From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, March four, twenty twenty five. The White House seems determined to keep its spat with Ukraine, going with Secretary of State Marco Rubio accusing President Zelenski of Ukraine's flaming. That's after Donald Trump and JD. Vans said Zelenski was ungrateful. Both the Australian government and the opposition say they want to support a UK led coalition of the willing, but
won't commit troops on the ground. Food producers and retailers, as well as charities that feed the needy, say the government has failed to address the cost of living crisis, soaring cost of energy and fuel. That's an exclusive live now at Vaustralian dot com dot au. Tis the season for politicians in Hawaiian shirts to sit down with their glowing partners to reveal the real me. And Anthony Albanesi has found a new ultrasympathetic outlet, the long form podcast Interview.
But what are we learning about politicians in their new favorite medium? That's today's episode. We've all watched politicians for at least a decade try to be relatable on social media.
All right, let's make a sandwich a back my popular demand.
It's James Cocktail Hour and can I tell you after one week of campaigning, mommy need the cocktail.
Hey, TikTok, thought i'd hop on here to let you know the big news we're announcing today.
It's usually horrifying.
Did you know Anthony Albanizi is on TikTok because I had no idea and it appears that not many other people did either.
That's Kristin Amio, producer of the Front and The Australian's podcast critic.
I really think i'd prefer him in a hard hat and hi viz somewhere.
The advent of social media was meant to mean politicians didn't need boring old journalists with their tricky questions anymore. They could go direct to the people.
Hi there, PM here, I'm back with your weekend reminder that the right to disconnect is now law.
But now they've thought of a new way to avoid the tough questions. Podcasts. But not podcasts like the one you're listening to. Podcasts like this.
Here's what I'm wearing for the most important interview of my life trousers. That's how serious is guys, I'm in trousers.
That's reality TV star and radio host Abby Chatfield prepping for an interview with Anthony Albanezi.
This actually is like consequential and I've got twelve pages of notes and I feel like that feeling the night before UNI Present.
She's the host of podcast It's a Lot with Abby Chatfield. It covers everything from sex to feminism, a lot more sex and relationships. She's smart and funny and the show has been near the top of the Australian podcast charts since twenty nineteen.
Welcome to Its a Lot podcast. Prime Minister Anthony ALBANIZI.
Great to be here Abby.
Over the course of about ninety minutes, the PM got time to wheel out all his lines.
The intervention that we've done has really looked after low and middle.
Income earners the Middle East, the right.
Of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security with prosperity the voice. So we did that and it didn't work out. I accept that, and we accept the result. The other guy talked to everyone and in Peedi Dartin doesn't.
And he just reeled off the talking points he did.
When I initially pitched that story, I perhaps naively assumed that Anthony Albanezi would make some kind of announcement, would maybe elaborate on some of his policy agenda. We are pretty close to a federal election now it hasn't been called yet, but it is coming. But really all I got was everything that I've already heard in the press conferences that have happened really over the course of the last twelve months, if not longer.
My strategy was to kind of give a problem, a criticism of the government, and then let him answer and reply. This wasn't because I didn't want to debate him. It wasn't because I didn't want to prove him wrong. It was just a timing thing.
But I really that's not to say she gave a bad interview, but it's an opportunity, I think for us to step back and understand what the objective is of these podcast interviews and what we as voters and as listeners want out of them.
Yeah, I think the last thing a lot of politicians want to do is sit down with a newspaper journalist who's going to dig through their policies one by one looking for a splash a news story that the politicians doesn't necessarily want to be out there. That's what we're always looking for. So politicians for years now, forty years, fifty years have been going on kind of light entertainment programs in an effort to make themselves seem more relatable.
Peter Costello dancing on Kerry An Keneley's midday show. John Howson blowing himself up on a current affair. If I buy a birthday cake from a cake shop and GSP is in place, do I pay more or less for the birthday cake?
Well, it will depend where The cakes today in that shop are subject to sales tax, so they're.
Not, which I must say is not like entertainment. It was one of the greatest news interviews in Australian television history. But even when they go on shows like Today or Sunrise, they get a hard time. This is under your watch. How do you feel about that?
Well, I know what it's like to do it, tough net.
It seems like the appeal of going on a ninety minute podcast is just that it's a nice, cozy, warm blanket and they don't really get challenged.
I think that's absolutely right. I was looking through the kind of slate of other podcast interviews that Anthony Albanezi and to a lesser extent, Peter Dutton have done this year, and strangely enough, cricket is widely represented in this list.
We literally have the Prime Minister of the country. Just interrupt.
Anthony, We're just talking cricket in there, Prime Minister.
The b Tudor advert, a satire publication, is represented.
My mum raged three great plays, Catholic Church, South Sydney Regular Football Club and the Australian Labor Party.
Now, as James Madden, who is The Australian's Media editor noted in the Media Diary, this was an absolute zinger when it was first dropped by Anthony Albanesi around about twenty fourteen, I think. But he has said it quite literally hundreds of times in media interviews since then, and it's lost a little bit of the luster that I
think Albo thinks it carries. We've got some women's networks, and then there are what I would call smaller independent news and current affairs shows for both Anthony Albanesi and Peter Dutton.
Hi, my boris and this is straight talk. Peter Dutton was straight talk Mike. Great to be with you, Thank you, min Yeah, So let's talk about Peter Dutton. He gave a ninety minute interview in December to a former Olympic diver, Sam Fricka, who's got a massive YouTube audience. He's got about six million subscribers. And again, it was not a particularly challenging interview, was it.
No, it was a long interview and it was, as far as I can tell, an attempt to kind of counter this emerging hard man persona that has come about around Peter Dutton, whether or not that's been fostered by him and by his team, or if it's something that's happened due to the circumstances. But it did seem that the audience that did watch this interview on YouTube wasn't necessarily buying it.
So my apologies for being so tarti in our arrival time.
Of course, thank you for coming in.
And as other campaigns are like just moving around the country talking to people, what's a Dane your life look like at the moment, Well.
It is pretty much like that.
So the election proper, Yeah, which is interesting, isn't it, because presumably you don't follow Sam Fricka to get politics, and you don't follow Sam Fricka to get just unfiltered politics, where it's just the endless repetition of talking points or worked up media lines. I wonder if that's the audience's irritation with it, that politics is actually quite boring.
Yeah, I wasn't actually familiar with Sanfrica until Peter Dutton appeared on his podcast. His life after Diving seems to actually be quite diverse in terms of the paths that he has pursued. He does have a podcast which is
called Diving Deep. He seems to interview people from all walks of life, but it's not in any way, shape or form specifically a politics podcast, nor is it a politics podcast that would really attempt to peel back those layers of those talking points and actually understand the policy that's at the heart of that agenda.
Coming up where you've heard this all before.
Do me a favor. Do you know Elon musk Yez he endorsed me by the way he gave me the nicest endorsement too, the tougher he said, the country's going to have failed. You should do the same thing, Joe, because you cannot be voting for Kamala.
Joe Rogan is one of the biggest podcasters in the world. His show That Joe Rogan Experience regularly clocks up millions of downloads per episode. In November, Rogan got Donald J. Trump, there's a.
Lot of interest in it.
One of the things that's a lot.
Of interest in the people coming from space. You know, yes, and I know you're interested.
Oh, I'm very interested in that.
How much do they tell you about that a lot?
Trump's presidential opponent, Kamala Harris, appeared on another Mammoth podcast, call Her Daddy, hosted by Alex Cooper.
I saw the Governor of Arkansas said, unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn't have anything keeping her humble. How did that make you feel?
I don't think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who are not aspiring to be humble, a lot of women out here who have.
Harris was talking to young women. Trump was talking to young men. It was a friendly environment for Donald Trump, wasn't it.
It was probably also a pretty easy numbers play based on the fact that this is one of the biggest podcasts in the world. But it felt different in my opinion, in the sense that Joe Rogan is so ideologically aligned with his audience being predominantly young men, and we saw
that reflected in the vote in America in November. Whether or not there's a causal link there, I don't think it would be fair to say that Joe Rogan's millions of listeners heard that interview and automatically switched to vote to Donald Trump or were compelled to vote at all because of it. But there is a difference there in that Joe Rogan is so ideologically aligned with his audience in a way that some of the Australian podcasts being
engaged by Australian politicians don't necessarily seem to be. That feels more like a surface level demographic play.
Yeah, and the risk for those interviews is that, in a very comfortable environment where you're not really being challenged, you reveal yourself to be not as likable as you think you are. Kamala Harris, appearing on Call Her Daddy, the Big American Podcast, relaxed enough to let herself talk quite freely about Donald Trump as a human being and said some things that maybe didn't win her any new voters and could potentially have turned some people off. That's the risk, isn't it.
Absolutely. It's presented to the audience as this opportunity to get to know the real you. And if there's nothing there for them to get to know, then why would you go and cast a ballot for this person who said that they can be the one to change your life, will make your life better.
Kristin Amiott is producer of the Front. You can read all our coverage of the looming federal election anytime at the Australian dot com dot au