WILL GOODINGS, HOST: It is the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, who joins us on FIVEaa Breakfast. Prime Minister, good morning to you.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, guys. Good to be with you.
DAVID PENBERTHY, HOST: Great to have you on Mr Albanese. Big news yesterday out of Western Australia, it came as a bit of a surprise. I presume you would have, being PM, you always get the the first phone call when bombshells like this occur. But when you spoke to Mark McGowan, did it make you think about your political longevity? You're coming up for 30 years as a Member of Parliament now, Prime Minister. Do things like this make you think, 'How much fuel do I have in the tank?'
PRIME MINISTER: Not at all. I'm just getting going. I've just passed one year in the gig. He's been Premier, of course, for six years. And I did have a few chats with Mark, I'm quite close to him. And I wasn't completely surprised, I've got to say, because I knew that he was thinking about these things and expressing that he was tired. I think that political life is tougher today with social media, and with all of the commentary that's made, some of which is very personal. I know that you've written, David, quite extensively and well about what people are prepared to say anonymously. It can be incredibly hurtful. And that makes, I think, life a little bit more difficult than it was pre-social media, which is when both Mark and myself were elected in 1996.
PENBERTHY: But to the first part of your answer, do you feel like having just become Prime Minister, it's almost like you've rewound the clock to zero and you do approach this as a very much a long-term, hopefully, electors willing, a long-term proposition?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, absolutely. I feel as though this is a completely different existence, certainly from being a member of the Opposition but even even from being a minister. I regard this as an extraordinary privilege. And one of the things that I believe people will consider at the next election is the last seven federal elections, going back to 2004, have elected seven different Prime Ministers. Now whatever you think, and wherever you stand on the political spectrum, I think it's hard to argue that that is a good state of affairs that we have different Prime Ministers elected in 2004, '7, '10, '13, '16, '19 and '22.
PENBERTHY: So stick with one for the next ten years is your message today?
PRIME MINISTER: I reckon, stick with what you've got. I do think that people are looking for stability, and I think the country needs stability going forward.
GOODINGS: Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, yesterday accused you of name calling and suggesting that those who oppose the Voice are racist. Are people who don't support the Voice to Parliament referendum racist?
PRIME MINISTER: No, people will have a range of views and they're entitled to it. Peter Dutton is doing his best to turn up the heat on the debate. And what he did last week in the Parliament, where he referred to 'racialising' the Constitution. He as the alternative Prime Minister should know that, in the words of the former High Court judge Robert French, said that it represented a significant shift away from the existing race-based legislative power that the Commonwealth has in the Constitution. What I referred to in my speech was very clear. I said that, remember how the sky was going to fall in after the Apology? Please enjoy the sky as you head back out today. The truth is that people, including Peter Dutton - I don't know anyone who today is arguing that the Apology was a bad thing. But prior to it being given, of course, it was a campaign which was resisted by then-Prime Minister Howard and it never occurred, it took the change of government for that to occur. Once it occurred, the world moved on. But we've had, over the issue of constitutional change, we've had all sorts of claims. Barnaby Joyce claimed, as a former Deputy Prime Minister, that the Budget this month could be the last ever Budget if the Voice happened. I mean, that is just absurd. We've had claims that it would end Anzac Day and Australia Day and that it would change everything. The truth is that it's a very generous and gracious request that'll do just two things - recognise First Nations people in our Constitution and allow them a Voice, an advisory body - that's advisory only - to make representations on matters affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Nothing more than that, but nothing less either.
GOODINGS: You're speaking with a South Australian audience. We've got I think somewhat of a different perspective, given we've gone through the process of a state-based Voice to Parliament in South Australia, a legislated Voice to Parliament. Why is the constitutionally-enshrined version of this superior to a legislated one that we can refine, change, remove or improve over the course of the next few years, decades or whenever?
PRIME MINISTER: The point is that the principle will be in the Constitution. That's the point, that's why it will be legislated, the detail, because it will need to be refined, changed over a period of time. But the principle of a body being in the Constitution is what First Nations people themselves came together at Uluru in 2017 in a First Nations constitutional convention. In the lead up to that there were over a thousand meetings and discussions. There were over 200 delegates, elected and appointed by their local communities, came together. And they said, one, we want recognition, finally, in the Constitution. We are the only advanced economy in the world that has arisen with a colonial past that doesn't recognise First Nations people. New Zealand did it a long, long time ago, in the 19th century. And Canada did it last century. This has happened around the world. And they said that the form of recognition they want is to have a body, a Voice, so that they're listened to on programs that affect them. Because we know that we need to do things with Indigenous Australians, not just for them. Even with the best of intentions, when you have the gaps that are there in life expectancy and housing and health and education and incarceration rates. We need to listen to First Nations people and take their advice, as we do in other areas of policy. Listen to people who are directly affected.
PENBERTHY: Prime Minister, there's obviously an intent argument, you've dealt with some of it there, around the details and the intention of the Voice. I gotta say, whenever you come on the show, we always say to our listeners 'Send us your messages, tell us anything at all that you'd like us to ask the Prime Minister. I think the bigger threat of the Voice is the economic backdrop in which you are trying to win this debate. And I'll just give you a quick sample, we get so many messages like these. And I read them out with somewhat of a heavy heart, being a bit of a softy, and someone who intends to vote Yes for the reasons that you have been outlining, and more more persuasively Aboriginal people have been outlining. But I reckon it's in trouble and it's in trouble because of texts like this one from Martin: Good morning. Question for the PM, my mortgage has just risen again to two-thirds of my income, energy prices in my home are increasing by up to 25 per cent. My daughter had to bid overs against 40 other people to get a rental. Yet you continue to argue for the allocation of public money to the Voice, which is about number 5000 on my list of priorities at the moment. What do you say to people like Martin? Because there's more of them out there than the Yes camp is aware of.
PRIME MINISTER: What I say to Martin is that we are concentrating on matters that affect him. We just handed down a Budget that will give energy price relief. We are trying to get legislation through the Senate that will have an impact on housing, through our Housing Australia Future Fund, but we had other legislation as part of the Budget as well - rental relief for people in the private sector. We had increased funding for community housing. We had in the Budget, following on from our cheaper medicines policy that came in on January 1, further measures that will reduce the cost of medicines by September 30. We have cheaper child care comes in on July 1. We're doing all of those things that affect a vast number of Australians. But at the same time, yes, we are going to give the Australian people the opportunity to vote on something that overwhelmingly will not have a direct impact on most Australians. But it just might make a positive difference for some of the most disadvantaged Australians who are there. And this, I think, is something that is within the Australian ethos of the fair go. And I understand that many people are doing it tough. And that's why we introduced those measures in the Budget. And that's why we'll continue to work each and every day on the full range of issues. That's why in health, in order to give people access to bulk-billing, the last time I was in Adelaide I was in a medical centre in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, in the electorate of Spence around Elizabeth, talking about our tripling of the bulk-billing incentive. That, at that medical centre, will make an enormous difference for people, speaking to the doctors and the people on the ground there.
PENBERTHY: Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, always great to catch up. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk again soon.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, guys.