AUSTRALIA: New PM outlines agenda
Updated
Australia's new Prime Minister has been outlining his agenda - from saying sorry to aborigines to maintaining a tough line against boat people. The Labor leader, Kevin Rudd - the victor in Saturday's federal election - says he'll announce his Cabinet on Thursday.
Presenter: Graeme Dobell.
Speakers: Australian Labor leader, Kevin Rudd.
DOBELL: Australia is starting to imagine life with a Prime Minister called Kevin.
RUDD: I'm still Kevin, still from Queensland, so still here to help.
DOBELL: The new Prime Minister is announce the makeup of his Ministry when the Labor Caucus meets in Canberra on Thursday. Mr Rudd says he'll announce the mechanism for Australia to ratify the Kyoto protocol on tackling climate change laying the ground for Mr Rudd to attend the United Nations climate conference in Bali next month.
RUDD: I then have, of course, a commitment, which is upcoming for Bali and I've spoken, as I indicated already to President Yudhoyono about that. I spoke to Al Gore about it yesterday as well. He telephoned me from the United States. And Al will be in Bali as well.
DOBELL: The Prime Minister called Kevin met the new Nobel Prize laureate when Al Gore visited Australia this year...and indeed taught the former US Vice President some Australian language skills.
RUDD: G'day Kevin - and that's what he started by saying.
JOURNALIST: He didn't say 'g'day', did he?
RUDD: Actually I've taught Al how to say 'g'day'. As you know, with some of our American friends, it's very hard to get it quite right and so 'g'day'.
DOBELL: Mr Rudd says the new Labor Government will consult with aborigines about the wording of a formal apology for the dispossession and injustices suffered by Australia's original inhabitants.
RUDD: It's not sustainable in a country like Australia to have three times the level of infant mortality amongst Aboriginal children under five than there is with non-Aboriginal children.
DOBELL: The issue of saying "sorry" to Aborigines was a controversy that ran through much of the eleven and a half years of the Coalition government and it has the potential to be an equal problem for Labor.
RUDD: Oh well, on the precise language of the apology, it will be extensively consulted with Aboriginal people and I go back to everything that I said on the 40th anniversary of the '67 Referendum. And the content of it will be real, meaningful, substantive. But I want to be very clear with our friends in Indigenous communities in the country as to a form of that. It's really important to get it right
DOBELL: One thing that will not change under Labor, according to Mr Rudd, is Australia's strict enforcement system for dealing with boat people trying to enter Australian waters to claim refugee status. The Howard Government began construction of a processing centre for boat people on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean and also transported boat people to Nauru - the so-called Pacific solution. The new Prime Minister says Australia will meet its obligations under the Refugee Convention, but will maintain what he calls an enforcement system, including pushing back sea-worthy boats trying to enter Australian waters or processing would-be refugees on Christmas Island..
RUDD Well, you've got to have an orderly migration system and the only way you have an orderly migration system is if you have an enforcement mechanism. What's the alternative? There isn't one. So if you're rational about this, you must have an enforcement system. Compassion lies in how you execute your responsibilities under the Convention and making sure that is done both in the spirit and letter of the Convention. Now I've spoken before about why that Convention exists, coming out of the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War. This is deeply ingrained into my soul about what's important. And therefore, accepting our obligations in terms of resettlement, in terms of the resettlement quotas which are negotiated across the resettlement countries, and adhering to the letter in the spirit of the Convention in terms of the processing.
