Australian Prime Minister Radio Interview – Nova Perth
: The Prime Minister is just sitting down next to you – now the Prime Minister has to know a lot about everything, of course. And I just want to ask him straight off the bat. Good morning to you, Albo. It’s great to have you in here. Jeremy McGovern, six time All Australian from the West Coast Eagles. What can you tell me about him?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I can tell you that in 1991 I went to the only AFL Grand Final ever held at Waverley – And the Hawks, I remember it vaguely because we met at the Hawthorn Social Club at Glenferrie really early in the morning. Really early. And there was a big bus trip out there. And it was a great game. The only one ever played there. And then we went back there –
NAT LOCKE, HOST: It was a shocking venue. It was awful.
PRIME MINISTER: The team came afterwards – it wasn’t great, was it?
MCMANUS: So cold, so cold.
PRIME MINISTER: But the team all went back afterwards. It was a very late night. So, that’s –
LOCKE: So, that’s all you’ve got to say about Jeremy McGovern?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, you know, I just –
LOCKE: Were you even born then? Oh, no, you –
JEREMY MCGOVERN, GUEST: No I was born ’92, so that’s why.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s an Eagles story.
MCMANUS: That’s right. He does play for the Eagles. Yeah.
NATHAN MORRIS, HOST: Gov, is there anything you want to ask the Prime Minister?
MCGOVERN: No –
MORRIS: You’re – well, you’re a small business owner. Maybe you can ask him about anything coming up in the near future.
MCGOVERN: No, I’m sure you’re getting plenty of other questions and don’t need one from me.
MORRIS: What about some advice? Because you always get advice.
LOCKE: Why don’t you ask him what he thinks of Harley Reid?
PRIME MINISTER: Harley Reid will look great in brown and gold.
MCGOVERN: Oh, come on now.
LOCKE: You’re trying to get votes in this country – you want votes in this state you can’t be talking about that.
PRIME MINISTER: Harley is sensational, great player.
MORRIS: Yeah. You know what? We saw one of the biggest contracts ever signed in the NRL just recently.
PRIME MINISTER: We did.
MORRIS: $13 million over ten years.
PRIME MINISTER: I don’t know about that. I’ve got to say, Dylan Brown, good player, but $13 mil, really?
MORRIS: The Gov gets more than that.
MCMANUS: But Albo, Harley Reid’s deal, his next one will be. It’d almost double that.
PRIME MINISTER: It’ll be big. No, he’s a fantastic young player.
MORRIS: Would you rather be the Prime Minister of Australia or be Harley Reid about to sign a new contract?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, mate, I had to go into politics because I wasn’t a good enough half back at rugby league. I actually have played AFL. I played in Community Cup which is a charity game that’s held for Reclink. And my advice to people out there, your young listeners, is make your debut before the age of 50, not after.
LOCKE: Anybody lay any solid tackles on you?
PRIME MINISTER: It was very ordinary. There was this young bloke on me playing at Henson Park and he’s sort of pulling at my jumper and all this stuff. I said, mate, you know – I’m older, I’m fatter, I’m slower. I’ve never played this game, like, chill out. Chill out. You know, he is very excited.
MCMANUS: That would be Shaun. That would definitely be Shaun.
PRIME MINISTER: Bit of bumping and – actually, the umps gave me a free that I probably didn’t deserve it’s fair to say.
MCMANUS: You know what the best thing about – I don’t know if – I’d imagine you do this too, Gov. Sometimes you don’t deserve a free, but you’ve got to overact after they give you the free.
MCGOVERN: I try not to.
LOCKE: He doesn’t get any free kicks. What are you talking about? He’s a backman.
MCMANUS: Like, oh, yeah really hit me hard. Thanks. You know, you got to sell it afterwards.
LOCKE: What are you talking about? Gov has broken ribs and keeps playing.
MCGOVERN: Yeah, you don’t want to oversell it, Shaun, try not to make it harder for them. It’s hard enough to umpire the game.
PRIME MINISTER. So, how are the Eagles going to go this year, mate?
MCGOVERN: We’ll find out Sunday, but we’re hoping to keep building. Yeah, we’ve obviously had a tough couple of years, but, yeah, for us, we’re just trying to get better and do whatever we can to, yeah. Keep improving. But –
PRIME MINISTER: No, it’s been a great club. I went to the AFLW derby between the Eagles and the Dockers. It was awesome.
LOCKE: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: I think last year or the year before.
LOCKE: Yeah. Brilliant.
PRIME MINISTER: Fantastic. It’s amazing.
LOCKE: Derbies get everybody up and about, don’t they?
MORRIS: They certainly do. Hey, Gov, do you know much about the Prime Minister’s favourite sporting team, the Rabbitohs?
MCGOVERN: No, not a lot. I know of the Rabbitohs, yes.
PRIME MINISTER: We had a win. We started round one with a win last week, but we keep getting injured. We can’t get through a training run without losing players.
MCMANUS: You got to make – actually, Wayne Bennett has to go down as one of the greatest coaches. You know much about Wayne Bennett?
MCGOVERN: Not much. But I’ve heard of Wayne Bennett, yes.
MCMANUS: One of the greatest leaders of all time.
PRIME MINISTER: He’s like the Kevin Sheedy or – I don’t know if that’s an equivalent, I don’t know – or Barassi. You know, he’s been quite extraordinary. He’s in his mid-70s now. He’s just come over to Souths and he’s just a motivator of men. He doesn’t say much. I was on the Board for years and he just gets the best out of players.
MCMANUS: How can you take a bit of leadership out of what he does, Albo, even being a Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, focusing on what’s important. Ignoring the noise. That’s one of the things that I have to do as PM, ignore the noise.
LOCKE: There’s no noise around that, is there?
PRIME MINISTER: Ignore the noise. You know, if you look at your comments on social media or anything. it’s just focus on what you’re trying to do for the country. You agree Gov? And the Grand Final is a bit like election day. It’s not won in, you know, March or April any more than a game’s won in the first or second quarter.
LOCKE: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: You know, you got to play it out. Be ahead when the siren goes. When the siren goes in May, I’ll be ahead.
MCMANUS: All right, mate. Did you write any of that down?
MCGOVERN: I felt like I was speaking to myself. He was speaking to me. Yes. Yes. Yeah. There we go. Let’s go. I’m about to run through a brick wall.
LOCKE: I know. We’re ready, Gov. Good luck on Sunday. It’s going to be. I can’t wait to read your column again in a couple of weeks.
MCGOVERN: I’ll rip it out. Thanks, guys.
Short break.
LOCKE: And here he is, everybody, officially the Prime Minister is in the house. Not just crashing interviews with our West Coast Eagle. Welcome back.
PRIME MINISTER: Good to be here.
MORRIS: You’re at the door sticking your tongue out before.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, I wouldn’t have been doing that.
LOCKE: That would be very un-Prime Ministerial. What are you talking about?
PRIME MINISTER: I was just saying g’day waving.
MCMANUS: Yeah, that’s very friendly. That’s how he met Jodie.
LOCKE: Yes, that’s right. Just lovely, Jodie.
MCMANUS: You have already spoken to Jodie this morning?
PRIME MINISTER: I have. I texted her early to say good morning and she rang me back and it was, I did say after a while. It’s actually 3:30am here, so.
LOCKE. So, you got up at 3:30am this morning because of the time difference.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah. Your body wakes up before 6:00am every day. Yeah, it did today too, so. That happens, you know, and it actually, I find if you’re here for a couple of nights, which I am this time, I’ll go back over East tomorrow. It makes more sense to keep on east coast time. So, I went to bed pretty early last night.
LOCKE: Yeah, the three hour time difference at the moment, really, it’s hard isn’t it.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, I had dinner at like 5.
LOCKE: You got a pensioner discount though, so that was amazing.
MORRIS: You caught up with Roger Cook yesterday.
PRIME MINISTER: I did catch up with Cooky.
MORRIS: I know you had the media there but then they left. Do you ever have like personal discussions with him?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, absolutely. Because we’ve known each other since before either of us were in politics.
MORRIS: What do you talk about? What’s it?
PRIME MINISTER: We talk about footy, we talk about the campaign, talk about what he’s going to do, we talk about, you know, our families, all that.
LOCKE: Did you get some tips from him? Because he did pretty well.
MCMANUS: He did well, Rog.
LOCKE: Better than expected, actually.
PRIME MINISTER: He romped it in. I expected a pretty good result for him.
LOCKE: We didn’t think he was going to lose, but we thought that the, that the Opposition might put up. Do a little. There’d be a correction from the last – more of a correction from the last election.
PRIME MINISTER: Most of the media expected that but he’s been a good Government and they got a plan and it’s basically we’re in lockstep on – he’s got a future made in WA. I’ve got a Future Made in Australia.
LOCKE: Yes. Manufacturing is a big thing.
PRIME MINISTER: Today we’ve got a big $750 million announcement here at Curtin University. It’s about making steel, green steel and green aluminium here, green metals. And that is spot on with what his agenda is. Renewables backed by gas, powering jobs, powering manufacturing here, making us more resilient. And we’ve received a reminder this week about why that is necessary.
LOCKE: So, we’re talking about the tariffs that are going to be imposed by the Trump Administration.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s right.
LOCKE: Now you’ve had, you’ve spoken to him obviously and pleaded our case and –
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, look, I had –
MCMANUS: It’s not done in stone yet.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it kind of is. They’ve been very clear and I’ve had two conversations with him. They’re of the view that tariffs somehow are the most beautiful word in the English language, according to him. The truth is that it’s an act of economic self harm. Tariffs increase costs for Americans who are buying those products.
LOCKE: Yes.
PRIME MINISTER: And so we don’t think it is in the US’ interest or in Australia’s interest.
LOCKE: Their stock market agrees by what’s been going on.
PRIME MINISTER: The stock market agrees and people who are buying those products will agree too when they realise that in fact it is a tax on them that then goes to their government. But it doesn’t make sense. We’ll continue to argue our case. We’ll do it constructively and respectfully.
LOCKE: The Opposition is saying that you haven’t defended our position enough and haven’t gone hard enough, but you really don’t have any bargaining power. If they’ve said this applies to everybody, no exceptions.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I mean, two points there. One is last time round they did exemptions – not just for Australia, for a range of countries all got these exemptions. This time around they’ve said no exemptions. Doesn’t matter who they’ve spoken to, who they’ve met. This is slapped right across the board. That’s point one. Second point is when the world throws challenges at us, I will always have Australia’s back. Peter Dutton will always turn his back on Australia. He has had a choice in the last few days of whether he stands up for Australia or stands up for the Trump Administration, which has put these costs on every country in the world. And he has chosen not to stand up for Australia. It is beyond belief how he can argue that his commentary helps Australia in arguing our case to the United States. It clearly undermines it, because he never ever wants the best for Australia. He wants the worst for Australia because he thinks it’s better for him.
MORRIS: Do you think it’s fair though that – and these comments came before – but you’ve got Kevin Rudd, who’s an Ambassador to America, who said stuff about Trump and he is a human being that does not forget when somebody disses him. That can’t be helpful either.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, have a look at what JD Vance has had to say about him.
MORRIS: Well, Cooky then said something about him and I’m a big fan of Roger’s, but yeah –
PRIME MINISTER: But you know, people say things. JD Vance is the Vice President of the United States. He said things that are far harsher about Trump.
LOCKE: Yeah. So, he was very anti-Trump before he was selected as the vice presidential nomination.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, he said harsher things than any Australian has said what –
LOCKE: And he’s been welcomed back into the fold for sure. So, yeah, you’re right, it’s a good point.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. He’s now the VP.
LOCKE: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER. So, those things go through to the keeper, frankly. Kevin is working really hard and it says something about the importance we place in the relationship that we’ve got a former Prime Minister as our Ambassador.
MCMANUS: On the other side of things that’s happening at the moment because we always talk about the US, and Donald Trump will always be in the news. Because he’s selling papers, right? He’s saying weird arse stuff all the time and he’s making statements and he’s pissing off everyone for want of a better term, China threw massive tariffs on us as well, on terms of meat, barley, wine, lobsters, like way more than 25 per cent.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh absolutely.
MCMANUS: Plus they’re doing bog laps around Australia where there are frigates and stuff. That surely has to be more concerning.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, China, we fixed the relationship. What we did was there were tariffs on Australia or straight bans on issues like lobster. That’s so important for a place like Gerladton. They just stopped it. Full stop, exclamation mark.
LOCKE: I mean, everybody got cheap crayfish for Christmas that year.
MORRIS: Back of the truck, my friend.
PRIME MINISTER: They did, they were 20 bucks in Marrickville, I’ve got to tell you, at my little wholesale outlet there in Marrickville in Sydney. But you know, we fixed that, through diplomacy, through the work that we’ve done.
LOCKE. So, what about the security concern though, that we were, you know, we all saw the boats.
PRIME MINISTER: We have boats in the South China Sea and we do exercises all the time.
LOCKE: But they did exercises around our entire coast. Like, what’s that about?
PRIME MINISTER: We do exercises in the South China Sea, in the Taiwan Straits, etc. What they wanted, I’m sure from us, was from us to say, ‘no, no, you’re not allowed to do that.’ And then they would say ‘I’m in international waters.’ It was accordance with international law. What we say is that we support international law. We put in a strong protest about the live fire exercise that they did. They did that in international waters. But, we think they should have given far more notice. That’s what we do when we’re in their region of the world. But the relationship is far improved. There wasn’t, of course – I brought the Chinese Premier here to WA, of course, last year. That was well received.
LOCKE: Lobster for dinner.
PRIME MINISTER: We did have lobster for lunch. And that helped. That helped. I sat next to the Premier and said, this is pretty good, isn’t it? You want some of this and you want some of the WA wine as well.
LOCKE: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: Which is all great quality. And that’s jobs for Australia.
LOCKE: Yes.
PRIME MINISTER: My job is to support Australia’s national interest, to support good relations with everyone across the board when it comes to economic relations, we have a different political system from China, so we’re going to have differences with them. We’ll talk about that honestly and in a straight way, and that’s what we’ve done.
MCMANUS: Albo, I really like what you were talking to Jeremy McGovern about when he was just in here a second ago and keeping the main thing the main thing. So, in polling and in politics, a month ago, everyone was saying that the Labor Party are under pressure. That’s your Government, they’re under pressure. And the Liberals have, I don’t know, maybe surged ahead might be the wrong term. But then, you know, yesterday I think it was, and the polls come out and they change and it’s all in a matter of moments.
LOCKE: An interest rate cut happens, which is great timing, that kind of stuff, yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, and it’s all, frankly, it’s 1 per cent here or 1 per cent there, which doesn’t matter. You know, you can’t be focused on whether you’re on, there a poll today, we’re on 51 per cent. If we’re on 49 per cent, does it really matter at this stage in the cycle?
LOCKE: And polls are notoriously small numbers of – you know small sample sizes.
PRIME MINISTER: You know, what matters – what matters is when people go into a polling booth.
LOCKE: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: They put numbers next to names.
LOCKE: When is that going to happen?
PRIME MINISTER: And that will happen in May.
LOCKE: Do we know which weekend? There’s three weekends it could happen, right?
PRIME MINISTER: There are. There are. The 17th and working back.
LOCKE: Which one do you think we should set aside?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ll wait and see how we go. We’ll do a budget on March 25. But when people put numbers next to people’s names, they’ll know that my Government has got inflation down, it’s got wages up. 1.15 million jobs. It’s managing the economy well, that we’ve got a plan for aged care that we’re implementing. We’ve put nurses back into aged care. We’re making child care cheaper. We’ve increased wages of child care workers, aged care workers. We’re dealing with the challenge of climate change and making more things here in Australia. And the alternative, what they’ll have to focus up on, is nuclear energy sometime in the 2040s that will cost $600 billion. Free lunch for some that all your listeners will have to pay for, of 20,000 bucks, and cuts to pay for this nuclear fantasy. They are the options that they’ll have. And that’s why I’m confident that when people put numbers next to names, they’ll do what they did for the Cook Government, which is to say they deserve another term. And the other mob simply aren’t ready. They’re not ready for government. And Peter Dutton has shown that this week. He had a chance to look like a leader, to be bipartisan. And once again he just chose to not stand up for Australia, but to play politics.
LOCKE: We do have to let you go, but we did note that you rolled up your sleeves and went into the face of the cyclone, when clearly lessons were learned from the Scott Morrison bushfires episode when he went on holidays to Hawaii. But what was it like up there? I mean, obviously there’s a lot of people very much still impacted by the floods and damage that was caused by that storm.
PRIME MINISTER: They are still impacted and we have increased disaster relief going up there. So, what happened on that day, Peter Dutton flew out of Queensland and I flew in.
LOCKE: Right.
PRIME MINISTER: I flew up to Sydney in the morning. We did a big announcement, I had a meeting with Chris Minns, the New South Wales Premier, because it impacted Northern New South Wales severely as well. And we did a big schools funding agreement, $4.5 billion. Had other meetings during the day. I went to, I did have a fundraiser during that day, but then flew up, had a meeting with Premier Crisafulli that night and then attended the meeting of the Disaster Coordination Authority that took place the next morning. And then cancelled everything else for, that we had. I was due to be over here for the election. I was due to be with Roger on Friday and Saturday.
LOCKE: Yeah, right, and there was a lot of chatter that you were going to call the election and then this cyclone started hovering and you went, well, no, well, so we’ve got to wait and see that out.
PRIME MINISTER: We were just focused. I spent all my time either in South East Queensland in Northern New South Wales or at the National Situation Room in Canberra making sure that we got – did what we could.
LOCKE: Yes, you can’t turn the weather around.
PRIME MINISTER: You can never do these things perfectly. But I think that the effort of the three governments working hand in hand, in partnership, was incredibly positive. And I have a good relationship with both the Premiers. One Labor, one Liberal – doesn’t matter. There were no politics involved here, no borders. We just got on with it. And just a shout out to all the SES and volunteers at the worst of times we always see the best of the Australian character. And we did that.
LOCKE: It’s true, yeah.
MCMANUS: Good on you, mate.
LOCKE: Thanks for coming in. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again.
PRIME MINISTER: Fantastic. So, next Friday, same time? Footy with McGovern? You might get a rugby league team over here too.
LOCKE: Yeah, that’s true. Thanks, Albo.
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/radio-interview-nova-perth-5