E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2WSFM 101.7
JONESY AND AMANDA

THURSDAY, 9 APRIL 2015

 

SUBJECT/S: Unusual eating habits of conservatives; Tony Abbott’s cuts to the pension; Unfair Budget.

 

AMANDA: We were talking the other day in the office, we’ve never actually met Bill Shorten, he’s the Leader of the Opposition as we know, he’s on our TV screens every night on the news, but what’s he like? We thought we’d get him in to say hello. Bill Shorten, hello.

 

BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Hello.

 

JONESY: Good to have you here. Bill I noticed that you’re not wearing a red or a blue tie, you’re sans tie this morning.

 

SHORTEN: Yeah, well it’s radio.

 

AMANDA: So you’re going all casual.

 

JONESY: So you’re saying you didn’t make an effort for us Bill? Is that what you’re saying?

 

AMANDA: I bet you would for Karl and Lisa though, wouldn’t you Bill?

 

JONESY: Yeah.

 

SHORTEN: Oh well, it’s morning TV.

 

JONESY: Oh I see.

 

SHORTEN: The Godzilla of media in the morning.

 

AMANDA: You know, it must be hard, I was looking in the paper this morning, there’s a picture of Prime Minister – the British Prime Minister David Cameron, and he’s been making headlines for being on the campaign trail and he’s eating a hotdog with a knife and fork, and everyone’s going what kind of idiot does that? You must be so heavily scrutinised when you’re out and about, what’s – have you been caught doing embarrassing things like eating your own earwax?

 

SHORTEN: Well with everyone being a potential photographer with their mobile phones, it is a freak show some days, but because you’re always – oh and I’m sure, I’m sure that you’ll do something embarrassing, it’s just law of averages, we’re human beings and if someone’s permanently got a camera on you, it will be embarrassing at some point.

 

JONESY: Because what do you think is weirder, David Cameron eating a hotdog with a knife and fork or Tony Abbott just munching into a raw onion?

 

AMANDA: That was odd.

 

SHORTEN: That’s a competition which you’d have to call a dead heat.  The raw onion, that’s just weird, but a hotdog with a knife and fork.  I mean I suppose if it was a really sloppy hotdog with lots of – I don’t know, no you’d just get a napkin and wrap it up.

 

AMANDA: You’d have to, you just have to keep, you just have to hoe into it, you can’t use a knife and fork.

 

JONESY: There was nothing sloppy about that hotdog.

 

AMANDA: Not in the photo.

 

JONESY: That was an easy pick up.

 

SHORTEN: Yeah no, you just wouldn’t use a knife and fork for a hotdog full stop, and you don’t need a minder to tell you that. Now if I’m ever filmed eating a hotdog with a knife and fork –

 

AMANDA: Make sure you use a fish knife because it’s more posh. But you’ve got a twin brother Robert, are you identical twins?

 

SHORTEN: No, thankfully for him, he’s not identical, it’s fraternal, he’s a couple of inches taller than me. I was born 15 minutes first though, so I’m first by 15 minutes and if you know twins the time gap between the eldest and the youngest is always something every twin knows.

 

JONESY: Right, see that’s an opportunity right now to have a go at your brother on the radio.

 

AMANDA: 15 minutes older, 15 minutes better.

 

SHORTEN: Well he’s very smart and he was good at sport when he was young so that was - I think the first competition I won with him was the last competition I won with him.

 

JONESY: And that’s – he was smart and good at sport so that’s why you became a politician.

 

SHORTEN: Yeah well, you know they call it show business for ugly people.

 

JONESY: You’re well known for your zingers, your zingers wherever you may be, here’s some of your zingers.

 

Audio: Unfortunately now it would appear that we have two Prime Ministers in Australia, Prime Minister Abbott and Prime Minister Palmer.

 

JONESY: I like that one. I like this one better.

 

Audio: The Government’s used the term team Australia a lot, I’m worried about the emergence of team idiot.

 

AMANDA: They’re just not appreciated enough.

 

JONESY: The problem is, I think it’s your crowd, the crowd aren’t supportive of your material, like on this radio show we have a bunch of minions that just sit around, you know chuckling away while we say it just to make us feel good, so what we’ve done is we’ve got out minions for your material.

 

Audio: Unfortunately now it would appear that we have two Prime Ministers in Australia, Prime Minister Abbott and Prime Minister Palmer.

 

Audio: Laughter

 

AMANDA: It’s different, it sounds better.

 

Audio: The Government’s used the term team Australia a lot, I’m worried about the emergence of team idiot.
Audio: Laughter

 

AMANDA: You could just do a monologue within your own talk show with that kind of response.

 

SHORTEN: Everyone needs some minions to help them kick home their gags, I get that. That’s a really good development.

 

AMANDA: It must be hard being in Opposition Bill, because by nature of the job it’s being negative. It’s like a tennis match you say the Government’s stuffing it up, they say well we’re just dealing with the stuff that your government stuffed up last time, and it just goes back and forth, back and forth and it feels like nothing gets done. Is it a frustrating role to be in?

 

SHORTEN: At one level it is - I mean you want to make a difference, you want to help people. When you’re the Opposition though, your job is to hold the Government to account. But at another level it’s not a frustrating job because you do have the chance to stand up for what you believe in.  It’s a good job but you’re right occasionally the only thing which you say which is going to get on the news is you saying no to Tony Abbott, and you’ve got your own propositions you want to advance and as we get closer to an election, I’ve got no doubt we’ll get the chance to get more coverage on our alternative view for Australia’s future.

 

JONESY: Maybe you should eat a hotdog filled with a raw onion.

 

AMANDA: A raw hotdog, raw sausage.

 

JONESY: That could be something.

 

SHORTEN: Yeah I don’t have relevance deprivation syndrome.

 

AMANDA: Oh what’s relevance deprivation syndrome, what’s that?

 

SHORTEN: I think it’s an attempt to get attention by doing something really odd.

 

AMANDA: Oh wow.

 

JONESY: Because the last time we had Tony on the show, he didn’t do anything odd at all.

 

Audio: ‘Tony Abbott’ singing

 

JONESY: We didn’t even ask him to do that.

 

AMANDA: We didn’t ask him to sing, he just did.

 

SHORTEN: Really?

 

JONESY: You want to sing Bill?

 

AMANDA: Any 80s songs or anything you’d like to share?

 

SHORTEN: To sing?

 

AMANDA: Sure.

 

SHORTEN: No.

 

AMANDA: Oh ok. You’ve learnt haven’t you? Stick to eating a hotdog with your hands.

 

SHORTEN: Yeah I can do happy birthday well but anyway.

 

JONESY: That’ll do, because it’s no one’s birthday. Well Bill when’s the election coming up? I mean that’s ages away isn’t it? You should know this.

 

SHORTEN: Well it has to be I think by about September of next year, but the average length of a first term government is about two and a half years so maybe in the next 12 months. I’ll be interested to see, the Budget’s got to be brought down by the Government in about a month’s time. They made such a train wreck of the last one, I think that this one will be - either they will just go into election mode and do a really dull budget as Tony Abbott says or they might have more surprises. I really don’t know where the Government’s going on a range of the issues, but the Budget will be an indicator of when the election is going to be.

 

JONESY: As a voter Amanda, what do you want, a dull budget or a surprise budget?

 

AMANDA: I like a dull budget, because the last one was full of a whole lot of awful surprises and most of them still haven’t been passed.

 

JONESY: Can we have a good surprise budget? What about that, well you don’t want a bad surprise budget, you want a good surprise budget.

 

AMANDA: Is anyone writing these ideas down Bill?

 

SHORTEN: Well I think one think they could do is just repudiate their changes to the pension. What they’re proposing on the pension, just to be serious for a moment is that, they want to cut the rate of pension growth, the indexation rate, so that sounds a bit technical but effectively if you’re an age pensioner, you know you’re in your mid-70s, you get roughly just on $20,000 a year and each six months it goes up by a certain percentage, not much.  But the Government’s picked a lower rate of growth and that’s really hard. If you’re on a fixed income we think the Government should not tinker with the pension increases, they should just take their hands off the pension. So that would be a nice surprise, then for pensioners they can get on with not being anxious about what the Government’s going to do.

 

JONESY: Very good. Well thank you Bill.

 

AMANDA: That makes perfect sense.

 

JONESY: We’re just so easily swayed.

 

AMANDA: I know, I know.

 

JONESY: We’re hardly Alan Jones are we?

 

AMANDA: I know, you could say, ‘I’m going to just be a giant axe murderer’ and we’ll go oh that makes sense. That sounds nice.

 

JONESY: That sounds nice, he’s an axe murderer.

 

AMANDA: He’s a nice man isn’t he?

 

SHORTEN: I reckon you’d probably have a go if I said that, but anyway I don’t think it so it’s all good.

 

AMANDA: Oh good. Maybe the headline will be that you’ve come on to our program to deny the fact that you’re an axe murderer.

 

JONESY: Bill Shorten, and what we’ve learnt about Bill Shorten is you’re not an axe murderer and you don’t eat raw onions, you eat a hotdog with your hands, and you’re not going sing randomly.

 

AMANDA: Well they’re things we didn’t know about you before so we’re happy to know that.

 

SHORTEN: Very good.

 

AMANDA: Nice to talk to you Bill.

 

SHORTEN: Nice to talk to you guys, have a nice morning.

 

ENDS

 

LEADER’S OFFICE MEDIA UNIT: 02 6277 4053