Hot issues such as the carbon tax and income tax rates were thrown to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday when she served for one hour as live blogger on The Telegraph.

Readers held no bars in asking Ms Gillard tough questions such as one raised by a family man who questioned why families that earn more than $80,000 are classified as wealthy which disqualify them from some government benefits.

In response to a query about the impact of the carbon tax on prices, the prime minister estimated that prices would go up 0.7 per cent but this increase would be offset by cash payments to families and generation of more jobs.

Other questions included queries about the budget and foreign aid.

Wednesday was apparently a day for connecting with voters for Ms Gillard who also addressed a public forum at a community cabinet meeting in Berwick, La Trobe.

In the forum, the prime minister chided the Victorian government for not fulfilling its promise to investment in education as evidenced by cutbacks to the state's TAFE sector. Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans, who was with Ms Gillard in the forum, said the TAFEs had complained to him that the Victorian government would likely shutter schools, axe campus employees and not offer required training.

Besides education, the public forum also touched on the issues of carbon tax and solar energy. In response to a question why is Australia's carbon price triple that of other nations with a similar tax, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet explained that Australia is one of the top 20 emitters of greenhouse gas and is the highest emitter of GHG per capita among developed nations, thus the need to collect from GHG emitters $23 per tonne of carbon dioxide they release.

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