HOST: Prime Minister, good morning.
PM: Good morning.
HOST: And happy New Year.
PM: To you too.
HOST: Alright, there's a few elements to this that's quite exciting. Apart from having you on the radio on 2UE, we're also live on the Sydney Morning Herald's website at smh.com.au and in Melbourne we're on 3aw.com.au but something also I've got to thank you for right off the top is you want to take some calls so here's your chance.
How often in your life do you get the chance to speak one-on-one with the PM and actually have her telephone number? For the next 15 minutes or so her telephone number is 13 13 32. That was a worried look just then, you thought I was going to give out your-
PM: Mobile number, yes.
HOST: Yeah, exactly. Alright now let's have a chat about a couple of things here including, how was your summer? I should ask the obvious up front. You been seeing much, reading much?
PM: My summer was fantastic. I had a great time in Adelaide with my family. A different Christmas for us because no dad. But we all came together and we had some really great family time. Tim and I produced the Christmas lunch. We were very proud of ourselves.
HOST: What was it?
PM: It was a turkey, vegetables, the whole nine yards.
HOST: And I've got ask, how is mum? Obviously the first Christmas is horrible and it would be tough for yourself, but how is mum?
PM: She's going okay. My family is a strong one and my sister has moved in with her, which is a big thing to do but that means she's not alone so that's helping a lot.
HOST: There's plenty of things that children have of their parents, but is there something you have of your dad's that you've got in your office or that's at home, something that over recent months it's really taken on even more significance, you know, your bit of dad in the corner?
PM: Yeah, the main thing I've got is some fantastic photos including a photo of him washing dishes on a Christmas day where it's obviously a surprise shot and he's kind of turned to the camera and, you know, tea towel over his shoulder and it's just a very, you know, that's how I remember him, a very natural kind of capturing of the moment.
HOST: I'm glad your mum's not home alone because that's often the toughest thing for women after husbands go or any partner after a husband goes.
PM: Well it's a long, long time. My parents would have celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary on 28 December. They got married shortly after Christmas way back when in the UK. So it's a long time to live with someone and a very, very big loss.
HOST: Good stuff. Alright now let's have a chat about yesterday when you went to the fire ground. You're the most powerful person in the country; the assumption is that you can fix every problem but when you're standing in front of somebody who's lost a house is that one of the moments that you feel truly powerless as a person who has the top job in the country?
PM: There are some things I can do and there are something that I just can't and when you're touring around fire grounds like that and seeing how intense and ferocious that fire must have been then it's not only as Prime Minister but really as a human being that you recognise some of our limitations.
I think one of things of our ages is we feel as we've got so much technology, so many resources at our disposal that we can kind of do anything. But there are times in nature, times in life when there is a limit to what we can do and there was certainly a limit to what could be done to fight that fire. Everything that could be done was done and it's amazing that we didn't lose any life. It's a great tribute to everybody who fought it.
HOST: When you're standing there and you're looking at people, apart from offering comfort it's built into any politician that you want to fix something you feel you have the ability to. How do you reconcile that you can't rebuild somebody's house tomorrow.
PM: Well you've just got to recognise that limitation and be settled with it in yourself and also as you're talking to people, I can offer comfort I think I can embody that fact the nation is thinking about them. The fact that the Prime Minister is there I hope gives some reassurance that the nation is thinking about them. We can offer some practical help and we triggered some new government payments yesterday to give people a helping hand. But there's nothing I can do to bring back the family photo album or the trinkets that we've kept from your daughter's wedding or any of those kind of things that have gone in the blaze.
HOST: I don't know if it's a stylistic question or it's one of linguistics but you often say the nation, not the country. Why is that?
PM: I'm not really sure.
HOST: Because that's one of those terms that you do weave quite often into things. Is there any reason for that?
PM: No, I'm not really conscious of it. You're the first person who's ever raised that with me.
HOST: I'm sorry now you're going to think about it next time you're at a press conference.
PM: That's right, I'll be stuttering as to whether to say our nation or our country and I'll think back to you and say, woah!
HOST: Yeah, sorry Prime Minister. Unemployment figures yesterday, there was 5,000 people who in December lost their job in the lead up to Christmas. We often talk about how Australia is compared to Greece or the United Kingdom or the United States but Australia this month compared to last month the unemployment queue is 16,000 people longer. There are 5,000 people who lost their job over Christmas. What do you want to say to the people who lost their job in the past 30 days?
PM: To anybody who lost their job, particularly in the run up to Christmas, a devastating blow and we all rely on having work. It's what enables people to make a life for themselves and a life for their family and our job is to keep running the economy as strongly as we can so that there are new jobs, new opportunities.
Across the year, 148,000 more people in work than at the start of the year. So our economy has got strengths and there are so many things about our economy that's unlike the rest of the world.
But I get it, if you're that person who's lost that job then it's about your world and your experience rather than comparing the big statistics of the rest of the world. And for your world and your experience I'd want to say we're doing everything we can to keep job opportunities coming.
HOST: But also as a Labor Prime Minister, you would know better than most, is that a huge number and this would have been worse than 5,000 if there wasn't a significant jump in casual employment.
There's a lot of people listening to us right now whose hours are cut, whose conditions are changed. Technically they have a job so that you or the Treasurer can argue about the overall numbers but the individual circumstances of people have changed. Now they might have a job but it mightn't be a fulltime job. It mightn't be the one that pays the way that they believe it deserves.
PM: Now that's true and it's always been true of the way we do our unemployment numbers so there's nothing different in the way we do the count. When we look at our economy I think it's complex in detail and political debate often doesn't give you the space to work through all of the complexities.
It's undoubtedly true that our economy is strong compared with the rest of world. We came through the global financial crisis strong. That's something that we can and should be proud of. It's also true our economy is continuing to generate jobs.
But there are pressures as well. High Aussie dollar; result of the resources boom which is a good thing. That's generating jobs and wealth and prosperity but pushing the dollar up high.
The very fact we came through the global financial crisis so strong that our banks didn't have some of the problems that the rest of the world did means that we're increasingly viewed as a safe haven currency.
Now you'd think to yourself, gee that's something to be proud of too, being viewed as a safe haven currency. People who make decisions around the world saying, I want assets in Australian dollars. But that's pushing our dollar up and the result of that is a mix of good things and bad things.
It means imports are cheap. It means if people are going overseas then they're getting a better deal when they trade their Aussie dollars into the currency of the country they've gone to. But it also means for manufacturing, for tourism, for international education, for a whole lot of industries that trade with the rest of the world that there's a lot of pressure on.
So depending on where you are in our economy your experience will be quite different. For me the challenge is, yep, we've got to keep creating jobs now, people need work. But it's also how do we come through this time in our economy with still a diversified economy.
I don't want us to be a nation that's got all of our eggs in one basket in the resources basket. I want a strong manufacturing sector, I want a strong services sector, I want us to have the industries of the future. And that's what we've been doing with the policies we've been putting in place.
HOST: Once again, if you've got any questions for the Prime Minister, pick up the phone give her a call. Let's take a couple of calls here including Lisa, who is listening to us in Eastwood with a question about the bionic eye. Lisa, here's the Prime Minister.
LISA: Good morning Prime Minister.
PM: Good morning Lisa.
LISA: I'm a blind person. I've been blind now since I was 28, I'm now 43. My daughter was 13 at the time I went blind, she's now 27 and I don't know what she looks like. I don't know what you look like actually.
I'm ringing to ask you about the bionic eye because I think that we have a lot of medical research going on and we have some of the best researchers in the word, and they have been making a lot of progress with the bionic eye, but they need to have continuous funding.
So my question is, will your Government be continuing the project for the bionic eye and be funding this project?
PM: Lisa, thanks for ringing in and thanks for being prepared to share your story with me and with everyone. And when you said the words that you've never seen your child I think a lot of people would have stopped whatever they were doing in their kitchen or their lounge room to really listen to that. That's a very powerful thing to say.
We've got more money in research than ever before, including health and medical research. As the Government we have councils of experts including the National Health and Medical Research Council, you would have heard of, that advise us and help make decisions about where to put those research dollars.
So I'm very happy Lisa, from having heard you, to go and work out what's happening in with research and support for the bionic eye. Those experts will have had a look at it. But I'll go and make some enquiries and if you can leave your number with the people who are assisting us make this show, then we'll make sure we get back to you.
HOST: Okay, if you've got a question for the Prime Minister call us now. Now Prime Minister, a couple of other things to get to including there's been some conversation about guns and gun protection and also border protection. I know that you said the other day that the Home Affairs Minister needs to step up here, there's a national approach to be done.
New South Wales fires back pretty quickly and says well great, the one thing the Federal Government can do more than anything else is tighten the borders. To make sure that we check more containers that come through and make sure the border protection - when it comes to firearms - is a higher priority. Is that a part of his job?
PM: Well big problems need us to understand the facts. And I'm glad you've given me an opportunity to get some of the facts in to this debate.
The Australian Crime Commission in 2011 looked at sources of illegal firearms in Australia, so they're pretty expert people. And they said around one per cent come over the borders, that is they're imported, 44 per cent are out there in the hands of criminals because they're guns that should have been given back at the time of the buyback after Port Arthur and the guns change, but people didn't give them back.
Around 12 per cent are stolen, so started off as legitimate firearms with someone who was entitled to have them and then they got stolen and into the hands of criminals. So one per cent coming across the borders.
In terms of how we go about policing the borders and picking up packages of stuff that shouldn't come in, we have more than doubled the interceptions of illegal packages. So that means something that's got drugs in it, something that's got a firearm in it or a component for a firearm.
So, more than double the number that we're catching, and it's one per cent of illegal firearms problem. So in all of this of course we'll always keep looking to do what we can and should do strengthening our borders.
But there's a problem out there from other areas that we've got to think through and address. And that's one of the reasons that I've asked Jason Clare to give us some advice because there is this broader issue.
HOST: There was something, and I don't know whether I'm reading into it, but yesterday in talking about this you said that you wanted parents to feel comfortable that they could send their kids off to school knowing that this country had a good handle on guns.
Now, I don't know whether you were deliberately trying to be evocative about what had happened in the United States, but school shootings is not something that happens here. It isn't something that happens here. Was that the point you were trying to make?
PM: No, I wasn't trying to conjure up images of the United States. The United States has got quite a different problem from us, and a worse problem than we do. They are well behind where we are with gun laws.
We tightened up after Port Arthur and all credit to Prime Minister John Howard for leading the nation through that. All credit to him, he did the right thing. Even before Port Arthur, we had better firearms laws than they have in the United States, and certainly post-Port Arthur we have much more rigorous laws.
So they've got a different problem, different politics, we don't have an NRA equivalent here, and thank goodness we don't.
But we've still got a problem and people live in communities, they go about their business, they do the right thing every day, and I don't think it's right or fair or can be tolerated that they sit there wondering whether that's the night that a bullet's going to come somewhere in their street. That was the point I was making.
HOST: Okay, a couple of other calls here. We've got Luke who wants to ask you, guess what, about the carbon tax.
PM: No problems.
HOST: Okay Luke, here's the Prime Minister.
LUKE: Hi Prime Minister, I'd just like to ask you a question that ever since the carbon tax come in, air conditioning re-gas or the gas you put in air conditioners has gone up like 300 per cent, 400 per cent. When you get the normal LPG and other gas, it hasn't risen so high.
Like, we used to buy it for 12.5 kilos for $280. We're now paying up to $800 for 12 kilos.
PM: I can explain that for you. Those refrigerant gases have actually been the subject of particular levies for a long period of time, even before carbon pricing. Because they are very strongly polluting gases in terms of the amount of carbon pollution - it's actually not carbon, it's about form of greenhouse gas that they generate. But in terms of their generation of greenhouse gases, they are incredibly powerful. More powerful than other sources of greenhouse gases.
And that's been recognised for a long time here and internationally and they've been the subject of levy arrangements. And yes, their pricing has been affected by carbon pricing too. But it is really recognising their potency.
In terms of costs for people, you don't re-gas your fridge every 24 hours, that's something that you do periodically but over a long period of time. And all of that's been factored in to the cost of living increase we expected from carbon pricing, 0.7 per cent of consumer price index - less than one per cent, less than one cent in a dollar - and what we said would happen has happened. The cost of living impact has not been more than we expected.
HOST: Something that I know a lot of mechanics who literally own small businesses have as an issue is specifically about the air conditioning gas, is that they can't tell their customers the reason that it has gone up is because of, further down the line, the carbon price.
Now, this is something that clearly the only people who are allowed to say that something is a result of the carbon tax is the original producers of something. Because there's actually fines. The ACCC will fine a business if they turn around and say that well this price went up because of the carbon tax.
But if it's the real reason why it's going up, why couldn't a business like a mechanics say, hey this if going up because of a price on carbon?
PM: The ACCC is only interested if people are making false claims. False and misleading claims. You are allowed always to get out there and give people the facts and tell them the truth.
What the ACCC was always poised to crack down on, and what we wanted to make sure didn't happen, is that people just profiteered. So you walk into the shop one day and everything's gone up 50 per cent and they're cheerfully smiling and saying, oh you know all that's carbon pricing. And of course all of it is nonsense and they're just trying to rip you off. We didn't want anybody to be in that rip-off business. But if you're patiently explaining the facts to people, that's fine.
HOST: Okay, now I've got to ask you a couple of other questions as well as calls, and I'm being very greedy with your time here, but yesterday we had a story that was around about a former legal secretary at Slater & Gordon who is speaking to Victorian Police about the matters way back when. Have police spoken to you about it at all?
PM: No.
HOST: Would you be willing to speak to them should they want to speak to you?
PM: The question doesn't really arise, I mean the only thing I know about that is I saw it in the newspaper.
HOST: But are you surprised that this investigation, that you've said very directly about your own involvement is one that you've done nothing wrong, are you surprised though that the investigation seemingly the Victorian Police keeps going on and on and there are plenty of people who may potentially have a pretty serious case to answer here.
PM: Look, all of that is a question you are going to have to put to the Victoria Police. What I can tell you is over 17 long years of listening to any amount of political carry-on about this, including the Opposition deciding to waste all of the last sitting week last year on a matter the best part of 20 years old, I didn't do anything wrong, and it's a question for the Opposition whether they want to continue with that kind of negative carry-on during the course of election year.
HOST Okay, and something I've been very passionate about in the lead up to this election year, and I know it was part of the original deal done with someone like Robert Oakeshott. I think we should have a debates commission. I like the idea that sure, it's up to you to decide when an election is called.
But I think that the public deserves to know that there will be a minimum of three debates, and they won't just happen early in the campaign, they'll be timed. And we know that over the 33 days of the campaign, there will be three debates, they will be in the following settings, and who the participants are, well that's up to the political parties.
Can you, at the start of this election year say, whether you want to sign up to the debates commission and also have three debates.
PM: Well what I can say is I do think it's a good idea to have all of this sorted out well before the election period, rather than have it the subject of a furious debate during the election period.
We have said that we're interested in a debates commission, and that will be the subject of discussion between the political parties relatively soon during the course of this year. And I hope agreement can be reached.
HOST: What's your personal view? Are you willing to stand there three times, do you want to do three one-hour chats?
PM: I think the problem with me now outlining my preferred personal view is that it really undercuts the endeavour to get a debates commission doing it. That is, someone that's not me and not someone that's in politics at the moment.
HOST: But that's got to be something that hopefully happens sooner rather than later? That we're not waiting desperately until two minutes before the election for this to be signed off on. This is something that can be done pretty easily, you get everyone in a room and you work out many and that's the deal done.
PM: This will be something that Gary Gray, one of our Ministers will be dealing with. He brings to that position of course some experience in political parties, he's a former National Secretary of our great political party. And I'm sure there will be discussions between him and counterparts in the Opposition, and organisational people in political parties too.
HOST: Okay, rather than me having the last question we'll take one from the phones. Bill with a question here for the Prime Minister, Bill, here's the PM.
BILL: Good morning Julia, doing a great job.
PM: Thank you Bill.
BILL: Julia, as pensioners the wife and I get a discount from our electricity company. The GST takes the lion's share, if not 99 per cent of it. Don't you think it's about time we scrapped the GST for pensioners?
PM: Well Bill, thank you for saying I'm doing a good job. And now you know I'm going to disappoint you because we're not in a position to take the GST back off things.
Once big, new economic arrangements have been made - and the GST was one - then it really becomes very costly, a big source of business uncertainty to start winding back arrangements.
I think we'll actually have some of that discussion during the course of this year about carbon pricing as well.
But what I can say to you Bill, is that your circumstances are ever present in our minds, we do know that there are lots of older Australians who do it really, really tough, which is why I'm glad we were able to deliver and fund an historic pension increase, and why we've been able to put some new resources in your hands associated with carbon pricing.
But more than you need to deal with the average impact of carbon pricing to help you get that little bit in front.
HOST: Prime Minister, thank you so much for your time. I know we said 15 minutes and I've been, well, more than greedy with your time. But thank you so much.
PM: Thanks very much.