SUBJECTS: Inflation; unemployment; cost of living; prices; productivity; wages; energy; industrial relations; taxes; responsibility.
 
ANDREW CLENNELL: Joining me now is Anthony Albanese. Mr Albanese, thanks for joining us.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Afternoon, Andrew, good to be with you.

CLENNELL: Well, you know, my next question, what's the inflation rate?

ALBANESE: The inflation rate is 3.5. And the wages rate is 2.3, which is why inflation is much higher than the cost of living. That's why people are under pressure Andrew.

CLENNELL: Alright well let me just get to this unemployment question, though, because it's clearly a gaffe. I mean, we have to call it as it is.

ALBANESE: Well, it’s a mistake, Andrew. And I’ll own it.

CLENNELL: How did it occur though?

ALBANESE: Oh look, you can come up with a whole range of reasons, a whole lot of figures around, of course, the average unemployment rate under this Government is 5.7, under us it was 5.1. That was a question that I thought of, when people are firing questions at you. But it was it was a mistake. I accept it. I own up to it. I'm not blaming anyone else. I'm accepting responsibility. That's what leaders do.

CLENNELL: I mean I don't want to get melodramatic here, but is this the day you lost the election?

ALBANESE: You are being melodramatic, Andrew. People make mistakes and when it comes to figures, quite often. I don't want to get into the Prime Minister's mistakes that have been made. But they have been. Recently, there was a beauty with regard to how many years four plus three make up. People make mistakes, that happens. I've fessed up to it, Andrew, I'm accepting responsibility for it. And that's it.

CLENNELL: It's been reported you've apologised to your colleagues about it today. Is that true?

ALBANESE: No, Andrew. People make mistakes. The key test of character, Andrew, is that when you make a mistake do you own it, do you set about fixing it, and then do you accept responsibility for it? I accept responsibility for it.

CLENNELL: Look I don’t want to spend too long on this, but unemployment and the fact that it’s so low, and the labour shortages, that's something that we've been talking about for months, so it is a bit surprising, I guess.

ALBANESE: Sure, but that that wasn't the first question, Andrew. To be fair, the first question was about the Tasmanian unemployment rate.

CLENNELL: Yes, that's right. I wouldn't necessarily expect you to know that, hence why I ask the question.

ALBANESE: When you have a range of questions fired at you, I don't want to make excuses, Andrew, though. I should have said, four per cent. I accept that, I accept responsibility for that.

CLENNELL: Well, they're they've already made an ad, by the way, the Liberal Party, as you can imagine, but they want to, they want to frame you as a risk to the economy. So, you can see obviously how they'll be able to make hay with this don’t you? They'll be able to say, “look, this guy doesn't even know the unemployment figure. He doesn't even know the official cash rate. How can you trust him to run an economy?”.

ALBANESE: Well Andrew, I do know the official cash rate, it's 0.1. But the thing that matters to people is the interest rates that they pay, and no one out there is paying 0.1 per cent on their mortgage, either. The cash rate feeds into interest rates, of course. But we have a government that's presided over a trillion dollars of debt with not much to show for it. Productivity has done nothing under this Government. They doubled the debt even before the pandemic. They don't have an economic plan for the future. You have real wages that have never been, real wages are the most important indicator in terms of cost of living, and the fact is that real wages have been going backwards.

CLENNELL: I'll get to that in a minute. But I just, one of the things you also said was petrol prices last time you filled up, wonder when that was, $2.20. Since the excise cut? 

ALBANESE: Well, they've come down. 

CLENNELL: Yeah. Do you know what they roughly are now?

ALBANESE: Yeah, they're around about $1.90. They've fallen substantially as a result of the excise cut. But the last time I filled up was in Illawarra Road, Marrickville, it was $2.20. I know the price of goods.

CLENNELL: You said you need milk and bread. I don't want to make a thing of this, so final question on this subject, milk and bread, what's the price?

ALBANESE: Well, bread at Kim's Hot Bread is $2, it went up from $1.80 once I spoke about it being that. Milk of course varies in price depending upon what you buy in terms of two litre Home Brand is about $2.60. I, myself, buy Paul's Smart milk. That varies a little bit, but it's around $2.15 for a litre.

CLENNELL: All right, well, let me ask more generally about the cost of living because such a big issue, if not, has become the number one issue.

ALBANESE: It is the issue.

CLENNELL: Yeah. They have, the Federal Government produced a budget which had, if you like, a three to six months solution. Let's face it, you're happy enough to go out and say that, but you're the alternative Prime Minister now, what's your long term solution to this issue? We're going to cop interest rate rises, as you pointed out, petrol, I mean, would you extend past six months the excise cut, for example?

ALBANESE: Well, Andrew, this Government is baked in that change in six months time. But what we've looked for –

CLENNELL: You could extend it.

ALBANESE: But at a cost to the budget, at a fiscal cost. We've been cautious. But what we've aimed at doing is productivity reforms that make a difference. So, our childcare policy, for example, will take pressure off families, no family will be worse off under our policy, but most families will be much better off into the future. And what that does is a permanent change. What I know, Andrew is that when I go around and talk to family, so many of them have said to me, “when my son, Johnny, or a little, little Mary turns five and goes into kindergarten, all of a sudden, we're better off because we're not paying childcare costs”. Why is it that that’s the case? 

CLENNELL: A common experience. 

ALBANESE: There is so much pressure on families with their kids in childcare. Our policy will reduce the cost of childcare permanently for most families. Our policy on energy, we have our Rewiring the Nation policy. You used to ask me, Andrew about our 2030 target. You don't anymore, and nor do other journalists. Our policy for Powering the Nation will reduce household energy costs by $275 for households, and have a much more significant decrease in costs for businesses wanting to then drive through that change into having industry policy, of having more jobs created by manufacturing more things here. That’s how you deal with the cost of living, through reform.

CLENNELL: I understand, but how are you going to lift wages? I mean, Bob Hawke had his Accord, what have you got? You don't seem to have a magic bullet on this front, other than saying they're too low.

ALBANESE: Well, I've got a Full Employment Summit that I'll have to bring business and unions together that I announced at the National Press Club.

CLENNELL: And what are you hoping to achieve?

ALBANESE: Well, what we saw was the Business Council and the ACTU get very close to an agreement that would boost productivity. The way that you lift wages and lift profits can only be through productivity, that's how you can get a win-win. And that's what I'm keen on. But I'm also keen on other reforms that we've said we'll have. Making wage theft a crime, proper definition of casualisation, same job-same pay, making sure that people in the gig economy don't get left out as well, making secure work an objective of the Fair Work Act. All of these changes are, of course, ones that were foreshadowed more than a year ago. And in addition to that, for some specific industries like aged care, we've said that, in line with the Royal Commission, there needs to be an increase in wages to keep people in the sector

CLENNELL: Nearly out of time, just a couple of quick ones. Jim Chalmers in his comments on the tax cut, sort of indicates Labor will tax more or take more taxation, doesn’t it?

ALBANESE: He doesn't do that at all.

CLENNELL: Well, why’d he say it?

ALBANESE: What his indication is, is that neither side of politics will reach the tax cap, that it's a bit of an academic thing. We've made it very clear that the only tax measure that we're looking at is around multinationals. 

CLENNELL: What is that measure, by the way?

ALBANESE: We’ll announce that Andrew. We're at day one, we've got six weeks, and we've got to fill the six weeks Andrew. Otherwise you'll be bored after a few days. 

CLENNELL: Pretty good start today, news wise.

ALBANESE: We want to keep you interested, we want to keep you focused.

CLENNELL: I’m interested, don't worry about that. How often do you talk to Kevin Rudd?

ALBANESE: I haven't spoken to him for a little while, he's overseas.

CLENNELL: So, we won't be seeing the invisible hand of Kevin Rudd in this Government, he’s not one of your mentors when it comes to if you gain power?

ALBANESE: Look, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Paul Keating, all of the former Labor Prime Ministers I respect, I have contact with all of them from time to time. But I haven't spoken to either Kevin or Julia for a while because they're both overseas. The last former Labor Prime Minister I spoke to was Paul Keating, I went and visited him at his office. He's always good company. And I'm always happy to chat with people. And I've spoken to, Kim Beazley was actually the last Labor leader that I spoke to.

CLENNELL: Now I expect you to, if you're elected, to make Richard Marles Defence Minister, is that fair?

ALBANESE: I expect that people will fill the current positions that they hold.

CLENNELL: So, Kristina Keneally is Home Affairs Minister and Brendan O’Connor is Defence Minister, rock solid guarantee?

ALBANESE: No, well, that's my starting point. That's my starting point. And we don't know who the Health Minister will be in the Government. And we’ve learnt, I still can't work out this bizarre thing where Alan Tudge is still in the Cabinet but he stepped aside. Is he being paid or not? I don’t know what's going on there.

CLENNELL: Now look, the poll, the Newspoll I did ask you about it. You still sounded confident this morning. But would you agree the trend is not your friend here? If there’s a close election in Australia, the incumbent tends to win.

ALBANESE: Not at all. Elections are always close in Australia, that's the truth. 

CLENNELL: But he’s closing, isn’t he, Morrison. 

ALBANESE: Their primary vote did nothing. There was a one point drop in our primary vote in the Newspoll. Look what I'm focused on is putting forward a clear alternative. We have our themes. It's about a Better Future for Australia. No one held back, no one left behind. We have policies for strengthening Medicare, we have policies for more secure work, policies for making more things here, and policies to address the cost of living, like cheaper childcare and cheaper energy bills. We'll keep doing that. We'll keep advocating that throughout this six weeks, and I'm very confident that Australians will embrace our sense of optimism, that we can be a better country if we have a better government.

CLENNELL: Do you think you'll be making any more mistakes in the next six weeks?

ALBANESE: Well, Andrew, I made an error this morning. I fessed up to it, I owned it, I accepted responsibility. Let's see what happens with the other side of politics. I accept that that happened. I'm human. Will I be perfect? No. But I'll tell you what I'll do, Andrew, if I ever do make a mistake, I'll put my hand up. I'll own it. I'll take responsibility, and I'll set about fixing it. That's what I did today. And that's the way that I would approach being Prime Minister of this country.

CLENNELL: Anthony Albanese. Thanks for your time.

ALBANESE: Thanks mate.

ENDS