Subject(s): Election campaign; Reforms to ALP; Newspoll; Asylum seekers; NPC debate; Visit to NT
HOST: Kevin Rudd, Good morning.
PM: Good morning Pete, thanks for having me on the program.
HOST: A delight to have you and congratulations on getting your old job back Kev.
PM: Thank you for that, I'm looking forward to getting to Darwin today actually and I’ll be in the Territory for a couple of days. After Queensland the NT’s the best place in the world to be.
HOST: You’ve announced today that grassroots Labor members could help elect the leader, taking power from the factional and faceless men.
You will be congratulated by many for that move, but when we transpose that to the local scene and the issue with Nova Peris being parachuted into Trish Crossin’s senate seat, there is a classic example where the rank and file weren’t even consulted and the former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, exercised the captain’s pick.
PM: On the first point you raise Pete, which is the need for national reform of the Australian Labor Party, this has been 100 years in coming.
And what we’re doing for the benefit of your listeners is making sure that in the future when there is a vote for the leader of the Australian Labor Party, 50 per cent of that vote will go to the members of the parliamentary party and 50 per cent will go to members of the Australian Labor Party across the entire nation.
That’s to give local members of our party a voice in our future national direction.
The other thing about this reform Pete is that when the Australian people therefore go to an election and if they vote for a person to become their Prime Minister, under these reforms that person stays as their Prime Minister for the parliamentary term.
That’s what all this is about.
On the local stuff that you’ve raised, I intend to have a chat with the locals about that when I get up there.
I know enough about Darwin and the Territory to know that people from the south and from elsewhere need to actually get up there and see how the locals feel.
I’ll be talking to the local branch about this question when I get up there, and I’ll be talking to locals as well.
So I know all of the controversy surrounding this, but I actually want to hear what the locals have got to say.
HOST: Yeah, there is a bit of a bitter taste in a lot of people’s mouths because like when you were first elected Prime Minister of this country, then you were dumped by your own party, you were elected by the people.
Trish Crossin was elected by the people, and it really should be up to either Trish Crossin or the people to decide when it’s time.
PM: Well Trish Crossin’s made a huge contribution to the Territory as a senator. And she’s a good friend of mine and has been for a long, long time.
Of course when it comes to Nova Peris, she also has made a contribution to life in the Territory and her work in terms of encouraging young indigenous kids to get into education, to stay in education in particular with Aboriginal girls, is first class.
But I go back, Pete, to what I said before. The last thing you want is for some bloke on a phone from Canberra saying that I've got all the received wisdom on this.
I really look forward to getting to Darwin to talk to the locals about this, including the Northern Territory branch of the Labor Party.
HOST: Okay. The bump in the opinion polls. Quite extraordinary Kevin, less than a fortnight and all of a sudden you're up there with Tony Abbott and it looks as if we will go to an election with a neck-and-neck contest.
The election date – would you like to announce it live here on 360?
PM: You want an NT exclusive on the election date?
HOST: I would be delighted Kev.
PM: Pete, I love you dearly and I love the Territory even more, but there’s a thing called a Constitution.
It sets the parameters for when an election date should be and despite Mr Abbott jumping up and down on all of this, and guess what, he doesn’t get to decide, the Constitution outlines when elections are held.
So like all my predecessors, Mr Howard, Mr Keating, Mr Hawke and going back to Bob Menzies. They operated under the Constitution. I’ll do the same.
HOST: Okay, alright, we’ll move on from the election issue. I'm obviously not going to get a scoop there. Tony Abbott’s mantra with ‘stop the boats’.
You had discussions with the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Did he look you in the eye and say we won’t cop boats being turned back?
PM: Well, I've known SBY, the President of Indonesia, for a long, long time, in fact well before he was President of Indonesia and I've met him on many times. He’s a good friend, and he’s a good friend of Australia.
I think you’d understand Pete when it comes to private diplomatic conversations, the thing you don’t do is go and broadcast to the world the precise content of those discussions.
What happens when you have a meeting like that is that the participating governments – in his case the Indonesian Government – puts his case down on paper in a joint statement, and that’s what we did yesterday and you’ll see his views clearly reflected there in terms of unilateral action.
The bottom line is this Pete. When it comes to asylum seekers, first of all it’s a problem across the world. We’re not Robinson Crusoe.
If you're in Europe or sailing across the Mediterranean all the time, same with North America and people coming from Latin America and elsewhere, this is a problem for many, many countries including within our region.
A lot of folk come from outside the region, from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from Iran and then find their way to Indonesia or Malaysia or elsewhere in the region including Thailand.
So the right response is a regional response and that’s why the Indonesian President has decided to pull together – at his initiative – a meeting of regional ministers to work out practical actions for all of us now to take.
And the really interesting thing, important thing about what President Yudhoyono had to say is that he said this is our problem together. And that’s why he wants a cooperative approach to reducing this problem over time.
I’d say this, unfortunately Mr Abbott seems to be very taken with political slogans and flash sounding phrases like ‘stop the boats’.
I think what the Australian people want to know is how will you stop the boats, Mr Abbott? And that’s a pretty valid question given that he’s spent the last four years saying that he will, how will he?
Because as you said before, this is going to be an open and competitive race for the Australian election and he’s got to fess up to what his policies are.
That’s why I've asked him to a debate at the National Press Club this week on Thursday.
HOST: We can lend you a chair.
PM: Well we might need that, but for your listeners who were listening to Mr Abbott over the last few years, it’s all about debt and deficit, it’s all about stop the boats and it’s all about carbon pricing.
So what I've said to Mr Abbott, okay, let’s have the first one on debt and deficit, that’s your chosen topic.
We’ll have the second one on ‘stop the boats’ and then the third one on carbon pricing.
Let’s actually hear what you would do about each of these things rather than just chant a slogan like you’re at a football game.
HOST: Just finally before I let you go Prime Minister-
PM: I've got to jump on the plane to come and see you.
HOST: I know.
PM: I'm up there to campaign for Luke Gosling, who’s a great bloke, he’s our candidate for the seat of Solomon, in fact his partner Kate works for me so I should put all that on the record.
He’s a good guy, and as you know he’s a career soldier and we’ll be up there talking about the Palmerston Hospital which Pete, I understand you’ve had a bit to do with as well.
HOST: Yes very much so and very disappointed we were-
PM: I want to see that project go ahead.
HOST: It has to go ahead, it’s an essential piece of infrastructure. But quickly before you go, as the Australian Prime Minister and if you are re-elected, whenever the election might be, will you support the Northern Territory becoming the seventh state?
PM: I love this question.
HOST: So do I.
PM: You know something, I am such a huge fan of the Territory, and as a Queenslander I just feel automatically at home when I'm up there.
On the question of statehood, it’s such a complex constitutional question, I just want the Territory to develop and to become a stronger regional economy, more jobs, more economic development, more opportunities for all Australians, and I’ll have a lot to say about that during the election campaign.
So Pete I'm sorry on that and the election date, I can’t give you a scoop.
HOST: Prime Minister, great to talk to you and I don’t doubt we will chat again.
PM: See you soon, bye.