Prime Minister, thanks very much for your time. In your reshuffle announced yesterday, you even had a Special Envoy for Social Cohesion announced, today we see this quote from Barnaby Joyce. He was at a rally against offshore wind proposals, and he said, I’ll quote it to you and get your reaction. He said, ‘The bullet you have is that little piece of paper in that magazine called the voting box. Get ready to load that magazine. Goodbye Chris, goodbye Stephen, goodbye Albo’. What do you make of that language?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: That it is completely unacceptable. That it’s a test for Peter Dutton. Peter Dutton has had four reshuffles, he should have a fifth, and Barnaby Joyce should go. This is the sort of language which has no place in any part of Australian society, let alone in public life, from someone who has served as Deputy Prime Minister, not just once, but twice. Someone who continues to serve as a Shadow Minister. The analogy that he uses, to use a gun analogy, at a time when the AFP Commissioner has warned that there have been over seven hundred threats or harassments of Members of Parliament in the last year, is just completely unacceptable. We have seen what has occurred with the attempted assassination of former President Trump in the United States. We have seen violence committed against Members of Parliament including two have lost their lives in the Westminster system in the UK. And here you have a guy going to a rally calling for action, using analogies of guns, bullets, magazines and ‘goodbye’ to three members of the Government. What does this bloke have to do to lose his job? We’ve seen other incidents involving Barnaby Joyce which should have cost him his job in recent months and over a period of time. And this is someone who, of course, has used language in the past when it comes to climate change that has sought to incite division. Remember Whyalla was going to be wiped off the map, roasts were going to cost $100 a kilo. There was all that sort of rhetoric from Barnaby Joyce in the past, but this is a new level, a new level. And it is time that this bloke, this bloke, had a good look at himself, but it’s also time that Peter Dutton showed a bit of leadership, had a fifth reshuffle. He’s already got more members of his frontbench than there are backbenchers – he’s got forty-five. He has a bigger frontbench than the Government has, where you’re only allowed to have forty-two, he’s got forty-five. So one can leave the front bench, you’ll still have more people shadowing than there are Ministers.
HOST: Barnaby Joyce apologised. Does that change things?
PRIME MINISTER: He continually, this was a conscious thing. I’ve seen the footage and I’m sure that you will show it as well. This was a statement to a rally that was very clear, and it is completely unacceptable. And Peter Dutton needs to make a decision over whether he will back this up, or whether he’ll just take action. I heard the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, of the Opposition this morning, said that they weren’t words that she would use, but refused to condemn it. What do you have to do to incite division if this is acceptable?
HOST: We’ll wait to see what Peter Dutton says about these remarks from Barnaby Joyce, but they were quite, quite extraordinary in that sense. Are you worried it incites behaviour, though?
PRIME MINISTER: Well of course, it does. How else could you view it except to see that this was using language which should never be used anywhere, to use these sort of things. I’ll say this to Barnaby Joyce, you’re no Tim Fischer. Tim Fischer, as Leader of the ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Party showed great courage, and was a great Australian. He showed courage in standing up along with John Howard for bipartisan gun reform. You can use, surely, a whole lot of analogies can be used without resorting to using analogies about bullets, magazines, of weapons, and without speaking about people being said, ‘goodbye’ and disappearing, and it’s unacceptable. And Peter Dutton has a choice today. This is a test for Peter Dutton, who will often go too far himself, but he hasn’t got anywhere near this. This is a new level that I have not seen from someone in public life in Australia.
HOST: Let’s look at the reshuffle, ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Affairs going to one of your key figures in the Government, a very important figure, the Leader of the House, Tony Burke. Why didn’t you just change the name though, of ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Affairs? Because all those agencies are out now, including ASIO.
PRIME MINISTER: No, that’s not right. ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Affairs will look after border security and those issues, as well as looking at immigration. It was a logical thing to put ASIO together with the AFP. We inherited a system that was simply dysfunctional, and we’ve had a trinity of reports from Christine Nixon, from Dennis Richardson, and from indeed, the former Head of Prime Minister and Cabinet under the former Liberal Coalition Government, who’ve all spoken about the dysfunction that was there in ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Affairs. So what we have done is talk those issues through, come up with a sensible proposition. Tony Burke will be excellent. Tony Burke has, of course, served in the portfolio in the past. He’ll be ably assisted by Matt Thistlethwaite and Julian Hill, and I have appointed as well, Peter Khalil in the area of social cohesion, that’s important. As well as Andrew Charlton doing work as an Envoy on the whole issue of cyber security, digital resilience. These are big issues and big challenges for the country going forward.
HOST: And as you said though, those two both big thinkers. As for Tony Burke, James Paterson has said that Tony Burke is a failed Immigration Minister. On his watch, in eighty days, more than 6000 illegal arrivals. He says it’s a shocking message of weakness to people smugglers. What’s your reaction to that?
PRIME MINISTER: James Paterson is a shocking message to Australians that all you need to do is to be negative and oppose everything. I mean, this is a guy who, I think it was on one of your programs, said that myself and Penny Wong should apologise to Israel over the Zomi Frankcom issue, where an Australian lost their life, where the Israeli Defence Force have acknowledged that was as a result of a mistake. It’s about time James Paterson stood up for the Australian national interest, instead of just playing politics. The only person and group who send messages to people smugglers which could give them some heart is the Coalition. What we’ve done is put in place Operation Sovereign Borders with more funding than it has ever received since it was created – simple as that. And Tony Burke, of course, instituted in the time in which I was Deputy Prime Minister, and he was Minister, he instituted the deal with Papua New Guinea.
HOST: You’ve said that you’ll be the first Prime Minister, if you win the election, since John Howard to serve a full term and be re-elected. It is a long time between –
PRIME MINISTER: More than twenty years, Kieran.
HOST: That’s true. But do you think that we look at the drama, and I’m not getting you to talk about the individuals or the outcome, but you look at the drama in the US and elsewhere, does the stability, are you hoping that stability argument will compare favourably in the minds of voters when they go to the ballot box?
PRIME MINISTER: Well it’s real, Kieran. The truth is that Prime Ministers Rudd, Gillard, Turnbull, Abbott, were all removed by their own party, and it will be the first time since the 2004 election, if I’m successful. So it will be more than twenty years since we have had any continuity at all in leadership, and that is something that my Government has brought. Stability, as I’ve said today, we have the first reshuffle after more than two years and two months. That compares with four reshuffles under Peter Dutton, and in spite of that he went almost 300 days, 292 in fact, before he replaced Stuart Robert. Just left the spot vacant of that portfolio. You’ve had dysfunction on the other side, what you’ve had with this Labor Government is stability, order, consistency going forward. The minor reshuffle that we have brought forward as a result of the decision of Ministers Burney and O’Connor to retire at the next election, to step back from the Ministry, and Senator Carol Brown making the decision to prioritise her health in the lead up to the next election, where she will contest and continue as a Senator from Tasmania. I think that stability does matter. The revolving door made us, I know, internationally people were looking at us and thinking, what sort of operation is this when you have a different Prime Minister every couple of years? And we saw that in the UK, of course, with three British Prime Ministers that I met in the first six months of holding the Office of Prime Minister of Australia. Now that wasn’t a good thing, and I think under our system it wasn’t a good thing that you have had such a turbulent time in Australian politics over the last couple of decades.
HOST: A few other issues, I mentioned the US, and you’ve said, understandably, that you’ll work with whoever wins, the alliance will remain strong. But do you think it’s a good thing that a woman of colour, Kamala Harris, is a candidate for the biggest job in the world?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think Kamala Harris is an outstanding candidate. There’s no question about that. I’ve met Kamala on a range of occasions, and she is a good friend of Australia. She understands us, she is a strong supporter of AUKUS, she’s a strong supporter in areas of consistency with Australia’s policy direction on issues like climate change and the transition to net-zero and the global economy that’s occurring. So there’ll be a continuity there if she’s successful in the election in November. But President Trump, of course, was President for four years. During that period as well the alliance continued to function. President Trump has said that he would continue to support AUKUS, and one of the things that I get heart from, of course, is that across the board, in the Congress and the Senate, when I was in the United States I met with the Friends of Australia group. It was a very large gathering. There were more than 100 Congresspeople and Senators who I met with during my state visit there. And all of them were very supportive of the Alliance, all of them supportive of AUKUS, and all of them supportive of the important role that we have in working together on economic issues, but other issues as well, including of course, our trade.
HOST: You, along with your Canadian and New Zealand counterparts, issued a statement a few days ago warning about your concerns on the escalation of hostilities and rhetoric between Hezbollah and Israel. It seemed prescient, sadly, that that expression of concern, given what we’ve seen the last couple of days. The risk here is that it not just hits that region terribly, but it reverberates around the world any further escalation.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely, Kieran. And I saw some commentary that somehow linked the New South Wales ALP Conference with that statement that I found rather bizarre, that Prime Minister Trudeau and Prime Minister Luxon in New Zealand were sitting there and saying, ‘Oh, well, there’s a conference in Sydney, we’ll put out this statement’. It underestimated how significant the tensions are in the Middle East, and the great risk of escalation, we certainly don’t underestimate that. And you could see trouble brewing there, the danger of escalation. One of the things, it’s the third statement that I’ve put out with the New Zealand and Canadian Prime Ministers. And one of the things that the statement talked about really up high was the Iranian-backed proxies, effectively the danger of them, whether it be Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis, engaging in an escalation. We saw that with tragic consequences for those Israeli citizens who lost their life over the weekend. We continue to see a loss of life in Gaza, including from innocent civilians, and that is why we backed in the US peace deal put forward by President Biden. It is time for all parties to agree to that ceasefire and those arrangements. We want to see hostilities cease. We want to see the hostages released. We want to see a pathway toward peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians in the region. And we certainly warn of the risk which is there of an escalation. I mean, Hezbollah are a very different organisation from Hamas. They represent a risk of a far more savage conflict occurring with consequences for Israel, for Lebanon, for the Middle East, and for world peace. And of course, many Australians, of course, in spite of, I repeat, I take this opportunity to repeat the Government’s warnings and declarations that people shouldn’t be traveling, Australian citizens shouldn’t be traveling to that region, given the instability which is there and the risks of escalation which are there.
HOST: We know there are many thousands who are there despite those warnings. So let’s just wrap up, we’ve got two big things happening with the inflation number on Wednesday, the Olympics, on a brighter note. But let’s start with the inflation number, because that, a lot of nervous mortgage holders right now, aren’t there as to the outcome. It’s got important economic but political implications too, what happens on Wednesday.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we know Australians are under cost of living pressures, and this is a phenomenon that’s occurred, of course, throughout the world with the rise in inflation and the consequential pressures on family budgets which are there. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve given every Australian a tax cut, why we’re doing $300 Energy Bill Relief, while we’re doing Fee-Free TAFE, Cheaper Child Care, increased Paid Parental Leave. And while as well, we’re very pleased that real wages are increasing again after that period of stagnation and deliberately keeping them low. But there’s something else the Government’s doing as well, which is producing two Labor Budget surpluses, opposed to the Liberal massive deficits that we inherited. Now what that does is put that downward pressure on inflation. The Reserve Bank have acknowledged that that’s the case. We know inflation peaked in the March 2022 Quarter before we came to Office, 2.1 per cent in just that one Quarter. Now it is now around about half of what it was, but we want to see further moderation occur, but we’ll continue to prioritise our cost of living relief as our number one priority.
HOST: We’ll see what that number is on Wednesday. And the Aussie women in Paris, unbelievable, aren’t they?
PRIME MINISTER: They are awesome. And Jess Fox, what a champion, just an extraordinary effort that she’s done and now, so whether it’s on the bike, Jess Fox and then in the pool as well, Ariarne Titmus and the 4×100 metres, we’ve seen Emma McKeon, The Young Australian of the Year this year, now our greatest Olympian and more to come in the pool, we hope in coming days, but it’s been a great start to the Olympics by Australia.
HOST: Yes, I’m struggling with lack of sleep personally.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, everyone will be getting up early and staying up late. It’s one of the issues of us being on the other side of the world from where the Games are. But I know that every Australian will be cheering on our great Olympians, and then, of course, our Paralympians, which will follow. And they do us so much, we get so much pride, and it’s a matter of our national honour, I think, and how they conduct themselves is also so good. They’re so humble, such great champions.
HOST: Prime Minister, appreciate your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Good to be with you Kieran.
