KYLE SANDILANDS, HOST: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Good morning, sir. Long time no chat.
JACKIE ‘O’ HENDERSON, HOST: Good morning.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good to be with you. I'm glad I'm the entree for Cher.
JACKIE O: Oh, you are. Look, listen, can I ask you, what does the Prime Minister do on Christmas Day and where is he?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, gee. Christmas Day this year was a one off. I was in Darwin. At 6am I was at the memorial service that took place to commemorate 50 years since Cyclone Tracy. So, the night before we heard from a whole lot of the survivors, the Railway Club in Darwin stood up, some of whom had not spoken about their experience for that 50 years. It was quite traumatic for people.
KYLE. So, you don't even wake up. You don't even wake up on Christmas Day and walk out in your undies and just have a look what's under the tree. There's none of that for you.
JACKIE O: Did you fly home straight after and spend it with the family or?
PRIME MINISTER: None of that – oh, look, it was. Jodie came up with me, so it was – and the Governor-General was there. It was one of the best things I have done in my life.
KYLE: Oh, well, you need to hang out with me more because I've done heaps better things than that.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, well, that could get both of us in trouble. Particularly me.
JACKIE O: Well, yes, yes, your job would be in jeopardy. Kyle might be okay.
PRIME MINISTER: People were hugging and crying. It was a very emotional moment.
KYLE: Of course. It was one of the worst tragedies that ever happened up there, ever.
PRIME MINISTER: There was – a woman gave a spiel the night before about her experience. She'd been a young girl by definition and her house had collapsed around her, the family home. And she spoke about the experience of being trapped, because there was a bed on top of herself, her sister and her other family members, and her sister had died and she was stuck next to her for seven hours. Like the –
JACKIE O: Oh, that's so, so terrible –
PRIME MINISTER: And she hadn't spoken about it for 50 years.
JACKIE O: Really? Was that the first time she was talking about it?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, that she'd been able to come to terms with it. But the next day on the Christmas morning, there's a wonderful – it's an art installation on the point, right on the waterfront. It's metallic, it's got the names of all of the people who were known to have lost their lives because one of the things that was made clear was that they don't actually know because a lot of the indigenous people who travel in and out of Darwin from remote communities, they don't know who was there. There were no records kept. It was just – it was a really extraordinary event. And then I did travel back to Sydney and got to have dinner with Jodie's parents and family and with my son Nathan, so –
KYLE: Oh, that is nice.
JACKIE O: And, and can I ask, we just spoke to Chris Minns, Premier of New South Wales about the explosives that were found in the caravan. What did you want to say on that front?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, this is a horrific incident. Quite clearly this is aimed at terror, aimed at causing harm, but also aimed at spreading fear in the community. And –
KYLE: We can't let some caravan like, we can't let some conflict from another country raise its ugly head in this country. If anything blew up that would just, it'd just change this country forever.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely.
JACKIE O: We all know that. But then, you know, it's, it's hard to like – this was found by a resident. I mean and how sometimes you can't pick up on these things.
KYLE: It wasn't uncovered by the intelligence. It was – I don't know if this thing broke down or it was left to be retrieved by someone else but thank God for an eagle eyed resident.
JACKIE O: Thank God or whoever that person is, has saved so many lives.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, yeah. And the authorities of course are continuing their investigation. I receive regular briefings, of course, on security issues. And can I say this, that our police and our and intelligence agencies do an amazing job and people need to be held to account for what are crimes and to put these people in the clink and keep them there.
KYLE: I agree. Would we be surprised as the community, without causing distress, but would we be surprised of the amount of things like this that we don't hear about, like where the authorities get things prior to it happening?
PRIME MINISTER: I think the ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has been much more public in recent years to go through about the threat that comes from a range of sources. From the rise of far right groups, we saw neo-Nazis marching in Adelaide, coming from all over Australia.
KYLE: I saw that. Young men too, like all around that sort of 20-ish age group. Very weird.
PRIME MINISTER: Scary, scary stuff. And some of the radicalisation that occurs online means that we must be vigilant about these issues. We can't take these issues of our safety for granted. We need to give the authorities all the resources they need. And certainly, Chris Minns, I've had a chat with this morning, I think before he was on your program, as well. We continue to engage with each other. But even more importantly than politicians talking, the security agencies and the police jurisdictions are all talking with each other, sharing information, sharing intelligence.
KYLE: Good. Because what we don't want to happen, Prime Minister, what we don't want to happen is like what happened where Trump, they tried to assassinate him, when all of the intelligence agencies over there weren't talking to each other, they were sort of just dealing with their – we don't do that here. Everyone's open, everyone communicates with each other, right?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, absolutely. And we've set up a joint Operation Avalite, particularly to target antisemitism. And that involves the AFP, ASIO and security agencies as well as all the state jurisdictions.
KYLE: And now just a little bit of quick news, because I know you have to deal with all the bad news and the good news, but you wanted to announce a new funding that you're providing to public schools in the Melbourne, Victoria area. What is that?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. Well, we'll move towards what David Gonski recommended 14 years ago of the School Resourcing Standard, so that every student will get the money that enables them to have the support that they need. So, that this involves not just dollars in the deal with the Victorian Government, but also involves things like standards. So, there'll be testing in year one to find out – does someone need a bit of extra assistance? Are they falling behind? At the moment we wait until a child is eight and that can be too late, then the catch up takes a lot longer.
KYLE: Right. So, this will be implemented into primary schools and early learnings and that's like, keeping an eye out earlier?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. Across the board, we want to make sure that things as well in the curriculum, like proper phonics and people learning in a way that teaches them very early.
KYLE: Where were you when Jackie was at school? You know, we needed Albo when Jackie was at school becuase she had to do year 10 twice, obviously, for obvious reasons.
JACKIE O: Yeah, it was my last ditch attempt.
KYLE: Yeah. And then they said –
JACKIE O: And then it just didn't work, after that.
KYLE: What they said to your parents? You might as well just leave school, there's no hope.
JACKIE O: Give up now. There's no point in you paying fees.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Jackie's done all right in life, I’ve got to say.
KYLE: That’s what I think! Maybe the teachers were right. Maybe they were. Albo, thank you for that.
JACKIE O: Thanks so much. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese keeping us safe.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah. Great to talk with you.