: Breakfast with Allan and Carly this morning, Robbie filling in. And we have a very, very special guest with us right now, the big dog, the Prime Minister. The main man here in Australia, Anthony Albanese. How are you? Thanks for coming on.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Great to be here. Good to be in the studio, rather than out there in the rain too.
VON: I reckon.
CARLY PORTCH, HOST: And welcome again. Twenty-two visits since you officially became Prime Minister. Now, does that include the holiday you did to Margs with Jodie?
PRIME MINISTER: Nope, it doesn't include that.
VON: That's an extra one.
PORTCH: That was off the record.
PRIME MINISTER: If you count that and Broome, it's 24.
PORTCH: Oh, you did a little jaunt in Broome as well, like a holiday?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, did that early on.
PORTCH: Obviously that was kept a bit secret for good reason.
PRIME MINISTER: No, no, it was secret. Except for the front page of the local paper.
VON: That'll do it. The Broome Advertiser.
PORTCH: Nothing gets past them.
PRIME MINISTER: I ended up as well, doing work. I ended up, I got seen and got asked to open an art exhibition, which was fantastic, in Broome centre there. And then someone saw me there and said, 'Oh, can you do a radio interview?' So I ended up doing a little bit of work, but it was still a good break, just after the election.
PORTCH: Oh, nice. Now, how does Jodie take that? Cause I know what I'm like with my husband when he's answering the work phone after hours.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, I'm in trouble. But that's part of, that's part of the gig. You're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
PORTCH: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: And you know, that comes with the job.
PORTCH: Yeah, absolutely. Now, you are here for a positive announcement around our child care workers.
PRIME MINISTER: I sure am.
PORTCH: We were actually just talking about them this week because there are a couple of regional towns that are really having to up the incentive to get child care workers because they literally don't have any. And you've upped the incentives for child care workers as well?
PRIME MINISTER: We sure have. Right across the country, 15 per cent pay increase, 10 per cent from this December and then a further 5 per cent from next December. And as well, what we've done is make sure there's a cap on childcare fees so that it can't be passed through. So it's good for childcare workers who, of course, they don't just mind kids, they care for them. And importantly as well, they educate them. The first, 90 per cent of human brain development occurs in the first five years. So it's really good for children, good for the workers, good for families by keeping costs down as well. And if we didn't do something, then people were leaving the sector. I mean, why would you do this hard, difficult, intense work? Sure, people who do it love doing it, it's out of satisfaction, but satisfaction doesn't put food on the table. You need proper wages.
VON: Well, I've genuinely had friends who have left the industry because it wasn't paying enough and the stress of it was actually really bad. So things like this are actually amazing. That and aged care, I think, are the hardest jobs.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, and they're the ones that were the most underpaid, and it's no accident, because if you're a childcare worker or an aged care worker, you're committed to helping our youngest Australians or our oldest Australians. You don't say, 'Oh, we won't look after Mavis and Stan today, I'm gonna go on strike for better wages and conditions'. And it's no accident that it's the feminised industries, those who are dominated by women, that were the most underpaid. And so we need to value them properly. There's a work value case taking place in the Fair Work Commission, but we didn't want to wait. We wanted to put down this payment negotiated through with the union and with the workers as well as with the centres, to make sure we delivered on this. We said we would fix childcare in this country and that's precisely what we're doing.
PORTCH: It's a very welcome announcement. You've made a raft of announcements. Just trying to ease the pressure of cost of living, because, I mean, this is, I could imagine, being something that is hopefully on your agenda constantly. There are Australians that literally are working full time, struggling, living in their cars. There's a rental crisis going on. Cost of living crisis. Now, you put up this post and you kind of had good intentions to show what your Government have done to try and curb it. Now, I think someone got a little creative in your social media team and tried to do it via, like, a So Fresh.
PRIME MINISTER: Young people, I don't know.
PORTCH: News.com is calling for them to be fired. It was obviously done in jest, but the reason why I think people have kind of lashed out at this is because it's such a serious topic and it kind of looked like it was making light of it. But if you actually read between the lines, you have done some things in that area to try and ease Australians. How did this come about? And do you literally have to tick off every social media post?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I don't, obviously. But how it came about is the fact that we are doing things.
PORTCH: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: What we're doing is income tax cuts for everybody, not just for some. I mean, I got less, so that more, other people could get something. People earning under $45,000 a year, were going to get not a single dollar. We made sure the average workers are getting double. We've done energy bill relief, together with the states and territories, that adds up to hundreds of dollars off bills. We've got the second increase in a row in rent relief, providing the biggest support that has ever been given for renters. We've got fee free TAFE, we've got cheaper childcare. All of these measures we have done because we understand that cost of living is the number one issue that we need to deal with.
PORTCH: So, how did that end up on the front of a So Fresh CD on social media?
VON: It's creative.
PRIME MINISTER:You know, whatever, you're talking about it…
PORTCH: Well that is true.
PRIME MINISTER:Which means we're talking about our cost of living relief.
PORTCH: Well, that is actually quite true. So maybe...
PRIME MINISTER:Which is kind of the objective of social media, to get people talking about the issues.
VON: He makes a good point.
PORTCH: So, does that mean someone gets to keep their job, then Albo?
PRIME MINISTER: I'm from the Labor party, we look after workers.
PORTCH: Good, good.
PRIME MINISTER: And what we don't do, is have the sort of breathless nonsense that appears on some of these sites from time to time in order to get clicks. That's precisely what they're doing. In order to say that someone should lose their job over something like this.
PORTCH: It is a bit harsh.
PRIME MINISTER: For goodness sake, if people on that site want to look at everything that they've ever put up for accuracy, then fine.
PORTCH: Oh, shots fired.
VON: Hello, hello.
PRIME MINISTER: They should hold themselves to the same account.
PORTCH: Yes, well, very true.
VON: The other big thing in WA at the moment is housing, and it's not 100 per cent your domain. I know this probably comes under the WA Government as well, but we've got a severe lack of housing at the moment, especially for renters and actually, property prices for purchasing is through the roof as well. How is that something that we fix going forward so that everybody can have a roof over their head they can afford?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you can't fix it overnight, but we've got a $32 billion Homes for Australia Plan. The largest investment in social housing in decades, making sure that specific programs as well, like $1 billion extra for women and children escaping domestic violence, for that emergency housing. We have our Build-to-Rent scheme that's about private sector building more homes to rent for affordable housing. So, we have across the board, a range of programs, as well as backing up a program that began here in WA of shared equity.
VON: Ah, yes.
PRIME MINISTER: So, the Government does some of home purchase in order to reduce the payback costs and then at some time in the future, the option is there for either sale, so the proportion goes back to the Government or for people to buy out the Government share of that home and that's a way of getting people into home ownership who mightn't have a deposit as large as is required by the financial institutions. So, whether it's home ownership, private rentals, public housing, we are acting on all of those issues because we understand that it's an absolute priority.
PORTCH: Yeah, that is fabulous to hear that you're taking it seriously and I feel like every time you're here we have to bring it up because there's so many, especially Western Australians and Australians, struggling. Thank you so much for joining us, Albo.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you.
PORTCH: You've always got so much on so we appreciate you putting some time aside for us. Unlike the Broome station, we did actually check ahead of time.
PRIME MINISTER:You did indeed. This was a scheduled stop.
