: You never know who’s going to call.
LISA SHAW, HOST: You never know who is going to call. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is with us this morning, hello.
CLAIRS: Mr. PM.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. And I was just really enjoying listening to that song that I haven’t heard for a very long period of time.
CLAIRS: A bit of The Mentals.
SHAW: Mental As Anything.
PRIME MINISTER: Bringing back memories from The Mentals who were just such good fun live.
CLAIRS: Oh, we miss Greedy.
PRIME MINISTER: We do indeed. But Reg and some of the boys live in my electorate.
CLAIRS: Oh, do they! Reg Mombassa.
SHAW: He could design your electorate poster.
CLAIRS: He could.
PRIME MINISTER: He’s still playing as Dog Trumpet these days.
CLAIRS: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: And still good fun. And they do some Mentals songs as well as part of their set.
SHAW: Yeah.
CLAIRS: Yeah, Reg and Pete. Yeah. Dog Trumpet. They’re the side band.
SHAW: Dog Trumpet – which my dog does a lot. So, what’s been happening? You’ve had a bit of a Cabinet Tetris game this week. This is your first reshuffle. Why the switch up?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ve had a couple of retirements in the wonderful Linda Burney who’s made such an incredible contribution, the first Indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives, ever, since Federation, and then the first female Indigenous Cabinet Minister. And so her and Brendan O’Connor, who’s done a great job with half a million Fee Free TAFE places and doing a ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Skills Agreement. They decided basically, as not everyone gets to decide their time of retirement in my profession, but they had decided to not contest the next election and they spoke to me about that and decided to step back, which gave us the scope to get some new people in. Josh Wilson, a great West Australian there, the Member for Freo, has stepped up to the frontbench, adding to our WA contingent and enabled us to get some new Ministers in. Malarndirri McCarthy is an Arnhem Land woman who’s stepped up to be the Indigenous Affairs Minister and do a bit of a refresh of the system. We’re the first Government since Federation – little fun fact – a new Government that has had no changes whatsoever in its Ministry for more than two years. So, it was time to do a bit of a refresh for some of the team. But now we’re all in place for the election, which will be held sometime in the next year.
CLAIRS: Yeah, absolutely. Now, as the captain of the team, PM, you have to go into bat for some of your team mates sometimes and you’ve done that with Tony Burke, having a bit of a crack at the media, some Opposition criticism of his immigration record. You do have to stand up for your team mates don’t you?
PRIME MINISTER: You do. And I’m the captain of a great team. And they’re a team that are united, are absolutely focused on doing the right thing by Australians. We know there’s cost of living pressures there, which is why we’ve got tax cuts for every taxpayer and the energy bill relief. We’re rolling out Cheaper Child Care, the Fee Free TAFE, all aimed at making a difference whilst putting downward pressure on inflation. We’ve produced now two Budget surpluses in a row. That’s two more than the entire ten years, almost, of the previous Government that managed to deliver none. And so that is all assisting with the economy and with cost of living pressures that we have to deal with. So, we’re doing all of that whilst rolling out additional Medicare Urgent Care Clinics and other support for people according to our priorities.
SHAW: Of course, everyone’s a little distracted at the moment. All eyes are on Paris for the Games. People are still talking about the Opening Ceremony. What, what did you think of it?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, look, I thought it was a bit of fun. You know, I think Paris is such a great city and no matter what Paris did, it was going to look pretty good. The Eiffel Tower, and the wonderful natural setting that they have there. A bit like Sydney. Of course, 2000 was an extraordinary time for my home city. So, I think it’s just fantastic that Australia’s once again showing that we punch above our weight when it comes to sport. We’re third on the medal tally, which is incredible given our population, you know 27 million, a lot smaller than – we’re certainly not the third largest population in the world, but we punch way above our weight. We’ve put record funding into the Australian Institute of Sport. One of the things I like about these athletes over there, whether they be our Olympians or our Paralympians, is unlike footy players or unlike tennis champs or golfers, they don’t get paid a lot of money, overwhelmingly. They work incredibly hard – like the idea of getting up – but when we see our swimmers, we watch them do 100 metres or 200 metres and we cheer them on, even up to 1500 metres. These are people who get up every morning at 4:00am or 5:00am to swim laps up and down the pool for two or three hours and then do weight training and then do more swims in the afternoon. And they do it out of a love for their sport, but they don’t get often great financial compensation. And so I think it is a great thing that the whole of Australia is cheering on our champs and they’re doing so well.
CLAIRS: Yeah, very, very well. Anthony, last time we chatted, Lisa and I were very impressed because you said that Nick Cave was around your place for coffee, cake and keyboards. So, we know you love your music and we’ve been focusing on the Perth pub scene and the pub crawl, we’ve been calling it, and catching up with musos, particularly in the eighties and some of the nineties here in Perth. You’ve got a busy schedule, can you recall the last band you saw at a pub or at a venue?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, well, the last band I saw was Radio Birdman at the Manning Theatre in Sydney Uni, where I went as a student. I saw them a few weeks ago and it’s their farewell tour. Mind you, they might – Deniz Tek and co, Rob Younger – they might go around again, who knows? But I saw them and it was fantastic. Everyone was of my age or vintage, a fantastic band. But I saw some great bands when I was over in – Perth, of course, has produced some extraordinary bands and still doing so with Jebediah and a range of fantastic – I saw The Triffids when I had my great falling in love with the West tour was in, December…I’m trying to think of the year…December 1983 and January ’84, I travelled over. I had a mate, we had no money. Myself and my then girlfriend got a free lift from someone who was travelling back to Perth across the Nullarbor.
CLAIRS: Sweet.
PRIME MINISTER. So, we jumped in the car and spent a lot of time, I think six weeks, and then drove back with him at the end of him visiting his family. I had Christmas on Rottnest Island, but I saw The Triffids at a pub in Freo, which was awesome because it was at their absolute peak and it was a great experience. Nothing beats live music in a pub.
SHAW: Certainly doesn’t.
PRIME MINISTER: That era was particularly, particularly awesome, I’ve got to say. I’m looking forward to seeing Cold Chisel in their, yet again, farewell tour. I don’t know what they call it. They had the Last Stand tour. Maybe this is the really last stand.
SHAW: This is the big 5-0.
CLAIRS: I think so. The Last Stand was a long time ago now.
SHAW: Well, we will let you go. Inflation data is out today. You’ve got a busy day at the office. Thank you for calling.
PRIME MINISTER: No, all good. And have a great day.
SHAW: Thank you. Prime Minister.
CLAIRS: Anthony, I can’t believe you told us the Nick Cave story. Then you topped it by seeing the Triffids. Lisa and I envious, before you hit the wide open road, mate, and headed back. That’s unreal. Well done.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you.
