: Now it's time to talk to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who gave a speech here at Old Parliament House last night. Prime Minister, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Sally. Good to be with you.
SARA: In your speech last night you said that the dismissal was not a constitutional crisis, instead calling it a partisan political ambush. Five decades on, could it happen again?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I don't think so, because there has been an assessment. Even Malcolm Fraser looked back and said that he would have, things should have been done differently, said that the Governor-General should have consulted properly with the elected Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
SARA: You're firmly a pro-Republican and you've supported fixed four year terms, which Gough Whitlam long called for. Is that something you're going to pursue?
PRIME MINISTER: The problem is our constitution is very difficult to change and there have been attempts on two occasions to have that change enshrined in our constitution. I think it's common sense. But the problem has been unless there's bipartisan support for referendums - there have only been eight have been carried of almost 50 that have been put. So, at the moment my focus is on dealing with cost of living and on dealing with measures that affect the day to day lives and living standards of Australians.
SARA: When you think back to these historic political events of 50 years ago, you were seven, I think. What do you remember of that day?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I wish I was seven. I was 12 in Year 7.
SARA: I was being kind.
PRIME MINISTER: But thank you very much, Sally. I appreciate the compliment. But I was in Year 7. My history teacher at the time, Vince Crowe, who's a great historian of Haberfield in my electorate now at the Inner West, he burst into the classroom to tell us that our government has been dismissed. And I will recall one of the big rallies that occurred that week was in the Domain in Sydney and a number of us skipped off and attended that rally. For someone like my mum, who'd waited a long, long time, 23 years to see the election of a Labor Government, it was seen to be this intervention that was very unfair. That was something that they didn't expect could ever happen in Australia. And that it was driven in part by some elements believing that the Labor Government wasn't legitimate. And of course the fact that both Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser were in Government House at Yarralumla, not to the knowledge of the elected Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, I think shows that it was an entirely inappropriate action. And Malcolm Fraser relied upon advice from Sir Garfield Barwick that suggested that a Prime Minister and the government needed to have the confidence of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Of course it's actually very unusual in recent times, in the last 50 years, for any government to have a majority in both houses.
SARA: When you reflect on the events of 50 years ago and also on the scale of the majority that your government secured in the last election, how do you see the balance between having a responsible government and having a courageous government?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there are lessons to be learned. I read Troy Bramston's quite brilliant, I think, biography of Whitlam that was, I launched a couple of weeks ago. And inevitably, when you read something, you read it in the context that your life is in. So, I read it as the sitting Prime Minister and thought through what I would do. Look, there's no doubt that the Whitlam Government made mistakes. Its internal processes were dysfunctional. You had Ministers going into the Caucus arguing against positions that the Ministry, the Cabinet, had taken. You had a range of scandals. The loans affair reflects very badly on everyone involved in it. And so I think it is a matter of making sure that government should be orderly, should be considered proper. Processes were put in place and the Hawke Government, I think, learned many of the lessons of the Whitlam Government and was effective, therefore, in governing for a long period of time.
SARA: Trust in institutions was a significant challenge in the wake of Gough Whitlam's dismissal. It's also a significant challenge now, perhaps for different reasons. Do you see parallels?
PRIME MINISTER: I think, well, the world has obviously changed substantially. One of the things that is undermining trusts in institutions is, of course, misinformation, disinformation that comes from social media, conspiracy theories out there. The polarisation to the far left and the far right. The difficulty in 2025, I think, of ascertaining the truth and just some agreement about facts, is far more difficult. People benefit from the fact that the sources of information can be many and instantaneous. But with that has also brought challenges and a greater silo effect. One of the things that social media can do with its algorithms is push people into greater and greater polarisation. They reinforce views and people think that everyone thinks that way because that's what the information that's being popped up to them is telling them.
SARA: Prime Minister, thank you so much for joining me this morning.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, Sally.
