NATALIE BARR, HOST: The Prime Minister joins us from the White House, good morning to you.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Nat.
BARR: Tell us, what was going through your mind when the President turned to you and said, does he still work for you?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, yesterday was an important meeting. We had an $8.5 billion dollar deal. We confirmed AUKUS and my focus was on what a successful meeting it was.
BARR: Yeah, and then you had that strange bit where the Rudd question was brought up and the President turns to you and says, does he still work for you? What was going through your mind?
PRIME MINISTER: Not much, that was a bit of light-hearted discussion, it was all fine. What I was focused on was on the national interest and it was an incredibly successful meeting. I got on very well with President Trump, being able to spend almost three hours with him yesterday and then meetings with the Treasury Secretary, Mr Bessent, and had dinner last night with the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. The meetings that took place today on the Hill were incredibly successful as well. And the Australia-US relationship is in great shape.
BARR: Do you feel vindicated? Because there was criticism going into this that you were taking so long and you'd had phone calls but no meeting.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it was a success. And I kept saying that the relationship was good, it was in good shape. We'd had fantastic discussions. We had a brief chat in New York and I was always very confident, as I’ve said, about the relationship. We've been working on the critical minerals and rare earths agreement between our parties. We've had Ministerial discussions, I've had a couple of meetings with Secretary Bessent previously and other meetings with members of the Administration. And this morning we hosted a breakfast of the Friends of Australia Caucus, attended by, I don't know how many people were there, more than 20 members of Congress. It was terrific. And we've been really well received here. And what we're doing here is Australia and the United States are going to make more things together. That means more jobs in Australia, more economic activity for Australia. Building our resilience as a national economy is so important. So we have been very focused on outcomes. The personal relationship with President Trump has gone very well, and it was a very successful couple of days I've had.
BARR: It absolutely was. Now you're a tennis player, he's a golfer. If Donald Trump accepts your invite to come down under, will you take some lessons before he arrives?
PRIME MINISTER: What I will do is use the skills of my Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, who plays off single figures, and I think he'll be my proxy representative. As a golfer, I'm a good tennis player.
BARR: Okay. What about, would you take him to Rabbitoh’s game, though?
PRIME MINISTER: I would certainly take him to a Rabbitoh’s game. And who knows, we might even see if President Trump can attend the game that takes place in Vegas every year to open up the competition. That's been a huge success as well. We did have a talk about sport, we had a talk about a range of issues over the three hours that we spent together and it's terrific to get to know each other. Those personal relationships are important. One of the things about Australians is we don't talk down to people, we don't talk up to people, we just treat people like people. And President Trump I think enjoyed the conversation.
BARR: Yep, you looked like you were, mates.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, well we get on and we've had fantastic, warm discussions over the phone, we've talked through issues and I was very confident that the meeting would go extremely well. I got a very warm invitation from him and things are good. And that is in Australia's national interest. The United States is an important ally and friend.
BARR: Yep. Thank you very much, Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks so much, Nat.