CAMERON: Senator Penny Wong is Federal Finance Minister and joins me now. Senator Wong good morning.
WONG: Good morning.
CAMERON: Well Western Australia tried this?
WONG: Well, its sort of interesting, your comment about the Premiers comments around five marginal seats. Its a very political way to approach the serious issue of budgeting. I would have though the people of New South Wales would have wanted the Premier to focus much more on whats good for the state, than playing politics with it.
Obviously its a matter for the NSW Parliament and the Government, but from where I sit, youve got a budget thats in deficit, a budget that whacks homeowners, and a budget thats about cutting jobs and sacking people. Theyve got billions of dollars worth of savings, with very little detail, and weve got a new mining levy. And Im still waiting for Tony Abbott to come out and say thats a bad thing, given that he thinks any additional taxation on the mining industry is the end of the world.
CAMERON: Well, is NSW going to get what it wants here? The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has already said that you will debit infrastructure allocations to New South Wales. Now, youre the Finance Minister.
WONG: Can I say first that I saw your NSW Treasurer making some joke yesterday about the pittance that the Government spends on NSW. And perhaps your listeners would like to know that we provided some $12 billion to NSW through the Nation Building program. One in every three infrastructure dollars goes to NSW. In addition, there was an additional $2 billion from the Building Australia Fund. So, I dont know how those sorts of numbers are a pittance, particularly given how much more than the previous Coalition government we are spending.
But, weve made clear the minerals tax is funding a range of things. The minerals tax, when it passes the Parliament, is funding a tax cut across the economy for business, with a head start for small business. So its directly trying to deal with the patchwork economy pressures, taking from the mining companies, which are in the fast lane, and spreading the benefits across the economy, including companies in the slow lane. Its funding increasing superannuation for Australians, and it is funding infrastructure. So, obviously, if theres less revenue, theres less expenditure on infrastructure.
CAMERON: But the Premier says that your carbon tax will affect NSWs budget so severely that is how he is justifying this.
WONG: Any port in a storm, I reckon. Any reason he can get to justify his budget. Is this the Premier who previously supported action on climate change in the past? This is, quite clearly, out of the Tony Abbott playbook around how you handle politics.
We want to price carbon because we want to do something about climate change. We want to do something about changing our economy, and we want to do something to ensure that we hand to our children, and our grandchildren, a less polluting economy and a less polluting nation than the one weve inherited. And thats a good thing.
CAMERON: In a way though, your weakness is your political vulnerability federally. Because the Premier believes hes in touch with the people, hes just won this massive landslide, he sees a repeat of that in NSW federally. So if it gets back to your political vulnerability, and if that gets back to the Prime Ministers popularity, then hes on a winner isnt he, if he backs self-interest here? Because you will not withdraw funding for NSW if five marginal seats slide as a result of that.
WONG: Were already putting a lot of funding into New South Wales, as I said, $12 billion more than John Howard ever did. But can I make this point, Deb: I dont think that anybody who has ever met or seen Prime Minister Gillard in this last year would think that shes somebody who simply will react because shes scared. That shell walk away from important reforms for the nation like a price on carbon, like the minerals tax. And so I think Premier OFarrell should perhaps be focused on a more constructive approach to dealing with his state, and his budget.
CAMERON: Now, the Prime Minister, as youve alluded to, has taken a very heavy personal hit on her own popularity and standing, almost since the day she headed out to start to argue the case for the carbon tax. And thats been compounded by the refugee detention wreck. Everyone expected a brutal year this year. It has turned into a kind of furnace. Has it surprised you?
WONG: Well, its not for the faint-hearted, is it, federal politics. Certainly, were not in debates which are for the faint-hearted. Were in difficult debates. If were talking about pricing carbon, its a debate thats been around for a long time. I mean, I sat in front of you, talking about it many times, including in my previous portfolio.
Lets remember John Howard, half a decade ago said he was going to do this. And were still arguing about it. Now weve got Tony Abbott who says the skys going to fall in and the coal industrys going to end, which is simply not true. But we need to press ahead with this, someone actually has to have the courage to get this through the Parliament. And that person is Prime Minister Gillard.
CAMERON: Well of course, in your previous life as Climate Change Minister -
WONG: (laughs) Many lives ago now.
CAMERON: You worked very closely with Kevin Rudd on climate policy. Now what were his attributes as a leader at that time?
WONG: I think you Deb are inevitably trying to draw me into some comparison comment and Im afraid Im going to disappoint you. I think the Labor Party has had a very, very clear view about what why we need to price carbon. Paradoxically, it is the Labor Party that is saying we need a pricing mechanism. It is Tony Abbott who is saying, no actually what we should do is take money from Australian families, Australian households. We should give that in grants picked by bureaucrats in Canberra to polluting companies and somehow thats going to fix this.
CAMERON: The Labor leadership question hangs there though. I mean Kevin Rudd has bounced back from heart surgery. He is an unstoppable force. And if you look at the polls hes more popular. Now youve worked with him closely before so do you think that his attributes as a leader then resurfaced today?
WONG: Look Deb, I really am not going to get into this. We have a leader. We have a Prime Minister and we have a Foreign Minister, and Kevin is doing an extremely good job as Foreign Minister. He is exceptionally talented at foreign affairs and we have a Prime Minister who is pressing ahead with the reforms which are needed. Reforms which have until now not been able to get through the Parliament. We do have the votes to get this through and this is a reform that can be delivered.
CAMERON: Now you are in Sydney because you spoke last night to the Women in Banking and Finance Annual Forum. And here you are a woman in leadership yourself. Youve got a Prime Minister there who you are defending loyally. The subject of women and their role in Australian corporate life is something weve talked about before. Very little movements, very few movements have been made at the top board level of Australias top companies. How are you going to force that to change?
WONG: There has been some movement, but youre right. As I said in my speech last night in 2011, you would have thought we would have gone further. So clearly we need to put more focus on this. And I think the first thing you can do is do what were doing. What Im trying to do and what Kate Ellis the Minister is also trying to do which is to talk loudly and clearly and publicly about it so that people are more conscious of it.
But we can also do things. And the point I made last night is Government can one of the ways in which Government can help is to try and increase the number of women on the boards that we have. So if one of the arguments about the number of women on boards of companies, that is this is in the private sector, we need past experience on boards, well obviously (inaudible) if there havent been many very women before that, that immediately lowers the field.
What we can do as government is say, well why dont we try and be the entity that gives a woman her first board experience, or her second board experience. So you enable more women to get prior board experience in the public sphere. And we do have a range of boards which might enable more women therefore to move into private sphere boards as well.
CAMERON: Do you think about though when you look at the treatment the Prime Minister is getting. And shes in it for keeps and she took the job in the most remarkable of circumstances, that there is a sort of inherent hostility to the presence of senior women in some organisations?
WONG: I think that some of the reaction by some people to the Prime Minister is undoubtedly gendered. I think there is, things like the signs at some of the rallies that weve spoken about previously where shes referred to as a witch or a bitch or something, or those sorts of unacceptable terms. Theyre quite clearly pretty gendered terms arent they.
I think over time, things do change. There are attitudes that have shifted in the last 20 years, in the last 10 years, and we still have a way to go. I spoke last night about the sort of implicit barriers, the ones that are not spoken and how we need to try and change the cultures inside organisations and as any leader knows, as any manager of any company knows, thats the hardest thing to do.
CAMERON: One last question, now when youre at home tonight and youre tucked up on the couch with your coffee, will you be watching At Home with Julia?
WONG: (laughs) Until your producer actually mentioned it to me that was on tonight, I hadnt realised it was on tonight. But I actually get home to Adelaide tonight so I was hoping to cook dinner. I havent worked out what were going to watch yet; I suspect Sophie can choose.
CAMERON: (laughs), Thank you very much and congratulations by the way.
WONG: Thank you very much, very kind of you.
CAMERON: Senator Penny Wong, the Federal Finance Minister.
ENDS