: Welcome, Albo. How are you?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Wonderful to be here. I’m very well. It’s great to be back in the West again.
ANDERSON: Nice. And you’re missing, you straightaway ,you walked in and you’re like, ‘Oh, where’s Xav?’ Because you wanted to talk Hawks, of course.
PRIME MINISTER: I went to the Hawks-Giants game. There I was a Sydneysider, cheering for the Hawks against the Giants. You know, getting sledged for being loyal for decades.
RYAN DANIELS, HOST: That’s tough.
PRIME MINISTER: And twenty-eight points, I think they were up at three quarter time –
DANIELS: We couldn’t, like you, you’ve got a lot of power –
PRIME MINISTER: Giants had kicked five in the first three quarters, and then they nailed seven goals in the last five.
DANIELS: That was tough. I was watching that and I saw you in the crowd next to Buddy Franklin, he was sitting just in front of you, and I thought, surely the most powerful man in the country can just end this game now? Blow the siren, that’s it, Hawthorn wins.
PRIME MINISTER: It was one of those games –
DANIELS: Do you have that power?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, if I did, it was one of those games where we got back to ten points ahead, then kicked a goal, then ten again. They kicked another goal. We got back to ten again, so we kicked two goals to at the same point, and then they kicked the last two goals, including –
ANDERSON: You’re still hurting aren’t you? You’re still hurting. Look at, he’s got the middle distance stare.
PRIME MINISTER: That Hogan fellow better not ask for any government support –
DANIELS: A good West Australian boy, too.
ANDERSON: You were talking to Ryan off air before we jumped on, there will be jealousy from Xav as well because he likes you as his own to have a good chat to. This rapport won’t go down well with him at all.
DANIELS: You’re the first person to ever be disappointed that Xav’s not here, which is remarkable. Hey, we’ve been loving the Olympics –
PRIME MINISTER: I like the fact that you say we’re all standing – that’s because you haven’t given us chairs.
DANIELS: Budget’s tight.
SHAAN SUBRA, HOST: It is tight, Albo.
ANDERSON: You know what the other one is like, we’ve got that, it’s over there. It’s like a mechanical bull. It’s because we care about you. That’s why you don’t have a chair.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh thank you, I don’t need it. I’m about to go to a childcare centre this morning –
ANDERSON: I saw you, yesterday. So, you’ve been around and about, because we’ve got some wage increases –
PRIME MINISTER: 15 per cent wage increase, 10 per cent in December – so over $100 extra for our early educators who do such a fantastic job caring for our youngest Australians. And then a further 5 per cent next year, at the end of next year –
ANDERSON: I was going to say, does anyone deserve it more? Because it’s wild times in those child care centres.
PRIME MINISTER: Look, the two areas that were really the most underpaid that have been identified were those who look after our youngest Australians in child care centres, educating them, and those who look after our older Australians in aged care. And we’ve fixed both of those issues. Still not making them wealthy, it’s got to be said, but giving them respect and valuing the work that they do.
DANIELS: 100 per cent. It’s anarchy in those places. I’ve dropped my kids off at day care before and you walk out thinking, those people need more money.
ANDERSON: He doesn’t even stop the car for them. He just rolls pasts and push –
PRIME MINISTER: Out they go.
DANIELS: Yes, exactly.
PRIME MINISTER: They have to run in themselves. Yeah, I think there are some laws about that –
DANIELS: They do keep trying to yell at me and tell me to stop the car. I do have one question with it, though. If they all getting paid more, does that mean that if you taking your kids to day care you’re going to have to pay more for the service?
PRIME MINISTER: No, that’s the good thing about how we’ve designed this, is that we’ve also got a cap on fees.
DANIELS: Right.
PRIME MINISTER: So to make sure, in order to get that, the centres are all having to sign up to putting a cap, a maximum increase of 4.4 per cent is the most that they can charge extra over the coming year. We’ve already reduced, through the child care subsidy, we’ve reduced costs of child care on average around the country by 11 per cent. This will be good for families as well as being good for the workers who look after our youngest Australians. And, of course it’s good for kids. 90 per cent of human brain development occurs in the first five years. So that is why –
ANDERSON: Shaan never went. He never went. He was an at our home.
SUBRA: It makes so much sense now –
ANDERSON: Joining the dots –
PRIME MINISTER: That’s why this is an investment.
ANDERSON: I saw you on the news last night and you’re with the kids and everything. They say, never work with animals, never work with children. Now, you’d done a beautiful picture of a rabbit –
PRIME MINISTER: I know what you’re gonna bring up here –
ANDERSON: No, the rabbit picture –
PRIME MINISTER: The rabbit was good wasn’t it? It was a bunny.
ANDERSON: It as a great picture of a rabbit, and you said to this little boy, ‘Oh, what do you think of my bunny?’ And he just, he had no understanding –
PRIME MINISTER: He just trashed it, didn’t he?
ANDERSON: Did he actually say anything? I thought he just cold shouldered you?
PRIME MINISTER: Nah, Ned was not impressed by my red and green bunny. He was a lovely kid –
ANDERSON: I saw you gave it a bit of South Sydney, your bunny, and he just, nothing.
PRIME MINISTER: Of course I did, it was red and green. He gave me nothing. What was worse was the dissing I got from Anne Aly, our Minister, a great West Australian. I’ll be with her this morning, but if you’re listening, Anne, be polite about my drawing today. I’ll cop it for one day. But she did a really good drawing and I reckon –
ANDERSON: What did she do?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, I don’t know what it was, but it was like a dog, a puppy. But it was pretty good and mine was rubbish, to be honest.
ANDERSON: Oh stop, nah listen, I got a glance –
PRIME MINISTER: But that’s half the point when you’re there with a little kid, you don’t want to try and out do the little three-year-old. Go, ‘My drawings better than yours’. You know, you deliberately downplay your skill.
DANIELS: Hey, you know who’s not downplaying their skills is our Olympians. They are killing it over there.
PRIME MINISTER: They are so awesome.
DANIELS: Amazing. 18 Gold Medals, which is the most we’ve ever had. Now we’re sitting around here going, even though we’ve done nothing, we’ve sat on the couch and we’ve watched, we feel like we should be rewarded for that, maybe with a public holiday –
SUBRA: Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER: There’s a big pitch coming here –
DANIELS: Just one day, that’s all we’re asking for. We could call it Golden Day, whatever you want to call it. You can do the naming. What do you reckon? Public holiday for us?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I do know there are some welcoming home events. I don’t know there’s going to be a public holiday. But I’m looking forward to welcoming the Olympians home on Wednesday morning –
ANDERSON: So, you’ll be at the airport?
PRIME MINISTER: I’ll be at the airport at 7am, Wednesday morning. It’s going to be exciting. I did a FaceTime with some of them the other morning or morning their time, it was afternoon, and they’re just such great people. And the thing about the Olympians is unlike the great AFL players or rugby league players or cricketers, they don’t get paid much. You know, they do it out of love for their sport and the love they have of representing Australia and there’s that real sense of teamwork there as well.
ANDERSON: Yeah and it is. Four years, you’re leading in with four years. Obviously there’s other competitions, but four hard years to get to where you get. Who, is it federal government, because you know how different countries go, ‘Hey, you’ve got a Gold that’s worth X thousand dollars or whatever’, and different countries they are awarding money. Is that Federal Government or where does that money, who decides what they’re getting?
PRIME MINISTER: We do some, but the big thing that we’ve done is make investment beforehand.
ANDERSON: Yes.
PRIME MINISTER: So I had a message the other day from one of the admin looking after our Olympians there, someone on the Board, who just said thank you. Because they approached us a while ago and said, we actually don’t have enough money for our sports people to go and compete in international competition, to get the training to go to the world championships or to go to different events or to go and acclimatise. I mean, whatever was necessary. And we did provide a substantial advanced funding, just like we have funded the largest ever upgrade of the Australian Institute of Sport. I mean, it’s falling apart there in Canberra –
ANDERSON: See, I haven’t been in so long.
PRIME MINISTER: It was a shocker. It was a shocker.
DANIELS: Missed your invite, Michelle.
ANDERSON: I was training there all the time back in the day.
PRIME MINISTER: And so the funding for Olympians, and importantly as well, we’ve been inspired by the Olympians, but the Paralympian’s will inspire us as well.
DANIELS: Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER: They will be just fantastic coming up.
DANIELS: The events, there’s, some of them are difficult, some of them are easy. Michelle’s had a crack at fencing. We’re going to have a listen to that soon –
PRIME MINISTER: That’s coming soon –
DANIELS: I put her into that. I was just wondering, when you watch, we all sit there and think, ‘I could do that’. What’s the event that you watch and you think, if I really set my mind to it 30 years ago and really worked at it, what’s the one event you would have been able to compete in or wished you could have?
PRIME MINISTER: None of them is the answer to me being able to compete. What I would like in my dreams to compete, I play tennis, so this Saturday I’ll be playing doubles for the mighty Marrickville versus Killara in the Sydney comp –
DANIELS: Good luck.
PRIME MINISTER: And so I do love playing tennis. I was in, I used to as a young lad because my best mate was a good swimmer, I wasn’t. I was in South Sydney Swimming Comp I played, or swam for South Sydney, and swam in various events. My KPI was, you know, making it to the end of the 50 metres –
ANDERSON: That’s my kind of –
DANIELS: Don’t drown –
PRIME MINISTER: Not so much, but it was sort of like, I had a crack, but I was never going to, as much as I did training in the morning and stuff for a couple of years, I was never going to make it. These people are inspirational.
ANDERSON: I was going to say you sort of figured it out in another area.
PRIME MINISTER: How about pole vaulting? I don’t even know how they can do it, let alone win a Gold Medal.
ANDERSON: Physics says no, and yet it happens. You know what I mean?
PRIME MINISTER: Another West Australian –
ANDERSON: Yes. We’ve done so well here as well.
PRIME MINISTER: Punching above your weight again.
ANDERSON: Look at us go. What’s caught your heart, though, in the Olympics the most? What’s caught your eye the most? I mean, everyone gets into the gymnastics. The pool’s fabulous for us. But you personally, is there one that you’re like, ‘Oh, I love that one’.
PRIME MINISTER: The pool was great. But I’ve got to say, the skating, I watched Keegan’s, was not the final, his whatever it was, the heats. And I was just like, Wow. He got 93 point something, and other people were getting like 20 and 30 – were falling off, and you know, I don’t know how you would go to do, you know, double and a half spins without being scared, you know? Like I just don’t know how you would have that confidence for the speed, given that they’re hitting concrete when they come down.
ANDERSON: Just a pair of, I’ve got my knees covered, I should be right.
DANIELS: Just the pads –
PRIME MINISTER: Just amazing –
DANIELS: The Prime Minister of this country, thank you so much for coming in. Enjoy your time out West and we’ll catch up with you next time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you. I’m off to the child care centre to see how I go with the kids –
DANIELS: Good luck.
ANDERSON: Have another shot of drawing. Have another shot, give us a house and a sun.
PRIME MINISTER: I might need knee pads –
DANIELS: I reckon you’re going to need something.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks guys.
