And the Prime Minister joins us live in Canberra now. Good morning to you. Are you just kind of kicking yourself for not getting on that plane to Washington to meet Trump earlier?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Not at all, Nat. I've had my priorities right, which the Australian people got to have their say in on 3 May, which is why I'm still speaking to you from the Prime Minister's office today. And on 1 July, today is the day when Paid Parental Leave goes up by another two weeks. Superannuation being paid for the first time, 3 million of your listeners and watchers get a 3.5 per cent pay increase. We've got energy bill relief of $150, kicks in from today. Paid prac for students studying to be a teacher or a nurse, encouraging them there for the first time, $10,000 incentives for construction apprenticeships as well. All of these things kicking in. Superannuation for every single one of your viewers goes up to 12 per cent today, so that makes a big difference. What we've been doing is continuing to govern, dealing with that cost of living relief that makes an enormous difference to people's lives.
DAVID WOIWOD, HOST: Look, Prime Minister, they're all incredibly important changes and we have been following them, but look, the President was actually elected last November. You've had plenty of time before our own election to actually visit him. Look, the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he was there back in February. Are you now looking at this and thinking it was a mistake to leave it this late?
PRIME MINISTER: No, we're available for a meeting. We would've met at the sideline of the G7 except that the President quite understandably left, and left meetings with others as well, left the G7 to go back to Washington because of what was happening with Iran and Israel. We've had really constructive discussions, very warm discussions. The President rang me to congratulate me on the re-election of the government and importantly, Australia has a tariff rate that is the lowest in the world. The US has imposed this across the board and we have a 10 per cent rate and what we've seen is indeed Australia's exports to the United States not change and indeed go up in value in the case of areas like beef. This is a different position that the US Administration has. We see tariffs, I think quite rightly, as something that just impose costs on American purchases of imports to the US and they're across the board. So, Australia has no comparative advantage or disadvantage. Indeed, we have a comparative advantage over those countries that have a higher tariff rate than 10 per cent.
BARR: And we've got huge demands from the US to spend way more on defence than we are currently spending. We spoke earlier to a US pollster who worked on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. He claims the President does not like our current ambassador, Kevin Rudd, take a listen to this.
GRAB: Go back all the way to 2024 when he's made statements publicly about Donald Trump, calling him a village idiot and other statements, and there's really no coming back from that.
BARR: He says there's no coming back from Mr Rudd's past comments about the President. Are you putting your loyalty to Kevin Rudd above our alliance with the US?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, JD Vance had some pretty strong comments, it's got to be said, and he's now the Vice President of the United States of America. President Trump has had very warm discussions with me. The relationship with the United States is an important one. It says something about the importance that we place in it, that we have a former Prime Minister in Kevin Rudd as our Ambassador that says a lot about the priority that we place in the relationship with the United States.
WOIWOD: We know that Washington and Donald Trump in particular, he really operates on those relationships though, Prime Minister, and very clearly that relationship just isn't there with the current ambassador. Is it time now the Australian Government starts looking left of centre here and perhaps using those relationships, leveraging things like Greg Norman, Gina Rinehart, or whoever it may be, to try and have Australia at the centre of those discussions?
PRIME MINISTER: We use all of our relationships. And certainly I've met with Greg Norman, for example, and others as well, who have relationships in the United States. We use all the great assets at our disposal and Australians are quite prepared to talk Australia up. Importantly here, I think that Australian viewers and lookers, watchers and readers, of some of the media would think that Australia is this little country that doesn't contribute anything to this relationship. We do. We're an important ally for the United States. We are a middle power who exercise a great deal of influence in the Indo-Pacific, in ASEAN, and we play a very important role in peace and security in the region. As well as that, we are an important economic relationship with North America and with our other countries in the region. Indeed, Australia, of course, was the founder of APEC. APEC is just one of the meetings that President Trump will attend as well as myself. And summit season is always at the end of the year. We have the G20, we have APEC, we have a range of meetings where the US President would be expected to attend, as well as leaders in the region, as well as of course the Quad meeting that will take place this year in India.
BARR: Okay, so, you don't just sort of pick up the phone and say, Gina, Greg, who can we use? Can you just get me in for a meeting before then? Before September?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we talk to all of our assets, if you like, the great Australians who make a difference around the world and Australia is really highly regarded. I was in the US just a couple of weeks ago, in Seattle, where we had a major announcement, some $20 billion of investment into Australia, creating thousands of jobs, and that's the strength of the economic relationship between Australia and the United States and indeed Australia. There's no other country in the world that has been able to get inflation down to 2.1 per cent whilst keeping employment really strong, not seeing a spike in unemployment. It's just over 4 per cent at 4.1, and with real wages increasing. And today's events with real wages increasing, a 3.5 per cent increase compared with inflation at 2.1, just means that those living standards can be increased. That is our concentration, that is the strength of Australia at the moment. We realised that we've been through tough times with COVID and then with global inflation, and my Government has prioritised making a difference and the Australian people had their say on 3 May and they chose us to continue to do that.
BARR: Indeed. Prime Minister, we thank you very much for your time today.
