TIM BLACKWELL, HOST: When the man who does the Quick Draw rules for us every week wants to call and say 'G’day', we can't say no.
RICKI-LEE COULTER, HOST: No way.
TIM: Our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. Albo, g'day, mate.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: G'day.
RICKI-LEE: Hello. How are you?
JOEL CREASEY, HOST: Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Good to chat with you. Well done, Ricki-Lee. I hope you're keeping those two boys in line.
RICKI-LEE: Thank you so much. Look, I do my best.
JOEL: She's the rough one.
TIM: She is the rough one.
RICKI-LEE: I am. I’m a Gold Coast girl, so she's a bit rough around the edges, you know.
PRIME MINISTER: A Coastie. Well Tim's an Inner-Westy, I'm not sure where Joel's from, but.
JOEL: Neither am I, actually to be honest. I’m from Perth.
TIM: Yeah, you’re from Perth.
PRIME MINISTER: From Perth?
JOEL: Yeah, and I've got the same haircut as Julie Bishop, so it's hard to tell us apart sometimes.
PRIME MINISTER: You’re twins.
JOEL: Yeah, we are twins.
TIM: Where are you at the moment, mate? Because you've been absolutely, well, you've been everywhere man, as the song says. Where are you right now? Are you back home?
PRIME MINISTER: I have been everywhere. I'm in not-so-sunny Canberra today. It was a really hot weekend here. But I'm in Canberra, Parliament City, and we're busy trying to get through our agenda. It was a very busy week or so I had away. I was in India, helping to cement the relationship there with that growing economy of 1.4 billion people. And then I went to the United States to announce our AUKUS agreement with the US and the UK.
TIM: You got some cheeky sunnies out of that, didn't you?
PRIME MINISTER: I did. Joe Biden gave me a pair of his sunnies. They've got his little signature in the corner.
RICKI-LEE: I can't even tell you, I really have, I’m in love with Joe Biden in a really weird kind of way. I've got the hots for him.
PRIME MINISTER: He's great. He's such a good person. And he's engaging and warm and he really likes Australia. And good news is he'll be in Australia in a couple of months, in May.
JOEL: We have to get him in for Quick Draw.
TIM: We have to get him to do the Quick Draw rules for us.
PRIME MINISTER: Maybe I can let you know where he is.
RICKI-LEE: Absolutely, I'll be there.
TIM: Can I ask you about your Indian trip really quickly? Because I heard that Modi, the Prime Minister, found out your favourite bands and then got the songs played on the sitar for the dinner.
PRIME MINISTER: It was unbelievable. They made us so welcome. I arrived on the Holi festival, which is like a festival of colours, where they spread, in this case, marigold. Sometimes it's like some form of what looks like paint, but isn't, colours on people. And it's a great celebration. And that was the first night. And then we went to the cricket for a short time together. That was quite good fun. And then at the banquet, the luncheon, sitting next to Prime Minister Modi, and he looks at me and it's just with a smile on his face. And I was like, 'What have you done?' And I look, and on the sitar, a flute and a traditional Indian drum, the band were playing 'Wide Open Road' by The Triffids.
TIM: Beautiful.
JOEL: Oh my gosh.
PRIME MINISTER: And then they played 'Streets Of Your Town' by The Go Betweens, as well as playing a whole lot of traditional Indian music. I put on my Insta account, people can have a listen and see what they think of 'Wide Open Road' on the sitar.
RICKI-LEE: I'm going to have to check that out. That sounds amazing.
JOEL: That’s brilliant.
PRIME MINISTER: They went out of their way to make us feel welcome. I'm a bit nervous now because.
TIM: You just normally connect your UE Boom up at Kirribilli House, don't you?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I've got the record, I've got all of that, but I don't know how I compete with how welcome they made us feel. And he'll be coming at the same time as President Biden and the Japanese Prime Minister. I just can’t possibly compete.
JOEL: No pressure on you, then.
RICKI-LEE: Do you feel the pressure when you're hosting dignitaries and people from around the world, Presidents and Prime Ministers?
JOEL: Yeah, do you quickly whip down the supermarket, get like some Jatz?
PRIME MINISTER: You do. We've got the Prime Minister of Samoa coming tomorrow and so we'll have a grand welcome at the front of Parliament House. She's terrific. And then having her for dinner at The Lodge tomorrow night. But I don't think anything compares with a US President, brings a lot of people with them, en masse.
RICKI-LEE Yeah, the Secret Service detail is wild, isn’t it?
JOEL: Just order in.
TIM: It's like when Meghan Trainor goes anywhere, she brings a whole crowd. It's just an American thing, I think.
JOEL: Prime Minister, I wanted to ask you about the US President, because there's so much rage in the world at the moment and we saw so much rage over the weekend. And now Trump has said he predicts that he'll get arrested today, Tuesday, their time. What do you make of all that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I'll wait and see how that plays out, of course, in the US. But what I know is that there's too much division when it comes to politics. And when it comes to, you know, people should be able to disagree without having really hostile, nasty relations. And in Melbourne on the weekend, we saw an anti-trans rally, which is really disrespectful of who people are, and then it was joined by a bunch of people who were essentially doing Nazi salutes and slogans and doing all of that. And that, of course, should be condemned by all Australians. There's no place in Australia for Nazi salutes and people basically paying tribute to Nazis who were responsible for the Holocaust.
JOEL: Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER: I sometimes think that, politics needs to be civil and we need to learn from history. And that's why I condemn the actions there, and why people would attend an anti-trans rally in order to promote division. We saw with the whole Pride Festival in Sydney that I think Sydney was enriched by that.
JOEL: It was beautiful.
RICKI-LEE: It was wonderful. There needs to be more of that.
PRIME MINISTER: We were celebrating diversity in Australia. And that's a good thing, absolutely.
JOEL: Now, did you have a good time walking at Pride? Sorry to jump in there, did you have a good time? I know you've done it for years.
TIM: Yeah, you did too.
PRIME MINISTER: I had an awesome time. I mean, why wouldn't a politician want to go on a march down Oxford Street and be cheered by 200,000 people? I don't know why.
TIM: Disappointed you didn’t wear the glittery harness, though. Because they're right into the harness.
JOEL: It mustn’t have arrived in time.
PRIME MINISTER: And we got to walk across the Harbour Bridge walk. It was also absolutely fantastic.
JOEL: Stunning.
PRIME MINISTER: It was a beautiful Sydney morning. And it was just, again, a great celebration of diversity. And that's a strength of Australian society.
RICKI-LEE: Sydney did such a wonderful job with World Pride. Just all of the celebrations over the period were amazing. There were so many people out and about, so many smiles on people's faces.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s pretty good for the economy, too.
TIM: Hey, before we let you go, just back to India quickly, because I can't talk sport in here, really, with these guys, unless it's F1 with Ricki.
RICKI-LEE: Yeah, Formula One’s the only thing we can talk about.
TIM: Was Steve Smith's catch the other night the greatest catch of all time?
PRIME MINISTER: It was extraordinary. He is a great slips catcher. And it was a hoot and a great pleasure walking out to the middle with Steve Smith to be introduced to the team. I regard that as one of the great honours of my life. And Steven said to me, we put our arms around each other for the national anthem, ‘Would you, you know, we’d like you to join in’. And so that was just an incredible honour that Steve gave us. So I am a Steve Smith fan for life. I was beforehand, but even more so now. And that catch was amazing. It was past him before he moved and somehow he got it.
TIM: I've watched it so many times. It's been amazing. It was hard to get the guys in here to watch it, but I'll put it on again.
RICKI-LEE: I’ll watch it.
PRIME MINISTER: Put it on.
TIM: All right, mate, we'll let you go. Thanks for jumping on the phone with us, always a pleasure to chat to you.
JOEL: Thank you Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, guys.
TIM: And good luck with the Samoan leader tomorrow.
RICKI-LEE: Yes, good luck with all of your hosting coming up.
PRIME MINISTER: It’ll be good.
JOEL: Just have it catered.
TIM: Just get the Sakatas and some hummus out, you’ll be fine.
PRIME MINISTER: You'll have to then play the sitar version of 'Wide Open Road' after this as well.
TIM: Alright, I'll do this first. Thanks, mate.
RICKI-LEE: Thank you. Bye.
PRIME MINISTER: Cheers.
Transcript
Prime Minister