: Millions of Australians will unite to mark Anzac Day after a week of violence that’s rocked our country. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is one of many preparing to commemorate the day by hiking the Kokoda Trail. And he joins us live now from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. Prime Minister, thanks so much for your time. It’s hot over there, I bet.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Sarah. It’s a bit warmer than Canberra. Let me give you the tip, Sarah.
ABO: Hey, look, we do have a bit to get through this morning and as you prepare for your hike, which we’ll get to, I just want to get you first on this fight with billionaire tech giants, starting with Elon Musk labelled an egoist and narcissist by Canberra. This is the kind of guy who loves a fight. Are you outmatched?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this guy is saying more about himself than anything else. He’s putting his ego and putting his billionaire’s dollars towards taking a court case for the right to put more violent content on that will sow social division and cause distress to people who are on his platform. Now, the other social media operators accepted the decision of the eSafety Commissioner. This is something that’s not a partisan issue here in Australia. I thank the Opposition for being, and Crossbench, everyone’s just strong on this. You know kids that, such as the ones at the school that were just shouting out there, they have access to this sort of material. Surely social media needs to have some element of social responsibility.
ABO: What do you really think PM? Because he clearly doesn’t care. I mean, he’s put out a tweet saying, basically thanking you for making, for highlighting that his platform is apparently where you go to seek the truth.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it just shows his arrogance, really. Like if he doesn’t see that this is essentially a common sense position by the eSafety Commissioner. The eSafety Commissioner was established under the former Government. We’ve quadrupled the funding. We want to make sure that those young minds, such as at that school, are not darkened by this sort of material.
ABO: And I think you’ll find a lot of agreement with you there. I guess the challenge, PM, of course, as you know, is that we’re kind of playing catch up aren’t we? I mean, we did see that emergency injunction granted forcing X to take down videos of last week’s church stabbing. But the problem is it doesn’t stop new videos from being posted and all it is is kind of a warning that there is some violent content coming up. I don’t know that our laws go far enough to prevent this kind of stuff from being broadcast and from reaching the minds of those young people that you keep pointing out.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this is a difficult issue, which we know, Sarah, because everyone can be a publisher, a content provider. But we need, of course, this isn’t about freedom of speech. And most Australians, of course, overwhelmingly would never think about posting the sort of material that would cause damage. And to what end? This is an egotist. He is someone who’s totally out of touch with the values that Australian families have, and this is causing great distress. I think it is causing damage to his own brand of Twitter, which has now become X. He clearly sees this as a vanity project for himself, rather than about the people who are consumers on this platform.
ABO: What can you do now? Is staring Elon Musk down, is removing X from Australian servers the answer? Do we have a future without it?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we certainly will look at what measures we can take to strengthen the laws which are there. But we have, through the eSafety Commissioner, I think, a pretty reasonable process. We don’t want, no one wants censorship here. What we want, though, is the application of a bit of common sense. So, you don’t show and propagate violence online and surely that’s not too much to ask.
ABO: No and as you said, you do have bipartisan support for that. All right, in the other news, the Federal Budget is only three weeks away. Prime Minister, the Treasurer’s outlook is rather bleak. Should Australians be worried?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, look, on international economic fronts, there are a range of economies that are in recession. Inflation has been a global issue that has had an impact. The conflict in the Middle East is now having an impact when it comes to prices of oil and energy. Again, on top of the conflict in Ukraine.
ABO: Yeah, I mean, I guess these are issues that have been around for some time, though. Isn’t it the role of a government to overcome them?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it is, but the world, of course, does have an impact on Australia. But what we’re doing is providing cost of living relief. Every single taxpayer watching this show will receive a tax cut on July 1. We’ve provided a range of other cost of living relief. Our task is, how do we provide economic support whilst continuing to put that downward pressure on inflation? Now, inflation has been moderating, unemployment still at 3.8 per cent, which is very much a historic low. We have got economic growth, we’ve got wages growing. There’s nowhere you’d rather be than Australia at the moment. But we’re conscious as well that these economic headwinds are coming in from overseas and they do have an impact and it’s something that the Treasurer and my Government is conscious of.
ABO: Yeah, I guess the issue is for those who will receive tax cuts but are still staring down really tough rate rises and inflation. Let’s quickly move on PM, because I want to get you there in situ. Anzac Day, such a special day in this country. You’re going to be walking the Kokoda Track. How are you feeling about it?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, look, I’m feeling a little bit nervous, to be honest Sarah.
ABO: You’ve got this. You got this, mate.
PRIME MINISTER: I’m also really excited. It is such an honour to walk in the footsteps of giants, these extraordinary Australian soldiers who defended our continent in our darkest hour. I’m conscious about the leadership of John Curtin, choosing to stand up to Winston Churchill and say, “no, I’m bringing the Australian troops home to defend our own continent, we’re not going to just let it go.” And they were outnumbered to an extraordinary degree by the Japanese forces, but they showed sacrifice and courage and valour and it will be great to be able to honour them. I’ll be walking with Prime Minister Marape. So, it is also about cementing, walking side by side, step by step, Australia and Papua New Guinea, which is so important for a country that is, of course, our closest neighbour. You can literally see PNG from Sabai Island in the Torres Strait.
ABO: It’s a beautiful commemoration. PM, thank you so much for your time and good luck out there.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks so much, Sarah.
