RUDD: I’d like to honour the life of Bernie Banton. I went and saw Bernie at his West Pennant Hills home, his partner, Karen, and their son, Dean, only four or five weeks ago. What struck me then is that there was Bernie in the determination to keep fighting and to keep living. He was talking about life two to three years down the track and what he could be doing for those who suffered from asbestos-related diseases and mesothelioma, in particular. And what has stunned me, as someone who got to know the guy a bit and to know his family, is just how quickly this disease got him in the end. And I was shocked at the news of his passing this morning.

I’ve just spoken with his partner, Karen, and she’s a really strong woman. And I honour her and their son, Dean, and Bernie’s son, Adam, and their other children, for the enormous support that’s been extended to Bernie in what has been a terrible period of dealing with this insidious disease.

Bernie died at home and it’s where he wanted to die.

If you look at the history of Bernie’s family, I mean, this is a family which has suffered so much, such as his brother, Ted – and as the factory foreman at that James Hardie factory who helped Bernie land the job back in 1968 – his brother, Ted, died of asbestos-related diseases in 2001. Bernie’s brother, Albert, also worked at the same factory and he also has asbestos-related diseases.

Of Bernie’s 137 work mates at that particular plant in Western Sydney at the time, less than 10 are still alive. It’s a pretty shocking number. Around Australia we have some 54,000 Australians who, it’s estimated by the year 2020, will be diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases.

Bernie’s great, great contribution was just as a fighter, a real fighter, not just in terms of his own struggle with this disease personally, but in his struggle with that company to get justice for the people who suffered as a result of working there. And Bernie won. He won that fight. A $4 billion compensation fund.

And just recently, he won another fight as well. And that was the enormous satisfaction he had in getting the Government to agree to subsidising Alimta. He and I talked a lot about that when we spoke last at West Pennant Hills and that would have been, for Bernie, one of the best victories in his struggle for justice for those who have suffered from this terrible disease.

Australia is going to be poorer for Bernie’s passing. Our whole nation will be poorer for Bernie’s passing because he became a symbol, a living symbol of what is right and decent and proper in the workplace relations of this country, including industrial safety.

We will miss him. I will miss him. The nation will miss him. And we’ll now reflect on how we should honour him appropriately, his memory in the future. I’ll, together with Therese, my wife, will be attending his funeral.

I’ll take any questions.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, what’s your message to any corporate (inaudible)?

RUDD: My message to the country is this. Working people are not economic commodities. Working people are human beings. And working people, therefore, deserve and demand respect, care and protection in whatever their workplace is. That’s the core message from Bernie.

JOURNALIST: How would you describe the impact Bernie has had on your life?

RUDD: You know, I went and sat on his bed with him for about an hour that day. I can’t remember where we’d been earlier in that day. I think up on the Central Coast – some of you may have been with us. So, I just rang his partner, Karen, on spec, and saw if he was up for a visit, so he was, and he (inaudible) larger than life. And you know, he’s this bloke full of fight. And his one great passion, his one great passion was that those who had helped him in his struggle should also be respected and recognised. In that conversation, he had nothing but praise and admiration for the work done for him by Greg Combet.

In terms of the effect on me, you know, whatever challenges any of us face in life, there’s Bernie Banton out there saying, ‘mate, here’s a real struggle. And this is how you go about fighting it in a class way’. That was Bernie. And fighting it not just for himself but in the great Australian spirit of fighting it for a whole bunch of other people as well. That’s what you’ve got to admire about the bloke.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, on Saturday night you made mention of Bernie and also the role of the unions. How did you see unions (inaudible)?

RUDD: Well, just talking to Bernie, I just sat there and listened to Bernie for nearly an hour, and his son, Dean, and Karen, as they went through, step by step, of the saga they had been through with James Hardie. And Bernie said repeatedly that were it not for the support of the trade unions, and Greg Combet personally, they could never have got there. So, I just, you know, give recognition where recognition’s due. That’s what the man himself said. That’s what Karen just said to me on the phone. And you know, it just says something about decency and people looking out for one another, and protecting one another when you run into one of these great life tragedies.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible) Greg Combet’s contribution by giving him a (inaudible) role in your Government?

RUDD: Well, I think I said yesterday and the day before, I’ll make those decisions over the course of the next few days, and everyone will be assessed on the basis of merit. My comments just now are simply about what is plain and self evident to me from what Bernie has said about people getting in there and fighting for him at the time. It needs to be honoured and respected. On the question of the composition of our front bench, that’ll be determined, as I said, in the days ahead.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible). Do you have any idea when the Cabinet will actually been sworn in? Have you got any pressures on timing and that sort of stuff and when the first Cabinet meeting will be? And secondly, can you brief us on, please, the advice you’ve received on Kyoto ratification?

RUDD: Sure, sure. I can give partial answers to both of those things. We would hope to have a Cabinet sworn in latest by next Monday. And, and that’s the timetable we’re working to, and I will determine the composition of the front bench by the time the Parliamentary Party meets in Canberra on Thursday.

On the question of Kyoto, yes, I have received a brief. I’m not going to tell you everything that’s in it though, because I’m still working my way through it. There’s a range of ways in which the ratification process can be transacted and I’m seeking further advice on that now. I would hope to have a complete statement on that prepared by the time the Cabinet and Ministry is sworn in.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, the Opposition (inaudible) seems increasingly likely …

RUDD: I’m not sworn in at this stage, so…

JOURNALIST: Seems increasingly likely to allow your workplace changes through Parliament, except for the unfair dismissal. What’s your reaction?

RUDD: Well, our legislation is clear-cut, self-contained and canvassed more than anything else in the course of this election campaign. So, that’s the legislation we’ll be presenting in full, as I said yesterday. And I say it with double vigour today, given the passion of the man who is now no longer with us, that we are proposing decent laws to protect decent people.

And I don’t think it’s right that the Liberals and the Nationals should stand up and wave a flag saying that they want to stand in the way of the changes to industrial relations laws which we’ve extensively canvassed with the Australian people. If Senator Minchin and others want to stand up there and say that they are now running on a platform of retaining Work Choices in all its dimensions or some of its dimensions, that is a very interesting platform for them to run on at this stage, and shows once again that they haven’t all got hold of the message from Saturday. The message that we ran for a long, long time, was that this Government’s lost touch.

Post the election, for these Ministers and others, to be saying that they want to stand for the retention of Work Choices speaks volumes about them having lost touch comprehensively.

JOURNALIST: Lowitja O’Donoghue thought that an apology won’t cut it and she wants to do the work (inaudible). What do you say to that?

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, OK. So, I’m sure I’ll be having a chat with Lowitja O’Donoghue in due course about that as well.

JOURNALIST: Obviously, there’s a long way to go down the track on unfair dismissal and the industrial relations reforms. You’ve made clear that you have a clear mandate, (inaudible) back off. But what if they don’t ultimately go all the way down the track? Double dissolution? What will you do?

RUDD: Well, I’m confident and relaxed that we’ve put a very clear-cut proposal to the Australian people, one that’s been debated extensively for more than six months, not least in your newspaper. And there could not be greater clarity about what we stand for and propose. I go back to the proposition: are the Liberals still so out of touch with working people in Australia that they think they have a mandate to retain Work Choices? Is that the sort of arrogant statement we’re hearing from the Liberals two or three days after an election? Two or three days before the election, it’s the sort of an approach I’d kind of got used to. Two or three days after the election, I find it an interesting proposition.

JOURNALIST: From your comments, can we assume that you’re hoping that the moderate parts of the Coalition will take over and shout down those who, like Senator Minchin, are making noises (inaudible)?

RUDD: Well, remember Senator Minchin’s on the record as saying that this Work Choices legislation, as it currently stands, was but the first wave, in his much reported speech to the HR Nicholls Society. He said that they would need to go much further in the future. And I find it very interesting that Senator Minchin out there waving this flag again today. So, here we have Senator Minchin on industrial relations, on Work Choices, on the record already as saying that he wants to take this much further, and now, quite arrogantly, saying to working families that he believes his Party has a mandate to retain Work Choices? Well, we know he wanted to take it further. Now he still wants to take it further. But to argue now that he has a mandate to retain Work Choices is quite extraordinary.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

RUDD: I’ll make a statement to the Parliamentary Party as is customary about the composition of the Labor front bench. That will include Cabinet Ministers, include Ministers, and will include Parliamentary Secretaries and they are members of the Executive. And that will be the composition of the next Government of Australia.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, have you given any thought to travelling to Afghanistan or Iraq to visit the troops?

RUDD: First priority is, of course, to appoint a Ministry and a Cabinet, and as I’ve indicated in my earlier answer to Matthew, that we would want to have that completed latest by next Monday. 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. Now, beyond that I’ve not, at this stage, had a discussion with Departmental officers about other proposals for travel. But as and when that occurs, I’ll speak to you further.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, why did you drive yourself to work this morning? Don’t you have people to drive you around?

RUDD: Hey, I can drive. It’s a free country. Since Saturday it still is. Why did I drive to work? I wanted to take Marcus, my son, to school. So, I drove him to school. I dropped Therese at the office and then came in here.

JOURNALIST: Do you think that your life is going change dramatically now?

RUDD: No. I’m still Kevin, still from Queensland.

JOURNALIST: Still here to help?

RUDD: Still here to help! No, I wanted to take Marcus to school. I was trying to do it yesterday and it didn’t quite work out. Have you ever tried getting a 14 year old out of bed in the morning on time?

JOURNALIST: Did you get help …?

RUDD: He’s very quiet about it all.

JOURNALIST: How did his school friends respond to the concept of the Prime Minister-elect rolling up at school?

RUDD: I, just as most of the other parents, let him out of the car door, gave him a kiss on the head and off he went.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, you’ve said that the Howards can take as long as they like moving out of the Lodge. How long before you expect you and your family to be in Canberra? Is this over Christmas, over the summer period?

RUDD: The honest answer, Clinton, is I don’t know because Therese and I really only started talking about this, I think, yesterday morning. And that was the first time. We’ve had a few other things on our mind, like the election. So we, therefore, mean it when we say that Mr and Mrs Howard should be treated with complete dignity and respect and I’m perfectly happy with them making whatever transitional arrangements are necessary. And Norman Crescent’s a perfectly nice place to be.

JOURNALIST: What else did Al Gore say?

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’. No, he rang up to congratulate us on the win. I thanked him for that. I congratulated him on his Nobel Prize. He’s off to see President Bush today because President Bush I think has a function for American Nobel Laureates. And so he’s talked a lot about climate change, and about some of the important things which need to be done globally. And we’ll resume that conversation in Bali over a strong cup of tea, or something stronger.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, you’ve talked a lot about the very specific details of some of your (inaudible) policy areas but in the broad. Taking a step back from that, what kind of a place do you hope you can fashion Australia into (inaudible) election?

RUDD: Misha, I spent a lot of time over the last 12 months laying out what I’ve described to you on probably a thousand occasions as a detailed plan for the country’s future. The framework for it in terms of building long-term productivity growth in order to provide a platform for long-term economic growth beyond the mining boom, is well-considered, well-conceived and very mindful of the sorts of public statements you’ve had over a long period of time, for example, from Ken Henry. That’s the framework. How do you build long-term productivity growth to underpin the Australian economy’s long term prosperity? And that is so much what galvanises the economic agenda, hence our proposal for a world class education system. And in terms of the impact on working peoples’ lives, getting the hospitals right through the Commonwealth-State arrangements is crucial, acting on climate change and water is crucial.

So I would much rather be known by the Australian community as someone with sleeves rolled up acting on the detail of this. I actually have a pretty simple view of politics, which is people make a judgement about what you do. And as I said, I have less of an attraction for high blown rhetorical statements lacking substance.

JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, the day you were elected Labor Leader, you said you wanted to rehabilitate the word ‘compassion’ in this country. Now that you have been elected Prime Minster, how do you plan to do that?

RUDD: Well, one of the ways in which we want to do that is by bringing in some decency into the workplace laws of this nation. I keep going back to the experience I had in the main street of Campbelltown. Some of them were down there I think with me – I remember you being down there and a number of the rest of you as well. But just sitting there and just listening to the eloquence of peoples’ stories about what had happened to them as a consequence of Work Choices, it just sets you back. It just really sets you back. And so that’s one thing.

Another is I’m pretty passionate about what we do about homelessness. I’ve been to three shelters for homeless people in the last few months - one in Bris, one in Melbourne, one in Sydney. I think we can do much, much better as a nation for people who don’t have anywhere to stay or secure to stay.

There are other things as well and one of those is closing the gap in terms of Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy. As I said, 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.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible) What is compassionate about turning your back or putting them 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 resettlement countries, and adhering to the letter in the spirit of the Convention in terms of the processing of applicants as well. But in the absence of an enforcement system, you don’t have a system. Let’s just be blunt about it. That’s the truth of it. I better go, folks, thank you.