RUSSELL CLARKE, HOST: Who have you brought in for us today, Barra?
ADRIAN BARICH, HOST: Just a name, I just sort of, bugger those footballers, I thought. Let's go straight to the top and get the man himself. The Prime Minister of the country.
CLARKE: Good to see someone dressed up for the occasion here this morning.
BARICH: Yeah. Mr Albanese wearing his suit, looking fantastic. No Joy Division T-shirt today for us.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: No, no. Gets you into trouble, apparently. Controversial. Who knew wearing a band shirt could be such a big deal.
LISA SHAW, HOST: Go in the Dead Kennedys one next time.
BARICH: I was just going to say, wait till they find out the story behind Spandau Ballet. Then they'll really freak out.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, but it was Amyl and the Sniffers. Or a whole range of them.
PRIME MINISTER: Pearl Jam. Don't even go there.
BARICH: It probably was a failure of judgement.
CLARKE: A lot of Googling going on now.
BARICH: Prime Minister, I reckon it was a failure of judgement because I reckon you should have worn your Cold Chisel T-shirt. Or have you got a Metallica or INXS?
PRIME MINISTER: I don't have a Metallica shirt. I certainly do have more than one Cold Chisel shirt, though.
CLARKE: He just didn't have it on the plane.
BARICH: It reminded me of, like getting off the plane after you've been to Bali, you know, that's what dads do, don't they? They always buy those T-Shirts. We know none of the songs -
SHAW: Bintang.
BARICH: But you actually know the songs of Joy Division. I was very surprised.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. Absolutely. And tracks on Unknown Pleasure include Disorder and Candidate.
SHAW: You're not, Barra doesn't know what you're talking about.
BARICH: Who was the drummer?
PRIME MINISTER: We'd been on the plane, we had an emergency landing in Missouri. I'd been the plane for 29 hours. Journos, they're on the back of the plane, sometimes they film you getting on and off and we wait for them to go down. I was like, you know, they just wanted to go home and go to bed. And I was like, ‘do I need to change?’ I mean, no one dresses like this on the plane. But I have to get on and off sometimes. But I was going home. I was going home to collect Toto the dog on the way. I was pretty relaxed and it wasn't an issue for days, and when it blew up, it was like oh my goodness, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. It's a band, people.
SHAW: It is. Now, speaking of bands -
PRIME MINISTER: A great band, by the way.
SHAW: A great band. One of the absolute best. We have a very special edition of Dad Chat today talking about the social media ban that is just around the corner.
PRIME MINISTER: December 10th.
BARICH: We've been talking about it this morning and people have been giving us their thoughts. We've run a poll.
SHAW: They are very mixed. It is a mix.
PRIME MINISTER: I tell you what, I hear from so many parents who are so grateful that we're doing this because what it does is empower them to have the conversations with their young sons and daughters. This arose from parents. This is a grassroots campaign that ran - let kids be kids - essentially and people being given, there was a 36 Months campaign. There were various grassroots movements led really by mothers and fathers who'd lost their children and the tragedies that they then turned into trying to make a difference, to make sure that other families didn't have to go through what they had.
BARICH: Wow, you're talking bullying and stuff like that?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh look, it's shocking what people have to do, some of the surveys say more than 10 per cent of young people online through social media have been encouraged to take their own life by others. There is, young people don't have the maturity to discern either from real, what's real and what's not real. There is, I think, a real issue that - technology brings wonderful things, but we need to keep in control.
BARICH: Yeah, we need controls. There's too much on there. Some of it is so bad. I'm so with you. We grew up, Albo, and when we were in the classroom, flicking rubber bands was about as bad it got, wasn't it?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, that’s right.
CLARKE: You were worse than that, Barra
PRIME MINISTER: Or making paper airplanes.
SHAW: It did get a lot worse than that. You obviously didn't go to a girls school. But we, you know, we were meant, we said earlier, we went home, we closed the door, we got some respite.
BARICH: We could escape from it.
SHAW: Now it follows you home. It’s in your hand. It is 24 hours around the clock. It is non -
BARICH: It’s in your house. You can't block it out.
SHAW: It is exhausting.
PRIME MINISTER: A young girl came to my office in Parliament House during the last sitting week, Flossie from Tasmania, 12 years old. And what she's done with her peers is she's got this campaign where they write on a whiteboard or on paper what they could do instead of being on their devices. Things like play sport, learn an instrument, read a book, engage with each other.
BARICH: Oh, you mean the things we used to do?
PRIME MINISTER: All of that so that they get that development and that social interaction. I remember years ago on Modern Family and they're all around the kitchen table and they're all texting each other rather than talking to each other. That scene really stuck with me.
BARICH: You see that in restaurants all the time.
SHAW: Yeah, I was gonna say you see it on holidays and in restaurants.
BARICH: Actually Russ, we do support Albo on this though, don't we? Because as dads it, the great thing about it is we can actually say, look, you have to give up your social media. Are you under 16? I'm so sorry. I think the Prime Minister said, it's his fault.
SHAW: Take it up with him –
BARICH: It's not me, it's not me.
CLARKE: Can I get your number and I'll get my son to call you later on?
PRIME MINISTER: How old’s your son?
CLARKE: He's 13.
PRIME MINISTER: 13. You know what, he will, part of it was the 36 Months campaign was lifting from 13 to 16. So, there you go. And who knows, he might actually go out and kick a footy.
CLARKE: It would be nice.
PRIME MINISTER: Or talk with you. The other thing –
CLARKE: Make eye contact.
PRIME MINISTER: I'm gonna put the pressure back on here. There are a whole bunch of parents who are also going offline in order to show their kids that they can do it.
BARICH: They can do it.
CLARKE: That's good.
PRIME MINISTER: Wouldn't that be good? People go out for date night and aren't on their phones instead talking to their date.
BARICH: Reintroduce yourself to your wife and your kids.
PRIME MINISTER: Exactly.
BARICH: But it'll be the first time this century that kids say, 'I'm bored, dad. What can I do? I’m bored.' Because you never hear that anymore, do you? When we grew up, how many times did we say that? 'This is boring,' 'get outside, come back at 5pm.'
PRIME MINISTER: Well we used to, I grew up in inner Sydney where there was lots of concrete, basically, and there was an oval in between this big block of flats, not really an oval, bit of grass. And everyone, all the kids would go down and you knew when to go home - when it was dark.
BARICH: When the street lights come on, home you go.
PRIME MINISTER: That was it.
CLARKE: Did your mum call you Anthony or Tony?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, always Anthony.
CLARKE: 'Anthony, come home, Anthony.'
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they couldn't find us. I've got a mate who’s here - Clayton, if you're listening. He's a wharfie at Freo who I grew up with. He lived in the flats down the road and we've been mates ever since. And those lifelong friendships are because we spent so much time together.
BARICH: Yeah, that’s right.
CLARKE: Did you play cricket as growing up as well? I know you were in those apartments. Did you get out there and play backyard cricket?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, we did in the middle. It was like an old English estate. So I grew up in like townhouses and there was a passageway and the doors were in the middle of the passageway.
CLARKE: So you used the passageway as the pitch -
PRIME MINISTER: So, the passageway was the pitch. So, I had one shot - a straight drive - cause anything else didn’t work.
CLARKE: The brilliant thing –
PRIME MINISTER: On the road was four. On the road on the full was six.
CLARKE: Yeah. Six and out. But the best thing is coming off John Howard and that performance when he bowled. Remember that when he, no you were laughing. You could do anything Albo, you would have been sweet because Johnny was so bad.
SHAW: He loved his cricket. That was not his, it wasn't his favourite memory.
PRIME MINISTER: It was a shocker.
CLARKE: Poor old Hawkey copped that. Remember when they hit him in the glasses and you know –
BARICH: So he had his bad cricket moment.
PRIME MINISTER: Little Johnny. That was diabolical.
CLARKE: How good is Dad Advice going? And we've got the Prime Minister on deck to give us advice. Before we let you go, we've got to ask you because the Ashes start on Friday. A massive, I know you love it. How much are we going to win by?
PRIME MINISTER: Five-nil.
CLARKE: Five-nil. Penalty.
PRIME MINISTER: I'm an optimist. I'm one of those people who, when we're, I remember being at the cricket and we were like, Langer, it was at the SCG, Langer was, you know, 100 and something not out. We're like two for 400 and people going, 'oh, that's getting a bit dull.' I was like, 'no, it's not.'
CLARKE: No, it's not. Beating the Poms.
PRIME MINISTER: I want us to be two for 600 -
CLARKE: Can't you get out? Can't you get out of going to South Africa, hang around for a bit, just for day one -
BARICH: Timing's not great.
CLARKE: What's going on over there? Something going on?
PRIME MINISTER: I would love to. A bit of a conference. You know, just the 20 largest economies in the world.
CLARKE: Sorry I missed that. Sorry, I'm in sport, Albo.
PRIME MINISTER: Lucky you.
CLARKE: Mate, just put in a sick leave note. Can you ever do that?
PRIME MINISTER: I am hoping to get to the SCG Test this year.
CLARKE: All right.
PRIME MINISTER: I'll get there and maybe the Boxing Day. We'll see how we go.
CLARKE: Well, we gotta let you to you, I'll say hello to your Mankini friend from Telethon 2022.
PRIME MINISTER: I don't want any contact either physical or visual ever again.
BARICH: Still a restraining order going on there.
CLARKE: I was there that day.
PRIME MINISTER: It's never going to disappear from my memory. And folks out there, we've been speaking about social media and the Internet. Do not Google it. It can't be unseen.
CLARKE: Albo and the mankini man.
BARICH: You can YouTube it, but only if you're over 16.
SHAW: Safe travels to the G20 in South Africa. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
PRIME MINISTER: Fantastic. Been an absolute pleasure.