HOST: Joel Creasy's with us –
HOST: That doesn't matter. The Prime Minister's here.
HOST: – and so is the Prime Minister. Albo, welcome back.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Great to be back in Perth.
HOST: I saw you on Saturday night, Albo. We were at the same function, and you spoke wonderfully, but we didn't get a chance to see each other. Maybe you were avoiding me. I'm not sure. You were with a much cooler table up the front.
PRIME MINISTER: Had I have known you were there, I would have raced over to you.
HOST: Joel was working as a waiter.
PRIME MINISTER: I don't want to talk to you anymore. I need to talk to Joel. It was a fantastic function.
HOST: It was for the Murdoch Foundation.
PRIME MINISTER: It was for the Children's Research Institute, who do incredible work. And I visited there at the kids' hospital, a bit like visiting the kids' hospital here. Here we had the telethon, of course. I'm actually fulfilling the auction prize, which was a function with me, while I'm here.
HOST: At the Telethon Ball.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah. Tonight. An event to raise money for kids.
HOST: What did it go for on the night? Can you remember?
PRIME MINISTER: I don't know. I just do my bit and turn up for the kids. And the research institute in Melbourne that's attached to the children's hospital there do amazing work and it was a glittering night. It was lovely. And one of the young people who I met when I was at the hospital gave, I think, the best speech of the night. He was born with half a heart and now he's living a full life, and the difference that research can make.
HOST: You spoke wonderfully, and you would give so many speeches. But given where I was sitting, I was actually trying to work out, being the media and stage nerd that I am, was there an autocue or is that just something that comes naturally to you? Because it didn't even seem like yourself or the Victorian Premier were referring to notes even.
PRIME MINISTER: There was a cue, but I must say I did – it was a short-ish speech.
HOST: A tight five.
PRIME MINISTER: What I do, if I work on a speech myself, I do it by hand as well, so that you get to know it, so you're not having to look at the autocue or look at the paper that's there for a big speech. And having met the kids there eight days earlier and having met with the wonderful people who run the institute there, you put a bit of effort in, essentially. And a Saturday night, you've got more time to prepare as well. We flew down to Melbourne for it. So, really did a fair bit of work on it because I was –
HOST: It showed.
PRIME MINISTER: I wanted it to mean something for the young people who were there and all the researchers, they do incredible work. It was celebrating 40 years of research, and it's now recognised as one of the best in the world.
HOST: Outstanding. Well, my fiancé was there, and he was very rock and roll seeing you in person. He's like, "Prime Minister." I was like, "Yeah, that's Albo."
PRIME MINISTER: You should have brought him up for a photo.
HOST: Albo, you don't want that. He's devastatingly good looking. Don't want to have to stand next to him.
PRIME MINISTER: When's the wedding?
HOST: Yeah, it's a long conversation, but not for – we're renovating, so that's our excuse at the moment.
HOST: I love how, now that you've got your wedding out of the way, you can ask everyone else about their wedding plans.
PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. And demand an invite.
HOST: I might need a DJ.
PRIME MINISTER: I'm available.
HOST: How good would that be? Great.
HOST: Albo, you were telling us that you were in three different states yesterday and I'm interested to see, because you mentioned to us the breakfast, lunch and dinner scenario – do you have to eat properly at all these events? Because there's one after the other. And first of all, tell everyone where you were yesterday.
PRIME MINISTER: I try not to. So, I woke up in Hobart and I did a couple of radio interviews.
HOST: Did Jodie know? Were you supposed to be home last night?
PRIME MINISTER: I did a couple of interviews in Hobart and then off to the airport, went to Adelaide, did a housing event in Adelaide with the Premier, Peter Malinauskas and some young people who benefited from our Housing Australia Future Fund. And one of them had got shared equity into their own home. And then got back on the plane, flew here and did another radio interview yesterday afternoon.
HOST: We'll allow it.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you're not on 24 hours a day.
HOST: No, that's fine. Yeah, they need the free kick.
PRIME MINISTER: This is my morning interview, of course. And as I committed to last week, then had dinner here last night. And so I've done, the day before I did Melbourne and then to Hobart and –
HOST: You're getting around.
PRIME MINISTER: I've done Sydney and Canberra.
HOST: Have you ever, in the Prime Minister's car, told the guys at the front, "Hey, can you just pull through McDonald's and grab me something on the way through?" Have you ever done that?
PRIME MINISTER: The windows don't go down. We have attempted this, but they do not go down. So, we have gone into Maccas.
HOST: You have to dine in.
PRIME MINISTER: We go in there, and the last time around, we're on the Central Coast of New South Wales, so we're there for about half an hour. It just didn't happen. I don't know what was going on. I used to work at Maccas, so I know how it works.
HOST: Really? Were you kitchen, front of house, drive through?
PRIME MINISTER: Maccas at Broadway. I never made it to front of house. I was at the back there. I was in charge, it was the days when Maccas used to do fried chicken. And so, I was chicken, hot apple pies and fries. All the fat from the oil stuff that got in your pores.
HOST: Yeah, you would've smelled like an abattoir.
PRIME MINISTER: Smelled like Maccas for 24 hours afterwards.
HOST: You get the Maccas accas, which is the acne.
HOST: Oh, acne. Teenage boy. Hey Albo, let's get into the politics side of things. I was looking at Janine–
HOST: We've got four minutes, Shaun.
HOST: Yep. Janine Allis. You don't want to ask him anything?
HOST: No, no, keep going.
HOST: Janine Allis, what did you make of her talking about business? And I see what she's talking about, and it kind of doesn't make sense to me personally that there's a – why there is a tax on people starting a new business when they're going to sell.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I haven't seen what she said. So, I'm reluctant to give tax advice about a specific example.
HOST: But if you're starting a new business, and you build it up, and then you sell it, it's 47 per cent, correct?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, no. No, that's not right. And I have seen some of the memes which are there and the memes are very flattering, I must say, some of them. So, thank you to those who've made me look rather good.
HOST: There's one I saw of you doing the splits. It's impressive.
PRIME MINISTER: I wish I could do that. But what we've done is, and we've said that we're in discussions with startups about how it will operate, the capital gains tax. But what essentially we've done is treating income from work – your salary, which is what most people do – more equally with income from assets, from wealth that people own. So, capital gains tax, what we're saying is that you will have to pay the capital gains tax on the increase, your capital gain, less inflation, so real – and that's what existed right up until 1999. So, we're just moving back to that system because that's real. That's what a real gain is. And so, with regard to startups, we're in discussions. We announced that on Budget night, that's not a change, we want to make sure that for things such as startups and venture capital that there's no disadvantage there as well, which is why we made that announcement. We'll work it through and I'm sure there'll be a positive outcome.
HOST: Oh, so there's going to be, you're going to discuss with other stakeholders and go, "Okay, let's come to what's gonna really work."
PRIME MINISTER: Well, with startups in particular, we recognise that there's a particular issue with them. But on capital gains in general, capital gains didn't exist in this country before 1985. There was no tax on capital gains. In 1999, it was changed, and what that's done is distort in fact where investment is going towards the housing market. And I know I've discussed in this studio before the problem of young people getting into housing and we can't just sit back and say it's too hard to do anything about it. So, we are doing something about it. It's the right thing. It will result in 75,000 additional young people getting into their first home.
HOST: But that's over 10 years, that's seven and a half thousand people a year. That's not many, considering.
PRIME MINISTER: That's in addition to the other measures that we've got in place, including the ones that we'll be seeing here in Perth this morning, a project that the Premier, and I went to when it was a building site, ground level, and now it's just about ready to move into. We've got a $47 billion Homes for Australia plan. So, whether it's increased public housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund or increased rentals through Build to Rent or shared equity, which is based on a scheme that operates here in WA, or our 5 per cent home deposits has benefited 250,000 families, we ticked over last week, into their first home since we were elected. That's probably if you take on average, if there's a couple living in that home purchasing together, then that's half a million Australians have got access that wouldn't have it otherwise.
HOST: And you're off to a building site, so you must love wearing a high vis jacket and a helmet. They love having a politician and a hard hat and a high vis jacket. You must have worn so many in your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this project is complete, so maybe we'll suit out. We can do the before and after shot.
HOST: Yeah, perfect. We do have to let you go because you are off to this presser now. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER: We can't keep the Premier waiting.
HOST: Telling him you're with us. It's fine. I love it. Thank you so much for coming. We'll see you again next time.