Anthony Albanese: I Certainly Do Have More Than One Cold Chisel Shirt

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s Dad Chat and today Barra brought along a very special guest: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Albo wasn’t wearing his usual Joy Division T-shirt, but he did weigh in on the big topic of the day: the Under-16s social media ban. The campaign has a strong grassroots push behind it, all centred on the idea of letting kids be kids. Tune in to hear the full chat.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Who have you brought in for us today? Barrow just
a small name.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I just sort of a bug of those footballers. I thought,
let's go straight to the top and get the man himself,
the Prime Minister of the country.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Good to see someone dressed up for the occasion here
this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, mister Albanezi wearing his suit looking fantastic. No joy
Division T shirt today.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
No gets you into trouble, apparently controversial. You were wearing
a bandshit, Well wait till they find it.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I was just going to say, wait till they find
out the story behind spandal ballet. They really freak out.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
But it was well, amal and sniffers.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
That's all. It feels like it. Jam I didn't even
go there.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It probably was a failure of googling going on now,
Prime Minister, I reckon it was a failure of judgment,
because I reckon, you should have worn your cold Chisel
T shirt or have you got a metallica or in excess.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
I don't have a metallica shirt. I certainly do have
more than one could chisel shirt.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
He just didn't have it on the planet.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It reminded me of like getting off the planet after
you've been to Bali and you know the Dad's what
dads do, don't They always buy those T shirts. We
know none of the songs, but you you actually know
the songs of Joy Division that very.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Absolutely absolutely and tracks on Unknown Pleasure include Disorder You
to barras Us. It's We've been on the plane. We
had an emergency landing in Missouri. I've been on the
plane for twenty nine hours and the journators are on

(01:33):
the back of the plane. Sometimes they film you're getting
on off and we wait for them to go down.
I was like, you know, they just wanted to They
just wanted to go home and go to bed. And
I was like, I need to change. I'm another one
with no one dresses like this on the plane, but
I have to to get on and off sometimes. But
I was going home. I was going home to collect

(01:54):
Toto the dog. On the way. I was pretty relaxed
and it wasn't an issue for and when it blew up,
it was like, oh my goodness, this is the most
ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. It's a band.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
People now speak of ban great band, by the way,
a great bad at one of the absolute best. We
have a very special edition of dad Chat today talking
about the social media ban that is just around the
cost December ten.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
We've been talking about it this morning and people have
been giving us their thoughts.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
It is I'll tell you what I hear from so
many parents who are so grateful that we're doing this
because what it does has empowered them to have the
conversations with their young sons and daughters. This arose from parents.
This is a grassroots campaign that ran let kids be
kids essentially and people being given. There was a thirty

(02:52):
six months campaign. There were various grassroots movements led really
by mothers and fathers who had lost their children and
the tragedies that they then turned into. Trying to make
a difference to make sure that other families didn't have
to go through what they had.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, you're talking bullying and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yeah, Look, it's shocking what people have to do with
some of the surveys, more than ten percent of young
people online through social media have been encouraged to take
their own life by others. There is, you know, young

(03:34):
people don't have the maturity to discern either from real
what's real and what's not real. There is I think
a real issue that technology brings wonderful things, but we
need to keep in control.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
We need controls. There's too much on there. Some of
it is so bad. I'm so with you. We grew
up Albo and when we were in the classroom flicking
rubber bands was about as bad as about it were worse.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Paper error planes.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
It did get a lot worse than that. You obviously
didn't go to a girls' school, but we were, you
know we were. We said earlier, we went home, we
closed the door, we got some respite. Now it follows
you in your hand. It is twenty four hours around
the clock.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Is non you can't block it out. I exhausted.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
A young girl came to my office in Parliament House
during the last sitting week, FLOSSI from Tasmania, twelve years old.
And what she's done with her peers is she's got
this campaign where they write on a whiteboard or on
paper what they could do instead of being on their devices,
things like play sport, learn an instrument, read a book

(04:52):
with each other, all of that so that they get
that development. And that's socially interac action. Oh mayby years
ago seeing modern family and they're all around the kitchen
table and they're all texting each other rather than talking. Yeah,
that scene really stuck with me.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
You see that in restaurant, you see it on holidays.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Actually, Russ we do support Elbow on this, that don't
we because as dads, the great thing about it is
we can actually say, look, you have to give up
you social media and you're under sixteenth. I'm so sorry.
I think the Prime Minister said it is. We're blaming Elbow.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
It's not me.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
It's not me.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
But I'll get your number and I'll get my son
to call you later on thirteen.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
You know what he will give him. Part of it
was the thirty six months campaign was lifting sixteen. So
there you go. And who knows he might actually go
out and kick a footage. Yeah, it would be talk
talk talk with you. The other thing that a whole
lot of marriage make eye contacts. I had put the
pressure back on here. There are a whole bunch of

(06:07):
parents who are also going offline in order to show
their kids that they can do it.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
They can do it.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
That's good. Wouldn't that be good? Go out for date
night and on their phones instead introduce.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Their wife and your kids exactly, But it'll be the
first time this century that kids say, I'm board, dad,
What can I do on board? Because you never hear
that anymore When we grew up, how many times this
is boring? Get outside, come back At five pm?

Speaker 3 (06:37):
I go up Inner Sydney where there was lots of
concrete basically, and there was an oval in between this
big block of flats, not really an oble bit of
grass and everyone, all the kids would go down and
you knew when you go home it was done.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
When that was it home? You go and did your
mum call you Anthony or Tony?

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Always Anthony, Anthony.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Come home Anthony. Well that's the time.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
And now well.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
They couldn't find us. I'm going to make you see
Clayton if he's a war for at free who I
go up with. He lived in the in the flats
down the road and we're been mates ever since and
those lifelong friendship because we spent so much time together.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Do you play crickets growing up as well? With I
know you in those apartments, Did you get out there
and play backyard crickets up?

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Because we did in the in the middle and we
had it was like an old English estate. So I
grew up in like townhouses and there was a passageway
and the doors were in the middle of the passageways
to pitch. The passage way was to pitch. So I
have one shot, a straight drive because anything else didn't work.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
And you know, the brilliant thing.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
On the road was four on the road on the four.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Was sick, yeah, six and out. But the best thing
is coming off John Howard and that performance when he bold,
remember that, when you were laughing, you could do anything
out but sweet because because Johnny was so bad loved
his cricket.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
That was not his memory.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
It was poor old hawky copper. Remember when they hit
him in the glasses. So he had his background Johnny.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
That was Minister our Good's dad vice going And we
got the Prime Minister on deck to give us advice.
Before we let you go, We've got to ask you
because the ashes start on Friday and massive it.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
I know you love it.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
How much are we going to win by it?

Speaker 3 (08:41):
I'm one of those people who were I remember being
at the cricket and we were like Langer. It was
at the s c G. Langer was one hundred and something,
not out. We're like two for four hundred and people go, oh,
that's getting a bit dull. I was like, it's reading
the poems two for six hundred. I can declared, can't

(09:02):
you get out of outfit?

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Can't you get out of going to South Afygay? We'll
just hang around for a bit, just for the day
one and then it's not great, mate, that's going on
over there? Something going.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
I would love a bit of a conference. You are
just the twenty largest economies in the.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
I'm in sport alb.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
I'm lucky you mate.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
I just put in a sick leave note. Can you
ever do that?

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I am hoping to get to the s CG tests
this year. I'll get there and maybe the boxing day
we'll see how we go.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, we've got to let you go al, say lo
to your man kiny friend from Teleson.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
I don't want any contact, either physical or visual.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Still a restraining going on there.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
I was there. It's never it's never going to disappear
from my memory. And folks out there, we've been speaking
about social media and the internet. Do not burgle.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
It can't be. You can YouTube, but only if you're
over sixteen.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Safe travels to the G twenty in South Africa. Thank
you so much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
An absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Thank you, Thank you, Barjee. You're pulling in the big guests.
See what you can do for us for us next week,
have a safe trip, Prime Minister. Hopefully you can do
some good deals with that bunch of twenty biggest economies.
Nice to be a part of that club. Actually