HOST: Good morning, Julia.
PM: Thank you very much, Eddie - good to be here.
HOST: Welcome aboard. Let's get straight into the carbon tax issue.
First of all, can I ask, I don't want to debate whether who's going to come off better and all that sort of thing, because that'll all flesh itself out and far stronger economic minds than mine have done the actuary on it, all the rest of it. Can you tell us why, tell the Triple M listeners why is this is the most important thing that's dominated government over this period, at the expense of maybe other things to do. Why is this so important to our country?
PM: We are working on other issues at the same time, but this is vital for our country's future because it's about climate change. We live in a hot, dry place. That means we are particularly at risk of the change in climate driving more extreme heat days, more bush fires, more droughts, loss of agricultural land in the Murray Darling Basin, devastating effects for the Great Barrier Reef, for Kakadu.
We are among the biggest polluters in the world per head of population. We generate more carbon pollution that any other people, per head, in the developed world. That means we've got a lot to do and we've got to get started and by asking big polluters to pay a price on carbon, they'll find ways of cutting carbon pollution and we will cut carbon pollution that we're putting in our atmosphere by 160 million tonnes in 2020. That's the equivalent of taking 45 million cars off the road. There are only 12 million cars in this country, so imagine every car in Australia - 12 million - then try and imagine 45 million. That's how much pollution we'll be getting out of the atmosphere.
HOST: (inaudible) the changing nature of launching a new policy in this country. It used to be done on the floor of Parliament. Now you have to go on a presidential-style campaign to get your message across. Is this because of the ferocious nature of our press? Why can't you deliver this on the floor of Parliament, as we used to do?
PM: I think people get their information in more ways now. I think it's really as simple as that. Way back when, when the principal source of information was you watch the six o'clock news and that's how everybody found out what was happening in the world, if you did a parliamentary address and it went on the six o'clock news, people would have the information. Now, of course, it's everything from getting through a tweet, to listening to your radio show, to going and reading a blog, or some other way of getting information.
So, we've got to be out in more ways, talking and explaining.
HOST: You're like Lady Gaga on tour, that's what you are.
HOST: We'll come back to Lady Gaga in a moment, but-
PM: -I don't think I'm dressed the same way.
HOST: She's got a question for you we're going to put to you very shortly, but we get a lot of our information via the News Limited press, Prime Minister. I'm sure you've been following the story, the News of the World scandal with great interest. Do we need to be concerned about the amount of influence that Rupert Murdoch appears to have over government and police and people all around the world.
PM: I think we always need to be concerned about quality in our media. I want people to get accurate information, balanced information. Clearly in the modern age people have a lot of choices, people will continue to buy newspapers, but they'll go online, they'll use the iPad, I can see you've got your iPad in front of you there. They'll listen to radio, they'll follow tweets, they'll engage in blogs. So, lots of ways of getting information and finding out what's going on.
And increasingly I think people like to just go in direct and get it themselves, which is why on carbon pollution we've put a lot of information on the cleanenergyfuture.gov.au website, and I think people will get on there and Eddie was saying before they'll work out about tax cuts and family payments, they'll go in, they'll use the household estimator and spew their own figure out and work it out for themselves.
HOST: Nice sidestep. News Limited have given you a belting over this. The Herald Sun had a countdown towards it, and on the front page again today saying it's useless, hang on, I'll just grab the paper, pick out exactly what it says here, well, The Australian says ‘miner bets $5 billion on future of coal', and the Herald Sun says ‘get real Julia, how your compensation is going up in smoke, new homes up $,5000, grocery bills up $120 a year', carbon tax fury has been the headline every day. Do you feel that what's happening in England is a little bit indicative of what's happening here in Australia, where the Murdoch's have now been exposed to have been right into politicians? We've heard today that Gordon Brown's phone had been hacked as well, there are allegations towards that.
How do you view this in the world where the media is so important to everybody in this country?
PM: I think people are bright enough to think about it themselves and work it out themselves. I don't think people will just pick up the newspaper and believe every word they read. They've got their own critical thought processes.
On the front of the Herald Sun today, what I'd say is we've had our experts in Treasury model the prices that will flow through from putting a price on carbon pollution paid by the big polluters - it's 0.7 per cent of the cost of living. Now, these are the same people that modelled the impacts of the GST and got it right. They're the figures I'm relying on. People can work all that through for themselves as well.
On the front of The Australian newspaper, a somewhat happier story today - it's telling us that a business is interested in buying a big mining company in this country, a big coal mining company. Why are they interested in that? Because they're smart business people and there's good a future in coal, so don't let anybody tell you that somehow we're seeing the end of the Australian coal industry.
HOST: 19 minutes to 9, it is the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, is with us. 1 333 53 if you want to ask her a question you can do that next, as Lady Gaga did yesterday.
HOST: We've got Lady Gaga firing questions at the Prime Minister, and you too. Come back right after this with the Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard for Dodo Electricity on Triple M's Hot Breakfast.
[BREAK]
HOST: 16 minutes to 9 on Triple M's Hot Breakfast for Dodo Electricity.
Wayne from Craigieburn's got a question that I was going to put to you Prime Minister, but Wayne's going to do it for me. Go, Wayne.
CALLER: Yeah, good morning Julia. I just want to know, I have solar power, now, you guys currently contribute 6c per kilowatt to what I get. Now, are you going to give us more because this carbon tax to offset the electricity prices that are going to go up?
PM: That solar scheme is probably a Victorian Government scheme. We've helped people put solar panels on as well. What carbon pricing will do is make sure you enjoy some rewards from having made that decision. Yes, it's going to mean that renewable sources of energy are comparatively cheaper and energy from dirty coal-fired power stations is more expensive, so you've done the right thing and you'll enjoy some benefits from it.
HOST: Prime Minister, I've just renovated our house and I want to go solar and it is too expensive and too hard to do and it's more complicated than Chinese arithmetic to try and figure out. How can we not make this easier, and if we are going to go for let's get rid of brown coal, or take it down, why don't we spend more money - I mean I'd be prepared to take no tax deductions or anything else, if you said in 20 years time we're going to have the best solar industry in the world and given me something to aim for for my kids, rather than just muck around with a bit of tax breaks here and there and all the rest of it. I'd like to see something really big and go for it.
PM: Well, Eddie, I'm glad you said that-
HOST: -It's not a Dorothy Dixer, is it?
PM: -because we've got something really big and we're going to go for it. We're creating a $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, so we've already been in the business of working with our great innovators to create new solar and renewable energy projects. I've has the opportunity to talk to people about a big one at Moree in New South Wales, another in Chinchilla in Queensland - some of the biggest solar plants in the world. We've already achieve that
With $10 billion in this Clean Energy Finance Corporation, we believe that our use of the renewable energy, of clean energy, will increase by 1,700 per cent. So, you're going to see a big shift towards using our beautiful sunshine, wind power, hot rocks, tidal-
HOST:-Don't forget us here in Victoria, because we're going to put people out of business down in Yallourn and places like that. We need to have a new industry ready to go to help those people as well.
PM: Yes, and we're going to see gas increasingly used and, of course in Victoria, wind as well.
HOST: We've got Warren on the line from Ormond. You're talking to the Prime Minister of Australia, Warren.
CALLER: Good morning, Prime Minister. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity this morning and also thanks Hot Breakfast.
Prime Minister, I have two quick questions for you: one - where's the money going that you'll anticipate receiving for this new carbon tax, and two - on Andrew Bolt's show, the Bolt Report, on Sunday morning I saw a report that reported a gentleman that Ross Garnaut holds in great esteem, it actually showed that the impact of Australia reducing its carbon emissions is not going to have any impact on the planet's climate for about 500 years and that was inclusive of every other country doing the same thing at the one time, so what real impact is this carbon emissions, is this going to have other than to incur yet another tax on the Australian business and the Australian people?
PM: Sure, happy to answer those two questions.
Where's the money going? Well, all of the money that's paid by the around 500 big polluters who now have to stump up and pay the price for their carbon pollution, all of that money is going into assisting households, working with industries to make the transition into the cleaner energy future so we protect Australian jobs, or in programs to drive the uptake of clean energy. That's where it's going - full stop.
On what difference will it make - well, there's a very simple proposition here: do you want your kids to grow up in a country that's generating more pollution, or less pollution. I'm for generating less pollution, and by putting a price on carbon we will generate less carbon pollution and stuff it up into our atmosphere.
HOST: PM, can I just quickly maybe edit some of the other callers that are on the line. LPG - why don't we give more incentive for people to have LPG in cars, for example?
PM: LPG you put in your vehicle won't have a carbon price effect on it. We understand that people have to fuel their cars. People will make choices between petrol and LPG, people will make choices for cleaner motor vehicles. We are going to have motor vehicles emissions standards, fuel standards, from 2015.
HOST: OK, I'm tipping you want to talk about something other than carbon for two seconds. So I'll throw one in from-
PM: -I'm happy to keep talking about carbon pricing. I could do it all day.
HOST: You will be. Lady Gaga was on A Current Affair last night, an excellent performance she put on, not only as an entertainer, but she had some interesting things to say. She was asked Tracy Grimshaw, first of all she was very complimentary of the fact that we do have a woman who's in the number one job in Australia and she was very complimentary of you. But she had this to say about the gay marriage scenario:
LADY GAGA: I believe in marriage equality. So, I would just encourage all of you to mobilise your voices so that the Prime Minister of Australia can hear you scream and speak and say we want to be fully equal. We want to get married.
HOST: It's a vexed question. Why is it that seemingly open-minded politicians baulk at this question? Ted Baillieu, we put it to him in the lead up, he was against it, and your Government has not been for it either. I don't quite get it.
PM: I think there's a big community debate going on and people have got different views in the community and you'd expect that to be true of politicians too, representing the community. For me I believe in equality, in the sense that making sure the law doesn't discriminate against people's choices. So, we've gone out of our way to fix things like the social security law, the superannuation law, so same-sex couples aren't discriminated against.
But for me, I think marriage and the Marriage Act has had a particular status in our society and it should keep that status, but I understand people have got different views.
HOST: You don't really believe that do you. Turn it up.
HOST: I reckon I've got something-
PM: -Yes, I do.
HOST: -Prime Minister, I'm just looking at her entourage out here and they're a fairly scrawny looking bunch, the boys in security. I reckon that she needs, trying to sell the carbon tax, she needs to get her big mate Barry Hall, he's probably just got one year to go and take him around on the hustings and you'll get this through in a matter of weeks, Julia. You need to get big Baz back out there.
PM: Alright, we'll I'd be happy to take big Baz back out, but I think you might have accidentally insulted people who do security, because the two lads you're pointing to actually work in my office.
HOST: Sorry, boys.
PM: That very formidable woman at the back of the pack is actually doing security.
HOST: You and me Mick, we've got the evil eye coming our way.
HOST: I have had a run in with the Prime Minister's security team, so happy that they haven't recognised me.
HOST: What happened? Come back after the break and tell the story one more time.
Prime Minister, thanks for coming in this morning. Obviously everyone's going to be watching this with great interest. I'm not buying your same sex things there, but that's for another day and Lady Gaga had plenty to say so I'm sure you'll get another go on the hustings today, but thank you for coming in, we always appreciate your time on The Hot Breakfast.
PM: Lady Gaga and Julia Gillard - different views
HOST: Who would have though?
PM: Who would have thought.