PM: Well I'm happy to take questions, given we've already made the announcement, but you may have to get your voices up, you seem quite a long way back.
JOURNALIST: How hard will this budget be for families (inaudible)?
PM: We are determined - you're quiet and I'm loud, okay we've still got the mic on.
We're determined to balance the budget, to return it to surplus because that's the right thing to do to lock in confidence at this time. But I do want to say something about how we're going to do that.
When you're making decisions about creating a budget surplus there are two ways to do it. We're intending to make those decisions on the basis of providing support to jobs as we've always done, protecting frontline services for families like doctors and nurses and making sure we're continuing to extend a helping hand to those in need.
The Opposition has got itself in a position that even after it endorses all of our budget savings it will need to provide $70 billion more of cuts into things that working families rely on and Tony Abbott's always telling us to judge him on his track record. Well his track record was even at a time of easy revenue growth that he took $1 billion out of public hospitals. So there's a very sharp contrast here between the approach we're intending to take to balance the budget, to lock in confidence for the future, to create a surplus whilst we protect jobs and frontline services for families and look after those in need compared with the $70 billion of cuts into areas families most rely on like the public hospital system which Tony Abbott has savaged in the past.
JOURNALISTS: (Inaudible)
PM: We'll go here and then come over.
JOURNALIST: Are you planning on cuts to the Medicare Safety Net though?
PM: Look I've seen budget speculation today in the newspapers and I'm not going to comment on individual items of Budget speculation but what I can say is you can judge us on our approach and Labor values that we take to this task. We've invested billions and billions of dollars into health care into public hospitals to make sure that there are more frontline services, more doctors, more nurses, less waiting time in emergency departments, less waiting time for elective surgery. We will always act to preserve and protect the frontline service that families rely on.
JOURNALIST: I'm not asking specifically about what's in the budget or not but does the Government have any concerns with the current structure of the Medicare Safety Net?
PM: The Medicare Safety Net was designed by the former government, it was designed by Tony Abbott when he was Minister for Health and having given Australians a rock solid, iron-clad guarantee that he wasn't going to cut it in the 2004 election he then immediately cut it afterwards because in part it was badly designed. Badly designed because it was possible for some people to make a lot of money out of the Medicare Safety Net. We've acted to address a number of those problems with the Medicare Safety Net and we're always going to act to make sure taxpayers get value for money.
But I would remind - Tony Abbott, who was responsible for the initial setting up of this, immediately after an election, having said he wouldn't, took an axe to it himself.
JOURNALIST: Is it true that a razor is going to be applied to the rebates on special treatments?
PM: Well, I mean I'm not going to comment on individual Budget speculation but if you want to see the kind of approach that Labor takes to our decision making, have a look at today's newspapers and the fact that we are in a position to provide medicines that families need to them more cheaply.
The newspapers today are rightly reporting that for 1,000 medicines people will see price reductions up to a $15 price reductions, a cost of living benefit for families who are looking at their own budgets and finding it tough to make ends meet.
So we take our Labor approach to how we put the budget together. It's the right thing, it's the economically right thing to bring the budget back into the black, to make sure that we have a budget surplus that will lock in confidence for the future. But as we go about these savings we'll take our Labor approach of supporting jobs and frontline services and people in need.
JOURNALISTS: (Inaudible)
PM: I'll go here and here and then back again.
JOURNALIST: The Opposition wants to claim credit for those discounts on pharmaceuticals saying this is something that Tony Abbott introduced, and it happens annually anyway, so you're claiming for something he did.
PM: As long as he's claiming responsibility for the billion dollars that he took out of public hospitals, so long as he's claiming responsibility for having cut doctor numbers leading to a doctor shortage, the reduction in GP training places, it seems to me a little bit curious that Mr Abbott's out there trying to cherry pick his record when his record as Health Minister was huge cuts to public hospitals and let's remember Tony Abbott was ripping a billion dollars out of public hospitals when revenue was rolling into the Federal Government.
We are now putting together a budget after the effect of the global financial crisis where the world has changed, where the days of easy money are gone and even in those circumstances I can say to you we will act to protect services for families whereas Mr Abbott's track record in much easier days was huge cuts.
JOURNALIST: Will guarantee that families will not pay more to go to the doctor (inaudible)?
PM: I can just repeat what I've said to you, which is we're a Government that has ensured we're training more doctors, that there's billions of dollars more in the public hospital system, that we're out there creating new services like GP super clinics and cancer clinics to get people the care they need. They're the values we've taken to rebuilding the health system after Tony Abbott's cuts when he was in government in days of easy revenue. He still ripped a billion dollars out of the public hospital system.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you didn't answer the question though, can you give a guarantee that families won't pay more?
PM: I know going to play - and I know what the next question will be and what the next question will be and we're not playing the budget speculation game so you will just have to live with that until the budget comes out in May. But I can direct your attention very specifically to our track record and our values as we go about this task.
JOURNALIST: On a different topic then, given your Labor MPs on the detention centre inquiry joint parliamentary committee agree that there should be a 90-day limit on keeping people in detention, why won't your Government commit to that?
PM: We'll respond to this parliamentary inquiry at the appropriate time. We've worked hard to speed up processing times and to change the way in which the detention centre system works with new detention values. Of course what we ultimately want to do is we want to have an arrangement with Malaysia which would deter people from risking their lives at sea on boats where they can all too easily lose their lives as we've very tragically seen. The reason we are prevented from doing that is because Mr Abbott would prefer to see more boats.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) Tony Abbott chiming in and giving you some fashion advice on the jackets you wear.
PM: Mr Abbott's words are a matter for Mr Abbott. Thank you very much.
JOURNALIST: Sorry Prime Minister, could Medicare savings be used to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme?
PM: The approach we're taking about the budget is the one I've outlined to you. On the National Disability Insurance Scheme, this is a great Labor reform which we do want to deliver. We've never underestimated the complexity of doing it but I do want to see us as a nation not treat people with disability as if they were participants in a lottery where some of them can come up with a package of services and some of them just miss out.
We'll take a last question from Sue.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, one of the front line services families rely on is child care-
PM: Correct.
JOURNALIST: Can you guarantee that will be protected (inaudible)?
PM: Once again you can judge us by what we have done in child care. When we came to office people were struggling with the cost of child care, the rebate was only at 30%, the system meant families would wait to up to 18 months to get government support for their child care bills, be absolutely out of pocket for all of that time.
We have increased the rebate to 50%, there's more money going to support families with child care bills today than there has ever been before in our nation's history. 780,000 families are benefiting from that work and we've moved the system so people can get their money fortnightly.
If you want to judge people on their bona fides about child care, that's our track record whereas Mr Abbott, when he was in government and in a position in days of easy revenue to make a difference, didn't make any of those differences, and now he's involved in what has been unmasked in yesterday's newspapers as just a cynical political con job to get people talking about child care when even Liberal insiders are saying they've got absolutely no intention of changing the system or moving to supporting nannies. This is all just political spin and hot air from Mr Abbott.
Thank you.