HOST: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese joins us. Good morning Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE: Quite a welcome.
HOST: Yeah it is Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Are you actually standing up now?
HOST: Of course we're standing –no we’re not. It’s very early, Albo,
HOST: They are very high stools, though. So we'll call that almost standing.
HOST: Prime Minister, I'm concerned and confused because the other bloke only spoke to us before an election, like what's this?
HOST: Or a budget.
HOST: He only spoke to us when he needed something. What's going on?
HOST: What do you need?
HOST: Do you need help moving or something?
PRIME MINISTER: This is called engaging with people.
HOST: I don't get it. Sorry, explain that again.
PRIME MINISTER: … with your listeners and voters, how a democracy should work.
HOST: I've got a feeling you're selling something? What is it?
PRIME MINISTER: No, not at all – just a better future is what I am trying to sell, it’s what we campaigned on. So it's a great chance to engage. One of the things I'm committed to is regular visits to Perth, and I've got at least three visits to WA in my diary already.
HOST: In pencil or in pen?
PRIME MINISTER: Just this year. It’s in pen, including a Cabinet meeting in Port Hedland in a few weeks’ time at the end of September.
HOST: Well, we do know that you did holiday in Broome. Did you like it?
PRIME MINISTER: It was fantastic. It's a great place. I've been there for both work and pleasure in the past. I ended up getting roped into doing a couple of work things but nothing onerous. I opened in an art exhibition from artists who came in from the Kimberley from Hall’s Creek and from right around the region. And I did do a couple of local radio spots, talking about the Voice to Parliament. It's such a relaxing place and I've got to say Western Australians are so welcoming. It was great to be to be welcomed. It was a holiday with the difference because these days I have to travel with security, so that was a bit weird.
HOST: So we’ve seen photos of you out on a canoe and doing stuff like that. Do they have to be in a canoe next to you? Is it that serious?
PRIME MINISTER: There were two kayaks on the water. There was myself and Jodie and next to us were two of our best friends who happened to be large gentlemen.
HOST: The sniper kayak. Very important on the water.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. It was that it was their job to protect me from sharks.
HOST: Are you in Kirribilli yet?
PRIME MINISTER: I'm in the Lodge this morning. I visit Kirribilli sometimes. There's two residences but by and large I'm here in Canberra. I'm looking forward to – it's the last day of winter, they said on local radio this morning, and it has been a bit chilly. That raises issues for my dog Toto who refuses to go half on the grass in the morning because it's icy so we have this whole stand-off in the morning with her say, ‘Nah, don't be ridiculous. It's cold out. What are you thinking?’
HOST: I was wondering about the realities of living in the Lodge or Kirribilli.
DOG BARKS
HOST: Hi Toto.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s Toto in the backyard, playing ball with an AFP officer outside.
HOST: Is it a draughty house? Is there like squeaky floorboards? What surprised you since moving in?
PRIME MINISTER: It's a very old house of course. But it's a lovely place. And it is a bit strange because it's so big. It's bigger than anything I've ever lived in myself, so that can be a bit strange. But Toto rather likes the idea of a walk around the Lodge grounds, which is big – we call it an oval if it was in Marrickville.
HOST: And you've got security the whole time that you?
HOST: Yeah, of course.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, effectively.
HOST: Could you just be in your boxers walking around and there's some security guys in the kitchen in the morning. How does it work?
PRIME MINISTER: No, not really well, I'm not going to go into all those details. I can report…
HOST: Yeah Nathan's asking a lot of security questions.
HOST: It's strange, imagine like being in a house and wake up the next morning and go on and get a coffee and there's some guys holding guns
PRIME MINISTER: No, it’s not quite like that. But there is literally an Australian Federal Police officer who doesn't know that we're talking about him. I can see through the door here playing ball with Toto
HOST: Protect the first dog as well
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, absolutely. The first dog, they've made it very clear that we cannot have the first dog run over.
HOST: Exactly.
PRIME MINISTER: They're all very conscious about that.
HOST: As they should be.
HOST: Now Albo you've been in the job over 100 days now. And it's good to have a chat about where you've been, and, you know, Toto and all that kind of stuff. But what are you doing at the moment to make sure that you're living up to the promises, you set the Australian people, which is, obviously to find a way of people getting paid more? The cost of living in particular?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. Well, tomorrow, and the next day, we have our two day Jobs and Skills Summit. So bringing Unions, Business, civil society together not to dig a deeper trench on the old battlefields. But to actually put that aside and say, right, what are our common interests? How do we boost productivity and therefore boost wages that boost profitability? How do we address skill shortages by training more Australians for the right jobs for high wage jobs? How do we make more things here and be more resilient, I think, during the pandemic, was a bit of a wake-up call that we can't just continue to be at the end of global supply chains and rely upon them to work, we do need to make more things here. And of course, WA has a big part in that. Because WA has such amazing minerals including in some of, the rise of newer minerals that we weren't talking about a couple of decades ago. Lithium and nickel, in particular – I've been to the nickel refinery down there at Kwinana. We should be making batteries, for example here for electric vehicles and for households. I'm really optimistic about Australia's future, but what I want to do is to bring people together to head in that direction
HOST: Albo, on that – you say that WA plays an important role in this, but of the 143 delegates at the Job Summit, only seven of them are from WA. How does that work?
PRIME MINISTER: I think the truth is that a lot of the peak organisations have their headquarters in the Eastern states. That's the truth of the matter. But when you've got Mark McGowan in the room, who else do you need? And when you've got Twiggy Forrest and other prominent West Australians will be there as well. I'm certainly very confident that WA's voice will be heard loud and clear. And that's one of the reasons why I'm bringing the entire cabinet to Port Hedland. I don't think that's happened before in terms of a cabinet going to a region in WA.
HOST: That's because they all voted not to go anywhere like that. What are we going to do at the Pier Hotel, that hasn’t been done before?
HOST: You can’t take them to Kalgoorlie because of the skimpies.
PRIME MINISTER: I'll be back in WA after that too, for the telethon.
HOST: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: So I will be a regular visitor as I've always been.
HOST: We'll wait to see what happens at the Skills Summit as well. A lot of people said there's either two things that come out of the Skill Summit: number one is just everyone's just talking, another thing that happens in the political world, or number two, already the deals have been done with the unions and things have already been put in place, regardless of what happens tomorrow.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we've had over a hundred meetings already: mini-summits, roundtables held right around the country including in Western Australia. And so I think that the fact that we're getting better collaboration and people having a chat with each other and talking through issues is a good thing in itself. That spirit of cooperation, I hope, extends to the way that people conduct ask themselves over Thursday and Friday here in the National Capital of Canberra.
HOST: All right, well knowing that you're going to be a regular visitor back here in WA, do we go as far as to get a special little chair made for you for our studio?
PRIME MINISTER: You could do that, that would be good. Always happy to be in the studio.
HOST: Okay, well, let's get a Prime Ministerial Albo chair here.
PRIME MINISTER: Will anyone else sit in it? Or will it be available for when I come?
HOST: No, no, no, no, just you
HOST: And there will be a countdown on when your bum was last on it.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s a lot of pressure.
HOST: If a Prime Minister from another country happens – if Jacinda Ardern pops by we'll let her sit in it.
HOST: Nah, Jacinda Ardern gets a milk crate you'll get a special chair.
HOST: Because of the build-up of the dust in the studio, then it'd be quite clear when he's been here.
HOST: We're getting a special Prime Minister chair and I'm pretty excited about that.
PRIME MINISTER: Excellent. I look forward to sitting in it
HOST: Many times.
HOST: Thank you so much for talking to us.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.