Hit Breakfast with Dan and Christie with Izzy this morning. And this bloke is the 31st Prime Minister of Australia. He's leading the country with energy, optimism. He's got the mind of a scholar, the body of granite. He's the total package. Mr. Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. How you going, mate?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: What a wonderful introduction. I might speak to you every morning, mate.
HOST: I was going to call you the Ayatollah of Rock and Roller, but you are travelling around this beautiful country. So, tell us about everything. Many Australians feeling the squeeze of rising costs at the moment. I imagine cozzie livs or cost of living is probably the biggest thing with the Budget on the way. So, tell us, how's the government going to get the families ahead?
PRIME MINISTER: It is absolutely the biggest thing and that's why we're rolling out support. Today I'll be in Northwest Tassie for the new child care centre that's open there, a temporary one at this stage before the permanent one opens in July. And in TAFE and skills that people need as well - I went to a TAFE in eastern Melbourne yesterday, looking at Free TAFE, 725,000 Australians have benefited from that. So, we're out and about. We understand that people are doing it tough, but we're doing our best to make sure that we continue to provide that cost of living support.
HOST: And Anthony, first off, I appreciated the student debt relief. It was nice to see a zero knocked off what I owe.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, that's good. 20 per cent. Well, that made a huge difference. I don't know how much you benefited by -
HOST: No, it did. It really did.
PRIME MINISTER: Average was $5,500 for three million Australians, largely young Australians.
HOST: Yes. No, it really helped. My question to you is that you have acknowledged the need for, like, more nurses and teachers, especially in more rural areas, but time and time again, they kind of find themselves, I guess, in a system where training for those roles really sets them back financially. So, more on what you were talking about, TAFE, what's going on to continue to support these people and these students while they're studying?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, a big thing that we did is Paid Prac. I reckon most of your listeners would think, 'oh, well, if someone's studying to be a nurse, we need more nurses. When they're off doing their prac placements for four weeks, six weeks, then surely, they'd get paid'. But previously they weren't. So, I spoke with nursing students at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne just yesterday, and it's made such an enormous difference to them. I don't know how people were paying their rent and just dealing with their bills without any income coming in, because many of them, while they're studying also have other part time jobs, but they can't do that if they're doing their Paid Prac. So, that's just one practical measure that we've made. The difference for nurses, for example of Free TAFE and Paid Prac is about $17,000. That's real assistance in an area where we need more retaining the workforce but also encouraging people to go into those careers where we need a workforce to care for our youngest Australians and our oldest Australians.
HOST: Now Prime Minister, on a different note, as someone that's grown up on social media, I think I've had it since I was 12, and I know many of our young listeners have grown up the same way. It's been a few months now since the social media ban. How do you define success when it comes to that? Like what does working actually look like?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it looks like people being able to enjoy time with each other and communicate, listen to the radio, being able to play sport, have those conversations with family and friends. You'll see just as in schools when mobile phones were banned from school time, a lift up in educational outcomes, a lift up in behaviour, people being happier because they weren't on the devices the whole time. 4.7 million accounts were immediately either closed or paused, and it continues to be rolled out across the ten platforms where this applies. But the other thing that's happening is that this isn't just an Australian problem, it's a global one and the rest of the world is following Australia's lead - France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Denmark, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, all looking at what we did saying, 'yeah, we want kids to have the opportunity to be kids, to have their childhood'.
HOST: Oh absolutely. I'm the father of two girls and they're playing Roblox at the moment. They're annoyed they can't chat to each other, but I am glad that they're being protected online, which is the main thing, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, absolutely. To give that peace of mind that is so important. The figures were quite shocking of people who'd been encouraged to commit self-harm because of online activity. And we need to come to terms with the impact of social media, of course it can bring great benefits, we can communicate easier than ever before, but with that as well, we need to make sure we deal with the downside of that and continue to be human beings, need to engage with each other on a one on one basis and that's something applies to adults as well, it's got to be said.
HOST: We wanted to let you know that when you said this back in the day, we loved it.
[AUDIO GRAB]
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Mr. Speaker, they are delulu with no solulu.
