HOST: It's 8:22am. Nathan, Nat and Sean, and we're joined, all be up standing, please. We're joined by Alf from Home and Away.
HOST: He's up next, by the way.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Fantastic.
HOST: That's the lineup we've got at the moment, Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Albo and Alf. That could be a band or something. A sitcom.
HOST: Exactly, what a double act. I know.
HOST: Joel was standing nice and tall for you a second ago. You can see him clearly.
HOST: Yes, I was.
PRIME MINISTER: He's on his butt. Oh, there he is. He's standing. Good on you, Joel.
HOST: Of course, I'll always stand for you, Prime Minister. It's the ARIAs tonight. You're not going to be there?
HOST: Sean will just fix you now.
HOST: A bit of a morning for you, Prime Minister.
HOST: The ARIAs.
PRIME MINISTER: I couldn't hear Joel's dulcet tones. Now I can.
HOST: That was my choice.
HOST: So, you're off to the ARIAs tonight as well, are you?
PRIME MINISTER: No.
HOST: No, you're not?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I wish.
HOST: Because you love your Aussie music. It's Aus Music Month for you.
PRIME MINISTER: It is indeed. It is actually Aus Music T-Shirt Day next Thursday.
HOST: Yes. What have you got lined up?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, well, you know, you can't wear band shirts these days. It can get you into trouble.
HOST: Who knew, right? Who knew.
PRIME MINISTER: How ridiculous. But I have recorded something for the ARIA Awards.
HOST: Okay. Oh, great.
PRIME MINISTER: Recorded for friends of mine who've been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
HOST: Ahead of the game! We won't ask for a hint. We don't want to give it away. We want to be watching.
PRIME MINISTER: Exactly. It'll be fantastic. A celebration. There's so much great Australian music around at the moment.
HOST: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
HOST: Can I ask you, if you aren't going to the ARIAs, does that mean you're staying here for the first ball on Friday at Perth Stadium?
HOST: The Ashes.
PRIME MINISTER: I wish. I'm here for four days. This is my life. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
HOST: Oh, this is very bad. Who's doing your calendar?
PRIME MINISTER: Guess what? The first test starts on Friday. Something's gone wrong in my life. My priorities.
HOST: What's happened? Where are you going to be on Friday?
PRIME MINISTER: I'm going to be in South Africa in Johannesburg.
HOST: Are you, no joke?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, the G20.
HOST: Bloody summits.
PRIME MINISTER: So, I'll go from here to Jo-burg on Thursday.
HOST: Amazing. Right. And, well, on that flight over, I'm sure you've seen the news this morning. Are you going to be a little bit more eloquent with your press pack than one President of the United States? Said this overnight.
[GRAB] PRESIDENT TRUMP: Quiet, piggy.
HOST: 'Quiet piggy'. Have you referred to any of the press pack as a piggy?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I'm always very polite to the press pack. I respect all of them.
HOST: Equally?
HOST: Even when they're asking you things that you don't like?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, sometimes there's a quiet voice inside of me, but I try not to verbalise it.
HOST: That's an inside the head voice, not an outside voice.
PRIME MINISTER: Inside voice, yep. Pivot to the inside voice.
HOST: Smart move.
HOST: Well, Albo, speaking of the President there, what was it like being at the White House recently when you were there? There was a couple of standoff moments that the media wanted to build up with Kevin Rudd, but that was nothing by the by.
PRIME MINISTER: It was nothing. It was terrific.
HOST: Can you explain what it's like going in there and, I don't know, what it looks like inside?
HOST: And it's been renovated?
PRIME MINISTER: You have this sense of history, of course, and we were in the Oval Office without the journos. And there's lots of gold now he has renovated.
HOST: Yes, because you had been during the previous presidency -
HOST: I'd been in during President Biden. And so, I spent about an hour with the President before we sat down and had the signing of the critical minerals, so big for WA here. And we then had lunch, and so we had time in the Oval Office, and then we went outside and he showed me what he was intending to do re the renos.
HOST: He put the wrecking ball through the East Wing, yes.
PRIME MINISTER: That is one way to put it.
HOST: He's going to build a ballroom.
PRIME MINISTER: I prefer to call it renovations.
HOST: It was demo day.
PRIME MINISTER: Where the Rose Garden was, now it's marble.
HOST: Paved over.
PRIME MINISTER: Paved over. So, there've been big changes there. But it was terrific. We got on very well.
HOST: Clearly you did, right? So, you signed the critical minerals. The beef tariffs have been dropped.
PRIME MINISTER: They've been fixed.
HOST: As a beef farmer's daughter, this is good news
PRIME MINISTER: And a whole lot of other agricultural products as well, dropped to zero. We have the lowest tariffs of any country in the world at just 10 per cent anyway. And we cemented the AUKUS deal that's also so important for West Australia and South Australia. So, I'm going, after this, I'm heading down to Stirling just south of here of course, to look at the maintenance that's happening on subs. And all that means jobs in WA.
HOST: When big meetings like this happen or big summits happen, and of course there was a big buildup to the meeting with the President and a lot of speculation. Is there a part of you that cracks your knuckles and you're like,' right, I've got this, let's go.'
PRIME MINISTER: Look, we got an invite to stay as well, about a couple of weeks out, when it was organised, at Blair House. Now, that is the place that the surrender was signed during the Civil War. It was where Abe Lincoln did a whole range of the biggest things in American history. And it's quite a special place to stay. It's the President's guest house that only he can invite people to stay at. So, me and my team were there. Maddie King got to stay there. She's still talking about it. Very excited. The Great West Australian. And that was a sign that it was going to be cool. That was great. It's like if you get an invite to someone's house and they say, 'I've got a really good bottle of Margaret River, I'm waiting for you.' You know it's going to be good.
HOST: You know it's going to be good, that's right. It wasn't going to be like Hugh Grant in Love Actually where he takes on the - it wasn't going to be a combative.
PRIME MINISTER: It was always going to be good. We'd had good phone conversations and he's of course a character. He's larger than life. And we were able to have a short discussion in New York a couple of weeks earlier. And so, it was terrific for Australia. My job is to represent Australia overseas and to make sure that jobs are created here as a result of that. Simple as that.
HOST: Hey, I want to ask you, this is something just recently, so, today the Australian market's just hit this deck on the back of Chinese news. And before that it was Trump's tariffs news, the market's hit the deck. Does that come across your radar? It's not really anything to do with how Australia runs its own economy.
PRIME MINISTER: No, it does a bit. I remember during the Global Financial Crisis, Ken Henry, who was the head of Treasury, and I spent four years at university doing an economics degree. And you get told it's really about the vibe.
HOST: Well, there's a lot that's outside of your control, right?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of it's just about sentiment and then you get a correction back. The Australian economy is fundamentally doing well. There's nowhere in the world you'd rather be. And at these forums people say that, how is it that you've continued to have economic growth? We've got unemployment falling in the last month. Inflation is half what it used to be. So, we're in pretty good shape. We're not complacent about that. And we know a lot of people are doing it tough. And we're continuing to put those cost-of-living measures in.
HOST: I mean regular punters would say that interest rates won't be coming down anytime soon and therefore their mortgage is still costing them a significant amount.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. But there have been three decreases.
HOST: But that's a sign that the economy is healthy, right?
PRIME MINISTER: And there's been three decreases this year. That has made a difference. But that's why we're putting in measures like the Cheaper Medicines, will come in on 1 January, $25. Fee-Free TAFE. Now, there's more than a hundred thousand people in WA who have benefited from Fee-Free TAFE now. There's been a couple of hundred thousand visits to Urgent Care Clinics just with the Medicare.
HOST: Taking the heat off hospital emergency rooms, yeah.
PRIME MINISTER: We need to do more, that job's never done, and that's why this is my 38th visit to the West.
HOST: Good numbers. You promised us at the outset - and you certainly haven't -
PRIME MINISTER: I did. And we need to get a date for you guys coming back over.
HOST: We're waiting for the invitation to the wedding, perhaps. Joel, have you got one yet?
HOST: No, I haven't got one either, don't worry.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you know. Keep checking your mail.
HOST: How are the wedding plans coming along? Joel does a good job of MCing. Great MC.
HOST: I'll do you a discount of course, for you, Prime Minister. In fact, I'll pay you.
HOST: You could negotiate a very reasonable fee.
HOST: Thank you so much for dropping by. We know you're a very busy man today. Thank you for coming back to WA and not forgetting all about us.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolute pleasure. And go Australia in the Ashes, hey?
HOST: The Prime Minister's XI, did you get to pick anyone?
PRIME MINISTER: I did.
HOST: You didn't pick Peter Siddle, did you?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I wanted to - we met with the selectors, George Bailey and the team, and I said I wanted a mix of - I wanted Sam Konstas. I have a crack. And I actually was texting with Patty Cummins. 'Mate, it's just two days, this would be a good warm up for the second test.'
HOST: Did he go for it?
PRIME MINISTER: I did pitch up, but he didn't go for it.
HOST: You were the one who said Sam Konstas, you wanted him?
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. And Peter Siddle's such a, remember that hat trick on his birthday? One of the great moments in Australian cricket.
HOST: There we go. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks mate.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks guys.
HOST: We'll see you again soon.
PRIME MINISTER: See you, Joel.