Joint Doorstop Interview, Brisbane

Subjects: The Coalition’s real action for paid parental leave; the ‘real’ Julia Gillard; Leaders Debates.


E&OE


TONY ABBOTT:

Ok. Look, it’s great to be here at King Country Nursery, surrounded by families and their children. We’re in the heart of the electorate of Bowman, so magnificently represented in the Federal Parliament by Andrew Laming, my friend and colleague. I’m delighted to be here with Sharman Stone, the Shadow Minister for Childcare. I’m also really pleased to be here with my friend and colleague, Sophie Mirabella, who is the Coalition’s ultimate working mother. And it’s good to see Katerina here as well.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that this debate was all about me, that this election was all about her. Well, this election is not about Julia Gillard, it’s not about the Labor Party, it’s actually about a better deal for the struggling families of this country and I’m pleased today to be formally launching a really important Coalition policy, which is going to help provide a better deal for the familles of Australia. I’m also really pleased that amongst the crowd today is my own daughter, Louise. I have three daughters. I have to say, as the father of three daughters, I’ve become particularly attached to the policy that I’m going to formally launch today. I think it’s very important that my daughters’ generation doesn’t have to struggle the way their mothers did, trying to wrestle with the difficult choices of work and family. We need to make those choices much easier and that’s what this policy is all about.

So, today is the formal launch of the Coalition’s paid parental leave policy. This is not only important visionary social policy, but it is important economic reform. Paid parental leave is good for women because it gives them a real choice. It’s good for families because it relieves the financial burden at a time when it is at its most acute because there are very few modern Australian families that can survive on just one income and it’s good for the economy. It will boost population. It will boost participation and it will boost productivity. The three “p’s” that Peter Costello so famously spoke about in successive inter-generational reports.

I want to just dwell on some of the significant features of the Coalition’s policy. Importantly, our policy provides real money for real time. It is 26 week of leave at your full wage, up to an annual rate of $150,000 a year. Importantly, the paperwork is handled by the government, through the Family Assistance Office, not by business, particularly not by small business. Importantly, the cost is borne by big business, not by small business and importantly, this is not just for full time working mums, this is for any mother who is in the workforce for one day a week, for a year before the birth of her child. So this is very, very good policy and it is going to be of immense benefit in the years ahead to the women, to the families and, ultimately, even to the businesses of our country.

Now, when I first announced this policy, back in March, I said that there would be an extensive period of consultation. Sharman has very ably led that consultation, assisted by the Shadow Minister for Families, Kevin Andrews. As a result of that consultation, we have been able to bring the levy down to 1.5 per cent. I note that the Government has taken to traducing this policy as some kind of a tax on Woollies and Coles, well really, the last thing you should say of something that will benefit the families of Australia, as this will, is that it is a tax on Woollies and Coles, but nevertheless, the fact is that Coles Managing Director recently said that the levy would not have an impact on prices and that as far as he was concerned, he was much more concerned about things like the rising price of electricity than he was about this. So, I’m now going to ask Sharman to say a few words about this policy, then I might make a few observations about general political issues and then we’ll have some questions. Over to you, Sharman.

SHARMAN STONE:

Thank you. Thank you. Well, when Labor introduced their paid parental leave two years after they were elected, it was a real shock. It wasn’t comprehensive, there was no superannuation for families and, as we know, women, in particular, really do suffer in their older age with inadequate financial independence.

There was only that 18 weeks of leave, not enough, we know. And of course they said only the minimum wage. Didn’t matter what you had been earning, what size your mortgage, just the minimum wage. It was so bad that they soon started to refer to it as ‘just a first step.’ So why should families in Australia in fact just have the first step? So that’s why our paid parental leave scheme is comprehensive. As Tony has said, six months with two weeks for the non-primary carer, with superannuation paid, not a burden on business, and that is of critical importance. Labor’s scheme was so bad, is so bad, that it requires businesses to be the paymaster. Businesses, particularly micro and small businesses, can’t cope with that. And let me say to you that Labor, its scheme is so bad they’ve said ‘you’ll have to top it up, we know it’s not comprehensive, we know it’s very mean and lean, but you can go and have it topped up by your employers.’ Well, I’m afraid a lot of our small and micro businesses can’t afford that either. It’s not equitable, it’s not fair. So our paid parental leave scheme is just the help that our working families need. It’s what they deserve. And I just have to say right around Australia we’ve had enormous support for this scheme, and I want to commend it to you today.

TONY ABBOTT:

Thanks so much, Sharman. And, look, I should also add that the scheme is starting on the 1 July 2012. I said when I first announced it that we would bring it in within two years of the election of a Coalition government, and obviously Labor’s scheme will operate, should the Coalition be elected, from the 1 January next year until the middle of 2012.

Now, just a couple of other issues. Look, I think the Australian public should be very concerned about the news today that the Rudd-Gillard Government is stripping $300 million out of Medibank Private to pay for its election promises. This is the equivalent of an eight per cent rise in private health insurance premiums. It’s a sneak attack on the families of Australia. It’s a sneak attack on the three million policy holders with Medibank Private. And it shows that not only with the political assassination of Kevin Rudd has state Labor politics come to Canberra, but with the asset stripping of an important Commonwealth owned business state Labor economic has come to Canberra. And so my clear message to the Australian public is let’s remove this Government before it does any more damage. We just can’t afford another three years of this kind of mismanagement.

Also, many people would have watched the Four Corners programme last night which shows that people smuggling is simply out of control. And what’s very clear is that if you want to stop the people smuggling you’ve got to change the government, because this Government will never remove the product that the people smugglers have to sell.

And finally, I know there’s continued interested in the comments that the Prime Minister made yesterday. It seems now that we’ve had three Prime Ministers in the last six weeks. We’ve had Kevin Rudd, we’ve had Real Julia, and we’ve had whatever existed between those two people. And I say to the Australian public you just can’t tell what you’re going to get from this Prime Minister. You can’t tell from one day to the next what she’s going to be, and I say to the Prime Minister, finally, please, will the real Julia stand up and show herself to the Australian public.

QUESTION:

Will you commit to any other debates in this election campaign?
TONY ABBOTT:

Look, you can’t change the rules just because you’re in trouble. Labor had the chance to have three debates at the start of the campaign. They repeatedly refused, and frankly things have moved on. The time for changing the rules has passed.

QUESTION:

Are you dropping your request for two more debates? Because you did call for two more. Will you agree to have one at some point in the next three weeks?
TONY ABBOTT:

And subsequent to that, the Prime Minister publicly refused. Now, are you suggesting to me that when it comes from Julia, no doesn’t mean no? I mean, perhaps which Julia was talking to me. But the truth is I can’t be expected to know whether it’s the real Julia or someone else who was talking. She said no repeatedly, and when she said no, I thought she meant no.

QUESTION:

If she’s going as poorly as you say she is why wouldn’t you want to have another crack?
TONY ABBOTT:

Well, the fact is that the rules are the rules. And you can’t change the rules just because your campaign is in trouble. And this is what we’ve got. We’ve got a desperate Prime Minister who has been told by the faceless men that she’s got to denounce the faceless men. She’s been told by the people who write the rules that you’ve got to tear up the rule book. I mean, the fact is she agreed to the rules at the start of the campaign. The rules have been set, and the rules should be adhered to.

QUESTION:

[Inaudible] what are you doing on Sunday at that time?
TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I suspect some of you might have noticed that I actually have a campaign launch on Sunday. And as Laurie Oakes himself said yesterday, it was a very cynical ploy by the Prime Minister to try to distract attention from the Coalition’s campaign launch. Look, you can’t change the rules just because you’re in trouble. That’s the simple truth. And if Julia Gillard wanted three debates she should have said so at the start of the campaign when she had ample opportunity. If she wanted more debates she should have agreed after the first debate. But since then she has again refused. And as I said she’s surely not trying to say to us that no doesn’t mean no, because that’s what she said. No, repeatedly. And when she said no I believed her.

QUESTION:

This scheme is going to cost $8.8 billion. You’ve said that you’ll get rid of the levy once the country goes back into surplus. When will Australia go back into surplus? You’ve also had a crack at the Government over taking a special dividend from Medibank. John Howard did the same with Australia Post for three years in 2001-2003. What’s different?

TONY ABBOTT:

I want this to be a temporary levy but because of the spending spree of this Government, because even if the Government does manage to pay off the deficit or at least to reduce the deficit within three years, we’ll still have debt for years and years to come. I just can’t say when the levy will stop. I want it to be temporary but because of the dire fiscal position that this Government has put us in, I’m just not going to put a timetable on it.

QUESTION:

You don’t know when the country will be back in surplus under a Coalition government?

TONY ABBOTT:

I don’t know what I will inherit. I can’t be confident that on going into office, should the people entrust us with the government of the country on 21st August, I can’t be confident that what I’m going to find is what they say. The fact is, every single program that they have put in place, or just about every single program that they’ve put in place has been subject to cost overruns and blowouts. How can we be sure that what they are telling us now is in fact the correct position?

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, you say that families need and deserve help but you’re also telling them that they’ll have to wait until mid-2012 before they can receive your paid parental leave scheme. Why the inconsistency?

TONY ABBOTT:

I note that this is within two years of coming to government, as I promised when I first announced the policy back in March. And certainly we will move much, much more quickly on our paid parental leave scheme than the Rudd-Gillard Government did on its much more modest paid parental leave scheme, which isn’t really paid parental leave at all because it’s not based on the mother’s wage and is really just a re-badged Baby Bonus.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, can you guarantee to us that the economic team that you’ve got in place now is the economic team that you would have if you were elected?

TONY ABBOTT:

Yes, I can. Yes, I can. I’m very happy to give that guarantee. I am full of confidence in Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb. Both of them are very experienced, both in public life and in the world of commerce. I have every confidence in my economic team and I am certain that we will deliver much better economic management than the Government, which has taken us from a $20 billion surplus to a $57 billion deficit in just two years; and has taken us from a net $60 billion asset position to a, pretty close to a $90 billion net debt position. So, yes, I have every confidence in my team and I believe that when the Australian people compare my team with Julia Gillard’s team, they will share my confidence.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, you fell off the face of the earth this morning a bit. You were absent from the media until you rocked up here at 11.15. There was not even any morning radio. I’m just wondering, what did you get up to this morning? And were you behind closed doors strategising with the faceless men and women helping you with your campaign?

TONY ABBOTT:

The interesting thing is that I run my campaign. I am in charge of my campaign. Sure, we have a big team, a big team, but it’s a team that I run. Unlike the Prime Minister, I don’t have to reinvent my campaign halfway through and you know exactly who has been in charge from the word go with my campaign. I simply put it to you, just what has Labor been doing over the last two weeks if the campaign has been as misdirected and as anonymously driven as Julia Gillard said yesterday?

QUESTION:

Ten years ago when the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, pushed very hard, after consultation, for paid maternity, you said over this Government’s dead body. Legitimately, you’ve said you’ve had a change of heart seeing your own daughters grow up. Does that mean you owe the mothers of the last 10 years an apology for making the wrong decision back then?

TONY ABBOTT:

I’m happy to say that my views have evolved on this one. I’m happy to say that the enduring values which are at the heart of my political beliefs, I now think, are given better expression by a paid parental leave scheme than by other policies. That’s the challenge of government. The challenge of government is to apply your enduring values to contemporary political circumstances and in the circumstances of the modern Australian family, we must have a proper paid parental leave system. Without a proper paid parental leave system, we don’t give women choice, we don’t give families a fair go and we’re not even fair to the long-run economic development of our country.

QUESTION:

You’ll be using Labor’s scheme until 2012 but you’re making cuts to that scheme, so how can it be maintained for that year and a half?

TONY ABBOTT:

We’re cutting Labor’s scheme once ours comes in because Labor’s will no longer be necessary.

QUESTION:

Can you just explain, Mr Abbott, how, if the cost of this scheme is blown out, how you can reduce company tax?

TONY ABBOTT:

Because we have flagged a $47 billion program of reductions to borrowing and spending and the $2.5 billion cost over the forward estimates of our company tax cut is more than achievable. The difference between the Coalition and the ALP is that all of the policies that we have put forward in this election campaign are fully funded. At the start of this campaign, the Prime Minister said that all of her policies would be fully funded; but she has not announced a single serious saving, a single significant cut, in the course of this campaign and that’s why it’s very hard to take her economic credibility seriously. Thank you.