Julia Gillard's carbon price promise

JULIA Gillard says she is prepared to legislate a carbon price in the next term.

Julia Gillard in her Parliament House office in Canberra yesterday. Picture: Kym Smith

JULIA Gillard says she is prepared to legislate a carbon price in the next term.

It will be part of a bold series of reforms that include school funding, education and health.

In an election-eve interview with The Australian, the Prime Minister revealed she would view victory tomorrow as a mandate for a carbon price, provided the community was ready for this step.

"I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism," she said of the next parliament. "I rule out a carbon tax."

This is the strongest message Ms Gillard has sent about action on carbon pricing.

While any carbon price would not be triggered until after the 2013 election, Ms Gillard would have two potential legislative partners next term - the Coalition or the Greens. She would legislate the carbon price next term if sufficient consensus existed.

Earlier this year, then prime minister Kevin Rudd ditched Labor's plans to introduce a carbon price for the next term after the bills failed to pass the Senate.

Ms Gillard's proposal for a citizens' assembly to discuss climate change, announced after she replaced Mr Rudd as leader, has been heavily criticised.

Ms Gillard told The Australian there was a substantive basis to her rejection of same-sex marriage.

She now rules out any change in her opposition to same-sex marriage during the life of her government. She said she appreciated "our heritage as a Christian country" and believed "the marriage act has a special status in our culture".

Like Mr Rudd, she said she would select her own ministry rather than bow to factions.

And she has rejected proposals for both a parliamentary budget office and a debates commission.

She said her government would legislate a new funding model for government and private schools across Australia. It would be based upon the review chaired by prominent businessman David Gonski that Ms Gillard branded a "think big" exercise.

She said a shift to some integration in government and private school funding was a "possibility". Aware of the explosive political nature of this exercise, Ms Gillard insisted Labor would legislate the new policy to begin from January 2014 - after the next term.

For the first time, she nominated micro-economic reform in health and education as her most critical economic priorities.

"In my view, the major economic reform is to focus on health and education, big sections of our domestic economy that make a difference to productivity and participation."

This included market design, transparency, consumer choice, quality and regulation. Ms Gillard said health and education were "the two big undone (domestic) pieces of micro-economic reform".

She also spelt out her proposals to change immigration policy. "Will there be new criteria that bear upon immigration and numbers? Yes, two - better training policy and sustainability.

"It is not acceptable to me that states like Western Australia have got companies in the north crying out for skilled workers, and in Perth youth unemployment is more than 10 per cent. That's not acceptable to me. We will be acting on that."

She defended the $43 billion National Broadband Network, saying it had been subjected to "appropriate processes and diligence checks". This included a strong defence of the network's operating monopoly.