Rockingham, WA
PM: A big thank you to Kolbe Catholic College, to the students over here and our principal, Robyn Miller for making us feel welcome.
I'm here with Gary Gray, this is actually his community and his part of the world. He has just been promoted to Minister for Resources and Energy, Minister for Small Business and Minister for Tourism and in our discussion with the very intelligent students here today, we had the opportunity to canvass some of those topics.
We are also joined today by Roger Cook who is acting Leader of the Opposition, and we are also in and around the community that he serves and some of the students who come to this great school would come from his electorate.
Today, I want to talk about two big topics: one, Afghanistan and then one relating to education funding for this school and for schools around the nation.
First on Afghanistan, I'm pleased, with Minister Smith, the Minister for Defence and of course a great Western Australian, to today announce that we will-
[Interruption by announcement over PA system]
PM: Oh, we're holding up the bell! Okay, that's really not a popular initiative from us, is it? Holding up the bell? Someone's being forced to do a triple period of maths as we speak but anyway, apologies to everyone.
So first, I'm very pleased today to be able to announce with Minister Smith, the Minister for Defence, that we will be awarding the first Army Battle Honour since the end of the Vietnam War.
This Battle Army Honour will be awarded to the Australian Army's Special Operations Command.
That means that it will be awarded to the Special Air Service Regiment and to the 2nd Commando Regiment.
I know that the awarding of this honour will have particular significance for the people of Western Australia, given this is home to the SAS.
And this special honour is being awarded because of the incredible bravery and courage shown during the very intense conflict, the Shah Wali Kowt Offensive, in Afghanistan from May to June 2010.
That is actually the Offensive for which Ben Roberts-Smith was ultimately awarded his Victoria Cross.
He played a role in that battle which merited that incredible award for gallantry; the Victoria Cross.
And now the SAS as a whole, and the 2nd Commando Regiment as a whole, is being recognised through this battle honour.
So I know that will be meaningful to all Australians, but it will be particularly meaningful to the people of Western Australia who proudly host the SAS in this great state.
Today too, the Minister for Defence joined by the Chief of the Defence Force has made an announcement about the future of our mission in Afghanistan.
In April last year I indicated that we would move into transition in our work in Uruzgan Province, the transition would take around 12 to18 months, and at the end of that transition period the nature of our engagement in Afghanistan would have changed and the bulk of our forces would be able to come home.
As I spoke to the Australian people last April, so it has come to pass.
So we did move into transition in Uruzgan Province. We are well into transition now. The work of the provincial reconstruction team will come to an end. And the base in Tarin Kot in Uruzgan from which our forces work will be closed at the end of this year; at the end of 2013.
What that means is beyond the closure of Tarin Kot, around 1,000 Australian personnel will come home.
We will see a reduction in our mission to Afghanistan of around 1,000.
We have maintained a complement in Afghanistan of on-average around 1,550 personnel.
At the moment, we are slightly above that number because we do have going in an extraction team. It does take some people to go in to make the arrangements to finalise the closure of the base.
But we will, at the end of this year, see around 1,000 personnel come home.
The ongoing role for the remainder in Afghanistan will be working with other forces who are there in Afghanistan in training roles.
So for example, we are working with a range of allies and partners to continue artillery training and other training obligations in Afghanistan.
We have said that we will consider a continuing role for Special Forces, and we will consider a continuing role beyond 2014 when transition throughout Afghanistan comes to an end and we move from the current mission to a new era in Afghanistan.
The Government will continue to consider that potential role for Special Forces and at the appropriate time, having consulted with all of our ISAF partners, make an announcement when we are in a position to do so.
But this is important news in relation to our mission to Afghanistan today.
And then on the question of school funding and the question of making sure that every Australian child gets a great education, I've just had the opportunity to talk through how we are getting our nation ready for the future era of opportunity that we have in this region of the world.
Asia is the fastest growing set of economies in the world. It will be home to the biggest middle class in the world. It will be home to the most consumers in the world. This can be an era of prosperity for Australia if we make the right decisions now.
That era of prosperity is not an assured future for us. We've got to prepare for it and we've got to take the right decisions today.
Amongst the right decisions today is making sure that every child gets a great education. That means that we have got to bring to every school in the country - all 9,500 of them - the right combination of resources, and a focus on school improvement so every child gets a great education.
We have been working now for some time on our National Plan for School Improvement and we have been working on new funding arrangements for Australian schools.
We have been in discussions with state and territory colleagues and with the Catholic education sector and with independent schools.
During all of those discussions it's become increasingly clear that in too many states around the nation we have seen cutbacks to funding going into schools. Those cutbacks not only hurt directly, but they actually affect the indexation formula for the future; the amount of increase in funding that schools around the country see in the future.
So I've got a clear message for state governments around the nation and that is to stop the cut backs, and it is also to properly index their funding for the future.
They should be offering an indexation arrangement of at least three per cent for the future.
I too today want to say that our drive for school improvement is one that recognises differences in different parts of the country and in school systems.
The differences in the Catholic system from state school systems, the differences between states in the way that they offer education.
And so our drive here is not for a national uniform model, but a nationally consistent model recognising the flexibility that jurisdictions need to get on and manage their schools.
Here in WA I know that people have been told this is a takeover of Western Australian schools and that we're going to try and run these schools from Canberra. All of that is of course nonsense.
States would continue to be the drivers of education in state schools. The Catholic school system would continue to drive education in its schools. Independent schools would continue to manage themselves.
But our aim is wherever a child is educated, that they are getting a truly great education. That as a community we can transparently check they are getting a truly great education through My School and making information available.
That the powerful combination of great teaching with a continued plan for school improvement is brought together with new resources so that we can attain the goal I've set for the nation, which is being in the top five schooling systems in the world by 2025.
I'm very glad to take questions.
JOURNALIST: Premier - Prime Minister sorry-
PM: You'd better not tell Colin that!
JOURNALIST: An absolutely shocking Newspoll today. It would see you lose two of your last three seats here in WA. How much do you put that down to the last week?
PM: As you know, I don't comment on opinion polls but I don't think anybody in the country needed an opinion poll to tell them that last week Labor, the Federal Labor Party, had a truly appalling week.
I described it as appalling and self-indulgent yesterday. That's how I felt about it.
And I'm unsurprised that's how Australians felt about it around the nation.
For us, that week is over. The Government has always had a sense of purpose. Now it has a sense of unity. And we've got to make sure we are getting better every day, working harder and getting better every day.
Certainly, my mission to get up every morning and do this job better than I did it the day before - that needs to be the mission of the Government as a whole.
JOURNALIST: It's such a wipeout that you will have no members left in Western Australia including Mr Gray standing over your shoulder. And there will be Government members sitting on the Opposition benches.
PM: The election will be held on September 14. I announced that earlier this year. And Australians will make a choice on 14 September.
The only real political contest in Australia is the one between me and the Leader of the Opposition. And people will make a decision on 14 September whether they want me to lead a majority Labor Government with our clear plan for the future and the help and assistance we are providing families with all of the modern pressures they face.
Or whether people want to endorse Mr Abbott's plans to take money away from families, to cut jobs and to cut the services they rely on.
People will make their choice on election day.
JOURNALIST: Are you disappointed that the WA Labor Leader Mark McGowan felt that you were so unpopular here that he didn't want you standing next to him during the state election campaign? And what does that fact say about your chances for turning around your popularity in this state?
PM: During the days of the state election we dealt with this matter. I obviously travel very regularly to Perth and I'm here today and I've not only been here for visits as Prime Minister I, working with my federal team in Western Australia, have ensured that we have hosted some very big international events out of Western Australia including most recently the strategic dialogue we have with the United States of America here in Australia once every two years.
The state election has come and gone. Overwhelmingly, state elections deal with state issues. For us it's about now working productively with Premier Barnett and we will continue to do that.
JOURNALIST: Do you think you owe Mark McGowan any apology, any responsibility? It was your own Defence Minister who conceded Federal Labor had been a drag on Mark McGowan's campaign.
PM: Mr McGowan, as Leader of the Opposition, ran a very good campaign indeed. And I understand he always intended to take a bit of leave with his family after the election campaign and he's doing that now and I hope he's enjoying a few days break, it's well deserved.
Mr McGowan ran a good campaign. He took responsibility for the election result. Clearly overwhelmingly, state elections are resolved on state issues.
For Labor here as we go to the federal election, we have obviously got a lot of hard work to do and I've indicated to you that each and every day I think we have always got to strive to do better and better and better, and we will.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the budget that you'll hand down in several weeks' time, how pivotal do you think that is in turning Labor's fortunes around?
PM: Budgets are pivotal for the Australian economy. What they are pivotal for is jobs and growth. Whether or not people can look forward to jobs and employment, whether our economy grows - that's what budgets are about.
As a Labor Party, we deliver budgets that are focused on jobs and growth and even in the last parliamentary fortnight when eyes were understandably on other things, we delivered the strongest monthly job figures in 13 years.
So jobs and growth, that's what our budgets have been about in the past. Jobs and growth, that's what this budget will be about.
JOURNALIST: Why don't you think the Australian people appear to be giving you credit for those achievements than if Newspolls are to be believed and all the other polls in the past? You say you have got a good economic story to tell but it appears that the electorate doesn't agree with you.
PM: Well I don't comment on opinion polls but as I said yesterday, I believe as Prime Minister it's vital for me and for the team I lead each and every day to be pursuing with a clear sense of purpose the shaping of Australia's future and the support for modern families. I believe we have been doing that; that we have been of have been driven by that sense of purpose.
But unity, a sense of unity, has eluded us. That was very spectacularly on display in the last week. We now have that sense of unity, so driven both by a sense of purpose and sense of unity we need to focus on all of the things that matter to Australians.
A budget that's about jobs and growth, schools which are about opportunity for every child and the future of the Australian economy. Hospitals and a healthcare system that meets peoples' need and is added to with Disability Care Australia; a new way of supporting people with disabilities.
The best of infrastructure for the future and of course the best supports we can provide to people as they go about their daily lives looking for that job, looking for a better job, starting a small business, raising their kids, looking after their older relatives.
JOURNALIST: Gary Gray has previously said that mining companies are paying more state royalties than ever and he believes that's a good thing. You said that you want an end to royalty hikes. Is he not contradicting you on that?
PM: We have got the same view about how the royalty system works and its interrelationship with the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. We brought the Minerals Resource Rent Tax into being because it is appropriate for there to be a profits-based tax for minerals in the same way that there is a profits-based tax for petroleum - the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.
There is an ongoing issue about how that tax intersects with state royalties and that's the subject of continuing review and discussions between us and the State Government.
JOURNALIST: Do you believe that you can win this election?
PM: Absolutely, because the choice on election day will be the choice I've outlined.
It will come down to just the most simple of choices; whether on 15 September, I'm Prime Minister leading a majority Labor Government with a clear plan for the nation's future and supports for families today, or whether people have made Mr Abbott Prime Minister with all of his negativity, with his plans for jobs and services cuts and with his plans to take away from an average family $2,300 a year in government benefits.
JOURNALIST: Protestors are expected at tomorrow night's Cabinet angry, they say, that the Federal Government has ruined live exports.
What do you have to say to them and will you be beefing up security?
PM: I don't personally deal with security matters. They are obviously dealt with by police and the like so I don't have anything to do with that.
On live animal exports, let me be very clear. If this Government had not acted to deal with animal welfare conditions in the live cattle industry, we would not see that industry exist for the long-term.
One of the major reasons we acted was to give this industry long-term security and stability. No-one wants to see the animals mistreated, and I've met with lots of people who make their living from the live cattle industry and they were more distressed than most by the footage of animal cruelty. They raised these animals; they know these animals and don't want to see them treated like that.
So of course a concern about animal cruelty motivated us, but we were also motivated to act because this industry operates in Australia with the consent of the Australian community.
And if the Australian community withdraws that consent because they see animals mistreated time after time after time, then this industry would pass into history. No-one would be making their living from the live animal export industry.
By addressing animal welfare standards we have made sure there is a strong and secure future for this industry. It was a difficult decision and it was a difficult time for people in the industry but it was the right thing to do for the long-term future of the industry.
JOURNALIST: Two asylum seekers have died near Christmas Island. Boats continue to come. Surely the Government needs to change their policy?
PM: We have been guided in our policies by the most eminent and expert Australians you could find. I ask you just to contemplate whether there is anybody you would have asked in the country apart from Angus Houston, the former Chief of the Defence Force, Michael L'Estrange, a foreign policy expert, and Paris Aristotle, a refugee expert. They, these very eminent Australians with their expertise in these different areas, came together and chartered a course for the future.
I have wholly endorsed that course for the future and the thing that is stopping me bringing it into operation is that unfortunately the Leader of the Opposition and his team has decided it is in their political interest to see more boats.
I would in a heartbeat enact every recommendation of the Angus Houston review. We have been stopped from doing that by the negativity of the Opposition because they think more boats on the horizon is good for their politics.
JOURNALIST: You were asked by one of the young women over here what you liked most about being Prime Minister. Can I ask what you like least?
PM: One is tempted to say journalists but that would be unfair wouldn't it? And possibly not popular in this group!
No, it's a life of some stresses and strains but more than anything else, it's a life of incredible opportunity in that all of the things across my life I've seen in our nation that I've wished could be better, closest to my heart whether or not every child gets a fair go in education or whether some get left behind.
In this job, in this role, you get the opportunity to fix it and one of the things we have done and we will continue to do is make a difference for kids in schools.
I can go to schools now that not only boast buildings and more computers, but I can go to schools now where I can show you that those schools were overwhelmingly churning out kids who couldn't read and write and today they are churning out kids who can read and write.
That's because of what we've done as a Government working with those great teachers to make a difference for those kids, and now we are getting on with the very big job of making sure that that happens every time for every child in every school.
When you get to do things like that, who would describe this life as anything other than a delight?
Thank you very much.