SUBJECTS: Labor’s campaign launch in Western Australia; Covid recovery; Importance of Western Australia to national economy; Labor’s plan for a Better Future; Labor’s Help to Buy policy. 
 
KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: How are you, mate? 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: How are you doing? How good is this?

GILBERT: Amazing, hey. You said you were going to kick with the wind in the final quarter. You're taking that theme pretty seriously, are you?

ALBANESE: Absolutely. I always said we’re deep into time in the fourth quarter. And where better to kick with the wind than at Optus.

GILBERT: And how are you physically after the virus?

ALBANESE: Truth is, I’m getting energised by being out and about again. We had a barbecue just before, and a whole lot of people turned up, and the energy as I’ve been around Perth, the energy when I came out yesterday morning I went down to the local oval and walked my iso buddy, Toto, we’d had a week of just us. I was locked in so she was pretty excited to get out too. She couldn’t quite understand why she hadn’t had a walk for a week. 

GILBERT: So you’re feeling recharged now? Obviously coming out of it takes a few days? 

ALBANESE: Yeah, it takes, when the body tells me to rest, I’m going to have to rest, according to the health orders. I’m very passionate about the task at hand. We do need a better future and I think the team did really well while I was away. And I continued to do work, of course, do interviews and do a lot of work, including on the speech that you’ll hear. 

GILBERT: There aren’t many places that say, WA, like this place. 

ALBANESE: This says WA, right here. I came to the Qantas Tourism Awards here, was the first event I came to here, then I came to an AFLW game between the Eagles and the Dockers here. That was quite exciting, walking across the bridge and the stadium here. Western Australians are really proud of this. 

GILBERT: And you’re optimistic about your own chances here? Obviously that’s why you’re having the launch here, to give it a bit of something. 

ALBANESE: I’m optimistic. I think that Western Australians often feel, understandably, that the east coast doesn't give them the respect that they deserve. Over the last couple of years, if you look at how the Australian economy has kept going, Western Australia and Queensland, in particular, have done exceptionally well to keep people in jobs. Here in WA, when the Prime Minister was referring to “cave people”, they were scratching their heads saying ‘well, hang on, we're going to school, we're going to work, we're going to the pub, we're going to restaurants, we're going to work, we're contributing to the national economy, the resources sector is continuing to boom.’ It's good here in WA and Mark McGowan has done a great job.

GILBERT: Do you feel the weight of responsibility, expectation from your Party on your shoulders? It's a massive, massive moment in the campaign, the launch.

ALBANESE: Well, I feel a massive responsibility for the people who need a Labor Government to win. The people who need more secure work. The people who need to stop the cuts to Medicare and the NDIS. The people who are looking for a more secure future. Australians are really doing it tough and we need a better government, and I'm very passionate about delivering that. I do feel a sense of responsibility. But I know that we've done the hard work. We've put in place the policy program around the theme: A Better Future; no one left behind; no one held back; that we can be a country that seizes the opportunity that is there at this moment to come out of what's been a tough few years with bushfires, floods and the pandemic, and build back stronger. Not just not just try to go back to where we were, but how do we learn the lessons of the pandemic and build back stronger?

GILBERT: What do you want the key take out of the launch to be for an Australian, maybe undecided on which way they're going to vote, what's the key takeout you want out of the launch for people?

ALBANESE: That we can do better than just having three more years of the same, three more years of wages not going up, three more years of pressure on cost of living, and that Labor has a plan for a better future. A plan not just for them, but for their children as well, for families. Taking the pressure off the cost of childcare, the cost of electricity, the pressure off the decline that's occurred in real wages. Taking action on climate change so that we seize the opportunity to create jobs and to shape the future, rather than just be passive and being shaped by it.

GILBERT: I know you've got to go in and go through some of the launch warm up and so on. So just finally, central to the announcement and your speech is this housing affordability plan. Government equity in people's homes. Will this get a whole new range of people into home ownership or is it just an incremental thing?

ALBANESE: Look, it goes together with our plan with Housing Australia Future Fund that I announced in one of my Budget replies, which is about increased social housing. So we need increased social housing, we need increased affordable housing for essential workers. But we also need to help people into home ownership who aspire to that. I know when I was growing up, my mum lived in the one council house, and it became housing department for the whole of her 65 years. And she drummed into me growing up, when you get the opportunity, buy your own home.

GILBERT: So this one’s personal? 

ALBANESE: It is personal. Because I think the great Australian dream of owning your own home is – we’re in danger of being out of reach for a generation And we need to look at ways constructively in which we can assist that as well as dealing with homelessness, dealing with public housing, dealing with affordable housing, we need a whole-of-government approach. One of the things I want to do, as well, is to work with state and territory governments. I think Australians have got conflict fatigue. Now, my opponent is always looking for an argument, always looking for a disagreement, never looking for a solution. And I think really, people are sick of a government that has ‘wedge-islation’, as I call it, looking to wedge the opposition rather than legislation. I've been constructive as Opposition Leader. I've copped some criticism for it, for saying ‘I'm going to be the Labor Leader, not just the Opposition Leader opposing everything’. So during the pandemic, we were constructive. We didn't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We supported all of the stimulus packages. But what I want to do is to take that attitude into government. Bring unions and employers together for their common interests. Bring all the state and territory governments together as well as local government, for how do we get all of government working together? How do we get the private sector and civil society together? It's one of the reasons why one of the first things I'll do is convene a Full Employment Summit. We know that Australians have much more that unites them than divides them. We saw that during the pandemic, we need to harness that attitude of sacrificing for each other of our common interests in the national interest. And that is how you build a better future.

GILBERT: We will let you get in there and continue your preparations. I tell you what, you’ve got one thing done, it's a cracking spot. 

ALBANESE: It is a fantastic spot. I spoke to Mark McGowan a long time ago, about a year ago, when we were potentially thinking about an October 2021 election. And I said to him, I've got this idea of having the campaign launch in Perth, because I do want to be the Prime Minister for the whole nation, and then the WA Branch came up with the idea of here, and what a venue.

GILBERT: Phenomenal. It is beautiful. Well, we'll let you go. All the best.

ALBANESE: Let’s hope we’re kicking with the wind in the last three weeks.

ENDS