Radio interview – 96FM Perth with Russell Clarke
RUSSELL CLARKE, HOST: Prime Minister, good afternoon.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good to be here, mate. It’s great to be back in Perth.
CLARKE: So, you went to Germany which was very important and then you had a rather important meeting in Lithuania in Vilnius for NATO.
PRIME MINISTER: We sure did, we had the NATO Summit there in Vilnius with all of the major democratic world, really is what it’s a gathering of. So, all of the European countries as well as the United States, Canada and they’ve now expanded the invitation list to the Indo-Pacific Four, with Japan, South Korea, us and New Zealand. We had a separate forum and then we all talked to the NATO members.
CLARKE: Because Europe is not the only place that has its challenges.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had an impact on the whole world – on inflation, on food security, on supply chain issues. It’s had an impact on the price of things in the supermarket here.
CLARKE: We know, we notice on a daily basis.
PRIME MINISTER: And that’s why we need to be engaged and Australia needs to have that seat at the table. And so it was a pretty quick visit, a whole one night in Vilnius in Lithuania after a couple of nights in Germany, where we arrived Sunday night from Perth. I was here in Perth last Saturday, seems like a long time ago, but we opened Medicare Urgent Care Clinic down there in Rockingham.
CLARKE: That’s right, you were here when the new member of Rockingham –
PRIME MINISTER: She was out there canvassing
CLARKE: Campaigning.
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed, and with Mark McGowan, a fairly well known former member for Rocky.
CLARKE: One or two people have heard of him. And also, of course, an important thing happened in Lithuania too, in that we are delivering another is it 30? 30 Bushmasters to Ukraine?
PRIME MINISTER: Another 30 Bushmasters. Our Bushmasters are really symbols of how we can make things here.
CLARKE: They like them, don’t they? They really value them.
PRIME MINISTER: They like them and the world likes them. Indonesia’s purchasing them, people like them because they’re fantastic equipment.
CLARKE: And they’re tough.
PRIME MINISTER: They are awesome. It’s essentially a really simple design, I’ve been to the factory in Bendigo where they’re produced and essentially is by having a V shaped bottom, any blast underneath, like a mine, goes out rather than up into the vehicle, and it saves people’s lives.
CLARKE: Absolutely. It’s an ingenious design, isn’t it? It’s so, simple.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s so simple, but it’s made an incredible difference and Australia should be proud that we produce material like that. I visited the Barracks here in Perth on Saturday afternoon as well, just to thank –
CLARKE: The SAS barracks, Campbell Barracks.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank the men and women of the Australian Defence Force who were there, and their families were along too. It was just a great opportunity to just say thank you for your service to our country.
CLARKE: Of course now it’s back to business here at home and let’s face it, there’s quite a bit going on and you were talking about it and how Ukraine situation is affecting things here. The cost of living, I mean, it just can’t be unnoticed, can it? We see it around us every day. What plans do you have to tackle that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we’ve been concentrating on is measures that take pressure off cost of living without putting pressure on inflation.
CLARKE: Tricky.
PRIME MINISTER: It is tricky. Our Energy Price Relief Plan, $3 billion of assistance will actually reduce the inflation rate by three quarters of a per cent according to Treasury and the Reserve Bank – so it’s an example of getting it right. Cheaper medicines have made an enormous difference, including here in Western Australia. Cutting the cost of medicines from $42 to $30, that happened on January 1. First time there’s ever been a decrease since it was introduced way back by the then Labor government in the forties. We put in the Budget as well a measure that will enable scripts to happen for 60 days rather than 30, so it literally will cut in half the number of visits to the doctor first to get the script and then all of the other costs that are associated with getting a script. We have cheaper child care came in on July 1, and our fee free TAFE is going gangbusters here. I visited a TAFE here at West Perth a while ago and spoke to the apprentices, both in blue collar work, in the construction area, but also in the services sector like aged care and nursing and other skills that are required –
CLARKE: Those areas that really need people.
PRIME MINISTER: Made an enormous difference. And we’ve got 480,000 now fee free places in TAFE. We know that we need people to fill those jobs and it is making an enormous difference straight up.
CLARKE: Which is all fantastic and helps. Of course obviously, the other problem that you are going to be battling, and that all Australians are battling are increased interest rates. Now we had a bit of a reprieve in the last meeting. There is the talk of possibly a new RBA Governor which I guess your Treasurer will be, sort of, leading the charge on the meeting as to whether he stays or whether is replaced. Are we expecting, how many more interest rate rises do you think we can expect? How many more can we take?
PRIME MINISTER: What the government’s been doing is trying to ensure that the measures that we put in place work in partnership with monetary policy, with the decisions of the Reserve Bank, not against it. That is that we don’t encourage them by making sure we have responsible economic management. And so for example, we were facing a $78 billion deficit when the Budget was brought down by the former government last March, in 2022. Now, we turned that around into a budget surplus of in excess of the $4 billion that we predicted in May, it’ll be higher than that, we’ll await when the final figures come in in a couple of months’ time. It takes time for those things to flow through and be finalised, but we know that it will be higher. What that does is send a signal that the government is serious about putting that downward pressure on inflation, that takes discipline. So we have to be careful about what measures we put in place. Which is why if we just handed out cash rather than for example, energy bills –
CLARKE: Fuel to the fire.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s exactly right, so it’s difficult times. The whole globe, one of the things about going to an event such as the NATO Summit is that the rest of the world, the G7 countries, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, all have higher interest rates with a five or a six per cent – we’re at 4.1. So it is difficult, interest rates, of course, were never going to stay at point one of a per cent.
CLARKE: No, unrealistic.
PRIME MINISTER: But we understand that that raises enormous pressure on people. So, we’ll continue to manage the economy in a really responsible way, and we’ll continue also to look for ways in which we can provide that cost of living relief without putting pressure on inflation.
CLARKE: Well, you have the job of not putting fuel on the fire and handing out cash. 96 FM is not helping the situation because we are –
PRIME MINISTER: You’re not helping
CLARKE: No, we’re not. We’re going to be giving away spending money, we are giving away two tickets to go and see Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival. We’re throwing in the accommodation, we’re throwing in the spending money, the flights, the whole thing.
PRIME MINISTER: All the way to LA.
CLARKE: Yeah, that’s something we’re doing. That probably, well I guess it’s our little relief package to anybody who’s doing it tough at the moment.
PRIME MINISTER: A couple of people will be very happy with that, and good luck to them.
CLARKE: Thank you. And you’re on your return flight back to Canada, to Canada?! To Canberra via Perth. Not a bad stopover. It is not a bad stopover.
PRIME MINISTER: It is indeed, and it’s always good to be here. I’ll be bringing back the entire Cabinet next month to Perth. I’ll be here for three or four days during the next visit, which will be terrific and I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve already had one Cabinet meeting up in Port Headland. I spoke to my Deputy Prime Minister, it is his birthday, Richard Marles, today.
CLARKE: Right.
PRIME MINISTER: And he’s in Port Headland for his birthday so I wish him a happy birthday, if you happen to be listening, Richard.
CLARKE: He might, he might be streaming us on iHeart. Nice of you to drop in, bit of a surprise, wasn’t expecting it, and maybe we’ll see you again when you’re here for the for the Cabinet meeting.
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed, great to chat.
CLARKE: And anybody who wants to take part in that relief package to Los Angeles, just be caller ten, 1096 FM will tell you when on 13 10 65. You’re a Bruce Springsteen man, aren’t you?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely.
CLARKE: I wouldn’t expect you wouldn’t be.