Radio Interview – B105 Brisbane
VOICEOVER: I present the honorable Anthony Albanese Prime Minister. Albanese, Albanese.
MATT ACTON, HOST: Prime Minister is on, good morning mate.
PRIME MINISTER: Hey, how you going? The Eagles want their royalties.
ABBY COLEMAN, HOST: We only played a little grab, we know the limit.
STAV DAVISON, HOST: We cut it before we’ve got to pay.
HOST: We take it to the limit.
PRIME MINISTER: Very sensible.
COLEMAN: You’re coming up to very sensible Brissy today?
PRIME MINISTER: I am indeed. We’ve got the big announcement today of $7 billion funding between us and the Queensland Government for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, so it’s a really exciting day. But it’ll be an exciting 2032 and the whole lead up to it and beyond because it will leave, of course a legacy for Queensland. Not just for Brisbane, there are venues right throughout Queensland, of course, but the focus will be very much on Brisbane.
COLEMAN: Did you play a sport growing up?
PRIME MINISTER: I did. I played rugby league or tried to and I played tennis and I still play tennis. I played a bit of cricket when I was younger. A good sport is tennis because you can keep doing it. So I still play in the Sydney Badge comp occasionally, I only made four rounds last year. But it did give the other teams a shock when I rock up as part of the mighty Marrickville team.
COLEMAN: Yeah we did see you in the stands of the Australian Open, that made a bit of news, it was like what you were eating, what people were cheering you.
HOST: God you can smash a Magnum like a champion.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you know, I am allowed to have, you know, a Saturday night off.
COLEMAN: That’s not what they say on the Daily Mail. No way!
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, no, absolutely. We’re not allowed to be human at all. But that’s life. That’s part of the price that we pay for public life.
HOST: Speaking of that then, being a human, are you going to pop along to Ed Sheeran tonight at Suncorp Stadium? You love going to a bit of live music and I praise you for that.
PRIME MINISTER: No, I’m in three states today but I won’t be in in Queensland tonight. But I know that Budjerah is his support act and I met him, he’s 20 years old, amazing talent, he will be a superstar and it’s good that Ed Sheeran is having him on his tour because it’ll really give him a lot of exposure. He sang at the Australia Day Australian of the Year Awards and he’s just got the most extraordinary voice. A fine young man.
COLEMAN: Yeah, he’s gonna be on at 6pm.
HOST: We do want to ask while we’ve got you, we’ve talked about this a lot in the last few days Albo, and that is the youth crime problem which we have here in Queensland. It’s getting out of control. Are you and Anna, our Premier, discussing ways to get on top of that?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh look, I think issues of crime of course, always relate to social issues a lot as well. We need to make sure that we give our young people wherever they live, the best opportunities to be positive and to make the most of their lives. And part of that is our Fee Free TAFE places that began this year, 180,000 of them giving people those career opportunities going forward.
HOST: I don’t know that a TAFE course is going to fix somebody breaking into a house.
PRIME MINISTER: We don’t run the police system, obviously. But what we can do, though, is to look at, okay what’s causing a young person to be in a situation whereby they’re committing crime? How do we make sure that that is minimised by giving people a positive and optimistic outlook?
COLEMAN: There’s a lady called Julie West that we’d encourage you to get to know. She has got a petition and she’s trying to meet with you guys to be able to discuss and she’s not talking about anything else but the youth crime laws that she wants to changed. And she wants, you know, the minimum sentencing to be increased.
PRIME MINISTER: They’re not federal laws, of course. So my job as Prime Minister is a big one and we are very much focused on doing that job and making a difference each and every day.
HOST: It would be nice to see some movement in it, let’s hope that we can get something sorted.
COLEMAN: On a lighter note, have you ever got a spray tan?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I got into trouble actually because I made a reference at one stage that when the last Morrison Government Budget that it would have all the longevity of a spray tan and just disappear after the election, any of the funding that they were offering. And I went back to my office and I got a spray myself, a verbal spray, saying how dare you criticise, make a joke about a spray tan! So I’m not doing that, I’m not going there again.
HOST: You’ve never put a bit of Bondi Sands on or something like that?
COLEMAN: They boys said you had and I said no way, there’s no way that you would have so we had a bit of a bet.
PRIME MINISTER: I have of course, one of the benefits of being half Italian is I’ve got a bit of a Mediterranean skin. So that that does that does help. But having said that, we had a big barbecue this week about melanomas so I do want to give the message out there as well to be careful and cover up and make sure that people now are much more conscious about skin cancer than they used to be.
HOST: Well mate, nice to talk to you this morning. We appreciate your time and have fun when you’re here in Brissy.
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed, well looking forward to travelling up there. The weather, I heard the weather report, a fine and sunny day up there.
HOST: Yeah it’s cracking.
HOST: Yeah it’s beautiful.
PRIME MINISTER: Brisbane is always pretty good when I’m there and I’m really looking forward to the announcement today and looking forward to watching as the Game’s infrastructure builds up over the coming years.
HOST: Good on you mate, there he is, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.