: The Prime Minister was in town yesterday with Peter Malinauskas making an announcement about the South Road, the tunnels that are going to be built, the extension making it into a freeway. $15.5 billion project. Prime Minister, my first question to you this morning, you said yesterday this will be finished early. It will be done before 2030. I don’t know if you’ve built anything recently in Australia. If you build a home or you put an extension on or whatever, but gee, they don’t come in on time too often. You reckon this will be done early?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: We’re going to get this done. And the big thing that they’ve been able to achieve is to get three tunnel boring machines. And that means that instead of doing one bit and then waiting and the congestion being there while that is occurring, the infrastructure will be being built all at once. 21 sets of traffic lights gone.
MARK RICCIUTO, HOST: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: 40 minutes saved of travel time. So, this is going to be a ripper for jobs. It will be great for the South Australian economy and it also, of course, will get people home safer as well, because it will stop some of the congestion which is there. And it’s not just that road, of course, as you well know. It’s everything from the east and the west of it, everything gets funnelled into the North-South Corridor. So, if you fix that, you make an enormous difference. It’s the most important infrastructure project that South Australia could have and it’s the most significant investment, the largest ever infrastructure project in South Australia.
RICCIUTO: Well, everyone avoids it now. It is terrible. Even on Saturday mornings in Adelaide, generally, traffic’s pretty good, but it’s bumper to bumper there. So, not only will it fix South Road and people will go back onto South Road and enjoy it, it will free up all the roads around it, because everyone’s avoiding South Road and going on those roads. So, it’s an absolute pain in the bum. But for you to be that confident to announce this, it’s great news for the State.
PRIME MINISTER: It is a fantastic project and it’s been delivered 50-50 between us and the Malinauskas Labor Government there in South Australia and will make an incredible difference between Noarlunga and Gawler connecting to the airport, to the seaport there. And it will be great as well getting your kids to the footy or to sport on Saturday. It’ll make a difference as well.
RICCIUTO: It will do. Speaking of sport, the Olympics has been unbelievable. Australia has been awesome. Best ever results. Prime Minister, I said earlier on in the Olympics, I just feel like our Olympians get a raw deal financially. They put everything on hold. They train 30 or 40 hours a week since they were kids, don’t really get financially compensated for what they sacrifice and they become role models and inspiration for our future generations and then they end up without a career afterwards. Should we be looking at giving them a million bucks a gold medal, or half a million bucks a gold medal? I know it sounds a big number, but it’s not that a lot. How many billions of dollars do you spend every year running a Country?
LAURA O’CALLAGHAN, HOST: And the work that they do. Good work that they do through the Olympics.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, look, they do Australia proud and they lift up the whole country. They bring excitement and joy and they’ve certainly done that over the last couple of weeks. I look forward to welcoming them home on Wednesday morning at 7:00 a.m. when they arrive. But we have provided, what we’ve been asked to do, which is record funding. In the lead up to the Olympics, the Fox sisters were talking about how the funding that we gave before the Games enabled them to go and compete and train and get qualification, and what a difference it made. We put $250 million into the Australian Institute of Sport here in Canberra. It was, frankly falling apart.
RICCIUTO: Yeah, it needed a face lift, for sure.
PRIME MINISTER: And we are investing real dollars, helping not just our Olympians as well, but our Paralympians, of course, will do us proud over the coming weeks as well. And it is in the national interest. Sometimes we get criticised for putting money into sport, but if we can have more kids off their devices and onto the footy fields or the swimming pool or the netball courts or whatever sport, who cares? Get them out into the open air –
O’CALLAGHAN: Break dancing.
PRIME MINISTER: – Break dancing, whatever! And the thing about the Olympics is that it is all about participation in different sports. So, you know, I responded a bit to the pile on that happened with Raygun. Well, good on her for having a go.
RICCIUTO: She had a crack.
PRIME MINISTER: We just need to provide that support because they give us so much. We need to give them a bit of love back.
RICCIUTO: Oh, Ditts was like that at our eighties party on Thursday night, Prime Minister. He did a couple moves.
O’CALLAGHAN: He gave it a go.
PRIME MINISTER: You’ll have to send us a video.
DITTMAR: Please don’t. Good on you, Prime Minister, thanks for your time and great announcement for all South Australians yesterday. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks for having me on the program.
RICCIUTO: Thank you.
DITTMAR: There he is, our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.
