SUBJECTS: Weight loss; air fryers; vaccine rollout; quarantine; insecure work; chid care.

HOST: He's been busy with budgets the past week or so but Ding Dong's sous chef and Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, has had his eye on some other numbers recently, the ones on the scales. Albo has shed some serious pounds over the past six months. So how has he done it? Albo joins us on the couch now. Nice to see you. Almost didn't recognise you, Mr Albanese. Albo, what sparked the big shed?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Just trying to get match fit for the campaign, whenever it's on. And then I also had a major car accident in January, so that kind of helps.

HOST: What happened?

ALBANESE: I had a head-on car crash here in Sydney and ended up in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

HOST: Are you okay?

ALBANESE: I'm okay. I was just incredibly lucky. But something like that, when you see, literally, you think your life is about to end, you think through issues like health. And so I started before then, but I was on some heavy painkillers for a while too, so one of the things I've done is really cut back on alcohol substantially. And just drinking water, that helps.

HOST: Oh geez, and in Australian politics.

ALBANESE: It means when I do have a beer, I really enjoy it, which I did watching Souths beat Cronulla last week. 

HOST: I was going to say.

ALBANESE: You can’t have a shandy. That’s just wrong.

HOST: No, Tony Abbott’s drink.

HOST: We know you love your pasta, here is the proof. 

PLAYS GRAB

HOST: Is it still on the menu, though? Is pasta still on the menu? 

ALBANESE: Largely not. So, trying to really cut down on carbs. So no bread, absolutely no bread. 

HOST: Isn’t that the hardest?

ALBANESE: Pasta is the hardest, actually. With a name like Albanese. And it's mainly it’s your go-to food as well because I used to do big spag bogs and big sauces and you put it in the freezer and you bring it out and it is so easy. So I have cut back. I allow myself once every two or three weeks. So I'm not religious about it. I think that's part of the trick. I've seen a lot of people lose weight in Parliament and it comes back and then they lose it and then it comes back. So I'm trying to be sensible about it.

HOST: How much have you lost?

ALBANESE: I've lost 13kg.

HOST: Wow.

HOST: And how are you feeling about yourself?

ALBANESE: I feel good. It's given me a bit more energy. I try to be a tennis player. So I am a bit quicker around the court these days as well.

HOST: We often talk about weight loss, but we don't talk mentally how you are feeling. And you are obviously looking a lot happier as well.

ALBANESE: It helps, it really does. And when you've got early mornings, as I do, often doing morning radio, but late nights as well, so you can have really long days. So it helps. And I've found it not that hard, either.

HOST: Have you been doing some sneaky exercise?

ALBANESE: I walk my dog every day.

HOST: Toto.

ALBANESE: Toto. People know the dog. She is very cute. So I want her around Marrickville Golf Course and I play tennis for Marrickville.

HOST: You've knocked the pasta on the head, how about the air fryer? You are a bit partial to that?

ALBANESE: I got an air fryer in the Christmas sales.

HOST: It should have been from our show, Albo. Four easy payments.

ALBANESE: Sorry about that. I find it really easy to do. Fish is so nice. My son is not completely wrapped in my change of diet because we used to have pizza once a week too. So that’s gone. But fish with a few vegies or salad is really easy too. Eleven minutes, press a couple of buttons. 

HOST: He’s a convert. 

ALBANESE: It’s so easy.

HOST: DJ Albo, chef Albo, it's everything. And you mentioned about getting match fit for a possible election whenever that may be. Now you’re not the first to do that. Malcolm Turnbull did it, and Bill Shorten. Has that inspired you a bit or is that perhaps sparked by your newest status on Facebook, shall we say?

ALBANESE: No, I just tried, around about the Budget Reply last year, so about October, I just decided to set myself a little bit of a target until Christmas. And no-one noticed. I'd actually lost about half of that before January, but you sort of don't notice it. It's the extra three or four when people come up and go, ‘Oh, you've changed!’ Post-accident as well, kept it going. So I went up to my birthday, March 2, so I didn’t touch alcohol at all from the beginning of the year through to after that. But you've got to have a beer on your birthday.

HOST: It's the law, isn't it?

ALBANESE: It is.

HOST: Good on you, it is really good to see you looking so well. And talking about the election and getting match fit for that, there is clearly one brewing. Do you think you are ready for it? 

ALBANESE: I'm absolutely ready. I don’t know it will be. It’ll be sometime between October and next May, but I think it will be March. If they go early it will be because he doesn't think he can last a full term, that there is trouble around the corner. And I think it is very difficult for them to go early while Australians haven't been vaccinated. I think people go, ‘Hang on, you've got one job’.

HOST: How would you do the job better?

ALBANESE: For a start, I would be giving clear messages about the need for people to get vaccinated. Get vaccinated, folks. It’s important. It is essential for our opening up of the economy. And I would also be doing quarantine facilities. You have the proposal at Wellcamp, for example, just outside of Toowoomba. It's an airport. It’s there. People could be flying in, camped there, it is close to Toowoomba Base Hospital, it makes sense. We need to get Australians home. There’s more than 30,000 stranded overseas. So I think quarantine and vaccinations are the big two things. But into the future, I just think we have an opportunity to build back stronger, to recognise some of the weaknesses that have been exposed. There's been some really good things in terms of Australians looking after each other and pulling together, but there are weaknesses in our economy. We need to be more self-reliant. We need to make more things here. And I am determined to do that.

HOST: What do you think everyday Australians, COVID to one side, will be worried about primarily when it comes to that election? What do you think is going to be number one in their minds?

ALBANESE: I think they are worried about their jobs, and it’s not just whether they have a job or not. We saw numbers yesterday come out, for example, that unemployment, in terms of you look at the base figures, it went down. But it didn't really. It didn't. What's happened is that people are underemployed. They can't get enough work. They can't get secure work. And that insecurity at work is a real issue. So that's adding to inequality. If you haven't got a secure job, you can't get a home loan, it affects whether you are going to have a family, your first kid or your second or third kid, it affects all of that. So security at work is a major, major issue and for young people, of course, housing affordability. It's pretty hard to get into the market at the moment in Sydney around where I live or indeed anywhere.

HOST: And you mentioned kids, what about child care?

ALBANESE: Child care is absolutely critical. We want universal child care, to move towards that. Affordable child care. Why is it that when your daughter or kids hit five, everyone recognises that they are entitled to go to public school and they are entitled to get an education, but before then, you are sort of on your own, basically. And we have the fourth most expensive child care system in the world.

HOST: But none of that money gets to the child care workers.

ALBANESE: No, exactly. And they are underpaid, as are aged care workers. We need to address that as well.

HOST: How?

ALBANESE: When we were in Government last time, we did through the Community Services Award, we took a case to the Fair Work Commission with the Government's support, and that led to a substantial increase in their salary which meant that they stayed in the workforce longer and you didn't lose those skills. People now, if you are working in aged care or child care, so you are looking after our youngest Australians or our most vulnerable older Australians, that is tough work. You can earn more packing shelves than some of those industries. We need to do much better.

HOST: So does the subsidy need to stop going to the child care centres, which are making money hand over fist, and somehow get directly to the child care workers?

ALBANESE: I think what we need to do is to fix up the award through an appropriate application that values, as the Community Services Award did, values, basically, industries that are dominated by women tend to be paid less. That is just a fact. And we need to address that imbalance which is there.

HOST: Anthony Albanese, it is such a pleasure to have you on the couch. Thanks for popping in.

ALBANESE: Good to be here. Sorry I missed Ding Dong this time.

HOST: We will set up another date.

HOST: It is good to see you looking so well, but more importantly feeling so well. Mental health is such a huge issue at the moment         and it is great that you are here. 

HOST: Good on you, Albo. 

ALBANESE: Thanks very much.

ENDS