ERIN MOLAN, HOST: Prime Minister, first of all, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good to be with you, Erin.
MOLAN: Give yourself a score out of a hundred for your first one hundred days.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I'm not a commentator, so there's no right answer to that. I'll leave that to others. But I'm pleased with how the government is going. I think in the first hundred days, all you can do is set a tone.
MOLAN: So the happiest you've been over the past hundred days?
PRIME MINISTER: I think probably the 21st May was a very a happy moment. Truth is, it was a relief. It's something that there was a real sense of occasion. I was very calm on the night. I had people just at my home in Marrickville. There was Penny and Jodie and Nathan and just a couple of people from my office. I cooked pasta that night in a very calm way. And no one could eat – Penny Wong and Nathan were the only people who ate the pasta. But that sense of relief came through when it was clear that we were going to succeed. I was confident on the night that we would get to 76 and be able to form a majority government that I think is important for stability.
MOLAN: Bittersweet, I'd imagine, in a way given the person who would have been the most important person in your life until, obviously, you had your son, but she wasn't there – your Mum.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, absolutely. And I had that sense of her. I had this artist’s drawing in my home of the council house I grew up in and that's now up there in the Lodge, which is quite a nice thing – I've returned to public housing. It was a deep moment for me and I felt that sense of loss as well, that she wasn't there. But on the Monday I went to Japan and then on the Wednesday was the twentieth anniversary of her death – the 25 May 2002. So I arrived back from Tokyo and landed and went straight out to Rookwood, the Catholic cemetery there, to let her know basically that I was the Prime Minister, her boy – against considerable odds. But it says something great about this country, too, I think that someone from that beginning can rise to be Prime Minister.
MOLAN: She'd be very proud.
PRIME MINISTER: She would. She would be chuffed. I received a lovely letter just this week from someone who was a nurse, just saying that my Mum had said to her, ‘my son will be the Prime Minister one day’. Just this week. So nice things like that really lift you up.
MOLAN: Absolutely. The most nervous you've been in the past hundred days?
PRIME MINISTER: Most nervous? I think a bit of nervousness leading up to the speech I gave at the Garma Festival, where I outlined what the question might be in a referendum for constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. That was a step forward to take that debate forward, and it wasn’t clear to me how it would be received. It was received very well by the audience since then. I think it’s the right thing to do. But I felt a sense of nervousness about whether it was absolutely the right thing to do.
MOLAN: Have you cried since becoming Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: No I haven’t, I don’t think. I might have had a tear or a hint of a tear at Garma because Linda Burnie, who is a dear, dear friend, I've had a lot to do with her as a neighbour, she was very emotional about the speech. That was pretty close.
MOLAN: The angriest you've been over the past hundred days?
PRIME MINISTER: I haven't got angry at all. I think anger is not a great emotion. I think that you have to channel positive energy, and I try to be positive. I'm optimistic about Australia's future. I can't recall being – I won't say I've never been angry in my life. I obviously have been from time to time. But I haven't been angry since I've since I've been Prime Minister.
MOLAN: You still have elements to your life that are normal in that you love to play your tennis on a Saturday, you've got a partner, son, family life. What, though, do you miss about your life prior to becoming Prime Minister? Is there anything?
PRIME MINISTER: I miss not just going somewhere without security, to be honest.
MOLAN: Jodie's travelled with you in an official capacity. She wore Karen Gee, a designer that I love. She looked beautiful. How has she settled into life as our First Lady, if you give it that term?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think that she seemed pretty comfortable with just being who she is. She's not trying to be someone else. She's not trying to change the way that she lives her life. There are obviously some changes to it, but she's still working. She is catching up with her mates. She's got a really good, strong network of women who she went to school with that she’s still mates with – a bunch of Coasties, most of whom are friends the Central Coast, most of whom live in Sydney now, but some still live up the coast. She's got a really strong family. Her mum and dad are also great South Sydney supporters.
MOLAN: Was that a prerequisite for you?
PRIME MINISTER: Her brother’s a Raiders supporter. You should be pleased.
MOLAN: He’s got great taste.
PRIME MINISTER: I say that's bad parenting. Nathan had choices. He could have chosen to support a team other than South Sydney, but he chose to sleep inside. It was a very wise decision that he made.
MOLAN: You’re very sweet. What kind of a boyfriend are you?
PRIME MINISTER: I don't know. That's a question for her.
MOLAN: I would love to ask her.
PRIME MINISTER: It's still a relatively new relationship because of the time that inevitably we spend apart. My life is one where I'm not in a new relationship spending that intense time that you would normally spend. I’m away a lot, in parliament or with work. But I think we've got a really, really good friendship as well as a personal relationship and I think that's really important.
MOLAN: So it's still exciting?
PRIME MINISTER: It's been very positive and I think having someone just to be with you is an important part of life. It’s very positive. Jodie had to deal with the media. She had never been in the newspaper before. Someone took a photo of us out at dinner and certainly had never spoken to the media. But during the campaign she was just who she was. She’s got really good people-to-people relations.
MOLAN: Nathan was also thrust into the spotlight. I think he was on stage with you and there were a lot of posts on social media talking about how hot he was. Was that something that embarrassed him and you? Or were you like, that's my boy?
PRIME MINISTER: He's not on social media for good mental health reasons. I think people say some extraordinary things on social media that they never say face to face, and you've been champion of that those issues. It's just awful, frankly, some of the things that people will say. So Jodie and Nathan, neither of them are engaging in the social media world. But he's enjoyed it. He came down to the first Question Time in parliament, which was great. We have had a hit on the tennis court there at the Lodge. And for Father's Day which is, I think, next week or the week after – it's coming up. We have a deal: my Father's Day present that I want every year is, I say to him, we've got to have a game of tennis. That's what I want, time with us. But he's a 21-year-old lad with lots of friends. I feel very confident about the young man that he's become, I'm really, really proud of him.
MOLAN: Let me ask you, legacy: what do you want your legacy to be?
PRIME MINISTER: I absolutely want to leave a legacy. I don't know why you would go into politics just to occupy the space. And I'm determined to make a difference. So I want that legacy to be a range of things, summed up in a better future for Australia. I want people to have opportunity – I'm very conscious of the opportunity that I was given – people not to be left behind so that they can be the best they can be as individuals. But I also want Australia to seize the opportunity which is there. I see the challenge of climate change as being an incredible opportunity. We can be a renewable energy superpower. We can have clean, cheap energy powering new industries. We can be more self-reliant and be less dependent upon trade. In particular, the challenge of China's rise is there, we need to respond to that. National security is a very broad issue now and it's about being able to stand on our own two feet. But also, I want it to be a little legacy of inclusiveness. When it comes to gender issues, I want women to be safe in every workplace. I want the gender pay gap to be closed. I want to see more women in positions of power and authority, more equality. I want Indigenous Australians to be recognised in in our nation's birth certificate, it’s an important step forward. I want people to feel respected regardless of their gender, their religion, who they are, to just feel respected and have their place in this great, diverse, multicultural melting pot that is Australia. I love this country. I think we are the greatest country on earth. But together, we can be even better in the future. And I'm really optimistic about what we can do. And whenever it is that I leave politics, what I don't want to do is to look back and go, ‘I wish I had a crack, I wish I'd had a go.’
MOLAN: Do you fear failure?
PRIME MINISTER: No. I fear not trying.
MOLAN: Beautiful. Prime Minister, thank you so much for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.
MOLAN: Congratulations.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you.