: Anthony joins us. Anthony, good morning.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: G’day, Tom. How are you going?
ELLIOTT: Mr Albanese, good morning. How are you?
PRIME MINISTER: How are you? I’m pretty good, mate, I’ve just come down to Melbourne today from Canberra and on my way to Dingley for the launch sod turn of the new facilities there, not just for Hawthorn Football Club, but amazing facilities that are going to be there for community sport for southeast Melbourne as well. And then I’m off to Neil Mitchell’s retirement lunch today, which will be a really splendid event and a great tribute. So, I thought, I was here in the car on the way out there and listening to your tones and thought that I’d just call in on the talkback line.
ELLIOTT: Our phone answerer said, ‘I think it’s the Prime Minister, but I’m not certain, to be honest’.
PRIME MINISTER: It is lucky that my voice is distinctive, because I don’t think he believed me at first.
ELLIOTT: Now, just one thing I have to correct you on – don’t call it Neil’s ‘retirement lunch’, and I’ll be seeing you there, Neil is still working, just not doing radio.
PRIME MINISTER: I know that, he still will be, but not from – well, from this gig, 3AW, that he’s been such an institution there in morning. So, it’s big shoes for you to fill, Tom, but I’m sure you’ll do it well. But Neil is someone who I’ve been speaking to for 25 years, and particularly when I was Transport Minister. I appointed him to the Road Safety Advisory Body. That’s an area of concern that he has had over such a long period of time, and I really admire the work that he did, the diligence that he showed, and at a time where, tragically last year we saw an increase in the road toll. It’s a reminder that we need to be vigilant and really keep working as, not just government, of course, but as civil society as well. We need to work with each other.
ELLIOTT: Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. I must say, though, the response here in Victoria has largely been – let’s just cut speed limits. And we have some terrible potholes in our roads here, we’ve had a lot of bad weather. Do you think cutting speed limits is the answer to reducing the road toll?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, it’s certainly not the only answer. There might be some areas where that’s appropriate, but there are three things that effectively you can do. One is better infrastructure, better roads, separation of highways, and a lot of that work has been done. The road tolls on the Hume and the Pacific and the Bruce and those roads has been significantly cut since you have that separation. The second is rules, and that’s made an enormous difference. Even car designs have made an enormous difference. I was in an accident a couple of years ago, you might remember.
TOM ELLIOTT: I do.
PRIME MINISTER: If that was ten years ago, I wouldn’t be speaking to you now, I have no doubt about that, that the safety features saved my life in that car. And the third is driver behaviour – we need to recognise that some of that has slipped. There’s increased drug use when driving and we need to continue to get those messages across, about not taking risks, not being on your mobile phone while you’re driving, not taking risks that are unnecessary, looking after your mates – if there’s someone who you think might be over the limit at the pub, say to them, ‘Hey, how about you get a taxi or an Uber, rather than drive?’ Just really looking after each other as well, and those community messages are so important.
ELLIOTT: Yeah, I agree. To me, mobile phone usage behind the wheel is the biggest negative. As you say, cars are a lot better than what they used to be, and your car accident could have been fatal if it was a decade ago. But cars are better, we train people better to drive, I think, but we can’t seem to do anything about mobile phone using cars. Just while I’ve got you, we just had the Greens on about half an hour ago, they’re desperate for you to wind back negative gearing and to reduce the capital gains discounts on housing investments. Is that something you’re going to look at?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, what we’re focused on, and the Greens seem to want to talk about anything but, is the tax cuts that we have before the Parliament right now. 13.6 million taxpayers, every single taxpayer who’s listening to this program, will get a tax cut under what we have before the Parliament. 90 per cent of women will get more than they were going to get, 84 per cent of your listeners will get more than they were going to get, including truck drivers and cleaners and nurses and aged care workers, and people out there, will make an enormous difference. And, for many of them, they weren’t going to get a tax cut at all, so, that’s what we’re focused on. When it comes to housing, we’re focused on supply. And we’ve been doing that work, including with the Victorian Government, which was first out of the box to start investing in the half a billion dollars additional investment that we forwarded for social housing construction here. But as well, we have a tax incentive for Build to Rent that we put in the last Budget, that will make a big difference for the private sector as well.
ELLIOTT: Final question, and it’s one out of left field for you. There’s a report in the paper today in the Herald Sun suggesting that members of Melbourne’s Jewish community who live in the Inner North are going to leave that part of town because they worry about anti-Semitism. If that’s true, that’s not the sort of modern day Australia we really want to live in, is it?
PRIME MINISTER: It certainly is not. It is just a tragedy that at the moment, I spoke in Parliament yesterday about, I have not seen a rise in social disharmony like I’ve seen in recent times. Now, people have very strong views about the conflict in the Middle East, but we don’t want to bring conflict here, and one element of that has been the rise in anti-Semitism. I was shocked by the comments of my local Greens MP in Sydney, the Member for Newtown, who made comments about ‘octopus’, that should not be ever used, and spoke about, somehow, an inappropriate intervention – is the way that it was put by members of the Jewish community about anti-racism. Well, the Jewish community have a very proud history of standing up against racism in all its forms, both here in Melbourne, but everywhere. They’ve taken the experience of anti-Semitism and broadened it out to very much reach out to opposition to racism in all its forms. And it is tragic that people feel that they have to consider living from, moving from, their local communities. It’s completely unacceptable, it’s not the Australia I want to see. The great thing about our country is we can be a microcosm for the world. And by and large, we are. We’re a peaceful country, we live in harmony. The great thing is that people, whether they be Catholic or Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim, live side by side and are enriched by the diversity which is there. And that’s the sort of Australia that I want to see.
ELLIOTT: Mr Albanese, thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, Tom.
