The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, joins us live now. PM, what a moment. What a morning.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: It’s just fantastic. Uplifting as the last fortnight has been. These amazing athletes, and not every one of them had a medal as they came down the steps, but every one of them was worth their weight in gold. They’ve done Australia proud. Our most successful team ever. But the character of the team, I think, really shone through. And the way that they’ve engaged, the embracing of their family and friends and supporters and volunteers who are here. It’s an incredible day.
STEFANOVIC: Did you have a moment of the games? Was there a medal or even a non-medal moment?
PRIME MINISTER: Heaps. Well, I think a medal moment was the Opal’s bronze medal match. Where what I liked was the fact that Lauren Jackson, who I’ve known for a long time, our greatest ever basketballer, there on the sideline just cheering on – she can’t have been more excited, and that said to me a lot about the Olympic spirit. The Fox’s entourage, all diving in when Noemie won, joined her sister Jess in winning the Gold. I’ve met their father here today and you know what a proud dad he is.
STEFANOVIC: So you might not be Prime Minister in 2032 when the Brisbane Games are –
PRIME MINISTER: Anything’s possible.
STEFANOVIC: We are quite a way off, but I mean, look, are you happy with –
PRIME MINISTER: I’ll still be in my sixties, which is relatively young for world leaders these days –
STEFANOVIC: That’s very true, actually. So, I mean, any concerns about how that’s shaping up? There’s a huge fight over infrastructure at the moment.
PRIME MINISTER: It’ll be great. I remember Sydney in the lead up to 2000. Eight years out in 1992, there was all this carping from the sidelines. Australia will get it done. It’s what we do. And it will be a fantastic games of which we will be so proud, and it will once again showcase us to the whole world.
STEFANOVIC: What about funding now? I mean, I know I asked you this the other day, but I’ll get you now that we’re in person again. We’ve done so well, have you got all these sports now with their hands out going, ‘Right, well, we’ve got to keep this momentum going, we need some more money?’
PRIME MINISTER: We’ve done it. We put $20 million on the table for the lead up to the Olympics, which just helped people like Noemie Fox go and get that international competition that was needed to provide that support. We’ve got $250 million for the Australian Institute of Sport. It was falling apart. It was left to decay there in Canberra, and that’s so important for so many Olympic sports. And we have record funding for not just Olympians, but Paralympian’s as well over the next two years that we announced in the lead up to the games at the PM’s dinner that was held there in Melbourne in the lead up to the games. So we’ll provide that support because it’s important. When we think about the health budget, every dollar we put in a sport helps lower the health budget because people getting out there on the netball courts, on the athletics fields, in the swimming pools, on the footy fields, whatever it is, is a good thing. We need to get our young people off devices, get away from the TVs, even watching Sky, away from the TVs, what they’re watching, and out on the fields on the weekend and during the week.
STEFANOVIC
