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providing any information. Well, you know, Tony Abbott said that he d restoreaccountability and improve transparency. It s a pretty funny way to show that.

TORY MAGUIRE: Senator, why do we even need a debt ceiling? I mean, it was introducedin 2008, under very different economic circumstances we d survived perfectly well without

one before. It s now created this highly-charged political and economic bottleneck shouldn t we just get rid of it?

PENNY WONG: Well, I think the point here is governments should be true to their word.And you know, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey said that they were they would be aGovernment that would reduce debt and deficit, and some of their first acts, since coming toGovernment, have been to blow out the deficit, and to seek to increase the debt ceiling. Now,its a pretty clear game plan they re going to do that, theyre going to say that thesituation s really bad, it s all because of Labor, then they re going to impose massive cuts onAustralian families next year. It s a very obvious game plan. I think the point is this is not theGovernment they said they d be.

PHIL JACOB: Senator Wong, if we can move to the carbon tax will you provide a triggerfor eventual double dissolution in the Government in the next three to six months?

PENNY WONG: What we will do is to continue to respond to the science. Climate change isreal, and Australia does need an effective response to climate change. Now look, this is adifficult issue. I m not pretending it isn t. But I think if you sit down and read what scientiststell us, if you understand the implications for Australia today, and for our children and ourgrandchildren, then it is the responsibility of this generation of politicians and Australians toact. I ll be going after this to one of the rallies that will be held around the country, and I ll besaying the same thing. You know, we can t walk away from this responsibility.

TORY MAGUIRE: But Senator, doesn t Tony Abbott have a mandate? I mean, the result in he was very clear in the Federal Election about getting rid of the carbon tax. He won theelection. How can you ignore that?

PENNY WONG: Well, I d make a couple of points. No-one elected me, or any LaborSenator, or any Labor member, to do anything other than to hold to our position on climatechange, which is that Australia needs an effective limit on the carbon pollution we put intothe atmosphere. Otherwise there s not a response to climate change. I mean, Tony Abbottwants to rush this bill through. I see its quite interesting, actually even some businesses

are reported in the papers on Friday and Saturday as raising concerns about the speed ofrepeal, and the lack of scrutiny. And most importantly, he wants to replace the currentarrangements with direct action. Well, that s a slogan. That s a slogan that could potentiallycost taxpayers much more. I think it s time we did focus on that, and Mr Abbott sGovernment was held to account for their policy which they ve not been prepared todisclose in detail to Australians.

TORY MAGUIRE: Changing the subject, Senator documents released under FOI haveshown that the Remuneration Tribunal has looked at what they describe as the possibility ofex-prime ministers ending up in dire financial circumstances, and that perhaps a safety netneeds to be considered, to make sure that we don t end up with an ex-prime minister living on

the breadline. How would that possibly be a situation, with modern prime ministerships beingthe way they are?

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PENNY WONG: Well Tory, to be honest I haven t seen those documents. I think you said itwas the Remuneration Tribunal that was expressing these concerns I mean, theRemuneration Tribunal is independent, they need to consider all matters around theremuneration of parliamentarians independently.

PHIL JACOB: And do you think it s realistic, though, that ex-prime ministers, I mean, withthe very large pension that they receive, might find themselves in financial strife over thenext 10 years?

PENNY WONG: Well, I m not going to be drawn on hypotheticals, about what might ormight not happen. I mean, it s a matter for the Remuneration Tribunal. I would make the

point that one of the things that has occurred, as you might recall, is that politicians enteringthe Parliament after 2004 do not receive a pension such as people prior to that. So, you know,its a different set of circumstances, much more in accord with community standards, and Ithink that that s appropriate.

KATHRYN ROBINSON, PRESENTER: Welcome back to Meet the Press.. More now with the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong. Senator, there arereports this morning that the Australian Government is donating two patrol boats to the SriLankan Navy, to help effectively stop the boats. Is this an initiative a Tony Abbott initiativethat you d support?

PENNY WONG: Well, can I first say this is Government Abbott-style , isnt it? You can t tellthe Parliament or the Australian people what s happening when it comes to dealing withasylum seekers, but you can drop a story about operational matters to the papers on Sundayso you get a run. I mean, its this is a Government that, you know, just doles out theinformation that it wants to dole out to a few individuals, a few people but refuses to frontup to the Parliament and tell Australians what s occurring. I mean, you know, cooperationwith our neighbours, cooperation with Sri Lanka, is something Labor has said is a priority fora long time. I m glad that the Government, after being so negative about, for example, thearrangement with Malaysia, has now come to the view that regional arrangements areimportant.

PHIL JACOB: And would you agree with Tony Abbott s assertation that he s closed thefloodgates, in regards to recent boat arrivals?

PENNY WONG: Well, I think if you look at the tracking of arrivals, the significant reductionoccurred in the period after then-prime minister Rudd announced the arrangement with Papua New Guinea. I mean, that s really been what s reduced arrivals. I think it s been a real pity,since this Government was elected, that we ve seen such secrecy. I think I haven t seen Imean, I havent seen a minister in the House of R epresentatives get up and say Because Imgoing to tell you on Friday, I m not telling you now which is effectively what ScottMorrison has been saying all week. Well, I don t think Australians should be getting theirinformation about what their Government is doing from the Jakarta Post . I think they should

be getting it from their Government.

TORY MAGUIRE: Senator, on that you ve made efforts in the Senate to compel Scott

Morrison to inform the Parliament what s happening. Can you explain to us what sort ofsanctions could be imposed, or how you would make that happen?

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PENNY WONG: Well ultimately, that s a matter for the Senate. And the obligation isactually imposed on Senator Cash, who is Mr Morrison s representative in the Chamber, andshe is obliged to table, under the order, a range of documents. If she doesn t do so, the Senatecan determine how it wishes to proceed in response to that. And ultimately, you know, there

are a number of options which can occur. I think in the past, for example, people have refusedto deal with legislation in the portfolio until the portfolio minister has complied with theorder. You can have a censure of the ministers. You can ultimately refer the matter to thePrivileges Committee to consider further action. So, you know, we will methodically gothrough this, not because we want to make a political point, but because I think there is no

justification for the level of secrecy that this Government is demonstrating. The culture ofsecrecy is really quite pervasive, and we have to stand up to it. This is a democracy, after all.

KATHRYN ROBINSON: Do you think that all these measures that youve got up yoursleeve will lead to greater transparency?

PENNY WONG: Well, that s ultimately a matter for the Government. I do think they Ithink two things. First, as I said they re really very addicted to secrecy, at a very early stagein their period of Government. But I think that the other point is they re treating the Senate asif it were the House of Representatives. And the Senate, as you know no government John Howard very briefly had a majority in the Senate, and that led to WorkChoices, and Ithink that helped bring him down. But generally, governments don t have a majority in theSenate. You have to manage your interaction with the Chamber respectfully sometimesrobustly but what you see instead is this Government treating that Chamber with realcontempt, and I don t think Senators are going to take too kindly to it.

KATHRYN ROBINSON: Senator, if we can move on to childcare now there are reports oh, well obviously there is a Productivity Commission into childcare thats going on. There issuggestions that the 50% rebate will be means tested would that be a good idea?

PENNY WONG: Well look, you know, we didn t take that step in government, and thereason was that increasing the participation of women remains a national economic priority.And the primary benefit for the childcare rebate is second income earners, the great majorityof whom are women. So you d have to be very careful, if you were the Abbott Government,going down this path that you didn t in fact set up a set of disincentives for women to

participate in the workforce. You also have to get your priorities right. I don t understandwhy the Abbott Government would have a rolled-gold paid parental leave scheme , thats

funded by retrospectively taxing Australians and double-taxing shareholders, but at the sametime trying to limit access to the childcare rebate. It s a very strange set of priorities, and nota set of priorities that I think most Australians would agree with.

PHIL JACOB: Senator, there have been suggestions that perhaps money would be betterspent on improved childcare, and perhaps nanny facilities. What are your thoughts aboutthat?

PENNY WONG: Well, you know, I think that Tony Abbott didn t go to the election sayingthat he was going to cut childcare. And if he does that, I think it would be a very clear breachof the sort of Government he said he d be. I think we re going to see a fair bit of that. Were

going to see a fair bit of this Government doing something they didn t fess up to Australians before an election.

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TORY MAGUIRE: Senator, you re a working mother what do you whats yourassessment of what would be the most productive thing? What would working Australianmothers like to see most?

PENNY WONG: Well, I don t like to, you know, pretend to be the expert, because my partner who s probably watching this with our daughter was very keen to come with metoday, but I told her it probably wasn t a good idea. She is you know, Sophie, my partner, isthe primary career. But my observation would be, trying to have work arrangements whichenable both parents to more share in the care of the child is probably the key. And we haven tdone as well on that, as a country, as we should. Parliamentarians have done even more

poorly. Some private sector firms have done much better. But I think, as a nation, whether it s for fathers or mothers, I think more parents would like the opportunity to balance work andfamily, and we have to keep improving our work structures, to enable that to happen.

TORY MAGUIRE: Obviously one of the big dilemmas in the provision of childcare is thecost of labour, and the pay for childcare workers, and I m sure everyone agrees that childcareworkers deserve more pay, but how do we pay for it? On the minimum wage earlier thisweek Maurice Newman gave a speech where he said that Australia s comparatively highminimum wage, of about US$33,500 a year, is actually holding back the Australian economy

because we re so much further ahead than our competitors and argued that it should bedropped. What s your position on that?

PENNY WONG: I don t agree with that at all. Labor Party doesn t agree with an approachto, you know, the Australian community and economy which is all about cutting wages andreducing the minimum wage. I mean, it s one of the things that makes this country a decentsociety, is that we don t have the levels of working poor that you see in too many othereconomies. You started your question with childcare I think it s very disappointing for

parents and for childcare educators that one of the first acts of the Government was to renegeon arrangements that we had put in place to help fund part of the sector to lift wages, toreflect better qualifications. I mean, that s what this was about. This was about improving thequality of care for our children, and lifting qualifications, and therefore making sure that

people were paid appropriately. But on the minimum wage, I mean, this is a really 19thcentury view that you want to reduce wages in order to compete. We re never going tocompete on wages, and we shouldn t try. We should be competing on our innovation, on ourcapacity, on the high levels of skills in our community, on the innovation andentrepreneurship of our business sector. We should never be competing on trying to drive

down wages.PHIL JACOB: And Senator, if we can talk about the NBN you were the finance ministerwhen Lazard put out their report in 2010, talking about perhaps how financially unviable the

NBN was. I mean, why wasn t that advice heeded?

PENNY WONG: Well, you know, I think it s really telling that this Government seeks toselectively leak advice. Let me tell you when we went through various decisions around the

NBN, including in relation to the deal with Telstra, we went through an exhaustive process ofconsidering advice including advice from departments, advice from my department, as itthen was, given I was the minister the Department of Finance. We took advice, that was

considered very carefully by Cabinet. We also had other consultants look at this, andultimately the government came to the view, in fact, that the agreement with Telstra actually

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reduced the risk in the project was a significant de-risking strategy, as I recall beingadvised. I want to make the point, on the National Broadband Network, this is theres a lotof politics being played by this Government, trying to destroy what occurred, trying to

portray what occurred as being inappropriate. I make this point you can build a cheaper NBN, if you re prepared to say to Australians you don t want everyone to have access to

high-speed broadband. That s what this Government is saying. They want to try and build acheaper NBN. I suspect it won t be cheaper in the long run. But what they re actually sayingis were not going to give it to everybody, and people are going to have to pay to it get it. Itsa very different project, and thats whats important.

KATHRYN ROBINSON: Senator Wong, briefly, just before we go Kevin Rudd sresignation. What does it mean for the ALP?

PENNY WONG: Well, I think this is the end of an era an era of Government, and an era ofsome division and conflict, regrettably. And I think I said on election night that the electionwas a time to draw a line for Labor, and for this generation of Labor leaders, and Laborfrontbenchers, and the entire Labor Caucus to move beyond the division that really, I think,let us down, and let Australians down, over these last years. So we ve got a job to do as anOpposition to hold this Government to account, a Government that isn t the Governmentthey said they would be. And to do that properly, we have to remain united. I do think,though, we have to honour our past prime ministers, and on this occasion, I do honour Kevin,and the work he did, his many achievements and from a personal level, as I ve said, youknow, he led us to government, he put me in the cabinet, I got the opportunity to be a cabinetminister in a reforming government. That s an enormous privilege, and I owe him greatthanks for that.

KATHRYN ROBINSON: Senator Wong, we thank you for your time on Meet the Press thismorning.

PENNY WONG: Good to be with you.

KATHRYN ROBINSON: Well coming up on the program what does the surpriseresignation of Kevin Rudd really mean for the Labor Party? We ll ask our expert panel. Staywith us.