ABC AM
HOST: Julia Gillard, good morning and welcome to AM.
PM: Good morning Sabra.
HOST: Newspoll shows that your Government is heading for electoral oblivion and you must concede that with the primary vote of 30 per cent and a two-party preferred vote of 42 per cent, it means an electoral wipe out for Labor.
PM: Sabra, as you know I don't comment on opinion polls but I don't need a poll to tell me that last week the Labor Party had an appalling week. I made that very clear yesterday. When we present to the Australian people self-indulgently talking about ourselves there are consequences.
HOST: Your own personal approval ratings have crashed, 65 per cent of voters are dissatisfied with you and you have an overall net satisfaction rating of minus 39 per cent. Why don't people like you, Prime Minister?
PM: Well, once again Sabra, I don't comment on opinion polls but after last week in federal politics, I don't need a poll. I don't think any political observer - indeed any community member - would need a poll to say that people looked at the conduct of the Labor Party last week and were just shaking their heads.
HOST: When you announced a reshuffle in January, you said that your ministry was the team that you'd take to the election but you've lost eight people all up now, including the whips. How can this team now, that you've got now, be the best team for the job?
PM: Well fortunately, federal Labor has a depth of talent. As I said on the weekend, as I pondered the reshuffle I was spoilt for choice. There are a lot of people in our ranks with the capacity to make great ministers and I've selected a number of them to be part of the team.
HOST: But you could have chosen these people in January and you didn't so by that reasoning alone, this isn't your best team.
PM: Well, there is inevitably change in politics across the life of a government. Now that, of course, doesn't excuse the circumstances of last week and I'm not trying to but inevitably there is change in politics.
What matters is the depth of your team and the ability of people to step up and do a great job. I'm very confident that the people I selected yesterday will do precisely that.
HOST: Have you had to sacrifice your best team possible for unity?
PM: Well, a number of ministers made a decision based on their conduct during the course of last week and whether or not they thought in those circumstances it was the honourable thing to step back from serving in the ministry.
Those decisions were made, I accepted those decisions and described them as honourable because that was the right word.
In those circumstances of course, I am choosing people as replacements and the people that I have brought in, as well as the new allocation of portfolios, gives me a team which will perform well with a sense of purpose and a sense of unity.
HOST: You've talked about a team and I know that you like football analogies; you've loaded up Mr Albanese, Mr Combet and Mr Emerson with extra jobs. They already have pretty full plates. How is that responsible? Are you, in football terms, just asking them to be full forwards and full backs?
PM: No, I'm not. I'm most certainly not. What I've done is I've put together responsibilities that fit. Minister Albanese has been dealing with infrastructure and transport and if you took yourself to a regional area today, they would be talking to you about their infrastructure needs, about the quality of local roads. So it makes sense to combine that with the regional development portfolio and that's what I've done.
Minister Emerson of course, travels the world talking about Australian exports and trying to get more exports. International education is one of our biggest export industries and nothing will define our future more clearly in this Asian century of change than what is happening with apprenticeships, traineeships and university places. So it made sense to ask the person who is leading our course into that Asian century at a ministerial level to do that work.
Minister Combet, of course, is continuing to perform magnificently on all of the industries and innovations of the future, including clean energy.
HOST: Simon Crean was on the Expenditure Review Committee. It's meeting all day today. Who will take his place?
PM: It's my intention to keep the Expenditure Review Committee with the same membership as currently - that is, not to appoint a replacement for Simon Crean.
HOST: He was on it given his broad ministerial experience. Is that committee now going to suffer because his experience is no longer there?
PM: That committee is full of people with broad experience led by the Treasurer Wayne Swan, with participants like Jenny Macklin and Stephen Smith.
HOST: Former ministers and former ACTU leaders Simon Crean and Martin Ferguson have both warned you against the class war rhetoric. Will you heed their call?
PM: Well, Sabra, this is one of those debates where a term or a couple of words start being used and I think it's important to drill down and see what people actually mean by it. So when you put that question to me, what are you saying those words mean?
HOST: Well, the class war rhetoric in the Minerals Resource Rent Tax fight, certainly Martin Ferguson said that picking a fight with the likes of Gina Rinehart was wrong.
PM: Well, Labor governments in the past and this Labor Government have taken the proper view that the resources that are in our grounds and in our seas - whether it's petroleum or whether it's coal or iron ore - that those resources belong to the Australian people, and so it's appropriate for them to be the subject of a profits-based tax.
That was the approach of the Hawke and Keating government which created and then administered the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. That is the approach of my government with the Minerals Resource Rent Tax.
HOST: But even your new Resources Minister Gary Grey said last night that language from leadership should be more "thoughtful and cautious".
PM: Well, Sabra, here we are having a thoughtful discussion.
HOST: Mr Crean says, and he's back by Bill Kelty here, that it makes no sense to tax people's surpluses, their super, in order to help the Government surplus. He's right, isn't he?
PM: Well, superannuation is a Labor creation. It will only ever be safe in Labor hands. It is only Labor governments that have ever worried about a decent retirement for working people. That's why we are doing things like insuring the lowest income Australians can have a special extra contribution with government support to bolster their retirement income.
And you know, the true contest here in Australian politics, Sabra, is the contest that will be resolved on 14 September between me as Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
One of the things in contest on 14 September is whether low income Australians get to keep that extra superannuation contribution or the nation endorses Mr Abbott's plans to take that benefit away from them.HOST: And for higher income earners, will you be increasing the tax on their superannuation?
PM: I've already made a series of statements ruling out certain measures in superannuation. We've always got to make sure that the system is sustainable and is meeting the nation's needs and the needs of individuals.
But let me be very clear about this. It is only Labor that will ever safeguard superannuation in this country. It is Labor that brought superannuation to this country for working people.
HOST: Simon Crean's done you a favour hasn't he with all the conspirators and backstabbers gone now from Cabinet and from here on in all the responsibility is on your shoulders?PM: I described last week as an appalling week and that's what I meant.
HOST: There are a significant number of ministers now facing the task of being involved in their preparation for their first budget in incredibly constrained fiscal circumstances. How is that responsible governing?
PM: Look, we have a very strong economic team that will shape and lead us in the budget debate.
Of course, Wayne Swan here delivering another budget. This is the man who saw us through the global financial crisis and was lauded around the world for his economic performance as Treasurer, and of course he is assisted by Penny Wong.
HOST: The trip that you're heading off to today to Western Australia, is that governing or campaigning?
PM: I'll be there doing a series of very important things for the people of Western Australia. I've travelled to Western Australia frequently.
Of course, as Prime Minister I travel around the nation to meet with local communities and particularly to conduct Community Cabinets. This is something that we've done consistently across the life of the Government.
HOST: To asylum seeker policy, a policy that is particularly strong in Western Australia, there has been a sharp rise in the number of boats in recent weeks coinciding with the end of the monsoon season. We had two deaths yesterday. Your policies clearly failed, hasn't it?
PM: Well, there are incredibly distressing circumstances from yesterday and of course I think many Australians will have been moved to see that loss of life, particularly the loss of life of a child.
This just reinforces the message how incredibly dangerous it is for people to get on these boats, to put their lives in the hands of the people smuggler and too often, too tragically we see lives lost in those circumstances.
I've taken the best advice possible on this area of policy from the former head of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, from a foreign policy expert, Michael L'Estrange, from a refugee expert, Paris Aristotle, I have been stopped from implementing the full suite of measures that they recommend because of the belligerence and negativity of the Opposition and I think that is to be regretted.
HOST: But the Opposition isn't in government. You're the Government and you have deals with the independents and the Greens here. Why not bring pressure to bear on the Greens to make something happen?
PM: Well, I think an obligation lies on the shoulders of those who will say to the Australian community on 14 September that they are ready to govern, an obligation lies on their shoulders to show that they can put the national interest first.
In this debate very, very sharply each and every time it has been presented to the Parliament, they have said ‘no' to the national interest, they have said ‘yes' to their political interests and they have preferred to see more boats on our horizon because they think it's good for them politically.
It is an incredibly destructive attitude but it's been their attitude and it continues to be their attitude.