Bridget Brennan, Host: We're joined now by the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, who's in Adelaide. Good morning to you, Penny Wong, and congratulations.
Penny Wong, Foreign Minister: Good morning, good to be with you and thank you. And I want to start by thanking your viewers for the opportunity and responsibility that's been entrusted to us and we're really conscious of what a privilege that is and we will work every day to repay the trust that Australians have shown in us.
Brennan: Seeing you up on the stage on Saturday night, there seemed to be an even more jubilant mood than 2022. Did the election result take you by surprise and what was the mood on Saturday night?
Foreign Minister: Well, it was pretty electric in the room and my family was there, which was lovely, and my daughters did say how loud it was. So, I don't know whether you got a sense of that on the camera, but it was pretty loud when I got up on stage. It's been a long time since, you know, a Prime Minister was re-elected. And it's certainly been a long time, you know, since we've seen that kind of, that kind of emphatic decision. And it really showed, I think, that the Liberal Party doesn't represent middle Australia. That's really the clear message of the election result.
Brennan: Were you expecting seats into the 80s in the lower house?
Foreign Minister: Can I just say it's at the upper end of my expectations, but I think if you look at the metropolitan electorates around the country, overwhelmingly, Australians who live in cities and suburbs looked at the Liberal Party and said, 'you don't represent my aspirations, you don't reflect the things I'm worried about, you don't reflect where I want to go.' And you know that is the clear message from the election. As I said, we're really humbled by and grateful for the opportunity and we understand what it means.
Brennan: Why do you think it appears Chinese-Australian voters swung towards the Labor Party again at this election? And what impact do you think your messaging had on WeChat, for example, in seats like Menzies?
Foreign Minister: I'll leave others to the commentary about me, but I was out expressing the same thing I've been saying for a long time, which is that the Liberal Party's approach to a whole range of issues are of concern to the Australian-Chinese community. I thought Jane Hume saying, asserting that Labor volunteers, Chinese volunteers were spies was an extraordinary thing to say. And it continued a pattern of comments and behaviour by the Liberal Party that Chinese Australians were rightly concerned by. And we did see in many seats in Bennelong, in Chisholm, in Menzies, in Reid and beyond, Chinese Australians being really clear about their views about the Liberal Party.
Brennan: You made the step of acknowledging country as you stepped onto the stage on Saturday night, which I've heard meant a lot to Aboriginal Australians after what had happened in the previous week. This is not a gotcha question about your comments on the Voice at all. I just would ask you to reflect on the media's response to those comments where you had looked at a social issue that may take many decades to progress on reconciliation and acknowledgement of Aboriginal people and yet it was sort of used as a sort of gotcha moment in those final days of the campaign. Did that disappoint you?
Foreign Minister: Of course, look, it was an inaccurate beat up. But I think more importantly, what it did show Australians is that the reflex for the Liberal Party was to have a culture war and get very aggro, let's be frank. Whereas most Australians weren't there, most Australians wanted to talk about Medicare and schools and cost of living and tax cuts and fee-free TAFE and childcare and 20 per cent off their HECS debt. That's where most Australians were. But the Coalition, yet again, their reflex is to have a culture war, which is often very hurtful to First Nations Australians, but more generally to people who care about reconciliation. So, I think it was a demonstration of why the Liberal Party has done so badly in Australia's cities and suburbs.
Brennan: Overnight we've heard of tariffs on incoming films made outside of the United States into America. This could have a damaging effect on our industry here in Australia. What will be your message to the Trump administration on this decision?
Foreign Minister: Well, our message is we make great films together. We collaborate together. We've got Australian actors who work on American films. We have films, American films, which are filmed here in Australia. We have collaboration between our artists in the creative industries. The collaboration is a good thing. So, let's not get in the way of that.
Brennan: And will you serve another term as Foreign Minister, Penny Wong?
Foreign Minister: I absolutely will. And I'm really looking forward to not only doing good things this term, but working in a government that has the capacity to be a really long-term Labor Government and change this country for the better.
Brennan: Alright, thanks for your time this morning.
Foreign Minister: Great to speak with you.
