Amanda Rishworth downplays Albanese’s crude hot mic moment at COP31, insists its not embarrassing for nation

A senior minister has brushed off a crude joke shared between Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, urging people not to get “overexcited”.

The Prime Minister was caught on a hot mic this week joking with Mr Bowen that he should not keep a phone in his pants pocket because the radiation could harm his “d**k”.

The jestful exchange happened at COP31 in Turkey, which Australia is co-running as president for negotiations.

Cabinet minister Amanda Rishworth on Sunday rejected that it was embarrassing for Australia.

“I mean, this is a private conversation in between meetings,” she told News24.

“I know that a hot mic incident is very exciting for people. It’s interesting.

“But really, there are bigger issues to tackle and to discuss. And so, I think, quite frankly, it’s a joke between two people, and we shouldn’t get overexcited by it.”

Asked if those sort of jokes were common in cabinet, she refused to say.

“I’m not going to go into the jokes I hear in my private life,” Ms Rishworth said, adding that she hears “a lot of interesting jokes out in the community”.

“It was a private conversation, a private joke, and I’m sure many Australians have used that word in private before.”

Speaking to the same broadcaster, Liberal frontbench senator James Paterson took a different view.

He called the incident “unfortunate”.

“I didn’t run for the federal parliament to appoint myself as a morality police,” he said.

“What I would say is that locker room talk like that has a time and a place that it’s not at international summits when you’re the prime minister of Australia talking to your energy minister.

“If you want to engage in that kind of banter at a private barbecue, not before the assembled media at an international conference.”

He added that no one “thinks it enhances Australia’s international standing or respect for the office of the prime minister”.

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