SUBJECTS: Christopher Pyne; Southern Expressway on/off ramps announcement; visit to Adelaide; SA state election; federal election; new east coast submarine base.
 
DAVID PENBERTHY, HOST: He’s been wanting an intro ever since his Two Tribes intro went the way of the dodo. The Federal Labor Leader, Anthony Albanese, joins us. Anthony Albanese, good morning to you.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: I thank you for the warm welcome there.
 
PENBERTHY: We're just sorry, Albo, that we don't have your old mate Chris Pyne on the show. Although you could probably soldier on admirably in his absence.
 
ALBANESE: Yeah, you're not really. We can survive without Christopher. He's doing quite well. I ran into him at a function a few weeks ago and he was he was looking great and seemed very, very happy with life.
 
PENBERTHY: Yeah he's living large. Hey, Albo, the Southern Expressway, this is a road I'm extremely familiar with heading back and forth towards Aldinga at least once a week. And then you've got an announcement about it that relates to more entry and exit ramps to ease some of the congestion around Brighton Road and down Hallett Cove way.
 
ALBANESE: We certainly do. New on/off ramps for the Southern Expressway at Majors Road. This has been a big bottleneck, as you know, Penbo. And this will enable people to get to work more easily, get home, get to the shops, get to the weekend sport. This will be really important. And it's a joint announcement between ourselves and Mali, Peter Malinauskas, who’s in Opposition there, hopefully soon to be in government in South Australia, $60 million from each level of government to make a real difference.
 
PENBERTHY: Can we expect to see you in Adelaide again before the end of the campaign?
 
ALBANESE: You can. I'll be there, of course, today. But then I'll be there the end of next week, as well, for a couple of days. South Australia is an important state. And I think Peter Malinauskas has done a great job leading South Australian Labor. It’s an important state. It's important that I think we show that federal and state Labor are united. You know, we both have elections coming up on the horizon. And I'm hopeful of a good outcome in a couple of weeks.
 
PENBERTHY: Do you think that there's any federal issues at play in the South Australian election, Albo? Or do you see it as being largely fought along state lines?
 
ALBANESE: People know about the distinction between levels of government. It's largely fought on state lines. But I think the Federal Government's failure on some issues like vaccine rollout, like a supply of rapid antigen test, failures in aged care, have all fed into, I think, damage to the Liberal Party brand. I think Premier Marshall is suffering from that. But any credit goes to, Peter Malinauskas and I had a very similar approach, I've got to say, towards the pandemic, which was that we would put the national interest, in my case, first and the South Australian interests first in Peter’s case, and be constructive, put forward suggestions, not play the role of the traditional opposition of just opposing things for its own sake. And I think as a result, we're in a position to put forward constructive suggestions and announcements like the one that we're putting forward today.
 
PENBERTHY: On to federal matters, Albo, and the Prime Minister today is going to announce $10 billion for a new base of operations on the east coast for the new nuclear submarines. Is it Labor's position that you'll be matching these submarine-related commitments? Or do you reserve the right to review them?
 
ALBANESE: Well, we reserve the right to serve the national interest. This Government is always good at announcements. It hasn't been good at delivery. We had the announcement of subs from Japan and that led to led to no actual activity. Then we had the announcement of the deal with the French that resulted in substantial activity, particularly in South Australia, and then substantial job losses when that deal wasn't forwarded. We support nuclear propelled submarines. We received advice and we accepted that, that that was the best form going forward. But we, of course, haven't been briefed on today's announcement. I did note in today's drop to the newspapers, I was looking for the word Adelaide anywhere, given the Adelaide has really suffered substantially by the Government’s decision. There were immediate job losses occurred there. And I couldn't find it anywhere in the announcement. I await, of course, the speech that’s being given to the Lowy Institute today, apparently. But we have not received the courtesy of a briefing in advance, so therefore I'm not going to just sign off automatically on that detail.
 
PENBERTHY: Anthony Albanese, the Federal Opposition Leader, thanks very much for joining us this morning on fiveAA.
 
ALBANESE: Thanks very much guys, and have a great day. 
 
PENBERTHY: Cheers. The detail, just so you know, folks, this will be of particular interest to people in the southern suburbs. So the plan is new on/off ramps for the Southern Expressway at Majors Road, so sort of O'Halloran Hill way and that extends all the way towards the sort of northern end of Hallett Cove as well on Ocean Boulevard. And in addition, they're also promising to upgrade Brighton Road intersections at Brighton Road, Wattle Street and Dunrobin Road and also Brighton Road and Edwards Street, and also improved signalling on the Seaford rail line.
 
ENDS