ALLAN ALDWORTH, HOST: The Prime Minister of our country, Anthony Albanese, good morning. Helps if I turn your mic on, how disrespectful to the Prime Minister. Once again, good morning.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. And it's fantastic to be back here in Perth. And what a beautiful day.
CARLY PORTCH, HOST: It is.
ALDWORTH: It is. We've turned it on for you, mate. We've turned it on.
PORTCH: Now, you were telling us off air you also brought your beautiful partner Jodie along. Now, whenever you drag a partner to a work trip, surely you're going to incorporate some fun for her?
PRIME MINISTER: No, although tonight there is a bit of a reception for the Telethon. It’s weekend here in Perth, it's a big weekend. So, that won't be a hardship function. That will be very pleasant mixing with the good people of Western Australia. So, they always have a bit of a gathering the night before the big ball. And today will be a fantastic day, talking to some of the ambassadors for Telethon. But I'm also visiting a TAFE this morning with the Premier, Roger Cook, and we're going to be in Hasluck ,we're in Midland, so, Tania Lawrence, our local fantastic MP, will be there.
ALDWORTH: How do you remember all the names? There's so many MPs. Do you actually like, you just remember that, you don't have anything written down in front of you, I can see.
PRIME MINISTER: No, well you get to know everyone.
ALDWORTH: I had to look at my notes to remember your name for half a second, and Carly’s.
PORTCH: We know your name.
ALDWORTH: I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you guys do it.
PRIME MINISTER: The difficulty you have sometimes is you're at a function and someone goes, ‘Hi, remember me?’ And like you've met them as one of the 500 people who were in a room. You go, 'Just remind me?'
ALDWORTH: I just fake it. I always fake it. Carly has seen me do it many a time. I'm like, yeah, man, how are you? No idea who they are.
PORTCH: I'd love to see you refer to someone as man. That'd be great. How you going, man?
PRIME MINISTER: That, of course, is why the word 'mate' is so useful in Australia.
PORTCH: Yes.
ALDWORTH: Yes. Nothing better than that.
PORTCH: No one knows anyone's name here.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, mate. How you going, mate?
ALDWORTH: For the sake of Telethon, I imagine they're hoping that when you came over here, you happened to check in your luggage a giant cheque for Telethon, because we always are hoping that some money might come our way. Any spoilers?
PRIME MINISTER: No spoilers here.
ALDWORTH: No? All right, we can wait. We can wait. We're patient. We're patient like that.
PRIME MINISTER: No spoilers.
PORTCH: Now, Albo, while we've got you, we obviously must touch on what everyone's talking about, and that is the rental crisis going on at the moment. This week, we saw a family in the Great Southern get highlighted. This is a family of four that are currently paying $360 for a patch of land. They're currently living in a tent. They cannot find a rental. They've been looking for a long time. Reading their story is so heartbreaking, but it's one of many. And we're seeing this right around regional WA, and people are not having access to affordable housing in their own towns. We're seeing Airbnb pushing them out, making prices go through the roof. I know you've been very forthcoming about the fact that you grew up in government housing. What is being done for families like this?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we're accelerating it through our Social Housing Accelerator, here in WA will benefit from some $209 million from that. It's available right now, working with the WA Government. The truth is that we've had to step up because for 10 years there was a reduction in social housing funding from the Commonwealth. It's something I put in my second Budget Reply. So, a range of measures, there's not an easy fix. It's all aimed at supply. So, the Social Housing Accelerator, the increased spending, we got $1.7 billion this year across the country for our National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. We have $2 billion additional for community housing. We have incentives as well for the private sector to build private rentals as well, we need to do. And that will result in between 150,000 and 250,000 additional dwellings. And as well, we're working with all the states and territories about planning laws to just get things moving. Sometimes the bureaucracy makes it so hard for building to occur. We do have in this great state, of course, people want to live here. Why wouldn't you? You look outside there, it's an economically prosperous state. You've seen that enormous growth. But we need to make sure that can be matched with the growth in housing. We're doing what we can to do that. Of course, you can't make a decision to build a house and then live in it the next day. It doesn't have time to flow through.
ALDWORTH: What is the timeline? When do we think we'll see it, I don't know, a sense of normal?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it's happening immediately. The funding's flowing through to states and territories. States as well, I know Roger Cook's very conscious about this, is making sure that they're doing the right investing and working with the three levels of government as well. A lot of planning laws, of course, are the presumption of local government. So, we need to make sure that planning occurs. Medium density housing where it's appropriate as well in order to make sure that can assist. So, different states and territories are responding differently, and in some cases it's regional areas that are really under pressure. because one of the things that happened as well during the pandemic was for a whole lot of people, they thought living with a bit more space in a regional community is pretty attractive.
ALDWORTH: Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER: As Prime Minister, I haven't just been here to Perth. I've been to Karratha and Port Hedland and Albany and Kalgoorlie, all around the state. And there are so many fantastic places to live here in the west.
ALDWORTH: Now, before we let you go, we do need to touch on the Voice. Obviously didn't quite go your way in the referendum over the last weekend. How's the feeling? How's the vibe? Because I've heard from a lot of Aboriginal leaders they're having the week of mourning. Yeah, I imagine it's not a great feeling at the moment in the Labor camp.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it was disappointing. We responded positively to the invitation of Indigenous Australians through the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. They said, having been asked to go away and say what form should recognition in our Constitution take, they decided it should be through a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament. We responded positively to that. Ken Wyatt did a lot of the work, of course, when he was a Minister in the Morrison Government, a great Western Australian. And we put it to the Australian people, people in the Kimberley and people in Indigenous communities, particularly in northern Australia, and the areas where you can identify, really where the big Indigenous communities are. They voted overwhelmingly Yes, but the Australian people voted No. And that is something that has got to be respected. And so, we do respect it. We understand that will be difficult for Indigenous Australians and they're entitled to think about what next steps want to be taken. We, at the same time, will continue to get on with Closing the Gap and measures that we can put in place. And this week, as part of our skills announcement I'll be talking about this morning, there was over $200 million allocated as part of that skills package for apprenticeships and training to skill up Indigenous Australians. That's really important as well.
ALDWORTH: Absolutely. It’s things like that, that we want to see the money going to.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. Jobs, health, education. We do have this gap and we've been unable to bridge it. Governments of all persuasions have failed in doing that. And so, we'll continue to work. We'll continue to listen to Indigenous Australians and to discuss with them the best way forward. What we do know is that the best programs are all ones which involve Indigenous Australians. We can't just do things in Canberra for a place like the Kimberley and the Pilbara.
PORTCH: Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER: And think that bureaucrats in Canberra know better than the people on the ground.
PORTCH: Couldn't agree more. Very well said.
ALDWORTH: Prime Minister, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it. Enjoy Telethon this weekend. Thank you.