Q: Prime Minister three years ago. You said that you felt the weight of removing the Morrison government this time around, you don’t have the Morrison factor working in Labor’s favour. What weighs you down now? You know, why is Peter Dutton still so competitive with you?

Anthony Albanese:

Well, what weighs me down is that the Morrison government, I think, was a bad government. I think the fact that they replaced Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull and then replaced Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott and then wanted to replace Morrison with Josh Frydenberg, says a lot about the wasted ten years, ten years where they had 23 different energy policies and didn’t deliver.

One, didn’t deliver one. And so you had that uncertainty for business.

What weighs me down now is I feel a responsibility to ensure that we’re able to continue to govern, that you continue to have the investment that we’re seeing from companies like this, that you have a government that strengthens Medicare, that looks after people, doesn’t leave people behind, and that creates opportunity. I want that to continue to occur.

And what we’re left with now is the leftovers of the Morrison government.

Some of the best people have all gone. They’ve left and the remaining moderates, one by one. Karen Andrews, are you have Paul Fletcher, you have had Senator Birmingham, Christopher Pyne’s gone. You’re now left with a more and more right wing rump in the Liberal Party. And when you look at their candidates, some of the views that they have are just not consistent, you know, not consistent with Australian values that we have that we hold dear here.

We look after each other in Australia, we don’t have a dog eat dog attitude towards the economy. We look after people, we make sure that we have a culture here of the fair go. That’s what my government represents and that’s what I want to continue with.