HOST: The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, good morning.
PM: Good morning Neil.
HOST: Prime Minister, you've been in charge for two years, boats are arriving in record numbers, horrendous number of deaths. Do you accept some responsibility for what's happening here?
PM: Well look, I'm the Prime Minister of the nation so of course I accept responsibility for the Government's programs and plans and I accept responsibility for the consequences.
I'm also accepting responsibility Neil for change. We need to see change. What we are doing now clearly isn't working and it isn't what the Government wants to see.
We want us to be able to process people offshore. We've been stopped from doing that by the High Court. We need to change laws, and a compromise which combines the central element of the Government's plans with the central element of the Opposition's plans, passed the House of Representatives yesterday and I want to see it go through the Senate today.
HOST: I guess nobody's happy about the situation. I think everybody's is decent enough to know it needs to be sorted out but we have to recognise don't we that your policies have failed?
PM: Well I've just said to you I want change. The High Court stopped us from pursuing offshore processing the way we wanted to. So they basically in fact stopped all offshore processing. So whatever view you've got, about processing asylum seekers beyond Australia's borders, you need to see change in the law.
We've been working to try and get change through the Parliament. We've been open to discussions with the Opposition every step of the way.
We've compromised Neil, including some very, very difficult things for Labor members to accept.
Now is the time, not to bang on about the politics of who did what when, but actually to look to the future.
We've got two choices today in Parliament House. We can leave here this evening with laws in place that enable us to process people offshore, or we can leave here this evening with no result.
Well I'm for action and for seeing the compromise get through the Senate today.
HOST: In the end, I guess politics is what's going to solve this though, in the sense of dealing with each other and negotiation. You had the Mid-Winter Ball last night, did you have a talk to Tony Abbott there?
PM: No I didn't, but my door has been open to Mr Abbott for days and days and days now, I've made that publicly clear over a long period of time. We also worked with the Opposition a number of months ago and we put to them a compromise where we said, we want to process people in Malaysia and you want to process people in Nauru. Let's put them together. The Opposition said to us, we want Temporary Protection Visas.
We said, we're really concerned that that will encourage women and kids onto boats, but let's agree an expert panel who can look at this for us with agreed terms of reference. We worked our way through all of that, put all of those compromises on the table and to date, the Opposition on offshore processing has not moved a millimetre.
My call today Neil is to senators of good conscience who don't want to leave the Senate today and watch over the weeks to come, boats arrive and potentially more tragedies at sea.
To endorse the only piece of legislation that can get through this Parliament before the Parliament leaves for the winter recess.
HOST: Well have your people been working on Coalition senators to cross the floor?
PM: I've said that my door is open to senators today. It's now a question for senators in good conscience, and I am happy to talk to anyone from any political party in the Senate.
HOST: But you have a particular relationship with the Greens, which is better than your relationship with the Coalition obviously. Have you talked to the Greens and said, look we have to get this through, because you can get it through with them, can't you?
PM: I've certainly said to anybody who will listen, I've been talking to people, certainly the Greens are well-aware of my views. Everybody in the House of Representatives has been well-aware of my views, the Opposition is well-aware.
HOST: I want to focus on the Greens here. With the Greens you've got the numbers. You've got a special relationship.
PM: Everybody's responsibility is the same, people are drowning at sea, Neil. Everybody's responsibility is the same. No-one gets a leave pass from making this decision. Every Senator has to vote.
It doesn't matter whether you're in the Opposition, in the Greens, Independent, you know, wandering around between political parties. To be frank Neil, I don't care. That's all the party politics of it.
Every individual who sits in the Senate irrespective of the party ticket in their pocket, has an obligation to the nation today.
HOST: Well it doesn't look good at this stage, what are the consequences of that?
PM: Well Neil, I'm going to keep pressing to see change here and we have approached this from the point of view of getting a result, getting change.
The bill that was endorsed in the House of Representatives yesterday wasn't a government bill. It was a bill from an Independent. It's not a question of, does the Government win, does the Opposition win, you know, argy-bargy politics. It's about an Independent's bill which would enable us to enact what the Government says and I say we need and what the Opposition Leader and the Opposition says we need. We would do both.
HOST: So Prime Minister, what is Plan B? If this doesn't get up today as it seems it's unlikely it will get up. What is Plan B?
PM: Neil, my focus now is on the Senate and it finding a way to do what the House of Representatives did yesterday, where the majority in the House of Representatives, not the Opposition, but the majority in the House of Representatives found a way to compromise.
And in terms of the breadth of that compromise, Government members voted for it, all of the Independents in the House of Representatives voted for it, and people of extreme good will, like Mal Washer in the Liberal Party, were prepared to vote for it if it was going to be the difference.
So it shows you this is a compromise, genuinely, or it wouldn't be attracting that breadth of support.
HOST: Is there a Plan B or is this the one shot in the locker?
PM: If this bill does not go through the Senate today, then we will leave this Parliament today with no change in the laws. This is now a yes/no proposition Neil.
Mr Abbott put his proposition to the Parliament yesterday. He moved it in the House of Representatives and it was rejected.
So the only bill, the only legal change that can happen today in Canberra, in Parliament House is the Senate endorsing the bill that has gone through the House of Representatives.
HOST: So if this doesn't get through this means more deaths?
PM: Well what it will mean is that we can't process people offshore. What it will mean is that we can't send an effective message of deterrence to people smugglers.
What it will mean is people will get on boats and Neil, we know now, from everything we've lived through in the past few days and on too many occasions in the months before, what we know is that people get on boats, unfortunately, tragically, awfully some get into trouble and people lose their lives.
HOST: Prime Minister, I know you need to go, but just very quickly, is there any suggestion to you that boats have been deliberately scuttled to overcome offshore processing?
PM: It's well-known Neil, I don't want to comment on the boats that have got into difficulties in recent days, there will be investigations for all of those, and the facts will come out. So I don't want you to interpret anything I'm saying now about the boat last week or the boat yesterday. But if were asking me generally, has it happened in the past, that asylum seekers have disabled their vessels or caused a circumstance where they have to be rescued from the sea, yes that has happened in the past.
We've said consistently to the Opposition who use this slogan, and it just is a slogan, let's turn boats around and tow them back, the reason the Navy says to us that's dangerous to do is because they do fear this conduct, where boats are set on fire or whatever. And I don't want to, Neil, let's be very clear, I'm not going to put Navy personnel into dangerous circumstances like that and see some of our Defence Force personnel lose their lives. I'm not going to do that.
HOST: Very finally, I was talking about decency and everybody wants a good solution to this, but your Parliamentary Secretary Mark Dreyfus did say this week that Tony Abbott saw political advantage in people dying. Is that right? Did you censure him for that or do you agree with him?
PM: This has been a week of strong emotions and passionate views. Yesterday we saw people with tears in their eyes in the Parliament.
Neil, I'm not interested in the politics of this. I want to see change. And there would be no-one in this country more delighted than me, and more prepared to acknowledge that the right thing had been done if Mr Abbott saw fit today to change his view and to say yes to offshore processing and the bill going through the Parliament.
HOST: I agree with that, but it's pretty tough to say somebody's taking political advantage from death. Is that fair?
PM: I don't want to be drawn on the politics of all of this. I'm not looking for you to say to me, you know, Prime Minister you've had a win or anything like that, that's not what I'm looking for.
I want a Bill from an Independent that is a compromise, that has the support of the House of Representatives to go through the Senate today.
Neil, if that doesn't happen, am I really worried that we will see more tragedies in the future? Yes I am.
HOST: Thank you for your time.
PM: Thank you.