HOST: Are we all upstanding? Can we please – let me play this. The one and only Anthony Albanese is in the building, is in the room.
HOST: Anthony Albanese, we ran the risk of getting rid of listeners by telling people you are coming so we gave them warning. Hopefully someone’s still listening.
PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE: Come on. The ratings will go up
HOST: Mate, he just offered you a 20, he pulled his wallet out.
PRIME MINISTER: I pulled out a lobster to buy you a decent pair of socks.
HOST: Albo’s come in here looking shmick, smart as, and Marto’s not even wearing shoes.
PRIME MINISTER: You’ve got paint all over your leg, mate.
HOST: His shirt’s not even ironed.
HOST: I cleaned up my desk. You said the Prime Minister is coming in, I cleaned up all the desk. Look, perfect – hello.
PRIME MINISTER: You’ve got paint on your shirt. You’ve got paint on your leg and your socks are shockers, mate.
HOST: And you want to give me some sort of government payout?
PRIME MINISTER: No, that was my money, my hard earned cash.
HOST: His socks are matching today Albo. So that was a benefit.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s a plus.
HOST: How are you Albo? We’ve been calling you Albo, you don't mind?
PRIME MINISTER: No, that's all right.
HOST: I like that. It's very casual
HOST: You’ve called him Tony before.
PRIME MINISTER: No, I don't like that.
HOST: But that was on air before you were here. I wouldn't say Tony. What do you prefer? Albo or Anthony?
PRIME MINISTER: Whatever.
HOST: What do you close people call you?
PRIME MINISTER: They all call me Albo. My friends have always, since primary school I've always been Albo. It's a very Australian thing.
HOST: Saturday not a very good day for you. So you went to the MCG early. You obviously went to that breakfast early. Actually, can we address that first?
HOST: This was great from you, Albo. You are absolutely on fire because you took a shot at Gil McLachlan, the AFL CEO. They had the boat parade with the players where no one could see them from the banks. They normally have them in cars, you can make eye contact. And this was at the AFL breakfast and you just bang straight between the eyes for Gil.
PRIME MINISTER: [from Saturday] Gil, I would say, having watched the parade on the Yarra yesterday, to quote a former Prime Minister, we do need to stop the boats
PRIME MINISTER: It was a shocker. The Yarra isn't quite Sydney Harbour. It isn't in the Brisbane River.
HOST: It's a creek.
HOST: Is that your gear Albo? Is that off the top of your dome?
PRIME MINISTER: That was a sledge.
HOST: Can we go through the other one?
PRIMEMINISTER: Fully authorised.
HOST: At the Brownlow on the Monday night. Gil McLaughlin, he's retiring, he had a shocker with Christian Petrakis’s name and you referenced it. And another Zinger.
PRIME MINISTER: [from Saturday] Congrats to Gil McLaughlin. I'm glad that you didn't have to do the honours introducing me today. I understand from Christian Petrakis that you have a few problems with the Italian surnames.
PRIME MINISTER: He did have a shocker. The Brownlows, no one was listening. It was chaos.
HOST: Anthony Albanese, you go to a lot of award ceremonies. Is the Brownlow the worst award ceremony going around in terms of attentiveness? Like, it's very hard.
PRIME MINISTER: It normally isn't too bad, but it was particularly bad. I think it was a Sunday night. I don't know. I've never been to the Brownlows. I've been to the Dally M’s quite a few times.
HOST: They're on again on Wednesday night. Will you be there on Wednesday night?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I'll be in Canberra. We’re sitting, parliament’s sitting this week.
HOST: What would be more boring: Brownlows or parliament?
PRIME MINISTER: Come on. Parliament's always interesting.
HOST: Well, you just had a rest for 15 days. Surely there's plenty to catch up on.
PRIME MINISTER: A rest did I? I’ll show you my diary
HOST: Would you have been at the Dally M’s had the Rabbitohs have made the Grand Final, perhaps?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I still would have been in Canberra because parliament's sitting on Wednesday. I'm heading up to Tokyo in a couple of hours for the memorial service for Shinzo Abe, he was the former Prime Minister.
HOST: That's other stuff. Tell me, on Saturday, were you there for Robbie Williams? Were you in the MCG?
PRIME MINISTER: I was. He was fantastic.
HOST: I didn't even know who he was before he performed. But did you have your swan's scarf on?
PRIME MINISTER: I did.
HOST: Were you swanning?
PRIME MINISTER: I did. I'm actually a Hawthorn supporter.
HOST: All right. So at what stage did you take the swannies scarf off?
PRIME MINISTER: No, kept it on, mate.
HOST: Did you put the Rabbitohs one on top of the Swans one?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I had the Rabbitohs one on Saturday night.
HOST: So at what time did you fly? You got out of there, out of the MCG, to the airport and you made it to Accor Stadium for the Rabbitoh’s game
PRIME MINISTER: As you do.
HOST: And what stage did you take the Rabbitoh’s scarf off?
PRIME MINISTER: Never, never.
HOST: You're 0/2 for the weekend. Who are you tipping this weekend? Because we need to know to get on the other team.
PRIME MINISTER: I tipped Australia last night against PNG, there you go. Two games, all right? Women's and men. Two and two.
HOST: You know how it's called the Prime Minister's XIII and John Howard, remember when they used to have a Prime Minister’s XI. He used to say, can you pick him? Did Mal ring you and say, Albo, is there anyone you want?
PRIME MINISTER: I picked the team.
HOST: The whole team.
PRIME MINISTER: The selection group was me, Mal, Darren Lockyer and Laurie Daly. They gave me a short list, and one to nine I picked exactly the same as what Mal wanted – which was pretty amazing, really, because we could only pick the players who weren't still in. So that was fortunate that Souths were still in the comp at that stage, otherwise it would have been one to thirteen: cardinal and myrtle.
HOST: So what happens this week? Parra against Penrith. The Battle of the West. How the West was won and all the rest of it. Who do you go for?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I go for Parramatta because they haven’t won for 36 years and my son's best man is a Parramatta supporter so I’ve to do it. Not best man, godfather.
HOST: Well, we thought considering your Swans and your Rabbitohs scarves no longer have much value this year, we thought we might present you with a new scarf, if you don't mind. It's Triple M one.
PRIME MINISTER: A Triple M one?
HOST: We go into survey tomorrow, we get the results. Everyone out there rating us.
PRIME MINISTER: Here we go.
HOST: Now in the honour of Triple M and the Aussie music we play, you're a DJ, you like to get your ears around a bit of music. What would be your favourite Aussie band?
PRIME MINISTER: Gee, there's a few. The Oils I'm seeing next Monday, the night after the Grand Finals, their last ever gig at the Horden Pavillion. That will be awesome.
HOST: Are you going to chug another beer for the crowd? Because that got a rousing – that was pretty empty though, Albo, you know that.
PRIME MINISTER: I know it was.
HOST: You’ll need a full one.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s right. At 9AM.
HOST: You’ve only been going a little bit more than a hundred days as Prime Minister. And, as you said, full diary. There's something for you to do all the time. What's one thing, an unexpected highlight of being the Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: I’ll put this the wrong way because it wasn't good that it happened, but it was incredible honour to be at the Queen's funeral. Just incredible.
HOST: We got a question from Corey Parker, Margaux's husband. He reckons she wasn't in the coffin.
HOST: He said she wasn't in the box for ten days.
HOST: He wasn't there, Albo
PRIME MINISTER: He wasn't there. What would he know?
HOST: We were sitting watching it at a caravan park in Hervey Bay. He said, ‘I 100 per cent guarantee she was not in that box for the last ten days. Everybody's just watching a wooden box go around and she's not actually in it.’
PRIME MINISTER: Come on.
HOST: I don't know. I said, she has to have been in there. David Beckham even lined up for 14 hours to see her, like, surely.
PRIME MINISTER: The queues in London were absolutely extraordinary. There was this moment where we went along early in the morning because we're waking up really early and we're going along the queues there and people shout out, ‘G'day Albo’. I went over and they were from Melbourne. They had just flown in and then about a kilometre on someone else yells out, “Albo, Prime Minister”. I said, ‘Oh, where are you from?’ And they went, ‘Kent’. It was like ‘Kent?’ It was this young bloke and he was a complete Australian political tragic.
HOST: Oh, really?
HOST: Did you feel sorry for him, Albo, waiting in a queue like that and being an Australian political tragic?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that's a plus.
HOST: Hey, one more for your Albo. Dylan Alcott, you know Dylan, Australian of the Year.
PRIME MINISTER: Dylan Alcott. Great guy.
HOST: Great guy. He was there at the funeral. I actually caught up with him over the weekend. Now, confirm or deny: he was a few metres away from Joe Biden. As were all of you, I guess in a relatively small room you're pretty close. He said the Secret Service agents had, like, fake hands almost, that were like it was a decoy.
HOST: In their pockets.
HOST: Yes, fake hands in their pockets. Albo. And their real hand was inside their jacket on their piece, on their gun, ready at any time to be like quick draw.
HOST: What do you know about this?
PRIME MINISTER: Sounds like Dylan's just spinning you, mate.
HOST: I think he is.
PRIME MINISTER: He's like that. We played pool on the way over at Dubai or one of the stops on the way. We played for his Wimbledon trophy because he's got three and so I've won one of them. One of them is coming. But then played him again, he won. So he’s getting dinner at Kirribilli. He's not bad, he’s sharp. Don't underestimate Dylan Alcott.
HOST: Albo, on a Monday, thanks for coming in. We've all been upstanding for the entire interview.
HOST: Favourite Robbie Williams song?
PRIME MINISTER: ‘Let Me Entertain You’, that was awesome.
HOST: A big tribute to Farnsy and Warnie
PRIME MINISTER: It was good, wasn't it? And Delta was great when she came out to do the Kylie things.
HOST: I love Delta
HOST: Have you ever worn a pink singlet?
PRIME MINISTER: Nah mate.
HOST: Or a pink suit? Albo would look good in a pink suit
PRIME MINISTER: No one wants to see me in pink.
HOST: Sorry Rabbitohs, thank you Albo. Good on you mate, appreciate your time.