Transcript: Julia Gillard, Address, National Press Club
Julia Gillard
posted Friday, 20 August 2010
E & EO PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: Chris Johnson from the Canberra Times, Prime Minister. When Labor settled on a five per cent emissions reduction target, Kevin Rudd said repeatedly then it was actually far more ambitious than it looked because of Australia’s expected high population growth. You have since said repeatedly that you don’t want a big Australia. So if we’re not going to have a big population, what excuse have you left for not pushing ahead for a bigger emissions reduction target?
PM: Well we’ve got the same targets, obviously with a five per cent unconditional target. What I’ve said for the future of population and for immigration is I believe in a sustainable Australia, not a big Australia and we’ll get the policies right. Now obviously every year this nation considers what its immigration intake should be against a set of economic criteria. For the future I want to see us do that against the sustainable population policy we will develop. Yes the target remains the same, the target is an ambitious target. The difference between me and Mr Abbott essentially in this campaign is I believe in climate change, he does not. I believe we need to cap carbon pollution and we need a market mechanism to do that. I will lead the national debate, he does not believe in either of those things. We will address emissions through the policies I’ve outlined. Record investments in solar and renewable, new transmission lines to get that energy into the national electricity grid, no more dirty coal fired power stations, greener buildings to work from, greener cars to drive. Mr Abbott will endlessly take money out of your wallet, the purses and wallets of Australians, shove it in the hands of big polluters as pollution continues to rise.
JOURNALIST: Michelle Grattan from The Age. Ms Gillard you repeatedly say you think this will be a cliff hanger and that raises the possibility of a hung parliament. What would be your approach if there was a hung parliament to the cross bench members? For example, if it involved the possibility of a deal with a Green member what would you be willing to do? And secondly, Mr Abbott the other day committed himself to supporting a Debates Commission for the next election. Given the farce over debates this election, are you willing to give a similar commitment?
PM: Well what I’d say to you, Michelle, is I’m not going to speculate on what might happen on Saturday. My job, my drive, my passion is to be campaigning and fighting for the decision that Australians, I believe, should make on Saturday. Contrast between a positive plan for this nation’s future and a campaign of relentless negativity asking for protest votes. So the decision is in the balance. It’s tough, it’s close, it’s tight, it’s a cliff hanger but I am going to use my time remaining between now and Saturday campaigning not speculating on the result. On a Debates Commisson, can I say to you quite frankly I think politicians in election campaigns will obviously always pursue questions about debates. They’ll vary from time to time in each election campaign. I formed the view we should have had a debate about the economy. I was ready for it last night, Mr Abbott was not.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Malcolm Farr from the Daily Telegraph. You’ve twice referred today to record investment in solar energy, yet during the campaign in your pursuit of offsets you’ve taken some $220 million out of the Solar Flagships program and some $50 million out of the Renewable Energy Bonus scheme. Can you understand how all those people who’ve gone to the Greens, many of them young voters, are cynical about this Government’s approach to climate change?
PM: Right, what we’ve done of course is we’ve looked at the likely expenditure draws on those programs and we’ve made some decisions about what needs to be in the forward estimates and allocated as a result. I can understand that following the events in Parliament House about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that there’s a sense of frustration amongst many Australians, some of them younger Australians, some of them older Australians, but a sense of frustration among many Australians about not having a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I share that sense of frustration. I was there in Parliament House when you could hear the consensus to get the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme through the Parliament shattering around you and it shattered because of Mr Abbott. Now obviously in this election campaign people are making a decision whether they will have a prime minister who believes in climate change, who is committed to leading a national debate to get a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the market mechanism we need to price carbon whilst delivering on the policies I’ve outlined. Or they will elect a man who doesn’t believe in climate change, will never price carbon, will never have a market mechanism and will endlessly take money from them and give it to big polluters as pollution rises.
JOURNALIST: Lyndal Curtis from ABC radio current affairs. Both you and Tony Abbott are haring around bits of the country at a rate of knots in the last week or so of the campaign. If you’re a voter in a safe seat though you’ve got almost no, you’ve got no chance really of meeting either of the candidates for Prime Minister, let alone having any taxpayer funds for local projects like roads and sporting stadiums rain down on your head. It may be a smart way to run a political campaign, focusing just on marginal seats, but is it really any way to run a democracy?
PM: Well Lyndal excusing me for not sharing your cynicism. I’m very happy to meet voters in all parts of the country and when you look where I’ve travelled and where I’ve gone since the 2007 election, I’ve been right around all parts of the country. I’ve been to many, many places talking to many people. We’ve had community cabinets to go out there and meet people. When we make decisions about where investments go let’s go scoreboard, track record, very happy to. Regional rorts? Mr Abbott’s track record, remember what the Auditor General said about that? Well it wasn’t a very nice form of words and I think the word corrupt or corruption figured in it somewhere. Look at what we’ve done, Building the Education Revolution, economic stimulus. We could have put that in places we thought were politically sensitive. We didn’t do that. We said let’s benefit every school in the country, every school and that’s what we’ve done. When we look at things like GP Super Clinics, I know it’s fashionable to be cynical about where these things are placed. We use a set of criteria about doctor shortage and about need. When we look at other investments, Trades Training Centres, I want to make sure they go into every school in the country, whether mum and dad vote Liberal or whether mum and dad vote Labor or whether they equivocate between, but the children in that school get the benefit of a Trades Training Centre. Mr Abbott wants to stop that. I want to make sure that children in secondary school get computers, every school, every seat, every electorate, every suburb, every town. Mr Abbott will stop that. I want to make sure that people can ring a GP hotline after hours and use the power of the National Broadband to get health assistance in the middle of the night, doesn’t matter where you are, Mr Abbott wants to stop that and so the list goes on. This is a campaign of importance to every Australian in every part of the country. And can I say on local commitments, the difference between me and Mr Abbott is the local commitments I have committed to, we will keep. The local commitments Mr Abbott has committed to have got a huge big funding hole. He’s committed to $900 million worth of local promises and he has accounted in his budget from yesterday for only $350 million worth. So, if Mr Abbott has made your community a promise, odds are, it’ll never happen if he’s elected Prime Minister.
JOURNALIST: G’day Prime Minister, Matthew Franklin from the Australian —
PM: And the campaign trail.
JOURNALIST: Indeed. Well I've been talking to people on the campaign trail, just like you. And I talk to them about promises. If you and I had time right now we could go somewhere and sit down and look at the list of promises that the Labor Party made in 2007 and we would have no trouble at all in finding quite a few broken promises. And when you talk to people out on the street, and you say well, what do you think about that? They say, I don’t believe either of them. I don’t think politicians will keep their promises. I would like to ask you, what you have to say to voters who are undecided and going to the box and they’re wavering and they’re think, why should I trust this woman to be any different from any of the others?
PM: Okay, and I'm happy to say to voters, judge me on who I am and what I've done. I been Deputy Prime Minister, I've been Minister for Education of this country. I carried the Government’s education revolution agenda. I carried our agenda for getting rid of WorkChoices and introducing the Fair Work Act. I'm happy for everybody to get out the tick sheet and say promises made, promises delivered. And there’ll be one, there will be one out of many, many promises, one that we didn’t deliver and that was the child care centres because ABC Learning collapsed – the biggest private child care provider in this country. I didn’t know this was going to happen in 2007 when we made that promise. But I'm happy to go through the rest of the list, you know, promises made, promises delivered. National curriculum, Fair Work Act, improving schools, Trades Training Centres, computers in schools, HECS relief for kids studying maths and science, a better way forward for universities, universal pre-school, child care quality standards and the list goes on and on. Happy any of day of the week to sit down with you and go through that tick sheet, happy to stand by it in front of Australians.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Andrew Probyn, from the West Australian newspaper. What happens, and this is assuming you win on Saturday, what happens if the Minerals Resource Rent Tax does not raise the predicted $10.5 billion in revenue? What would happen to the infrastructure money, the company tax cuts, and the superannuation benefits? Would they have to disappear for the sake of the budget surplus because, let’s face it, the last time the Treasury came up with numbers for the RSPT, they were horribly wrong. And secondly, would you consider lobbying or encouraging Woodside to locate its processing plant for the Sunrise LNG project in East Timor if that is the, if that is what it will take to get East Timor to accept a refugee processing centre?
PM: Okay, happy to answer those questions, thank you very much. Number one, I'm not making any assumptions about Saturday. This is a cliff hanger election, a cliff hanger election. If the Government is re-elected, and I'm using the word if deliberately, if the government is re-elected, then we have worked with Treasury, and obviously in my discussions with the biggest mining players in this country, BHP and Rio, biggest mining companies in the nation, to get the figures right on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax and I stand by them. The contrast for Saturday, let’s go through it: Minerals Resource Rent Tax, superannuation, infrastructure, company tax reduction, better benefits for small businesses, these are the things that I will provide. On Mr Abbott’s side, company tax up, no tax breaks for small business, no superannuation, no extra infrastructure for WA. He’s not only going to stop the $2 billion flowing from the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, he’s hacked $400 million direct out the Budget, direct out of the forward estimates. So that’s the contrast, that’s what people can choose between. On commercial decisions about where projects go, whether its Woodside or whether it’s any of our other great resource companies, they should make those decisions in the best interests of their shareholders, paying dividends, the things that they need to do to run a profitable business. Yes, I will pursue the dialogue with East Timor, the East Timorese Government is open to the dialogue and as Prime Minister I will pursue that dialogue, if I’m elected on Saturday.
JOURNALIST: Hello, Sandra O’Malley from Australian Associated Press. You’ve repeatedly said that this will be a cliff hanger election. Can I take you to one seat where the race will be against the Greens, rather than the Liberals the seat of Melbourne. Many traditional Labor voters might think about switching their votes to the Greens there because they feel betrayed on issues like climate change, asylum seekers, gay marriage, the internet filter. What would you say to those people who no longer see Labor as the progressive party of choice. And if the Greens were to have the balance of power in either the Reps or the Senate, will you rule out any horse trading with them over the MRRT?
PM: On the second question, yes I rule out any horse trading with the Greens on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. I know Mr Abbott has been going around trying to raise a fear campaign about this. Part of the campaign of relentless negativity. But let’s just actually look at the facts, because the facts are revealing. I have consistently ruled out any movement on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. What I have agreed with Australia’s biggest miners is what I will legislate and to be fair to Senator Bob Brown, he has publicly acknowledged that while he will seek to move amendments he accepts that when those amendments fail that a re-elected government would have a mandate for the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, in the form I agreed with Australia’s biggest miners. So this fear campaign has no substance. It’s not based in fact. If I am elected as Prime Minister on Saturday, the Minerals Resource Rent Tax I legislate will be the one that was agreed.
On the question of the choice between the Greens and the Labor Party I would say this. The way to make change in this country is from government. Yes, you can make political points from other places, and of course the Greens very much use their candidates in the Senate, people like Senator Bob Brown, for whom I’ve got a lot of personal respect, they use them to raise issues and that’s appropriate, that’s part of our democracy. But you make change from the Government benches. So if you want to see change, there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to elect the Government.
JOURNALIST: Louise Dodson from the Financial Review, Ms Gillard. You’ve put the economy at the centre of your campaign and I’m just wondering, if you are elected, what your top economic priority would be. Would it be lifting productivity, returning the budget to surplus, easing cost of living concerns, economic reform and tax reform etc?
PM: Look I’ve outlined a comprehensive economic plan for the nation that does all of those things. So my priority is delivering that economic plan. I will bring the budget to surplus. I will cut company tax. I will give small businesses tax breaks. I will invest in the skills of the future that increase productivity and participation. I will invest in infrastructure that increases productivity and participation. What is the one thing I will always have in the front of my mind? It’s jobs. I’ve been motivated all of my life by the benefits and dignity that work brings people. I’ve all of my life, worried about the shattering of self confidence, family life that unemployment brings. That’s why I’m proud we stepped up and we saved Australian jobs when the global financial crisis threatened and that’s why I think Mr Abbott was so wrong, so wrong, to advocate that this country go into recession and we just see hundreds of thousands of Australians join dole queues. That’s not my way, that’s not Wayne’s way. We will be pushing for jobs.
JOURNALIST: Phillip Hudson from the Herald Sun. You’ve said that you believe Australia should become a republic, but you don’t want to do anything about it, while the Queen still reigns. But are you going to get ready for a republic. Will there be anything, if you’re re-elected on Saturday, is there anything you will do in the next three years to get Australia ready for it by having a non-binding plebiscite or anything like that at all, so if the time ever arises, the nation will at least have some sort of road map.
PM: Look, I’ve expressed my own view during this campaign, but can I say, where the republican debate largely went off the rails and didn’t get the confidence of the Australian people last time round, is that it was too much about political figures and too little about community views and community campaigning. So I genuinely believe that for this nation to become a republic, we need to see an organic coming together in the community, a sense that people want change. I think there’s actually less sense of activism around this now than there has been for a long period of time. I think that would have to be rebuilt before it is you know, credible to suggest that we would go to any form of vote with a hope of success.
JOURNALIST: Good afternoon Ms Gillard. Phillip Coorey from the Herald, Sydney Morning Herald. At this event about three years ago then Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd was asked if elected what he would have liked to have achieved in a year’s time. Could I put it to you if you are elected on Saturday, could you give me three palpable things you would like to have achieved by this time next year and possibly one by Christmas, which is roughly within your first 100 days?
PM: Right. Thanks for that. Well by Christmas I would have wanted to have delivered, commenced delivery of the Government’s promises. Obviously, promises have staggered start dates, but what I want to do is I want to rebuild a bit of faith by actually setting about methodically, piece by piece delivering what we’ve promised. And what we’ve promised is a comprehensive integrated plan for the future of this country on the economy, on skills, on jobs, on health care, on the National Broadband Network, piece by piece, step by step, getting it done, delivering what we’ve promised the Australian people. What I’d like the government to be remembered for and whether that’s at the end of the first year or the end of the three years or at some other time in Australia’s history, if I’m re-elected what I’d like people to be able to say about a government I lead, is that my passion and determination for making sure that every child got a great education shone through everything the government did and that was the time that Australian education was transformed so we gave every child that chance.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Hugh Rimington from the Ten Network. Just sort of really following on from Phil Coorey’s question in many ways. When the debate was held here you were asked what was the thing, the area in which you’d been called upon to display political courage and I think you nominated MySchool. Moving forward, if you’re re-elected, if you’re elected on Saturday, can you nominate a policy area in which you think political courage will be required and how will you display it?
PM: Look I think often these debates are, you know, close in a bit and people don’t get a sense of what it’s like to live this life and do this job. You know, I’d hope people would say to me that pursuing, piece by piece, the national plans that I’ve outlined in this campaign takes courage and it takes determination. It’s easy to sit there and carp and moan about what everybody else is doing wrong. It’s much harder to put out positive plans and to seek to be judged by them. Judged by them in the election campaign, judged by them on the implementation of those positive plans. So for me, transforming education, keeping our economy strong, reforming health care, delivering the National Broadband Network, stepping up and tackling the challenge of climate change, the need for a deep and lasting community consensus. All of these things take courage. And you know, when you look at the things that I’ve done as Education Minister, well you know, it’s easy to say, oh modest achievements in one area of policy. Thirty years this country waited for national curriculum. Thirty years. Why do people think that was, because it was hard to do. I got it done. Twenty-five years, this country’s waited for increased school transparency. Why do people think that was, because it was hard to do and I got it done. Thirty years this country’s waited for uniform occupational health and safety laws and we were well on our way to taking as long as it took to get a uniform rail system – I got it done. Across these achievements, Fair Work Act, WorkChoices, getting rid of it, getting the workplace relations system that shows decency and respect to working Australians – I got it done. And for the Government, here with Wayne, I would say it took some courage. It took some courage to step up during the global financial crisis when there wasn’t anybody, there wasn’t anybody in this country or around the world who had the play book, had the rule book, knew what was going to happen next to step and to make the decisions to keep Australians in jobs – we got it done. We got it done and that was the right choice. What do we see on the other side of politics? Well, you know, national curriculum, talk talk talk, nothing happened. Transparency in schools, talk talk talk, nothing happened. WorkChoices, deep passionate embrace and ongoing love, global financial crisis, would have sat on their hands. All too hard. Don’t want to know. Don’t want to be judged by a decision. Maybe something will go wrong. We’ll just sit. We’ll just wait until Australians are on dole queues and we hope that they’ll accept our explanation that it was something to do with the world, not us. That’s what Mr Abbott stands for.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Jessica Wright of the Sun Herald. You mentioned before your first words as Prime Minister and during that same speech you said there were some days that you’d delight and some days that you’d disappoint. Now five weeks into the election campaign and you have battled leaks, outspoken criticisms of former leaders. It’s been up and down. You’ve trailed in the polls and now have a narrow lead. Could you tell us then personally what you believe has been your high point when it is you have delighted the Australian people, and equally the low point when you have disappointed?
PM: Well, you’ll probably have to excuse me if I keep these moments of critical self analysis until after election day. And what I’d say to the Australian people is when I delight and when I disappoint is a matter for them to judge. But with those words, what I was trying to point out is, you know, we’re all human beings in this job. We’re all human beings. There are days when you’ve got to make tough decisions. There are days when people would look and say: “She could have done that better, I wish she’d said that, I wish she’d worn a different suit.” You know, so on and so forth. Those things will happen each and every day. What I seek to be judged by is not necessarily the accumulation over a 24 hour period of the six or seven media cycles that are now within that 24 hours. What I would seek to be judged by is what gets done and what gets achieved. And that’s what I meant when I used those words, you know, this business isn’t about entertaining. It’s about leading the country. What you’re remembered for are the hard things that required persistence and effort and you got them done. That’s what I seek to be judged by.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Jayne Azzopardi from the Nine Network. Jess alluded there to one of the low points probably for you this campaign, and that was the leak over you opposing paid parental leave in Cabinet that Laurie Oakes revealed. The announcement you made today about paid parental leave, can you tell us whether you personally supported this decision and also when the decision was made? Was it made before the election campaign or was it made after that leak in an attempt to make you look a bit more family friendly?
PM: Look, guess what? I’m not going to give you an insight into how we do our campaign policy announcements and I’m not going to invite all of you who have been on the media bus and the media plane to our campaign strategy meetings or our Cabinet Meetings, or any of those kind of things. What I’m announcing today, I believe in. It’s a good policy, it’s an affordable policy, it’s a costed policy. It’s going to give dads time at home with new babies – that’s a great thing.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Karen Middleton from SBS Television. Could you also tell us what this policy announcement today actually costs in dollar terms? But my other question is this. The Government won great praise in 2008 for the apology to the Stolen Generations, and there’s been a lot of talk since about closing the gap in life expectancy. The Bureau of Statistics figures show in 2008, of all Indigenous deaths that year, 4.2 per cent were due to suicide. The comparative proportional figure for non-Indigenous deaths is 1.5 per cent. And there aren’t any newer figures than 2008 yet, but if you talk to Indigenous people they tell you they go to far too many funerals, particularly of young Aboriginal men. Can I ask you, what responsibility, what moral responsibility do you as Prime Minister and former Deputy Prime Minister take and will you take for this situation and the disillusionment that has clearly caused it, and what undertaking will you give today to make this an urgent priority if you win office?
PM: Look, thank you for that question and you’ve raised something that I think is very important to the Australian people and very important to our – suffering there a bit, aren’t you – very important to our sense of perception of ourselves as a nation. The Government has set a range of aspirational targets in closing the targets. Aspirational in the sense that we are, you know, fixed on achieving them but we recognise that they’re a climber’s reach; that they require a real effort, a real step up. And the Government has allocated, it’s more than $4 billion extra to assist with reaching our closing the gap targets. Now the reality is as we invest in literacy, in numeracy, in closing the gap in education, as we invest in health care, as we invest in employment opportunities, we’re investing but change happens, you know, piece by piece. And then when you do the full set of statistics for all Indigenous Australians, obviously, for that full set of statistics people are going to think, can’t we speed this up more? Look, I’m determined, I think you’ve seen from Jenny Macklin as Minister a great deal of determination in this area. For me, it all, you know, comes back to getting a great start at school, getting skills, making a transition from school into the first rungs of work, the first opportunities that are out there in the workplace. If a young Indigenous person doesn’t come out of school reading and writing, and too many don’t, if they miss the first step on that, you know, journey into the workplace, into an apprenticeship, where they need to go next. If they end up therefore on welfare with the sort of corrosive effects that come from that aimlessness, it can be a long, long, long way back. So that’s the focus of our policy. On the costing of the measures we’ve outlined today, you’ll see the costings in the press release. It’s a modest measure, absolutely modest measure. I acknowledge that. When we look at Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme, his is in the capital B for billions; ours is in the hundreds of millions. The difference, of course, is that ours is affordable and doesn’t require a tax on groceries.
MIDDLETON: Can you tell us what it is?
PM: The figure, it comes out, it’s 270 currently on the forward estimates. Sorry, it’s 270 a year for the current paid parental leave scheme and this will add 90 a year.
JOURNALIST: Hello Prime Minister, Jodi Spears from the Seven Network. I'm interested in your thoughts today on leadership. Are you able to define what you see as leadership and also name the person you see as the most inspirational leader, either here or anywhere else in the world?
PM: Yep. Look I think leadership is about engaging with people. I think the Australian model of leadership, particularly, is not for people to get a sense that they are above or somehow different to the people that they lead. I think the Australian model of leadership is to see yourself as, you know, a member of the community to always be open to concerns, to questions, to issues, to discussions with people. That’s the model of leadership that I will employ. I have always believed people are immeasurably strengthened by being a member of the team, by having a team around them that can feed in ideas, and I will have that model of leadership too. In government that is a traditional Cabinet system of Government. But people also look to leaders to chart a course, to inspire, to show fortitude and determination in pursuing that course, that’s important to me, it’s important to how I conceptualise myself as a leader, and people should expect that to be on display, I hope, this is in the judgement of the Australian people. I hope people would say that’s been on display in this period of the campaign.
JOURNALIST: Mark Kenny from the Advertiser, Prime Minister. I want to go back to, I guess, what was raised by Lyndal Curtis, and Matt Franklin, really the sort of functioning of democracy question. In your speech you talked about Tony Abbott’s boat phone, which we know doesn’t actually exist as an actual phone, but there’s —
PM: Well, you know, you’re making assumptions, aren’t you.
JOURNALIST: — Well I am, I'm taking him at his word. WorkChoices, which he says is dead and buried and last night it as gone as well. The PBS, which he said today, there will be no increase to medicines, and the surplus, which you say he doesn’t have a plan for getting it, you don’t know when it will happen. In all of those cases he has an alternative view. I'm just wondering, given that both sides in this election campaign have so egregiously misrepresented each other’s positions, what choice to voters have, what chance do they have, really, of making any sort of reasonable assessment of the truth in all this.
PM: Well, can I say, the following, no matter which side of politics says it, one plus one is always going to equal two. And on Mr Abbott’s costings, by using that very, you know, simple set of mathematical processes, that hopefully people learned in school, obviously I'm very passionate about making sure we keep investing in numeracy, but using that very simple set of mathematical processes, when you go through Mr Abbott’s costings, we’ve identified $12.4 billion in costing errors. Now, $12.4 billion means that their savings do not match their spending, that means that it adds to the budget bottom line. That is, it punches into the surplus. You can’t walk away from that maths. Maths is maths. And for Mr Abbott on other questions on WorkChoices, look, I'd accept, I'd accept if Mr Abbott, the day after the 2007 election had walked out and said, look I get it now. I get it now, the Australian people are opposed to WorkChoices, I get it. You know, verdict in, verdict accepted, that’s me packing in the tent, no more WorkChoices. If he’d done that, then I think his claims in this campaign would be credible, but he didn’t do that. He wrote a book that lauded WorkChoices. He stood at a despatch box in Parliament House. The despatch box in Parliament House, in the single biggest parliamentary opportunity an Opposition Leader gets in a parliamentary year. He stood at a despatch box and he said, what he stood for was effectively the re-introduction of individual statutory employment agreements and changing the unfair dismissal laws of this country. Now that’s not ancient history, that was May. This is August. Now excuse me for pointing the Australian people to the fact that I think, when a man who wrote a book, and said that in May, wanders around radio studios in an election campaign going “WorkChoices? Who? Me? I can’t imagine what you’re talking about?” That people are entitled to be a bit cynical about that and we are pointing to that, we’re pointing to it for good reason. We’re pointing to it because it’s a risk to what will happen if Mr Abbott is elected as Prime Minister. And the other thing I would say, I think this would be different too, if the Coalition had been transparent about WorkChoices before the 2004 election, but scoreboard. Form. They didn’t tell you about it before 2004, what would make anyone think they’re gonna tell you the truth about it in this campaign?
JOURNALIST: Lenore Taylor from the Sydney Morning Herald. You spoke about the $900 million you calculate that the Coalition has spent on marginal seat promises in the campaign. By our calculations you’ve spent almost as much, or at least as much. You and Mr Abbott have both said that you can’t spend more on things like mental health or people with disabilities because you have to make the tough choices. Wouldn’t the really tough choice be to stop making marginal seat bribes during election campaigns on stuff that isn’t really Federal Government responsibility anyway? And while we’re on costings, by our calculations you have I think $200 million left in the money earmarked in the budget for climate change. Are you going to spend that? Or are you not talking about climate change so much after the Citizen’s Assembly didn’t go down so well?
PM: Oh dear, cynicism, cynicism, cynicism. Number one, you may think that some of these promises for local communities aren’t important, well excuse me for differing. I’ve been in Townsville announcing the Townsville Ring Road. You couldn’t get something more important for the citizens of Townsville as they move around. You also couldn’t get a more important piece of economic infrastructure for our mining industry. So to just you know take a broad brush view and say anything that’s been promised locally is just somehow political trickery – I beg to differ. And you know you, look at examples like that. On the question of climate change, we have made record investments. Yes we’ve got some funding in the budget that enables us to make more investments. That’s a good thing.
On the Citizen’s Assembly, obviously, you know, we look in Government’s past, I mean Bob Hawke for example, I said at the campaign launch when I spoke – Bob Hawke showed to this nation that you can make big changes with strong leadership and by striving for consensus. He had a tax summit, now if we had that today, happen before people’s eyes – “Oh – tax summit, imagine doing that? Imagine getting people to Canberra? Oh – why would you bother talking to anybody – yeah? Why don’t get on with leading it” – tweet, tweet, tweet and so on. Well, frankly I think, including people in decision making is a good thing. I think Australians are pretty smart. I think if I’m elected and I have this Citizen’s Assembly I reckon I know what will happen. You’ll all follow it, and you’ll report it, and in doing so you will help inform the Australian community about the big issues in this debate and that’s a good thing. So happy to stand by that, just like I stand by $1 billion for transmission lines for clean energy into your home. Just like I stand by no new coal fired power stations, dirty power stations polluting our atmosphere. Just like I stand by my policies to green our car fleet. Just like I stand by my policies to green our buildings.
JOURNALIST: Heather Hewitt, 7.30 Report. We are almost at the end of it, but –
PM: I’m not sure if you said that with relief, Heather, or with regret. It was hard to pick your tone.
JOURNALIST: Well possibly both. But is has been an unusual campaign I think by anyone’s standards, including the moment where you said, from now on I’m going to be the real Julia. Do you think you really did throw out the rule book? Have you been happy at all times with the style of your campaign and have you maybe thought sometimes, perhaps I shouldn’t have called this so early if it is now so close. And just on that previous answer, would you call a Tax Summit as Bob Hawke did?
PM: So you call all issue cynical tweets about it? No we actually took a different approach with Tax Summits. We took a different approach on tax reforms so we had the Henry Tax Review, who obviously went out and consulted widely and deeply and produced the report that Wayne responded to and the Government, in its response to the report has obviously indicated that there are a set of things that we want to do now. It won’t be done if Mr Abbott is elected. He’ll go in the reverse direction, company tax up, grocery prices up, and we’ve said there are a set of things that should be considered over the medium term as Budget circumstances allow and we’ve said there’s a set of things that we won’t do so our roadmap in tax is well and truly out there.
On the campaign, I’ve always thought this campaign was going to be an absolute cliff hanger. I’ve thought that from the start. I thought it in the first few days of the campaign, when there were polls coming out with very different figures and people I think were, you know, not necessarily accepting my words, that that was my genuine judgement of the campaign. I think it now. This is a cliff hanger. For me, in terms of campaign style, yes there’s an orthodoxy. I think I’ve done some different and unorthodox things. I think I’ve done that in my own way as I’ve been out and about. I think I did that at the campaign launch. People will judge whether that was a smart decision or whether it wasn’t. I’ll leave that for others.
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard, Peter Hartcher from the Sydney Morning Herald. The Labor Government in NSW, has that been a good Government and if not, how would your Government be any different?
PM: Look the Labor Government in NSW has obviously had its set of problems and I’m not going to stand here on a podium before the Australian people and seek to spin that, or not acknowledge that. And what that means is for people in NSW, is 1. I think that there is cynicism about Government delivery and I think that cynicism is particularly acute in Western Sydney where people have been asked, year after year, to absorb more people, where they live, without seeing the corresponding increases in services and transport infrastructure that enable them to maintain their quality of life. And so, as they’ve seen, year after year, their travel times go up, their ability to move around, you know, more and more frustrated, too much traffic, very difficult to get to work, very difficult to get the kids to school, very difficult to get a GP’s appointment and so on and so forth. The lack of infrastructure that people wanted and needed. I think that that’s particularly exacerbated the cynicism. We’ve seen some of that on display in this campaign. The reception of our rail link announcement. I am determined to build the rail link between Parramatta and Epping. But I understand, people have heard a lot of policies before and some of how they respond to these things is informed by that past experience. You know, what I would say Peter is people will make their judgements about the NSW Government. They’ll get an opportunity to do that next March. Their opportunity on Saturday is an opportunity to select who they believe should run our $1.3 trillion economy, who they believe has a plan for the future of this country, for jobs, for health, for education, for embracing the challenges of the future. I’m asking Australians to judge on that.
HOST: Prime Minister, thank you very much.
Tags: club, Gillard, national, press