CURTIS: Prime Minister, welcome to News 24.
PM: Thank you.
CURTIS: You're about to head off on an overseas trip to Japan, Korea, China and then to the UK for the Royal wedding. You're going to Japan first. How important is that symbolism of going there first, particularly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami?
PM: I think it is important. I arranged this trip to Japan some time ago. I was invited by the Japanese Government and was very happy to accept their invitation, but of course the context of it has entirely changed and the main purpose now will be to be there and to be saying to the Japanese Prime Minister and the people of Japan that the thoughts of Australia are with them.
I am intending, if it's possible, to go and look at some of the communities that have been so hard hit by the huge natural disaster - I mean, it's just so hard to get your mind around the scale of it - and we'll be there with a message of friendship and goodwill.
CURTIS: You were also planning to talk the Free Trade Agreement with Japan. Is that something you'll push less for, given Japan does, the Japanese Government does have a number of other things on its mind at the moment?
PM: I've had the opportunity to talk to Prime Minister Kan in the past about free trade, and of course he was taking some steps to look at liberalising agriculture in Japan and trading agricultural produce, but I understand and I think Australian people generally would understand that his first thoughts and efforts need to be on the recovery and rebuilding efforts in Japan.
CURTIS: Will you be taking any more promises of help? Is there anything else Australia can do to assist with the recovery?
PM: We've said to Japan and I've said personally to the Prime Minister that if there is anything we can do, then don't be afraid to ask. We, of course, provided a search and rescue team. We had our three C-17s up there helping with various parts of the relief. They're our huge heavy lift aircraft. We've got three of them and all three went and we've made a direct donation to assist with the recovery efforts, too.
But should we be asked for anything else then of course we've give it the most sympathetic consideration, but as this stage we haven't been.
CURTIS: You're negotiating Free Trade Agreements with Korea and China as well. The one with Korea seems to be moving along well. The one with China has been years in the making. Are you expecting to make more progress there?
PM: I am hoping to inject some momentum into the discussions with China about free trade. These discussions have been of long standing and I'll certainly be hoping to give a push along whilst I'm there in China. The Korean agreement, we've got a high degree of optimism about it being concluded this year.
CURTIS: Your Trade Minister came out with some principles on free trade a week or so ago, including saying [AUDIO BREAK] policy considerations should not override trade policy. Are you still able, will you still raise issues like human rights, given China's undergoing one of its biggest crackdowns on dissent in years and there are still a number of Australian citizens in jail in China?
PM: Well, certainly I'll be talking across the full breadth of our relationship with China, which is a comprehensive one and a constructive one. We do raise human rights regularly with China. I raised human rights as recently as the last few weeks, when Mr Jia, a senior Communist Party official, was here travelling in Australia.
So, I anticipate that I will be raising human rights in China as part of these broad and comprehensive discussions.
CURTIS: Are you satisfied with the explanations with the treatment of Australians in detention and particularly what happened most recently with the Australian writer Yang Henjun?
PM: Look, I will, of course, be raising human rights. I don't want to be drawn on individual matters in an interview like this, with respect. I think it's best for us to deal with those cases as consular assistance cases and if necessary take them up individually.
But our view, of course, is that we raise human rights. We have a human rights dialogue with China. That dialogue was in session as recently as December last year.
For individual cases, of course we represent Australians as necessary in China in the way that we represent Australians around the world.
CURTIS: You'll be out of Australia for two weeks. You leave behind a very crowded agenda. Do you think things are going well for your Government?
PM: We've got a lot of hard work to do and we're getting on with that hard work and my focus is on delivering the things that matter for the long-term future of this country. That requires us to confront a number of difficult issues.
Carbon pricing is certainly a hard debate and one in which my political opponent Tony Abbott is devoting all of his time to changing his position - he's had every position on carbon pricing you can possibly have - and then of course raising fear about pricing carbon, but we'll get on with this job because it's the right thing to do for the future of our economy; it's the right thing to do for our environment.
And of course we're shaping the budget in a set of economic circumstances where the outlooks for our economy are strong. We do have a strong economy, but we've got some short-term pressures arising from our own natural disasters, from Japan and its impact on trade, and so there is some short-term pressures in the economy, but strong prospects for economic growth.
So, we are delivering the budget in those circumstances. The right thing to do by people's cost of living, when the economy is in a situation like that, is to not add to inflationary pressures, so when people hear us talk about a tough budget, where we'll be bringing the budget to surplus in 2012-13, we're doing that because we don't want to add to inflationary pressures which would worsen the cost of living concerns of people.
CURTIS: If I could go to the atmospherics of the carbon debate, you said in the election you wanted to create a deep and lasting community consensus around carbon pricing. Do you accept that that does not exist yet and may well not exist by the time you put legislation into Parliament?
PM: I accept that with a vitriolic fear campaign being run by Tony Abbott - despite the fact that he has in the past supported carbon pricing, he thinks now it's in his political interest to stoke fear - I accept in that environment that that does cause concern amongst the Australian community, but we will be there, doing what I do as Prime Minister: working patiently, methodically, explaining it to people, giving them the opportunity to be involved in the conversation. That's why we announced the carbon pricing mechanism and now we've got the business roundtable and the non-government organisations roundtable to collect views about the detailed mechanisms for pricing and then we will be able to make full announcements about the details of the scheme in the middle of this year.
CURTIS: Do you need to do more though, to bring the community with you, because a lot of those meetings are happening behind closed doors and we won't know the outcome of them for some time?
PM: There is a considerable community outreach program. The Climate Commission is out there with the scientists explaining the science. Of course Professor Garnaut has been engaging people directly in meetings and also through the publication of his papers on various aspects of tackling climate change and pricing carbon.
But I believe that what will happen here is we'll work though, we'll deliver the details of the scheme, and Australians will look at it and judge it on the details. I particularly think what people will do is they'll look at the pricing mechanism, they'll see that the 1,000 big businesses who are our big polluters are paying the price for carbon pollution and I think people will conclude to themselves ‘that's the right thing to do.'
We don't want people putting pollution in the atmosphere endlessly, any volume with no price paid. We want a price paid to put pressure on businesses to work in a cleaner way and then people will look at the household assistance that we will provide, and as we've said, millions of Australians, when they look at the details, will find that they're going to be better off as a result of us pricing carbon, so I think people will digest those details and make their final decision.
CURTIS: We're seeing a lot of claims from business, business putting out markers for what they want, the unions doing it. Can you put a price on carbon and still protect every industry and every job, or is that impossible?
PM: We can certainly work with [audio break] to transition to a clean energy economy and in that clean energy economy there will be more jobs. We've got to be very clear about this: we're going to have a stronger economy with better job prospects for Australians if we price carbon, than find ourselves languishing behind the rest of the world with a high pollution economy.
CURTIS: But some jobs in the old pollution rich, or emissions rich industries might go while others are being created?
PM: I just think we're seeing in the newspapers some inflammatory claims, and then meanwhile, out in the real world, there's BHP announcing a new investment worth more than $40 billion; meanwhile, out in the real world, I've been to a coal-fired power station in the last few weeks which is going to have a solar boost project. That solar technology manufactured locally, jobs in construction, jobs in manufacturing, people still working in the power station, clean energy future and look at the jobs. We're talking there about something in Dalby is where the manufacturing is going to be, the construction work actually happening in Kogan Creek, so all of this giving people jobs in that region.
Now, I think when people look at those sorts of economic opportunities, the strength of our economy, announcements like the BHP announcement, perhaps some of the fear mongering will fall away.
CURTIS: As you put together the budget people are still concerned about cost of living pressures. Is it reasonable for people to think that you can do something about that?
PM: It's reasonable of people to look to the national government, to look to me as Prime Minister, and say ‘a big part of your job is getting the national accounts right, getting the budget right', which is why when we had the last election campaign that we made sure every dollar and cent added up, whilst Tony Abbott [audio break] $11 billion black hole.
I take my responsibility to run the budget well and properly very seriously. Clearly, Mr Abbott doesn't bring the same perspective to it, or he wouldn't have got himself in that $11 billion black hole position.
So, taking that kind of disposition that I showed during the election campaign, we'll get the budget right to not add to inflationary pressures. That's the right thing to do by people's cost of living.
CURTIS: You're focussing on building up workforce participation, getting the hard cases from welfare back into work. Given the pressures on the labour market, do you still believe that Australia doesn't need to have huge population increases, that you can rein in those population increases?
PM: We are a country that will always have an immigration program. We have an immigration program now with a focus on skilled migration, but in having this perspective about getting more Australians in the workforce, I want people to understand clearly: it's not acceptable to me that big resource companies in the north west of this country rush into my office and say ‘can we get some more skilled workers from overseas?', whilst at the same time I can have one of our good local members like Gary Gray, who represents Kwinana in Perth, rush into my office and say ‘we've got double digit unemployment, do you reckon we can do something about that?'
Well, we can and we should. We should find those kids in Kwinana the skills they need to get the opportunities that are there in the strong Western Australian economy.
Now, I use the Western Australian example because it's a stark one, but we've got comparable examples right around the country. We've got a strong underling economy, good jobs prospects, good growth prospects, we've created 750,000 new jobs since we were elected in 2007. We will continue to create jobs and I want those jobs to be opportunities for some people who otherwise would end up in a lifetime of disadvantage on welfare.
CURTIS: If we can finish up where we began, with your overseas trip, you'll be ending your trip attending the royal wedding. There's been talk in Britain of changing the line of succession so that the first born, if they're female, can inherit the throne. You've talked, your Government's talked about equal rights for the military. Should there be equal rights for women in the monarchy as well?
PM: As I understand this, technically if there was to be a change in the line of succession for the monarchy that would be a decision that the UK would need to take and then we would, Australia itself, would be asked to pass legislation to achieve the same effect, so as I understand the debate in the UK, they haven't made any decisions as yet, but Lyndal, you'd expect me sitting here as the first female Prime Minister of this country to say I believe in equal rights and opportunity for women.
CURTIS: Prime Minister, thank you for your time.
PM: Thank you.