PETE CURULLI, HOST: It is always wonderful to have this man in town. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is here.
KYMBA CAHILL, HOST: Look, Mr Prime Minister, we've always been very friendly with you on our show. We've had a lot of laughs together. We know that you're here for the train line, which we're very excited about. But we just need to know, do we need to become more serious now that you are Prime Minister?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Not at all.
KYMBA: Oh, good.
PETE: Well, Kymba's gone from Albo to Mr Prime Minister anyway.
KYMBA: I had to check.
PRIME MINISTER: Keep the relationship going.
KYMBA: Oh, well, it's good to have you here, Albo.
PRIME MINISTER: It is very good to be here. And Perth is always a great place to visit, and to visit it to open a rail line is incredibly exciting.
MATT DYKTYNSKI, HOST: Let's get to one of the sort of sticky issues. Obviously, price of living is affecting people on a really profound level these days. And yet, we're also sort of getting thrown concepts like how much money it's going to cost us to go green, green, energy wise. And, you know, you're in the unenviable position of trying to find a balancing act between that. How can you, and can you give any relief to people for cost of living whilst transitioning us into a cleaner economy?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think you need to deal with immediate cost pressures. And we've done that by making medicines cheaper, for example, the first cut in the price of medicines since the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme was introduced 75 years ago. And that will take effect from January 1, as long as the Parliament passes the legislation. We have legislation before the Parliament to cut taxes for electric vehicles. We have legislation to make childcare cheaper for over a million families. So they're immediate measures that we've introduced in accordance with our promises. But people will know out there that the reason why they've put solar panels on their roofs might be to help the environment, but it's also about lowering their power bills. And that's what we're dealing with, with the shift to a cleaner economy, is also the cheapest form of new energy.
PETE: Prime Minister, one of the things that I've heard in the last sort of six months, and forgive me if this sounds quite simple but, is that, you know, one of the reasons why we have record inflation at the moment is because there's been a lot of free money that's been handed out, you know, throughout the pandemic, and I understand why because we had to keep people afloat. Do you think that the fact that we're trying to bring inflation down, this might have a negative impact to that come 2024 when we might see things start to tick up again, because it appears that there's more free money flowing around again?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, certainly, part of our concern with the state of the economy is there's a trillion dollars of debt, with not enough to show for it. And debt under the former Government had doubled even before the pandemic. But when you look at the money that was spent on things like a billion dollars on government advertising, $3.4 billion for submarines that were never built, $19.7 billion in JobKeeper payments to companies that were actually increasing their revenues, they weren't going backwards, they were actually doing okay because of the nature of their business during the pandemic. And that sort of waste is of real concern. The National Broadband Network, where they promised to deliver basically a second rate NBN, with copper rather than fibre, because it would be cheaper, but it ended up being $28 billion over budget.
KYMBA: Albo, just a quick one before we let you go here, and this is on the record, the question we do need answered, which is superior, chicken or cheese twisties?
PRIME MINISTER: Chicken.
KYMBA: Chicken!
MATT: Controversial!
PRIME MINISTER: That's a really easy answer.
KYMBA: Wow, you didn't even waste any time there, straight in.
PRIME MINISTER: No, no, I made that decision at least 50 years ago.
MATT: That's opened up a whole new can of worms. And also, if we had more time, I want some of this free money that Pete's been talking about. But anyway, Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, thank you so much for chatting with us and look forward to speaking to you again soon.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, guys.