Good morning. Happy birthday, Prime Minister.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Craig, thank you very much. And congrats on the relatively new gig. Good to talk with you.
REUCASSEL: Yeah, no, good to talk to you. Before we get to the by-election, just quickly in the lead up to the weekend, the reports were all that you wouldn’t be at Dunkley, that you would be, as you do, have for many years, be marching at Mardi Gras. I didn’t see you in any of the packages of Mardi Gras. Was there security concerns? Why were you not there in the end?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I was always going to be in Dunkley in the morning. I ended up having a quiet dinner with Jodie, my partner, and Nathan, my son, on Saturday night. I’ve been to Mardi Gras for many years and this time didn’t because it was such an eventful day and I decided to have a quiet birthday, given I knew that I would have to come back to Melbourne on Sunday as well.
REUCASSEL: All right, so it wasn’t necessary, I mean, there were obviously protests there on the night, pro-Palestinian protests. It wasn’t a concern that it was just too hard to give security for you this year?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there are security issues, of course, around some of the protests that have been going on. That’s the truth of the matter. And it’s unfortunate, I think, that some people jump the fence to protest about something that isn’t related at all to what Mardi Gras’s about, which is a fantastic message about inclusiveness and people participating and people being valued for who they are. And I’m sure that it was good thing that Mardi Gras had Chris Minns, the Premier, the first Premier to march at Mardi Gras. I was the first Prime Minister last year and I look forward to attending again. I went to my first one way back in 1984, was the first time that I marched around then with Young Labor. And it’s always a good night.
REUCASSEL: Now, returning to the by-election, the Dunkley by-election. I think there was definitely, Richard Marles was looking pretty stressed in the lead up until the numbers started to come in there. What’s your takeaway? What’s the message you got from that election?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh look, we take a very positive message, but one that is reassuring – the fact that Jodie Belyea will take Peta Murphy’s spot as the member for Dunkley. We wish the by-election wasn’t happening. Of course, Peta Murphy passed away far too soon from cancer at age just 50. But it’s fantastic that a local champion has been elected. We will work each and every day to make a difference for people. We know people have been under cost of living pressure. That’s why we made the difficult decision, not the easy one, but the right decision to change the tax cuts, to make sure they’re focused on middle Australia.
REUCASSEL: Were you surprised? I mean, it’s interesting over the weekend, it seemed like a lot of the votes went back to the major parties. We saw kind of higher primary votes for major parties. Is that just because a lot of the small parties chose not to run?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the far right sort of parties, the UAP and One Nation, chose not to run this time around, and I think that explains the bump in the Liberal primary vote. They didn’t get all of that vote. But I think, then again, the Liberal Party under Peter Dutton, the lesson that they’ve taken from the last election is to become more conservative and more right wing. And we saw in the lead up to the by-election just a whole series of fear campaigns being run. And being run as well by Advance, this right wing group that work hand-in-hand with the Liberal Party, spent over a quarter of a million dollars on ads that were pretty disgusting, some of them. I don’t want to see Australia going down that polarised road that we see United States politics going in. But we did see that with some of the advertising and some of the misinformation that was there in that campaign.
REUCASSEL: You say that, Prime Minister, obviously there’s been some proposals before the parliament to tighten up truth in advertising rules for politicians. I mean, politicians at the moment can lie in advertising, they don’t have to be truthful. Seeing the attacks that were put against you that you’re saying were misleading and wrong. Doesn’t that make you more likely to say, yeah, we should actually have truth and advertising rules for politicians?
PRIME MINISTER: I think we should.
REUCASSEL: Well, you’re in charge of it.
PRIME MINISTER: The difficulty is how you deliver it. The people who are putting the ads in, for example, Advance aren’t politicians, they’re not a political party.
REUCASSEL: But you could make it apply to political advertising. It obviously doesn’t have to just be politicians.
PRIME MINISTER: These things are not easy to achieve. We’re examining, and there’s been various committees look at, how you might achieve that. But it is difficult because some people will argue what the facts are essentially during a political campaign. But quite clearly, the attempt to link the by-election with, particularly the signaling out the use of the word ‘foreign’ is always a hint that it’s going down a bad road, and that occurred. And with social media, how do you stop on Twitter, or X, as it’s called now, there was a particularly offensive tweet put out by the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party – How do you stop that?
REUCASSEL: Yeah well, that’s I guess, the question going forward, how do you stop that? We’re speaking to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. You talked about the fact that cost of living was obviously the number one issue in the by-election. You’ve got this Help to Buy Scheme which is proposed. According to analysis at the moment, it’s suggesting that at most, it allows a single person to buy a property for is $655,000, which in Sydney rules out about 90 per cent of property. Do you think that, is this Help to Buy Scheme if it does get through the parliament, obviously it’s facing a lot of opposition at the moment, do you think it’s actually going to be that useful in Sydney, given the Sydney property prices?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it’s just one of the measures that we have, on top of the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator, the tax incentives that we have for Build to Rent for the private sector. We have a whole suite of programs, this is just an additional one. And what it does effectively is allow for shared equity, shared ownership, so that people would only need 2 per cent of a deposit and so that therefore, instead of borrowing say, for $500,000 new unit, then you would have up to 40 per cent owned effectively, shared by the Commonwealth, which takes the loan down to $300,000. Obviously makes it a lot easier to pay off. And then down the track, the person can then buy out the government share at a time of their convenience if they choose to do so. It’s worked effectively in Western Australia for more than 50 years, has made a difference. It’s just one measure.
REUCASSEL: Given it makes such a difference here. I mean, at the moment, it looks like you might struggle to get it through the parliament. The Greens are kind of saying that they’ll only support it if there’s support for negative gearing rollbacks. You’ve said there’s no chance of that. So, where does this actually stand at the moment?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the Greens and the Libs are going to vote against it. That’s where it stands, and they can be held to account for it. Why they would vote against a scheme that will help more people into home ownership, some 10,000 a year. Obviously, that’s not a huge number in the scheme of a population of 26 million, but it gives those people a start. And as I said, it’s just one of the measures that we’ve put in place in what is a comprehensive housing plan that we’ve put forward now.
REUCASSEL: Prime Minister, you’re currently two for two for by-elections. Linda from Cronulla has texted in asking us, will Labor run a candidate for the Cook by-election? Do you want to go for the third one? You reckon you could pull off that one?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we haven’t made a final decision on that. Cook is not a seat that it would be expected that we would win, but we’ll wait and see. I noticed that the Liberal Party have the opportunity to finally select a woman candidate today for Cook. But we’ll wait and see whether they actually do or whether it’s yet another bloke sitting behind Peter Dutton just saying no to everything.
REUCASSEL: Just before we let you go, Prime Minister. We’ve been concerned at the moment that for some reason the shoey has become an international symbol of Australia. We had Kylie Minogue been asked to do a shoey after she was announced as a global icon at the Brit Awards. We’re a little bit concerned about this. What’s your view on the shoey? Are you pro or con it?
PRIME MINISTER: I think Kylie has earned the right to do whatever she chooses.
REUCASSEL: But I don’t think she wanted to do it. She was kind of made to by the host because for some reason we’re now seen as the shoey country. Can you please, I mean, you’ve got ASEAN coming up. Can you please not do any shoeys there with ASEAN?
PRIME MINISTER: I can assure you that there’ll be no shoeys at ASEAN with world leaders from Southeast Asia who’ll be here in Melbourne over the next three days. But people who know me will be having a chuckle at even the question, the idea that I would ever do a shoey. I’m far too neat and far too clean, it’s something that I would never do. I think it’s a bit weird myself.
REUCASSEL: You’re with 99 per cent of the listeners to ABC Radio Sydney. Just quickly, you are meeting up with –
PRIME MINISTER: I am not judgmental about it, mind you.
REUCASSEL: No, not at all. You are meeting up with ASEAN leaders. ASEAN, obviously as an organisation, has a kind of, part of its role is to protect countries against China. The Herald today, the report is that the so called ‘A Team’ that, you know, infiltrated Australian politics and had a politician working for them at the time is actually China. To what extent will these discussions with ASEAN be about how to protect ourselves from China’s growing role in the region?
PRIME MINISTER: Primarily what it will be about is how we work as a region to promote jobs and promote economic opportunity, that’s the big focus that we have. Security is always a part of that. But ASEAN nations represent Australia’s second largest trading partner. We’ve got more than a million Australians here that have heritage from the Philippines, or Indonesia, from Vietnam, from one of these countries. And we think it’s a real opportunity to come together to discuss our common interests and to discuss investment in the region to benefit our economy. That’s the real focus, how we can all work together in a more constructive way. Part of that’s about security, but largely it’ll be about the economy.
REUCASSEL: Yeah. All right, well thank you so much for joining us, Prime Minister. Just good news also, Pondi has been extended until Anzac Day. Have you swam at Pondi yet, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I haven’t.
REUCASSEL: Get the dipstickers out. I believe some former Prime Ministers wore them with pride. So, maybe that can your next move. Thanks for talking to us, Prime Minister. Appreciate it.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks for the constructive advice, Craig.
