Radio interview – KIIS 106.5 Sydney The Kyle & Jackie O Show
KYLE, HOST: Hi, Prime Minister. Good morning, Prime Minister.
JACKIE O, HOST: Hi, Mr Albanese.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. How are you both?
JACKIE O: Good.
KYLE: I’m so sorry, Prime Minister. I didn’t realise that you were there.
PRIME MINISTER: I’m here, listening into what sounds like absolute chaos.
JACKIE O: How embarrassing.
KYLE: Well, correct.
JACKIE O: I bet when you thought, I’ll flush that later, you didn’t think it would end in this. The Prime Minister weighing in.
KYLE: Dog barking, dog screaming, being insulted by my nanny, the wife’s woken up and the Prime Minister’s listened to the entire fiasco.
JACKIE O: You could never have predicted that one.
KYLE: No, you’re right.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s a bit earlier here, too –
KYLE: Where are you? Are you at Uluru?
PRIME MINISTER: I’m at Uluru. It’s just a magnificent place and you really feel the sense of Australia’s heart here. It is just a wonderful experience, to be here. And yesterday, I sat down, literally, in the red dirt with the Anangu women who did the painting around the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and they sang and they danced, and it was quite a memorable experience.
KYLE: I saw photos of you and it looked like you were really that involved in it, that you became emotional.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it was a very emotional thing. You had that sense of the tens of thousands of years of culture which has developed here in this great country. We’re really privileged to share this country with the oldest continuous culture on earth. And I’m hoping, of course, that on Saturday, we put that fact of history into our Constitution, by voting Yes.
KYLE: I voted Yes already, I did a postal vote. And we had a couple of these Senators for the Yes and the No campaign on the other day, and it just got more and more confusing. People keep talking about these, they’re almost like talking points from each camp, and they just keep reiterating the same thing. Like, we’re voting Yes for something that you don’t even know. And the other one saying, well, we don’t know because it’s just a group of people giving ideas from this culture, these Aboriginal people, to the Parliament. So, we can’t say what it is because the ideas haven’t been formed yet. And everyone was just so confused. But what I wanted to do, even I was confused. And I just thought to myself, voting Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t care what anyone else does. But I just thought, I want to at least feel like I’ve done the right thing.
JACKIE O: Or something, right?
KYLE: Everyone wants to do the right thing. I don’t think, there’s a very small slither of the community that’s like, yeah, I’m not giving them anything. That’s not what the No –
JACKIE O: Can I ask though, with that poll that happened right, on Channel Seven, like, what was it, 40,000 people polled and 72 per cent were voting No? Do you think that that’s a reflection, a proper reflection, or any indication of how this might go?
PRIME MINISTER: No, no, I don’t. I think that Australians, when they go in the polling booth, it really is straightforward. Like, it’s just recognising. The words are there for people to see. It says, in recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first peoples of Australia. Pretty straightforward, just a fact –
KYLE: All we’re doing is recognising a fact. We’re recognising a fact, that’s it.
PRIME MINISTER: We’re recognising a fact and then the form of recognition is that we’re just having an Advisory Committee. That’s all it is. It doesn’t change the way that decisions are made, it doesn’t change the power of the Parliament or the power of government. It’s simply a non-binding Advisory Committee, so we can listen to people. And what that’s about is, just like if you want to engage with the local school or what have you, they function well when they actually listen to people who are involved directly.
KYLE: Sure.
PRIME MINISTER: And people here in the Northern Territory, that’s why all the Land Councils and these wonderful women, the idea that you can decide in Canberra, everything that’s good for them, if you like, even with the best of intentions, it hasn’t worked. We’ve got an eight year life expectancy gap. There’s a greater chance of an Indigenous young male going to jail than going to university. That is not on.
KYLE: No, it’s not on. But we need to focus more on the communities, where these young fellas are getting in trouble. It’s largely, not due to, there’s a criminal element there, it’s boredom and lack of opportunity.
PRIME MINISTER: Of course, lack of opportunity.
KYLE: And lack of any option to do anything other than run around with your mates and think, oh, shit, we’re bored, let’s break into this joint. I’ve been that kid.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s exactly right.
KYLE: I’m not even Indigenous. I’ve been that bored, homeless kid, where we just thought, let’s just cause some trouble because there’s nothing else to do. That’s the problem.
PRIME MINISTER: No,that’s exactly right. And, you know, we need to create opportunities for people. And there are success stories that we can learn –
KYLE: Many.
PRIME MINISTER: Where communities have sent, you know, their kids are going to school, there’s employment successes, there’s health successes. But they all have something in common, which is, it’s not some bureaucrat in Canberra deciding it for them. It’s involvement and that engagement from the local community and listening to them. And that’s what this is about. It’s a really simple proposition. They worked on it for years for this to happen, and in 2017, is when the Uluru Statement happened. Just a request. It’s like, if I was in the studio there, I’d put my hand out when we, when I walked in the studio. Might even have a hug, but just a handout at first. And that’s what this is, a handout, just asking for it to be shaken, to be held in the Australian way. This is really about a fair go and I really hope –
KYLE: I think there’s a lot of misinformation, though, Prime Minister, right?
PRIME MINISTER: There sure is.
KYLE: A lot of people think, we’re going to have to pay for the Aboriginals, we’re going to have to give all these people the land. They’ll never work a day in their life and we’ll pay. That’s not true. That’s all fake.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely not true. And guess what? If you actually do things properly and more efficiently, you’ll end up saving money, because you’ll actually not be wasting it on things that simply don’t work and what’s happening now is not working.
BROOKLYN, HOST: Can I ask, Prime Minister?
KYLE: What do you want? You know what he’s like, though, he’s a bit A,B,C, this bloke.
BROOKLYN: Yeah, but a lot of people, I think, are confused. Because we see on TV, Aboriginal people saying, vote No.
KYLE: That’s what threw me, Brooklyn, in all honesty.
BROOKLYN: Yeah, right.
KYLE: I was yeah, yeah, yeah and then I saw one Aboriginal saying, don’t do it. And I was like, oh shit hang on.
BROOKLYN: Even one saying they don’t want it makes us go, oh, it makes us question.
KYLE: Doesn’t it depend on their politics? It’s not just the colour of their skin, it’s also their politics. What’s driving them to say, whose side are they on? For what reason?
PRIME MINISTER: Of course. And why should they be different from, not every Greek Australian thinks the same, not every Italian Australian thinks the same. They’re not a homogeneous group. But 83 per cent, 83 per cent of Indigenous people do want this. Every single one of the Land Councils in the Northern Territory here are saying ‘vote Yes’. I mean, yesterday, meeting with the elders, the Central Land Council here, made up of, there’s of 90 delegates, they elected from their local community, all of them unanimous. This area covers something, tens of thousands of square kilometres, it’s huge. You know just something else that’s happening here this morning, I’ve got to mention, Pat Farmer, who’s a former Federal Liberal MP, is finishing off his run into Uluru. He has run right around Australia, 80 kilometres a day, since May. He’s run over –
KYLE: Hang on, are you talking something good about an ex Liberal politician?
PRIME MINISTER: Yep, absolutely, because this should be absolutely above politics. Julian Leeser, who was the Liberal Party’s Shadow Attorney-General, before Peter Dutton decided to just oppose everything and vote No. He’s out there campaigning strongly, Malcolm Turnbull’s campaigning strongly, all of, Dominic Perrottet was a Yes.
KYLE: Wow. Okay.
PRIME MINISTER: So was Jeremy Rockliff.They’re all Yesses. This shouldn’t be party political. Peter Dutton’s decided to do what he does, and say No. There seems to be a one track position here.
KYLE: Do you think sometimes, he says No just because he doesn’t want you to have a win, or is he always rock solid in his decisions? What do you think?
PRIME MINISTER: I think a lot of this is driven by politics and yeah, unfortunately.
KYLE: Can it hurt? This is why I voted Yes. How can it hurt, to give someone a chance at something they’ve not had a chance to do?
PRIME MINISTER: That’s exactly right.
KYLE: Maybe I’m wrong, there’s a lot of people no disagree.
PRIME MINISTER: No is where we are now. We are living in No. We know it’s not working. So, Indigenous Australians have come up with this proposal. They worked on it for ten years, most of it under the Coalition Government, under process that were established, I mean, I wasn’t the Prime Minister in 2017. And it’s unfortunate, that at the last hurdle, Peter Dutton has decided to campaign so strongly for No.
BROOKLYN: And you know what’s crazy about Peter Dutton, Kyle? Is that back when Kevin Rudd did the Apology for the Stolen Generation, Peter Dutton walked out of the Parliament. Like he wouldn’t even be there for it, which he now says that he regrets doing that. And you just think, well, are you going to regret this?
KYLE: It was almost like he was like a show pony, sort of a thing, and he thought it looked like bad view.
JACKIE O: Well, yeah, now.
KYLE: Well, look, Jackie’s voted Yes.
JACKIE O: Yeah.
KYLE: We have a few people on staff, we’ve all talked about it openly on air, few people have said No. You know, and I just said, you know, look, we’re not going to get into an argument –
PRIME MINISTER: That’s people’s right, it’s a democracy.
KYLE: But it can’t hurt to give them a chance, can’t hurt.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that’s why people who have looked at it, all of the faith leaders, all the sporting codes, you’ve got people like Evonne Goolagong Cawley, has spent her post-tennis life trying to assist young Indigenous people. They’re all out there, they’re all out there saying, please just vote, vote Yes. You know, Cathy Freeman, all of the Indigenous footballers, Johnathan Thurston and Eddie Betts, and all these people, who’ve had a look at it, have all come to the position of please vote Yes. And Briggs. I went to a concert in Shepparton on last Friday –
KYLE: You never miss a concert, Prime Minister. I love that you keep your youth about you, I like that.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this was pretty good. You could even play Paul Kelly’s song, he’s got a song, ‘If not now, when?’ Was really powerful. But him and Jimmy Barnes and all these amazing artists, Hilltop Hoods, were all out there doing this concert at Shepparton, 10,000 people they got. And so, that’s why I have hope that on Saturday we will get a positive outcome. Young people and people who tend to vote Yes, tend not to answer surveys in polls, we know that that’s the case.
JACKIE O: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: So, I’m really hoping that there’s a positive outcome.
KYLE: Really, if you’re at home, Albo, if you’re at home, the phone rings and they go, and you go, ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’ And you hear, ‘Hello, I’m calling from’ and you’re just thinking, I’ve been trapped. Normal people won’t even answer a poll. They’re boring people that have got nothing to do. So, the polls are never really accurate, right?
PRIME MINISTER: You’ve always got to have a bit of scepticism about them. And in some cases, there was one out yesterday that was from the UK, allegedly looking at seat by seat. They hadn’t actually spoken to anyone, they’d done some computer program. How you do that is beyond me.
KYLE: Like an AI person, that’s a disaster.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah,well, I’m hoping that enough people go and write three little letters, y, e, s and vote Yes on Saturday.
KYLE: Well, thank you. I hope it works out for you guys. I don’t think it’ll hurt. By the way, we had your mate Chris Minns, NSW Premier, on before. We were high-fiving him about getting rid of all the coppers with the bags and I tried to get him to decriminalise it before Christmas, so we could all have a white Christmas. And then he reminded me it’s still illegal, but we’re only after the dealers. So anyway.
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed it is.
KYLE: So, if you need to, I’m just saying, if you needed to, not that you would, but you could bring a couple of bags back from Canberra because you guys are all good down there, right? But I’m just saying, before, you’d have to throw them out the window on the border.
PRIME MINISTER: I won’t be doing that.
KYLE: No worries. Okay, well, look, let’s get back to what we’re here for, the vote. I’m not going to try and convince anyone one way or another, that’s an individual personal thought, but I just thought it can’t hurt. What can it hurt to land on the right side of an opportunity for people that we live with, in our own country? Is it that bad? It’s not the end of the world. Nothing real bad is going to happen.
JACKIE O: Yeah, I agree.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s right, give it a crack.
KYLE: So, Prime Minister, thank you.
JACKIE O: Thanks, Prime Minister.
KYLE: I know that you’re there, have fun at Uluru.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks.