JENNY MARCHANT, HOST: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has brought his election campaign to the Hunter today. He's been in Maitland and other parts of the region, is on the line for you this afternoon now. Hello, Prime Minister.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: G’day, Jenny. Good to be with you, and wonderful to be here in the Hunter.
 
MARCHANT: Do you still see the Hunter as Labor heartland?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I certainly do, because the Hunter Valley has the values that Labor shares – the values of a fair go, the values of looking after each other. I've been coming to the Hunter for my whole life, basically. And I think the culture here is absolutely consistent with the values that I was raised with.
 
MARCHANT: Well, with that in mind, Prime Minister, the seat Paterson you visited today, Hunter, Shortland, held by a Cabinet Minister in Pat Conroy. All those seats, you know, certainly considered marginal at this election. What's gone wrong? Have you lost track of how voters here feel?
 
PRIME MINISTER: No, we'll continue to campaign hard. It's no surprise – of course, Paterson was held for a long time by Coalition – Liberal Party members in Bob Baldwin, won it on couple of occasions. And of course, Newcastle in the state and Maitland have been represented by the Liberal Party at various times. And when people have done that, they've come back to Labor pretty quickly, because it's only Labor that will stand up for their values.
 
And today, I was in Maitland announcing an Urgent Care Clinic. People of this region understand that Medicare is the key to health care, that they want people to get the health care they need with just their Medicare card, not with their credit card. And then, of course, I was at the miners’ union Annual General Meeting in Cessnock, and the Mining and Energy Union played such an important role in this region. And we celebrated Same Job, Same Pay, that's making a difference for one worker, Danielle from Mount Pleasant, $30,000 additional money in her pocket as a direct result of our legislation.
 
MARCHANT: Prime Minister, I appreciate that. There are communities in our region who are very concerned about their future. The Mayor of Muswellbrook has said his area will lose 12,000 jobs by 2030 with the closure of mines. Whole communities concerned about their future. Why haven't we seen more done to help communities like that sooner?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that's why we're acting. That's why we've established the Net Zero Authority. We want to make sure that communities aren't left behind. I've been in Muswellbrook with the Mayor there, of Muswellbrook, opening the innovation centre that's talking about startups and new industries and new jobs and new opportunities.
 
MARCHANT: How will those actions, then, and Net Zero Authority and other actions, help those 12,000 or so families concerned that in four or five years from now, they won't have an income stream?
 
PRIME MINISTER: They'll help by making sure that we have new jobs created in addition to support for existing jobs. So, that will be around for some time. But we want new industries to come to the Hunter. We want to also make sure that industries like those workers at Tomago get looked after, the largest employer in the area. We’re working with Rio Tinto on the plan that they have to transition with the new economy.
 
And I noticed that last week when Peter Dutton made a rare visit by a senior Liberal to this region, he was essentially dismissing Rio Tinto's plan that they have put in place.
 
MARCHANT: Prime Minister, if we can stay on the issue here of coal communities in the Hunter. How is attracting new industries now going to support communities like Muswellbrook that are looking at the loss of 12,000 or so jobs in a matter of four or five years?
 
PRIME MINISTER: By having new industries and new jobs created. I don't know if you've been to the innovation centre there in Muswellbrook, in the main street there, but it's exciting. The companies that are developing, they're working with the universities, working with the tertiary sector as well. The Hunter Valley has a great future. And I remember, I'm old enough to remember when the steelworks closed there -
 
MARCHANT: The Prime Minister's line has dropped out. We're aware that he is traveling this afternoon, Prime Minister, do I have you back?
 
PRIME MINISTER: - but what happened was it made an enormous difference and Newcastle has transitioned. Newcastle is a thriving community; it's diversified its economy and that's the benefit.
 
MARCHANT: But is it happening fast enough in our coal communities. Prime Minister? This is at the heart of the issue, and you've had a protester in Maitland today feeling you haven't been strong enough on the environment, concerns about coal and gas projects. And then you have areas like Muswellbrook where there are concerns you haven't done enough to support coal communities. On this issue alone, you end up with a divided electorate and a bit of a quicksand here, don't you?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there were a couple of protesters at a hospital, I think that people screaming in a hospital ward says more about them than advancing their cause, frankly. I thought it's an entirely inappropriate setting for a couple of people to pose as journalists in order to basically –
 
MARCHANT: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is with me on 1233 ABC Newcastle, traveling with an unreliable phone line. Prime Minister, I'd love to ask you about wind farms off the coast of the Hunter. There's a lot of opposition to that plan. What are you going to do to deal with doubt and opposition to that?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you've just spoken about jobs, and one of the things that can happen is jobs relating to renewable energy. That is one of the positives. There needs to be proper environmental assessments for all of these measures, but it can benefit by bringing jobs to the region.
 
MARCHANT: But at the cost, some say, of a local tourism industry or fisherpeople, these renewable projects need to have that community license, don't they?
 
PRIME MINISTER: They do, and they’ll receive that. That's why you have proper environmental proposals. But some of the scare campaigns, like that whales somehow won't be in the ocean if there is a wind turbine in the ocean. Quite frankly, whales are going up and down our coast, there are various things around our coastline, including moving of shipping et cetera. The idea that those things can't exist together, quite frankly, doesn't stack up. We will have proper environmental assessments. We stopped PEP11 because that was an inappropriate project going forward, but we do support jobs going forward.
 
MARCHANT: I know we have limited time – will there be money in this campaign for fast rail between Newcastle and Sydney?
 
PRIME MINISTER: We've already begun that process. We've established the office in Newcastle here. We think it's an exciting proposal. I've been a long-term supporter of it. The work is being undertaken as we speak, and we've already provided funding in the Budget for it.
 
MARCHANT: How soon do you think we could see that high-speed rail in place?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we're going through the business case and going through those processes. We think that it's very capable of attracting private sector investment as well as the public investment.
 
MARCHANT: Prime Minister, the fact that your phone line has dropped out a couple of times here, a serious issue in parts of the Hunter, telecommunications. Could we expect better connected communities under a re-elected government?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely, we're rolling out – one of the things that we've had to deal with was the National Broadband Network, and rolling out fibre-based, completing the rollout. It began under the former Labor Government under Kevin Rudd, and we're having to complete it, after they stopped the rollout of fibre, thought that it was okay to rollout nineteenth century copper wire and bought enough new copper to go around the entire planet twice, it made no sense. So, we are dealing with the NBN, dealing with regional communications, after a decade of neglect.
 
MARCHANT: Prime Minister, we saw that you fell from the stage in Cessnock this afternoon. Are you okay?
 
PRIME MINISTER: No, I stepped back one step. I didn't fall off the stage.
 
MARCHANT: It looked like you went down. I'm glad to hear you're okay, though.
 
PRIME MINISTER: Just one leg went down, but I was sweet.
 
MARCHANT: Thank you very much for your time this afternoon.
 
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, bye-bye.

ENDS