SUBJECTS: Workplace culture in Parliament House; floods; JobKeeper; holding the Government to account.

HOST: Anthony Albanese, good morning to you.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning. Good to be here in Adelaide. 

HOST: Welcome to Adelaide. We know you have been here plenty of times over the last few years. One half of Two Tribes, of course.

HOST: Do you catch up with your own sparring partner?

ALBANESE: He was on the plane last night. So we waved at each other. 

HOST: You didn't swap seats so you could sit next to each other for two hours?

ALBANESE: No. No-one needs to do that. There were empty seats either side of him, I'm just saying, on a packed plane. But I did do his podcast. That was good fun. Pyne Time, there you go, I will give him a free ad.

HOST: He has become a media figure, Chris, he is quite a good columnist for the Tiser. 

HOST: I think he's almost now a competitor to us more than Anthony.

ALBANESE: Tries to be. I'm still on your side.

HOST: Good on you.

ALBANESE: Notice how I worked in our slogan for next election there?

HOST: Very subtle. What a horrible week, what a horrible month, it's been in federal politics. Can I just ask you, though, it feels to me like all of the attention on the Government has let Labor off the hook? Because I don't think that either side of politics has a monopoly on the bad treatment of women. Do you, as Leader of the Labor Party, have you had to have any quiet conversations with any of your blokes?

ALBANESE: No. But I've never argued that the Labor Party is immune, as other parts of society aren't immune. This is a very broad problem that exists. There's a power imbalance in society. So there's no reason to think that has occurred. Bad things have occurred in the Labor Party in the past, there's no question about that.

HOST: How does Parliament, as an entity, change the culture? Because there are still live things on your side too. There's the Facebook site, that Sam Maiden wrote about, talking about female staffers on the Labor side sharing some stories, some of which probably involve people still in the parliamentary Party.

ALBANESE: Well, we have two things. One is the Jenkins Review is important. And it's important, I think, that it establishes some form of arm's length mechanism, an independent mechanism, to sort out these issues so staff can feel confident they have somewhere to go, just like the Independent Parliamentary Expense Authority, a body that seeks out entitlements of MPs, has made a difference, and the Parliamentary Budget Office has made a difference to election commitments, independent costing. It needs some form of independent body that isn't there at the moment. Because the relationship between a Member of Parliament and their staff is different from others in the employer-employee relationships. The truth is that employees have little power under the Act that governs the employment of staff. So there needs to be something addressed. I have confidence in Kate Jenkins. But we've also set up internal mechanisms within the Labor Party. We have a code of conduct, we have a sexual harassment policy, we have a bullying policy. And we have a complaint process that has been set up over a period of time in 2018 and then was improved by the National Executive before these current issues were raised.

HOST: The parliamentary element of that, the proposals and changes, sound reactive insofar as they're mirroring what we have in private enterprise where you've got an HR department, you got complaints handling and whatnot, to the preventative measures that are possible, and there are unique challenges faced by Parliament, its remoteness, the availability of alcohol, the nature of the business is different to other places.

ALBANESE: It is.

HOST: Does there need to be some attempt to address some of those things that do make it unique?

ALBANESE: Of course.

HOST: So what kinds of things need to change?

ALBANESE: Some of it is cultural change in the way that the place operates. I think there has been a huge wake-up call. I mean, quite frankly, I'm shocked by some of the stuff that was reported this week. You just really do shake your head. I mean, someone engaging in solo self-satisfaction onto the desk of an MP is just strange to say the least. In what world does someone think, 'I know, I've got a good idea, and I will film it and circulate it around a group of friends'. So it seems to me that's the sort of weird culture that you see sometimes, it's got to be said, in some of the activities you see on buses and public transport, that's got publicity from time to time, from some of the really elite schools that have been embarrassed by that. We've got to address the whole issue of respect for women throughout our society. And the first thing to do is we've got to listen to what they're saying and that these issues are real.

HOST: I've got to say, Albo, it feels to me like, at the moment, the Government's clearly rattled and distracted by the enormity of this issue and the Prime Minister's inability to shut it down. And it feels like Labor has got a vested interest in maintaining that situation for as long as possible. Meanwhile, there's all these other issues, like JobKeeper is about to expire, people aren't getting vaccinated. But it feels like everyone in politics this week has wanted to talk about nothing other than blokes having a crack at desks and sending pictures around. I'm worried that it's done collateral damage to politics as a profession and Parliament as an entity, because it looks like no one's actually thinking about the average person listening to FiveAA right now.

ALBANESE: Well, you're right. There's no doubt that there has been damage done to politics. But we, this week, were raising questions every day about JobKeeper ending this weekend, 150,000 people will essentially lose JobKeeper. That means less income for them, the potential loss of their jobs, it means those businesses having the support withdrawn from them. There's a range of other issues as well. We raised this week the floods that we've seen, the Emergency Response Fund that was set up a couple of years ago, it's a $200 million allocation every year, $50 million of that is for mitigation so you don't wait for the disaster, you try and fix things in advance. Not a dollar of that fund has been spent. There are so many issues out there that we raised in Parliament this week. But this is a Government, really, that didn't have any legislation this week. We discussed the thing called the Appropriations Bill, which is really that people can stand up and talk about whatever they want for most of the week. This is a Government that I think is looking like a tired eight-year-old Government that really needs a bit of time out of government to try and sort itself out.

HOST: Anthony Albanese, Leader of the Opposition, great to see you in Adelaide. We'll catch up again soon. Thanks for coming in.

HOST: A little disappointing given you are a one-time contributor to the program that you didn't get the dress code. I mean, coming in with a suit.

ALBANESE: I haven't got a tie on at least. I took it off. And I had a shave.

HOST: You knew the standards is all I am saying.

HOST: I have my best Billabong t-shirt on especially.

ALBANESE: And it's only got a few holes in it.

ENDS