KYLE SANDILANDS, HOST: Ladies and gentlemen, would you please be upstanding for the Australian national anthem as Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is doing the rounds this morning after the Budget was handed down last night. A lot of great news I heard, for a lot of folks in the Budget. Obviously the losers, the other, the other team, the opposition. I don't even know why they, of course they're going to complain and pick holes and things, but I think all in all, I think they've done a great job with this Budget for a lot, a lot, a lot of folks. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese on the phone. Good morning, sir.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, Kyle. Good to be with you.
JACQUELINE HENDERSON, HOST: How are you, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: Hey, Jackie.
SANDILANDS: Okay now, before we get into the Budget, I've heard that every man and their dog keep asking you, am I coming to your wedding? I want to let you know up front, don't feel obliged to send, if you want, if I get an invite, great. If I don't, I never show up at people's weddings anyway, so save yourself the hassle.
PRIME MINISTER: You know what mate, one of the things I have said is that there's no way that I'm going to try and compete with your grandeur of that wedding, I've got to say. Mine will be much more modest, but yours was a great night.
SANDILANDS: Thank you. I've heard people having a go, I've heard people bringing it up.
PRIME MINISTER: And I loved sitting next to your mum. It was just great. She was terrific.
SANDILANDS: Mum's single now, by the way. Not that –
HENDERSON: Are you wanting to hook her up with someone -
SANDILANDS: No, I'm not trying. No, no, I'm just telling Albo. Just giving him the update. Yeah she's single now.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah no, well I met her, she had a date there at the wedding.
SANDILANDS: Yeah, he was called her husband. She's left him, the third husband. It's over. Mum's moved on.
PRIME MINISTER: Well I'm, yeah well, I won't comment on other people's relationships there, but I hope she's going okay.
SANDILANDS: Thank you. I hope Jodie's doing well. Is she buzzing about, is she doing all the plans and everything or not yet?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the problem is I've been a bit focused on the Budget. We didn't put our wedding plans through the Expenditure Review Committee of the Cabinet. But she, last night she came around, we had a couple of events last night for the business community and she came to them and she's just looking good. We're both very, very happy, I've got to say.
SANDILANDS: I’m so happy for you.
HENDERSON: Nice, that’s exciting.
PRIME MINISTER: It's been quite delightful since we made the big announcement and made the big decision. We're both really, really wrapped at the moment and people's goodwill has been quite lovely towards us.
SANDILANDS: That's so nice. Will you be wearing a top hat and a cravat or have you chosen your wedding outfit?
PRIME MINISTER: No, no, we've got none of that, none of those plans. I've been focused on the Budget up until now. The difficulty with my job, of course, is that we don't get little sabbaticals, which radio announcers get from time to time, where you have a few weeks off. I'm on twenty four hours a day at the moment. But we will get around to planning the big day and sorting out the venue, and sorting out the invite list, and doing all of that.
SANDILANDS: Let me tell you, Albo –
HENDERSON: It’s going to be tough, the invite list, you know.
SANDILANDS: It will be tough.
HENDERSON: I heard you say the other day that you're keeping it quite small and low key.
SANDILANDS: Family.
HENDERSON: I think that's the best way to go because then if you do anything bigger, everyone's going to want that invite. Everyone's going to think they deserve the invite.
SANDILANDS: Dick Smith and all them, they'll be all lining up.
HENDERSON: Anyone you've ever met or had dealings with are going to want it.
SANDILANDS: Family only, in the backyard.
PRIME MINISTER: I've met a few people in this job, so it will be a challenge.
SANDILANDS: So Prime Minister, before we get into the Budget, let me tell you, I've spoken to Karl Stefanovic and him and I are going to put on your bucks party. So get yourself prepared. We need a three day event.
HENDERSON: He’s thinking, ‘Oh no.’
SANDILANDS: You have to surrender yourself to me and Stefanovic and we will give you the bucks party of your life.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Russell Crowe has volunteered his services as well.
HENDERSON: Has he? I’ll ring Rusty then.
PRIME MINISTER: So what a dangerous troika that is.
SANDILANDS: We'll go up to Russell's farm because he's got it all locked down up there. Okay, so get three days off from Jode and we'll, I'll ring Russell and get it organised.
HENDERSON: I'll take care of Jodie.
PRIME MINISTER: And we're away.
SANDILANDS: Okay. Now give us the highlights for the Budget. Who were you looking after? Who needed the most attention and the most help? Tell us about it.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this is a Budget for every Australian and every Australian will benefit. So the big picture is tax cuts for every Australian, every one of your listeners. Energy bill relief for every single household. We’re strengthening Medicare -
SANDILANDS: And is that real relief for electricity?
PRIME MINISTER: You bet it is. $300 off people's power bills for every household - so they're universal. And then we've got some targeted support as well. So, rent relief, a 10 per cent increase for people who get rental assistance, on top of the 15 per cent we did last year. For students, and I know there'll be a lot of students listening to your program, $3 billion taken off HECs debt.
SANDILANDS: Each.
PRIME MINISTER: Not for each, but taking off the full bit. And as well, one of the things that I reckon a lot of people wouldn't know is that when, if you're studying to be a teacher or you're studying to be a nurse, all your prac training that you have to do as part of your course, you're not being paid for it, but you're making a contribution –
SANDILANDS: Aren’t you?
PRIME MINISTER: So we're going to pay people for that time.
SANDILANDS: To learn. Oh good.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah exactly, to encourage people.
SANDILANDS: I just assumed –
PRIME MINISTER: We need more teachers, more nurses, more social welfare workers.
SANDILANDS: Yeah, we do.
PRIME MINISTER: So, that will make a difference as well. We have now $32 billion we're putting into housing. And the other big picture thing is..
SANDILANDS: By the way, Prime Minister, you should ring up Vogue Homes because they do, they’ve got specials and everything on at the moment. I don't know if you're across all these housing joints, but they're advertising with us. I'll hook you up with Vogue Homes. They've got a bloody great joint.
PRIME MINISTER: Hook me up. Well I've got, I'm in pretty fine public housing at the moment there at The Lodge here in Canberra. But I feel very privileged each and every day to be able to be there at the Prime Minister's residence. And I'm enjoying it here in Canberra, I've got to say. Although it's a bit cold this morning, I've got to say, out there. We were doing the TV interviews this morning and there's something that happens as the sun comes up, as it gets a little bit later, after 7am, it gets colder. So, it was much warmer at 6am.
SANDILANDS: How does it work when the sun's out?
PRIME MINISTER: There must be, there's a science to it, I'm not sure what it is. You’d need to get, I don't know, some scientist, meteorologist on the program to explain it. But there's something about when the sun comes up, the temperature drops. And that certainly happens here in Canberra because I was up pretty early this morning. At 5am it was okay, at 7am it just started to get a little bit chilly.
SANDILANDS: Well, you should get the electric blanket out.
HENDERSON: Oh, do you know what I got for Mother's Day? An electric throw blanket for the lounge.
SANDILANDS: Oh, get that for him for the wedding, Jackie.
HENDERSON: You come home, you turn it on -
How does an electric throw blanket work?
HENDERSON: It's just a normal, beautiful, soft throw rug for your lounge.
SANDILANDS: Full of hard wires.
PRIME MINISTER: And do you have to plug it in?
HENDERSON: Yeah, you do. But it's, like, really easy. And it's just as soon as you turn it on, it heats up instantly.
SANDILANDS: Albo, you should give one of those electric blankets to everyone as well in the Budget.
HENDERSON: Yeah, can you do that?
PRIME MINISTER: So let me get this right. The Kyle Sandilands recipe for the Budget that I should pitch up for next year for Jim Chalmers is a tax cut for every taxpayer, well good, tick.
SANDILANDS: Including the filthy rich.
PRIME MINISTER: Energy bill for every household, tick.
SANDILANDS: Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: And an electric blanket for every Australian.
SANDILANDS: An electric throw rug. Correct. Because then people don't use that rebate money to buy drugs and cocaine and alcohol and, you know, fritter it away down at the Casino.
PRIME MINISTER: Well we're not, we're not providing cash. One of the things that we're doing is how it delivered in order to put downward pressure on inflation is we just take it off the power bill.
SANDILANDS: Oh see, because that's where Rudd went wrong. Rudd gave every one $300, and we all rang our dealer and spent it direct. And none of that money, none of that money went into the economy with Rudd. So, very good thinking. Very good.
PRIME MINISTER: What we're doing as well is producing the second surplus in a row. So we’re saving more than we’re spending.
SANDILANDS: I did notice that. How much surplus? Listen to this, Brooklyn.
PRIME MINISTER: $9.3 billion.
SANDILANDS: Wow. And no one thought, you'd have –
PRIME MINISTER: On top of $22 billion last year.
SANDILANDS: How did you manage that –
BROOKLYN ROSS, KIIS NEWSREADER: The interesting thing about last year –
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we're a responsible government. We went through, and in this year's Budget, we found $32 billion in savings. So it's hard to do that, but it’s what you’ve got to do.
SANDILANDS: And what do you do? Do you just grab a highlighter and go through all the accounts and think, well, we don't need that Netflix subscription. We don't need -
HENDERSON: You'd have to go through a lot to get that amount.
SANDILANDS: That's what the Treasurer is doing, right? Going through and saving -
PRIME MINISTER: We do it through, there’s this committee, The Expenditure Review Committee –
SANDILANDS: They sound fun –
PRIME MINISTER: That met for hundreds of hours, I've got to say, over many weeks and indeed months leading up to the Budget. But the bottom line is that our position is $200 billion better over the next six years than it would have been. And that makes enormous difference. We inherited a $78 billion deficit under the former government and we've turned that into back to back surpluses. And that's good for the economy. It means less interest on the debt, it also puts that downward pressure on inflation that’s really important.
SANDILANDS: When will all this inflation go away? And all these tax, I mean not the tax, the inflation and the interest rate rises. Can't you wave some magic government wand and just make it all go away? How long is it going to last?
PRIME MINISTER: What we can do is just hard work, hard yakka, and that's what we're doing through this Budget. We have, inflation is now half what it was when we inherited the government in 2022.
SANDILANDS: That’s good.
PRIME MINISTER: It peaked in the March quarter, so just over that three months, inflation increased by 2.1 per cent in that quarter. And we've got annual inflation down to 3.6. That's lower than was predicted in December last year of what it would be at the end of this financial year on June 30. So there's more work to be done because the inflation band we want to get it to is between two and three per cent, but it's moderating, it's heading in the right direction. At the same time as wages are increasing, so that's a very positive thing. And we've created 780,000 jobs on our watch, more than any government in history, any new government.
SANDILANDS: Well I'm glad to hear you, out of your own mouth, mentioning all the bits that you never see on the news. You always just see the opposition always complaining and carrying on. I think, let's find out what's being done, not what the other, the losers are bitching about. Thank you, by the way -
PRIME MINISTER: They just oppose everything.
SANDILANDS: Yeah I know.
PRIME MINISTER: We've got this plan to make more things here in Australia. Now you've got to say that's a good idea to make things to be more resilient, to take advantage of what we can do in the future, producing green metals and jobs that will provide us with a secure future -
SANDILANDS: Green metals. What's a green metal?
PRIME MINISTER: What we do there is instead of producing steel and aluminium by burning coal, you do it through green hydrogen, which is produced by solar energy or wind energy. You produce hydrogen that essentially can take the place of coal.
SANDILANDS: I've heard of this, and I'm a big fan of the green, by the way. I think you know that.
PRIME MINISTER: It's where the global economy is going and we can make a big difference, and they've said no to that.
SANDILANDS: They just say, don't even worry –
PRIME MINISTER: We need to make more things in Australia.
SANDILANDS: I agree, I agree. Prime Minister, well done.
HENDERSON: Prime Minister, thank you for your time.
SANDILANDS: From all around the place. Pretty good budget for everyone, which is excellent.
HENDERSON: Yes.
SANDILANDS: Jackie's tuned out.
HENDERSON: Yes I have, I’m sorry.
SANDILANDS: She's going through her hinge feed. Anyway, you know what it's like. Boys be boys, girls will be girls. Prime Minister, make sure you, for that bucks party at Rusty's joint, you're just going to need to bring a wetsuit. And I'm not going to say anymore. Just bring a, pack a wet suit, goggles and snorkel.
PRIME MINISTER: What could go wrong?
SANDILANDS: Nothing, exactly. Prime Minister, thank you, mate. Nice to chat.
HENDERSON: Thank you, Prime Minister.
SANDILANDS: Wonderful budget.
PRIME MINISTER: We remember an important principle there. What goes on tour stays on tour.
SANDILANDS: Oh, bro, you're talking to me.
HENDERSON: Yeah, you don't have to worry there.
SANDILANDS: I invented that saying.