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: Prime Minister, welcome to 7.30.

PRIME MINISTER: Good to be with you.

FERGUSON: Given the bumper harvest of legislation in this fortnight and especially in the last few hours, is there any big legislation that you need to secure before you call an election?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ll have an ongoing agenda we want to get, for example, production tax credits are really important for future industry, for green hydrogen, for critical minerals, rare earths. That’s an important part of our Future Made In Australia agenda that’s passed the House today. The Senate will consider it in February.

FERGUSON. So, that means you are confirming that there will be a sitting of Parliament in February?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s certainly our plan.

FERGUSON: That’s not a confirmation, is it?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I don’t give election dates or variations to the questions.

FERGUSON: That’s not. Sorry, that’s not confirming the election date. That’s confirming a sitting in February, or not?

PRIME MINISTER: We fully expect to be sitting in February and we’ll continue to do the two objectives. Everything aimed at how do we make life better for Australians, whether that’s immediate dealing with cost of living pressures. So, just this week, measures like helping with HECS debt reducing that, child care wages going up, Free TAFE, all help with that cost of living pressures which are on. At the same time, how do we set Australia up for the future. So, that Future Made In Australia agenda is a part of that – what are the jobs of the future that are created? Our aged care reforms, the biggest reforms in decades to make sure that older Australians can have the dignity that they deserve in their later years.

FERGUSON: Do you think it’s the right thing for you to do, to go to another Budget so that the voters can have a crystal clear understanding of your economic management credentials?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, they had that already. Inflation had a 6 in front of it and was rising when we came to Office. Now it has a 2 in front of it, 2.8 per cent, and it’s falling. We’ve created a million jobs on our watch, more than any Government since Federation began. We’ve got real wages increasing four quarters in a row, productivity lifting up, business investment lifting up. And importantly, we have done all that while we’ve delivered tax cuts for every single taxpayer, not just some – and the whole range of support as well for cost of living. A billion dollars Australians have saved on cheaper medicines. The energy relief that we’ve provided as well. And we’ve done that while we’ve delivered two budget surpluses in a row.

FERGUSON: And that brings us to the complexity of a further Budget for you, because you’re going to have to explain to the Australian people, why those two Budget surpluses are going to turn into long running deficits?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, Australians know that we have made measures to substantially reduce debt by producing those two Budget surpluses. We inherited, Sarah, a $78 billion deficit, turned that into a $22 billion surplus –

FERGUSON: And you’re about to turn that back into a series of deficits –

PRIME MINISTER: And then followed that with a $15 billion surplus. Now, what we inherited was projections of deficits first year and every single year going forward. That was what we inherited. As a direct result of our measures, Australians have saved on interest payments as well, to the economy. We have been responsible in how we’ve dealt with issues, but we’ve also designed cost of living relief in a way that has assisted in getting inflation down, because we understand that inflation places pressure on people and places pressure on more people who are on low incomes is particularly where it has an impact.

FERGUSON: Just before we get to what your arguments will be in that election, just on one of the matters that happened this week, you killed the environmental laws promised at the last election in order to, as we understand it, protect seats in Western Australia. Was that you just clearing the decks for an election?

PRIME MINISTER: No, well, that’s not right. The legislation remains stuck in the Senate. We didn’t have a majority for it, Sarah. There’s a range of –

FERGUSON: But you killed the negotiations.

PRIME MINISTER: No, no, we negotiated through and we did not have a majority in the Senate to support that legislation like there was other legislation as well, that we would have liked –

FERGUSON: With everything that was in the news cycle yesterday from the Premier of WA. Are you saying you did not step in to stop that negotiation from being concluded now?

PRIME MINISTER: I was the negotiator, Sarah.

FERGUSON. So, did you not call an end to the negotiations?

PRIME MINISTER: No, we negotiated in good faith across the Parliament for bills where we could secure a clear majority, consistent with our values and our position. Now, you can always get everything through if you just cave and give everything the other parties want. That’s not what our approach to these negotiations were. They were ones where we were determined to get our agenda through. We were prepared to listen to arguments, but where it wasn’t consistent with our view of the purpose of legislation, then we wouldn’t just agree to any amendments.

FERGUSON. So, what did you say when the Premier of Western Australia rang you to, or you spoke to the Premier of Western Australia, to talk about that Bill and why it should be held up?

PRIME MINISTER: I spoke to the Premier of WA about my visit to WA next week.

FERGUSON: You didn’t talk about the bill?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I don’t give all the details of my private discussions with premiers.

FERGUSON: In talking about the bill, what did you say? Did you agree with him that it was not the right moment for that bill to be concluded?

PRIME MINISTER: No, I informed him that we didn’t have the numbers to get the Bill through. We didn’t have the numbers for a range of bills –

FERGUSON: Not what the Greens are saying.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, the Greens don’t represent a majority of the Parliament. The Greens represent 10 votes out of 76. What you need is either the Coalition who’ve said no, and we had discussions with them as well about a range of issues. They just chose to say no to just about everything.

FERGUSON. So, how did the Premier of Western Australia reach the conclusion that he had been instrumental in stopping that bill being resolved this week?

PRIME MINISTER: That’s a question for the Premier. He’s a good friend of mine. I informed him that it wasn’t happening this week.

FERGUSON: Can I just clarify one thing? In your conversations with the Premier of WA, you didn’t talk about the electoral implications of the environmental bills?

PRIME MINISTER: No.

FERGUSON: You made a commitment at the time of the last election that those laws were important to you. So, why should voters trust your commitments when they can be abandoned for a moment of electoral expediency?

PRIME MINISTER: We haven’t abandoned anything, Sarah. So, the premise of your question is wrong. We have legislation in which if 37 Senators say they’ll vote for it as it is, then it would have passed today. That wasn’t the case.

FERGUSON. So, you’re saying we should expect that bill to come back in February and with your full support for it to pass?

PRIME MINISTER: It has the support as it stands to pass. And if you might recall, on Monday, we had, in spite of campaigns by Greens and some crossbenchers, to change our housing legislation. We held the line. We held to our commitment. We said it’s good legislation and it passed without amendment. That’s what we want to see happen with all of our legislation. That’s our starting point.

FERGUSON. So, going to the next election, to someone struggling at the moment under the cost of living crisis, and you’ve given – you’ve noted some of the things that you’ve already done. But just briefly, in terms of the briefest message, what is your elevator pitch to someone suffering in the middle of that crisis about why you and your Government deserves a second term?

PRIME MINISTER: We have your back. We’ve implemented reforms to make a difference, whether it’s in housing and rental assistance, whether it’s child care support, Cheaper Medicines, Energy Bill Relief, tax cuts for every taxpayer, fixing up single parenting payment. Right across the board, we have been focused absolutely each and every day on improving the living standards of Australians and taking that pressure off. There’s more to do. We understand that there is more to do and we will have more to say about that. We’ve already started to set out what our second term agenda will be so that, for example, if you’re a student with a HECS debt on average –

FERGUSON: I forgive you. I was asking for the brief elevator pitch. So, let me just come in with a follow up to that, which is if that person feels, says “I feel worse off than when you came to office three years ago,” what are you going to say? They’re wrong?

PRIME MINISTER: You would have been far worse off had Peter Dutton gotten his way and stopped you getting a tax cut and stopped you getting the cost of living relief that we’ve put in place.

FERGUSON: But is that enough? Because that’s what Peter Dutton is going to be telling them every day between now and the election, that they were better off before you came to power.

PRIME MINISTER: People understand the global inflationary pressures which are there, the cost of living pressures. They understand that we have put in place a range of measures and Peter Dutton has opposed every one of them. If Peter Dutton had got his way, there would have been none of that support there. And there’s no future agenda from Peter Dutton. We’ve already started to outline what a second term agenda is like. And Australians won’t vote just on the past. They’ll also vote on what is the offer for the future.

FERGUSON: They will compare themselves to how they felt three years ago, weren’t they?

PRIME MINISTER: What they’ll be looking for is who will make them better off over the next three years. And by voting Labor, they will be better off than they would be if they voted for Peter Dutton because he has form.

FERGUSON: This will be the first election where millennial and Gen Z voters outnumber baby boomers. Younger voters, as we saw so clearly in the US, don’t fall simply into a progressive camp and nor are they attached to traditional media. What do you have to do differently this time to reach them?

PRIME MINISTER: We have to engage on issues of which they’re concerned, such as student debt, is just one of those issues that we’re engaged with. Affordable housing and those issues as well, giving them an opportunity from the changing economy, including acting on climate change in a way that creates jobs of the future. We have to engage through mediums which they listen to or watch or are engaged with. We have to be prepared to go to them rather than expect them to come to us.

FERGUSON: Now, Peter Dutton will make the case, as he did during the Voice referendum, that he instinctively understands the electorate better than you. He’s proven himself to be a formidable Opposition Leader. Do you accept he could beat you?

PRIME MINISTER: Elections are always contestable. I take nothing for granted, but each and every day we have worked to make a positive difference for Australia. And at the next election, we will be talking about Australia’s future, not going backwards. You can’t take Australia forward if you still are run by climate sceptics, if you’re running from the future, and that is something that Peter Dutton consistently does. I want to shape the future in the interests of Australia, and I’m very optimistic as well that if we seize the opportunities which are there, we can be an even stronger country into that future.

FERGUSON: You have done a deal with the Greens this week to push through a series of big Bills, after a very fractious time with them, a lot of name-calling. Have you cracked a way to work with them in minority government?

PRIME MINISTER: I will always work with people across the Parliament. What I want to do, though, is to lead a majority government. That’s my objective, a majority government to provide more certainty, and I do that now. I lead a majority government where I sat down with all of the crossbenchers in the House of Representatives just yesterday, for over an hour, because I believe that people are entitled to be treated with respect.

FERGUSON: If you had one word to describe today, what would it be?

PRIME MINISTER: Good.

FERGUSON: Just on another matter, this week a very senior member of staff in your Government, the Chief of Staff to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, launched legal action, claiming she was bullied and harassed out of her job. Have you failed in your commitment to change the culture here for staffers and politicians?

PRIME MINISTER: No, but work in this building and culture in workplaces is always something where the job is never done. I’m not going to comment on any of the specifics, because as you say, that is a legal matter, and that would not be appropriate.

FERGUSON: Some of the matters are part of the legal case that that person has brought against the Government. However, she went public on the 10th of October, and at that time was not talking about legal action. No-one from the Government spoke to her. Does that reflect a culture that hasn’t changed?

PRIME MINISTER: I’m not going to comment on something that is before the courts. She has taken legal action, which is her right. I do note that there is no suggestion of inappropriate behaviour from Richard Marles, the Deputy Prime Minister, who I regard as someone who is a great man of integrity and honour.

FERGUSON: Prime Minister, thank you very much indeed.

PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.