HOST: Good morning to you
PM: Good, it's a bright and sunny day in Hobart.
HOST: You're giving me your weather forecast, I'm just thinking as a Queenslander that it might be slightly chilly for you, but enjoy the crisp day anyway.
PM: I went for a long walk last night, it was crisp, refreshing. It was good to see Hobart. I gather you guys have won an award in the ABC, is that right?
HOST: 936 ABC Hobart have won metro station of the year and Tim who would normally be sitting in this chair has won broadcaster of the year so it's, it's a very celebratory day for us here.
PM: Congratulations to you all, I take it that's why he's taken the day off. Is that right?
HOST: He's still in Canberra. So I don't know if you take days off in Canberra but that's what he's doing anyway.
PM: No, no we've outlawed that.
HOST: Now looking at news overnight, the alert for the flu is now at level five. What's the latest information you have on the swine flu?
PM: Well the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, advised by also the input of all states and territories through the Commonwealth Health Protection Committee, continues to work directly with the Health Minister and continues to work through her to the cabinet.
Overnight we have had a further increase in the World Health Organisation description of the actual virus itself, they've raised the alert to Phase Five and that Phase Five is on the basis of a recognition that human-to-human spread of the virus has occurred in at least two countries within a World Health Organisation region.
What are we doing in Australia? The key things are these. Not only have we provided information to emergency departments and GPs on the known characteristics and risk factors of the disease, our travel advice has been updated, we've established a swine influenza hotline, airports have a clinical presence now with nurses available and on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer the Government has included swine influenza to be a quarantinable disease. And we'll continue to make further announcements and take further measures as is appropriate based on professional advice.
HOST: And you're confident that Australia is fully prepared to deal with whatever eventuates?
PM: We believe that we have taken a whole range of preparatory measures over a long period of time through earlier experiences of SARS, earlier concerns about bird flu and of course this most recent appearance of swine influenza.
The other thing which your listeners should be apprised of is that all incoming passenger flights will be required to report to the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service on the health status of passengers on the plane. Previously that was only on flight from the Americas and New Zealand.
Furthermore health declaration cards are now being provided, are being deployed to airports and airlines so that passengers themselves will be asked to fill in this card and report any flu-like symptoms, once that is system is fully deployed.
Also thermal scanners are being deployed to eight of Australia's international airports over the, over the, well it's already begun and they will be deployed operationally on the basis of advice from the Chief Medical Officer and we will continue to take appropriate action based on the best professional advice.
HOST: Okay well let's move to COAG now. Are the states going to be told today how much money they're going to get to spend on infrastructure under the Building Australia Fund?
PM: We said prior to the last election that we were in the business of nation building, building infrastructure in all states including Tasmania. You'll be aware in Tasmania that we made a recent announcement that we'd be rolling out the National Broadband Network, beginning here in Tasmania in the second half of the year. That will be a very large investment.
More broadly on other infrastructure needs, whether it's in terms of health infrastructure, whether it's in terms of what we do in education and research or what we do in other forms of physical infrastructure, all that will be done through the Budget process and we're still some ways off the Budget.
We'll talk more broadly about the state of the public finances of the nation when we meet with Premiers and Chief Ministers today but we've still got some way to go before the federal Budget is formally released.
HOST: And looking at the broadband rollout, what do you expect to learn from a rollout in Tasmania that you can realistically apply to other parts of Australia that are very different in terms of geographical area?
PM: Well I was talking to the Tasmanian Premier about this last night and I think what's exciting for Tasmania and important for the nation is the early evidence we will have on take-up by small businesses across Tasmania and the particular experiences that we will learn from how they deploy high speed broadband in growing their businesses.
Remember the great value of broadband is when properly applied it starts to overcome the tyranny of distance. That means it puts small businesses, medium businesses in touch with a far wider network of potential customers and a far wider network of their potential supply chain.
I think it is potentially one of the most revolutionary technology platforms for businesses for the 21st century. And the great thing about starting the roll-out here in Tasmania through the very supportive efforts of the Tasmanian State Government is that we're going to have early evidences of how that's working.
HOST: And will we have early evidence as well that it's affordable for the average person or for small business?
PM: Well obviously on the question of cost, we've got to make sure that first of all the physical service is provided and let's just remind all your listeners of this fact. Up until now Australia's broadband services in terms of bandwidth and band speed are among the slowest in the world's developed economies. That is not appropriate for a modern economy like Australia.
Secondly, we've got to make sure that once it's rolled out it is available at reasonable cost. All these things will be sorted out through the implementation process but we want to make sure that it just doesn't exist as a service in name, that it's taken up and of course that will be shaped very much by price determinations on the way through.
HOST: So a lot of these things to some extent are speculative, Prime Minister. When do you anticipate seeing the impact of the infrastructure stimulus package in all of these areas showing up on the economic figures?
PM: Well let's just look at the most recent data which was produced by the International Monetary Fund on their projections for global economic growth for the year 2009.
The projection for the world's most advanced economies is three times, almost three times worse than it is for Australia. One of the reasons at play there is because we in Australia took early, decisive and effective action through our national economic stimulus strategy and nation building strategy to inject investment into the economy very early, in the fourth quarter last year. That is rolling through.
First of all through the short term stimulus we provided through payments to pensioners, veterans and carers. Secondly, our investment in medium term infrastructure, the largest school modernisation program in the country's history, and thirdly through long term infrastructure such as the National Broadband Network which we referred to before.
What do all these things do? Create jobs today and at the same time, build infrastructure for tomorrow. If you look at our figures relative to the rest of the world, whether it's in the housing sector, whether it's the retail sales sector or in the International Monetary Fund's projection for economic growth for the 12 months ahead, while this recession has hit Australia - and there is no doubt about that and people are hurting - our relative performance, relative to the rest of the world is on average considerably better.
HOST: Are you confident though that states can meet the strict deadlines and timelines and will also have sufficient tradespeople, skilled workforce to do the building work in the time that you've set and to get the economic impact that you say will happen?
PM: You know something? I'd much rather be in the position of saying, have we got enough tradespeople around than the reverse, which is the case in housing and construction markets across Europe and across America at present. And the reason is we are pumping so much activity and investment into the economy.
Let's just give you one example. The first home owners boost, which has trebled the grant available to first home buyers buying a newly built home, has had a massive effect in housing construction levels across the country, particularly when measured against the rest of the developed world. It has been a very significant measure. The Housing Industry Association in Australia has welcomed it. If you look at the data on housing starts in our country relative to the rest of the world, it is clear evidence that the policy is having real effect.
On the question of the availability of tradespeople around the world, my mission, around the country, my mission for Australia is this: to provide in every primary school in the country a construction site through the addition of state-of-the-art, 21st century libraries or the possibility of investing in new language centres, new science centres or in classroom refurbishment or multipurpose halls so that our tradies right across Tasmania, right across Australia have an opportunity to obtain work, get a job now, provide employment now and build the best school infrastructure we need for our kids for tomorrow. That's our strategy.
HOST: Prime Minister Rudd, yesterday a report was released into poverty in Tasmania by the Tasmanian Council of Social Services and the Chief Executive of TasCOSS said on this program yesterday that the federal government could make an immediate difference to the situation by increasing income support benefits for all people on welfare and specifically looking at people on unemployment benefits. Will the budget increase, include an increase in employment benefits?
PM: Well as you know we don't engage in pre-budget speculation, that's just a matter of a standard public policy discipline which has been adhered to by all previous Australian governments.
HOST: Is it being considered?
PM: I'm just responding to you as Mr Howard would have responded to you as well. That's the first point. The second though is in terms of people who are doing it really tough and there are many, many, many across our nation including in Tasmania, what many of the welfare organisations have said to us as a Government is the critical underlying need here is the physical availability of sufficient social or public housing for people in the most abject need.
This has been an area of massive non-investment by the previous Australian Government under Mr Howard. What we have done again through the national economic stimulus strategy and nation building strategy is commission $6 billion worth of investment in the largest single addition to the social housing program that this country has seen. 20,000 additional units of social housing being built, providing jobs today - but critically, providing available and affordable social housing for people in real need.
At the end of the day there is a limit to what governments can do but we are taking these sorts of practical measures to help people in need now.
HOST: Mr Rudd we'll have to leave it there and let you get to the meeting of COAG. Thank you very much for your time on mornings.