SUBJECTS: Australian Women’s Weekly; clothes; Mardi Gras; ‘Hot Albo’ photo; Young Labor; Rabbitohs; what Labor offers WA; WA infrastructure; policy agenda; climate change policy; importance of WA; visits to WA; religious discrimination legislation; federal integrity commission. 
 
HOST: Hot from the pages of the Australian Women’s Weekly. Dumped from the cover by Chrissie Swan, though, it should be noted. Anthony Albanese joins us. Albo, welcome. 
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good to be here. Well, they always have women on the front page of the Women’s Weekly.
 
HOST: Is that right?
 
HOST: That makes sense.
 
ALBANESE: That makes sense.
 
HOST: It never occurred to me that that’s the rule. 
 
HOST: Oh, Women’s Weekly. 
 
ALBANESE: Guess what, they have women on the front of the Women’s Weekly. Who knew?
 
HOST: You know what, though? You are looking fit, sir. Men’s Health. You could be on the cover of Men’s Health.
 
ALBANESE: That could be a go. Hold the space. 
 
HOST: Why not?
 
ALBANESE: Do you know anyone there?
 
HOST: No I don’t. Get you in some hot pants and we could get you on the cover of DNA magazine.
 
ALBANESE: Well, I will be at Mardi Gras tomorrow night in Sydney, so.
 
HOST: There you go. Very nice. 
 
HOST: You know what? That would be very exciting. Because remember, this isn’t just Albo. Back in the day, this was Hot Albo.
 
HOST: That’s right. 
 
HOST: When the Hot Albo photos came out, you must have felt pretty good about yourself.
 
ALBANESE: Well, that was way back in 1985.
 
HOST: So you were at university?
 
ALBANESE: Yeah, I was at uni. I was 21 or something when that was taken. It was taken the day, or the day after, I got elected president of Young Labor. So I was pretty hungover, actually, in that photo, to be honest. But I’m wearing an International Youth Year t-shirt in it. Yeah, so, it sort of laid dormant and then someone found it and posted it up and it went a bit crazy.
 
HOST: Was that someone you?
 
ALBANESE: No.
 
HOST: Handing it to a staffer and saying, ‘Spread this around, look how good I look’?
 
ALBANESE: No it was Marieke Hardy.
 
HOST: Oh yeah, okay.
 
ALBANESE: Who has a huge following. So she’s put that up with the two-word thing of ‘Oh Lordy’ and it went nuts.
 
HOST: So, back in the day, did people think that you were hot, Albo? 
 
ALBANESE: No.
 
HOST: No, it’s a retrospective thing?
 
ALBANESE: Yeah, exactly.
 
HOST: Oh, spewing.
 
ALBANESE: Exactly, exactly.
 
HOST: Although, you in a linen shirt in the Women’s Weekly did get hearts a’fluttering as well.
 
ALBANESE: Well, that was an interesting thing to do. Doing a photoshoot for Women’s Weekly was not on my bucket list to do. But it was a positive article and told a bit of my life story.
 
HOST: The outfit, they break it down, so you’re looking relaxed and friendly. Your watch says it’s a ‘professional accessory’.
 
ALBANESE: Oh that’s just weird, isn’t it? See, it’s my watch. 
 
HOST: No, it’s a professional accessory. Your pants was a ‘youthful chino’. And your shoes display that you are ‘agile and sporty’.
 
ALBANESE: Well, the shoes have got more focus than anything else.
 
HOST: Country Road, were they?
 
ALBANESE: They were.
 
HOST: With a gum sole, Shaun.
 
HOST: With a gum sole. 
 
HOST: And the colour matched his girlfriend’s dress, which shows that they’re serious.
 
ALBANESE: The whole analysis of the shoes is just like, wow.
 
HOST: What are you wearing today?
 
HOST: Oh, a formal shoe.
 
ALBANESE: I’ve got boots on today.
 
HOST: We’re going to have to get you some Yeezys. 
 
ALBANESE: But the whole shoe thing. I don’t know if I can give a plug, but it’s OK, they’re not in direct competition, but Betoota Advocate did this whole thing about, I was up in Brisbane with the floods, and they did this whole article about me wrapping it in plastic bags, my white shoes, so they didn’t get mud on them. It’s a thing. Who knew?
 
HOST: Yeah, shoes maketh the man, apparently.
 
HOST: Albo, we’ve been talking about fashion and stuff, but you did mention just in talking there that when you were elected the Young Labor President.
 
ALBANESE: A long, long time ago now.
 
HOST: Yes but, god, that sounds so boring. You know?
 
ALBANESE: No, Young Labor wasn’t boring in those days. 
 
HOST: Like you go, I’m going to go join the Young Liberals or Labor in politics and I’m thinking, oh my Lord.
 
HOST: You’re thinking, what a bunch of nerds, is that what you’re saying?
 
HOST: Yes. Yes.
 
ALBANESE: No, I’m just saying, life was a lot more fun before everyone had cameras on their phones and things.
 
HOST: Sure. We were there too. We know what you mean. Were you student politics as well?
 
ALBANESE: Not really. A little bit. I was on the Sydney Uni SRC and I was involved in various campaigns and stuff at uni. But it was a great time. I feel so sorry for this generation. My son is at uni now and he didn’t go onto the campus for two years. It was all online.
 
HOST: They’re missing out on so much, aren’t they?
 
ALBANESE: They’re missing out on that social interaction and growing as a person and you engage with people from different backgrounds. I reckon I hadn’t met a Liberal voter till I went to uni.
 
HOST: Because you’ve got really blue collar roots, haven’t you? You were housing commission flats and things in your youth, weren’t you?
 
ALBANESE: I was. I grew up with a single mum in city council housing. And I say that I grew up with three great faiths: the Labor party, the Catholic Church and South Sydney rugby league football club. And it was just what you did.
 
HOST: They got beaten the other day. St George.
 
ALBANESE: What was it called? Charity Shield, mate. Charity. Charity.
 
HOST: They found that their shoes weren’t ‘agile and sporty’.
 
ALBANESE: It was Charity Shield and we were being charitable.
 
HOST: There we go.
 
HOST: Hey, it’s going to be really interesting. So, you are wanting to be our prime minister, which is the biggest job in the country.
 
ALBANESE: That’s the plan.
 
HOST: It’s the plan. It’s the plan.
 
HOST: And I don’t know, I’ve done no research, because we don’t do that on our show. But have we ever had a prime minister that has got a girlfriend, not a wife, before?
 
HOST: Julia Gillard had a partner. 
 
HOST: She had a partner not a husband. I guess that’s the same.
 
HOST: Yeah.
 
ALBANESE: That’s sort of the same.
 
HOST: No, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s really interesting because it’s a display of another type of relationship, you know. But I’m thinking of like, are we going down the marriage track with your partner? And if you were to be prime minister…
 
ALBANESE: You’re asking me on air?
 
HOST: Yes. 
 
ALBANESE: Not to get personal, but. 
 
HOST: Would we have a wedding at Kirribilli?
 
ALBANESE: I’m not going there. Not even on Nova.
 
HOST: Because this is a relatively new relationship for you, isn’t it?
 
ALBANESE: It is.
 
HOST: We’re talking a few years?
 
ALBANESE: Two years. And a lot of that’s been interrupted, of course. I was locked out of Sydney for three months. It’s been an unusual time.
 
HOST: You look really happy, though.
 
ALBANESE: I am happy. I am happy. And that’s a good thing.
 
HOST: And your shoes matched her dress. So I feel like -
 
HOST: It’s a sign, it’s a sign.
 
HOST: I feel like we’re going to have a Kirribilli wedding.
 
HOST: Got to get in first.
 
ALBANESE: The thing is, exactly, not getting ahead of ourselves there. But Australia’s made up of all sorts of different people. Not everyone’s mum, dad and 2.2 kids.
 
HOST: I love that.
 
ALBANESE: I grew up with a single mum, just me and her. And I am in a situation now where my son’s 21. Yes, I separated a few years ago. But that’s not unlike a whole lot of other Australians.
 
HOST: Yep, yep. Then you got on the Tinder and met a new girl, right? Is that how it worked.
 
ALBANESE: No, no. I think if I was on a website, I think it would have been known. Even though. Some people have taken a joke and then acted as if it’s serious and put it on. So, that’s a joke, for those people who are writing gossip columns. But it’s diverse. I’m the first person, too, to put themselves forward as prime minister with a non-Anglo Celtic name.
 
HOST: Is that true?
 
ALBANESE: Think about it. Rudd, Gillard, Howard, Morrison. 
 
HOST: No.
 
HOST: That’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Throughout our entire history. 
 
ALBANESE: Think about it. See if you can think of one. I can’t think of one. Curtin, Chifley, Menzies.
 
HOST: I can’t go back that far.
 
HOST: We can’t remember who was against them at the time.
 
ALBANESE: So, it’s possible. But I think that’s probably right. Certainly, I’m in Freo this morning, and certainly the Italo-Australian community are a little bit excited about the prospect of someone called Albanese running for prime minister.
 
HOST: Yeah, I’ll bet they are. Now, Albo, I’ve got to ask you, getting down to brass tacks and I did read that the reason you’re over here, you want WA people to get behind you. They want to hear what you have to offer. So, Josh Frydenberg said that West Australians have been recipients of $14 billion of investment over here, right? So are you saying you’re prepared to offer more to West Australians than what is currently on the table?
 
ALBANESE: Josh talks himself up but they haven’t actually done any really big things. What’s the big project?
 
HOST: Okay, so they’re paying $2.9 billion for Metronet. That’s not bad.
 
ALBANESE: Yeah, but we did Gateway WA, we did Swan Valley Bypass, Perth City Link, sinking the railway line there to unite Northbridge with the CBD, we did Great Northern Highway, the road down to Bunbury, when I was the Infrastructure Minister we did a whole lot. We did National Broadband Network too, we were actually rolling out fibre instead of silly last century’s copper, which is what they’ve done.
 
HOST: Malcolm Turnbull.
 
ALBANESE: So we’ll do that. We’ll offer cheaper child care. And we want a future made here. So we want to make more things here and we think WA will really benefit from that. We can address climate change, but at the same time create jobs.
 
HOST: How do you quantify that? Because it’s easy to say we can provide all these things, but how do you quantify that in money? Because you’re talking about the rail, I’m talking about just the Metronet. The Federal Government also paid for roads here and there.
 
ALBANESE: Not much. Not much.
 
HOST: Can you tell me how much? 
 
ALBANESE: Well, they put. I’ll tell you what they did. They put money aside for the road to the port at Fremantle, no the Gateway was paid for when I was the Minister, Roe 8 that hasn’t got anywhere. So they’ve got this money that they say they’ve spent but it’s actually not being spent. It’s over a billion dollars, $1.3 billion is just sitting there in a locked account.
 
HOST: To be fair, the state government, the current state government nixed that project.
 
ALBANESE: Sure. But they’ve been voted for twice. People have rejected it. So that’s a bit silly to get in that circumstance. We want real projects that make a real difference and create real jobs. And our climate change policy, we have put out full costing, for example, that will create 604,000 new jobs. So there’s a figure for you.
 
HOST: Crikey, where are those people going to come from?
 
HOST: That’s good now because everyone’s thinking that way. I think everybody is. And I think what we see over in NSW and Queensland, we all see the effect. What’s the cost of that versus the current jobs?
 
ALBANESE: Well that’s 604,000 additional jobs, compared with what’s happening now. $52 billion of private sector investment. We put out all the costs. And we’ve actually got a policy that’d backed by the Business Council, by the National Farmers’ Federation, as well as the union movement. So it’s not too bad to put together a climate policy that has the support of big business, Australian Industry Group. The whole of the business community are way ahead of where this Government’s been on climate change.
 
HOST: Over the last two years, there was a portion of the West Australian people that felt so disenfranchised from Scott Morrison, because we felt like he was the Prime Minister for the eastern states, and not for us. And a lot of that was to do with his reaction to what we were doing over here for COVID and stuff like that.
 
ALBANESE: Yeah. And backing Clive Palmer probably wasn’t the best thing that he could have done.
 
HOST: And now recently because, you know, because the election’s coming over, he’s, ‘Oh no, I’ve always been on the side’ and blah blah blah blah blah. How are we going to know that you aren’t just going to go back over to the eastern states and then -
 
HOST: Forget about us.
 
HOST: We are part of the conversation.
 
ALBANESE: I’ve always come here. I’ve always spent a lot of time here. And way back when, we were talking about the photo, way back in 1983 I spent six weeks here. I had a mate who was driving across, so he was from Perth, he was driving across and I came across with my then girlfriend at age 20 and had six weeks here. I had Christmas Day 1983 on Rottnest Island. And I really got to know Perth. I stayed in someone’s flat and then we stayed down south and when around the southwest and around Margaret River and down to Albany and all of that. And I’ve been a regular visitor here. I’m not someone who just flies in during an election campaign. I want to work with West Australians. And I think too often in the Canberra pollies, you’ve got to spend time here. You can’t just fly in and fly out. I remember during the campaign in 2016, I was over here and Malcolm Turnbull flew in, was here for like two hours, and then flew out again. And that’s why I made the commitment to be on the first flight, to spend a few days here. I’ll be back. And you’ll have me back in the studio, I hope, as well.
 
HOST: Yes we will.
 
HOST: Albo, there’s been criticism of you that your campaign style or your leadership style is just to sit back and to wait for the opposition to fumble. Is that, do you feel that’s accurate?
 
ALBANESE: No. We’ve put forward policies for cheaper child care, for making things here, for our climate change policy – the most detailed policy ever put forward by an opposition for anything. We spent six figures.
 
HOST: Why didn’t you openly oppose the religious discrimination bill? You asked for some amendments but essentially.
 
ALBANESE: Because we think that people should not be discriminated against because of their faith. We think that is a legitimate thing.
 
HOST:But the thing about, being a member of that community, for me was that bill was people saying, ‘We don’t want to be discriminated against but we want to discriminate against someone else’.
 
HOST: Yeah.
 
ALBANESE: Exactly, which is what we fixed. So our amendment that included vilification provisions as well for people of faith, no woman should be yelled at or discriminated against because they’re wearing a hijab down the street. People shouldn’t be, a Sikh guy shouldn’t be discriminated against.
 
HOST: But that’s already the community standard, though.
 
ALBANESE: No it’s not, in terms of, there is no law there to stop discrimination against people on the basis of their faith. So we supported that. But we said this, our condition of support, which is what we fixed with the amendment, was that you shouldn’t do that at the expense of increasing discrimination against someone because of who they are, because of their sexuality or their gender identity.
 
HOST: Yep.
 
ALBANESE: So we fixed it. And then Scott Morrison said, ‘No, no, no, no, we’ll withdraw the whole bill’. 
 
HOST: Because that’s where it lost me. Because I don’t want to live in a community like in America where someone from the LGBTQ community can go into a business and then be refused service.
 
ALBANESE: Absolutely, and nor do I.
 
HOST: And with trans children.
 
HOST: And that’s the thing at the moment, right. But it’s to do with the rules committee that have to sit down next year or later this year to be able to go over that before you can make an amendment, is that correct?
 
ALBANESE: No, no. They’ve just trashed the thing because they wanted to play a wedge. They wanted to say you’re either against discrimination against people of faith or you’re against discrimination on the basis of gender identity. And we said no, no, no, no, you don’t have to do that. We’re against discrimination, full stop, exclamation mark, against anyone.
 
HOST: Yeah, great.
 
ALBANESE: Whether it be on the basis of religion, or gender, or sexuality, or gender identity. And we were very strong about that. We said we would stick with that. Which is why Scott Morrison withdrew the bill. So the big two things he went to the last election on was that and an anti-corruption commission. We know why there’s no anti-corruption commission, because they’re worried about what it might find.
 
HOST: Yeah, hang on a second, you can’t throw stones here, Albo.
 
ALBANESE: I just did. I just did.
 
HOST: That’s both. 
 
ALBANESE: No it’s not.
 
HOST: Would you be up for it?
 
ALBANESE: Absolutely. We’ll do it.
 
HOST: You’ll do it?
 
ALBANESE: Absolutely we’ll do it.
 
HOST: Plus, great drag name. Annie Corruption.
 
HOST: Albo, we have to leave it there because we’re running out of time. We know you’re a busy man, you’ve got to go get a coffee in Freo.
 
ALBANESE: That’s important.
 
HOST: I know. No, we know. We’re Freo people. Don’t worry about it.
 
HOST: Next time I want to see those Country Road shoes on your feet, please.
 
ALBANESE: I will bring them in just for you.
 
HOST: Thank you.
 
ALBANESE: Do you reckon I should wear them tomorrow night?
 
HOST: Yes, you should wear them tomorrow night. Are you kidding me?
 
HOST: You’ll never get the glitter out. Thank you so much for joining us. 
 
ALBANESE: Thank you. 
 
ENDS