Radio interview - B105 Brisbane Breakfast

MATT ACTON, HOST: Albo is on the air. Good morning, Prime Minister.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. I thought I was gonna miss out on my intro song.

ACTON: Never.

COLEMAN: Never. We're consistent. And plus, we haven't updated it, so it'll always be there.

ACTON: You can't beat perfection, can you, Albo?

PRIME MINISTER: Exactly. Oh, we could beat it if you guys sang the song yourself.

ACTON: Ah, well, Stav does sing.

COLEMAN: He's doing singing lessons.

PRIME MINISTER: Oh, very good. Well, you could. You could sing it live next time.

STAV DAVIDSON, HOST: Okay. Okay.

COLEMAN: I thought you were calling up to say congratulations to Matty. Did you know that he's become a grandfather? He wants me to call him granddaddy, but that's just creepy. But yes.

PRIME MINISTER: Oh, congratulations. A little boy or little girl?

ACTON: Little girl. Illyria Fay Acton.

PRIME MINISTER: Oh, lovely, lovely. And everyone's all healthy and happy?

ACTON: Yeah, they - Mum and bub went home just last night, so they're all back in the house now, which is very good. But, yeah, everyone's very healthy. She's so cute, Albo.

PRIME MINISTER: And the good thing is you can, you can spoil your grandkids and, yeah, not have to do the hard bits, but just do all the fun bits.

ACTON: Exactly.

COLEMAN: Right. How old is your son?

PRIME MINISTER: Mine's 23. So, I'm hoping that it's some time off.

COLEMAN: You're too busy. You got a wedding to plan, an election.

ACTON: My son's 22, so. Yeah, that's obviously why I'm so young when I become a grandfather, but -

PRIME MINISTER: Well, it can happen.

ACTON: Just out of curiosity, what kind of benefits do I now get as a grandparent? Like, what's -

PRIME MINISTER: Mate, the benefit you get is loving your grandchild.

DAVIDSON: Well done, Albo.

COLEMAN: Well, you would get a seniors benefit but you don't.

PRIME MINISTER: What more do you need?

DAVIDSON: What more do you need?

ACTON: A tax cut.

PRIME MINISTER: We've already given you a tax cut. July 1.

COLEMAN: I thought him personally, I thought, what's going on here?

PRIME MINISTER: You've got a tax cut, we've given you $1,300 off your energy bills, Cheaper Child Care for the little one as they come along.

ACTON: Yeah, that's - well, that'll be a benefit to my son. Yeah. Yeah.

COLEMAN: But he's offered free at his household. Hey, I know that you guys are looking to crack down on the supermarkets who are, like, doing shrinkflation, which I know everyone hates. When we hear a lot of these headlines, I go, how much authority do you have? Because a lot of it is, like, we want to, you know, ban social media from a certain age, but can you actually introduce some law to make it happen? Or is it all just putting pressure on those big companies to do the right thing?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, we can, because one of the things that we've announced, and we'll introduce legislation this year, is to make the Food and Grocery Code mandatory. It was voluntary. It was all up to the goodwill, essentially, of the big supermarkets, but we're going to mandate it and that will mean that there are multi-million dollar penalties for serious breaches. So, shrinkflation is when a product that was 500 grams all of a sudden becomes 400 grams, but the same price. And people have noticed that happening. Companies making their products smaller and their prices bigger. And so it rips Australians off. Now, new product packaging shouldn't mean that customers are paying more for less. So, paying more for air just isn't fair. That's the other thing that's there. You know, often you see the packages might look the same size, but there's not as much in them. So -

DAVIDSON: I guess the tough part though. How do you stop shrinkflation in the freezer department?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, the same principle will apply.

ACTON: He's asking for a friend. But then won't they just charge us more for the same. So, rather than drop it, they'll go, okay, we'll keep the product the same and just jack it up a couple of bucks. Is there legislation to ensure that they can't just keep hiking the price?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, that's what the mandated Code is all about. Making sure that customers get the right delivery and get good value. When people are going around their supermarkets during cost of living pressures, they're looking for value, they're looking for specials. And there's a range of ways that just annoy customers and quite rightly so. Shrinkflation is one. The other one is where prices go up by a dollar and then down by fifty cents, and they pretend it's on special or it's cheaper. And on those measures, the ACCC, which is essentially the consumer watchdog, is taking Woolworths and Coles to court with 500, between them, examples of alleged breaches. And there are substantial fines going into the tens of millions of dollars will be available, if that is found to be correct, before the court. So, that's the other thing that we're doing. The other area we're doing is funding CHOICE, which is the consumer organisation, to publish what a basket of goods comparative costs are across supermarket chains. And that will make them more accountable as well. They found that Aldi was cheaper than the big two.

DAVIDSON: Yes, it is.

PRIME MINISTER: And so we've funded that for three years.

ACTON. You're doing a bit, which is good, which is good.

PRIME MINISTER: It's not simple, but what we're doing is taking on each and every possible measure we can to make sure that consumers get looked after.

ACTON: What's in your weekly sort of dinner? Like, what do you have on rotation?

COLEMAN: Well, you get to eat at Parliament House, right?

ACTON: Like chicken nuggets and chips one night, sketty bag the next day.

PRIME MINISTER: I've gotta say, I'm mainly on a fish diet at the moment.

ACTON: Shreddin' for the wedding, are we?

PRIME MINISTER: I'm trying to do the right thing. I lost quite a few kilos when I became Labor Leader and then I had, you might recall, my car accident a couple of years ago. That was a bit of a wake up call to get fit. So, it's all about what you eat, but also getting a little bit of exercise. And getting exercise in this job is hard.

ACTON: Would you give the Ozempic a go?

COLEMAN: He doesn't need Ozempic.

ACTON: Did you think about trying the Ozempic?

PRIME MINISTER: I'm not sure about some of the other effects of those things, so I'd rather go the natural route.

COLEMAN: Then you'd have to start with the pharmaceutical companies of how much they are price gouging. Don't get him started.

ACTON: And the next thing we're talking about vaccines and we're down a whole rabbit hole, aren't we, Albo?

PRIME MINISTER: Indeed. My go to used to be pasta. I would have pasta four times a week. Now it's just special occasions, so I really enjoy it a lot more when I have it now.

COLEMAN: Gosh, look at you. Special occasions, you have a bowl of pasta. Woo!

ACTON: He's a man of the people.

PRIME MINISTER: And just a few other little rules. Like, I go to a lot of dinners and functions, so you know, don't eat the bread, don't eat the dessert. Just often don't eat multiple meals either. It's really easy to get food.

COLEMAN: To be fair, this is just making me hungry.

ACTON: Yeah, me too. Buddy, great to talk to you this morning. Thanks for calling through. Appreciate your time.

PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, thanks, guys. Great to talk with you.

ACTON: The Prime Minister here at B105.

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