PM: As the Rio+20 conference draws to an end I want to speak about what has happened here over the last few days and what has been achieved.
This meeting is 20 years on from the original Rio Earth Summit - the time when the world came together to first address, through this forum, environmental issues.
Here at Rio+20 we have reviewed progress since that original summit and there have been some decisions which will affect the future.
I came here to both participate in this summit and to participate inside events to promote issues of great importance to Australia including the health of our oceans, the importance of clean energy and renewable energy, the wisdom we can draw from our indigenous communities about managing and maintaining our lands and seas, and the important role that women play in sustainable development.
In terms of the outcomes of this meeting, as I said in my contribution to the meeting last night, collective action is hard and global collective action is event harder but things have been progressed here at this Rio+20 event.
First and foremost we have seen on progress on sustainable development goals and I'm very pleased that at this meeting agreement has been reached to develop a set of sustainable development goals to focus our efforts and to drive collective action.
The experience of the Millennium Development Goals has been that having defined goals which can be measured does drive change.
I'm also pleased on the outcome in relation to oceans. There have been some important agreements here.
There is a commitment to address the subsidies which lead to over fishing.
There is recognition of the effects of climate change on our oceans and recognition that we need to address the management of our oceans beyond the exclusive economic zones of individual nations.
We now want to see, following this meeting, a stronger oceans governance regime under the UN convention on the law of the sea and we will work on this in New York.
In addition we wanted to see strengthening of the architecture that enables us to know about environmental issues and to monitor progress.
So I'm pleased that at this meeting there has been agreements to strengthen the architecture in particular there is a strengthening of the role of the UN environment program so that there is an authoritative voice on the environment with universal membership.
There has also been an agreement to replace the commission on sustainable development with a high level political forum because the view was taken that the commission simply wasn't working.
And there's also been a strengthening of the economic and social council so that it can fully integrate sustainable development.
As I said on my way into Rio progress will be made at this meeting and it has been made at this meeting.
I do not believe that this meeting will make change tomorrow but I do believe that the things that have been agreed here will over time make a difference to our world's environment.
Today, in addition to the meeting itself I have attended a number of bilateral meetings.
I've had the opportunity to speak to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton,I've had the opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister of Sweden, Prime Minister Reinfeldt, and I've had the opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister of Nepal, Prime Minister Bhattarai.
So I engaged in three discussions between Australia and those nations.
I'm happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: We discussed a variety of global issues, focused on issues including Syria and Iran - so common global challenges.
JOURNALIST: Did you discuss her plans to visit Australia later this year?
PM: She was expressing her delight at being able to visit Australia later this year.
We do have the AusMin forum later this year in Perth.
That is an annual forum where our Defence Ministers and Foreign Ministers meet.
It's held one year in Australia and one year in the United States.
Last time it was held in Australia it was held in Melbourne; it was the first time that Secretary Clinton had had the opportunity to visit Melbourne.
This will be her first opportunity to visit Perth and she's certainly looking forward to it.
JOURNALIST: You talked about how this conference is going to develop goals to be measured. One of the criticisms is that the goals haven't yet been defined.
How long do you think it'll take to define those goals and what are you hoping some of them will be?
PM: There is a process that's been outlined to develop the goals and the time line is associated with the timeline for the Millennium Development Goals.
So the Millennium Development Goals are being reviewed.
We want to see progress in defining sustainable development goals and in 2015 these can be brought together.
The Millennium Development Goals are being reviewed for that purpose.
JOURNALIST: So you think that green groups and others are off the mark when they question progress (inaudible).
PM: As I indicated at the start of my involvement here in Rio, I can certainly understand that there are many groups and many people around the world who would have had an ambition for more progress at this meeting.
The nature of global action is that it needs to be collective, it needs to embrace and involve everyone and this is the process that embraces and involves everyone.
So I do understand that there are people who will look at aspects of what has been resolved here and feel some sense that it's not enough but we shouldn't forget where progress has been made.
I think agreeing to sustainable development goals is progress and once again, looking back on the Millennium Development Goals, they were not easily achieved but once achieved they did make a difference to the driving of global action.
I think we will see a similar progress and similar outcome with the sustainable development goals.
I also think that progress has been made on oceans. This is an important issue for our nation.
At this meeting for the first time we've seen the world think about and move to address issues like subsidies that cause overfishing, issues like the abandoned marine equipment that floats in our ocean, the so-called ghost nets that have come adrift and are there sweeping up marine life and causing them to perish turtles, you know, all sorts of very precious marine life that's under challenge because of this marine debris.
Progress has been made on these issues here at this meeting and it's always important to see a strengthening of governance so that progress can continue to be made.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: This is a leaders-level meeting so I'm here as Prime Minister representing the nation.JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, it's two years this weekend since you've become Prime Minister.
I was just wondering how you were going to mark the occasion or whether if there's anything that you particularly know now that you didn't know then about what it's like to be Prime Minister and how you respond to the increased chatter at home that some of your Labor colleagues are unhappy with your leadership?
PM: I've been focused here on my work in Rio and before that at the G20.
I will leave from Rio today and arrive back in Australia on Sunday morning and prepare for the Parliamentary week.
My focus as Prime Minister is always on what I can do to ensure that for the future, we're a stronger nation and we're a fairer nation.
My job is to keep our economy strong today and prepare so it can be even stronger tomorrow and we have made progress on that in the last year, in the last two years, and our economy is the envy of the world even in difficult economic times around the globe.
My job too is to ensure that Australia's get a fair share of the resources boom and that we're managing that strong economy for working people and as Prime Minister I've made progress on that including through the Minerals Resources Rent Tax and our benefits to share the boom with Australians around the nation.
And my job is to make sure our nation is ready for the challenges of the future which is why I've been so determined to ensure we put a price on carbon and tackle climate change and so determined to keep reforming our education system and our health system so both are ready of the challenges of the future.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: My focus is not on the politics or the policy debates. A search and rescue mission is still in progress.
That's my focus and that's the Government's focus.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: No I most certainly don't and I'd refer you to all of the information that Minister Burke released at the time that he released the maps of the marine reserves.
What you will see from that information is that the impact on commercial fishing will be around 1 per cent and Minister Burke's information makes that very clear.
So we're talking about a very very small impact on commercial fishing, we are talking about marine reserves that we manage as conservation zones because of how precious our ocean environments are to us as an island continent and here is this meeting we've been talking about how precious oceans are to the world.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)PM: There are always going to be debates in international meetings where people come from their own perspective informed by the history and contemporary circumstances of their nation but I do think the sustainable development goals are a global mechanism for action and change.
They are goals that the world will set itself so we are not talking about different countries having different goals or different aspirations but the world coming together and agreeing that we need to achieve something by working in common.
JOURNALIST: One of the goals both of Rio and G20 is start phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. You said yesterday that Australia wasn't in the business of subsidising fossil fuels but Treasury estimates (inaudible).
Will Australia start to make more progress on subsidies (inaudible)?
PM: Well I think we've got to be very careful about concepts and terminology here.
We're not subsidising fossil fuels, we do have a tax system where companies are able to claim tax deductions for materials used in there commercial work and commercial processes so fuel is part of that efficient tax system and dealt with in the same way as other inputs.
What we have focused on in the course of this summit is inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that lead to increased consumption that is the problem that we've been trying to tackle here and have the world tackle where you have subsidy arrangements that actually increase consumption of those fuels.
In our own domestic circumstances, I mean it is not a fossil fuel subsidy but we brought to bear the same kind of analysis when we changed the tax system in relation to fringe benefits which had a perverse incentive for people to get in their cars and drive them and drive them and drive them towards the end of the tax year because if they triggered over a certain kilometre amount then they'd get a bigger tax deduction so we eradicated that because we didn't want there to be some incentive in the tax system that drove unnecessary over consumption.