM: You can always understand a mother's love and anxiety about her son and I do understand that, but the wrong thing's been done here.
HOST: FIFA decision, football federation, let's talk about the back page stuff because it's top of your mind, posing in papers with kangaroos, plastic blow-up kangaroos, who talked you into that, do they tell you no silly hats and no blow-up animals?
PM: Well the kangaroo had been very naughty, it'd gone to FIFA, and stolen the World Cup, brought it here to Australia, and I had to help get it back.
HOST: Now but Ben Buckley, I heard him this morning on this radio station saying because Elle MacPherson's there, in brackets she has sex appeal, she'll win over the old blokes making the decision. How offended about that approach are you?
PM: We've got a great World Cup bid in, we are the nation that delivered the world's best Olympics, and we want to deliver the world's best World Cup, that's the essence of our bid. I reckon Elle MacPherson is a fantastic ambassador for Australia.
HOST: So she's got it so she should flaunt it?
PM: Well she's made a career as a model, a world beating career as a model, but she's a great Australian and we want to have faces of Australia there. Of course the Governor-General is there too.
HOST: Of course, two powerful women in different ways I suppose. The Government campaigns, I'll just deal with a very, very domestic issue-
PM: Sure-
HOST: And I appreciate your time, but Government campaigns, sponsored by State Governments, I think it's a national program though: If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot; you're stupid if you don't wear a seatbelt. And today we've got police officers in this State who are receiving what's quoted as 'management guidance' because they've called people they've pulled over not wearing seatbelts stupid. Have we gone a little bit too precious?
PM: I must admit I'm not familiar with all of the details-
HOST: I haven't held anything back, that's essentially it-
PM: Well I'd have to say I think I can understand frustrated police officers who go to road crashes and see injury and death and hideous sights and then have to go and tell families that dad's not coming home anymore. I can understand them using a little bit of tough language to try and get the lesson through to people, we don't want them drinking and driving, put your seatbelt on, get home to your family. What a shocking time of year to lose someone in your family after a Christmas party-
HOST: Or whatever, anytime. You know it just strikes me though that you've got courts have recently ruled that somebody who calls a police officer a five letter word starting with p-r, and it's thrown out of court and although I could use it according to the judge because it's common language, that's the joke, you don't, you don't worry about those words, you roll with that. But a police officer says to somebody you're stupid for not wearing a seatbelt, and he gets hauled before the bosses and getting management guidance.
PM: I think we all know there's a lot in the way you say things too. You can actually use some rude words as a joke between friends and it's taken as a joke between friends, but I think not wearing your seatbelt, drinking and driving, it is stupid conduct and we're trying to get that message through to people so we might as well just use the plain language and the plain words - stupid is stupid and don't do it.
HOST: Well Prime Minister Gillard good to see you.
PM: Thank you.
HOST: Thank you for your time today. Can you tell Wayne Swan I'm ok, he can come on this program?
PM: I'm sure he knows that.
HOST: He should, I've been interviewing him for 25 years, what would he be afraid of today? Thanks for your time.
PM: Thank you very much.
HOST: Congratulations on being Prime Minister, do a good job, that's all we care about right now, ok?
PM: That's exactly what I care about too.
HOST: Alright Prime Minister Julia Gillard's been our guest this morning and we appreciate your time.