HOST: Albo is in the studio. Good morning mate.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. Great to be back in Brisbane.
HOST: You have got a little bit of a cold. That's not why I'm sitting all the way over here. I think it was just the cameras. But is that why you missed the game last night? Couldn't go and support your Rabbitohs?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah well, I was tucked up watching it in the hotel. It was a great game. Six tries a piece.
HOST: Are you excited about the new coach? The superstar coach, though, for you guys next year?
PRIME MINISTER: Wayne Bennett. He's such an amazing guy. He just keeps going and going and going.
HOST: Have you met him?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, yeah. No, he's a great guy and he's a great motivator of young men and he gets the best out of his team. You look at that Dolphins squad, he's got a whole lot of people who are at the end of their careers, to be fair to them, like Jesse Bromwich and co. And he's just getting the best out of them. And then he'll find these youngsters and just turn them into stars. They didn't have the Hammer last night, but they still had fantastic attack and it was a great game.
HOST: Very good. Hey, we were just talking off the air about Joe Biden. You've met him many times before.
PRIME MINISTER: I have.
HOST: Obviously people aren't being that kind to him at the moment in the press. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think he's fit to keep going?
PRIME MINISTER: I think it's important that the Australian Prime Minister not interfere in the American electoral process.
HOST: You're not George Clooney. He doesn't want to make a big statement.
HOST: You've had many very serious conversations.
PRIME MINISTER: When I have engaged with him, he has been fantastic. I would have spent eight, nine hours with him in total when I was there at a State Visit last year. We had dinner two nights in a row. We had a discussion with his entire cabinet where he was certainly in command. We chatted about the full range of issues and he's on top of his brief. He is an important partner of Australia with AUKUS, obviously our defence relationships, but our economic relationship as well. He's showing leadership in NATO, in standing up to the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
HOST: Well, as they're campaigning though, does that mean you need to keep an open mind and say good things about Trump too.
PRIME MINISTER: No, it just means I need to, just means I need to not interfere in the democratic process.
HOST: Of course, of course. Okay.
HOST: But I get what you're saying. You don't want to go too hard and then in a year be like, “hey bro.”
HOST: Cultural relations are so important. It's important to get along well with anyone.
PRIME MINISTER: Look, we just had the UK elections. Keir Starmer's a friend of mine, but I got on very well with Rishi Sunak and I had a chance to congratulate Keir on Saturday. I think he'll be a great Prime Minister. And obviously someone with my politics would prefer to see Labour do well, but that doesn't mean that I engage in the internal processes. I would have continued to work with Rishi Sunak. I actually, after I became PM, of course, was the time where Britain was going into chaos and I met Johnson, Truss and Sunak. Over, like, a four month period, I met three UK Prime Ministers. It made our system look stable, which is pretty hard.
HOST: You just didn't get too attached to the first one. Is it normal to fly with the doctor? Because everyone was like, “hey, Joe Biden has a couple of doctors flying with him at all times.” You know what I mean? Like, they're not concerned. Like, you wouldn't do that. But is that normal for American politics?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, absolutely. They have an operating theatre on the plane. They have the full kit and caboodle.
HOST: They’d have to be a pretty steady handed surgeon, wouldn't it?
HOST: Have you been on the plane?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I haven't been on the plane. We travel overseas with a doctor on board from Defence, basically, because when we travel, there are Australian Defence Force personnel travel with us, obviously for security reasons as well.
HOST: Get your skin checked when you go on somewhere?
PRIME MINISTER: Well you know, if something happens, of course you want a doctor to be present. We had a couple, I've got to say, when we walked Kokoda.
HOST: Oh, yeah, yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: They were more nervous than I was, I think, about our capacity. They weren't showing a great deal of faith in our capacity to walk Kokoda. And the Papua New Guinea Prime Minister as well, Prime Minister Marape, had a doctor, but they provided the security on that trip as well.
HOST: Amazing. Are you having a bucks party?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you know, this has been suggested by a few people.
HOST: All radio announcers.
HOST: Well you gotta, you gotta have a bucks party.
PRIME MINISTER: Well you've got to set a date before you have the bucks party you see. And we haven’t set a date yet.
HOST: Are you going to set the election date before the wedding date?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, these things might be interrelated, you see.
HOST: Have you said to her, “look, if I don't get re-elected, then we can't get married earlier.”
PRIME MINISTER: Well, if I don't get re-elected, it'll be a lot calmer, I think, the wedding. We won't have to worry as much about security issues.
HOST: Is there any truth to you holding the election sooner rather than later?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, I quite like the fact that people are losing their mind over the election. I've said that government should serve full term, but we're getting prepared. So yesterday I announced our candidate in Ryan as Rebecca Hack. And in Forde is Rowan Holzberger. And this morning I'll be in the electorate of Dickson, announcing Ali France as our candidate. She is amazing. She's a Paralympian. She's someone who's had extraordinary difficulties in her life. But come through it and she would be such a courageous fighter.
HOST: So, getting back to the bucks, would you let us organise one for you?
PRIME MINISTER: Brisbane, could be an option. Could you do it discreetly though?
HOST: Oh, yeah. Discreet is our middle name.
HOST: Can we do it discreet? No, we can't do anything discreet.
HOST: We could do a Bali bucks.
PRIME MINISTER: No, you can't, I can't do anything in Bali. It's gotta be here in Australia.
HOST: Vietjet is our current sponsor. We could take you over to Vietnam. We'll do something over there. Cause I reckon you wanna be out of the country.
HOST: You can have a bucks on a plane. You know what I mean? Just do a few loops and then come back down.
HOST: Famously, doesn't go well when Prime Ministers have do-things overseas.
PRIME MINISTER: That's right.
HOST: But you're with us.
PRIME MINISTER: Aloha.
HOST: There's a throwback.
HOST: Not doing it in Hawaii.
PRIME MINISTER: Just got to remember that.
HOST: We could do Brissie. The Star Casino we're looking at right now.
HOST: Really good.
HOST: It opens in August.
PRIME MINISTER: I’m looking forward to all of that being open. It looks amazing. And next week I'm back for the opening of the bridge at Kangaroo Point there.
HOST: Does that mean you'll swing by the Origin?
PRIME MINISTER: He's timed it well.
HOST: On the day of the Origin.
HOST: Oh, what a stitch up.
HOST: Mate, thanks for dropping in.