Radio interview – Mix94.5 Perth breakfast with Pete, Matt and Kymba
VOICEOVER: He’s the 31st Prime Minister that won’t stay in one spot for too long. And one thing we do know he always packs with him, a bag of Chicken Twisties, it’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: What a great intro.
KYMBA CAHILL, HOST: Welcome.
PRIME MINISTER: Good to be here. Great to be back in Perth.
KYMBA: It’s lovely to have you back. You are definitely our most consistent PM visiting over, well, the history of me being at the radio station.
PRIME MINISTER: It wasn’t a high bar, I’ve got to say. I’m not quite sure why there was an aversion to the West. I love being here, this is my second visit this year.
KYMBA: I believe you’re in town to help us search for the radioactive capsule.
PRIME MINISTER: Done.
MATT DYKTYNSKI, HOST: Well done Albo, another problem solved.
PETE CURULLI, HOST: Thank you so much, well done. Amazing.
PRIME MINISTER: Probably shouldn’t have lost it in the first place.
KYMBA: You’ve some time up your sleeve now that you don’t have to join the search party.
PRIME MINISTER: It was good news, I actually got a heads up that it had been found before it was announced. It was like, yes, thank goodness. Because it was such a strange story, wasn’t it? Little radioactive, tiny little thing that they were looking for like a needle in a haystack. But they found it to their great credit, though. There was five teams at least out there looking for it.
MATT: Good on ’em. PM, of course, one of the reasons you’re in town and spruiking these Urgent Care Clinics?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah.
MATT: Which is fantastic, sounds great. The only question I would have, certainly for Pete and myself, people with kids, you know, often you’ll go to an emergency department with a kid, because you know, is the arm broken? Is it not? And the reason one goes to emergency is you find that out and it gets treated in the one spot?
PRIME MINISTER: What a great question, because that is exactly the sort of scenario that Urgent Care Clinics will look after.
MATT: Great.
PRIME MINISTER: The place we were at yesterday at Morley, for example, has doctors, it has X-ray, it has pathology, it has a pharmacy attached. The idea is that it will take pressure off the hospital system, so that instead of being in emergency department for something that is a problem it’s urgent, but it’s not…
MATT: Life threatening?
PRIME MINISTER: You’re not going to die from a broken arm. So you can get it fixed, on the spot, with bulk-billing, and it will basically mean that you can get the care when you need it, where you need it, at an affordable at the same time as it takes pressure off the emergency departments of hospitals.
PETE: So these things will have, these places will have the tech and hardware as well like X-ray and all that sort of stuff?
PRIME MINISTER: Correct, that’s the whole idea, is that seven centres to look after exactly that sort of scenario. There’ll be seven sites, three of them we want to be up and running in the first half of this year, Perth City, Joondalup and Rockingham. And then the last four will be at Murdoch, Midland, Bunbury and Broome. And it is, I think, a really practical idea.
KYMBA: It’s a great idea. I mean, I think at the moment, we’ve only got like one 24-hour chemist in this entire city, we can’t even access you can’t even go get Panadol if you don’t…
PETE: Good morning to Botts Chemist on Albany Highway. God bless you guys.
PRIME MINISTER: There’s a free ad. Send them an invoice.
PETE: Prime Minister, one of the other things that’s a real critical touch point, particularly here in the West, but across the entire country, is we’ve got a vacancy rate of 0.6 per cent right now. And I was reading something with regards to what Canada introduced at the beginning of January, which was a two-year ban on foreigners being able to buy residential properties to hold them for investment. And I was just wondering if there’s any solutions that the Government is currently working on to help ease the pressure and lift that vacancy rate so we can see housing become a lot more affordable for a lot of families out there?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there’s a range of things we’re looking at to boost supply, we have a $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund that will build more additional social housing. On top of that, we released $575 million for social housing investment with the states and territories. We have a Housing Accord with the Master Builders Association, with industry, and with state and territory governments about supply. And we’re creating a Housing Supply and Affordability Council nationally as well, to look at all of the different ways, like there’s not one measure. We’re throwing everything at this, because we know that it is such a major issue. But the big problem comes down to, we aren’t building enough housing in the right places as well. So often, we’ve gone back, we build housing in areas and then we go ‘oh, how do people get from A to B?’
PETE: There’s not a shop.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah.
PETE: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who’s in town at the moment, you’re hearing him with us on Mix94.5 in the studio, when we come back in a roundabout five or six minutes time with him, a very special edition of…
JINGLE: Albo’s big ones. He’ll win a crappy prize.
(Music and traffic break)
PETE: The Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Anthony Albanese, our good friend, he’s still with us. Alright, shall we? Shall we get into something a little bit more fun with the Prime Minister?
KYMBA: Please, Albo, would you like to play a game, I normally play a game…
PRIME MINISTER: I’m not sure I would like to, but here it comes anyway.
KYMBA: You know what, I think you’re going to love it. It’s called Kymba’s big ones. We play it every week and you’re our special guest today, if you’re willing.
PRIME MINISTER: Kymba’s big ones, I’m up for it. When I spoke in the PNG Parliament a couple of weeks ago my office stirred me up, because I got introduced by the Speaker of the Parliament in Pidgin as ‘big man number one’.
MATT: Oh I love it. You should get that tattooed.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s there on Hansard in PNG.
KYMBA: Well then you are definitely ready for Kymba’s big ones.
PRIME MINISTER: I’m ready for Kymba’s big ones.
JINGLE: Albo’s big ones. He’ll win a crappy prize.
MATT: And you will, that’s a promise.
KYMBA: That’s how it works, you wind up with a crappy prize from the fun bucket. That’s what happens every week.
PRIME MINISTER: Flash.
KYMBA: OK, Kymba’s big ones, what I need you to do Albo is to put these in order from lowest to highest number of Instagram followers.
PRIME MINISTER: Ooh, okay.
KYMBA: Lowest to highest.
PRIME MINISTER: Lowest to highest. I’ll get the pen out.
MATT: Get the pen out, do your workings out, you’ll get marks for that.
KYMBA: These politicians, Peter Dutton,
MATT: The Dutts.
KYMBA: Anthony Albanese and Chris Hipkins.
MATT: Chris Hipkins, the new Prime Minister of New Zealand, whose name’s impossible to say without doing the accent.
PRIME MINISTER: So lowest to highest.
KYMBA: From lowest to highest, the number of Instagram followers – Peter Dutton, Anthony Albanese, and Chris Hipkins, the New Zealand Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’ll go Hipkins, Dutton, Albanese.
KYMBA: Ooh, OK now you’re quite, do you find yourself on Insta quite a bit? Is that how you sort of know this? Or you just think you’re just going in terms of popularity?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’m not sure about Chris because he’s only been PM for a short period of time.
MATT: Big man number two?
PRIME MINISTER: But there’s less Kiwis than there are Australians, so I factored that in.
KYMBA: See, this is, we do our working out loud, you’re doing a great job of that.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, so how did I go?
KYMBA: Well, I can tell you, from lowest to highest: Chris Hipkins at 14,500, fourteen and a half thousand.
MATT: Early days.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s alright, he’s only been in the job for a couple of weeks.
MATT: He’d be rapt.
PRIME MINISTER: He’s coming out next week, I’m having lunch with him next week. He’s coming to Canberra and it will be a good thing, I’ve met him before a number of times, I think he’ll be terrific.
KYMBA: Well he can’t be doing too shabby on fourteen and a half thousand, because then in comes Peter Dutton on fifteen point six.
PRIME MINISTER: Really?
KYMBA: I mean, come on Dutton. He’s been in the game long enough and he’s only got a thousand more followers.
PRIME MINISTER: Fifteen point six, Hipkins almost beat him.
KYMBA: And then Anthony Albanese, my goodness, there you are, 270,000.
MATT: Big man number one.
PETE: Oh let’s go, let’s go. Wow.
KYMBA: So you nailed it.
PRIME MINISTER: So I got it?
KYMBA: You got it right, we’re giving you a prize.
PRIME MINISTER: What do I win?
KYMBA: You win something from the fun bucket. Would you like this?
PRIME MINISTER: Ah, chicken Twisties.
MATT: A big bag of chicken Twisties.
PRIME MINISTER: A party bag.
KYMBA: A party bag, the large size.
PRIME MINISTER: I reckon that you will be so popular with the plane going on the way back.
KYMBA: Oh, you’re going to share them on the plane?
PRIME MINISTER: I have to share them, or else will undo all the good work I’ve done to get fit.
KYMBA: You are looking fantastic.
PRIME MINISTER: I’ve dropped 20 kilos, but I reckon I could put 20 kilos on by the time I get to Canberra if I ate all of them.
MATT: Save some for Chris.
PRIME MINISTER: But how good are chicken Twisties?
PETE: Well, we know we know how good they are because the last time…
KYMBA: The question we do need answered, which is superior, chicken or cheese Twisties?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh chicken.
MATT: Controversial.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s a really easy answer.
PETE: So can I say…
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely, and cheese Twisties, all the yellow stays on your fingers.
MATT: Albo, don’t go there, don’t go there mate, I’m a fan of yours, do not go there against cheese Twisties.
KYMBA: It is a sticky point for us, because when we had that chat with you, Twisties got in touch and said ‘Oh, thanks so much for giving us a spruik, we’d love to send you a little something, Kymba, for asking about the Twisties.’ And I said you can make payment in two boxes of cheese Twisties because I love cheese. They sent two boxes of chicken.
PRIME MINISTER: They’re good aren’t they? I’m taking my Twisties.
PETE: Thank you for joining us, Prime Minister. Good to see you over here and we’ll catch you again very soon next time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, see you next time.