HOST: Joining me in the studio, the Prime Minister of the country, Julia Gillard, welcome once again to Darwin.
PM: Thank you very much it's great to be here and I am welcoming President Yudhoyono here a little bit later today and he will be here overnight and into tomorrow.
So Darwin is where it all happens. President Obama, now President Yudhoyono.
HOST: It seems you're always in town. You've been here quite a lot in the recent times and it seems to be the place that you meet international guests.
PM: That's right, a big focus on Darwin. So it's great that President Yudhoyono's here and he's bringing a sizeable delegation of his ministers too. So this is our annual leader-to-leader discussion, so it's an important meeting and very, very important that it's here in Darwin.
HOST: Why so important at the moment, to talk to the Indonesian President?
I mean obviously the asylum seeker issue has been covered within an inch of its life in the media, but is that going to be the main thing that you'll talk about today or are there other things on the agenda?
PM: Everyday is an important day to be building our relationship with Indonesia. This is of such strategic importance to our two countries.
We've got economic ties that are just going ahead in leaps and bounds, so we want to be making sure we're building on that growth.
We've got strong people-to-people links, I mean, Australians in their hundreds and hundreds of thousands go to Indonesia each year and students study in each other's country, so the people-to-people links are so important.
We share a strategic outlook about our rapidly growing region, we work together in the G20 for the benefits of the global economy and in the East Asia Summit for the benefits of our region.
And of course we collaborate on things like counter-terrorism and fighting people smuggling.
HOST: I want to talk a little bit about the disaster relief centre and where you're going today with the President, but one of the other questions in from the Northern Territory Cattleman's Association.
Of course we didn't have a great relationship there for a while, and in fact I think the last time I spoke to you in this studio we were right in the midst of the closure of the live export trade.
The Northern Cattle Association have been obviously talking to you continually.
Why for instance wouldn't you support or put money into an abattoir which was proposed here in the Northern Territory as part of the trade between Indonesia and Australia in the cattle industry?
PM: We're going to keep working with the cattle industry on the beef strategy and we're working on a Northern Australia strategy.
Minister Simon Crean in particular has been working on that and leading that, and you're own Warren Snowdon and Trish Crossin are participating in that too.
The issue that I needed to deal with here in the Northern Territory and beyond was the question of cruelty to cattle that was uncovered through Four Corners and we needed to act and we have now acted so exporters work through a supply chain, we know where the cattle are going, we know the abattoirs they're going to and consequently we are able to assure ourselves about the conditions that those cattle are being dealt with in.
HOST: There's no doubt though at that time, the trust between Indonesia and Australia was somewhat on shaky ground and do you still support the campaign for Indonesia to continue territory live exports, because it's such a key part of the Northern Territory's Cattle Association?
PM: I'm a big supporter of this industry. And for it to have a robust strong future, we needed to get these animal welfare questions sorted out.
HOST: Then why wouldn't you support a local abattoir, which was one of the reasons, we it was one of the suggestions that came up, that in fact we would have an abattoir here?
PM: We're happy to keep working with the industry on suggestions that the industry makes.
But we faced a moment where the Australian people were rightly saying, seeing images of incredible cruelty to animals on their TV screen, industries like the cattle industry need to have a social licence, they need to have support from the people of Australia, as well as the economic merits of the industry itself.
And so in order to ensure that the people of Australia were going to support this industry, we needed to sort out how we were going to deal with animal welfare, and we have. So that's important to the long term future of the industry, of which I'm a supporter.
HOST: One of the discussions that's come up on the text is with regard to roads. Obviously roads and infrastructure are very important in Darwin. And we've seen a time in recent times when the floods took the train line out and for a little while there, there was no road and there was no rail. It was like being back in the 1800s - roads are very important.
One of the things with the upcoming election is that the CLP have said that they would reinvestigate whether to reintroduce open speed limits.
Is Federal road funding dependent on us keeping our speed limits at 130km per hour?
PM: Look I'm not going to involve myself in the discussions about the forthcoming Territory election.
We are big providers of infrastructure to the Northern Territory. We've been big investors in local roads. We understand how important they are to the people of the Territory.
We've also been big investors in infrastructure, in health, in education because in this growing community you always need more to keep servicing community need.
So we'll keep doing all of that work with the territory and you'll have your Territory election.
HOST: But the money has always been, the discussion has always been, if you didn't lower the speed limit from an open speed limit to 130 the Federal Government would withdraw its road funding. Is that the case now?
PM: Look, I'm not going to involve myself in local discussion for the Territory election.
HOST: Well let's involve ourselves in something that Jim from Berry Springs wants to know; dental care in the top end.
He says he's faced a five-year waiting list to get new dentures. Where are we at with dental care?
PM: We've just made a major new investment through the Federal Budget of around half a billion dollars to have a dental care waiting list blitz.
We believe that that's very important for people who have waited far too long for dental care.
What happened with the history of all of this, is way back when, Labor in Government had a Commonwealth dental program, it was abolished by the Howard Government.
Since then we've seen waiting lists blow out and we've been trying to work through to make sure that every dollar spent on dental care by the Federal Government does the most amount of good work.
We're still working on that but in the meantime we're now going to inject a significant amount of money for a dental waiting list blitz.
HOST: Just on the question of the e-health records which have also started to come in. The Northern Territory already had some scheme that was already operational.
Will eventually those two schemes go together? Because there seems to be some confusion about how people would match their e-health record from the Northern Territory Government system and the Federal system.
PM: We'll want those systems to be working together, I mean, the aim here is for people to have their electronic health record and for it to be portable because you may be turning up for treatment in Darwin where you live, but you also might be down in Adelaide for something or across in Brisbane and need to have access to your health records and for the people treating you there to know precisely what's going on.
HOST: Questions coming through, one from Wazza who's a fairly regular texter, is in regard to turning off the beer fridge.
There was a list of ways to respond to beating the carbon tax. The number one thing that they suggested that you do was turn your beer fridge off in between the weekends, whenever you had parties.
I was wondering, does the Lodge have a beer fridge?
PM: I don't think we really have a beer fridge, we're not drinkers of that much beer.
Look, I think however people want to do it, being energy efficient at home is obviously a good thing to do but let's remember with carbon pricing, it's not individuals who are paying the price on carbon, it's big businesses that generate a lot of carbon pollution.
Yes, they pass some of that cost through, and that means people will see a cost of living increase on less than a cent in a dollar and I don't know what Wazza's personal circumstances are, but if he earns less than $80,000 a year, check your pay packet this week Wazza, because you're going to see a tax cut.
And if he's someone that works part-time, you know, earning a bit of money, we are increasing the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $18,200.
You will be able to earn $18,200 and not one cent will go to the taxman. That means a million Australians just won't be paying tax.
HOST: But it still encourages you to turn the beer fridge off.
Disaster relief - you're here with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - one of the major things that you will do is go to the disaster hub, which was something that happened post the Bali bombings, and Darwin was seen as a key player in terms of international relief for the tsunamis and for bombings and for terrorism.
What is the plan long-term for that disaster-relief hub at the Royal Darwin Hospital?
PM: We are going to go to the disaster-relief hub and I'm very well-aware, as is the President of Indonesia, about the pivotal role that Darwin played post both of the Bali bombings, not only to help Australian nationals but also to help the people of Indonesia.
Australia and Indonesia have been working together on a leadership role in our region to try and coordinate how we all come together and respond when we see an emergency in our region and unfortunately we've seen too many, whether it's been the tsunami and the earthquake in Japan, or what happened in Christchurch, or what we faced with our own flooding and natural disasters.
So we want people to be able to seamlessly work together. President Yudhoyono has played a big leadership role there.
We've been working alongside him, and so that it will be part of what we're discussing over the next few days. And so to get to see people who do that work, who actually make it happen, is a very special opportunity.
HOST: I know you've got to go because you've got some other engagements as Prime Minister, that's the way it goes.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Stronger Futures legislation, but perhaps do it next time. Did you sleep last night by the way or did you manage to get some crackers (inaudible)?
PM: I did get some sleep but certainly there was some continuing fireworks around 2.30am in the morning, so I was awake for that.
HOST: You should have reported that immediately to the police, you know they're supposed to shut down by 10pm?
Prime Minister, thanks for coming in. No doubt we'll hear more on the carbon tax particularly I would think and in terms of asylum seekers and the policies there.
PM: Thank you very much.