Buongiorno e benvenuto al Globo TV al Primo Ministro, Antonio Albanese.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Buongiorno.
SCHIRRU: Buongiorno. Mr Albanese, you have passed half of your mandate. How do you assess your experience and the experience of the Government?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it’s a great privilege each and every day to be Australia’s 31st Prime Minister. We made a number of commitments when we were elected in 2022, and what we’ve been doing is playing them out, making sure, firstly, that we have a strong economy – and if you look at the global challenge that was there, with global inflation, I think we have come over that hump. Inflation is heading down, real wages are going up, and that means a lift in living standards. And on July 1, we will deliver a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer to deal with cost of living pressures which are there. So I think the fundamentals of the economy are in good shape going forward in the right direction. Unemployment is relatively low, still at 4.1 per cent. And I’d think last year, we’ve seen productivity increase as well. So you need a strong economy so that you can then deliver the sort of support that we want to – cheaper childcare, cheaper medicines, to deal with health care reform, to deal with education and provide opportunities for our young people. And also dealing with the economic transformation that comes from the opportunities of dealing with climate change.
SCHIRRU: The ex-Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, the other day at the Australian Financial Review Summit said that the economy was going well – so it was a vote in your favour?
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed, but we have been through a difficult time globally in the economy. And we’ve dealt with it in a way that has been responsible – we delivered the first budget surplus in 15 years. And what that does is enable you to have the scope, the space if you like, to be able to deliver on social policy, to provide support for people, which is our objective.
SCHIRRU: Next May will be another Budget surplus?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ll wait and see. We’re a couple of months off. There’s been a decrease in the prices we’re receiving for our iron ore and our some of our other exports of resources. But we are being very responsible, and that’s why we made the difficult decision – but it was the right decision – to change the tax cuts, so though it went to average workers, were the real beneficiaries – that middle Australia, which is so important. And that has at the same time, we want to make sure that we’re continuing to provide funding for health care, provide funding for education, provide increased funding and support for childcare, deal with aged care, as well, which is so important.
SCHIRRU: While talking about aged care, the problem – skilled migration is a necessity for the Italian community. That has special needs, especially in relation to nursing homes and so on. I believe you’ve been briefed by a provider like CO.AS.IT about the needs that are in those type of areas for the Italian communities?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely, and CO.AS.IT is an example of an organisation that provides extraordinary support for the Italian community. And one of the things that we know is that often people who have been migrants and had English as a second language, as they get older, they will go back to using the language of their birth and they lose some of the capacity to communicate in English. So that is why it’s particularly important that we have aged care facilities that provide support for the community, such as the Italian community. It is so important, something we’re very conscious of. So we have set about repairing the aged care system. We provided a 15 per cent wage increase for aged care workers, funded by the Government at a cost of some $11 billion dollars, because we believe that our older Australians, including those from the Italian Australian community, deserve dignity and respect in their later years. And that’s a very important part of culture, of course, is respect for our elderly. And that’s why we have prioritised those aged care reforms.
SCHIRRU: But with that mix – personnel, bilingual personnel, that we can come from Italia, from another country, to Australia with a special avenue.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah well, we’re changing the migration system – the migration system was broken. And we need to make sure that we get the right people in the right places. And one of those areas is to make sure that we attract nurses and other workers in aged care, with the language capacity so they can look after our elderly Australians – that will be one of the priorities is making sure we get the right skilled migration here. And that includes people of course, with the language skills in Italian.
SCHIRRU: Talking about migration – Labor has been [inaudible] in migration forever. But migration often has been the tone of a Labor Government. Not only the 149 people that have been released, and we are well aware of, but it’s also a matter of numbers. I mean…
PRIME MINISTER: That’s right. Look, it was inevitable, that after the pandemic, when the borders were closed, when the borders open, you would have a spike in numbers, an increase in numbers. Because, for example, students who hadn’t been able to come here, whereas what would happen would be people would come and start their university degree, and then at the same time, people would be graduating and leaving. What happened, of course, was a considerable increase, because there were only people coming, people weren’t leaving, because they hadn’t been able to come in 2021 – 2022. So we saw an increase in migration. We want to get those numbers down, the overall numbers down. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we continue to attract the right migrants, the right people, so that we can fill the jobs, undertake the tasks, including in aged care, but in other areas as well. We are a country made up of the oldest continuous culture on Earth – Aboriginal Australians – but since then people who’ve come here to make Australia their home, and have contributed to our multicultural society. We want to make sure that we can continue to attract the right people. We do want to get the numbers down. And we will do, that by fixing the way that the system works. There were – when we came to office, there were over a million people had visa applications in the queue. Now that makes no sense that that occurred. And so we’re busy reforming the migration system to one that delivers for Australia.
SCHIRRU: Yesterday, there was the news of the Palestinian being blocked in the middle of nowhere, with visa cancelled – people coming to Australia and they had their visa case. What happened there?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I can’t comment on individual cases, of course, but we have provided support for people from the Middle East to be able to come to Australia. We recognise that people in Gaza are really suffering. And we have called for a humanitarian ceasefire. We’ve called for increased humanitarian assistance to be able to be provided to those people. We continue to have some people have been able to come to Australia on temporary visas from both the Gaza Strip, but also from Israel. We think that is appropriate, but we have mechanisms in place to make sure that security issues are looked after as well.
SCHIRRU: The war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine will be obviously discussed at the G7 in Puglia in July – in June. Also will be the climate change. Will you be in Puglia in June?
PRIME MINISTER: I hope to be so, we haven’t finalised the arrangements yet. Those will be important topics – they were important topics at the ASEAN Summit that I hosted here in Melbourne, just last week. That was really successful, bringing together 10 nations, the leaders, presidents and prime ministers of countries in the Southeast Asian region, but it’s also important, as a major economy, that Australia engages with the world. One of the things that my Government has prioritised is improved relations, whether they be with our European friends – the engagement that we’ve had with Prime Minister Meloni, with President Macron, with Chancellor Scholz – European leaders have been very important for Australia, in part because there’s such a deep connection between Australia and those major economies, as well as, of course, important relationships that we have with the United States with the United Kingdom. And of course, Japan – a G7 nation as well.
SCHIRRU: If Donald Trump was elected in the United States, how would the relationship between Australia and the US change, and would it have any weight your office [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER: The relationship with the United States is a relationship between nations, not just between individuals. Now, I have a very good relationship with President Biden. I’ve known him since he was the Vice President, and his Administration and my Government have very close relations at a ministerial level as well. I was invited to the United States for an official visit last year – and one of three visits I made to the United States last year. If the American people choose a different President, that is a matter for them, it’s important that we not interfere in the democratic processes of other countries. But I’m confident that our relationship, because it is a relationship between nations rather than individuals, would continue to be strong.
SCHIRRU: Very controversial, it seems, is the idea of to put Australia on the same level of the same, of the other developed country, with the new vehicle efficient standards, or fuel efficient standard, the Opposition call it the ‘ute tax’?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, well, that the Opposition in Australia, unfortunately, have gone from being an alternative government into just a series of fear campaigns. They don’t put forward alternatives. And you raised Josh Frydenberg, in a different context before – when the former government proposed fuel standards as well, when they were in government, but didn’t proceed with them. At the time, they said that it would not lead to any increase in prices, because everywhere in the world that has emission standards that hasn’t occurred, if you look at what has happened. What we’re about here, is just catching up with where the United States has been since the 1970s. The United States, of course, has big vehicles – it has utes, they call them something else over there – but they have large vehicles. Every country in the world has fuel efficiency standards, every industrialised country, except for two: Australia and Russia. Now, I don’t want to be on the same page as Vladimir Putin’s Russia on anything, frankly. And so that’s why this is a sensible position. What we’re putting forward is much more modest than the current European standards, which are there and have been there for a long period of time. And what we know is that automotive manufacturers, whether they be Fiat, or Alfa Romeo, or Holden, or Ford, or Mitsubishi, they’re all moving towards a change in vehicles. Yesterday, I was in Sydney at Team Global Express, launching what are 60 electric heavy vehicles to transport parcels and goods right around Western Sydney. Linfox are doing the same, and doing things at their facility out here in Melbourne. All of the buses of course, being produced, which are electric. We’re seeing a transformation. And the task for Australia is to make sure that we shape that transformation in our interests. That is what we are determined to do. And I’d I do think that the fear campaigns, which are being run, which really don’t have a basis in any reality.
SCHIRRU: You said that their position doesn’t offer any alternative. They offer uranium as an energy source. Why not at least discuss uranium as something that can go on par with wind and solar?
PRIME MINISTER: Because it’s a distraction from what needs to happen. And every 10 years, people who don’t want to actually do something came up with this plan – the Howard Government did it, the Abbott Government floated at one stage as well. The truth is that the cheapest form of new energy in Australia is renewables. And the most expensive, and the longest form plan in Australia is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy works very well in a range of countries. And that’s fine, that’s a decision for them. But it would take decades to get a nuclear energy reactor up in Australia. The Opposition need to say where those nuclear reactors will be, they need to say who will fund them, because it will would require massive Government subsidies. They talked for a while about small modular reactors, until they finally recognised they don’t actually exist. And so now they’re talking about large nuclear reactors in Australia, that would take decades to build, would be very emissions intensive while they’re being built, and very costly – would cost tens of billions of dollars. And that’s why it’s, it again, is a distraction. We need to get on with the transformation that is occurring. That’s where the market is going as well, the private sector want to invest. And the tragedy of the nuclear distraction is that it would provide uncertainty for investors, and what investors need is that certainty going forward. We’re providing them with that.
SCHIRRU: You briefly before mentioned, cost of living. And you talked about the tax cut that will be introduced in July. What else can be done? I mean, people are actually suffering at the moment.
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed, people are under pressure. What we’ve done is do a range of measures that have provided support for cost of living relief, or people under pressure, but without putting pressure on inflation, we need to get inflation down. So if you just put more money into the economy, that would have a negative impact. So the measures that we’ve put in place – our energy price relief plan provided support for families of $3 billion, that we put into the system. Cheaper child care – so childcare costs, on average went down by 11 per cent as a direct result. We have our cheaper medicines policy that saw the price of medicines dropped from $42.50, down to $30. Fee free TAFE has made an enormous difference, with over 300,000 Australians enrolling in courses for free. So all of those measures have been really positive. We’ll look at further measures in our Budget. But we want to make sure they don’t put pressure on inflation. But these tax cuts will be worth, for someone on an average income, around about $2,000. That will make a substantial difference – more money in people’s pockets. But because it is a tax cut to their weekly wage, it won’t have that big injection into the economy, but will go over a period of time. So we think it is a very sensible move. Our opposition were opposed to it, they just wanted to give tax cuts, essentially aimed at those people on more than $200,000 would have been the big beneficiaries. We understood that it was people on low and middle income, who were really suffering, and we’ve provided in addition to that, of course, we provide a substantial support for people on income support. So the largest increase in rent assistance for 30 years, increases in the pension, increases in student allowances, substantial increases as well in JobSeeker – people on unemployment benefits. So all of those changes is important to make sure that people were looked after.
SCHIRRU: You recently backed ASIO chief, Mike Burgess’ call not to name the former Australian MP who was accused of their working for a foreign spy agency. How does that sit with you, knowing that someone who likely be betrayed Australia got away with it?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, of course, as Mr Burgess has said at the time – whoever this person was, wasn’t breaking Australian law. That’s a point that Mr Burgess has made – that was disrupted, it’s someone who’s not in politics, they engaged in activities that was quite clearly inappropriate. And Mr Burgess called it out. He called it out in order to send that message, as he has made very clear – that some foreign governments will seek to interfere in our domestic political circumstances across the spectrum – Liberal Party, National Party, Labor Party, Greens – across the spectrum, will seek to interfere. And Mr Burgess made that public statement and it was his decision as the ASIO Director General, and with responsibility for keeping our nation secure. What I will do as the Prime Minister of Australia, is back our national security agencies. Not trying to second guess them. But to provide that support for him. I think he does a very good job.
SCHIRRU: On a personal note, you are the first Prime Minister of Australia to be engaged, while in office. Will you be the first Prime Minister to get married while in office?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I hope that is the case – We haven’t been able to set a date yet, myself and Jodie, but we’re very happy. It is quite a wonderful to meet someone at my stage in life, that I want to spend the rest of my life with, and that she feels the same about me. So, we’re very happy and delighted and very excited about the prospect going forward. Of course, my job entails a very busy diary, so we’re trying to work out what the options are for getting married. Sometime in the not too distant future, we’re going to sit down over Easter.
SCHIRRU: So you think this [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ll wait and see what the…
SCHIRRU: If you are to win the next election?
PRIME MINISTER: We’ll wait and see what the timeframe is. We haven’t finalised a date yet or venue, any of those things. I put a lot of thought into the proposal, which I made on Valentine’s Day.
SCHIRRU: We noticed, we noticed. The day was very romantic.
PRIME MINISTER: Well it’s the Italian side. And we went out to an Italian restaurant.
SCHIRRU: Now I actually read the menu what you had for dinner. Now I can’t remember what it was, but actually read it.
PRIME MINISTER: It was good. We had fish for the main course and a very nice entree as well. There are, of course, always a good plus when leading into…
SCHIRRU: [Inaudible].
PRIME MINISTER: Indeed from Nicola who is, of course, I think Australia’s finest jeweller. He’s extraordinary. And I sat down there in Leichhardt, with Nicola but his daughter and one of his chief jewellers as well, and we designed the ring. I think my great achievement was to actually do that discreetly that, without anyone finding out which is difficult as Prime Minister, I reckon.
SCHIRRU: Especially walking up and down Leichhardt.
PRIME MINISTER: We were very pleased. And I wanted to do something that had that touch of Italian-Australian ingenuity, really. He, of course, Cerrone is known globally, as well.
SCHIRRU: Honeymoon in Italy?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we haven’t got to that point, that point yet. We’ll wait and see. We’ll have that discussion over Easter.
SCHIRRU: Well, we thank you very much, Mr Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Grazie.
SCHIRRU: Grazie a lei.
